Healthcare is one of the biggest revenue and employment generating sectors in India and was expected to touch US$ 160 Bn by 2017. Like all other sectors, healthcare is abuzz with technology-driven startups. At present, India is home to as many as 240 healthtech startups, leading innovation and redefining healthcare.

Inc42’s recent analysis of the Indian startup ecosystem across sectors threw up some interesting findings. According to our Indian Tech Startup Funding Report H1 2018, deals and funding in the sector dipped in the first half of 2018.

In H1 2017, healthtech witnessed 55 deals and a total funding of $195 Mn, while in H1 2018, only 40 deals were signed and $180 Mn funding was raised. Inc42 DataLabs also revealed that in FY 2017, Indian healthtech startups had raised about $346 Mn across 111 deals.

So, what changed in the last six months to effect this decline?

In 2016 and early 2017, a major portion of healthcare investments went into startups that were working on telemedicine, enabling doctor appointments, and other health apps, but since H2 2017, that pie has been shared by wearable tech gadgets, genetic research, and the smart diagnostics space, which have seen rapid growth. Naturally, the funding slices have become smaller.

But deal and funding numbers alone don’t tell the entire story. Healthtech is still going strong. So, in this edition of What The Financials, we crunched the numbers of four leading players in the space of e-pharmacy and online diagnostics — 1mg, Healthkart, Pharmeasy, and NetMeds — to analyse their financial health as well as that of the healthtech industry. Here’s what we found:

1mg And Healthkart: Are Breakups Good For Business?

Founded in March 2011, Healthkart sells consumables such as protein supplements and vitamins and has more than 200 brands and authorised vendors on its platform. It also has private label products in the nutrition and supplements category.

Backed by investors such as Sequoia, Intel Capital, Kae Capital, and Omidyar Network, the company has raised $50.6 Mn till date, with the last round being in 2016. In FY17, Healthkart posted a total revenue of INR 124.48 Cr against total expenses of INR 166.29 Cr.

In April 2015, Healthkart separated its generic drug search business, HealthkartPlus, and rebranded it as 1mg, to be operated under 1mg Technologies Pvt Ltd. 1mg operates an online marketplace for medicines apart from facilitating doctors’ appointments and diagnostic test booking.

1mg has raised $47 Mn till date and posted a total revenue of INR 12.34 Cr in FY17, while its expenses were INR 70.29 Cr.

Backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network, and Deep Kalra, co-founder of travel portal MakeMyTrip, the company spent INR 22.44 Cr in FY17 on advertising and promotional expenses. This was a 158% spike from its INR 8.66 Cr expenditure on advertising in FY16.

Healthkart is just a step behind 1mg. The company spent INR 21.97 Cr in FY17 on advertising and promotions against INR 8.69 Cr in FY16.

The companies also extensively increased their expenses on employees benefits. In FY17, Healthkart spent INR 29.17 Cr in this area, a 78% increase from its INR 18.42 Cr spend in FY16.

1mg, meanwhile, invested INR 29.45 Cr in employees’ benefits in FY17, up from INR 16.46 Cr in FY16.

On a positive note, 1mg, with a growth rate of 263% on the basis of its total income in FY17, earned INR 9.15 Cr from sales of services. Of this, 69.4% or INR 6.35 Cr came from its e-pharmacy business while the remaining INR 2.8 Cr came from its diagnostics business. In FY16, 74.9% of 1mg’s business of INR 1.93 Cr came from its e-pharmacy while 25% was from diagnostics.

For Healthkart, which had a growth rate of 58% in FY17 on the basis of its total income, the total sales of services in FY17 was INR 9.53 Cr. On the other hand, it earned a large part of revenue through the sale of health products, amounting to INR 110 cr in FY17, an increase of 45% from FY16.

In FY16, there was a dip in Healthkart’s revenue by 27%, coincidentally at the same time when 1mg separated from the company.

The separation was aimed at individually capturing the healthcare products and services marketplaces in India and the strategy seems to have worked well.

We can fairly conclude that Healthkart has been able to consolidate itself as a health products marketplace and 1mg as a health services marketplace.

PharmEasy Vs NetMeds: Same Business Model, But Who’s Better?

To put the e-pharmacy and online diagnostics market into perspective, it must to be noted that India’s pharmaceutical industry was valued at $33 Bn in 2017. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 22.4% over 2015–20 to reach $55 Bn. At the same time, the market for diagnostic services has been growing in India over the past couple of years at a rate of 15%-20% and stood at nearly INR 40,000 Cr as of 2016.

Founded in 2010, NetMeds is a licensed pharmacy marketplace that offers authenticated prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines along with other health products.

With a total income of INR 139.75 Cr in FY17, the company earned INR 7.93 Cr from sales of its services in that year. But even with an operational income INR 139.05 Cr, it had expenses of INR 195.81 Cr in FY17.

PharmEasy was founded in 2015 and particularly caters to the chronic-care segment. It offers a range of services including teleconsultation, medicine delivery, sample collection for diagnostic tests as well as a subscription-based service, which is currently live in a few cities.

The company had expenses of INR 82.6 Cr, and it has a total revenue of INR 34.44 Cr in FY17, with operational revenues being INR 33.57 Cr.

While PharmEasy spent INR 14.7 Cr on employee benefits in FY17, NetMeds spent INR 21.81 Cr in the same period.

Another interesting thing to note is that NetMeds spent INR 20 cr on advertising and promotions in FY17, while PharmEasy spent just INR 9.34 Cr on these heads in the same period.

To The Good Health Of The Healthtech Sector

Of the four healthtech companies we analysed above, NetMeds is the only player that has its own warehouse. In FY17, the company spent INR 3.27 Cr on freight and INR 2.2 Cr on warehousing, which further helped NetMeds in capping its logistics expenses to INR 5.5 Cr.

On the other hand, PharmEasy, which has a revenue of almost one-fifth that of NetMeds, spent INR 8.7 Cr in logistics in the same period.

Further, in FY17, Healthkart reduced its losses to INR 45.7 Cr while PharmEasy’s losses rose to INR 56.75 Cr. In the same period, NetMeds posted losses of INR 56.7 Cr and 1mg doubled its loss figure INR 60.9 Cr.

Thus, it would be fair to conclude that Netmeds is the winner of our healthtech financial analysis with the highest revenue and better expense management. At the same time, 1mg and Healthkart are aiming for niches and are targeting to grow in their individual markets; however, 1mg’s growth is coming at a bit of a high cost. PharmEasy is walking in the steps of its peer, Netmeds, but has a lot of catching up to do in terms of growth.

Overall, the global healthtech market is anticipated to reach $104.5 Bn by 2020, according to a new report by Grand View Research. Meanwhile, the Indian healthcare market is further expected to reach $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn, according to an IBEF report. There’s certainly an open opportunity for healthtech startups in India, but only the ones that take the right steps will succeed.

[This is a part of the What The Financials (WTF) series launched by Inc42 Datalabs. We would be exploring the financial health of Startups and discuss its key metrics of growth, to read more articles click here.]

The post [What The Financials] Dabbling In Telemedicine And Diagnostics, Which Healthtech Startup Is In The Pink Of Health? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

About 58% of India’s enormous 1.3 Bn population depends on agriculture to eke out a livelihood. Yet, the sector has been left out in the cold as far as innovation and technology are concerned.

The average income of a farmer in India is estimated to be Rs 77,976 per year, and as many as 22.50% farmers live below the official poverty line, according to the Dalwai Committee report. Climate change has contributed to the suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers over the past three decades.

The Modi government has targeted to double Indian farmers’ income by 2022. However, this seems like a pipe dream at the moment. In fact, the Economic Survey 2018 predicts that climate change could further lower farmers’ income by up to 25%. The Survey warned about the need for “dramatic” improvement in irrigation, use of new technologies, and better targeting of power and fertiliser subsidies.

India’s farmers and agricultural sector need a saviour. And given agriculture’s dire need for disruption, the saviour may well turn out to be a rising brigade of agritech startups, which are willing to toil in the face of hurdles such as high government control, remote location of agricultural lands, and inadequate market linkages, among others, to improve the condition of Indian agriculture.

One such startup, Agricx, is striving to bring in a reliable crop-grading system in India, with the aim of eliminating middlemen in the supply chain and enabling farmers to earn a fair price for their produce.

Ritesh Dhoot and Saurabh Kumar, who started Agricx in 2016, realised that the main reason for unfair pricing of agriculture produce was the fluctuating quality and standard of the produce, an acute problem, according to the duo.

“During our research, we realised that the entire transaction process in this segment was based on the ‘perception’ of quality. It was subjective. We needed objectivity in the crop grading system. This was our Eureka moment,” says Rahul.

Agricx has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-based SaaS solution to simplify the grading system and eliminate variability in the quality of produce sourced.

The core idea behind Agricx’s business model is to streamline the procurement process by establishing accurate and precise grading systems with the help of technology. Currently, Agricx grades only potatoes (it has plans to expand to other crops) and caters to procurement chains in cities such as Agra, Gujarat, Mohali, Karnataka, and Delhi, among others.

Agricx: Zeroing In On Potatoes

When asked why they picked potatoes to start the grading process with, the founders explain that potato is one of the most widely sourced crops by big companies and yet it is cultivated on small patches. Therefore, the produce that is sourced tends to vary in quality and there is no foolproof way to determine quality. Agricx fills this loophole with its grading system.

“In India, we produce a total of about 44 Mn tonnes of potato and about half of it — 23 Mn tonnes — is kept in cold storages and supplied to markets across India throughout the year. Grading a crop that is so widely consumed was a necessity and, thus, Agricx zeroed in on potato as the first crop to start the grading process,” added Ritesh.

According to the founders, there are two major problems faced in the supply chain management — one, it is difficult to determine the quality of large volumes of produce by evaluating a small sample, and two, the archaic, manual grading process leads to inaccurate results. The manual grading system doesn’t have any predefined standards and assessment is done at the point of consumption, leaving farmers vulnerable to accept whatever price is offered by the purchaser, usually middlemen.

Agricx’s SaaS-Based Crop-Grading Solution

Agricx lab seeks to be a bridge between farmers and cold storages on one side and procurement specialists on the other, helping the latter procure their requirements in an efficient manner with the use of technology.

For this, the startup has partnered with cold storages (who are measured against stringent parameters) across India and listed their certified potatoes on its platform. Agricx also provides an additional offline service where their internal team visits cold storages to double check and evaluate the produce. However, this is an on-demand service and is provided over and above their technological solutions.

The startup’s core service is completely based on the SaaS application it has developed. The application enables cold storages to click images of samples and grading is done based on some pre-determined measures. The data is then stored for future reference. The data contains information such as:

• Who graded the sample
• The quantity of sample used for assessment
• When and where the grading was done

The certification software uses an advanced proprietary algorithm to accurately detect grade specifications of potatoes from the images captured.

The application is also easily scalable as it can grade high volumes and different types of samples in minimal time, thereby establishing a reliable and transparent grading system. A single image of the produce can be evaluated just within 30 seconds.

Agricx’s USP is its deep learning technology. The startup’s convolutional neural networks (CNNs/ConvNets)-based algorithm aid in image processing, classification, and segmentation of produce.

For the uninitiated, CNNs are artificial intelligence networks that analyse visual imagery. In this case, they help determine the quality of produce by evaluating the crop images.

Agricx: 100 Cold Storage Clients And 2 Mn Kgs Of Potatoes Certified

Agricx is growing at a rapid pace, serving clients such as Mccain India, Mahindra, and over 100 cold storages in the country.

They have already certified over 2 Mn kgs of potatoes till date and the founders are planning to expand their crop portfolio to chillies, rice, and tomatoes. The startup is also developing a state-of-the-art technology to evaluate internal defects and nutrients in agricultural produce. It is also exploring European markets to expand its potato grading expertise across the border.

However, agriculture is one of the most difficult sectors to work in, and Agricx has had its share of challenges, including hiring employees. The founders say “some good PR around our funding and ML/AI-based positioning made the hiring process a little smoother.” They add that being an agri-focussed technology company helped Agricx attract talent.

The startup has raised about INR 3.25 Cr till now from the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and Ankur Capital. Most of the funds have gone into developing the technology. Both the founders emphasise on the fact that their investors have a keen interest in agriculture and are able to see and support their crucial business decisions.

As of now, Agricx may not have much competition, but there are a few other players operating in the segment, including Bengaluru-based Intello Labs and Agshift, a US-based food inspection company, both of which are well rooted in the Indian agritech segment.

It doesn’t seem like it will be too long until space gets crowded with more innovative business models, considering the impetus the Centre and state governments are giving to this sector.

However, the major challenge for Agricx may not really be the competition (as of now, at least) but the ability to sustain in the fractured agricultural ecosystem where farmers are still not educated about the best means of farming and traders or middlemen still exist as redundant layers in the system. The industry is huge and complex and the challenges are many, but it holds great opportunities for innovation and improvements of the type Agricx is doing, and it can only get better from here.

The post This Agritech Startup Is Betting The Farm On Its AI-Based Crop-Grading SaaS Solution appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Sometime in 2015, someone posted a very thoughtful question on an online Q&A platform Quora: “Is India still an agricultural nation? Why?” The replies from Quora users, while highlighting the positives and negatives of the agricultural sector, were a resounding “yes”.

There’s no arguing that India is indeed still an agricultural nation. The agricultural and allied sector is the first of the three pillars of India’s $2-3 Tn economy, the other two being industry and services. However, in 2014, the sector contributed a mere 17-18% of India’s GDP, whereas the industry and services sectors contributed 24.2% and 57.9%, respectively.

Despite the fact that India is primarily agriculture driven, one-fifth of the Indian households primarily engaged in farming live below the poverty line. Experts fear that climate change will further impact their productivity, with the incomes of farmers set to be reduced by another 25%. Meanwhile, spiraling debt burden — farmers’ inability to repay loans as a result of low productivity, caused by environmental and other facts — is driving a large number of farmers in the country towards suicide.

While the government has tried waving farmers’ loans, even increased minimum selling price (MSP) on rabi and kharif crops, the latter has been credited for reducing farmer’s woes to some extent, but is yet to have a widespread impact.

The burning question is: How can India increase its farmers’ productivity and incomes and decrease their cost of production, thereby enabling better lives for them?

Ruchit G Garg, founder of Silicon Valley-based agritech startup Harvesting Inc, believes information and communication through technology are the answer to resolving farmers’ woes.

“If we can bridge the information gap somehow, the fundamental day-to-day problems of farmers can be significantly resolved,” says Garg.

With this aim in mind, the startup has built an Agricultural Intelligence Engine along with three complementary products to provide lenders accurate and real-time information on farmers, their land, and their farming behavior to enable the former to take effective decisions related to disbursal and follow-up of agri loans.

Harvesting Inc is leveraging machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to forecast agricultural output and monitor aspects such as vegetation cover, water stress level, agricultural diseases, etc. This data is then combined with geo-spatial factors (climate, topography), historical financial data, etc, to draw actionable insights for its customers (lenders).

The Agricultural Intelligence Engine processes images of farms obtained via remotely sensed satellite imagery and then uses technology to differentiate among crops varieties, check whether or not they have been watered, gauge how far the field is from the water source, measure the field’s slope and elevation, and even estimates the crop yield, among other agricultural usages.

The startup enables agri-lending institutions — public sector banks (PSBs), non-bank financial institutions (NBFC), and micro financing institutions (MFIs) — to carry out pre-loan activities such as assessment of credit risk and post-loan activities such as loan utilisation, collection alert more efficiently.

Launched in 2016, Harvesting Inc is currently implementing its agricultural solution in about seven-eight countries, including Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, in partnership with nine lenders and lending institutions.

In April 2018, the startup launched its operations in India with its headquarters in Bengaluru. It is currently piloting five projects across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Punjab.

Harvesting Inc’s Trio Of Agri-Lending Solutions

Garg says that more than an estimated 500 Mn global smallholder farmers need financing worth $450 Bn approximately, yet only 3% of the need is being met currently. Financial institutions are unable to deliver enough loans and better services to smallholder farmers because they lack access to data relating to agricultural and financial lives of farmers required for decision making.

Harvesting Inc is bringing win-win solutions for both lenders and small farmers as it reduces the credit risk of both parties. The startup has developed three complementary products around its Agriculture Intelligence Engine — Credit Risk Scoring System, Farmlands Monitoring System, and Land Records Monitoring System.

The Credit Risk Scoring System enables lenders to assess the creditworthiness of farmers approaching them for loans. Garg claims that the technology understands what kind of crop can be grown on the land, what its output could be. It uses remote sensing to monitor fields 24×7, providing real-time information on any changes happening on the farm.

Lenders can use the Farmlands Monitoring System to monitor farming activity after loans are disbursed. Garg explains this with an example: If a lender has provided loans to 5K farmers, it would be difficult for it to keep track of every farmer’s performance. The monitoring system notifies the lender if there is any change in weather events, including information on drought,  which could affect the crop growth and production.

Lenders are given access to a dashboard with the datasets of individual farmers and their farms, making it easier for them to manage their portfolios.

Garg gives another example of a different use case of the monitoring system: Let’s say, a farmer has taken a loan and has not done any activity on the farm for whatever reason for a certain period of time. This is a matter of concern for the lender. The monitoring system keeps the lender updated on various counts — whether the farmer is growing any crops, what crops is he/she growing and where, whether it’s time for harvesting, etc. The lenders can draw insights from this data and plan their loan selection accordingly.

