Silicon Valley accelerator-investor Y Combinator (YC) recently conducted second chapter of its Office Hours in three Indian cities i.e. Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Three partners Gustaf Alstromer, Adora Cheung, and Anu Hariharan, spent a week in India conducting Office Hours and evaluating potential Indian startups for the accelerator program. During this visit we got a […]
Pankit Desai, co-founder of cyber security startup Sequretek, almost sounds like a nationalist when he says, “India is the only country of its size and complexity which does not have a very strong homegrown cyber security company.” He believes that while dependence on international products is fine in other areas but not in cyber security. […]
Gautam Shewakramani recently took over as the country manager for Quora India. With over 200 Mn unique visitors visiting the Q&A platform that empowers people to share and grow the world’s knowledge, Quora has grown to be a formidable global platform in its own right.
This year, Quora became the unicorn of subjective human knowledge after raising an $85 Mn Series D round co-led by Collaborative Fund and Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, with participation from previous investors Tiger Global, Matrix Partners and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The round valued it at $1.8 Bn, thus marking its entry into the celebrated unicorn club. In another first, Quora will be organising its first Global Meetup Week as well.
Gautam joined Quora after serving as the founder and CEO of AudioCompass. He was also named among top 15 entrepreneurs who are “shaking up India’s travel scene” by Conde Nast Traveller. Additionally, Gautam is an active angel investor and has invested in several startups, including Exotel, Hotelogix, and Bevi. Gautam works closely with the product team at Quora’s headquarters in Mountain View, California to focus on growing Quora, and better serving its users and businesses in India.
In an exclusive conversation with Inc42, Gautam shed light on Quora’s focus on quality content amidst a crowded content space, its strategy for monetisation, and expansion plans for Quora India.
Inc42: As of today, what is Quora’s global traction like? Where does India stand in this tally?
Gautam Shewakramani: Quora has more than 200 Mn monthly unique visitors around the world, many of whom belong to India. We don’t focus too much on specific numbers beyond that; in general, we optimise for quality and not volume. Quora has grown to be a global platform, with users from all over the world. This year, we’re organising our first Global Meetup Week, with user-led meetups being held all over the world. Our response from India has been amazing. We have over 30 user-led meetups happening during the meetup week in cities across India, including Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi.
Inc42: What kind of content is being shared and consumed on Quora as far as India is concerned?
Gautam Shewakramani: Quora is a horizontal product. We are very conscious to ensure that it is a place for knowledge on a wide variety of topics, and our traffic from India reflects that diversity. Popular topic areas in India include career advice, exam/test advice, and technology.
Inc42: Why is there a thrust on the following four languages: Spanish, French, Italian and German? Are you planning to launch Quora in any Indian regional language, given that the rise of vernacular audience will overshadow English speaking audience in India as per a recent Google-KPMG report?
Gautam Shewakramani: Our mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge, and only a fraction of the world speaks English. We started with Spanish, French, Italian and German because we felt that there was a large number of people that used Quora in English who were bilingual and comfortable contributing in those languages, which helped create the initial community in those languages. Given our scale, it also made a lot of sense technically to start with languages that were in the same (Latin) script.
At this time, we haven’t made any decisions on expanding into Indian regional languages, but it’s something that we are exploring and will consider as we work towards achieving our mission.
Inc42: What kind of innovations are on the anvil for Quora, in particular on the product and content sides?
Gautam Shewakramani: It’s too early to comment on the results, but an example of a globally relevant product innovation that may resonate in India is the recent expansion of our video beta. Video Beta allows a user to tap the record button from the iOS and Android apps to record a new video answer. Depending on the question, an answer could be a single video, multiple videos, or videos and text. Early traction has been promising from India, with several people here contributing video answers, and using video as a medium to share and gain knowledge on Quora.
Inc42: Where do you see the content industry going from here? What are some of the trends in the content you are witnessing both on user and creator sides?
Gautam Shewakramani: First of all, we believe in the value of quality content. That’s why we’ve been focused on it from the very beginning. Also, the ability to personalise content (in the context of Quora, those could be questions or answers) for readers is important to increase the chance that they will find the content relevant and engaging. For creators, this personalisation is also important, because not only do you want your content to be read by a large number of people, but you also want to be sure that you’re reaching an audience who’s going to find your content relevant.
Inc42: Content is becoming a crowded field. How does Quora aim to differentiate itself and maintain its edge over others in the same space?
Gautam Shewakramani: Our product is highly personalised and this is an area we continue to invest in. The more someone uses Quora, the better it gets for them and for others, as we learn more about your interests and expertise. Content added to our platform remains high-quality as we scale because of the quality of our writers, features in the product, and community policies that allow us to detect and remove things that detract from a high-quality experience, such as spam, plagiarism, and serial trolling. Readers can also give their opinions about the content, through voting, commenting, and reporting, which in turn helps Quora assess the quality of the content and allows people to trust the content more.
Inc42: The thrust of consuming content on mobile is on the rise. What plans does Quora have in place to leverage this rising trend?
Gautam Shewakramani: We’ve had a philosophy of product parity between mobile and desktop for a while now. The launch of video on the platform is an example of a format that lends itself to mobile. We have several other mobile product features with which we continue to explore and experiment.
Gautam Shewakramani On Quora India Plans
Inc42: What are Quora’s expansion plans for India? How much traction are you hoping to gain in the next five years?
Gautam Shewakramani: In India, our goal is to continue the exponential growth we have seen over the last several years while ensuring that the product continues to improve as we scale the number of people and businesses that use Quora. One of my primary responsibilities is to learn more about and figure out how we can better serve our audience here in India. I will spend most of my time working closely with the Quora product team in the US to help ensure the product continues to improve for people all over the world, with a special focus on the needs of Indian users.
Inc42: How big is the Quora India team? Any plans of hiring and opening an office here?
Gautam Shewakramani: In total, Quora has about 200 employees, almost all working out of Mountain View. At this time, I am the only person focused on India, and we don’t plan to open an office or do any hiring here in the near future.
Inc42: What are Quora’s monetisation plans from India given that Quora rolled out limited advertising last year?
Gautam Shewakramani: We launched our ad platform to the public in mid-May 2017. We already have Indian advertisers running ads on Quora. Quora is a great place for brands to fulfill their marketing goals and anyone can start advertising via our self-service platform today!
As of August 2017, according to Alexa, the US currently accounts for around 35.1% of Quora’s user base, followed by India which contributes 20.1 % of readers. Content is becoming a highly contested space in India with rising smartphone penetration and an Internet population touching 500 Mn users this year. According to a 2016 study by Groupe Speciale Mobile (GSM) Association, India’s mobile using population is expected to cross the 1 Bn mark by 2020.
In April 2017, Google’s VP for Southeast Asia & India, Rajan Anandan, said that 9 out of every 10 new Internet users will be non-English speakers. At present, rural users account for 35 % of the country’s Internet community. While Quora currently has no plans to leverage this growing Indian vernacular populace, it looks like sooner or later Gautam Shewakramani will have to address this question to be able to reach the next level of growth in the second largest Internet market in the world.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Amjad Puliyali, co-founder of online grocery delivery startup GetBaqala based out of Bahrain, comes from a digital background. After moving to UAE to build his professional career, Amjad ended up gaining insights in the domains of digital, growth, performance, big data and personalisation. He was mainly consulting startups and businesses (in ecommerce and travel) like Etihad Airways, Souq.com, Careem, Namshi etc.
Amjad also had the chance of working with many Indian data-driven companies like Vizury. Working with Vizury, in fact, was a big learning experience for him. During his tenure in the company, he got a chance to expand the company’s business to the Middle East and Africa. And thus, when Amjad was raring to set up his own startup in the Middle East, it was the digital medium, data and mobile that intrigued him.
“One of the biggest trends in the Middle East was mobile which was picking up in all markets. As we looked at trends across the globe and compared them with the local opportunity in markets like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, one of the things that struck us was people are looking for grocery delivery services in these markets. Everywhere else in the world you have online grocery delivery but in this region. So we saw an opportunity here. We noticed that in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia there has been 400% year-on-year growth in the search itself. Of course in ecommerce there are already big guys like Souq.com (acquired by Amazon this year) which have a presence in the region but we wanted to focus on hyperlocal and mobile as a key element,” reveals Amjad.
So Amjad quit his job and scouted for a market to test out the hyperlocal space. Though Amjad has lived in Dubai for 10 years yet set up a startup was an expensive proposition in the country. That’s when Amjad met Dharmi Magdani, Economic Development Board Of Bahrain (EDB)’s India country manager in India and Bahrain came into the picture.
Says Amjad, “Obviously I had my reservations as to why would I go to Bahrain which is the smallest market in the Middle East. However, there were some very definite advantages.” Saudi Arabia is just 30 minutes away from Bahrain. So testing the product in Bahrain before entering Saudi Arabia made sense. More so because the customer behaviour is the same from the Arab audience. With an Internet penetration of almost 95% and a mobile penetration of 120%, it just seemed to have the right metrics in place as well.
“But it was when we heard about the incredible support system Bahrain had for startups, that sealed the deal for us. We were sitting in Bengaluru when we were applying for the company license. It all happened to them,” he reveals.
So Amjad only had to visit Bahrain once to sign documents and GetBaqala, founded along with co-founder Aboobacker Shinan, was up and running.
How EDB And The Government Are Helping Build A Robust Startup Ecosystem In Bahrain
Speaking about the measures undertaken by EDB for the supporting the startup ecosystem in Bahrain, Amjad reveals that EDB was instrumental in getting the startup a virtual space, helped it to get legally paper wise ready, and arranged visas for the team. So GetBaqala moved in to test out the market without any hassle.
The startup also got selected for Bahrain Development Bank’s 12-month accelerator program Seed Fuel which provided it funding to the tune of $66K (BHD 25,000).
Besides EDB, GetBaqala also received major government support from Tamkeen, an organisation tasked with developing Bahrain’s private sector and positioning it as the key driver of the economic development programme. Under Tamkeen’s subsidy program for startups, the organisation hires Bahrainis and pays 70% of their salaries. Thus, with the support of the government GetBaqala has hired fresh polytechnic graduates and is sending them Bengaluru for six month training. Tamkeen is providing all the support, starting from accommodation to travel for them, their six months’ salary, as well as ICT support. Out of its 12 member team, four in the technology and development team are in India. Not only that, the startup has also been provided rent subsidy for a year in Bahrain.
Amjad reveals, “For both me and my co-founder, Bahrain was new. Dubai was our natural choice even though lifestyle is expensive in Dubai but it has access to a big market and has potential. However our runaway increased easily from three to nine months by choosing Bahrain. Also, we liked the fact of being nimble and simple in the beginning.”
Ease of capital was yet another attractive feature for the duo to move to Bahrain. That’s because the Bahrain government has reduced the capital requirement from $53K (BHD 20K) to as low as $3K (BHD1K) for businesses and even lower than that in some cases. Hence GetBaqala started off with $3K (BHD1K) capital which now has grown to $266K (BHD100K).
GetBaqala: The Journey From Inception To 20k+ Downloads
And thus, GetBaqala initially started as an online grocery delivery platform. When a user places an order the platform maps it to the nearest grocery outlet to him. However, now it has reiterated on the model, as, Amjad felt that it is not going to scale. Given that the price is defined by the grocery guy, the startup does not have any leverage on that and dependency on delivery is with him. Hence it made sense for GetBaqala to pivot from managing their entire delivery.
Explains Amjad, “It makes sense for us to own last-mile logistics as that is the only point of interaction we have with our consumers physically. If I don’t optimise that experience with my consumer, I am not going to win that trust back. And especially when it comes to food, it is all about trust. We are breaking his relationship with supermarkets over the last 10-15 years to trust us on quality and delivery. So I need to build that same trust so that people know that with us, delivery is on time and quality is maintained. We will take it back on the spot if you don’t like the product. Also, consumers can rate immediately on the app if a delivery experience has gone wrong.”
Also, the startup moved away from multiple grocery partners, consolidating to one of the largest hypermarkets in the GCC (signed NDA with them). Eventually, this partnership will help it access other GCC markets as well. Now in addition to the mobile app for customers to place an order, it also offers its shoppers an app like Instacart in the US. The Shopper app is basically an internal app, where the startup has part-time and full-time shoppers shopping for the orders placed by their customers with their partner stores. The startup carefully hires and trains shoppers; they are a part of the team. Delivery App, is another app only for the delivery boys, where the customer’s address/delivery location and real-time tracking is enabled. The app enables the startup to do two hours delivery. The startup keeps the Shoppers and Delivery team separate.
As the startup wants to be asset and inventory light, the majority of the sourcing of goods is still under the care of the hypermarket. However it does source some of the products individually, thus operating a hybrid model. The idea is to keep products with short shelf life with the partners while the startup sources some of the long life products which they don’t have. These normally include speciality offerings like vegan products or the likes.
As of last month, GetBaqala claims to have crossed 20,000+ downloads without spending a penny on marketing or advertising. Out of these, over 10,000 are monthly active customers. It boasts of a good retention rate of 70%, which means basically 2.8 times a month, consumers shop on the platform. Average order size has since inception increased from $13 (BHD5) to $48 (BHD18) with the addition of more categories.
Amjad also claims to have a customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratio as 1:10X. Meanwhile, revenues have grown 40% month on month. He adds beaming, “It took us 10 months to reach our first $100K, but the next $100K came in 2.5 months.”
It is this compelling story, which comes without even raising a seed round, which has made Silicon Valley investors interested in pumping in Series A funding in the startup!
But Amjad is not worried about the inflow of funding. While Bahrain has lack of active tech investors unlike India, however funds are pouring into the ecosystem. And one of the most crucial ones would be the $100 Mn Fund of funds announced by the government.
He adds, “Funds are coming into the ecosystem, so we are not worried about that. Our vision is to become the number one mobile commerce platform so that anyone can come and list any product with us, and sell it to consumers in two hours.”
When one compares GetBaqala’s model with Grofers or BigBasket in India, the duo follow a similar model but minus the Shoppers app. However, neither of them promise a straight two hour delivery for every order, rather ask the customer for the preferred time slot from the customer to make the delivery.
A $15 Bn Online Grocery Market In The Middle East
Amjad offers an interesting comparison. “Bahrain as a market is 1 Mn+, which is half of Koramangala! But the consumer spending is 4X of that in India.” Having spoken to Indian companies in grocery including the ones that failed (Peppertap), Amjad believes that GetBaqala has a significant core base it can experiment on in Bahrain.
And once they develop this base, there is a larger pool of audience in neighbouring countries like Dammam, Kuwait and other GCC members. Even in Bahrain, he expects 5% of the people to move to the online grocery.
He reveals, “Latest reports show that by 2018, Middle East grocery commerce potential is $15 Bn. Grocery offline in GCC is a $325 Bn + opportunity. Think of even 1% shifting online!” Ecommerce is expected to grow 40% to $41.5 Bn in 2020 in GCC.
Meanwhile in Bahrain, offline retail is a $2 Bn+ market which is only 2% of the entire GCC market. GetBaqala is aiming for a 5% of this market in the next three years.
“So even if it is the smallest market, it is a $50 Mn opportunity for us,” he concludes.
When one compares with India, as per a Goldman Sachs report, “The domestic online retail industry is evolving into a hyperlocal, on-demand market. India’s ecommerce market is estimated to grow 15 times to $300 Bn by 2030.” The Indian online grocery market is estimated to reach $40 Mn (INR 270 Cr) by FY ’19 growing at a CAGR of 62% from 2016 to 2022. As per the report, Morgan Stanley expects the online grocery and food segment to become the fastest-growing segment, expanding at a compounded annual growth rate of 141% by 2020.
On the same lines, GetBaqala will stay focused on online grocery as it is the fastest moving segment in Bahrain as well. And look to moving into neighbouring countries. For instance, neighbouring Dammam – the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia – which Amjad believes is another beast altogether. And thus GetBaqala aims to tame this beast in the next six to nine months.
But how about the competition in Bahrain itself?
Amjad reveals, “When we started in September in last year, we were the only one present. Now there are 5 players who are into online grocery. Howe, er we are winning on certain key differentiators.” Some of the players delivering online grocery now include Wafiapps.com, Alosraonline.com to name a few along with incumbent retailers like Jawad Group which have recently launched their own mobile app for grocery delivery.
One of them is that GetBaqala does not have a minimum order. So a customer can even order a single bottle of water. However, it encourages customers to buy bulk so that they can save up funds on delivery. If the order size is less than $13(BHD5), it charges $1.33(500 fils, 1 BHD=1000 fils) and for order sizes more than BHD5, the delivery becomes free. In addition, it has multiple payment options and has recently added benefit pay mobile to them.
Adds Amjad, “In India, money is coming in, you will have 10 players in Bengaluru alone. So obviously in comparison, Bahrain is less risky when it comes to hyperlocal.”
But Amjad is also not sceptical of bigger players like Alibaba, Amazon or investors like SoftBank coming into the region, who have mostly ignored it because of geopolitical tensions.
Explains Amjad, “Even if bigger players come to Bahrain, we see it as an opportunity than a threat. Because in that event, we might prove a favourable acquisition target, having done the groundwork for them much earlier on.”
While the founder of online grocery delivery startup, Amjad, may not be far off from the point, right now the problem for tech startups like GetBaqala is convincing investors of the tech story. Investors traditionally have been investing only in the real estate, oil, and manufacturing sector in Bahrain. While EDB and the government of Bahrain are leaving no stone unturned to bolster the startup ecosystem in Bahrain, ultimately how convinced will be the investors to reroute their money into the Bahrain’s developing startup ecosystem is the real test for the country’s tech startups.
The writer was in Bahrain on a sponsored trip by the Economic Development Board of Bahrain.
[This article is part of Inc42’s series on Bahrain where we will be covering the Bahrain startup ecosystem in detail. Stay tuned for the next article.]
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Currently ranking 7th globally in terms of its contribution to the country’s GDP, the Indian tourism and travel sector underwent an impressive 8.5% jump last year, with 2017 witnessing an additional 6.7% leap. Interestingly, domestic travel is what currently leads the charge, accounting for a staggering 88% of the total revenue generated by the tourism sector in 2016.
Undeterred by increasing competition in a space that is largely unorganised, one startup has set its eyes on becoming one of the country’s top three travel distribution companies in the next five years. So, how will it achieve such a feat? For Goomo CEO Varun Gupta, the answer lies in adding value to customers and providing a consistent user experience.
Headquartered in Mumbai, Goomo is a traveltech startup that distributes products and services through online channels, 15 company-owned branches and a B2B partner network. It operates across three verticals – consumer, corporate and B2B, and claims to possess a 40% market share in the trade fair and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) segment. Having raised more than $50 Mn in funding from Emerging India, Goomo is currently in a phase of rapid growth.
The company’s total transacted value stands at $310 Mn. Its online platform serves more than 100K users every week, a figure that is doubling month after month. In the B2B segment, Goomo claims to be onboarding over 30,000 passengers each week.
While technology has played a major role in driving the startup’s growth, Varun attributes a large part of it to Goomo’s omni-channel structure, which facilitates consumer and corporate travel bookings across offline as well as online channels.
How Goomo Was Conceived
Goomo came into existence in November 2015 around the same time when its lead investor Emerging India acquired Orbit Corporate and Leisure Tours, a 27-year-old company specialising in trade fairs and MICE travel segment. Varun added, “Orbit was largely an offline player with a focus on managing travel for Indians going for trade fairs as well as for Indian companies that wanted to send their employees and partners on incentive tours. With the acquisition, the idea was to try and create a larger platform that would get exposure to the broader travel market in India.”
After more than a year of ideation, product development and testing, Goomo went live in March 2017 with a functional website and a legion of loyal customers. Between November 2016 and March 2017, the company worked on building core strategies. Along the way, Varun reminisces, they hired a full-fledged team to set up three travel verticals i.e. consumer, B2B and corporate.
Before the official launch in March 2017, the startup spent a sizeable amount of its funding on building the backend technology for the consumer and B2B platforms. In the long interim period, Varun and his team focussed on a few core things. He explained, “One was to establish a strategy for our B2B and B2C businesses, for which we had to build up the teams. So we have grown from 150 people during the Orbit acquisition to around 350 people today.”
Armed with skilled tech, product and customer support teams, the traveltech startup took the leap in March. At the time, the company was leveraging its tech stack to form strong B2B alliances. Goomo’s first call centre was also erected during that time.
A Three-Pronged Approach To Integrating Technology For Consistent User Experience
Traveltech is one sector that is constantly evolving. People in the country’s traveltech space are at different stages in the technology adoption life-cycle. To ensure quicker and more efficient acceptance of latest standards, Goomo started investing in technology right from the start.
