Gaming platform Paytm First Games on Thursday said that it has raised $20 million from AGTech Holdings and One97 Communications Limited, the parent company of Paytm.
The funds raised will be used by the company to scale its operations, invest in technology and further expand its userbase through various marketing activities.
As part of its last round, the gaming platform had raised close to $16 million in August 2018 from its promoters, AGTech and One97 Communications.
In August 2019, the company said that it is looking to raise close to $25 million in funding.
Speaking on the growth, Sudhanshu Gupta, COO - Paytm First Games, said,
“In the last six months, we have launched several games across different genres and the response has been encouraging. We now have more than 35 million registered users playing their favorites games including the paid ones like Rummy and Fantasy Cricket. This fundraise will support our ambition to become India’s largest gaming platform which in-turn makes gaming a rewarding experience for our users.”
In January 2018, Paytm had announced the launch of Gamepind, a joint venture with AGTech Holdings Limited, a Chinese gaming and entertainment company.
Recently, the gaming platform was renamed to Paytm First Games as part of Paytm’s effort to offer a clutch of services under its paid subscription plan, Paytm First.
At present, the platform claims to have achieved more than 10 million monthly transactions with an annual revenue run-rate of $50 million.
The platform currently offers more than 300 engaging games including the popular ones like Fantasy Cricket, Fantasy Kabaddi, Fantasy Soccer, Rummy, 8 Ball Pool, Ludo, and live quiz.
Earlier, the company said that the registered users can play games and quizzes on Gamepind to win Paytm cash, movie tickets, flight tickets, among other things.
CareStack, a cloud-based platform for dental industry has raised $28 million in a Series B round, led by Steadview Capital and Delta Dental of California.
It will be using the funds to expand its customer footprint and drive product innovation aimed at elevating dental offices, the company said in a statement. As part of the investment, Puneet Kumar, Vice President of Steadview Capital has joined CareStack’s Board of Directors.
Speaking on the company and product, Abhi Krishna, CEO of CareStack, said,
“Simply put, CareStack is rewriting the rules of what an intelligent solution should look like for dentistry — for groups, DSOs and solo practitioners. We are excited to partner with leading firms like Steadview Capital and Delta Dental of California, along with our existing investors Accel Partners, Eight Roads and F-Prime Capital, as we continue to accelerate the adoption of our platform and offer never-before-seen capabilities for practice growth.”
The SaaS-based dental platform provides a complete clinical and business management platform on the cloud, to manage all major functions of a dental practice.
Started off as a 15-member team in 2015, CareStack has grown into a 200-member team across its offices in Orlando, USA and Thiruvananthapuram, India. The company expects to have a 400-member team by the end of 2020, including a new office in Kochi, Kerala.
“Technology adoption has been traditionally slow in the US dental industry. CareStack’s service offerings have the potential to revolutionise the industry in the years to come,” Ravi Mehta, Managing Director, Steadview Capital said.
CareStack leverages analytics and automation to enhance patient experience, maximise insurance reimbursement and improve patient dental care.
“We are very interested in helping our dentists build a successful practice and making it easier for them to focus on high quality care for their patients. Our investment in CareStack will benefit dentists’ business operations and improve the patient experience, by bringing powerful capabilities and driving greater efficiencies to practices of every size,” Kevin Jackson, Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer at Delta Dental of California said.
The six-day ongoing festive sale period of competing ecommerce majors – Flipkart and Amazon, has generated over $1 billion of gross merchandise volume (GMV), according to a consultancy firm.
According to RedSeer Consultancy, the consumer sentiment has been bullish and the sale momentum was on the expected lines by Flipkart and Amazon. As in the past, mobiles dominated the festive period sale accounting for 55 percent of the GMV. There has also been a strong growth in electronics and fashion segment.
The festive sale by Amazon and Flipkart started on September 29, and will end on October 4. This year, the scenario has been different from the previous years due to certain regulatory overhang and a curb on discounts.
On the 2019 festive sales, Anil Kumar, Founder and CEO, RedSeer Consulting, said, “The first three days have been a strong success for etailers despite challenging macro environment, indicating that consumer sentiment on online shopping remains bullish. We expect the industry to continue to do well in the remaining days of the sales event and achieve 80-100 percent of the RedSeer forecasted numbers for the whole six-day event.”
RedSeer had forecasted that sales would touch around $3.7 billion during this period. In this year’s sale, the focus has been on the buyers from Bharat, that is consumers in the Tier II & III locations and beyond by both Amazon and Flipkart. Now, all indications have shown that high share of customers have come from smaller cities attracted by wide selection, offers and fast deliveries.
On the competitive scenario between the two players, RedSeer said that customers preferred fashion on Flipkart due to heavy discounts, and electronics on Amazon because of lower price and faster delivery on Prime.
For the last five years, the festive sales period has always been a crucial moment for the Indian e-tailing industry, with key metrics showing a significant jump compared to the non-sales period.
Bengaluru-based Datasigns Technologies Private Limited, which operates loan platform Shubh Loans,on Thursday said it had raised Rs 34 crore (or $4.78 million) as a part of their Series A2 funding led by Omidyar Network India. Existing investors Saama Capital, Beenext, SRI Capital, and Pravega Ventures also participated as a part of this round.
The funds raised in this round will help Shubh Loans expand its customer sourcing platform, work on increasing its technology capabilities, and grow the data science team and credit scoring platform to incorporate next-generation features, including ‘Credit locks’ (procedural credit features that promote good client behaviour). The startup will also grow its on-ground sales team and expand distribution to nearly 40 cities by end of the year.
Founded in 2016 by Monish Anand and Rahul Sekar, Shubh Loans provides personal loans to the emerging segment of underserved and new-to-credit borrowers at the lower end of the income spectrum.
Speaking about the company’s goal for the future, Monish Anand, Founder & CEO, Shubh Loans, said,
“Shubh Loans’ partnership with Omidyar Network India speaks of the shared focus that both organisations have towards emerging technology and inclusiveness. The infusion of funding will expand our footprint in India and improve customer experience by augmenting data science capabilities. By providing timely access to loans for an underserved market, we ensure that aspiring Indians are not denied rightful borrowing for their personal needs.”
In an earlier interview with YourStory, Shubh Loans claimed that it provides credit to the ‘Next Billion’ (households with an annual income of Rs 1.4 lakh and Rs 4.5 lakh). It also helps employees with a monthly income of Rs 12,000 or more get loans of up to Rs 5 lakh with long EMI tenure (up to four years).
Commenting on this investment, Amol Warange, Principal at Omidyar Network, said,
“Shubh Loans not only provides credit to an underserved market, but also leverages technology to promote financial literacy by handholding its customers towards better credit behaviour and financial health. This, in turn, leads to a more meaningful life for its customers. We are excited to partner with Monish, Rahul, and the rest of the Shubh Loans team.”
The startup has earlier raised $1.5 million in pre-Series A funding in 2017 from SRI Capital, Beenext, and Pravega, and $4.2 million in a Series A round of funding led by Saama Capital.
Since 1988, Anand Sweets founded by Anand Dayal Dadu, has been associated with sweetening thousands of celebrations across India, pampering patrons with unparalleled gourmet experiences, authentic heritage delicacies and an innovative array of enticing creations, every day. “Over the past three decades, we have built a great customer base, which has steadily grown, owing to the fact that people consider us a destination mithai brand,” says Arvind Dadu, CEO.
When Anand's sons took over the reins of the business, they realised that the mithai industry, although a niche space, is ingrained in the culture of each and every home across India. So, they wondered how they could make that experience even more pleasurable.
"A lot of brands across the world have taken traditional ethnic sweets and made it luxe and contemporary. We said why not do the same for Indian Sweets, that's how the new brand of Anand Sweets came about. The brand signifies Tradition, Festivity, Celebration and Gifting. It is a signature for a contemporary face of Indianness that is grand and constantly keeping pace at reinventing.’," says Ankush Dadu, Director, Marketing and Growth.