“It is the absence of such information, farmers often end up taking extra loans from local loan sharks, which sometimes can be as high as 60% interest rate, leaving them in a debt trap,” adds Garg.

Harvesting Inc’s third product, the Land Records Monitoring System is aimed at helping lenders to manage land records quickly and efficiently by reducing the turnaround time to evaluate land documents to just 24 hours.

There is another problem the Land Records Monitoring System is solving — that or accurate and transparent information on farm mortgages.

Most farmers mortgage their farmlands to get loans. Whenever they do so, all the government documents about the farm need to be updated. “When we spoke to banks, they told us that in some cases they take up to two-three years to evaluate such documents,” says Garg.

“We realised that one of the biggest problems in agri-lending is that some Indian farmers — though not all — are misusing the system. They mortgage the same farm again and again and eventually declare bankruptcy,” he adds.

The current practice of getting loans involves farmers approaching the bank with their survey IDs. A bank employee is then required to survey the farmer’s land and other assets physically. On the basis of the report, the bank takes a decision on whether a loans it to be sanctioned.

The startup has created a document management system around land records, especially designed for lenders. It obtains information on the farmer’s land from the digital land record system of the Indian government.

“We have written a layer (of technology) on top of the digital land record system of the Indian government which allows vendors to get notified within 24 hours of any (farm and mortgage-related) changes that have been updated in the digital land record system of the Indian government.”

“It’s up to lenders how they want to proceed — whether they want to use the scoring system or the monitoring system or the land record monitoring or all three. We understand that lending is a critical business. They can assess, verify, and monitor all the information related to the farmer and his/her farm and then make lending decisions. We work very closely with the lenders at every step to help them draw actionable insights,” Garg says.

How Does Harvesting Inc Collect Data For Agri-Lenders?

Initially, when Garg started working on the theory of Harvesting Inc, he used high-end sensor drones to capture images of farms, but he realised that this method was not efficient enough to gather large amounts of data.

He says, “Although drones are on-demand high resolution image capturing devices, surveying large areas of farmland, say 1 Bn square acres, would require many drones, which is a logistical challenge. Moreover, the cost of the solution would go up for our customers (lenders) if we included drones to gather the images.”

Thereby Harvesting Inc uses remote-sensing technology to gather images. The engine analyses images from three primary sources — Landsat satellites equipped with sensors that respond to earth-reflected sunlight and infrared radiation; Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS),which observes every point on earth in 36 discrete spectral bands; and the European Space Agency (ESA) constellations Sentinel 1, which monitors land and ocean, and Sentinel 2, which monitors variability in land surface conditions.

Each of these satellites has its own frequency and resolution. For example, MODIS  has a viewing swath width of 2,330 km and views the entire surface of the earth every one or two days. Landsat does it every 16 days, but it captures images of the earth’s surface with a resolution of 30 metre.

“At Harvesting, we pick images from these satellites to get the best free data points for analysis. The challenge of working with satellite images is that it is complex and requires specialised skills and high performance computing infrastructure,” Garg says.

Harvesting Inc is not the only startup combining agriculture with satellite imaging technology. In Karnataka’s Chikballapur district-based ISRO scientist P P Nageswara Rao has developed a plant health indicator index. He calls it the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) that identifies weak plants. If a plant (crops) has low NDVI, it needs immediate attention such as fertilisers or pesticides.

Even the central government is currently working on a project to make available the latest satellite images and information to explore its diverse usages across sectors. For this, government think-tank Niti Aayog is said to be collaborating with IIT Delhi to develop a machine learning tool to analyse and study remotely sensed images.

Meanwhile, Harvesting Inc is keeping itself busy implementing its solutions on farms in remote parts of the country and making decision-making in agri-lending easier for lenders. Garg is not concerned about debates such as the one on Quora about whether or not India is an agricultural nation. He believes that if solutions such as theirs can lead to wider adoption of technology, they could reimagine the Indian agriculture sector and its productivity, and consequently, farmers’ lives.

The post How Harvesting Inc Is Bridging The Information Gap Between Farmers And Agri-Lenders appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In a country with a population of 1.3 Bn — set to overtake China as the most populous country in the world by 2024 — educational infrastructure can hardly ever be enough. As far as jobs are concerned, India’s inadequate education system is churning out young professionals with insufficient skills and knowledge — according to recent studies, only 7% of engineering graduates and only one out of 10 MBAs in the country are employable.

For the past couple of years, edtech startups have been looking to fill this gaping hole created by conventional educational institutions, courses, and degrees. While edtech startup BYJU’s quietly turned a Unicorn, other edtech startups such as Embibe, Unacademy, iNurture, and Littlemore have registered a healthy growth in terms of number of users as well as funding.

Meanwhile, international startups such as Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, and Progate, are looking to dig their teeth into a slice of the Indian edtech market. One such US-based edtech startup, Springboard, now plans to enter the country to hone graduates to produce a job-ready skilled workforce in India.

Springboard, founded by Parul Gupta and Gautam Tambay in 2013, offers online courses and one-on-one online mentorship programmes in hot new-age domains such as data science, digital marketing, UX design, business analytics, and others.

The startup, which raised $9.5 Mn in Series A funding at the end of last year, has around 10,000 users from 80 countries the world over. Its major markets are the US, the UK, India, and Australia.

The startup now is also looking to introduce some brand new courses as well as one-on-one mentorship programmes for its Indian users.

Inc42 spoke to the co-founder of Springboard, Parul Gupta, to get insights into the company’s plans and courses for Indian users.

Springboard: The India Chapter

The Indian education market is vast, complex, and has innumerable existing gaps. So, despite the proliferation of both Indian and foreign edtech companies, there is enough scope to start up in this space.

Online education in India is expected to see approximately 8X growth in the next five years.

According to a report by Google and KPMG, the edtech market is expected to have a significant impact on the online education sector, which has a potential to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from $247 Mn at present.

And Springboard is well aware of the opportunity.

“We believe there is a big opportunity in India because it has an advantage in terms of demographics. At present, we have about 100 users from India subscribed to various courses, and are in the early stage of understanding and evaluating Indian users and the market here through one-on-one conversations about users’ exact needs, their motivations, what options they’ve considered so far.”

The purpose of this exercise is to get deep insights and a better understanding of the Indian market so as to formulate educational courses and services designed especially for India. Springboard plans to launch its India-specific courses and support services in the next few months.

Back To The Book: What Courses Does Springboard Offer?

The courses on the Springboard platform are mostly designed and developed for graduating students, graduates looking for jobs, and professionals looking for to upgrade their skills for better job opportunities. In keeping with this, the startup offers courses in new-age domains such as data science, digital marketing, cybersecurity, business analytics, UX designs, or others.

All of Springboard’s courses at present are in the English medium. Gupta says it works for the startup as its target users demand courses in English.

But is the company looking to cash in on the vernacular market? “Definitely, localisation is one of the cards we might look at later; however, it’s not the priority at present,” says Gupta.

Why Springboard?

No matter what the market potential for edtech in India is, the fact of the matter is that there is a large number of companies offering free and subscription-based online courses in these domains. How does Springboard seek to differentiate itself in this busy market?

Gupta explains that Springboard’s courses have been scientifically designed by industry experts to bridge the employability gap, up the employability quotient for better job profiles. In addition, what’s unique at Springboard is the one-on-one mentorship programmes it offers.

“While many of the courses currently available at Springboard are free, the mentorship programme is a paid one. We enable our students to access mentorship from the best experts from across the world in relevant subjects, says Gupta.

Springboard has further categorised its courses into two tracks: one is for students who want to do the course simply to improve their knowledge of and skills in the subject and the second is for students who want to do courses to enhance their career prospects. “They may be wanting to get a job or switch careers such as from a software developer to a data scientist,” added Gupta.

The Edtech Market Scenario

Driven by digital technology, edtech startups are not limited by geographical boundaries. This is one of the reasons the sector has grown exponentially. In 2017, edtech witnessed a 30% hike in terms of investments with international funding touching a new record of $9.52 Bn. Last year, 813 edtech companies received funding across the globe.

According to Research and Markets, the global educational technology market crossed $17.7 Bn in revenue in 2017 and is expected to grow to $40.9 Bn by 2022, at a CAGR of 18.3%.

As mentioned, the Indian edtech market will see approximately 8x growth in the next five years and is set to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from the existing $247 Mn.

Gupta says that India is fast becoming a technology-driven knowledge economy and, therefore, there is a huge potential for edtech startups here. Springboard is evaluating the Indian market demands and figuring out what its users want. In addition to existing courses, the company is also planning to launch courses in blockchain, AI, IoT, product management etc, which have become a buzz in the Indian market.

Springboard: Learning Along The Way

But the Indian market is price conscious and not an easy one to sell any subscription-based products, even in the domain of learning. While Japan, the US, Europe, and many other countries have a lot of takers for more subscription-based premium online courses, Indians, at large, don’t want to pay just to learn online, unless they can earn certificates or secure some job security.

Aware of the challenges in the Indian edtech market, Gupta explains how the startup plans to get around the problem. “For them (Indian users), we will not only teach them the concepts and courses but will also provide apt placement support. We have a team of career coaches who help them with career counselling until they get what they want,” she says.

Most Indian edtech startups are yet to strike the fine balance between freemium and profitability. However, in concurrence with what British academician and educationist Claus Moser once said — “Education costs money, but then so does ignorance” — Gupta asserts that people would be willing to pay courses once they see the edge paid courses can provide in terms of career and skill development.

The new economy needs a new approach to education. Education is no longer a one-time investment at the beginning of one’s career, it’s a lifelong pursuit. Springboard aims to build an educational experience that empowers its students and users to thrive in this new world order.

The post Edtech Startup Springboard Is Looking To Improve Employability In India appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Mornings in Indian metros are chaotic to the point of being painful. Everyone is trying to get somewhere, and everyone is in a hurry.

It doesn’t help that most Indian cities are unplanned with narrow, potholed roads (which too are riddled with encroachments), ever-increasing wheels on the street, and burgeoning populations. Highway expansion, extension of metro lines and flyovers are doing little to help the situation.

Arterial roads are choked with traffic, public transportation is overcrowded and unreliable, and parking is at a premium. There’s Ola and Uber for those looking for hired rides, but cabs have painfully long wait times or are unavailable. Plus surge pricing hikes up fares astronomically, making cabs unaffordable for many.

Enter bike rentals. Riding bikes to get around the city — making for quicker, hassle-free commutes and exercise on the side — has picked up in India in the last few years. And in the sharing economy it is but natural to get everything on hire.

With a view to make bike rentals hassle-free and enable quicker intra-city commutes, Bengaluru-headquartered online bike rental startup ONN Bikes has introduced hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly bike rentals.

“Cabs fare has increased a lot and availability is a challenge. So, people have started renting bikes as an alternate mode of transportation,” says the founder of ONN Bikes, Namit Jain, adding, “The cost of our self-driving bikes are 70% lower than that of cab rides.”

The startup currently offers bike rental plans at a reasonable INR 8 per hour for 100cc bikes. Its daily, weekly, and monthly packages start from INR 175, INR 799, and INR 2,899, respectively. The prices differ as per brands and models and the minimum duration for which you can rent a bike is one hour.

It recently carried out a pilot in Bengaluru for Dockless Smart Bikes to enable commuters to drop bikes at any parking hub in the city.

The platform, at present, offers its services across six cities — Jaipur, Udaipur, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, and Mysore. Jain tells Inc42 that ONN Bikes plans to expand its operations to Pune, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Himachal Pradesh, and Vizag by the end of 2018. It is also looking to foray into 85 new locations — mostly tourist hubs — across India by 2022.

ONN Bikes To Introduce OTP-based Dockless Scooters By August

Interestingly, ONN Bikes doesn’t own a single bike. Instead, it leases bikes and provides them to the end-users, similar to the cab aggregation model. It makes money from commissions. “We are not an asset party. We have a certain set of investors who lease us these bikes on our platform and we connect to the users to them,” says Jain.

The startup claimed to have on-boarded 3,000 bikes, including scooters and motorbikes, on its platform from brands such as Honda, Bajaj, Yamaha, Royal Enfield, KTM Duke, etc. The bikes have engines ranging from 100cc to 400cc. It is looking to add another 4,000 bikes as part of its expansion plans.

It also offers renting solutions for businesses that are into last-mile deliveries such as online marketplaces Amazon and Flipkart, cab aggregators Ola and Uber, and food delivery startup Swiggy, among others.

A commuter using the ONN Bikes platform can pick up a bike from any of the parking hubs located across metros, colleges, hospitals, and hotels in select cities.

After the ride or rental period is over, he/she has deposit the bike at the same parking hub where the ride/rental started. The startup has recently completed a pilot project in Bengaluru for Dockless Smart Bikes, which enables commuters to deposit bikes at any of the parking hubs (not necessarily the one where the ride started) across the city. Bengaluru has 700 at present, Jain said.

The new model will implement Rapid Stain Identification Series (RSID) technology, which automatically locks the bike once the user keeps the helmet back on the bike’s handlebar or mirror, using the D-lock on the helmet buckle. The app tells the user if the helmet has been kept properly or if the bike steering needs to be tilted to end the ride.

According to Jain, the dockless scooter trend is popular in countries such as the US and China where the commuter can start the ride from any parking hub by scanning a QR code and drop it at any parking hub; riders are charged according to the distance travelled, as it plans to roll out the dockless service by August in Bengaluru.

The Dockless Smart Bikes project will use improved technology including geo-location and geo-tagging, along with immobilisation of bikes to check the risk of theft.

We Are ONN Bikes, And We Are Many

The ONN Bikes founder says they were inspired to launch the startup after they noticed that bike renting works very well in Goa. “We thought, why not take it to other cities.” So, Jain, along with Shanky Munoth, Akashdeep Singal and Kunal Gupta, started ONN Bikes in 2017. The 18-month-old startup has grown quickly, adding 150 employees along the way and rakes in about 5,000 monthly bike rentals on an average, says Jain.

The startup has raised three rounds of funding so far — $219K (INR 1.5 Cr) equity funding and $439K (INR 3 Cr) asset funding from investors such as early-stage accelerator Z Nation Labs and JITO Angel Network, among others. It recorded a total revenue of $2.6 Mn (INR 18 Cr) till March 2018 and $1 Mn (INR 7.1 Cr) the previous year. The startup is currently in the process of raising Series A funding and plans to close the funding by August, says Jain.

 ONN Bikes has 150 employees working across its offices in six cities

As demand for bike rentals surges across cities, startups such as ONN Bikes have been rapidly gaining popularity. ONN Bikes considers Ola-backed Vogo and Metro Bikes as its main competitors. Vogo currently operates in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Manipal, and Mysore. The startup, which too offers dockless bikes, claims to clock more than 5,000 orders per month, similar to ONN. It has also added electric scooters to its fleet of scooters, bikes, and motorbikes.

On the other hand, Bengaluru-based Metrobikes offers around 65 to 100 bikes at 36 out of 42 metro stations across Bengaluru. Its charges are even lower than ONN Bikes — INR 5 per km and INR 0.5 per minute including fuel charges. Riders can book bikes on their app or walk in and book them at one of the 40 touchpoints across the city. The bikes are keyless and work on OTP-based access.

A RedSeer Consulting report suggests the Indian online mobility market has witnessed substantial growth. It contributed over 15% of the industry’s overall gross book value (GBV) in 2017. According to Statista, India’s two-wheeler vehicles (scooters, motorcycles, and mopeds) saw 20 Mn sales to domestic customers in 2017-18, making it the most popular vehicle category sold in India.

According to Jain, in Bengaluru alone, there is scope for deployment of more than 20K bikes for rentals. Cumulatively, rental companies operate around 3,000 bikes in the city at present.

“The demand is very high. The only challenge is the supply of bikes. We are not able to secure bikes as per the demand,” he says.

That shouldn’t be a difficult problem to solve. However, most bike rental platforms in India operate petrol-and diesel-fueled bikes and scooters, which are not really in line with the Indian government’s ambitious plan to roll out 30% electric-charged vehicles by 2030. The Centre wants to reduce carbon emissions of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 33-35% by 2030.

These are the initial days for bike rental startups such as ONN Bikes. While looking to ease intracity travel for commuters in busy metros, these startups should also explore ways to incorporate ecologically friendly e-bikes on their platforms so that they can race ahead in the game of electric vehicles as well.

The post Bike Rental Startup ONN Bikes Looking To Rev Up Its Game With Dockless Bikes appeared first on Inc42 Media.

From a single centre just three years ago in the bustling Connaught Place (CP) in New Delhi to nine live centres across the country today, Innov8 has established a firm footing for itself in the vast pool of coworking spaces in India. Innov8’s latest centre was inaugurated recently in Delhi-NCR’s weekend paradise — Cyber Hub in Gurugram.

The company, which was founded in 2015 by Ritesh Malik, has managed to build a strong community of over 4,000 members across its centres in India. Malik has backed several startups in his personal capacity.

Innov8 has hit many a milestone in this short span and is redefining coworking in India. It has onboarded 190 companies as members and claims have a 95% occupancy across all its centres. Its clients include well-known names such as Vice Media, Ratnakar Bank Limited (RBL Bank), and Swiggy.