Varun claims that, till date, they have spent more than $20 Mn in technology development and deployment. According to him, in the travel market, technology comes into play in three main areas – inventory management, “middle office” and front-end. Whether it’s a flight ticket, a hotel room, a bus booking or a train ticket, travel aggregators like Goomo get the inventory either from the operator or the source.
For OTA platforms, therefore, it is crucial that the underlying technology can connect to multiple suppliers. The technology should be able to scale as the supplier base and traffic grow. If the technology is not architected properly, it tends to impede business growth, which would, in turn, result in response time problems.
“The second aspect of technology usage is what we call the “middle office. Once the inventory is collated and combined from various sources, technology assists us in pricing management, lead management and customer management before it reaches the front-end. The technology works to ensure that the right information is available to the users when they want to transact with us,” explained Varun Gupta.
The final portion pertains to the user interface. Here, the use of technology ensures that the information is displayed consistently on the web, mobile and tablet platforms. The ultimate goal, according to Varun, is to provide consistent user experience. To that end, the company has developed a versatile app (available on Android and iOS) that promises personalised customer experience, across all platforms and devices.
Integrating Technology Without Forgoing Traditional Customer Acquisition Models
At present, the startup does not have a direct presence in the B2B market and instead goes through partner agents. Unlike most players in the traveltech space that mostly operate online, Goomo allows users to work with offline partners and travel agents as well.
According to Varun, the main difference between Goomo and some of the more established players in the market is that it tends to take a 360-degree-view of the customer. The company, he claims, doesn’t really want to force the customer to transact through a particular channel. There are nuances both from the customer as well as the agent standpoints. It is a combination of the target user’s needs as well as the technical limitations/specifications of the platform, which is what Goomo currently focusses on.
In a country where digital penetration is still largely confined to tier I and tier II cities, Goomo believes that customers should be allowed to deal with an agent however they want. Keeping that in mind, the company also has the infrastructure in place to support offline dealings. In such cases, transparency plays a big role in enhancing trust among users who are still unaccustomed to digital technologies.With respect to the second point, there are, in fact, two levels to the relationship between the agent and the customer.
For users who already have a predestined relationship with agents, Goomo’s job is to provide the agents with the technology support needed to serve the customers better. In case of users that currently do not have an agent to rely on, the traveltech startup is in the process of bringing a set of innovations over the next three to six months that will make the task of discovering agents/specialists at a convenient location faster and more efficient.
Despite being a largely unorganised sector that is thronged by smaller, offline players, the Indian travel segment has undergone substantial progress in the last few years. As stated by Varun, the rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July this year also helped raise transparency and accountability in the space.
Varun Gupta On Reaching $310 Mn Transactions And Servicing 100K Users Weekly
With 15 offices spread across Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, the company currently has a workforce of more than 350 people. Although only 18 months old, Goomo’s growth has been nothing short of impressive. Immediately after the acquisition of Orbit Corporate and Leisure Tours in 2015, the company’s total transacted value stood under $15.5 Mn (INR 100 Cr) per annum. As claimed by Varun, the figure has since increased by almost 20x, which amounts to over $310 Mn.
The company’s online platform currently serves more than 100K users every week, a figure that is doubling month after month. The B2B platform, on the other hand, is used by partner agents to onboard more than 30,000 passengers each week. Thanks to Orbit’s long-standing presence in the country’s MICE market, Goomo booked over 100K trade fair and MICE passengers last year alone.
Varun credits the company’s rapid growth to the novelty of having a robust product that solves real problems faced by customers. He shared his views, “A large part of our growth has come organically because we have been very well received in the market. Second reason is that when we acquired Orbit, we got access to upwards of 500K loyal customers who had transacted with Orbit in the last five to six years.”
Although these customers did not necessarily have access to online solutions, they became early adopters very quickly and played a major role in getting Goomo’s name across. To expedite its expansion process, the company also forged a partnership with a B2B player called Hermes.
With a presence in excess of 100K retail outlets, Hermes helped Varun and his team to leapfrog in the B2B travel segment. “We are also started investing in marketing through search engines and advertisements to drive volume,” added Gupta.
$50 Mn Fundraise And The Race To Hit Profitability Within 12 Months
As a testimony to its growing presence in the country’s travel space, Goomo raised $50 Mn funding from Emerging India in June 2017. Of the total commitment of $50 Mn, the startup has so far received around $25 Mn, and will be getting the remaining amount depending on future requirements.
The financing, as stated by Gupta, went into setting up the tech platform, creating new products, acquiring customers and establishing a robust channel partner network, among other things. The company is also working to streamline and automate the online booking process through the intelligent use of technology.
In a bid to enhance customer experience, Goomo has also developed targeted white label solutions for its offline partners. In the B2C business, the traveltech startup recently added its hotel booking feature to provide accommodation solution across 300K hotels in India. On the corporate side, it has bolstered its trade fair businesses by integrating a wide array of travel options for flights as well as accommodation.
With all this under its belt, Goomo is currently racing to hit profitability. In fact, a number of divisions in the company are slated to become profitable within the next 12 months, Gupta claimed.
Goomo’s Razor Sharp Focus On Achieving Stellar User Experience, Enhancing Engagement And More
Image Credit: Retail Design Blog
Driven by the aim to become one of the country’s top 10 travel distribution companies by the end of this fiscal, Goomo has already enumerated key focus areas of improvement for the months and years to come. During his interaction with Inc42, Varun listed out three main things that the company will expend its time, energy and money on. He said, “The next 12 months for us will be about making sure that we offer consistent customer experience in case of flights, hotels, trade fairs and holidays. I hope to even launch in bus, train, cab-related domains in the future. That’s our first focus.”
Goomo’s second focus in the coming months will be on getting a high degree of interaction in both offline and online markets, with the ultimate goal of providing similar experience to customers. As an added push to its existing business, the platform claiming to be looking out for acquisitions across all three of its verticals.
Innovation, according to Varun, remains one of the traveltech startup’s key points of attention. At present, Goomo’s main technologies are built, tested and deployed with the help of “Ruby on Rails” (RoR) and ReactJS, both of which are distributed on a microservice architecture.
To expedite the process of technology development and deployment, Goomo is currently evaluating a host of futuristic solutions that could potentially add value to its customers. Before it can integrate more forward-looking technologies, however, Gupta believes that the company will first have to build a robust infrastructure and bolster its existing platform.
Consolidation A Reality In The Indian Online Travel Space
In October last year, the Indian startup ecosystem witnessed one of the biggest consolidations till date. Two of the largest players in the country’s online travel space, MakeMyTrip and Ibibo, announced a merger, in a deal that has since been estimated to be worth over $720 Mn. According to a report by Morgan Stanley, the valuation of the combined entity stood at $1.8 Bn.
In a country where the online hotel booking sector has a penetration of only around 19%, as per a report by Deutsche Bank AG, consolidations of this scale often spell trouble for smaller and new players. According to Varun Gupta, the key to survival in such cases is to first accept that consolidation in any industry is a reality.
He said, “I think consolidation in this sector will only continue growing in the future. To an extent, consolidation is good as it gives customers lot more choices and more transparent pricing. It has far deeper integration in the economy of the country. It brings in the technology that will actually help niche and specialist players to focus on giving a better customer experience.”
To enhance its chances of success at a time when other players are either preparing for consolidation or looking for an exit, Goomo recently forged partnerships with global players like UNIGLOBE Travel and PAYBACK, a multi-brand loyalty programme. Through these alliances, the omni-channel traveltech startup is looking to add more diversity to its suite of travel products and expand its reach in the booming South Asian travel market.
Editor’s Note
According to a Google India-BCG report, the country’s travel market (offline and online included) is expected to become a $48 Bn industry within the next three years. As per an IBEF report, the online travel space alone will likely account for 40% to 50% of total transactions by 2020. India is one of the few markets where both B2C and aggregator market continue to grow, driven by an increase in volume and frequency of transactions especially from new entrants.
Leveraging the sector’s rising potential, Goomo is working to integrate technology, in order to eliminate redundancies and offer consistent customer experience. Armed with over $50 Mn in its coffers and strategic partnerships with some of the biggest players globally, the omni-channel traveltech startup is aiming for the sky.
As predicted by Varun Gupta, this single-minded focus on creating customer value will likely be what drives traveltech startup Goomo to the next level of growth. He concluded, “Over time, the Indian market will become more organised. There will still a large number of service-oriented smaller players. But there will also be room for larger companies. Our current focus remains in India, given the scale of opportunity here.”
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Bitcoin’s price is sky high. In spite of the RBI and the Government of India’s repeated warnings, investments, trading and interests in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies continue to surge with every passing day. Like many other investors who have backed cryptocurrency startups, Sanjay Mehta, Angel & PE Investor and Director of CORE Media – CFO Engagements, is also quite enthusiastic about cryptocurrency-based startups.
Sanjay Mehta, who has invested in Peerplays, civic and EOS through ICOs, is bullish about the cryptocurrency idea yet sceptical about the Bitcoin boom.
“Currently, most of the people in India are interested in cryptocurrency trading. Traders have always been sort of greedy in nature. This is precisely the reason Bitcoin price is skyrocketing. However, my sense is that it’s a bubble phase, so it can’t last long. There has to be a correction and I am sure it will start with Bitcoin,” explained Sanjay Mehta during an interaction with Inc42.
Does he sound like Warren Buffet and JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon when he says Bitcoin bubble will burst soon? Absolutely not.
According to Sanjay Mehta, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoins are here to stay. He believes that, in future, every business, large enterprises and institutions will have their own cryptocurrencies.
“If we go back in history, there were various kings and each king had his own currency in his kingdom. With cryptocurrency, we might go back to that era. We might face situations where trust on corporations will be far higher than the governments,” he added.
Citing the example of Starbucks, he explained that the coffeehouse chain has more money in its wallet than many banks across the globe. Customers add money to their Starbucks wallets and the value of their money keeps increasing. For instance, if one adds 500 bucks, Starbucks itself will add 500 more to his/her wallet, which means that the user’s money keeps increasing.
“Whereas, in governance, the money stored gets devalued because of the government prints more and more money. Secondly, corporations are global, but currencies are local. Today, the Indian government has made 500 and 1000-rupee notes null and void. Corporations won’t do that as they try to add on values,” Sanjay stated.
“As did Burger King by starting a new Whoppercoin for their own business. we might see more companies/corporations launching their owns cryptocurrencies soon.”
Sanjay Mehta On Cryptocurrency Startups And Their ICO Checklist
ICOs act like a Kickstarter for cryptocurrency startups to expand. However, at a time when scams are happening in the name of ICOs and cryptocurrency and the crypto market itself is too volatile in nature to believe in, how does Sanjay keep his money safe, while also investing in cryptocurrency startups?
He explained, “While investing in cryptocurrency startups, people need to understand the difference between the scams and the real ones.”
In fact, Sanjay has a checklist that he looks at when deciding which startups to invest in. Some of the key things that he looks for are as follows:
Is the ICOs based on real blockchain technology?
Is the blockchain technology solving a large problem?
Is the team behind the blockchain capable of handling the challenges that come with the territory?
What is their timeline? What is their execution plan to create a network effect? An ICO will be successful only if it is having a viable network effect.
Lastly, how much value is the team retaining?
Startups are supposed to solve a problem. Are startups using cryptocurrency solving some kind of problems? We need to look into that.
The Bitcoin Way
The new era will be based on P2P transactions and transfers. By 2025, we will see a plethora of such apps. Backed by distributed ledger, P2P apps will enable users to connect directly with the required suppliers, without any third party monitoring and control.
Sanjay stated, “The apps have gone the Bitcoin way. We will see lots of apps adopting decentralised P2P platforms where users and suppliers will get connected without getting controlled by any third party. You will see such P2P startup apps giving Uber and Amazon a run for their money.”
“There are open source organisations which are either creating or helping create infrastructure on which P2P engagements can be built upon. Blockchain-based startups will execute those smart contracts to ensure that fulfilments happen across the parties. Yes, things are happening,” added Sanjay.
However, are cryptocurrencies destined to the future Sanjay predicts, especially in countries like India and China where governments are still hesitant about regulating Bitcoins and other virtual currencies? In light of the recent ban on Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, can cryptocurrencies make a strong comeback?
“About China, yes, they have banned cryptocurrencies ICOs. However, my thinking is that they will soon come up with some regulations. When neighbouring countries like Japan and South Korea are milking all the benefits, China can’t afford to stay away from it. Now, as far as India is concerned, I think the government is just waiting for other countries besides Australia and Japan to come up with cryptocurrency regulations, which our government could simply copy.”
So is it legal to invest or trade in cryptocurrencies in India?
“I am a law-abiding citizen and I go by the law of the land. Having said that there are places where the government has not decided whether it is illegal. This is a grey area, and I take my baits depending on what my interests are and how much risk I can take. And, I have invested in cryptocurrency startups accordingly.”
Sanjay believes that the Satoshi Nakamoto-created Bitcoins are not limited to currencies and assets. It is, in fact, the very foundation of cryptocurrency-based trading, P2P based trading, smart contracts and other blockchain-based applications.
The Internet has redefined the idea of doing business. Today, Google and other Internet companies have replaced oil companies as the most valuable companies. Now the Internet of Money is set to disrupt the space and overtake Internet-based apps like Uber, Facebook and Amazon. However, it might be too early for that, as the Internet giants have already started embracing cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
Getting It Right
Angel Investor Sanjay Mehta’s portfolio is diverse enlists some 70+ startups including AdstringO, Box8, WowMomos, UnBxd, Consure Medical Device, PrettySecrets.com, Zippr, Letsventure.com, and more.
Verticals he prefers to invest in are B2B, logistics, food, IoT, cleantech consumer Internet, enterprise software, healthcare and more. Among his famous exits is OYO Rooms, which marked 280x returns on his initial investment. Given that early-stage investments are highly risky in nature, how does he manage to keep it so real in terms of returns?
Sanjay responded, “I avoid platform-driven startups, where you don’t know exactly where the money is going to be used. It is difficult to come to some conclusions regarding platform-based startups at early stages.”
“I am more interested in startups that are developing some value-based solutions and which can be integrated into growth capital that could further accelerate their business and open up new verticals.”
This is the time of aggression. Bigwigs are not only acquiring startups right at the beginning but at times, their entry into the market throttles the growth of fledgeling startups. Sanjay disagrees, “If a startup is niche and focussed on point-one solutions, they will typically outsmart the horizontals which are doing so many things.”
“For instance, locally developed startup Ola is giving Uber, the largest player in the segment globally, a run for its money. The advantage with Ola is that it is focussing on geography. So, this can be an advantage for cryptocurrency startups too, especially ones that are focussing on location and vocation of their choice.”
Sanjay Mehta is among those few investors who get their angel-instinct right while investing in startups, most of the times as his portfolio shows. In the cryptocurrency space too, he is among the early investors from India to sketch a grand market scenario for cryptocurrencies and P2P-based apps. However, what roles authorities and corporations (that have already embraced blockchain) will play in determining the fate of cryptocurrencies will be interesting to watch!
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
As a techie with over 28 years of experience, Anand Jain, co-founder of SaaS-based behavioural analytics company CleverTap was no newbie to running marketing campaigns and analysing them. However, what piqued his interest in these campaigns in his last stint at Network18 was the fact that most of these marketing campaigns were not targeted ones.
“All users would get the same kind of notifications irrespective of the fact if they were interested in sports, finance or politics. We thought we could do better, target or engage them based on their interest,” says Anand.
But then again people don’t like filling up forms or stating their preferences because these things change over a period of time. Wouldn’t be it cool if one could observe people, understand their behaviour and on the basis of that send notifications without the user necessarily subscribing to these kinds of things, he adds.
And that’s what exactly led him to found CleverTap with two of his other co-founders Sunil Thomas and Suresh Kondamudi who quit their lucrative jobs at Network18 to build the customised platform which could analyse user behaviour, group them into multiple groups and on the basis of what they have done or not done, send them push notifications, emails, SMSes, etc.
Thus was born CleverTap in 2013, a startup that provides mobile app analytics and user engagement products and till date, has catered to more than 4,000 companies.
CleverTap uses analytics to increase user engagement by tracking user behaviour down to an individual through behavioural analytics. The app groups such individuals according to their behaviour pattern then on the basis if they have carried out or not carried out a certain action – say logged in an app or added items to the cart but not purchased, it sends them notifications via different mediums and thus nudges them to move to the next level.
In other words, the app uses the analytics platform to study and evaluate online behaviours and user engagement and then applies behavioural trends to improve retention, engagement and conversion rates.
Here Anand cites an example. “For instance, I have looked at a red jacket three times in the past week but I have not yet added it to the cart of the app, say Flipkart. So, we could send a push notification saying that ‘Hey, there are only three pieces left, so if you click on this notification, we will do the checkout for you with a 15 days return policy’.”
These are the simple nudges that the app follows, taking the user from where they are right now to what you want them to do, explained Anand.
Organisations that benefit from such analytics comes across a spectrum of businesses such as from ecommerce to travel. In the case of travel apps such as MakeMyTrip, CleverTap is instrumental in determining users who are browsing across international destinations but haven’t made any booking yet.
So, such analytics will aid the customer care centre of the travel platform to call the user and say, “We understand you are looking for an international vacation and there’s a lot of money at stake. So, we can help you figure out which hotel to stay, what places to see, how many days to spend, etc. within your budget.”
These simple yet tactical nudges, according to CleverTap, give the customer a lot of assurance and the required confidence to complete the action. The app has been able to focus on such specialisations over the years and today, it process over 55 Bn such actions every month.
1.5 Years Of Monetisation Of CleverTap
The Sunnyvale headquartered startup started monetising the platform in June of 2016, though Anand would not specify the exact numbers. Out of this, 70% of the revenues come from India, Southeast Asia, Middle East and the rest of the world while 30% come from the US.
While speaking about monetising as SaaS startup, Anand reveals that the company has been very lucky in working with the top brands globally in the last four years.
In India, CleverTap works with companies like BookMyShow (its first client), Vodafone, Cleartrip, and so on. In Southeast Asia, it has Gojek as a customer. Its global clientele includes brand names such as Sony, DC Comics, Curiosity and Rupert Murdoch’s Star Group among others.
As of today, the total number of brands that Clevertap has worked with stands at a heartening number of 4,000, with around 300 being paying customers. The rest are freemium customers.
Anand claims that CleverTap offers one of the most generous plans, allowing brands to send or conduct 100 Mn events or what it calls as ‘any user action’ in its freemium plan.
The freemium model has worked as an acquisition channel for the startup with many brands wanting to try it out. Business plans start upward of $999. Consequently, it claims to touch a billion plus users through the brands associated with it.
Right after Accel Partners infused seed money of $1.6 Mn in 2014, co-founder Sunil Thomas moved to the US to set up operations in America. In all, about 14 people operate from the US as of today with the rest 60 spread across Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi operating from India.
In 2015, the analytics startup managed to rake in another $8 Mn from Sequoia Capital India and Accel Partners in Series A funding. The SaaS startup was also reported to be in the fray for raising $20 Mn in Series B funding from investors. As per reports, Recruit Holdings Co from Japan, along with its existing investors have invested in the startup last month.
Banking On Innovation And Scale For Differentiation Among Other Behavioural Analytics Platforms
When asked if the startup faced any challenge in setting up in the US, Anand stated that nowadays one has to build a globally competitive product, be it in India or in the US. He believes there is no particular advantage in building in one geography and selling in another.
“Basically your product has to be a 10x better product, than what’s existing out there. Secondly, my competition is global. I don’t face a country specific challenge. All I could say is that the US is not growing as rapidly as Southeast Asia in terms of mobility. The US is not a mobile-first market like China or India, it is still in the era of desktops and emails. While the Southeast Asian region is by far the fastest growing region in the world, in terms of Internet penetration and app usage.”
When it comes to the competition, Anand feels that just like any industry starts with one or two players and then everyone jumps in because it’s hot, same is the case with behavioural analytics. He believes that what follows next is that the innovator wins and everyone falls by the wayside.
As a result, CleverTap has been providing the edge to its clients the last four years as it competes with platforms like MoEngage (backed by Helion Venture Partners, Anand Chandrasekaran of Facebook among others), Localytics, Braze (formerly Appboy), Wigzo.
“We don’t actively watch our competitors but we are aware of what they are up to. And we have managed to win accounts from all of them,” says Anand.
CleverTap has been gung-ho on an innovation spree and on an average, it claims to launch one feature every two weeks with customers sending 1,200 campaigns every day.
Scale forms the second part of CleverTap’s USP-based story. Anand believes that one thing about the startup that brands can fully trust is their size and scale.
“We work with India’s largest apps which are in the first top five or ten leagues globally. Our clients include India’s fastest growing telecom which has 150 Mn subscribers today. We also power Times Internet. You can use us no matter how much traffic you have.”
