Reliance Industries on Friday said its wholly-owned subsidiary Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Ltd (RSBVL) has acquired over 51 percent stake in Asteria Aerospace for Rs 23.12 crore.
"RSBVL has acquired equity shares of Asteria Aerospace for a cash consideration of Rs 23,12,49,584. The said investment represents 51.78 percent holding in the equity share capital of Asteria," Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said in a BSE filing.
The investment will further enable the group's initiatives in emerging technology, it added.
RSBVL proposes to make a further investment of up to Rs 125 crore, subject to Asteria achieving agreed milestones, and is expected to be completed by December 2021, it said.
"Post the further investment, the shareholding of RSBVL will increase to 87.3 percent of the equity share capital of Asteria," it added.
On Thursday, RSBVL had said it has picked up 85 percent stake in NowFloats Technologies for a cash consideration of Rs 141.63 crore.
Asteria, incorporated in India in June 2011, is a full-stack drone technology company with in-house drone manufacturing capabilities, and also offers software solutions to provide actionable insights from aerial data, intending to deliver "Drone-as-a-Service" digital platform.
An early-stage company, Asteria had a turnover of Rs 1.96 crore in 2018-19.
Earlier this week, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited, announced that it has acquired SaaS platform NowFloats Technologies.
Reliance acquired equity shares of NowFloats for a cash consideration of Rs 141 crore (approx). According to a statement issued by the company, the investment represents 85 percent holding in the equity share capital of Nowfloats.
The fresh investment will enable Nowfloats' digital and new commerce initiatives. On achieving milestones that are discussed internally, Reliance will be further pumping in an investment of up to Rs 75 crore, by December 2020.
Over the past year, Reliance has been acquiring startups to build out its digital ecosystem.
Earlier in May 2019, at the company's 40th Annual General Meeting, Mukesh Ambani reiterated his commitment to entrepreneurs and startups when he said,
“Just as Reliance became known in the past 40 years as a company that won the trust of millions of retailers, it will be known in the coming decade as an enterprise with lakhs of partners and an enabler of a large ecosystem of entrepreneurs.”
The domestic electric vehicle (EV) market is projected to grow 36 percent annually between 2019 and 2026 as the market has gained traction following the implementation of the second phase of the EV incentives scheme in April.
Under the government's ambitious FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacture of Electric Vehicles) II scheme to popularise electric and hybrid vehicles, up to one million EV two-wheelers, powered by new advanced technology battery of 2KWH, are pegged to get subsidy of up to Rs 20,000 each.
"Total EV sales in 2018 hit 365,920 units and are expected to grow 36 percent annually till 2026. The battery market is estimated to be $520 million in 2018, and is projected to grow 30 percent annually during this period," India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) said in report.
The base year of the study was 2018 while the forecast period was 2019-2026, it said.
The IESA is an alliance of 96 stakeholders comprising energy storage manufacturers,research institutes/universities, renewable energy companies, and power electronics companies.
Noting that total charger sales in 2018 were under 1,000 units, the report forecasts this to touch 50,000 units by 2026 as public charging points are set to rise with an estimated investment of $520 billion.
It is predicted that the EV market will grow rapidly with support from government as it pushes for greater penetration.
Recently, the government also sanctioned 5,595 electric buses in 64 cities for intracity and intercity operations under the second phase of FAME to push for clean mobility in public transportation, an official release said on Thursday.
The Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises had invited expression of interest (EoI) from cities with million-plus population, smart cities, State or Union Territory (UT) capitals, and special category States for submission of proposal for deployment of electric buses on operational cost basis.
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)
Identity and access management platform truMe has raised $1,45,000 from Rajan Kaistha, an angel investor in the US.
According to a statement released by the company, with this fundraise, truMe plans to deepen its footprint in Delhi-NCR and expand operations to Mumbai and Bengaluru. Apart from the expansion plans, it will use the proceeds to invest in talent and technology.
truMe is the flagship product of Mobico Comodo Private Limited, an IT product startup in identity and access management space. The company, which owns the truMe patent, is founded by friends Babu Dayal, Pramod Uniyal, and Lalit Mehta.
Commenting on the investment, Pramod N Uniyal, Co-founder and CEO of truMe, said, "Our vision is that everyone in the world will have a digital identity, hosted on truMe. Our endeavour is to create an access management ecosystem that runs on truMe all over the world. We want to make access secure, private, and convenient for businesses and users."
Babu Dayal, Co-founder and COO of truMe, added, "We are using technology to create an ecosystem which will liberate businesses from the constraints of legacy access management systems and drastically bring down the costs for them."
According to a report by Grand View Research, the identity and access management industry is growing at a CAGR of 13.1 percent and is expected to reach $ 24 billion per annum by 2025.
truMe leverages several technologies to create a product that is extremely easy to use both for the establishments and individual users. truMe is a state-of-the-art platform, which is not dependent on hardware to create a superlative experience, both for the businesses and the users.
Rajan Kaistha, CEO of RST solutions Inc, said, "I am excited about the people and the technology behind truMe, and believe that there is a latent need for an access management ecosystem that truMe can fulfil. I have been keenly watching this space and like what truMe is doing."
Building a winning CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy for your organisation is synonymous to building a dynamic football team, with team management being sacrosanct for success. The promise of customer relationship management can be captivating, but in practice it can be a risky affair.
When it works, CRM allows companies to gather customer data swiftly, identify the most valuable customers over time, and increase customer loyalty and retain them by providing customised products and services. It also helps minimise the costs of serving these customers and makes it easier to acquire similar customers down the road. But when CRM doesn’t work—which is often—it can lead to debacles.
Let’s start with technological underpinnings of an integrated CRM, because they determine the scope, speed, timing, security, and quality of any company’s customer interactions from the first touch through the entire lifecycle of a relationship. Once you gain clarity on the technology, which makes it possible to create a truly aligned and consistently great experience for both your team and your customers, you’ll be able to select a provider that can actually deliver on the promise. You’ll also feel more in control and gain peace of mind from knowing that you’re investing in the right technology to help you reach your customer and business goals.
While the promise of a CRM platform that allows companies to align sales and service automation all in one place is much sought after, the fulfillment of that promise — which relies on technology and data structures — often falls short. Why is that? What should you look for and expect from a modern CRM platform?
Horizontal CRM vs vertical CRM:
A vertical solution is often quite expensive, but typically includes built-in workflow processes, rules, and best practices for your specific industry. Everything from the screen design to the product’s nomenclature is industry-specific.
These products will have functionality specific to your business. It’s much easier, faster, and more efficient to grow your business by going an inch wide and a mile deep. One of the advantages of going for a vertical-based solution is that you may not require extensive customisation; however, every business workflow is different so some tailoring may be required.
There is an increasing verticalisation of the CRM market, according to Forrester Research. Not only are CRM apps more verticalised, but their depth is also increasing, with more support for industry regulations, integration with industry-specific apps, and available end-to-end processes. But if your business objective is to just manage existing accounts and contacts more efficiently and improve your sales effectiveness, then a quality horizontal CRM solution will serve you well.
Social CRM:
Businesses are built on relationships, and a CRM highlights the desire of customers to engage in collaborative conversations and helps boost relationships. Companies should adopt an omnichannel approach, not just to capture customer data from multiple social media platforms, but also design experiences for customers that make them offer tangible value in return in the form of attention, engagement, and advocacy.
A CRM should provide an unbeatable interface for hyper-individualised client experience due to the long stretches of the information accessibility in the organisations' CRM framework. Hyper-individualisation, known by the name "in depth” personalisation, is an encounter that conveys administration wherein customers feel the joy of being valued and esteemed because companies understand their necessities and recognise their requirements and needs. This gives a focused edge on customer experience and commitment.
Customer service beyond expectations with self-service:
Companies that provide an amazing customer experience will go a step further and thrive. Despite customers engaging with companies on different channels – customer support, social media, and stores and so on – they expect fast responses.
To achieve this, your customer service knowledge base and FAQs need to be easily accessible, up to date and visual through the use of images and videos. The self-service portal needs to be organised. When self-service support is done right, it allows the customer to find information quickly, can reduce the number of incoming calls or e-mails your support team receives, and leads to an excellent customer experience.
Live chat:
If you’re busy running a company while looking for new ways to make your employees more productive and efficient—all the while holding the line on expenses—then live chat is the perfect solution. No matter what your company’s business or story may be, now’s the time to seriously consider adding live chat to your customer service arsenal.