Right from the look and feel of the store to how the products are displayed, they increased their product repertoire to cater to the various taste palates of India as well as International palates. From the simple Kaju Katli, Ladoo and Rasmalai in 1988, today they've created an artisanal lounge that includes products that are infused with caramel, Nutella and even sell a wide range of Baklava.
The idea is to stay traditional, yet relevant for the modern customer. The brothers were amazed by the flavours and freshness that Old Delhi's street food offered and wanted to replicate that environment and food experience, keeping the hygiene standards of Anand, in Bengaluru. That's how Purani Dilli - the company’s QSR format, was born. They also have a unique wedding brand called Royal Union that provides the ideal hamper for a big fat Indian wedding. The brand has been associated with various startups as well as Fortune 500 companies, and curate different collections for their celebrations.
Watch this video to learn how the Anand brothers are on a journey to make mithai giftable again.
Corporate India raised $0.86 billion (about Rs 6,000 crore) through 10 initial public offerings (IPOs) in the July-September quarter of this year and going forward, the IPO activity is expected to gain momentum in the first half of 2020, a EY report said on Thursday.
Indian firms had raised $0.87 billion through 22 IPOs in the corresponding period last year.
According to the EY India IPO Trends Report Q3 2019, Indian stock exchanges (BSE and NSE, including SMEs) ranked sixth globally, in terms of number of IPOs in the third quarter of 2019.
During the third quarter of 2019, the main markets (BSE and NSE) recorded four IPOs as against three in the year-ago period.
A similar trend was witnessed in the SME markets too, as there were six IPOs in Q3 2019 as compared to 42 IPOs a year-ago.
The report further noted that the recent fiscal reforms are likely to instill confidence in capital markets and is expected to improve market sentiments and liquidity in the economy.
"Corporate earnings are likely to be positively impacted owing to the recent fiscal reforms announced and demand in the upcoming festive season. Markets have reacted positively to the steps as announced by the Government of India and that is likely to result into re-rating of the Indian markets in near to medium term," Sandip Khetan, Partner and National Leader, Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS), EY India, said.
Khetan noted that reduction in interest rates will make industries more competitive and may result in a better story towards equity value creation.
"We expect to see positive momentum around IPOs in the first half of 2020. Companies who were already considering raising money in the public markets will look at the market movement as a positive step to go ahead with their IPOs," he said.
A sector-wise analysis noted that consumer products and retail sector was active with three IPOs, followed by real estate, hospitality, construction, and technology with two IPOs each (including main and SME markets).
Globally, the backlog of high-quality IPOs continues to grow as issuers await more favourable market conditions, pushing IPO activity down across many markets in Q3 2019 compared to Q3 2018.
Overall, 256 IPOs came to the market in July-September 2019 with total proceeds of $40.2 billion, a decrease of 24 percent by volume and 22 percent by proceeds, as compared with July-September 2018, the report noted.
Vernacular social ecommerce platform, CityMall, has announced it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a clutch of angel investors including - Jitendra Gupta of Citrus Pay; Alvin Tse of Xiaomi; Manish Vij and Harish Bahl from Smile Group, Rishab Malik, ex-co-founder of Droom; Rajesh Sawhney of GSF and M&S Partners among other marquee investors.
Founded in early 2019 by Angad Kikla, Divij Goyal and Naisheel Verdhan, CityMall sells lifestyle and household products with curated special discounted deals through peer to peer referrals via WhatsApp. In just a few months, the company claims to have grown from 50 to 750 orders per day, and is currently growing at 50 percent growth rate on a weekly basis.
Speaking about the platform, Angad Kikla, Co-founder, CityMall, said:
“We have received tremendous support from our investors, and this funding will help us technologically develop and strengthen our supply chain while keeping our growth plans intact. We also focus on differentiated customer experiences that play a big role among the price conscious audience enabling them to purchase online more easily.”
CityMall plans to scale its growth to 20,000 orders a day in the next 12 months. City Mall sells household and lifestyle items and focuses on curating special discounted deals being leveraged via the networks of individual customers within WhatsApp.
According to key investor Hiro Mashita, Founder and Director of M&S Partners Singapore,
“CityMall plans to cater to 200 million middle class price sensitive buyers with women belonging to the Tier II, III, and IV cities of India. They are marginally technologically inclined, and typically social buyers. Through CityMall, we have found a platform that couples this behavior and seamlessly integrates with WhatsApp to provide a differentiated way of shopping online”
The company gives discounted offers on a product selected, post which, each individual then shares the item within their personal network in the WhatsApp to gain referral deals on the items purchased.
With very low prices, this mechanism motivates users to have a more dynamic and interactive shopping experience.
CityMall’s model not only benefits consumers but also manufacturers, as direct shipping eliminates layers of middlemen therefore raising the profit.
On why CityMall chose WhatsApp as a medium, Co-Founder Divij Goyal said,
“WhatsApp is the most penetrated social network in small town India with maximum amount of time spent by a user on this platform. Using WhatsApp will provide very strong view-ability of deals shared for our products as compared to other social platforms like SMS. We will be doubling down on leveraging WhatsApp for downstream ecommerce workflows with more languages soon.”
CityMall’s targets audience are women in small town India. They range between the ages of 25-34 years and are one of the fastest-growing customer segment.
With this funding, the company plans to add more women centric products in addition to more languages on the platform soon.
“I believe parents should pay on a monthly basis, and not upfront for the whole year. I realised that this was a problem as most parents don’t have the savings to pay upfront,” says NV Subramanian, Founder and CEO of Payed.
N V Subramanian
This was the reason Payed came into existence - to smoothen out the financial crunch facing parents. Given the protests across the country due to fee hikes, it was time to address this issue. Payed also came out of NV Subramanian’s personal experience. It addresses a core issue of lump some fee payment and on-time fee collection by educational institutes.
Payed was launched in January 2018 when Subramanian decided that he had to do something about giving parents access to formal credit. Today, Payed has 100 customers on board.
As an affordable, subscription-based solution that requires absolutely no collaterals, deposits, payment gateway charges, processing or application fees, Payed frees the parents from the hassle of paying fees quarterly, semester-wise, annually or availing interest-ridden loans from the market.
Instead, it helps education institutes get paid as per schedule, freeing them to focus more on academics, without any cost or risk. At the core, it works with parents, education institutions, and financing institutions.
Parents can also secure loans, and Payed has created a new loan category for financing institutions while also helping schools in payment collections.
NVS, a graduate of BITS Pilani and IIM Lucknow, with more than 17 years of work experience in ITC, Future Group, Samara Capital, and Snapdeal, has throughout his career built businesses around consumers: managed large teams (1,500 people), led large businesses (Rs 1,000 crore revenue) and won numerous awards (example, best iOS app of the year, marketplace category, for Shopo in 2015).
Creating innovative solutions with technology has been NVS’ legacy be it India’s first smart card-based CRM solution at ITC or the chat-based ecommerce platform at Snapdeal (Shopo) among others. This foray marks his entry into the education sector.
The idea
As a subscription-styled solution, Payed can be accessed with an application online free of cost. The application process is digital, and does not involve any visit to a bank, submission of any collateral or cash deposits. The subscription charges are transparently mentioned on Payed’s website, unlike any other financial service. Applicants are evaluated on a few standard parameters. And once selected, they receive their Payed card and account within seven to 15 days.
The investing, the learning
Payed secured angel funding from reputed investors and leaders from the education and financial services industry, and a line of credit up to Rs 100 crore from RBL Bank. The founder himself has invested Rs 40 lakh in the business.
"The key challenges have been building a financial product offering (subscription-styled) different from usual options present in the market (loans, subvention etc.), and convincing reputed financial partners to back us. The other challenge includes communicating this novel concept to different stakeholders,” says NVS.
The business
In the next 12 months, Payed wants to help 10,000 salaried parents become Payed customers, and it aims to wrap up a round of institutional funding too. “We plan to expand our team to about 30 to 40 people from the current strength of 10. We have a long-term vision of processing education fees worth $1 to $5 billion in the next five to seven years,” NVS adds.
