The country’s biggest online travel portal, MakeMyTrip has recently acquired GoIbibo for a $2 billion deal which makes it India’s biggest acquisition in the online travel space.
The country’s biggest online travel portal, MakeMyTrip has recently acquired GoIbibo for a $2 billion deal which makes it India’s biggest acquisition in the online travel space.
“Today’s announcement is a significant step forward for the rapidly growing travel industry in India. There are three well established brands, each a leader in their space that we value. These include MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo and RedBus and on the internet it is very important that you keep brands that add value and grow them and we are quite clear we would want to play to the advantage of each of these brands. If you look around the world, you will see keeping established brands have helped.” -Makemytrip Group CEO Deep Kalra said in a statement.
Here are a few things you should know about this merger:
This acquisition will bring all brands which belong to the travel space like Redbus, Ryde, Ibibo and Makemytrip under the same umbrella. This is a huge development in the travel space. In a market place where all services are fragmented, a consolidated website offering all services under a single name is more likely to become a hit with the masses.
This deal will help Makemytrip gain an upper hand over other competitors like Cleartrip, Expedia etc as by adding more variety and number of services; it is in a position to outdo the competition.
Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow will continue their roles as Executive Chairman and India CEO of MakeMyTrip whilst Ashish Kashyap, a former employee of Ibibo will be joining the board of directors as the president of this merger.
The final transaction is scheduled to be done by December after which MakeMyTrip will own 100% shares of Ibibo.
Ola, has currently upgraded their technology and come up with a new and revolutionary feature called Ola Offline which gives customers the option of booking cabs even when they aren’t connected to the internet.
Ola and Uber have been engaged in a constant battle to outdo the other player by offering additional services and facilities across the country. However, the Indian born company, Ola, has currently upgraded their technology and come up with a new and revolutionary feature called Ola Offline which gives customers the option of booking cabs even when they aren’t connected to the internet. The feature will be available for all types of bookings- Micro, mini, prime, share and shuttle. Currently, the feature exists in the metro cities but will soon be available across all cities where Ola is available.
This feature has been introduced because even though internet penetration in the country is increasing, many small towns and cities aren’t very well-equipped with the idea of internet and how to use it. By offering this feature, Ola will help them with their struggle with the internet.
“As the country ushers in the digital revolution with projects such as Digital India and Smart Cities, the way users experience technology is changing. While connectivity continues to be an infrastructural challenge, we are constantly building innovative technology that helps fill the gap, and the launch of the ‘Offline feature’ is a major step in that direction. We understand that while an Ola might be available around you, a working Internet connection might not always be. Ola Offline will now plug this gap.” – Ankit Bhati, CTO & Co-Founder
The process:
When the booking option on the app fails due to bad/no internet connectivity, you get two options: Retry or Book via SMS. Choose the latter and you will be able to see a pre-entered text message requesting Ola services. Send this message and once received by the company, you will be receive an SMS with the information about the nearest cabs across the various categories. Select the preferred cab category and in some time, you’ll receive the details about the cab and the driver and the driver can locate the user through GPS tracking system and via call.
Meanwhile, if your internet connectivity resumes, all features will be available on the app again.
After a sustained funding frenzy, investor enthusiasm for the country’s tech startups has fallen sharply this year. Weaker firms are laying off employees and some have closed up shop altogether.
After a sustained funding frenzy, investor enthusiasm for the country’s tech startups has fallen sharply this year. Weaker firms are laying off employees and some have closed up shop altogether.
Startup funding in the second quarter plummeted to $583 million from its recent peak of nearly $3 billion in late 2015, according to CB Insights. It’s a sharp turnaround for a sector that attracted more than $8 billion last year.
“We’ve already felt the effects of what that bubble would be,” said Arjun Malhotra, the co-founder of Indian startup incubator Investopad. “A lot of the companies that were high performing, they are crashing now.”
The slowdown has occurred despite favorable conditions: The broader Indian economy is booming, and inflation is low. Global investors are on the hunt for the next Facebook or Amazon.
With 1.3 billion citizens and a surplus of skilled IT workers, Indian startups proved irresistible to many investors. The success of homegrown e-commerce darlings Snapdeal and Flipkart, and ride-sharing app Ola, added credibility.
Yet there is a simple explanation for the reversal: Investors say India’s tech sector experienced a classic bubble, similar to the one that rocked Silicon Valley when it burst in 1999.
“I think India is going through its first bubble,” said Kashyap Deorah, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who now runs a startup in Delhi. “It is a bubble and it is normal.”
Already, the downturn has claimed some high-profile victims.
Peppertap, a grocery delivery app financed by Sequoia Capital and Snapdeal, shuttered its delivery operations and “pivoted” to logistics. Another funded grocery delivery startup, Grofers, shut its operations in nine cities across India.
In late 2015, Indian unicorn Zomato laid off about 300 staffers.
Young techies have been among the hardest hit. Some university graduates even had job offers rescinded by tech startups, according to Gurumurthy Balasubramanian, the chief placement officer at Birla Institute of Technology and Science.
“Six or seven companies have done this to our students and students from [the Indian Institute of Technology],” he said. “In the last six months, the last nine months, things were slowly deteriorating.”
Some industry insiders believe the crash is a needed wake-up call.
“I think it’s better for the market now that startups are not getting money mindlessly,” said Abhishek Gupta, the chief operating officer at incubator TLabs. “What I see [now] is money being well spent.”
Foreign investors agree that there are still opportunities worth exploring.
“Quite honestly, we expected this to happen,” said Sumant Mandal, managing director at March Capital, a U.S.-based investment fund based in Santa Monica, Calif. “There’s definitely a slowdown.”
Mandal has been investing in Indian startups for over a decade, backing electronic payments firm BillDesk and online auto classifieds company CarTrade. March Capital invests in one or two big deals in India each year, representing about 20% of its overall fund.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the market is going to be an important one,” Mandal said.
In the wake of the hour, CabME, a homegrown cab service startup, is all set to create waves in the Indian travelling domain.
Cab market in India has indeed gained its swing. It is estimated that its worth more than around 10 billion dollars, just within the country and this year around 600 crores of Indian rupees has been pumped in the Indian radio taxi market. At this time when the cabs are taking the place of the traditional autorickshaws, buses and trains, a lot is expected from the Cab service portals of the country.
Unfortunately, the so called Biggies in the cab market have done their fair share in disrupting the newly mushrooming faith in cab travels among the commuters. In the wake of the hour, CabMe, a homegrown cab service startup, is all set to create waves in the Indian travelling domain.
So what’s so different about CabMe?? Well…CabMe comes with all new facilities that effortlessly addresses the woes of its passengers. This startup stands out with it being affordable, safe and one stop for all your travel needs. In the upcoming new website and app services which are going to be launched by the end of october or most probably, “due to high demand”, for this Deepawali, you can book almost everything, be it Cabs, Flights, Bus, Hotels, Holiday Packages, Travel accessories and what not? Surprising..? Oh yeah…
Just like its inceptors, the diligent BITSIANS, even CabMe focusses on the needs of the students and the intercity commuters. The students who face troubles in acquiring train tickets or bus tickets to travel back home, will look upon CabMe as a saviour in the eleventh hour. With CabMe, cab travel won’t be an expensive affair. The best part is that you can customize your travel…like choose the road you want to travel, choose whom you want to share your cab with and post your experience on the webpage, post your cab details in search for pooling partners…all this without burning a hole in your pocket. Another scintillating feature is the packages that you get to avail in your travels,there are plenty of intercity and intracity packages, hourly based packages and many more… and soon you can also avail self-drive option too. Interesting? you bet..It is….Thus CabMe will be one stop solution for all the types of travels at low fares.
