VMware may be a publicly traded software virtualisation company, but it continues to think like a startup. Over the years, it has over learnt that by collaborating with startups, it can build billion dollar business lines. The Palo Alto, California-based company, which closed last year at $9 billion, is looking to work with innovators and innovation outside the company. That’s why its global innovation team was in India recently to scout for innovation in the Indian startup ecosystem.
In this video interview with YourStory, VMWare VP and Managing Director for India Arun Parameswaran reveals more about the company's journey and proffers advice on how startups can scale. Arun believes that networks will change everything in India, especially when data costs are falling so fast.
Nokia’s India Mobile Broadband Index reveals that the average consumption of data in India is 10GB per month, and is expected to grow up to 30 GB by next year. This, Arun believes, will fundamentally transform the country and its businesses.
“Startups should work with people with operational excellence. Scaling the organisation is a completely different skill set and the founder may not have that ability,” Arun says.
He adds that startups can add value to corporates by building technology valuable to them. “Our global team was in India looking at how the startup industry was shaping up. Like I said, VMWare has acquired so many startups in the past that it is always looking for cutting edge technology,” says Arun.
VMWare looks at innovation in two spectrums. It believes 50 percent innovation will be organic innovation while the rest will be through acquisitions.
The company has bought 45 companies since 2008, and has acquired nine companies since 2017. VMWare’s big acquisitions include AirWatch, Nicer, and CloudHealth, turning these companies into big businesses since then.
“We were always called a one-trick pony because of our virtualisation business. But not anymore because several of our business lines are a billion dollars in revenue,” Arun says.
The company's businesses that have hit a billion dollars in revenues include the virtualisation piece (its main business), the cloud management business, work space business (end-user computing), networking and security, and hyperconverged infrastructure.
VMWare believes India is seeing transformation at a scale that they have never seen before. Arun says SMBs and large businesses are taking the digital transformation route.
“Banking in India is transforming faster than any other industry. Digital transformation is a cliché, but businesses have to go digital. There is no other way if one has to scale,” Arun adds.
It is no secret that the Indian Premier League (IPL) is one of the most-watched sporting leagues in the world. Over the years, it has notched up several viewership records for its broadcasters - first, Sony Entertainment Television, and now, Star India. Since 2015, it is being streamed digitally on Hotstar, and the league's reach has grown exponentially thereafter.
This year, IPL has garnered a viewership of 267 million on Hotstar within the first three weeks itself, including a global live-streaming record of 12.7 million concurrent viewers. This happened on March 28 during the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians.
The Disney-owned service crossed its own past record of 11.2 million concurrent viewers that it hit during the India-New Zealand T20 match in February.
Streaming in English, Hindi and six other regional languages, IPL 2019 is expected to fetch over 300 million viewers on Hotstar. The OTT platform is on course to hit that mark - possibly, even surpass it. So far, it has witnessed a 2x growth in watch-time compared to last season.
Besides tapping into India's enormous vernacular user base, Hotstar has made the IPL viewing experience more social and interactive with its "Watch N'Play" feature that allows users to predict outcomes every ball, offer live commentary through a social feed, interact with others, and win real rewards.
In a statement to the media, Varun Narang, Chief Product Officer, Hotstar said,
“The remarkable rate at which viewership has grown over the years is a testament to the audience pull that IPL enjoys. On the back of this, Hotstar continues to break records by raising the bar in reinventing the sporting experience for millions of Indians."
While live sport, especially cricket, has played a critical role in the growth of Hotstar, other virally popular entertainment shows like Game Of Thrones (whose eighth season premiered on the platform yesterday) also help further its reach.
Fleet service and transport automation software provider, Routematic, raised $2.5 million in a Pre-series A round of funding. It was led by Naresh Malhotra, former Coffee Day CEO.
Existing investor VAMM Ventures also participated in the round. A significant portion of the funds will be deployed towards building the country's first EV-centric smart city transportation network.
The company is backed by Blume Ventures and VAMM Ventures. With this latest round, the total capital raised by Routematic stands at $4.5 million.
Naresh Malhotra said, "Strength growth, solid unit economics and execution precision, they have been ticking all three boxes consistently. Their (Routematic's) customers have been seeing significant value in the form of improved operational metrics, significant efficiency improvements and cost savings."
Routematic will also be using the funds to expand its operations - including staff transportation, fleet marketplace and staffing.
The Bengaluru-based startup was founded by ISB alumnus Surajit Das and software engineer Sriram Kannan in 2013. It began as a transport automation solution provider, operating on the SaaS model and offering cloud-based location tracking and vehicle management system to large enterprises in the IT and financial sectors.
In press statement, Surajit said,
"We are pleased to announce our continued association with Naresh Malhotra who has played a significant role in our growth and will continue to do so in future. Over time we have increased revenue per asset to our fleet marketplace members and have more than doubled the revenues in the last 12 months. We are extremely capital efficient, as is evident in our data models, which allow us to execute at sub 1 percent variation to projections."
Routematic plans to channelise its funding towards five core markets - Pune, Bengaluru, NCR, Hyderabad, and Chennai, for the next 12 months. Strengthening its position, the company aims to enable EV-based transportation ecosystem in these markets.
Ajay Malhotra of VAMM Ventures said, "This is the only way to de-congest roads and change over to greener transportation networks and have happy commuters and cities. Routematic is a pioneer in smart transportation networks. Its target market is both simple and sizeable. The average commuter takes 14 trips in a week of which 10 are commute to or from work and Routematic is solving these 10 trips!"
Today, most agritech startups seem to be looking at solving mainly one problem - getting fresh produce to the consumer, both B2B and B2C. While people are increasingly embracing organic produce for its multitude of benefits, farmers, on the other hand, are finding it difficult to market the organic produce to the right customers.
After realising that farmers from his village in Telangana were facing problems to get their produce to the market, Ramaraju Lakkamraju spotted an opportunity in the segment. He says this was more evident in case of farmers following natural and organic, or Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF).
Ramaraju and his cousin, Suribabu Lakkamraju, set up GoFarmz in 2016 in Hyderabad. Both have a background in software engineering. GoFarmz is a platform for farmers growing organic vegetables, fruits, and millets to sell their produce. It also lets customers buy products from the website or the app on a weekly basis.
Ramaraju says: “Our motto is to deliver farm fresh, naturally-grown veggies and fruits to consumers in the span of 24 hours after harvest.”
Coming from a farming family, Ramaraju’s father, who is a farmer, was finding it difficult to farm naturally. Further, getting this produce to the market was equally, if not more, difficult.
“Sometimes, my father would give these vegetables for free or even at super-low prices at the market. I thought about creating a marketplace for our own produce, but later, after communicating with different farmers, I realised they also had the same problem,” Ramaraju says.
Soon after, Ramaraju along with his cousin Suribabu, started Innasoft, a software company that built GoFarmz, a website and an app to sell fresh produce.
Working on collaborations
Initially, the team started collaborating with farmers following natural or ZBNF practices of cultivation. They also checked the authenticity of the products by visiting farms and making sure that they were 100 percent genuine.
GoFarmz procures the goods from partnered/registered farmers, and the team adds 15 percent to the farmers' price and delivers it to consumers by adding delivery and other charges.
“We collect the produce from these farmers every week on Friday. The orders are placed on the website and the app from Sunday to Thursday in three baskets - vegetables, fruits, and millets. We also display the information of the farmer for every item that is placed on the website,” Ramaraju says.
The GoFarmz team with farmers.
The orders, in turn, are delivered on Saturday and Sunday. In case someone wishes to cancel the order or want to modify their baskets, the same can be done on every Thursday, he adds.
“We have 3,000 customers registered on the platform, and 15-plus farmers on-boarded till now,” he says. Every week, the team clocks an average of 100 orders, at Rs 500 per item. The average basket size ranges from six to eight kg.
The team is currently working out on setting up a small warehouse in Hyderabad.
The business model
Currently, GoFarmz has tied up with few grocery and kirana stores in Madhapur, Kondapur, Gachibowli, Manikonda, and Filmnagar. The team is also in the process of developing an app for bulk buyers and wants to be a complete marketplace for naturally-grown products across the country.
“For farmers, it should serve as a marketing platform to sell their products in a hassle-free manner, since we are developing an app specially for them to provide information about their products’ harvest and selling information,” Ramaraju says.
Some of the other players following the B2B farm-to-fork models include Hyperpure by Zomato, and other well-known players such as Ninjacart, BigHaat, and several others.
On the business front, the B2B farm-to-fork market is estimated to be $180 billion plus, growing at nine percent annually. The market is very stable as fruits and vegetables are an essential commodity.
For GoFarmz, the differentiator lies in the focus on organic farmers and natural produce. The team has at present tied up with a few local players for delivery, and claims to be setting up its own delivery team.
In order to connect with more farmers, the team already has a few natural organic food producer organisation tie-ups and has a farmer network. “We have placed an option called “Refer a farmer,” where a customer who knows someone already into natural farming can give us the details, and our team will follow up,” Ramaraju says.