"We have received a very encouraging and positive response from middle class parents - our key target audience. We are looking to engage with parents within an income bracket starting from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 20 lakh to Rs 25 lakh. We receive anywhere between 50 to 100 applications from salaried parents daily,” NVS explains.
What’s more, over 50 plus quality institutions have adopted Payed to offer a monthly fee payment module.
It is a platform that empowers parents to pay pre-schools, schools, colleges and coaching centre fees monthly in a simple and seamless manner.
Parents can pay education fees online to institutes through www.payed.co.in and repay monthly. Customers can also access Payed through RBL Bank’s co-brand credit card partner, which works on the Mastercard network. The solution also helps parents earn rewards up to Rs 12,500 per annum on use basis.
The market
According to IBEF, the education sector in India is estimated at $91.7 billion in FY18 and is expected to reach $101.1 billion in FY19.
MPower Financing works with a similar model in the USA though it only gives loans, and does not collect fees on behalf of the institutes. The company competes with regular fintech companies. Gyan Dhan, Credila, and Shiksha are some of the companies that provide finance to students. Yet, there is no business focused on parents. Proving that NV Subramanian is right on the money.
London-based ContractPodAi, provider of AI-powered contract lifecycle management software, has raised the largest Series B funding for any CLM provider globally. It secured a $55 million Series B investment led by US-based Insight Partners with participation of the Series A backer, Eagle Proprietary Investments. ContractPodAi already partners with IBM Watson.
Sarvarth Misra, Co-founder and CEO of ContractPodAi, said,
“This is a truly exciting time for the legal technology sector - we are on the cusp of the legal sector's very own industrial revolution. We are hugely passionate about building platforms that help lawyers do their jobs more effectively and allow them to focus on what they love doing. Our solution is customer-focused and our team has both the legal and tech experience needed to disrupt the legal world and unlock added value.”
The funds will be deployed towards business expansion, and to build its global technology R&D centre out of Mumbai. The centre’s focus will be on building best in class technology innovations in the legal technology sector, especially on leveraging AI technology.
Founded in 2012, ContractPodAi's supports research, software development, system maintenance and contract migration services, managed by lawyers. Growing their stack significantly, the Mumbai operations plans to add up to 100 additional professionals to the team, by 2019-end.
The company is a leading end-to-end solution for all three aspects of contract management: contract generation, contract repository, and third-party review. Its technology uses AI to streamline all areas of the contract management process, massively reducing the burden on corporate in-house legal.
Most recently, the startup’s product’s unique merits placed the company on Gartner's 2019 “Cool Vendor” list.
"Today, India is witnessing a boom in AI. Educational institutions are promoting bachelor degrees in Artificial Intelligence and the government is using leading technologies to create a digital map for its future. Indeed, it is an exciting time to be a part of this revolution," says Sarvarth.
Josh Fredberg, formerly of SAP Ariba, and Paul Szurek, Vice President at Insight Partners, will join the board of ContractPodAi.
The startup serves customers across every continent, with offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Glasgow, and Mumbai.
Every early-stage entrepreneur or SME owner has one vital worry: filing of taxes and accounting. It’s an important task, and also one of the most tedious ones. It was something 45-year-old Suneel Dasari saw often in his 23 years of experience at Oracle.
“When I decided to return to India from the US, I made up my mind that my new venture should be one that solves a problem that touches most Indians. I chose taxation to build solutions at a time when most Indians were not aware of tax issues and market adoption was low, and most Indians are not aware of the tax subject during that time,” says Suneel.
He adds that today only 1.4 percent people pay taxes and 4.8 percent file taxes in India as compared to the OECD nations’ average of around 47 percent tax filers.
Suneel, founder of EZTax
Starting EZTax
In 2016, Suneel bootstrapped and founded EZTax, and the portal was launched in 2017. The first SaaS product was an IT filing self-service platform that helped taxpayers file their taxes online. In October same year, the team launched EZTax Books to help SMEs to maintain their books, including invoicing, GST returns, and accounting.
Suneel says his key value proposition is that it makes tax and accounting easier. For the self-service and assisted service tax filing service, you need to register on the platform, upload Form 16, or enter the information, and e-file in under seven minutes. The consumer can also request an Expert Assisted Tax Filing Service by uploading relevant documents and paying a service fee.
For the self-service GST accounting platform, the consumer needs to register based on the business country, set up, start issuing invoices, and follow accounting. They also can prepare TDS every quarter or when needed.
“Register, and upload the documents, and make the payment. Once done, the service will be taken up by our team and the request executed,” Suneel says.
Challenges
However, the task wasn’t easy, especially when the team started in 2016. Most tax filing software in India was then geared towards tax consultants.
Suneel explains that designing a tax software for a taxpayer, one that would make filing and paying taxes easy even for a novice, was challenging as it required a bit of unlearning for SMEs.
“Also, coping with the constant changes from both IT and GST Departments, and making the end-user aware of such changes has been an issue throughout our journey. Capturing the B2B and B2C through D2C (Direct to Consumer) model is tough, and we broke this by gaining confidence from B2C market before hitting B2B for our EZTax.in Books SaaS Solution,” Suneel explains.
Today, tax filing platforms are fast growing. Last year, tax filing and investment startup ClearTax had raised $50 million as a part of its Series B round of financing from Hong Kong-based Composite Capital. ClearTax was the first India-focused company to be funded by Y Combinator. Its other investors include Peter Thiel and Sean Parker-backed Founder’s Fund and Sequoia Capital.
Apart from that, there also is Kolkata-based TaxMantra and several other startups.
However, Suneel says most tax compliance portals were either covering income tax or GST or accounting.
“The clientele would have a great difficulty in switching between different providers. From get-go, part of EZTax.in strategy is to be a long-term player, and build assets that provide services through software, and expert services covering income tax, GST, accounting, registrations etc. Our differentiation from the competition is to have ‘innovative IT solutions, and affordable expert services,” Suneel says.
The team claims to have over 1,10,200 B2C consumers and over 5,000 GST consumers, including Anuradha Timer (International), Dhatri (Super Market), JSK Medely (Manufacturing) etc. Their client list includes companies, firms, and businesses that have Rs 20 crore in revenue.
The revenue model
“Our expert services provide margins of around 35 percent. While the software side is free to minimal subscription pricing, this is expected to change as we move into the next year. Our services are broadly classified in the way we deliver,” Suneel says. For GST accounting, the team charges Rs 5,000 per year per subscription model.
For the expert services for ITR, prices start from Rs 499; GST compliance is Rs 349 to Rs 96,000 per year. Virtual accounting services start from Rs 3,000 per month and go up to Rs 40,000 per month.
Speaking of future plans, Suneel says, “Our goal is to become a dominant player in taxation, and to be in the top two in next three years, with a million filings per year. We are soon launchingtax kiosks in select cities. We are also looking to add AI modules and newer products.”
Crisp raw banana cutlets, shrimp in coconut curry, appam and beef ghee roast – the very name of these mouth-watering delicacies form a picture of Kerala in every foodie’s mind. And where are these best experienced than in Kozhikode – the food capital of God’s own country.
With such enticing food to offer, the opportunity for food delivery startups are many.
Despite the presence of food delivery startups like Swiggy and Zomato, Potafo, a food delivery app, is giving these unicorns a run for their money.
Knowing the pulse of the city, four friends from Kozhikode - Magdy Ashraf, Muhammed Rashad, Vyashakh Prasanth, and Adul Haseed Moosa, set out on their entrepreneurial journey to start their own food delivery startup, Potafo, in 2017.
The startup has tied-up with Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA) to have the best restaurants in the city as their exclusive partners. According to Magdy, restaurants under the KHRA deny services to their competitors – Swiggy and Zomato.
At present, the startup claims to have more than 50,000 users registered on its platform.
Twenty-six-year-old Magdy, Muhammed Rashad, and Vyashakh Prasanth studied together at Sree Gokulam Public School, Kozhikode.
“We are very proud of the food culture in Kozhikode and have always tried out new restaurants in the city,” says Magdy.
Once done with his BTech in Mechanical Engineering, Magdy approached his batchmates and common friend Adul Haseeb Moosa (26), with the idea of starting up in the food delivery space.
