After a spate of lay-offs by Indian startups in the edtech space, EruditusGroup has reportedly let go of 40 people, including 15 from its talent acquisition team. In an interview Co-founder and CEO, Ashwin Damera, said that an additional 40 employees resigned voluntarily, taking the tally to 80 people.
With this, Accel and SoftBank backed edtech unicorn Eruditus joins the ranks of peers like Unacademy, BYJU’s-backed WhiteHatJr and Vedantu, who have let go of over 1,800 permanent and contract staff in 2022.
The development was first reported by The Economic Times which stated that the Eruditus Group had let go of 50 percent of its talent acquisition team. In an interview with Moneycontrol, the CEO said that apart from 15 employees in talent acquisition, employees from other functions including marketing were let go.
Request for comments from the company did not elicit a response till the time of publishing this article.
With offline classrooms and courses opening up and growth rounds drying out, edtech startups in India have gone on a cash conservation mode, letting go of talent in non-core functions.
Of the global employee base of 2,300 at Eruditus Group, nearly 1,500 are based in India. Emeritus, part of the Eruditus Group, raised $350 million in debt financing from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to power its global mergers and acquisition strategy. With the debt round, the startup has raised a total of $1 billion across debt and equity since August 2021. The Eruditus Group was valued at $3.2 billion in its equity round from SoftBank, concluded in August 2021.
Founded in 2010 by Ashwin Damera and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu, Eruditus Group offers certification courses from global universities targeted at working professionals. In a recent release, the company had said that the Emeritus arm of business was on track to clock $500 million in gross bookings for its courses for the financial year 2021-22.
This weekly quiz from YourStory tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 40th edition of the quiz, we present issues tackled by real-life entrepreneurs in their startup journeys.
What would you do if you were in their shoes? At the end of the quiz, you will find out what the entrepreneurs and innovators themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?
Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 340 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.
Q1: Healthcare opportunity
The pandemic spurred trends like online delivery of medicines and teleconsultations with doctors. But other than curative healthcare, what other health trends did the pandemic accelerate, and how?
Q2: Digital business
Going digital helps many MSMEs reach new customers and serve them better. It improves workforce productivity as well and unlocks new innovation. What’s another benefit for small businesses going digital, on the monetary front?
The pandemic spurred the remote work movement by requiring work from home (WFH) during the lockdowns and beyond. It redefined the way people connected to their colleagues, along with online education and entertainment. But what key impacts did the pandemic have on employer-employee relationships?
Q4: Need for speed
Businesses need to have speed in the way they respond to customer queries in the digital era. They also need to anticipate their needs and aspirations faster. Where else does speed matter for founders, in the launch and growth stages?
Q5: Role of government
During the pandemic, digital channels helped the government in ensuring vaccine distribution and coordinating three-phase vaccination campaigns. What’s another key example of effective e-government during the pandemic?
Answers!
Congratulations on having come this far! But there’s more to come – answers to these five questions (below), as well as links to articles with more details on the entrepreneurs’ solutions. Happy reading, happy learning – and happy creating!
A1: Healthcare opportunity
There are two kinds of healthcare approaches - preventive and curative. “While people think about healthcare as curative, things have started to change now pushed by the onset of the pandemic,” observes Aniruddha Sen, Co-founder of healthcare subscription platform Kenko Health.
Proper diet, fitness regimes, and immunity-boosting products witnessed significant growth during the COVID-19 waves. Kenko Health reports at least 70,000 monthly customers and hopes to cross 100,000 this year. Read more about the subscription-based startup here.
“By taking the transactions and payments online, businesses increase their financial transparency and provide comprehensive cash flow insights to potential investors or creditors,” explains Meghna Suryakumar, Founder and CEO of Crediwatch.
Instead of just annual reports, business activity can be tracked on a monthly basis, eg. service tax payments. “These actionable insights enable lenders (banks or other financial institutions) to assess MSME creditworthiness better,” she adds. Read more about how digitisation helps banks expand their customer base via the fintech route here.
A3: Work from home
“The pandemic has acted as a catalyst in rebuilding employer-employee relationships. Employees today are looking for more flexibility in terms of the working hours and the location of work, along with other things,” observes Senthil Kumar Muthamizhan, Founder of CultureMonkey.
“While empathy has always been critical, it’s earned a new meaning in a post-pandemic world. Active listening forums or formal/informal pulse checks are a few mechanisms that can help leaders build a culture of empathy and compassion,” adds Prashanti Bodugum, VP, Walmart Global Tech India. Read more about accessible support for all employees here.
“Today, everything happens very quickly compared to before, so if you want to grab a chance, you have to act super quickly,” says Marcin Beme, Founder and CEO of audiobook platform Audioteka, as a launch tip for startups.
“Make time for learning because in this world, your only advantage is to learn faster than the rest,” adds Jowita Michalska, Founder of Digital University. The world of digital startups is fast-moving, and the stage is global as well. Read more entrepreneurship tips and case studies here.
A5: Role of government
“The onslaught of COVID-19 accelerated digitalisation and reinforced the role of G2P (government-to-person) payments in helping countries and governments deliver social assistance rapidly, effectively, and responsibly,” explains Lamia Naji, Consultant, Digital Development, World Bank.
“Digital government has played a major role in COVID-19 response,” adds Dr Abiyot Bayou Tehone, Lead, Digital Transformation Program at Ministry of Innovation and Technology, Ethiopia. Read more about digital infrastructure and resilience in the pandemic era here.
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).
Senior advisor for private equity firmKKR in India, Sanjay Nayar, announced the first close of his $125 million venture capital fund focused on early-stage tech investments in India. Investors in Sorin Investments, a fund founded by Sanjay,include the family offices of Nayar and Banga family, which owns Caravel Group headquartered in Hong Kong.
In an interview with The Economic Times, Sanjay Nayar said that the fund will be raising capital from nearly seven family offices and had received the necessary regulatory clearances to launch operations.
The fund will write cheques ranging from $2 million to $10 million across 10 to 15 companies, participating in Series A and B rounds. The fund will focus on fintech, health tech, direct-to-consumer brands, ecommerce, business-to-business technology companies and Software-as-a-Service startups.
The fund has also appointed Anshul Bansal, former Vice President at Fireside Ventures and Harshita Kochar, a former associate at DAM Capital Advisors as founding members.
The announcement comes at a time when an increasing number of venture capital firms have sent out advisories to portfolio companies asking them to conserve cash. Growth rounds will be hard to come by, believe industry observers, as the likes of Tiger Global and SoftBank have adopted a wait and watch approach.
According to a recent report by IVCA and EY, private equity and venture capital investments in April 2022 declined 27 percent year-on-year to $5.5 billion as a result of the slowdown in growth rounds.
In May this year, Absolute - a plant bioscience startup, raised $100 million in its first institutional funding round from Sequoia Capital India, Alpha Wave Global, and Tiger Global Management.
Founded in 2015 by Agam Khare, with Prateek Rawat joining as a co-founder later, the Delhi-headquartered company provides precision agriculture solutions using phytology, microbiology and AI technology.
It offers software solutions to control farm hardware systems, and collects data on an regularly basis from IoT devices, sensor suites, hardware systems, and satellite sources. It then feeds it into proprietary machine-learning algorithms to produce actionable insights.
Team at Absolute
“We will use the funds raised to bolster our three core platforms–the bioscience platform, Universal Farm OS, and the global trade platform. This capital will also help us in hiring talent and scaling to newer markets and segments,” said Prateek in mail responses.
