Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 45 gems and insights from the week of April 22-28 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our compilation of Top 50 Quotes from 2018here.
If we don’t have a vision that’s big, and tackles a real problem with a unique solution, people will not care. - Kevin Nguyen, Uiza
Just because something works doesn’t mean it cannot be improved. – Shuri
India needs as many intrapreneurs as entrepreneurs. - Anil Rao, WeSchool
Startup trajectories can lead to wild success or failures, but for the vast majority, the future lies in the uninteresting middle. - Shripati Acharya, Prime Venture Partners
The quicker you can illustrate how your pitch stands to be a win-win deal for your prospect, the better. - Ryan Robinson
Entrepreneurs are like the trunk of a tree, which gives fruits to those who want, shade to the passers by, and holds the branches and leaves together so that the tree can thrive and grow. - Bhavin Turakhia, Flock
With the future heading towards more eco-friendly modes of transport, cycle and EV logistics will be the next game changer in foodtech. - Srivats TS, Swiggy
Over the next decade, as the presence of solar electricity increases, every house can become a charging station. - Maxson Lewis, Magenta Power
Corporates are quickly adopting renewables sourcing at scale to achieve the twin benefits of profit improvement and carbon footprint reduction. - Kuldeep Jain, CleanMax Solar
A new ethical mode of morality will be required over the next 10 years. Look at connected cars; they will require new laws. - Atul Jalan, Manthan
As more data is unearthed, interpretations change. Thus our knowledge expands and we make our journey towards infinite knowledge. - Devdutt Pattanaik
A company is much more than a set of features or products, it is a way of building and solving problems. - Farid Ahshan, ShareChat
As fonts also speak for your brand, typography is an element that needs your attention as well. - Harnish Shah, 3 minds digital
Traffic sense is one of the topics which should be taught very early on in one’s life. - Rishab Anand, Rise Up
The best way to establish better partnerships between government, industry, and universities is to define and organise common challenges in competitions. - Thorsten Rudolph, AZO
India is among the 'first world' as far as investment in startups is concerned. - Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm
The standard of life is rising everywhere in India, so why not for students? They are ready to pay if there is value for money. - Yogesh Mehra, TribeStays
The future of retail is entertainment. The experience economy we see today is the start of that era. - Ashwini Asokan, Vue.ai
Yet another major problem solved by collaborative consumption is the consumers’ access to certain goods or services, which were otherwise unaffordable. - Sudeep Singh, GoWork
In the digitalised world, cybercrime and digital threats are unfortunately an increasing challenge for many organisations and individuals. - Mats Boström, Zacco Group
Today, the security of IoT applications is one of the issues causing most concern and is one of the biggest barriers to IoT adoption. - Alistair Elliott, Pod Solutions
People are vulnerable and we have seen that a third of the people on social media believe bot-infused information. - Rohit Maheshwari, Subex
Customers have to wait until a launch vehicle is going where they want to go. There are no dedicated launch vehicles for these small satellites. - Srinath Ravichandran, Agnikul Cosmos
Startups doing door-delivery of services, be it an online restaurant or a ecommerce store, could actually apply clustering algorithms to bring in efficiency into their delivery process. – Vinodh Kumar, Belong.co
According to two different studies, doubt clearance and homework help are the biggest student needs and 62 percent of Indian parents spend 12 hours per week on that. - Tanushree Nagori, DoubtNut
Digital affordability solutions are witnessing unprecedented growth in India. - Lizzie Chapman, ZestMoney
Many fintech companies are now offering innovative solutions which tap into cash flow data of a firm for making credit extension decisions. - Arun Singh, Dun & Bradstreet India
People want to take a break from their busy hectic city lives and relax amid nature along with proper village stay experience in traditional tribal houses. - Prakash Gupta, Harisal Tourism
If we continue to poison our air, sky, land, and water - we will become sicker and die younger. - Prakash Belawadi, Avani
We cannot speak a transactional business language when it comes to mental health, because if we do, we are not addressing the true purpose of helping people. - Kanika Agarwal, Passion Peers
It is in the journeys between the famous destinations that we find the true culture of the country and are able to immerse ourselves in it. - Amol Parashar
The community you design with are the experts, they can tell you more about the problem (as well as the solution) better than anyone else. - Ishita Jain, Autodesk Foundation
It is okay to go to Ladakh hoping to photograph a snow leopard, but there is beauty also in the ant or squirrel. – Giridhar Khasnis
The basic difference between male and female comedians is that women are far more personal with their comedy. - Anuradha Menon
YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple,Android).
Pune-based industrial IoT platform Altizon has raised Series A funding of $7 million. The round was led by TVS Motor Company (Singapore) Pte. Limited, the Singapore based Subsidiary of TVS Motor Company Limited, and also saw participation from existing investors The Hive, Wipro Ventures, and Lumis Partners.
The funds will be primarily used to strengthen its international presence and continue the company's investments in intellectual property (IP) development. The company's industrial IoT platform addresses all industrial IoT needs like edge computing to business applications for smart manufacturing.
In a press statement, Vinay Nathan, CEO, Altizon said: “The Industrial IoT market continues to expand at a rapid pace and this investment brings on board TVS Motor Company, which is the flagship company of the multi-billion dollar TVS Group, with deep experience building companies in the industrial sector. We have a strong roster of global industrial majors as our customers and they can now gain further benefit from our global footprints and enhanced technology offerings.”
Speaking of their investment, Rajesh Narasimhan, Board Member of TVS Motor Company and CEO of TVS Motor (Singapore) said in the press release: “After detailed assessments around industrial IOT platforms we found Altizon’s technology portfolio of definitive value in driving digital transformation with Industrial IoT. We are hence delighted to invest and have the opportunity to partner them in their exciting journey of growth and market leadership. This is among our first set of investments in digital startups focused on the Automotive and Fintech Industries.”
The factories in India and their machines are getting smarter. At Mahindra & Mahindra's Nashik plant, there are robots building car body frames and a similar scene plays out in Pune at the Tata Motors plant. Plants operated by Godrej and Welspun use the Intelligent Plant Framework provided by Covacis Technologies to run their factory floors.
The IPF connects every machine node in a factory and understands the rate of work and efficiency. The aim of the framework is to let the corporate cut down on wastage and organise production flows.
Robotics and machines connected over a network are big bets for product companies like Cisco, IBM, SAP, and Microsoft. It is an equally big business for system integrators like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro. Startups like Altizion and Entrib are playing a major role in this connected factory ecosystem with their device-based factory solutions.
The Indian startup ecosystem might rank third globally, but why do only a handful of startups make it big? A study by Forbes says that 90 percent of these startups fail, mainly due to lack of innovation.
Moreover, starting up in India includes 10 registrations and more than seven tax and labour laws to comply with every month. The process is tedious and expensive. It is also very difficult for an entrepreneur to focus on innovation, while ensuring 100 percent compliance.
Enter the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). While it is necessary to have a CFO, not all startups have the resources to afford one. Pune-based Business Setup aims to ease this process for early-stage startups. With an in-house team of experienced professionals, Business Setup has joined hands with IIM-Ahmedabad, Hyderabad's T Hub, and Startup India as their legal advisors and partners.
Business Setup founders (L-R) Ritesh Jain, Parinit Thated, Khushboo Bhattad, and Rohit Lohade
Rohit Lohade, 31, was working with Deloitte as Manager, Audit and Assurance, when he began helping an entrepreneur friend to raise funds.
“We worked 60 hours straight only coordinating with lawyers, CAs and tax consultants,” Rohit says. “I realised that while not all startups can afford a CFO, everyone deserves one,” he adds.
Not long after, in March 2015, Rohit along with his friends, Khushboo Bhattad, Parinit Thated, and Ritesh Jain, created an online platform for CA, CS, and legal services. Business Setup provides services for company establishment strategy, fund raising and mergers & acquisitions guidance, business model formulation, financial reporting and projections, accounting and managing financial books, managing payroll, tax and regulatory compliance an coordinating audits and valuations.
Recently, the startup has also launched an India Entry Services vertical for foreign companies looking to set up operations in India.
Backed by a team of experts
The founders are all CAs with combined experience of over 10 years in consulting and taxation.
Khushboo, 30, leads the taxation team and is the in-house GST expert. Pranit, 31, leads the India Entry services and advises NRIs and foreign companies on establishment of business in India, offshoring operations, and managing compliance. He assists listed companies, including Bajaj Finance.
Ritesh, 30, leads the financial management vertical. He has been the virtual CFO to more than 20 foreign subsidiaries, and has been active in the Indo-German Chamberof Commerce.
Rohit is responsible for fund raising, M&A guidance, and business development. He is the director to overview compliance at many companies, including Domino’s Pizza.
