The initial barriers that most small businesses face are discoverability and the inability to estimate demand for their products or services. Larger and more established companies have long had the upper hand, being able to invest heavily in marketing and other outreach activities. In the past decade, e-commerce has levelled the playing field to an extent, giving smaller businesses a platform to tap into a vast, existing pool of customers.

But the ‘e-commerce story’ is still in its nascent stages in India. It is estimated that only about 2–3 percent of transactions occur online, with immense room for growth. While horizontal marketplaces have seen the most growth and popularity, there are multiple niche players popping up that aim to provide the depth and customisation that horizontal marketplaces can’t cater to. Glowship aims to help organise and improve the home utilities space in India.

Story so far

Glowship was formally launched in March 2015 by Srinivas Potukuchi, an IIT Madras and Stanford Business School alum, who spent about five years working in the solar energy and home utilities sector before venturing out on his own. Through his personal experience, Srinivas found that most companies in this space, even those with interesting and innovative products and solutions, were unable to communicate effectively and reach out to the mass market.

So through Glowship he aims to address this space, which is estimated to be a Rs 20,000-crore-a-year market in India. He also aims to help small businesses make informed choices and better handle power cuts and other issues faced because of the unreliable power grid in India.

So along with a team of eight, Srinivas officially launched Glowship in Bengaluru and currently has over 225 sellers serving customers in about 10 Indian states. The e-commerce platform is positioning itself as a unique marketplace for home utility goods and services mainly targeted at residential home owners.

While solar power solutions are one of Glowship’s main offerings, the marketplace also provides conventional power solutions like inverters, batteries, and power banks as well as pumps, water, and lightning solutions.

On the services side, Glowship offers four main service packages for solar water heater systems based on the consumer’s specific needs. Once the customer confirms their interest, Glowship then arranges for the installation of the solar system through its partner network of system integrators around India.

For consumers who are new to the sector, Glowship provides a ‘Knowledge Center’ on their platform to cater to frequently asked questions. They have also recently launched a do-it-yourself rooftop solar platform, which they claim is the first of its kind in the solar industry. It is able to recommend the optimum solar capacity and provide instant price estimates for the entire system while offering customers options to choose from either consuming solar power directly (without storage) or for the purpose of providing back-up power during a power outage.

Revenue model and marketing

As a marketplace and after-sales solutions aggregator, Glowship makes a commission for each transaction that occurs on its platform. Srinivas noted that their average ticket size has been around Rs 27,000, with a conversion rate upwards of 10 percent.

So far independent home owners have been their largest customers, followed by small and medium businesses. In terms of geography, Karnataka, Delhi-NCR, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh are among Glowhip’s top performing markets. Srinivas noted that they are trying to simplify the entire purchase decision for consumers by providing the widest range of solutions and also simplified and accurate information about different products and services in the market. He said,

We are profitable on almost every single order and have not used a discounting strategy to attain our current growth.

Glowship has so far relied only on online marketing channels and Srinivas believes that that they have been effective for their e-commerce offerings. Srinivas noted that since their home utilities marketplace is standardised for most product categories, marketing them and getting conversions is straightforward. Srinivas also sees a big market to upsell and cross-sell, based on one’s purchasing patterns. However, for some of their other custom solutions like solar panels for homes, Glowship is able to generate estimates but generally closes the deal only after a technician visits the homes.

Sector overview

With the second largest population in the world, India has a big need for reliable home utility products to make the best use of available resources. However, the country is faced with unique challenges. Srinivas notes that in the developed world, the power grid never goes down, but in markets like India power outages can vary between one and eight hours. So developed markets mainly look at solar solutions without storage, while storage is a necessity in developing markets. He said,

In India, customers don’t go shopping for solar solutions, they go shopping for power backup.

Until India’s power grid situation improves, Srinivas sees the solar segment being a big driver for growth in the home utilities space, with hybrid solutions being the key.

Solar solutions have gained mainstream acceptance in the West because of the convenience and cost benefits associated with them. Elon Musk-backed SolarCity is the most well known player in this space. The company initially started out as a aggregator leasing solar solutions to consumers and has now developed end-to-end capabilities on developing and manufacturing efficient solar panels.

Related read: Tesla Motors to acquire SolarCity for $2.6bn

Glowship too is looking to do the same in India and will seek to re-enable the growth of India’s solar market by increasing awareness and driving down customer acquisition cost.

India aims to have an operational solar power capacity of 100 GW by March 2022, which includes 40 GW of capacity from rooftop projects. In an attempt to boost the relatively neglected rooftop solar power market, various state governments have announced attractive subsidies for homeowners looking to set up rooftop solar power systems. Indian homeowners too have multiple needs ranging from heating, pumping, back-up power, home automation, energy management, and potentially even energy generation, given the falling costs of solar energy. So the sector has great room for growth in India.

Future plans

Glowship had raised a pre-seed round in 2015 from investors in the energy and solar sector and Infuse Ventures, India’s only cleantech fund (both institutional and angel money). At present, Glowship is in the process of expanding its team and raising a larger funding round to boost growth. The startup is leveraging a team of freelancers to spread awareness and knowledge through starter kits that explain the basics of solar power and battery pack solutions.

Glowship aims to reach a milestone of 500 sellers in the coming months and also expand to adjacent verticals like home automation. Glowship’s short-term aim is to address existing market problems and reduce cost at every level of the value chain by making solar and other platforms more plug and play oriented.

While e-commerce is making a transition to m-commerce, with a large percentage of transactions now occurring on smartphones, Srinivas considers desktops to be the main focus for high value purchase decisions that happen on their platform. But he believes that smartphones and apps are best suited to schedule after-sales services and solutions.

While it is currently a marketplace and aggregator of services, Glowship’s long-term goal is to grow its own intellectual property (IP) and develop its own products to help improve the home utilities space for the market. In terms of numbers, Srinivas noted that the goal is to target a 45 percent reduction in deployment time and 15 percent in cost.

Website- Glowship 

Online platforms have changed the traditional way of doing things — from shopping to travelling to searching for job opportunities.

According to a report by McKinsey Global Institute, online talent platforms are increasingly connecting people to the right jobs. By 2025 they could add $2.7 trillion to global GDP, and begin to address persistent problems in the world’s labor markets.

Back in 2011, when Vivek Chandok was heading value added services (VAS) at Tech Mahindra, he hit upon a business idea that struck from his personal experience. He recounts an incident.

“I was standing outside my office. I observed a man (a jobseeker), who didn’t appear to be very educated, look at a ‘housekeeping staff wanted’ poster stuck to an electric pole. Soon, he began conversing with a nearby tea vendor. The jobseeker wanted to know if the vendor had heard about any housekeeping jobs in the vicinity. He further stated that he had paid a local agent Rs 300 to land him a job,” says Vivek, Founder and CEO of Saral Rozgar.

For blue-collared jobseekers, searching for and getting jobs is challenging. They either rely on acquaintances or pay hefty amounts to touts and agents. They also spend significant time and effort in travelling to find jobs themselves or even to get information.

For employers too, with no structured database for blue-collar and entry-level candidates, reaching the huge pool of jobseekers is a problem.

Vivek realised the evident gap here. What was needed was a job market that was easily accessible to millions of Indian workers. It also occurred to him that using technology, there was something he could do to alleviate some of the problems that jobseekers faced, or perhaps help the entire market.

He conducted surveys with his target audience to understand the pain points and how one could solve them.

Based on feedback from jobseekers and employers, Vivek launched Saral Rozgar, a VAS platform with an IVR at one end, in 2011.

Job seekers can dial a short code and subscribe immediately, and the subscription amount will be deducted from their prepaid balance. Candidates can also apply for jobs through voice-based profile creation. Upon calling the Saral Rozgar phone number, live representatives create a profile and resume along with contact details for jobseekers.

They also help candidates in searching for location-based job opportunities on the phone. Vivek says,

Employment in India is dominated by small employers and the highly fragmented unorganised sector. Non-farm, blue-collar work accounts for vast majority of employment. This provides a significant market opportunity for an omni-channel provider to help with convenient job discovery and an opportunity to extract values from both employers and jobseekers.

Saral Rozgar is an internally incubated business of Tech Mahindra.

In 2013, after TRAI’s new regulation, which led to a significant dip in the number of subscriptions, the platform evolved its business model. It introduced Saral Rozgar job card and a physical distribution model. Through this, job seekers can register via the value added service, buy a job card, or online. This turned out to be a boon for the platform and led to a rise in reach and availability.

Million want jobs

Jobseekers can avail the service by paying a minimal fee for assisted registration. Under this, job seekers receive relevant job alerts for a stipulated period. They can also register for free service. Currently, there are over 2.5 million paid job seekers are registered on the platform.

Besides, employers can purchase subscription packages (cost per connect) and can additionally buy verification services. Employers can also pay for campaigns for bulk hiring.

In 2015, the company organised more than 25 job fairs in 20 cities, which saw participation from over 25,000 jobseekers and 165 companies. More than 7,500 candidates got job opportunities.

It claims to have a jobseeker base of over six million, across 150 job categories. With over 10,000 employers on board, there are 1,50,000 live job opportunities in the repository. More than 1,00,000 jobseekers have found the right jobs using this service.

Its contact centre is equipped to service jobseekers in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla, Oriya and Marathi, to address the larger market.

Market opportunity

According to the Confederation of Indian Industry, only 14 percent out of the 500 million Indian workforce accounts for the formal sector and the remaining 86 percent is part of the unorganised sector.

The total current workforce that is employed in the blue-collar and entry-level job market is 117 million. There are 51 million job providers for this segment.

To cater to the high demand market, Babajob, Aasaanjobs, Nanojobs, BookMyBai and many others are offering service in this segment.

Last year, Babajob secured $10 million funding from SEEK. Early this year, Aasaanjobs raised $5 million from Aspada, IDG, Inventus.

Next plan of action

In terms of technology, the platform claims to focus on automation, analytics and predictive analysis.

Apart from plain vanilla packages, it will provide value added packages – cost per shortlisted resume or per shortlisted candidate or interview line-up. As a logical extension, it has now introduced a hire-train-place model to keep in line with industry needs.

Going forward, SaaS solutions such as HRMS and CRM will also be introduced.

“We are upgrading services for job seekers also – we will be offering them location preference and also career counseling tips to get the right jobs basis their skills. The app will play an important role going forward as penetration of smart phones and mobile internet is increasing,” says Vivek.

Hiving off

Saral Rozgar, which began with a team of 25-30 people, is now a team of 300. It is planning to hive off into a separate business.

“Since Saral Rozgar was internally incubated, a small investment was directed towards product and technology setup. We quickly realised that the potential was much larger than we had initially anticipated. Entrepreneurship culture had to be encouraged and the idea had to be institutionalised. Over the period, we have built products, added layers and service extensions and invested in creating mass awareness of Saral Rozgar,” concludes Vivek.

Website

Twenty-seven-year old Sagar Paliwal was in a fix. His SUV had several mechanical and electronic issues, due to all the usage during floods. But when he took to to the brand’s dealer, he was asked to expect a bill for a whopping Rs 4,00,000 plus taxes.

So, like most, Sagar decided to take his car to the local vendor, but there was a problem of trust and guarantee. Being an automotive engineer from Lancaster University, he decided to fix his car himself.  In a span of two months, he was able to fix the car with all performance upgrades and in under Rs 90,000.

It was then that Sagar realised that there was no single guaranteed place where customers could source all spares and accessories. It led to the creation of AutoKartz in Delhi last year to cater to spare parts and accessory needs – whether it was accessories or restoration of a classic.

Bringing in the add-ons

“We provide owners genuine parts and accessories at wholesale rates. We also regularly educate our customers on which products would help them and help the performance of their vehicles,” says this second-time entrepreneur.

AutoKartz ships products across India and has tie-ups with service providers in over 150 cities. The team has also claimed to have tied up with Mahindra First Choice Service Centres.

The platform also works as an aggregator for car modification experts, a lead-generating platform for auto insurance and a listing platform for used auto sales. Apart from Sagar, the main core team consists of Delhi University graduates Arun Mittal, Ayush Mishra, Mukul Sood, and Farhad Khan from Greater Noida Institute of Technology.