The Growth Driver At Innov8

When Innov8 was starting out, startups had just started becoming mainstream in the Indian ecosystem and the atmosphere was electric, with everyone wanting a piece of the startup pie. Malik zeroed in on the coworking space as he saw potential there and ended up building and developing Innov8. The idea was to provide the best infrastructure and design facilities to members and empowering them by offering a world-class office space.

“Building a high-class product at a value-conscious price with world-class service is our key strength. Going forward, the focus is scaling the model and integrating more verticals under shared economy space,” emphasises Malik.

Innov8: Growing At An Enviable Speed

The startup’s deep engagement with its members is evident from the fact that Innov8 has organised more than 500 member-centred events in its short journey. The aim of these initiatives is to enable the members to get know the Innov8 family and build connections. This approach has led to the phenomenal rise in the number of members at the startup.

While opening new offices, Innov8 invokes a tradition Indians identify with — the breaking of a coconut. So, on a hot summer afternoon when the recent Innov8 centre at Gurugram’s Cyber Hub was inaugurated, it was a simple, no-frills affair with the founders being accompanied by a few employees and a small coconut-breaking ceremony.

The company does the same while onboarding and welcoming its customers. It’s a simple gesture of warmth from Innov8 to instil a sense of belongingness in its customers and mark the start of a new relationship.

In keeping with its spiralling growth, Innov8 decided to strengthen its senior leadership further by hiring a chief operating officer — Gaurav Gulati — earlier this year. Gulati has been a long-time real estate specialist, who has an experience across retail, distribution, tech, real estate and consulting.

“Innov8’s mission is to create workspaces and environments wherein individuals and companies alike can find, seize, and expand amazing opportunities for success. And I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the Innov8 team,” says Gulati, a veteran real estate specialist.

Stepping Up The Game At Innov8

For the growth and success of a  young company, it is critical — and very difficult — to break through the strong wall of established players. And with international players like WeWork entering the market, it further reiterates the increasing demand for coworking in India.

With eyes set on this demand, and a need to carve its own niche, the group of homegrown professionals at Innov8 is working hard to transform how India works and functions.

The coworking segment in India is expected to receive $400 Mn in investments by 2018 end, according to a study by JLL. It is anticipated that by 2020, the coworking space will overtake the traditional serviced office. The market, which had a just a few players three years ago, has witnessed the launch of several new companies.

Companies today are opting for coworking because of the flexible plans, design, facilities, and prime locations coworking spaces offer. Startups, especially, are opting for coworking spaces both in India and across the world. There is also rising interest from corporates and other companies in coworking.

So, despite competition, Innov8 still has the opportunity to tap into a massive demand for coworking that is only set to increase in future.

“Building a high-class product at a value-conscious price with world-class service is our key strength. Going forward, the focus is scaling the model and integrating more verticals under shared economy space,” says Malik.

Ankush Grover, VP operations, Innov8, says that the startup is taking heavily funded companies head-on without compromising on real estate, operations, and quality. “Frugality is in the startup’s leadership style and DNA,” says Grover.

With the ambitious plan of acquiring 15,000 members in the next year alone, the company believes it has the soul of an underdog that will do anything to establish itself as a leading player in the coworking industry. And with the backing of US-based seed accelerator Y-Combinator and marquee investors Kunal Shah, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, LetsVenture, and more, it appears that Innov8 is all set to get ahead in the game.

The post Innov8 Is On A No-Holds-Barred Mission To Carve Out A Big Chunk Of The Coworking Space appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“The world is a book, those who don’t travel read only one page,” once said Roman philosopher Augustine of Hippo, who saw life as an opportunity to travel across the world. Novelist and MIT professor Anita Desai decoded the fun part of the journey when she said, “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”

For a place to become a part of you, you must embrace it in its totality — its culture, people, cuisine, landscapes, et al. This, however, depends on how well you plan your trip in alignment with your interests, what experiences you incorporate in your itinerary, and the overall quality of the time you spend at a holiday destination.

Which brings us to the basic question asked by most travellers — how do you plan for a trip in a way that it becomes a part of you?

This was precisely the question that led Mohit Saxena, traveller, co-founder and former CTO of India’s first unicorn, Inmobi, to start a new luxury vacation marketplace called Rizort. The startup is looking to bridge the gap between travel planning and the actual experience at the destination.

It’s not as if other online travel aggregators (OTA)s don’t offer experiences — they do, or at least they try to. But, with competition tough in the segment, the “experience” often ends up playing second fiddle to concerns of keeping costs down and offering low-priced rooms and experiences.

“Thanks to existing OTAs, I always felt there was a lot missing in my vacation trips, in terms of experiences,” says Saxena, who recently shifted to the US to start up his new company.

Sachin Kanodia, former senior vice-president at Inmobi, joined him on this new journey along with Nishant Sameer, then a GM at Samsung Electronics.

In a conversation with Inc42, Mohit explains that the offerings of existing OTAs are generic and limited. Most marketplaces deal with competition by offering rooms at cheap prices, which is why when you book a room, you will see messages like ‘two rooms left at this price’ etc. “No matter where you go and what’s your purpose for the trip, the OTAs’ selling methodology doesn’t change,” he says.

“In the last five-six years, there has been an entire paradigm shift in the OTA space. Experience is fast becoming the core objective of travel. For instance, take Airbnb: though budget hotels have always been there, the platform is about providing a home-like experience,” adds Saxena.

The Huge Gap Between Demand And Supply

The online travel market is estimated to touch $1,091 Bn, globally, by 2022. According to a Google-BCG report, in India, the sector is set to hit the $45 Bn mark by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 11-11.5%.

However, there remains a huge gap in terms of demand and supply. This is precisely the reason a number of OTAs are differentiating themselves by offering curated, customised and experiential vacations.

While Airbnb offers curated experiences, Yatra(.com) recently launched Yatra Journeys, which provides themed experiences led by experts. Cleartrip offers ‘Local Experiences’ — typically short-duration activities ranging from a couple of hours to half a day. Then there’s Thrillophilia, a travel curator and a marketplace for operators of experiential tours in India, and PickMyTrail, which hand-crafts itineraries keeping traveller preferences in mind. There are many smaller players such as Trip38, We Are Holidays, Tripoto, Beyond Travel, and many more.

But, does the existing OTA even care about your very purpose of travelling — the intent and the experience, asks Saxena.

“When you select a travel destination, there’s usually something about the place that inspires you, around which you plan your trip. People either ask their friends or start researching the place and the experiences it offers. However, it’s a cumbersome process and doesn’t offer guaranteed satisfaction during the trip, irrespective of how well you planned it,” says Saxena.

So, while the demand side, OTAs have generic offerings irrespective of travellers’ intent of visiting a place, most of the marketplace doesn’t even meet the supply requirements.

Saxena argues that OTAs club together luxury hotels and resorts and budget hotels on the same list. This dilutes their brands completely. Also, existing OTAs drastically fail to address the demand for offbeat, luxury experiences as the selection parameters remain the same for both budget and luxury hotels.

This is precisely the reason upmarket hotels and resorts such as Four Seasons and St Regis are now actually moving away from the OTA space, explains Saxena. “We realised this big gap — that’s how the idea of Rizort was born,” he says.

So, what does Rizort do differently from existing OTAs?

Having identified the gap from both the ends, what strategy and business model has Rizort adopted to bridge the gap? Saxena responds, “We have created one of the most unique luxury vacation marketplaces, which, instead of simply showing the user dates, rooms, and prices, starts with the very basic question we’re trying to address — What’s your intent to visit the place?”

The company has broadly classified the “intent” into eight categories and has accordingly curated its location-based experiences. For instance, if someone is planning for a honeymoon trip to Bali, the platform, once it learns of the intent, will instantly curate experiences and resort preferences accordingly. Instead of blindly showing anything and everything, it will show resorts which offer candlelight dinners or other romantic experiences.

“There is no other online platform that exists today which can actually talk about their opulence as well as users’ intent,” claims Saxena.

Besides, the travel packages offered by most OTAs are static in nature. The stay and services remain the same irrespective of the traveller’s profile, interests, and intent. For instance, most OTA offers packages with a fixed number of days and nights with some popular experiences at that destination thrown in. This doesn’t allow travellers much freedom to curate experiences as per their choice.

Rizort claims to help travellers curate not only the right destinations and resorts aligned with their interests, but also the right experiences aligned with their intent.

“We bring alive all the beautiful experiences that these places offer,” says Saxena.

Rizort: Crafting Intent-Based, Opulent Travel Experiences

With a view to leveraging the hype around virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), some online travel marketplaces use these technologies to show a 360-degree view of available hotels. However, Saxena claims that these are not really in sync with actual experience on offer.

He explains that Rizort not only uses immersive technologies such as AR and VR to showcase the opulence and experience that its curated resorts offer, but has also created immersive content around places such as Bali, Thailand and Maldives, to provide travellers with a larger context of the destination.

This, he says, bridges the “intent” and “experience” gap, giving travellers an exact idea about what experiences the resorts and destinations at large offer.

He adds that the startup selects its partners and vendors “very carefully” and works only with luxury hotels to ensure that standards and services levels are maintained.

Rizort claims to have it all sorted out, right down to the minutest detail. For instance, all transportation is WiFi enabled. “In Bali, local vendors are likely to charge you two-three times the normal rate for everything. We take care of these concerns as well so the guest doesn’t end up paying excess in such scenarios,” adds Saxena.

It has planned for redundancy within the system as well. For instance, if one taxi driver doesn’t show up in time, there is a system in place to instantly find an alternate one.

Further, every customer is given the contact of a Rizort representative who can be reached out to at all times in case of any requirement or emergency. There is also a mobile companion app called Rizort Concierge. Once a trip is booked, the customer can access the entire itinerary on it and connect with the Rizort contact either by mobile, WhatsApp, or chat.

“We make dynamic arrangements as well. Suppose you’re in Bali and, on the third day of your trip, you want to party at the fanciest nightclub there. All you need to do is just put it on the Rizort app, and we will take care of the booking process and arrangements. You can get to the nightclub within 5-10 mins,” says Saxena.

Rizort has also come up with a number of add-on services for its users. For instance, It claims to offer guaranteed priority immigration for every user who books on the platform. Users will also be escorted from the airport to the hotel in a BMW/Mercedes.

In the first phase, Rizort has zeroed in on three curated destinations — Bali, Thailand and Maldives — for its customers. While Bali is already live, the remaining two will soon be available for booking.

“In Thailand, we will be providing services to all the top islands — Koh Samui, Ko Tapu, Ko Phi Phi, Phuket, Koh Chang, Koh Phangan, Bangkok, and so on,” says Saxena. In Phase II, Rizort will cover India, Sri Lanka, Japan, and Mauritius. Phase II will be ready by Q3 this year.

Are Rizort’s ‘Opulent Experiences’ Too Costly?

All this talk of “luxury”, “opulence” and “curated experiences” makes it seem like such holidays would be steeply priced and unaffordable for most middle-class people and Millennials. Rizort, however, claims that its experiences-cum-stay are not that expensive.

Saxena explains that the entire cost of the trip must be put in context, in perspective. Of course, the resorts on offer on the Rizort platform are not on par with budget accommodation such as OYO or Airbnb. But, while making a comparison, one must also look at other factors such as the frequency of the visit as well as the value-added experience of the trip, he says.

“The cost of these experiences on our platform is actually much lesser than those offered by other players. Our experience is priceless and, most importantly, it is designed around you. Also, nothing can really go wrong as it is you who shortlists the experiences after we provide you with enough information in the form of visualisation, experience, and everything you need to decide,” he says.

Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said — “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Rizort appears to have been following his advice by taking all possible steps to woo travellers with an intent looking for experiences. The startup hopes that one perfect trip will help it forge a bond with its customers for thousands of miles in the future.

The post Luxury Vacation Marketplace Rizort Is Taking A Road Less Travelled In The OTA Space appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Have you ever wondered why a lingerie ad pops up while you’re browsing a sports website for updates on, say, cricket, even if you’ve never run an online search for lingerie products?

Running ads on websites is a popular mode of monetisation for companies — especially for digital-first ones — but some websites just can’t seem to correlate their ads with their content, and this can result in a UX disaster, putting off visitors to the site so much that they find an alternate site. Now, which website would want that?

But why should this happen in these times of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommendation engines, where data related to users’ interests is gathered and mined continuously to make ad selection and targeting more intelligent.

Clearly, not all websites have their recommendation game down pat.

Gurugram-based Staqu has developed an artificial intelligence-powered recommendation engine that adds context to ads based on the website content, for a seamless and unobtrusive user experience. Other than the ad solution, it also recommends relevant links to information, again in line with the context. The solution can be integrated on any kind of website, from ecommerce to news, the company says.

Not only that. Beyond addressing the relatively simplistic concerns of marketing departments of companies, Staqu is solving much bigger problems through big data — that of identifying criminals and finding missing persons.

In November last year, Staqu launched an AI-based human efface detection (ABHED) application for effective policing. The app, when integrated with a police database, helps police officers in identifying criminals and search for missing people. The startup has integrated the solution for police departments of eight Indian states, including Rajasthan and Punjab.

Staqu’s New, Improved Recommendation System

But let’s first understand how the startup’s recommendation engine works and how it’s different from other such systems. Atul Rai, co-founder and CEO, of Staqu explains this with a use case of the solution when applied to video content.

“Let’s say you’re watching a video of Shahrukh Khan, who is wearing a jacket and you like the jacket. The engine correlates the jacket to products on different ecommerce websites, and if that jacket is available, for instance, on Myntra, the engine will show you related ads,” Rai says.

“We are creating a Google of recommendation wherein we’re not capturing user data but rather provide related links to content that correlate to the content one is exploring on different websites,” he adds.

Rai says that Staqu’s recommendation solution relies heavily on AI-driven analysis. “While analysing videos, we perform speech and image analysis, and for ecommerce platforms, we perform both text and image analysis,” says Rai. In addition, the engine can also be used to identify the voices of different speakers. The startup claims that its voice recognition feature has 89.5% accuracy.

A Predictive Policing Solution To Curb Crimes

Staqu’s other offering is an AI-powered predictive policing solution that is helping police officers identify criminals and missing persons and even predict crimes.

The predictive policing solution uses an advanced hybrid AI technology that amalgamates different neural network models to process image, speech, and text and extracts meaningful information from the analysis. The aim is to help law enforcers in decision making while dealing with criminals.

The company has developed an app that provides authorised police personnel with secured login IDs and access to the database.

“Police officers can automatically profile criminals or missing people and also gain access to their biometric information such as fingerprints, voice, and facial recognition. The system can also be integrated with the current Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) system,” says Rai. The CCTNS is a project of the Indian government aimed at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for effective policing through e-governance.

Staqu claims that the solution has helped the Punjab police nab more than 100 criminals.

In January this year, Staqu’s AI-powered predictive policing technology was selected by the Dubai police from solutions of over 677 other startups. Rai says, “The Dubai police want to integrate AI with their current programmes and databases in order to leverage analytics and statistics to support the decision-making process.”

The startup will assist the Dubai police in identifying criminals and predicting criminal activities based on heuristic data. According to Rai, Staqu’s solution will also enable the Dubai police to detect lies and ensure quicker response times during situations of emergency.

An AI-Powered Journey

Rai along with Chetan Rexwal, Anurag Saini, and Pankaj Kumar Sharma founded Staqu in 2015. Rai is focused on AI research and managing the company. Rexwal and Saini, both expert coders who had worked on building mobile-based apps or native apps that could be integrated directly into the operating system of a mobile and be deployed instantly, took care of the app development.

“Our team fit was complete with Pankaj joining and taking over server development. A business that is going to sift through copious amounts of data needs a strong network infrastructure right from the start,” says Rai.

Staqu’s prime focus is on AI-based research, image processing, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing (NLP), among other emerging technologies.

The startup raised $7.2K (INR 500K) in seed funding from Indian Angel Network in June 2016.

AI is a tool to extract meaningful information from big data. With India being one of the major countries creating tonnes of user data, many startups have started leveraging AI to draw both analytical and predictive insights from data and cater to the needs of various sectors.

Staqu directly competes with Bengaluru-based defence startup Tonbo Imaging, which offers a suite of solutions for military reconnaissance, infrastructure security, and transportation safety. It also provides imaging products and intellectual property cores that can be licensed by OEMs and systems integrators.

Similarly, there is IoT-based border security solutions provider CRON Systems, which provides security solutions for border defence and commercial security applications. The company claims to be working with the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Indian Army. It combines deep research in lasers, data, artificial intelligence, encrypted communications, and automation to offer accurate intruder detection and deterrence infrastructure.

NASSCOM recently released its Artificial Intelligence Primer 2018, which revealed that India saw more than 400 AI startups and nearly $150 Mn invested in the last five years. Overall funding in the sector went up from $44 Mn in 2016 to $73 Mn 2017.

Some of the top AI investments in recent times include SigTuple ($19 Mn), Active Intelligence ($8 Mn), Observe ($8 Mn), Uniphore ($7 Mn), CreditVidya ($5 Mn) and Edge Network ($5 Mn). Investors leading AI funding in India are Accel Partners, IDG Ventures, Sequoia, Matrix Partners, Axilor, and India Angel Network, among others, the report says.

