There are startup ideas that are good and then there are startup ideas that are superlative. So much so that you don’t have to go seeking funds. So much so that your users want to invest in your startup.

Something similar happened with myGate, a Bengaluru-based security management solution that is closing the door on security breaches at residential complexes. myGate, founded two years ago by Abhishek Kumar, Vijay Arisetty, Vivaik Bharadwaj and Shreyans Daga counts among its investors, users who had tried and tested their product before investing in it.

Sanjay Swamy, a general partner at venture capital (VC) firm Prime Venture Partners and his partner Amit Somani live in a gated community in Bengaluru that has been using the myGate app for quite some time now.

Impressed by the “peace of mind” offered by the safety features of myGate, the duo decided to invest in the startup. In October, Prime Venture Partners led a Series A funding of $9 Mn (INR 64 Cr) in myGate. In January, it had invested $2.5 Mn (INR 16 Cr) in the startup.

“The main reason we go to a gated community is that we want to feel safe. But, with so many external parties visiting complexes these days, we should feel confident that whoever comes inside is authorised. Having myGate gives you that confidence. This, I think, is very reassuring — it gives you peace of mind and a feeling of being secure,” says Swamy.

(From left) MyGate founders Vijay Arisetty, Vivaik Bharadwaj,  Shreyans Daga and Abhishek Kumar

myGate’s solution is a no-brainer really, except that they thought of it first. It has built a mobile-based application to enable communication between security guards and residents which addresses the all-important security problem — whom to allow entry and whom to debar. The app replaces intercom and other hardware, making the communication process smoother and less intrusive.

Founded two years ago, myGate has made apartment living more secure for over 1,200 gated communities across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai. More than 3 Lakh security guards and residents use the app.

Managed Security, At The Swipe Of An App

There is something wrong with how visitors’ footfall is managed at gated communities in India, feels Kumar. Although security guards at most complexes maintain a visitors’ registry, unauthorised people often manage to slip through the cracks. And we can’t deny the role ecommerce and doorstep deliveries have played in upping this risk.

Some high-end communities have made significant investments in physical infrastructure such as access cards, boom barriers, biometrics, intercom, and others. Kumar says, “Even though residential communities have installed hardware to authenticate visitors, security guards aren’t able to ensure seamless management of domestic help, staff, visitors, delivery trucks, taxicabs, and other vehicles.”

Small loopholes born out of manual errors caused by unskilled guards, inefficient and time-consuming visitor authentication, and inefficient management of inbound traffic raise security concerns for residents, explains Kumar.

However, myGate has set out to change that through its app, which provides residents “peace of mind” by offering them a real-time view into who is entering the community and absolute control to allow or deny entry to the visitor.

“What residents of gated communities want is that whoever is inside is authorised and authenticated. That is the reason the myGate is placed and while this is happening, we don’t compromise with the convenience,” says Kumar.

The myGate app has been designed with easy-to-use features, keeping in mind the fact that it will be used by people across demographics and education levels — from security guards, children and senior citizens to tech-unsavvy people. Which is why, 70% of its user interface (UI) contains numbers, similar to the dial pad of a smartphone.

Residents can add multiple users in the family and are interlinked with myGate’s dashboard, which the security guards have access to.

A lot of research has gone into the app. Based on its data analysis, the startup has categorised the types of people visiting gated communities:

• Support staff: maid, cook, nanny, driver, car cleaner, beautician, plumber, gardeners and other maintenance staff, who visit on a regular basis
• On-demand service delivery: Executives from Swiggy, Ola, Flipkart, Amazon, and other ecommerce companies
• Relatives and friends

For the support staff, a digital profile can be created on the app and each staff is provided with a ‘unique citizen code’. So, when a maid reaches the gate, she provides the code to the guard and her digital profile will appear on the app, thereby informing the resident about her check-in through a notification.

For the second category of people visiting the gated community, options like ‘Pre-approve’ and ‘Leave the parcel at the gate’ are also available. But, most of the time, the guard punches the details of the delivery guy — contact, company, vehicle number, contact person, flat number, etc — into the app and the details are forwarded through a notification to the concerned resident. The procedure is similar while allowing guests (friends, relatives, and others) to enter.

However, if the resident does not respond, the guard falls back on the traditional way of communication via the intercom, which too can be done through the app itself.

During checkout, the guard simply swipes the screen.

myGate also assists residents welfare associations (RWAs) in managing their society accounting, payments from residents, help desk, and other value adds. It also enables visitor car parking management without compromising on the space reserved for other residents.

The startup has a ‘quasi enterprise’ marketing approach, which means that the users of its product are the individuals staying in gated communities but the decisions are made by the elected members of the RWA.

Another Mumbai-based security app, Biizlo, has also launched a similar service that has converted the manual process of registering visitors’ entry into a digital format. Launched in 2017 by Nishant Katyal, the startup in November this year raised $500K (INR 3.5 Cr) from a Mumbai-based security firm Eagle Group. It also plans to expand its services across gated communities in Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad.

Screenshot: myGate App

Is Your Gated Community myGate Trained?

Training of security guards is a big focus area for myGate. Once a gated community gives the go-ahead for the deployment of the app, myGate’s operations team trains both day-shift and night-shift guards at the complex on handling the myGate application.

“Now, it is becoming sort of a standard for security agencies to say that ‘my guards are myGate trained’,” says Kumar.

Before the product launch in October 2016, the founders spent a lot of time trying to understand the psyche and education level of security guards, did a time analysis of their tasks, and based on these insights, the solution was designed. myGate is currently available in English and Hindi.

The training of security guards, including their supervisors, can be completed within 3-7 days depending on the size of the gated community. Kumar says that training the guards on the app is not that difficult as most of them already have exposure to smartphones and their education levels are generally between classes VI-X.

The guards are provided with a separate dashboard on the myGate app to handle visitors’ entries. Besides teaching them to authenticate visitors authorised by the residents to enter the community, the startup also trains them in handling features such as e-intercom, vehicle management, clubhouse access management, etc.

The first onboarding of the entire support team for a gated community on the app is done by myGate’s team. Later, the trained security management supervisor does the onboarding of guards who join subsequently. myGate also commits to train the guards as and when required.

myGate: Knocking On Gated Communities In Delhi-NCR

In Bengaluru alone, myGate is being used by more than 300 security agencies, managing visitors’ footfall 24×7 across 700 housing communities, claims Kumar.

Residents at Sobha Dew Flowers, a Bengaluru-based real estate apartment, have been using the app for over two years. All security guards here are myGate trained. Nalini Shivkumar, a member of this housing association, says, “Initially, it was difficult to introduce the myGate application to the residents — it took 2-3 months to convince them. But people voluntarily started using the app once they realised its useful. Residents of all the 231 apartments in the community now use myGate.”

Kishore Gopinath from Sobha Daffodil in Bengaluru’s HSR Layout residential apartment estimates that currently, about 99% residents in its 432 apartments are using the app and that 77% of the security guards at the complex are myGate trained. He says, “Visitors are not allowed to enter the community without entering the details in the myGate app.”

Last week (November 29), the founders launched myGate for gated communities in the Delhi- National Capital Region (NCR). The app is being deployed across premier housing communities such as DLF Crest, DLF Magnolias, Aralias, EMAAR Palm Springs, and Supertech Capetown.

The founders estimate that there are over 5k gated communities in the NCR. They claim to have already secured over 8,000 apartments in Gurugram and plan to add about 300K apartments in the Delhi-NCR region by April 2018. The startup currently has a 15-member team managing the operation.

Further, myGate plans to foray into Mumbai by February 2019. It is also surveying the market in cities such as Cochin and Kolkata and plans to add more vernacular languages such as Marathi, Kannada, and Tamil on its app.

With urban Indian lifestyles becoming exceedingly hectic and erratic, people in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities are increasingly opting for the facilities and convenience of managed living in gated communities. Security is one of the most appealing features of such residential complexes. Fuelled by this demand, the number of gated communities in India is rapidly increasing, resulting in the need for digital, managed security services.

According to a GrantThornton and FICCI 2015 report, the private security services market in India was $5.6 Bn (INR 40K Cr) in 2014 and is expected to reach $11 Bn (INR 80K Cr) by the year 2020, providing employment to more than 70 Lakh people.

As RWAs increasingly do away their tunnel-visioned way of handling visitors’ entry to adopt the technology-enabled method, myGate is making ripples in how residents’ safety is measured and promises to keep residents of gated communities safe as long as the walls remain unbreached.

myGate was part of the 2018 edition of the most coveted list of India’s most innovative startups — 42Next by Inc42.

The post How myGate Is Making Apartment Living Secure In Indian Cities appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India’s relationship with jewellery goes back to time immemorial and is entrenched in tradition, relationships, the rites of passage — from birth to marriage to even death. The traditional thing to do in India has been to go to the neighbourhood or fancy branded jewellery store to buy gold, silver, and stone-set jewellery. According to an IBEF report, the gems and jewellery sector plays a significant role in the Indian economy, contributing around 7% of the country’s GDP and 15.71% to India’s total merchandise exports.

Jewellery buying is a lot about trust, which was hitherto defined by personal interaction and offline stores, but the trust is now shifting online. With the rise of ecommerce and consumer needs shifting from purely traditional, heavy designs to lighter daily and workwear essentials, the way Indians buy jewellery and the kind of designs they look for have also changed.

Online jewellery sales is gaining ground and, according to the IBEF report, is estimated to account for 1-2% of the fine jewellery segment by 2021-22. It may seem like a small percentage, but it amounts to a substantial figure given that the size of Indian jewellery market is huge — it is currently valued at close to $60 Bn and is expected to touch $100 Bn – $110 Bn in next four to five years.

Within this segment, a newly sought-after category is platinum jewellery, the market for which is currently estimated at INR 3,000 Cr and is growing at a rapid 25% CAGR.

With a view to cash in on this burgeoning opportunity — both in online sales and the demand for platinum — Jaipur based Sambhav Karnawat, Khushboo Patwa, andRuchika Beri launched an online platform for authentic platinum jewellery, Jewelove, in January 2016.

Jewelove offers minimalistic jewellery for people who prefer elegance over bling. Its collection includes wedding jewellery as well as everyday workwear designs. To enhance the customer experience, Jewelove also offers customised services.

A bootstrapped startup, Jewelove was incubated at incubation centre Startup Oasis, Jaipur, and has been recognised as one of the authorised retailers of the Platinum Guild International (PGI), a marketing organisation working to develop the global platinum jewellery market.

Jewelove: A Labour Of Love And Economics

Karnawat started experimenting with the idea of Jewelove in 2009 while he was associated with an offline jewellery retail establishment (Surana Jewellers in Jaipur). Having worked there for a few years, he realised that the retail model didn’t excite him much, mainly because of the high capital expenditure involved in it, which reduced profit margins.

He started toying with the idea of an ecommerce platform for jewellery and thus Jewelove was born, with a capital infusion of INR 10 Lakh by the founders.

There’s a lot in a name, as every startup founder knows. The trio wanted a name that resonates with Indians’ love for jewellery. “In the Indian context, jewellery represents the emotional bond between two people and Sambhav penned down many names before we zeroed down on Jewelove,” says Beri.

And it seemed to have worked like a lucky charm for them. The company has recorded positive unit economics and aims to increase its portfolio designs from 1,000 to 1,500 by end of FY18. In the past two years, the startup claims to have sold over 1,000 jewellery pieces and received an average rating of 4.95.

The Jewelove platform offers 1,000 designs across wedding and daily wear categories for both men and women. In the engagement and wedding category, it offers engagement and wedding bands and rings, earrings and pendant sets, bangles, neckpieces, etc. For men, there are chains and kadas on offer. Its workwear category is targeted at the modern, working women and has simple and elegant studs, earrings, and pendants. Simple couple bands start from INR 45,000 while a women’s basic band or a pair of earrings are priced upwards of INR 15,000.

Tackling Trust Deficit In Online Jewellery Shopping

What is the one thing that people look for while buying jewellery, apart from design? Trust. But trust doesn’t come easy, especially in a market dominated by trusted legacy players such as Tanishq, PC Jewellers, Amrapali, Kalyan Jewellers, etc.

Online jewellery companies such as BlueStone, Caratlane, Radiant Bay, and Kuber Box, which have been around for a few years, have succeeded in building this trust to an extent, but newbies usually have a struggle in making a mark while addressing the trust and credibility issue.

Jewellery is a high-ticket item and falls in the category of luxury goods under government regulations. Therefore, even simple fluctuations in industry laws and government decisions such as demonetisation etc have a major impact on the revenue of companies in this segment.

Beri says that from a customer’s perspective, the most common apprehension is with regards to the authenticity of the item of jewellery they are buying online.

Besides, in the case of Jewelove, there is another challenge — people in India are still unaware of the difference between white gold and platinum.

To address the trust deficit problem, the startup assures its customers that it is a certified retailer of the PGI. “Reviews shared by existing customers are a testimony of our products. Plus, we are transparent and what one sees is what one gets, along with a great experience,” says Beri.

To address other external situations such as gifting regulations or wilful defaulters, the company says it has the ethos of ethics and transparency that help it overcome such problems and make it a recommended choice by its customers.

Buoyed by its increasing market understanding, Jewelove is now considering international expansion. Along with working on new innovations in technology and product to keep fueling its growth, Jewelove is also looking out for a strategic investor to fuel its expansion plans.

Besides, competition is getting tougher with ecommerce giants such as Flipkart and Amazon also entering the online jewellery segment. Amazon offers more than 100 brands and four lakh styles from brands such as Malabar Gold, Joyalukkas, Senco Gold, PC Jeweller, WHP Jeweller, PN Gadgil, PC Chandra, etc.

Arun Sirdeshmukh, the Business Head of Amazon Fashion India, says that some of the top precious jewellery brands have grown two to nine times year-on-year sales on Amazon in 2018.

Sirdeshmukh explains that Amazon customers usually opt for the price range of INR 15,000 to 45,000. While style preferences might vary, overall, the company has seen a demand for contemporary styles in rings and bracelets that are light and easy to wear. Besides, customers like having the option of buying heritage styles from different states.

Golden Opportunity In Indian Platinum Industry?

In many foreign countries, platinum jewellery is the preferred metal when it comes to wedding or engagement bands. India, though late to pick up on the trend, is slowly but surely being dazzled by the subtle sheen of platinum, the PGI has found.

Vaishali Banerjee, Managing Director India, PGI, notes in the Platinum Jewellery Business Review for Q2 2018: “Platinum growth in India for 2017 has been very encouraging. Platinum today resonates with young India. The rarity of the metal, the designs inspired by global trends and the distinct emotional positioning of platinum makes it the preferred choice of millennials.”

“The major difference (compared to other countries) is the jewellery preferences and the same can be attributed to cultural dynamics and individual choices. We are seeing the shift here and this transition would go up a notch,” Banerjee says.

The PGI’s Platinum Jewellery Business Review revealed that two key trends — young consumers and bridal demand — are emerging to contribute to platinum demand growth in 2018 in India.

Banerjee also emphasises that the outlook for 2018 is strong, given that both their wedding collections — Platinum Love Bands and Platinum Evara — are getting embedded in Indian culture. She adds that the business opportunity that platinum offers to retailers is incremental and sustainable.

Besides, given that the jewellery market in India is still traditional and fragmented, the market share of online jewellery companies is increasing steadily. According to reports, the online jewellery market in India might reach $3.6 Bn (20% of the global market) in the next three years.

Amid continued challenges posed by new legislation like Goods and Service Tax (GST), the online sector has seen retail sales reported in platinum ounces increase 21% year-on-year for the PGI programme and fabrication ounce demand grows at 34% year-on-year.