AI and cognitive computing puts a face on the often impersonal online world. Instead of being fed overused, canned responses, live chat connects customers to real people. Chat offers a human connection—establishing trust and reassuring visitors that there are actual human beings who care about their customers behind the scenes of your business right now. Live chat brings the advantages of in-person human interaction to the online world.
Mobile CRM:
This provides all the business insights on most of the devices that can be connected to the network. It is capable of real-time accessibility at any place and any time. This trend has seen a substantial growth this year and continue in the coming years because of advancements in the technological field and the increasing usage of mobile devices. And because of those CRM users using the system on their mobile phones and tablets it will grow significantly as well.
To grow in scale in the future, having a deep understanding of customers and a strong digital presence will lead to a seamless multi-channel experience, strong customer relations, and increased profitability. Companies that transform digitally have customers that are six times more likely to try a new product or service from their preferred brand, four times more likely to refer your brand, and two times more likely to make a purchase with their preferred brand, even when a competitor has something better to offer at a lower price.
It is an India-first app, and free (and ad-free) for users, marking Amazon's rare departure from paid streaming services.
On Audible Suno, Indian listeners can get unlimited access tohundreds of hours of original audio content in Hindi and English, including more than 60 exclusive audio series and dramas, with new episodes added regularly.
Amazon has tied up with leading homegrown digital content studios, including TVF, OML, Culture Machine, Film Companion, Arre, Terribly Tiny Tales, and others for original shows and audio series on the Audible Suno platform.
Audible Suno Originals
India's most famous voices from Bollywood stars and TV celebrities to comedians and famous authors can be heard on the app.
"Audible Suno will enable listeners to turn their idle time into 'found time' and unlock more hours every day to fill with entertainment and learning," Amazon announced.
Audible Suno climbed to the No. 1 spot in Google Play Store's 'entertainment' category within a week. The app has recorded more than 50,000 installs, and is rated 4.2 out of 5.
While Audible Suno is an Android-only app, iOS users in India can access the content via the native Audible app. Amazon shared that the core Audible app has a large library of over 200,000 audiobooks, including 250 recently added titles in Hindi and Urdu.
Audible Founder and CEO Don Katz described Audible Suno as "a world-first for Audible" and found it culturally relevant for India.
He said in a statement,
“I’ve always been passionate about the transformative power of the spoken word, and I’m delighted to be able to offer this breadth of famous voices and culturally resonant genres with unlimited access, ad-free and free of charge."
Amazon's decision to launch Audible Suno comes at a time when India's audio-streaming industry is witnessing an unprecedented surge. There are an estimated 150 million listeners who tune into audio-streaming or podcast apps every month.
Three officials of the classified startup Quikr have been accused of faking business transactions. The startup has filed a complaint against its zonal manager, area manager, and accounts head.
The company has been accused of a massive fraud by faking transactions in the name of non-existent clients. In an official statement Quikr said:
“Certain anomalies have come to our notice in our PG transaction business involving our employees, and we are working with external parties for legal action against all the parties involved. We may not be able to disclose more information as it may hamper the ongoing investigation.”
Quikr is Everywhere!
While the company hasn't commented much on the issue, media reports suggest the three allegedly introduced several people who own PG Accommodation on the platform in Delhi and Bengaluru. The company has accused the officials of conspiring with the owners to create fictitious business transactions and submit the same to Quikr through the owners and got them to approve the documents on behalf of Quikr.
In July this year, Quikr had raised a debt funding of Rs 20 crore from Trifecta Capital. The startup had also received Rs 13.90 crore on May 27 from its Mauritius-based entity. Pranay Chulet-led firm has issued 14,940 equity shares at a premium of Rs 9,300 per share to Quikr Mauritius Holding Ltd.
Quikr has raised close to $441 million in capital till date and has made 15 acquisitions, including Zefo, Babajob, Zimmber, Grabhouse, StayGlad, CommonFloor, Stepni, and a few others. Its investors include Tiger Global Management, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, NGP Capital, Steadview Capital, and Omidyar Network, among others.
According to media reports, the accused have been booked by the Bengaluru police under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 506 (criminal intimidation), 477A (falsification of accounts) and 120B (criminal conspiracy), and are investigating the case.
With an aim to foster a culture of innovation within the Indian fintech community and task startups to solve the payment challenges of tomorrow, The Visa Everywhere Initiative , kick-started with a series of successful roadshows across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurugram and Hyderabad. This outreach programme showcased innovations driven by Visa and the latest happenings in the world of payments, recent VEI updates and success stories of the fintech startups that graduated from VEI.
Flagging off the Mumbai roadshow on December 2 was Arvind Ronta, VP, Head of Products - India South Asia, Visa, who delivered the opening keynote on the Visa Everywhere Initiative India 2020. Held at Barclays Rise, it was a full house of fintech startups showcasing innovative solutions for the fintech industry.
“Visa is the first fintech in the world, and has always been looking for convenient, secure and customer-friendly solutions when it comes to payments. This is what fintechs in India are aspiring to do. There is ample opportunity to co-exist in this market with multiple solutions and this is where fintechs can help us,” Ronta said.
The highlights of the roadshows across all cities were the fireside chats between a Visa senior leader and a fintech stalwart. In Mumbai, it was TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager India & SA, Visa in conversation with Jitendra Gupta, founder, CitrusPay. The engaging conversation covered a gamut of topics in the fintech space, including neo-banking, unnoticed trends and digital inclusions in tier II and tier-III cities in India.
An audience interaction session with Ramachandran was followed by a short note on the importance of fintech and future of collaborative innovation by Sudipta Roy – Head, Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank.
The success of the Mumbai carried all the way to Gurugram on December 3. The fireside chat at the Gurugram roadshow featured an insightful conversation with Arvind Ronta and Upasana Taku, Co-founder & COO, MobiKwik, which centred on digital inclusion and the technologies impacting the fintech space. Opening the floor for a Q&A with the audience, Upasana fielded questions on digital lending, maintaining customers in low-footfall business and more. Soon after, Pramod Mulani, Senior Director - Innovation, Digital Partnerships & Fintech, Visa, took to the stage, to discuss how to build the future of payments together.
From Gurugram, the VEI travelled to the city of startups – Bengaluru – where it was greeted with a jam-packed venue. Here, Ronta hosted Harshil Mathur, CEO & Co-founder, Razorpay for the fireside chat on his journey to building Razorpay and the road ahead for fintechs.
After successful roadshows in Mumbai, Gurugram and Bengaluru, the Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI) India 2020 roadshow arrived in Hyderabad on December 11 where Pramod Mulani, Senior Director, Innovation, Digital Partnerships & Fintech, Visa, in his keynote, shared an overview of payments landscape in India and how VEI leverages the power of fintech imagination with Visa’s global scale and innovation to solve payment challenges in the market. The fireside chat in Hyderabad featured Ravi Narayan, CEO, T-Hub.
The roadshows were the beginning of Visa’s massive programme to invite fintech startups to provide innovative solutions for real-world challenges in the fintech industry. Registrations for the Visa Everywhere Initiative close on December 25, 2019.
Every store and brand commonly doles out loyalty points. We bet you’ve accumulated thousands but never enjoyed any benefits. Till now! For Bengaluru-based Twid aims to change things by becoming your “currency of choice”.
The rewards-based payment app lets you club all your loyalty points and use them to pay for your daily spends at offline merchants, online partners, restaurants, hotel and flight aggregators, and more. What's better? It offers additional points on every transaction.
The three founders of rewards-based payment app Twid.
Launched in June 2019, the app is the brain child of Amit Koshal (37), Rishi Batra (40), and Amit Sharma (41), who earlier founded Fashalot, an offline-to-online fashion store.
“The perplexity of the current reward ecosystem is that there are too many. There are multiple loyalty programmes from banks, brands, and airlines that we all are part of but do not track. These points have limited redemption options and people tend to forget about them,” says Amit, the CEO of Twid.
How Twid started
Fashalot, which used to connect shoppers to brick-and-mortar retail stores in their neighbourhood, was started in 2015. It’s common for entrepreneurs to notice gaps and challenges when working on other problem statements. This is what happened when the Twid founders were running their omni-commerce company.
They noticed that consumers typically accumulated loyalty points from different brands, be it shopping, dining, travel, credit cards, debit cards, meal cards, and more, but “did not find value in them”.
“We noticed that points worth over Rs 16,000 crore were lying unused and unnoticed. These rewards were getting accumulated, but were just lying there as there were no good options to spend on,” Amit says.