Staqu, after its AI-based recommendation and security solutions, now plans to foray into the banking sector. Rai, however, refuses to spill the beans on its new solution. “We are developing a niche solution for the banking sector, which will be launched soon,” he says, smiling cryptically.

In the meantime, here’s hoping we don’t get spammed with enticing food recommendations and recipe videos while we’re on a diet. Here’s also hoping that AI solutions one day truly enable India to reduce its spiralling crime rates.

The post How Staqu Is Making A Case For AI In Policing, And Also Building Better Recommendation Engines appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Since the adoption of the Green Revolution — between 1965 and 2015 — India’s food production has multiplied 3.7 times, resulting in a 45% increase in food production per person, making India self-sufficient when it comes to food and an exporter as well. But one-fifth of India’s farmers’ still live below the poverty line.

The Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre has announced its commitment to doubling farmers’ income by 2022, an ambitious plan that could do with a leg up and more from technology.

In remote villages in Gujarat in India, a handful of Farmer Mitras are doing just that. These Farmer Mitras (friends), appointed by agritech startup MyCrop, roam agricultural fields in the area, collecting data across various agricultural parameters. The information is then uploaded on an app developed by MyCrop built using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for predictive analysis of farming output.

A Farmer Mitra showing a MyCrop farm plan to a cultivator in Gujarat

The Farmer Mitras are also tasked with mentoring smallholder cultivators in the latest farming techniques and technology. The aim is to help farmers decrease farming costs and increase productivity and income, says founder of MyCrop, Deepak Pareek, adding the startup is also helping generate employment for youth in these villages by onboarding them as Farmer Mitras.

Interestingly, MyCrop started started its operations abroad — in the Southeast Asian island nation of Indonesia — before launching in India. It is present in Java and North Sumatra, where it has appointed 21 Farmer Mitras. Back home in India, there are 14 Farmer Mitras working in 28 villages in central Gujarat.

“The Farmer Mitras collect data related to land, including geofencing, along with the demographic profile and past crop information of every farmer in the villages where we’re active. Based on the information churned using our AI-powered application, they guides farmers on what to grow, when to grow, and how to grow it,” says Pareek.

The projects have started showing fruitful results, Pareek claims, adding the startup has helped farmers increase their productivity by 30%, thereby enabling them to decrease their cost of production and increase their incomes.

For instance, agri-lenders can use the platform to evaluate farmers’ performance, their land quality, and their farming behaviour to take effective decisions related to disbursal and follow-up of agri loans. Meanwhile, agri-input companies can take effective market-related decisions. Such data-driven insights can even help the government formulate better policies.

“These (farm) plans help farmers do better than what they were doing yesterday. We’ve been able to reduce their cost of cultivation and increase their yields, profitability and income,” Pareek says.

Similarly, food aggregators, agri-import companies and distributor can use predictive insights on farmers’ productivity manage their own stocks better. This, in turn, can enable farmers can avail good prices for their produce.

“We can even sell the produce before the harvest because we can predict its growth. This whole ecosystem is delivered to the farmers free of cost,” Pareek said.

A screenshot of the MyCrop application dashboard

Farmer Mitras: Making A Career Of Data Collection And Mentoring

MyCrop handpicks tech-savvy locals and appoints them as village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) or Farmer Mitras. It trains them and tasks them with collecting data related to farmlands and crops, which is then uploaded on the AI-powered MyCrop app to draw actionable insights.

“We’ve worked a lot in creating a good training module that is universal. We give a complete career plan to the Farmer Mitras,” Pareek says.

The Farmer Mitras are taught to collect important information related to the demographic profile of farmers and their land and crops, among others, along with images. The data is then collated with geo-spatial factors (climate, topography, etc). The startup also draws on information from third-party services — for instance, historical financial and land data.

All of this data is processed using ML and AI to predict agricultural output. On the basis of these predictive insights, MyCrop draws up customised end-to-end farm plans covering the crop lifecycle for farmers. The plans are simple and include recommendations on what crop varieties a farmer should plant, the number of days he should spend on different farming activities (sowing, irrigation, application of crop nutrients, crop protection, harvesting), and other relevant inputs.

The Farmer Mitras visit farms periodically helping farmers implement their cultivation plans and post updates on the MyCrop platform through pictures of the current crop status. They also educate farmers through video, pictures, and information on their MyCrop tablet about actions to be taken.

According to Pareek, Farmer Mitras hired by MyCrop in India are earning nearly $150 USD (around 10,000 INR) every month while following their passion to serve farmers.

The startup maintains that unless it finds at least one candidate passionate enough to

help farmers in his/her respective villages, who is also adept at using mobile phones and tablets, it doesn’t add the village to its portfolio.

MyCrop: Sowing The Seeds Of Growth, From Indonesia To India

Founded by Pareek along with two other co-founders — Paresh Shah and Vinesh Patel — MyCrop first launched its pilot in December 2016 in North Sumatra in Indonesia. Now, the startup is offers its solutions through 21 Farmer Mitras across 32 villages in the country.

Inc42 asked why the startup chose to first pilot its solution in Indonesia? Pareek said, “We chose Indonesia as there are less variables to manage. Rainy season duration in Indonesia is usually long and has a very rich soil (because of volcanic soil), and farmers have more income per capita than India. Further we had support from agriculture Input companies and some NGOs like GIZ for our endeavors.”

The three founders infused about $400K to start the company. The bootstrapped startup was officially launched in March 2017 in Indonesia and in August of the same year in Gujarat, ready to foray into agritech market and change the way farmers grow crops. In India, MyCrop is headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and its Indonesia head office is at Medan in North Sumatra.

The startup claims that its solution is being used by approx 4,500 Indian and Indonesian farmers, who have been able to increase their income by an average of 34%. The startup, which was running in pilot mode until last year, started clocking revenues from February 2018. Currently, its monthly revenue is around $5.8K (INR 4 lakh).

“We work by launching a small sustainable pilot and then take it to a large organisation that can roll it out to more and more people. We generate revenues from commissions charged to stakeholders using the platform,” Pareek said, adding that MyCrop doesn’t charge anything from the farmers using its application.

The platform is currently being used by seven ecosystem stakeholders including NGOs, agri-input companies, and agri-lenders.

Agritech In India: The Market and The Players

Bolstered by the government’s commitment to the goal of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022, several agritech startups and ecosystem enablers, including investors, incubators, and accelerators, are coming forward in India to invest in the sector.

Inc42 DataLabs report suggests that around $36 Mn was invested in 15 agritech startups in 2017. Further, an IBEF report highlights that the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA) from the sector is estimated to have grown at 3% in FY18.

Investors such as Rairah Corporation, Omnivore Partners, Future Venture Capital Company Ltd (FVCCL), IDG Venture, Accel Partners, Aspada Investments, IvyCap Ventures, Unitus Seed Fund, Rabo Equity Advisors, SAIF Partners, Villgro Innovations Foundation, Qualcomm Ventures and IDFC, among others, have taken a keen interest in the agritech sector.

Similarly, startups are mushrooming in the space. There’s Intello Labs, which provides an AI-based deep-tech solution for crop inspection and agricultural products grading, and Agricx, which has developed an AI-and machine learning-based SaaS solution to simplify the grading system and eliminate variability in the quality of produce sourced, among others.

Another agritech startup, Harvesting Inc, is implementing its AI-based agricultural intelligence engine in villages across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Punjab. The engine uses remote sensing technology to provide data on farms and farmers to enable agri-lending institutions to carry out pre-loan and post-loan activities more efficiently.

In a recent development, Chandigarh-based agritech startup AgNext raised an undisclosed in Series A funding from Omnivore Partners India Fund 2. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its product in data analytics in the agriculture space by combining both hardware and software.

MyCrop, meanwhile, is in the final stages of charting out its plans to start its operations in Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam — other agriculture-focused countries in Asia.

The startup is currently looking to raise Series A funding and plans to close the round by September, as part of its plan to expand its operations to other states of India. “We want strategic investors and want to onboard domain experts,” Pareek says.

Asked about the challenges faced by MyCrop, Pareek says the biggest challenge is hiring the right candidate to train into a Farmer Mitra. “Till the time I don’t get a good Farmer Mitra, I’m not adding another village just for the sake of adding one,” he adds.

This approach may well be a boon for the startup. At the heart of MyCrop’s AI-based farming solution is the larger mission of improving the lot of farmers and of agriculture as an industry. And that can only be done by stakeholders — whether individuals or companies — who are passionate about ensuring that India’s farmers get their due and can live better lives.

The post How MyCrop’s Farmer Mitras Are Helping Growers Reap Better Harvests, And Making A Career For Themselves appeared first on Inc42 Media.

City life in India can get incredibly busy, stressful, and unhealthy, given the potent mix of work-life imbalance, pollution, spurious food items, and other such urban hazards. To counterbalance this, Millennials are increasingly focussing on their health — encompassing all aspects of fitness, healthy eating, and wellness.

Now, you can get your daily dose of health in a shot — of the non-alcoholic kind. Looking to provide a boost to people’s healthy food choices, Bengaluru-based SapFresh has introduced healthy juice shots made of wheatgrass, amla (Indian gooseberry), beetroot, and carrot, spiked with superfoods such as chlorella, a nutrient-rich algae; spirulina, a blue-green algae that is high in protein and a good source of antioxidants, B-vitamins, and other nutrients; and moringa leaves from the Indian drumstick tree, known for their powerful anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and tissue-protective properties.

Founded by Vishal Goel in August 2017, SapFresh provides pure, fresh, cold-pressed, and 100% organic juice shots, delivered to Bengalureans every day on a subscription-based model. The company, which takes orders online on its website, has hit upon a simple but effective logistics mechanism to ensure smooth and timely deliveries.

SapFresh is using existing networks of newspaper delivery boys and milkmen along with its own delivery captains to deliver its products across Bengaluru.

Goel told Inc42 that he has seen a lot of people, including close friends and family, suffer from chronic diseases, many of them a byproduct of the modern, unhealthy lifestyle. This is what inspired him to venture into healthcare.

He believes it’s time people address health holistically. And he wants SapFresh to play an active part in achieving healthy results for all.

But why choose drinks over other food items? Goel explains that health drinks are convenient and fast to consume and people have an affinity for such drinks. “My aim was to push the right nutrition into people’s lifestyles. So we created a product that is easily consumable,” he says.

Currently, the SapFresh team comprises of five delivery staff, two people who juice and bottle simultaneously, and one person who takes care of its nursery. Besides, there are 14 people across marketing, customer services, human resources, and in the backend team, including Goel and another SapFresh director, Arjun Bir Singh.

SapFresh offers 15-30 day subscription packages and home delivers fresh juices made of superfoods every day. Despite slow growth, the company has been earning revenues from its products and has sold over 10K healthy shots till date.

The shots are priced at a reasonable INR 60 for 50ml, and if you take the monthly subscription package, the shots are delivered directly to your doorstep every morning at 7 am. The subscription comes for INR 1,800. For corporates, SapFresh offers a discounted monthly package for INR 1,500.

A Shot Of Health, Served At Your Doorstep

SapFresh is a stickler for quality — you really can’t be any other way if you’re a health food startup.

It has its own 3,500 sq ft infrastructure unit within a food-producing unit called Eat5, which is owned by its investor. The SapFresh unit includes an 800×1,000 sq ft greenhouse as well.

The startup grows its own greens such as wheatgrass in the nursery. There are some ingredients that SapFresh can’t grow due to environmental restrictions, so it procures them through organic sources.

After initial challenges in finding the right vendors, the company has now managed to set up a supply chain and is able to source good quality raw materials directly from its vendors. It sources other raw materials from farmers in Nelamangala, Karnataka.

“We import superfoods such as chlorella from the US and spirulina is procured from Pune in Maharashtra. We source moringa leaves, pulverised and powdered, from Dindigul in Tamil Nadu,” says Goel.

SapFresh employees start work very early in the morning to deliver a daily dose of healthy shots to its customers. The workers clean all the vegetables and herbs thoroughly before making the shots, which are then dispatched at 5am from the unit.

The company uses a fabricated machine called the PR100 for juicing. For smaller trials, it uses Omega Nutrimax juicers.

With a shelf life of 12 hours, SapFresh says it does not add any preservatives to its shots; the shelf life can be stretched to 24 hours if refrigerated.

Using Milkmen, Newspaper Boys To Deliver Shots

The company works on a hybrid model to ensure on-time and uninterrupted delivery of its health shots. It has leveraged simple and already available distribution channels — newspaper delivery boys and milkmen — besides putting its own fleet in place. The model helps the startup keep its production costs down.

Goel says, “We work on a hybrid model where we have our own delivery captains who deliver our shots to certain apartment complexes. We have also tied up with some newspaper and milk vendors where we follow two-way deliveries. Our product goes from our production units through our own team to these vendors, who then deliver it to the customers.”

This strategy of leveraging existing hyperlocal delivery networks of newspaper delivery boys and milkmen has helped SapFresh shave off 10X of its logistics cost.

Challenging Patanjali From Bengaluru

Goel further shares with Inc42 that SapFresh is not a juice company, but rather a superfoods product company which sells fresh shots. This, he believes, is SapFresh’s USP, which no one has tapped into yet.

“We believe every cell has life. We deliver fresh products that still is entirely fresh and living when its sold. So, this is really what makes a difference,” says Goel.

But there is India’s homegrown brand Patanjali, which sells packaged amla, aloe vera, giloy, etc juices at very reasonable prices. While Patanjali’s offerings may not quite be in the same league as SapFresh, it has the advantage of having become a household name across India with several of its own stores and partnerships with major ecommerce sites as well as retail outlets.

But Goel doesn’t view Patanjali as competition. He believes that Patanjali’s product segment and customer segment is not as same as theirs.

“Patanjali caters to everyone. The cost of their products is less but we sell superfoods. We have amla juice but we infuse it with superfoods, which helps raise the quality of our product by so much more.” He adds, however, that the fact that Patanjali’s products are accessible to and affordable to all is really “applaudable”.

Apart from Patanjali, there are several other players catering to the demand for superfoods, healthy food, and juices in Bengaluru.

One of the leading fitness, health, and wellness startups in the country — Cure.Fit — serves healthy drinks such as Antioxidant Kick which includes electrolyte-rich coconut water; Hydration Lift, which includes anti-inflammatory goji berries; Core Cleanse, which has anti-inflammatory fruits and veggies, through its Eat.Fit vertical. The juices, priced at INR 99, are available on the Cure.fit app and also on Zomato under Eat.Fit. They’re also sold offline at Cult centres.

Then there is Doctor Juice, which provides vitality shot juices made of ashwagandha, watermelon seeds, walnuts, poonaikali, etc, priced at INR 110; wheatgrass juice at INR 50; amla curry juice at INR 50, and more. These are available on its website as well as through other food delivery apps.

To diversify further and strengthen its operations, SapFresh recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Dr BS Rao, who is also the founder of Eat5, a startup producing toxin-free patient food.

The company has used most of its funds to build its facility at Eat5 and to procure the best-in-class machinery, which required to produce a high-quality product.

At present, SapFresh is also investing in its marketing activities to increase its reach. Available only in Bengaluru apartments as of now, the company is looking to tap corporates in the next stage of its expansion.

The Hyperlocal Delivery Market In India

Digitalisation has become an undeniable part of our everyday life. From ordering groceries, food, and apparel on apps to attempts at healthy living through online workout programmes, nutrition plans, digital fitness wearables and trackers — we literally run our lives through our smartphones these days.

The physical products, meanwhile, are delivered to our doorsteps by companies deploying tech-enabled offline-online models including smooth logistics and supply chains.

This demand for any time, anywhere deliveries of all kinds of products has given rise to the hyperlocal delivery market in India. According to a July 2017 report, the Indian hyperlocal market is expected to grow at a considerable CAGR, exceeding $335.82 Mn (INR 2,306 Cr) by 2020.

It is further expected that if the Indian GDP (currently at $2.5 Tn) continues to grow at 6-7% for the next 10 years, the Indian fitness industry would triple upto $2.5 Bn by the end of 2027.

According to ‘Beverages: Indian Scenario’ report, the health beverages market currently stands at $300 Mn and is the fastest growing market among beverages.

Looking ahead, SapFresh is planning to enable its customers to visit their farmer partners in Nelamangala and is also planning to organise scheduled factory visits for them.

This is a good marketing strategy in present times when people are becoming increasingly conscious and want to get closer to the sources of the food they consume.

As SapFresh looks at the fresh and growing opportunity in the health food and beverages industry, the company, with its unique hyperlocal delivery model and product, has stumbled upon a huge untapped potential market to address.

The post What’s The Secret Sauce Of SapFresh’s Health Shot Hyperlocal Delivery Business? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“If you’re in the luckiest one percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.” — Warren Buffett.

In a world where all and sundry is being disrupted by technology, why should humanitarianism be left behind? Here’s a startup that has developed a commission-free online fundraising and crowdfunding platform, which aims to promote humanitarian activities through crowdfunding.

Crowdera intends to build a “giving economy”, empowering individuals and organisations to drive crowdfunding projects that make an impact, do social innovation, follow their passion, or even fulfill personal needs.

Most crowdfunding platforms enable fundraisers to seek financial assistance by sharing verified stories of individuals or groups in need with their network — social media platforms, advertisements, word-of-mouth, etc — who can connect with the cause and help through donations.