Sagar hired the team after looking for people who had a passion for automobiles, and were willing to help build a platform for automobiles.

Breaking into an unorganised market

However, building an e-commerce platform for vehicles has its own set of challenges. Sagar adds that getting genuine parts and ensuring their quality is a big challenge in a fragmented and unorganised market. Convincing players and manufacturers is a task, as they are wary of new entrants. But once you break into the market it’s easier.

Sagar adds that they have a target market of $57 billion that is going to reach $80 billion by 2020.

AutoKartz isn’t the only player looking at this market. Over the past year several players have attempted to take a crack at this unorganised market. In the second-hand vehicles market itself, there is the heavily-funded Droom, a used automobile marketplace. There also is Cartrade, which closed a $145-million round in February last year and even acquired Carwale. There also is Cartisan, which guides users to the right auto care centre.

Carstudio provides users with needed accessories and spare parts and even helps them remodel their cars.

Expanding across geographies

AutoKartz, however, claims to be the only one to have integrated everything that a car or vehicle owner needs on one platform. “We are the only ones who have service tie-ups all across India. We are also in the process of launching insurance services on our platform,” says Sagar.

He adds that in the past seven months they have managed to grow at an average of 50 percent month-on-month. Right now, the company is clocking sales of over Rs 1,00,000 a day, with a turnover of over Rs 3 crore. Currently bootstrapped, the team is in the process of raising funds.

“We are shipping all over India and internationally. We have service partners in over 150 cities, which is expanding very rapidly. We aim to have local service presence in 500 towns and cities by the end of 2017,” says Sagar. The team is also looking to enter South East Asia, Africa, Europe and Middle East.

Website

Keeping a tight grip on their USP Direct to Home TV Channel, Jaipur-based gems and jewellery firm Gemporia India claims to witness daily sales of Rs 20 lakh, with 96 percent of the business coming from television.  Conceptualised in August 2014, the company sent out about 600 shipments a day in the first year of operations.

Manuj Goyal, Co-founder, Gemporia India, made it happen riding high on his 25-year-long experience in the jewellery and gemstone industry, while mentoring startups as President of TiE Rajasthan and also  as Co-founder of Rajasthan Angels Investor Network.

Single-brand retailer Gemporia showcases jewellery live on TataSky, Videocon D2H, Dish TV and Airtel DTH. What differentiates the company from other online jewellery firms is its omni-channel approach with presence on television, Internet and mobile apps. The company started the test phase on September 2015 on two DTH network with four hours of live telecast on Dish TV and Videocon D2H.

Looking at the growth, positive costumer feedback and organic viewership, Gemporia TV has extended the duration from four hours to 18, in six months.  All the jewellery come with certificates of authenticity, BIS hallmark for gold products and a 30-day moneyback guarantee.

Tracing history…

Gemporia was originally established by Steve Bennett in 2004 when he set up Gems TV in UK and is claimed to have sold over nine million pieces worldwide, achieving almost eight-percent market share of all hallmarked jewellery sold in the UK.  Gemporia UK currently sells about 14,000 pieces of jewellery every day and has a team of around 500.

A graduate gemologist from Gemological Institute of America and MD of Pinkcity Group of Companies, Manuj met Steve at a jewellery exhibition in Bangkok and became the manufacturer for Gemporia across UK and USA.  Before Gemporia, Manuj’s Pinkcity Jewel House also produced jewellery for major brands in US and Europe.

Having worked together for eight long years, Manuj and Steve entered into a joint venture to bring Gemporia to India. Gemporia India was registered as Jewel Alliance Network Pvt. Ltd.

It took over a year to sort out the legal procedures, paperwork, permissions to broadcast, getting a team and training them, setting up infrastructure and finally going on air. Gemporia went live on air almost a year ago, in September 2015,” says Manuj. Steve and Manuj bootstrapped Jewel Alliance Network with a seed capital of Rs 20 crore.

A sneak peek at the growth metrics

According to Manuj, Gemporia India earns 30-50 percent margin, depending on the category of products. With 180 employees on the sales side and 900 people in two manufacturing factories in Jaipur, Gemporia India hopes to scale up to 14,000-15,000 a day, soon.

Getting the right set of talent in a Tier-II city like Jaipur is bound to pose hurdles. Manuj says,  “The challenges began at bringing in the right people to a Tier II city, went on to building up solid logistics delivering jewellery safely, to explaining our concept to the consumer and building trust.”

However things have changed in due course and today the merchandisers, designers and craftsman of Gemporia create over 100 new products every day. The product category is divided into gold and silver, with a wide range including rings, earrings, pendants, necklaces, bracelets, bangles, ring bracelets, nose pins and charms.

Gemporia India has tied up with three e-commerce logistics players-BlueDart, EComm Express and Delhivery, covering more than 10,000 pin codes across India. Once the order is placed, it takes 3-4 days for the products to reach consumers.

With 55,000 registered customers, Gemporia India expects to achieve a Rs 150-crore revenue in the next one year and add 300 new customers every day.

Compared to our first full month of transactions in October 2015, we have already grown to about 104 percent in the number of transactions and we have made about 207 percent in terms of value,” Manuj says. Gemporia is in talks with investors to raise Rs 100 crore in private equity funding.

Market overview

According to India Brand Equity Foundation, the gems and jewellery market in India is home to more than five lakh players, a majority being small players. India is one of the largest exporters of gems and jewellery, contributing to around 6-7 percent of the country’s GDP.

As reported by PTI recently, online jewellery market in India is likely to reach $3.6 billion in the next three years, which is 20 percent of the global market size, amounting to $18 billion. The growth can be attributed to customers no longer hesitating to buy jewellery online, as each piece comes with a guarantee certificate.

Online jewellery seller BlueStone has raised around Rs 200 crore in Series-D funding, which was led by IIFL and Accel, with participation from IvyCap Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and RB Investments. While in May this year Titan group acquired majority stake in Tiger Global-backed online jewellery startup CaratLane, which is also considered as the first successful exit for Tiger and first major investment in an e-commerce firm.

Marketplaces like Flipkart and Snapdeal too retail precious jewellery. More traditional players like Tanishq and regional offline majors like GRT Jewellers have also gone online, adding to the competition.

Gemporia

Proximi.io is a unified API (Application Programming Interface) of positioning technologies, a tool for developers, a tech company. So, it comes as a surprise learning that the CEO of this Helsinki-based company is a woman with a degree in Archaeology.

Annina Koskiola was doing research for her Master thesis on how museums make use of mobile applications and noticed that there were quite a few issues with performance. “Many museums were using apps to guide the visitor around, but they didn’t know where you were. So it either showed you everything at once, or you had to click for information to pop up,” she says.

When museums inspire technology 

“That’s when I started thinking it’d actually be very clever if the app knew where you were and gave you information about a specific statue because you were standing in front of it.” Easier said than done. GPS does not work indoors, but Annina explains that at the time of her research, technology to solve the issue was just getting interesting.

“In fall 2013, new solutions were coming out like IndoorAtlas, which is based on geomagnetic fields. Also, Apple had just released the iBeacon standard, a protocol for transmitting data via Bluetooth Low Energy. This information can be picked up by nearby mobile devices, and used to determine their positions. There had been some use of Bluetooth in positioning already before that, but the release of an official standard opened up a whole new market.”

The team

So she decided to take the chance, persuaded that she should try to do something with all the knowledge she had acquired on the topic. The first step was to find a good developer, and it was easier than she expected. “I went to the first developer I knew, my sister’s husband, who’s always been my go-to man whenever I have technical questions. I shared my idea and asked him if he knew any good developer who’d be willing to start a company with me,” she recalls and, laughing, continues, “To quote him literally, his answer was ‘You’ll never find anybody who’s good enough, but I will join you!’”

Now Annina’s brother-in-law Mika Koskiola is the CTO of Proximi.io. The rest of the team joined organically through networking and connections. Proximi.io gathered talent from Finland, Germany, Slovakia and India, and formed a good group of eight.

The right product

The second step was to develop a product that would address one of the core problems of indoor positioning, “It’s very difficult for developers who want to use this technology to figure out what’s available, how to use and combine indoor and outdoor options, and then make something meaningful out of them,” Annina explains.

It took them two years and some part time jobs to bootstrap, but eventually Proximi.io took shape and launched in March 2016. “With our libraries, you can get access to all the technologies and can combine them, so you get the best position fix, and you can move from indoors to outdoors without a problem. We have a portal where you can log in, create your places, and define geo fences around interesting areas,” says Annina.

And taking off

Indoor positioning has recently attracted the attention of many, including giants like Google and Apple. Proximi.io explains that instead of competing with them with a new product, they have built a single point of access to all the existing options. Annina argues that, “This way, developers don’t need to tie themselves with one particular technology, but can combine them. We also offer them completely open interfaces and easy tools for integrating our platform with other services.”

Two months after the launch, Proximi.io already has 500 registered users and 80 percent of them are from outside Finland, mostly from the US, India, Russia and Pakistan. “We did assume our product would raise some interest because indoor positioning is so hot at the moment. But we’re really overwhelmed by the feedback we’re getting from the developers,” shares Annina,

I actually expected the US to be the biggest market because there are a lot of retailers using indoor positioning there. But it seems that even though these companies are headquartered in the US, they have outsourced their development operations to India.

Ups, Downs and the road ahead

Annina shares that there are several competitors in the market, “To mention a few, there is Pole Star, a French company that has been around for a long time. They produce their own beacon hardware, and set up positioning for large venues. Indoo.rs is a similar company based in Austria; while in Finland, our biggest competitor is Walkbase, which focuses on indoor analytics,” she says, “What sets our product apart is the simplicity of use, while our team is the first technology-agnostic developer platform on the market.”

For the moment, it is free to start using the platform, but charges are applied after a certain amount of use. It’ll take some time for Proximi.io to become profitable but, so far, they have secured some investments from Dane and Finnish angel investors, as well as 74,000 euros from the Finnish government, and 300,000 euros from the accelerator they are part of.

This seems like quite a long way for an archaeologist and Annina has obviously stumbled into some down moments, “Mostly, your struggles are with yourself and your mental locks,” she shares, “Having very little background in business and absolutely none in tech, being the CEO of an IT startup has been challenging. Everything’s been new to me. Sometimes, I found myself thinking, ‘I’ve NO idea how to do this and I am not sure how I’ll do it.’” Yet, she continues,

It’s just about forgetting that and getting over it, because you have to do what you were previously not able to do to get to the next level. It is really important to believe in yourself, because a lot of it is just about having the passion, especially when you’re talking with investors.

Now Proximi.io is focussing on establishing a global presence and will try to monetise the platform soon through subscriptions. Quite an achievement for an archaeologist who started up in indoor positioning!

Website

Anshul Maheshwari, a former marketing executive, decides to create a platform for housewives or grandmothers wanting to sell homemade delicacies and organic products. But he didn’t want to invest a lot on building an application. So he buys an application ‑Naaniz ‑ from TM store and gets his marketplace running within minutes. Since May 2016, Naaniz mobile application has onboarded 900 products, 100 sellers and 1,000 downloads on PlayStore and 500 on iOS. Naaniz is creating a C2C platform using TM Store, which is enabling technology component in their business.

Similarly, there’s Robu.in – a niche platform that provides technology and tools in the field of robotics and Internet of Things (IoT) for researchers and innovators in institutes such as  the Indian Institutes of Technology, Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Jayesh Jain wished to create a marketplace of such products. He too bought a service from TM Store and got it running. “TM Store is different in its approach because they are giving a solution as a product. Their product has scope of customisation strictly based on the need of the business at software level,” informs 27-year-old Jayesh, Founder of Pune-based MacFos Enterprise and Robu.in.

There are several other niche merchants and mobile marketplaces such as MeraHoardings (hoarding services, India); BodyBigSize (plus size fashion, Indonesia); Celler& Loom (second-hand cloth platform, United Kingdom) who have been benefitted by the TM Store Product.

What’s TM Store?