In today’s Turning Point, we speak to Agam to understand how he came up with his winning idea.
Words of inspiration
“In 2015, we started as a research initiative to study microscopic details of nature’s molecular building blocks that impact agricultural yield and quality,” says Agam, Founder and CEO.
The idea to build this was inspired by the world-renowned scientist and 11th President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and his call for the next big revolution in agriculture, says Agam.
He was part of the founding team of Kalam Foundation from 2011 to 2012. Here, he worked closely with Dr Kalam on a range of issues, including agri productivity. He then went on to launch and scale an industrial robotics and factory automation company, Vertex Group of Companies, working across various sectors, including food and beverage, pharma, auto, oil and gas, steel and cement from 2012 to 2016.
“One day in early 2012, at his residence, Dr Kalam presented two simple and profound thoughts,” recalls Agam. How to build a world where all stakeholders win while solving humanity’s grandest and most fundamental challenges-clean air, clear water, and clean food? And, what kind of a world will we leave behind?
This presented an opportunity to solve these grand challenges by radically improving agricultural performance to potentially impact farmer livelihoods, consumer health, and environmental sustainability.
“And, that gave rise to the seed we call Absolute,” shares Agam.
Words to action
The company started by building a fully autonomous indoor vertical farm on the outskirts of Delhi in 2015, and later in Okhla in 2017.
The farm was majorly run on the hydroponic model, where the cultivation of plants happens in nutrient-enriched water, with or without the mechanical support of an inert medium such as sand, gravel, or perlite and aeroponic model – growing plants in an air or moist environment to greenhouse farms.
The company used these farms as the base of experiments in collecting over 30,000 data points to set conditions suitable for any specific plant to grow.
“We arrived at a robust technology structure, which was by far one of the most cost and tech optimal systems to exist in the world, almost 1/10th of the average global cost,” says Agam. “However, we still could not find a scalable fit for the produce from them in the world, especially in developing economies like India.”
This is when Team Absolute realised that to reap the benefits, one has to democratise the technology for everyone - across all types of farms and across all growing practices, and build a full-stack solution enabled by natural or biological innovations across the agri value chain
“We then deployed our technological capabilities to build a network of open farms and greenhouses where we have been helping farmers dramatically increase yields, improve quality and eliminate persistent issues that exist in the traditional farming system,” adds Prateek.
To the future
Absolute currently has a plant bioscience R&D platform BioX, a farm operating system (FARM OS), and a global trade platform for the produce. Absolute’s Farm OS generates actionable insights based on inputs from the likes of sensors, satellite feeds, and others to the farmers for optimal growing conditions throughout the crop cycle.
“Over the next few years, we aim to build a truly full-stack, proprietary tech platform that originates with the right seeds and concludes at the right market,” shares Prateek.
Absolute has scaled its solution to over 15,000 farmers and has built a team with more than 100 scientists.
(This story has been updated to reflect additional inputs from the company)
The month of June has started on a positive note with a sharp rise in venture investments into the Indian startup ecosystem, with soonicorns leading the pack.
The total venture funding for the first week of June stood at $326 million—cutting across 24 deals—as compared to $191 million in the comparable period of the previous week. If one takes into account the expected infusion of $300 million into ShareChat, then the total funding this week certainly exceeds expectations.
The key deals during the first week of June were largely from the soonicorn startups, which were in the $50 million and below range.
However, despite June beginning on a high note, the mood still remains quite cautious and startups have started cutting costs amid the prevailing macroeconomic uncertainities.
Key transactions
Short video app ShareChat raised nearly $300 million in funding from Google, Times Group, and Temasek Holdings, Reuters reported. The deal values the company at $5 billion.
Google-backed math learning startup CueMath raised $57 million led by Alpha Wave Global at a valuation of $407 million.
D2C brand SUGAR Cosmetics raised $50 million from L Catterton, A91 Partners, Elevation Capital, and India Quotient.
Fintech unicorn Slice raised $50 million from Tiger Global, Moore Strategic Ventures, Insight Partners, and GMO VenturePartners.
Cloud kitchen startup Curefoods raised $50 million from Winter Capital, Three State Capital, Chiratae Ventures, Accel, Iron Pillar, and others.
Fintech startup StrideOne raised Rs 250 crore (over $32 million) in a mix of equity and debt led by Elevar Equity.
Healthcare startup Orange Healthraised $25 million from Bertelsmann India, General Catalyst, Accel, Y Combinator, Good Capital, and others.
Alternative data platform for investors Synapticraised $20 million in a Series B round of funding led by Valor Equity Partners.
Live video streaming platform Eloelo raised $13 million from KB Investments, Kalaari Capital, WaterBridge Ventures, and Lumikai Fund.
Spacetech startup Bellatrix Aerospace raised $8 million from BASF Venture Capital, Inflexor Ventures, StartupXseed, Pavestone Capital, and others.
Agritech startup Nutrifreshraised $5 million from a group of angel investors—Theodore Cleary, Sandiip Bhammer, Sky Kurtz, Mathew Cyriac, and others.
Innovative Retail Concepts, which operates online grocery platform BigBasket, has received Rs 350 crore from holding company Supermarket Grocery Supplies, Economic Times reported citing filings from business intelligence platform Tofler.
BigBasket had received Rs 1,000 crore from its holding company, ET had reported in April. The latest investment was approved on May 24.
The infusion comes months after the online grocer acquired the enterprise business unit of Kochi-based deeptech startup Agrima Infotech.
BigBasket said it would be implementing Agrima Infotech’s customer vision technology platform, Psyight, at the self-checkout counters at its retail stores.
Founded in December 2011 by Abhinay Choudhari, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, VS Ramesh, and VS Sudhakar, Bigbasket is backed by investors such as Alibaba Group, Mirae Asset Ventures, and Trifecta Capital.
Tata Digital, a subsidiary of Tata Sons, acquired a 64.3 percent stake in Bigbasket in May 2021.
In April 2022, Tata Group launched its super app—Tata Neu. The super app will bring the services and products of the $103 billion Tata group under one umbrella.
The app already has brands like Air Asia, Bigbasket, Croma, IHCL, Qmin, Starbucks, Tata 1MG, Tata Cliq, Tata Play, and Westside, among others.
India is on the cusp of an e-mobility revolution led by the two-wheeler and three-wheeler vehicle segments.
As we inch towards the goal of limiting our GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions and protecting our environment, we need to heavily rely on advanced solutions like battery swapping to reduce environmental pollution.
Battery swapping involves exchanging discharged batteries for charged ones and provides customers the flexibility to charge them separately.
It also has the potential to enhance the attractiveness of electric mobility by addressing the issues related to building a sustainable EV ecosystem, the challenges associated with recharging electric vehicles (EVs), and most importantly, working towards a cleaner environment.
According to ResearchAndMarkets, the global electric vehicle battery swapping market is expected to be worth $229.1 million in 2022 and reach $690.81 million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 24.7 percent.
In Budget FY 2022-23, the government announced plans to release a battery swapping policy and interoperability standards. In April 2022, Niti Aayog introduced a draft battery swapping policy to ensure faster-scale adoption of EVs by making them more efficient, affordable, and accessible.
Many startups are now actively investing to reach this solution at the grassroots level. Here are some companies that are providing battery swapping facilities to two and three-wheelers in India.
Sun Mobility
Founded in 2017 by Chetan Maini, Uday Khemka, Ajay Goel, and Anant Badjatya, Bengaluru-based Sun Mobility is an innovative technology platform that enables battery swapping solutions.