By now, India is well-versed with the concept of crowdfunding, especially when it comes to seeking aid in the form of donations during medical emergencies and natural calamities, for social causes, art and film promotions, etc. Thanks to the Internet and instant payment technology, crowdfunding has helped many during their time of need.

Crowdsourcing is used not only by individuals and NGOs; even governments have realised that it is an effective way to raise funds in this digital age. The latest such instance is the Stand With Kerala crowdfunding initiative taken by the Kerala government for victims of the recent devastating floods in the state. The Kerala Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund is accepting donations made through Internet banking, RuPay cards, and Paytm. It is also accepting donations through bank transfers.

Crowdera too has launched a campaign called ‘Help Kerala Flood Victims’ in which the proceeds will directly go to the Kerala Flood Relief Account.

The startup is also working to make fundraising “a sustainable process”, so that, in a year or a two, fund-seekers can look at previous donors on the platform for further fundraises. The platform also assists donors or backers, especially businesses, to decide on which projects to support for their CSR activities.

All transactions on the platform are secure, with donations being made directly using banks’ online payment gateways or global digital payments platforms such as PayPal, WePay, Stripe.

Chet Jain, founder of California- and India-based fintech startup Crowdera, says the platform enables “ask-fors” (fundraisers) to launch successful crowdfunding campaigns where donations can be collected, for free.

Chet Jain, Founder, Crowdera

True Abundance Starts With Giving: Crowdera Founder Chet Jain

Jain says he had philanthropy on his mind when he started Crowdera. He wanted to develop a global online fundraising platform that supports campaigns related to social causes, health, education, environment, animal safety, disaster relief, theater, and other such innovations, without charging any commission.

Crowdera charges no fee to help campaigners in their overall fundraising journey — from providing technical and marketing assistance to finding the right network and backers.

He adds that all campaigns being launched on the platform are verified by an administrator. The campaigner who is leading the crowdfunding campaign is asked to submit his/her basic details and documents supporting the cause. Campaigns seeking donations for medical emergencies are usually approved within 5-10 hours, Jain claims.

Crowdera’s services for businesses, however, are chargeable. The startup provides customised campaigns for its enterprise clients, enabling them carry out their corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects by connecting them with relevant fundraising campaigns on its platform.

Jain says the startup has more than 25 business clients using the paid subscription at present. The customised packages can cost as low as $60-70 (INR 4185-4882) and go up to $2.4K (INR 167K) for an annual subscription.

“We run multiple discount solutions for campaigners who sign up for our services through paid subscriptions. For instance, we are aligned with nine of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If any non-profits leading a fundraising campaign on our portal falls under one of the categories, we offer substantial discounts. It (the discounts) also depend on the size of the non-profit. We are compliant with the US, the UK, Canada, India, and Silicon Valley charitable laws,” Jain says.

Support From 60 Countries For Humanitarian Calls On Crowdera

Since its inception in 2014, Crowdera’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution has helped more than 2,500 crowdfunding campaigns, claims Jain. He adds that the crowdfunding platform is popular in India, the US, the UK, Canada, Guatemala, Singapore, among other 60 countries.

Some time ago, storyteller, writer, and humanitarian Laura Simms raised $4.2K on gocrowdera to help a group of adolescent girls in Haiti, who were recuperating from the devastating earthquake. Simms required funds to organise a girls meetup in the Haiti camp to impart awareness on the power of supporting each other by writing poetry and dancing. In her campaign note, she talked about spreading awareness on the risk of diseases and sexual abuse.

The campaign that has raised the highest funds so far on the Crowdera platform was launched by Hyderabad-based anti-sex trafficking NGO Prajwala. Its founder — social activist Sunitha Krishnan — raised close to $226K to build a rehabilitation centre for victims of sex trafficking.

Crowdera also enables artists and filmmakers to use its platform to raise funds for their projects. Mumbai-based actor and director Rajat Kapoor is crowdfunding for RK/R KAY — a crowd-produced feature film. He has so far raised $48.6K on Crowdera.

In another film-making campaign, former Radio Mirchi executive vice-president and radio consultant Riya Mukherjee raised about $27K on Crowdera to produce a short film — The Disguise, which is based on cultural intolerance and racism.

The crowdfunding platform has already got eminent personalities such as social worker Padmashri Dr Suneetha Krishnan for Prajwala, Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF) founder Divyanshu Ganatra, and several others raising funds for their causes and ventures.

Crowdfunding Is Just Picking Up In India

According to a 2018 report by market research portal Statista, the current transaction value in the crowdfunding segment in India amounts to $8 Mn in 2018 and is expected to touch $21.7 Mn by 2022. The study further states that average crowdfunding per campaign amounts to $190 in 2018.

Though these may seem like small numbers, the space is growing with a number of crowdfunding platforms starting up in India. There’s the Mumbai-based Wishberry, which recently raised $1.4 Mn in a Series A round of funding from Reliance Entertainment and 3one4 Capital. The startup plans to utilise the funds to launch a crowdfunded film studio for low-budget cinema, and to expand its team, especially in the film production and distribution space.

Another crowdfunding startup, ImpactGuru, raised $2 Mn (INR 13 Cr) in a Series A round of funding co-led by Apollo Hospitals Group and Venture Catalysts. The startup plans to use the funds to scale crowdfunding in India by ramping up sales and marketing. It also wants to further develop its technology platform, which makes use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, and vernacular language support. Similarly, there are reward-based crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Meanwhile, Crowdera is not in a hurry to make money in this nascent space. Right now, the priority is to make people aware of crowdfunding and to get them to trust the platform. “We just started earning revenue three months ago. We are slowly evolving. Once we’ve scaled, it’d be all about pumping money into marketing. I see huge opportunity in terms of scaling in size and revenue,” says Jain.

In June 2018, Crowdera raised a pre-Series A funding from Anil Advani, a Silicon Valley-based startup attorney; Pramod Jain, Amrendra Reddy, and Manish Satnaliwala, angel investors from Singapore; and Anand Daga, SME IPO specialist from central India. Investors from San Francisco Bay Area also participated in the funding.

Jain says the startup is currently looking to raise Series A funding as it plans to expand to Singapore. “We’ll have a presence in Singapore in a month or a two. We already have some companies signed up with us to leverage their CSR campaigns through our platform. We’ll be helping them amplify their CSR impact using our crowdfunding model,” says Jain.

The Future: Crowdera To Integrate Blockchain Into Its Platform

Crowdera is working on introducing a blockchain-based utility only token on the platform. Jain says he is currently holding talks with US-based developers to formulate a framework on how the utility only token will work on the crowdfunding platform.

“We will be introducing it (blockchain) soon…probably in the Singapore market first as Indian blockchain operations is still shaping up. In Singapore, blockchain will be operation in a month or two. We will tie up with a few campaign managers to do the beta testing of this initiative,” says Jain.

He adds that the startup is also looking to enter into machine learning to understand donor and fundraiser behaviour.

Jain’s greatest joy is that Crowdera is connecting humanitarians across the world and constantly taking crowdfunding to many in their time of need.

“The fastest fundraise (on Crowdera) was when a crowdfunding campaign for a three-year-old girl fighting with cancer in Pune raised $257K (INR 18 Lakh) in just 48 hours,” says Jain, smiling.

Crowdera is well on its way to facilitating, if not creating, a ‘giving economy’ by connecting do-gooders and those who need help on its platform. And it’s sure to find many takers, for there is nothing quite like the joy of giving, is there?

The post Crowdera: This Crowdfunding Platform Is Creating A ‘Giving Economy’ By Connecting Do-Gooders With Those In Need appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In the last couple of years, encouraged by Bitcoin’s soaring popularity in the Indian market, a number of cryptocurrency exchanges have come up with many more queued up to be launched. However, very few cryptocurrency startups have actually managed to raise funding. Homegrown Mumbai-based Koinex is one of the few that has. It is also a living example of VCs’ growing fondness for investments in Indian cryptocurrency and blockchain startups.

Founded by Rakesh Yadav, Rahul Raj, and Aditya Naik in August 2017, Koinex, in a very short span — just five months from its launch — successfully closed a pre-Series A round of funding led by Dirk van Quaquebeke, Managing Partner of Beenext, a well-known Singapore-based early-stage venture capital (VC) firm, and Daniel Morehead, founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, the world’s largest blockchain-focused VC firm.

To assuage the effect of the RBI circular — which banned banks and payments companies from extending any kind of services to cryptocurrency exchanges — for its users, Koinex came up with an innovative collateralised peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto transactional solution called Loop. The platform enables users to carry out crypto investments and enables crypto-INR trading notwithstanding the RBI circular.  

But the circular has had a far-reaching impact on the cryptocurrency market of India. Inc42 speaks to Koinex founder and CEO Rahul Raj to find out just how deep and wide the impact has been. We also speak to him about the company’s journey in the last one year — the year which saw Bitcoin prices surge to above $19,000 and then stabilise at $ 6,500  — and seek to understand the Loop advantage.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Inc42: The last one year has been a roller coaster ride for the cryptocurrency segment across the world. How has the year been for Koinex? To what agents and factors do you attribute your phenomenal success?

Rahul Raj: It has been an incredible 12 months for us as we end the year with a cumulative transaction volume of over $7.1 Bn (INR 50K Cr). Being one of the first digital assets exchange in India, we quickly gained the trust of Indian investors with our superior product offering and user-centric approach. This was reflected in our January market stats as we received more than 35K sign-ups and crossed $246 Mn (INR 1,722 Cr) in trade volume within 24 hours.

We were the first exchange globally to launch a Ripple (XRP)-based trade market and, in India, we were the first exchange to introduce instant deposits and withdrawals. We gained a significant market share and built a strong reputation as a trusted exchange and succeeded in securing funding from Pantera and Beenext as well as accomplished angel investors.

One of the main reasons why Koinex grew to become the most trusted digital assets exchange in a short span of time is our ‘consumer-centricity’. Product development never stops at Koinex; we are constantly looking at ways to better the user experience by enhancing the efficiency of the platform, improving the robust security offering, and providing ‘value-added features’ on our platform to help in easier and smarter trading. The other reason is that we’ve been very agile in adapting to the market conditions.

Inc42: How did the RBI circular affect Koinex in terms of revenue, users, etc?

Rahul Raj: The RBI directive was a knee-jerk reaction from the government, which adversely impacted the entire industry and also the players in the space. The main concern for the Indian investors then was losing value of their digital assets and so we launched Loop, a collateralised P2P trading platform that allows crypto/INR trading. Loop is a trustful token transaction network that takes trading in digital assets to a more decentralised setup.

Inc42: What’s the scope of the P2P crypto transaction network in India. Tell us more about Loop and how has users’ response has been so far.

Rahul Raj: Loop is India’s first collateralised peer-to-peer trading platform that enables crypto/INR transactions at zero network and zero trade fees. We have equipped Loop with fundamentally critical features such as KYC compliance, multiple payment options, technology-enabled dispute settlement, and automated action calls via Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Buyers and sellers on Loop can create their own listings (like a marketplace) or explore existing listings to choose their best trades. Other key aspects of Loop include a user rating mechanism, cancellation option for sellers, listing modification, dynamic pricing, cleansing of stale listings, and a host of other features to ensure only genuine and legitimate trading on the platform.

We are also building sophisticated algorithms to enhance the trust factor and discourage fraudulent trading activities. This platform is also fully integrated with the Koinex exchange to create a complete ecosystem where one account can be used to access crypto/crypto corridors on Koinex and crypto/INR trade on Loop, thus completing the trading cycle for users.

Zero trade fees and our user-focused approach has helped Loop become the most trusted platform among users for peer-to-peer trading. The other key reason for Loop’s success is our conscious effort to help active and genuine traders gain better traction on their trades and weed out the rest, which reduces the scope of disputes and builds a healthy and trusted trading platform. While it’s still early days, Loop has been very well received by the Indian trading community and we are seeing increasing traction every day.

Inc42: As the crypto market is currently dull, does Koinex have any plans to launch other blockchain-based solutions? Please elaborate.

Rahul Raj: We recently launched Loop and we’re also exploring many other blockchain use cases for various industries and sectors. We are open to collaborating with the government or industry players/category leaders to forge alliances and co-develop sophisticated solutions.

Since we successfully built an exchange from scratch, we already have a strong understanding about the financial sector and the various blockchains which are integrated in it, but that doesn’t limit us from exploring other sectors such as healthcare, education, governance, real estate, digital media, and so on.

We have a strong team of more than 60 members who specialise in this revolutionary technology. We aim to make India a hotbed for blockchain technology and Koinex was our first step towards this goal. We take pride that Koinex is built in India, built for India.

The post After Launching Loop, Koinex Explores Other Blockchain Solutions appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Do you know what your CIBIL score is? A CIBIL score, a three-digit number ranging from 300-900, is based on your credit history, which is contained in your credit information report (CIR). The CIR, generated by a credit bureau, summarises the payment history of the loans and credit cards borrowed by you from all banks and financial institutions. The closer your score is to 900 (anything above 700 is a good score), the stronger your credit profile and the higher your chances of getting a loan or credit card.

Now, most banks and financial institutions rely on the CIBIL score — it is the first screening criterion — to decide on borrowers’ creditworthiness, Mumbai-based fintech startup CASHe has come up with its own, patented credit scoring system to provide short-term, unsecured loans to borrowers.

“We have devised an alternative scoring system called ‘social loan quotient’ (SLQ), which is completely different from the current banking credit scoring system,” says V Raman Kumar, the founder of the mobile-based credit lending startup.

The SLQ is independent of any bureau reports and generates its own scores based on the customer’s social behaviour data. CASHe’s SLQ rating system is fused with deep learning and artificial intelligence-based technologies that give insights into a borrower’s credit behaviour. It indicates his/her willingness and ability to pay his financial obligations.

“CASHe calculates a customer’s credit score from a number of data points obtained from the borrower’s smartphone — like his mobile and social media footprint, education, remuneration, career, and also financial history. Our SLQ scores are generated in real time to check whether or not he qualifies for a loan from CASHe,” says Kumar.

He maintains that the process used by CASHe requires permissions to access data from the borrower’s smartphone, similar to how social media platforms and messaging apps access data. Kumar explains that for credit scoring purpose, the CASHe app needs permission to look at the borrower’s contacts and SMSes to check whether or not the borrower is getting his/her salary on time. Besides this, copies of the borrower’s PAN card, Aadhaar card, and bank account details are also required.

“I am giving a loan which is unsecured, I am not taking any securities from the borrower. So, I need to know everything about you for me to come to an understanding that, yes, you’re worthwhile for me to lend to,” Kumar says.

The founder claims that the SLQ is based on a proprietary AI-based algorithm developed by CASHe, and that the startup has also patented it as intellectual property.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has licensed four credit bureaus to provide information related to the credit history of an individual. Banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFC) rely on credit information reports from these bureaus before approving loans and credit cards. The most popular credit information company operating in India is TransUnion CIBIL Ltd. The other credit bureaus are Equifax, Experian, and Highmark.

The founder adds that CASHe, as a licensed NBFC, is supposed to take up a borrower’s CIBIL score as well as his/her ‘good’ or ‘bad’ image at CIBIL, the credit bureau which collates credit information reports.

But what if a person doesn’t have a good CIBIL score, Inc42asks? “It doesn’t matter. Even if you have a CIBIL score of 900 (the highest in the range), but if you don’t qualify in my (SLQ) rating, you’ll not get a loan,” says Kumar.

                                  CASHe Chairman & Founder, V Raman Kumar

So, How Does One Qualify For Loans From CASHe?

Kumar maintains that CASHe’s easy-to-use mobile application frees the loan application process from tedious paperwork. He claims the startup can provide loans within just 10 minutes of submission of all required documents.

So, who can apply for a loan to CASHe? Salaried people who are earning at least $214 (INR 15K) per month are eligible to get loans worth upto 75% of their monthly salary from CASHe. Of this, 25% is allocated for EMIs. The borrower has the option to repay a loan in 15, 30, 90, or 180 days.

“If one has already taken loans two-three times and is a customer with a good credit rating, we can increase the loan amount to 100% of his/her monthly salary,” says Kumar. He adds that plans are afoot to lower the interest rate basis of borrowers’ SLQ ratings. “If you have a higher score, you’d be eligible for a higher amount with a lower interest rate, but if you have a lower score, you’d be eligible for lower amount with a higher interest rate,” he explains.

Currently, the startup charges a monthly interest of 3% for 15- and 30-day loans, 2.5% for 90-day loans, and 1.9-2% for 180-day loans. Kumar says CASHe also plans to introduce a 365-day EMI soon.

“Every month, CASHe provides more than $4.9-5.6 Mn (INR 35-40 Cr) worth loans to salaried professionals,” says Kumar.

Since the launch of the platform in April 2017, CAHSEe claims to have provided about $65.5 Mn (INR 460 Cr) in loan disbursal, with more than 2 Mn app downloads and an over 180K customer base. Of the total customer base, loans have been disbursed to over 70k customers, Kumar says. The startup plans to achieve $113 (INR 800 Cr) loan disbursal by the end of this fiscal.

The founder, however, declined to comment on the revenues being raked in by CASHe.

Apart from leveraging digital marketing to attract customers to the platform, CASHe also gathers leads from various financial institutions that provide loans based on the traditional CIBIL score. “They don’t give loans to people who have less credit score. They in turn, refer them to us, and we pay for the referrals,” says Kumar.