This realisation led them to consider developing a new product to bridge this gap, and Twid was launched. Fashalot was merged into the new company. “Twid is the main consumer-facing brand now,” Amit says.
Twid allows users to seamlessly pool all their rewards and loyalty points and spend them like cash at online and offline stores. The startup also allow users to keep track of all their loyalty memberships, total accumulated points, their worth, expiry date, and transaction history, at one place.
So, for example, if you have 100 points each with Uber, Ola, UrbanClap, debit card, salon, and credit card, Twid offers you a total of Rs 600 to use. The founders dub Twid “a payment app” and call it the “new mode of payment”.
It has partnerships with banks, retailers, dining, travel, online platforms, and brands such as Ola Money, Bata, Nature’s Basket, Spar among others. According to Amit’s estimates, Indian consumers spend close to Rs 1.15 lakh crore every month, on purchases through credit and debit cards.
“We earn rewards not just from banks but also from brands, offline and online, on these purchases. These points are simply lying idle and unused because they stay hidden. We are here to make these rewards more valuable by bringing the points in rotation,” he says.
Twid auto manages your rewards, reading transaction SMS, real-time alerts, exclusive deals on your cards, benefits of using your card, and more.
It took the team two months to build the core platform for a beta launch. The app is now live pan-India, but currently focusing on metro cities.
Amit says Twid is a win-win for consumers and businesses. Consumers get one place to manage their rewards, make them more valuable by combining them, and then using them as a mode of payment for their daily spends. For brands, the app helps increase their business, create a highly engaged consumer base, and get a larger pool of points to be redeemed.
“The point value automatically grows for a consumer when s/he can use it for daily spends. It also helps the brand build a customer base, and bring in repeats and new customers,” Amit says.
The idea soon caught investor attention. In September this year Twid received Rs 10 crore, or about $1.4 million, from SCV LLC, a family-owned business of tech entrepreneurs, as part of its seed round of funding. Earlier, for Fashalot, the team had secured funds from investors like YourNest Fund, Whiteboard Capital, and Capillary Technologies.
India online payments landscape saw a massive surge of growth after demonetisation - so much so that it is now one of the fastest growing fintech markets in the world.
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant concurred, recently stating that India was the “only country in the world with over a billion mobile connections and biometrics, providing enough scope for penetration of fintech technology”.
Studies back this as well. An ASSOCHAM-PricewaterhouseCoopers India analysis projected that digital payments in India would double to $135.2 billion in 2023 from $64.8 billion in 2019.
Agreeing that opportunities in the fintech space are endless, Amit says Twid brings in additional currency for usage in the economy.
He says players like Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe, among others, can be considered either as a competition or seen with a positive outlook. “If we can collaborate together…to boost the digital economy in the country,” he says.
Business and future plans
Since its launch in June, Twid has crossed 1 lakh downloads mark on Google’s Play store. “Our average transaction per user is two per month currently, with an average ticket size of Rs 2, 200,” Amit says.
The startup work on a transaction-share business model with its brand partners, which means Twid earns a percentage whenever a user pays for something via the app. Amit claims about 350,000 merchants accept payment via Twid at present.
When asked about profitability, Amit says that as of now the focus is on multiplying the growth of consumers and transactions.
In the near future, the Twid team is aggressively aiming to on-board more brands and banks within the rewards pool.
“We plan to have three lakh-plus merchant base accepting Twid as a mode of payment and over three million active users transacting at least five times a month in next 12-24 months,” Amit says.
Going forward, the co-founder says the company has a “global outlook” and plans to hire “high quality talent” to augment the 18-member team.
As for Twid users, they can spend, collect points, and spend again!
City skylines dotted with billboards featuring smiling mug shots of aspirants who got placed in premier educational institutes or passed a competitive exam with top marks, is a clear indication of the pressure students in India face to excel academically.
But how tough can it really be?
In a country of 1.3 billion people, the level of competition to crack an exam to get into a top education institute is real and fierce. To add to the pressure, students are expected to gain admission in the very best institutes and colleges to prove their mettle.
Consider this. In 2019, 11.47 lakh students sat for the JEE Main exams. Of these, only 2.45 lakh students qualified for JEE Advance. Finally, only 13,000+ will gain admission to a college. Similarly, over 2.44 lakh aspirants took the CAT exam for management institutes. The year also saw over 15 lakh students applying for the national medical entrance exam NEET. All this is a clear indication of the levels of competition in the country.
A matrix of competitions
Those who’ve made it will tell you that cracking competitive exams takes more than just studying. For many, the journey starts at least two or three years before taking the exam. Students say early preparation gives them time to learn new concepts and decode complex ones. Burning the midnight oil is not just a metaphor but a reality for the aspirants.
Yet, it is often not enough. Students need to supplement their regular academic curriculum. They also need access to top educators, structured courses, practice tests and mock tests.
But, for many, getting access to alternate support is a competition in itself. Students have to write separate exams to qualify for the training institutes that will give them access to top educators and resources who eventually help them in their bid to crack the competitive exam. A student’s intelligence and ability is also measured with their ability to get into these training institutes.
This pressure not only takes the fun out of learning, but it can also be very disparaging for the students. Additionally, this kind of learning is more about memorising information rather than actually internalising the learning and the applicability of the information.
A downhill for students
All this makes students extremely vulnerable to pressure. Students complaining of depression, anxiety and other such psychological problems are becoming increasingly common. Many say that when aspirants are unable to get into a good coaching institute, they tend to develop the mindset that they are not good enough to crack the competitive exam.
On the other hand, there are multiple challenges even when they do qualify. First, there is the challenge of exorbitant fees, preferential batches to get access to the top educators, and learning methodologies that do not take into account the needs of the students. All of this ultimately overshadows their ability to learn.
The answer in democratisation
Unacademy, one of India’s largest learning platforms, believes the answer to these challenges lies in the democratisation of education. The democratisation of education mainly refers to making it easy for everyone, irrespective of their academic ability, to get access to their choice of courses, educators and subjects. There isn’t differential pricing or rank-based batches. The idea is not to put further pressure than there already is but instead become enablers in a student’s learning says the edtech startup. More importantly, the structure, the study material, the mock tests, practise tests are all designed taking the needs of the learners into consideration to help them play on their strengths and work on their weaknesses.
Why Unacademy is taking charge of leading the change
Amidst the chaos of a less-than-perfect education system, undue pressure on students and a journey that is gruelling, Unacademy believes that it is essential for technology to break traditional norms and make a real impact on India’s education sector. And to further drive home this belief, the startup has launched a campaign titled ‘Let’s Crack It.’
“Unacademy’s constant endeavour is to understand the pulse of learners and provide them with the best of resources. This is at the heart of our campaign. With such a solid insight, was born the thought - Let’s Crack It! What we want to bring out through this campaign is the fact that the journey is tough, but together we can ace it. In the current education system where students are subjected to extreme pressure and disillusionment, Unacademy is the beacon of hope that will help students achieve their dreams. While the campaign celebrates the determination of students, it also motivates them to go further ahead. If by the end of the campaign, we get the masses talking about how they have a chance to crack their exams with Unacademy, we would have achieved our goal of levelling the playing field and given every student an opportunity.” says Karan Shroff, Vice President Marketing at Unacademy.
An ode to the hard work and perseverance of students, the anthem puts the spotlight on the struggles of the aspirants and applauds the students who go through the daily rigour and burn the midnight oil. Sung by Naezy, and produced by Dub Sharma, the energising anthem uses phrases and words that strike a chord with the aspirants.
The startup believes that this anthem is just the beginning as they continue to partner with students and show how they now have the chance to crack the competitive exams with Unacademy.
Gurugram-based logistics startup Rivigo said that it will be raising Rs 141.97 crore ($20 million) in Series F round of funding, according to the RoC filings accessed by YourStory.
As per the filings, the company has issued 5,086 Series F preference shares at a nominal value of Rs 10, with a premium of Rs 2,79,143 per share to SAIF Partners and Spring Canter Investment Ltd, on December 9.
In July 2019, the firm had closed its Series E funding at $65 million from its existing investors SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus, to further strengthen its technology and network coverage, which is a key game changer for the larger logistics market in the country.
Rivigo entered the unicorn club in September 2019, after raising $4.97 million from KB Global platform fund, the investment arm of South Korea-based KB Financial Group Inc, at an expected valuation of $1.05 billion.
Founded in 2014 by Gazal Kalra and Deepak Garg, Rivigo, which offers delivery services to ecommerce, pharmaceutical, automobile, cold-chain, and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, claims to have a network coverage of more than 29,000 pin codes in India.