TM Store was founded in 2015 by Virat Khutal of Twist Mobile and his team in Indore but was released in January 2016. TM Store converts CMS to native mobile app/ VR view in just 15 minutes and helps early-stage startups or offline businesses have their own application instantly. There are two major gaps whenever businesses think of switching to mobile experience. Firstly, responsive web experience of CMS (WooCommerce, Magento, etc.) is very slow and jerky for smaller handsets. As a result, many enterprises despite emptying their pockets into development of a responsive website, don’t get desired results and lose customers. Secondly, if they go for mobile application development, they have to deal with a bad UX and UI in less cost or spend a lot of money and time to get a robust mobile app designed. These problems further multiply given that virtual reality is picking up pace as a marketing tool and many businesses are already finding themselves behind the race due to their existing mobile or web applications.

“In simple words, TM Store is like WordPress, you choose from several themes and create your store within seconds. Looking at the growing number of startups and more and more businesses switching to web and mobile applications, it’s a futuristic product,” shares 36-year-old Virat. The merchants buy the basic product and then may or may not choose to buy their plug-ins and support services.

Team TM Store identified 70 unique functions in CMS and standardised those functions. “Our core philosophy is that experience today is more important than the product. We believe commerce will be driven by mobile and virtual reality experiences. Data in commerce will be collected by IoT devices integrated to CMS. To achieve this, we will have old CMS with technologies written on top of it. They will change experience for consumers. We would be building technologies to enable large ecosystem of categories like fashion or grocery to get high quality mobile and VR experience,” adds Virat.

TM Store has plans of a phase-wise implementation. Phase 1 would have mobile and major CMS with category identification, while Phase 2 would be responsive VR for experiences. They have started with WooCommerce CMS and have worked with 1,000 merchants so far validating the technology. The startup has released more than 260 merchant apps, sold more than 100 copies on Android and iOS within 75 days and integrated more than 50 plugins inside its application.

There are several similar players in this space such as AppMaker.xyz, WordApp Mobile App Plug-in, AppTuse. “It’s a huge space with 1.5 million merchants in WooCommerce alone. Our approach is not about selling IT or Native App, but we will be moving towards managed services for e-commerce businesses. We are building UI Runtime creators, A/B testing features, user navigation, analytics and marketing for merchant success in ecosystem. It will enable us to penetrate in richer and deeper markets of Shopify and Magento,” informs Virat.

There are 3.2 million small merchants worldwide with e-commerce shops and web stores. “Considering that 10 percent of them are successful business, we would have 3,00,000 merchants having unique products and sustainable business,” he adds.

India alone has 50 million shop owners and merchants with non-digital presence. A rise of digital agencies, technology providers and companies deriving technology around commerce in on the anvil.

How does TM store make money? 

“We have a pay-as-you-go model among merchants and developers. We charge merchants on the basis of platform, say Android and iOS App with $100. If they want to integrate payment SDK, multi venderSDk (Dukon), shipping SDK or Multi-lingual, they pay based on the plug-in component. This process is generating reusable inventory of plug-ins with us. We believe top 200 plug-ins can cover very large market for us,” says Virat.

Secondly, they pay for analytics, push notification, targeted push notification based on their needs. “We would be releasing A/B testing and actionable analytics with monthly subscription in coming months,” he adds.

Future plans

“I am convinced that the app ecosystem will be converted to web-ecosystem in the next two years. Instant Apps and App on Cloud will change the behaviour of Apps to Web. Our solution will solve this problem and give good experience to 3.2 million e-commerce portals with our technology,” informs Virat. TM supports all features in case of payments such as RazerPay, PayUMoney, PayUBiz, Paypal, CC Avenue, etc.; or order status and notifications like Push Notify; WooCommerce, WordPress Custom Menus; Google Places API and the likes. They have integrated Hotline Chat for instant 24/7 support. It is a product of Freshdesk,” informs Virat.

TM Store claims to have 100 percent growth with sales of $5,000 per month since May. They have not started full marketing and developer reach programme yet.

In future, they want to unify product sourcing technology while integrating merchants with each other to enable them for international product reach and knowledge. “Imagine Indonesian merchants having product access to Indian merchants. It will become product discovery for all the merchants to increase their product reach,” adds Virat.

Watch the making of Naaniz and making of TM Store.

Website 

It is not every day that you meet entrepreneurs who have a very minimal social media presence. These are individuals who know that business is ultimately about presenting solutions that increase revenues and benefit consumers. This being the core of their narrative they go after the long tail of the Indian market, which is yet to get onto any form of social media. Three entrepreneurs Raj Pyla, Santhosh Rapeti and Sridevi Singaram, all three in their early 40s, built a Rs 125 crore optical business in less than eight years. Ben Franklin is now a 230 store chain, which retails optical needs in over 107 Indian towns and cities. The three entrepreneurs have raised Rs 40 crore from Venture East last year and are now eyeing to expand their store count to 500 stores in the next two years. They also hope to double their revenues by then. However, all good things have a beginning and have their share of ups and downs.

The UK connection

Back in 2004, Raj was a technology consultant based out of Reading, UK. He had, in his younger days, worked as an entrepreneur building medical equipment and had soon realised that being an entrepreneur requires not just capital and knowledge, but also the acumen of the market that one is serving for. “I had given up the hope of becoming an entrepreneur and had worked in various corporations till I met Srinivas, who was an ophthalmologist, in the UK,” says Raj, Chairman of Ben Franklin. He adds that it was after a game of tennis did Srinivas and he began to think of opening ophthalmology stores in India. “The idea sounded compelling because there were no organised or branded chain of stores selling frames, glasses and lens,” says Raj. Srinivas’s wife ‑ Sridevi, who was a practicing doctor in the UK ‑ too jumped into this idea. Santhosh, who was also a technology consultant and a family friend, joined them within days because the business proposition sounding compelling. They named their company Ben Franklin because it was the inventor Benjamin Franklin who invented bi-focal lens.

Think about it, young people in India will eventually require glasses for correction and lifestyle. The type of frames and lenses also differ based on the requirement. For example, a sportsman will need a shatter proof lens, and those with high eye power will need thicker lenses.

With this in mind, in 2006, Raj frequently travelled to India to study the market. He realised that the numbers were staggering because two-thirds of people in India aged above 40 years needed some type of eye correction. Sridevi stopped practicing medicine to get into the business full time and so did Raj and Santosh, who stopped their consulting business and dived into running Ben Franklin. To their credit, the market was there. There was little competition; there were the likes of GKB Opticals, Himalaya Opticals and the Sunglass Hut. But this was a multi-billion dollar market with very few national chains. This was the gap that Ben Franklin hoped to fill.

Market Scope’s report titled “India Opthalmic Market Report” An analysis for 2015 to 2021” forecasts that over 140 million people in India ‑  who are above the age of 60 ‑ will require eye care due to an upsurge in dietary change-related eye diseases and growing incidence of myopia.

Market Scope estimates that there are more than 180 companies competing in India’s ophthalmic market. Twelve companies (Alcon, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Bausch + Lomb, Genentech/Roche, Allergan, Abbott Medical Optics, Bayer Healthcare AG, Santen, Topcon, Nidek, Cipla Limited, and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.) make up more than two-thirds of manufacturer revenues. The market is estimated to be more than $1 billion today and is expected to double by 2021.

After two years of research, Ben Franklin opened its first store in Hyderabad in 2008 and quickly opened 10 stores in high street locations, with the average store size of 800sqft. The company stocked the best brands – like Zeiss, Baush+Lomb and Roche – and combined with their superior service they expected the business to soar. “It hit us very hard,” says Raj. High rentals, low margins and inventory pile up made the business bleed. The rental itself was 25 percent of the sales and when combined with other costs, the company began losing cash.  By then, the company had invested Rs 4 crore and was in a precarious situation. That’s when Raj and Sridevi decided to study their own business again and turn it around.

The second coming

Around 2009-2010, the three founders met a doctor who had a large eye care clinic. Upon visiting the doctor, they enquired about the number of lens they bought directly from him. The doctor said he would sell four to five lenses a day and that it became part of his additional revenues. That’s when the trio asked him if he could take 100sqft space in his clinic and retail optical products to increase revenues for the clinic. The doctor agreed and quickly the Ben Franklin team set up a small store. To the team’s credit, the doctor began converting a lot of his patients into customers for the retail store. This model worked like a charm and helped them scale up their revenues to Rs 70 crore in three years. The model worked because it had low rentals, it reduced the manpower cost – as the store was manned by only one or two persons and then it increased revenues because of the captive patients from clinics. There are 10,000 small sized eye hospitals and large clinics – in India – and each of them is yet to have their own captive eye care retail store. The number of stores increased from 50 in 2011 to 230 by 2016. The company had reinvested all the cash into the business and had further invested Rs 6 crore by 2012.

“We began to break the mindset of the doctors and made them believe in our business model,” says Sridevi, Co-founder and director of operations at Ben Franklin. She says that the small store format also coincided with their private label strategy.

Kishore Biyani, Chairman and Managing Director of Future Group says,

Every retail business should be focussed on private labels to increase margins and for that they need to improve their supply chain and manufacturing capabilities.

Increasing revenues and private labels

Around 2011, the three entrepreneurs landed up in Hong Kong to figure out suppliers of frames, lenses and sunglasses. They had no idea who to contact and how to go about it. It took them six months to figure out that they had to meet manufacturers in China to get factories to build their private label frames and lenses. They went the private label route because they did not want to be dependent on distributors that supplied products. Like any retail business, their business is based on volumes and net margins can be as low as three percent. Today, the company has 70 percent of their inventory as private labels. However, lenses and eye care from big brands still account for a majority of their revenues. “We organised our business with our own internal ERP and automated some of the processes by connecting our brand offices on web-based data capture,” says Sridevi. The company had raised some more money (in the form of debt) from friends and family at the time. But their business had crossed Rs 100 crore and suddenly it captured the attention of venture capital funds. Around four or five funds chased the company. “We thought we were not good enough for raising money, and that’s when we realised that young people were raising large sums of money with just paper ideas. So we decided to raise money,” says Raj.

VentureEast managed to invest Rs 40 crore in the business along with some secondary investment from the founding team’s family and friends.

“We invested in the company because the entrepreneurs have an eye for efficiency in operations and management of capital,” says Jagannath Samavedam, General Partner at Venture East. The money will be used to double store expansion and improve the digital play of the company. It will also increase its store presence in Northern India. For the due at Ben Franklin, Rs 500 crore is just around the corner.

Website

Manufacturing, automobile, engineering, and now startups — Chennai is undoubtedly emerging as a successful playground for multiple startups.

With Chennai-based companies like Freshdesk and Indix already creating their mark on global territories, the city is hands down the fastest emerging SaaS hub for startups.

Adding to the fame is bootstrapped unicorn Zoho, which, although born out of Silicon Valley, entrusts Chennai with its developer teams.

Amongst the other well-known names is financial marketplace BankBazaar.com; subscription and recurring bill solution Chargebee; online accommodation booking marketplace Stayzilla; legal services startup vakilsearch; and Titan’s newest bet Caratlane.

According to YourStory Research, the first half of 2016 saw Chennai startups receiving a total of $43 million in funding flow, spread across 16 deals, while last year, when there was a funding boom, a total of 308.8 million was invested in Chennai startups, across 32 deals between the months of January to September.  Further, in 2014, a total of 58 million was invested across 14 deals in Chennai-based startups.

The potential of the startup ecosystem has also led to the creation of several active mentor organisations like TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), CII Startupreneurs, IIT Alumni Clubs, and Nasscom’s Million Dollar startup programme, over the past few years. Further, it is estimated that Tamil Nadu alone has over 30 incubators with a fraction of them present in college campuses of IIT, VIT, etc. 

But, having given legacy startups such as Bharatmatrimony.com, the emerging breed of startups are all geared to shape a new future for the startup ecosystem.

Here’s a list of the up and coming startups which are redefining the ecosystem and putting Chennai on the map:

• Fuel Book Technology

Made in India, the Fuel Book device has been developed by Chennai-based Pupalic. Through a device and mobile app, the user can interact with their car for fuel analysis, mileage tracking, trip tracking, smart terrain mapping, etc. Other features include a black box which tracks the vehicle speed during an accident.