CabMe is a humble startup that holds the comfort of its customers in travelling as its main objective. It already has many feathers in its hat for a budding startup as it is They received first prize at Sandbox StartUps And Accelerators competition, also the best scalability award at the Startup-Utsav and also won the Pitch Your Product competition in IIT Kanpur. They are now funded by Sandbox Startups which is in collaboration with Microsoft ventures and have been selected for startup accelerator espark virdinan accelerator recently.
In just only one year has thousands of customers and has garnered a revenue of 30,000 USD with a team size of fifty. It has its goals in place and aims to cater 10,000,000 customers and garner a revenue of more than a billion in a period of just 3 years. Not only this, it also aims to expand its business from presently 38 Indian cities to the international market and make its global presence felt in the future.
Well this is just the beginning. With thousands of users already booking and well trusted cab drivers, CabMe has become another name of safe travel. So those long travels are no more a strenuous deal…neither are the shorter ones anymore. And what comes handy? it’s that you get to all this at affordable prices…Oh yes, good things can happen to those who book CabMe.
With all these facilities CabMe is grabbing eyeballs and faithful customers in the Cab travel industry. So, buckle up folks, for a new chapter in cab travels of the country that will be known long for the comfortable travelling it provides and a successful saga that it will turn out to be. And the next time you think about Cab, think CabMe.
Budget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms is closing a $90-million financing round. The funding is led by its largest shareholder, SoftBank.
Budget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms is closing a $90-million financing round, according to a report by Times of India. The funding is led by its largest shareholder, SoftBank. The report claims that OYO has already received $61 million, and the rest would be pumped in soon.
In a RoC (Registrar of Companies) filing by OYO in June, the company had claimed to be raising Rs 413 crore through a proposed rights issue of shares and was also looking to buy back shares worth Rs 60 crore from certain undisclosed investors. OYO declined to comment for this story.
The report suggests that the fresh capital is going to be used to strengthen OYO’s new offering – Flagship, which leases properties and services them for better experience. Flagship has over 70 operational properties currently.
It is believed that of the $90 million, the remaining $29 million will be a mix of debt and equity. The TOI report also suggests that OYO is picking up $5-million debt financing from InnoVen Capital. Apart from SoftBank, the other key investors of OYO are Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Capital.
This $90 million is SoftBank’s second round of investment in the company. OYO Rooms had raised $100 million from SoftBank last year. Mumbai-based VentureNursery, one of its first investors, which had held a two-percent stake in OYO, exited netting Rs 60 crore in a secondary sale of shares. The accelerator had put in Rs 25-30 lakh in the company during 2012-13.
This raising of funds is to take on the other players who are entering aggressively into the space, most importantly Treebo Hotels, which raised Rs 112 crore from a round led by Bertelsmann India Investments and existing investors. Also, after facing flak from customers on the service at OYO Rooms, Flagship is expected to redeem the company’s image.
OYO Rooms had shared a report in May that claimed that the company had reached unit-level profitability, meaning, on an average, OYO makes a profit on every room sold. As of May this year, the average booking rates of the rooms range from Rs 1,400 to 1,800. Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO, says that their team has delivered a 15x year-on-year growth, with 2.3 million booked room-night transactions in the first quarter of 2016.
However, rumours of SoftBank looking to invest again in OYO had been making the rounds for several months now. There also were reports of a rift between VentureNursery and other investors at the end of last year, coinciding with the news of OYO buying Zo Rooms, its closest rival in an all-stock deal. Reports suggest that Zo went out of business and could not raise funds, and when Tiger Global, its investor pulled back from India, it left Zo with few options.
SoftBank, over the course of last year as well as 2016, has pumped more than $1 billion across its Indian bets – OYO, Snapdeal, Ola, Housing and Grofers. This funding in OYO comes at a time when higher rounds seem to be slowing down and bigger ticket sizes are no longer seen. Also, SoftBank seems to be taking it easy on the investment front, after the Housing debacle.
Creative startups from India that are courageous and innovative in their work.
India’s startup culture is on the rise. Many young entrepreneurs and creative thinkers are starting up as a way of building something new and creative, and relevant. Unlike the earlier times, it’s not the Indian dream anymore to become part of the mainstream or join an established MNC. To start something of their own is the predominant passion for youngsters today. Curious to know a little bit about what the youth brigade has been coming up with off late? Here are five creative startups from India that you should know about.
1. Little Black Book
Little Black Book, based in Delhi, is a lifestyle guide to everything exciting in the city of Delhi. It was started in 2012 by Suchita Salwan who began to document her experiences living in the city of Delhi. Little Black Book has recently launched their website for Bangalore as well. They are a platform for information regarding events, travel, culture, food, shopping, and more. It’s the perfect guide for anyone wanting to keep exploring the city. The LBB team also gives you the opportunity to explore the city along with the LBB crew.
Jamun is a startup in Delhi that specializes in digital film making. They are located in Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi. Their film making operations range from advertising to political and social work-related production. Ayesha Sood, who is the director, has received many positive reviews for her work, which has been recognized at several film festivals across many countries around the world.
Established in 2015, Renomania is a platform that offers people unique and creative ways to design their homes. Ritu Malhotra, the co-founder of Renomania, has nearly 26 years of experience in this field. The content on this platform is a result of years of experience and knowledge that Ritu Malhotra has accumulated during her time in this field.
Hatti Kappi began in 2009 with an investment of Rs. 1 lakh. It was started out under the staircase of a building in Gandhi Bazar in Basavangudi, Bangalore. Today, Hatti Kappi sells at nearly 25 outlets and employs about 120 people. US Mahendar, who started this up, says that his intention was not to compete with other coffee brands. Hatti kappi is not meant to be a lounge for people to relax for long, like many other cafes are. Instead, it’s a quick-bite outlet for people to have a refreshing beverage as they pass by it.
Culture Machine Media was started in 2013 by Sameer Pitalwalla and Venkat Prasad. Culture Machine Media has many channels on the internet like Being Indian and ‘What’s Trending India’ that have received nearly a million subscriptions on YouTube. Their entertainment platform has become a popular one, especially among the Indian youth.
With the latest partnership announced with mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm, Kishore Biyani is making an effort to go online without taking on the risks and huge costs associated with the e-tail business.
Kishore Biyani has been extremely critical of the business model followed by e-commerce companies in the past. The founder and group CEO of one of India’s largest organised retailer Future Group, however, cannot close his eyes to the potential of e-commerce and the ever-growing base of customers shopping online.
With the latest partnership announced with mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm, Biyani is making an effort to go online without taking on the risks and huge costs associated with the e-tail business.
Under the deal announced by the two partners on 4 August, customers will be able to shop for Future Group’s hypermarket chain Big Bazar’s merchandise on Paytm’s marketplace and also, get them delivered to their homes.
Explaining the rationale behind his tie-up with Paytm, Biyani said: “The cost of customer acquisition in the e-commerce space is more than 20%, the cost of fulfilment is more than 20% and the cost of running operations is 8-10%. This totals to almost 50% as the cost of operation. At this cost, you can’t sell any goods on this medium.”
Biyani, indeed, isn’t speaking through is hat. Almost all e-commerce companies, including the market leaders such as Flipkart or Snapdeal and even global companies such as Amazon, have been running massive losses in their operation with no signs of profit in sight yet.
Since, market pundits have been predicting that at some point, online retail transaction will become big enough to command a viable business model with a huge potential for growth, Biyani did make a few attempts at hopping on to the e-commerce bandwagon in the past.
In 2014, for instance, the Future Group had tied up with Amazon India to sell its merchandise, primarily private fashion labels. The same year, it had also launched shop.bigbazaardirect.com, the online platform for its direct selling offshoot Big Bazar Direct.
Both experiments, however, failed to deliver desired results.
The deal with Paytm
The tie-up with Paytm is Biyani’s yet another attempt at going online. Is he late to the e-commerce party? He doesn’t think so.