In August 2019, the company also shifted its focus towards relay trucking model, which ensures the drivers are behind the wheel for a maximum of four-five hours at a stretch and reach home the same day. According to the company, the model uses algorithms to develop intelligent driver allocation system that picks the driver for duty and allows equal driving hours, rest hours, and transit hours for drivers. Rivigo's system also records the driving behaviour of the drivers.
Gazal Kalra, Co-founder, Rivigo, said,
“With RaaS (Relay-as-a-Service), we aim to offer the benefits of relay trucking to millions of fleet owners in India and bring efficiencies in the logistics industry, while directly addressing one of the biggest challenges of the chronic truck driver shortage."
In FY19, the firm claims to have added Rs 300 crore to its revenue and reported a loss of Rs 600 crore. It is now looking to be EBITDA profitable in March 2020.
Bengaluru-based digital payments major, PhonePe on Friday said that it has crossed five billion transactions on its app. According to the platform, it is a substantial growth since November 2018, when it claimed to have crossed one billion transaction milestone.
Speaking about the current milestone, PhonePe said that it has achieved this milestone owing to the reach and adoption of the platform across the country.
At present, PhonePe is accepted as a payment option in eight million MSMEs present across 215 cities in India. The company further added that over 56 percent of its transactions are now driven by users in Tier II and Tier III cities.
Earlier in September 2019, PhonePe rebranded its in-app platform to 'PhonePe Switch’, which does away with the need for downloading multiple apps. The platform added multiple used cases including food, grocery, shopping, and travel apps from within the PhonePe app.
The company also said that it has more than 150 million bank accounts linked to its platform, and over 56 million credit and debit cards saved on it.
Commenting on the milestone, Sameer Nigam, Founder and CEO, PhonePe, said,
“We are delighted to reach this milestone and are thankful to our customers and merchant partners for reposing their trust in us. Our journey over the last 4 years has been incredible, not just in terms of the growth of the platform, but also in realising the social impact that payments and financial services can create.
"In particular, we believe the MSME sector is the core engine of the Indian economy and there is a need to create compelling solutions for MSMEs to thrive. We will continue working on solutions that provide a best-in-class experience to consumers and merchants alike,” Sameer added.
At present, the company boasts of having more than 175 million registered users on its platform.
Earlier this month, PhonePe received $82.5 million (Rs 585.66 crore) from its Singapore-based parent PhonePe Private Ltd, documents filed with Registrar of Companies (RoC) revealed.
The digital payment business also reported a loss of Rs 1,907 crore for the financial year 2018-19, while revenue for the company stood at Rs 245.8 crore during the same period.
In contrast, PhonePe’s arch-rival, Paytm in June, said that it has close to 12 million merchants across the country that already accept payments through Paytm QR. These merchants are spread over 2,000 towns and cities spanning across 650 districts in India.
Additionally, the Noida-based financial services major, this year, said that it is looking to enable 20 million retail merchants to accept digital payments through Paytm QR, by the end of this fiscal.
Further, Paytm, this year, claimed that it had achieved a Gross Transaction Value (GTV) of more than $50 billion while clocking 5.5 billion transactions in FY19.
Starting with smartphones, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has now ventured into the digital lending space. Earlier this month, Xiaomi launched Mi Credit in India, touting an easy application process for getting personal loans. Upon approval, the users have the option to choose the amount and the tenure of the loan.
At present, PhonePe is accepted as a payment option in eight million MSMEs present across 215 cities in India. The company further added that over 56 percent of its transactions are now driven by users in Tier II and Tier III cities.
As a child, Imaan Javan battled dyslexia and overcame her struggles with determination and confidence. She started Suntuity REI in 2011 to provide renewable energy solutions around the world.
Sajan Pillai, CEO and Managing Partner, Season Two Ventures
Season Two Ventures, an early-stage venture fund based in Southern California, founded by Sajan Pillai, is now in the process of raising a $100 million fund, which will dedicate exclusively to the funding of B2B startups in India.
Mumbai-based dental school graduate Shantanu Jaradi started Dentzz in 2006, and now has eight Dentzz centres in India and one in Dubai. Dentzz is seeing financial growth of 30 percent year-on-year, and plans to expand both domestically and internationally.
The domestic electric vehicle (EV) market is projected to grow 36 percent annually between 2019 and 2026 as the market has gained traction following the implementation of the second phase of the EV incentives scheme in April, India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) said in a report.
Founded in 2012 by animal lover and activist Anjali Gopalan, NGO All Creatures Great and Small (ACGS) aims to give animals a place where they are protected and free from the cruelties of the world. It provides sick and disabled animals a safe sanctuary for a lifetime. Some of the animals even get adopted after being rehabilitated by the NGO.
Reliance Industries on Friday said its wholly-owned subsidiary Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Ltd (RSBVL) has acquired over 51 percent stake in Asteria Aerospace for Rs 23.12 crore. It proposes to make a further investment of up to Rs 125 crore, subject to Asteria achieving agreed milestones and is expected to be completed by December 2021.
Three years ago, when fintech only had payments in its spectrum, a large population of the country was yet to discover and use the EMI system to its fullest. Certain products were accessible only to those who had a high credit score or owned a credit card or had a large salary. The only option for most people to secure funds for expensive purchases was to borrow from friends and family.
Co-founders of ZestMoney Priya Sharma (CFO), Lizzie Chapman (CEO), and Ashish Anantharaman (CTO) noticed this friction in the online transactions system in India. They were then colleagues at Wonga, a UK-based finance company. Lizzie was the India head, working out of Mumbai, Priya was heading corporate development from London, and Ashish was the head of software development.
Priya Sharma, Lizzie Chapman and Ashish Anantharaman.
Finding scope to provide affordable, digital, small-ticket consumer credit to a market as big as India, the trio found the opportunity exciting and decided to start ZestMoney.
Speaking with YourStory, Lizzie says,
“We don't believe that people need to go to banks and take out heavy loans to finance their purchases. These can be financed instantly, at the checkout, using technology and data intelligence. This is exactly what we have envisioned to build ZestMoney.”
She refers to the RBI data, which shows there are no less than 23 million credit cards issued in India, but the number of credit card-holders in India is not more than 10 million. Lizzie points out that it is a very miniscule number in a population of 1.3 billion. This is because most of those who can get a credit card tend to own more than one (from different banks).
After looking at the data, the team understood that a significant chunk of its user growth was coming from Tier II and III cities, contrary to industry trends.
Lizzie said, “We started focussing more on non-metro cities and reached out to many merchants relevant for the consumer base. Today, cities such as Patna, Lucknow, Indore, Bhopal, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad are some of our top-performing cities."
The technology startup facilitates real-time credit decisions based on alternative data sources, thereby enabling lenders to reach a wider market in a technology-driven and efficient manner.
ZestMoney was seed-funded with $2 million by Ribbit Capital and Mumbai-based Omdiyar Network. In August 2018, the startup raised $13.4 million in its Series A2 funding, led by smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. Prior to that, PayU led the company's Series A investment of $6.5 million in 2016.
As part of its Series B round, ZestMoney raised $20 million, led by global fintech investor Quona Capital, Australian fintech investor Reinventure, Ribbit Capital, Omidyar Network, and PayU. The new funds were reported to address the growing demand of EMI financing in India and the company's expansion.
Realme has seen phenomenal growth in 2019. It started by catering to the budget phone segment, but is now a full-blown threat for the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and even Samsung.
Last month, Realme stepped into the “flagship” territory with the Realme X2 Pro. Priced at Rs 29,999, the device could potentially emerge as a challenger to current top “affordable flagships” - Redmi K20 Pro (Rs 27,999) and OnePlus 7T (Rs 34,999).
Let’s find out if it lives up to the promise.
Specifications: tailored for tech nerds
The Realme X2 Pro comes with a 6.5-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED 90Hz display, and is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855+ processor. It boasts of 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, along with a 4,000mAh battery.
There is also support for the 50W Super VOOC Flash Charge.
On the back is a quad-camera setup: a 64-megapixel primary lens, a 13-megapixel telephoto shooter, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. On the front is a 16-megapixel selfie camera.
The X2 Pro runs ColorOS 6.1 that is based on Android 9 Pie.
Best-in-class design and display
The X2 Pro comes in two eye-catching colours - Lunar White and Neptune Blue. It has an aluminium body with Gorilla Glass 5 on the back and the front. At just 199 grams, the device is easy to grip and can be used for long periods of time.