In May last year, the firm was reported to be entering the production phase with the device being self-installable. [Read More]

• Energyly

Formerly known as eMeter.in, Energyly helps industries, tech parks, and other commercial entities as well as homes reduce their power cost by providing hardware and intelligent analytics. Having gone commercial in January this year, the product was the brainchild of Dayal Nathan and Dilip Rajendran.

Connecting close to 10 devices to the Energyly hardware, the platform provides a simple dashboard interface measuring the energy consumption pattern to make targeted changes to reduce power cost.

• Zarget

Started by ex-Zoho executives Arvind Parthiban, Naveen Venkat, and Santosh Kumar, Zarget is a conversion rate optimisation software. Changing the way traction and engagement are assessed, the platform provides analytics and insights on increasing conversions and transactions to marketers for their websites.

Sitting as a Google Chrome plugin, the SaaS tool had received 1,500 signups with 400 companies during its launch in December last year. In May, the firm received funding from Accel Partners, Matrix Partners, and angel investor Girish Mathrubootham. [Read More]

• GoBumpr

Started by Karthik Venkateswaran, Nandha Kumar, and Sundar Natesan, GoBumpr helps vehicle owners  find, book, and pay for automobile services from service stations. The array of services include OEM-authorised free services, regular scheduled paid services, ad-hoc repair jobs, 24/7 on-road assistance, vehicle insurance renewals, and finding the nearest petrol bunks on road.

Bootstrapped, the platform also gives service centres and businesses the opportunity to promote, manage, and sell their services online.

Within two months of its launch, GoBumpr registered over 700 car- and bike-owners, clocking Rs 15 lakh in revenues. In January, they were reported to have on-boarded 260 service providers (50 four-wheeler service centres, 120 two-wheeler centres, and 90 exclusive tyre puncture shops). [Read More]

• Lawbot

Joining the bot revolution is Lawbot, developed by Chennai-based Acumenist Analytics Pvt Ltd. Part of Target’s fourth batch of accelerators, the startup is the brainchild of Manaswani Krishna and Krishna Sundaresan.

Essentially an AI-powered contracts engine, the platform automatically checks for common errors and loopholes, pointing out missing obligations and restrictions when a contract is uploaded at the backend.  Bootstrapped, the product also helps in drafting and reviewing contracts automatically.

• Uniphore

Founded in 2008 by Umesh Sachdev and Ravi Saraogi, Uniphore is essentially a speech technology company. Headquartered in IIT Madras Research Park, the company’s solutions aim to allow any software application to understand and respond to natural human speech. Having integrated their smart speech recognition application, the firm’s solutions are centred around voice biometrics, a virtual speech assistant, and speech analytics.

In June last year, the firm raised investments from IDG Ventures, just a month after receiving Series A funding from Kris Gopalakrishnan and other existing investors. [Read More]

• DriversKart

Started in September 2015 by IIM Calcutta alumnus Vinit Srivastava, DriversKart is an on-demand driver service. Operational in five cities — Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, and Chennai — the firm has a little over 20 employees.

Reported to have a network of 200 professional drivers, the app allows individuals to request for a driver at a specific time and location. Charging customers on a minutely basis, the app has around 4,000–5,000 downloads across platforms and closes 4,000 rides on a monthly basis.

In April this year, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A from ah! Ventures and subsequently acquired Mumbai-based chauffeur service Driven by May this year. [Read More]

• FixNix

Started around the end of 2012, FixNix is a SaaS-based GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) platform. The software essentially automates the processes of compliance and risk management linked to corporate governance.

Bootstrapped for three years, the firm raised its pre-Series A funding of $500,000 from Jay Vijayan, CIO of Tesla Motors, along with other angel investors in the Silicon Valley.

Having its offices in Silicon Valley, Founder Shanmugavel Sankaran (Shan) claims that the firm has generated revenues of $500,000 in their three years of existence. In an earlier interview with YourStory, he said,

“In August (2015) we met close to 43 banks, of which three banks have already bought the solution for $100,000 and several others have expressed interest.”

Further, the company claims that its public SaaS version has over 213 corporate clients already. [Read more]

• YELDI Softcom

Founded in July 2015 by father-daughter duo Lakshmideepa and Ra. Arjunamurthy, YELDI is a core NFC technology company.

With contact-less NFC-enabled cards, the solutions are designed to handle a variety of payments and security access applications. Until now, they’ve launched an NFC prepaid payment card iTapIt in association with National Development Bank PLC in Sri Lanka. The firm is also scouting for similar partnerships in Bangladesh, Middle East, and the Philippines.

Further, YELDI has closed group payment solutions for retailers in the form of mPOS and payment cards. With a team of 90 people, the firm is looking to market 10 million NFC cards by the end of this year. [Read More]

• Proklean Technologies

Probiotics chemicals company Proklean was founded by Dr Sivaram Pillai, B. Chandrasekhar, and Vishwadeep Kuila in 2012. Already having developed a host of customers in the textile and leather processing industries, Proklean manufactures natural probiotic products under the brand name ‘Proviera’.

Being completely non-toxic and  biodegradable, Proklean finds its products marketed in USA, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Turkey, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Australia, and Bangladesh. [Read More]

There is also Vortex Engineering which is known for building low cost (power consuming) ATMs for rural India. Started in 2004, the company has its presence spread over 12,000 ATMs and 35  locations across the country.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Other startups that merit mention are ContractIQ, Mad Street Den, Konotor, Contus, Unmetric, Frilp, GoFrugal, and Avaz App (Invention Labs), amongst others.

Which is your favourite startup from Chennai? Let us know in the comments below.

While 2016 has seen a rise in fintech activity, there is another segment that seems to be catching the fancy of young entrepreneurs.

With players like ClearTax, TaxZippy, and Makeyourtax already claiming the space, tax filing and management is surfacing as one of the key playgrounds for young entrepreneurs.

So why are startups still flocking to this space? Abhishek Soni’s [24] story might provide some answers.

Working as an auditor with Ernst & Young in Gurgaon, Abhishek used to travel to work in an Uber provided by the company. More often than not, he used to find a few familiar faces ferrying him to work and back. During the journeys,  drivers would often clear their doubts on the various complicated processes of tax filing or even better, just ask Abhishek to file their taxes.

This left him with two strong points to ponder upon. First, due to the plethora of job opportunities, there was a newer segment of individuals falling under the tax filing bracket. Second, in spite of several players, there were still not enough resources to help this newer breed of tax payers with their IT returns.

This is the story of how he decided to start up. How he justified his decision to his family is another story altogether. For obvious reasons, they didn’t understand why Abhishek would leave a well settled job to foray into untested waters.

During this time, Abhishek reconnected with Vertika Kedia [24], whom he knew from his CA internship days, and explained his decision to her.  Seeing the idea’s potential, she plunged in and together they founded online professional tax filing service Tax2win in July 2015.

Filing returns, one at a time  

Another major validation to Abhishek’s idea came when the firm launched the Beta version of the product. Within the first 10 days of launch, the firm got close to 1,000 users on their platform, filing 300 returns while forging three corporate partnerships around the same time.

Abhishek says,

Tax filing is a very subjective process, with each case being different from the other. In such a case, technology cannot fully standardise the process.

This was one of the basic fundamentals behind providing a differentiated experience to their consumers.

At the start of the process, users are asked certain basic questions, like whether they have a fixed salary or any assets or savings. Based on these responses, users’ journeys are customised, asking them to fill up only the relevant fields of information. Abhishek remarks,

The amount of information thrown at an individual can be overwhelming. This is one of the major reasons why tax filing in India is considered to be such a complicated process.

The platform also provides a CA Assistance feature for individuals still unsure about filing their taxes. On booking the service, the platform asks individuals to upload their documents, which are reviewed by a CA who then shows them the best way forward. All doubts are answered by the accountant within 24 hours of raising the request. Priced at Rs 299 annually, the service also allows users to be connected to their personal accountants all year round.

However, the team didn’t stop there. Abhishek rightly says that even after being confident of their filings, individuals still wish to get them cross-checked by CAs or professionals thorough with the process.

Keeping this tendency in mind, the platform has a ‘CA Reviewed’ feature where the filing is cross-checked and reviewed by a CA before submission. The firm charges a nominal fee of Rs 99 for this service. Though it has not yet been marketed, the firm is expected to fully roll out the service by September this year.

During the current tax filing season, 30,000 users used the Tax2win platform, of which 4,000–5,000 opted for the CA Assistance service.

On the B2B front, the firm ties up with corporate houses and sets up helpdesks in their office premises to help employees file their taxes. As of now 30–50 percent of the firm’s revenue comes from the B2B side of the business.

Tax2win’s clientele includes names like the Indian Railways, Marriott Group of Hotels, Fortis Healthcare, Idea Cellular, and IndiGo, amongst others.

The firm also claims to have raised an investment of one million from a business house in Jaipur.

Moving forward, the platform plans to introduce TDS filing and tax-saving services along with newer product lines for these B2B clients. Having a team of 45 people (of which more than 20 are CAs), the firm also plans to expand rapidly in the next four months, setting foot in Mumbai and Bengaluru.  In fact, Abhishek claims that the firm is also looking to shift its headquarters and core team from Jaipur to Bengaluru.

However, for the founders, the vision remains to make Tax2win the ultimate destination for any tax- related tasks.  In line with this vision, the firm is also introducing technologies which will allow CAs to remotely track an individual’s financials through consent from their personal smartphones.

This will remove the friction of uploading documents, with the CA being completely aware about an individual’s financial status and health.

The market

Speaking about competition, Abhishek states,

“There is only three to four percent of the total Indian population which really file their taxes today. Out of this percentage a mere, 0.2 percent file their taxes online, leaving the market still nascent and untapped.”

On the other end is competitor ClearTax, founded in March 2011, which as of the last tax season claimed to be helping 10 lakh individuals file their taxes. The firm also claims to have an army of 10,000 CAs and experts registered on its platform, while raising a funding of more than $15 million this year.

Further, fintech players like Zerodha and Taxmantra are also getting into the game with Z-Connect and Makeyourtax respectively. However, the audience targeted might be different (Z-Connect is focused on traders).

But like other fintech segments, the focus for the tax filing sector remains to be on growing the pie and getting more individuals to file their taxes online. With a new player sprouting up every tax filing season, the competition is also on the technology backend and simplicity of the experience provided to the user.

With multiple players existing, it might be possible to see future consolidation in the space.

Website: www.tax2win.in

Back in 2012, Indore had won the ‘Best Foodie City Award’ by NDTV Good Times Food Awards. Food startups have a competitive market with a plethora of options from local vendors, street food shops and established brands. When Oye24 charmed the demanding people of Indore with its 24/7 AFAP (as fast as possible) delivery, it became a feat.

Oye24 is an Indore-based food producer, aggregator and delivery startup. It offers 24/7 free delivery services with no minimum order size, consistent food quality and pocket-friendly prices. It serves multiple cuisines from various vendors along with food cooked at its own in-house kitchen.

The startup has earned a reputation, especially among a large student population, with its late-night food delivery services. Started in November 2015, Oye24 today delivers around 350-450 orders per day during the week and during weekends it goes up to 450-550 orders per day. “We have delivered over 30,000 orders and served more than 10,000 customers so far. Since January our order volume has increased by six times,” informs 47-year-old Manish Chhajed, Co-founder of Oye24.

The idea of Oye24 was born during a family get-together. It all started when the co-founders were trying to order food for their kids and to their surprise found that none of the food delivery applications had free delivery and has minimum order size. The co-founders then finalised on the idea of Oye24 that day.

Online Indian food business and competition

According to India Brand Equity Foundation report, Indian food service industry is expected to reach $78 billion by 2018. The Indian gourmet food market is currently valued at $1.3 billion and is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 percent. India’s organic food market is expected to increase by three times by 2020. The online food ordering business in India is still in its nascent stage, but has an exponential growth ahead. The report also stated that the organised food business in India is worth $48 billion, of which food delivery is valued at $15 billion.