Business Setup is now a 45-member team working across offices in Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.The average age in the organisation is 28 years, which often makes client acquisition a challenge.
“There have been so many times when the client asked us where our boss was!” Rohit says.
It took Business Setup several rounds of meetings, calls, and convincing to get their first 10 clients. At present, it manages more than 1,000 clients, and claims to have helped more than 1,500 clients to register their business. Its client list includes startups like Turms, Northmist, Schoolay, Rapawalk, and Heelium.
The startup has been bootstrapped since the beginning, with the co-founders investing only Rs 11,000 each. “We even cut a deal with the landlord to pay rent in kind!” Rohit adds.
Saving operational costs, the co-founders worked clerical jobs the first year, later hiring interns and training them. “Our philosophy has always been to be bootstrapped and grow from within,” Rohit adds.
From advisor to partner
How does Business Setup help businesses set up? They begin by understanding the needs of the entrepreneur when a client approaches them. “Based on future growth and funding strategy, we provide structuring solutions to establish the business,” Rohit says.
After incorporation, Business Setup assigns a project manager, the point of contact for all services, to each client. This manager is further supervised by senior partners or co-founders.
"Based on client size and needs, we design packages, including tax filing, book keeping, audits, and RoC compliance services," he adds.
Clients also receive regular updates on government schemes and changes. Having closely known HNIs and angel investors, Business Setup has helped more than 25 clients to raise funds.
Business Setup has also developed in-house Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. “One of the tools used for determining price strategy can calculate taxes required on a particular product,” Rohit says.
“We are also planning packages under the 'Pay as you Grow' model, where clients will pay for services they need as they grow,” Rohit adds.
Revenue model
For initial incorporation, Business Setup does not charge any service fee. “This allows startups to save almost Rs 15,000,” Rohit says.
Business Setup earns revenue on conversion of the client – when they seek accounting, operational, and compliance services. According to Rohit, they have a “90 percent conversion rate”.
For a partner company with turnover of up to Rs 20 lakh, Business Setup charges Rs 4,000 per month (for Rs 50 lakh turnover, it charges Rs 6,000 per month, and so on). This charge is levied for compliances like TDS returns, GST returns, ROC compliances, and other financial services.
The company has been cash positive since day one, and claims to have generated Rs 5 crore in the last financial year.
Competition and future plans
Business Setup competes with the likes of Vakilsearch, Indiafillings, LawRato, and NearLaw. While all these players work on an aggregator model, providing external entities, what sets Business Setup apart is their in-house team of experienced professionals.
The company expects to cater to more than 2,000 startups by the end of this year, through StartupIndia.gov.in.
“We are developing a platform that will be driven by AI tools to make processes faster and leaner, and to cater to the large volumes of transactions," Rohit says.
Business Setup, which already has an associate in Dubai, plans to start operations in Singapore by next year.
Indian digital payments major, Paytm, which is owned by One97 Communications, on Monday said that its payment gateway processes 400 million transactions every month for its merchant partners. Along with this, the company also announced the launch of a recurring payment feature for merchants, using Paytm’s payment gateway.
Through this, the company said it aims to equip subscription-based businesses to effortlessly collect payments from its users. In addition, consumers have the option of choosing their preferred mode of payment from the likes of credit cards, debit cards, netbanking, Paytm proprietary instruments, and saved cards on Paytm.
Image source: Paytm Blog
Speaking of the development, Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm, said,
“At Paytm, we continue to invest in innovative technologies to cater to the evolving payment needs of our merchant partners. Frictionless recurring payments is a critical element of subscription businesses, and with this feature on our payment gateway, merchants can now reach out to millions of users for their subscription offerings. We expect this new feature to benefit both merchants and customers alike.”
The automatic billing feature, which is based on the frequency of a user’s subscription, is expected to simplify payments for several growing use cases including bill payments, content subscription, grocery purchases, membership fees, and housing society payments, among others.
According to the company, the payment gateway’s instant plug-and-play offerings and deep merchant platform integrations has helped it rapidly expand its merchant base. At present, the company said it is focused towards driving an intuitive payment experience and easy integration for third-party platforms.
Paytm’s payment gateway, which also allows merchants to receive payments through different channels including email, SMS, and chat, claims that several large online businesses such as IRCTC, Zomato, OYO Rooms, Grofers, Swiggy, BigBasket, and Idea leverage its payment gateway.
The Noida-based company isn’t the only consumer payments brand that operates a payment gateway. It’s arch rival, Gurgaon-based MobiKwik, also owns its proprietary gateway, which counts brands including Uber and Dominos Pizza as clients.
In a recent interview with YourStory, Upasana Taku, Co-founder of MobiKwik, said the company was breaking even for its payment gateway business. However, the gateway wasn’t profitable for the company for certain types of offline transactions, including smaller stores where the return of investment is less.
While announcing its new head for the payment gateway business in December last year, MobiKwik also claimed that it envisages a 400 percent growth for its gateway business in the next one year. In addition to this, the founders said the gateway business is on track to process more than $20 billion in online payments over the next two years.
It is 4:30 am and over 18 ‘Chhota Haathis’ (as the Tata Ace vehicles are nicknamed) are parked outside Hyperpure’s 30,000 sq ft warehouse in Bengaluru’s KR Puram locality. These small trucks are filled with neatly packed containers of high-quality fresh produce - fruits, vegetables, grain, poultry, dairy, and fresh meats.
They’re all set to hit the streets before sunrise and make sure that over 1,000 restaurants in the city can order everything they need to cook up a storm.
Hyperpure is Zomato’s B2B foodtech vertical, which the Gurugram-based unicorn had rebranded after acquiring Bengaluru-based WOTU. The startup began life as a B2B online supplier of ingredients that restaurants needed. Founded by former PayPal executive Dhruv Sawhney in 2015, WOTU raised funding from the likes of Kae Capital, Mumbai Angels Network, and Claris Capital before being acquired by Zomato in late 2018.
Prior to the acquisition in August 2018, WOTU served 250 restaurants out of a 6,000 square foot warehouse. By February 2019, it had moved to a 30,000 square foot warehouse capable of serving 2,500 restaurants every day. Hyperpure has a 40,000 square foot warehouse in Delhi too, capable of serving just as many restaurants.
Dhruv describes the acquisition by Zomato as “a shot in the arm”. He himself continues to be the Business Head of Hyperpure, which contributed $2.5 million to Zomato’s overall revenues of $206 million in FY19.
“My aspiration was to make this as big as possible, and we needed a strategic partner for that. Zomato was the perfect fit. Their team’s aspirations were as big as ours. So, within a few hours of conversation, I was sure about becoming a part of Zomato,” says Dhruv.
Today, Zomato is looking to expand Hyperpure beyond Delhi and Bengaluru to eight cities across India by the end of the year and to international markets after that.
Right now, Dhruv and his team are ensuring the backend processes and algorithms work in a manner that ensures a high fill-rate and really low wastage for the business.
“For that, our only bet can be with technology,” says Dhruv.
The app allows restaurants to search for items, place orders, pay, and even choose credit periods. Basis these orders, the algorithms predict demands in advance for 45-60 days. The farmers are then given that as the assured quantity.
“We have ensured that the algorithms are built to predict demand,” says Dhruv. This in turn ensures that the farmers get an assured quantity of orders from Hyperpure every month. Most of the demand is a combination of staples such as pulses, flours, meats, fruits, and vegetables.
Some hits and misses
However, the algorithms can predict that demand only with data. So, in the initial days, the team worked on both sides – with restaurants and farmers.
“We had on-boarded 350 restaurants and we had to ensure that they had a complete fill-rate,” says Dhruv. A complete fill-rate means that a restaurant receives all the products it has ordered, in the right quantities.
“For that, we would predict a certain quantity which initially was right only 65 percent of the times. This would cause wastage. And if we decided to reduce the quantity, it would lower the fill-rate,” explains Dhruv.
The only way to ensure this could work was by bringing in more orders and feed in more data, such as what kind of produce was more in demand at what times and where. Or, what are the standard orders for each restaurant. Today, Dhruv says the accuracy is between 95 and 97 percent.
When Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder and CEO of Zomato, decided to transform Zomato into a foods company, they had realised one thing - Zomato had to have control over supply.
That is where WOTU caught their eye.
“It isn’t just about food delivery, ratings, or listings. The idea is to become a food company, with complete control on where, how and what the customer eats, especially from outside,” he said in a conversation with YourStory late last year.
If you want to get more people to eat outside, it means the restaurants need to have better quality food. “And that can be determined only by the quality of the raw materials,” Deepinder says.
He explained that in order to ensure this, it was important that farms produce a certain quality of produce. WOTU already had agreements with different farmers, who welcomed guaranteed orders.
One of these is Lokesh, who had to travel 30 km every day to haggle with different aggregators and visit mandis to try and find buyers for his produce.