The front has a gorgeous 6.5-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display (offering a 20:9 aspect ratio) with a water-drop notch on the top. In this regard, you could easily mistake the X2 Pro for the OnePlus 7T.
But Realme has added a curved rear glass - instead of the usual polycarbonate backs - to the X2 Pro. This gives it an ergonomic touch. Also, a flat-front glass means accidental touches are kept to a minimum.
There is a power button on the right, and a volume rocker on the left. They are very tactile and feel solid upon pressing. The SIM card slot is in the top-right, while the speaker grill, the Type-C port, and headphone jack are placed at the bottom. The X2 Pro is one of the few devices to still sport the much-loved headphone jack.
At the back, the placement of the logo is a departure from earlier handsets. It is situated right below the camera module, which might take some getting used to.
The switch to a glass backis possibly one of the best decisions made by Realme, giving the device a premium feel. The haptics also feel much better.
The X2 Pro has a vibrant and fluid display, with 90Hz offering superb viewing angles. The device clocks over 480 nits (a unit of brightness), so outdoor views are never a problem. The text is adequately sharp too. Watching videos on the X2 Pro is a delight. The colours pop and the large display makes for a great viewing experience.
Performance: as smooth as butter
The X2 Pro performs admirably in all conditions. It is never sluggish, and there are almost no frame drops while gaming (from Call of Duty to PUBG Mobile). Multitasking is a breeze too. The device has a winning combination of a strong processor and ample RAM that makes its performance super smooth.
It isn’t at OnePlus 7T-level yet, and that is because it lacks a bit on the software optimisation department. But the Realme X2 Pro could rank an undisputed second.
UI: ColorOS needs a rehaul
There’s no easy way to put this: ColorOS is one of the weakest mobile operating systems out there. It has a lot of bloatware, the animations feel sluggish, and the OS just feels dated.
The bloatware sends out unwanted notifications and ads. Realme should have gone with a ‘clean’ look, but instead, it is far behind OnePlus’s OxygenOS and Samsung’s One UI. The icons need a design rehaul too.
Additionally, ColorOS still operates its own ‘app store’. It is annoying because the recommendation algorithm isn’t strong, and apps update without user permission.
Battery and charging: fastest in the business
It’s hard to believe but Realme’s 50W Super VOOC Flash Charge is in a class of its own. Going from 0-100 in just under 40 minutes is incredible. The 4,000mAh battery lasts for a day and a half, with medium-to-heavy usage, which is pretty impressive.
There is no option for wireless charging, but a small dose of the VOOC Flash Charge is enough for long periods!
Camera: good but not great
The X2 Pro has a comprehensive quad-camera setup.
Colours come close to what the naked eye can see. HDR also does a good job of balancing the lighter and darker areas. The dynamic range of the camera is impressive too. Portrait shots have good edge detection.
However, the camera is found lacking in low-light conditions. There just aren’t enough details left in the image after the software’s over-processing is done.
The camera performance of the X2 Pro will not match up to that of the OnePus 7T the or Redmi K20 Pro, but the average consumer might still come out impressed.
Final verdict
Realme has now officially joined the affordable flagship territory with the X2 Pro. Can it deliver a knockout punch to other devices in the segment?
The answer would have been a resounding yes… only IF the software was better or as good as the OxygenOS, and the camera performance was more up to the mark.
But, the X2 Pro still has a lot going for it: a premium design, top-of-the-line specifications, and a class-leading VOOC Flash Charge feature. You get a large and vibrant screen with a high refresh rate. There are some powerful speakers that make gaming and entertainment a fun experience.
Besides the OS and camera, there is not much you can fault the X2 Pro for. It is one of the best value-for-money flagship devices out there.
It’s one thing to take hoards of photographs, but it's another matter altogether to print the best, curate them into an exhibition, and travel around the country to showcase and sell them to audiences in different cities. Here’s one IT professional and avid photographer who does both.
Pune’s Darpan Art Gallery recently featured an exhibition titled Eloquence of Life, with the works of tech professional, manager, and photographer Mithun Prabhu.Around 60 photographs were on display, priced from Rs 4,000 to Rs 14,000.
“Photographs help discover and preserve beauty even in the mundane and routine. They help experience life at another level altogether,” Mithun explains, in a chat with YourStory.
“Photography is not about making loads of gigabytes of images, but about telling a story,” he adds. He also cites photographer Ansel Adams in this regard: “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”
“In this fast-paced world, where all people want to do is swipe right or left, if your photograph or story doesn’t appeal to them, then you have lost a chance. You have to know how to touch the hearts and generate interest in the humans who are viewing your work,” he emphasises.
This involves envisioning the scene and how it may play, and weaving the story around it – sometimes all in just a few seconds. “No two photographers, standing at the same point and looking at the same scene, would be able to replicate each other’s art,” Mithun says.
He has experience across a range of genres: travel, nature, street, astro, landscapes, products, events, portraits, and wildlife. “The most important thing is respecting the ethical treatment of animals, humans, and nature,” he stresses.
A father of two, Mithun describes himself as a "Mumbaikar by heart". He also has an MBA, and is based in Bengaluru. “With photography and IT, I strike a balance. Photography is my passion and stress-buster, and my solo exhibitions present my work to the world,” he explains.
Thanks to travels around the world, he has millions of photos on his hard disk. “Only 10 percent are processed, the rest are still waiting their turn to come out of sleep,” he jokes. He sees photography as not just a possible livelihood, but as a source of inspiration to all.
Mithun has conducted workshops on request, to audiences ranging from 10 to 65 years in age. “When you teach, you learn too, especially from youngsters who have always a completely different perspective on everything,” he observes.
Practice and exposure help refine the art of storytelling through photographs. Photographers often have to choose or balance between “commercial and passion photography”, Mithun explains. In that sense, success comes not just from commercial sales but audience’s artistic appreciation as well.
He has received 375 acceptances at national and international photography salons, and won seven awards this year, including one from the Artist Federation of Indian Photography (AFIP). “I want audiences to enjoy the photographs and also experience the vast beauty of India,” Mithun says.
At the Pune exhibition, he showcased a range of photos on nature and heritage, printed by Honeycomb. There were also storycards for audiences to read, and a feedback book. “I was even told I have inspired some of my fellow artists who shall now work to showcase their photos to the world,” he proudly says.
In addition to the Pune and Bengaluru exhibitions, Mithun has plans for more exhibitions on travel photography in 2020. “My biggest project was in 2017, where I picked daily themes along with write-ups and stories,” he recalls.
As trends in the field, Mithun points to the rise of digital devices, platforms, and AI; popularity of photography ‘on the go’; growing appreciation of photography as an art; and the opening up of new opportunities for youth.
“As a photographer, you have to exercise caution to never cross the line in wanting to outsmart others, disturb wildlife, interrupt people on streets, misuse the kindness of the poor, use digital deception, or become ruthless just to be seen as the best photographer,” he cautions.
“My advice to aspiring photographers would be to go out there, explore the unexplored, document it well, showcase it, print your work, and become storytellers,” he suggests. “The human race is a winner when people are more competitive in the right spirit,” Mithun signs off.
Now, what have you done today to stop in your busy schedule, and find joy in profession and passion?
See also the YourStory pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups,’ accessible as apps for Apple and Android devices.
Indian startups raised $246.5 million in equity funding, up by 23 percent compared to last week’s $200 million. Additionally, there were venture debt fund deals this week that raised $7.3 million.
Startups working in a wide array of areas from agri-tech, gaming, fintech, SaaS, travel, among others, have participated in the funding deals this week. While HappyEasyGo raised the largest amount this week, Ninjacart stole the show, when it announced a deal with Flipkart and Walmart.
Gurugram-based online travel portal HappyEasyGo raised around Rs 350 crore ($49.4 million) in its extended Series B round of funding from its investment partners, including Korea Investment Partners (KIP), Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), UOB Venture, 10 Fund, CVCapital, Zero2IPO Ventures, and M&S Partners.
Early and growth-stage deals:
Zetwerk, an 18-month old B2B software platform for custom manufacturing, raised Rs 225 crore ($32 million) in Series B round led by Lightspeed and Greenoaks Capital. Existing investors Sequoia India, Accel, and Kae Capital also participated in the round. Founded by IIT alumni Amrit Acharya, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Rahul Sharma, and Vishal Chaudhary, Zetwerk is a manufacturing platform connecting Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) customers across India, North America, and South-east Asia with manufacturing SMEs.