To Inc42’s query on how the startup collects loans back from the borrower, Kumar says, “If we properly assess the profile of the borrower, the loans are paid back in time. There are multiple ways in which money can be repaid to us — UPI, IMPS, and NEFT transfers. In addition to that, we use eNACH. Here, we can make a mandate to the customer that on the due date, the money can be pulled automatically from his/her bank account.”

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)’s eNACH initiative is one of the newest methods of electronic payment. User needs to fill-up the NACH form to the concerned authority to debit the said amount from his bank every fixed day of the month.

Lending: Market Size & Competition

Kumar says that a lot of people in the 23-34 age group — the Millennials — don’t want to commit to long-term loans. They also don’t want to get into any long-term commitments involving high-value amounts. These people comprise blue-collared workers, self-employed people, as well as salaried professionals.

“India has a population of more than 1.3 Bn and a third of this population is urban. The median age of people in India working and generating income is around 27 years. These people are Millennials who are either pre-credit or no-credit. We want to bring them into the credit rating system and give them a rating,” says Kumar.

This allows us to build credit scores even for individuals with little or no formal credit information but who may actually be good candidates to disburse credit.

CASHe has a lot of competition though. Many fintech startups and NBFCs promise instant credit decisions these days, with little or no paperwork, transparency in their offerings, and great customer service.

There are digital lending platforms such as PaySense, a Mumbai-based startup that is targeting to be a risk assessment provider for 16 Mn Indian households currently underserved by lenders. Similarly, Bengaluru-based LoanTap and Pune-based EarlySalary have stepped in to provide instant small-value loans, attractive repayment schemes, and quick disbursals.

“Alternative lending is the second most-funded and one of the fastest growing segments in the Indian Fintech space,” according to the Fintech Trends Report — India 2017 by PWC. Alternative lending refers to digital lending platforms catering to different borrowing needs, including consumer, MSMEs, student loans, and mortgages. More than 225 alternative lending companies had been founded in India as of 2017.

Meanwhile, the share of banks in the lending market has fallen with NBFCs registering a remarkable growth of 28% compared to the previous year. According to a BCG report, between 2014 and 2017, the share of NBFCs in total loans was estimated to have increased from 21% to 44%, whereas for public sector banks, it fell from 49% to 28%.

According to Inc42 Datalabs, fintech startups attracted the highest number of funding deals in H1 2017. Total investment made in this segment during the period stood at $2 Bn.

Recognising the potential of alternative lending, startups have started designing their value proposition to cater to these segments, providing loans and working capital based on innovative processes for risk assessment and disbursement.

However, CASHe claims that its USP is its proprietary SLQ rating system. “Other players in the market are offering loans but they don’t have an alternative credit scoring system. They rely on credit bureaus scoring to decide on borrowers creditworthiness ” Kumar claims.

In October last year, CASHe raised about $3.07 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in debt funding from IFMR Capital in its NBFC company, Bhanix Finance and Investment. Prior to that, the startup raised about $3.8 Mn (INR 25 Cr) Series A funding from an investor group led by Mathew Cyriac, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone Group.

The startup doesn’t want to fall behind in adopting latest technologies like blockchain. Kumar says CASHe is working on a proof-of-concept (PoC) project where blockchain-based smart contracts can be introduced into its platform. It is also exploring a use case for the hightech ledger technology in money transfers.

While CASHe has already been bringing Millennials under the ambit of credit with its SLQ, touted as India’s first alternate credit scoring system, it’s efforts at incorporating blockchain are in the right direction and are likely to help the company make a mark in the cutting-edge and competitive fintech sector.

The post What CIBIL Score? CASHe Uses Its Own Credit Rating System To Extend Loans To Millennials appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The most prized possession for a lot of us growing up has been that decorated little journal where we noted down our fondest memories, our deepest secrets, and all those momentous occasions in life — the last day at school, the first trip to the beach, the first pet, and others.

Slowly, before we even realised, the diary was replaced by different kinds of social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat all have given us different ways of showcasing our vacations, but a social platform only for travel is still niche. This is where Mumbai-based startup, TraveLibro, the travel social network for influential bloggers and power travellers, is looking to fill the gap.

Instead of elbowing its way into the already overcrowded travel bookings space, TraveLibro founders Monish Shah and Malhar Gala decided to come up with a unique digital storytelling platform with a focus on just travel — which is what gives TraveLibro the sweet spot that it is relishing among travellers, influencers, and the ilk.

L: Monish Shah; R: Malhar Gala, Founders, TraveLibro

Since its inception in 2014, TraveLibro has grown to become a digital haven for travellers to record their memories. It is the classic amalgamation of Instagram and traditional travel blogs and gives travellers the option to encapsulate their trip in a digital timeline with the help of photos, videos, descriptions, and locations, for other travellers to follow.

Idea To Reality: The Inception Of TraveLibro

The idea of TraveLibro came to Shah and Gala when they were on a holiday in the UK. They had been to London several times before but were struggling to recall some of the places they had visited on their previous trips.

“This gave birth to the idea of an app and a portal that would allow you to capture your entire travel experience together on a shared time to relive your entire trip at any moment through your life,’’ says Shah.

As with any new idea/product, TraveLibro also had its fair share of rehashing and revamping. The startup initially launched a platform that offered the option of sharing past travel memories through itineraries, along with a travel planner, metasearch, a connect with agents feature, and destination information.

“But being a small team it was difficult to scale all of the above. Besides, the audience visiting TraveLibro had an overdose of information and were not being able to relate our main offering. This gave rise to TraveLibro 2.0,’’ says Shah.

Available on iOS, Android, and desktop, TraveLibro enables users to build a global social network where they can capture their travel experiences in live ‘On-The-Go’ stories via photos, videos, reviews, and thoughts, chronologically. It also enables them to publish and share their journeys as a video and photo log. Users can rate and review their experiences of the places they visit within a timeline of the events captured.

The memories can be put up on a shared timeline with family, friends, and groups travelling together, so people don’t need to individually capture and share moments via emails, stories on other platforms or chats. People travelling together can document things together, thereby saving time and effort. TraveLibro also enables users to share their experiences on multiple social platforms to inspire other travellers to plan their holidays based on others’ experiences and reviews.

TraveLibro went from 15,000 users in April, 2018 to 60,000 by August, today there are detailed journeys of 10,000 travellers on the platform. ‘’About 30% of the top 100 global influencers use TraveLibro,’’ says Shah.

A Single, Unified Destination For Globetrotters

On the platform 97% of the influencers are from outside India, with 33% being from the US

30% from Europe and 18% from India. Some of the influencers on the platform are Jack Morris of Do You Travel, Lauren Bullen of Gypsea Lust  and Jennifer Tuffen of Izkiz

“One of the issues we face as travel bloggers is being able to convey all our media (photos and video clips) to our followers in an organised way. We love TraveLibro because it enables us to put them all into one ‘Journey’ and post them as a ‘Card’,” says Collette from, roamaroo, a couple’s travel blog.

Digital Travel In India

Travel as a segment in India is booming. India is the most digitally-advanced nation where travel is concerned in terms of using digital tools for planning and booking a journey, according to a recent report. Hotel bookings, especially are a major area where people spend time online when planning a holiday. Players like Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra have found immense success and serve as the mecca for bookings.

Travel apps, on the other hand like TraveLibro still need catching up from Indian players, at the moment Polarsteps, and Journi, which are travel-based apps based out of the EU are what TraveLibro considers as competition. Though the market is still niche in India with few entrants in the space, TraveLibro is well aware of the sky-rocketing potential of the sector and is not slow to innovate to keep its first-mover advantage ahead in the game.

TraveLibro: Making Headway In Its Journey One Step At A Time

One of the key growth-hacking techniques the platform has deployed has been working with top influencers in the travel space and getting them to influence their audiences on other social networks about TraveLibro.

TraveLibro is heavily dominated by Millennials’ love for social media. The average age groups on the platform are 18-24 and 25-33, with women making up a larger chunk of the user-base at  57% and men following in close at 43%.  

At present, one of the key focus areas for TraveLibro is ensuring the data privacy and security of its users. The company has ensured GDPR compliance for the same.

“We are using some of the best security protocols to ensure that our systems are not hacked. Each user has the option of selecting their privacy settings within the app too,” emphasises Gala. 

The platform, though English-oriented, has no barriers for users of other languages. “A lot of users have been recording their journeys in their local languages. We have over 250 journeys in Italian and German,” says Shah.

With plans to add direct messaging, a travel book feature, that allows one can to print a coffee table book on one’s journeys, blogs and vlog-sharing feature on the platform, TraveLibro is all set to further up its game to become a one-stop destination for discovery and sharing of travel-related inspirational stories.

A New Meaning Of Travel And A Digital Way To Document It

The trend of documenting travel on digital platforms started with solo travellers, bloggers, and digital nomads looking at travel as more than just a vacation — travel became therapy, a religion, and a part of one’s identity. It was this emerging meaning of travel for the traveller that found its representation on social media platforms.

Whether it was for a like or a reaction or simply to shout from the rooftops — the new way being ‘checking in’ and ‘tagging’ places and people on social media platforms — where one was, documenting travel became important. While some stories were a mere repository of memories, other started serving as the base on which would-be travellers started planning their future holidays.

Videos and photos are a medium that will continue to grow; this is testimony to the fact that Gen Z spends the maximum number of hours on social media, with Instagram being the favourite destination. And, the maximum number of ‘stories’ are about travel.

Considering travel has become almost as essential for the soul as food is for the body, social media platforms that enable travellers to share and store their memories for posterity online are only set to grow. And TraveLibro seems to have recognised this need early on and made a headstart in the journey.

The post TraveLibro: Here’s A Travel Social Network That Helps Travellers Discover, Capture, And Inspire Wanderlust appeared first on Inc42 Media.

If you’re a fan of Marvel’s Iron Man, you’re sure to have been impressed (like me) by how Robert Downey Jr in his act as Tony Stark uses “mixed reality” to find clues of villains plotting to destroy the earth, fashionably swiping, pinching, pushing and pulling things on a 3D holographic computer interface.

Well, sorry to disappoint all you Marvel fans and tech geeks out there, but the way Marvel projects technologies such as mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality in its sci-fi movies is way overhyped — for the moment at least.

While we may be able to interact with technology the way Stark does someday in future, the reality is that mixed reality as a technology is just starting to take off.

But what is mixed reality? Mixed reality or MR combines elements of augmented reality, which adds digital elements to the real world, and virtual reality, a virtually immersive experience that shuts out the physical world. In an increasingly technology-anchored world, MR, AR, and VR are changing the way we communicate, connect with people, work, play, and interact with the digital world, by making us feel that we’re right in the middle of the virtual or augmented reality.

In the last few years, VR has gone mainstream with companies offering VR-enabled headsets such as  HTC Vive ($970), Oculus Rift ($599), Samsung Gear VR ($129), and Sony’s PlayStation VR ($582). AR, however, is still on the cusp of breaking out and changing how real-world and digital objects interact. Microsoft, Google and others have been working to bring AR to consumers in the form of eyeglasses.

“You may hear of these products coming out of Silicon Valley, US, Europe, China, but you don’t hear stories of such AR products coming from India,” says Kshitij Marwah, the founder of the Delhi-based deeptech startup Tesseract.

“If you look at the field of augmented reality, most companies that exist in India create content and deploy it in a specific set of AR/VR hardware, which costs over $2,000,” he adds.

In July, Tesseract introduced what is being touted as the first made-in-India AR headset — Holoboard, and works with smartphones. Users of AR headsets can see digital and virtual images in the real world around them.

Marwah believes that it is important to democratise the mixed reality space by bringing down the price point and making it accessible to consumers. “It’s such a fast-moving space that you don’t know what new technology may exist in a few months. India is a big market, but the startups here are focussed only on content,” he says.

This is why Tesseract’s Holoboard is priced at an affordable $149 (INR 10.8K), $249 (INR 18K), and $349 (INR 25K) for the Basic, Premium, and Enterprise editions, respectively. Compare this with Microsoft’s Hololens comes at a steep $3,000 while the Google Glass Enterprise Edition is priced at $1,892.

Tesseract Team (L-R): Abdul Saboor, Lead Architect – Hardware; Devesh Jain, Chief Product Architect; Kshitij Marwah, Founder-CEO; Gaurav Bansal, Lead Architect – VR

Democratising Mixed Reality: Tesseract’s Quark, Methane, & Holoboard

Marwah was studying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US when the idea of Tesseract came to him. It was a result of his work in AR and VR as part of university’s Media Lab, which counts innovations such as Amazon Kindle, Lego Mindstorm, one laptop per child (OLPC), etc. Marwah was running the MIT Media Lab India programme, aimed at introducing self-organised design-led innovation in the country’s grassroots.

In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. In Marvel Comics, the Tesseract (also called the Cube) is a crystalline cube-shaped containment vessel for the Space Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones that predate the universe and possess unlimited energy.

Here’s a scene of The Avengers arguing in front of the Tesseract:

“The MR space provides a lot of opportunities in India, but there are a lot of entry barriers. So the question arises, how do you democratise MR-based content creation and consumption to ensure access to the masses? That’s the vision we started with at first,” says Marwah.

Since its inception in 2015, Tesseract has launched three hardware and two software products in the MR, AR, and VR sectors — Methane, Holoboard, and Quark. The founder claims to have seven patents: one US, three international (130 countries), and three India patents.

“Everything we do works around smartphones so as to democratise mixed reality,” says Marwah.

Tesseract’s Business Model: Consumer & Enterprise

So how does a startup like Tesseract keep costs down and achieve the right product-market fit while launching MR products in India? “All you need to figure out is who wants your product and at what price point will you be selling it. In a country like ours, people rarely use such products. Even after pulling off the product technologically, you don’t know whether it will work in the market or not,” says Marwah.

Tesseract’s offers its hardware solution in two different domains — AR and VR. On the AR side, the company is focussed more on “content consumption” while in VR, it concentrates on “content capture”. Tesseract’s product are available for both the consumer and enterprise segments. Here’s how:

• Consumer: In the consumer market, Tesseract’s Holoboard has been tested for use in five domains. In games, they enable collaboration with peers a lot better than VR while remaining within real-world surroundings; in entertainment, they have integrated YouTube and also enable streaming of 3D movies; in communication, they offer a handsfree video-calling facility; and in education, they enhance teacher-student learning in the classroom.
• Enterprise: Tesseract’s enterprise products are focussed on four verticals — marketing (showcase and collaborate in events and meetings), corporate training, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Why Choose AR Over VR?

According to Marwah, AR has three definite advantages over VR. One, it doesn’t isolate you unlike VR, which shuts out the physical world; two, it has no side effects — VR can give users motion sickness because of which they can’t wear VR headsets for long periods of time; and three, the applications of AR are much broader than VR, and range from manufacturing to healthcare, logistics to education.

“AR can improve productivity by 30-40% in various sectors. For instance, in healthcare, surgical error rates are reduced to 10 and to even 0% in certain cases,” Marwah says.

Virtual reality, on the other hand, provides a complete 360-degree immersive view of the world around you. You can capture VR content and use it in VR headsets, which is the first point of contact. The other is that you can share it in social media and people can explore everything around you as well.

“But, people generally miss the third: using VR content, you can also create 2D content, which is impossible using a normal smartphones or SLR cameras. That is a part we felt was missing,” Marwah says.

All startups face challenges in their journeys. And because of the advanced technology domain it works in, the challenges were all that much more for Tesseract. Marwah says the startup faced quite a few problems, starting with finding the key people to support the innovation, as many aren’t aware of the technology.

Other challenges were finding partners for manufacturing and building relationships with manufacturers and investors. Starters are not in a position to place big orders to manufacturers while developing a prototype. But low-volume manufacturing is difficult as very few companies work on such orders. Tesseract has tie-ups with Tier 3 and Tier 4 manufacturing companies.

Marwah also faced a tough time explaining to manufacturers and investors what and why they were developing. “Many companies come and say to us, ‘we can’t do this, we don’t have the right processes to make,’ but you have to still work with them,” says Marwah.

One of the biggest learnings Tesseract had in the post-prototype phase was that for the kind of products it produces, one has to capture a big market. “This learning came after we faced a bottleneck selling Methane, as the market was limited,” he add.

So What’s Tesseract’s Revenue Strategy

It has just been two months since Tesseract launched Holoboard and Quark. Within a quarter, the startup plans to expand geographically, based on its sales, funding strategies, etc.

Tesseract, which has remained largely bootstrapped, is currently looking for investors who understand the mixed reality space and who also understand deeptech. It plans to raise anywhere between $3-5 Mn, Marwah says.

Revealing the sales Tesseract has registered for Methane, Holoboard, and Quark, Marwah maintains that the startup has generated revenue of about $200K from Methane; 2,000 Holoboard headsets are under shipment and he expects to make a couple of crores in INR out of them. The company will rake in revenues of about $207K (INR 1.5 Cr) from 1,000 Quark cameras.

“Our lifetime revenue would be about $300-400K. For FY 2018-19, we have kept a target to cross $2Mn,” says Marwah.

India is at the nascent stage when it comes to adoption of AR and VR technologies. January 2018 report of GrowthEnabler estimates Indian AR/VR market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 76% over the next five years, and 60% of 170 startups in this field to be set up in the past two years.