“We are not entering late. We were unable to do business online because unit economic wasn’t working,” he told Techcircle, adding: “We didn’t want to spend considerable amount in the acquisition of customers, in fulfilment or administrative obligations.”
Biyani said in Paytm, the Future Group has found a partner that can “bring the unit economics into the business. Besides, we don’t have to worry about payment gateway cost. In that sense, it is a great fix for us.
“Biyani’s optimism may not be misplaced. To begin with, the tie-up with Paytm comes just a few days ahead of Future Group’s hypermarket chain Big Bazar’s yearly flagship sale, Maha Bachat that will run during 13-16 August this year. A hugely popular format, Maha Bachat contributes around 3% to Big Bazar’s annual revenue. With its discounted offers moving online during the four days, Biyani is hoping to reach out to a new set of customers outside of his loyal set.
Under the deal, an anchor store has been created for Big Bazaar on the Paytm app. Customers will not only be able to browse and buy Big Bazaar merchandise on offer, they will get a further 15% cash back on all purchases using Paytm’s wallet facility.
Paytm, too, sees the partnership with Future Group as a win-win deal. “Together (with Future Group), we see a fantastic opportunity to create a mobile first, omni-channel retail and payment solution for our wide consumer base,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, was quoted as saying in a PTI report.
In a chat with Techcircle, Sharma said the partnership is an attempt at bringing a high frequency, large offline platform, online. “They (Future Group) do not have a very active e-commerce strategy as publicly visible. This (the partnership) will allow them to get mobile and internet customers to shop for Big Bazaar merchandise. Everything that is available offline will be available on the anchor app,” he added.
There are a lot of successful Indian entrepreneurs who are actually college dropouts and could make it big only because of their zeal to succeed.
Indians have always valued education over anything else. Good grades, admission into top colleges and degrees might be important in some fields but to become a successful entrepreneur, one needs entrepreneurial qualities and a degree is just an addition. There are a lot of successful Indian entrepreneurs who are actually college dropouts and could make it big only because of their zeal to succeed.
Here’s a list of entrepreneurs who are actually college dropouts:
1. Kunal Shah
The founder of Freecharge got a degree in Philosophy from Wilson College Mumbai after which he enrolled into Narsee Monjee institute to get an MBA. It was only a matter of time before he dropped out and worked as a software engineer at a BPO company. He also started his first venture which was called PaisaBack after dropping out. He gained success only after starting Freecharge in 2010 which is a unique and successful Indian model. It was acquired by e-commerce giant, Snapdeal in 2015 and Shah was employed as the CEO.
2. Pallav Nadhani
Nadhani is the co-founder of Fusioncharts which he started at a tender age of 17. He enrolled into University of Calcutta but soon dropped out to nourish his company. Currently his company has over 23,000 customers and over 500,000 developers. In 2002, he also co-authored a book called Flash.Net which speaks about combining the power of Flash and NET.
However, Nadhani values education which is why he went on to earn a degree from University of Edinburgh in Computer Science after his venture was running well.
The very young and successful entrepreneur and founder of OYO rooms was also a college dropout. Ritesh Agarwal enrolled into one of Delhi’s most prestigious B-schools but dropped out after a semester. He wanted to make his chain of budget rooms Oravel big. And, once he won the Thiel scholarship, there was no looking back. He went on to build a huge OYO empire which is spreading wings in Malaysia as well. Currently, with huge funding from investors like Green Oaks, he’s expanding OYO to OYO café and OYO prime as well.
This entrepreneur started his venture, Kayako at the young age of 21 after dropping out of a college in Jalandhar. He took a keen interest in computers and website designing at the age of thirteen and once he saw a gap in the market, like a true entrepreneur, he tapped it. Currently he serves as the CEO of Kayako Infotech Ltd and looks after the complete product design of the company.
Iqubal dropped out if Indian Institute of Delhi in his final year to start his extraordinary venture, News In Short. This is a unique platform which aspires to keep people up-to-date about all the current affairs in short. This is meant for lazy or busy people as each news article tries to convey packed information in 60 words or lesser. His venture gained popularity and a massive funding of 25 crores some months back.
The richest business tycoon in India, Mukesh Ambani, is also a college dropout. He was studying in Stanford when he decided to dropout and help out with his father’s business, Reliance. He believed that whatever he’d learn hands-on while working would be of greater importance than a course in Stanford. We guess he was right as because of his efforts Reliance has soared new heights today.
Another billionaire, Gautam Adani who owns the Adani group of industries dropped out of Gujarat University in his second year. He didn’t start his own venture immediately; instead, he moved to Mumbai and worked as a diamond sorter for Mahindra bros. Later, he started his own diamond brokerage company and currently his net worth is over $3.9 billion.
Hence, to achieve success in the entrepreneurial field, a degree or formal education isn’t absolutely necessary.
The new DIPP is serious when he takes the initiative of encouraging the budding startups in the country.
The new DIPP is serious when he takes the initiative of encouraging the budding startups in the country. Every aspiring entrepreneur waits with bated breath to know what the whole fuss is about. We have almost all details covered for you about the startup scene in India.
Ramesh Abhishek succeeded DIPP Amitabh Kant as the latter went on to become the CEO of Niti Aayog. Startup India is the current Prime Minister’s on-going project in which he aims to give a boost to Indian entrepreneurs in order to encourage them to succeed and build upon their innovative ideas.
“The government is very keen to promote the startup sector. A lot of good things are already happening without government intervention, and what the government is doing is stepping startup to provide a much better enabling environment for startups. Much of what was announced this January is already underway” Abhishek.
“Taxation and incentives (for startups) were the big areas. Startups registered and incorporated from 1st April 2016 are eligible for tax incentives,” he adds.
The Government in order to continue with their initiatives has provisions of tax exemptions for startups which register from 1st April, 201- 31st March, 2019. The startups can also avail tax benefits and capital gains tax benefits for entrepreneurs who are willing to invest in the fund of funds which is to be set up by the government. Work is in full swing and SIDBI is aiming to set up an Rs 1,100 crore worth of fund of funds. The DIPP also proudly mentions that they’ve received over 571 applications. Since, this scheme is an extremely new and complicated one, Startup India Hub is also providing help in form of support and guidance to people who are aspiring to register to the scheme.
To make things easier, all aspiring entrepreneurs who want to register can call on 1800-11-5565 or mail the DIPP at dipp-startups@nic.in or get in touch with him on Twitter. This helpline is working because they’ve received over 10,000 calls which have been attended to. The startup hub is constantly tracking data and is open to suggestions. They are also looking to add more new features which will probably have training modules and financial tool modules in the market. The DIPP claims that the government’s job is to encourage entrepreneurship and like in many countries, the government has played a critical role, they want to do the same in India.
Seven proposals for research parks and 16 proposals for technology business incubators and startup centers have been recommended by the National Expert Advisory Committee which the Startup Hub is looking at. Also, they are fast tracking the patent applications and have set up 250 expert panels which are supposed to provide consultation. Procurement norms have also been relaxed for startups who want to register. The DIPP requests the people to have faith in the government because they want this scheme to be successful so that startups can be the new game-changers in the Indian market.
Because the Hub is not overly optimistic and know that all ventures will not succeed, the government has come up with the idea of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Bill 2015 to help business that aren’t doing very well a chance to wrap up in three months.
“We want to build a solid environment and infrastructure for entrepreneurship, focus on improving the ease of doing business, so that startups have no reason to register in Singapore, for example. We are working to remove all the bottlenecks,” Abhishek promises.
This looks to be a promising initiative and is definitely going to give a boost to all startups which are aspiring to make their innovative ideas work. If you have an idea and entrepreneurial qualities, this is the time to test them.