In a country like India, where jewellery plays an integral role in relationships as well as tradition, if online jewellery companies can figure out a way to overcome the all-important trust deficit challenge while impressing upon people the value of platinum, there can be a golden market opportunity for online platinum jewellers.

This startup was among the 100 Women Faces 2018 Series Conducted by Womennovator in association with COWE in May 2018.

The post Jewelove Wants To Build A Platinum Bond Of Trust In Online Jewellery Buying appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Slowly but surely, Google Home, Alexa, Siri-Homepod, and Cortana have made their way into our daily lives, becoming invisible members of our homes. AI chatbots are no longer a thing of fancy — in fact, they’re on their way to becoming as ubiquitous as our  TV, giving us weather and news updates, playing our favourite songs, flipping channels for us, and more.

However, these voice assistants have their failings and are, at times, inconsistent. One time, I asked Alexa to play the last song on the playlist, she burst out into a weird laugh. I was amused and later relieved that she wasn’t behaving as creepily as I’d heard she does sometimes. Thankfully, even the weird laughing has stopped for some time now.

While such failings might be admissible to an extent in B2C products like the ones mentioned above, AI enterprise solutions are a different ball game altogether and have no room for failure. Used mostly in the supply chain, banking, retail, healthcare, and other sectors by enterprises, AI enterprise solutions have to be nearly 100% accurate while being equally efficient to reduce the human support in business functions.

With a view to understanding the technology behind enterprise chatbots, their nuances, and the efforts made by companies to meet market expectations and eliminate any scope of failure, Inc42 spoke with Sriram Chakravarthy, co-founder and CTO, Avaamo, an AI startup.

Avaamo offers deep learning virtual assistant platforms to enterprises, primarily in sectors such as fintech, healthcare, telecom, and retail. We also asked Chakravarthy about the future plans of the California-based company, which has an operations and development team working from its Bengaluru, India, office.

Enterprise AI: Culture And Context Underpin Language

Artificial intelligence, which replicates human intelligence with accuracy, is no easy technology to adopt and execute. Humans speak and type multiple language-specific words. Hence, for an AI chatbot to be truly global and of use to an enterprise catering to various country-markets, it needs to understand multiple languages.

For an AI assistant, this simply means loads and loads of data processing.

Chakravarthy says, “This segment is very data-driven. Data is the oil that runs this whole business. So, we have built domain-specific machine learning tools for each of these industries.”

While there is a significant commonality as some of the machine learning (ML) modules can be adopted across markets — whether it’s a telco in Singapore or a telco in Australia or India — the real challenge lies in deciphering the nuances of language-related variables. This also involves the way people talk.

Chakravarthy cites an example, “In India, we use the word ‘recharge’ quite often for mobile and data plans. However, in the US, the concept of recharge hardly exists because they mostly have fixed monthly mobile plans.”

There are innumerable such linguistic and cultural nuances that define how a company understands and delivers chatbot solutions for different business problems it’s solving. Further, the meanings of some words/terms vary sector-wise. So, ML modules have to be customised accordingly.

Avaamo bots are capable of processing multiple languages. Chakravarthy says, “We have bots that are currently live in 14 different international languages. They can understand, process and revert in these languages. Besides, we have already incorporated seven-eight major Indian languages as well. The bots are also capable of processing Hinglish (a mix of Hindi and English), Banglish (Bangla and English), Tamlish (Tamil and English), etc.”

People sometimes enter Hindi/other language inputs in the English script, therefore, Chakravarthy adds, “We have enabled all these types of use cases. For instance, if one types Portuguese in English or a mix of both, some words co-exist in both languages but their meanings vary immensely. Suppose you type ‘bento’ — it could be a Portuguese word which means blessed or it could also refer to ‘Bento’ the beer brand.”

An AI bot needs to understand the difference between the meanings of the word. This is where context provides the due intelligence. A lot depends on how you use a particular word and this, again, varies from person to person, explains Chakravarthy.

There could be situations where the bot may not be able to verify the exact meaning of the word that a user has entered; in such cases, it will ask the user what he/she means. For instance, in the abovementioned example, the bot asks whether the user meant ‘bento’ as bento (blessed) or Bento as beer.

The Beer Game Intelligentsia

Chakravarthy takes us through another use case to explain the AI game. “Take the example of a large beer manufacturer which happens to be our client. The company, which has a large presence in Brazil, has been there for over a hundred years. Recently, they were looking at leveraging their WhatsApp channel for better supply assistance and approached Avaamo for a solution.”

He elaborates that despite having applied the Bullwhip effect (forecasting supply chain inefficiencies) to the client’s supply chain, beer shops that were SMS and WhatsApp-friendly needed to be given apt and quick responses. The question could be, “Hey, what’s the status of my order?” Or, since the client also supplies coolers along with beer cases, it could be: “Hey, the cooler is not working…”

Now, in addition to collecting personal identities of the user interacting with the chatbots and the Beer Game (beer distribution game was developed by MIT in the 1960s to demonstrate supply chain management principles), which includes batch planning, production, scheduling, ingredient forecasting, and, most importantly, client orders, the enterprise chatbot for this company required to deliver clear and precise responses to users.

This supply chain distribution game involved point-of-sale (POS) data collection, electronic data interchange (EDI), and vendor-managed inventories (VMI) to improve communication accuracy and efficacy.

“We have automated the entire channel down to the last person. There are a couple of more solutions like this that we have built for a large freight company,” says Chakravarthy.

Digging Deeper Into Data Than Alexa And Google Assistant

Explaining the difference between AI enterprise solutions and consumer tech chatbots, Chakravarthy says that in the case of Alexa and Google Home, most often, you ask a question or give a command and the voice assistant can simply address it. For instance, you say, “Hey, Alexa, play a Taylor Swift Song” and Alexa responds by playing the song, which is already available on the Amazon Music list or on other lists.

However, in the case of the enterprise chatbots, it is a multi-turn conversation. For instance, if you say, ‘Hey, I need insurance’, it can’t just get you the insurance. So, it will say, ‘Okay, I will help you with that. What’s your name, what’s your age. And, so on.’

To enable enterprise chatbot conversations, companies have to engage with users deeply and collect a lot more information and then process this data. He adds that there are a lot of nuances involved in this because user responses are subjective and the response design varies from person to person.

For instance, when asked ‘What’s your name?’ by an enterprise chatbot, there are many ways in which a person may respond:

• Some users will simply pronounce their name say ‘Mr X’
• Some will say ‘My name is X’
• Some will say my name is ‘X’ and my surname is ‘Y’, and so on.

Now, the actual reply — the name itself — needs to be filtered irrespective of the way it has been answered.

So, right from evolving the machine learning solution, analysing the data collected, to responding to a query, these chatbots have to go through a lot of challenges.

“Our focus remains developing an intelligent conversation interface. We have gone through Phase I and are now working on Phase II of the development, which is about the depth of the conversation, bringing more context to the conversation. For instance, if a user logs in after a week, the chatbot needs to connect with their conversations that happened in the past,” says Chakravarthy.

Hey Avaamo, What’s The Plan Now?

Avaamo currently caters to more than 40 country-markets. Among these, the US and India are the top markets for the startup. It has over 50 enterprise customers in India including Honeywell, Wipro, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, City Union Bank, Axis Bank, Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, SBI Mutual Fund, Aditya Birla Life Insurance etc. It is now slowly expanding into other regions, including Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

The startup recently raised $14.2 Mn in a Series A funding led by Intel Capital, a division of the US-based hardware giant Intel Corporation. Avaamo’s total funding now stands at $23.5 Mn. Chakravarthy lays down the big plans Avaamo has for the Indian market as well as for foreign shores.

He says Avaamo is using the funding for three major purposes: sales and marketing, R&D, and increasing engagement with its partners. “We have a team of 50 engineers here at our Lavelle Road office, Bengaluru. While it is not about team size but quality, we are hiring at least 30-40 more ML/data scientists who will be working on the product development that be served globally.”

“We are also quickly enabling our partners by giving them a chance to building their AI chatbot around our platform. We are going to spend a large part of the amount on building a coherent partner ecosystem,” he adds.

Chakravarthy adds that the enterprise AI solutions market has tremendous potential across the globe and that it’s not localised to a particular country market. “Every large company is looking at a new technology — automation — to call itself a last-mile organisation. It’s talking to its suppliers, employers, consumers. There is a lot of costs associated with service desks. Every company is looking at innovative ways to reduce the cost of operations and services,” he explains.

The AI Market In India

According to an Intel India-commissioned report by US-based IDC, 68.6% of Indian firms might deploy AI solutions by 2020. Another study by Accenture says that AI could add $957 Bn to the Indian economy, increasing the country’s income by 15% in 2035, by changing the nature of work to create better outcomes. These projections present a huge opportunity for AI startups working on enterprise AI solutions.

Besides Avaamo, a number of startups have mushroomed in the enterprise chatbot space, offering customised and differentiated solutions. There are also Amazon’s Alexa as part of its Amazon Web Services (AWS), SigTuple, Haptik, Niki.ai, Flutura, Uncanny Vision, Innefu Labs, Netradyne, Active.ai, staqu, Formcept, and other players in this space.

Ratan Tata-backed Niki.ai leverages natural language processing (NLP) and ML to enable brands to converse with customers over a chat interface and help the latter shop for products and services.

However, in India, not all sectors have picked up on automated AI assistance yet. The verticals that are hyperactive in enabling AI-assisted customer service include insurance, retail, healthcare, and banking. “In India, most of the demands actually come from fintech, while in case of Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia, it’s more of telcos. If you will look at the US, it’s kind of a mixed bag — manufacturing, retail,” says Chakravarthy.

But considering how enterprise chatbots are revolutionising the way of companies respond to human interactions, whether from customers or employees, it won’t be long before they are adopted on a larger scale and across industries. Enterprise AI has not only automated the process of interaction, but also reduced the cost and usual delays in human responses.

This is just the beginning and we won’t be surprised if AI captures the entire thinking space tomorrow taking over most of the decision-making of today’s times.

The post Understanding The Deeptech That Goes Into Avaamo’s Enterprise Chatbots And Voice Assistants appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In Disney’s Oscar-winning movie Ratatouille, decoding Chef Auguste Gusteauâ’s cookbook  — Anyone can cook — food critic Anton Ego said, “Not everyone can become a great cook (artist), but a great cook can come from anywhere.”

In India, where new ideas and business models are springing up in the foodtech industry, Bengaluru-based startup, FoodyBuddy has come up with a platform where anyone can be a chef and sell their food to their neighbourhood.

Speaking to Inc42, Rachna Rao, one of the founders of the foodtech startup explains, “While working at my previous company Zynga, I didn’t have any time to cook. However, I was accustomed to having home-cooked food.”

Recently, Prime Ventures Partners (PV) invested $833K (INR 6 Cr) in FoodyBuddy. This is the first time, the venture capital firm is investing in an Indian foodtech startup.

When there are a number of foodtech platforms emerging fast, what made PV invest in FoodyBuddy? Amit Somani, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners said, “We see a huge potential in serving a large base of customers who are looking for authentic, comforting, and a variety of home-cooked meals.”

The company plans to use the funds to expand into new geographies including Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Pune and build the network in Bengaluru. The company already has a handful of community reach in Hyderabad and Pune, and it aims to expand further. With over 1,000 active homechefs and 20,000 households served, FoodyBuddy is looking to onboard 1,00,000 home chefs by end of 2019.

How Does It Work

Funding apart, how does FoodyBuddy implement its idea of being an e-marketplace for home-cooked food?

Rao says, “The platform is very flexible for sellers. It gives choice to the sellers to sell whatever they are cooking. For instance, if I shall be cooking Rajma chawal in dinner and want to sell five plates of same. The platform gives that choice to them. Further, I may instruct that food will be served by 8 o’clock, and hence buyers need to order before 4 o’ clock only.”

“So, by the time, I shall be cooking food, I know how much I need to cook. This reduces food waste,” Rao added.

Pune-based MealTango is another foodtech startup which offers home-cooked food online.

On the logistics side, cofounder Anup Gopinath said that since the aim is to cater to neighbourhoods only, there’s no supply chain or delivery issues. Mostly, it’s the sellers’ family members who deliver the food.

The range is mostly within the apartment or the neighbourhood apartments depending upon the choice of sellers.

In the case FoodBuddy, while the sellers are entirely different than that of Swiggy and Zomato, the buyers are more or less the same.

How It Started

In rural India, people in neighbourhood are still used to share their home-cooked food. Rachna wanted to introduce the same social connect and sense of trust in cities as well. “The idea struck to me what if we could have the same food what our neighbours are having!”

Rao didn’t have to search much for the partners. Her husband Akil Sethuraman and her former colleague Anup Gopinath both liked the idea and decided to cofound the startup in 2015.

The next one year wasn’t easy though. “We spent the entire year in market research and people feedback over the idea. The idea wasn’t limited to having or selling home-cooked food but, at the same time, the idea was to provide a platform to wannabe chefs,” says Rachna

In 2017, with a handful of community, we started Foodybuddy in South Bengaluru.  And, within two years, the company has grown to the level where residents of more than 100 apartment communities are using FoodyBuddy, which has sold more than 250,000 meals till date and reaches 20,000 households.

Does the FSSAI food certification matter?

Gopinath says, “Most of the people who come on Foodybuddy are categorised as very small-scale sellers. They don’t need any license to operate. However, they just need to be registered which we ask them before onboarding.”

“Mostly, people offer or sell only what make for themselves. For instance, you are making rajma chawal for lunch, you can keep the orders open before cooking. The level of trust is very-very high in this model as they live nearby,” he adds.

Home chefs and home-cooked food services are a new and fast-emerging category in the Indian food services industry. Growing at 11%, the Indian food services industry is pegged to around $57 Bn (INR 4 Tn) by 2018-end, according to National Restaurant Association of India.

While Swiggy and Zomato are hogging all the limelight, the path ahead won’t be easy for FoodyBuddy, given the fact that a number of foodtech startups including Yumist, Twigly, MonkeyBox and Dazo recently had to shut down their operations.

The post Foodtech Startup FoodyBuddy Promises Warm, Home Cooked Food But Without The Fuss appeared first on Inc42 Media.

While tech startups have explored areas such as last-mile delivery, drivers work life and tracking of shipments in the logistics space, Jaipur-based startup FLEECA focuses on the thing which makes the whole industry possible — the tyre. The company has identified the dependency of the logistics industry on the tyre and has created its own niche in the logistics market.

The company, which recently closed Pre-Series A funding round from Rajasthan venture capital firm, Innovana Thinklabs Ltd,  offers multiple services including tyre-as-a-service, inspection and retread across the tyre-management sector in seven northern across cities including Mumbai, Nagpur, Delhi/NCR, Bhopal, Surat, Agra, Gwalior and more.

The startup said it will use the fresh funds to further develop its product, set up the marketing and sales team along with an eye on expansion pan-India.

“In addition to the investment, the investors will be supporting us as mentors and will also be providing us required support to scale up including infrastructure, market linkages to name a few,” founder and CEO Tikam Chand Jain told Inc42. Jain set up the company in 2016 along with Lokesh Sharma.

India’s logistics sector has been on an exponential rise with a touch of technology trying to revive the important yet stagnant and unorganised market. According to a report by investment bank Avendus Capital, the logistics tech market is expected to surge to $9.6 Bn (INR 69,044 Cr) by 2020.

Why And How Is FLEECA Taking Care Of Tyres?