It offers interoperable smart mobility solutions for EVs, separating the battery from the vehicle and thereby bringing down the upfront cost of EVs, making them financially viable.
The startups’ vision is to create a universal network of interoperable energy infrastructure to accelerate mass adoption of electric mobility.
Sun Mobility has collaborated with battery cell technology providers, vehicle manufacturers, oil marketing companies, fleet operators, aggregators, and cities across the ecosystem to enable quicker adoption of its solution.
In October 2021, the startup raised $50 million from Vitol to accelerate and expand its services across India and select global markets.
Battery Smart
Delhi-based Battery Smart, founded in 2020 by Pulkit Khurana and Siddharth Sikka, is a network of EV-battery swapping stations for electric three-wheeler rickshaws and two-wheelers.
The startup offers advanced Lithium-ion batteries to e-rickshaws on a subscription basis, where the driver can stop at any of the startup’s partner swapping stations and get a fully charged battery against a discharged battery. The replacement charge per battery is Rs 25,000 to Rs 28,000.
Battery Smart aims to improve the livelihood of e-rickshaw drivers and strives to double their daily earnings.
In November 2021, the startup raised $7 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures and Orios Ventures to strengthen its battery assignment technology, expand, and scale its operations.
Chargeup
Varun Goenka and Akshay Kashyap founded the New Delhi-based startup in 2019 to provide a battery swapping network for electric two- and three-wheeler vehicles.
The startup claims to have adopted an advanced technology-driven approach to offer battery as a service (BaaS) solutions to e-rickshaw drivers.
Chargeup enables e-rikshaw drivers to join the service without any upfront cost. This allows drivers to visit the swapping station as many as two to three times a day to swap the discharged batteries with charged batteries.
The startup claims to have 100 swapping stations and 800 drivers on the platform.
In February 2022, Chargeup raised $2.5 million from Capital A, Anicut Capital, Tiger Shroff, Aman Gupta, Shraddha Gupta, and Sameer Mehta to expand its network in new cities and to build bigger capacities.
RACEnergy
Founded by BITS Pilani alumni Arun Sreyas and Gautham Maheswaran in 2018, Hyderabad-based RCEnergy develops cost-efficient battery swapping stations and swappable batteries for use in three-wheelers.
It also builds high-performance powertrains for use in three-wheeler vehicles.
The startup was founded to accelerate the adoption of electric mobility with its affordable electric powertrains that give better performance than its ICE counterparts and include tracking, security functions, and safety.
It provides an integrated solution by taking the cost of the battery out of the vehicle and offering energy as a service through a network of swapping stations.
In August 2021, RACEnergy raised $1.3 million led by Micelio Fund, growX ventures, Huddle, Prophetic Ventures, BITSian Angels, and other angel investment firms to enhance R & D, scale the company’s swapping technology and infrastructure, and fulfil pre-orders received in Hyderabad and surrounding Tier II cities.
BatteryPool
Pune-based Battery Pool, founded by Ashwin Shankar in 2018, is a tech stack that provides real-time, actionable insight to fleet operators to eliminate operational challenges in running EVs and improve utilisation of the vehicles.
The startup is deploying and building technology-driven SaaS and hardware solutions that are crafted to meet the needs of EV fleet operators. It is an IoT enabled, battery agnostic, swapping station and an API-first software ecosystem.
Its IoT swapping stations are customisable to battery specifications, integratable with existing CRM via Open API, and designed for Indian ambient conditions.
The startup claims that its IoT vehicle tracking system will help with vehicle locations, vehicle diagnostics, and battery charge level.
In August 2021, BatteryPool raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from IAN and others to scale up business development efforts and add new fleet charging products to its portfolio.
Chinese internet conglomerate ByteDance has exited its investmentin DailyHunt and Josh app parent, VerSe Innovation through a secondary sale to Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), according to regulatory filings.
This was a part of the $805 million raised by Ver Se in April, 2022, led by CPPIB, OTPP, Luxor Capital, and Sumeru Ventures, valuing the company at $5 billion. ByteDance sold its shares in Ver Se for $102 million approximately, according to the filings. ByteDance has first invested in Ver Se in 2016.
The news was first reported by Mint.
This marks the exit of another China-headquartered investor from Indian startup. Earlier this year, Alibaba and Ant Financial exited Paytm Mall, selling their stakes for a meager $5.6 million. In 2021, Shunwei Capital had exited social media platform Koo by selling its share to other investors on the company’s cap table.
The news of ByteDance’s exit from Ver Se comes at a time when the company is reportedly in talks to forge India partnerships to mark its return to India. ByteDance’s business in India was dealt with a body blow when the government banned its short video app TikTok in June 2020. Following this, the company faced multiple high profile exits from its India team.
Ver Se’s short video app Josh, which was launched as a competitor to TikTok, claims to have 150 Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Dailyhunt claims to have a user base of 350 million monthly users while PublicVibe has one million Daily Active Users, according to details shared by Ver Se in April this year.
In traditional healthcare, the patient experience feels broken due to several reasons including non-transparency in pricing, delays in admission and discharge, etc. Also, hospitalisation costs and insurance documentation only make the forehead furrows grow.
Additionally, 30 percent of India’s population–or 42 crore people–are devoid of any form of health insurance, with actual numbers estimated to be higher due to existing gaps and overlaps among various schemes, the NITI Aayog has said.
Having known each other for over 10 years and worked together at Milestone Religare Private Equity,
Archit Garg and Dr Preet Pal Thakur thought about doing something to solve this problem. The duo launched Glamyo Health in February 2020.
Delhi-headquartered Glamyo Health is a multi-specialty healthcare startup that envisions delivering a hassle-free experience for all elective surgeries and cosmetic procedures with personalised care.
Starting up
Archit Garg completed his MBA from Said Business School, University of Oxford. After his education, he started his career with Deutsche Bank in London and spent almost 12 years on the investing side with organisations including Milestone Religare, Quadria Capital, and Rabo Equity.
Dr Preet Pal Thakur completed his MBBS degree from Government Medical College, Patiala, and went on to work as a resident doctor with Fortis Healthcare. He went on to pursue an MBA from IIM Indore, and then worked with global investment bank JP Morgan, and venture capital funds including Milestone Religare PE Fund, Asian Healthcare Fund, and Alkemi Venture Partners.
Archit met Dr Preet Pal while working at Milestone Religare Private Equity, and after 10 years of knowing each other, they thought of starting a new venture together.
In 2019, they met frequently at cafes to discuss business ideas and came up with the idea of creating a full-stack healthcare platform to provide a seamless experience to the patients.
Glamyo Health Co-founders(L:R) - ArchitGarg, Dr Preet Pal Thakur
Glamyo Health says it offers quality medical treatment, medications, and food at reduced or even half the market cost. The startup offers a single point of contact—from arranging consultations to post-surgery follow-ups—and delivers end-to-end services.
What does the startup solve?
Glamyo Health solves the following gaps in the market –
Information gap—by providing free and fair advice on the surgery through a team of 100 + medical coordinators.
Access gap–by providing various value-added services including hassle-free admission and discharge, free pick and drop, free OPD consultations, and follow-ups for the patient.
Financing gaps–Working with various financing stakeholders including insurance aggregators/EMI partners for arranging single-window clearance for patients for their healthcare financing needs.
“We are facilitating no-cost EMI options so that the patient does not need to bear any interest costs and they can pay for treatments in monthly instalments. For arranging this facility Glamyo Health has tied up with fintech players like Unofin, Shopse, Earlysalary, Liqui-loans, etc to facilitate loans to the patients at zero cost,” says Archit, Co-founder of Glamyo Health, during an interaction with YourStory.