Lokesh is a farmer from Bengaluru Rural district, where he grows spinach, amaranth, fenugreek, spring onion, and other perishables.
“After working in the fields through soaring temperatures and unpredictable showers, we used to face the issue of an ineffectual supply chain run by middlemen; leaving us with not much profit, and leftover stock sometimes,” Lokesh told YourStory.
“Hyperpure has been able to fix this supply chain issue. They also guide us on sustainable farming methods, to cultivate crops that are pesticide and chemical-free –clean and matches the set quality standards,” says Lokesh.
Assured purchases for farmers are one of the attractions that startups like Ninjacart and Licious offer. And it is to solve problems of such farmers, mill owners, poultry farmers, and processors that Dhruv had started WOTU.
Today, as HyperPure, it forms a key component of the quality part of Zomato’s AAAQ philosophy. As Deepinder explains, “Assortment, Affordability, Accessibility, and Quality – it is about being a part of every value in the food chain and being a complete food business.”
Rohan Agarwal, Engagement Manager at RedSeer Consulting, believes in both the foodtech unicorns - Zomato and Swiggy. Zomato is focussing on a differentiator by conquering every aspect of the food supply chain, while Swiggy is focussed on logistics. “It is building a differentiator of itself. But B2B is a tough business, and needs consistency and constant monitoring,” he says.
While Zomato is currently doing that, what about the part where you have to build a separate DNA for a B2B business? And for 10 years, Zomato has been a B2C one. Deepinder, however, shrugs that off, saying,
“The DNA analogy of an organisation’s culture is very uni-dimensional. We believe that an organisation is more like a chromosome – one that evolves when new people join the team at senior levels. We have been able to build different types of DNA (e.g. B2C and B2B) because we have great people with hybrid DNA working towards a collaborative mission of better food for more people.”
Want to capture images and data in remote areas? Think drones. Want some form of delivery done? Think drones. The Indian government’s policy regulatory framework for drone usage is yet to be frozen, but that hasn’t stopped startups from looking at using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in our day-to-day lives.
Enter Redwing Aerospace, a Bengaluru-based drone delivery startup, that isn’t looking at drones for delivery of food or ecommerce. It aims for a deeper use-case perspective.
“Logistics is about getting something from point A to point B. Drones let you do that much faster. So why not use them for something that can solve a real problem?” asks Anshul Sharma, Co-founder and CEO, Redwing Aerospace, which sits out of the WeWork Galaxy space in Bengaluru.
Drone out the meds
When Anshul, an ex-NTU Singapore Researcher, had the idea, he immediately contacted two friends from his Manipal Institute of Technology days - Rishabh Gupta and Arunabha Bhattacharya.
Focusing on this idea, the team decided to use drones to deliver medicines, vaccines, and blood to the remotest parts of the world. In these regions, getting a truck, van, or even a bike to deliver medical essentials is next to impossible.
“Drones can cover a distance of 25 km in 30 minutes,” Anshul says.
The trio had always been interested in drones. While at college, they participated and won several projects by NASA, Airbus, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Work, nevertheless, took them to different places. Arunabha is a former officer on Special Duty at National Technical Research Officer (NTRO) in Chhatisgarh while Rishabh worked as an insurance surveyor.
“The idea of using drones for logistics, especially in the healthcare space, was too lucrative to miss,” Rishabh says.
Soon, the trio decided to build a rudimentary prototype last year.
Prototyping and testing
Arunabha says the idea was to test and see how far drone flights could go. They got the prototypes, spending a few lakhs, tested them, and then decided to get them tested for a Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), Australia, certification. The company is currently bootstrapped.
“We had built our prototypes at the Manipal Group, where we had access to the labs, and even had them tested there,” Arunabha says.
In 2018, Redwing Aerospace was selected to be a part of the Techstars US accelerator programme. Through this, they were contacted by WeRobotics, a not-for-profit organisation, that has head offices in Switzerland and the US and focuses on deep-tech solutions for problems.
“Through WeRobotics, we worked for a large US-based government health agency to use cargo drones to supply medicines in polio-struck Papua New Guinea,” Anshul says. He adds that while the team ensured the drones were functional, they also made sure that deliveries were quick and successful.
“These are regions where UNICEF employees themselves would take three days to cover 30 km. Thus, speed and safety are imperative,” Rishabh says.
Redwing team at Papua New Guinea
How Redwing operates
The Redwing Aerospace team had to focus on the operational stack and logistical support to ensure speedy and safe deliveries. The team needed to build roughly 25 to 30 drones for close to 5,000 deliveries. Currently, one drone does close to 180 deliveries a day.
As the drone is primarily used for medicine deliveries, it has an inbuilt temperature logger that notes the temperature of the vaccines during the flight. “We gave this data to the health agency to test and certify,” Anshul says.
The delivery works on a hub-and-spoke model. The team gets a message on the inventory needed. This is loaded at the central hub , and the drones take off, after the regular pre-flight tests and checks of wind conditions, audio pilot systems, and GPS tracker. The coordinates are fed into the systems and the health examiner picks up the vials at the drop-off point.
India’s drone policy as of now necessitates UAVs to be in the line of sight, which is why Redwing cannot operate here. However, the team hopes that the regulations will soon change in their favour.
Be it agriculture, surveying, surveillance, or traffic monitoring, drone tech is here to stay. India has over 35 drone-based startups, but only two of them - IdeaForge and Aarav Unmanned Systems - have managed to scale up beyond Rs 4 crore. Of the 35 startups, only five are generating more than Rs 20 lakh; the rest are registered but have no revenues to show.
However, the Redwing team believes if you give value, “there will be money”.
“We have done close to 10 paid deliveries,” Rishabh says. The team is looking for more tie-ups to work on deliveries, and is in the process of working with 10 countries, like Panama, Africa and few others where some regions are remote and accessibility is a problem.
Hyperlocal delivery startup Milkbasket raised Rs 20 crore funding from Sachin Bansal's BACQ. While the company has confirmed the funding in a press statement, its Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings state that it has raised Rs 10 crore so far. The remaining will come in tranches.
Anant Goel, Co-founder and CEO, Milkbasket, said,
"We are excited to have Sachin Bansal and BACQ on our board. Milkbasket is now working on the next set of innovations to further consolidate its market leader position across it’s fresh (fruit and vegetables) offering, automating the daily delivery supply chain and reducing go to market time for multi-city expansion. These funds would provide us the needed CAPEX and R&D investments in all the three domains."
Founded in 2015, by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain, and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket wants to replace your local kirana store. It has raised close to $16 million from Mayfield Advisors, Beenext, Kalaari Capital, Unilever Ventures, Lenovo, and Blume Ventures.
On its app, items you add to your shopping cart between 7 am and midnight are delivered to you the next morning. And there’s no need for a checkout or payment because the purchase is pre-paid via a mobile wallet on the app, which you can top up whenever it runs out of funds. So, every time you choose an item on the app, the order is automatically placed withoutthe need for a traditional ‘checkout’ or payment.
At present, the platform operates in Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad, and Bengaluru. According to CRISIL, the online retail market in India is expected to grow 250 percent to touch Rs 1.8 trillion by fiscal 2020.
The hyperlocal space is heating up again. Bengaluru already has DailyNinja, which raised $4.5 million in funding in October 2018. The company claims to deliver close to 25,000 households every day, clocking over 7.5 lakh orders every month. By December 2018, the number had grown to over 55,000. There is also Doodhwala, which is fast growing.
Funds received by startups from accredited investors may be exempted from angel tax, subject to complying with certain net worth criteria, an official said.
This provision is considered by the government as part of an exercise to define 'accredited investors' with a view to increase investment flow in startups.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is working on the definition, which would be submitted to the finance ministry for approval.
"Accredited or genuine investors can invest any amount but we will make some criteria for that. It should be liberal enough so that all such people can come under its purview. But it should not be over liberal and extra-stringent," the official said.
"How much a genuine investor is investing per year would depend on his/her net worth. For example, if you invest Rs 2 crore, then the net worth should be 10 times of that. There should be a linkage between investments and investors' net worth and certain income should be there," the official added.
These accredited investors, which can include trusts, individuals, family member of a startup, and unlisted companies, may get exemption from angel tax under Section 56(2)(viib) of Income Tax Act, 1961, beyond the Rs 25 crore limit.
Currently, the government allows startups to avail full angel tax concession on investments up to Rs 25 crore.
Section 56(2) of the I-T Act provides that the amount raised by a startup in excess of its fair market value would be deemed as income from other sources and would be taxed at 30 percent.
Touted as an anti-abuse measure, this section was introduced in 2012. It is dubbed as angel tax due to its impact on investments made by angel investors in startup ventures.