Additionally, he claims that CleverTap is the only product that combines analytics, segmentation and engagement into one product. Which means that if you are an app or brand owner, your product guy and marketing guy will look at the same set of data. In most companies, product and marketing guys buy different solutions even though they are targeting the same set of users. So, CleverTap enables them to see things through a single lens.
Going forward, the startup plans to launch features based on machine learning. One of them has been already launched and is called RFM Analysis. This feature automatically segments users on the basis of the actions they have taken and on the basis of their behaviour.
Additionally, the analytics platform will also make it possible to engage in a multi-channel campaign with a user base on a certain logic or create a workflow and target users on the basis of that. This is again machine learning enabled. On the cards is also the launch of a bunch of AI-related features in the first quarter of 2018 which will do prescriptive analysis or campaigns rather than just predictive campaigns.
With these plans, CleverTap is looking to double its existing user base and as a result, its ARR by 2018.
Editor’s Note
There is hardly a doubt about India’s growing prowess as a mobile-first economy. The recent App Annie Retrospective Report revealed that India overtook the US to take the second spot in terms of the number of app downloads in 2017. China took the first spot, amidst four of the top five countries by downloads in emerging markets.
Meanwhile, globally there’s been a 60% growth in the number of app downloads with downloads exceeding 175 Bn. Consumer spending has more than doubled from 2015 and exceeded $86 Bn. Additionally, time spent in apps spiked by 30%, to the point where each user spends about 43 days per year in apps. The top markets by consumer spending have all posted a double-digit percentage growth during this time, with China in the lead (+270%), followed by the US (+75%), India (+60%), Brazil (+80%) and Russia (+35%).
This presents a lucrative opportunity for behavioural analytics players like CleverTap who have their eyes firmly focussed on the growing mobile-savvy population in Southeast Asia and the world. The only conundrum is that CleverTap alone is not in the quest to leverage this app boom. While with 4,000+ brands in its kitty, and some formidable names among them, it is certainly well positioned, how well it is able to leverage the boom in the app economy in the coming times and in the face of an increasing competition will be something to watch out for.
Update 1: 5 February 2018, 5:50 PM
The revenue figures of CleverTap were removed from the headline on the request of the startup.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
From flunking 12th grade to dropping out of MBA to becoming a millionaire at just 24, Rishabh Lawania’s extraordinary story is undoubtedly fit for the big screen. Coming from a non-tech background, Rishabh, inspired by the greats like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, launched his first startup at the tender age of 17.
Since then, he has gone on to launch two more startups, one of which i.e. Xeler8 got acquired last year by Chinese accelerator and venture fund ZDreams Ventures.
Today, Lawania is a prolific investor with connections spanning across India, China, Japan and the US. For his latest venture, WeeTracker, he has set his eyes on Africa, the land of untapped opportunities. Leveraging his expansive network across some of the world’s most developed tech economies, Rishabh Lawania is now looking to help up-and-coming African startups to build sustainable businesses that have the potential to scale up.
During a candid interaction with Inc42, Rishabh Lawania shared interesting anecdotes from his unusual journey as a serial entrepreneur and investor. As part of our hour-long conversation, he also offered some valuable insights into the lessons learned from the failure of his second entrepreneurial venture as well as his plans for the future.
The Formative Years: Failing 12th Grade Exams, Starting A Company At 17
While everyone around him was dreaming about qualifying engineering entrance exams, Rishabh knew he wanted to do something beyond the usual i.e. start a business. However, the major hurdle was not having any guiding hands, since he came from a non-business family. “So, nobody expected that I would start a business, much less a technology startup because I have no technical background whatsoever,” he uttered.
Undeterred by this obstacle, Lawania started his first venture the year after he flunked the 12th grade. In fact, during the gap year immediately after his 12th board exams, he launched Red Carpets Events. Conceived in 2010, the event management company helped organised/co-organised 70+ promotional, corporate events across Delhi-NCR and Jaipur.
Although not a technology startup per se, the venture taught Rishabh Lawania the power of networking.
“The inspiration to launch a tech startup came to me during my early years as an independent event organiser. During this phase of my life, I understood the power of networking. At the time, my focus was on connecting with as many entrepreneurs, VCs and investors as I could and understanding from them how to start a business,” he explained.
Unlike most entrepreneurs who are driven by the allure of starting and owning billion dollar companies, Rishabh Lawania has been a realist through most of his career. Instead of focussing on building companies of the same scale as Apple or Microsoft, he wanted to create something that was profitable, while also offering an easy exit to its founders.
From JusGetIT To Xeler8: A Failed Attempt To An Remarkable Exit
From this desire was born JusGetIT, a last mile logistics startup that specialised in doorstep delivery of groceries, in 2013. The startup, according to Lawania, was operational for around six to seven months, during which it had partnered with 30+ vendors and shopkeepers. Additionally, it helped maximise the revenues of offlines kirana stores by offering its tech solutions to them.
The venture, however, failed to take off the way Rishabh had envisioned. He believes that the main reason behind the startup’s untimely shutdown was the lack of right understanding of the market. Although JusGetIT was one of the early movers in the space, it failed to raise sufficient funding.
“That was the time when the entire hyperlocal thing was just starting up in India. Back in 2013-14, Grofers and Bigbasket were at a pretty nascent stage. We figured out that we did not have a cost-effective model,” Lawania added.
Given that the B2C business was not cost-effective, the team at JusGetIT needed to scale the technology into a very asset-light model. He went on to state, “Although funding was available to Indian startups at the time, we were not able to figure out the right way to do it. However, we learned a lot. We had reached out to a lot of investors and through that, eventually, learned how to raise funding.”
Remarkably, the failure of JusGetIT didn’t stop Rishabh Lawania and this time, he focussed on creating a sustainable B2B tech platform that was at the same time scalable. In 2015, when he was in the US, Rishabh teamed up with techie Keshu Dubey to launch Xeler8, his most successful venture to date.
A deal-sourcing and research platform, Xeler8 offered a modernised approach to prospecting, tracking and analysing startups with an initial focus on Indian startups. As stated by Rishabh Lawania, the idea behind Xeler8 came to him when, as an entrepreneur, he tried to learn more about his competitors. He said,
“Back then, there was Bloomberg and similar platforms, which had databases of big corporate companies. However, there were not many platforms that focussed on startups. Even the ones that existed back then did not have good coverage when it came to startups. This was pretty much a good product-market fit.”
Essentially, Xeler8 offered a database of Indian startups, covering about 47 industries. The data were singularly curated information of the startup’s business model, funding, founder details and more. The startup tracker also acted as a lead generation platform for corporates and a market research tool.
Convinced of the product’s marketability, the Xeler8 team in the US started building a beta product and launched it exclusively for certain invite-only angel investors, startups and VCs. Within four months, the company was ready with its first product, following which it was launched officially in India.
In addition to basic details such as the name of the startup, founders and investors, the platform had metrics to predict how likely it was for a particular investor to back the startup. Rishabh Lawania added, “And we also provided an estimated valuation of the company. This was a very tricky part because you don’t really know how the startup will be valued in the future. Although this was kind of tricky, we backed everything with data.”
The process was largely dependent on machine learning crawlers that were built in-house. Additionally, Xeler8 hired a separate team of analysts. According to Rishabh, the entire process of evaluation was based on around 16 to 17 parameters.
At the time of Xeler8’s acquisition
Just over a year after it commenced operations, Xeler8 was acquired by ZDream Ventures for an undisclosed amount, while the product was still at the development stage. ZDream Ventures is a Chinese accelerator and venture fund with a startup incubator in Gurugram.
As claimed by Rishabh Lawania, Xeler8 had been in talks with a number of Chinese companies for a potential acquisition. In the end, the platform was incorporated into ZDream and is currently used internally to evaluate the valuation of Indian startups.
At the time of acquisition, the tech startup had around 35 to 38 paying clients, including corporates, VCs and angel investors. Additionally, it had a lot of premium customers such as micro-VC firms and big startups that wanted to have access to the Xeler8 database. Overall, the company’s client base stood at somewhere between 65 and 70.
On the decision to sell the business and exit the venture, Rishabh averred, “With Xeler8, I was a third-time entrepreneur. It should be noted that the startup was bootstrapped since its launch. From the very beginning, we knew that we had to face the reality that Xeler8 was never going to be a $100 Mn company. We knew the upper cap that we could go to. But, I was aware that I needed to exit from it at the right time.”
“Building a B2B product is especially difficult because you need to keep pivoting. There was not a lot of people in my team. At the time of acquisition, we had around 13 to 14 people in our team. More difficult than building the tech product was to actually sell it,” he added.
From Entrepreneur To Investor At ZDream Ventures
Following the acquisition of Xeler8, founder Rishabh Lawania joined ZDream Ventures as the Chief Operating Officer and Head of Investments. This marked the start of his journey as an investor.
During his one-year stint at ZDream, he led a number of Indian investments at Seed and Pre-Series A stages, geared towards propelling the growth of the firm’s portfolio as well as portfolio companies.
As part of his responsibilities, Lawania also helped incubate POC (Proof of Concept) and pre-revenue stage media, entertainment and consumer-focused businesses. It was during his role as the COO of ZDream Ventures that Rishabh gained a strong understanding of startup ecosystems across India, China, Japan and the US, including their specific challenges and opportunities.
This, in turn, enabled him to widen his network of connections; something that has since come in handy for his latest African venture, WeeTracker.
Inside Rishabh’s Latest Venture In Africa
As a serial entrepreneur who is constantly chasing the high of starting his own business, Lawania stepped down from his coveted job as a VC within one year to dive into another venture with long-time partner Keshu Dubey and Nayantara Jha; this time in the emerging tech landscape of Africa.
Launched earlier this year, WeeTracker is a global tech media dedicated to the African tech ecosystem. It aims to nurture startups in the continent in a three-way holistic fashion: inform, educate and invest. To attain this feat, the company will focus on providing data-backed digital media and information, skill development as well as investments in promising African startups.
In line with this vision, the startup will serve as a platform that strives to bridge the gap that currently exists between emerging markets like Africa and developed ecosystems across the world.
According to Lawania, WeeTracker is actually his first step to having a virtual presence in Africa and creating a well-connected network of indigenous startups, entrepreneurs and investors. Ultimately, the aim is to connect startups in fledgling ecosystems like Africa with key players and enablers in the same vertical in developed economies.
As part of the skill development programme, Lawania and his partners are planning to take a group of African entrepreneurs to China and another batch to India in June of this year. Most of these startups operate in the fintech, agritech, cleantech and water tech segments.
Shedding light on WeeTrack’s plans for the near future, Rishabh added, “At present, I have a list of 25 to 30 Pre-Series A andSeries A African entrepreneurs who are interested in coming to India to learn from established entrepreneurs here. We are trying to build a network of mentors, entrepreneurs and product managers across India, China, the US and Japan. So if someone in Africa is trying to build a B2B platform, we can just connect them to the relevant product managers across these economies.”
So far, the platform has already onboarded up to 75 entrepreneurs, mentors and product managers across diverse sectors such as hyperlocal, fintech and ecommerce. As an added boost, Lawania said that WeeTracker would be investing in a number of African investments at Seed and accelerate stages.
Essentially, the trio is looking to back startups that are post-proof of concept and are trying to solve a local problem with immediate social impact. With the average ticket size ranging from $50,000 to $100K, the company is looking to disburse capital in approximately 60 to 70 startups through a sector-agnostic fund over the next two years. WeeTracker is currently said to be in the process of raising a $20 Mn fund.
At the time of Startup Safari acquisition
At the time of its launch, WeeTracker also published a detailed funding report on the African entrepreneurial ecosystem. Additionally, in the third week of January, it announced the acquisition of Cape Town-based Startup Safari, an ecosystem immersion programme intended for entrepreneurs in emerging economies.
Commenting on the development, Rishabh Lawania said in an official statement, “This represents a strategic value addition to our mission of bridging the World Emerging Economies, giving us an opportunity to physically connect the entrepreneurs to the ecosystems, apart from doing so virtually. It also helps us kickstart our plans to scale to multiple economies very soon.”
As per the official release, Startup Safari is a platform that facilitates cross-border investment, technology transfer and joint ventures, with the goal of driving economic growth and strengthening fledgling startup ecosystems.
Speaking of the acquisition, Startup Safari founder and Curator Apoorv Bamba stated,
“The acquisition journey with WeeTracker just felt like the automatic next step to move closer to our bigger vision and bring further scale to the African ecosystem through media, research, and insights. With WeeTracker and Startup Safari, we aim to become the African window to the world and enabling emerging market opportunities and growth for both sides of the table.”
In addition to investing in African startups and connecting them with enablers in other more developed ecosystems, the Rishabh Lawania founded the company is also looking to help launch a few Indian startups in Africa through the Startup Safari programme.
Why Africa, You Must Be Wondering
As a cool and calculated investor, Lawania’s recent shift in attention to Africa is backed as much by data as it is by the desire to usher in a social change in a region where a large section of the population still struggles with poverty, malnourishment, drought and inadequate access to clean water.
He told me, “Having worked very closely with Indian, American and Chinese startup ecosystems, I wanted to do something that would really create some value. So, my team and I did an extensive comparative analysis of the major tech economies: India, China, US, Japan and South Korea.”
Africa, according to Rishabh, is undergoing a tech revolution, similar to the kind that happened in the US in the late 1990s or in India in the early 2000s. Because the ecosystem is still very nascent, it also holds a lot of untapped opportunities. Despite the lack of proper government support, digital penetration in some African countries – including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana – has reached a record high in recent times.
In the last two to three years, there has been a discernible boom of startups that are leveraging advanced technologies to solve some of the local problems. For instance, Cape Town is currently going through the worst drought in history. Combating this issue is a group of emerging startups that are working to make clean water more available to the masses.
Other sectors that are booming in Africa include fintech, agritech, and cleantech, among others. Within fintech, Lawania claimed that mobile wallets, remittance startups, and B2B companies are rapidly gaining traction.
To support these startups, a network of angel investors, VCs, and ecosystem enablers have also cropped up recently. According to a report by WeeTracker, in 2017 alone, African startups raised more than $167.7 Mn in funding across 201 deals, which was a significant 28% jump from the year before that.
Echoing this increased interest in Africa-based startups, Lawania said, “During my earlier trips to China, Japan and the US, I noticed that there was a lot of interest in the African ecosystem. However, most people are still hesitant about investing in African startups.”
Through WeeTracker, Rishabh Lawania and his partners are aiming to bring a change in the continent’s still-nascent startup culture. By offering funding support as well as access to mentors, the company is hoping to help create sustainable businesses that can, in turn, drive Africa’s economic growth.
Road Ahead As An Angel Investor
In his eventful career, Rishabh Lawania has donned many hats, from entrepreneur, enabler, VC, mentor to an angel investor. During his seven month stint at Xeler8, he claims to have invested in a small portfolio of Indian companies.
Despite moving out of the Indian startup scene, Lawania has remained active as an angel investor in the country. He said, “I have invested in six startups in the last five months. I am now looking to back five to six startups by the end of this year.”
As far as the stage of funding is concerned, he will be investing in startups at bridge and seed stages. Lawania is essentially looking at startups that not only need capital but are also looking to access his network to launch their operations outside India.
Among the startups that he has backed in his personal capacity are marketing automation platform Wigzo Technologies, Cha-Chi, to name a few.
According to Rishabh Lawania, the Indian startup ecosystem has developed tremendously in the last few years, as a result of which it now has a strong community of angel investors that are aggressively trying to back promising tech startups.
While a few years back, most Indian investors were looking at Chinese and American counterparts to determine which startups to invest in, Rishabh believes that a majority of them are now making sound investment decisions, which only comes as the ecosystem matures.
“The government should definitely do something about the angel tax fiasco because the market has only just started to boom. In recent times, more and more angel investors are coming from non-tech backgrounds and are investing in tech startups. The government should try to promote this, while also becoming more vigilant when it comes to curbing black money.”
Editor’s Note
Constituted by 54 nations, Africa is the world’s second-largest and second most populous continent, home to more than 1.2 Bn people. Rich in diversity, resources and history, this land mass is almost synonymous with resilience amidst extreme adversities.
Colonised for the most part of its modern history, many countries in Africa still struggles with poverty, malnourishment, diseases, drought and inadequate to proper resources. As stated by Rishabh, in a way, there are a lot of similarities between the economies of India and Africa.
Despite the lack of proper government support, countries like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are leading Africa’s ongoing tech revolutions. Consequently, digital penetration has improved remarkably in the last two to three years.
Riding this wave is a crop of new startups that are leveraging technology to create a positive social impact, be it in fintech, agritech, healthtech, cleantech and water tech. With the Indian startup ecosystem, currently, the third largest in the world, reaching a point of saturation, entrepreneur and investor Rishabh Lawania’s latest venture WeeTracker aims to tap into the largely untouched African market.
Here’s to hoping a new day will dawn on Africa soon!
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Elon Musk once said that we need to match the convenience of gasoline car in order for people to buy an electric car. However, when the world’s biggest two-wheeler market India enters the EV race, the opportunity is enormous. And this is exactly what the country’s first electric superbike maker, Bengaluru-based Emflux Motors, is trying to tap into.
Emflux Motors was founded in July 2016byEx-Jugnoo executives Varun Mittal,Ankit Khatry, and former Designer at TVS Motors Vinay Raj Somashekar. The startup is registered with Startup India and has received a small grant from PRAYAS for developing its technology for the EV charger circuit.
The company strives to create a unique positioning amid the growing brigade of electric two-wheelers in India, including names like Okinawa eScooters, Hero Electric, Yobykes, Hero MotoCorp, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, TVS Motor, Mahindra Two Wheelers, Yamaha and Bajaj Auto, among others.
Now, nearly 18 months after its inception, Emflux Motors is on its way to showcase EMFLUX ONE, the first model of its electric superbike at the upcoming Auto Expo 2018, to be held in Greater Noida from February 9-14, 2018.
Also, the startup is planning to make the EMFLUX ONE superbike available to the public in the beginning of 2019.
Emflux Motors: From A Dream To Pushing Into The Real World Of EV
As Ankit reminisced, it was Varun’s dream to make superbikes and supercars during his college days but he did not have the time, money or the resources to do so.
Thus, when he returned from Europe after completing his master’s degree in February 2015 he started working at Jugnoo, the hyperlocal delivery and auto ride-hailing app.
However as fate often has its own way, Varun met with a major accident after almost a year of working at Jugnoo. It was during his stay at home that Varun decided to pursue his dream.
He quit Jugnoo and, in his endeavor, got the support of Ankit and Vinay who shared Varun’s vision to make electric vehicles widely available in India.
“Meanwhile, investors Like Meher, Nikhil, and a few others gave us the confidence and strength to follow our ideas by trusting and funding Emflux Motors,” added Ankit.
EMFLUX ONE: Tech Aspects And The After Sales Approach
The founders have focused on all three aspects necessary to create a product-market fit including the performance of the superbike, components added as well as have put in a rigorous testing framework.
“We will extensively test EMFLUX ONE using both software simulations and real-world testing for 100K kms. We will also be working with some professionals to verify our test results,” said Ankit.
To do so, the startup has developed the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE), the master controller and the complete drivetrain technology in-house, which includes motor, motor controller, battery pack, battery management system (BMS) and charger circuit.
“This gives us a competitive advantage over others in the form of intellectual property, better agility, and scope of customisation as well as better efficiency,” added Ankit.
According to Ankit, the company’s after sales service approach is actually its main advantage.
“We will service at customer location through our service vans. We are guaranteeing to repair the bike if you are stuck anywhere in India be it Himalaya or Thar desert at company’s cost. Users will also be receiving over-the-air software upgrades to enjoy the benefits of our R&D,” he added.
The Road Ahead For Emflux Motors
Emflux Motors is currently working on a top-down model approach for its electric superbike, where the mission is to empower 10 Mn electric two-wheelers in India by 2027 with its two-pronged market focus.
As Ankit explained, “Firstly, we aim to build a brand and loyalty by producing high-performance electric motorcycle and secondly, we will create an ecosystem of partner OEMs for whom we will become the technology and component supplier.”
Going ahead, the startup aims to open offline experience centres in Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, wherein a customer can walk in and know more about the bike.
“Some customers can test our bike on track days (invitation only) which we will have across different cities. Purchases will be completely online on our website through digital payment methods,” said Ankit.
Further, Emflux Motors intend to install 1000 EV chargers (to be known as WARP) on highways across India and Europe in the next five years. As claimed by Ankit, these chargers will be capable of fast charging at rates of up to 110 kW. This is similar to the recent initiatives taken by other players in this space. For instance, Ola partnered with Indian Oil to install EV charging stations in Nagpur.