American entrepreneur and celebrity investor Kevin Harrington has announced his very first investment in India in The New Shop, run and owned by Delhi-based ProductX Ventures.
The “original shark” from entrepreneurial-based reality TV show Shark Tank, Kevin Harrington, who is the also the founder of As Seen on TV, and claims to be the “inventor of the infomercial”, speaks to YourStory about his first foray into India 25 years ago, his latest (and first in India) investment, and his future plans for India.
Edited excerpts of the interview:
YourStory: You have been an entrepreneur for 40 years now. When and how did India catch your attention, as an entrepreneur and investor?
Kevin Harrington: I started the product business back in the early 80s. We would invest money in a product, manufacturing, inventory, etc. Then, we had to find celebrities to endorse the products, pay them, and produce a TV commercial. These were major investments for every single product, each of which had a bell-shaped curve of success. The products would ultimately die, just like a movie that comes out, meets success, and eventually goes out of the theatre and is finished.
But, where does the movie go from there? It goes international! In the early 90s, we had a library of about 100+ products, all of them with a bell-shaped curve. But I thought of the movies, and how they then go to Europe, Latin America, Asia, etc. I started thinking about the global marketplace in the early 90s. My first step was going to England because it was easier owing to the same language. And it was wildly successful. We opened our London office in 1991; we did north of $15 million in sales in the English market in our first year. Then we went into Germany, followed by other countries in Europe, and Latin America. This was till 1993. In 1994, we launched our products in Japan, and we did sale of $80 million in the first year. That’s when we realised that this library was valuable, and that we needed to take it everywhere. That's when we started exploring India.
I came here in 1994 thinking that it would be a great market as there are billion-plus people. But, after a year of operations, we pulled out due to a lot of challenges.
Getting TV time was not a challenge; it was getting the products out to market. We found that in many parts of the world, be it Germany, Japan, or Spain, marketplaces were fairly sophisticated with inbound phone centres, fulfillment centres, banking processes, etc. In India, we were able to get our products on television, but the credit card penetration, fulfillment centres, customer service, and the phone ordering were a problem. We were actually using people on bicycles to deliver a product. So, it was a very difficult business to run and we left in a year. We were too early.
YS: You almost waited 25 years to come back here. What reignited your interest?
KH: To be honest, we were busy with everything else we were doing. It isn't until now, with The New Shop, that we actually decided to come back. Why? So, back in 80s, I decided that I want to go direct to the consumer, and wanted my own products where I could control distribution, B2C, direct to the consumer. So, when The New Shop came to me and said they had a new concept of shopping and it was direct to the consumer, I found it interesting.
I don't want to invest in retail stores, or big infrastructure. But if I can have a place to sell products that is where people work and live right, it could be very powerful. The bottom line is that I love the business model and it is in line with my strategy of “direct to the consumer”.
YS: Do you plan to invest in more startups here?
KH: I take it one step at a time, and so far the only venture that I have here is with The New Shop. So, we will look at having it (The New Shop) as a possible entity that can partner with the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem because our goal is to get to 10,000 stores in five years. At the end of the day we will be able to partner with entrepreneurs here to give them access to our footprint.
YS: Apart from FMCG, which is the focus of The New Shop, what are your other interest areas for India?
KH: I have been a product entrepreneur for 35 years; I love products. Just talking entrepreneurially, maybe some service businesses could be incorporated into The New Shop, leading to opportunities for additional revenue streams.
I always like to keep my eyes open for opportunities. I believe that India has a great number of tech startups. Now that I am spending more time here, we will be looking at tuning into the world of tech and the opportunities that exist here.
In India, there are millions of manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors across all major manufacturing hubs. With the growth of ecommerce, and the general trade itself being a highly unorganised sector, a majority of the supply chain network has been struggling to keep pace with the rapidly evolving consumer preferences with regards to stocking inventory.
Against this backdrop, Mumbai-based Bnext is working to simplify the interaction between manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and resellers.
“Wholesalers and distributors find it extremely difficult to track inventory and resell the inventory coming to them from various manufacturers. Further, every SME in the supply chain needs access to logistical support and other supporting services, which are missing today,” says Dipti Singla, Co-founder of Bnext.
Bnext Co-founders Sriram Subramanian and Dipti Singla
Working with SMEs, Bnext aims to achieve a transparent supply chain by digitising catalogues and integrating these with social media platforms to expand the online reach of all parties involved. The B2B enterprise-SaaS platform helps them expand their business, and better engage their customers.
Founded by Dipti and her friend Sriram Subramanian in 2018, Bnext has raised $300,000 from angel investors. Dipti had earlier founded IndiaCardsGallery.com (a startup for personalised gifting and greeting cards), and BluBox (an ecommerce service provider to online marketplaces). Sriram has a management degree from UC-Berkeley, and previously worked with H-P, Paypal, and eBay. He also co-founded ShoppinPal (a mobile commerce platform for brick and mortar retailers).
Bnext currently has around 2,000 clients and works across the fashion and lifestyle sector, including apparel, jewellery, and footwear.
Bnext helps manufactures create digital product repositories and catalogues on the platform, and then share it with their distributors. The distributors will then resell the same products to the retailers, who then share it further down the line.
The digital catalogue has the image and other product specifications. However, only the manufacturer can list the products; others can only resell.
Dipti says, “Usually, the manufacturer has no connection with the customer, and doesn’t know what the customer really wants. The ideal situation should be where a customer demands something and the retailers send this information to the manufacturer, and the product gets created.”
So Bnext provides visibility and transparency to both the manufacturer and the end customer. By digitising the product details, it helps the customer get information on what the retailer is selling, at what price point, design, and various other details.
According to Dipti, manufacturers can also use the Bnext platform to share the store link with the distributor through an SMS, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms.
Further, the distributor can either send an enquiry related to the product or directly add products to the cart and purchase them for resale to retailers.
"List, share, and resell on a single platform - through this system, the manufacturer will be able to make their product better, with better inventory management, and better distribution,” says Dipti, who is a graduate from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
The Bnext model claims to reduce the task of digitising the inventory at every node of the supply chain.
Some of the other key players in the space include Delhi-based JumboGrocery, Bengaluru-based Smerkato, and EZKirana.
The team claims that unlike other B2B marketplaces like Amazon and Udaan, which are looking at a two-node transaction, Bnext is looking at multi-node transaction, where it not just brings two intermediaries, but multiple intermediaries on board. This makes it easy for the startup to reach the smallest retailer.
“These experiences have given us a deep understanding of the real challenges with B2B commerce and all the essential components of the solution that can operate at scale with millions of users,” says Sriram, explaining the motive behind starting up Bnext.
Challenges and revenue model
Dipti and Sriram say they wanted to bring in technology that was simple to understand for traders. But they admit having faced challenges while coming up with a solution that was easy to operate and would not disrupt the current trade channel. By hiring a proper team and experimenting their product before launching, they managed to overcome this hurdle.
Bnext is now a team of 12 people spread across sales and technology departments.
The startup, which was launched just a year ago, claims to have a revenue growth of 2x month on month. For this, Bnext works on two revenue models - a basic model for Rs 1,000 per month, where anyone can pay, register, and use all the features on the platform. The other model is for those who want the entire process to be white labeled, with customised images, videos, product descriptions, etc. Here, the amount can go up to Rs 25,000 per month.
Dipti says their immediate goal is to have one million users on Bnext over the next three years to take them to a multi-million-dollar revenue run rate.
The team is also planning to build a technology with a focus on financial institutions to create easy and instant access to credit, especially for small wholesalers and distributors.
Digital investment advisor Kuvera on Tuesday announced that it had raised $4.5 million in Series A funding from Eight Roads, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited. This first round of institutional funding will allow Kuvera to build its team and expand its product portfolio.
The Founders of Kuvera (L to R): Gaurav Rastogi, Mayank Sharma, and Neelabh Sanyal.
Founded in 2016 by Gaurav Rastogi, Neelabh Sanyal, and Mayank Sharma, Kuvera is a web-based direct mutual fund investment platform. With more than 100,000 users, the company provides access to a range of innovative investment tools designed to help them save and reach their financial goals.
In a statement, Kuvera said it currently manages more than Rs 3,000 crore in mutual fund investments. The Bengaluru- based wealth management platform said it charges zero fees to provide tailored, goal-based financial advice.
Speaking on the investment, Gaurav said,
“With Eight Roads as an investor, we will continue to innovate and expand our advisory offering across financial products. We have an exciting lineup of product releases this year and are looking to expand our team to build these out even faster.”
Till date, over 75,000 goals have been recorded by Kuvera’s customers as they save to buy a home, purchase a car, or invest in a child’s education. Other features on the platform include family login and mutual fund portfolio consolidation, which are targeted towards advanced investors.