Female co-founders could serve as a tremendous asset for any startup because it brings a diversity of views, experiences and thought processes into the board room.
Entrepreneurship does not come easy and more so when it comes to startups. While trust and synergy between founding members is a fundamentally important thing, gender diversity within core teams are also crucial in building successful businesses.
There is no universal plan for creating a perfect startup team. However, the general sentiment is that female co-founders could serve as a tremendous asset for any startup because it brings a diversity of views, experiences and thought processes into the boardroom.
“A woman brings a fresh approach to problem solving and distinctive leadership styles that can bring in different viewpoints to a particular task or activity,” says Zappfresh, co-founder, Deepanshu Manchanda.
“Encouraging diversity in perspectives is key to making better decisions and attracting top talent,” he adds. Manchanda co-founded Zappfresh, an online meat delivery startup along with Shruti Gochhwal in July 2015.
“Shruti comes with an analytical bend of mind to our operations. Women are known to be adept at multi-tasking, which is a big plus in a small team,” says Manchanda. “Our team is also well balanced, with me being more aggressive in daily operations and she infusing calmness in the most chaotic parts of our supply chain,” he adds.
Since women make up 70% of the startup’s target group, understanding them is key to good business for Zappfresh, feels Manchanda. “Right from food tasting to understanding the right quality of meat, Shruti understands the pulse of the normal homemaker,” he adds.
Calling Shruti ‘the engine’ of the company, Manchanda says, “We see her coming up with great negotiation deals with vendors. Managing the cash outflow is also one of the most crucial parts of running a successful startup.”
Greater role
Female co-founders could also be great assets in other businesses like healthcare and education, feels PurpleHealth.com, CEO, Vikram Nair, a digital health platform that gives people greater control, choice and flexibility in connecting with doctors and healthcare providers. Nair co-founded the startup in 2014 along with Prakash Sathyapalan and Mini Balaraman.
“In healthcare, it is vital to have a female viewpoint because women health issues are very different than that of men and more often than not, they are the main health decision makers for the family,” says Nair. “Having a woman as a partner can be helpful in understanding these issues in detail, so that better products can be designed. This kind of diversity improves our ideas as a company and only makes us stronger and better,” he says.
Nair goes on to add that any startup would benefit from having female co-founders. “In Mini’s case, she manages our entire operations very well. As a co-founder, she is intrinsic to our success and brings stability, dedication and a wealth of experience at both technical and operational levels. In fact, I would go as far as to advice all startups to look for women co-founders, if they already do not have them,” he explains.
Poyni Bhatt, COO at the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) feels that given the skewed gender proportion, women as entrepreneurs or in leadership roles bring immediate visibility to an organization. “It is said that women are more intuitive and better in soft-skills. This helps them in networking, negotiation and in relating to people much faster.
Having played different roles, women entrepreneurs are emotionally stronger, good at multi-tasking as well as bringing order and discipline in any organization. Thus, they are better equipped to deal with the startup chaos,” she says. SINE manages a technology business incubator at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.
The calmness
Bhatt says that conflicting situations in a startup are better dealt with when there is a female cofounder, considering their less fragile ego. “By virtue of gender, women come across as more sensitive than men. Organization culture is much more humane and people-friendly under women leaders. My personal observation is that women look at a work problem much deeper than men, and try to work on it end-to-end,” she adds.
Cofounders at Mydala, a mobile coupon and discount marketing platform site, CFO Arjun Basu, and CTO Ashish Bhatnagar feel that having CEO Anisha Singh as a co-founder makes for a complete startup team.
“Anisha is a quick decision-maker. She is an energetic and spontaneous person. She is also a good leader who leads by example. Her thought process is particularly useful in our area of specialization – which is related to the health and beauty vertical. She is also very good at thinking about what the user is looking for – the customer perspective,” says Bhatnagar.
“She brings balance and perspective. She will point out key points that none of us may have thought about or tend to miss. We joke that her attention limit in any meeting is 20 minutes, but what we do not tell her is that those 20 minutes tend to be the most productive because of her intuitive nature,” he adds.
Basu finds Anisha very bold and creative, which, he says, is a rare combination. “She is very comfortable with change and keeps a tab on what is going on in the market. That makes Mydala a place that is always trying out new things and ‘innovation’ is the norm here. She brings a lot of energy to the conversation, is self-deprecatingly funny and always has an eye on the future,” he adds.
Online shopping has become one of the fastest and convenient ways to save time on your shopping activity. A lot of offline stores have started off with their online version as well to entertain people to do more of online shopping. CouponRani is a platform where the online shoppers are made aware of the latest deals and discounts from these online stores. Most of the online companies and stores come up with sales and deals as part of their way to clear off the stock and even to promote any of their new launches. Most of them being a startup do not spend much amount on promotion and some do not do any kind of promotion. CouponRani is a website which collects and aggregates all the coupons, deals and offers from various online stores, so that users come aware of the sale.
Ravi Trivedi founder CouponRani
Ravi Trivedi, who is the founder of Srijan Capital, which focuses on building startups and who is also an angel investor, founded CouponRani in July 2012. It was started off with just two people – Mr. Ravi Trivedi, the managing director and Mr. Sai Kumar Sarkar, who is the General Manager of CouponRani. Now, they are a team of 15 members who strive hard to make each of their users save more through online shopping. Ravi remembers that there was a huge demand for online shopping when he decided to start CouponRani and now it is one of the top most coupon sites in India that helps all crazy online shoppers to get extra savings on every purchase they make.
CouponRani is not just a coupon site for all the exclusive coupons and deals from stores but, it is also a platform which offers a differentiated set of other products such as a)Colors – their blog where you get to read articles on fashion, health, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and entertainment, b) India Discounts Chrome Extension – they have a chrome extension that makes coupons available to the user without them leaving the shopping site, c)Coupon API – they also have an API for their B2B partners, who give coupons to their site for product enhancement and revenue increasing.
Sai, the General Manager of CouponRani says that CouponRani kick started from a scratch and this helped them to grow more in every aspect, which has led to what they are today. He shares all the credit to his hardworking members, whom he believed supported him in thick and thin, to grow substantially. Now, they are working tremendously on growing their product and technology team and expanding their Digital marketing team as well for better reach out.
“Working for own startup is indeed a challenge, but it gives me the freedom to change things, that needs immediate action. My responsibilities are 10 times more but, I am able to incorporate things in the right way with a hardworking team,” adds Ravi.
Delhi-based educational-technology firm Transweb Educational Services Pvt. Ltd has raised its Series A round of funding from 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator and early-stage VC fund house.
Delhi-based educational-technology firm Transweb Educational Services Pvt. Ltd has raised its Series A round of funding from 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator and early-stage VC fund house.
The transaction was routed through 500 Startups IV LP, a $200 million seed fund managed by 500 Startups Management Co. LLC.
Transweb, which provides online tutorial services, has raised over Rs 80 lakh ($120,000) from the US-based firm on a fully diluted basis through a preferential allotment., according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle, based on filings with the Registrar of Companies (ROC).
500 Startups has picked up 6.48% as part of the deal. BMR legal acted as legal adviser to the investor in the transaction.
The company, which was launched in 2006 by IIT Delhi alumni Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha, provides online tutoring services through its five websites—askIITians, eMedicaPrep, transtutors, transwebtutors and mycollegesabroad.
Aditya Singhal And Nishant Sinha, Co-founders, Transweb Educational Services
When contacted, Singhal confirmed the development and said that the funding will be used for marketing of transtutors and increase its team strength. Transtutors is a question-and-answer format website for homework help.
Singhal said transtutors is venturing into Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) coaching this year.
While Singhal had earlier served global management consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates, the other co-founder and his batch-mate Sinha was previously working with retail consultancy firm Technopak before launching this venture.