Tata Power also recently unveiled two charging stations in Mumbai, while Reliance Energy is set to launch 15 electric vehicle charging stations in the country’s financial capital over the next three months. India’s first EV manufacturer Mahindra is also aggressively exploring renewable sources of energy that can facilitate the shift to green, zero-emission mobility.
Also, the startup will soon be closing another funding round from its existing investors, Brian Fabian, and others. “We initially raised some capital from co-founders, friends, and family. Followed by a round from some serial entrepreneurs including Samar Singla (Co-founder of Jugnoo and Click Labs),” added Ankit.
As per TechSci Research, the Indian electric two-wheeler market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of more than 23%, during FY2018E–FY2023F.
For the faster adoption and manufacturing of electric (and hybrid) vehicles, the Union budget 2018 has also allocated a sum of $40.5 Mn (INR 260 Cr) to support market development of hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs).
This will further help up-and-coming electric vehicle startups like superbike maker Emflux Motors to overcome the existing infrastructural challenges in the country.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
“It’s not just about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen. Do It!”
This was the ethos that kick-started BIGShift, a joint programme by Inc42 and Amazon India for Indian startups that strove to connect the startup ecosystem by hosting localised meetups in eight Indian cities beyond Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
The four-month event series collectively saw the participation of 700 attendees and provided 40 Indian startups with an opportunity to present their ideas to the audience, which was a mix of entrepreneurs, investors, and influencers from respective series.
Of the 40 Indian startups that showcased during BIGShift, here our top picks that we feel are the most likely to make some great buzz.
Spread across cities ranging from Chandigarh to Vizag to Bhubaneswar to Nagpur and sectors as diverse as IoT, agritech, fintech, let’s take a look at 12 of our favorite Indian startups we discovered during BIGShift.
The 12 Indian Startups That Caught Our Eyes During BIGShift 2017
Kritsnam Technologies
Founded in: 2015
Founders: K Sri Harsha, Sagar Setu, Prudhvi Sagar
Headquarter: IIT Kanpur
Category: IoT
Business Model: B2B
Founded in November 2015 by K Sri Harsha, Sagar Setu and Prudhvi Sagar, Kritsnam Technologies is an Indian IoT startup with a key focus on water resources management. The IIT-Kanpur based startup aims at empowering the developing nations with cost-effective and data-driven water resource management techniques.
The startup is garnering support in the form of grants from different quarters of influencers such as DST, FICCI, USAID, Ericsson India Global Services, DST Nidhi Prayas, MHRD, DISR (shared with IIT Kanpur) and IUSSTF – DST, US Govt (shared with IIT Kanpur, Wood Hole Oceanographic Institute).
The market which Kritsnam is targeting is currently dominated by corporate giants like Siemens, Campbell Scientific, etc.
Pindfresh
Founded in: 2016
Founders: Somveer Anand, Sohila Anand and Jaspal Singh Anand
Headquarter: Chandigarh
Category: AgriTech
Business Model: B2B/B2C
The Chandigarh-based startup was founded in 2016 by Somveer Anand, Sohila Anand and Jaspal Singh Anand. Pindfresh is attempting to disrupt the way food is grown and consumed in urban areas.
Pindfresh has developed a sustainable system where food production is brought directly to people’s homes, instead of the countryside, using innovative, hi-tech and inexpensive techniques making urban farming easier in homes, rooftops or balconies.
The startup aims at affecting the urban farming sector. It works on three streams of business: creating and selling systems for home and commercial usage, producing food using and selling it and lastly, holding workshops to equip the youth to reclaim their right to clean food and a green environment.
DronaMaps
Founded in: 2016
Founders: Utkarsh Singh
Headquarter: Visakhapatnam
Category: Drones and 3D Mapping
Business Model: B2B
DronaMaps was founded in 2016 and the Indore-based startup works on recreating reality in 3D. The startup specialises in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), photogrammetry, 3D, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning, maps and IT infrastructure, among other things.
It specialises in machine vision and 3D to cause a ‘BigShift’ from inefficient workflows into parallel multi-scale and real-time utilisation of massive 3D data. The startup has received an award from MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan at the Federation of Madhya Pradesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries during the 4th Outstanding Achievement Award ceremony in 2016.
Omegaon – PhotoClickPay
Founded in: March 21, 2016
Founder Info: Sreekanth Eragadindla
Headquarter: Bengaluru
Category: Fintech
Business Model: B2C
As India moves to become a powerhouse of the digital economy, we are still facing some major hurdles. Most of the smartphone users in India are unable to perform digital payments because they are digitally illiterate. Consequently, they are unable to enter bill details like electricity ID number, consumer number, board name, card details, etc.
Founded in 2016 by Sreekanth Eragadindla, Omegaon works on solving the aforementioned problems. The startup, which became fully operational only in 2017, created a technology called PhotoClickPay.
It leverages AI and unique IDs like Aadhaar to predict payments and future needs of an individual as well as enterprises for all their regular payment needs like rent, EMI, Fees, etc.
Currently, a total of 30,000 users are using the app and a total transaction volume of $388K (INR 2.5 Cr) has been achieved in one year. Over 20 ‘paying guests’ and 10 colleges have adopted the PhotoClickPay as a mode of payment method. Omegaon merchant app enables SME like PG, Apartments, EMI companies, etc. can collect payments with zero line of code.
O2ONow
Founded in 2016
Founders Manoj Gaddam, Aradhana B Kamidi, Syam V Navur
Headquarter: Nellore, Andhra Pradesh
Category: Hyperlocal
Business Model: B2B/B2C
In the world with an increasing presence of ecommerce websites, local shops have gone into oblivion. Our good old kirana stores are left not to be picked up by either the GPS or by any website. This vacuum was largely left unattended until now.
O2ONow was started by Manoj Gaddam, Aradhana B Kamidi and Syam V Navur in 2016 and is an offline store aggregator platform with in-built digital marketing tools. It is aimed at building an ecosystem for retailers (with a mobile-first approach).
The startup is operational in Hyderabad and Nellore and has enabled 129 sellers from Nellore and another 154 from Hyderabad to reach their potential market.
Among its achievements, being chosen as a local startup by I&C Dept., Govt. of Telangana to provide low cost solutions that enable MSMEs to digitise their business, working in three technical workshops organised by the I&C Dept. along with other organisations like Microsoft, Nowfloats, Tigersheets, being one of the five startups selected by Amazon for BIGShift Vizag and being selected for the ScaleMinds accelerator programme in 2017 are some prominent ones that stands out.
Aurassure
Founded in: 2015
Founders: Amiya Kumar Samantaray
Headquarter: Rourkela
Category: IoT
Business Model: B2B (solution as a service)
Aggressive urbanisation and industrialisation have resulted in a fatal level of air pollution in India. No wonder, Indian cities like Delhi are featured as some of the world’s most polluted cities in the world. Taking note of such a situation, Aurassure was founded by Amiya Kumar Samantaray on May 2015 to build end-to-end solutions for environmental monitoring.
This startup is incubated at NIT Rourkela and is working in the field of Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The startup has so far raised $50K in Seed funding from investors Amit Gupta (ED, Narbheram Steel and Power), Manoranjan Mohapatra, Amrit Biswal.
Currently, it has a team of more than 25 members, with operating offices at Rourkela and Bhubaneswar. They are working with two different customer segments; one being medium and large scale industries, while the other one is Smart Cities.
WEPaint
FoundedIn: 2015
Founders: Jatin Patel, Suraj Patel
Headquarter: Ahmedabad
Category: Consumer Services
Business Model: B2C
Ahmedabad-based WePaint, co-founded by Jatin Patel and Suraj Patel, converts any surface or background into a writable-erasable-projectable surface. Currently, it is the only manufacturer of dry erase paint in India.
WePaint currently caters to IITs, VITs, Nirma University, the US Embassy and many more institutional customers. It also boasts Godrej, Siemens, Claris, Baxter, Adani, etc. as its registered customers. Its major traction cities are in Bengaluru and Mumbai. At present, the startup is looking for a pan-India expansion and is also keen on entering the Middle East.
Accelo
Founded in: May 2017
Founders: Arbaz Reza, Vrunda Nimje, Aditya Unde
Headquarter: Mumbai (Previously Nagpur now shifted to Mumbai)
Category: Mobility Safety
Competitors: Netradyne
Business Model: B2B
With automobile sales reaching an all-time high, road-safety has become more of a necessity than anything else. While road-safety has been largely propagated through targeted campaigns in schools, colleges and other institutions, these days technology is doing the job for us.
Accelo was founded by Arbaz Reza, Vrunda Nimje and Aditya Unde in 2017 and is developing products that would improve human and vehicle safety on roads in India. Accelo Innovation is envisioned to disrupt the automobile sector with its driver assistive savvy technology.
Its revenue streams range from the sale of products to insurance companies, fleet owners, logistics companies, packers and movers; licensing to OEMs; tie-ups for data exchange with insurance companies, OEMS and governments.
ShoppingPost
Founded in: May 2016
Founders: Manas Usharia, Shantanu Gaur
Headquarter: Indore
Category: Shopping and Social Network
ShoppingPost, founded by Manas Usharia and Shantanu Gaur, is a social shopping network and product discovery platform. Founded in 2016, it enables users to share what they buy with their friends and their network, discovers what others are buying, explores trends, provides user feedback. It enables a community where shoppers meet other shoppers.
ShoppingPost is targeting to empower a billion shoppers to make the right shopping decision. The startup claims to have 170K installs (Android) so far. It has raised $140K (INR 90 Lakh) from angel investors.
Fleetferry Logistics
Founded in: 2017
Founders: Avik Das, Deepto Choudhury
Headquarter: Kolkata
Category: B2B
Business Model: B2B
Fleetferry Logistics is a tech-based freight service provider founded in 2017 by Avik Das and Deepto Choudhury, which enables smooth and hassle-free cargo movement for SMEs and large corporates in manufacturing, infra development, FMCG and related segments.
Intercity logistics is an industry which is extremely fragmented and dominated by multiple brokerage layers. Fleetferry Logistics aims at helping the industry by consolidating the multiple brokerage layers by becoming a single aggregator.
HappyDNA
Founded in: November 2016
Founders: Abhik Mallik, Sudipta Pal
Headquarter: Kolkata
Business Model: B2B
The healthcare industry in India is undergoing a transformative phase, evolving from mere medical treatments to rolling out health plans. Health insurance is one segment that is now on the verge of covering OPD checkups with the doctors.
With all the innovations taking place, healthtech startups are coming up in India that not only help patients get the right treatment from the best-recommended doctors but also work on the preventive measures of disseminating information and conducting activities to check any early symptoms. HappyDNA is one such startup that is solely focussed on preventive healthcare for children.
Launched in October 2017, HappyDNA is an initiative by two school friends who became co-founders. Sudipta Pal and Abhik Mallick bootstrapped the startup to help the next generation of Indians keep their nutritional and psychological health in order. It works in the domains of preventive health, psychology and developmental care for children.
This Kolkata-based startup has identified three major risks regarding children’s health – physical health, mental health and developmental needs. HappyDNA operates through an innovative ‘Educate-Detect-Intervene’ model. It claims to have touched 5K+ lives, 14 institutional partners and 50+ experts on the platform.
The world recently has seen some great initiatives on sharing economy ranging from cab sharing to home sharing to workplace sharing. A new world order is on the horizon. Arising out of ‘sharing Economy’ is a noble approach towards a better world with consumption shifting from individual basis to collective basis, thereby saving significant energy or resources and controlling pollution.
CarryMates’ which was founded by Youmit Singh, Pushpendra Sijariya, Navneet Kumar and Hitesh Kumar in 2017, is one such initiative in the courier and logistics space that is striving to maximise utilisation of the unutilised carrying capacity of millions of travellers commuting daily using various modes of transportation. The Mumbai-based startup is bringing a unique and innovative platform to connect these travellers with the people who want to parcel their items.
CarryMates is creating a social community platform where people will be connected with other building trust factors and informed about others travelling plans. This unique community will create ample opportunities for people to earn and save money as carriers and senders.
Over the next two weeks we will be covering these startups in detail, stay tuned! To read more stories about BIGShift, click here.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
In October 2017, the Indian Union government in its National Health Policy (NHP) draft indicated the concerns around the increasing burden of NCDs (non-communicable diseases) in the country. These medical concerns get worse in the case of toddlers. In order to meet the challenges of preventive healthcare for children, two school friends Sudipta Pal and Abhik Mallick launched HappyDNA.
Launched in November 2016, a month later to the NHP draft, HappyDNA is aiming to herald preventive healthcare solutions for kids aged between 1.5-7 years.
India’s healthcare sector is booming and is expected to touch $280 Bn by 2020, as per IBEF. But preventive healthcare, especially the kind that caters to kids, is yet to catch up and is relatively new in India. This is exactly the reason why Indian entrepreneurs are seizing preventive healthcare as an opportunity and boosting the healthcare industry.
With our changing lifestyles, it is imperative to detect early symptoms so that their ailments may be treated well before time. And this is where HappyDNA is striving to make a difference.
On a mission to provide early detection of symptoms in children via its workshops, website and app; HappyDNA works in the area of NCDs and mental wellness. Primarily focussed on these two vectors, the startup works with pre-schools on the model of ‘Detect and Intervene’ which means that it provides personalised services for health checkups in pre-schools with a team of specialist doctors who examine kids between the age group of 1.5 to 7 years.
The Genesis Of HappyDNA
HappyDNA was conceived due to a personal motivation of Sudipta. Since his birth, Sudipta harboured a heart problem, right bundle branch block (RBBB), and it was not detected until his adulthood. The problem came to light only when health checkups were conducted on him for some investment purposes. This experience of his life triggered him to think about working on preventive healthcare systems.
Recollecting his experiences while speaking to Inc42, Sudipta said, “I could have led a more healthy life had I known about my RBBB problem.” This thought kept striking him and during his time in the US and Canada on his work tours, he learnt about how the governments in such developed nations have enabled preventive healthcare for kids in schools itself.
Once the seed was laid, the dream started flourishing as he started connecting with school friends to plan for HappyDNA and thus Abhik came onboard as a co-founder.
Sudipta said,
“We thought to bring preventive care awareness and to identify health issues among kids as young as one and a half to two years of age. So, that’s how HappyDNA was born. The idea to create the curriculum by a core medical team expert was to provide a holistic coverage to a child’s health perspective. So, with our structured curriculum, we interact with the child and the school and we identify the problems faced by the child and accordingly educate the caregiver.”
Expanding Network With Preschools And Parents
HappyDNA works on a B2B model with preschools. It targets urban preschools so children as young as 1.5 years of age could be a part of the workshops. The core team has developed a curriculum to check the health issues amongst children.
The HappyDNA mobile app is customised and personalised to provide parents with a sound awareness of impending symptoms, awareness and consultations.
Parents are able to participate in the online discussion forums where they can also read blogs which are posted on various child-related health issues. They can also reach out for consultations with the listed doctors. The startup doesn’t own separate clinics but since their inception, they now have a pool of 150+ doctors.
They have touched the lives of 13,800+ children and currently, the team is working with 17 hospitals and clinics.
HappyDNA conducts a detailed medical check-up making use of its curriculum which was developed by its core medical team and it examines the entire physiology, ENT and dental problems of children. Sudipta said, “We were able to uncover heart murmur in many kids and parents weren’t aware of it. About 4% of the kids in India have the heart murmur.”
Parent profiling is a core part of the work at HappyDNA. With young children, their stress and trauma become predictable through studying parenting styles.
“We follow a unique model of ‘Educate and Detect’ and it is our primary focus for the next three to four years for our preventive healthcare curriculum,” stated Abhik.
HappyDNA is not involved with clinical tests as of yet, even though they are equipped for physiological health checkups. It publishes researched articles through blogs and conducts physiological check-ups on the premises of the pre-schools.
The startup aims to reach as many pre-schools as possible so that any kind of health issue amongst children may be taken care of as early as possible. It partners with hospitals who then prepare a team of doctors for the health checkups in the pre-schools. The parents are not charged by the startup as it works directly with the schools. The startup is helpful in also handling specific issues in children related to autism, dyslexia, ADHD, diabetes control, etc.
The healthtech startup has two operating sites, one in Kolkata where it already working with preschools and the other in Bengaluru.
Myriad Plans For Tier I Cities; Wielding To Reach Kids 8-14 Years By 2019
Since its launch in October, about 2,200 downloads for the app have been registered and offline, the gross profit margin is about 42%, HappyDNA has also impacted over 25K+ parents and children through their offline and online services.
The startup is also popularising its content and through its operations, it’s aiming to achieve a break-even. Presently the startup is catering to four preschool chains in Kolkata and has established its footprint in Delhi. HappyDNA was also shortlisted for ET Power of Ideas, ISB jumpstart and HitLabs by Unitus Seed Fund.
The healthtech startup is now looking forward to bringing a greater number of pre-schools within its services fold. “By early 2019, we are trying to go to the school areas, the next age level (8 to 14 and later till 18) and start coaching for high school too. Then, we will start catering to tools that concern the psychology of older kids since the requirements for teenagers are different from preschool kids,” stated Sudipta.
Besides looking at Tier I cities for expansion, the startup also has plans to expand into Tier II cities. Abhik said, “One of the biggest reasons for working in the healthcare sector is that India is finally starting with the four A – availability, accessibility, affordability and awareness. The healthcare sector is trying to reach out to more people.”
HappyDNA is optimistic for growth in the coming years although the competition in child preventive healthcare has already begun with competitors such as Address Health, Health Set Go, Parentune, Babygogo, etc.
Market Size Of 190 Mn Parents Seeking Healthcare For Kids
The modern-day nuclear family setup comes with a lot of baggage. One of the baggage translates to less parenting time. Workplace stress has a detrimental impact on the mental health of parents and the stress is eventually reflected in their parenting style. There are also detrimental effects of screen-addiction in children leading to learning disorder, obesity and other developmental concerns.
All these culminate in an inflection point where modern parents are looking for professional help in the child’s development. “With technology and social media influence, we are seeing increasing early adopters of digital healthcare services. Increased Internet penetration and acceptance of healthcare services through digital platform brings the total market size to 190 Mn parents,” said Sudipta.
Kolkata, the City of Joy, is tiding over the wave of Indian Startup hubs along with the rest of the country. With private and government entities, the startup ecosystem is looking up in the state and today, it can boast of 250+ startups. However, despite the increasing number of startups, HappyDNA founders think there is still room for a lot of improvement in Kolkata.
Sudipta goes on to say,
“Mindset is still nascent, be it the youngsters or the professionals. People here are yet to take the kind of interests which is prevailing in Hyderabad or Bengaluru. There aren’t much platforms where startups can network for business in Kolkata. That kind of culture is yet to develop.”
Despite the challenges, HappyDNA is growing by leaps and bounds and it is determined to take strides along the rough terrain of children preventive healthcare sector. In India, due to lifestyle changes brought in by rapidly spreading urbanisation and industrialisation, there is a marked shift in the way healthcare systems are functioning because of which an equal importance is now being given to the early detection of health issues and resolving them.
With India’s public healthcare spending at 1.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), there is a crisis facing the healthcare system in the country. In a country plagued by dire health needs, it will be a gripping encounter to watch HappyDNA meet the challenges.
After the ecommerce boom, it’s the IoT and AI that have rocked the startup ecosystem in India. However, not many entrepreneurs have thought of blending the two in a cup of tea or coffee!
Amuleek Singh Bijral, Founder and CEOofChai Point which runs retail stores and a delivery chain network under Mountain Trail Foods Pvt Ltd, decided to make technologies like IoT and AI an inherent part of his startup way back in 2011-2012.
Why Tea?
“I say, let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
India is the seventh largest coffee and the second largest tea producer in the world. Interestingly, 83% of Indians consume tea instead of coffee. For the remaining 17% Indians, there are a number of coffee retail outlets and restaurant chains such as Cafe Coffee Day, Barista, Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Cafe Mocha and Georgia. However, there was hardly any tea-specific restaurant and retail chain for the rest of the 83% consumers until 2012.
By the time 2012 came, besides Chai Point which was founded in 2010 as a small retail pilot project in Bengaluru, Cafe Coffee Day had successfully hit the IPO and many entrepreneurs started giving a serious thought to creating a ‘Cafe Coffee Day’ like retail store for the Indian tea segment too.
In 2012, Kaushal Dugar started Teabox in Darjeeling; Raghav Verma and Nitin Saluja set up Chaayos in Gurugram, Parvez Gupta in Siliguri launched Udyan tea. While Teabox is backed by RNT Associates, Chaayos has successfully raised funding from Tiger Global.
In the following years, came Tpot Cafe, Tea Trails and Chai Thela, and more. However, Chai Point with its unique technology blend remained a prominent player in the market.
A Harvard alumnus, a former country manager in the information and security company RSA and a former Microsoft executive, Amuleek realised way back in 2010 that consumer brands could be hugely important in the Indian market in the near future.