Alokik Advani, Head of Fintech Strategic Investments at Eight Roads, who will join Kuvera’s board, added,
“This is our team’s first investment in India. We are really impressed by Kuvera’s platform, which is at par with the best. We will leverage our close relationship with Fidelity to support Kuvera in serving the Indian consumer.”
Kuvera also claims to be leveraging artificial intelligence to provide better targeted advice to customers, while reducing the cost of accessing multiple financial products through a single digital platform.
Indian payment players, including PhonePe, Paytm, and MobiKwik, are aggressively doubling down on the wealth management category and are offering mutual funds on their platform.
One97 Communications, which owns Paytm, launched its mutual funds investment platform, Paytm Money, in September last year while Gurugram-based MobiKwik entered the wealth management space with the acquisition of mutual fund platform Clearfunds in October last year.
Flipkart-owned PhonePe also launched a new wealth management product last month; it started its wealth management arm PhonePe Wealth Services in November last year.
Other startups in the wealth management space have also been attracting investor attention lately. Early this year, Scripbox raised Rs 151 crore as a part of its Series C funding. Other competitors include Nivesh, Groww, Orowealth, and Sqrrl, all of who have raised funding demonstrating investor faith in the space.
Mumbai-based online bookings platform BookMyShow announced on Tuesday that it has made a strategic investment in the Pune-based payments company AtomX. The amount of the deal was undisclosed.
With this investment Anil Makhika, COO, Venues and Service Delivery, BookMyShow will be joining AtomX’s Board of Directors. Anil leads the operations and service delivery verticals at BookMyShow and also oversees deployment of new on-ground technologies at the firm.
Commenting on the investment, Abhilash Gowdara, Founder and CEO, AtomX, said in a statement, “The contactless technology penetration in India and the future of India is rapidly moving towards a cashless society. We are looking to unify both online and offline payments, enabling live entertainment events to accept contactless bank issued cards beyond our close loop tags which offer users multiple options to tap and pay at all our live events. BookMyShow is the leader in India's online entertainment landscape and we are thrilled to be associated with them to tap synergies more efficiently."
The booking platform will now provide customers an enhanced cashless experience for its onground events. A statement said that this investment will let BookMyShow seamlessly enable AtomX’s cashless payments platform and solutions on Near Field Communication (NFC) cards, wristbands, and keychains that consumers can use for digital payments at music festivals, sporting events, food festivals, and concerts, amongst others.
The solution enables users to store cash in the form of digital money in their NFC chip and simply tap and pay, to buy food, beverages and merchandise instantly, allowing them to enjoy the experience wholly without worrying about losing their money, the statement said.
AtomX’s solutions can be used by BookMyShow’s vendors and customers. It will allow the data to be stored on the card. This in turn resolves the challenge of low internet connectivity at outdoor events, which typically result in a broken experience on the ground.
On the investment, Ashish Hemrajani, Founder and CEO, BookMyShow stated: “As we broaden the out-of-home entertainment ecosystem, we continue to improve every aspect of that customer journey. This includes safer and smoother digital transactions both, while buying tickets and for on-ground services. We also strive to provide relevant data analytics, insights around events to vendors and organizers to better deliver the experience to our customers. Our partnership with AtomX will play an instrumental role in furthering this experience.”
Last year a RedSeer report suggested that the online-ticketing industry saw a 40-45 percent growth in the non-movie category. It stated: “The online ticketing industry saw a decrease in the share of movie tickets in Q3’17 as movies on-demand started to increase. To counteract this drop in movies, the industry shifted its focus to ancillary categories which are showing exceptional growth in sports and local events. Increased contribution of local events also opens doors for the increased penetration of the industry in Tier-II cities.”
Anil Makhija, COO - Venues and Service Delivery, BookMyShow, said, “As India’s leading destination for all out-of-home entertainment experiences, BookMyShow truly believes that the experience lasts much after the event. It is this user journey - from the ticketing process until on-ground execution - that we are constantly looking to improve and enhance. A smooth venue operation for any event relies significantly on technology and our investment in AtomX underlines BookMyShow’s aim to provide an unparalleled customer experience."
As part of the SpaceTech Startups (STS) community, the first-ever Space Crowd Pitch took place in Bengaluru on March 28, 2019. The event brought together Space startup founders, sector-focused investors, subject-matter experts, ecosystem leaders, and engineering talents. Themed Accelerating into the World of Space, the event’s panel sought to address what would it take to build the future of Space from India. The community reconnected a week later, during Airbus Bizlab TakeOff 2019 in Bengaluru, and with plans of more such learnings and gatherings across other cities.
Investors on SpaceTech Startup Trends
The recent months have seen extensive coverage of India’s Space technological developments, leading to the country now being labelled a ‘Space Power’. The excitement is palpable, especially among the student community. In a recent campus poll conducted by Crowd Product, we had an overwhelming number choose SpaceTech as their dream career, followed by Robotics and Electric Vehicles.
Like many of you may have, I too grew up being fascinated by the world of Space and by keenly following scientists like Yash Pal and their celestial activity discussions on the national television. I have also had the opportunity to research on the sector during my coverage of India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, back in 2008 for Yahoo! Space, being such a vast domain, can easily overwhelm potential innovators.
In this post, I am sharing with you some learnings from Space startups, investors, and the ecosystem leaders.
Srinath Ravichandran, Agnikul Cosmos
The startup is building a mini launch vehicle, enabling rockets of up to 100kgs to low earth orbit. Their goal is to facilitate the launch of micro and mini satellites on-demand.
Srinath Ravichandran, Founder and CEO, Agnikul Cosmos, mentioned his team includes talents from various engineering streams - electrical engineers, propulsion engineers, structural engineers, system engineers, chip designers, software engineers, and more. And this, talking only about talents in the technology streams.
Takeaway - If you understand technology, one is never an outsider when it comes to building something in SpaceTech.
Aparna Allannavar, NoPo Nanotechnologies
NoPo Nanotechnologies manufactures space-ready Carbon Nanotubes (CNT), a material for the future of rockets. Aparna Allannavar, a scientist from the company, shared more about HiPCO technology - a process invented by Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, which aids the manufacturing of Carbon Nanotubes. She also explained about CENCE™, an enhanced sensing composite for use in Space.
Gadhadar Reddy, Founder, NoPo Nanotechnologies, studied Electrical Engineering at BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru, which offered nanotechnology as a subject. He later went on to study Molecular Sciences and Nanotechnology at Louisiana Tech University. There, he was able to convince Robert Kelly Bradley, co-inventor of HiPCO reactor, to join him in his vision to make humanity a space faring species.
Takeaway - Being a lifelong learner and willing to collaborate can go a long way in helping one realise objectives. The Space Technology sector is no different.
Vishesh Rajaram from SpecialeInvest
Developments in the SpaceTech domain are going to increase multifold, given that governments are acting towards privatisation of the sector. Vishesh sees three overarching trends that will drive increased innovations in Space - Cost of satellite launches coming down drastically, decrease in the size of satellites, and increase in computation power.
Takeaway - There are focused investment funds who understand the Space sector well, and who are willing to assist innovators with funding and other insights.
Rama Bethmangalkar from Qualcomm Ventures
Rama estimates there are 1,500 to 2,000 companies across the world that are into SpaceTech, with 250-300 already being venture funded already. He says, sometimes commercial grade or even military grade products and components may not be enough for use in Space. Hence it would be important for companies to critically test solutions for Space.
Takeaway - A government-backed shared infrastructure for critical testing will reduce costs and thereby encourage more innovators start up and sustain their SpaceTech companies.
Corporate learnings from Airbus BizLab
Anand Stanley, President and MD, Airbus India and South Asia, believes the future of India does not belong to entrepreneurs or innovators, as much as it is for the rest of the 99 percent who will benefit from the innovations that entrepreneurs work on. Innovations that have made data in India 95 percent cheaper, agriculture more sustainable, infrastructure more robust, etc., have and will make a huge impact to societies.
Takeaway - The motivation for innovators should not just be reaping monetary rewards for themselves, but also finding solutions that can make a difference to millions.
The Leader of Airbus Bizlab India, Siddharth Balachandran, did some trend spotting. He shared how the future of aerospace will enable many more companies to work on unmanned solutions like delivery drones, on emergency healthcare solutions, and even basic necessities like the internet - which will be powered by satellites. Siddharth also went on to share how satellite data and geo intelligence can avoid calamities such as the Kerala floods.
Takeaway - There are several use-cases that can be addressed by leveraging latest technology and developments in the aerospace industry.
More Learnings from Innovation-led Community
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
As explained by Varadarajan Krish, GNSS is the standard term for satellite navigation systems. The technology can deliver a user’s latitude or longitude position in quick time and across the globe. GNSS accepts various global positioning systems, including the popular GPS (Global Positioning System) developed by the US government. The GNSS systems developed by other regions, are GLONASS (Russian), Galileo (European), BeiDou (Chinese) and IRNSS (Indian).
Takeaway - GNSS opportunities are huge, with the market driven not just by its sheer size but also modernisation plans by governments and fast growth of several industry sectors.