An angel investor is the one who puts funds in a startup when it is taking steps to establish itself in the competitive market. Normally, about 300-400 startups get angel funding in a year. Their investment in a unit ranges between Rs 15 lakh to Rs 4 crore.
The department is also suggesting to exempt funds of alternate investment funds (AIFs) Category I and II in startups to be completely exempted from this section.
Currently, only certain areas of AIF Category I are exempted.
DPIIT has proposed various measures such as tax incentives to promote budding entrepreneurs as part of the 'Startup India Vision 2024'.
The vision document aims at facilitating setting up of 50,000 new startups in the country by 2024 and creating 20 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities.
In the document, it has suggested setting up of 500 new incubators and accelerators by 2024; 100 innovation zones in urban local bodies; deployment of entire corpus of Rs 10,000 crore Fund of Funds; and expanding CSR funding to incubators.
Startup India is a flagship initiative of the government launched in January 2016. The programme intends to build a strong ecosystem for the growth of startup businesses, to drive sustainable economic growth and generate employment opportunities.
So far, as many as 17,984 startups have been recognised by the department.
Apart from overcrowded cricket stadiums and heated discussions over social media, the Indian Premier League (IPL) waveis also taking over fans who prefer to enjoy the games from the comfort of their living rooms – a trend which in turn could majorly benefit India’s foodtech players.
From Zomato to Swiggy to a host of other food delivery platforms, each of them could witness a massive increase in daily food orders. Add to this the extensive discounts, which could go up as high as 60 percent this year, and the rapid expansion of online food delivery partners in 100 plus cities, they are all set to make the most of this IPL season, as per data from RedSeer Consulting.
Without a doubt, the Indian Premiere League is one of the most awaited sports entertainment events in the country. In fact, 2019, which marks the 12th edition of IPL, witnessed a record viewership in the first weekend itself. According to Star India, the official broadcast partner of IPL, the network saw around 219 million television viewers tuning in from across the length and breadth of India for the first three matches.
Just to put the stats into perspective, this marked a 31 percent increase in viewership as compared to the last year. The cricket frenzy is real, to say the least. The report by RedSeer stated:
“As online food delivery platforms have been spreading their footprints in 100+ cities (more so since December 2018), Redseer believes the IPL season is the opportune time to stoke the latent demand and acquire new customers in these new cities (and also drive wallet share increases for existing customers). Given the discounting, we estimate the foodtech industry to reach 2.6 million Daily Industry Average Order Volumes during the IPL season.”
When compared with the daily order volume average pre-IPL, this is almost a 20 percent jump.
And if the RedSeer data is any indication, the trend will only build up in the coming week, when IPL 2019 enters the final stages. The report said:
“The momentum is likely to continue post IPL (which ends on May 12) with the start of the ICC cricket world cup on May 30.”
Amazon Pay on Monday said that it will launch person-to-person (P2P) payments for Android users, allowing its users to make instant bank-to-bank transfers, while leveraging the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform on the Amazon app.
Customers can use this functionality to settle bills or expenses with friends, lend and return money to family, pay rents, pay for services like house help, newspaper bills, milk subscription, etc. In addition to this, users can also make payments from their bank account to local stores nearby or to Amazon delivery associate at doorstep by scanning UPI QR codes using the Amazon app.
For the P2P payments, customers can send or receive payments by simply selecting a contact from their phone contact book or entering UPI ID or bank account of the recipient. Further, customers can easily access their phone contact book and initiate payments by simply tapping on the contact.
In a statement, Amazon India said that with this launch, it has made it easier for customers to make repeat payments by displaying recent transactions.
Speaking on the development, Vikas Bansal, Director – Amazon Pay, said,
“Our goal is to make Amazon Pay the most trusted, convenient, and rewarding way to pay for our customers. The customers trust their Amazon app and we continue to expand payment use cases directly on the app. With this launch, we have the largest selection of shopping and payment use cases on the Amazon Android app, which provides added convenience and control to our customers.”
So, how will it work?
The new update also allows Amazon Pay users to auto-detect if the contact is a registered Amazon Pay UPI customer, and enables instant bank-to-bank transfer. If the contact is not registered for Amazon Pay UPI, the customer has the option to pay using any another BHIM UPI ID or contact’s bank account.
After selecting contact, the customer inputs the amount and enters UPI PIN to confirm payment. All P2P payments are secured through multi-factor authentication involving customer’s phone, SIM details, and UPI PIN. The money is transferred instantly and both customer and receiver are notified through SMS alerts and in-app notifications.
At present, Amazon competes with Google’s payment arm Google Pay and Indian payment platforms including PhonePe, and Paytm.
According to data from Indian retail payments organisation National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the total UPI transactions in the country reached 799.54 million in March 2019.
You would have encountered them in some form or the other, the Debbie Downers, the Lazy Larrys and other clock-watchers, who cannot wait to get out of the office as soon as they walk in. For them, coming into work on any day of the week is like a Groundhog Day version of coming in to work on a Monday morning after a long weekend. While they go through the motions of being employed, their actual motivation of coming in to work is almost non-existent, and, at best, ambiguous.
Members of this breed of office dinosaur are vehemently resistant to any type of change. So forget asking them to brush up on their skills and learn something new. What’s worse, they even try to pull down those around them, who are enthusiastic to explore newer skills, options and technologies.
Watch the new campaign from Great Learning on how not to be an office dinosaur
New age tech skills that take you off the endangered list
While the present day is not much like the future envisioned in the 1985 hit Back to the Future – we have yet to encounter flying cars, though we do have self-driving ones – it is a reality that technology is rapidly transforming our world as we know it. Today, digital, automation and Artificial Intelligence are more than just buzzwords; in fact, they are playing a key role in how organisations across the world are doing business.
In such a scenario, upskilling and reskilling across the board become paramount and employees need to keep pace with the rapidly-evolving workplace. Some of these new-age tech skills essential to survive in today’s digital first economy are Business Analytics and Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Cloud & DevOps and Cybersecurity.
Where can you learn these new-age skills that can help you get ahead?
You can always tune into the thousands of online videos that claim to make you an expert in an unbelievably short time (after all, who doesn’t like freebies?) Or you can opt for one of the many classroom courses available in the market today.
But it is important to note that in order to understand, in depth, how these skills are actually utilised on ground, you definitely need some hands-on experience. You need experts from the industry who can take you through these topics, and you need to have the opportunity to get hands-on experience of working on actual industry projects.
You can find such courses at Great Learning. Their programmes are taken by thousands of professionals globally, who build competencies in these emerging areas to secure and grow their careers.
You need to have a working knowledge of technology, and a basic programming background would also be good to have.
The Bagheera to your Mowgli in the tech jungle
Their success metrics thus far have been truly impressive. Every month, their alumni achieve rewarding career transitions in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Cloud Computing roles. McKinsey, Amazon, Samsung R&D, Deloitte, BNP Paribas, Capgemini, NASSCOM, Zomato, Swiggy and Cleartrip are just some of the corporates that reach out to them to hire talent. Their alumni include Data Scientists, VP/Directors of Data Science, Heads of Machine Learning, Heads of Corporate Strategy, Operations Managers, Directors of Engineering, Principal Consultants, Solution Architects and people in other pivotal roles in leading global organisations. They claim that 66 percent of their alumni transition their career within 12 months of the programme. Their younger alumni, in the 2-6 years’ experience bracket, are also known to receive well over 50 percent raises.
As IT moves in the direction of increased automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and cloud adoption, it's clear that the IT jobs landscape will see an enormous change by 2020. In 2016, the Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) stated that up to 7.1 million jobs could be lost in 15 developed and emerging economies due to redundancy, automation or disintermediation.
On the other hand, this explosion of technology is creating a massive demand for new skills. By 2020, one-third of in-demand skills will be new, and as the cost of traditional education continues to rise, there is a need for an educational platform that is accessible to everyone. That’s where Salesforce’s Trailhead comes in. Trailhead is a free, gamified, online-platform that empowers everyone to learn in-demand skills, earn résumé -worthy credentials, get mentorship opportunities and land a job that will thrive in the future of work.
The trail has moved to India
New technologies are evolving more rapidly than before and creating new jobs globally. It’s a challenge for schools to keep up with the pace of innovation. The Trailhead programme was initiated in 2014 to empower everyone to learn the skills they need to land a job in the workforce of today and tomorrow. Since its launch, APAC alone has seen over 3 million badges earned by over 200,000 learners (a growth of 62 percent just last year) on Trailhead.
Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, California with presence in 51 locations. In India, they have a large team of over 1,000 people across Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners and customers will create 3.3 million jobs globally. In India, Salesforce will create 1.1 million (direct and indirect) jobs contributing $17.2 billion to the Indian economy. Today, the organisation is working with industry and academia through the Trailhead initiative to prepare students in India for the ever-evolving business world. They have announced a partnership with ICT Academy, a Government of India initiative. This partnership will deliver new skills and learning for over 200 institutes, reaching more than 100,000 students in a year. “Our goal is to prepare the next generation of Trailblazers with in-demand job skills, thereby contributing to the Salesforce economy in India,” says Sunil Jose, SVP and Country Leader, Salesforce India.
A valuable online learning experience
Today, companies need to have a culture of learning to succeed and maintain a competitive edge. Unfortunately, a majority of companies lack this culture. On March 5, 2019, Salesforce announced the launch of myTrailhead to empower organisations to create a continuous learning culture to upskill their employees.
myTrailhead is an online learning experience platform that enables organisations to reinvent learning and enablement at their company - with their brand and content. myTrailhead transforms the corporate learning model and provides organisations with tools needed to make learning bite-sized, customised, gamified and at the center of their business.
Salesforce is also taking the power of Trailhead, with its guided, hands-on learning paths into the classroom with Trailhead for Students. Working together with universities, community colleges, workforce development programs and educational non-profits, Trailhead for Students provides everything educators need to get students ready for the Salesforce economy.
How to become a Trailblazer
Becoming a Trailblazer is a process that takes both time and dedication. It can’t be completed overnight, and it isn't one that should be rushed through quickly just to get badges or finish trails. Trailhead is a series of online tutorials that coach beginner and intermediate developers who need to learn how to code for the Salesforce platform. Trailhead education comes in three levels: trails, modules and units. The learning programme is designed to help users by providing a series of interactive assessments to identify whether learners have learned the content. Gamification is built into the Trailhead program, so developers can also earn badges for milestones reached in their Trailhead education.
You don’t necessarily have to be a part of an organisation to join Trailhead. Anyone - admins, developers, architects, business users, marketers, sales managers, and more - can create their own personalised learning path. In addition to providing in-demand technical skills, you’ll find soft skills content — everything from equality to culture, storytelling to coaching, and hiring to career exploration.
Gaurav Kheterpal, CTO, MTX Group (Silver Consulting Partner with Salesforce) is a 4x Salesforce MVP, Certified Technical Instructor, and Jaipur Dev Group Leader. A proud Trailblazer, Gaurav says, "From a technology perspective, Trailhead helps people ramp up quickly on several products and frameworks. However, I think the biggest win is the cyclic process of learning and giving back to the Salesforce community - becoming a member of this global tribe. This sense of belonging is something I never would have expected from a technology company - that's what sets Salesforce and Trailhead apart. There will be times when you will want to give up, there will be days when nothing seems right - it's all a passing phase. Focus on your own journey, make sure you understand everything you do and why you are doing it."
There’s no dearth of training modules to skill people for the workforce today, but Trailhead offers a diverse set of features that help you track your learning, create custom URLs, curate learning maps and so on. Here’s why Trailhead is unique from other learning programmes:
Self-paced learning – You can learn what you need when you need it, by choosing the appropriate trail.
Learning paths – Content is arranged in a hierarchy, with three levels: trails, modules, and units, and presented in a specific sequence, so you don’t have to spend time deciding what to read and in what order.
Modular and engaging content – Each tutorial consists of short units, which can be read in 10-15 minutes each. The content is designed to be simple, self-contained, and directly useful, to maximise the value of the learning experience.
Interactive assessments – At the end of each unit, you can take a challenge to verify what you learned, through multiple-choice questions or performing specific tasks. You get instant feedback after every challenge.
Gamification –Points and badges are awarded on successful completion of units and modules, respectively. These are displayed on your user profile, so you can get recognition for your expertise.
“We are delighted to be associated with Salesforce. Career readiness and employability skills are becoming an integral part of education. To truly achieve ‘Make in India’, we need to adopt a framework that supports the holistic development of the youth and makes the country the world capital of skilled workforce. We believe a global leader like Salesforce can help students enhance their skills and equip them to pursue their career in this era of digitalisation,” says M Sivakumar, Chief Executive Officer, ICT Academy.
The trail ahead for Salesforce
India is a very important market for Salesforce as they envision a tremendous amount of growth opportunity here. “India is home to some of the best technology talent in the world and is known for its incredible innovation. It has even recently surpassed the U.S. in the largest amount of Internet users. It’s this type of growth, speed and innovation that made us want to double down and make India a key focus for us as a company,” says, Sunil Jose, SVP and Country Leader, Salesforce India.
They plan to continue driving customer-centric digital transformation and accelerate their focus on innovation across industries to create an ecosystem of Trailblazers. This year, they have launched the financial services (FSI) vertical for Salesforce in India reimagining the power of technology delivering unmatched experiences to consumers while supercharging productivity across the industry. They also plan to reach out to tier 2 cities and focus on small and medium businesses. Their customised solution for the SMB segment will empower every small business to get started and tap into the power of Salesforce with apps for sales and service that are easy to use, setup and maintain. Most importantly, they want to continue to build a close-knit ecosystem of employees, customers, partners and communities.
From admin to a developer to CEO, anybody can be a Trailblazer. So, if you’re looking to deliver an awesome customer experience, accelerate productivity or improve your business acumen, register and become a Trailblazer today!
What’s better than streaming premium entertainment on high-speed internet? Getting paid for viewing it! A month ago, ACT and Netflix came together for the #BetterTogether partnership which means you can now watch your favourite shows on Netflix and even get paid for it. Sounds unbelievable right? Under ACT’s recent brand refresh exercise, their tagline changed to 'Feel the Advantage' and their customer-centric solutions ensure that users are, in fact, feeling the advantage.
All the binge-watchers from Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi who subscribe to Netflix via ACT are in for a treat. While paying for your bill, you could get cash back up to Rs 350.
The ultimate guide to avail the offer
Whether you’re an existing ACT customer, or looking to opt for an ACT connection, here’s how you can avail the offer.
Existing users can visit https://www.actcorp.in/personal/fibernet/plansand choose the city they reside in. You can browse through the entertainment plans and choose one that suits your requirement. Once you’ve made up your mind, reach out to ACT on +919121212121 and request for a change of plan. Once you’ve confirmed that your plan is switched to ACT entertainment plan, visit actcorp.in/roi-campaigns/netflix/ and sign up for a Netflix account.
If you don’t have an ACT account, you can opt for the ACT entertainment plan by contacting the above-mentioned number to book your connection. You will have to subscribe to the six-month or 12-month plan to avail the service. Once your connection is established, go ahead and create a Netflix account using the above-mentioned link.
That’s all you need to do to start enjoying the ACT-Netflix advantage!
How much will you get paid?
If you’re in Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad, you get up to Rs 350 as cash back. Delhi users will get up to Rs 300 cashback. This cashback is applicable per month, based on your six-month or 12-month plan. While paying for your Netflix subscription through your ACT bill, you avail this amazing offer.
But, what about those of us who already have a Netflix account? You’d have to sign up using another ID, and subscribe via ACT to avail this offer.
Everyone wins
So, now you can view premium content with super-fast internet, with none of that irritating buffering. With the cashback offer, Netflix’s Rs 650 plan (HD quality) and the Rs 800 plan (4K quality) becomes very affordable.
The #BetterTogether partnership also gives you access to behind-the-scenes premieres, Netflix guides, awesome merchandise and much more.
Hurry up, subscribe to Netflix via ACT, grab that popcorn and enjoy your favourite show!
The online travel aggregator space has seen strong growth in the last couple of years as visible in room inventory growth coupled with rapid growth in total industry bookings. A host of players, including OYO Rooms, Vista Rooms, Zo Rooms, Treebo, and WudStay, are tapping the opportunity. Amid the honeymoon period and Indian Premier League hostings round the corner, there has been an increase in hotel bookings.
New RedSeer data shows the quarterly gross booking value by hotel aggregators has increased by 40 percent and is at $216 million as against $155 million in 2018.
Similarly, it showed a 48 percent increase in the booked room nights from $7.1 million in the first quarter of 2018 to $10.5 million in the first quarter of 2019.
The Indian mid-segment hotel market is sized at $4 billion, of which chain-affiliated hotels constituted about 35 percent as of FY 2018 (estimated for only room rental). This has been growing at an average of 17 percent annually since 2015.
According to the RedSeer report, last year witnessed an increased focus of players on partnering with hotels in Tier III and IV cities to increase their coverage. There was also seen a heightened effort to increase their share of corporate bookings (higher ARR through offering premium hospitality services) from existing markets.
Additionally, increased spend on marketing activities to ensure sustained customer acquisition and improving on service quality metrics for customer retention has also driven this trend.
Today, with many players on the platform, the relationship of hotel aggregators with OTAs strengthened with several exclusive partnerships and have enabled hotel aggregators to list their sellable rooms on OTA platforms.