The notion of how technology can help shape the brand excited us
After going through all the large category solutions, it was the unavailability of a desi, high tech tea retail chain in India that stuck in Amuleek’s mind for its further perusal. He adds, “Chai is consumed in India almost 15 times more than coffee. Now, it’s almost a $30 Bnmarket, which is poised to hit the $60 Bn mark by 2020.”
It was a treasure trove of delights for Amuleek to explore the market opportunities over tea. Eventually, he realised that the tea market is largely unaddressed and that there were the same old brands available across the market at that point in time.
He says, “Nobody was interested in the standardisation of tea, unlike coffee. By the time we consume tea, the freshness has already gone as most of the tea packets that consumers buy are usually around nine-month-old.”
On the contrary, in case of coffee, there are standard infographics addressing the combination of milk and coffee that forms latte, cappuccino, etc. On this obvious but rather bias distinction, Amuleek says, “In case of tea, there is no standardisation available. Everyone makes tea, as per his or her own taste and belief. Also, no tea brands were bothered to educate the customer at the last mile.”
And this is where Amuleek saw a big opportunity. For him, the logical step was to start with retail stores, which he began with offering fresh and proper packaging. Fast forward to 2018, the startup has 91 stores, which will hit a century in the next few months.
With 90+ stores, BoxC and packaged tea blends, Chai Point is currently the largest hot delivery beverage chain in the country. Another tea cafe retail, Chaayos currently has 50+ stores.
Luckily, for Amuleek, funding wasn’t an issue. “By the time we launched, stores were having big revival. While Dominos had already gone for IPO, CCD was also about to go for an IPO. This boosted our confidence as well as that of the investors in the business. Then, as we were demonstrating the technology behind the entire chain, Series A happened.”
Having closed its Series B funding in 2015 and a total fundraise of $14 Mn, Amuleek expects to close Series C funding this year.
From Tea Stores To Founding A Tea Ecosystem
“As we started with the stores, we soon realised how quickly customers’ lifestyle was changing. We had to evolve further,” quips Amuleek convincingly.
Chai Point did a survey among 2,000 customers, and interestingly, it revealed that over 55% of the customers consumed tea in offices, while roughly 72% consumed tea outside the home. Collectively, over 30% of the consumers had tea four times a day.
“We realised that we needed to cater to a larger segment. And, it is not just about selling tea blends and dispensers, but providing an end-to-end solution,” says Amuleek.
It is not just about selling tea blends and dispensers, but providing an end-to-end solution.
Looking at the wide variety of customers and their preferences, Chai Point has gradually added multiple channels to meet customer requirements since then.
Stores: to cater to orders booked on Zomato, Swiggy and other food delivery platform as well as independent demands.
Chai On Call (CoC): Customers can buy hot tea sachets directly from Chai Point website or app.
BoxC: A tea and coffee dispensing machine integrated with IoT and AI to serve customers in their offices.
CPG: Freshly packaged tea sachets for everyone.
BoxC And SHARK: Blending IoT And AI In Chai
While tea retail stores were already gaining some traction and there are a number of tea-blending machines available in the market, what made Chai Point team to come up its own blending machine?
Sandesh C, COO, Chai Point explains, “Most of the available tea or coffee dispensing machines found in offices are not IoT enabled. The machines don’t actually make the beverage, but simply mix water and milk. While it’s the user that uses tea bags, they end up sometimes using 2-3 bags for a single cup. This not only downplays the efficiency but also causes acidity.”
BoxC is an IoT-enabled automated tea and coffee dispenser for producing tea via tea leaves and not with tea bags and the tea tastes just like the tea prepared at home. It has two versions: one that is hardware automated and the other which is software automated.
BoxC: The Hardware
Chai Point has designed and developed two tea dispensing machines: V1 and V2. The company has partnered with a third company to manufacture these machines as per the requirements.
The dispensing machine is capable of making masala tea, lemon, ginger and cardamom tea using tea leaves.
V1 machines have higher throughput. To keep the form factor intact, instead of having separate water and milk tanks in the machine, the duo is connected through inlet pipes. Sugar is mixed outside, depending on the choice. The machine makes use of fresh milk.
Unlike V1, V2 was developed last year by Chai Point and has got a large touchscreen powered with Android platform. This allows customisation and freedom to make tea as per the consumer’s choice.
V2 machines also have facilities to brew filter coffee. The machine has been designed keeping the scant spaces of office pantries in mind. The machine has a smaller form factor that meets a number of requirements for tea, coffee and other hot milk and water-based beverages.
BoxC: The Software
BoxC machine’s Internet connectivity, which is assured through a sim slot provided inside the machine.
The touchscreen dashboard provides a number of details such as tea or coffee health, time to refill the inlets so that there is no need to open the container to see how much tea or coffee is left.
It provides all the necessary information such as how many cups have been consumed since the last reset and it even allows users to alter the tea and milk volume and density per cup (even cup volume can be personalised) with an option to customise brewing temperature as well as time.
The machine sends an update to the server every five minutes.
But even if for some reason, it is unable to send the data to the server, it has got enough storage to maintain the entire record and send it later, once the connection is back.
“We have blended IoT and AI in the machine. While IoT helps us and the client to know the exact number of cups consumed over a given period of time, AI provides details about consumer behaviour i.e. which tea – ginger, masala, green or black tea – consumers prefer to consume. This, in turn, helps us keep our next set of fresh refills ready for the machines. This is a unique way to forecast the demand.”
The IoT aspect further helps the user to determine if there is any blockage in the machine. The machine has got sensors and in case of any blockage, it sends signals demanding maintenance requirements.
Sandesh says, “With V1, it was more about the challenge to get the hardware right. With V2, we infused the software with the hardware to make it work seamlessly.” “We don’t sell the machine. The machine is part and parcel of an annual contract that we offer. This is because we also want to ensure the right service such as the timely supply of inputs via Chai Point’s tea blends and maintenance of the dispensers around it,” informs Sandesh.
He further explained that the beauty of the machine lies in providing the utmost hygiene throughout the tea-making process. “The tea waste is disposed through the pipe and it doesn’t get collected in the machine. The machine has got auto-flush facilities where hot water flows across the machine and self-cleans it,” explains Sandesh.
We have already applied for a patent for the hardware as well as the software versions of BoxC
In the V2 machine, one can easily select the areas which they want to clean. Since the water and milk are fed through inlet pipes, there is no issue regarding capacity as such.
The size of the machine, thus, does not depend upon how many teacups one requires on a daily basis. The company has also taken care of small things in the design, such as adequate space for small as well as large cups.
“We have already applied for a patent for the hardware as well as the software versions of BoxC,” says Sudesh.
SHARK: The Operational Brain Behind BoxC And Chai Point
The entire data is stored in the cloud. Chai Point has developed an in-house SHARK platform on AWS which is the backbone of its entire operations. It collects and feeds the data to the app, website, etc. The platform has also been integrated with food delivery sites such as Zomato, Swiggy, etc.
SHARK takes care of all aspects of sales, delivery orders, IoT-enabled solutions for BoxC and products being sold on multiple channels. The platform is also helpful to integrate AI for the cost optimisation, efficient operation and smooth backend operation.
The machine is also connected to the phones of office boys through the app called ‘call of duty’. The machine automatically sends notifications regarding the type of tea or the quantity of tea and milk left for refilling. The machine tracks the records of every cup spending and updates the server memory. Hence, there is a complete transparency in terms of consumption.
Sandesh says, “The data also helps in the further customisation of flavours.”
SHARK automatically collates feedback from different sources which gets stored in an excel sheet which help the team to understand the market. Even if a small component of the machine is not live or functional, SHARK helps the maintenance team know that.
“Currently, the revenue model is distributed 60:40 between the stores and BoxC. However, BoxC is catching up,” Amuleek shared.
Chai Point: What Comes Next After Brewing Tea?
“There is a host of solutions such as serving breakfast along with Chai, adding ice tea facility to the dispensers, bringing wallet-based dispensers in the market and more like that on which we are working to integrate with our offerings,” says Amuleek.
For the startup, this is just the beginning. “We are excited by ice tea as another possible offering,” he adds. The company is currently working on the ice tea dispensing facility.
The startup is also working on a wallet-based dispensing machine which can be independently installed at airports, hospitals, malls and other public places. As per Amuleek, its prototype would be ready this year.
And that’s not enough! The Chai Point team is also working on machines of smaller form factor that could be independently installed at homes for personal uses. The prototype is expected to be ready within the next one year.
Besides deepening its presence in existing cities, some of the other cities that are very much on the company’s radar for expansion are Chennai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
At present, Chai Point has around 1 Mn priority loyalty-based customers. However, the total number of customers extends to 5 Mn.
When asked whether Chai Point is planning to follow a franchise Model, Amuleek averred, “In India, franchise paths can degrade the brand value. That’s why we haven’t adopted this model. As the environment is changing, so is our brand. It is extremely important to have the entire control in your hand rather than in franchises.”
The company has partnered with one tea estate in Nilgiri and four tea state estates in Assam for fresh deliveries of tea leaves. While CCD has already become a household name in the metros, Chai Point might have the potential to go beyond the metros, to penetrate the tea-buds in every house in the country.
Besides offering tea, Chai Point also intends to become a software company by offering independent SHARK solutions to smaller retail and restaurant chains across India.
Given that India is such a large and vast market, as far as tea consumption is concerned, a mere presence of few tea retail chains is not about competing with each other but encashing the untapped opportunity, especially since the penetration of organised tea retail chain stores is still very low in the country. The challenge for Chai Point is to meet the burgeoning demand, without compromising on quality and cost-effectiveness. How the upcoming IoT-enabled wallet-based dispensers meet the heat, Inc42 will continue to report from ground zero!
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
“All it takes is one idea to solve an impossible problem,” said Robert H. Schuller.
The founders of Curofy – Nipun Goyal, Pawan Gupta and Mudit Vijayvergiya – stumbled upon their big idea during a midnight coffee break one seemingly unspectacular day in 2012. The idea, in case you are wondering, was brilliantly simple: a networking app only for doctors.
Unlike most healthtech startups that are developing solutions focussed primarily on patients, Curofy took a somewhat different approach: catering directly to doctors. Looking back, this was what enabled the trio to create a sustainable, scalable business, despite increasing competition in the healthcare space.
Since its inception, the healthtech startup has onboarded more than 220K verified doctors across 2,500+ cities in India. Having cemented its foothold in the Indian healthtech market, the startup is now looking to spread its wings across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Through the use of algorithm and machine learning, the platform has also managed to create an exhaustive crowd-sourced digital repository of medical cases, while at the same time fostering a robust support ecosystem for doctors.
So far, the Gurugram-headquartered startup has facilitated more than 250K case discussions between doctors, with the daily average standing at 500+. Armed with a wide network of partners and service providers, Curofy is now aiming to fulfil different needs of doctors, including access to loans, medical devices, jobs, insurance, clinical decision support etc.
Mirroring the startup’s strong numbers are some truly impressive achievements such as winning Google’s Launchpad programme in 2015, Medtech Investing London and being one of the Vivatech Paris Winners.
As per Inc42 sources and a VCCircle report, the Gurugram-headquartered healthtech startup recently got acquired by its key investor, RoundGlass Partners, as part of an all-cash deal estimated at somewhere between $9 Mn-$12 Mn (INR 60 Cr-INR 80 Cr).
In response to Inc42’s query on this development and the way forward for the startup founders and team, Nipun declined to comment.
Before delving further, let us look back at the startup’s remarkable journey from the days at IIT Delhi to amassing a registered user base of 220K+.
A Midnight Coffee Break And The Birth Of Curofy
Three ambitious IIT Delhi graduates and close friends: Nipun Goyal, an electrical engineer who has worked with Rothschild; Mudit Vijayvergiya, who completed chemical engineering before joining a pharmaceutical consulting firm Axtria as an analyst and Pawan Gupta, an electrical engineer who spent two years as an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
The trio went on to start Curofy in 2015, as a networking platform where doctors can connect and collaborate with each other.
While the desire to launch a business together remained unabated, the trio initially started working in the healthcare sector and associated themselves with a medical tourism company. The business, according to Goyal, was lucrative and offered good margins. Essentially, all they needed to do was bring overseas patients.
However, along the way, they managed to identify a bigger problem that the medical tourism industry was thriving on: thelack of connectivity among doctors, which was in turn breeding inefficiency. It was then that they dropped that business, took jobs with MNCs and continued to research the concept of medical networking in India.
A Value Proposition Based On Real-World Needs
During their meetings with more than 1,000 doctors between 2012 and 2014, the founders realised that there was a real need for medical networking. According to Nipun, there were a lot of platforms working on improving lives of patients, but very few were working on making the practice of doctors more efficient.
During an interaction with Inc42, Curofy co-founder Nipun Goyal said, “Doctors use Facebook and WhatsApp groups to discuss cases and community issues, but that’s highly unorganised. The outlook is not professional and there is significant data loss.”
“More importantly, the aspect of networking and reputation management is lost as the entire doctor community will never be active on one FB group or one WhatsApp group. Additionally, they are spammed on these platforms,” he went on to state.
Eager to tap into this relatively untouched opportunity, they soon left their jobs and started Curofy. The team initially built a website and ran a pilot, only to realise that mobile was the way to go.
“It helped us in further understanding their needs and behaviour, which went into our mobile app design and development. We killed our website and became a mobile-only company,” Nipun averred.
In January 2015, they started the alpha phase of the app to receive user feedback and launched on the Play Store in February of the same year and later introduced the iOS app.
Curofy, on the surface, is a social networking platform for doctors, however, as we peel the layers, it emerges as a comprehensive platform for every doctor’s need to keep himself/herself updated with the latest developments in the medical world, claims Goyal.
In fact, Curofy encourages peer-to-peer collaboration in learning and solving cases to help doctors keep abreast of the newest advancements in the medical realm. To that end, the app has a content sharing module through which doctors can share cases, trending news and discussion topics with other doctors from their specialty, hospital, city and more.
An Overview Of Curofy’s Many Offerings
Owned by 911 India Healthcare, Curofy’s online medical directory creates profiles of doctors based on the information provided by them. Doctors provide their basic details to become a part of the premium network, post verification.
Additionally, medical professionals can provide referrals, share cases, call other doctors without actually accessing each other’s numbers and have access to the most recent, speciality-wise developments taking place in the fields of medicine, surgery and dentistry, thus providing a platform for collaborative learning.
Besides providing a platform for discussions, Curofy offers access to various service providers who fulfill different needs of doctors like loans, medical devices, jobs, insurance, clinical decision support tools etc.
While its core product is the Discussion Platform, among its other offerings is Library, which provides knowledge aggregated from various sources and partners to help doctors in staying updated in their practice. This includes clinical decision support tools, guidelines, journals, quizzes etc.
Other than that, there is Genie, a service that connects doctors with service providers who fulfill different needs of doctors like getting unsecured loans, buying medical devices, finding jobs or staff, insuring their practice and taking medico-legal advice. Lastly, through the Profile feature, Doctors can highlight their profile on Curofy, which enables discovery to both patients and doctors.
Based on this profile, a doctor can even get patient referrals from other doctors on Curofy.
Embracing Technology To Create A Well Knit Ecosystem For Doctors
With the world standing on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution, technology has become an integral part of all successful businesses. And it’s no different, in the case of Curofy. By leveraging the power of intelligent algorithm, the startup has managed to keep its platform targeted and spam-free, while also organising and streamlining the conversations among doctors.
So, what are some of the real-world use cases of the Curofy platform?
Imagine a small town doctor coming across an unusual case and having doubts regarding the exact cause of the problems. He posts this case on the app and within a few hours, receives opinions from qualified doctors across the country.
The doctor can now consider these different lines of diagnosis or refer the patient to the right doctor based on the opinions.
Elaborating on another practical application of the technology, Goyal stated, “A doctor needs a loan for opening a new clinic. He posts his requirement on Curofy, which is automatically sent to the most relevant financial partner of Curofy. The partner directly approaches the doctor and provides an unsecured loan within 48 hours.”
Ushering In Change In The Indian Healthcare System
Although Curofy’s customer base comprises doctors only, the platform has been indirectly striving to make the country’s healthcare system more organised, by eliminating inefficiencies and streamlining the diagnosis and treatment process.
With Curofy, doctors now have an ecosystem where they can quickly discuss the case with the right set of doctors in the community and help the patient in getting a faster treatment. Additionally, the platform provides the doctors with a support system that allows them to partner with various stakeholders in the industry.
Talking about the impact that Curofy has had on the country’s medical sector, Nipun further stated, “The biggest outcome of this platform is the continuous intelligence that is been built by cataloguing these interactions and cases. With next-gen tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence at disposal, the possibilities can only be termed as revolutionary.”
On the medical industry side, even in today’s digital world, various healthcare stakeholders still rely on inefficient offline channels to create awareness about their innovations and services with the provider community. A highly engaged platform of doctors solves this problem as well.
As claimed by the founders, “Curofy is changing behaviour of doctors, making them adopt this closed social media. This enables a digital channel of communication between doctors and the industry.”
Numbers Don’t Lie: A Look At Curofy’s Current Statistics
While the intention to do good was what drove the founders to start Curofy in the first place, its continued success has been the result of careful strategising and the team’s steely-eyed focus on creating a sustainable business. The growth, Nipun believes, has been largely organic, mainly through word of mouth.
Currently, the medical networking app boasts more than 220K registered customers/clients on its platform, including super-specialists from premium hospitals like Medanta, Apollo, Max and Saket City, among others. So far, it has facilitated over 250K+ case discussions between doctors, with the current daily average being 500.
As per the filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), Curofy’s total revenue in 2016-17 stood at $162.1K (INR 1.05 Cr), which included $34.890.1 (INR 22.6 Lakh) as income from other sources. During the said period, the company reported losses of around $988.2K (INR 6.4 Cr). This was mainly because of the increase in expenses to $1.14 Mn (INR 7.4 Cr).
While Curofy’s current priority is a higher engagement of doctors over revenue, it claimed to have started making revenues in January 2017 and even reached close to breaking even by end of last year.
On the road ahead, Goyal averred, “As we delve deep, seamless communication is just tool for a broader goal. The goal now is to keep every doctor up to date with latest in the medical world, to inculcate a spirit of collaboration among them and most importantly to build an affordable healthcare system that is geography agnostic. At present, Curofy’s priority is the engagement of doctors over revenue while doing these tie-ups.”
Nipun Goyal On Surviving The Initial Challenges And The Road Ahead
Like most startups, gaining tractions during the initial days was a major hurdle for Curofy. According to its co-founders, the biggest challenge was to convince doctors to use the platform and then drive traffic from WhatsApp to the networking app.
Goyal explained, “We focused on retaining the doctors on the app by giving them an easy-to-use product with high utility. Providing them a spam free platform with very high relevance for each user was the key.”
“The word started spreading amongst the doctors and the network started growing rapidly. From four to five doctors a day, more than 1000 doctors started joining the app in a single day,” Nipun added.
In a bid to attain such an ambitious feat, Curofy is currently focussed on getting a foothold of the major stakeholders in the country. Utilising the funding it has raised so far, the company will further increase and improve the quality and quantity of the cases for its case repository.
Apart from that, Curofy is also working with various healthcare industry stakeholders to disrupt the way they communicate with doctors, thereby helping them to make their practice more efficient. As claimed by Nipun, the medical networking company has already collaborated with many industry partners to help them disseminate new innovations to doctors through the platform.
Along similar lines, a number of healthcare giants have joined hands with Curofy to digitise various aspects of their businesses. The medical networking startup is also said to be integrating with various platforms and service providers, who will fulfill different needs of doctors like getting them loans, medical devices, jobs, insurance, clinical decision support etc.
For instance, recently, it announced an alliance with Bajaj Finserv to provides easy access to unsecured loans and financial assistance on their app.
This strategic collaboration, according to the founders, is the outcome of a three-month-long pilot between and the NBFC, as part of which more than 1000 doctors have already received financial aid in setting up their clinics, starting their practice, expanding their business expansion, purchasing medical devices and buying real estate.
Shedding light on the company’s future plans, Nipun stated, “Facebook has proven to us that the entire marketing function of the world can be confined within the realms of a few buttons Curofy is taking the Facebook approach of buttoning various marketing functions.”
Ultimately, the healthtech company is keen on expanding its geographical reach in developing markets beyond India. To that end, it has already run pilots in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Editor’s Note
According to an IBEF report, the overall Indian healthcare market is estimated at $100 Bn. It is expected to touch $280 Bn by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 22.9%. Globally, the healthtech sector attracted over $10 Bn funding with the market moving closer to consolidations, as per an August 2017 CB insights report.