Licence on Transfer (LOT) Network
There is a new trend of technology startups adopting defensive patent strategies by being part of global communities. The LOT network protects companies from patent trolls or patent assertion entities. Patent trolling adds up to $80 billion of money lost, which could have instead been used for innovation, talents, and building better products. LOT members include Microsoft, Google, Facebook, SAP, NetApp, Salesforce, Cisco, Logitech, and other corporations in the automotive, financial, entertainment, etc. Startups here are able to leverage from the over 1.5 million patent assets available in the network.
Takeaway - There are networks and communities created to protect innovators, and when in danger of losing their time and money.
There were other useful takeaways from leading ecosystem attendees at the event. For instance, Vijetha Shastry, Lead, Open Innovation at NASSCOM Centre of Excellence for IOT, reinforced the belief that a lot of growth in innovative startups that we see today could not have happened in isolation. Right from contributions from varied talents to technologies like 3D printing – they have all made a crucial difference to the realisation of opportunities.
Finally, answering the question of ‘What does it take to build the future of Space from India?’
‘It’s the Community’, as shared by Space Pitch panel discussion’s moderator, YourStory's Madanmohan Rao, and reiterated by other Space Pitch event delegates like Futurist and Chair TiE IoT Forum, Arvind Tiwary. The future of Space may well come from a region that engages innovative startups, talents, and global stakeholders, even more productively.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
Every organisation needs to clearly break down the competency attributes for each job role. This ensures that the right people are hired for the right job, and tasks are delegated to the person in accordance with his or her competence.
Have you ever wondered why one individual performs better than another on a team? It is because they differ from each other on a very specific component – their competence. In fact, competence is what determines an individual’s performance.
Competence is the integration of the attitude, skills, and knowledge required by an individual to perform his or her job tasks in an effective manner. Thus, in order to get a job done, one needs to possess the right mix of all three elements relevant to the specific job tasks and activities.
Only the right attitude is not good enough to get the job done. For an individual to perform the required tasks, he or she needs to have the skills and the knowledge as well. Likewise, only skills or only knowledge is not sufficient either; one needs to have the right attitude to put those skills and knowledge to work to produce the desired results.
To further break this down, here is how I define the three elements:
● Attitude is the amalgamation of behavioural traits and the mindset of an individual. It determines their background context in a given situation. For instance, patience, persistence, empathy, and attention to detail are all traits that would fall under the bucket of attitude.
● Skills are the capabilities required by an individual to execute critical job tasks. For instance, selling, negotiation, and presentation are the critical skills that a sales executive needs to possess. For a customer support executive, attentive listening would be a skill, as answering phone calls of customers would qualify as a critical job task in that role.
● Knowledge would be the data and information that an individual needs to possess to be able to perform the task at hand. Similarly, for a sales person, product information, customer information, and competitor information would comprise the critical knowledge required to be effective in the job role.
Another key element for us to keep in mind is that the competence attributes differ from one job role to another. For example, the attitude, skills, and knowledge required to be effective in a sales role are very different from the attitude, skills, and knowledge required to perform the job of an accountant.
Every organisation needs to clearly break down the competency attributes for each job role. This ensures that the right people are hired for the right job, and tasks are delegated to the person in accordance with his or her competence. Otherwise, either the wrong person ends up being hired for the wrong job, or the wrong job ends up being delegated to the wrong person, creating not only unrealistic expectations, but also wastage of time, effort, and finances.
In the context of MSMEs, it is critical that team members have complementary competencies to be able to keep the ball rolling in all functions of the business, i.e. marketing, sales, operations, accounts, human resources, and management. This is one common mistake that I see many MSMEs making is building teams that are only strong in one particular department, but not in the others. This, sooner or later, lands them in a struggle of execution, in each of the other departments.
Even when it comes to creating the right combination of co-founders for a venture, the key is to have diversity of competencies between the members of the top team, to cover various functions of the business.
When a business uses this approach of competence attributes for any kind of people management activities, it is able to implement a more objective and scientific operational plan, rather than a subjective and biased one. In a nutshell, the key to building a high-performance team is defining the attributes of attitude, skills, and knowledge for the various job roles essential for delivering the goals of the business, and using this list of competencies for hiring, training, and managing people.
It is only when you take care of the ‘A-S-K’ factor (Attitude-Skills-Knowledge) in your business, that you can deliver on the TASKS of the business. Thus, “No A-S-K = No Task”.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
For many startups, becoming an overnight success is not just a dream – it’s a reality. But going from one customer to one million can turn into a nightmare if you’re not equipped to support them.
As a founder, you've probably given your startup your all -- spent every waking hour shaping your product idea, getting your tech right, testing your solution or hustling for capital. All this while working out of your apartment, in cafes, or even while on the go. Now comes the nerve-wracking part: your first customers are about to take your product for a spin. You know that you need a customer service team, but you've never built one before. Where do you begin?
“Why Zendesk?” you may ask. Well, Zendesk is a global leader in customer service and has helped thousands of startups and even unicorns like Airbnb and Uber build relationships with their customers and scale their customer service. OLX, another client of Zendesk, was able to reduce their global ticket volume by 40 percent with Zendesk. Zendesk can help startups and scale-ups maintain personalised customer experiences as they grow—without sacrificing quality or increasing costs. It can help you be a CX leader in your class and win the game.
Win at customer service
Customer service can be a tricky game. So how do you win at it? There are many possible paths to take, and many decisions to be made. With your A-game, winning can be a reality. But customer service is also very serious. A single wrong turn can make your customers unhappy and cost your business money. Sometimes alliances — between you and your customers — need to be formed to get you across the finish line. This session will show startups that the key to winning at customer service is to think like your customers and provide a path of least resistance from problem to solution.
Learn from the ‘Zen’ master Kan Kunimura
As Director of SMB, APAC at Zendesk, Kan leads all SMB and startup-focused initiatives in the region. Leveraging his near-decade-long experience with startups across APAC with Zendesk, Kan will be talking about the importance of customer support at an early stage. The Startups and the customer experience session will also cover responsiveness to feedback, tools & technology and reporting & metrics.
“Startups are built on vision and passion, but it can be hard to cover all their bases, especially at an early stage. With this initiative, we are aiming to give them the tools and expertise to build a strong foundation in customer engagement, and allow startups to focus on building better products and services,” says Kan, as he explains the significance of the session. “A strong customer engagement setup can also give them a boost to stand out, especially in markets like India, that has a vibrant but extremely competitive startup space.”
Sign up for ‘Startups and the customer experience’
The Zendesk Startups and the customer experience sessions will be held across two cities in India. Further details are below. Note, it’s only limited to a select audience of 30 participants.
With every new beta update, WhatsApp brings a host of new features to make the app more functional and easy to use. While some of these introductions – like the much-anticipated dark mode or an authentication feature – successfully stir curiosity, some others end up being at the centre of a debate.
Much like the latest functionality that the Facebook-owned company is said to be working on for its biometric authentication option.
The last time we talked about this authentication option – first spotted by WABetaInfo, the website tracking all WhatsApp-related updates and news – we reported that the feature was in testing mode. And that once it was enabled, it would allow users to lock the messaging app using the fingerprint sensor of their smartphones.
But - there's a catch. WABetaInfo reported that enabling this fingerprint authentication feature could effectively block a user from taking screenshots of the chats.
“In this beta update we find a new improvements for the Authentication feature (that’s not available yet),” the blog stated, “When the Authentication feature will be enabled, your fingerprint is obviously required to open WhatsApp, but conversation screenshots are blocked. It means you won’t be longer able to screenshot your chats if you enable that feature.”
Although the global messaging platform has not officially rolled out the feature for its larger user base, the report has already garnered mixed responses on social media.
“So does it mean I cannot take screenshots if I enable authentication feature? Pls correct me if was wrong in understanding,” a twitter user wrote.
Besides the block screenshot functionality, WhatsApp is also working on improving the user interface for its Doodle feature. And this included addition of a search option and categorising into ‘Stickers’ and ‘Emoji’.
VVDN technologies was founded by four technology professionals – Bhupender Saharan, Puneet Agarwal, Vivek Bansal, Murali Jayaraman – who were all working in the US. The experience of working in the deep engineering domain for close to a decade gave them enough knowledge about the industry pain points as well as the opportunity for growth. They decided to venture on their own and started VVDN Technologies in 2007. (VVDN is an acronym for Voice Video Data Network.) Their goal was clear – to build an end-to-end solutions company for embedded product design and production.
In just over 10 years, they have been able to achieve that goal and much more. Today, VVDN is a premier ODM (original design manufacturer) from India. It provides advanced engineering, cloud and manufacturing services and works closely with customers and partners to develop and manufacture commercially viable best-in-class products. VVDN's strong partnerships and alliances with various Semi-Conductor Companies like Qualcomm has helped the company develop cutting-edge solutions for customers in various domains, including automotive, IoT, networking, cameras and the industrial space.