The name Potafo is derived from the most celebrated dish in France – Pot-au-feu, which is beef stew. “We wanted to make it simple and catchy, hence made it Potafo,” Magdy, who handles the operations and technology, says.
Rashad, a BCom student from Calicut University, worked as a sales and exports manager in UAE, before starting Potafo and managing the delivery fleet. Vyshakh, also a BCom student from SRM Institute of Arts and Science, joined Potafo right after college and now handles Human Resources. Haseeb is an electronics engineer, and worked as a production line supervisor, before starting Potafo. He handles marketing and business development.
Aditya Raveendran and Abdul Mukthadir manage finance and sales departments, respectively.
The food business
Like most food delivery startups, Potafo has both Android and iOS applications and a website through which customers can place their orders.
“We bring in orders for the restaurant and also deliver it for them,” says Magdy.
Potafo, which works on a contract model, has more than 200 delivery partners who work on a contract basis. The delivery personnel bring in their own vehicle for delivery, and the startup provides them with a delivery bag.
Potafo has currently partnered with more than 150 restaurants, and as some of Kozhikode's leading restaurants and cafes on its list, including Paragon, Hotel Rahmath, Sixth Avenue, Down Town, Bombay Hotel, and Topform Restaurant, among others.
The startup collects up to 15 percent commission per order from restaurant. On the other hand, they charge Rs 20 from the customer, as delivery fee. Currently operational across Kozhikode, Potafo plans to expand to other major cities in Kerala after raising funds.
According to Magdy, Potafo served up to 500 orders each day, with an average cart size of Rs 360. The startup says it has been recording up to 15 percent growth every month since inception.
A Potafo delivery executive
Moving ahead
A report by RedSeer suggests that the overall food delivery market in India was valued at $15 billion in 2016, and has been projected to grow at a CAGR of 24 percent to reach $26 billion in 2020.
While giants like Zomato and Swiggy have already captured a large share of the market, startups from Tier II and III cities, including Nativ Chefs, FoodXD, and HungerBay are trying their luck to create their brands.
“We are very connected with the end customers. Initially, we made deliveries by ourselves at customer’s doorsteps. Their smile is our biggest reward,” says Magdy.
Recalling a memorable incident, he adds that the founders personally visited few customers who were unable to understand how the app worked, and gave them a demo.
Initially bootstrapped with Rs 1 lakh, Potafo is now actively looking to raise funds.
“We are looking for funding to speed things up,” Magdy says.
Once they cover all of Kerala, Potafo plans to expand to other South Indian cities, including Bengaluru.
We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, and on this edition we have Hari Menon, Co-founder and CEO of BigBasket, India’s largest online food and grocery store, which serves 10 million customers in 30 cities today.
In this podcast, Hari takes us through the journey of starting and scaling BigBasket and gives a behind-the-curtain glimpse of the years of grocery business experience that led to building an expertise in grocery supply chain and culminated in building India's leading online grocer.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, Hari graduated from BITS Pilani and chose to start working right away. A few jobs old, and exposed to the internet boom during his stint at Wipro, Hari decided to start Fabmart in 1999, an ecommerce company that started by selling cassettes online, and quickly diversified to books, jewellery, toys, and groceries.
This was at a time when the Indian consumer was still wary of transacting online, there were no payment gateways, and deliveries were difficult.
The business model was too early for the market and the dotcom bust made it difficult to raise more capital from investors. The team decided to leverage the platform developed and the existing warehouse setup to pivot into a physical grocery chain built on a franchisee model that they scaled from 15 stores in Bangalore to 200+ stores in South India before getting acquired by Aditya Birla Group.
The founding team went on to do different things before coming together again half a decade later, when the market had caught up with their initial vision - broadband had picked up, payment gateways were there, and Flipkart was demonstrating serious traction in terms of online transactions. The time was right for ‘BigBasket’.
Calling upon the supply chain expertise in the complex grocery business from their Fabmart days and with a focus on setting up a robust backend technology, the team’s second bid at making Indians shop for groceries online picked up steam very quickly.
“Initially our volumes were too small to meet the minimum volume requirement to qualify for direct supply. So we started buying from Metro Cash and Carry. We had people in the Metro stores, literally operating that as our warehouse. Then we scaled fast and set up our first warehouse within a year in Whitefield.”
Hari recalls how the founders would eat, sleep, dream the three golden metrics of ecommerce: fill rate (percentage of customers’ demand met), on-time delivery (due to the essential nature of groceries), and in-stock rate (“out of stock” is a killer for e-commerce businesses). The ‘inventory control model’ was central to the thesis of solving for the three golden metrics.
Meanwhile, a dozen other startups were raising money with an asset-light business model, but the team continued to keep its conviction on taking the more capital-intensive route to ensure superior customer experience. The team's focus was singularly on going deeper in one city, and steadily bettering the metrics. Spend on marketing and aggressive expansion came later.
“We expanded fast because one thing we told ourselves was that if we did get into a city, we would do the entire city. Secondly, we would start with fruits and vegetables because that was the toughest one to solve for in terms of supply chain (due to the highly perishable nature).”
Today, Bigbasket is the fifth largest grocer in the country after offline giants D-Mart, Reliance, Big Bazaar, and More. Hari’s near-term vision is to take it to the top three.
Talking about his personal growth as CEO, Hari talks about how valuing trust and attitude over skills and knowledge while getting people to join, obsessing about process (BigBasket’s head of HR has authored a book called Say No to Jugaad), and being passionate about the grocery business has helped take Bigbasket to where it is today.
He says that knowing when to pivot and when not to pivot is something every entrepreneur must learn- instead of being emotional about the original idea, which at times goes against the company's interests.
Last but not the least, he emphasises the importance of having an unshakable conviction on the business, something that helped BigBasket survive the test of time and emerge as a successful business today.
“It's all about getting that emotion out and saying, you know let's pivot but you won't get it because you're so emotionally attached to the idea that you're not even thinking right. Then it's important to believe in your model in spite of giants and large investors coming in and pumping money. The whole world was talking about SoftBank, Tiger backing asset-light models, but we stuck our ground on the need for inventory control. Since then, there really has been no looking back.”
On a closing note, Hari shares his fondness for cricket and music, something that is well known in the startup ecosystem.
Tune in to the podcast to learn more about Hari’s roller-coaster journey.
Anand Daniel is a seed/early stage venture investor with Accel Partners.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
The robust technological evolution has led to the proliferation of cybercriminals and antivirus softwares in digital society. As the former figure out ways to avoid being detected, it is imperative for the latter to evolve and identify such threats.
Most antivirus solutions now follow a multi-layered approach to threat defence, by leveraging signature-based scanning, heuristics-based scanning, behavior-based detection, and sandbox implementation.
Next-generation antivirus softwares now implement cloud-based scanning as one more layer of detection. This gives the users an advantage since their databases are always on the cloud and up-to-date.
Kailash Katkar (L) and Sanjay Katkar (R)
While the evolution is rapid, the cybersecurity market continues to face challenges around awareness. Users across multiple geographies, whether individuals, businesses or even governments, remain unaware about the need for robust cybersecurity.
“Even if they track fresh developments in the cybersecurity space, they do not have a complete understanding of how these threats could possibly impact them,” says Sanjay Sahebrao Katkar, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Quick Heal Technologies.
Quick Heal, which started as a bootstrapped startup with a consumer antivirus product in 1995, has evolved into an end-to-end cyber security solutions provider. With its clientele spread across retail, enterprise, SMB and governments, the company is leading the domain with its flagship products: Quick Heal and Seqrite.
While the former caters to retail with antivirus and internet security products, Seqrite deals with enterprise security solutions for endpoint security, network security, server protection, enterprise mobility management, data encryption and data loss prevention (DLP).
Silver jubilee in cybersecurity
Sanjay’s elder brother and CEO Kailash Katkar’s expertise in screen printing, ledger posting machines, radio and TV repairing since Class 5 has stood him in good stead. At one time, Kailash was known as the only calculator repairer in Pune, earning Rs 400 a month.