After working with Sriram group companies for almost eight years, Jain began his entrepreneurship stint with a focus on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) logistics solutions in 2013. However, when he met transporters, he discovered the high cost of managing tyres and the lack of management of this essential part of the logistics industry.

This prompted him to deep dive in the tyre-world tirelessly and he came up a solution to test the condition of a tyre and provide preventive care methods. By installing RFID (radio frequency identification) tyre tags to track the mileage of a tyre in its entire lifecycle, and a microchip to store the tyre’s unique ID, which is linked to the vehicle identification number, FLEECA could keep track of wear and tear on the tyre.

The chip can also store information on when and where the tyre was made, its maximum inflation pressure, size, etc.

Jain explained that when FLEECA inspects a truck tyre, it charges $0.27 (INR 20) for each tyre and helps transporters with preventive care methods. The next step for the company is to provide retreading of the damaged tyre.

Breaking down the economics, he said that a new tyre costs $250 (INR 18,000) with which it runs 80K kms, and once a tyre is retread for $27.8-$41.7 (INR 2000-3000) it runs an additional 50K kms, increasing cost efficiency and product longevity.

FLEECA also provides tyre-as-a-service, where it takes up end-to-end responsibility of taking care of the tyre fleet along with managing any damage on the run. Tyre-as-a-service begins with the selection of tyre depending on load, road conditions, vehicle type and axle position followed by inspection, repair and maintenance and more.

To follow this on the run inspection of management, Jain said that they plan to set up FLEECA centres at every 200 kms across India. Currently, eight such centres are operational across Jaipur, Bhopal, Kota and other locations.

With a team of 30, Jain and Sharma are also looking to leverage next-gen technology for its 25 customers including Ekta Enterprises among others.

The company is already working on an artificial intelligence-based product to put to use the data it has collected from the 2,000 tyres it has already deployed.

“AI-based platform will use data to give the analysis of best tyres, how to use them, which tyre suits what route, what tyre can be retread and much more,” Jain said.

The scalability of the niche market FLEECA has focused on is also tested with the growth the company has seen in its revenue since its first year of operations. After earning $5,560 (INR 4 Lakh) in its first year, the company earned $58,396 (INR 42 Lakh) in FY17-18 and has already recorded revenue of $361.5K (INR 2.6 Cr) in three-quarters of FY18-19.

FLEECA also attained break-even recently and is now eyeing exponential growth to further strengthen its presence in the country.

Rajasthan: Nurturer To Innovation And Ideas

FLEECA is just one of the success stories from the iStart programme. Started by the Rajasthan government, iStart, incorporates a single-window platform for startups offering a host of relevant information and benefits to facilitate their entry into the ecosystem.

Launched in November 2017, iStart has enrolled more than 750 startups till May 2018.  With the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) state ranking framework in place, state governments across India are aggressively making all possible moves to nurture their startup ecosystems.

With the launch of the Bhamashah TechnoHub Incubator, which aims to incubate 700 startups, and the Bhamashah Startup Promotion Fund of $77.3 Mn (INR 500 Cr), iStart has helped the state government achieve the advancement of the state, both economically and technologically.

The post Jaipur Based Tyre Care Provider FLEECA Looks To Carve Its Niche In The Logistics Industry appeared first on Inc42 Media.

All natural, stylish, and comfortable shoes, which cater to all your needs and have the potential to turn into an ecological revolution — sounds like the perfect sustainable business idea, right?

Founder duo Taran Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh have already put this business idea into action and are on their way to achieve their mission with Neeman’s, an online but not-yet-another shoe company. In a first in India, the Hyderabad-based startup has come up with a line of shoes — sneakers, loafers, and joggers — made from Merino Wool fibre that is environment-friendly as well.

So, how did the founders hit upon the idea of making sustainable shoes? Well, all the clichés that you hear about life suddenly start seeming true while travelling. And, sometimes, your experiences can give birth to a business idea — an opportunity that has the potential to turn into a revolution.

The idea behind Neeman’s came about when Chhabra was travelling, and he nearly missed a train, the reason being over-packing! The culprit was separate pairs of shoes for specific activities and it was the ‘no one-size-fits-all’ problem that led Chhabra to start thinking about designing one multi-purpose shoe that would be comfortable for all-day wear — be it casual or formal dressing needs to even exercise as well as do other activities.

Neeman’s founders Amar Preet Singh (L) Taran Chhabra

While on his quest to turn this idea into a reality, Chhabra travelled extensively to understand how the shoe production industry worked. It was then that he understood the magnitude of the environmental hazards caused by the industry.

“What I saw was puzzling, what I saw was disturbing, because every material that goes into the shoes is either synthetic or manmade,’’ says Chhabra.

Most shoes available in the market use synthetics, plastic, petroleum byproducts, liquid petroleum gas, and natural gas, resulting in a lot of pollution with excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These products are non-biodegradable, take decades to decompose — in effect, they are extremely hazardous to the environment.

What started as a need suddenly turned into an altruistic mission. The single-minded desire to make Neeman’s’ shoes as nature-friendly as possible, while producing them in the most sustainable way, became a pledge for the cofounders.

Taking The High Road: The Making Of Neeman’s Shoes

The Neeman’s founders wanted to blaze a new trail by completely ditching synthetic materials in the shoes they produced. Naturally, it wasn’t easy — a lot of trial and error went into the making of the shoes until, finally, the founders chanced upon Merino Wool. The wool, which comes from Merino sheep in Australia, is naturally renewable, soft, anti-bacterial, moisture-absorbing, odour-resistant and designed to be worn all year round. It is also very durable. It was just what they needed.

The company collaborated with The Woolmark Company in developing the Merino Wool fabric. “I reached out to a company called the Woolmark Company, a non-profit funded by Australian wool farmers. I explained to them how India is a big market and how these wool-based shoes would be great for Indian weather conditions and that we could do with an environment-friendly shoe,’’  Chhabra explained.

Then started the process of designing these sustainable shoes. Neeman’s shoes comprises a removable shoe insole made of renewable rubber and castor bean oil, as opposed to the commonly used, hazardous petroleum-based oil. The shoe lining is abrasion-resistant, soft, and durable and perfect for Indian weather conditions, both for extreme summers and winters.

A People’s Brand, Sustainable All The Way

While the founder duo started off on their shoemaking journey with the initial thought of designing a multi-purpose shoe, Neeman’s later decided to come up with more than one style, but still limited it to three — a sneaker, a loafer, and a jogger. Primarily designed for men, these shoes are, however, unisex. They are priced upwards of $91 (INR 6,500) and Neeman’s is also  planning to roll out shoes for women in 2019.

Neeman’s follows a direct-to-consumer model for its sales through its website and has a seven-day trial policy during which customers can return the shoes if they don’t like them.

Being ecofriendly is so ingrained in the DNA of the company that even the boxes used to ship the shoe are 85% recycled waste paper. Ensuring productive and humane working conditions for their employees and the workers who assemble their shoes is paramount for the founders and they ensure that each link in the supply chain resonates with the mission of the company.

“It’s always going to be a brand that customers are going to want to be associated with because they see the value of sustainability as well as comfort with the shoes,’’ says Chhabra.

Neeman’s has no plans of liaising with other ecommerce players at the moment but plans to open experiential offline stores to enable its customers to experience the shoes before purchasing them.

Wool-Based Shoes: A Rising Trend Globally

Wool-based shoes have been gaining popularity the world over, be it for comfort, style, or simply because they are an ecologically conscious choice.

While talking of woollen shoes, the first name that pops up is the famous San Francisco-based brand — AllBirds — which went on to be valued at $1.4 Bn in a mere two years since its inception. The brand, which, too, makes shoes from Merino Wool, has become a household name in fashion, akin to PUBG in games. Everyone who can is sporting a pair of AllBirds. AllBirds’ mission is producing eco-friendly shoes and the brand has managed to pass on that sentiment to its customers.

While Neeman’s is aligned in spirit with the environmentally conscious buyer, we will have to wait and watch for its impact in India, considering the slightly steep price points of the shoes, the road conditions in the country, and the general apprehension people have about trying something new. The company, however, has started out with a positive customer response and is very hopeful that more people join Mission Neeman’s.

The post Comfortable Shoes Are Now Environment-Friendly: The Driving Idea Behind Neeman’s appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) comprise an important pillar of the Indian economy, with a 28.77% share in the country’s GDP (2015-16). But despite this claim to fame, the Indian MSME segments is largely unorganised. Apart from the lack of structure and processes, one of the biggest deterrents in MSME growth is inaccessibility to easy credit.

The good news is that digital lending to MSMEs in India has the potential to grow up to $100 Bn by 2023, according to a recent report. The lending scenario for not just MSMEs but for all kinds of enterprises is looking brighter with digital lending mechanisms being enabled by government initiatives like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which serves as a backbone for non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).

Another important factor has been the drastic cut in loan disbursal time, especially with the coming of new-age NBFCs such as DMI Finance, Capital Float, LendingKart, etc, who are doubling down on technology-only processes for lending.

Delhi-based DMI Finance was founded in 2008 with a mission to build a platform on the cutting edge of the Indian credit market. The NBFC is boosting digital credit availability in a big way with its bespoke, advanced APIs for its lending partners and customers, making it a lender of choice in the digital ecosystem.

To understand the DMI perspective on the projected growth of digital lending in India, we caught up with Shivashish Chatterjee, Co-Founder and Joint MD of DMI.

Chatterjee shared with us his views on what’s triggering the upward curve in digital lending, UPI 2.0, and spoke about automatic repayments, how if and when they come, could prove to be a gamechanger for the entire lending infrastructure and lending companies, he said. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Inc42: What do you attribute the phenomenal growth of the digital lending ecosystem in India to?

Shivashish Chatterjee: There are two primary things to consider from a digital lending perspective.  Simply put, the range of activities that can be financed is increasing significantly while at the same time the number of people who can avail of credit to indulge in those activities is also rising rapidly. The multiplicative effect is very powerful.

Technology is dramatically reducing the cost of origination. If you go back a decade or more, lenders did not know how to underwrite or collect a loan of less than INR 5,000 because the fixed cost of originating that loan was more than INR 500. That cost structure automatically put a floor on how small the loan could be and still be profitable for the lender. That floor was about INR 50,000.

Now, if that INR 500 can be reduced to INR 50 then suddenly an INR 5000 loan becomes viable. And that’s just illustrative. There are players in the fintech space who believe that they can make an INR 1000 loan viable. So, a purchase of INR 6000 is a financeable activity in 2019 while it was clearly not feasible in 2005.

So one dynamic that’s causing this growth in the digital lending volumes is the sharply higher range of activities that can be financed owing to the dramatically lower cost of origination that is enabled by technology. Obviously, technology has the highest impact on tech-enabled platforms and so we are seeing this surge in volume in the fintech world compared to the physical paper world.  

The other dynamic is the explosion in the digital infrastructure itself that is bringing more and more people into the target demographic for digital lenders. NPCI has done a fabulous job of building the digital payment rails for the country and the government has pushed most of the country into the ranks of the “banked”. The word “cheque” does not exist in the lexicon of the new age lenders. Money transfer and reconciliation which was a huge pain point is now largely solved and that allows the digital lenders to address a much larger population. Smartphone penetration has gone from virtually nothing to 400mm just in the last 5 years.

The proliferation of transaction data whether it be on ecommerce platforms or Merchant POS or e-wallets has made it possible to assess the creditworthiness of individuals who are new-to-credit and hence ineligible under traditional, credit history-based underwriting models. Combined with 4G penetration, cheap data and widespread adoption of API-driven data transfer, the smartphone proliferation is really revolutionizing credit transmission in India and truly holds the promise to credit democratization. And we are still only scratching the surface. GST is a game-changer for SMEs and MSMEs. Credit availability to these sectors is about to skyrocket. We believe that in ten years the digital credit landscape in India will be unrecognizable to an observer who compares it to today.

Inc42: What role do you feel NBFCs such as DMI Finance can play to contribute to this growth?

Shivashish Chatterjee: NBFCs such as DMI Finance represent the supply of credit in this new ecosystem. The consumers and SMEs/MSMEs described earlier represent the demand for credit and the broader fintech community represents the transmission infrastructure that connects the supply and demand.

In order for this ecosystem to thrive and grow it is not enough that there are hundreds of well-funded fintech start-ups leveraging technology to bring credit demand to the capital providers. It is vitally important that capital providers themselves embrace and adopt technology like never before so that the benefits of the fintech infrastructure providers actually filter to the end borrowers. Banks obviously are the biggest source of capital but it will take time for Indian banks to fully connect themselves to this new transmission infrastructure.

Hence the immediate need for new-age NBFCs who can partner with the demand aggregators in the language of APIs and call-backs and process-automation. Under our Digital lending business, we are focused on being that capital provider. Any network is only as efficient as its slowest link. Today, in the network of digital credit, that slowest link is the one connecting the aggregators to the banks and NBFCs. We are trying our utmost to change that by being a new kind of NBFC.

Inc42: UPI 2.0 enables features such as overdraft facility and one-time mandate (payment scheduling). How do you see UPI 2.0 helping the digital lending market in India?

Shivashish Chatterjee: UPI is creating new possibilities which are force multipliers for many payments and banking related activities. Our customers can repay EMI’s using their UPI handle and it’s very efficient and at a fraction of the cost of other methods. UPI 2.0 was supposed to bring some interesting use cases for lending especially around automatic debit and standing instructions that would qualify under the Negotiable Instrument Act, 1881. But when the announcement came in Aug 2018, we did not see a transformative new use case. We are hopeful that this will change in the future.  The innovation in UPI 2.0 that allows pull-payments in addition to push-payments is a building block for payments innovation in credit. We are confident that NPCI will build on it in future enhancements.

Inc42: Besides extending credit facilities, what more do you think is needed as far as BHIM UPI is concerned?

Shivashish Chatterjee: Let’s take the first part of that question and examine the assumption itself. BHIM is currently a payment app for UPI. Anyone with a UPI handle can make payments to anyone else with a UPI handle using BHIM. There are many other services including those powered by Google and Whatsapp that provide the same functionality for people in their ecosystem. If we want to think of BHIM as going beyond payments and enabling credit to their users then it needs greater functionality. With UPI 2.0 a merchant can send an invoice to its client along with a pull request for the payment of the invoice. Ideally, the customer should also have an in-app option to finance this invoice.

For BHIM to be able to provide that option and further expand the digital payments and credit ecosystem, it will need a clean way to allow lenders to plug into the app and provide them with enough information to be able to underwrite the borrower right there in real time. So there are a couple of issues with that because BHIM is a government-sponsored service. First, it cannot discriminate among lenders. So it will need to make a credit platform on BHIM available to any qualified lender that wants to connect. Which it may not want to do.

Second, the data privacy issues get magnified when the government is involved. So on balance, my instinct is that BHIM is not the right platform for extending credit services and that particular innovation is best left to private applications. But it is certainly possible should the government want to head in that direction and UPI, in general, is a great enabler of credit democratization.   

Inc42: While UPI 2.0 is set to help digital lending further, the Supreme Court has struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act. Now, private companies can’t ask for customers’ Aadhaar ID. Reverting to a paper-based online authentication process from a paperless one could be a costly and time-consuming affair for NBFCs. What are your views on this?

Shivashish Chatterjee:  E-KYC using Aadhaar was a boon to the credit ecosystem in India. With the SC order that functionality has been taken away. Seven years ago KYC involved mounds of self-attested photocopies and field visits to verify the authenticity of those documents. This ate up days and weeks of effort. In early 2018 that had reduced to 30 seconds and no paper. Undoubtedly the verdict is a major setback and, unfortunately, the bottom of the pyramid, the poorest people, are the hardest hit. The well-off still have Driver’s Licenses and Passports to prove their identities but most farm labourers and domestic helps only have Aadhaar. So ironically, in the name of preserving privacy, the order has the unintended consequence of completely disenfranchising the people who need help the most. So anyone who is invested in social progress and financial inclusion should hope that all the concerned parties arrive at some compromise on this issue soon.