Leading this journey is VVDN’s core team with Bhupender as Founder and CEO, Puneet as President –Global Sales, Vivek, President-Engineering and Murali Jayraman, VP-Engineering.
VVDN has an extensive presence in India with branches in Gurgaon, Kochi, Chennai, Bangalore, Noida, Pune, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore. In the US, it is present in four major cities – San Jose, Seattle, Austin and New York. “After setting up VVDN in 2007, the first few years we focused on strengthening our position and expertise as an Embedded Design Service Provider. Having achieved a strong business recall, we began to diversify our offering by adding cloud and mobile app capabilities in 2013 and ODM and manufacturing services in 2015,” says Bhupender
With diversification came fast-paced growth and 2018 saw VVDN expanding its global presence in Germany, Finland, Japan and South Korea. The expansion in Europe and Asia-Pacific region particularly, is of prime importance to the company, both from a business and technology perspective. “VVDN has constantly received positive market reception and has continued to see growing demand in Europe and APAC region for our product engineering and manufacturing capabilities. And we see a lot of local companies depending on talent elsewhere, especially for product development needs. By establishing our presence in these key hubs, we will be able to understand and meet the needs of local companies, enhance global reach for our customers and also tap bigger business opportunities in product engineering, cloud, mobile, manufacturing services,” says Puneet.
An Indian company with manufacturing expertise
Leading a core tech business, meticulously diversifying its offering without diluting its value proposition and tech expertise, has obviously has had its set of challenges. But the biggest challenge was to dispel the perception of India being just a software hub. “When we started out, we had to deal with the misconception that India had talent and expertise only in software. Businesses elsewhere couldn’t fathom that we had ODM capability as well. However, with time and the opportunity to showcase our work, we have been able to overcome this stereotype. Today, our key challenge is that even though we have all the expertise and key capabilities for in-house manufacturing of niche products like IoT Cameras, Trackers, Smart Wearables, Access Points, Automotive and Industrial Products etc., we are still dependent on imported components.” explains Bhupender.
The CEO is all praise for the Indian Government’s drive to encourage design and manufacturing in India through ‘Design in India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives, saying “it has had a positive influence for Indian business.” He adds, “In addition, the custom and labour regulations have been eased to make it easy for manufacturers to produce goods in India.” Today, VVDN produces a wide variety of products at its manufacturing unit, which would not have been possible if without a conducive manufacturing environment in India.
IoT is Integral
Even while growing strong on the manufacturing front, VVDN continues to leverage its engineering expertise and develop products across domains, with IoT being a hot area for the company. The 12-year-old company builds end-to-end devices – from sensors to cameras and video doorbells, from trackers to streaming devices from gateways to access points, from cloud to mobile apps. Its unified IoT cloud enables faster and simpler development of new enterprise, industrial and consumer applications.
“From an engineering perspective of building an IoT product, one of the key elements that determines the success is time-to-market. And, to develop these IoT products, we work closely with semi-conductor companies. Their support is vital in helping us take the product to market on time,” says Vivek Bansal, President Engineering.
Here Qualcomm has been that supportive partner for VVDN. VVDN today is working on wide portfolio of product solutions based on Qualcomm Application Processors, Mobile Processors, Modem and Wifi Chipsets. When VVDN released an LTE IoT Security Camera Reference Platform in 2016, it was based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor. The IoT Security Camera solution was designed to address a wide array of use cases, including smart homes, smart cities and other commercial applications. The LTE-enabled camera aimed to revolutionise the surveillance business since it could be quickly mounted without requiring cumbersome cabling or Wi-Fi connectivity. The reason why Qualcomm’s technology like the Snapdragon helps manufacturers like VVDN is because it brings scale and proven performance of mobile devices industry to IoT, thereby helping accelerate the development and introduction of exciting new products for this segment.
Qualcomm’s support has not been limited to just providing technology. Mature businesses like VVDN can leverage Qualcomm’s expertise of being a global enabler of Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) technologies (like Narrowband-IoT and eMTC) through the Qualcomm Accelerated Design and Cellular IoT Program (ADP). A programme sponsored and executed by Qualcomm Technology Licensing, Qualcomm ADP, was kickstarted to enable its patent licensees fast track development and testing of their IOT and other cellular products. Qualcomm handholds the partners in designing and productising, to cater to India-specific needs, and also provides market push and deployment support through the programme. In addition, Qualcomm also provides chipset platforms, processors and new technologies to the businesses part of the programme. By doing so, Qualcomm is helping niche businesses like VVDN bring to the market commercially-competitive IoT products made in India. This aligns with the founders’ vision to design and manufacture products in India and develop the innovative Make in India product designs in fields like IOT, networking, and cameras.
Validation through expertise and experience
Vinod Kumar, Senior Hardware Engineer says, “We see a lot of synergy, not only with Qualcomm as a technology partner but also with the Accelerated Design and Cellular IoT Program. We come with strong engineering capabilities. We have already worked with the wireless and networking sector in the past. All this is key for any smart city-related project- which means, with our own expertise as well as that of Qualcomm’s, we are not only able to tap a much bigger market opportunity than ever before but also cut down costs so that the infrastructure is viable for the Indian market. This essentially means that we not only make in India, for India, but also at Indian market price points.”
Explaining how the engagement with Qualcomm adds value even for an experienced player like VVDN, he says, “When you work with Qualcomm, they play a key role in the design and validation phase. Especially during the design phase, they provide feedback on aspects such as schematics, layout, the software architecture, etc. They also play a key role in the validation phase because they have the expertise, and the feedback helps to overcome pitfalls which otherwise can cost a lot of time and effort if addressed at a later stage.”
Qualcomm’s support also helps to make products marketable and sellable, according to Vinod. “We have in-depth discussions with Qualcomm so that they can suggest the right platform for the product, both from a performance and price point perspective. Also, if you look at Qualcomm, be it their infrastructure, their testing labs, especially for newer technologies, including NarrowBand IoT and other related cellular technologies, it is exceptionally advanced. That means you can get products that leverage these new technologies to the market at speed.”
Why the future is now
As smart cities and smart infrastructure become the ‘new present’, as technology becomes more connected than ever before, the digital divide gets smaller by the day, and with the domestic manufacturing environment getting a much-needed push from the ecosystem, economic and social transformations will gain pace. From a business perspective, for organizations like VVDN, the growth opportunity is exciting. “With our efficient manufacturing coupled with a robust network of supply partners and VVDN’s product expertise, we will be able to help our customers produce IoT products at unbeatable price and at speed,” says Murali.
The first two months of 2019 have already indicated what this growth potential can translate into. In January2019, VVDN expanded its base to Canada. It has begun working on innovative technologies in AI, ML and Analytics.
Partnering with Xilinx, the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, VVDN unveiled the Irya-SmartNIC solution at Mobile World Congress 2019. This new solution has been designed to help accelerate functions such as virtual switching, security and compute for dynamic workloads in the cloud-connected infrastructure.
Future Roadmap
The founders say that the convergence of IoT and Intelligent Analytics and the need for it, is opening up a lot of new opportunities. “VVDN will continue to focus on its proven Engineering Design and Manufacturing capabilities while foraying into the next generation technologies like 5G, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Pioneering the Govt. of India’s Make in India campaign, VVDN Technologies is all set to disrupt the Technology Sector in India with its unique standing and capabilities in the industry,” says Bhupender with confidence.
TikTok, the popular Chinese app that runs on user-generated content, is positive about the appointment of Arvind Datar as amicus curiae (independent counsel) to the court in the case involving its ban in India, the company said on Tuesday. The statement was made in light of the recent development after Madras High Court passed a directive, asking the government to put a ban on the app’s download in the country. On Tuesday, the Madras High Court also pushed the hearing to April 24.
TikTok stated,
“We welcome the decision of the Madras High Court to appoint Arvind Datar as amicus curiae (independent counsel) to the court. We have faith in the Indian judicial system and we are optimistic about an outcome that would be well received by over 120 million monthly active users in India, who continue using TikTok to showcase their creativity and capture moments that matter in their everyday lives.”
Following the order, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) urged global tech giants like Google and Apple to take down the video-sharing application from their app stores, media reports claimed. As it turns out, MeitY made this move after the Supreme Court in India denied TikTok’s plea to stay the Madras High Court’s directive from April 3.
YourStory reached out to TikTok about MeitY’s directive to Google and Apple, and the company refused to comment on the matter.
On April 15, SC refused to stay the Madras High Court order on grounds of the issue being still sub-judice. As per reports, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi would hear the matter on April 22.
TikTok is touted to be one of the fastest-growing apps with vast markets like India driving its growth, contributing 88.6 million new users to the platform over the last three months, per reports. A recent study by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower recently stated that TikTok added 188 million users in Q1.
"This marked a year-over-year increase of 70 percent from Q1 2018, when 110 million users installed the hit app for the first time," Sensor Tower stated.
However, the app has been at the centre of a heated debate recently after Madras High Court sought a ban on its downloads on grounds of "inappropriate content".