In the early 1990s, Kailash realised that computers were eventually going to replace calculators and persuaded his younger brother, Sanjay, to opt for a bachelor’s in computers course.
Owing to user requests that involved fixing virus-infected computers, Sanjay wrote the required utilities to kill the Michaleangelo virus, which was designed to infect DOS systems in the early 90s. While the brothers started selling sets of these utilities, a product eventually materialised, resulting in the birth of QuickHeal antivirus software in 1995.
The company raised funding only by August 2010: $12 million from Sequoia Capital. India has been the primary market for Quick Heal for 25 years, with more than 90 percent of its revenues coming from the sub-continent alone.
“In the enterprise segment, Seqrite is protecting millions of endpoints for more than 32,000 enterprises across the world. The pan-India channel network now has over 25,000 partners. The gross turnover for FY19 was around Rs 385 crore,” Sanjay says.
Expansion of tech = expansion of vulnerability
Much has been spoken about the antivirus market and its prospects. Yet, the thin line between a plethora of exciting opportunities and the expansion of the attack surface area is where the real magic of cybersecurity resides.
Sanjay points to the influx of new malware that is now targeting any and every online user, and the challenges that follow the scale at which the malware can grow. As a result, malware research will have to be fast-paced, with new updates released within hours of a new threat being detected.
"It also leads to a ‘bloating’ of antivirus software in terms of resource utilisation, and it can become heavy and hamper the user’s day-to-day activities. This is the biggest technological challenge for Quick Heal and, for that matter, any antivirus vendor - keeping the solution both lightweight and effective enough to defend from all the cyber threats. We solved it by integrating our product range with data analytics, machine learning and cloud-based AI."
Speaking about the BYOD (bring your own device)-led work culture becoming more prominent at Indian workplaces, Sanjay avers that none of these developments have security at their core. Besides, enterprises are naturally increasing the adoption of new-age digital technologies, and are storing sensitive data on digital devices and the cloud.
This is the reason that Indian citizens and businesses have emerged as a lucrative target for threat actors across the globe. In Q2 2019 alone, Quick Heal detected more than 242 million threats on PCs and laptops. This translates to around 2.5 million attacks a day, or more than 1,850 attacks every minute.
Considering that a single breach can potentially threaten an entire business, an enormous responsibility falls upon the chief information security officers (CISOs) to bring in sensitivity on their own boards and with decision-makers about such rampant threats. Cybersecurity in the current age is no longer only an IT issue, but an enterprise imperative.
“The spending for cyber security in India is less than 10 percent of the overall enterprise spending, a number that is way below the international standards,” Sanjay adds.
Quick Heal to the rescue
Sanjay says the company has now moved beyond just endpoint protection, and developed better capabilities in cloud, mobility and data protection. The new inclusion has products like unified endpoint management (UEM), secure web gateway (SWG), enterprise mobility management (EMM), and data encryption and data loss prevention.
“We are now looking at further strengthening our product offerings with solutions such as endpoint detection and response (EDR), and are also looking at developing security capabilities to introduce XDR solutions,” he adds.
The company recently launched GoDeep.AI, a proprietary AI-backed threat hunting engine that attempts to identify and eliminate existing and emerging threats globally. Sanjay elaborates that the team is now using security automation to ensure smoother threat detection and response for all its products, while releasing a free anti-ransomware tool.
For retail consumers, there’s the 'lighter, smarter, faster' range, which builds upon existing offerings to provide amplified threat defence, but at a lower system-resource consumption.
Considering the ongoing digital transformation where more and more systems are going digital, the sheer scale of security challenges is huge.
“Enterprises need to wake up to this challenge and adopt a multi-layered, security-first approach for their operations. Business leaders need to understand the specific security needs of their respective enterprises and deploy security solutions that best fit that requirement. Only by doing so will they remain competitive in a fast-changing business landscape and derive the maximum benefits,” Sanjay says.
A whopping 230 million internet users who shop, eat, and entertain themselves online prefer to consume content in Indian languages, according to management consulting firm RedSeer’s report, Vernacular is NOW, Not the Future.
Led by Reliance Jio, increased internet penetration has made going online cheaper and easier, and an additional 320 million users are likely to take to the internet by 2023. These users will come from Bharat, the Tier-II and III cities of India. Needless to say, they will prefer consuming content in a language they are comfortable with.
A recent InMobi study estimated that over the next five years, nine out of every 10 users in India will “prefer vernacular internet access”. Capitalising on this is Bengaluru-headquartered Vidstatus, an app that caters to the diverse vernacular audience using social media, especially WhatsApp.
This “video status download app” lets you download 30-second video clips of movies that can be used as your WhatsApp status or sent as a message. Started in 2017, the app is available in 15 Indian languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi, and Malayalam.
According to New York-based app analytics company Similarweb, the app had 1.62 million daily active users in India in May. It has crossed the 50-million-download mark on Google’s Play Store, and is rated 4.4 by the users.
Let’s get deeper into the app to find out why it is one of the Top Charts apps on the Play Store.
Browse and create
Users can sign up using a mobile number, followed by an OTP for verification, or via Facebook and Google account. There is also an option of skipping the sign-up, but signing up is mandatory to post videos. You can begin browsing through trending videos once you create an account.
Similar to TikTok, the app has a seamless TV-like browsing experience; you can swipe down to change the video. The app has hyper-localised the digital space for vernacular users with about 15 Indian languages.
Users can follow each other, discover more new friends nearby, and chat with them across India. The users can also download and share videos on several social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
A user can open his or her WhatsApp from the app, after which the app syncs the user’s “friendliest” WhatsApp video statuses, which can be re-shared as WhatsApp status and can be downloaded on the phone.
Video creation
The app has an impressive free video editing tool to create 30-second videos. The editing tool allows users to trim, cut, copy, and merge videos and photos with ease, and add animated texts, themes, posters, filters, transitions, music to videos, and share to WhatsApp status.
The most remarkable feature for video creation in the app is that there isn’t only one tool. Two editors are available to help create a variety of videos. The ‘Lyrics Video’ and ‘Magic Editor’ are two major highlights of the app. The Lyrics Video allows users to add music or audio available in the app to selected videos or photos.
A user can take photos, clips, videos from the mobile gallery or can record a video directly from the phone camera to create videos. With this tool, a user can add local music, emoji, texts, themes, and stickers to create a video song and share it on social media, or as WhatsApp status.
The Magic Editor seems like a new feature in the app. This editor lets users add a photo in existing video templates. Say, if there is a video of a red carpet appearance featuring Deepika Padukone, a user can simply add his/her photo alongside the actor.
This feature is pretty cool and has a wide variety of video templates across themes like love, magic, and funny, among others.
Shooting videos and photos via the app is really useful for content creators as VidStatus supports multiple shooting options, such as shooting with filters, beauty lenses, basic, with effects, timer, along with music, theme, and effects.
Redeem your coins
You also have the option of earning some money by using the app. The rewards are redeemable as cash. To get Re 1, a user needs to have 1,000 coins or points. Users get coins to complete their profile, play videos, share them, and based on the downloads their videos get.
Your app profile will include metrics like followers, posts, activities, and viewers on each of your posts, etc.
The verdict
The app also has impressive editing features and can be used to edit pictures and videos even if you are not interested in using the content creation and sharing aspect. The best part? VidStatus is free.
You can create and save videos and pictures on your phone, or share them on the platform as content creators do on platforms Like, Vigo, TikTok, etc. The app can also be used to simply edit videos and photos.
All in all, it can be a fun app for people looking forward to new, short, and user-generated content, in their local language. Even if you have opted for a local language, the app still gives translations in English.
However, since the app is catering to mostly first-time mobile users, it should have a lighter version for low-specs phones. It is heavy at 47MB (for perspective, PubG is a 45MB app).
Nonetheless, we will recommend you explore VidStatus, especially if you are a WhatsApp status user and are fond of browsing short videos to put as your status.