But it is incorrect to say that we are automatically back in a world of full-paper KYC. Technology is an irresistible force and already there are several viable alternatives to biometric authentication for some part of the target population. Offline verification using XML and pdf is widely seen as consistent with the SC order. It has its drawbacks and primary among those is that it requires far more user interaction than biometric authentication. Which in turn means that it is not a good solution for the bottom of the pyramid. The underlying infrastructure is also not as robust as EKYC and so it is unclear whether it will work at large scale adoption. But these are early solutions to a temporary hurdle and the solutions will rapidly get better. I believe that Aadhaar is here to stay and the use cases will be identified and codified into law over a period of time. The benefits are just too large to be ignored.

The recent legislation that was passed by the Lok Sabha expanding the definition of Aadhaar authentication and defining consent-based use cases shows that the government is acutely aware of this. The RBI Committee headed by Nandan Nilekani for exploring further digitalization of the financial systems is more evidence that the corridors of power will find the solution. Many of the tech solutions involving facial recognition and in-video verification are in use around the world but need the RBI’s blessings for the regulated lenders in India.

However, should I be proved wrong and we are indeed back to 2010 for KYC purposes then the outlook is somewhat bleak. Identity and document fraud killed the retail loan business in its first incarnation with rampant losses forcing businesses to shut. Aadhaar-based KYC largely eliminated that and allowed lenders to focus on credit rather than fraud prevention. It will be a shame if that is indeed entirely reversed. Financial inclusion will be the highest profile casualty of such a regressive step.

Inc42: The RBI has reportedly agreed to defer Basel III implementation by one more year. This will effectively expand the lending capacity of Indian banks by  $52.24 Bn (INR 3.7 Lakh Crore). How will this affect Indian NBFCs?

Shivashish Chatterjee: Basel III norms do not apply directly to NBFCs as they are bank capital norms but indirectly they affect the liquidity available to NBFCs from the banks. We at DMI, are more than adequately capitalised to conform to regulatory norms prescribed for us. However, we understand that we are part of a larger ecosystem with a wide range of players some of whom may not be able to absorb adverse changes in liquidity conditions. Hence any delayed application of the Basel III norms that facilitates greater availability of capital is good news in the short term as long as the banks choose to use the added buffer to increase their exposure to NBFCs. Which is not an assumption we can make automatically.

In the medium term, of course, NBFCs need to manage their ALM and liquidity appropriately and cannot be reliant on easy bank loans to fund their business.

(This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)

The post Shivashish Chatterjee, Co-Founder & Joint MD, DMI, On How Digital Lending Is Changing The Way Loans Are Accessed And Consumed appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based fintech company Instamojo has raised INR 50 Cr ($7 Mn) in a Series B round of funding. The round, led by existing Japanese investor AnyPay, saw participation from other existing investors as well as new ones. The first-time investor was Gunosy Capital while the other existing investors included venture capital firms Kalaari Capital, Beenext, and angel investor Rashmi Kwatra.

While Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures is already on the board of Instamojo, Taka Inoue, the CEO of AnyPay, is set to join the board. Kwatra will join as an observer.

Speaking to Inc42, Sampad Swain, CEO and cofounder, Instamojo, said, “This funding will help us become the defacto fintech platform for MSMEs, rehashing our numbers. Having achieved most of the 2018 milestones, we have set new milestones for FY19. We are looking to grow 3X-5X, launching a slew of products under mojoExpress (logistics solutions) and mojoCapital (credit and lending). In the case of mojoCapital, we plan to achieve annualised disbursal run rate $100 Mn in the next 12 months against the existing $30 Mn.”

“To achieve all these targets, we plan to increase our manpower of existing 120 to 250 soon. Only yesterday, we hired around 30 people,” he added.

“We believe that the digital and cashless economy has grown rapidly in India and the ecommerce market is also expanding,” said Yuki Maniwa, director of Gunosy Capital.

In the last couple of years, Instamojo has raised funds annually with Japanese VC AnyPay leading the rounds.

Taka Inoue, the CEO of AnyPay, said, “Our association with Instamojo started in August 2017 and since then we have seen extraordinary growth at their end, in terms of sales and MSMEs on-boarded on the platform. Now, Instamojo is all set to evolve from being just a payments company to a full-stack service provider that supports logistics and short-term loans to empower Indian MSMEs.”

How Instamojo Became A Full-Stack Service Platform

Instamojo was founded in 2012 by Akash Gehani, Harshad Sharma, and Sampad Swain. The fintech startup is backed and advised by prominent angel investors and VCs such as Rajan Anandan, Sunil Kalra, 500 Startups, Blume Ventures, Dave McClure, Rob de Heus, Thijs Gitmans, Pankaj Jain, Shailesh Rao, Bharathram Thothadri, and Avlesh Singh.

Counted among the 42 most innovative startups in India under the 42Next list by Inc42 in 2018, Instamojo started its journey in the fintech space with its flagship product — the online payments link — thereby solving the digital payments challenge for several entrepreneurs.

Catering to the needs of MSMEs, mostly micro-merchants, the startup has also launched its ecommerce platform mojoEcommerce, which helps merchants build their online identity and sell, manage, and grow their businesses online. It provides a suite of tools, including an online store where merchants can showcase their products and services. Merchants can also connect to a marketplace which allows business owners to connect with sellers offering services such as digital marketing, content, SEO design web hosting, logistics, SMS marketing, etc.

New Products Under mojoExpress And mojoCapital

In August last year, Instamojo launched mojoExpress and mojoCapital. While mojoExpress provides a logistics solution enabling delivery of products sold on its mojoEcommerce platform, mojoCapital provides credit and lending solutions to micro-merchants.

Instamojo plans to enrich its solutions further in these categories. Swain said, “In mojoExpress, currently we are providing only air shipping solutions — long-distance deliveries — intercities only. With this funding, the plan is to launch surface shipments enabling intracity shipments such as Koramangala to Indiranagar.

For deliveries, the company has already partnered with FedEx, Delhivery and Ecom Express and intends to add more soon.

mojoCapital was launched last quarter and is about to hit an annualised disbursal run rate $30 Mn, this March and aims to achieve $100 Mn by the year-end. Meanwhile, other payments startup Razorpay, too, recently has launched a lending platform. However, both are catering to different customers, says Swain.

“mojoCapital primarily caters to the segment which are neither NBFCs nor the banks are currently catering to. Most of these loans are of the size of $100. We are currently offering two solutions at mojoCapital — Instant Payout, Next Day Payout. And, we aim to add three more solutions in mojoCapital this year,” said Swain.

“We have been catering to MSMEs for the last six years and will continue to do so. Our customer base compared to other existing providers are unique in the sense that we mostly cater to micro merchants who employ around five people with around INR 12 Lacs ($16.8K) annual turnover,” he added.

Next Step: A Unified Dashboard 

Having launched a triad of solutions — ecommerce, smart payment links, and credit and lending solutions — Instamojo now plans to integrate all the solutions on one dashboard.

Swain said, “We want to be the first company in building an entire mobile experience of payments, lending, and ecommerce.  The unified dashboard will be launched by March, this year.”

Besides, the company is also planning to launch a networking platform for the MSME communities where they could interact and help each other to grow further.

The company is also working on a digital advertising solution and with this funding, it plans to pursue the segment further.

Swain has already laid out big plans for the company. “The current MSME fraternity in India is of around 65 Mn. With 600K existing customer base, 1% of the existing potential, we aim to increase this to 1.5Mn this year. And, this is achievable, We added almost 300K customers in 2018 only.”

While Razorpay and Paytm claimed to have achieved 10x growth in post-demonistisation era, Instamojo has claimed a growth of 15X during the same period.

With internet and smart mobile consumption expanding exponentially, and payments companies becoming an inherent part of everyone’s mobile, India is currently witnessing a fintech revolution.

Instamojo was part of the 2018 edition of the most coveted list of India’s most innovative startups — 42Next by Inc42.

The post With $7 Mn Series B Funding, Instamojo Looks To Triple Growth, Double Manpower appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India is currently the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market growing by 23% every year, according to a Morgan Stanley research report of 2017. A report by technology conglomerate Cisco, showed that smartphone users in India are projected to double to 829 Mn by 2022 from 404.1 Mn in 2017, which means more Indians are using their phones for daily activities such as banking, bill payments, capturing pictures etc.

As the smartphone becomes the most used personal device, the risk of losing private data in case loss of the phone gets much larger. The reason could be many. But here we are focusing on smartphone lost or theft cases. According to a Pew Research report, nearly one-third of mobile phone owners have experienced a lost or stolen phone, and 12% have had another person access the contents of their phone in a way that made them feel their privacy was invaded

To address the logistics of losing a phone, Abhijit Barua, the founder of smartphone security app MIFON, with his domain experience of more than 25 years in the telecom and tech industry took up the onus to explore the security and safety solutions for smartphones.

As Barua shared with Inc42, “I started experimenting in 2014 along with my friends and family for an app which tracks the user’s phone and after several hits and misses, regular OS updates and starting from scratch, again and again, we launched MIFON app in February 2017.”

The company has been focusing on 500 Mn first time internet users of India, along with other internet users in South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Headquartered in Singapore, it raised its first institutional funding in July 2018 from US-based venture capital investor SOSV. It is also backed by mobile-only accelerator MOX based in the Centre of Innovation, Taipei.

MIFON: The Siren, Thief Catcher And Tracker

In simple terms, MIFON helps users track their phone in case of theft or loss even without power or an internet connection. The app seeks access to phone data, control, location etc and in case of loss, can be engaged to erase the phone data, as well as change phone password from a remote location.

Also, it can enable photo clicking of the person who is trying to unlock the phone and send an email to the user with that image, which can then be taken forward to police or authorities, as needed.

For personal security, MIFON offers Smart SOS Distress mode, which enables users to discreetly and smartly alert selected contacts in case there is any personal emergencies, as well as a group safety tracking dashboard.

An interesting addition for all of us who leave the phone on silent and forget about it, and soon after, turn the place upside down searching for it is the siren. In case the phone is lost, a user can SMS to MIFON with the phone security code and a siren goes on.

Some of the other additional services include integrated tracking of family, alerts when the sim in the phone is changed, send low battery notification in the last location, automated cleaner, auto backup of phone’s data in the cloud and anti-malware along with a battery efficient footprint among others.

As a service, the company enables phone locator in case of theft or loss. An interesting part of accessing the MIFON app is the conscious effort to explain the use of every single access to data it seeks.

When asked if they faced any regulatory issues for storing user’s data, Barua explained to Inc42 that the company had faced no issues in complying to Europe’s GDPR regulations and personal data privacy rules being discussed in India, as they had been consciously making the use of data clear. “We don’t record the name or details of a user, all we do is store the identity of the device to ensure the safety of user data,” he added.

Business Model: A B2B And B2C Integration

At present, the company offers a premium paid model and a free version, along with a seven-day trial period. MIFON has its alliances with telecom operators and is also in process of signing more partnerships to further strengthen its B2B model in both local and international markets. “MIFON will be co-branded and bundled with their data packs,” he added.

Its B2C model also continues to grow organically. The company claims to record 3,500 daily users on its app. It has also achieved a monthly growth of 12% and is catering to more than 3 Mn smartphone users.

After starting B2C user subscriptions in the last quarter, the company has also completed a two-quarter paid-pilot run with a mobile network operator for a test of the quality of services.

Barua said, “With the kind of access we get and the data we record, we have also found a use case of the data points we receive in testing the quality of service for these mobile networks. As we track a user’s device, we are able to track the kind of quality their mobile network has and thus, help mobile operators to do their QoS easily rather than months-long process.”

70% Indian Users And Counting

The company claims to have more than 70% of users from India, with 10% coming from the USA and other  20% users from South East Asia including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Phillippines etc and Africa.

Barua along with his core team— Sagar Desai, chief of technology; Mayank Savla, chief architect; and Amol Pomane, chief of Digital— and other advisors like Gautam Ghosh, Hemant Tripathi and others is now looking at further scaling up the use of the app with partnerships with insurance companies.

“We are working with insurance firms to create an end-to-end platform that will enable the $20 Bn smartphone insurance products to be scaled into emerging markets, efficiently to make business painless for both the insurance firms and customers,” Barua told Inc42.

The company is also in active discussions with strategic investors for a Series A round of funding to support its pipeline of partners across 25 countries and potential access to over 350 Mn users.

Barua said that the MIFON stack is already using a fair amount of Machine Learning to process the billions of data points at the backend and therefore, the company is making efforts to move beyond phones to appliances and gadget protection. It is also looking at proactive alerts like predicting risks in the real world.

At present, in the market, every major global company has introduced its own phone tracker. For example, Google offers Find My Device, Apple offers Find My iPhone, Find My Phone, Lookout etc. These companies have separate conditions and are mostly working on the internet with the phone switched on.

The statistics available show that 150 Mn smartphones are lost or stolen in India every year. A Cisco report showed that smartphone users in India are projected to double to 829 Mn by 2022 from 404.1 Mn in 2017.

This further highlights how mobile device management (MDM) is set to reach $7.86 Bn by 2023. And as a player looking for wholesome security of a user’s device, MIFON’s technology is a feature we can use to save our day.

The post MIFON Carves A New Market Helping Users Recover Lost Or Stolen Phones appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In today’s social media-crazy world where every product adorned or consumed is shared on Facebook and Instagram — instantly — clothes and accessories have become an extension of one’s personality. But along with increased sartorial consciousness come rising ethical concerns around products using or abusing natural resources.

One such pressing concern is the use of animal skin/leather for making accessories such as bags and shoes. On the flipside, essential substitutes of leather — leatherette, polyurethane, and polyvinyl chloride leather — are adding to the ever-increasing non-biodegradable waste load of the world.

Catch 22 situation, this.

Well, where there’s a problem, there’s bound to be a solution. The above dilemma has given rise to the concept of “slaughter-free leather’ (leather sourced from animals who have died due to natural causes) and ethical tanneries.

As the niche demand for slaughter-free or compassionate leather grows in an increasingly ecologically-conscious world, stylists and designers are cashing in on the opportunity with popular startups like Khara Kapas and Grain. India, which is known for its leather goods the world over, is no exception.

One startup that is redefining people’s sense of aesthetics by the use of compassionate leather is Brandless. Founded by Aanchal Mittal, Brandless has a unique approach to product design — it focuses on day-to-day problems faced by its users and conceptualises products to solve them, while ensuring nothing gets wasted during the production process. “Each product is designed keeping functionality as a priority. We design products to make daily life more organised. However, we pay equal attention to the aesthetics and strike a balance between the two,” says Mittal.

Brandless has come up with exotic leather products — its primary product line comprises travel gear and accessories and it offers a niche line of duffel bags, backpacks, laptop bags, satchels, and other small leather goods. More than just a style statement, Brandless products offer the value-add of utility — think leather pencil holders, charger wraps, bookmarks, earphones protecting holders, and the like. The price points range between $2.81 (INR 200) and $254 (INR 18K).

The Road Less Travelled: The Making Of Brandless

An alumnus of NIFT Delhi, Mittal has worked with renowned designers such as Samant Chauhan and done an internship at Fashion Week. She has a keen understanding of sartorial aesthetics and was irked by the obsession people have with brand names without really understanding the value and aesthetics of the product in question. This is what gave birth to the idea of “Brandless” — both its name and existence. With a belief that a product should compliment the personality of the user and not overshadow it, Mittal came up with the name “Brandless” for her startup.