Homegrown messaging application platform Hike wants to change the way friends communicate with each other over chats and reduce dependency on the keyboard. To do this, the company has launched Hike Sticker Chat.
Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike
Hike’sFounder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal told YourStory:
“Stickers are at the centre of Hike Sticker Chat and are built with machine learning at its core. The app seamlessly tailors itself around each user’s tastes to make communication really simple and expressive by bringing you the right sticker at the right time.”
The new app comes with 30,000 pre-loaded stickers across English and more than 40 Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, etc. By the end of the year, Hike plans to up this number to 200,000. Of the 30,000 stickers currently available, 10,000 are ‘neutral to English’ meaning it either doesn’t have text or it’s in English, another 10,000 are in local languages with their respective scripts, and the rest are in local languages but in English script.
"All these stickers are hand drawn by the company, but as it scales the numbers, they will be machine-made," Kavin said. Till now four in-house art directors along with help from studio partners across the world have been producing these stickers.
“People in India have a tough time with input and as tech gets better, folks want to type less and that’s why companies like Google have come up with the 'smart reply' option where AI (artificial intelligence) prompts the text of a reply and such and that’s the need we are catering to,” he remarked.
According to the Founder-CEO, Hike Sticker Chat has already been adding 50,000 users per day. The company is also working on user-generated stickers or UGS in order to give a more personalised user experience, which it hopes to roll out before the year ends.
Speaking on messaging app leader WhatsApp’s stickers, which Kavin has never considered a direct competition, the 31-year old tech entrepreneur said the Facebook-owned company only has a couple of standard sticker packs, compared to Hike’s vast repertoire.
He noted, “Of course there are third-party apps from where you can get more stickers for WhatsApp, but it’s all a bit convoluted and long-drawn to be honest."
However, Kavin continues to believe that WhatsApp and Hike Sticker Chat can happily co-exist and be on the same phone at the same time. “WhatsApp is more for formal relationships and interactions while ours is more for close friends and young people. WhatsApp is very good at solving the lowest common denominator,” he added.
As far as competition is concerned, Kavin says no one else is doing it at the scale that Hike is doing it at.
Hike’s messaging target group has so far consisted of users in the 18-24 years age bracket. But lately, the company has decided to widen its focus to include even younger users starting with 16-year-olds.
In terms of top cities based on the number of users, the student-town of Pune is unsurprisingly numero uno followed by Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Jaipur.
With technology making new inroads every day coupled with data availability and speeds like never before, Kavin believes there is no need to stick to keyboards anymore when there are other more 'fun' alternatives to communicate.
Hike understands its Sticker Chat is a niche product catering to a select audience but its London-educated CEO believes that even if the company gets two out of 10 messaging users, it’s great for the company given the sheer size of India.
Serving seasonal specials
With the General Elections underway, the company has an interesting bunch of sticker packs dedicated to voting and politicians.
There's one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking a selfie and a Rahul Gandhi caricature wearing sunglasses with the text - “Rahul! Naam toh suna hi hoga” - a pun on Shah Rukh Khan’s famous dialogue from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.
Voice prompted stickers and video in stickers are features that are expected to be rolled out during the year as well.
The journey so far
Last year, Hike had announced that it would start unbundling its services and launch them as separate, individual apps. Hike Sticker Chat marks the beginning of the rollout and other services like cricket scores, gaming, and news, which were a part of the earlier ‘super-app’ would be launched over the next six to nine months.
Currently, the company has around 150 employees, and the head count is expected to go up to nearly 200 by 2019.
Launched in 2012, Hike has become a billion-dollar company in terms of valuation. Till date, the company has raised $261 million. In August 2016, Hike raised its Series D round of funding led by Tencent and Foxconn at a valuation of $1.4 billion and managed to become one of the fastest to attain 'unicorn' status amongst Indian startups.
Praveen Mokkapati is Associate Partner at Anthill Ventures. An IIM Bangalore alumnus, he has over a decade of experience in B2B scaling across India and Southeast Asia. He oversees operational aspects of sales and marketing distribution channels for entrepreneurs across various startup scaling programs such as Anthill Studio. He also assists corporate strategy and innovation for industry leaders by leveraging the startup ecosystem.
Praveen joins us in this chat on the vision of Anthill Studio, the graduated startups, selection, and services for the upcoming cohort, opportunities for entrepreneurs in India, and recommendations for aspiring founders.
Edited excerpts of the interview:
YourStory: What was the founding vision of your accelerator, and how is it supported?
Praveen Mokkapati: Anthill Studio was born to identify and help accelerate media-tech startups with strong potential to disrupt an industry that is deeply entrenched in traditional processes and business models. To enable this vision, Anthill Ventures partnered with Suresh Productions and Rana Daggubati – both with strong intent - to support the startup ecosystem via their very valuable industry knowledge and foresight.
YS: What would you say are the top three opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs?
PM:
1. eSports. When Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014, the eSports industry turned a corner. Commanding a rapidly growing viewership, the industry has the potential for startups to make it big.
2. Healthcare. From the several gaps in primary healthcare or emerging growth in senior citizens, to rising levels and awareness of mental stress and need for early or pre-diagnosis for a large population, there are many opportunities for the smart entrepreneur to build solutions.
3. Travel and mobility. With a rising middle-class population, their aspirations, and increasing disposable money to spend, more Indians are expected to travel in the coming years than before. Tailoring solutions for this segment can be lucrative. Given the emphasis on autonomous vehicles and electric cars, the entire value chain presents opportunities to disrupt the conventional solutions.
YS: Which startups graduated from your first cohort, and what kinds of IP are being created by them?
PM: The cohort at Anthill Studio is working on cutting edge solutions and IP.
• ComicFlix is a technology platform that converts movies and videos to stunning graphic novels at scale, which can be printed or distributed digitally.
• Saranyu develops and delivers OTT TV/video, digital news, enterprise video products, and solutions for content providers, aggregators, service providers (telco/OTT), and enterprises.
• Woodcutter leverages big data, machine learning, and analytics to help filmmakers understand how their audience views their projects, where they stand compared to similar films, and help them with their promotion strategies.
• RecoSense is an AI-driven venture that uses data science stack to offer user personalisation, content recommendations, and analytics aimed at boosting consumption, conversion and retention.
• NewsPlus brings you breaking news, local stories, and personalised feeds on topics you follow. Their platform has found traction with telcos, celebrity magazines, and large enterprises.
• Scapic allows users to build, explore, share virtual and augmented reality experiences right from their web browser.
• Rooter is a sports fan app that engages fans during live matches with fantasy and prediction games and connects with other fans, thereby creating a seamless second screen experience.
All these have graduated but we continue to assist them. See the video of their Demo Day here. We are actively pursuing Cohort 2 startups.
YS: What is the background of the managers and leaders of your accelerator?
PM: Prasad Vanga is Founder and CEO of Anthill Ventures. Within four years, he has built a startup portfolio of 30 companies across India, US, and Southeast Asia that has grown 3x in portfolio value. He is a Stanford GSB alumnus, with over 18 years of experience in helping senior executives from large organisations like Symantec, Nike, Nestle, Novartis, Wachovia, HSBC, and YES Bank to drive business transformations. Prasad also has the experience of an entrepreneur who built a $25 million company within three years. As an investor, he has backed several successful companies like Medplus, Zenoti, and Tynker which provided exits of more than 12x.
Rana Daggubati is a successful actor, producer, and a VFX entrepreneur. He has invested in tech startups over the last 15 years and has seen the first-hand impact of technology in Indian films. He has provided support services for visual effects to making VFX spectacle films like Arundhati, Baahubali, and Robot.
Suresh Babu Daggubati established Suresh Productions (SP), one of India's largest integrated production powerhouses with offerings for producers, distributors, exhibitors, digital post facilities, animation, and gaming studios. With around 400 theatres in the country, SP has upgraded the cine-viewing experience via D-Cinema in theatres.
Rajeev Menon helps startups scale with speed by bringing big business thinking to early and growth stage startups. He has 25 years of experience, and is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach working with senior leadership and teams for career, personal development, and performance.
Mahesh Balani is an executive coach with over 20 years of experience in helping professionals and business owners achieve transformational outcomes. He is an active investor and has been an entrepreneur in the retail space. He has a process engineering background and is a GE-certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Navaneeth Menon focuses on driving operational excellence in the programme through continuous improvement and bringing best practices into various processes of Anthill programmes.
YS: What are the key challenges faced by startups in India, and how can you help bridge the gap?
PM: Unlike the past, there are vast improvements in the availability of institutional capital for equity or debt. More than capital, early growth stage companies need strategic investors who can help turn the startup into a scale-up.
These companies need investor-partners who can understand the fundamental gaps that are preventing them from scaling, those who can provide business scaling support on those specific areas, introduce necessary industry partners for market access, and provide access to senior sector or functional professionals who can provide valuable insights to the startup. Startups in Anthill Studio or any of the other programmes are offered all these tiers of support as they chart their growth story.