Source

There has been an exponential growth in the number of  food aggregators  (Swiggy, Food Panda, Faasos, Dazo). However, rapid growth has also resulted in faster failures. For example, Tiny Owl closed down and  Zomato shut down its operations in many cities. The future of the food tech startups has been a hot topic of debate in the ecosystem. Yet, there are examples of food recommendation apps such as Bingage (Indore) or FoodbyMood (Nagpur) that scaled up fast. How does Oye24 plan to compete in case more food recommendation startups surface?

“We are aware of the competition Faasos and Food Panda post in similar space. But more than companies coming into the space, the challenge is to compete with home-made food. We have decided that we will not offer discounts, either now or in future even if competitors do. We would instead maintain this seamless process of quality food supply that would surely keep people coming to us,” adds Mishal, 24, Co-founder of Oye24.

Oye24 has a fleet of 60 people including cooks, delivery boys, administration and operations team.

A family that started up

What’s interesting is this disruptive startup was born within a family. Mishal earlier worked in Tata motors for about two years, while the rest of the three co-founders and family members Rahul Badhera (48), Ritesh Chhajed (42) and Manish had their own business.

Ritesh says, “We ran a pilot assignment in November 2015 when we began with 10-15 orders per day. By December, we were touching up to 60 orders per day. We became confident of the acceptance.” The co-founders invested Rs 12 lakh from their personal savings to set up a complete and advanced infrastructure of the kitchen and re-launched Oye24 in January 2016.

Currently bootstrapped, Oye24 has been a profitable proposition right from the start. The vendors pay a certain commission for listing their dishes on the web application. “Our daily sales vary from Rs 40,000‑60,000 on weekdays and Rs 55,000‑85,000 on weekends,” he adds.

Oye24 lists food items in more than 11 broad categories including midnight snacks, combos and add-ons. Oye24 delivers food value of as low as Rs 24 (creamroll) or Rs 75 (Puribhaji) without charging for delivery.

Oye24 aims at opening six to seven more kitchens within the city soon. “We are desperate to start on-demand food meaning whatever customers wish to eat, they can customise instead of choosing from existing lists. We have plans in place for scaling up to multiple locations, catering to parties and conferences along with starting up with subscription facility for various customers, companies, organisations,” informs Rahul. Oye24 is targeting a revenue of Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1 crore per month by November 2016.

Website

There is no argument about it. Success, in sports as in everything else, is largely predicated on natural aptitude, talent, hard work, sacrifice, self-belief, and dedication.

But what about the other factors? How much does lineage (have your parents / grandparents played a sport at a higher-than-casual level?) matter in sporting excellence? What about the economic background? What about popular support, which comes from a larger public understanding and appreciation of the skills and stamina involved in playing the sport well?

To all these questions, it would seem the answer is the same – ‘A significant amount’. It explains – if only partly – why Geeta and Babita Phogat are among the top women’s wrestlers in the world (their father is a wrestler himself, apart from being their coach), how Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra was able to stay the course with an expensive sport like shooting (when they realised their son had an exceptional talent, his parents had an indoor shooting range built for him at their home in Patiala), and why there were few cheers back home for Manish Singh Rawat, even though he finished a hugely creditable 13th at Rio, in the almost-unknown sport (in India) of racewalking.

Blessed thrice over

On these parameters, Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, our girl in the Rio spotlight today, is blessed thrice over. Her parents, PV Ramana and P Vijaya, were both national-level volleyball players – her dad good enough to win the Arjuna Award for the sport in 2000. Her family was comfortably off, and willing to let their girls pursue sport seriously – Sindhu’s older sister, Divya, was herself a national-level netball player; she eventually quit the sport to study medicine.

As for popular support, why, badminton is the quintessential Indian urban sport, even more so than hockey or cricket, for it isn’t just snot-nosed boys who play it on the streets of every Indian city, it is also grandmothers in sarees and salwar-kameezes, their dupattas and pallus tied firmly at the waist, who enjoy playing the sport with their sons and sons-in-law, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, friends and family, on the streets, in apartment complexes, in neighbourhood sporting clubs, before the food hampers are opened up at family picnics.

Plus, we’ve had icons in the sport for over a generation now – Prakash Padukone, Syed Modi, Vimal Kumar, Aparna Popat, Sindhu’s coach Pullela Gopichand, and Gopichand’s other protegee, Saina Nehwal.

So yes, Sindhu had these perfect starting blocks to explode into her race from, but of course, not everyone who is thus blessed makes it, as she has, to World No 10 in their sport.

That called for other strengths – the strength, at age 11, to not only train through the week at the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Gachibowli, some 60 kms away from her Secunderabad home, but also live there, because the 120-km daily commute would not make sense; the strength to use the weekends at home to attend tuitions and catch up with schoolwork, since no self-respecting South Indian family, even a sporting one, would be comfortable with the idea of their offspring doing sport at the expense of a regular education; the strength to psyche herself to scream long and loud in front of some 100 other players and coaches at the Academy a couple of months ago, on her coach’s diktat, because he believed that the gentle, soft-spoken girl now had to learn to display some visible aggression to intimidate her opponents at Rio.

A long volley

Sindhu began to make waves on the international circuit some seven years ago. In 2009, at age 13, she won bronze at the sub-junior Asian Badminton Championships. At age 14, she participated in the 2010 Uber Cup, a bonafide member of the Indian national team.

A year later, she celebrated her 16th birthday with a bronze in the Asia Under-19 Championships. In 2012, she won the gold in the same championships, apart from earning her reputation as a giant-killer when she entered the semis of the China Open Masters after handing out a stunning defeat to the London 2012 Olympic gold medallist, Li Xuerui.

Before she left for China, her parents had taken her to watch Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Her dad thinks that might have helped, along with his running commentary to her throughout the film, about the importance of hard work. Dads!

In 2013, Sindhu truly came into her own. She won her first Grand Prix Gold title, the Malaysian Open, following it up with a second GP title at the Macau Open. She then won the bronze at the BWF World Championships, becoming the first Indian woman to win a singles medal at the tournament. An ecstatic country decorated her soon after with its second-highest sporting recognition, the Arjuna Award. She was just 18 years old (fun fact: her dad won his Arjuna at age 39).

A string of other successes followed, including, most recently, her demolition of Chinese World No 2 Wang Yihan to secure herself a berth at Rio. On Tuesday, she beat the Chinese girl again in the quarterfinals at Rio, to advance to the semis and deny badminton superpower China a two-medal finish at the Olympics for the first time since 1996.

After her win against No 6 seed, Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara, the reigning All England Champion, whom she has lost to in each of their three previous meetings, today Sindhu has assured India a silver medal.

(PS: Random thought – what is it about Hyderabad and its surrounds anyway? Pullela Gopichand, Sania Mirza, Srikanth Kidambi, Pusarla Sindhu – and even Saina Nehwal, who trained there for several years – seem to have benefited simply from living there! It must be something in the chillies, but that’s a story for another day.)

(Roopa Pai wrote this post originally on her Facebook wall)

Advances in cloud computing have brought in a technological revolution in recent years. Now, small and medium scale businesses don’t need to physically invest in infrastructure like servers and then worry about changes they need to make while scaling up, or even cutting back and scaling down during lean business cycles.

Cloud computing has also brought in a new era of business, with ventures that are being termed ‘born-in-cloud’ companies. Bengaluru-based Powerupcloud is one such company, and it has an interesting story.

Story so far

PowerupCloud initially started as a Cloud and Big Data consulting startup in June 2015. The founding team consists of Ankit Garg (COO), Ranjeeth Kuppala (CTO), Siva Surendira (CEO), Ram Kumar (Director-Engineering) and Arun Britto Lawrence (Director-Analytics). Like every startup in a competitive space, Powerupcloud faced multiple challenges from different fronts in their early days. The biggest struggle though was when the team was bad mouthed unfairly by one of their ex-employers, which prevented Powerupcloud from closing three massive deals. Siva noted that they had done everything right, both legally and ethically, but their ex-employer didn’t want them to rise because of the extremely competitive nature of the big data and cloud business.

Siva though is happy that, inspite of all the odds, they are stronger now and growing day by day. Powerupcloud considers itself to be a ‘Born-in-Cloud’(BIC) company and helps several large enterprises and leading internet companies with cloud and big data consulting services and supports their clients in delivering complex solutions in an agile manner.

Headquarted in Bengaluru, Powerupcloud has a 24/7 Global Support Center in Coimbatore that supports the cloud monitoring and management for their international and local customers. Powerupcloud also has sales offices in Pune and Chennai, and recently set up an office in Singapore.

On the services front, Poweupcloud offers three main services- consulting, big data and managed services. Powerupcloud claims to be one of India’s fastest cloud companies to become an advanced consulting partner with AWS and is also a HiPo (High Potential) partner with Microsoft Azure. They have partnered with several teams within Microsoft to take new technologies to customers.

Powerupcloud has been bootstrapping since inception and the team is currently 62 members strong across its multiple offices. Powerupcloud claims to be doing a million dollars in revenue already and aims to double this by FY16-17. Siva noted that they have started competing with mid-size system integrators and technology services companies and going forward aims to take large Global System Integrators (GSIs) head-on in enterprise deals.

Like every other high-growth startup that does well, Powerupcloud faced four situations where they had acquisition offers on the table. But the founding team took a decision not to sell as they were passionate about taking the startup further, in-line with their long term goals. Siva declined to disclose the names of the four interested companies for privacy and ethical reasons.

In April 2016, Powerupcloud decided to expand their horizons from the services side and launched IRA, their first product. Siva said, We have built IRA, a real-time AI-based customer support engine which has had great reception from the likes of Microsoft and AWS.”

We have built IRA, a real-time AI-based customer support engine which has had great reception from the likes of Microsoft and AWS.

What is IRA?

IRA is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine which interprets support mails written by customers, figures out the problem category, interacts with the company’s CRM and ERP databases and responds to the customer with the right solution.

Based on their research and experience, Powerupcloud is confident that IRA will be able to respond to customer queries in under a minute without committing ‘eye balling’ errors, which humans are prone to. IRA is available to customers for a $15,000 one time licencing fee, followed by a $999/month subscription fee.

Siva said that IRA has seen great adoption with a large set of enterprises in India and Singapore because the key differentiator for IRA is being an enterprise platform. IRA gets deployed in customers’ cloud accounts, which gives them complete control over their data.

Sector overview- Cloud wars

The cloud and big data space has been growing exponentially in the past decade globally and in India, with a lot of companies now opting to move completely to cloud services because of the ease and convenience involved. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a dominant player in this space and competes with the likes of Microsoft Azure.

Siva notes that the cloud and big data space is still a largely untapped market in India with room for exponential growth. He said,

The entry barrier in the space for big consulting companies is almost zero. Heavy investment is not needed and India has good tech talent.

But a vast majority of the startups in India focus on consulting and services, while very few have the technical capabilities and resources to develop products from scratch. Starting out as a consulting services company, understanding the market and then developing products seems to be a viable option that many startups are embracing.

Related read: “There is no compression algorithm for experience” -Andy Jassy, AWS CEO

Future plans

Powerupcloud’s long term vision is to become the numero uno cloud company in India by 2017.

The startup is also planning to setup a technology hub in Chennai to cater to application development and IoT projects. While they have been bootstrapped and self-sustainable so far, Siva noted that Powerupcloud is now actively engaging in discussions with investors to raise a Series A round of funding, which will be primarily earmarked for geographical expansion to other global regions and support innovation within the startup.

While India is a big market in itself, Powerupcloud aims to focus on more mature markets like the USA, Europe and Asia to further boost growth. From their recent expansion to Singapore, Siva found that doing business is easier in more mature markets because of easier regulations and clients who understand the needs for cloud solutions better. Siva said,

Geographically, Singapore, which is one of the five financial powers of the world, is the closest mature market we have. The results there have been very encouraging.