The inception of Brandless took place in 2014, but the operations were formally launched in 2015 as starting up was difficult for Mittal. First, there was the challenge of bootstrapping, then there was the fact that Mittal had ventured into a male-dominated industry — right from the karigars (craftsmen), labourers, and vendors to producers, most stakeholders are men — and it was no easy task to set up her company from scratch.

Today, Mittal takes pride in the fact that from being a one-woman army working out of a coworking space, Brandless has grown to have a full-fledged team. Brandless today has an average ticket size of $49.13 (INR 3,500) per month with a 35% repeat customer rate.

The startup caters to both men and women in the age group of 25-50 years. The products are available through its website as well as other ecommerce platforms. About 70% of Brandless products are sold on its website and the remaining 30% through other channels. The products are also available at select stores in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

Ethical Style Statement Blended With Functionality

Brandless ensures that it sources leather from ethical tanneries. “The leather we use is a byproduct of animals who are not killed for their skin,” says Mittal.

When coming up with the designs for a particular season, the startup works with vendors to develop the requisite leather, canvas, and lining for the designs. After developing a few samples, work starts on prototypes. Once the design and material are thoroughly tested, the next step is production. “We do not produce very high quantities to make sure that quality is not affected in the process,” says Mittal.

Leather being an expensive luxury good, pricing is a challenge for handcrafted leather accessory manufacturing startups like Brandless, especially while operating in an ever-changing, dynamic market. Which is why Brandless decided to focus on quality rather than on quantity.

Breaking Through The Competition

India has a substantial contribution of around 12.93% to the worldwide production of leather. As per reports, the total leather good exports from India stood at $3.05 Bn during the time period April-October 2018.

Observing the vast potential of the leather accessory market in India, numerous startups have sprung up in the space. Some such names are Nappa Dori, The Sole Sisters, The Black Canvas, The Trunks Company, and The Burlap People. So, among well-known international players offering brand value and emerging domestic startups offering affordability, how do new players like Brandless carve out a niche?

The startup is expanding its product availability through numerous concept stores in India and creating brand awareness by offering services such as corporate gifting. Some of its major clients are Bank of Baroda and Accenture.

Besides, Brandless is spreading its wings beyond Tier 1 cities and exploring the mass untapped potential of customers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. “Our base will be Delhi only but we are expanding our retail points all over India. We shall be diversifying into new product categories this year as well,’’ says Mittal.

Next up, the BrandLess headquarters in New Delhi is all set to become a walk-in studio for clients to experience its products.

Leather Accessories Still A Better Choice. Why?

In the last few decades, the use of leather has become an ethical and controversial matter. But, till the world finds a better and environment-friendly alternative to leather, slaughter-free leather might be the answer to the problem. This is even more significant in a country like India where the leather industry generates 250 jobs for every $200K investment.

From the economic perspective, the leather and leather accessory industry is known for its consistently high export earnings. It accounts as one of the Top 10 foreign exchange earning sources for India. Reports state that the total leather good exports from India stood at US$ 3.05 Bn during April-October 2018. Further, with direct government support and collaboration with international organisations, the leather and leather accessory industry is about to grow even bigger.

Startups like Brandless are contributing to this increasing employment opportunity and aiding the growth of the leather goods manufacturing sector. They are also expanding the scope of the industry by collaborating with artists, organisations, and the labour force from smaller Indian cities. They are also offering employment opportunities at the micro-level for unemployed people, mostly women.

And if, like Brandless, they are sensitive to the importance of animal and ecological protection as well, that’s being ethical on more counts than one.

The post How A Startup Called ‘Brandless’ Is Making A Name For Its Ethical, Functional Leather Products appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Building a website today is easier than ever before. With simple drag-and-drop tools, anyone can build one even without any technical know-how. But no matter how well the website is made, it will serve no purpose if it’s not hosted on the right server or platform.

During the late 1990s, companies like GeoCities, Tripod, and Angelfire started offering free web-hosting services to make the concept more popular. But in India, the idea was slow to catch on, mainly because of lack of internet penetration and awareness about the potential of running one’s website and its multifaceted impact on the business.

India, which is the sixth-largest economy and has the largest youth population in the world, reached an all-time high of digital transactions worth $2.82 Tn as of August 2018. It has the second-highest number of internet users worldwide and rising. More traditional and offline businesses are coming online not only to sell their products but also to spread the word about their brands. This trend has opened up a gamut of opportunities for new businesses to provide support to businesses going online.

For Jafar Muhammed and Abdul Jamsheer, founders of Bengaluru-based Host My Website Online, this was one of the major reasons to venture into the web hosting space.

The founders were quick to realise that startups and small businesses were paying a lot of money to host their websites with additional costs piling up to have the most basic features incorporated. Host My Website Online aims to make web hosting economical while complementing it with security as a free feature. The startup which is bootstrapped is now providing solutions to over 9,000 active clients.

Host My Website Online offers free A+ grade Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, 99.99% uptime guarantee, full security, on-demand backup and restoration features along with web hosting on premium cloud SSD and other managed services starting at as low as $0.70 (INR 50) per month.

The startup uses applications such as Cloudlinux, Cloudflare with free Railgun technology for enhanced user experience. “We offer the latest cPanel to our subscribers for website files and database management. The server OS is Cloudlinux, the leading OS (operating system) for web hosting providers,’’ says Muhammed.

This could be the answer for companies with a simple product offering looking for a cost-effective yet reliable web hosting experience. The availability and easy scalability to plans with more features enables the startup’s clients to upgrade as they achieve traction along their journey.

The Power of Web Hosting

Being a startup with a mission to bring more people online, the startup understands the needs, demands, and roadblocks for startups. The advanced firewall at Host My Website Online protects users in any crisis. “To meet a crisis like data loss, we have regular server-level backup and restoration features,” says Muhammed.

To ensure scalability, security, and search engine visibility, companies often hire web designers and web developers at high costs. But most people are not aware that with added security layers, easy, and automated scripting tools available these days, they can build websites themselves. Although today, there are plenty of tutorial blogs and videos available on the web, what people mostly lack is effective resources supporting those guidelines.

Host My Website Online assists its users in building websites with easy to use tools, along with all the necessary features from SEO optimisation and data backup. Host My Website Online provides 24*7 customer service, not just enabling users to build websites with ease, but also helping them get through any crisis.

AI-Powered Security Systems

With cyber attacks growing day by day, it is impossible for constant human monitoring to ensure complete safety of a company’s website and online data. Host My Website Online has taken an innovative approach to the issue by integrating a security solution known as Imunify360 to its web-hosting services.

Imunify360 is an all-in-one security suite with robust protection against the newest attacks, powered by AI. A proprietary technology with Proactive Defense stops known and unknown malware.

Imunify360’s AI-powered Malware Scanner automatically scans file systems for malware injection and quarantines infected files. Furthermore, the advanced self-learning malware cleaning system will clean the infected files and effectively restore the modified files.

Benefits Of Cloud-Based Services

The startup has chosen to completely stick with cloud-based services to offer scalable solutions and flexible pricing. The company’s approach gives customers limitless power and control over the services they use.

Going for cloud-based services also makes web pages load faster, so customers don’t have to pay for extra unused space, besides giving them the option to secure, backup, and restore data whenever needed.

In a digital economy, as an organisation grows, the amount of data it produces also grows exponentially. Very often rapid growth can lead to messy data collection, centralised data servers can prove to be expensive to maintain as well. Using cloud-powered software can minimise growth pains attached with the rapid expansion of a company.

Why Finding The Right Web-Hosting Partner Is Important?

Though most of the web-based apps are now on the cloud, some websites still use traditional shared hosting servers, VPSs and dedicated servers. This is primarily done to save costs, easy deployment and management, but it comes with its own set of problems. The websites on shared physical servers were often sluggish, experienced higher downtime and had little or no control over various advanced features. This is where cloud hosting became a go-to option.

For those wondering about cloud becoming a necessity today, Muhammed says, ‘’By using cloud, web hosting players will be able to provide any subscriber with the options such as easy customisation, easy on-demand-scalability, flexible pricing and much more.”

He further adds, “At Host My Website Online, we are on the cloud, and this gives us limitless power and control to offer our services. During our initial stage, we too were using a limited system. But ever since we moved to the cloud, we are now capable of scaling, customise and serve any number of traffic.’’

The shared web hosting space is highly concentrated with many players in the industry, often leading to startups grappling to find the right partner.

As a low-priced web hosting service with numerous free website management tools, Host My Website Online makes it an apt choice for individuals and small businesses which do not have very complex features as part of their websites and can make do with a maximum of 4GB SSD storage, which the startups offers.

Importance of Websites and Web Hosting

Gone are the days when it was necessary to be popular to be on the web. Now, it is essential to be on the web to be popular someday. So, whether it is a travel blog, a photographic exhibition, a freelancers’ group portal, or an ecommerce startup, more and more people and companies are joining the worldwide web.

The global web hosting market is saturated with plenty of popular names such as Amazon Web Services, Hostgator, and GoDaddy, apart from other emerging players such as iPage and InMotion Hosting.

However, numerous homegrown players such as BigRock, Host My Website Online, HostingRaja and MilesWeb have emerged over the past decade who have built localised solutions to cater to Indian businesses and seem to have cracked the code for providing security, safety and advanced suite of tools for web hosting at economical price points.

While India’s internet penetration has swelled in the past 5 years, there’s still a massive opportunity of another 500 Mn+ users coming online in India over the next decade – which would be a big potential market for such homegrown players to tap into.

The post Why Choosing The Right Web Hosting Partner Is Important And How You Can Find The Perfect One appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“Finding a mentor means looking for your future self with more experience.”

This headline from a Forbes August 2018 article aptly describes the role a mentor plays in the entrepreneurial journey of a startup founder or a wannapreneur. However, with India leading the global charts as the third-largest startup ecosystem — with more than 39K startups and a million more eyes dreaming of their own ventures — finding the right mentor to help start and scale a company is no easy task.

There are platforms like LinkedIn, AngelList, and Meetup that enable entrepreneurs to connect and build links with industry professionals. But the process is broken and time-consuming and there is no guarantee of ‘if and when’ the other person will respond to the shared queries.

Ranchi-based Simran Chhabra faced a similar issue while she was working with Gurugram-based recruitment solution provider Beam Commerce. “I was looking for an alliance with Flipkart but did not know whom to reach out to. I connected with a couple of category managers but that did not help. Reaching out to the right person became a big problem,” she says.

This incident gave her the idea to start Colangels, a startup that facilitates mentor connect, recruitment solutions for startups, and crowdfunding and investment opportunities — all on one platform. She roped in family and friends, including cousin sister Shruti Kaur, Shruti’s husband Aman Singh, and Aman’s friend Prateek Lamechwal. Together, they launched the beta version of the platform in July 2018.

Currently bootstrapped, this Bengaluru and Gurugram-based tech platform has a team of 60. Within just over six months of its launch, it boasts 10K users seeking advice from a network of more than 100 mentors, including Quikr CEO Pranay Chulet, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, and GoQii CEO Vishal Gondal. In the field of recruitment, it provides solutions to clients such as Alibaba, Instamojo, ShopX, Chaayos, Urban Ladder, MilkBasket.

Colangels is exploring two segments mainly — recruitment and mentor connect — but both of these are already crowded. For instance, in the money-making recruitment vertical, the competition is tough with established players such as Naukri, HackerRank, MercerMettl, WheeBox. Colangels, however, is offering mentoring opportunities for free at present and is yet to build a monetisation model around it.

So, how does the startup plan to create a differentiation as well as build a sustainable business model to continue in the long run? Inc42 connected with the founding team of Colangels last week to understand this.

Bridging The Gap Between Entrepreneurs And Mentors

Kaur defines Colangels as, “COLlaborate with COmpanies and COLleges in a way so that they GEL with each other for mutual growth and end up becoming an ‘Angel’ for the startup community.”

Simply put, the Colangels founders’ mission is to foster a number of verticals for startups to connect with mentors and investors for angel and crowdfunding investments. On one hand, these connections often open up funding opportunities for startups.

On the other hand, mentors get to learn about exciting technologies, ideas, and efficient teams, which they can make use of in their own ventures. Or they can take advantage of a being first mover and get an equity stake in the promising startups at an early stage.

The startup also facilitates other services such as aggregating coworking spaces, finding potential interns, professional networking, and crowdfunding campaigns. “Colangels can help students with their internships and getting placed in startups where they can showcase their talent and grow exponentially,” adds Chhabra.

How It Works

The user simply has to register on the Colangels platform to connect with mentors. Each profile created on the platform goes through a five-level verification process wherein information such as the idea, team, market size, scalability of the idea, and the revenue model of the startup are verified. This is done so the users can get precisely filtered options of the mentors — termed as “Angels” — that are relevant to their requirements.

Singh explains that users “earn” 150 Angels when they register on the platform, 100 Angels on completing the entire profile, and 25 Angels when they send recommendations to their connections.

“You burn Angels when you try to do an Alliance and when you connect with a Mentor or an Investor. And the burn of Angels while connecting to a featured mentor or investor is high, so we advise startup founders to use their Angels wisely,” he adds.

From the options thrown up by the engine, the user can send elevator pitches to mentors and investors. In order to avoid flooding of inboxes, each user gets a set number of “Angels” (mentors) based on his/her profile whom they can reach out to. Typically, responses are received within 48 hours.

A Startup With Its Heart In The Right Place

Chhabra says that initially, it was difficult for the team to secure time slots with industry experts (CEOs/CXOs, etc) who could be potential mentors on the platform. “But, once we helped them understand the model and the difference the platform can bring in the startup ecosystem, most of them agreed to be a part of it,” she adds.

Today, the startup is going strong. One of the feathers in its cap is an association with the Jharkhand government through which it is helping boost the startup ecosystem of the state. Colangels is also raising funds through a crowdfunding campaign called ‘Voice of Slum’, through which it will help more than 100 slum children across the country get an education and impart the skills to make them employable and give them a better chance at life.

“In the coming months, we will be organising crowdfunding campaigns for social startups as well that have a clear monetisation model in place,” says Chhabra.

With Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai being the major traction-generating cities, Colangels is also looking to reach a user base of 1 Mn by the end of 2020. Further, the team plans to expand across international borders in mid-2019 starting with Southeast Asia. “That’s when we will take Indian talent from Tier 1 colleges to SEA for internships and full-time placements as there is a massive increase in demand for Indian talent,” added Singh.

Will Colangels Be Able To Succeed?

According to Forrester research, around 65% of the startups that raised funding between 2014-2017 were looking for hiring partners, alliances, and mentor connect. As mentioned earlier, there exist gaps in the startup recruitment and mentor connect segment. With its personalised approach, Colangels can certainly make a difference in enabling startup founders to connect with mentors and the right employees at the right stage of growth.

The business model seems quite difficult to monetise even in the long run considering how price sensitive the Indian audience is. Plus, Colangels doesn’t guarantee that the mentors will answer all of a user’s queries, so there is always the possibility that some questions may go unanswered, creating trust issues for the user.

However, Colangels already has a monetisation model in place with its recruitment solutions and boasts a good list of clients. This can create enough traction for the startup and bring in revenues for it to sustain its efforts in the space of mentor connect.

Also, the fact that Colangels’ recruitment solutions are not specific to a particular segment, with the focus being on startup staffing needs in general, gives the startup the scope to create a much larger portfolio due to the high attrition rates faced by early to growth-stage companies.