For many years now, Mridul Arora, Managing Director, SAIF Partners, has been focussing on consumer internet businesses in the fintech and healthtech space. Speaking about his investment philosophy, he says the Indian startup ecosystem today has seen a sea of change. In a conversation with YourStory, Mridul speaks about the fund’s investment thesis, philosophy, and the key investment trends.
The six-day ongoing festive sale period of competing ecommerce majors – Flipkart and Amazon, has generated over $1 billion of gross merchandise volume (GMV), according to RedSeer Consultancy.
Chamundi Agarbathi is a Bengaluru-based brand that was started in 2010 in a 1,200 sq ft space. The company now exports its agarbathis to various countries, recording an annual turnover of Rs 20 crore.
Artificial Intelligence has changed the way industries function - from providing solutions in healthcare and social sectors to addressing farmers’ woes. An important tool, these 5 startups are disrupting diverse industries with their socially relevant ideas
As we become more aware about the harmful effects of plastic, it’s important to make the switch to eco-friendly products. Take a look at these five startups led by women, that offer a range of sustainable alternatives.
Ola Electric, ride hailing unicorn Ola’s EV entity, has published a report in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. The report suggests building a strong value chain to ensure adoption of e-mobility, and focuses on the challenges faced by the sector.
Aditi Bhosale Walunj and Chetan Walunj, Co-Founders of Repos Energy
Repos Energy is fuelling door-to-door delivery of diesel, thereby tackling dead mileage, spillage, pilferage, and adulteration. Backed by Ratan Tata, it’s stepping on the gas to target over 65 percent of India’s daily diesel consumption.
Udaan founders - Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta, and Sujeet Kumar
Udaan, a B2B ecommerce platform has raised $585 million funding led by Tencent, Altimeter, Footpath Ventures, Hillhouse, GGV Capital, and Citi Ventures. With this round of funding Udaan’s valuation is said to be $2.5 billion to $3 billion.
Aspiring entrepreneurs looking for insights on how to proceed from start to scale and navigate the turbulent journey will find a wealth of advice in the book, Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasketby TN Hari and MS Subramanian.It is a practical blend of storytelling and business tips in various steps of the startup journey.
TN Hari, a graduate of IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta, heads HR at Bigbasket. His other book, coauthored with YourStory founder Shradha Sharma, is Cut the Crap and Jargon(see my book review here). MS Subramanian is head of analytics and Bigbasket, and was earlier at Dell, McKinsey, Infosys, EY, and PwC.
The 15 chapters span 170 pages (including eight pages of photographs), and make for an informative and entertaining read. A chronology or timeline of key events in the company’s history would have been a welcome addition to the material.
Not all startups are flashy with a high-profile media presence; many started off away from the limelight. “It was only when some of the unicorns began facing trouble because of excessive cash burn, poor unit economics and recurrent issues which were far in excess of their toplines that Bigbasket drew attention,” the authors explain.
Bigbasket CEO Hari Menon is charismatic. and also was lead guitarist with a rock band, whereas VS Sudhakar stays away from the limelight and has an unwavering focus on process excellence. None of the founders are active on social media either.
The founding team should be cohesive, and balance multiple roles, personalities, and strengths. At scale stage, it may help to have one founder play a leading role, though others may choose to have well-coordinated founder teams working together.
As multiple generations of startup founders rub shoulders in the new business wave, it is important to draw lessons from the past while also being willing to learn new lessons and unlearn some old ones. These include changing consumer behaviours, and the core fundamentals of unit economics.
It is important to distinguish between tech-led and tech-enabled companies, the authors explain. In online commerce, retail companies have to learn tech (Walmart) and tech companies have to learn retail (Amazon). The starting DNA plays an important role in determining the nature of the journey.
The Bigbasket founders also learnt vital lessons about profit margins and money management from their previous startup, FabMart, as well as ‘dotcom era’ failures like WebVan. “The years 2014 and 2015 witnessed mindless cash burns and collective loss of rational thinking in the startup community in India,” the authors recall.
In such a wave of collective loss of conservatism, it is important to stand up to groupthink and take the right calls, the authors advise. At the same time, this needs to be balanced with the need to raise funds and incur some “good” costs.
3. Culture and values
“Rapid scaling can tear apart the culture,” the authors caution. They advise founders to explicitly define the elements of their culture, create a code of conduct, communicate this widely and frequently, and abide by the principles each day. “If the senior leadership understands how culture can drive business, the results are magical,” the authors advise.
The organisational values should blend current status and future aspirations. In the case of Bigbasket, these elements were speed, agility, customer focus, ownership, freedom, fairness, and responsibility. Care was taken to make the environment inclusive, and ensure safety and welfare of women employees.
Values and performance are celebrated during annual events through awards such as Beacon of Values and Bigbasket Rockstar. The rewards are given purely on merit, without regard to rotating awards.
Having a solid work culture helps handle the tough journey of a scaling business. “In effect, every professional ends up having two families – one at home and one at work,” the authors explain. Joining a startup is like marrying into the team.
4. Frugality
While frugal principles are important for startups, one must stay away from using ‘band-aid’ solutions or quick-fixes without addressing root causes. Too much ‘jugaad’ may lead to tech debt in the long run, though it may help speed to market in the short run.
Bigbasket learnt this the hard way, and had to implement practices like including a regional business unit in the headquarters (Bengaluru), and having separate heads for Mumbai and Pune, though the cities are close to each other. It also had to hire a separate General Counsel to manage legal issues.
Frugality also extended to marketing. Good service was seen as the best marketing, but digital techniques like SEO/SEM also helped, along with ads on vans and bus-stops. Web and app platforms were equally leveraged by Bigbasket, despite the temporary market madness when some companies began to shut down their websites.
Series B funding led Bigbasket to invest in celebrity endorsement with Shah Rukh Khan as well, given the image of his professionalism and dedication to work. It brought a sense of pride to delivery personnel and pickers as well.
Bigbasket recruits people not just from premium educational institutes or corporate backgrounds, but those with ground-up problem-solving skills, ability to collaborate with humility, and willingness to be coached. Non-performers are given extra coaching, and leaders are expected to groom individuals to scale their abilities. Employees are not expected to badmouth competitors either.
A National Training Head was hired to drive customer-centricity across all levels of the company, and keep a focus on quality even in the face of rapid scale in business lines and geography. Special programmes were devised for employees, supervisors and leaders.
Certification was introduced for trainees and trainers, along with refresher training for those who slipped in performance. Creative storytelling approaches used storyboards and videos. Mindful leadership and conflict management were also addressed.
An employee satisfaction survey is administered for the blue-collared workforce as well. Basic respect for dignity is what they crave, according to the authors. Jobs at this level will only continue to increase, hence the importance of skill-building and creating a culture of respect, loyalty, and love.
An innovation team was formed in 2016, for activities spanning cold chain solutions, quality of produce, and warehouse automation. Insightful questions and data-centric framing are encouraged. Trends to watch are use of image processing technology to assess quality of produce.
The company has a culture of continuous improvement, with regular updates to processes and metrics. This includes planograms (product and shelf layout) to optimise selection times and fill rates.
6. Customer focus
The authors explain the intricacies and customer needs for the grocery business in great detail. For example, high fill rate calls for deep understanding of inventory, supply chains, manufacturers, farmers, and distributors. Customers have high expectations with respect to selection, quality, price, delivery times, packaging, digital user experience, options like chopped fruits/vegetables, and refunds/returns.
Bigbasket devised ways to deal with customer fraud without causing inconvenience to honest customers. It has a ‘no questions asked’ policy for customers to return items if they are not satisfied with them. In every meeting, its employees are required to imagine that they were standing in the imaginary shoes of the customer.
Customer empathy and effective engagement processes have improved Net Promoter Scores for Bigbasket. This applies to the online ordering process, product quality, delivery, and resolution of complaints. Thorough training is given to the customer experience executive (delivery person), right down to use of cutters for opening crates.
The authors also identify a range of trends in customer habits with respect to food consumption in India. These include increased uptake of millets, fruits, organics, dairy, and animal-based proteins. There is an “explosion of choice” with respect to international brands and exotic products. Bigbasket designed new offerings and services for customers to reflect these trends.