In India alone, healthtech startups raised over $338 Mn funding across 111 deals in 2017, according to Inc42 DataLabs’ Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2017. Some of the biggest fundings in this space were received by online pharmacy startups such as Netmeds, which secured $14 Mn funding in a round led by Cambodian investment holding company Tanncam and Sistema Asia Fund in October 2017.
Despite the increased availability of funding and the growth in the number of healthtech startups, the country’s healthcare sector continues to be crippled with inefficiencies, lack of proper infrastructure, shortage of doctors and other medical professionals, among others.
While the Union Budget 2018 has made provisions to raise health care spending by 11% to $8.2 Bn as a way of meeting critical health infrastructure gaps, at it stands currently, the problems in the Indian healthcare system are still jarringly real.
This is where startups like Curofy come in. Although not directly focussed on patients, the platform is helping create a robust infrastructure for doctors to communicate and collaborate with one another, which in turn makes the diagnosis and treatment process more efficient.
Other startups working along similar lines include Docplexus, Daily Rounds, Practo, Health Feed and PlexusMD. Globally, there are companies like Sermo and Doximity that are offering physicians a platform to connect with each other.
Despite the emergence of a number of competitors, Nipun believes that Curofy is fundamentally different in terms of the approach taken to solve the same problem. He told Inc42, “Curofy’s engagement levels are at least 10 times more than the best of them. To be honest, engagement is the key metric for determining success and failure in this segment. Curofy has already proven engagement, where others are still struggling to find it.”
Amid a population of over 1.3 Bn, the 1: 1,700 doctor to patient ratio in India is extremely poor in comparison to the prescribed ratio of 1:400 by WHO. While this directly affects the quality and accessibility of healthcare, the lower doctor to patient ratio also makes it more difficult for startups like Curofy to gain a solid footing in an already limited market.
Add to that is the fact that more 90 healthtech startups were launched in India in 2017 alone. Although the path is evidently fraught with challenges, how Curofy decides to navigate them will be its success story!
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
India’s ecommerce market is projected to touch $33 Bn mark this year. With an Internet user base of 462 Mn, India has the second largest online user population in the world, second only to China. With deep-pocketed investors backing ecommerce sector at large, there is no dearth of options for the Indian users. But as they say, more the options, more the confusion and thus the increasing percentage of last-minute cart abandonment.
Looking at this vast opportunity that ecommerce offers, Manas Usharia and Shantanu Gaur took the plunge to launch a platform which could ease the online shoppers’ dilemma of online product credibility. That’s how the story of ShoppingPost started.
Being in competition with already established startups such as Voonik, Wooplr, Klip, LimeRoad and more, and having been in operations for over two years, the Indore-based social commerce startup ShoppingPost has now become a hub for shopaholics.
As claimed, the social commerce startup has witnessed about 150K installs with about 90,000 posts. And the next ambitious goal is to host a million users by the end of 2018 and over 10 Mn users by 2019 end.
Rise Of The Online Users
Manas’ entrepreneurial journey began way back in 2013 when he co-founded Codebin with a loan of $549.50 (INR 35,000) from his father. The startup dealt with services in the technology domain. Later he pivoted the business and rebranded it to ShoppingPost and was joined by Shantanu.
According to a report by Google and AT Kearney, by 2020, India will have 175 Mn online shoppers. With this shift in the shopping behaviour comes issues like trust, the credibility of the product, service and genuine feedback. How do consumers trust the websites or the products?
So, the simple mantra behind the purpose of ShoppingPost is ‘Shop and Post’.
As Shantanu states, “We created ShoppingPost to connect real users of different products to each other, share their purchases and create the next great social network with a purpose.”
The team drafted the first mockup 12 months before finally launching the basic version of the app. “We knew that there would be challenges and they first needed to be solved on pen and paper,” Manas said.
Their research was primarily based on understanding the consumer, problems they face while shopping online. The social commerce startup wanted the user to share his/her purchase information with others. As the platform comes with “Social” aspect, users have the option to interact with each other, share reviews about particular products etc.
ShoppingPost: Breaking The Mountain Of Challenges
Resonating with most startup stories, Manas and Shantanu had also faced the conundrum of funding. And initially, the duo had used their savings. And later on, they took a loan to give the social commerce startup a run time of six months and started meeting angel investors.
And then the team went on to receive angel funding to the tune of $140K (INR 90 Lakhs) from Suresh Kumili, a Hyderabad-based angel.
However, startup and challenges are like two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other. And ShoppingPost founders did have their share.
Apart from lack of funding avenues, just like any other Tier II city startup, ShoppingPost faced a huge challenge in finding the right team and then training them to use the technology stake. Then came the problem of convincing the major ecommerce sites to add a ‘share on ShoppingPost button’ on their websites.
Eventually, ShoppingPost has gained mileage in its journey. They have focussed on two parameters for the traction level they have achieved. One, on hiring the right talent and two, on diversifying the product offering of the startup. So, it set out as an informative platform to rate products and validate the credentials but in the long term, it has come to work with various ecommerce websites and customers to add value to online shopping.
So what kind of competition does the team of ShoppingPost foresee?
Shantanu quips, “We are a social commerce in horizontal space and we know of no one in India as a direct competition. Roposo is in fashion vertical. Pinterest and Instagram do not have shopping at their core. But, yes, if social media spaces such as Instagram were users can directly share their shopping experience, we will have competition.”
ShoppingPost: Current Traction And Plans Ahead
As per Shantanu, ShoppingPost on an average adds a new user and a new post every minute. He revealed that the social commerce startup has its user base spread over cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Patna, Mumbai, Lucknow, Bengaluru, New Delhi, Pune, and Indore.
The startup plans to test its revenue channel with targeted ads once it reaches 1 Mn users in India. “We have real data of the consumers which can help companies as well as consumers to get the best match possible before shopping,” Shantanu said.
As far as funding is concerned, ShoppingPost is planning to raise close to $1 Mn funding in a next few months. The startup, further, aims to launch a Progressive Web App and to add several new channels or stores through API integration to enable users to post everything they buy online.
Then there are plans to use artificial intelligence for product discovery and search, which maximises the chances of the user getting what he or she wants.
Then, there are also plans to enter into the offline space with organised retail stores like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Future Group to enable shoppers to share their offline experiences with everyone on the contact list.
Opportunities Galore
The online shopping space in India is heating up. Marketing cost is huge and the potential to solve every single problem via the social network is the key to optimising this market. Consider these figures: according to Statista, over 2.14 Bn people worldwide are expected to buy goods and services online by 2021. The same source also revealed that India had witnessed $16.7 Bn sales in 2016.
These figures are enough to understand the market that is posed by online shopping for the future. It would not be long before more ecommerce sites emerge and evaluators of their products to find their way to push through the competitive social media marketing space.
The biggest challenge in uniformly pursuing this figure lies in the different customer behaviours across different Tier cities. It will be a sheer determination that will conquer the quest despite infrastructural issues that the social commerce startup is facing.
Manas says,
“Internet infrastructure is poor in Indore, we have lost time and money sitting in the office waiting for the internet to be reinstated after paying twice of what we would have paid in a Tier I city. We have been quietly developing our product in a low-cost way, away from the plush environment. We have been able to shine as the go-to-startup for candidates who wish to work in Indore.”
Shantanu feels there are way more that can be done to undo the lethargic infrastructure and underdeveloped startup ecosystem in India, “The government needs to do more. Why do we need to approach private investors? Take an example of Israel and the way it incubates its startups. As a society also, mindset towards failure needs to change.”
Editor’s Note
With the number of online shoppers on the rise in India, even the way people prefer to shop online have changed substantially, and thus the digital marketing tactics of the online retailers. Leaving behind ad pop-ups and email marketing, the digital shopper is now embracing social networks for knowing the recent trends. A product review posted by the closed ones on a Facebook group is much more impactful than a random product ad, even if it’s based on user’s online shopping behaviour.
In the digital world, data is the new currency. The Internet operates by selling services or products and every user is either a seller or a consumer, directly or indirectly. There are differences in the market behaviour in India as compared to the West. Despite the differences, a government that is working for a Digital India and a young population of tech-savvy Indians will make all the difference to online shopping.
Plus as Shantanu rightly pointed out, going ahead India might get a startup investment infrastructure similar to Israel, thereby building a positive as well as a mature ecosystem for the online buyers. Digital platforms such as ShoppingPost might just drive this wave in India.
Often, environment is one of the most skewed topics of discussion.
In India, air pollution has almost an apocalyptic effect. The aggressive urbanisation and industrialisation have elevated the pollution level even further. Come winter, Delhi and its adjoining areas suffocate with smog.
A Greenpeace India report says that as many as 47 Mn children live in areas with pollutant PM10 or with particulate matter in the air with a diameter less than 10 microns. In the recent times, some of the cities that have had the worst cases of pollution include Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Maharashtra.
Taking note of the situation, Odisha-based IoT startup Phoenix Robotix came up with Aurassure – an innovative environment monitoring device that helps industries know the level of their pollutant emission.
The startup works in the field of Industrial Internet of Things aka IIoT and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). It launched Aurassure which provides a complete solution for real-time air and weather quality monitoring in Smart Cities.
In short, Aurassure came into existence to help cities to monitor and to better understand the micro-environments in real-time using sensor-based IoT device and data analytics.
What Triggered Aurassure?
The IoT startup was discovered during the BIGShift event series organised by Inc42 in association with Amazon India. Its product, Aurassure, captures different air quality parameters from widely distributed locations and showcases in a web platform with a mobile app to visualise and analyse the ambient air quality.
The product was initially aimed at a solution for industries, keeping in mind the mandated Central Pollution Control Board guidelines of ambient air quality monitoring by the industries themselves, but Aurassure found a bigger scope with the inception of smart cities.
The founders identified some key issues in the air monitoring system, Amiya claimed, “The existing tools and equipment used for pollution monitoring by the government organisations across the world are not scalable and sustainable. These devices are highly expensive, occupies exorbitant space, are bulky and consumes excessive power.”
Apart from this, the devices use consumables resulting in demands of regular maintenance by trained professionals adding to the operational cost. Due to such high cost of implementation, most of the developing countries like India end up with sparsely distributed devices leading to lack of visibility, granularity and substantial monitoring of air quality.
Due to the sparsely distributed devices across the country, the government is facing challenges to understanding the changes in their micro-environments due to lack of data. Lack of proper information is leading to improper policy frameworks, city planning and at times, end up with improper decision making, which ultimately results in the public disinterest.
According to Amiya,
“The real causes of air pollution in different cities still remain unidentified and therefore, due to the lack of awareness, citizens fail to realise the intensity of this exponentially growing issue.”
The air quality monitoring was a segment that lacked a complete end-to-end solution to meet all the requirements for the problem and the team already had some experience working with various industries in the pollution monitoring segment, so they decided to develop a complete integrated IoT based solution for monitoring the air quality of the cities in real-time.
Hence, the team of Aurassure felt an urgent need of a systematic and well-connected network of efficient air quality monitoring systems in huge deployments for establishing sound city planning and smart city implementation, and in turn spreading awareness among citizens by reaching their personalised levels.
Aurassure is working on the issue of air monitoring problem with two different customer segments; one being the medium and large scale industries and the other one being Smart Cities.
Amiya reasons why this was the approach, “We decided to start with providing some solutions to the industries as Rourkela is surrounded by a large number of industries. We made visits to different industries and wanted to know about their requirements for any customised solutions.”
Then the Government of India had also announced various Smart Cities. Amiya further said, “We wanted to be a part of the emerging market. We studied the requirements of various solutions proposed for the Smart Cities.”
From Aurassure To Oeuvre
Today, Aurassure is offering its air and weather quality monitoring solutions in smart cities. The team is also planning to add more sensors for multiple applications for smart-cities under Aurassure vertical.
Delightedly Amiya said,
“We had started from an absolute zero. We’ve generated a revenue of approx. $35K before receiving any outside funding.”
In 2016, the company went on to raise Seed funding of $55K from three local angel investors including Manoranjan Mahapatra, Amit Gupta and Amrit Biswal. Currently, the team is planning to raise a Pre-Series A round of approx. $700K to $800K in the next six months time frame.
A major thrust to its success story is given by the fact that PSU major Steel Authority of India has implemented Aurassure in its Rourkela plant after it received several complaints from neighbouring townships and villages about emission of harmful pollutants.
With permission from the regional office of State Pollution Control Board, Odisha, and Rourkela Steel Plant, Aurassure was installed near the fencing of the plant to enable fence-line monitoring. Acting on the data, the plant authorities were able to cut down chances of further emission. The solution also provided a pollution trend analysis, helping the plant authorities to plan their operations so as to minimise pollution to neighbouring residential places.
Aurassure claims to have been successful in maintaining a growth rate of 300% for the last two years and this year, the team claims, it will be closing with approx. $400K in revenue.
Amiya asserted, “We are already profitable from the first year itself due to lower operational expenditure and being established at Rourkela, which is nearer to our customer geographies. We are mostly targeting two major market segments – Industries & Smart Cities.”
As claimed, the IoT startup currently has more than 70 paying customers including top brands like Tata Steel, Jindal Steel & Power, Aditya Birla Group, Honeywell Automations & Dalmia Cement etc.
This is the story of a startup that has grown from a team of six members to more than 25 members within last two and half years. The startup has also been successful in being counted in the top ten innovations for smart cities in “Innovate for Digital India Challenge (IFDIC) 2015” hosted by DST and CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad and mentored by Intel and UC Berkeley. This was a turning point for the team as it gave the team a business-oriented direction and helped them in converting the idea into a strong business proposition.
The IoT startup was also selected among the top three startups in the impact challenge for developing a solution for water quality monitoring and awarded by the honorable chief minister of Karnataka. Adding to its galore of achievements, the IoT startup was also shortlisted to participate in the “Leader in Innovation Fellowship (LIF)” programme organised in the United Kingdom funded by the UK Government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2017.
As far as competition is concerned, on one hand, the device is competing with high-end ambient air quality device manufactured from across the globe such as Thermofischer Scientific, ABB, Chemtrols, Aeroqual, Horiba, etc.
As most of these devices have a foreign origin, the customers are paying a heavy technology price without proper services and maintenance support.
The traditional devices require in-depth knowledge in order to maintain and operate. Whereas, Aurassure device is a small, lightweight and easy to operate. It can also be powered by solar power in a street light pole installation. It will enable monitoring of street resolution pollution information for smarter and livable city.
“We have applied for one patent and some more is in the pipeline. Two trademarks and one design registration has already been granted,” says the founder. Currently, the startup is working with Honeywell and ICLEI for different smart cities of India.
Amiya says, “Though our product is competing with their product line, we are completely different in terms of technology used to make these devices, in turn reducing the price almost by 20-30 times as compared to the existing devices.”
On the other hand, the device is also competing with companies using similar technology. To name a few are brands like Bosch, PAQs, Oizom, AQmesh, Libelium, etc. who are providing similar solutions. “Our solution is competitively better as it can support customisable sensor selection depending upon the application requirement,” tells Amiya.
The team claims that the solution is very easy to operate and requires zero technical expertise. The device comes with remote calibration and configuration features and consists of no movable parts leading to zero wear and tear.
The Ecosystem And The Future Market
In India, there seems to be a delay or slow growth in the initial phase of air monitoring system right now due to lack of awareness and technology adoption among the people.
Amiya states, “Considering the segment in which we are working right now, i.e. real-time Environmental Monitoring, people don’t realise the necessity of such a system. But if we compare it to other developed economies like the US, UK, Europe, etc. and how they consider climate change as one of the major issues. They have a lot of awareness about environment protection and the Govt. is spending a lot of resources for various policies towards environment protection.”
Apparently, the adoption of technology and data-driven decision making is also much faster in the developed countries. But the situation is improving gradually and people are becoming more and more aware of the effects of environmental changes.
Amiya agrees,
“The technology adoption time-lag is also decreasing. We are also coming up with more number of solutions in the next two years under the umbrella of Aurassure. Also, we are growing our customer base to industries, research institutes, NGOs and various Environment Consultants.”
Speaking on the startup ecosystem of India, Amiya recalls that there were no major startups in Rourkela at the time when he and his team were starting. He adds, “But it’s getting better day by day with the support from both the Govt. of Odisha as well as the Govt. of India. Nowadays, a number of startups are coming out of small cities of India, Rourkela being no different.”
But Rourkela is still behind other top startup hubs of the country like Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, etc. It is indeed a big challenge to be an entrepreneur in a country which is yet to do much more to boost the ecosystem.
Reiterating the same, Amiya says, “Yes, it’s really challenging to be an entrepreneur in our country. In other developed economies like the US, UK, Europe, etc. the start-up ecosystem is much more vibrant than it is in India, with the students being more interested in starting their own ventures and the entire ecosystem supporting the culture. In India, it’s comparatively tougher for a student to follow his passion and start his own venture and getting the right opportunities for the same after completing education. But the time is changing and the Govt. of India is encouraging more and more start-ups in the country through increasing awareness and promoting various policies.”
With India opening up to the startup idea and industrialisation scaling up, products like Aurassure will certainly go a long way.
Markets and Markets in its research titled ‘Air Quality Monitoring Market’ has given a forecast period of 2016 to 2021. The market is expected to reach $5.64 Bn by 2021, at a CAGR of 8.5% from 2016 to 2021 in India. Along with other startups such as Sameer Air Pollution Control, Air Quality Index, AirVisual, etc. Aurassure will be able to tap into the market opportunities.
Editor’s Note
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), a statutory organisation under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, provides real-time air quality measurements across all states and UTs through its 683 established stations, free of cost.
The stations are further run with the help of premier environmental research institutes such as the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and IITB. Maintained at the research and policy-framework level, these stations usually measure atmospheric pollutants through all available methods such as gravimetric, wet-chemical as well as continuous online methods.
However, the CPCB’s air-quality monitoring instruments and their measurements are not hyperlocal and cost-effective as required by most of the industries such as Pharma and healthcare.
Blume Ventures’ Partner Sanjay Nath is all ears for investments in environment-related startups, given that these startups are trying to solve the country’s burgeoning pollution problem.
Claiming to meet the hyperlocal demands, it won’t be an easy and green turf for Aurassure to grazing in.
With the first mover in the market, big players like ABB and Thermo Fisher have developed and patented a number of sensors and technologies. However, adopting their solutions in the real world is not everyone’s cup of tea, as they mostly offer CMC/AMCs only which are very costly.
To meet the cost-effectiveness criterion, Aurassure uses sim card-enabled wireless smart sensors with small form factors that could easily fit anywhere and broadcast data. Inc42 has not been able to verify whether they meet CPCB/NAAQS issued methods of measurement and accuracy requirements for all the 12 primary pollutants.
What’s more interesting is that the IoT startup Phoenix Robotix product – Aurassure deploys solar panels to keep the air quality monitoring process green. Recently, a number of companies have jumped the pollution bandwagon. Enriching their data journalism, India’s data journalism behemoth India Spend has also started providing free real-time air quality index across the country.
The firm has deployed 40 low-cost quality sensors fitted with GPRS transmitters across major cities in India. Non-profit platform IODA and Chennai-based Sensors Without Borders have also deployed similar low-cost quality sensors to provide real-time air quality index.
In a scenario, where data is becoming free, the focus is fast shifting from monitoring to control, from acquiring information to cutting-edge technology implementations like cube sensors and smoke sucking towers.
As the awareness pertaining to air pollution is fast increasing, so is the mushrooming of startups in the vertical. In such a scenario, for the Aurassure team, the product should remain at the centre of their design thinking.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Crowdfunding: the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people typically via the Internet. While crowdfunding has been around for quite some time now, it started gaining traction as an alternative lending method, post the financial crisis of 2007-08.
As per a report published on Technavio, the global crowdfunding industry is poised to touch more than $110 Bn by 2021, expanding at a compound growth rate of 17%. Today, crowdfunding is commonly used to fund artistic and creative ventures like films and TV projects, among others.
In India, home to the world’s largest film industry in terms of the number of film produced per year, a growing class of independent filmmakers are turning to crowdfunding as a viable means to secure capital. While Shyam Benegal’s Manthan raised $3,087.5 (INR 2 lakh) from farmers back in 1976, more recently, movies like I AM (2010), Srinivas Sunderrajan’s Greater Elephant (2012) and Abhay Kumar’s Placebo (2015) would not have seen the light of day, had it not been for crowdfunding.
This was essentially the model that LiveTree was conceived on: a crowdfunding platform for the film and entertainment industry. However, since its launch in 2016, it has transfigured into the world’s first blockchain-based funding and distribution platform for film and content creators.
Realising the inefficiencies and challenges that continue to beset the distribution process to this date, LiveTree has since created its own Netflix-style online channel for content creators, Blossom TV, all using blockchain as the pièce de résistance!
Here’s an inside scoop of LiveTree’s incredible journey over the last two years.