The road ahead may be a bit rocky for Colangels, but then entrepreneurship is a tough game altogether. And as Kaur rightly says,

“You will grow automatically if people around you grow.”

The post For Startups Looking To Hire Or Connect With Mentors, Colangels Is Playing A Ministering Angel appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Recently, it was reported that Walmart-owned Flipkart, which has a 30-floor office in Bengaluru with a seating capacity of more than 7,300, is in talks with many coworking space providers for placing 3,000 employees in the city itself. Other corporates like Twitter, Jaguar, Land Rover, GoDaddy, and Discovery India are also tapping into India’s coworking options.

In recent years, India has developed a strong coworking culture. Big companies like WeWork, Regus, Awfis, 91 Springboard, and Innov8, along with emerging players such as Skootr, Workfella, GoHive, and GoWork are creating a major impact in the space.

With the emergence of shared offices and coworking spaces in India, the definition of the workplace has changed. They are taking away the monotony of traditional workspaces with cool, value-added features such as indoor games, lounge areas, cafés, nap rooms, breakout zones, mini-bars, gyms, Jacuzzi, and more. And the best part is that companies opting for them don’t have to worry about their maintenance.

Some coworking space providers are discoverable online but the entire spectrum on one platform and a true marketplace to make a decision and have a right solution This is where the need for a centralised platform such as Qdesq arises.

Founded in 2015 by Paras Arora and Lavesh Bhandari, Qdesq is an online aggregator of coworking spaces, shared workspaces, managed workplaces, virtual offices, and individual offices. Qdesq helps people from startup founders and freelancers to established entrepreneurs and corporates, offering hassle-free, ready to use, plug-and-play workplaces.

Qdesq is a one-stop workspace rental platform which is making the workplace search smarter and simpler. It often becomes a challenge for office space occupiers and seekers to look out for the perfect workplace based on their needs and budget. They often struggle to make time to visit each place that offline brokers offer. Qdesq understands this and is steadily simplifying the workplace needs of both startups and corporates.

Qdesq is marrying technology with brokerage in the real-estate sector to make office space search as simple as a tap on your screen. It has taken the pain out of searching for the right workspace, addressing client concerns and queries, and offering them the best-in-class workplace as per their needs, pricing, location, configuration, and company growth curve.

From aggregating coworking spaces, on demand hot desks, virtual offices, individual offices for both startups and enterprises, Qdesq offers them all.  Moreover, the company’s own proprietary CRM simplifies the process further and helps it keep a track of all its deals, thereby keeping the process at Qdesq streamlined.

Qdesq: A One-Stop Solution for Workplace Rental Services

Headquartered in Gurugram, Qdesq offers rental services in 32 India cities including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad among many others. It partners with India’s most well-known coworking partners such as WeWork, Awfis, Skootr, Innov8, 91 springboard, and Cowrks, as well as 1,500 other venue partners, semi-branded and neighbourhood coworking spaces, shared corporate offices, hotels, serviced offices operated by landlords across India.

It understands its clients’ demands and offers customised workspace rental solutions complemented with comparative pricing and live assistance to understand clients’ needs and offer them the right solution.

It counts among its clients a number of leading startups such as ClearTax, Autoninja, and NowFloats, along with small and medium-sized businesses. Also, the likes of global giants and large corporates such as Expedia, Jefferies, Tripadvisor, Google, Avaya, Worldpay, Siemens, Zomato, Flipkart, and Hyundai trust on Qdesq’s assistance for their on demand or long term workspace solutions. Or even a customised private managed office as large as 100 seater solution.

With a 4X YoY growth, Qdesq is setting a benchmark in the commercial real-estate sector.

Flexible Workspaces: The Choice Of Startups & Corporates

Startups’ attraction for shared workspaces is understandable — they offer them the chance to launch operations with negligible investment, along with affordable pricing, a redefined work culture that enables employees to network with people from other companies, and more. But, what is driving established corporates with huge workspaces to opt for coworking? The answer is simple — flexibility.

Flexible workspaces offer hassle-free day to day affairs in operations and maintenance, zero capex, zero compliance in maintenance, flexibility in terms of future team development, and premium locations with a productive environment. These are the reasons why major corporates, startups founders, entrepreneurs, and small-medium business enterprises are increasingly looking for flexible workspaces.

Also, lower costs. Given the spiralling real-estate prices in Indian cities it is getting extremely difficult for all kinds of companies to own offices of their own or expand them as they grow. For startups, coworking has emerged as a lifeline while for corporates, it makes economic sense to pay only for the space they need, when they need it.

The flexible workspace concept allows companies to pay per seat instead of the conventional method of paying for sq ft (while renting an entire office space).

Qdesq: Facilitating India’s Flexible Workspace Culture

According to research by Qdesq, the estimated market for flexible workspaces in India is worth $2.2 Bn with 1.779 Mn registered companies and 1.189 Mn active companies, excluding freelancers, sole proprietorship, and partnership firms. The company says that the exponential growth of flexible workspaces in India is being triggered by their inherent benefits — they are ready to use, economical, flexible and scalable expansion or reduction and provide exposure to a diverse workspace community.

Flexible Workspaces Are The Future

From the beginning of 2018, India observed rapid growth in the establishment and performance of flexible workspaces. Such workspaces, complimented with coworking spaces, have come up with innovative ideas, better flexibility, and engaging activities, among others, to be at forefront of the commercial real estate sector.

The founders’ blog at Qdesq says that this is no longer an emerging trend that it is about to take up the office stock. It further adds that flexible workspaces, which comprised 3% of the total office space in 2018, is about to rise to 11% within the next three years.

During a casual chat on why Qdesq thinks flexible workspaces are important, Paras Arora, founder & CEO at Qdesq, tells Inc42, “Flexible workspace is the future with an estimated 30% of real estate being flexible workspaces by 2030. The APAC will be the largest market share-holder of flexible spaces and India alone will hold $5 Bn of the market by 2022.”

With not many competitors in the same race, there is a huge market for Qdesq to explore. The growth strategy of Qdesq is simple: transparency in business practices, regular technological upgradation in the user interface, data points and BI, and understanding of the evolving market dynamics. Though Qdesq doesn’t have any direct competitors, direct online lead flow to coworking spaces and regional local brokers pose indirect competition to the workplace aggregator.

Arora adds, “The future lies in tapping the network and the community, and the factors that can boost business are strategic tie-ups and unbiased and impartial solution to the clients with a one-stop answer to pan India expansion, and tech-enabled offline to online SOP’s. This is how we work and how we are planning to grow in the near future.”

Given the market outlook and the increasing adoption of flexible workspaces by not just startups and SMEs but also by major corporates and enterprises, there’s a huge opportunity for Qdesq to look beyond Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, leading the startup ecosystem and coworking to even in smaller cities.

At the same time, with not many players in the workspace aggregation sector, Qdesq is preparing to expand its services to international shores. And given its innovative approach and first mover advantage, Qdesq looks set to go to these places and more.

The post 25 Cities, 4X YOY Growth, 220+ Monthly Transactions: Qdesq Is Taking The Flexible Workplace Segment By Storm appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.” — Elon Musk

With a similar motivation to be a part of something bigger than themselves, Aaditya Sharda and Souvik Sengupta founded Infra.Market, a B2B online procurement marketplace for real estate and construction materials, with technology as their focal point.

During a recent conversation about the current scenario of India’s construction industry, the founders at Infra.Market told Inc42 that the infrastructure and construction industry of India is estimated to be valued at $300 Bn by 2020.

However, the industry is largely unorganised  and adding to that was the aftermath of the demonetisation of currency notes in 2016, where India witnessed a major fall in the revenue of the construction industry due to the cash crisis in the market. Besides, around the same time, the global financial turmoil pushed the construction curve further downwards, demanding that the government step in to stabilise the sector.

The Centre then started taking major steps to uplift the economy by creating new fiscal policies supporting the construction sector, leading to it becoming a multi-billion dollar industry contributing majorly to India’s growing GDP.

Infra.Market is looking to be a key player in the construction industry by taking the procurement process online and bringing parity and transparency in pricing. Aaditya Sharda explains, “We all know, how critical is it for construction companies in India to avoid project cost over-runs to stay financially viable. We believe that procuring the materials at the right price can help them avoid these cost over-runs to a large extent.’’

Infra.Market realises that every construction project is unique in its own way and procurement of materials for these projects is an art which requires strong technical and negotiation skills and a local geographical know-how, which many construction companies in India find difficult to build in-house. Compared to large companies, smaller companies are deprived of the cost benefit on procurement of materials due to their small order-size or due to the presence of multiple middleman in the supply chain. Further, the supply chain for various materials is fragmented and unorganised.

‘’We sought to re-define this and decided to bring transparency in the procurement process of construction companies,’’ emphasises Aditya Sharda.

Infra.Market: Lower Prices And A Level Playing Field

• Central procurement unit to help Real estate and Construction companies procure materials for their project
• Better pricing and credit facilities to enhance parity, transparency, and productivity in the construction sector

Mumbai based Infra.Market has built a centralised online market for real estate and construction materials that offers fair pricing and an enhanced technology experience to its clients. It does this by aggregating clients’ demands, matching them with its supply chain, and offering economies of scale on material pricing, along with affordable credit options that were earlier not available to individual customers.

Aaditya Sharda says, “We have enabled our clients to make an average of 5%-7% savings on their input costs.”

There are some other B2B ecommerce companies serving in the same space, the notable being Moglix, IndustryBuying, OfBusiness, and Power2SME. Though these online startups are providing efficient services to the construction industry, not all of them act as a one-stop solution for construction and related products. Infra.Market’s edge is its industry specific focus.

Souvik Sengupta adds, “If you consider some of the other startups in the B2B ecommerce industry in India like Industrybuying & Moglix, they have chosen to cater to a large number of products across diverse sectors. We are following a different model than them. We consciously have been industry focused, product focused and geographically focused so far.’’

Infra.Market believes that the dynamics of running a business as a B2B are starkly different than that of running a B2C, be it offline or online. Only giving discounts to attract customers doesn’t work in B2B.

‘’We will remain relevant only if we add value to our customers by helping them consistently procure cheaper in the long run, ‘’ says Souvik Sengupta.

Infra.Market’s strategy has helped the company achieve the target of bringing value for  customers by helping them save 5%-7% of their input cost. In a nutshell, Infra.Market truly believes that as a B2B ecommerce platform it is bringing India’s unorganised construction industry online.

The Infra.Market Edge

• Enhanced technology platform connecting client requirements directly to its supply chain, enabling ease of ordering and delivery tracking through their mobile application.
• Online hassle free registration with ease of credit and instant quotes

As a technology platform, Infra.Market creates a direct communication chain between its clients and supply chain, ensuring an efficient delivery tracking facility. The startup dishes out a unique and personalised experience for its clients and allots each one of them a dedicated relationship manager to help understand and fulfill their requirements.

Aaditya Sharda adds “Our customer repetition is close to 90% due to our customer specific relationship managers. This enables us to bring to our clients an experience none of our competitors are currently providing. Our mobile application is helping us ensure our customers have a substantially better experience in ordering and tracking their order till delivery to their site, an experience unheard-of in the industry.”

Souvik Sengupta says, “We are growing at 100% year-on-year for the last couple of years; we expect to continue this growth. Our focus is to stay profit-centric and consequently, we wanted to first build a profitable ecommerce model and then grow it by diversifying into multiple products and expanding geographically, instead of the other way around.’’

Infra.Market’s strategy has helped the company become successful in touching the projected levels of revenue growth and maintaining positive PAT levels every year since inception. They believe in raising only what the business needs and hence the company has only raised $1 Mn in the last three years from an angel investor. ‘’We will further raise $3 Mn in a Series A in FY20 to widen our network, market penetration, launch new products and enter new markets,” says Souvik Sengupta.

The Sweet Spot That Infra.Market Has Picked

Infra.Market aspires to become India’s largest B2B ecommerce player in the construction space and its next target is achieving revenue of $15 Mn in FY20. With this in mind, the startup is aiming to capture a larger market and bring more and more construction and infrastructure products online.

The industry has a positive outlook with experts forecasting that India is going to be the third largest construction market globally by 2025. In fact, the construction sector has been the second highest recipient of FDI in 2017.

In order to increase the participation of foreign players in the ecommerce field, the Indian Government hiked the limit of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Ecommerce marketplace model for up to 100 per cent (in B2B models).

There are projections that by 2020, the B2B ecommerce market is set to grow at 2.5 times from the present pace to touch $7 Bn. The global B2B ecommerce market will reach $6.7 Tr.

Though the projected statistics seem opportune, ironically, construction is one such sector where companies invest less than 1% of their revenues in adopting new technologies. The sector however is ripe for disruption and the adoption of technologies can help greatly enhance the quality, productivity, and output of the industry as a whole. And that is exactly the sweet spot that Infra.Market is leveraging — using technology to design its product and ultimately benefiting the construction segment in its entirety.

With its USP as a centralised platform for all construction-related procurement solutions, better pricing and an enhanced customer experience, Infra.Market is emerging as a game-changer in the construction industry.

The post How Infra.Market Is Using Tech to Bring The Unorganized Real Estate and Construction Materials Industry Online appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value,” said Charles Dudley Warner, American essayist and a friend of Mark Twain. Often, it becomes difficult to find an “appropriate” gift from the plethora of mass-manufactured products available in the market. So, for those who like to put a lot of thought and effort in their gifts, personalised gifting is the way to go.

In India, too, this trend has been picking up in recent times. While there are traditional players dishing out good old sweet-nothings, startups offering a customised experience have been mushrooming to cater to the demand for personalised gifting. If you have an idea for a customised gift, there sure is a startup out there catering to it.

Apart from finding an appropriate gift, another challenge many people face is buying gifts for men. Sexist as it may sound, gifting women is far easier with a multitude of options available. Somehow, there just aren’t as many products that men use and there are limited ideas, choices, and companies when it comes to men-only gifts.

Some players have identified the gap players and launched startups like The Bombay Shaving Company, The Man Company and more have been offering customised products for men. One such startup which is becoming the answer to personalised gifting for men is Mumbai-based The Black Box Co. As the name suggests, the startup curates gift boxes for men, based on their interests, personality types, and occasions.

What’s even more interesting is that the startup looking to solve the male gifting problem is led by two women cofounders.

“Gifting for men is extremely difficult. Women are always complaining as they can’t think of better ideas other than the usual — clothes, wallets, and perfumes. These cliché gift items usually leave men cribbing about the limited options available for them. We realised the market gap and wanted to solve this problem and this is what gave birth to The Black Box Co,” says Rashi Biyani,’’ cofounder, The Black Box Co.

Rashi, who had worked with a corporate for a year, was seeking creative fulfilment. She started researching product-based startups and market gaps and realised that gifting for men had a wide scope as there just weren’t enough players. Her cofounder, Swati Biyani, on the other hand, was always intrigued with the idea of building a brand. Rashi’s business understanding and Swati’s passion for creativity made them the perfect team to run The Black Box Co.

And these craft-preneurs are now aiding other women give gifts to the men in their lives with a personalised touch. “A lot of research, surveys, and feedback later, The Black Box Co. was born. Our main aim is to provide personalised luxury products for men, at accessible price points and sustainable quality,” says Rashi.

Unboxing The Black Box

The offerings of the Black Box Co. go beyond the obvious choice of gifts for men. The gifts are boxed into different categories such as games, accessories, fitness and food, and more. Besides boxes, there is also the option of choosing single products like a pocket square, cufflinks, etc.