Though fruit consumption is increasing, it is still lower than WHO recommended levels of 400 grams per person per day. Bigbasket aims to boost fruit consumption, particularly since India is the second largest producers of fruits and vegetables in the world (300 million tons per year).
The authors debunk three common e-commerce myths with regard to discounts, profits, and scale. Cashbacks and discounts are effective only to accelerate channel switching, or to induce habits in new greenfield territory (eg. Uber, Ola). In contrast, online retail competes with modern retail and kirana stores, and offers convenience.
The online grocery business has narrow margins, and does not offer “super profits.” Online businesses have broad reach but also challenges in terms of visibility, discoverability, transactions, and delivery, the authors caution. “Offline to online and vice versa will be the norm,” they predict.
Other trends to watch are the positioning of tech-driven marketplaces (eg. Alibaba), store brands, private labels, and mergers and acquisitions in this space. Regulators are also trying to find the fine balance between promoting innovation and protecting local players.
8. Technology
The chapter on home-grown technology break down its components into phases of the company’s journey, along with profiles of tech managers and their backgrounds. A combination of directional leadership and participative leadership is called for. Tech skills must be combined with the right roles, processes, mindset and culture. Regular stocktaking and reflection helps address challenges like technical debt.
For example, Bigbasket hired VPs for Engineering and Product at scale stage (other options were to create a position for CTO). Design thinking and ERP skills were brought in to ensure robust micro-services architecture, quality assurance, and capacity building of engineering managers.
In addition to IT, tech issues arise in packing together materials at different temperatures, eg gels, insulation boxes, mini warehouses. Other solutions described include a mix of van and bike delivery.
9. Analytics
Bigbasket has a razor-sharp focus on analytics as a strategic differentiator and force multiplier. It spans conversion rates, customer experience, delivery routes, and warehouse management. Effective use of analytics helps create a culture of hypothesis-driven problem-solving, and could even improve understanding of the customer better than humans can do.
Phase 1 of analytics addressed personalisation, push notifications, and visualisation. Phase 2 (for growth from $50 million to $250 million) focused on clickstream analytics, customer segmentation, and sales performance. Phase 3 ($250 million to $500 million) addressed the use of actionable insights for recommendation systems, shopping assistants, pricing solutions, and forecasting.
Phase 4 (beyond $500 million) will address deep learning techniques to reduce variability and wastage, and extend earlier successes to acquired companies as well. Challenges can arise with respect to explainability of AI and ML, and in getting employees to accept automation of certain processes.
Bigbasket has entered a number of ecosystem partnerships for its line of business such as CFTRI for technology to chop vegetables. There are farmer-connect programmes, structured like a “cooperative within a corporate”. This includes collection centres, storage facilities, support from agronomists, and prompt payment services.
National/local supply and distribution are coordinated via collection centres in 35 locations as well as distribution centres across 25 cities. Other experts also gave valuable insights, eg. on the importance of supplying tender coconut, aloe vera, and fresh raw turmeric.
Suppliers and vendors are treated as partners, and challenges are collaboratively solved. Delivery slots are scheduled, with set targets for turnaround times. Trends to watch are use of IoT and robotics for picking.
In keeping with the environmental movement, returnable crates are being used in order to reduce wastage of packaging material. Ideas are also being tested from startups in YES Bank’s entrepreneur initiatives.
11. Funding and acquisitions
Bigbasket had a strong faith in its inventory model for groceries though it was asset-heavy. This model did not appeal to investors like Tiger Global, who ended up investing in Grofers (in addition to Sequoia and SoftBank). But the asset-light model did not work out for many competitors, who eventually pivoted to an inventory model or shut shop, the authors observe.
Bigbasket also bought four startups: Delyver (hyper-local delivery via bikers), Savis Retail (smart vending machines), RainCan, and Morning Cart (morning deliveries, eg. newspapers, milk). The acquisitions helped expand into express delivery, subscription models, and a marketplace of specialty stores.
Well-assessed and assimilated acquisitions can reignite the entrepreneurial spirits of the acquired startups, the authors recommend. There should be culture fit, and the new founders need to have empowerment and freedom to collaborate on new ideas.
12. The road ahead
“The last 10 years, particularly, have witnessed a tectonic shift in the overall startup ecosystem,” the authors observe. They are going beyond global wage-arbitrage models of earlier entrepreneur waves, and are embracing cutting-edge technologies, solving local problems, and attracting international investors. Companies like Flipkart have inspired many more to launch their own startups.
The authors sum up with some parting words of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: stay grounded, connect to your purpose, delegate but do not abdicate, avoid jargon, value face-time with teams, and never forget the importance of the customer. “The big picture is important, but don’t lose touch of the ground reality,” they sign off.
The book is packed with a number of inspiring quotes, and it would be appropriate to end this review with the sample below.
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. – Sam Walton
Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. - Daniel Bell
Planning is everything. The plan is nothing. – Dwight Eisenhower
Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion. - W. Edwards Deming
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. - Muriel Rukeyser
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).
Expense management startup, Fyle on Friday said that, it has received an additional $4.5 million in venture capital investment from US-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, following its Series A round in April 2019. Existing investors Tiger Global, Freshworks, and Pravega Ventures, also participated as part of this round.
With this, the total equity funding raised by Fyle stands at $10.5 million. The startup will use the funding to invest in product innovation and expand its global market footprint, with additional sales and marketing investments.
Founded in 2016 by Yashwanth Madhusudan and Sivaramakrishnan Narayanan (former-colleagues at Qubole), Fyle offers expense management solution for organisations and individuals. Earlier in March 2019, the company had raised $4.2 million as part of its Series A round, led by Tiger Global Management.
“Intelligent and automated systems will empower businesses to be more efficient in the coming decade. We are excited to partner with Fyle to transform one of the core business processes of expense management through intelligence and automation,” Ravi Mehta, Managing Director, Steadview Capital said.
At present, more than 300 companies in the US, India, Singapore, the European Union, and the UK use Fyle.
Fyle also claimed in a statement that its revenue over the past five months has increased five times and its in-house team has grown by three times.
“We’re very excited to bring on Steadview as a financial partner, as we’re aggressively expanding our market presence in the US and UK to meet customer demand. We’ve created a customer-first culture and with this additional financial backing, we’ll be able to continue to execute on product innovation to deliver a truly automated process for expense management, saving precious time for employees and ensure continuous compliance for the company,” Yash Madhusudhan, CEO and Co-founder, Fyle said.
Apart from the fund raise, Fyle also announced the launch of its new WhatsApp integration, which will enable users to text an expense via the social media messaging app and automatically create an expense entry.
Disclaimer:Fyle is YourStory's Tech 30 2018 startup.
The Prime Minister's Office on Thursday held a meeting of secretaries to discuss the draft national logistics policy, which aims at promoting seamless movement of goods across the country and reducing high transaction cost of traders, an official said.
Secretaries from different departments, including commerce, steel, revenue, chemicals, and corporate affairs attended the meeting, the official added.
The draft national policy was floated by the logistics division of the commerce ministry. The ministry will give a presentation on the draft policy in the meeting.
The government wants to formulate the policy, as the sector's growth is critical to boosting exports and economic growth.
The cost of logistics for India is about 13-14 percent of its gross domestic product (which is over $2.5 trillion) and is far higher as compared to other countries. There is a target to reduce it to about 10 percent in the coming years.
High logistics cost impacts competitiveness of domestic goods in the international markets.
Logistics is a key component for increasing competitiveness of exporters and domestic traders by reducing transport cost and time, and expediting smooth movement of goods.
In February, the commerce ministry had floated a 23-page draft policy with an objective to create a single point of reference for all logistics and trade facilitation matters in the country, which will also function as a knowledge and information sharing platform.
It has suggested several steps, including creating a national logistics e-marketplace as a one-stop marketplace.
The draft policy is also aiming at simplification of documentation for exports/imports and drive transparency through digitisation of processes involving customs, regulatory, certification and compliance services; and creating a data and analytics centre to drive transparency and continuous monitoring of key logistics metrics.