How Livetree Was Started: Journey From 2016 To Present
Headquartered in London, LiveTree is a film, TV and content company that was started in January 2016 by serial entrepreneur and former HSBC Business Specialist Ashley Turing, along with Dr. Jamie Ward. In the two years since then, it claims to have captured over 5% market share of the UK’s entertainment crowdfunding sector.
Over the last few years, LiveTree has attracted a number of high-profile partners, including the British Film Institute’s Future Labs, Film London and Red Rock Entertainment, among others. Furthermore, as claimed by co-founder and CEO Ashley Turing, the company currently boasts a database of 14,000+ from the entertainment industry globally.
Having funded over 150 film and TV projects so far, Turing realised that only a few of the projects were actually making it to cinema and TV screens. These days, getting films, TV and content on to the screen is quite difficult, believes Turing.
According to him, distribution is often restricted by complex contractual negotiations, insider connections or executives preferring cookie-cutter content to creative, imaginative works as a way of advancing their private wealth.
To make the distribution process more efficient and easier for content creators, LiveTree has developed an innovative solution called ADEPT.
LiveTree ADEPT: Leveraging Blockchain To Disrupt The Entertainment Industry
Touted as the world’s first blockchain-based funding and distribution platform dedicated to the film and entertainment industry, ADEPT (Advanced Decentralised Entertainment Platform for Transparent Distribution) was launched by LiveTree to empower content creators, while also supporting their respective viewing audiences.
The current process of distribution, Turing averred, is somewhat limiting. “Trying to navigate complex deal terms such as license territories, license type and license duration on paper or through email can be complex especially when several buyers and sellers are involved. This results in independent studios or productions being overlooked. To worsen the problem, the fees involved are up to 35%,” he further explained.
To counter these problems, LiveTree is utilising blockchain technology to manage and license the rights for film and TV content efficiently, through the ADEPT platform.
Essentially, on the funding side, the new platform enables backers of a particular to accrue profits from their investments, once the TV/film hits the box office.
Additionally with regard to the distribution conundrum, the ADEPT platform promises to ease the burden of sales agents by making new content available at a considerably lower cost. It also paved the way for transparent revenue returns from online channels.
If the content creator cannot get his/her original content to reach the viewers through traditional TV channels, he/she can opt to get the content published on LiveTree’s Blossom TV.
How LiveTree Is Making Funding More Accessible To Content Creators
One of the key advantages of the ADEPT platform is the ease of raising capital via crowdfunding. Unlike most crowdfunding models, LiveTree functions on the basis of a “refer-a-friend” model, which Ashley Turing claims considerably reduces marketing overheads, increased funding success and ultimately, builds an audience around the project.
Apart from the reward-based crowdfunding, project creators can also use LiveTree ADEPT to secure funding from backers, in exchange for the distribution sale of all or part of their intellectual property (IP). Creators can also raise funding against a share of their content’s future value.
At present, LiveTree ADEPT charges creators a processing fee of only 2.5%, which according to the company’s CEO is significantly lower than 5%-20% funding fees levied by other crowdfunding platforms.
Turing further stated, “This model allows for a more democratic funding processing, enabling ‘normal’ people to invest in and profit from content alongside the industry’s traditional backers and gatekeepers — studios, broadcasters and high net-worth individuals. It also helps to remove censorship and the ‘cookie-cutter’ approach to content creation, whereby only projects that are judged to have mainstream appeal are likely to find funding.”
Rewriting The Rules Of Content Distribution
By harnessing the power of the network effect, LiveTree ADEPT is also striving to decentralise distribution and bypass the major corporate distribution channels. At present, the platform offers three direct routes to market: Blossom TV, traditional broadcast and online streaming/aggregation.
Blossom TV is a new online-distributed channel operated by LiveTree ADEPT. The Netflix-style subscription service serves as a showcase for new product, with consumers invited to pre-pay, or pre-fund content before it is made.
The traditional broadcaster model focuses on legacy broadcasters and emerging VOD platforms, which are constantly seeking fresh and original content. LiveTree ADEPT’s open-rating system gives distributors and consumers quick access to new content, while acting as guide to help gauge demand for specific genres.
The streaming/aggregation model, on the other hand, uses the power and reach of YouTube, Vimeo and other online channels to reach a wider group of consumers. This approach, according to Ashley Turing, is best suited to first-time content-makers looking to gain exposure and build popularity for their projects.
Among the projects that are currently using LiveTree are The Buy In, a TV game show and an original series called Decentralized. Touted as the world’s first TV crypto-competition, The Buy In enables viewers, through the use of tokens, to have a stake in what they are watching. It will be initially shown online through Blossom TV.
LiveTree ADEPT also announced a partnership with independent filmmaker Christopher Arcella and tech co-producer Erik Vesterlund on a new film and planned series, Decentralized. The pilot will be available on Blossom TV.
How Blockchain Is Woven Into The LiveTree System
“It is increasingly clear that the blockchain, with its ability simplify distribution, manage creative rights and address piracy, is disrupting the traditional film and content industries,” said Turing on the potential of blockchain.
Blockchain, for the uninitiated, is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that allows all members to record transactions in a decentralised data log maintained on a network of computers, rather than a physical ledger or a single database. Transactions are approved by consensus, and everything is secured through cryptography.
While blockchain technology was originally used to create cryptocurrencies such Bitcoin, it is increasing being used in other fields such as payment services, agriculture, financial exchanges, infrastructure and education.
For LiveTree, the integration of blockchain has helped bring transparency to the crowdfunding process, by enabling backers of projects to see returns that until now were fully controlled by the creators.
To that end, the company also announced a Seed token (SED) sale, which is scheduled to end in 19 days. A total of 1.1 Mn Seed tokens were sold in the pre-sale, added Turing.
Editor’s Note
As per estimates, the global digital content market is expected to touch $549 Bn by 2019, expanding at a CAGR of 13.73%. Riding this growth is the online distribution market for film and TV content, which is currently estimated at $700 Mn.
The giants in this space include Netflix and Amazon Prime, both of which offer customers access to original content on the basis of subscription. In India, online video streaming has witnessed rapid growth as a result of the rollout of 4G Internet services by the top telecom providers, particularly Reliance Jio.
According to a report by Media Partners Asia (MPA), the Indian online video market is poised to increase from $340 Mn in 2017 to $1.6 Bn by 2020, growing at a compound growth rate of 35%. One of the biggest reasons behind this growth has been increased digital penetration and adoption of smartphones and the Internet.
Although these platforms are helping streamline the distribution process by making it easier for creators to get their content across to the viewers, they often charge exorbitant fees, which can be crippling for first-time content makers.
By leveraging blockchain technology, LiveTree brings transparency to the entire process of raising funding, while also streamline distribution. As the only platform offering blockchain-based funding and distribution services in this segment, LiveTree ADEPT, therefore, is strongly positioned to capture a sizeable market share in the burgeoning film and TV industry.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
India has an estimated 12 MnKirana stores. But the online visibility of these millions of stores has not been as optimal as its suppose to be considering their vastness in presence and number.
But not so long back, the mom-and-pop neighbourhood grocery stores or what they are commonly known as i.e. kirana stores evolved from being just the two-minute-away solutions for all gharwale needs to being essential entities to the ecommerce giants as they also started to use kirana stores as Intel to reach their local customers.
Amazon India did it, so did Myntra when it launched its MENSA Network. The country’s ubiquitous network of kirana stores was suddenly up for grabs by FMCG companies, Reliance Jio, etc. This was the beginning of micro-management of store clusters.
But, the premise of these business opportunities was laid on the requirements of the ecommerce industry and those opportunities did not necessarily solve the larger issue of how the kirana stores could be discovered.
Interestingly, startups are coming to the forefront to address this issue upfront, exploiting technological means to enable kirana stores to be involved with the means of modern trading. One such startup is O2Onow which Inc42 discovered during its eight-city event series BIGShift, organised in association with Amazon India.
Launched in September 2017 by Manoj Gaddam, Aradhana Kamidi, and Vikas Syam Navur, O2Onow is a smart-city derivative mobile app aimed at enriching the shopping experience of users in tier I and tier II cities.
With a team of 13 people, the Hyderabad-based startup functions as an offline store aggregator and a digital marketing platform for MSMEs envisioned towards transforming mom-and-pop stores to a bricks-and-clicks model. It is inherently cashing upon the primary factor which has also majorly been a hurdle for the Indian consumers to shop online – the ‘Trust’ factor.
On O2Onow, a consumer has an option to browse the available offers on her nearby store and either pay online or explore the physical purchase experience herself. The small retailers, on the other hand, are enticed with the vision to increase their reach in their neighbourhood community as well as the prospects of increasing their sales and dominance in the community market.
Although store locators as a means of adding convenience to the fast-paced urban lifestyle are nothing new. There are big players in the ring already; names like JustDial, Indiamart, Nowfloats, Paytm Mall, etc. might strike familiarity with us. Despite the presence of the eminent companies, O2Onow has retained the pitch and is playing shot after shot.
Digitising Kirana Stores The O2Onow Way
An idea can change the world. Or so it is said. But with O2Onow, it changed the way kirana stores are used and perceived in Hyderabad.
The idea to develop a digital platform to search local stores struck Manoj when he was searching for some local shops and their offers online but he could not find any. Since he could not find an online means to know about the offers that were available in the local stores, he thought of digitising the idea as a business by giving kirana stores an online presence at a low cost.
Of all the reasons why O2Onow came into existence, some of the crucial ones are to address for both consumers and the sellers on the lines of limited capital and knowledge; non-availability of suitable technology at low cost for seller promotion; ineffective and high costs of marketing and constraints on modernisation of expansion, difficulties in customer retention and customer engagement, amongst others.
After surveying almost 200 retailers, the founders got a fair idea about the problems and based on that, the prototype was built. In the process, they gained a proper understanding of the concerns raised by the retailers and the manufacturers.
The queer acronym-like name came after much thinking as Manoj claims, “From consumer perspective, O2Onow means ‘O2O’ i.e. online-to-offline for a consumer to view products online in nearby stores or for that reason, they view stores anywhere and purchase offline and ‘now’ i.e. real-time as customers are able to instantly view the store virtually.”
Interestingly, he adds, “From the seller perspective, O2Onow means ‘O2O’ i.e. offline-to-online for a seller to come online in a few hours to start selling the products and to promote their stores. ‘Now’, in this case, means sellers can be instantly on-boarded using our innovative platform.”
The startup had a modest beginning solely aimed at the good cause they wanted to affect. Started with a personal investment of $25K, the startup went on to receive a Seed funding of $25K from a consortium of angel investors.
O2Onow is focussed on the following:
Online enablement via mobile and web presence
Store promotions via ads
Etailing via delivery within 4 Km radius in remote locations and ecosystem via retailers or dealers to reach out to manufacturers, financiers, insurers in a simplified way
The Shades Of Grey With A Silver Lining
O2Onow is actively targeting to digitise small and medium stores, which is at the epicentre of its mission.
Some of the key features that have attracted users includes the platform’s unique search features which diversify the searches based on location, local stores, category, multi-category, nearby services, searches by brands, store and services ad, offers and deals of the day from local stores, coupons from local stores and government institutions and emergency services.
This range of offers has been developed by O2Onow in view of the challenges one has to go through to discover local stores around the locality.
Despite the offers and the achievements, the startup still has myriad challenges to overcome.
The major challenges are not in terms of just raising funding but, as Manoj elaborates, “Going by our 3P (People, Process, Platform) strategy, we are facing major challenges in hiring people and tuning the platform performance. We have a decent process which is manual and we are looking forward to automating it in the near future.”
Although the shades of grey persist, there are silver linings too. O2Onow was chosen as the local startup by the Department of Industry and Commerce, Govt. of Telangana to provide low-cost solutions for MSMEs. It was also selected by the ‘Scale Minds’ accelerator for its contribution in promoting local businesses.
The list doesn’t end here. O2Onow was also selected by AP innovation Centre after it showcased its business idea on BIGShift (Bigshift-Vizag).
In this arduous journey as an entrepreneur and in attempting to bring O2Onow to the service of his clients and consumers, Manoj says, “Every failure was our learning for improvisation. We had few achievements and those were the success stories. So far, we continue improving and will take us a long way to fulfill our mission in the digitisation of business.”
The journey goes on with much optimism and despite competitors, Manoj is hopeful of fighting for the tough home run.
Manoj states, “None of them is pure O2O as the aforementioned organisations are product oriented and not store oriented. We are the ONLY multi-category and first store online platform for MSMEs.”
O2Onow is now aiming to grow its revenue by at least 200% in the light of new strategy that the team has developed and adopted.
While there are no major competitors in the space of B2B online-to-online and online-to-offline small and medium business enabling platforms, except the Indore-based startup ShopKirana, O2Onow faces competition from major software giants like SAP, Oracle and other order management and retail CRM/ERP software that hold sway over the brands.
The FMCG majors, on the other hand, are seeking to cut down on the turnaround time by providing tablets to the mobile sales team, who visit kirana stores to take the orders, so that they could feed it to the company’s systems in real-time.
O2Onow is striving to develop better services to connect more small and medium scale businesses even in the light of many players in the B2C space like Bigbasket, Zopper, Jiffstore that are already present connecting the kirana stores to the end-customers.
Kirana Store Model: Enticing The World To Explore Further Opportunities In Retail
In 2015, during a presentation, Boston Consulting Group’s Senior Partner and Director Abheek Singhi had said that the kirana store model works well in a complex market like India, where small format stores can easily penetrate the length and the breadth of the vast country.
Then in 2017, a major prediction was made by none other than Adi Godrej, the Chairman of Godrej Group. In an interview with Quartz, Adi had said, “Kirana stores and not ecommerce, will fuel FMCG growth in India.”
Also, in late 2017, retail giant Future Group’s founder and CEO Kishore Biyani had announced to launch Retail 3.0 business model in India soon. “It is a model called Tathaastu. This will help you get anything you want,” said Biyani. Biyani is aiming to create a retail chain that will make its presence in every state of India and to achieve this, he has stated that it is essential to have a retail store within the parameter of every two kilometers.
With an estimated 12 Mn kirana stores currently present in the country, translating to 10 stores per 10,000 families, this number is only going to grow to serve the increasing number of families in India.
No wonder this is a huge opportunity for a startup like O2Onow! As part of the roadmap, O2Onow has new product offerings with which it can really strengthen itself in the market. In a city (Hyderabad) that supports startups favourably as evident from the presence of platforms such as the T-Hub that supports various startups by providing mentorship and access to VCs, the road ahead is definitely enlivening for the entrepreneurs.
Shorebird Technologies, the makers of the third generation, end-to-end corporate travel management platform Tripeur, has raised $600K in Pre-Series A funding led by Japan-based Incubate Fund and a few angel investors. Angel investors from the company’s Seed round like Rajul Garg also participated in this round.
Tripeur is an end-to-end corporate travel management platform that uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to drive efficiency, ease of use and customisation for business travel by employees and executives alike.
Commenting on the fundraise, Thiagarajan Rajagopalan, Founder and CEO of Shorebird Technologies told Inc42, “We are excited to lead the corporate travel space into the Third Generation by deploying latest innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning and personalisation in various aspects of corporate travel space – be it for the traveller experience or travel desk automation or post-travel reconciliation.”
“This round of funding will help our company to further our technology lead and grow our business manifold. Our objective is to scale our top-line and achieve a 10x growth in transactions by the end of 2018. Additionally, we are focussed on AI and ML, for which we have hired a number of experts and development in this area is already underway,” he added.
Elaborating further, Thiagarajan stated that the newly-secured capital will also be used for product development and for building the sales and marketing teams, with the aim of scaling Tripeur significantly in the coming months.
To that end, Shorebird has already brought on board Manish Raj, former Vice President and Business Head of Corporate Travel Services at Via.com. In his new role as the co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Tripeur, Raj will be spearheading the company’s sales and marketing efforts.
Sharing Rajagopalan’s excitement, Tripeur’s other co-founder and COO Sajit Chacko said, “It is gratifying to see Tripeur getting wide reception in the market – from investors and customers alike. We are excited to see our transaction count double in February compared to January! With this additional investment coming in, we look forward to acceleratinf our business growth.”
During an hour-long conversation with Inc42, Thiagarajan delved into the intricacies of product, while also offering a glimpse of the company’s future plans – from breaking even operationally by the end of 2018 to becoming a pioneer of the third generation corporate travel management technology.
The Three Waves Of Corporate Travel Management And How Tripeur Was Born
Tripeur was founded in December 2015 by Thiagarajan Rajagopalan and Sajit Chacko, two technology and hospitality industry veterans. What drove them to start a venture together was the realisation that corporate travel holds an immense, largely untapped opportunity in India.
According to Thiagarajan, there are a few fundamental differences between consumer travel and business travel. He explained, “While consumer travel is focussed on an individual or one family, in business travel, a company needs to balance three different aspects: travellers’ convenience and comfort; compliance for companies and thirdly, finance, where enterprises worry about efficient cost management.”
While consumer travel has transformed quite a bit due to the emergence of the Internet and the acceptance of technology, the segment of business travel management has remained very old fashioned. The sector, Rajagopalan believes, has seen a very slow evolution which can largely be categorised into two buckets or waves: 1st generation and 2nd generation.
In the first generation, corporate travel took the form of a separate department in most companies, often called travel desks. In order to manage these travel desks, businesses generally outsourced this function to third-party travel management companies such as American Express Travel, Thomas Cook, etc.
During the first generation, however, all these functions were done manually. The problem with this arrangement was that there was no automation, visibility or even control over how things were done. Then came the second wave of evolution. In this phase, there was an emergence of Internet-based travel aggregators that enabled online bookings for corporates as well. These included Expedia, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, among others.
Thiagarajan averred, “What companies started doing was that they brought the outsource function in-house, but it was still being done by humans. From the traveller’s perspective, the process remained the same, and involved sending an email and somebody physically doing all the bookings. However, in this case, trying to optimise convenience, cost and compliance became difficult.”
With Tripeur, the entrepreneur duo wanted to disrupt this whole system with a third generation of solution.
“We asked ourselves, how do we eliminate all the manual, human-intensive work and bring everything into a technology platform?”
The answer, he recounts, was artificial intelligence and machine learning. So instead of a human doing all the bookings manually, while also trying to optimise expenses, the company created a bot-enabled system to take care of the entire process.
As explained by Rajagopalan, Tripeur is basically an end-to-end solution – from pre-trip processes like approval to making bookings to compliance and analytics and finally post-travel reconciliation and expense management – for the organisation. In addition to doing all that, the platform manages of all forms of travel expenses: flights, hotels, buses, trains, etc.
The company’s focus, as per the founding duo, was to eliminate human involvement right from the beginning. Therefore, as soon as the user’s intent is recorded, Tripeur takes that information and converts it into travel options in real-time. These options are, in turn, optimised to offer swift and personalised experience.”
“While a standard booking takes several minutes to hours, our technology cuts it down to a matter of minutes, while also complying with all the requirements present in corporate travel,” Thiagarajan claimed.
To attain this feat, the platform employs modern technology to bring ease-of-use, efficiency and personalisation to the business travel management experience. Apart from AI and ML, Tripeur uses other technologies like natural language processing and auto-profilers.
How Tripeur Is Striving To Meet The Needs Of All Stakeholders In Business Travel Booking
The Tripeur system integrates seamlessly into the company’s existing ERP system, including the HR system and the finance system. This allows the data to flow seamlessly between the system, thereby bringing efficiency to the overall organisation.
According to the co-founders, Tripeur ultimately strives to satisfy all the stakeholders of a company involved in the corporate travel booking process, including travel desk executive, employee as well as HR and finance teams.
Breaking it down for us, Thiagarajan said, “Our platform helps automate the business travel booking process. So, the traveller is happy because the experience is customised and fast. The company’s HR, on the other hand, is also satisfied because all the bookings that are made in the system are compliant with the policies.
Thirdly, the finance team has its needs met because it gets real-time analytics which, in turn, helps in expense management.
Interweaving Innovation: The Multiple Layers Of Technology Integration
The Tripeur system, essentially, consists of four layers of technology: booking engine, policy engine, reporting and analytics and finally, user experience.
The first layer, the team claims, is fairly standard and already fully operational. The second layer, which is the policy engine, requires some level of customisation. For this, the company has built a flexible system that can configure up to 90% of the policies at one go, irrespective of their complexity. For the remaining 10%, the product is sometimes extended to incorporate certain new policies.
The third layer pertains to governance, reporting and analytics. This, again, has evolved quite since Tripeur was launched commercially in June 2016. The final layer, that of user experience, relies on email, chat, online portal, etc.
Among the areas of technology integration that the team at Shorebird is focussing on, one is on the HR side of things. As shared by Thiagarajan, “Employees join organisations every week, while somebody or the other is always leaving. These directories need to be synchronised with our system, so that when an employee is leaving, his/her account should be automatically blocked. Similarly, if someone new joins, his/her account should be automatically created in our system.”