“Buyers can choose from our range of pre-curated boxes or make their own black box by adding individual products from all over the website into one black box,’’ says Swati. The most popular products at the moment on the site are personalised AirPods, travel wallets, and mini wallets.

The startup uses a direct B2C sales model, with most of the sales come through its website, third-party platforms, bulk orders, and events. It takes five to six days to deliver a product in a metro city.

Going forward, the startup plans to start an offline distribution channel by selling its products at stores such as Croma and E-Zone, among others. Further, it plans to delve into search engine optimisation and Google ads to generate more leads.

Beating the Competition

Personalised gifting today is the key to impress (and please) loved ones. And there are many options — from personalised gifts for to-be mothers and newborns by a startup called Pamper Hamper, to curated gifts for all occasions by Jaipur-based Indigifts. There are numerous other players such as Presto, Giftcard, FNP, and Vistaprint posing competition for The Black Box Co.

The startup is also facing competition from both online and offline retail gift stores on one hand and synthetic leather accessory manufacturing companies on the other.

Gifting know no bounds — people can gift any product, experience, and even a service. Ecommerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart are also getting in the game with credit-based gift cards while OTAs such as MakeMyTrip and Goibibo have launched gift coupons. Even ICICI Bank and American Express are offering gift cards for both personal and corporate gifting.

No wonder, According to Technopak, the gifting market’s size is estimated at $40 Bn – $42 Bn currently. The many festivals and occasions have been the reason for the thriving gifting industry.

Though Indian startups have created a buzz in many sectors, the gifting industry is not talked about as much in startup circles. But given the potential of the market and given that India loves to celebrate every occasion and festival — from Diwali and Father’s Day to Valentine’s Day — there is a huge scope for startups to tap into the space. And having a razor-sharp focus on one area, like The Black Box Co., only makes their chance at success higher.

The Black Box Co. was a Gifting Partner At Inc42’s flagship conference — The Ecosystem Summit.

The post The Women Cofounders Of The Black Box Co. Are Gunning To Be Leaders In The Men’s Gifting Segment appeared first on Inc42 Media.

For days and weeks after demonetisation, people from almost every household in India found themselves standing in some queue or the other — at banks and at ATMs. Why? In light of the extreme cash crunch, banks had taken to distributing tokens — paper chits — without which no one was allowed to withdraw cash.

Each day, banks distributed 50 to 100 of these tokens on a first come, first serve basis. Many camped at night outside bank premises to get the token the next morning. Some even hired brokers to stand in a queue for them. The winter was back, and everyone felt the chill.

Bank token used during demonetisation

Even these exercises did not guarantee that one would strike lucky and get cash as ATMs ran dry and banks did not have enough cash available. The demonetisation had a huge role to play in pushing India’s payments sector to go digital, overnight. In the absence of cash, people resorted to all kinds of online transactions, digital or mobile wallets in particular.

And the trend continues. But, first, let’s understand what exactly is a digital transaction? India’s mobile payments segment is broadly categorised to Quick Response (QR) code and Near-field Communication (NFC). QR code payments use the smartphone’s camera to scan a barcode at the point-of-service (PoS). NFC, on the other hand, is a technology that allows digital payments to take place when two NFC phones communicate when they’re brought within close proximity of each other.

Digital payments companies such as Paytm, Freecharge, Mobikwik, HDFC PayZapp, ICICI Pocket, Airtel Money, among others, which use QR Code-based payments saw a huge surge in their users after demonetisation, as merchants and consumers had no option but to adopt this mode of payments.

A few months before demonetisation, a fintech startup, ToneTag — which is among the 42 most innovative startups in India as per Inc42’s 42Next list of 2018, had just launched the first-of-its-kind soundwave-based payments service in India. In fact, this new technology, which uses sound waves to enable digital payments, is slowly taking over the QR Code and NFC. Moreover, the technology works offline and supports both smartphones and feature phones, along with card-swipe machines, etc.

Notably, Google’s payments app, Tez, too uses soundwaves after it pairs two mobile devices enabling peer-to-peer (P2P) funds transfer through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a system that allows numerous bank accounts to be linked into one mobile app to enable P2P payment. Apple Pay also uses sound wave technology in PoS enabled with hardware that supports its contactless payments.

Inc42 caught up with ToneTag cofounder Kumar Abhishek to get more insight into its soundwave-based digital payments born out of India.

“ToneTag wants to take over the cash transaction dependency by improving the present transaction system,” says Abhishek.

ToneTag’s Soundwave To Supercede NFC, QR Code Payments?

Initially, Abhishek, along with ToneTag cofounder Vivek Kumar Singh, was looking to build software to make the mobile payment experience better and more interactive, which would work not only on smartphones and feature phones but also offline.

“We looked into both QR code-and NFC-based mobile payments, but neither of them ticked all the boxes with respect to solving these two aspects — making the mobile payments experience interactive and available for both smartphones and feature phones,” says Abhishek.

He explains that the QR Code is highly dependant on the phone’s camera and the internet. “Sometimes, you may end up paying faster in cash than through QR Code as scanning the code can take time. With a fast internet connection, it may work fine, but on a variable 3G signal, many users often lose patience while making such payments,” asserted the founder.

While NFC provides a much better experience as compared to cash and cards, it is not made for all devices such as Oneplus 2, Motorola Moto G, Apple’s iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPhone 6, Apple’s iPad.

So, ToneTag went ahead and devised its own payments protocol, which is touted as a first in the fintech sector. No other company has reportedly ever tried devising payments enabling technology that uses sound waves.

How Does Tonetag Mobile Payments Work?

A sound is an audible wave of vibrations that travel through the air. This form of energy, similar to electricity and light, has found applications across an array of scientific discoveries and inventions across sectors.

In fintech, however, ToneTag is touted to have built the first-of-its-kind technology using sound waves to complete digital payments. ToneTag’s technology uses the phone’s speaker and microphone as the medium to communicate with the PoS to make payments. This is similar to how a Bluetooth device requires Bluetooth hardware, WiFi needs a router, and NFC requires two NFC devices, to name a few.

“However, with ToneTag, it’s as easy as entering a shop, picking a product, and you walk out. It doesn’t require WiFi, Bluetooth, or any pairing of devices,” says Abhishek.

ToneTag’s soundwave-based technology is basically a software that can be installed in any merchant apps that facilitate digital payments. Using the merchant app, the consumers can click the payment icon, on which the merchant receives a pop-up to accept the payment. This is done using soundwaves.

It is similar to other modes of digital payments in which a consumer can identify a merchant by their phone number or barcode. Except that in ToneTag, the merchant emits his/her identity through sound waves, and a consumer gets a pop-up for the transaction to take place. The transaction is completed within a couple of seconds.

“This reduces the time taken by customers to stand in a queue or go to the cashier to make payments to buy any products and services,” Abhishek says.

ToneTag gives the merchant a sticker to paste on the PoS (card swiping machines in shopping malls, gas stations) that accepts this sound wave-based payments.

“Ours is just a software which you push through your central server and the card swiping machine or the ATM becomes contactless,” he says.

The technology also works with card swiping machines and parking machines. Telcos such as Airtel, e-wallets like ICICI Pocket, YES Bank, digital wallets like Freecharge and Mobikwik, retailers like Shoppers Stop, along with toll plazas and parking operators, have already started using ToneTag’s sound wave-based digital payments.

It charges a licence fee for performing the sound wave-based payments, while merchants are charged a fee on every transaction.

So, how does ToneTag’s technology ride payments data using soundwave, Inc42 asked. Abhishek explains this with an example: “Cable TV signal, coming from satellites, reaches you in a form of radio waves. On radio wave, there is data for the TV to deflect and broadcast it into channels. Similarly, a sound is a wave. We ride data on top of this wave, which your phone apps having our software, can decrypt to complete the transaction.”

According to a BCG-Google report, India’s digital payments ecosystem is estimated to reach $500 Bn by 2020. Of this, person-to-merchant payments will grow to $224 Bn and merchant-to-merchant payments will reach $176 Bn while P2P transactions comprise $98Bn by that year.

Another report said that sound wave technology is poised to touch 668.3 Mn users by 2023.

At a time when the digital payments industry is going extremely strong in India being a first-mover in the sound wave-based payment technology is sure to give ToneTag an edge, but whether it will be able to take over the more widely used QR Code and NFC based payments technologies depends on how much companies such as ToneTag can familiarise individuals and business owners with the new technology.

[ToneTag was part of the 2018 edition of the most coveted list of India’s most innovative startups — 42Next by Inc42. ]

The post ToneTag’s Sound Wave-Based Digital Payments Tech Is Making All The Right Noises appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Technology shifts have a way of shifting consumer behaviour. For most millenials, time spent watching TV has been replaced by online streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar, and YouTube. In the same way online music streaming services like Gaana, Spotify and Jio-Saavn are taking the spotlight away from traditional analogue AM and FM radio stations. However radio is now set for a disruption as advancements in digital radio promise a completely new experience for radio listeners.

In layman terms, we know of analog radio as Amplitude Modulation (AM) as the first method used for the audio radio transmission (for example, All India Radio listened for news and bulletins) and Frequency Modulation (FM) (for example, Radio Mirchi, Fever 104, etc). Being capable of providing better sound quality, FM is mostly used for music streaming services and is more popular than AM but it has an access range of only 60 Kms which creates dropouts on highways, underground structures and remote areas. Also, FM has limitations in content broadcasting (cannot broadcast news) and the number of channels (322 as of September 2017) also need to be increased, considering radio’s overall reach to 99% of the Indian population.

The radio industry has been constantly under transformation, driven by a shift in technology to digital and by changes in the way listeners are consuming music and other content. After AM and FM, Digital radio is now next in line.

Former Wipro employees, Prasanth Thankappan and Rajith Nair looked to make a mark here. With an aim to revolutionise the way radio content is consumed in India, the duo laid the foundation of Inntot Technologies in 2014. Since then the startup has bagged several industry accolades, and also received backing from Unicorn Ventures.

“The digital television revolution, with its obvious and far-reaching advantages, started in the late 90s and spanned into 2000s, marking the sunset of analog television. Similarly, it is the time for digital radio to achieve the same feat of digital television the world over,” wrote Nair in a LinkedIn article dated July 9, 2018.

Analog Vs Digital Radio

In comparison to analog transmission, digital radio offers many advantages. For instance, unlike analog, in case of digital, it is possible to have 3-4 channels on a single frequency carrier. For instance, today 91.3 MHz frequency is dedicated to one radio channel (Radio City). But with digital radio, three to four such channels can be transmitted at one frequency depending if its FM or AM broadcast respectively.

This will further help broadcasters in the transmission of different kinds of data together such as music, news and traffic updates, and graphics-based advertisements. “Future digital radio is all set to have a display panel and graphics-rich advertisements can be expected. This will not only help broadcasters to increase their revenue but at the same time regulatory bodies can fetch revenue in the form of broadcast license costs,” added Nair.

Digital radio can also act as an emergency warning system which ensures that an emergency warning alert that will stop all the playing channel in a switched-on radio as well as in a standby state of the radio and will continuously issue warnings to listeners within a range of 300 kms in the event of natural disasters.

How Inntot Is Making A Difference Here

Inntot Technologies provides software-enabled IP solutions for Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM for AM and FM band, a set of digital audio broadcasting guidelines) enabled receivers, DAB/DAB+ (digital audio broadcasting) enabled receivers and ISDB-T (A technical standard for digital TV broadcast) Digital Television paving way to digital radio transmission.

Though the transmission side in India is almost ready, next-generation digital radio receivers are expensive (can go upto INR 14K), which is posing as a hurdle in the common man from benefiting from the features offered by digital radio.

“The USP of our solution is that it runs on generic hardware, thus making it an affordable solution (substantially low) for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and bringing it within the reach of an average consumer,” adds Nair.

Traditional DRM Receivers Vs Inntot’s Solution

The infographic below depicts digital radio modulation, transmission by broadcaster and reception and demodulation at the receiver side.

Image Source: EDN

Instead, Inntot Technologies is facilitating software-defined radio (SDR) based DRM+ Receiver solution, wherein the software can be embedded directly to the fixed receivers, automotive/in-car radios, smartphones, as well as USB dongles. Here’s an infographic showcasing how the Inntot solution is different from using a separate hardware demodulator which adds to the overall cost of the digital radio receiver.

Image Source: Inntot

Inntot’s software solution can also help OEMs, radio receiver manufacturers, and semiconductor chip manufacturers in:

• Doing away with the recurring cost of the demodulator chip, which, in turn, will reduce the bills of material (BoM) cost — ideal for a high-volume market like India
• Easy portability on platforms like Android
• Reusable, fully standard, and specifications-compliant complete stack and no external dependency on any vendor
• System integration and field testing

DRM, DAB+, ISDB-T And More: An Overview

Digital radio receivers are guided by globally acceptable digital radio standards.

Within this frequency range, currently, there are five digital radio standards accepted worldwide — HD Radio, China Digital, Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), ISDB-TSB and Digital audio broadcasting (DAB+).

Here is a brief comparison of these with the existing analog FM and AM:

India has adopted the DRM family of standards because of its reach and compatibility with the existing analog mode of transmission. Typically, the DRM standard identifies two operating modes: DRM for AM band” and “DRM for FM band”. DRM30 modes use the AM bands below 30 MHz and DRM+ modes use the 30-300 MHz spectrum centred upon the existing FM band.

On August 20, 2018, director general of All India Radio (AIR) also announced that DRM as the digital radio standard that will be used in VHF-II band (88-108 Mhz) in India eventually replacing FM. For the uninitiated, Very high frequency (VHF) is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz).

Interestingly, Norway is the first country which has completed the digital switchover and has shut down the analog FM in December 2017. Other countries like Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, are also expected to switchover to digital radio by 2020.

Not The Only Player In This Frequency

Inntot is not the only company looking to offer cost-effective DRM receivers. Launched in 1993, the New Delhi-based OEM manufacturer Communications System Inc., has also put up its digital radio for sale on online websites like Amazon, and IndiaMart.

As of May 2018, the company has put up a notice for being in production for the second batch of digital radio receivers. However, despite tracking for weeks, its status remains ‘currently unavailable’ on Amazon, while we were not able to place an order from Indiamart.

But Communications System Inc does not have DRM in FM band reception. They have DRM only in AM band.  Inntot has both DRM in AM and FM band reception.

Inntot also competes with major semiconductor companies who have chip-based demodulator solutions. These companies have to rely on external vendors for software components like middleware. Also, they require help in application development, field testing, etc, whereas being software-based, the Inntot solution is full, complete, end-to-end, and integrated.

A Choppy Ride And An Eye On The Future

Like all startups, Inntot has also had its share of challenges which it has managed to overcome. From identifying the right internet protocol (IP) for development to zeroing in on a digital radio receiver IP; from putting together the right team to finding its first alpha (high-profile) customer, the Inntot founders have seen it all. They had a tough time in arranging the initial funds. However, Kerala  State Entrepreneur Development Mission helped them secure the initial funds

“Our collaboration with Telechips Inc was truly a turning point for us… We travelled to Seoul, South Korea, and demonstrated our prototype to the CEO of Telechips Inc. He was impressed and asked us to port our IP solution to one of the identified hardware platforms of Telechips,” says Nair.

Most recently, at the DRM Round Table Conference held in New Delhi on October 10, 2018, the startup demonstrated its own tech in Digital Radio Reception (DRM in FM band) on a smartphone. DRM in FM band was demonstrated in other form factors as well, namely desktop and automotive infotainment modules.