Earlier in June, it was reported that the government will also come out with a national ecommerce policy within 12 months to facilitate achieving holistic growth of the sector, an official said.
Data, they say, is the new oil. And India could well be the new Arabia.
With nearly 97,000 vacancies, India is the second-biggest analytics jobs hub after the US, a recent study by skilling platform Great Learning and Analytics India Magazine revealed. The figure is poised to more than double to two lakh by 2020. India now also accounts for one in 10 advanced analytics job openings in the world. If ever there was a gold rush for data scientist jobs, India would be at the heart of it.
Talking about the widening skill-gap in analytics, Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of edtech company Great Learning says, "A 45 percent increase in the supply gap in just one year indicates the pace at which businesses are adopting analytics and data-based decision-making. In the last few years, many large players have been forced to acqui-hire talent to keep the wind in their sails."
Adapting to an era of more data-driven decision-making has not always proven to be a simple proposition for people or organisations. Many are struggling to develop talent, business processes, and organisational muscle to capture real value from analytics. This is becoming a matter of urgency, since a prowess in analytics gives companies a competitive edge, and the leaders are chalking up competitive advantages.
Analytics as a career or skill
Compared to the numbers in 2017, 2018 had an optimistic job growth with a 45 percent increase in open job requirements. As BFSI, e-commerce and telecom lead the demand for data science skills in India, there was an overall growth in the number of jobs in analytics and data science ecosystem with India contributing to six percent of open job openings worldwide, a report by Great Learning and Analytics India magazine revealed. Of the 97,000 analytics and data science job positions available in the market, 97 percent of the job openings are on a full-time basis with just three percent of them being part-time or contractual.
As analytics as a discipline becomes more entrenched across domains, especially in India’s IT and financial services sectors, organisations and high-growth startups are on a hiring spree. However, the market continues to be employer-driven and finding the right talent is a growing challenge for organisations and startups. Hiring trends indicate a demand for junior-level talent with around 70 percent of analytics openings for candidates with less than 5 years of experience. 21 percent of the analytics jobs posted were for freshers an increase of 17 percent from last year. 31 percent analytics job openings were for professionals with more than 5 years of work experience. However there was a dip in hiring at mid-stage level from 2017 with a reported 38 percent share of job postings for professionals with 5+ years of experience.
With the emerging tech industry growing at a whirlwind speed, especially in analytics, more and more professionals are expected to segue into this sector. Consequently, the number of jobs in the data science sector is also mushrooming. As companies are diversifying their portfolio and the IT giants are entering into the SaaS and PaaS arena, there is more need for data scientists and analytics-ready professionals in this field.
The need for the right skilling providers
While it’s undeniable that there has been a rapid rise in the number of colleges and institutions offering data science and analytics training, the large gap in the job market has been linked to the lack of institutions that properly prepare candidates to solve real-world problems. And while a steady stream of data scientists and data analysts are being churned out, they have a strong foundation in theory but are found to be lacking in practical skills.
On the other end of the spectrum are employees who are on a path for lifelong learning approach to skills development. As leading institutes respond to the rising demand for analytics skills with tailored programs, skills development programs will play a critical role in updating the analytics capabilities and preparing the workforce for new roles.
Great Learning: bridging the skill gap with top-ranked analytics courses
Great Learning is an ed-tech company that offers programs in career critical competencies such as Analytics, Data Science, ML, AI, Cloud Computing, DevOps, Full-stack Development, Cybersecurity, Digital Business Management, Design Thinking and more. Their programs have helped thousands of professionals across the globe to build competencies in these emerging areas, to secure and grow their careers. Their range of courses address all levels of skills and requirements, from a short course for managers looking to get a basic understanding of analytics to a more comprehensive analytics and data science programme for freshers and early career professionals.
For experienced professionals looking to upskill in analytics
Great Learning’s PG Program in Business Analytics & Business Intelligence is a comprehensive Business Analytics Course that covers the latest analytics tools and techniques along with their business applications. Offered in collaboration with The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin and Great Lakes, India, the course offers a blended learning environment or an online learning environment that causes minimal disruptions to a learner’s work schedule. Sessions are augmented with online webinars, discussions and assignments for continuous and cumulative learning.
For managers looking to get a basic understanding of analytics
Great Learning’sData Analytics using Excel course is perfect for professionals who want to explore the analytics field but are not sure if they can commit to a longer duration PG program. Spanning just six weeks, the course modules include an Introduction to Analytics, Data Wrangling using Excel, Exploratory Data Analysis using Excel, Statistics with Excel, Data Modeling using Excel, and Data Visualization using Tableau. The topics are covered in a practical approach to enable manager-level professionals to prepare for future business roles using data analytics.
For freshers and early career professionals looking for a career in analytics
Great Learning’s PG Data Science Course has been designed to help candidates jumpstart their careers in Data Science and Machine Learning. This five-month classroom programme is ideal for fresh graduates and early career professionals who are looking at roles like business analysts, data analysts, data engineers, analytics engineers. It equips candidates with relevant data science techniques, tools and technologies and hands-on application through industry case studies.
India’s #1 analytics courses that see 48 percent average salary hikes post-completion
Great Learning’s analytics program has been ranked No.1 in India by AIM for four consecutive years, while The UT Austin McCombs School of Business' MS in Business Analytics is ranked No.2 in the world by QS World University Rankings. The programs are taught by faculty from Great Lakes, UT Austin and practising data scientists and analytics experts, and cover most current analytical tools including Python, R, SAS and Tableau. The capstone projects, in addition to 12 hands-on projects, allow candidates to apply their learning to real industry scenarios and add them to their portfolios as a tangible body of work. Having successfully transitioned over 2,500 alumni to analytics roles, the course typically sees a 48 percent average salary hike post-completion across its participants.
Finally, Great Learning's placement program, GL Excelerate, helps candidates unlock their potential, highlight their skills and connect to the right opportunities for their next job with exclusive recruitment drives, interview preparation workshops and access to curated jobs from over 200 organisations.
Keen on being a part of the great global analytics revolution? Start your analytics upskilling journey here.
Hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo has raised $45 million in a fresh round from Lightbox Ventures, Google, 3L Capital, and STIC Investment & STIC Ventures.
In a statement, the company said this capital will further Dunzo’s vision to be the largest commerce platform in the country. This round of investment stems from Dunzo’s 40X growth in the last 18 months, and a business model that focuses on unit profitability, it added.
Dunzo will be deploying the funds to establish itself as the logistics player in India, picking up and dropping almost anything and everything a consumer would want to buy and ship while integrating merchants and delivery partners on the platform.
Dunzo Founders - Ankur Aggarwal, Mukund Jha, Kabeer Biswas and Dalvir Suri
“Dunzo has always focused on building a reliable business model while ensuring consumer empathy in every action that we take as a platform. Over the last year, we have built a model that understands Indian cities deeply and empowers offline commerce to deliver to consumers instantly. We believe in giving local merchants a fighting chance while creating sustainable earning opportunities for delivery partners. We are on course to build the largest commerce platform in the country with the most efficient logistics solution for each city.”
Dunzo is clocking over 2 million deliveries month-on-month, with an average delivery taking 28 mins across its nine cities.
Founded by Kabeer Biswas, Mukund Jha, Dalvir Suri, and Ankur Aggarwal in 2015, Dunzo is a hyperlocal ecommerce company that connects merchants, partners, and users to facilitate transactions across courier, commerce, and commute. Dunzo is present in the top nine cities in India, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune. The Bengaluru-based startup also has bike taxi services in Gurugram, Hyderabad, and Noida.
Dave Leyrer, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, 3L said,
“Dunzo has been a crucial spoke in driving the hyperlocal wheel and has the potential to go the distance in becoming the largest commerce platform in India. It is our belief that the team at Dunzo has tapped into the backbone of the Indian economy - local offline merchants. Their approach to growth has been uniquely sustainable and we’re eager to see how they change local commerce dynamics in India.”
Dunzo's core strength is to digitise India’s offline commerce in the top 25 cities in the country.
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