YS: What are the selection criteria for startups in your accelerator?
PM: An ideal startup would have their solution validated in the market through a successful POC or early customer(s). All companies are evaluated for their scalability. The core of our decision-making rests on two aspects: the founder(s) and the core team on one side, and how they stack up on Anthill’s proprietary algorithm called Scalability QuotientTM.
Built on over 100 parameters, the algorithm allows Anthill to assess early growth stage companies across many levels and attribute a scalability score. Our ability to positively impact the startup’s scalability is also an important data point during the selection process.
YS: Who are some of your institutional partners, and what kinds of agreements are in place?
PM: Across the sector, Anthill Studio has partnered with large movie production houses, technology consulting firms with global scale, and the vast investor community. Each of these stakeholders has been extremely supportive to Anthill Studio’s mission to scale media-tech startups with speed.
Nearly three state governments have been progressive in either leveraging Anthill’s core startup ecosystem or in active conversations to boost certain sectors in their respective states.
YS: What support and services do startups receive in your accelerator?
PM:
1) Business Mentoring. On the basis of the SQ assessments, Anthill Studio and its team of experts understands the gaps and scaling potential in order to develop a customised scale-up plan for every company. Workshops on business and technology, intervention sessions, 1:1 founder coaching are aligned with this plan.
2) Market Access. The programme selects startups whose products have undergone successful product validation in the market. It actively helps startups identify target customers who are willing to provide problem statements or use cases. We call this effort successful when at least one opportunity for every startup is successfully closed during the three-month programme.
3) Infrastructure Support. The cohort is offered access to space and facilities of Ramanaidu Studios, a movie production and film school facility in the heart of Hyderabad. Suresh Productions, a large production house that owns the studios, provides sector access, support and understanding to the startups. In addition, the programme has joined hands with industry partners who offer solutions related to cloud infrastructure, financial solutions, among others.
4) Marketing and PR. Right from support with the right marketing strategy to coverage across Anthill’s PR network, early stage companies become more visible across print and digital media.
5) Investments. Showcase events attract institutional investors and industry partners in addition to Anthill’s interest to invest in select startups. For additional capital raise requirements, Anthill provides support to the cohort throughout the process.
YS: What percentage of equity or fees do you charge your startups?
PM: A nominal amount of equity is charged to be accepted into the programme. The percentage varies based on the stage of the startup. For global startups, we also provide the option of venture building and scaling, whereby the programme will help the startup launch their local subsidiary and scale in the Indian market rapidly.
YS: How would you differentiate your accelerator from other accelerators in the field?
PM: Anthill provides unparalleled access to scaling opportunities across Asia for each company it engages with. Its strong global network of investors and corporations ensures that these early stage companies have access to numerous sources of funding, excellent opportunities to establish beachheads and market share, ability to tap industry experts of high pedigree, and numerous other benefits.
For startups to reach beyond India, I need to highlight A-Scale (www.a-scale.co) – Anthill’s Singapore-based scaling and market access programme in collaboration with Enterprise Singapore, a government body. It’s the perfect platform to springboard into Asia.
YS: What would you define as success for your accelerator?
PM: Startups come into Anthill Studio seeking varying areas of assistance, including business support and mentoring, scaling support, access to potential customers and other strategic connections, marketing support, technology enhancement or refinements, and investment.
Through the programme, there’s a structured way to access all these forms of assistance. Fulfilling all or most of these aspirations is the programme’s goal. We’ve seen startups metamorphosise their narrative during the programme – this has been hugely fulfilling for us.
YS: What are some notable startups who have graduated from your accelerator, and what are their achievements?
PM: Each startup from the first cohort has great stories to tell. However, I will highlight the ones that have directly impacted mainstream cinema.
• ComicFlix. They have done very interesting projects on Kangna Ranaut-starrer Manikarnika, Nene Raju Nene Mantri featuring Rana Daggubati, and Rajinkanth’s Enthiran among others.
• Woodcutter. This startup, comprising of IIT Madras graduates, has worked on interesting studies including box office predictions, movie promotion analytics, audience demographic and sentiment analysis. Some of their projects include Fukrey Returns, No. 1 Yaari, and A. R. Rahman’s One Heart film among others.
• Scapic. This AR/VR startup has created an experience for recent Bollywood thriller Andhadhun, and Hollywood movie Bumblebee from the Transformers film series, among other exciting projects.
YS: How do you compare and contrast India’s accelerators with that of other countries like US and China?
PM: The community in India is just as vibrant and diverse as that in the US or in China. However, one key and often talked about aspect is the culture of sharing information, mentoring and community-like structure among accelerators and their cohorts in Silicon Valley; this has been paramount to its success as the startup capital of the world. Many Indian accelerators will benefit from adopting a similar culture.
YS: What are your plans for the coming three-five years with respect to new startups?
PM: With recent office openings in Singapore and Israel, we are offering global tech startups the chance to build and scale their stories in India. By bringing entrepreneurs-in-residence into this model, Anthill aims to help startups Scale With SpeedTM. We welcome startups to reach out to us should they find it relevant.
In addition, we’re working extensively towards the goal of positively impacting over 100 startups during this period.
YS: How can better partnerships be forged between accelerators, industry, and universities?
PM: Accelerators play an important role in maintaining partnerships between the various players. As innovation sourcing hubs, accelerators provide corporates access to startup innovations. Greater willingness for corporates to embrace open innovation will allow startups to apply their solutions at scale.
Today’s students are looking at startups as an exciting first career move given the several opportunities for learning and responsibility. While startups are often portrayed as a risky career choice by many universities, early association by means of internships with accelerator programmes might provide students a soft entry into the startup ecosystem.
YS: What are your recommendations for Indian policymakers to make business easier for accelerators, investors, researchers, and startups in India?
PM: From the deluge of articles around the onerous nature of the tax regime on startups, most of it is pure rhetoric and hyperbole driven by a few instances in the recent past. Apart from the many changes introduced by DIPP, more could be done – speed up investor accreditation to allow seamless flow of legitimate capital into startups as per valuations defined by market forces. Lesser barrier to capital infusion into startups will spur economic growth through job-creation and larger societal impact.
YS: What are your recommendations or words of inspiration to startups and entrepreneurs in our audience?
PM: India is a huge and diverse country with structural faults across several sectors – each of these presents a huge opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. Stories of successful unicorns and soonicorns that have emerged in the past decade are a testament to the enterprising spirit of individuals who have emerged despite all odds.
With the current environment more conducive than ever before, there cannot be a better time for new-age startups to identify a purpose and rally around it. The greatest stories have the tendency to bring people together. Will yours too?
In early 2015, a Chinese documentary titled Under The Dome raked in 200 million views in just three days. The 103-minute documentary didn’t release in a single theatre. More than 40 percent of viewers saw the movie on… wait for it… WeChat. With more than a billionmonthly active users, WeChat is the sort of phenomenon that hasn’t been replicated anywhere else in the world. Till now. But more on that later.
WeChat is more than just an “app” on a smartphone. Tencent, its parent company, has unbundled the traditional desktop OS, or at least our idea of one. It’s one app for media sharing, social media, movie bookings, taxi-hailing, payments, video calls, commerce, and more. It also has its own Slack-like corporate account. Hell, even government agencies use WeChat.
Users check the app at least 10 times a day on an average, and more than 80 percent of users purchase products online. That kind of stickiness at such scale is unprecedented. It’s not really an app as much as an Operating System for smartphones. WeChat is a Super App.
What makes for a Super App?
In 2010, Mike Lazaridis, the Founder of Blackberry, took a stab at what a ‘Super App’ constitutes, “…representing a new class of mobile applications that make you wonder how you ever lived without them.” Lazaridis’ definition was a closed ecosystem of “many apps” that people would use every day “…because they offer such a seamless, integrated, contextualised, and efficient experience”. Blackberry, as you know, got unbundled because they charged the user to be on a “platform”, without adding services to the platform. By building a walled garden, the brand alienated its users.
A Super App is many apps within an umbrella app. It’s an OS that unbundles the tyranny of apps. It’s the portal to the internet for a mobile-first generation.
More often than not, it will likely be operating at the intersection of logistics/hyper-local delivery, commerce, payments, and social. To become a Super App, you need at least two of these functions. The idea is to scale fast once you have a user’s buy-in and add multiple services to gain loyalty.
Once you have direct offerings, the next logical step is to open the app up to third-party companies to build on a loyal user base. Now, you don’t build separate apps. Instead, you can host your offerings on a single Super App. Step by step, the Super App becomes the OS.
In that context, there are a rare few who have what it takes to build a new-age, mobile-first OS that can be categorised as a Super App.
But why a #SuperApp?
By removing clutter from a smartphone OS and its multiple apps, UX acts as a bait to get the next billion on a smartphone. Design becomes a language for the uninitiated.