At present, Inntot is focused on India as its key market, considering the increasing smartphone and automobile users in the country. It is also targeting chip-makers (SoC Makers), ODMs, and OEMs from South Korea, Japan, the US, Europe etc. “Russia and South Africa could be potential markets for us as these countries have also mandated analog sunset and transition to digital radio broadcasting,” says Nair.

The Indian authorities are making progress as well. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued a suo-motu consultation paper on ‘Issues related to Digital Radio Broadcasting in India’ on February 1, 2018, to seek stakeholders’ comments on various issues relating to digital broadcasting.

As the next critical step, the regulator is expected to announce a Digital Radio Policy, which may lead to the auction of white spaces in VHF-II (FM) band. This, in turn, will help pass on the benefits of DRM in FM band to all stakeholders including private FM broadcasters, listeners, manufacturers/OEMs.

So, are you ready to tune into new-age digital radio? It’s coming soon.

The post Inntot Is Looking To Make Waves With Its Digital Radio Solutions appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The number of internet users in India is projected to touch 829 Mn by 2021. With a number this high, the ongoing upward swing of digitisation will only rise in the coming years. Today, everything from food delivery to flight tickets is digitised. And something that was earlier an offshoot of this digitisation is now defining how businesses are conducted today, namely — the subscription model.

More and more companies today are moving towards subscription-based models, as it is economical, convenient and a one-time undertaking at the consumer’s end. Be it Netflix which has over 125 Mn subscribers today or the SaaS industry, the subscription-based model is slowly but surely becoming the norm for consumers. From Online streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video and Hotstar, to grooming companies such as Harry’s or Dollar Shave Club offering razors and shaving products, to beauty companies as Ipsy providing personalised makeup for women, or companies such as eat.fit with their weekly subscription meal plans, subscription models are now ruling people’s minds globally.

One such startup partaking in the subscription economy is Chandigarh-based LetsShave, founded by Sidharth S Oberoi, and backed by the Korean shaving giant, Dorco.

Back in 2015, LetsShave started off as a brand catering to men’s grooming products, but today it caters to both men and women with more than twenty grooming products which include — shaving kits, trial kits, blades, shaving foams, scrubs, shaving brushes and exclusive products such as 6-blade razor with trimmers.

Empowering The Consumer

Sidharth S Oberoi grew up in the small town of Chandigarh and while pursuing engineering, the idea of bringing in good quality grooming products occurred to him and his rich experience in product innovation gave him the vision to bring in world-class razor products to the market.

Thus, he started LetsShave with a mission to put the power back into the hands of the consumers as the men’s shaving and grooming market in India was monopolised and consumers had little idea about what to expect or demand. A handful of players decided the prices and quality of shaving products, and consumers had no choice but to go with what was available in the market.

LetsShave is defining this by providing a wide range of high-quality products at affordable prices and is steadily onboarding a large demographic of the millennials and Gen-X customers. ‘’We sell directly to consumers which cuts the middlemen cost and allows us to offer products at a fair price. In addition, Dorco’s latest technology and unique techniques to manufacture blades ensure delivery of high-quality products while still keeping the manufacturing costs in check,’’ says Oberoi.

The startup offers subscription-based shaving products where consumers order a complete shaving kit with razors online and get it delivered at their doorsteps. In addition, consumers receive a reminder via SMS and emails about changing the blades every month. Based on these reminders, they order again or order in advance for the next few months to get a regular supply of blades without having to physically go visit a store.

LetsShave follows a direct-to-consumer online sales model and has a repeat customer rate of more than 40% with approximately 90% of the sales generated from LetsShave’s own platform, while 10% from other sources.

Since its launch in November 2015, LetsShave has touched a customer base of 450,000 people; and sales of 19 Lakh products.

Simplifying Grooming Needs

LetsShave started out as a men’s only grooming products company but slowly diversified to include products for women after realising how some women preferred quick-fixes in their busy schedules. “There’s a large demographic of women who don’t like to be operated for skin or hair removal treatments. They prefer short-term but safer ways. And this is a large enough market which we are tapping,’’ says Oberoi.

With its tagline ‘Love Your Body,’ the company aims to help women rely on them for their grooming needs by using technically superior products.

‘’We did start off as a modern grooming brand for the millennials but a whole demographic of older men and women completely surprised us,” says Oberoi.

Shaving is no longer looked upon as a daily chore before heading out for the day, but it is now a personal choice with different needs, and startups like LetsShave are helping in offering a pleasant experience not just with their suite of products but by providing easy access to these products as well.

Oberoi says, “With regards to the  technology of our blades, we have patented angulated blade platform, Venetian flow, and redying bars to prepare the hair, lubricating bars and patented common docking systems.”

With an aim to serve both men and women equally, the products of LetsShave fall in a similar price range. The initial kit pack for both men and women, that is LetsShave Pace 4 and LetsShave Soft Touch 4 starts at $5.62 (INR 399).

On the other hand, this sector is majorly dominated by traditional players offering a different range of products, but in most cases, products for women are costlier than men’s. For instance, Amazon offers Gillette MACH 3 limited edition shaving kit for men at $7.02 (INR 499), whereas Gillette Venus gift pack for women comes at $7.73 (INR 549).

Moreover, the subscription model of the startup helps people remain worry-free about their next refill purchase date. Tapping into the pool of internet savvy people, the startup plans to capture markets outside the Tier 1 cities in India.

While big names like Gillette are dominating the market not just with their products but also their ideology, the model of LetsShave and the ‘one for all approach’ gives the company an edge. With newly raised funds, the company wants to focus on its online business and on expanding the product portfolio to cater to the grooming needs of men and women efficiently, while becoming a one-stop solution for grooming, keeping shaving as its core category.

LetsShave was a Gifting Partner At Inc42’s flagship conference — The Ecosystem Summit.

The post An Engineer From Chandigarh Joins Hands With The Korean Shaving Giant Dorco To Redefine India’s Grooming Industry! appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The US-and Bengaluru-based fintech startup — Mudrex — has developed an operation-as-a-platform that automates the process of cryptocurrency trading. The startup, which shut down its crypto exchange even before its launch due to RBI’s stance against crypto trading, has revamped the platform and is now solving the ‘pain point’ of crypto traders.

“A cryptocurrency trader understands algorithms. They know how the market works. They can write condition and say, if this goes above this then I’d invest. Their pain point is that they don’t know how to convert their trading ideas into algorithms. He requires to do research, code, and needs a scalable infrastructure to be able to trade properly — these are essentially the things we are solving,” Mudrex cofounder Edul Patel told Inc42.

Interestingly, Mudrex’s technology doesn’t use blockchain. The core tech for the platform has been built using computer programming languages, Python and Java.

“We have built Mudrex in such a way so that, if required, we can port it to work in the decentralised ledger at any point of time in the future,” Patel said.

Since its launch in February 2019, Mudrex has already on-boarded more than 1K users. Of which, 20%-30% are from India and rest are spread across the US and Southeast Asian markets. The startup claims to be witnessing 25% week-over-week growth in trading volume.

The Rise Of Mudrex After RBI’s Ban On Crypto Trade

The idea of Mudrex was originally conceived as a crypto exchange. In fact, Mudrex was set to launch its exchange platform on April 15, 2018; but just 10 days before, the RBI issued circular restricting banks and regulated payments to refrain from extending any services to crypto exchanges.

“It was a massive shock for us. I still remember one of our investor saying: “ab toh crypto bandh ho gaya, kya karoge? (now that the crypto has been shut, what do you plan on doing about it?).”

Mudrex obviously decided not to launch the crypto exchange, though the startup had put in years of hard work into the project. In the absence of a supportive regime towards cryptocurrency, it didn’t find it feasible to scale its exchange platform which could entail mass retail participation in cryptocurrency trading. However, even RBI’s blanket ban couldn’t deter the spirit of five IITians.

Mudrex is However Not The First To Automate Crypto Trading

There’s nothing new with the automation of crypto trading, however. Even in the traditional stock market, there are a lot of automation platforms that have come into place.

According to cryptocurrency startup WazirX’s founder, Nischal Shetty, there are various platforms that help crypto traders to automation their trading. He gave an example of a trading platform, TradingView:

“TradingView, for instance, has a variety of charts the traders usually follow. Based on the chart, the user understands whether the price of a crypto asset is going up or will fall down. It’s more of reading historical data to understand where the market will go. And based on your understanding, you set your strategy and can automate them instead of manually having to check them every day,” Shetty said.

According to Shetty, this can be done either manually by keeping track of things or can be done by automating it using various platforms which are built on top of exchanges. “However, still you need to know what trading strategy you need to follow to make that happen,” he said.

Patel here argued that “Although TradingView helps in research for traders, users still need to know how to code if they want to trade. Also, there is Quantopian, which provides users with the ability to test their strategies, however, users can’t trade as they still need to know how to code,” Patel said.

Shetty is of the view that usually, hardcore crypto traders will opt for these kinds of automated trading platforms. “It is, however, interesting to note that crypto automation trading platforms are coming out of Indian ecosystem,” Shetty said.

In the recent development in India’s cryptocurrency sector, the Supreme Court of India has asked the centre to introduce the cryptocurrency policy within March, this year. The focus is to bring back the regulatory issues cryptocurrency startups are currently facing in India.

In such an interesting intersection, the six-month-old Mudrex still has miles to go to scale its business opportunities, especially at a time when the Indian cryptocurrency market is bleak and cold and is likely to remain so until the government comes out with something clear.

The post How Mudrex Helps In Cryptocurrency Trading Without Using Blockchain appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Whether it is hot or cold, tea is the most consumed drink in the world, after water. And, it is interesting to note that in terms of tea exports, India stands fourth after Kenya (including neighbouring African countries), China and Sri Lanka, with exports reaching $463.95 Mn between April-October 2018.

However this fourth position is not for the lack of production. India is the second largest producer of tea but around 80% of the tea produced in India is consumed domestically.

The history of India’s tea industry goes back to the colonial era when the British introduced tea into the country during the early 1800s. History states that by 1850s, India became one of the largest producers of tea. Moreover, not just in numbers, India is the home to some of the most prized teas in the world.

While a majority of the Indian populace consumes its tea hot and milky, a segment which is fast-growing in popularity is the iced tea or RTD (ready-to-drink) categories, as it is popularly called, owing to healthier choices being made by people who are slowly moving away from carbonated or sugary drinks.

According to an industry report, from 2012 to 2017, the RTD segment in India has observed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.85% with a sales value of $14.1 Mn in 2017, an increase of 14.96% over 2016. And, this sector counts all products which have tea as a base. This sector is monopolised by bigger brands such as Nestle and Unilever in India. Slowly though, the scenario is changing and like every other industry, even the RTD market has seen the growth of startups, ready to capture a share. Founded in 2017, Delhi-based Brewhouse is one such startup that is on a mission to capture the iced tea market in India.

The Inception of Brewhouse

Launched in 2017, Brewhouse is the brainchild of Siddharth Jain, an ardent lover of tea and a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta.

It all started while he was working as an investment banker in Singapore and his passion took him to one of the finest tea stores in the world – The Wellbeing Group (TWG) – a Singapore-based luxury tea brand, which offers a wide range of products from scented tea candles, white tea, to tea accessories. This is when he realised the gaps in the Indian iced tea segment and the immense opportunity it had bottled up, ready to bubble.

At that time Jain realised that though the sector was filled with big players such as Nestea (by Nestle) and Lipton, the iced tea in the market was more artificial in nature and obtained through either a concentrate or a powder mix. The very idea of brewing iced tea from fresh leaves was missing and that was the ‘seed’ to the idea behind Brewhouse.

Added to this, when he tried to get it manufactured, he found out that even the industrial units (which he approached), seemed to make the tea after intensive processing and that was not what he was looking for — an over-processed industrial product.

In a bid to set up a manufacturing unit, Jain went on to raise a small funding from angel investor Dheeraj Jain.

However, according to Jain, this wasn’t enough to build a world-class product. This is when Brewhouse got the backing of Singapore-based FMCG group Food Empire Holdings which invested $2.6 Mn in the company.

Bottling Health & Flavour For India

Unlike other bottled fizzy drinks which are unhealthy, Brewhouse’s bottled iced teas claim to be made from real brews. The iced teas contain 6 to 6.5% sugar, which is 45- to-50% lesser than other widely available bottled beverages. Brewhouse claims that their iced teas don’t have preservatives, making it a healthy choice for the increasingly health-conscious people in India. “We aim to serve people who admire the real taste of iced tea,” added Jain.

Brewhouse believes in keeping products as organic as possible. For starters, it uses a natural process of heating, cooling and then creating a vacuum that keeps the iced tea fresh for more than nine months.

In a bid to be environment-friendly, Brewhouse reuses its glass bottles, after a standard cleaning process. But all these factors make the costing of the product high. While talking about the ways in which Brewhouse manages the pricing and profitability ratio, Jain added, “With a team of more than 80 people, our own manufacturing and operation unit, we maintain a standard gross marginal income. We keep the marketing budgets low.”

With a product line of four popular brews of flavoured iced teas, namely, classic peach, classic lemon, honey mint and citrus green, Brewhouse has sold over 1.2 Mn bottles so far across more than 15 cities in India.

Concentrating On Online & Offline Sales

The startup started the distribution with HoReCa (Hotels, Restaurants and Catering), institutional chains like cinema multiplexes, hospitals with multiple retail distributor chains in major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and through popular ecommerce chains such as BigBasket, HealthKart, etc across India.

Brewhouse is now reaching the boundaries beyond tier 1 cities and a lot of outlets in smaller cities such as Jaipur and Chandigarh. “People can also find us in a lot of small-town airports like Raipur, Trichy, Srinagar and Lucknow,” added Jain.

Unfazed By Competition

Though this segment sees competition from players such as Nestea and Lipton iced tea, new entrants such as Myte, Eten Craft and new iced powder mixes from Rasna, Jain does not see this as a competitive space. He added, “In India, iced tea is a very small category. Only a handful of names exist. And with the emergence of new brands and increasing awareness about iced tea fuelled by their entry, the category will only get more popular which is ultimately beneficial for our growth.”

On the pricing front, the 350ml bottle of Liptop iced tea costs as $0.34 (INR 24), whereas, a Brewhouse iced tea is available at a cost of around $ 0.85 (INR 60). Other players such as Nestea offers powder insta-mix of 400 gm at $1.90 (INR134).

The Food & Beverage Segment & The Future For Brewhouse

According to reports, the food and beverage market in India, which was estimated to be $30.12 Bn in 2015 is expected to reach $142 Bn by 2020, with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.34%. The sector in India is indeed one of the fastest growing ones, owing to factors such as changing demographics, growing disposable income and urbanisation.

One of the key factors is digitisation and the rise of convenience economy which has bought the sector to people’s fingertips with hyperlocal delivery platforms such as Swiggy, Zomato, etc and online marketplaces such as BigBasket, Amazon, Flipkart, etc. This speaks of the massive opportunity for the new players in the sector.

Currently, Brewhouse’s iced tea is considered as a premium product. But, moving forward, Jain plans to come up with an alternative packaging and more organic methods to cut down costs, reduce prices with an aim to make Brewhouse a mass product.

Jain added, “We are working to bring in innovations into the iced tea segment and are  coming up with carbonated iced teas and newer flavours.”

It is widely known that tea is a popular refreshing drink preferred by people all over the world, irrespective of the place, season or weather. And, Jain added, “We are here to prove that tea gives the true feeling of refreshment, not only when it is hot, but also in its cold form.”

Brewhouse was a Gifting Partner At Inc42’s flagship conference — The Ecosystem Summit.

The post How An Investment Banker Turned Entrepreneur Is Redefining India’s Iced Tea Industry appeared first on Inc42 Media.