An email query sent to 500 startups, however, didn’t elicit any immediate response.
While askIITians caters primarily to students preparing for engineering entrance exams like the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) or All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE), eMedicaPrep reaches out to medical students taking entrance exams such as All India Pre Medical Test (AIPMT) or All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
On the other hand, Transwebtutors offers paid online tutoring in technical subjects and mycollegesabroad provides consulting for students planning to study abroad.
The company posted net sales of Rs 13.2 crore in FY2014-15 compared with Rs 10.4 crore a year before, according to VCCEdge. The financials for FY2015-16 couldn’t be immediately ascertained.
500 Startups fund
500 Startups was founded by former PayPal executive Dave McClure in 2010. Its network includes about 750 startups, 200 mentors and 1,000 entrepreneurs globally. The fund typically invests up to $250,000 in a company during the first leg. Its preferred sectors include financial services, gaming, payments SaaS, and education on mobile and web.
It has recently launched a $25 million regional fund focused on India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The 500 Kulfi fund, as it is christened, is sector-agnostic but will focus on fin-tech, ed-tech, health and wellness, data analytics, content and software-as-a-service segments.
500 Startups has invested in about 50 companies in India since 2011 including ZipDial (acquired by Twitter), SourceEasy, Instamojo, CultureAlley, SilverPush, KartRocket and Headout.
Investors betting on companies such as Transweb are seeking to benefit from the opportunity arising from the gap in demand and supply of jobs that is prompting millions of jobseekers to enroll into test prep centres to prepare for competitive exams.
“Disproportionate demand and limited supply forces students to approach these coaching centres,” said Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head of educational skill development sector advisory at KPMG in India.
The past two months have seen considerable activity in the ed-tech segment. Ed-tech startup Byju’s has recently raised $75 million from Sequoia India and Belgian investment firm Sofina.
Mohandas Pai and Aarin Capital seed-funded ed-tech startup Oust Labs Inc, which helps students prepare for competitive exams using mobile gaming technology.
Earlier this year, financial services and analytics education startup Imarticus Learning raised $1 million (around Rs 6.7 crore) from a group of investors including VC fund Blinc Advisors.
In late February, Bangalore-based ed-tech firm Carveniche Technologies Pvt Ltd secured angel funding from Calcutta Angels, Lead Angels and a bunch of wealthy individuals.
This article was originally published in Techcircle.in
The idea of ShopClues was born at California in March 2011 when Radhika and Sandeep Aggarwal met with Sethi.
The idea of ShopClues was born at California in March 2011 when Radhika and Sandeep Aggarwal met with Sanjay Sethi. How they met in California is also an interesting factor to know. Aggarwal’s son and Sethi’s daughter went to the same school in Fremont. Sethi was working with eBay, while Radhika Aggarwal worked for Nordstrom, an American fashion retailer. Both saw a huge opportunity in the Indian marketplace for masses, as “Back then everybody in India was doing an inventory model business”.
There was a single marketplace eBay but no one was taking it seriously. So these two people decided to implement themselves in Indian e-commerce market. The day when Sethi first landed in Delhi, was very much surprised when he saw the airport full of Snapdeal postures and Television were advertising only Jabong and Myntra.
Going in past and talking about the initial days of their journey, it was 2nd August 2011 when Sanjay Sethi was at the Elephant Bar in San Jose, California, in the middle of his farewell speech to colleagues at eBay Inc. when he received a call from his friend Radhika Aggarwal who had promised them $5 million for their new venture.
Now, Sethi, Aggarwal and their respective families were to move out from California to India to start ShopClues, a marketplace for the masses.
All stuffs were packed and ready to be shipped. Sethi, Radhika Aggarwal and her husband Sandeep Aggarwal, and Mrinal Chatterjee decided to have a few beers that evening. “The next morning they woke up and called everyone whom they knew in the community and within just three days, they had $1.8 million in their bank account from 12 angel investors.
More than three years later, on the night of 19 January 2015, Tiger Global Management led a $100 million funding round for ShopClues.com. Let’s tell you that Tiger Global Management had also invested in India’s largest online firm Flipkart.com and China’s Alibaba Group.
Shopclues started focusing on the unstructured categories. With the latest round of funding of $100 million from Tiger Global and two other investors, Shopclues current valuation has reached to $500 million. Earlier, in March 2013, ShopClues raised $10 million in third round of funding led by Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners. Nexus Venture Partners had previously led the Series A round of funding in the company in Feb 2012.
On the first side, ShopClues had to face controversy while dealing for the investment. Investors feel nervous while making an investment for ShopClues. The reasons for the nervousness of the investors were competitors like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon that had already built the market a tough war to survive.
And on the second side, company was surviving with the shock of its CEO Sandeep Aggarwal being arrested for insider trading in the US in mid-2013.
Year 2014 had been very punitive for the company. The company had hopeful orders and a larger seller base than earlier, but they had hardly any money in their bank account. The future of the company was unclear. But the remaining 4 co-founders didn’t lose hope. Sethi and Radhika Aggarwal refused to give up. They hunted investors, set in whatever money they had, and finally raised an undisclosed amount from existing shareholders in the middle of 2014.
What differentiates ShopClues from Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon?
The fact that made Tiger Global to invest in ShopClues was the fact that the business model of ShopClues was different from that of Flipkart and Snapdeal and that the company was largely focused on taking unstructured categories online.
Companies such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon get a wider piece of their business from selling the items that can be itemized under the structured retail channel. For illustration, companies like Flipkart get 30-35% of their business from selling branded mobile phones. For ShopClues, it is small brands and categories such as home and kitchen ware, fashion, and mobile and electronics accessories which work quite well. According to the company, out of the 7500 brands that ShopClues sells, 6500 are regional.
Marketing Strategies
With an ever-increasing customer base, its community of over 150k merchants is its biggest strength, which enables Shopclues to offer over 19 million products across 5000+ categories at attractive prices.
The Sunday Flea Market and Jaw Dropping Deal are its best performing deal so far. Shopclues has successfully built this deal property through innovative marketing promotions and by offering something new and exciting to customers in every edition
• Email marketing: Even though email marketing was considered dead, the brand’s Senior Marketing Director, Mr. Nitin Agarwal stood strong with the email marketing. Nitin started off by introducing his brand and the statistics related to it from email marketing perspective. He stated that ShopClues.com has 50 million visits every month, which is more than other travel e-commerce portals. Besides this, they have more than 50k brands on their catalogue. Looking at these whooping numbers, that is where bulk email marketing came into account and he stated that Gmail is one of the major areas amongst them. The results were tremendously far better than before. People started to engage more through emails and make the transactions. Also, mobile experience was made much better then yielding better results.
• Affiliate Marketing: ShopClues used affiliate marketing to add advantage to their business with many affiliate networks in India. This ensured ShopClues getting around 50 thousand members only with affiliate marketing.
• Blog Posting: FNY also regularly posted interesting articles on their blogs to increase the awareness and engagement.
• SEO Marketing: For any brand, search engine marketing plays an imperative role and ShopClues promoted itself well on Google using SEO, Adwords and PPC advertising.
• Facebook Marketing: Gaining on its popularity, FNY utilized Facebook marketing opportunity very well. Prior to the launch of the web portal, ShopClues kept on selling its products through Facebook and at the time of their website launching, ShopClues crossed over 1 lacs fan on their fan page.
Currently on a net basis, the company is losing money. Basically, on an operating basis, the company is able to recover all the fixed costs and some more and will become cash flow positive soon.
Lack of focus on long-term benefits among founders and funders is hampering the growth of a healthy ecosystem.
Narendra Gupta is one of India’s highest profile venture capital investors (founder of Nexus Venture Partners) as well as the founder of various investment and software firms (CEO and President of Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) for a decade and a half).