Creating an OYO for hospitals
With a vision to make Glamyo health India's leading healthcare delivery brand, the co-founders believe that their company is like an OYO for the healthcare network.
“We utilise the free capacity of hospitals and surgeons. While there are 44,000 hospitals in India in the private domains, barring 10 percent being branded hospitals, most hospitals can utilise their OT (operation theatre) capacity to a mere 40 percent only. We target such hospitals and help them connect with the patients in their locality, creating a win-win situation,” states Archit.
This asset-light model has allowed the startup to scale to 16 cities with a network of 300+ hospitals and 200+ surgeons, and claims to have already touched the lives of 1,50,000 patients within 24 months of launch. It claims to cater to handle 40,000 patients enquiries each month.
YS Design team
Glamyo Health says its network spans 16 cities in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Chandigarh, Indore, Bhubaneshwar, Patna, Mysuru, Madurai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Lucknow, Kochi, and Coimbatore.
“To date, we have recorded 4,00,000 patient traffic and 1,50,000+ patients have had counselling sessions with our medical coordinators. Our patient-centric model has made sure that we have an NPS (Net Promotor Score) of 75+. Over the next two years, we plan to grow to 45+ cities and arrange $100 million in patient financing,” adds Achit.
Business model and revenue
The startup offers minimally invasive laser treatments at low cost with the latest technology and type of equipment.
The startup uses technologies like laser treatments for proctology and urology cases, and laparoscopic equipment for surgeries which helps in making surgeries minimally invasive surgeries.
Speaking of affordability, Archit adds, “On an average, we charge 25 percent lower than other hospitals, however, it entirely depends on various factors like location, case, treatment, the facility required etc.”
According to Dr Preet, Glamyo Health controls the cost by negotiating the rates with hospitals as well as by limiting the usage of consumables.
“Additionally, Glamyo Health mostly conducts day-care surgeries, reducing the OT (Operation Theatre) charges and hospitalisation expenses. Apart from this, most of the surgeries are laser-assisted, thus ensuring lower cost than the traditional surgeries which involves a lot of equipment and consumable expenses,” he adds.
“Glamyo Health is focused on 50+ surgeries, ranging from minimally invasive gallstone removal to laser surgeries for proctology ailments like piles, fissures, fistula, and more. We offer these treatments in the best hospitals across India,” adds Archit
It offers low-cost treatment for piles, circumcision surgery, hernia, mole removal, cosmetic surgeries, Lasik and cataract etc
The startup earns a portion of the surgery fee after paying the hospital and the surgeon.
Glamyo has tied up with almost 300 + hospitals which include Tier I chains including Apollo Hospitals, Manipal Hospitals, Sparsh Hospitals, and other standalone hospitals like IBS, Apex Hospitals, Parakh Hospitals, SRV Hospitals etc.
The healthtech startup has achieved a month-on-month growth of 25 percent in terms of revenue and claims to have closed FY 2022 with an ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) of $8 million. It aims to reach an Annualised Run-Rate of $80 million for FY 2023.
With a team size of 300 members, the healthcare startup is projected to grow to 600+ in the next six months.
Speaking of competitions, Archit highlights, “We are a full-stack player and compete with Pristyn Care and a few others like Medfin and Ayu Health.”
Funding and the way ahead
At the time of starting, the company raised $1 million in a seed round in February 2020 and last year, the startup raised $6 million in their Series A funding round led by Ananta Capital, along with participation from Agility Ventures, Udtara Ventures etc. The startup is already in advanced discussions for their Series B fundraise.
Speaking about its future plans, Archit mentions,
“Going forward, we aim to launch AI-powered counselling for patients. We are also planning to move into allied areas like diagnostics which help us in predictive analysis before anyone needs a surgery.”
The healthtech Industry is expected to grow by $50 billion in 2023. Secondary care healthcare in India is a $30 billion market and growing at 15 percent annually.
Hritesh Lohiya’s journey is an inspiration for entrepreneurs struggling to find that one winning business idea.
In the early 2000s, Hritesh’s ventures– from chemical manufacturing to stone-cutting– tanked one after another. However, after the year 2005, things began to change. Supported by his wife Priti Lohiya, he began making and selling recycled decor items such as cushions and bags.
After years of struggle and changes to the original business, their company, Priti International, debuted on the market via National Stock Exchange’s SME (small and medium enterprise) Exchange platform in 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further tested the resilience of the company, pushing it to adopt online commerce. Read more.
Editor’s Pick: Glamyo Health
Anyone who has ever dealt with hospital stays has had to face hurdles like non-transparency in pricing, delays in admission, complicated discharge procedures, and more. Also, hospitalisation costs and insurance documentation only make the forehead furrows grow.
Delhi-headquartered Glamyo Health, a multi-specialty healthcare startup, aims to deliver a hassle-free experience for all elective surgeries and cosmetic procedures with personalised care. Read more.
Glamyo Health Co-founders(L:R) - Archit Garg, Dr Preet Pal Thakur
Founded in 2013 by Anup Kumar Adlakha and Ankur Agarwal, Gurugram-based
PE Front Office provides end-to-end investment management solutions for private equity (PE), venture capital (VC) funds, and family offices. Read more.
IndiaP2P, a peer-to-peer lending platform for high-yield, fixed-income investment products, also aims to be India’s vanguard for debt. Simultaneously, the startup also wants to ensure borrowers get loans faster and in an easier manner. About 95 percent of its borrowers are women. Read more.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
Somdutta Singh
“Entrepreneurship is not about gender equality and leadership skills alone. It’s about the passion and the attitude with which a person pursues the dreams to achieve the unthinkable.”
Karnataka Chitakala Parishath in Bengaluru is host this weekend to an inspiring and educational exhibition on nature. Titled Moghi’s Tales, it features over 100 photographs of wildlife and landscapes by Amoghavarsha Patlapati.
All of 14-years-old, Amoghavarsha is a student at National Public School, Rajajinagar, Bengaluru. Inspired by nature during family outings to wildlife parks, he took up the camera with a passion at the age of seven.
The exhibition is also a testimony to the support and encouragement from his parents. Busloads of students have come to visit the exhibition, his mother, Dr Chaitra Harsha, proudly says in a chat with YourStory.
Chaitra is the Managing Director of Vipragen, a firm providing pre-clinical research for integrated drug discovery and development. She was also an industry expert for the TiE Women Bangalore 2020 programme for women entrepreneurs (YourStory was on the initial selection committee; see writeup here).
On the occasion of World Environment Day (celebrated each year on June 5), we present a selection of beautiful photographs from the exhibition. See also our special compilations of quotes and proverbs on Earth Day and World Environment Day.
The captivating images feature a wide range of animals and birds in natural settings, taken in national parks from Bandipur to Kaziranga. Amoghavarsha has also launched a film series on wildlife.
A short video on the exhibition features compliments to the young photographer by the honorary consuls of Tunisia, Peru, Poland, Estonia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Cambodia. Malathy Narayan, Senior Principal, NPS, expressed pride in the achievement of the school’s student.
The achievements were also praised by Rohit Varma, Co-founder of Nature inFocus. See our coverage of the annual Nature inFocus Photography and Film Contest editions from 2021,2020,2019,2018and2017.
“The response has been overwhelming. I would like to thank everyone for the love and support you have been showering on me,” Amoghavarsha enthuses.
Now, what have you done today to pause in your busy schedule and find new avenues to apply your creativity?