The report further estimates that there are close to 1,500 startups in the AR/VR segment worldwide, with the US accounting for nearly 45%, followed by the UK, Israel and Canada. The AR segment received $2.5 Bn in funding, and VR $2.7 Bn from 2013 to 2017 globally. Whereas, in India, of the 100 AR startups, only 5% is estimated to have received any form of capital investment of $1-1.5 Mn, report says.

The post How Deeptech Startup Tesseract Is Democratising Mixed Reality appeared first on Inc42 Media.

You can’t be too rich or too thin. And you can’t ever travel enough. There are some of us who live life in tally marks from one vacation to the next. The moment a holiday is over, the planning and countdown for the next one begins.

But, when the time comes to move beyond daydreaming and plan the nitty-gritty of an upcoming holiday, it often starts seeming like a mundane and cumbersome task looming over one’s head. This is exactly where Mumbai based startup — Taxidio — steps in.

The startup, founded by Vishal Kejariwal and Abhas Desai in 2015, is a global do-it-yourself (DIY) trip planner that is a one-point-stop for all travel-related needs — from destination and hotel booking to local sightseeing, itinerary creation, and travel guides.

Taxidio, with an online presence on a website and app for iOS and Android users, believes that every individual has different travel needs. Accordingly, the UI features a tag for every possible travel-related element, based on which the platform generates a unique recommendation of destinations and customised itineraries for each user. Travellers also have the flexibility to modify their inputs at every step making it a truly DIY experience.

“At Taxidio, we believe that personalisation is the key to travel planning along with the necessity to encompass all the key aspects of planning and booking under the same roof. Taxidio was born out of the sheer realisation that trip planning cannot be looked at with a one-size-fits-all approach” says Kejariwal.

Taxidio Founders: L; Abhas Desai, R; Vishal Kejariwal

The Sky’s The Limit For Online Travel Aggregators (OTAs)

According to a Google-BCG report, the online travel market in India is set to hit the $45 Bn mark by 2020. Online travel aggregators (OTAs) are in plenty, with giants such as MakeMyTrip offering hotel and travel bookings along with options to plan holidays; Yatra(.com), which now provides themed experiences through Yatra Journeys; and Cleartrip, which offers Local Experiences. There are also other niche players like TraveLibro, which offers a digital storytelling experience to travellers and Rizort, a luxury vacation marketplace, among others.

While all of the above-mentioned platforms specialise in their own niches, the sweet spot that Taxidio has settled on is offering flexible, tailor-made travel plans suited to each individual’s need, along with taking care of all other requirements related to travel. The platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to customise options and has partnered with Booking.com, GetyourGuide, and Viator, etc to become the go-to platform for travellers.

Key Features Of The Taxidio Platform

So, how does Taxidio work? To begin with, users are asked for a few primary details such as the number of days they want to travel, temperature preferences, budget, etc. After this, they are urged to select their interests from the secondary list of options such as history, beaches, food, shopping, architecture, etc. The system then reverse engineers this data to recommend the right destination based on a traveller’s preferences.

Once the platform suggests countries and cities based on the above data, personalised itineraries are drawn up. The itineraries include a list of attractions that are filtered to support the user’s interests. Each attraction is plotted on a map on a “straight-line basis” so that the user knows the distance between each attraction point. And the itinerary provides a detailed description of the place, opening and closing time, entry fee charges, nearest public transport, etc. The itineraries are not just personalised, they’re also flexible, and travellers can change their inputs at any step for a truly DIY itinerary.

The next step is hotel recommendations and bookings. Accommodations are recommended not on the basis of the desired budget alone, but taking into account the distance from each activity that’s part of the itinerary. The idea is to reduce the time and money spent on internal commutes.

Besides, if a particular attraction that’s part of the itinerary requires a ticket, the traveller can book it on the platform itself. This way, he/she needn’t stand in long queues or make the effort of buying a ticket or pass online. Each attraction comes with a detailed description, which includes the history of the place, its opening and closing timings, the nearest public transport, etc.

Taxidio also offers its users a massive database of proprietary travel guides for many cities across the globe. The travel guide is like a complete handbook of a particular city that is aimed at giving travellers all the information they need about that destination. A travel guide typically focuses on a single city and provides detailed information on more than 40 parameters such as history, culture, food, visa requirements, transport facilities, hospitals, etc. The platform hosts curated content for over 500 cities across 90 countries.

Taxidio says it has a mix of both national and international users, with the majority being from outside India; a large part of its user-base is young and in the age group 25-35.

Taxidio Leveraging The Untouched Spots

In a domain where competition is fierce and big players are trying to seal opportunities for new entrants, Taxidio has identified some as-yet untouched spots and is banking on this to drive its growth.

Beyond individual travel needs and B2C, Taxidio offers B2B solutions targeted at automating concierge services at hotels. Leveraging its exhaustive database, the platform enables hotel concierges to assist their guests better by offering them services for itinerary planning and booking of attraction tickets.

Taxidio was also the only Indian startup and the only Asian startup to attend the Maderia Startup Retreat in Portugal. This helped the platform gain access to a global audience.

Companies everywhere are leveraging emerging technologies to improve the experience they dish out to their customers, making UI/UX smoother, quicker, and easier than ever before. To stay ahead in the tech race, Taxidio, too, is constantly innovating and seeking better solutions to its existing technology stack.

“Taxidio is looking for the right opportunity to transition in a phased manner towards better technologies. Our immediate goal is to imbibe AI learning about our customers’ choices now and in future. That keeps us a step ahead of what the customer would actually expect from us,’’ says Desai.

With customer experience being the key to success, Taxidio puts a lot of thought into the user experience, with a focus on design coupled with marketing efforts and newer functionalities. The platform recently introduced a new feature offering pre-planned itineraries to aid the planning process for travellers who’re not sure about which places they want to visit and how to go about planning their itinerary.

The team is working on various projects to further improve the value chain and provide better functionality to their users. In the near future, Taxidio has plans to introduce additional features such as flights, car rentals, hostels and much more.

Taxidio: Beating Competition With Every Flight

The startup understands that it operates in a tough space and that there is no space for me-too products in the OTA domain. The founders believe that while there are certain overlaps between their platform and those of Indian and global players, there are eminent differences compared to other platforms.

Taxidio’s edge lies in the way we provide users with a new value addition at every step of trip planning, coupled with the quality of our content. That is what sets us apart from our counterparts.”, says Kejariwal.

Taxidio has been successful in joining all the dots in the holiday planning journey — be it lodging, travel, sightseeing, guidance, and even answers to questions that one may have. The founders state that the number of pages visited and time per session spent by users on the platform has only shown an upward trend. Since Taxidio went live, they affirm that the platform has seen more than 40K unique visitors and sees close to 100 weekly downloads of its application.

With its eyes set steadfastly on the game, the platform has its focus set on reaching close to 750,000 unique visitors over the next year.

And it just might, considering that it’s taking the pain out of travel planning by providing a truly DIY experience for travellers, leaving them free to just pack their bags and get ready to go.

The post Wander Without Getting Lost: Taxidio Is Your One-Stop Destination For Everything Travel appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Online gaming has passed the status of a fad and has become a serious industry with investors and celebrities such as Famous Rapper ‘Drake’, Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban, Jennifer Lopez, Ashton Kutcher, Rick Fox, and Magic Johnson betting their money on the industry, given the potential it holds.

Global eSports is the latest entrant in the online gaming segment in the Indian startup ecosystem. Run by a team of paradoxes, achievers, and people passionate about gaming, Global eSports is a professional esports organisation that owns teams across the globe in various titles such as Fortnite, Overwatch, PUBG, Rainbow Six Siege, and soon expanding to PUBG Mobile, League of Legends, Call of Duty etc.

With a 400 Mn esports audience across the world, the industry has been seeing a steady Y-O-Y growth of over 38% and is estimated to reach the $1.5 Bn mark by 2020. The distribution of the esports industry is about 51% in Asia, 13% in North America, 18% in EU, and 18% in the rest of the world.

There’s a thin line that demarcates video gaming and esports — the latter is a more competitive form of video gaming with a much larger potential to become a multibillion-dollar industry given the possibilities it holds of becoming a host to major competitions and teams, much like the IPLs and ISLs that we see today.

However, it was pure passion and love for video gaming that brought GE – short for Global eSports, an online gaming startup — to existence. Dr Rushindra Sinha, all of 28, is the CEO of Womens Hospital, an avid gamer, he co-founded a Los Angeles-based social media startup and a Stanford Graduate.

“I’ve been playing video games for as long back as I can remember. My earliest memory of playing video games was on my parent’s black-and-white computer, which belonged to their hospital and which was used for patient data entry back in the day, I was only three years old at the time. I would sit on it playing video games late into the night,’’ says, Sinha

The inception of the first team of Global eSports was a matter of chance. The Indian Overwatch (game) team, which had hired Sinha for his excellent gaming skills, got back to him saying the team had been disbanded due to lack of funds. Upset about by the fact that such a talented team of players was going to break up, Sinha took it upon himself to find sponsors for the team and, if need be, sponsor them himself. Soon, Sinha found himself drawing up papers and creating a formal entity — Global eSports — and signed in his first official team. Before that the only GE branded event was the hosting of a Dota 2 viewing party for The International 2017.

“What started with 10 friends watching the tournament together grew into a 100-person event with sponsors coming onboard and became the first official GE event,’’ says Sinha.

Global eSports prides itself on being a “100% players-first team” and then a content-driven organisation which hosts tournaments and events. The current Global eSports team has a combined experience of over 100 years in gaming and the team members are deeply passionate about what they do. Passion and expertise are the key ingredients in turning a business into a raging success, and the Global eSports team seems to have them both in plenty.

Global eSports: Putting Together ‘A’ Teams

This startup is unlike any other. It binds people from various geographies, speaking multiple languages with a single yet strong thread — gaming. Currently, Global eSports owns seven teams, across four titles and has plans of including three more teams and titles to its portfolio by the end of this year (2018).

The company is in process of starting their first Gaming House / Training Facility (bootcamp) in Seoul, South Korea set to be unveiled before the end of November 2018.

While they will be doing a similar Gaming House / Training Facility in Mumbai and Los Angeles in early 2019.

The startup scouts for and locates professional players with potential across the world. They then follow up with the players, vet them, and find out if they have the right mindset to play in a team and are coachable. Open-mindedness and the quality of being a team player are an absolute must for becoming a member of the fast-growing Global eSports team.

GE prefers to opt for newer games that hold the potential to becoming popular esports titles. The startup recently signed US pro player and streamer Brian St Pierre ( popularly known as Kephrii to his fans), who has millions of followers across all social media platforms (Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) and makes an excellent addition to its talented and competitive teams.
One of their teams [GE] Pantheon Kr based out of Seoul, South Korea has a track record of not losing a single game going 10 – 0 against some of the best teams in Asia.

GE has players spread across 10 cities in India and across various cities in South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and North America. Its largest user base lies in South Korea, Singapore, and the US, where esports is already an established industry with millions of dollars. Through their structured approach, these countries have been able to create a breed of players who play and train professionally, as traditional sports players do. More and more gamers are embracing esports as a full-time occupation, adding more strength to the industry and their revenue.

esports trivia: GE’s Korean teams for Fortnite and Overwatch practice for a minimum of 8-12 hours, every day!

Global eSports has been bootstrapped since the time it was founded a year back, with Sinha footing most of the expenses for the company. However, given its growing popularity from winning international championships and hosting events & tournaments to delivering content over Twitch and youtube, GE has been gaining eyeballs and Canadian-born, US-raised celebrity chef Kelvin Cheung, (who is an avid gamer himself) was the first to jump on board the seed round for Global eSports after following its progress closely for months.

Global eSports has primarily been sourcing its revenues from the tournaments it has been winning with prize monies of up to $25 Mn, followed by the content it creates and streams through Twitch & Youtube as well as sponsorships from the events it has been hosting, along with brand promotion. The startup is, however, looking at more sustainable and stable revenue sources now that they are launching branded apparel and merchandise along with gaming and esports themed gear for gamers across the world.

A Shared Passion For Gaming

What’s common between a doctor, a filmmaker, a CPA, and a game designer?

This wouldn’t be an easy question to answer until you meet the core team of Global eSports. The tie that binds all of them is that they’re dead serious and passionate about gaming. With the founder himself being a passionate gamer, Mohit Israney, the co-founder of the company has over 22 years of gaming experience and has won international awards for filmmaking.

The other experts at the company are Pawan Lalwani, an associate CPA and a gamer for the last 27 years, and also among the first eSports players in India (back in 2001-02), and Rahul Hinduja a game designer and gamer with over 25 years of experience and an early adopters of the popular online battle arena video game, Dota.

Winning In The eSports Industry

When asked about the future of eSports in India, Sinha says that although its a very niche industry in India, the growth potential for gaming and esports in India is exponential. Much like the west and Asian countries, which have already seen a surge in the industry. Esports in India is soon going to gain traction that is expected from a country with a majority of the young population. Currently, Global eSports has players aged 15 to 33 on its team.

With the online gaming industry is catching the fancy of many, Global eSports does have established brands players like Cloud 9 Gaming, 100 Thieves, Optic Gaming,  Faze Clan, Ghost Gaming, Team Liquid and more to compete with.

“We at Global eSports don’t really see other companies in this space as competitors but rather as potential allies or partners in this growing industry of esports,’’ says Sinha.

Once it has established a foothold in Asia, Global eSports will look at expanding in North America. As for India, the startup hopes to turn the country into an established and lucrative esports market over the next 1-3 years. Internet and mobile phone companies like Jio and OPPO have already seen the potential this young market holds and have started churning out low-cost phones which also make for great mobile gaming devices — a foolproof plan for a price-conscious country like India which likes to dabble in new opportunities. OPPO, too, hosted an INR 50 Lakh tournament for PUBG mobile.

One of the biggest challenges that the Global eSports team faced was educating and convincing parents of players about the opportunities that the industry offers. It seems unfathomable for parents of players that their kids could actually have a stable source of income by just playing video games. In countries like Korea and the US, people have overcome this hesitance and embraced online gaming as a job like any other.

However, Sinha feels there’s a promising upward curve in Indians embracing esports as a possible career option as well.

The post Global eSports Takes Over International Competitive Video Gaming appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The UPI (Unified Payments Interface) initiative by the government of India was a step towards reaching the goal of a completely digitised economy. In an effort to boost innovations and solutions to get UPI off ground, the government has been supporting and encouraging many fintech startups by partnering with them.

UPI holds great promise for the people of India, a country which stands second to China as the world’s second largest unbanked country in the world with over 19 crore adults without any bank account or access to banking.

For the country as a whole, along with the new entrants to the banking system, handling and making payments, both as customers and vendors, had been an issue given transaction fees, processing time, validation of payments etc. These issues have been largely addressed by the arrival of UPI, but they are not resolved entirely, yet. It is in this space that many fintech startups are working to create a difference and making banking and payment processes much simpler than before, OmegaOn being one of them.

Wielding The Power Of UPI To Bridge Gaps In Digital Payment

Digital payments company OmegaOn has launched the Unified QR Payment service under its brand OmegaPay which lets vendors and retailers use just one QR code through which they can accept payments from customers using any kind of UPI App, be it Paytm, Mobikwik, PhonePe, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, etc.

The Unified QR Code boosts the much-needed financial inclusion that is absent in the current Indian market. The reason being different digital wallet services come with different settlement cycles, validations, and transaction fees, making it difficult for retailers to integrate the digital wallet service into their payment modes, thus not reaching the traction the efforts of digital wallet services deserve.

A retailer who supports UPI-linked payments needs to display QR codes of multiple digital payment apps. While this enhances business prospects for him by allowing more customers to pay through the wallet of their choice, the retailer is wandering into web of complicating factors like tracking multiple variables, such as:

• Settlement cycles: As each UPI-linked wallet will settle amount with the retailer in a different manner.
• Transaction charges: Each company charges different percentages on each transaction made.
• Payment validations: A payment made through a certain wallet can be validated only through that wallet, making the process of validation and completing a payment cycle dependent upon the traction the particular digital wallet is seeing.

Also, no one digital wallet company has a 100% market share which makes it impossible for the retailer to choose among the many wallets and payments apps to service.

In order to resolve this issue of inconsistency in payment cycles and other factors and provide retailers with instant payments with zero settlement cycles, without charging any transaction fee, and single validation for all transactions, irrespective of the UPI-linked wallet the payment is made through, OmegaOn launched the Unified QR Code using the UPI-powered Unified QR Payment platform.

Sreekanth Eragadindla, founder of the Bengaluru-based startup, believes that OmegaOn is not competing with any of the other digital payment brands present in India, instead OmegaPay is looking to complement the services of other digital payments apps by helping consumers pay with any of the UPI enabled apps of their choice and vendors to receive payments from all UPI customers without having to display a number of QR codes on its store shelf. The ultimate aim of Unified QR Payments is helping the country ease into using digital payments, thereby increasing digitisation in the retail sector, to a larger extent.

The promise of the Unified QR Code is mammoth given the size of the market it is looking at, which presently consists of 51 Mn registered SMEs of which only 5 Mn have a digital payment structure in place, currently. With a 250 Mn B2C businesses supporting digital payments apps, the unified QR code can play a pivotal role in improving and increasing the use of UPI-linked payments in not only the metros but in Tier II and III cities, as well.