The report says this has helped hotel aggregators edge past OTAs in recent months in terms of the total market share of the online hotels' space.
Innovate to Lead - Innovation Camp will be held on May 7, 2019 at Rukmani Hall, MGM-JNEC Campus, Aurangabad. This is part of an Indo-German co-operation on innovation promotion. The goal of the programme is to create a vibrant and innovative ecosystem for the MSMEs in the country.
The camp will bring together more than 700 students who worked on 100 solutions for over 90 SMEs located in the industrial hubs of Aurangabad, Nashik and Nagpur. The initiative involved over 20 academic institutes and over 150 staff who mentored the students.
Why industry-academia collaboration is a great fit
Systematic cooperation between MSMEs and academic institutes is key to creating an innovative ecosystem. However, barring a few examples, MSMEs and academia remain largely disconnected in the country.
To bridge this gap, a SME-academia engagement initiative was undertaken. The initiative involved students and their mentors working closely with SMEs to identify problem areas through factory visits and developing solutions to address them. The program was executed in close collaboration with various industry associations.
What’s in store for attendees?
Get an opportunity to experience, first-hand, the benefits of co-operation between SMEs and academic institutes
Witness innovative solutions and proto-types developed by the student teams for the industry showcased at the Innovation Gallery
Networking opportunities to explore the scope of collaborations with SMEs and/or academic institutes
Industry-academia collaboration is key to strengthening innovation capacity and sustainability of MSMEs. So, whether you belong to academia, the corporate sector or an MSME, this event is will play a pivotal role in helping you re-examine your current role in the eco-system and enable you to contribute to the country’s industrial development.
About the project
This is part of the ‘Innovation, Qualification and Modernization of MSMEs (MSME INNO)’ project jointly implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), GmbH and Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India.
Its parent company Alphabet reported revenues of $36.3 billion for Q1, missing analyst estimates by over a $1 billion. Not only that, its revenue growth - 17 percent year-on-year - has been the slowest since 2015. Last year, Alphabet had grown its revenues by 26 percent this quarter.
Even though revenues climbed, quarterly profits dipped a significant 29 percent to $6.7 billion. The sluggish growth is a direct result of declining ad sales as Google faces competition from other quarters, namely Facebook and Amazon.
Quarterly growth was further impacted by the hefty anti-trust fine of $1.7 billion, which Alphabet had to pay the European Commission.
Shares tanked 7.3 percent following the earnings announcement, eroding more than $60 billion off Alphabet’s market cap.
Google's Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, however, played the performance down, saying "robust growth" in the quarter was led by mobile search, YouTube ad revenues, and the cloud computing business.
"We remain focused on, and excited by, the significant growth opportunities across our businesses," she said.
She singled out Google's cloud business, stating that the company would continue to invest heavily in data centres and the tech workforce. Ruth said,
"Google Cloud Platform remains one of the fastest growing businesses in Alphabet with strong customer momentum reflected in particular in demand for our compute and data analytics products.
Investments in digital content offerings through YouTube would also go up.
As for its hardware business, which includes Pixel smartphones and Google Home smart speakers, the company is battling slow sales owing to increased competition, especially in the handset market.
Porat said in the analyst call,
"Hardware results reflect lower year-on-year sales of Pixel, reflecting in part heavy promotional activity industrywide given some of the recent pressures in the premium smartphone market."
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, is bullish about Google Home, which he called a "market leader”.
“We really see this as incredibly important to drive the future of computing forward, and to make sure our services are presented to users, in the way that we intended them to be," he said.
Interestingly, Google's 'Other Bets' unit, which includes self-driving car business Waymo, incurred losses of $858 million, widening over 50 percent from $571 million a year ago. The division reported revenues of only $170 million.
The company cautioned investors of a further slowdown in growth during the second quarter on account of currency fluctuations.
Music streaming service Spotify has clocked two million registered users in India since its February launch, according to its first quarter financial results.
This growth is indeed noteworthy as Spotify has been fighting a battle with big music labels since its launch in India. It has not been able to stream Saregama as it could not finalise a licensing agreement with them. The company had a similar issue with streaming Warner Chappel Music (a division of Warner Music Group) in India. Besides these, Spotify also has to compete with music streaming biggies like Gaana, Wynk, JioSaavn, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube music, to name a few.
In a statement, Spotify said,
"We launched in India in late February expanding our global market footprint to 79 countries. More than one million users signed up for Spotify in our first week in the market, and growth has continued to outpace our expectations."
Globally, Spotify’s monthly active users increased by 26 percent year-on-year to 217 million, and premium subscribers increased by 32 percent to 100 million subscribers. Premium subscriptions accounted for 91 percent of Spotify’s revenue this quarter, which stands at €1.3 billion at the end of March 31, 2019 (Q1FY19). This is up by 34 percent as compared to the first quarter of the last fiscal year.
However, the company did not disclose how many Indian users are premium subscribers.
Interestingly, Spotify offers a bunch of subscription plans in India, yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily. A user can start streaming at Rs 13 a day, and weekly pack for Rs 39. Monthly packs are available at Rs 119, and for students it is offers it on Rs 59 a month. For yearly subscription it is available Rs 1,189. On its launch, Spotify India made available over 40 million songs and three billion playlists in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. There are podcasts, talk shows, and city-based playlists too.
Listenership in India is now at an all-time high, with streaming services hugely popular among millennials in the country. A 2018 report by IMI and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that the average Indian internet user spends 21.5 hours per week listening to music. Industry revenues from music-streaming tripled in 12 months to reach Rs 220 crore last year.
YourStory is the outreach partner for SheLeadsTech from Facebook
Today, nearly half of India’s population is below 25, with many being avid internet and smartphone users. As a result, the definition of learning is changing and government, academic institutions, and entrepreneurs are jointly working to keep pace with it. On their part, edtech startups and their innovative ideas have been creating ripples in the Indian education industry.
The space has a large number of women entrepreneurs who believe that the manner in which today’s students are educated has a massive effect on our economy and society. So, they have dedicated their lives to make learning fun and help children pave the right career paths. Here are some of their stories.
Ritika Amit Kumar, Ashwitha Reddy Chinnamail and Suchitra Reddy Chinnamail, Vidhu Goyal, Ridhima Gauba, Sowmya Garimella, Dr Mona Mathur (Top left to bottom right)
Dr Mona Mathur, Million Sparks Foundation
Dr Mona Mathur comes from a family of educators. She wants every child to have the same kind of opportunity and access to great teachers who enable them to reach their utmost potential. But the numbers tell a different story. There are nine million teachers in India teaching 260 million children in one million schools. Teachers continue to use age-old methods which only focused on completion of curriculum, rather than actual student engagement. And 90 percent of teachers are not trained regularly, nor do they have up-to-date skills, motivation or time to search for new content that would keep classrooms interesting and relevant. She believes that this acute problem in the Indian education sector needs to be solved to achieve better student learning outcomes.
In 2016, she and her husband Dr. Abhinav Mathur, after 25 years of a successful corporate career across multiple sectors and geographies, set up the Million Sparks Foundation (MSF). MSF is a non-profit that focuses on continuous capacity building in education. The company creates free and open mobile and web learning tools and platforms, curates and develops world-class content from various sources, and organises it for the relevant curriculum, topic-wise. ChalkLit is their mobile-centric technology platform with complete web support. It has an easy-to-use interface to guide content consumption by teachers, and hosts both curated and created content. “We need to find ways to support 21st century learners and focus on interdisciplinary skills like critical thinking, creativity and collaboration,” says Mona. In two years, over 98,000 teachers across 26,000 schools have been trained on the ChalkLit platform.
She says that the edtech interventions in India primarily focus on direct-to-student products or student assessment-based solutions for school implementation, with very little focus on developing the teacher. MSF nudges teachers through personalisation and automatic/manual follow-ups to ensure completion of training, and have an over 85 percent success rate in this. “I want to lead the change we envision with teachers, the real change-makers on the ground, who do amazing things in their classrooms on a daily basis. And we, as a society, miss out on giving them the due credit for their selfless contribution to the future of this world,” she says.
And recognition for their own efforts have been pouring in. MSF was recognised as the most innovative edtech startup in Asia Pacific at BETT Asia 2019 in Malaysia. Mona was a finalist in the Women Transforming India Awards organised by NITI Aayog, and MSF was awarded the best Indian edtech startup award by the Global EdTech Startup Awards 2018 at the Learnit Conference in London, January 2019.
In the next three years, she wants to see 1.5 million regular users on the platform and scale content curation for multiple Indian languages. From a tech standpoint, she wants to focus on a much better UI/UX that automates almost all areas, and include AI & ML techniques to better measure teachers’ progress and provide more personalised inputs. She is also excited about the intersection of mobile, video and speech technologies.