The last 10 years have seen the birth of remarkable new-age startups in India. What are the common themes among these startups? They are technology-based and innovation-driven, and are often launched by motivated, educated, high-energy founders. These startups are changing a variety of industries, such as retail, health care, logistics, transportation, education, and entertainment. They enable a broad swathe of people to access high-quality products and services at affordable prices. Most importantly, these startups can scale rapidly and create millions of well-paying jobs, something India sorely needs.
Founders with grit and vision, fuelled by risk capital, have driven this vibrant startup scene. Recent changes in government regulations and tax policies are recognising the importance of startups among broader economic policy initiatives. Done right, these startups have the potential to form the foundation of long-term economic growth and bring millions of people out of poverty.
But the experiment that anchors India’s future is beginning to stumble. At least it seems far from realising even its modest potential. Let me explain why, and share some thoughts on what can be done before it is too late.
Based on my decades of experience in the Silicon Valley and, more recently, in India, I can say that Indian founders are, in general, world class. Venture funders and the media also have their hearts in the right places. The Indian ecosystem, however, lacks maturity. Unlike in the Silicon Valley, only a handful of investors in India have experienced multiple economic and venture cycles. All of us have a lot to learn.
While building great companies takes years, if not decades, many Indian investors have a short-term mindset. We often invest in areas that are ‘hot’, and shun larger, longer-term opportunities. The result is an over-funding of hot areas, with a concomitant funding dry-up a short time later. Indian investors also tend to value companies based on short-term metrics rather than an understanding of underlying technologies, business models and defensibility.
Post-funding, the investors’ focus seems to be on preparing for the next round of funding in preference to building sound, market-leading companies.
Exceptional founders need to be backed by a stable source of thoughtful capital from people who have gone through entire funding and company-building cycles.
The Indian media tends to over-promote ‘hot’ business opportunities and founders, setting them up for disappointments and eventual failure. When the lofty, unrealistic projections are not met, the media is equally expeditious in trashing the companies and their founders. It is either boom or it is bust. Over the last five years, the media coverage of microfinance, mobile VAS, media, ecommerce, food delivery, and other business opportunities, together with their founders, shows the immaturity of the Indian startup ecosystem. In my personal dialogues, I have generally found India business reporters to be informed, caring and thoughtful. I hope that the media will provide a more balanced coverage in good times and bad. The press should take a leadership role in helping potential customers discover innovative products and services from early-stage companies; something these companies do not have the resources to do themselves.
Most of a startup’s early success can be attributed to the founders and the leadership team. For this, they rightly deserve fame and fortune. Recently, I have observed rampant short-term orientation in Indian founders. Do irresponsible investors and the media drive this behaviour? I don’t know. In any case, exceptional founders should have the courage to go against the grain and do the right things. Startup leaders who cannot say ‘no’ to their board and venture investors when they are being misdirected are not good leaders.
In the early years of the Silicon Valley, in 1980, I started Integrated Systems, a company focussed on software products for real-time design and implementation. Our team wanted a company that would outlast any of us. We made numerous mistakes. One time, at the suggestion of one of our large customers, we got diverted into building a hardware product that could implement real-time logic for laboratory testing. It brought us revenue, but the decision almost killed the company since we were not set up to support hardware products in the field. Our biggest mistakes were, however, mistakes of omission—things we should have done, or the initiatives we should have killed, but did not, despite our instincts. Why? In every case, the decision would have caused short-term pain, but the long-term benefits would have been substantial.
We made many mistakes, large and small, but fortunately none turned out to be fatal. We learnt from every mistake. I ran the company for almost 15 years as president/CEO, with a maniacal focus: I took no outside board seats, or made any startup investments. It was the best time of my life. We took the company public in 1990, and merged it with Wind River in 2000. Integrated Systems remained a leader in the real-time space till Intel acquired the merged company for almost a billion dollars in 2009.
In 1995, after I stepped down from the CEO’s position at Integrated Systems, I met a young professor from Harvard University for lunch. Dr Yagyensh (Buno) Pati, in his post-doctoral research, had discovered a technology that would enable many more components to be placed on a semiconductor chip. I agreed to fund his company under only one condition: He would work on the company full time. Giving up an academic position at one of the most esteemed institutions in the world was a very difficult decision. In addition, bringing a new technology to market involved much iteration, some causing significant drops in short-term revenue. Buno had the courage to make the right calls. Five years later, the company went public and had a valuation of more than a billion dollars. As Buno says, “When you are standing on a pier with one foot in the boat, the boat is unlikely to go anywhere and you are likely to end up at the bottom of the sea.”
Over the last few years, I have failed to see this focus or commitment in many of the new-age company founders or management teams in India. They seem overly focussed on their image in the media, maximising valuations in the next funding rounds, and other short-term bragging rights. Where is the focus on exceptional products and customer satisfaction?
My belief is that today’s even moderately successful Indian entrepreneurs are so distracted that they cannot maniacally focus on building great companies. The baubles that distract them range from angel funding to building fancy bungalows. During my recent visit to Bengaluru, I cringed when I was told that many executives of rapidly growing companies were spending time with architects and builders, while their companies were losing millions of dollars every month and are in survival battles against strong competitors.
Some people say that the tendency to take short cuts is in our blood; the so-called ‘jugaad’ mentality. I disagree. It has nothing to do with Indian family values, culture or markets. Narayana Murthy and Sunil Mittal built large, durable companies in a less hospitable environment in the not-too-distant past. Indians around the world are doing exceptionally well as founders and leaders of market-leading innovators.
Two other major factors are affecting the ability of Indian founders to build large and sustainable market leaders.
One: Indian founders lack a culture of mutual support and brotherhood (and sisterhood) with other founders. In the Silicon Valley, founders frequently celebrate other founders’ successes. They try and buy products from other startups. The early-stage companies that we have funded in India tell us that moderately successful startups are their worst customers. For example, they would often defer payments to these early-stage companies while making timely payments to more established players. Startups that are further along also fail to leverage other startups’ innovative products and solutions. Rather than building a strong ecosystem around their companies, these founders set up competing teams within their own organisations. These teams are often incapable of competing with agile startups and distract the company from its main mission.
Founders, it seems, are doing everything possible to see other founders fail, even if they are in complementary businesses, at the expense of significant distractions, wastage of resources and less-than-optimal outcome. Founders and management teams need the courage to change conventional, dogmatic notions of ‘How India works’.
Two: Startup leaders need to embrace the notions of sharing and sacrifice, which are the key foundations of Indian culture. Authority, responsibility, credit for success and financial rewards should be shared broadly and deeply. When I ran Integrated Systems, one thing that made me proud was that most employees referred to Integrated Systems as “my company” in talks with their family, friends and the media.
The ‘me first’ way of thinking makes it difficult to build strong, committed teams with a wide range of expertise. As a startup scales, the capabilities of each team member and how well the team works together determines long-term success. The larger pie even allows more participants to benefit from the success. Silicon Valley has excelled on this philosophy of broad sharing. Given our culture, Indian startups can do even better.
Ten years ago, I decided to take a detour to help build the Indian startup ecosystem with a dream; a dream that the next mega success will originate in India. While the last couple of years have taken us sideways, the dream is alive and well.
We – founders, venture investors and the media – are all privileged to experience the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity first hand. But this privilege comes with responsibilities. Let us learn from the best in India, the United States, and elsewhere. Let us work together to leverage entrepreneurship for the benefit of billions of men and women in India and around the world.
This article was originally published in Forbes India
This list consists of some ideas which are bound to do well in the Indian market because of lack of market leaders or depending upon the needs of people with changing times.
To become successful, all an entrepreneur needs is a great idea and a set of skills which needs to employ to make the idea work. However, sometimes entrepreneurs need to find inspiration to start their own venture. This list consists of some ideas which are bound to do well in the Indian market because of lack of market leaders or depending upon the needs of people with changing times.