Chaitra Harsha
(All exhibition photographs were taken by Madanmohan Rao on location at the Moghli's Tales venue.)
See also the YourStory pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups,’accessible as apps for Apple and Android devices.
Food tech companyZomatoshared its Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) report on World Environment Day. Co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said the company has been working on six core themes in keeping with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
The core initiatives include climate conscious deliveries, enrolling 4,500 active Electric Vehicle (EV) based delivery partners as of March 2022. Nearly 18 percent of the deliveries were done by bicycle for FY 2022. The platform has also reduced waste by committing to 100 percent plastic neutral deliveries as of April 2022.
Zomato has also extended its Daily Feeding Program to 39 cities across India serving two lakh meals a day. The report also mentioned extending safety and well-being to its delivery partners including disability and death coverage apart from medical insurance. Zomato also claimed to have on-boarded 965 street vendors during FY 2022 under PM Svanidhi Scheme.
As part of being an equal opportunity employer, Zomato has also announced a six months parental leave policy to all employees, apart from 30 percent leadership roles being served by the women.
The Gurugram-headquartered company reported losses of Rs 1,220.3 crore for the financial year 2021-22 announced in May, 2022. The platform claims to manage $2.8 billion in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) across 535 million orders in FY 2022.
With schools shut, and students and teachers restricted indoors, the pandemic became a big catalyst for the adoption of online learning.
According to IBEF, the online education market is expected to grow by $2.28 billion at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of more than 20 percent. Overall, the Indian education sector was valued at $117 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $225 billion by 2025.
But with the world now opening up rapidly in the post-pandemic era, online learning has given way to hybrid education. Realising the importance of personalised teaching, new edtech apps are coming up with hybrid models that blend online and offline elements.
Here are some practice-based, personalised learning platforms that will enable students to ace their way in the exams.
SpeEdLabs
Mumbai-based SpeEdLabs, founded in 2015 by Vivek Varshney, is a personalised practice platform that uses a combination of artificial intelligence and adaptive learning to ensure personalised learning for each student.
The startup focuses on deep conceptual learning to enable real-world application, particularly in the science and mathematics domains.
This is applicable to students from Class 7th to 12th and those preparing for competitive examinations like JEE and NEET. Students have access to thousands of questions and practice papers, test series etc, and all their practice is tracked, mapped and analysed on this system.
The platform offers personalised analytics insights into what the student must focus on, their areas of weakness, and also allows them to strengthen their core concepts by offering learning and doubt-clearing sessions and mentoring.
In 2022, SpeEdLabs raised Rs 14.31 crore in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Mumbai Angels and other investors to boost its infrastructure and expansion.
Meritnation
Delhi-based Meritnation, founded by Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani, is an online education portal that provides interactive study materials for Classes 1 to 12.
The startup enhances the stay-at-home study experience with features like live interactive classes that are powered by cutting-edge technology, videos, in-class quizzes, analytics, and animations.
The startup claims to be a one-stop solution for students, right from aiding with homework, doubt-clearing sessions, video lessons, sample papers, mock tests, easy revision notes, and helping with previous year’s board papers.
Merination also has courses for entrance exams like IIT-JEE, NEET, CA CPT, and other exams like BBA and NDA.
Doubtnut
Gurugram-based Doubtnut, founded by Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar in 2017, leverages technology to help students with instant explanations and answers to their study questions.
The startup focuses on mathematics for students in classes 6–9 as well as those preparing for IIT-JEE and other entrance tests.
It uses complex machine learning (ML), algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition technology to show video lessons in response to photos of text problems.
If a student has any doubt about math problems, they can click a picture, upload it and will get a video solution to the query within a few seconds, according to the startup. The app has mathematics courses for NCERT (classes 6–12), IIT-JEE, including videos, books, and PDFs.
Adda247
Gurugram-based Adda247, founded in 2010 by Anil Nagar and Saurabh Bansal, offers products like on-demand video courses, mock tests, live-video classes, and books focused on government examinations.
The startup offers courses for various competitive exams, including SSC, GATE, JEE, NEET, UPSC, teaching exams, defence exams, and state exams.
The startup says it’s on a mission to take quality education to the masses and create a level playing field in terms of access to quality content, affordable pricing, personalised learning, and vernacular content.
Adda247 targets learners outside metro cities and offers courses in vernacular languages like Telugu, Odia, Malayalam, Bengali, and Tamil.
In November 2021, the startup raised $20 million in Series B round led by WestBridge Capital, Asha Impact, JM Financials, and Info Edge for technology, product development, and hiring.
Toppr
Mumbai-based Toppr, founded by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti in 2013, is an online exam preparation platform.
The startup uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data to analyse student behaviour and offers a curated learning medium for various school boards and competitive examinations.
Toppr is backed by the likes of Eight Road Ventures, Milestone Trustee Services, Alteria Capital, SAIF Partners, Kaizenvest, and Axis Capital Partners.
The startup is home to several platforms, including the Adda247 mobile app, the Adda247 YouTube channel, TeachersAdda, Career Power, BankersAdda, and SSCAdda.
In July 2020, Toppr raised Rs 350 crore in Series D, led by Foundation Holdings and Kaizen Private Equity, to enhance its technology platforms and make learning for students more personalised.
The pandemic has opened the doors to various business opportunities, and on-demand delivery is one of them. From food, groceries, and medicines to home improvement items, everything is now available to customers at the click of a button.
Keeping up with this trend, IIM alumnus Rakshit Mathur joined hands with Rajiv Mathur and Gaurav Adlakha to start The Fuel Delivery in 2020 to manage fuel requirements in a cost-effective and safe manner.
The Mumbai-based B2B startup delivers diesel to customers’ doorsteps while avoiding pilferage, adulteration, and unsafe practices and ensuring quality and quantity.
“As the pandemic-induced lockdown took hold, we thought, if everything can be delivered to the doorstep, why not diesel? At that time, the Indian government launched Door-to-Door Delivery (DDD) programme for startups. Thus, the company was formed, and we received our LOI (Letter of Intent) from Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL),” Rakshit says.
The founders bootstrapped The Fuel Delivery with an initial investment of Rs 4.5 crore.
How does it work?
The Fuel Delivery claims to provide convenience, compliance, and cost-effective solutions for its customers.
The startup has an instant fuel delivery app, available for both Android and iOS users, where clients can order fuel through the mobile app. However, because it primarily serves businesses at different locations, The Fuel Delivery also accepts orders via email, toll-free phone, and through its service delivery staff, which is in constant contact with clients.
Rakshit says, “We obtain diesel directly from OMCs (Oil Marketing Companies) like IOCL and deliver it to clients’ doorsteps. For example, just as anybody can order food through an app like Swiggy or Zomato, any business can order diesel (only) through our app.”
The startup supplies fuel with bowser trucks-a tanker with a dispensing machine that is equipped with the latest IoT (Internet of Things) gadgets for tracking its location and the quantity of diesel.
bowser trucks
The Fuel Delivery also provides scheduled and express delivery options according to customers’ requirements. It has services in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Jaipur, and Lucknow at present.
Meet the team
Rakshit, Founder and CEO, is an MBA graduate from the Indian Institute of Planning & Management, and has over 16-years of experience in sales and marketing, business development, channel and relationship management.
Before turning to entrepreneurship, he worked with companies like HSBC, Kotak Mahindra, and L&T Financial services, among others.
Rajiv, Co-founder and Managing Director, has over three decades of experience in business management and operations, technology solutions, brand building, security, and emergency response.
