Social networks and communication, as we used to know them, are breaking down every day. When friends and colleagues Vishal and Sudhir noticed this, they decided to establish TALLUK, a social network for the neighbourhood. It is a web-based platform that aims to improve social cohesion and connections in the neighbourhood.

“I saw there was an ever-increasing gap in the way society communicated, leading to a reduction in social cohesion within the neighbourhood, further leading to an increase in the crime rate in India. Several instances of heinous crimes like rape made us think of how a system can be built wherein the neighbourhood watches for you and becomes more responsive when it is needed,” says Vishal.

After doing some research, they realised that the social capital in a region is directly related to the crime rate. They also saw noticed that online socialising was a major cause for reduced human interaction. However, more often than not, the people we communicated with in the virtual world would not be able to collaborate or help when actually needed.

Discovering the gap

People know others who live thousands of miles away and are lost in connecting with them. This has led to a wide gap among the people in the real physical world. Moreover, the people in virtual world can’t collaborate or help when it is actually needed.

This led the duo to wonder if they could make people have more real-world interactions in their own neighbourhood, thereby increasing the safety and security in modern society.

A real turning point came when one day, while the duo were working on their idea of TALLUK, they received phone calls from their homes that their kids were engrossed with their laptops and not going out to play. This inspired them to develop a software that would connect people in their neighbourhood so that even kids could have real friends to play with.

Connecting neighbours

TALLUK redefines the ‘Private Social Network’ by going a step ahead and connecting not only people in the neighbourhood, but also small businesses and service providers in a given locality.

It acts as a one-stop platform for Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), Market Welfare Associations (MWAs), communities and other groups to share and interact with each other, thus increasing cohesion and networking amongst neighbours.

Vishal’s colleagues Abhishek Chauhan and Runal Dahiwade, who also worked in the tech industry, were inspired to join them after listening to their idea.

“Today, we have a strong core team of four people, one highly skilled PR person, one extremely skilled financial professional and three strong sales professionals apart from a small software development team,” says Vishal.

Building the technology

Despite being tech veterans, the team realised that developing the blueprint of the technology stack wasn’t easy. Fortunately, the founder members had a strong technical background, and after a lot of internal brainstorming, they were able to build a proper product road map and understand the technology ecosystem needed where TALLUK could thrive.

Other challenges like presenting the product to the end customers and a digital marketing strategy were addressed successfully with the help of the advisory board.

TALLUK defines itself as a 100 per cent cloud-based utility web portal that aims to simplify the functioning of RWAs, MWAs, clubs and other such groups. It helps them cut operational costs, and makes their functioning more efficient.

Workings of the platform

Some of the modules offered by TALLUK are a communication system, online resident directory, society events, online elections, vendor management, news, and nearby suppliers of hyper-local services.

TALLUK can be accessed through mobile phones, and therefore can be used anywhere anytime. The product is supported by using the single source code feature, which means that there is only one version of the solution available, and there is no need to go through the process of patches and updates every time any changes are made in the system.

Vishal says they are strategically placed as the only online private social network, which also facilitates RWA management and hyper-local services.

The provide a platform for people to get connected with their neighbourhood and enable transactions for hyper-local services. They operate the following revenue generation models:

1. Subscription for small business affiliation on TALLUK
2. One-stop bill payment services
3. Hyper-local services
4. Premium mobile app subscriptions for ‘Safety’

“Within a few months’ time, we had already enrolled 44 RWAs and 7 MWAs with 2,189 users; that number is growing each month,” says Vishal.

The vision now is to get funded and grow exponentially. The team believes that after the required funding is in place, they can touch one million households in less than year.

Website

In the quieter lane of a bustling neighbourhood market in East Delhi is an unassuming shop where Abhijeet Mazumdar works on tea and tea blends seven days a week since 2012.

This shop was a result of the desire that, having slogged 18-long years in the instrumentation and design industry, Abhijeet did not want to work for someone else.