The core team at Powerupcloud plans to disperse themselves in different geographies to better oversee the expansion plans and also hire from the local talent, who understand the market and its dynamics. Powerupcloud has opened their first overseas entity in Singapore in July 2016 and they are planning to enter the US market by setting up an office in Chicago by early 2017.

Website- Powerupcloud

Couples who fail to conceive normally opt for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). However, the process is not 100 percent successful. Many couples undergo several gut-wrenching and failed attempts of IVF.

For a former gaming entrepreneur Saarthak Bakshi, 29, this was a revelation. During his stint at a Adiva, a women-centric hospital, Saarthak realised the value of fertility and how deep the problem of infertility actually was. He was managing operations at Adiva, which is co-owned by his mother Dr Rita Bakshi. Rita is an IVF Doctor for decades now.

Building a technology focus

With an aim to help couples with infertility issues, Saarthak created the concept of One Child per Couple (OCPC). Adiva is a profit-centric organisation. Since Saarthak found it difficult to convince the stakeholders to run thought this vision and concept without a focus on profits, he decided start his own fertility centre. In 2011, Saarthak along with his mother opened International Fertility Centre (IFC) in New Delhi.  Currently, IFC has a network of over 10 clinics located across India, Nepal and Afghanistan.

To ensure that their IVF has the best results, the team uses ICSI unit from RI with micromanipulators. They claim to be the only centre in North India to offer Computer-Assisted Sperm Analysis, K-system Laminar air flow, Embryoscope and Vitrification unit.

IFC not only offers IVF treatment, but also provides surrogacy services. With the training of his mother Rita, the team is able to help each couple with a choice that is best suited for them.

The team claims that their clinical pregnancy and live baby rates are averaging at six out of 10. This means six women out of 10 are delivering healthy babies in the first attempt itself.

Clearing the roadblocks

Explaining why he chose to set up a centre in Nepal, Saarthak, a former Ernst & Young employee, says:

Post the success of the first centre in New Delhi, I researched on the worst affected places in India, where the problem of infertility existed. I started with Rajasthan and expanded into other states. I also realised that in Nepal, a problem similar to India existed – infertility was equally or more burdensome because of the low paying capacity and the similar cultural ethos associated with infertility.

One of the main roadblocks for Saarthak was understanding the nuances and technicalities of the subject. This meant months of research, understanding the different best practices across countries, get the best infrastructure in place and hire the right talent with in-depth knowledge and experience. With the deep knowledge and experience in this field, his mother Rita helped scale and grow the team.

Scaling up was a big challenge for the team. Saarthak adds that each centre requires a minimum investment of Rs 1 crore and with no external funding, it was a daunting task to think of replicating IFC centres in other locations.

“As a strategic move we started partnering with hospitals and widened out network. Hospitals started to outsource the entire IVF wing to us. As a result, I was able to cut my establishment costs to half and expanded much faster than expected,” says Saarthak.

The growing need for IVF

The past decade has seen a growth in IVF in India. According to a RNCOS report, several factors like changing lifestyles, busy work schedules and changing preferences are believed to be the key reasons that cause the problem of infertility. The report suggests that the IVF market is growing steady from 2014 at a CAGR of 14 percent.

Apart from IFC, today there are general women and fertility centric hospitals and clinics in India. There are several hospital chains like Apollo; Cloudnine, a multi-city hospital chain for women and children specialising in obstetrics, gynaecology, fertility, and neonatology. Cloudnine had raised Rs 400 ($74 million) crores from India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) for a minority stake in December last year.

This is the third round of investment made in the hospital chain. Cloudnine had earlier raised $16 million by Sequoia India and its existing investors Matrix Partners India. Both Matrix and Sequoia retain their stake in the hospital chain

Bringing that differentiator

Speaking of how different IFC is Saarthak says:

“IFC is unique in the measures it has adopted to treat couples, technology that is unmatchable in any other such centre and the supreme array of doctors that we have,” says Saarthak.

The team claims to have grown from one IFC centre to 12 till the first quarter of 2016. Bootstrapped, the team says they’ve had consistent revenue growth. With a team of close to 100, the platform has an average turnover of Rs 15 crore.

Apart from this, IFC is also focussed on ensuring that there is greater awareness on the subject, Saarthak says:

We also conduct camps for generating awareness in underdeveloped regions like Ethiopia, Uganda and Afghanistan as these countries do not have access to good infertility treatments. Moreover, these countries are politically unstable and pose inherent dangers to the people there.

IFC is aiming to build over 100 IFC centres across India by 2020 and expand to international markets.

Website

Although many things make travel wonderful, one of its most fascinating features is its potential to open doors one had never even thought about. David Belo and Angelika Anagnostou experienced much the same thing when, on visiting India in 2013, they found high quality cocoa growing in Karnataka. Although David had trained himself as an artisan bread baker and pastry chef, chocolate was a new experiment.

The beginnings of Earth Loaf

In 2010, David had set up Earth Loaf in London with the aim of producing handmade organic artisan country bread and raw vegan confectionery. When he decided to shift to India, Earth Loaf Artisan & Raw Pvt. Ltd. was incorporated with a focus only on chocolates. There were a few reasons why David took this step. “Firstly, I wanted to put the wonderful Indian cocoa on the global map. 90 percent of cocoa is used by large corporations like Nestle, Cadbury, and Campco whereby the appreciation for the raw material is lost,” says David. Earth Loaf chocolate is single origin with all cacao being sourced from India’s south west coast, predominantly from farms in Karnataka, and a minority in Kerala. The second reason David wanted to create Earth Loaf was to show that something like making chocolates can also be a wonderful career. “I was astonished to see the number of engineers I met and it would be nice to have a more open space for creative pursuits,” says David.

Quality over quantity

Earth Loaf makes chocolate with emphasis on quality rather than quantity. “We are selling on average 150–200kg per month at present,” says David. It is an artisan and raw social project dedicated to spreading wellness through unifying people with nature, and craftsmanship with creativity and nutrition. “All Earth Loaf products are handled by hand for as  much of the process as is possible, from the cacao bean to tempering and wrapping,” says David.

Earth Loaf’s cacao comes from the single estate of Varanashi Farms in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district. The estate was India’s first to be organically certified, and  supports in excess of 300 other farmers with organic farming methods and certification. Following the bean-to-bar movement, it gives the chocolate maker the kind of influence over his chocolate enjoyed by a winemaker or artisan bread baker.

For any such venture, the question of pricing always pops up. Earth Loaf chocolates are priced at around Rs 270 for a 72gm bar but if you bite into one, you’re bound to sit back and applaud the folks. Earth Loaf chocolates are distributed via organic stores across the country and they also have an online store. When we asked David for his view on pricing, he said, “For us to make chocolate that is flavourful, organic, and which retains the health benefits naturally present in cacao, we cannot product chocolate at the economy of scale and price point of commercial or candy chocolate for the following reasons:

1. Organic agriculture requires more care, labour, a bio-diverse environment, certification fees, and is harder to do over a larger area (less volume).
2. The demand for premium artisan chocolate is uncomparably lower than that of industrial chocolate candy, which denies artisan producers like ourselves from producing anywhere near the volumes to compete with commercial chocolate.
3. Quality chocolate contains at least 60 percent cacao mass, which is far more expensive than milk and sugar. Commercial chocolate brands often market products with 10–20 percent cacao mass, and many reduce costs even further by adding cheap and unhealthy hydrogenated vegetable oils (this is especially the case in India). Our chocolate is made of two primary ingredients — organic cacao beans and organic palmyra sugar.
4. To make a quality product — be it speciality coffee, good wine, sourdough bread or whisky — requires time and our chocolate takes approximately seven days to go from bean to bar.
5. For sustainable quality cacao beans, we pay a far higher price than government and international set rates. This incentivises our farmer to care about the quality of their agricultural and post-harvest processing practices.
6. I personally believe quality comes from craftsmanship, which is why we at Earth Loaf and many other artisan chocolate houses employ manual processing techniques as far as possible. This incurs labour costs, but we feel this is ultimately how quality is assured.”

And these are the things which are probably at the heart of many organic initiatives. At one point of time, organic was the only way mankind knew, but the last couple of centuries have given rise to this globalised, standardised world where a large chunk of us are moving towards creating uniformity. But in this race to have things under control, there is also a realisation to decentralise a few things and have smaller self-sustainable ecosystems.

The world of chocolate

As far as chocolates go, it is a massive $83-billion-a-year business which, according to World Bank figures, is a value larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than 130 nations on earth! (source) Most of the consumption is driven by Europe, but countries across the world are showing an increasing appetite for chocolate. And for this, it’ll be necessary to have more initiatives to work closer to the source of the cocoa and come up with alternatives for people across the spectrum.

There are other players like Mason & Co., Bean Therapy, etc. alongside a host of other people moving towards making chocolate the beautiful way. On the other side, there are also more popular mainstream stories like Pulse Candy which went on to make a revenue of Rs 100 crore in eight months. Consumers and makers may have their own personal choices, but it’s heartening to see efforts catering to all.

Website: Earth Loaf

Recently, I came upon a report in a newspaper that argued that we should celebrate failure. Quoting an entrepreneur, it lamented that we are obsessed with just a few popular startups. We should pay attention to failures too. “How about instituting a ‘Failure of the Year Award’, just like ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award’?” it asked.

The article made me think: should we celebrate failure? And, what is failure in the first place?

Let me take you to the world of sports, where success and failure are easily measurable. Imagine a race at a huge stadium. There is raw energy in the air. Suddenly, one of the runners skips and falls. But that’s only for a couple of seconds. She picks herself up, and runs as if life depends on it, manages to place second. The entire auditorium gives a standing ovation — because she picked herself up.

Did she fail? Are we celebrating her fall ? No. We are cheering the comeback spirit.

Off the track, this process — the failure, the recovery, and the ultimate prize — is never quite as fast. It takes time. It involves learning. Such learning depends on brutal honesty; the kind of honesty that Andre Agassi demonstrated in his fantastic autobiography “Open”. Even in the eighties, Agassi was an icon. People first started noticing him for his earrings, the color of his hair, and the style of his clothes. But soon, they were consumed by his tennis — the power of his shots, and the grace of his movements on the court. Like every human being, he had his failures, his moments of self-doubt, loss of confidence, physical degradation, and pain. His book recounts these days with amazing clarity and a rare honesty. His comeback in 1999, when he swept tennis fans off their feet by winning the French Open, was no accident. It was a result of that rare mix of introspection, honesty, humility, courage, planning, and hard work.

The world of sports offers innumerable examples of heroes such as Agassi. But such heroes are in the world of business too. One obvious example is Steve Jobs. His story is well known. We celebrate Jobs because he picked himself up and made a comeback. That didn’t happen by accident either. Becoming Steve Jobs, a book by two business journalists, shows how between his disastrous first innings and fabulous second innings, there was a period of learning.

I am happy to see such honesty among Indian entrepreneurs too. They don’t live in denial, and they take an honest view of failures. For example, Peppertap CEO recently gave a perspective on failure from his own experience of running the startup. Similarly, another entrepreneur Sahil Kini wrote a heartfelt piece about what it felt like when his start up failed — the raw emotion of it is almost palpable. In an insightful article, Fab founder Jason Goldberg wrote about how it took him two years to talk candidly about his failure.

In a way, it ought to be plain common sense. You evaluate the viability of an idea or business, and if it doesn’t work, accept failure. Unfortunately, common sense is not quite so common when our emotions are part of the picture.

Some years ago we invested in a firm that was in an exciting space. The market opportunity was huge, and the macro trends were favorable. However, the firm had accumulated debt by not paying several suppliers, and were at the brink of shutting down. We agreed to invest, close the debt, and clean up the balance sheet. We then moved on to fix the operations. What we needed was fast execution, and then on to market dominance. Straightforward enough. Or so we thought. To that end, we had long discussions with the founder and the management. We analysed the strengths and weaknesses, and collectively decided on the organizational changes that the company needed. With concurrence from the founder, we agreed that we needed to bring an external CEO on board, to complement the team. The plan looked great, on paper.

I wish the reality were that simple. For in the following weeks and months, we found the start-up repeating the same mistakes that had brought it to the brink of disaster the last time. The integrity needed to deliver on promises and sticking to commitment was lacking. Liabilities began to mount again, and there were issues related to compliance.