Invoice discounting platform KredX raised $26 million (Rs 187 crore) as part of its Series B round led by Tiger Global Management, along with participation from existing investors for a minority stake in the company. The startup will use the new capital to accelerate its expansion by hiring across functions, including senior leadership hiring and step up the development of new products.
Apparel and fashion startup, Bombay Shirt Company, raised $8 million from early-stage venture capital firm Lightbox Ventures in its latest equity funding round.
Pune-based agritech startup Ecozen, which develops technology-enabled products to strengthen the farm-to-fork value chain of perishables, announced that it has completed its $6 million Series A fundraise, after receiving $4 million in investment from Sathguru Catalyser’s Innovation in Food & Agriculture Fund (IFA Fund).
Mass market data and loyalty startup m.Paani raised $5.5 million (or Rs 39 crore) in its Series A funding round. The round was led by AC Ventures, Henkel, Candy Ventures, and angel investors Kevin Aluwi (CEO and Cofounder of Gojek), Ryu Suliawan (Head of Merchants at Gojek), and Suvir Varma (Board Member and Senior Advisor at Bain & Company, Private Equity). Existing investors Chiratae Ventures and Blume Ventures also participated in the round.
Bengaluru-based edtech startup Cuemath raised $5.5 million in its extended Series B funding round led by Manta Ray Ventures Limited and saw participation from existing investors Capital G by Google and Sequoia India.
Mumbai-based digital freight forwarding startup, Freightwalla raised $4 million (approximately Rs 28.70 crore) in Series A funding led by global venture capital firms Amplo, FJ Labs, and Rogue One Capital. Existing investors Kae Capital and Tekton Ventures also participated in this round. The firm said, this makes Freightwalla the first digital freight forwarding company to raise fresh funds within a year of seed funding.
Bengaluru-based work fulfilment platform, Awign Enterprises raised $4 million in a Series A funding round led by Work10M, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Eagle10, and existing investors, Unitus Ventures. The company plans to utilise this investment to strengthen its workforce-facing app and enterprise-facing platform, while also developing robust sales and marketing channels.
FableStreet, a Gurugram-based technology-enabled premium workwear brand, raised Rs 21 crore ($2.9 million) in Series A led by Fireside Ventures. Industry power-lifters including Pradeep Parameswaran, President for Uber India and South Asia; Dilip Khandelwal, MD and Head of Technology of Deutsche Bank; and Suhail Sameer, CEO of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group (FMCG), also participated in the funding round and invested in their personal capacities.
Bengaluru-based future of work platform, TapChief raised a pre-Series A round of $1.5 million from homegrown investment firm Blume Ventures. Sanjay Nath, the Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, will be joining the Board of Directors of TapChief as part of this investment.
Real money gaming startup Rein Games raised Rs 5 crore ($0.7 million) in angel funding round from Manipal Group Chairman Ranjan Pai’s MEMG family office and Titan Capital.
Children-focussed food and nutrition startup, Lil’ Goodness and sCoolMeal, raised $400,000 in seed funding from a clutch of investors.
Jaipur-based agritech startup, Freshokartz, raised $150,000 (or Rs 1 crore) as a part of its pre-Series A round, from Jaipur-based NSE-listed company, Innovana ThinkLab Ltd. The startup will be using the fund to expand its operation to newer districts in Rajasthan.
Identity and access management platform truMe raised $1,45,000 from Rajan Kaistha, an angel investor in the US. According to a statement released by the company, with this fundraise, truMe plans to deepen its footprint in the Delhi-NCR and expand operations to Mumbai and Bengaluru.
MyGameMate, an eSports platform where players can access various multiplayer mobile games to play and participate in the online tournaments raised $1,00,000.
WishADish, a startup that helps customers find their meals around with a variety of quality-assured options, raised $85,000.
Pune-based fitness startup SQUATS Fitness Pvt Ltd has picked up a minority stake in app startup Fitato for an undisclosed amount. Fitato allows users to access any gym of their choice across the city without paying hefty annual membership fees.
Rockstud Capital is making its second investment in FY 2020 with an undisclosed, bridge round in Cubical Labs for a valuation of $11 million. Dhruv Ratra and Swati Vyas set up Cubical Labs in their college days at IIT-Guwahati in 2013.
Binca Games, a Mumbai-based board games startup, announced that cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar has bought a stake in the company for an undisclosed sum. Along with the funding, Binca Games also announced the launch of its newest game, Qwicket, a quick cricket card game suitable for children and adults alike.
Noida based fintech, Afinoz, raised an undisclosed amount from a clutch of investors including Brand Capital, in its pre-series A round.
Late-stage deals:
UK’s development finance institution and impact investor in South Asia and Africa CDC Group announced that it has closed a $36 million equity investment in Warburg Pincus-backed tech-enabled logistics startup Ecom Express. Ecom Express will be using the funds for its network expansion and augmentation. CDC's equity injection will further enable Ecom Express to hire more employees.
Indian online beauty and personal care platform, Purplle.com (Purplle) raised $30 million as a part of its Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs. The round also saw participation from existing investors IvyCap Ventures, Blume Ventures, and JSW Ventures.
Gurugram-based logistics startup, Rivigo’s board approved the issue of 5,086 Series F preference shares to SAIF Partners and Spring Canter Investment Ltd. The company is raising Rs 141.97 crore ($20 million). Rivigo said that it plans to use the funding towards capital expenditure and working capital requirements of the business, in accordance with the business plan adopted and approved by the board.
Ninjacart, the Bengaluru-headquartered B2B agritech startup, has received a big boost with global retail giant Walmart and India’s leading ecommerce marketplace Flipkart announcing an undisclosed joint investment into the firm. This latest investment into Ninjacart comes after the agritech startup received a $100 million fund infusion from Tiger Global in April this year.
Debt funding:
Delhi-based venture debt firm Stride Ventures announced that it has invested an undisclosed amount in Bengaluru-based dairytech startup, Stellapps.
Shared housing startup Stanza Living raised $5.7 million in debt financing from Alteria Capital. This investment is in addition to the $4.4 million raised from Alteria Capital in March this year. With this investment, the total debt infusion by Alteria Capital in Stanza Living amounts to $10 million.
Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, announced on Thursday, that it has acquired SaaS platform NowFloats Technologies. Reliance acquired equity shares of NowFloats for a cash consideration of Rs 141 crore (approx).
Edtech sector looked bright last year. Poised to reach $1.96 billion by 2021, India has a current user base of around 9.6 million. This is a trend that many edtech venture capital firms are looking closely at, as seen by the significant investments in the sector in India.
According to a Google-KPMG report, the online tutoring market is expected to grow dramatically in the next two years to around 10 million users. This will still represent only a tiny sliver of the Indian market that has over 250 million students currently enrolled in schools, indicating a tremendous potential.
The funding trend in the sector in India has a similar story to tell and investor interest in the space has been noteworthy. This year, the edtech sector witnessed some significant investments, which include both big and small names.
YourStory takes a look at some of the edtech startups that raised funding this year.
The exam preparation platform, Gradeup had received $7 million in Series A funding from Times Internet. This is the second fundraiser for Gradeup in 2019, which has now raised $10 million in total.
Started in 2015 by Shobhit Bhatnagar, Sanjeev Kumar, and Vibhu Bhushan, Gradeup helps more than 18 million exam aspirants prepare effectively for competitive examinations like JEE, NEET, GATE, IBPS, SSC, TET, UPSC, among others.
The platform offers a comprehensive exam preparation experience, which engages students through live classes, interactive quizzes, mock tests, 24x7 mentorship, among others. All of this is designed and delivered by expert faculty through a structured methodology in a day-wise study plan.
Unacademy
Unacademy, the Bengaluru-based edtech startup, raised $50 million in Series D funding round from Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, and Blume Ventures. The funding round also saw the participation of other startup founders including Aakrit Vaish (Co-founder and CEO, Haptik) and Sujeet Kumar (Co-dounder and CEO, Udaan). In fact, the founders of Unacademy - Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini also participated in the round.
Unacademy Co-founders (L to R), Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Gaurav Munjal
Started by Roman, Gaurav, and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy helps educators create lessons on the Educator App, which learners access via the Learning App, and it has more than 10,000 educators and 13 million learners on its platform.
Vedantu
Bengaluru-based Vedantu raised $42 million in a Series C funding round led by Tiger Global and WestBridge Capital. With this round, the online tutoring platform is expected to be valued ataround $100 million.