The First Digital Payments Company To Foray Into Devices, With Their Unified QR Code Vending Machines

Among its other services, OmegaOn has also introduced the world’s first and one-of-its-kind vending machine that supports digital payments. These OmegaOn redesigned and re-engineered vending machines will allow people to use their digital payments apps, be it Paytm, Mobikwik, Freecharge, or Phonepe to buy food products from vending machines without having to use cash or card.

Over 1000 UPI-enabled vending machines to dot the country by 2020

• OmegaOn has installed 35 such Unified QR Code and UPI supported, vending machines across Bengaluru
• OmegaOn aims to install 420 more across the country by March 2019, and another 545 by the year 2020,
• The startups wishes to bring the number of UPI-enabled vending machines to 1000, across the nation by 2020.

Acquainting The Literacy-Challenged Population To The Idea Of Digital Payments

OmegaOn’s primary focus is on helping the uneducated population of India become acquainted and comfortable with using digital payment apps. India is home to 37% of the world’s total uneducated population, as such, it is unlikely that this considerable part of the population will ever come close to understanding or using technology, leave alone using digital payment apps. In order to use these, they will need to key in data such as account number, IFSC, bill details and amounts, which for an uneducated person will be more of a hassle than a help.

Seeking to break this barrier OmegaOn came up with the PhotoClickPay feature that allows literacy-challenged people to use digital payment apps in a simpler manner by illustrating services and utilities in the form of pictures, instead of using text as a medium of communication. After all, pictographic was the first ever form of written communication even before words and languages were created.

The feature takes away the pain of dealing with words and numbers for the literacy-challenged people by allowing them to just tap the picture of the service whose bill they want to pay and OmegaOn automatically pulls the records of the amounts due, only after authentication using an OTP, and all the person has to do is hit pay and the transaction is done. Being NPCI Approved Bharat Bill Payment processor, OmegaOn is authorised to carry out these transactions and handles its user information with utmost integrity.

In a country which has limited access to both education and banking, smartphone and 4G connection seem to be a luxury for most people. Sreekanth states that the company is well aware of the challenges it faces, along with other digital payments apps, fintech and the government who all seem helpless at the hands of limited access to technology for a considerable portion of the population. The young founder believes that the telecom giants of the country are working aggressively towards removing this barrier and soon the entire country will have access to the power of internet and digitisation in their hands. It is a market which will only expand and grow as time comes and there is no stopping it.

The Omega Of Digital India

OmegaOn envisions an India which will win the digital revolution on a mammoth scale just like Alexander the Great’s conquests that inspired the thought behind the unique name of the 2-year old startup. When Alexander the Great wanted to give his victories a truly unique name that would make them unparalleled to any victory any other king had ever seen, he selected the last letter of the Greek alphabet to name it with, symbolising something that is ultimate. OmegaOn, the On stands for Online, wishes to achieve the same kind of victory in digitising payments in India by reaching the masses in the Tier II and Tier III cities to ensure the masses not only have access to technology but are also capable of using it thus, simplifying lives of people all across India, one step at a time.

The post OmegaOn: Unifying Digital Payments In India With A Unified QR Code appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India is all set to become a $25 Tn economy by 2025, growing at a rate of 7%-10% over the next five years. The path to this commendable growth rate has been long and hard, but India is steadily walking along it now. So, what is triggering this growth and how can the average Indian make the most of it?

Over the last decade, India has seen an increased influx of foreign direct investment (FDI). Besides, more and more MNCs have been opening their offices and expanding their businesses here, resulting in a wealth of job opportunities. The result: India’s cautious middle class has more disposable income in its hands than ever before.

Even as Indians are increasingly adopting the consumerist culture — albeit much later than their western counterparts — most of them still want to do more with their disposable incomes than just buy more things. Invest, for one.

Investing for higher returns has become an important factor in the average Indian’s financial planning. While there are many wealth management firms targeting high networth individuals (HNIs) and their impressive portfolios, there aren’t many players in the market helping the average Indian invest his/her hard-earned savings and realise profits from otherwise idle assets. This is where Minance steps in to make a difference.

Team, Minance

Investing is laced with its own perils and complications, which keeps small investors from benefiting from the larger returns of a varied portfolio. They prefer to play it safe and stick to traditional saving methods, which offer slow and low returns.

Minance is aiming to change that by helping investors from all walks of life invest in products that were earlier available only to the ultra-rich. Right from financial handholding, transparent dealing of investments through a customer-friendly dashboard, to centralisation of investments and taxation, Minance is giving the Indian consumer financial independence in the true sense of the term.

Minance: Managing Risk And Investments

Founded in 2014 by Anurag Bhatia, Minance manages the investments of its partners (Minance refers to clients as partners, given the model they employ) across a range of asset classes — from equities and derivatives to mutual funds and stocks of fast-growing private companies and startups.

Anurag Bhatia, CEO & Head of Investments, Minance

In just four-and-a-half years, Minance has roped in 3,000 partners and has an Asset Under Management (AUM) of over $41 Mn (INR 300 Cr). The company also provides taxation services and is expanding to insurance, credit, and international equities.

Its vision is to be a one-stop solution for investors’ financial needs. “Our internal tagline is ‘The Money Company’ and we want that to be a reality. To that end, we will soon be expanding into insurance and credit,” says Bhatia.

Minance took off informally while Bhatia was still employed with Amazon. A lot of employees had vested their Amazon stocks but didn’t know what to do with the money. Bhatia had a reputation of being the “stock market guy” in the office and people came to him for advice. Before Amazon, Bhatia had worked at investment firms such as Motilal Oswal and was a successful investor in his own right.

Bhatia would chalk out a deal in which he would manage his colleagues’ investments in return for 1/5th of the profits.

As his expertise became increasingly sought after, Bhatia thought of making a proper venture out of it and founded Minance. The company, which initially offered just derivatives, soon gained traction among investors because of its low investment ceiling of INR 25,000.

But, the big push came once Bhatia became a top writer on Quora. Impressed with his knowledge of the markets, people started pouring in to invest through Minance.

The young founder says that he’s been humbled by the overwhelming response to his company. “The journey has been challenging at times. What we set out to do hadn’t been done this way before and we had to build a lot of things from scratch, especially the technology,” he says.

Carving Out A Niche In Financial Services

The asset management space in India is choc-a-bloc with established players, including the likes of Tata, HDFC, Future Capital, Kotak Mahindra Capital, Edelweiss Stock Broking, and many more. So, what made Bhatia feel he could carve out a niche in this competitive market with his startup?

He says he found a gap in the market. “Small retail investors were catered to by mutual funds and the ultra-rich (investments of INR 30 Cr and more) went with players like ASK, HDFC, Kotak, etc. We take care of the needs of those in the middle, people who can invest anywhere between INR 5-10 Lakh to a few crores,” he explains.

Minance’s products are designed to cater to a range of risk profile needs. So, whether you’re a heavy risk-taker hungry for returns or a conservative investor looking for stable and consistent gains, Minance has a product for you.

Talking about the most popular mutual fund product people use — systematic investment plans (SIPs) — Bhatia says SIPs are popular because they are built to be easy and convenient — money is auto-debited every month and the AMC takes care of the rest.

But SIP investments come with their own problems — people forget to monitor them and when market conditions change, 5-star funds can very quickly turn into losses. Regular monitoring and rebalancing are needed, for which Minance offers managed mutual funds. Bhatia points out that one of the most sought-after products Minance offers is a mutual fund-enabled product called Assets Pay Cash, which is designed to generate around 12% additional returns per annum over and above what the mutual fund makes.

He adds that investing through SIPs in stocks are harder since you need to gauge the market and track multiple stocks, which is time-consuming. “We are making this easier with our equity product (Bloom). Investors can set up a SIP with us, the money is parked into liquid debt funds while we wait for the right time to deploy. This way your money is still invested and we get to pick the right time to enter the market,” explains Bhatia.

Current Offerings From Minance

• Arbor: Minance’s core derivatives product catering to aggressive investors, Arbor is designed to generate returns of up to 35%. The product is market neutral, meaning it will generate returns regardless of the market direction.
• Bloom: Minance’s long-term equity product is designed to grow your wealth over a three-five year period. Both Arbor and Bloom feature five risk profiles to balance risk appetite with returns.
• Private Equities: The company offers shares of promising private companies such as PayTm, Ola, Kurlon Mattresses, Nazara, etc.
• Assets Pay Cash: An innovative product that uses one’s existing mutual funds as collateral and works the money to take very conservative derivative positions. This lets the partner make around 12% more returns on top of their mutual funds with no additional investment.
• Mutual Funds: The company helps its partners identify and manage the most lucrative funds for a given risk level, based on the Efficient Frontier Theory.
• Global Equities: Minance’s latest product enables its partners to invest in a diverse global portfolio comprising US tech giants, European manufacturers, Asian infrastructure firms, and more.
• TaxSafe: An overlooked part of investing is how complicated tax filing can become. TaxSafe is Minance’s online vault which stores users’ tax documents and enables them to file their taxes in a fast and hassle-free way.

The Minance Advantage

What differentiates Minance from the big asset management companies (AMCs ) is the level of personalisation it offers to its partners. “One of the biggest things users of online investing sites miss out on is personalisation. They don’t have qualified investment advisors to talk to you and can understand your specific risks, goals, and needs. We do,” says Bhatia.

Apart from personalisation, the reason Minance has been able to garner such a sizeable clientele in such a short time is the diversification of investments it offers along with a superior partner experience.

Minance Partner Dashboard

“While most investment firms offer only equities and derivatives, our offerings go far beyond that. We offer mutual funds, private equity, as well as international investments. We have also started offering taxation services so that our partners don’t have to worry about filing complicated tax returns,” explains Bhatia.

He adds that the partner experience is far more personal compared to what one gets on online platforms. Once an investor becomes a Minance Partner, he/she gets a dedicated investment manager who acts as a single point of contact for their investment needs. They also act as financial advisors, helping partners make financial decisions to invest in products outside Minance as well.

Minance’s typical investors are in their early 30s, successful, and want their money to work for them. They are businessmen, senior managers, and startup employees. Their investment needs vary — some look at periodic investments while others want growth.

According to Bhatia, another big advantage Minance offers its partners is its pricing structure. Unlike traditional fund houses, which take a set percentage of one’s investments, Minance works on a profit-only model. “Our fees are 10% of the profits made, no other charges,” he says.

Investments Made Easy And Accessible

Minance partners have access to all these advantages while being able to maintain complete ownership and control of their money. One of the most popular features is a sure shot investor pleaser — the ability to redeem funds anytime. By allowing complete liquidity, Minance takes away whatever apprehensions investors generally have, which make them wary of investing.

Minance also enables its partners to access their accounts anytime they wish to see how their funds are doing. It offers a web dashboard through which partners receive updates and insights about the companies they have invested their funds in. This helps them stay in the loop without having to set up additional tickers on their desktop.

Wealth management is an important concern for people living in a country burgeoning economically, technologically, and in many other aspects. The art of balancing lifestyles and ensuring financial independence is one not every individual is well-versed in, but should be, keeping in mind the contingent nature of money itself.

Minance helps investors as well as novices strike this balance and provides them the perfect platform to spread their wings and experience ultimate financial freedom.

The post 3,000 Partners And Counting, How Minance Is Redefining Investment Management appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In July 2016, India got its first e-court, which was opened at the Hyderabad high court. Also in July 2016, brothers Gaurav Kumar and Makarant Kumar, along with their friend Shrishail Phope, embarked on an entrepreneurial journey in the legal tech domain. Their startup — LegalDocs — is an AI-powered online service that enables its customers to create, validate, and receive legal documents such as rental agreements, affidavits, wills, property registrations, etc, without stepping out of their homes.

It was a personal experience that made Gaurav come up with the idea of a legal tech startup. “I was the first of the three founders to get married. As a newly married couple, we faced a lot of trouble in getting our marriage certificate and filing affidavits to change our names/marital status on our passports and other documents,” says Gaurav.

The founder believes that the main problem was lack of knowhow about legal processes and documentation — something a majority of Indians have to contend with. Also, there is no legitimate process, with reliable professionals and standard pricing, for people to obtain legal documents.

Thus, the trio launched LegalDocs, with an aim to make it a one-stop shop for the documentation needs of enterprises/businesses as well as individuals. It provides services such as company incorporation, ROC filing, GST registration and filing, MSME consultation, notarised and registered rental agreements, apart from consultations with industry experts.

“For a long time, fragmented agents with small kiosks were the only means for people to obtain legal documents. With LegalDocs, we aim to standardise the legal documentation process and make it extremely accessible to the masses,” explains Gaurav.

Mentored by startup accelerator and seed fund Axilor Ventures, LegalDocs claims to deliver 3,000 documents and reach about 10,000 users per month. It also claims to be the biggest collector of stamp duty in Maharashtra.

The startup has tieups with well-known real estate platforms, a strong B2B network of 500 real estate brokers, and around 100 chartered accountants on board, who refer their clients to LegalDocs for their documentation needs. It is also collaborating with food delivery services to help them meet their compliance requirements, says Gaurav.

LegalDocs: Creating An Edge With AI And Automation

Like all other domains, the legal sector has been disrupted in recent years by tech-enabled solutions. There are quite a few startups in this space — including Legaldesk.com and Legalraasta among others — trying to change the status quo and take on a brigade of traditional small agents.

“These agents conduct all their operations manually. They charge $78 – $85 (INR 5,000-INR 6,000) for a food license which we provide for $7 (INR 500) only. Our USP is automation and we will leverage it fully as volumes increase in the future,” says Gaurav.

He explains that the three steps in the legal documentation process are drafting, paying stamp duty, and getting documents validated. All the three steps are taken care of by LegalDocs. Customers can go online and can create documents such as rental agreements, affidavits, wills, property registrations, etc, and receive the documents at their doorsteps.

Here, the backend heavy lifting is done by automated machines and the drafting of documents is done using AI.

Based on a customer’s geographical location and the data provided, the AI categorises all the relevant data. It then identifies the customers’ requirements and prepares the relevant documents in a manner that they’re in the customer’s favour.

For example, if a tenant and a landlord have an agreement, and the tenant employs LegalDocs to prepare the documents, its AI system will identify any clauses in the agreement made by the landlord to exploit the tenant. The AI also notifies the customer when he/she has any payments due.

The second vital service provided by the startup is accounting services, which it is building an AI for.

“Our main goal is customer satisfaction since our customers are our primary marketers. We aim to fulfil customer needs efficiently so that they’re happy and keep coming back to us,” says Gaurav, adding that 30%-40% of LegalDocs customers learnt about the company through word of mouth.

Just A Laptop And A Lot Of Hard Work

The total initial capital required for the startup was minimal — just the cost of a laptop. “Our only investment was a lot of hard work,” says Gaurav.

The founders did invest about $7,085 (INR 5 Lakh) towards marketing, which came from their personal savings. They also marketed their brand through Facebook, Quora, real estate platforms, and digital media. The result: Within the first few months, LegalDocs saw a growth of 30%-40% in the number of orders received on the platform.

Although initially, the startup didn’t make any profits, in a year’s time, it was receiving over 500 orders a month and generating a monthly revenue of $21,256 (INR 15 Lakh).

At the time, LegalDocs had 500 users, delivered 500 documents every month, and was operational only in Mumbai and Pune.

Mentored and guided by Axilor Ventures, Legal Docs slowly built its way up. In the first year, it only generated and delivered rental agreements. Later, it moved into other segments and spread its services to Delhi and Bengaluru as well.

An AI-Powered Legal Tech Solution For All

Even though the founders did not have to worry about funding, they faced other teething troubles, akin to any other startup. Having no educational or work-related background in business management, they found it difficult to manage certain areas of the business, like the cash flow for instance. Setting up a team and developing the skills required to run a business were some other initial obstacles.

However, the biggest challenge LegalDocs faced was educating people about online documentation and convincing them to move away from the manual setup. Since most people in India are used to the conventional way of obtaining legal documents — through agents — they were initially mistrusting of an online legal documentation system.

Many doubted the legitimacy of the documents delivered by LegalDocs. “People thought that documents coming from an online service could be fake,” says Gaurav.

The founders say it was an immense struggle to convince customers that the documents were legitimate and that this was a much more convenient and economical way of doing things.

But the startup seems to be going places now — its projected revenue for the month of July 2019 is $2.1 Mn (INR 15 Cr) and it is targeting 1 Mn customers by then.

The market potential can be gauged by the fact that this number comprises less than 0.1% of the total market. The potential demand for documentation in India is roughly 70 Mn documents annually. And the CA services potential market is valued at approximately $2.8 Mn (INR 20 Cr) annually.

And the legal documentation industry could definitely do with some technological intervention. A very small percentage of Indians has insurance and basic documentation like wills, property registrations, etc. With awareness increasing and laws becoming tougher, the market for documentation and financial accounting will only grow.

Ask Gaurav where he sees LegalDocs in five years and he replies: “We see ourselves as the one-stop shop for all documentation or CA requirements. Since we’re driven completely by AI, our prices will be affordable for all segments of society. The masses will have access to services which they could not afford till now.”

With AI on his side, Gaurav’s claim seems completely legit!

The post LegalDocs’ AI-Powered Solution For Legal Documentation Is Totally Legit appeared first on Inc42 Media.