Co-founder and COO Gaurav, on the other hand, has years of leadership experience. He has worked in manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, and logistics for over 22-years, and brings a whole new perspective to the company.
Rakshit and Rajiv are family friends, and Gaurav was Rakshit's school friend. Later, Rakshit introduced Gaurav to Rajiv. At present, The Fuel Delivery has a team of 32 members.
Ensuring quality to customers
To eliminate the chances of adulteration, The Fuel Delivery directly collects oil from the depot and delivers it to the customer’s location. While entering into a contract with a business client, the startup makes sure to send the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for quality and quantity check of fuel at the premises.
The company claims to provide instruments such as a hydrometer and a gauge for measuring the volume of the fuel to its customers for checking the quality and quantity of fuel while it is delivered.
According to the team, the startup adheres to protocols, SOPs, and guidelines issued by the stakeholders.
Rakshit states, “Our bowsers are PESO-approved and registered with the IOCL Depots Gantry from where we obtain fuel.”
Additionally, drivers and gasoline handlers are Hazmat-certified and follow a standard operating procedure for all actions–including fetching, dispensing, and idle time.
The Fuel Delivery primarily serves infrastructure development and real estate companies, including IT parks, data centres, hospitality, and hospitals, among others.
Some of its prominent clients are the Tata Group of companies–including Taj Hotels, Vivanta, Ginger, Taj Sats, TCS, and Tata Motors. It also delivers fuel to companies like HDFC Bank, UDAAN, Securitrans, Roop Polymers, Airbnb, EXICOM, Airtel, STT, and Allianz, to name a few.
“Every task we perform is automated--from placing the order to tracking delivery, payment gateways, and tracking order history,” says Rakshit, while describing how the startup leverages IoT.
The business
The startup works for OMCs as a retailer and gets margins from them. “We deliver fuel to clients at the same price that is available in the city on the delivery date,” Rakshit says.
As of now, it claims its customer base is growing at a rate of 45–50 percent month-over-month (MOM). It claims to have delivered over 35 lakh litres of fuel to more than 500 companies till now. Customers can order a minimum of 100 litres and a maximum of 6,000 litres at a time. The Fuel Delivery app also has over 5,000 downloads.
The startup charges Rs 199 per delivery as a convenience fee, irrespective of the order quantity. Since its inception, The Fuel Delivery claims to have generated approximately Rs 16.50 crore in revenue, with an annual growth rate of more than 85 percent.
The volume of Indian high-speed diesel (HSD) consumption in March 2021 was 7.2 MMT (Million Metric Tonnes), a 27.6 percent increase over the volume of 5.7 MMT in March 2020.
According to Orion Market Reports, the global fuel delivery market was valued at $4148.8 million in 2021 and is projected to reach $4887.4 million by 2028, at a CAGR of 1.9 percent during the forecast year.
Many players are competing in the space, including FuelBuddy, Repso, Humsafar, Pepfuels, and MyPetrolPump, among others.
Speaking about how the startup stands out from the competition, Rakshit says, “We ensure quality and quantity and provide 100 percent unadulterated fuel directly from depot to the doorstep.”
The road ahead
In January 2021, the startup raised $1 million funding in a seed round from angel investors. Currently, the startup is in talks to raise around $5 million in Series A round of funding in the next two to three months to further expand its footprint.
According to the team, the Fuel Delivery plans to become a one-stop-solution for automobile needs. In addition to diesel, the startup is also planning to expand its product portfolio by offering CNG and gradually expanding into EV charging stations.
Rakshit says, “We are expanding our HSD business in other cities, including some state capitals and Tier-II cities.”
The startup plans to target the B2C market as well in the coming years. It is also looking to expand to Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Africa by 2023.
“We intend to become one of the leading energy distribution companies by 2025,” says Rakshit.
Last month, in a landmark order, the Supreme Court of India recognised prostitution as a profession and also ordered police to treat sex workers with dignity. It issued six directions safeguarding the interest of sex workers.
It also called on the Press Council of India to direct the media not to publish or telecast any photos that would reveal their identities. Publishing or telecasting their photographs from raid or rescue operations will be a criminal offence.
HerStory spoke with prominent activists working for this cause to find out whether things will change for the better or is there still a long way to go before sex workers can lead the lives they deserve.
Gunasundari comes from a humble family in Thanjavur city in Tamil Nadu. A topper in both school and college, she always wanted to learn to code and explore and know more about emerging technologies. She says, she aspires to learn something more ‘creative and innovative’. Read more.
The COVID-19 pandemic has opened the doors to various business opportunities, and on-demand delivery is one of them. From food, groceries, and medicines to home improvement items, everything is now available to customers at the click of a button.
Keeping up with this trend, IIM alumnus Rakshit Mathur joined hands with Rajiv Mathur and Gaurav Adlakha to start The Fuel Delivery in 2020 to manage diesel requirements cost-effectively and safely. Read more.
Zomato shared its Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) report on World Environment Day. Co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said the company is working on six core themes in keeping with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Social gaming platform WinZO has filed a lawsuit in Delhi High Court against eSports and mobile gaming platformMobile Premier League (MPL) citing copyright infringement and trademark infringement of its proprietary game format called ‘World War.’ WinZo has sought an injunction against MPL for the same.
The case came up for hearing in front of Justice Navin Chawla on June 3, with the judge giving time to WinZO and MPL to work out a mutual settlement. The case is next scheduled for hearing on July 4.
WinZO in its complaint stated that MPL had launched a game with a similar name as ‘World War’ in late March, 2022. Gaming unicorn MPL later changed the name to Team Clash though promotions by the esports platform continued to carry the tag of ‘World War.’ WinZO also stated that MPL had copied its proprietary game format.
WinZo Co-Founders (L to R) Paavan Nanda and Saumya Singh
Founded in 2018 by Saumya Singh Rathore and Paavan Nanda, WinZO is a casual gaming platform which hosts multiplayer game formats across 12 languages.
The platform allows users to interact with each other. The company had last raised $65 million in a Series C round of funding led by Griffin Gaming Partners. At the time, the platform claimed that its revenues had grown ten-fold over a period of 12 months.
Cricketer Virat Kohli-backed esports platform MPL, founded in 2018 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubh Malhotra, was valued at $2.3 billion in its last funding round led by Legatum Capital in September, 2021.
The company started out as a real-money gaming platform for games of skill. It recently announced the launch of its own gaming studio, Mayhem Studios, to develop high quality mobile game titles.
‘Alternative investments’ seems to have caught the fancy of India’s high net worth individuals (HNIs) as they look to go beyond mutual funds and stocks and diversify their portfolio across asset classes. Even high-salaried millennials are shunning traditional investment strategies in favour of digital alternatives.
Alternative investments include asset classes or financial investments not commonly accessible and not in traditional investment categories. These include venture debt, private equity, hedge funds, structured products like Sovereign Gold Bonds/Gold ETFs, Market Linked Debentures (MLDs), Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) or real estate linked debentures, Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs), as well as pre-IPO (initial public offering) securities, and offshore investments. More recently, cryptocurrency and NFTs have also come into the fold.
While HNIs have a comfortable access to financial advisors and portfolio managers when it comes to creating sophisticated portfolios, the rest continue to evaluate tools and ways to invest in these new asset classes along with their conventional options.
Mumbai-based wealth management startup dezerv. wants to tap into this niche section of investors. Founded in 2021 by former IIFL Wealth senior managing partners Sandeep Jethwani, Vaibhav Porwal, and Sahil Contractor, Dezerv provides advisory and investment service, particularly targeting senior working professionals, across multi-assets and instruments, including alternatives and new asset classes that are offered online.