Vedantu’s Founders (L-R): Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash, and Pulkit Jain
Vedantu was launched by Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash, and Vamsi Krishna in 2014. It has over one million lifetime users on its platform, and recently launched W.A.V.E – a personalised and interactive form for online learning platforms. The platform helps with student-teacher interaction, doubt-solving, participation in gamified quizzes, and customisation of teaching patterns owing to constant feedback.
Lido Learning
Mumbai-based edtech startup Lido Learning raised $3 million as part of its Series A funding round led by investors like Ronnie Screwvala (Chairman, upGrad), Ananth Narayanan (CEO, Medlife), Vikrampati Singhania (MD, JK Tyres), Anupam Mittal (CEO, Shaadi.com), and Arihant Patni (MD, Patni Wealth Advisors), among others.
Sahil Sheth founded Lido Learning in April 2019 to cater to students from Classes V to XI, offering year-long coaching classes in mathematics and science, through an integrated online platform that combines content along with tutors from across the country.
Adda247 has secured $6 million in Series B funding led by Info Edge (India) and Asha Impact. STL. An existing investor of Adda247 also participated in the latest round.
Adda247 offers products like live-video classes, on-demand video courses, mock tests, and books focussed on government examinations.
Anil Nagar (L) and Saurabh Bansal (R)
Started by Anil Nagar and Saurabh Bansal in 2010, Adda247 today is present on both online and offline platforms, with more than 450 coaching centers, 500+ professionals, and about 1,000 teachers across the country. Since its inception in 2010, the company claims it has trained more than 100 million students and helped them crack various prestigious government examinations.
DoubtNut
DoubtNut has raised a funding of Rs 23 crore ($3.3 million) in the round led by Surge, an early-stage startup accelerator programme by Sequoia India, with participation from existing investors WaterBridge Ventures and Omidyar Network India, and new investor, AET, Japan.
Doubtnut co-founders Aditya Shankar and Tanushree Nagori.
Launched in October 2017 by IIT-Delhi alumni Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar (who are also serial entrepreneurs in the education space), DoubtNut is an instant doubt clearing app leveraging AI. It helps students (Classes 6-12 + IIT-JEE) get answers to math problems in an easy-to-use format – the student takes a picture of the problem and gets a video explaining the solution.
With over one lakh videos in the library prepared by experts from IITs and other leading institutions, the company believes these are valuable tools for students and can also act as an aid to teachers.
Cuemath
Bengaluru-based edtech startup Cuemath raised $5.5 million in its extended Series B funding round led by Manta-Ray Ventures Limited and also saw the participation from existing investors Capital G by Google and Sequoia India.
The platform, which was founded by Manan Khurma in 2013, is an after-school math excellence programme for children between KG and Class 8 levels and is offered through home-based centres, which are managed and run by trained and certified Cuemath teachers.
In a fast-growing economy, the right person to approach to understand the resources and production market is an economist. The demand for efficient economists are on the rise in a competitive business world.
Economists study the production and distribution of resources, goods, and services. They collect and analyse data, research trends, and evaluate economic issues before deriving solutions for a better economy. By interpreting and forecasting market trends, they advise companies on their economic practices.
YourStory has curated a list of job openings for economists in the business environment:
Senior Economist – IN Fees and Selection Economics
Amazon
Experience needed: 5+ years
Amazon is on the lookout for a motivated economist who will work on key business problems like seller behaviour and program evaluation. The candidates should be able to solve problems using econometric models and provide data-driven guidance. They are expected to conduct, direct and coordinate all phases of research projects. They must partner with economists across WW teams and think of projects with IN/Global scope.
Selected candidates will have to analyse and interpret financial information and provide economic advice. They should partner with the on-shore Economics team to support research operations. Their responsibility includes developing and maintaining statistical models to forecast economic variables like inflation and GDP. Working knowledge of statistical packages such as Eview, SPSS and STATA is a must.
The company is looking for a competent economic analyst who has a strong understanding of data. They must develop economic guidelines and prepare points of view used in data set preparation. Providing litigation support such as writing reports for expert testimony will be their responsibility. The candidates should work with computational accuracy. Knowledge of database like World Bank, IMF, BIS and national sources like RBI, MOSPI is a prerequisite.
As a transport economist, the successful candidate will be responsible for providing relevant analytical techniques in the transport planning field. Their focus will be on transport appraisal and business care advice. They will be involved in the technical development of project tasks and will have to develop and check economic models. The applicants must understand how appraisals and business case requirements should match client needs and support scheme developments.
Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy
Experience needed: 2+ years
The center is looking for a research economist with a strong understanding of policy analysis and proficiency in micro-economic theory. Their role will include having to estimate the cost of negative externalities from urban road transport and recommending policy instruments to reduce external costs. They must contribute to primary surveys and analysis to understand the willingness to pay for the externality. They will also be expected to conduct sensitivity analysis for various scenarios.
If there is one thing that founders, especially early-stage ones, find challenging it is fundraising. What is the right time to raise funds, how much they should raise, at what stage should they look at raising funds, and, of course, at what valuation?
In this episode of #MatrixMoments, Tarun Davda, Managing Partner, Matrix India, talks about the important pointers that founders need to keep in mind when planning for a fundraise.
Think of fundraising as a balance between dilution and being well-capitalised. Tarun says,
“I think at the outset, like every business balances growth and profitability, fundraising also needs to be thought about as a balance between dilution and being well-capitalised. And, how much capital you need is a question that the founder first needs to spend time thinking over before they even start discussing with VCs.”
He explains, raising too little means that you are going to be in the market too often to fundraise or will run out of cash.
Tarun adds, “On the other hand raising too much comes with all sorts of issues. There’s a lack of discipline. There is too much dilution for the founding team. There is over-valuation, and one can’t justify the price to the next-round investor. So, I think the rule of thumb is, don’t raise too little, don’t raise too much.”
How much capital do you need to execute your plan for 24 months?
This is the basic rule of thumb. Assuming that it takes you anywhere between three and six months to fundraise, that’s basically giving the team enough runway for 18 to 24 months to ensure that they are able to show meaningful progress before hitting the market for the next round of fundraise.
He adds that, at the same time, it ensures that the team isn’t constantly distracted by the activity of fundraising, which does tend to happen often.
"When you look at a competitive sort of market, there are companies which operate in highly competitive dynamics where there is a huge premium for those that end up becoming the category leader. And, in such cases, obviously the competitive dynamics will inform how much you raise and when you raise. And, it’s harder to predict and say, I am going to be on this 18 to 24 month cycle of raising capital. And, at that time, very often the advice is ‘raise as much you can when you can’, essentially, see money, take money,” Tarun explains.
Understand the kind of market you are operating in
Citing an example, Tarun says, “If you are operating in a market where capital can help you scale disproportionately, I think it makes sense to raise as much capital as you are able to access because, to the point I made earlier, if you are able to use that to get category leadership, more capital will get concentrated in that company, which will most likely help the company scale even faster, and more capital then sort of chases you.”
He adds this isn’t always the case. It obviously needs to be followed up with execution. But, capital being a sort of fuel does become important. On the other hand, if you are in a market that isn’t necessarily growing fast, capital doesn’t have the network effects.
This basically means that the business model is more linear. Raising too much capital can actually cause more harm than good because your company becomes over-capitalised, investors are looking for generating IRR on the investment and start pushing you for growth, you start doing things that aren’t scalable, and this potentially starts destroying the economics of the business.
“So, raising too much in those situations can actually result in your company becoming significantly worse off. So, I think understanding what the right number is for your business is very important,” says Tarun.
Control what you can
Tarun points out that the market determines the valuation, but founders should focus on dilution, which is how much money is available at that price. What matters at the end is how large a company you are building, which is the size of the pie, he says, adding,
“But also, what percentage of that pie you own. And so, I tell this to all the founders: valuation is vanity. That number is going to keep changing with every round, but what will not change is the percentage of ownership. And, once you dilute it, it’s unlikely you are going to get back that ownership. And, so diluting too much too early on can result in various issues down the line. And so, control what you can, which is the dilution and how much money can you raise at that dilution.”
Early-stage valuations are as much art as they are science. There is no one size fits all. A lot of it is a negotiation between the investor and the founder. Today, typical seed checks in India are anywhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million or so.
Typical Series A checks continue to be in the four to seven million kind of range. Typical Series B checks are anywhere from 8 million to 20 million or 25 million even, depending on how much progress the company has been able to make. And, obviously, there are always outliers.
“If you are a repeat founder, if you are a successful founder, if you are a senior executive who’s worked at one of the successful startups, you will end up raising much more capital and the check sizes will go up. But, the numbers I have given you are more sort of the 80 percentile sort of median,” says Tarun.