Sowmya Garimella, Amazing Scribbles
Soumya Garimella, in her own words, is an engineer by chance and an entrepreneur by choice. Brought up in Vishakhapatnam, she was always interested in arts and literature. A trained Carnatic classical musician, she is also an ardent reader and passionate writer. After a brief stint at an engineering job, she started Textkart, a content and digital marketing company. In 2017, she noticed a dearth of content writers in her city and capitalised on that opportunity to create the Amazing Scribbles Magazine, an edutainment platform which provides children with the opportunity to get their literary and artwork published.
“Today, we hear that a lot of millennials are not happy with their careers, because their career paths were paved by their parents, and their passion lies somewhere else. One main reason for this is because the children didn't have accessible forums to showcase their talents,” says Soumya. She wanted to build a platform that would help kids identify their talent, showcase it and carve their career paths. Initially, she found it difficult to find the right network that would help her startup develop, and the right audience to target. She realised that the age group that she targeted was 7-15-year-olds who didn’t have as much access to online platforms. So, she decided to print the magazines.
According to her, although there are several magazines for children, very few let them become child authors/artists with thousands of global readers. “We are working hard to create an attractive child-friendly magazine which would be an amalgamation of education, entertainment, and experiential learning,” she says. Over the past two years, they have seen a 50 percent increase in the readership and were able to reach more than 2,500 students in 2018 through offline activities.
Competition inspires and encourages Soumya to be a better version of herself every day. “I work with a lot of edtech startups and I look to collaborate with them than compete with them,” she says. In the next few years, she aims to build an ecosystem to bring children, parents, teachers and experts onto a single platform, where children can be mentored. She believes there is a lot of work being done in India to provide engaging and experiential educating methods. “Edtech startups in India are receiving great support from government and private organisations which is very essential to create a greater impact,” she says. For a startup like hers, using technology to build platforms that are easy to use and understand is helping her achieve her vision. The magazine is currently incubated at NSRCEL as one of the top 100 startup ideas selected for the WSP Program at IIM Bangalore.
Ridhima Gauba, InterviewAir
InterviewAir was launched in 2015 after a personal challenge faced by Ridhima Gauba and three other co-founders who hail from small towns and found it difficult to travel to big towns or cities for multiple rounds of job interviews. “Being a woman, I mostly travelled with my parents or guardians, which meant double the expenses. I had to apply for jobs in places where relatives lived, to save money on accommodation and food. I missed out on several dream opportunities because of this,” she says.
InterviewAir is a one-stop shop for aspiring job seekers from tier 2,3, and 4 towns, so that they save time and cost for their interviews. “We also wanted to create a level-playing field for girls residing in small towns, who often travel with their guardians for interviews in big cities,” says Ridhima. They help screen candidates prior to visiting the company premises using AI-driven video interviewing technology, making sure selection decision happens in QuickTime and multiple visits are avoided. The platform also provides AI-driven interview feedback to improve the candidate’s interpersonal skills, increasing their chance of employability. Today, they reach out to 330 companies, 200 colleges, 32 institutes and 32000 job seekers.
As a new technology company, they had several challenges that evolved over time. These include popularising the concept of video hiring in small towns which was costly, and hiring a technically sound workforce. “The product has evolved multi-fold and we are able to cater to client needs and channelise vendor management. We are glad that we didn’t listen to the people in the industry who told us to “solve only one problem at a time,” she says.
On competition, she says, “You can come first once in the competition, but to maintain that status, it takes a lot of dedication, focus, problem solving skills, customer service and more.”
With rapid digitalisation, mobile penetration and projected skilled-labour surplus of around 445.6 million workers by 2030 in India, she feels jobs and job-related queries will be one of the top priorities among budding youth. Ridhima has a positive take on the startup ecosystem for edtech startups in India, “It’s exciting from a tech standpoint. There’s freedom to develop content, users are tech savvy and there’s great government support.” She believes that video technology and video analytics will shape the future of hiring.
She says that the journey has just begun, they plan to take their venture overseas and inaugurate franchise models so that they can train more people in tech and management. They are also in the process of building a “company” focused online training platform, that would assist in hiring talented candidates. “Any tech company, irrespective of the space, who is able to reach the masses and solve their issues at a click of a button will be a part of India’s growth story. The ambition and intention should only be “to serve”, the rest will follow,” she says. Ridhima is a recipient of several women tech entrepreneur awards by Facebook SLT, Grace Hopper WEQ, emPower, among others.
Vidhu Goyal, WONK App
A small-town girl from Faridabad with big dreams, Vidhu Goyal, along with her husband Rohin Kapoor, took the plunge into entrepreneurship after a 9-year corporate stint. The journey began in 2016 out of a personal experience of searching for a verified home tutor for her daughter. She was apprehensive about leaving her daughter at home with a complete stranger. To her surprise, there were no services available in the market to discover, compare and book a verified expert home tutor. “The industry was not exposed to technology and used to operate on the age-old method of referrals and yellow pages,” says Vidhu. This led to the birth of WONK App, India’s first AI-powered mobile application in India to formalise and streamline the process of connecting tutors within a specified geographical area, to students and parents seeking them. WONK services include verified handpicked tutors at pre-negotiated fees, tutor swap, ability to fund tuition fees through EMIs, and more. They have registered more than 35,000 expert tutors and centres from across the country and over 27,000 students and parents.
Her biggest challenge as a first-generation entrepreneur was convincing employees, customers, partners and tutors about her seriousness to build a long-term business. “There was no one from the tech startup community to guide and mentor me whenever I faced a tricky business situation,” she says. Coming from a non-tech background, another key challenge was the arduous task of developing a technology to organise the US $70 billion market of unorganised coaching services in the country. Over the years, these challenges have evolved. The biggest opportunity has been the actual size of the possible impact which WONK can create across the country, estimated to be a US $70 billion market growing at a CAGR of 35 percent.
Vidhu feels that the startup ecosystem in India is dynamic and full of entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas. “A large market, tremendous opportunities but challenging business environment greets all edtech startups. The ability to customise a solution as per the student’s requirement separates the best from the rest,” she says. She adds, “Youngsters are the future of any civilisation. Similarly, I foresee that tech startups will be the lifeline of the phenomenal India growth story.
She’s extremely excited about the potential of AI to improve learning outcomes in terms of suggesting the best school/course/tutor based on a student’s aptitude, powering “learning on the go” and customising content based on student’s interest.
WONK received the Digital Innovation Award 2018 from the Government of Haryana for using deep tech to solve a major pain point for students and parents. On the way forward, she says, “My dream is to connect a learner to the best teacher not only residing in the same district, city or state but anywhere across India or from around the world. The learning of a student should not depend on the quality of teachers residing near him. WONK wants to transform the world into a global knowledge village wherein a student residing in a Tier III city should be able to learn in real time from a professor at Harvard.”
Watch this video to see how She Leads Tech programme helped WONK, India’s first tutor discovery and booking app, to scale up.
Ashwitha Reddy Chinnamail and Suchitra Reddy Chinnamail, Level App
Cousins Ashwitha Reddy Chinnamail and Suchitra Reddy Chinnamail, both engineers, became entrepreneurs in 2016. During their college days, they observed that whenever anyone had an academic doubt, they would spend hours on the web browsing for answers. While generic information was widely available, specific answers were few, and they would end up asking someone well-versed in the subject. They started Level App as a personalised tutoring solution to fit students’ need. Based in Hyderabad, the app provides both subscription and instant learning.
When they started up, they were fresh graduates who didn’t know the end-to-end process of how an organisation works. Right from hiring to technology to marketing, everything was self-taught. “We thought having a good product was all that mattered, but later understood that there are several attributes that make a successful organisation,” says Ashwitha. The company has seen significant progress, in terms of technology and users. They see a lot of opportunity in tier 2, tier 3 and rural cities in India. Every year, they organise ‘Each One, Teach One’, a social cause campaign to help teach the poor and needy. “My dream is to see technology help students in education and achieve education equality throughout India,” says Ashwitha.
She says that one should try to be far ahead in the curve than competitors. Level App is all for women empowerment. Currently, more than 75 percent of tutors, 60 percent of the development team, and 100 percent of the IoS app development team are women. The founders believe that the startup ecosystem is encouraging more women to step forward, but there’s a long way to go. “We need to inculcate an entrepreneurial mindset in students right from their school days so that it will help them innovate at an early age and develop creative thinking,” says Suchitra.
They believe that this is the right time to explore technology to the fullest. “Having so many Indian leaders in Fortune 500 companies shows the capabilities of Indians in technology and leadership,” she adds.