The idea is to unlock access to new asset classes, currently available only to HNIs individuals, and help investors—with a minimum ticket size of Rs 50,000—create sophisticated portfolios with a balanced mix of both conventional and new-age investments.
Wealth management for growth
Dezerv aims to break the restrictive idea of wealth management that remains focussed around retaining the value of money (in line with inflation and taxes) rather than translating it into growing capital. Hence, influx of alternatives into investment portfolios, and the consequent need for a dedicated diligence and review advisory for it, which Dezerv claims to offer.
“Your money not only needs to give you inflation-linked returns but also grow over and above so that you are actually generating a second income. This calls for creating unique portfolios based around growth assets that do not find a place in the majority of our portfolios. There are ups and downs in such instruments but they help grow capital in the long run,” Sandeep tells YourStory.
Alternatives come with a set of challenges due to their complex nature, high risk, limited regulations, and relative lack of liquidity. Hence, this particular world of investment would require a high degree of due diligence on each opportunity, meticulous processes, and robust post-investment monitoring. Here lies an opportunity for technology-driven platforms to help deepen these financial instruments into investors’ portfolios through technology and human centric diligence and reviews, as the demand surges.
“A lazy approach doesn’t work with these growth assets. You cannot just put your money and forget about it. We do a lot of research before making recommendations and create the right mix,” the co-founder adds.
How it works?
Once a sign up request is accepted on the platform, the client undergoes a quick online survey around their investment needs, preferences, background, history, risk appetite (how much downside they can handle), and so on.
Based on the inputs, a team of experts undertake the risk assessment and create a multi-asset portfolio using algorithm models. “We use modern science and Black–Litterman Model to create portfolios. The quantitative experts run algorithms models to create these portfolios, which are then vetted by our domain experts before giving it to the users,” Sandeep explains.
The users can evaluate the recommendations and connect with the team for further discussion. They can change the portfolio as per their discretion following the discussion. Once the asset mix is finalised, the investments are made through the Dezerv platform and a member partner is dedicated for execution, reporting, and rebalancing of the recommendations.
The composition of the assets varies across clients, depending upon their exposure to risk. These include a mix of conventional and non-conventional assets, including equity, government bonds, large cap index funds, fixed return credit funds, global instruments, pre-IPO sales, gold funds, and other alternative investments. The startup is waiting for regulation in the Crypto and NFT space to evolve, before offering the same to its investors.
The minimum investment ticket size has been kept at Rs 50,000 while founders claim that the average amount of money invested through the platform falls within the range of Rs 5-7 lakh and goes up to crores.
Its target audience typically include working professionals in the age group of 30-45, who have some experience with investments and have dabbled in them on their own.
“We do not have just the typical HNIs on our platform. We get requests from startup employees who have made money through ESOPs. After working for 7-8 years, they get a lump sum amount of Rs 50-70 lakh and want someone to handle this money for them,” the co-founder says.
The platform is currently ‘invite-only’ as it wants to provide quality service with a human interface. Besides the personal network of the founders and word-of-mouth, Dezerv also receives sign up requests via social media channels, he adds.
The requests are evaluated and if an ‘invite’ is sent out to the customer, they can access the services. It has got about 65,000 sign ups to date, and now claims to be adding close to 20,000 signs up every month, starting May.
Dezerv has a team of 24 of which 12 are investment experts who design the portfolios while the member-partners come in post investment. In terms of volumes, the platform claims to have over Rs 600 crore of transacted assets on its platform and is expected to touch Rs 1,000 crore in the next few months.
The startup doesn’t charge any fee from the users but makes money from the manufacturers of the financial products they recommend. “We inform our users about how much money we will be making through their portfolio. This is not something which is common in the industry,” says Sandeep.
Within six months of launch, Dezerv raised a seed round of $7 million. This, the founders claim, has provided it a runaway of 2-3 years. It counts marquee investors like Elevation Capital, Matrix Partners India, Whiteboard Capital, Blume Founders Fund, and several angels, on its board.
Dezerv’s competition comes from the investment arm of private sector banks besides a host of other independent financial advisories in the country. Tech platforms like Groww, Zerodha, Upstox, Scripbox, and Kuvera are also operating in the space but follow a more Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach without much human interface.
The market for alternative investments has been growing at a great pace in recent years, and as per the latest data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), assets of Alternate Investment Funds (AIFs) grew over 32 percent year-on-year to Rs 5.35 lakh crore at the end of September 2021. While most of these are linked to growth venture capital and private equity funds, it also signifies the rise of interest for such asset classes and the need to make them more accessible.
Future
The startup plans to remove the ‘invite only’ feature as it scales. It has recently bagged its Portfolio Management Service (PMS) licence and would add the offering to its current services. A portfolio manager is required to accept minimum Rs 50 lakh or securities having a minimum worth of Rs 50 lakh from the client.
On the question of changing the current offering or target audience following the PMS services, the founders clarified that their minimum ticket size would remain Rs 50,000 and portfolio management will be an additional option for the clients.
“We believe that our current set of users who have an average investment size of Rs 5-6 lakh will gradually accumulate higher amounts of money in the next 4-5 years. They will then be eligible for our PMS service. It will be a natural extension and we are creating a capability,” says Sandeep.
The offering will also expand the startup’s audience to HNIs, creating a bigger monetisation pool for Dezerv.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) declared Tonetag, napID Cybersec, and TrustCheckr winners across four categories at its first-ever global hackathon, HaRBInger 2021.
The theme of the hackathon, "Smarter Digital Payments", was aimed at identifying solutions that have the potential to enhance ease of payments and user experience, make digital payments accessible to the underserved, and add a layer of security for digital transactions.
The central bank laid our four problem statements for applicants to work on:
Innovative, easy-to-use, non-mobile digital payment solutions for converting small-ticket cash transactions to digital mode: Won by India's ToneTag, with US-based Extolabs bagging the 'runner-up' award.
Alternate authentication mechanism for digital payments: Won by India's napID Cybersec, with US-based neoEYED, Inc and India's Sperotel Tech as joint runners-up.
Context-based retail payments to remove the physical act of payment: Won by ToneTag.
Social Media Analysis and Monitoring tool for detection of digital payment fraud and disruption: Won by India's TrustCheckr, with joint-runners up bagged by Ezetap and Lalit Kumar Pagaria.
The hackathon received 363 proposals from teams within India, and 22 from countries such as the US, UK, Sweden, Singapore, the Philippines and Israel.
The finalists were put through three rounds: shortlisting of proposals, solution development, and final evaluation.
The jury evaluated and selected the winners and runners-up based on parameters including user experience, security, ease of implementation, innovation, and technology.
"These products have the potential for wider adoption and can be integrated with the existing payment infrastructure subject to compliance with applicable regulatory requirements," the RBI said in a press release announcing the results of the hackathon.
Why the announcement is noteworthy
The RBI has been pushing the Government of India's mandate to promote financial technology in the country, especially in areas where it encourages financial inclusion and serving the underserved. In recent times, the RBI has invited fintech startups to work on solutions such as offline payments in collaboration with government bodies and mentors, to facilitate digital payments for people who don't have access to a smartphone or good data connectivity.
The problem statements are very telling of the RBI's focus on the fintech sector too. Security has been an important issue, especially with the rampant rise of fraudulent apps and instances of financial malfeasance.
ToneTag, which enables payments based on sound wave technology and NFCs, could play a big role in helping the central bank realise its dream to enable offline digital payments (including UPI123) to fruition.