Very few founders, much like teenagers, are willing to listen to advice — even when they ought to. No amount of discussion and advice post-investment seemed to have any meaningful impact. We offered to sell our share at cost and move on, since we no longer had any confidence in the founder and his advisors. When that failed, we suggested selling the company, albeit nobody would have made much money at that point. At a time when real decisions needed to be made, we were talking to a wall. In the end we resigned from the board, using the only option we had to signal our dismay at the fiscal mismanagement of the company. Predictably, things became worse. They were unable to pay suppliers, employees, even the dues owed to the government, while destroying investors’ value and their own credibility in the process. At every step, we were giving sound advice to deaf ears. Most often tough advice is not forthcoming in most companies. Even when offered, few choose to act upon it. Emotions cloud reality. Fantasy replaces practicality. Procrastination replaces action.

What are the lessons we can learn from these anecdotes?

Spot the signs of failures early: Failure doesn’t happen suddenly. Take the instance of one of the earliest recorded volcano eruptions, which occurred in 79AD, in Pompeii in ancient Rome. Eyewitness accounts from that time tell us that people in the city were taken utterly by surprise when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Very few events are quite as cataclysmic like that. Anyone who has studied history will know that the decay of a civilization is visible long before its fall. Paul Kennedy’s “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” documents how the fall is a slow and visible process, in case after case. It happened to the Ottoman Empire. It happened to the Roman Empire. It happened to the modern British Empire, and the East India Company. It has happened to a number of Fortune 500 companies over the years. And it is true for start-ups too. So, watch for the early tell-tale signs.

If you let yourself be surprised by a failure, more often that not, it is because you stopped listening.

 Don’t expect drastic change after a deal: Business deals are like marriages. In a marriage, if you pick a partner who is not right for you in the hope that he/she will dramatically change after marriage, it’s doomed to fail. You can take cotton and make fabric, wood and make furniture. You can’t turn steel into rubber, or wood into cotton. Change in form is possible, but not in core properties. The same holds true in business as well. People don’t change much. In our case, despite several discussions, promises and commitment from the entrepreneur, we watched him revert to the same patterns of behavior that had pushed them to failure in the first place. And our mistake was not recognizing that pattern at the outset.

No one holds a monopoly over such mistakes. In research, scientists who are supposed to be far more rational fall into a similar pattern. They persist with the same methodology despite evidence showing that it doesn’t work and there’s a need to consider a fresh approach. That’s one reason why it takes a new generation of researchers to come up with something revolutionary. It’s so common in science, that Einstein once defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results’. It’s true in the world of sports. Coaches tell us how difficult it is to change the fundamental mistakes marathon runners or swimmers make. They continue to do what they do because they are comfortable doing that. It’s a habit.

It’s near impossible to pull people out of prisons of habit. Don’t expect a Founder (or an investor) to change core characteristics.

 Don’t be delusional: Face the facts. Sometimes, people use catchy labels and wrong metrics to avoid confronting the hard truth. In our earlier example of running a race, it wouldn’t have mattered if the runner were the first to leave the block. What mattered was whether she got up after falling down, and if she ran till the finishing line. The tag, “first off the blocks”, would have taken her nowhere. In business too, such labels are meaningless. Steve Jobs didn’t call himself the father of smartphones. He focused on bringing out better and better iPhones. Jeff Bezos didn’t call himself the father of e-commerce. He focused on providing better service to more customers. Last I checked, Bezos was the world’s third richest man.

Measurable impact is far more meaningful than self-adopted labels. I get weary when people start dropping names, or promise to be different after funding.

Resist the temptation to blame others: The easiest thing to do when something goes wrong is to place the blame on others. Some entrepreneurs like to blame the VCs for their failures. It’s like adults blaming their parents for their failures. It’s also the least useful tactic, and might stand in the way of picking ourselves up and finishing the game. Don’t get me wrong — Finding the root cause of any problem is important. It takes persistence, intelligence, and courage to look into what went wrong. There was something inspiring about Richard Feynman explaining what went wrong with Challenger.

This is an example of objective analysis.

It’s important to know the difference between dispassionate analyses and the blame game.

Identify the source of failure: Find out what caused the failure. Sometimes as in Pompeii, it could be forces beyond our control. For example, some of my investments will fail because the market is not ready yet. There, I would take pride that we at least pioneered. But in some cases, failures happen because of individuals, because of wrong judgement about their capabilities. In those cases, I am personally hard on myself. I brood till I understand where I went wrong and I work hard to learn from each failure.

In the end the question is, ‘should we celebrate failure?’ Not in my book. However, I do draw enormous inspiration from people who triumph by picking themselves up and rising above their failures.

 There are many such stories of dedication — Soichiro Honda began his career as an bicycle mechanic at the age of 15. Creating a technology that he believed would change the evolution of the automobile, Honda’s idea was shot down by Toyota and several other auto makers. Undeterred, Honda would go on to start this small auto maker we know now as Honda Motor Company, whose revenues are over 100 Billion annually! His invention was the piston/rings, which almost every vehicle has used in the last 70 years — including Toyota.

And it isn’t just inventors. Artists are perhaps among the most familiar with struggle and failure, oftentimes simply because they’re ahead of their time. Vincent Van Gogh sold only one piece during his lifetime, and even that was to a friend for a pittance. Lucky for the art world, Van Gogh soldiered on, and went on to paint over 800 works. Today his work sells for millions of dollars. Similar circumstances nearly prevented the world from ever knowing the wondrous world of Harry Potter. JK Rowling’s typewritten manuscript was rejected by over a dozen publishing houses before her big break. More recently, we saw Dipa Karmakar narrowly miss her shot at an Olympic medal in Rio. Disappointed as she was, she later spoke on how this would fuel her to ensure she brings home a medal at the next Olympics. While coming 4th at the Olympics is no mean feat in itself, she has taken what was considered a failure and channeled it to push herself to do better.

These inspirational juggernauts show us that while failure isn’t exactly something to be celebrated, it certainly isn’t something to be feared either. The secret lies in embracing the lessons that failure teaches us, while keeping our chin up and ensuring we emerge from the tunnel wiser.

To sign off, I’d like to quote basketball great Michael Jordan, who himself battled multiple failures before being recognized as the legend that he is today — “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

This article was first published on Medium.

(Disclaimer: Kalaari Capital is an investor in YourStory.)

It was late Sunday evening, but Sunita Verma was hunting for things to do and planning activities for her upcoming holiday. She knew that the hotel had a concierge that would possibly help her with the tours, but she liked planning in advance.

It was a problem 38-year-old Manoj Tulsani saw with most hotels in the UAE; the guests would be able to book accommodation in advance but not the tours. Realising that people who go on holidays don’t confine themselves to hotel rooms, Manoj along with his friend Kamlesh Ramchandani decided to start Rayna Tours, started as Iamonholiday in Dubai, in 2006.

Finding a gap in the market

Venturing outside the single-point turf of catering to in-house guests’ tour needs, Manoj began to target all the hotels without a travel outlet. They began with opening a travel outlet in Flora Grand Hotel in Dubai.

“Despite the sudden industry shift then, I found it far more intriguing to be involved with the travel industry than I had ever found the trading industry, which I originally came from,” says Manoj, a former trader and analyst.

This, however, was not that easy in the beginning due to many significant obstacles. One of the biggest challenges was learning the industry, knowing the interests of customers, and convincing the clients.

Opening new horizons

Without any reference or a viable business model to follow, the overall performance had been unpredictable. They gradually extended their services to the B2B market by creating an exclusive portfolio of their own products and unique travel services.

From just working on an offline model, Manoj realised that the company couldn’t evolve or innovate with just a direct marketing strategy. He realised that the world was going online.

They created a refined online platform to put up all their tour products, services and packages. Backed by a dedicated client support system and highly secured payment modes, it not only made their customers’ travel experience smoother and smarter, but also helped the team build more robust customer relationships.

“Moreover, at a point when social media platforms and mobile apps began to manipulate sales, we implemented pre-emptive solutions and smart strategies to pull through changes. The efforts finally paid off; what started as a modest setup with just two of us, evolved into a team of more than 30 with six to seven outlets over a course of two years,” says Manoj.

Growing numbers

Today, bootstrapped Rayna Travels has evolved from a mere travel boutique to an industry-recognised Destination Management Company. Rayna Group is now responsible for more than 250 employees, in five locations across two countries.

Manoj adds that they started with personal savings and an investment of AED 500,000 and have now incredibly developed top and bottom line profitability, crossing AED 150 million in revenues per year.

He adds that this growth has been possible thanks to extensive analysis of market trends and knowing the demands of clients, the improvement of operational efficiency by eliminating expenses, the implementation of an effective business strategy to capitalise on their strengths, and the diversification of the business.

The team earns revenues through both online and offline bookings, the latter of which covers conventional reservations, walk-ins, and telephone and travel desk bookings.

Breaking an aggressively competitive market

The online travel and package booking space is not only growing, but practically exploding. The overseas travel industry is growing at 40 percent CAGR year-on-year. The leisure travel market in India as of today is about $80 billion annually and is set to grow to $150 billion by 2024.

One player that just cannot escape mention in the space is Makemytrip; this year the company raised $180 million from Chinese travel service provider Ctrip and it also opened its new technology centre in Bengaluru earlier this month. Cleartrip has also built a strong focus on activities and things to do.

Bengaluru-based TripFactory, the online customised store, raised Series A funding from Mohandas Pai’s Aarin Capital. Also, last April, Delhi-based travel marketplace Travel Triangle had raised $8 million in Series B funding from Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from existing investor SAIF Partners. Tripoto had raised a Series A round of funding from IDG Ventures India and existing investor Outbox Ventures.

Adding to the point on competition, Manoj says:

When you’ve many competitors, it’s important to think outside the box. Our strategy is to do things internally. For instance, most of our tours and activities do not have a middleman, which means we can assure our clients of fair prices with huge savings. Physical presence in major tourist spots is another of the company’s set apart aspects.

Apart from branches in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, Rayna tours operates in Singapore and Malaysia and now plans to venture into other Southeast Asian destinations like Thailand.

Despite the ever-growing challenges and aggressive competition in the industry, Manoj adds that they have never compromised on the quality of service and have always believed in delivering ‘the best tours products and services with the best pricing.’

“Alternatively, a significant percentage of our business comes from good word of mouth and referrals.   Now that we’ve established ourselves as one of the leading players in the UAE and India, our main focus is to fuel our infrastructural capabilities and resources to expand and grow globally,” says Manoj.

Website

Before the internet took over the world, man’s best friend, the ever loyal dog, was traditionally tasked with the important chore of fetching the newspaper from the sidewalk every morning. In the excitement to get their owner’s affection, many dogs have been known to go overboard and fetch other newspapers from neighbours sidewalks as well. While newspapers are still popular, a vast majority of the global population has now switched over to digital editions of newspapers and rely on websites or mobile apps to get their daily dose of news and stories.

Hacker Interstellar, a Chinese company recently forayed into India, setup a local team and launched a news aggregator app – ‘NewsDog’. It aims to function as a ‘digital version of a dog’ that fetches local, national and international news based on the reader’s interests. In a relatively short span of five months, NewsDog claims to have reached a milestone of seven million installs (across Android and iOS) and sees great traction for their Hindi offering. Here is their story.

The lightest news aggregator?

Headquartered in Hong Kong, China, Hacker Interstellar consists of a 25-member team spread across India and China. Currently available in two main languages, English and Hindi, NewsDog aggregates news and stories from a collection of top publishers that it has partnered with. While Amit Tewari, Operations and Business Development of NewsDog, declined to disclose the exact number of publishers they have partnered with, the apps ‘subscription section’ and Google Play description hints that their publisher partners range in the thousands.

Based on personal interests, users can choose to follow specific sectors and even publishers to keep track of updates in the ‘For You’ section of the app. Users can also swipe right or left to read stories on niche sectors too. At 2.8MB in size on Android and 14.9MB on iOS, NewsDog claims to occupy the least space compared to its peers in the news aggregation space.