But among a dozen reasons why, here’s the most hilarious one:
Remember India’s “Good Morning” message phenomenon? Every day, India’s mobile users send a “good morning” image to their friends and family. According to a WSJ report, “These images have an overabundance of sun-dappled flowers, adorable toddlers, birds and sunsets sent along with a cheery message.” As a result, one in three smartphone users ran out of space daily, according to a Western Digital report. And the first thing they do to free up space is… delete apps. But it’s not about space constraints anymore (that’s a thing of the past) — it’s about breaking design language barriers so more baby boomers and the next billion users can participate in the Internet economy. In a nation of 1.3+ billion people, a little over a third of India has access to the internet.
India ranks well below the global average for mobile connectivity in the world. Mobile broadband connectivity is only slightly better than Kenya. A Statista report shows there are over four million apps available between just the Google Play store and the Apple App Store, and the glut is painful for countries with limited smartphone memory and a saturated market.
ASuper App corrects this imbalance. It sits on top of a mobile OS by shrinking the time taken to complete a specific task and in turn, increase productivity. For the next billion users, it also adds UX elements that make it easier for users to get accustomed to mobile phone usage.
Is it easy? No. Ask Facebook. For about two years, Facebook’s Messenger tried to build the WeChat of the West without much success.
The Big Sell
The biggest moat to build a Super App is payments. Once you’re handling money for a user, you can build a castle of services within it.
Southeast Asia is riddled with fascinating opportunities for growth. This is an area that trades cost for convenience and the digital economy is at its zenith. A Google and Temasek report stated that the Indonesian internet economy touched $27 billion in 2018, and it’s estimated to grow to a staggering $100 billion by 2025. Jobs, livelihoods, and the emergence of a new era in software. The unravelling of SEA’s story defies logic in some regard - 650+ million people vs 1.3 billion people in India. And yet, if I were to place my bets, I’m wildly optimistic of the future of tech in SEA.
Wipro, India’s fourth largest IT services exporter, faced an advanced phishing attack on its IT systems on Tuesday. The IT major sought the assistance of an independent forensic firm to assist with an investigation into the hacking.
A statement from Wipro Limited said, “We detected a potentially abnormal activity in a few employee accounts on our network due to an advanced phishing campaign. Upon learning of the incident, we promptly began an investigation, identified the affected users, and took remedial steps to contain and mitigate any potential impact."
Wipro said it was also leveraging its industry-leading cybersecurity practices and collaborating with their partner ecosystem to collect and monitor advanced threat intelligence for enhancing security posture.
“We have also retained a well-respected, independent forensic firm to assist us in the investigation. We continue to monitor our enterprise and infrastructure at a heightened level of alertness,” the statement said.
The breach in the IT systems of Wipro was reported by KrebsOnSecurity, a cybersecurity portal. According to this site, Wipro was dealing with multi-month intrusion from an assumed state-sponsored attacker and that its systems were seen being used as jumping-off points for digital fishing expeditions targeting at least a dozen Wipro customer systems.
According to the portal, Wipro was building a new private email network as the company believed that the attackers had breached their email system.
Wipro also announced its results on Tuesday with a 37.74 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,483 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2018. The consolidated revenue of the company rose 8.98 per cent to Rs 15,006.30 crore in the March quarter from Rs 13,768.60 crore in the year-ago period, helped by 11.1 per cent growth in the IT services business.
Since the clarion call to push towards a ‘Digital India’ about five years ago, the country has seen a spurt in companies that have made it their mission to make financial services easy for its citizens. The-then fledgeling companies like Paytm have since seen exponential growth and users have benefited from using their platforms to make daily transactions. To be sure, financial technologies – or fintech – has brought about a paradigm shift in the way Indians makes financial transactions.
And the excitement around many opportunities in the Indian fintech space continues unabated, particularly within the global investor community. Something Melissa Frakman, Founder and Managing Partner of Emphasis Ventures (EMVC), the $25 million venture capital fund that invests in early-stage fintech startups, told YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma in an exclusive interview.
Watch YourStory's full video interview with Melissa Frakman of EMVC.
“I saw over and over again how incredible the (Indian) market is, and I've always been completely captivated by how quickly the markets change here. It's insanely addictive to build and work in India because you actually see the results and progress that's happening,” says Melissa.
Vancouver-born Melissa believes that the most exciting trends in the fintech ecosystem are unfolding in India. Fintech – a broad term used to define companies that make technology for financial sectors like banking, insurance, payments, and investments – has seen a slew of new players in the sector in the past few years.
In India, the growth in the fintech sector has been driven by the penetration of low-cost internet, which has transformed the lives and businesses of people across the country’s diverse socio-economic spectrum. The launch of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) by the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) has also fueled the growth in the fintech space.
The platform allows users to use their bank accounts for digital transactions, and various companies – including global giants like Google and Amazon and homegrown ventures such as Paytm – have zeroed in on this opportunity to capitalise on the ease of transactions on the platform. With the huge growth in the number of internet users in India, UPI payments have taken off, with Google and Boston Consulting Group forecasting digital payments will reach over $500 billion by 2020.
“We believe the most exciting financial technology that's happening is in India, so it's (EMVC) very much an India-focused play but it's a global- and US-based fund that we are looking at. It has really been a long journey and my entire career has been affiliated with India,” says Melissa, who has spent the dominant part of her career in India, mostly focused on the financial services sector.
In fact, during her initial stints in India, as Director of the US-India Business Council, she worked with global Fortune 500 companies, startups, and investors, advising them on their India market strategy. At the time, Melissa focused primarily on technology, financial services, and investment issues.
The many opportunities for fintech innovation
The fintech sector has been traditionally dominated by payments processors so far. But Melissa sees opportunities for innovation and efficiencies in every vertical in the financial services space.
Even within payments, which is currently concentrated on the merchant and consumer side, Melissa says she sees some opportunities in the specific use cases of payments that are still very much cash-based, inconvenient, or high cost.
“But there are opportunities across the board: insurance, how people save and invest, how people borrow money, how people plan for life events, and then the real market infrastructure (related to) how India's capital markets work and the stock market… there's a lot of fintech that can drive innovations and efficiencies on that side as well,” she adds.
For Melissa, being part of this digital development in finance in India has been exciting. Having worked with the consortium of global payments companies at a time when the UIDAI or Aadhaar card was just being implemented, she has witnessed the growth of UPI and payments banks in India.
A lot of the early startups she saw in those early days are now sector behemoths and she is now extremely bullish about the next generation of entrepreneurs. “Some of these 1.0 fintech companies in India are becoming platform plays that will become the platform on which new innovation and technology is built,” Melissa says, adding,
“Part of what gives me this enthusiasm for the next generation of fintech startups in India is seeing what's been possible, and yet that's barely scratching the surface of market penetration or matching the demand of what the market really needs.”
The ‘startup-like journey’ of EMVC
Though EMVC is a venture capital fund investing in fintech entrepreneurs who are transforming India and the world, Melissa says that, for her, building EMVC has been no different than that of a startup journey.
“People see VC investors and assume you are cushy in your five-star hotel and there's no struggle. But it's absolutely been an uphill entrepreneurial journey and it's been an exciting one,” she says.
In particular, the biggest challenge was that global companies and investors – to their major detriment – still see India as a niche, novelty emerging market, as opposed to a central play in the world, says Melissa.
“So India doesn't have the same mindspace in boardrooms in Silicon Valley or Wall Street or Toronto as China does. And it wasn't the fintech part…but the India piece actually was the challenge – of finding the most progressive leaders and global strategists who wanted to have skin in the game of this growth story for years to come,” she adds.
Indeed, EMVC is focused on investing in firms that provide hyperlocal solutions to very Indian problems. While most of the foreign investors look for India’s answer to an Airbnb or a Square, Melissa is more excited to work with lesser-known entrepreneurs who are solving complex problems.
“Our doors are open to all and in fact, one of the many reasons why I’m so excited about building EMVC for decades to come is that many entrepreneurs in India, if they are not sitting in the most popular corridors of Bangalore or in the IIT-Stanford corridors, are sort of invisible to global capital or the right global partners and helping to be that bridge is something that we are doing,” says Melissa.
So, what does success for EMVC look like?
It is about delivering a great fund and building a lasting business, which is global and led by innovation that’s happening in India, says Melissa.
EMVC, she adds, is not a classic, return-motivated VC, but rather one that drives strategic returns in terms of joint ventures, partnerships, interesting acquisitions, and interesting product and platform deployments on Indian start-up technologies around the world.
“What energises me is seeing founders and how incredible they are here and being a helping hand on their journey. I have so much respect for the ecosystem here and there are some insanely impressive investors across the market, but I believe there is still room for diversity of thought and new ideas and fresh, competing perspectives working with founders to build a robust ecosystem,” Melissa says.
The energetic investor is also optimistic about the future of the fintech industry in India. No matter what the outcome of the next elections would be, and no matter who comes to power, everyone across the board agrees that digitisation and entrepreneurship need to continue, Melissa says.
“I'm excited that entrepreneurs have their heads down and are building either way, and the wild buzz of India moves forward no matter what,” she adds.