He adds that dilutions have also been stabilised. Dilution at seed rounds maybe of a million dollars or so tends to be in the 15 to 20 or 25 percent kind of range. Dilution for Series A round is in the 20 to 30 percent range. And dilution for Series B rounds is again 15 to 25 percent.
“If there is a competitive dynamic to the round, it’s almost always the case that you end up raising more money for lower dilution. If, however, the fund raise has been hard and there isn’t enough interest, investors tend to have more of a say in the valuation, and the investor that is investing in your round tends to have a bigger say and likely will want to put in slightly lower amounts of capital for getting ownership at the higher end of that range. And so, that’s basically what decides valuations at the early stages. I guess the question that founders, like I said earlier, should ask themselves is how much capital is available at that dilution,” adds Tarun.
Tarun explains: “One should aim to create at least 10x value relative to the capital that you have raised. If you see the best and the most capital-efficient companies the worldover, if you take Facebook, Uber, Slack, Appdynamics — all of these companies at various points in their journey of fundraising were valued at 10x of the total capital raised prior to that round.”
So, if the company had cumulatively raised $100 million, the next round of financing after that would be at a billion dollar pre, or more. Not all companies are able to hit that.
“So, if you see a bunch of ecommerce companies in a market that is highly competitive, some of them have ended up raising at 2.5, even 3 times of the total capital raised. Now, that’s not to say that those aren’t good companies. It just means that the capital efficiency of those business models is significantly lower than what would be required to create a lot of value for early shareholders in the company. And, founders will likely need to dilute a lot more to take the company towards a large outcome,” says Tarun.
Enterprise companies, in fact, tend to be even more capital efficient. And, these are valued sometimes at 10 to 20 or 25 times of total capital raised. So, Zoom, which is a company that recently went public with an IPO, raised all of $160 million before. And, its IPO was priced at a $9-billion valuation which was 55-odd times the total capital raised.
“And so, with very minimal dilution for shareholders, the company has actually managed to create excellent value. Like I said, these are benchmarks. Not all companies will be able to hit these benchmarks. But, it kind of gives you a framework of how to think about it, because otherwise you are just shooting in the dark; you need to know how far you are from what the best companies are able to do,” says Tarun.
Aim for a 3x markup between rounds
Citing an example, Tarun asks to assume you raised your last round at $10 million pre-evaluation. You should then aim to make enough progress in the company with the capital that you raised that you can at least justify a $30 million pre-evaluation for the next round, he says.
Explaining further, Tarun says, “Obviously, the flipside is that the company needs to have made enough progress. You can’t just say, listen, I want these multiples, without having enough metrics to back it up. But again, the founder then needs to start thinking: ‘I have raised money at a $100 million valuation. If I need to now match the three-times value creation that is doing the rounds and, if my valuation that I am targeting for the next round is $300 million pre-evalution, I need to ask myself, with the capital that I have today, am I going to be able to take the company to a point where an investor will be willing to pay me 300 million?’ And so, it could be a revenue multiple, it could be GMV multiple, it could be whatever metric is used to value your company at that stage.”
He adds that working backwards is important. The ‘bottoms-up’ math has to make sense for that investor because otherwise you are not going to be able to fundraise.
“So, it’s important that when you are thinking about raising capital at that stage when you raised whatever dollars you did at the $100 million price, you have to ask yourself, how do I architect my business today such that 18 months out or 24 months out, when I go back to the market to raise capital, I can raise money at a $300-million target valuation? Have you built enough in terms of the numbers, in terms of revenue, in terms of GMV, in terms of whatever the metrics that you are focussed on, are those at a value that somebody will be able to pay you 300-million valuation?” adds Tarun.
The market your company is in
“I think whether your startup is leading industry growth is a big determinant of what multiple you can raise money at. High-growth companies and category leaders almost always get valued way higher than the number two or number three player. And we have seen that, across companies, if you are the market leader, you will end up raising capital at a much higher multiple compared to anyone else or any other company in your space,” concludes Tarun.
When Harshvardhan Lunia returned to his hometown, Ahmedabad, his family was a little baffled. The young CA, after all, seemed to have it all: a cushy job at ICICI’s corporate office in London, the financial capital of the world.
But Harshvardhan had different plans. It was 2014, and India was reaching a turning point. He noticed that businesses and SMEs were being run by the younger generation. Harsh and his friend, Mukul Sachan, felt there was a big gap that existing financial models weren’t able to solve and the idea for Lendingkart slowly started taking shape.
“These are people who do not have the capital and resources, but can run a business and are in need of working capital. We realised that traditional banks and NBFCs weren’t the best option as they looked at the borrower as someone who is a fraud and who would possibly default. However, we come with the idea that a borrower wants to return the loan. In all the 70,000 loans we have disbursed, we have had only 38 frauds,” says Harsh, the CEO and Co-founder of Lendingkart.
Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO and Co-founder of Lendingkart Technologies.
From lending to let's move on to the rise of gaming in India. If 2019 was about gaming going mainstream in India, penetrating across ages, gender groups, and geographies, 2020 is expected to see that expansion of that growth.
Largely driven by online and mobile gaming, the sector is growing at a CAGR of 22 percent and is likely to touch $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2020.
It’s possible that a few more gaming unicorns might be born. New, immersive gaming experiences will be created and gaming technologies will become more affordable and accessible. More localised games will be launched, and fantasy sports will go beyond cricket. 2020 is definitely going to be the year for games.
After all the fun and games, let us take a trip to the south. Chennai is a SaaS hub, and it’s also the place where the idea of Amazon's Web Services ML model was born.
Many believe SageMaker, the machine learning (ML) service from AWS, has truly democratised the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and data science by making it available for developers, corporations, and laymen alike. What you may not know is that the idea behind this AWS offering took root in Chennai a few years ago, when a software engineer on an annual pilgrimage back home was nursing a bad bout of jet jag.
Swami Sivasubramanian, the VP, Machine Learning, at AWS, conceptualised the SageMaker while dealing with jet lag.
Swami Sivasubramanian, VP, Machine Learning, AWS, is considered a pioneer in cloud computing. The 41-year-old joined Amazon in 2005 after completing a PhD in distributed computing, making him one of the early employees for an idea that is now a $36 billion ARR business. Over the years, he has built 40 AWS services along with his team.
Rata Tata is a national icon. The 81-year-old doyen of the Tata group is one of India’s most influential business leaders, and has largely eschewed the public eye for the most part of his life.
In a deeply personal, honest, and candid interview, he reveals what defines him as a person; his dreams for an equal opportunity India; and his advice for the young generation of aspiring Indians.
Mr Ratan Naval Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Chairman of the Tata Trusts.
What is that one quality that he thinks defines him? He ponders and offers a profoundly honest and poignant answer. “It's difficult for me to say, except that I have tried to treat all people equally,” Mr Tata tells Your Story, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if searching for just the right words to articulate his feeling.
“Whether it’s a poor person on the street or a kid selling magazines as against a millionaire or a billionaire, I talk to them and treat them all the same way. I'm aware that I do that, and I do that not for show, but because of the feeling that I think everyone deserves recognition as a human being,” he adds.
There’s a purpose and an emphasis with which he utters every word. You can almost hear the question in his voice – the one that plagues every compassionate, empathetic, and concerned soul: shouldn’t all people be treated equally? Doesn’t everyone deserve an equal opportunity in life?
From the icon, let’s move on to startups that we believe can help shape the future.
The Indian startup ecosystem is dominated by the likes of Flipkart, Paytm, Ola, Swiggy, and Zomato, but there are also many deep tech startups that solve core software engineering challenges.
Among these is Harness, a Silicon Valley-headquartered technology company that has its research and development centre in Bengaluru. Co-founded by Jyoti Bansal, who shot to fame when his earlier venture, AppDynamics, was acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion in January 2017, the startup believes in providing exposure to engineers early in their career by giving them tough problems to solve.
“The legacy definition of engineering only referred to building and constructing structures out of abstract patterns, which was considered 'hi-tech' at the time. Today, as technology is being commoditised, the focus is now on elements like design and aesthetics.”
Our techie of the week is Nikhil Kumar, a secret warrior at IndiaStack who helped make UPI a reality.
This is something Lalitesh Katragadda, the former Country Head of Google India Products, and a fellow at IndiaStack, told a confused Nikhil Kumar, Co-founder and Chief Evangelist of Setu, a few years ago. The latter applied it to his own work, which led him to envision a line of products that would eventually transform the way India interacted with the internet.
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