Amit also noted that NewsDog runs on algorithms and a recommendation engine to find most relevant news for users. It also sends timely push notifications in case of breaking news stories or other important updates.

Interesting features

Read offline news – NewsDog lets users download news and stories for offline reading. The goal is to help save on mobile data and continue reading even if one doesn’t have internet access.

Personalisation – Through the recommendation engine, NewsDog claims that it can effectively analyse user preferences from browsing and reading habits and then send push notifications of news and stories that are relevant to users.

Local news – While NewsDog provides access to national and international news, it considers its ability to cater to local news – by city – to be one of its USPs.

Social features– Users can subscribe to specific publishers based on their interest, bookmark stories and also search for news articles through the app. The app also includes social features such as the ability to share stories across different social media channels and an in-app comment section for readers to share views and opinions.

Revenue model and marketing

NewsDog is free to download and use for the end consumer. The company works on a revenue share model based on the readership and traffic that they provide to their publishing partners.

Out of all the categories on offer, NewsDog notes that 28 percent (2 million) of the users subscribe to news and articles related to business and technology. Entertainment and sports are popular too. They also see Hindi to be more popular than English at this stage.

In the month of July 2016, NewsDog was the highest ranked app on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store as well. Amit noted that their growth has been fuelled by word of mouth, social media marketing and their affiliate network partnerships. To better cater to the Indian audience, who are on low end smartphones, NewsDog also has a ‘bare bones-lite version’ of its app. In the coming months, NewsDog aims to partner with more small and big media houses to boost growth. The startup is also looking to expand their team and is currently hiring for its editorial team.

Almost all media platforms have their own brand ethos and loyal fan base. News aggregators provide an interesting value proposition to both publishers and end consumers. Publishers get access to a new-found audience who may have otherwise not heard about them. End consumers get a bird-eye view of the best and most popular content across different platforms.

In the past few years, news aggregator apps have gained mainstream popularity abroad and in India. Flipboard, News Republic and Nuzzel are popular globally, while Inshorts, DailyHunt, Way2News and the latest entrant to the unicorn club Hike are popular in India.

While news aggregator apps are popular now, many experts believe that chatbots and messenger bots could be the future as they eliminate the need of installing an app. Many global publications already push their content through Telegram messenger and Facebook Messenger and it may only be a matter of time before news aggregators enter this sector too. Amit noted that the chatbot space does look promising and that NewsDog is working on releasing its own chatbot in the near future.

Related read: Is regional language content the next frontier to reach India’s 1.2 billion people?

YourStory take

On first installing NewsDog users are asked to pick the language of their choice, followed by the sectors (entertainment, technology, sports, etc.) they prefer to read before finally being taken to the home screen. NewsDog has several USPs which add value for users, such as the ability to read news offline, subscribe to specific channels along with the in-app social features. The ability to comment within the app is also a great feature that has potential to drive user engagement.

NewsDog’s recommendation engine is not always accurate. Users may sometimes see push notifications they have not shown interest in reading. For example, even though I didn’t opt for entertainment or browse through stories of that genre, I still found many push notifications for stories that were not relevant to me. Giving users more customisation features regarding push notifications such as the kind and number of push notifications they wish to see on a daily basis could increase stickiness for NewsDog.

Website- NewsDog

You can download NewsDog here for Android or iOS

What do you think about this app, do let us know in the comments below. Also do check out other apps under our App Fridays series.

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In the rush of our everyday lives, we tend to overlook or miss some great stories.

These stories of strength, grit, and courage are lost between the chaotic traffic and buzzing noise. The inspirational silent resilience, sitting in the heart of the common man, or the woman.

These are some stories of breadwinners who didn’t have choices, perks, maternity benefits, or bonuses. No one posing to them the question of ‘job satisfaction’ or ‘passion’.

These are stories shaped with circumstances. Some could’ve shaken the most confident of us, but these women have risen above it all, and really mean business when they do.

Mary Shanti

Work description – Cook / baby care / laundry delivery

Mary Shanti spent 10 years doing odd jobs and helping her husband, who irons clothes for a living. Within eight months of her marriage, her husband, who was a painter, met with an accident.

It has been 19 years since. Now her happiness lies in her two children ­– 15-year-old boy and nine-year-old girl – who keeps the house clean.

Ratna

Work description – Running a fast food corner

Ratna has been selling snacks for the past 16 years to keep her household running.

“On August 4, I turn 50,” she says while packing Bhajjis.

Seventeen years since her husband’s death, she initially worked as a maid to make ends meet for her and her three kids.

“Naseeb aisa hain toh karna hi padega,” she says, as she serves hot pakodas. Rent, bills, and some loans have to be paid. She adds, “How else will I get them married?”. “Aaram se baithna hain, wahi khushi hogi mere liye.”

Rajeshwari

Work description – Selling flowers

Originally from Tamil Nadu, she started selling flowers and knick-knacks to support her family.

“Husband” she says and points to her right hand, and gestures that he is disabled and unable to speak as well. She has worked every day to raise her three children.

“Ek roj khushi, ek roj thandi,” she says with a smile.

Bhanumati

Work description – irons clothes

Like the other people who iron clothes, Bhanumati can always be found in a particular lane in Indiranagar in Bengaluru.

Originally from Tamil Nadu, ironing is the traditional occupation of her family. She says, “Our father, relatives and everyone did it, I’m only taking it forward.”

Bhanumati has been doing this since 1993, and has been in the city for the past 25 years. She has educated her children with the money she earns from ironing. “My son has passed his diploma, and my daughter is doing her PUC” she beams.

“This is my happiness, more money will also be a happy thing.”

Chittayamma

Work description – Sells vegetables

Originally from Mysore, Chittayamma, 54, keeps herself busy by selling vegetables and has been doing this for the past 30 years. Lack of jobs and education is what prompted her to sell vegetables.

“When sales happen, I feel contentment, that’s my happiness,” she says.

Palaniamma

Work description – Maid (serves four houses)

Savarajamma

Work description – Selling flowers

Savarajamma, 62, has been selling flowers for 40 years. She has three children who have now married with kids. Residing happily in Ulsoor with her family, the flower she sells gives her some extra money and she’s content. She started selling flowers as there were no jobs when she was young and had babies. She needed to start with something.

“Accha din hua toh khushi hain, selling hua toh khushi,” she says, as she puts a ‘gaajra’ around my hair and blesses me with two roses in my hands.

Popularly known as the ‘Dog lady of Delhi’, 62-year-old Pratima Devi is a rag picker who takes care of 400 stray dogs. Living in a house made of tin and torn rugs, Pratima lives with 120 dogs and spends her days feeding and nursing them.

Living in south Delhi’s Saket neighbourhood for over three decades now, Pratima spends all her earnings in looking after over her 400 canine friends. “I look after over 400 dogs – about 200 around my home. Others are scattered in the courtyard of the PVR complex up to J-block. My dogs never bite. They have been sterilised and vaccinated by the MCD,” Pratima told India Today.

Mother of three children who have grown up and live in their native village, Pratima wants to continue living in the burgeoning city and look after her dogs. In an interview with barcroft.tv, she said, “I feel happy to live with them. When I was with my husband, I wasn’t happy. I used to work all day and run the house. My husband didn’t work. My son calls me all the time and tells me that he will take me to the village with him. But I don’t listen to him, I want to do good for the dogs.”

Showcasing her extraordinary skills in the pit, woman wrestler Sakshi Malik ended India’s frustrating medal drought with a dramatic bronze-winning effort on day 12 of the Rio Olympic Games at Rio De Janeiro.

Sakshi fought five bruising battles in the 58kg category against equally determined opponents in a single day before securing the podium place. She had lost her quarterfinal bout but got a fresh lease of life when her Russian opponent reached the final, allowing the Indian to compete in the repechage round. The 23-year-old grappler from Rohtak in Haryana climbed the medal rostrum with a spectacular come-from-behind 8-5 win over Aisuluu Tynybekova of Kyrgyzstan after trailing 0-5 in the first period.

She jumped on the mat with an ear-to-ear smile before being hoisted in the air by her coach Kuldeep Singh with the Indian tricolour draped around her. It was the fifth bronze in wrestling for India in its long Olympic history stretching back to the 1952 Helsinki Games when Kashaba Jadhav became its first individual medallist. She is also the fourth female Olympic medallist from India, joining the ranks of weightlifter Karnam Malleshwari (2000, Sydney), boxer MC Mary Kom (2012, London) and shuttler Saina Nehwal (2012, London).

Sakshi also became the first female grappler from India to climb the podium in the quadrennial sports spectacle – the other four medals being won by men, with two of those claimed by Sushil Kumar in Beijing 2008 and London 2012. Sakshi, with tears of joy in her eyes said,

Meri 12 saal ki tapasya rang layi (It’s the fruit of my persistent hard work for the last 12 years). Geeta didi, my senior had qualified for the first time in London. I never thought I would become the first woman wrestler from India to bag an Olympic medal. I hope the remaining wrestlers will also do well.

She said she was confident of winning a medal and she kept on trying till the last.

I knew till the last that there was a medal in the offering, I kept on trying. I was very confident, and this medal is a result of my struggle all these years. I never gave up till the last, I knew I would win if I lasted six minutes. In the last round, I had to give my maximum, I had the self belief, she said.

Her bronze medal winning feat was like a balm as it came after Vinesh Phogat was forced out of the 48kg competition due to an unfortunate knee injury suffered during her quarterfinal bout against Chinese rival Sun Yanan. Vinesh had to be stretchered off the arena. The MRI scan confirmed a knee ligament tear. The injury occurred when the Chinese was leading 1-0. In another disappointment, woman half miler Tintu Luka ran a poorly judged 800m race and exited the fray after finishing sixth in her first round heat in 2:00.58, which gave her the overall 29th place out of 65 participants.

A protege of track legend P T Usha, she holds the national record of 1:59.17, which she created in 2010. As usual, she led the field till around the 600 metre mark, before fading on the final stretch to end her second Olympics campaign in disappointment.

Also read : India to send largest ever contingent to Rio Olympics, 90 sportsperson qualify

India’s teen golfer Aditi Ashok fired a flawless three-under 68 to lie tied seventh after the opening round of the women’s golf competition. The 18-year-old from Bengaluru, who won the qualifying finals to earn a full card on the Ladies European Tour (LET), picked up three birdies at the 2nd, 10th and 14th holes and parred the rest to stay three strokes adrift of the leader. Aditi had represented India at the Asian Youth Games in 2013, Youth Olympic Games in 2014 and Asian Games in 2014.

All these came before Sakshi brought enormous cheer with the day’s proceedings coming to an end. She stormed into the bronze medal play-off with a dominating 12-3 victory in her 58kg repechage bout. Sakshi gave no chance to Purevdorjiin Orkhon of Mongolia as she bagged as many as 10 points in the second period after the scores were tied 2-2 at the break. She got a shot to fight for the bronze medal despite losing in the quarterfinals as the wrestler who had beaten her in the last eight round, Valeriia Koblova, reached the final.

Also read : 10 Indians to watch out for in India’s 100 at Rio Olympics

As Sakshi had reached the quarterfinals in this category, she had to fight only one repechage round as compared to two for the other opponents of the Russian, whom she had beaten in the earlier two rounds. Koblova had beaten Luisa Niemesch of Germany in the qualification round before defeating Mongolia s Orkhon in the pre-quarterfinals. Sakshi had to get the better of the Mongolian in the repechage round 2 and she did just that to advance to the bronze medal play off. Earlier, Sakshi went down in the quarterfinals after losing 2-9 to Koblova.

In the first two rounds, Sakshi came back from behind to register impressive wins. Making a strong comeback from 0-4 down, Sakshi defeated Sweden’s Malin Johanna Mattsson 5-4 in the qualification round with just 10 seconds remaining. In the pre-quarters, she once again eked out a narrow 5-5 win over Mariana Cherdivara Esanu of the Republic of Moldova by virtue of a double take-down as compared to her opponent’s one. The Indian was declared winner on bigger points gain.