1. Home-based food services
The concept of dabbas and tiffins have existed for decades together. This idea has huge scope because the youth of India works longs hours and majority want “ghar ka khaana” when they come back home after a tiring day at work. You can choose your domain to work in- individuals, organisations or local businesses. The investment is pretty low because there is not much inventory required and the scope of this business doing well in metropolitan cities is very high.
2. Online courses
If you’re proficient with some software, coding language or foreign language, you can easily offer an online course to people who need it. The most effective solution would be to offer them with a well structured course they can avail at any time of the day depending upon convenience. In India, because people want to learn separate courses than the ones they are learning, this is bound to work.
For instance, VFX is in demand, so one can hire a VFX specialist and record his lectures and offer it to people who want to learn VFX.
With long hours of work, people hardly have the time to clean every nook and corner of their house. On one day of relaxation, they prefer to relax than haggle with the maid. An entrepreneur can turn these shortcomings into opportunities and provide people with trusted domestic assistance on an hourly basis. This is a new concept which is bound to garner attention in Tier-I and Tier-II cities.
4. Virtual assistant
The concept of having a virtual assistant to pay bills, organise tasks for the day, set reminders, reply to emails etc, is steadily catching up worldwide. This concept is relatively unexplored in India and has huge potential to click with the growing working population. All an entrepreneur needs for starters is a laptop and a good website with basic understanding of the virtual world of administration.
5. T-shirt printing
With organisations, corporate, schools and colleges constantly looking for vendors to print and design t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel in bulk, this could be your ticket to becoming a successful entrepreneur. This industry is slowly catching up and is bound to become big in the future. Some market players like Souled store and VX are already doing this. SO, if you can offer similar services at cheaper rates, you could mint money in no time.
Stressing on the fact that people do not have enough time to take out from their jobs to actually do laundry, they will be glad to give their dirty clothes to a laundry service and shell out some bucks to have it washed properly and ironed. For better sales, you could also introduce a pick-up and drop service. This is bound to be a hit with students and working youth alike.
7. Professional essay and SOP writer
If you have the writing skills and want to make money out of it, the best way to do that is by becoming a professional essay and SOP writer for people applying for college or jobs. Parents will be willing to pay tons to get their kids help from professionals for college and you could easily turn a forte into a money making business.
8. Pet clothing and accessories
With the pet industry booming and second after the infant care industry, a creative designer could explore this field and yield maximum benefits. One could design and customise dog-collars, beds, clothes, dog tags, grooming kits; the list is endless. The customisation offered will make the pet owner feel exclusive and this start-up is bound to do well in a country where pets are being celebrated. One has various sales channels for this venture- online, pet shops or sell at wholesale rates to pet owners and then expand the market from there.
When Sameer Grover was younger, he would collect the crowns of soda bottles and exchange them for discounts at local restaurants. It was like a game for him and his friends.
When Sameer Grover was younger, he would collect the crowns of soda bottles and exchange them for discounts at local restaurants. It was like a game for him and his friends – they’d finish their drinks, twist off the crowns, and explore new items on menus. For restaurants, it meant that customers were spending more money and coming back more often.
Making a game out of discounting worked so well on Sameer that the concept lay dormant in his mind for years. “I watched the Indian market for a long time,” he says. “Couponing is huge in the USA, but it’s not big here. Once you get a discount from a restaurant, you end up getting bad service. It’s not respected.”
He waited and waited, until one day, the ecommerce craze hit India. Suddenly, people wanted to make it easy for Indians to buy things on the internet. As they built up ecommerce sites, though, they all came across the same conundrum: most people were too used to buying things from the country’s many small and medium businesses to move online. And, if customers did move online, all of those small and medium businesses would go bankrupt.
That’s when Sameer realized his childhood game might come in handy. With his co-founder Ashish Munjal, he built out Crown-it.
Sameer describes it as an offline-to-online (O2O) marketing platform that helps local businesses make more money. It sounds complicated, but works simply.
When you buy things at registered stores, you get money back straight into Crown-it’s wallet. The wallet is closed, which means that it can only be used on chosen sites. This includes ecommerce sites Amazon, Flipkart, and Jabong, as well as budget room aggregator OYO Rooms, eBay, and ticket-booker BookMyShow.
The app works in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, and claims to have 800,000 people across 10,000 local markets using it after just 18 months.
“It’s a US$50 billion market across India’s top 25 cities,” he says. “The potential is huge.”
Challenges aplenty
At first, it was tough for Sameer to get people to sign on because the concept was very new. Most store owners weren’t used to visualizing online discounts and, plus, who would be willing to pay Crown-it’s per-transaction fee?
“Once they started seeing a value add, things changed,” Sameer says. “It wasn’t hard after the first few merchants, and we don’t charge them if they have no transactions on Crown-it.”
The other batch of people that Crown-it had to convince were consumers. This also wasn’t a big deal, explains Sameer.
“We really do offer good deals for consumers,” he says. “For a 1000 rupee (US$15) meal, you can get 200 crowns, which can mean a 500 rupee (US$7.50) shopping voucher from Flipkart. If you do two more transactions, you’ll still have extra crowns left, so the next time you’ll reload and pay for a movie ticket. It keeps people hooked in that way.”
It’s also a social app – if you refer a friend, you get free crowns. And, as a shiny little bonus, you can donate crowns to good causes. “There was a recent natural disaster where customers came up with lakhs of rupees,” Sameer says.
Oh, the places you’ll go
Sameer Grover, co-founder of Crown-it
The idea seems simple, but the opportunity is anything but. Crown-it has already raised US$5.5 million from Accel and Helion Ventures, so it’s reasonable that Sameer is pretty excited for his startup’s future.
“By 2019, we plan to be in 25 cities, as well as launch multiple categories like gyms, diagnostic centers, hotels, and other retailers,” he says. “We want to sign up big stores. Our proposition is that we can give them huge amounts of unique data, like customer analytics information.”
It’s not a new concept. There are plenty of other ways that startups are trying to win over the conjunction of the offline and online worlds.
Groupon India’s Nearbuy has one strategy, but “group buying won’t get anywhere because people have no incentive to return,” Sameer says. Another is Paytm and Tiger Global-backed Little, a site that helps merchants post local deals so customers can discover them.
Mydala is another popular daily deals site that’s been pushing cashback when people use wallets like MobiKwik. The startup replicates China’s Meituan-Dianping’s strategy, which raised a record-breaking US$3.3 billion in January.
Still, nobody has entirely taken the lead in India, and Sameer hopes that gamifying discounts will be what he needs to win.
He explains that he plans to eventually create an entire ecosystem around Crown-it. “There are vertical players and horizontal players,” he says. “We’re focused on a bunch of different segments, which is what makes us horizontal players. Once you have a few million customers hooked on one sector, it’s easy for us to add another.”
He cites an example of the many-headed WeChat in China, explaining that there will soon be a similar “super app” trend in India where a fast-moving single provider will dominate many services. Who knows, maybe the WeChat of India will start as a cashback app.
For every t-shirt you buy, a t-shirt is donated to a poor kid. It is a one of a kind concept where the buyer is given an opportunity to hand over a t-shirt to one kid of the few million who survives extreme temperatures without any clothing.
Based out of Kota, Rajasthan, TheCityFans.com is a unique, one of a kind e-commerce website which focuses on apparel which are city and state-based. They aim to target a niche audience who aren’t shy to express their remarkable love regarding something. Available, in six cities, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Jaipur, the T-shirt designs are quirky and for the ones looking to make a statement. State oriented t-shirts from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab are very urban yet authentic. The website has also come up with customised apparel for a few colleges and schools such as IIT, Sophia and Mody.