Ritika Amit Kumar, The Young Chronicle
Prior to starting The Young Chronicle, Ritika had extensive e-learning experience, where she created content for over 300 scripts for an educational show on TV. This experience coupled with close interactions with colleagues who were parents, made her realise the gaps in early-age education and parenting issues in double income nuclear families. She built AchaBacha.co.in, a new age parent-child interaction platform and a social network for parents. The Young Chronicle was a part of AchaBacha.co.in, and of all the features, it got maximum traction. However, since she was still doing her MBA, she worked for a while before starting Young Chronicle Again, along with co-founder Varun Mishra.
The Young Chronicle is an app and newspaper for children across the age group of 6 to 14 years. “Our mission is to ensure that children are able to gather knowledge irrespective of their reading level. We also want to ensure that over 80 percent of graduate women are engaged (using our technology), to help improve the dismal teacher-student ratio in our country, by offering world-class educational audio-visual and text-based content in different languages,” says Ritika. Today they have over 1,000 customers, but initially, they faced several challenges.
They needed a team to create content across seven reading levels, which meant that the same content had to be written seven times. After conducting a thorough survey, they realised that content written by mothers was more suited for children. “I was a new mother at that time, and realised a lot of new mothers around me were going through an identity crisis, after having quit their jobs. We decided to leverage their talent, and build a CMS that could enable seamless creation, uploading, and workflow management, that enabled women from across the country, to work from home, at their convenience,” she says. These mothers now work as consultants with the company. The second challenge was that most parents weren’t comfortable handing a mobile device to their child. To solve that, they created a print at home paper that had scan codes, so that children could work on paper, and land on the app, if they needed to, thus reducing screen time.
What differentiates them is that their content comes in different reading levels, and is driven by learning objectives which are often set by parents. Their analytics system is also designed to suggest objectives and offer solutions based on the child's progress. “We have found that children in the same age bracket and class, have different comprehension skills. Therefore, it becomes imperative to ensure each child is provided knowledge based on his or her reading level, so that it becomes interesting,” says Ritika.
Talking about the startup ecosystem in India, she says that it has become more congenial for growth. “Edtech, in particular, is booming, as parents and schools are realising the importance of customised education based on a child's competencies and interests,” she says. She adds that the technology landscape has also drastically transformed, with the evolution of smartphones, and the digital revolution. As the amount of data increases, Ritika is looking forward to solutions that AI can bring about in education. “If adopted now, in a few years, real-time evaluation systems will replace exams,” she says.
The Young Chronicle was shortlisted for the ET Power of Ideas, and also won the pitch at Gurgaon Moms, a community for moms in Gurgaon to network, participate & exchange ideas. On the way forward, Ritika says that they are focusing on growing their customer base, and their network of mothers.
Supporting women founders and their businesses
These women entrepreneurs from the edtech space are part of Facebook’s SheLeadsTech, a programme that was founded keeping India’s women entrepreneurs and their growth in mind. To support them, Facebook provides access to community, tools, resources, mentorship and more. Mona, whose startup has applied for the FbStart program says that they have availed several benefits including free tools and support from the larger community of entrepreneurs. She says, "Technology is the fundamental building block of most future organisations and SheLeadsTech is a timely initiative to encourage more and more female entrepreneurs and provide them access to a supportive learning community."
The programme is helping these entrepreneurs utilise technology in the best way possible through workshops, meetups, events and access to Facebook Developer tools. "We get to meet like-minded entrepreneurs who might be facing the same problem and could help," says Soumya. Ritika is a member of FbStart and says that it has helped her startup get more visibility.
Ridhima feels that the content during the events are well-curated to genuinely help them out. She feels the one-on-one mentoring sessions are especially helpful, "It's enlightening to talk to mentors because we get firsthand business-specific advice. Also, being part of the programme, I get the constant affirmation that I'm not alone in this ocean, there are many who are ready to help each other sail through." Vidhu says that Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions were beneficial and helped her get answers to diverse topics, from hiring to technology to marketing. She says, "The people behind the initiative could identify my exact needs and provide tools and resources to build the business."
India’s 'unicorn' club may be gaining more members every month, but Kunal Shah doesn’t believe that the number is going to leapfrog any time soon. The Founder and CEO of Cred, who also founded and sold payments app Freecharge, is categorical that there won’t be 100 unicorns in India anytime soon because “founders don't plan better”.
Speaking recently at India Internet Day (iDay), which was centred on ‘unboxing’ opportunities and trends to enable 100 unicorns in India by 2025, he said that a lot of times people confuse the whole concept of ‘fail fast’.
“But I ask, why can’t you plan better?” he said. Kunal then cited the example of how Cred was launched after one year of market research.
“We started researching for Cred in November 2017 and launched in November 2018. Out of 12 months, only four months was spent on building the product; the rest was researching,” he said.
Kunal's comments came as a part of a chat with angel investor Gautam Gandhi at the event hosted by TiE Delhi-NCR, as part of a keynote address titled, ‘Entrepreneurial Milestones: unboxing Pivots & Pirouettes to Exits’.
Kunal said the fact that founders do not ask each other a lot of questions may also be a reason. “Like when I ran Freecharge, I had an understanding of most of India's internet consumption behaviour. But, in my five years of running Freecharge, not a single founder reached out to me to ask about how Indians are using the internet. Now, I have been running Cred for almost six months, and not a single founder has reached out to me, asking what people are spending money on?” he said.
Kunal said this genuine curiosity, which is missing in India’s startup ecosystem, does not allow entrepreneurs to think of original ideas. “Therefore, we clone, and then we fear that when the original shows up we will lose because we have no original insights for customers,” he said.
He asserted that global players who have much sharper insights about India will keep beating Indian startups unless they manage to deal with them through regulatory games, “which is not the desired way of winning”.
“This is going to hurt us all,” Kunal added, expounding further on why he believes India won’t produce 100 unicorns in the near future.
Speaking about exiting Freecharge after five years of running it, Kunal said while it was the right decision at that time, Kunal debunked the myth that an exit translates into an easy time for a founder. Rather, Kunal said it means “almost crushing depression for months”.
“I have not seen a founder extremely happy about an exit, because what happens is that your purpose is taken away,” he said.
When asked what motivated him to start up again, Kunal said it was his “addiction to sangharsh (battle)”.
Kunal also shared some lessons from his Freecharge journey, saying that the most important lessons for every entrepreneur are execution, self-confidence, and betting on younger teams.
“A lot of times we try bringing in a lot of people with top experience. But they come with a lot of baggage. If you are an original product guy, it’s better you have a younger team with a lot more energy because it's easy to navigate that process,” he said.
The serial entrepreneur ended by speaking about the most important lesson: “things don't work out as you like or plan, and it’s imperative for everyone to be good at learning human behaviour”. “Please understand that your co-founders, investors, and employees, all are humans,” Kunal said.
Kolkata-based regional voice platform Mihup today announced that it had raised Rs 12.5 crore in Series A funding from Accel Partners and Ideaspring Capital.
Speaking on the development, Biplab Chakraborty, Co founder and COO, said,
“The latest funding will help us to further our ambition of adding more Indian languages into our engine. We support English, Hindi, and Bengali fully, with very limited use cases for an additional 12 Indian languages. Our immediate aim is to fully support the next eight most-spoken Indian languages.”
Established in 2016 by Biplab Chakraborty, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Sandipan Mandal, and Tapan Barman, Mihup is building an AI-enabled speech recognition platform for vernacular languages. The service is currently available in three languages: Hindi, English, and Bengali. It also uniquely supports mixed language and dialect recognition (for example, Hindi+ English= Hinglish) and is reliable in diverse conditions.
According to the startup, the platform is suitable for diverse use-cases such as car control, media and entertainment, and customer call analysis.
As per a Google India Insight reports, non-metros are catching up with metros in terms of internet usage. Over the next five years, 500 million new internet users will be coming online in India, mostly from secondary and tertiary towns, but they will face many challenges.
• 90 percent of Indians do not consider English as their first, second, or even third language.
• 60 percent of smartphone users consider lack of localisation as the biggest barrier to adopting digital content.
• 45 percent of Indian language users face challenges in text input on chat applications.
With voice being a natural user interface and with support for vernacular languages, Mihup’s technology is well positioned to address these challenges.
Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Co-founder of MiHup, who was previously the CTO at Justdial, stated,
“Voice and video are going to define the next phase of digitisation of India. For the next 500 million to be able to embrace and exploit digitisation, voice is the only option. We have come a long way and this funding will help us to fast-forward that advantage. Being able to get the funding and the subsequent network of Accel and Ideaspring at this juncture would help us make the product far superior.”
In August 2016, Mihup secured over Rs 45 crore from Accel Partners. Accel Partners took a 20 percent stake in the company as part of the funding round.
The latest funding in Mihup comes a little over a month after Reliance Industries acquired a significant majority stake in Bengaluru-based local language technologies developer Reverie Technologies for Rs 190 crore.
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