In November 2016, Talha Shaikh and Ashok Yadav saw the Indian healthcare supply chain was fragmented and riddled with loopholes at every step of the network. The duo decided to help close this gap with their startup Biddano.
Starting as a business-to-consumer (B2C) pharmacy aggregator platform, Biddano helped customers get prescription drugs—that need to be consumed immediately (acute markets)—from nearby pharmacies within 45 minutes.
In a conversation with YourStory, Talha Shaikh, Co-founder and CEO, Biddano, says, “Customers could upload their prescriptions, given to the nearby pharmacies based on their geolocation. We had smart algorithms running the backend, helping the pharmacies to receive and pack the order and deliver it to customers, similar to the Swiggy model.”
The Pune-headquartered startup had onboarded over 700 pharmacies on a single technology platform and ran operations for six to seven months. Soon, it started receiving over 3,000 prescriptions, but the pharmacies ran out of stocks for most products.
“We were tracking two major KPIs back then. First is the delivery turnaround time, which should be less than 45 minutes under any circumstances. Second is the fill rate—if a prescription has five medicines, how many of these can the pharmacy fulfil,” Talha explains.
Tracking inventory for pharmacies becomes a manual process since many don’t have an inventory management system. When they receive an order, pharmacies check their stocks, accept the order, and will deliver three out of five products.
He adds, “For the remaining two products, they will place an order with either a sub-distributor or stockist. Again, for various reasons on the business-to-business (B2B) supply chain side, the stockist, distributor, or sub-distributor would take 24 hours to deliver the medicines to pharmacies. Hence, it was not what we had promised to the customer side, and it was tarnishing Biddano’s overall brand value.”
Realising these inefficiencies, the co-founders decided to rework Biddano’s entire business model and pivot from B2C to B2B.
“We had done our research and realised no company at a pan-India level focused on the B2B pharma sector. Moreover, no healthcare logistics company focused on organising the B2B healthcare supply chain for the country,” Talha says.
In mid-2018, Biddano started onboarding stockists and distributors in Pune.
At present, Biddano has tie-ups with 200,000 pharmacies, over 100 top pharma stockists, 30 top fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and over-the-top-counter (OTC) companies, and more than 500 pharma brands across India.
While Talha looks after business expansion, team building, and PR, Ashok (CSO) looks after strategic partnerships and investor relations.
It has a team of over 100 people in its corporate office. The startup has satellite offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Biddano aims to solve these inefficiencies through its two coveted products.
Bkart, Biddano’s first product, is its B2B healthcare logistics infrastructure that helps super stockists, stockists, or distributors reach out to as many pharmacies as possible to deliver products to pharmacies in less than three hours.
“This technology platform helps stockists to deliver orders to pharmacies rather than going to the middle-men such as sub-distributors,” adds Talha.
This way, stockists could give better discounts to pharmacies, which they can pass to end-consumers, and expand their geographical reach. Biddano has 1,200 delivery executives on the ground who make these deliveries.
Launched in January 2022, Biddano’s second product Shortbuk helps pharmacies and hospital labs procure FMCG or OTC products on time from local distributors and brands.
Speaking about Shortbuk's launch, Talha says, “We already have the healthcare logistics infrastructure, where we deliver medicines to pharmacies every single day and every three hours. So, we tried integrating the FMCG or OTC vertical with our pharma vertical and deliver products in three hours or every single day to pharmacies, along with credit since it will be a strong value proposition.”
Biddano is the distribution channel partner for many FMCG companies, including Dabur India, Himalaya Wellness Company, Hindustan Unilever Limited, etc., to cater to its network of chemists.
Within four months of its launch, Biddano has expanded its Shortbuk’s service to four major cities, including Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Nashik.
Business model and revenue
Biddano's healthcare logistics service-based model forms its major revenue stream, where it charges super stockists a variable commission ranging from 1 to 2 percent on every order they deliver through Biddano’s platform.
For its FMCG marketplace platform, it has a standard cost-revenue model, where Biddano buys products at certain costs from brands, adds its margin to that, and sells them to retailers or pharmacists.
The startup claims to have generated a revenue of Rs 5.59 crore in FY22.
Biddano has raised $3 million led by Gokul Rajaram, a board member at Pinterest and Product Manager at Doordash, a Silicon Valley-based company. New investors JPIN Venture Catalysts UK and Ramakant Sharma (Founder, Livspace), and existing investors Venture Catalysts and AngelList also participated in the round.
It is planning to raise a Series A round later this year to strengthen its leadership teams across all verticals and launch a new platform.
Competing with Bengaluru-based Saveo, Biddano is present in 20 cities and plans to expand to 25 cities across India by the end of 2022.
Biddano will also launch financial services for every stakeholder in the healthcare value chain. It also plans to make finance accessible to small retailers with no credit history.
Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous edition here). This special series of compilations focuses on India’s COVID-19 struggle. Share these quotes and excerpts with your networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector was among the worst hit, with nearly 5,907 businesses shutting down during FY 2020-21 and 2021-22. - Nikhil Arora, GoDaddy
There were so many cases of people taking their own lives because their small businesses failed. - Lakshmi Menon, Toiless
It is very important to keep the needle focused on women, especially when the world is facing an economic crisis created by the pandemic and the wars. - Charlotte Keenan, Goldman Sachs 10KW
The thing that gives me hope is looking at how entrepreneurs responded in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The speed at which they took decisions, and they did not behave like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, hoping that everything blows away. - Parag Dhol, Athera Venture Partners
Our revenues hit zero and the next day we were trying to get all the approvals in place to make sure that we are included under food, which was an essential category. - Nidhi Singh, Samosa Singh
We had enough capital, but a post-pandemic lot of parents started asking for refunds, and kids did not have time as schools opened up. - Saumya Yadav, Udayy
Starting the business during COVID-19 was a challenge. Another challenge was making customers understand the product quality as we are new in this segment. - Ashima Singla, Whispering Homes
A huge set of tools and technologies like remote HR management, attendance, approval processes and project management tools, remote project management tools, and collaborative project management tools saw a strong uptick during the pandemic. - Veeraj Thaploo, Blazeclan
[Videoconferencing and collaboration front] are moving towards enabling the phygital mode of working and collaborating. - Komal Prajapati, Betterplace
[The third trend] is empowering IT teams or internal IT teams to support a remote workforce. - Natasha Rock, GoTo
People are working across regions and geographies. Working in a sensitive and critical environment needs a second level of governance. - Veeraj Thaploo, Blazeclan
We have seen a massive shift in mindset and adoption [of digital ways of working]. - Komal Prajapati, Betterplace
The pandemic was pivotal in changing [ecommerce investment], and brands shifted from perceiving ecommerce as a “good-to-have” channel to a “must-have, strategic channel”. - Sonu Somapalan, Tenovia
A large part of the population had started making all purchases online and this affected the local business community and impacted their livelihoods. It was imperative that people started buying from small traders again. - Lakshmi Menon, Toiless
While Indian MSMEs are crucial to our economic recovery, many MSMEs are still continuing to recover from the wrath of the pandemic. - Nikhil Arora, GoDaddy
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the home living space became the most integral part of everyone’s lives. - Ashima Singla, Whispering Homes
Post pandemic, the gap between supply and demand of skills has increased globally. We expect this trend to continue in mid to long term. - Hitesh Oberoi, Info Edge India
With the worst hopefully behind us, our focus must shift to the larger ramifications of such pandemics. How do we avoid any further catastrophes and how do we ensure sustained development? - Rushikesh Chavan, The Habitats Trust
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).