What sets this e-commerce site from others in the motto they thrive upon- One For You, One From You. For every t-shirt you buy, a t-shirt is donated to a poor kid. It is a one of a kind concept where the buyer is given an opportunity to hand over a t-shirt to one kid of the few million who survives extreme temperatures without any clothing. The smiles on the kids’ faces are priceless on receiving something they believed was out of their reach.
TCF has also made a short video on the same hoping out to help more children with their noble and unique e-commerce model.
We connect farmers, manufactures and brands to retailers directly through our lean and connected supply chain.
The vegetable market in India is expected to be buzzing with farm-fresh veggies and fruits. But, in reality, the vegetables aren’t as fresh as displayed in travel guides and brochures. Sharat Logathanathan, an alumnus of IIM Kozhikode made a visit to the “subzi mandi” and discovered the truth for himself. He recalls being shocked at the amount of produce being dumped as waste.
Sharat stated:
“When we went to the market, we discovered that the market was in total chaos. A lot of vegetables were lying as waste, and people trampled over them.”
In a third world country like ours where people don’t have food, wastage is unacceptable but then, it is harsh reality.
Thirukumaran Nagaranjan, also an IIM-Kozhikode alumnus who was accompanying Sharath stated:
“Inefficiencies could be seen in almost every aspect. There were a lot of middlemen involved, there was no price transparency whatsoever. The produce of the farmers exchanged a lot of hands before reaching the eventual consumer, which resulted in farmers hardly making any money in this whole scenario. We felt this is a market which has huge potential, has tremendous scope of development and is literally untapped. We almost instantly realised there is a lot of value addition that can be done in this space by bringing technological and operational efficiencies.”
That visit gave birth to the idea of Ninjacart which sources farm fresh vegetables and fruits from the farmers and delivers them to the customer. This was the inception of a model from which everyone would benefit.
Ninjacart.in states in its homepage: We connect farmers, manufactures and brands to retailers directly through our lean and connected supply chain.
The success story:
As of June 2016, Ninjacart has a customer base of over 400 retail stores and restaurants in Bangalore. The average monthly tonnage is about 1.4k tons and monthly revenue of around Rs 4 crores.
According to Vasudevan, Ninjacart is the only player in this space that delivers quality goods in a span as short as eight hours. They also guarantee daily supply, easy management and absolutely fresh produce.
Ninjacart got a massive funding of 20 crores from Accel which is the country’s leading VC. Other VCs are Qualcomm ventures and Zop.
Ninjacart caters to many villages in and around Bangalore and deliver the produce to some big names like Whitefield, Marathalli, Indiranagar and many more.
The unique model from which everyone benefits:
Farmers:
The best part as discussed above is that farmers can benefit hugely as they don’t lose out on the money paid to the middlemen. They are also insured from price fluctuations. Through a simple method(free of cost), the farmers load their produce onto Ninjacart vehicles which are sent to deliver produce to the customers. They receive their payment through NEFT.
Ninjacart has also gone one step ahead and hosts farmer seminar programs called “Rythu abhivrudhi karyakrama” which educated the farmers about fair pricing and the market.
Customers:
Customers (shopkeepers, households, restaurants) benefit as they receive good-quality, fresh vegetables and fruits delivered at reasonable prices.
Ninjacart developers:
They’ve faced threats in the past to stop their ways of dealing, however, they believe it is a good initiative and continue with it. The makers are reaping profits as high as 4 crores every month and manage to secure the livelihood of farmers in and around Bangalore. The recent fundings establish Ninjacart’s existence in the market.
India is a country with the third largest number of start-ups in the world. However, we need more entrepreneurs to come forth as the Indian market is constantly evolving and the opportunities need to be tapped.
India is a country with the third largest number of start-ups in the world. However, we need more entrepreneurs to come forth as the Indian market is constantly evolving and the opportunities need to be tapped.
That aside, here are a few reasons why India needs more entrepreneur:
1. New innovations
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Indians are often not very comfortable with taking charge. However, in the recent times, we’ve observed the growth of entrepreneurs in the country due to a boom of innovative ideas. Companies like OYO rooms, FoodPanda, Zomato have also managed to spread their wings into the international markets. However, what India needs is not a copy paste of ideas from the West but an array of completely new ideas because the markets they are catering to are completely different.
2. New ideas make life simpler
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With a huge variety of new idea cropping up; we can only fathom how much easier our life gets. If one needs to book a cab, Ola is the way to go; one can easily check restaurant listings on Zomato while booking tickets through BookMyShow is super convenient and only made the lives of people more organised. Also, companies like Flipkart and Snapdeal have sorted the e-commerce scene in the country. Hence, with more innovations by entrepreneurs in various fields, the public benefits greatly.
There are a huge number of Venture Capitalists who want to invest in start-ups but because of the lack of a completely original idea, they fail to find one. The world of investors see potential in our country and we need to use all the attention coming our way in a positive way. Recently, Zoomcar received funding worth $8 million from Sequoia capital where as OYO is funded by Sequoia Capital, SoftBank and GreenOaks capital which are foreign based investors.
4. Fill gaps in growth and development in the country
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The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi believes that start-ups are essential to bridge the gaps to enhance growth and development of the country on various fronts. New start-up innovations cropping up are steady sources of income for the entrepreneur and an addition to the GDP of the country. Hence, the government aspires to boost digital start-ups at grass root levels by allotting around INR 2000 crores for this initiative.
The Prime Minister is highly excited about the Start-up India project which has almost 2000 crore INR allotted to the cause. Along with that, the Government also plans to provide budding entrepreneurs with perks such as legal support for filing patents at free of cost and 80% reduction in filing patent fee. If the Government eases taxation for start-ups, it’ll be a great boost to empower the aspiring entrepreneurs who should definitely grab the opportunity and start more companies in India.
6. Healthy competition
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More number of entrepreneurs means more competition which saves the country from monopoly in any one field. This will force companies to come up with newer and more cost-effective ideas in order to secure profit margins and build a base which are beneficial to the customer.
For instance, Zomato was almost a monopoly until close players like FoodPanda and Swiggy ventured into the restaurant business increasing competition in a healthy way and providing the customers with more choices.
Lendingkart recently raised 205 crores; 128 crores was raised as equity and 77 crores as debt.
Lendingkart recently raised 205 crores; 128 crores was raised as equity and 77 crores as debt.
The Dollar Business Bureau
Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) led the whole money raising event where over $32 million was raised in series B funding from investors. Lendingkart is an Online loan platform.
“With BII onboard, we are looking forward to leverage its deep knowledge of global financial products and Internet businesses,” Harshvardhan Lunia, co-founder and CEO, Lendingkart Group, said in a statement.
The company after having raised a massive amount in the second tranche funding claimed that BII had led the new tranche of funding in which big investors like Darrin capital management had paricipated along with existing investors such as Saama Capital, Mayfield India and Indian Quotient. The company also stated that with Financial Service leaders like Arvato Financial Solutions as a part of the investing group, Bertelsmann has certainly brought forth a fresh angle to the mundane digital forum and data analysed risk assessment. It will also help Lendingkart to pose themselves as the leading lending platform in the country.
With the recent round of funding, Lendingkart has over 260 crores to its name. It has also helped to boost their tech platform and given them a sturdy infrastructure to enhance mobile capabilities.
The Managing director of BII said that they were proud to be associated with the LendingKart group to create a new generation of lending firm in the country. They believe that through lending money to the deserving, they will get to see a lot of new innovations in the country.
Lendingkart aims to expand its horizon, tap the lending market and emrge as a lending leader in the country by expanding its presence further across different regions of India. It has successfully organised loans to clients across 130 cities in 22 states and recorded a successful growth of 20% monthly in loan origination. In the future, Lendingkart also aims to facilitate loans to SMEs.