To that end, the company has created a framework that makes the process more flexible and efficient, whereby organisations can export their directories on a daily or a weekly basis. The Tripeur directory, then, automatically picks it up, processes it and makes whatever changes are applicable. The framework is currently in the process of implementation, Rajagopalan added.
The other end of the integration pertains to expenses. Once the travel is completed and all the expense reports are imported by the company’s finance system, there needs to be a certain level of automation to make the process smoother and faster.
On whether Tripeur will use the newly-raised funding to bring further innovation into its products, Thiagarajan answered, “Right now, in terms of innovation, our focus is on two areas. One is using AI and ML to provide efficiency, convenience and ease of use for the users. The second area is analytics, where we are focussing on offering insights to these organisations that would help bring down cost as well as resource usage.”
Targeting Medium To Large Enterprises To Break Even By 2018 End
At present, Tripeur’s customer acquisition process consists of four stages. The first stage is lead generation. While most of its initial growth was through organic means, the company now has dedicated digital marketing and email marketing programmes to reach out to prospective clients.
Additionally, it conducts events to get in touch with various corporates for lead generation into the company. The second stage of customer acquisition is where an in-house team converts these leads into qualified leads. This team focusses on sharing additional information and arranging meetings.
The third stage is feet on the street. In fact, as revealed by Thiagarajan, the company is in the process of building a strong sales team, whose responsibilities will include chatting with customers as well as structuring and closing the deals. The last stage is onboarding of the customers. Once the client has signed up, the platform leverages customisation and integration to fully onboard the clients.
Over the last year or so, Tripeur claims to have added between 40 to 50 companies, ranging from medium to large enterprises. Among them are DTDC, Hector Beverages, First Source, etc. Most of these companies, Rajagopalan claims, rely on it to fulfil all their travel needs.
Being in the B2B space, where margins are higher than in B2C businesses, Shorebird has been generating revenue from both customers as well as providers for over 18 months now, with positive unit economics. Its revenue is, basically, a single-digit percentage of the transaction value that Tripeur facilitates.
As a testament to its growth, the total transaction volume on the Tripeur platform nearly doubled in February as compared to January 2018.
For Thiagarajan and his team, however, the coming 10 months or so are crucial. He explained, “We expect to achieve a 10x growth in the current year, post which we will look for additional funding. By the end of the year, we also want to break even and be profitable operationally.”
That might not be very difficult since, unlike consumer businesses that require heavy investments and deep discounting to acquire customers, Tripeur’s cash burn for customer acquisition and retention is significantly lower.
Currently, the corporate travel management startup works with all the domestic airline carriers directly. In terms of hotels, it boasts 10+ partners, including consolidators, direct hotel chains and retailers/intermediaries. For buses and trains too, it claims to have partnered with multiple providers.
A Tale Of Numbers: 40 Clients, Team Of 20, Nearly $1 Mn In Funding
Headquartered in Bengaluru, Shorebird Technologies has a team of around 20 people. The number, Rajagopalan expects, will double in the next six to nine months. This is expected since the company has been aggressively expanding into Delhi and Mumbai.
In another six months, it will be setting up operations at the next set of cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.
Till date, the company has raised nearly $1 Mn in funding. Earlier in June 2017, the Bengaluru-based corporate travel management solutions startup picked up around $350K in Seed funding led by Grace Techno Ventures and a clutch of angel investors.
As stated by Rajagopalan, the funds raised in the angel round last year were used to validate the proof-of-concept as well as the Tripeur platform’s capabilities. The milestones set at the Seed stage were met six months ahead of schedule, claimed the founders.
We Don’t Want To Force Technology On People: Tripeur Founder
According to a report by Google India and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the Indian domestic travel market is poised to become a $48 Bn industry by 2020. Despite this enormous potential, the Indian online booking sector has a penetration of only around 19%, as per a report by Deutsche Bank AG.
Low online penetration, even in the corporate travel segment, was one of the major challenges Tripeur faced initially. The key to overcoming this problem, according to Thiagarajan, was to make technology an invisible ally, instead of trying to coerce its use on people.
He added, “We don’t want to force technology on people, which is what has been happening. Expectedly, there has been a lot of resistance to it as well. Instead of having users adopt technology, we make technology invisible and bring back to people. If email is more convenient for the user, we will deploy our bot to your email. If you are more comfortable with chat, we will bring it to chat.”
Another big challenge was convincing corporates to use their products. “When you start working with an enterprise as a startup, the challenge is to be able to sell your product to them properly. However, once we broke through that and had a bunch of clients on board, we didn’t face many challenges in terms of scaling the business,” Rajagopalan further stated.
For the near future, the company’s focus is two-fold: one, to grow the business exponentially. Secondly, it is also looking at becoming the pioneer and leader of the third generation of corporate travel management technology.
Editor’s Note
A report by consultancy KPMG and FCM Travel Solutions estimates that India’s corporate travel market is poised to triple in size by 2030 from $30 Bn in 2015. Another study forecasts business travel spending in India to reach $45 Bn by 2019. In terms of size, India is currently the 10th largest business travel market in the world.
While there are players like Yatra-owned Air Travel Bureau (ATB), Goomo, American Express Travel, Expedia.com, Thomas Cook, MakeMyTrip, etc., that are present either as service providers or online aggregators, Tripeur holds a uniquely strong position in the space.
Functionality wise, the segment essentially consists of five parts: pre-trip and approval; booking engine; compliance; expense management analytics part.
When asked how Tripeur scores over competitors, Thiagarajan confidently answered, “If you look at the competitive landscape, there are players that specialise in maybe one or two of these areas. There are companies that focus on expense management, while there are some that offer booking engine and so on. If you look at enterprise solutions, there is nobody else that is offering an integrated, end-to-end solution that we are aware of.”
Given that the sector’s scope is enormous and only increasing with each passing day, Tripeur is certainly in a strong position to become a market leader. Add to that its first mover advantage and the company could chart a bright future as the pioneer of the third generation of business travel management technologies.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
Bicycles have always been a part of the socio-economic culture of India. The arrival of the British in India brought bicycles to the country. Sometime down the line, it started representing the laborious middle class.
But in the present time, bicycles are not only owned by the low-income population simply because they can’t afford two-wheelers or four-wheeler vehicles, but they are transcending into lifestyle statements, thanks to brands like Hero cycles, Hercules, Atlas cycles, Montra, BMX cycles, Firefox, La Sovereign, etc.
It is being gradually realised that the role of cycling in promoting physical activity and healthy lifestyle is critical in a country like India which is witnessing an upsurge in the population. The growing population has resulted into not only congestion but also with growing income and the ease of doing business in India, there is an alarming increase in the number of motor vehicles in the country and as a consequence, diseases linked to unhealthy lifestyles and poor air quality is striking the Indian population like never before.
To tackle this menace, startups both local and global are exploring this terrain to tap into the opportunities of enabling lives to lead a zero-carbon-emission and healthier mobility.
It is with the aim of promoting sustainable mobility that startups in India such as Mobycy, Ola Pedal, Ofo, etc. are looking at pedalling options as a huge market potential.
Founded in 2017 by Akash Gupta and Rashi Agarwal, Mobycy is working on the mission to create sustainable mobility. The Gurugram-based startup enables dockless bicycle sharing and is actively working to change people’s lifestyle through the green tech.
Having worked in the NCR region to promote pedalling as not only an alternative means to travel short distances but also as an option of a healthy lifestyle, it is now expanding its services across eight cities in India.
Cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur, Gwalior and Sonipat have served as forts from whence the startup has gained mileage.
The greentech company that has been adopted by almost 40,000 users till date and is planning at adding over 50,000 bicycles in its kitty in the next six months.
But in light of the presence of many startups working in bicycle ride-sharing industry like Vogo Automotive, ONN Bikes, ZoomCar’s PEDL and giants like Ola and Ofo looking to gain a share in this domain in the Indian market, it will be interesting to watch Mobycy’s evolving strategies to gain its market share.
Mobycy And What’s At Dock For The Dockless Bike Sharing App
Aiming to make India a greener and fitter cycling nation, Mobycy is looking to present daily commuters with smart bikes for short-mile connectivity, while also reducing carbon footprints and improving the fitness levels of commuters.
It was in July 2017 during Akash’s tour to a university that the idea for the startup was conceptualised. The strenuous tour made Akash realise the daily ordeal of the students of the university and motivated him to startup.
The startup has made accessing bicycles for short rides leisurely easy. It makes use of integrated IoT-based GPRS lock technology along with other offerings such as cashless wallet payments, geo-fencing, etc.
Mobycy App users can simply locate the nearest bicycle at any public place, rent and unlock the cycle lock by scanning a digital QR code via the Mobycy app. Upon completion of the ride, the cycle can be parked anywhere on public pavements, except inside private compounds or gated colonies, etc.
As of today, Mobycy has deployed over 500 odd bicycles on the floor. Out of the 500 bicycles plying on the road, the startup gets about 1.5K to 2K bookings daily. Also, there are 40 to 45K downloads for the app already. The company is also planning to deploy the bicycles across places which are crowded with tourists and other travellers, small pockets of colonies where people can use the cycles for short distance rides are also its essential targets.
Here is a brief list of what Mobycy is targeting at:
The startup is targeting to deploy 1,500 to 3,000 odd bicycles in the next three to four months.
It is targeting students who can access the cycles to travel from one of the university to another; is in talks with 25 to 30 universities for the deployment
It is targeting corporate office campuses in Noida, Bengaluru and Pune.
It is looking forward to providing the service for small colonies in the cities
It is targeting people who regularly travel short distances such as metro stations, bus stops, university campuses.
It is working to collaborate with organisations that are a part of the government’s Smart City projects
“In fact, we are first implementing our concept in a university in Chennai. And one of the universities in Bengaluru is also planned soon for implementation,” says Akash.
Talking about the initial challenges that the startup faced, the founder quoted the reason as “hiring the right talent”. Hiring people to work for the startup was not easy as the bicycle-hailing model is still relatively new in India. So, even the candidates who were interviewed said ‘I don’t know if this will work in India’.
Akash further added that the startup is also facing challenges in replicating the model with the government. “It takes slightly more time to convince them and then there is also a hierarchy that needs to be followed,” he said.
As a testament to its growth potential, Mobycy was recognised under the Indian government’s DIPP–Startup India programme.
Backed by a US-based angel investor, founders of the startup believes that focussing on the business model and the vision on which the startup was founded is the key to making it successful. The startup is looking forward to raising $5 Mn in funding.
As far as expansion beyond India is concerned, Akash is of the view that, “If you look at Southeast Asia, there are countries like Indonesia where such startups are not mushrooming right now. There is also Sri Lanka and Nepal where this is very new. We have plans to go into Dubai where this can be a huge kit. So, we would like to go to places which are similar to India and replicate our India success in those countries.”
He says, “Replicating our success across regions in India along with extending operations in a few other countries and pursuing global tie-ups would be an interesting take for us. So, focussing on India for the next six months will be crucial.”
The Booming Indian Market For Dockless Bikes
Bicycles as a means of commuting are catching up in India. These dockless bikes appear to be just the thing required to ease the congestion of polluting vehicles, especially in metropolitan cities. Many startups are coming up to explore the potential of bike sharing as a viable alternative in India.
Ola has already come up with Ola Pedal, its bicycle-sharing service. There are already dozens operating in China, Southeast Asia and the US among other countries.
Similar business models in China led to the creation of bicycle-hailing startups such as Ofo and Mobike, which became pioneers of the category and have since expanded to other parts of Asia and even into the US and Europe.
In the current scenario, Mobycy will be facing stiff competition from a growing class of bike sharing startups, including Vogo Automotive, ONN Bikes, WickedRide, Stoneheadbikes and Rentabike, Tazzo Technologies, LetzCycle and WheelStreet. Bicycle-sharing startup Cykul is currently operating over 2K bicycles in three cities Hyderabad, Gurugram and Jaipur.
Also, in September 2017, InMobi’s co-founder Amit Gupta launched Yulu – an IoT-enabled bike rental platform. Another major competitor is ZoomCar’s PEDL, which aims to reach 500K monthly transactions across 50+ cities over the course of this year.
With rising interest in a healthy lifestyle and the burgeoning need to control pollution, dockless bike sharing startups like Mobycy that are green tech-focussed have the potential to rapidly expand their global footprints.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
There is no doubt that this is the time for a booming app economy. While hordes of apps which are populating the Play Store and iOS store enable the users to do everything – from ordering food to booking a cab to calling a carpenter, the increase in the sheer number of the apps also make their discovery hard. It is this problem of discovery in the app ecosystem which founders Sunny Gurnani and Venkatesh Rao of instant or express app store AppBrowzer wanted to solve initially.
Says Sunny, “We have hundreds of apps in the Play Store and Apple Store but we use very few in our daily lives. We hardly have 20-25 apps on our phone. But the fundamental problem with the current apps is that I need to download them and install them in order to use them. So, as a user, I need to give my phone real estate or space to an app to use its service.”
With a low-end smartphone (which majority of the Indians users have), consumers hit a space problem. “Also, the phone becomes very slow after a user downloads say 20 apps, 50 videos, and a couple of hundred photos,” he added.
Thus, the duo hit upon the idea of not just providing the Indian app users a curated app experience but also to optimise their phone space and to help them discover multiple mobile apps in a single place. Hence, AppBrowzer was born in 2016, and aimed to provide app users with a curated experience where a customer could download AppBrowzer and do most of the activities he or she does from a single mobile app than downloading multiple apps.
“We have an aggregated news app, recharge and bill payments app, Zomato’s food app to order food, Uber app to order a cab and MakeMyTrip to book flights ,” says Sunny.
Apart from solving the consumer-side of the problem, the startup has taken a step further by launching its business platform last month to help the retail and service-based businesses to create express apps in less than 10 minutes and reach out to the existing and new customers.
Solving Both The Consumption Problem And Creation Problem In The App Ecosystem
Sunny says that while there are so many apps in the App store, one hardly sees apps of local businesses to reach out to their consumers. Thus, a local restaurant or a salon won’t have a mobile app as they are hard to build and are expensive. Also, they don’t have the technical skills to build those mobile apps. For them, the startup has a B2B platform where businesses can use the platform to create a mobile app in less than 10 minutes.
In order to do this, all they have to do is share their product list and prices and choose a design to create an express app. So, just like the other apps in AppBrowzer, a user does not need to download these apps individually to use them.
In addition to the popular Indian apps like Flipkart, Amazon, Zomato and the likes, AppBrowzer also enables its users to discover local business apps in its local app section. It does so by picking up the user’s location.
Thus, users can access both popular as well as local business apps through AppBrowzer.
“We try to solve both the consumption as well as the creation problem in the app ecosystem. While on the consumer side, the challenge is that one needs to download apps to use them. On the other side i.e., business, there is a challenge of building an app which can easily cost $4.6K-$6.1K (INR 3 Lakh-INR 4 Lakh),” adds Sunny.
Thus, with its new B2B platform, the startup is also focussing on the creation of the mobile apps while also solving consumption problem on the B2C side.
For the mobile apps which have a massive user base, for instance Ixigo, Zomato and Uber, AppBrowzer has partnered with the company and has picked up the content in the form of SDKs or APIs, to create these express apps for them.
Meanwhile, the local businesses use the builder platform to create their apps themselves. The startup claims it would hardly take 10 minutes for a business to create a full-fledged application and start selling. One can either choose the payment gateway option by providing bank details and KYC or use the default cash on delivery option provided on the platform.
The builder platform is an easy as a plug-and-play option to create Express Apps and has been liked by quite a few home-based businesses, claims Sunny.
As far as the notifications from multiple apps are concerned, the app pauses all the notifications at its end and pushes the ones it thinks are appropriate. For now, users only receive notifications that AppBrowzer sends and not the ones from express apps directly.
The startup also plans to launch a feature, where it will have a notifications page inside AppBrowzer settings where a user can control and switch ‘ON/OFF’ the notifications from each express apps.
With 275K Users, The AppBrowzer Platform Is Gunning For 1.3 Mn Users By Year End
The AppBrowzer consumer app was launched in March 2017 and the first few months were focussed on building the install-base than the revenues. Currently, the platform boasts of 2,75,000 users using the mobile app, with the total apps on the AppBrowzer now standing at 200. Meanwhile, more than 25 businesses have created apps using its builder platform since its launch last month.
Sunny reveals that in the first few months, the app’s customer base mainly comprised of college students given the fact that they were mostly low-end smartphone users who face the space crunch problem on their phones.
So, in multiple colleges, the startup recruited college ambassadors which helped it to gain virality by offering them apps in entertainment and in education such as TedX and Khan Academy.
However, once the platform started partnering with Zomato, Ola and the likes, the team realised that it needed to tap other avenues for monetisation. It was then that the startup resorted to Facebook and Google to market the app to a wider audience.
The decision to launch the B2B platform last month was a strategic one as the startup first wanted to build a formidable consumer base so that local businesses would come in to build their express apps. The B2B platform offers a 30-day trial period and as per the startup’s claims, 60-70 businesses are testing it without going public yet. For publishing the app, they pay $7.69 (INR 500) per month or $92.3 (INR 6000) per year.
The startup monetises in two ways.
So for bigger apps, the startup receives 3%-12% of the transactions going through the app. In short, Sunny mentions the app makes an average 5% per transaction.
From the B2B platform, it gets subscriptions from local businesses who pay $92.3 per year to create their express apps.
As far as funding is concerned, the startup raised $500K in March last year led by angel investor Deepak Gurnani, who is a member of the Singapore Angel Network. A group of angel investors also participated in the round.
By December this year, the startup is looking to onboard 1.3 Mn users for its consumer apps. Meanwhile on the B2B platform, the team of 18 plans to have 1,800 express apps from local businesses by the year-end, from the current figure of 30.
AppBrowzer, Instant Apps And The Competition
Instant apps have been in the news for a while. Google had started offering Instant Apps in May 2016 where Android users would be able to use apps from a link without having to download anything from the Play Store.
However as per Sunny, Google’s focus is to solve consumer problems, hence it provides instant apps for users so that they can try some apps instantly before using. For that, Google requires an app to be present on the Google Play Store and then breaks it up into individual chunks and serves it to users as an instant app.
But developers are not its focus. So, as a developer, one still needs to go through the pain of building an app and putting it in Playstore which takes two to three months time. For a business to create a simple ecommerce app, it would take roughly the same time. This slow process does not help the developer as he still needs to create a mobile app and then make it instant.
Moreover, Google’s primary money comes from the ‘search and install’ of the mobile applications. So, every time a user installs a mobile app, the business pays advertisement money to Google. Hence, while Google did start the instant app as a project three years back to enable users to access instant apps, the focus has not been a major one, especially for the developers.
However, there is no dearth of competitors in both the B2B and B2C market. For instance, Tapzo, on the consumer side, aggregates 10-15 mobile mini-apps in one place. But it doesn’t have a platform for B2B businesses to create their express apps. Then, there are a lot of business focussed applications like GoodBarber which helps build Progressive Web Apps or Goodbox which helps one create a mobile application in a half an hour.
Sunny however points out that since the above-mentioned competitors are focussing just on B2B side, businesses might struggle with getting consumers on to the app. AppBrowzer’s long term focus is to get more consumers for businesses and thus, provide both B2B and B2C solutions.
Editor’s Note
As per the App Annie 2017 Retrospective Report, India overtook the US to take the second spot in terms of the number of app downloads in 2017. China took the first spot, with four of the top five countries by downloads in the emerging markets.
Meanwhile, globally there’s been a 60% growth in the number of app downloads with downloads exceeding 175 Bn. Consumer spending has more than doubled from 2015 and surpassed $86 Bn. Additionally, time spent in apps spiked by 30%, to the point where each user spends about 43 days per year in apps.
These statistics are not surprising given the explosive growth of mobile, Internet and the app economy in India. In Q4 2017, in India, as per the same report, users spent almost 50 Bn hours in apps during the same time frame. App usage grew rapidly in India, on account of the introduction of subsidised, unlimited 4G access by Jio in September 2016. According to the report published jointly by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Kantar IMRB, titled ‘Internet in India 2017’, the number of Internet users in India is expected to reach 500 Mn by June 2018.
In light of this backdrop, AppBrowzer is looking at a considerable opportunity as far as the burgeoning app ecosystem in India is concerned. But the fact also remains that smartphones are getting cheaper and more powerful, the consumer problem of real estate crunch on the phone might cease to be that big a problem.
However, AppBrowser still has the potential for developers and local businesses as it tries to create a parallel PlayStore for instant apps. How far can it provide the much-needed audience to local businesses in the overcrowding environment as well as stay ahead of its competitors will be something that will determine its success.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.
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