“Food was the first thought which occurred to me and my friend and I started a recce on the varied food offerings around town. For two years, every weekend, we used to go around Delhi and see what’s new, what the kiosks were offering and how they were performing,”

remembers Abhijeet. “We found everything from novel food offerings, a variety of cuisines and fancy coffee shops. We also found lacunae as far as tea was concerned. We Indians love our tea dearly and home-style tea could be sipped either in our homes or at roadside tapris. When we have fancy coffee places, why was a tea lounge missing from the food scene in Delhi? This drove us to think of opening a tea lounge,” he adds.

Of tea as a passion

It only helped that while at his last job at Samtel, where he was designing CRT displays for consumer products, Airbus, and F16, Abhijeet’s business associates from China and Japan brought him tea as presents. It was their way of carrying to a visiting country a part of their country’s heritage and culture. These tea presents soon filled his cupboard. “My colleagues were enticed by my collection and would often ask me for tea and I’d happily brew them a cuppa. So, while thinking of a tea lounge, it was only natural for me to study more about it,” Abhijeet says.

Of learning more about the brew

He first cut to a partial role as a consultant in his organisation and continued to expand his knowledge on teas. He’d procure various teas and research about them. He found mentors in Shiv Saria of New Glencoe and Vikram Mittal of the Mittal Teas, New Delhi. Finally, Abhijeet gave up his role at Samtel to start up on his own. He got a space in a market in East Delhi for the lounge. Along with his friend, Abhijeet even managed to score funding.

Hitting plateau, gaining momentum again

Abhijeet and his friend hit a plateau as they could not start the business within the stipulated timeline because of various infrastructural issues. After some struggle, Abhijeet shelved the tea lounge idea and started focussing on selling tea instead. His mentor Vikram of Mittal Teas promoted him and asked to become a supplier for his shop. Alongside bulk orders for others, Abhijeet also started retailing from his shop. He has managed to find a group of faithful patrons. Some come to buy their tea quota and others drop in to chat with Abhijeet over a cup of well-brewed Oolong.

The biggest factor going for Abhijeet is his ability to engage his customers such that they become his brand ambassadors. He doles out advice about various types of tea, storage and food pairings. Over the years, his loyal customer base has increased rapidly. “A Japanese family used to come by every month to buy their quota of tea from me,” he says.

Along with retail and bulk selling, Abhijeet launched the portal chaiwalah through which he sells tea online. He has also partnered with online portals like Amazon which has given a filip to his sales. On the side, one would see Abhijeet quietly working on his vision of the tea lounge to be launched next year.

As he sells a lot of floral teas or Tisanes and reads even more about them, Abhijeet says, “I came to know about the healing powers of various Tisanes. I started exploring them more and stumbled upon the idea of selling them as natural therapy. I am currently working on safflower and Borago officianalis amongst other tea infusions. Safflowers have excellent curative properties for intestinal ailments, act as a natural laxative, aid digestion, and recommended for post-pregnancy wellbeing. Borago officianalis is a blue petaled flower and a natural antiseptic, but rarely found in India. It forms the base of most talcum powders and antiseptic creams,” Abhijeet explains.

He is working on procuring the rare flower commercially and trying various tea infusions using the same. For the correctness of his formulations, he also has Ayurvedic practitioners on his panel.

Of respecting the nature

Abhijeet says, “We encourage people to use natural loose leaf teas, and educate them on the different tasting notes like floral and peppery, that are different for each tea.” He banks on a strong network of tea auction houses and estates like Sourene, Namring, Gopaldhara, Sungma, and independent suppliers from India as well as abroad for his stock. His network abroad helps him procure premium teas like Matcha and Pu’er, Fermosa, and Blooming Tea at competitive rates.

Do you know that India is among the top three grain producers in the world with an annual output of 265 million metric tons of good grain? Although India feeds a sixth of humanity each year, 17 per cent of the country’s population remains malnourished.

The problem of malnutrition and post-harvest loss alarmed Anurag Awasthi, a social entrepreneur and accountant from Lucknow. Anurag, who had previously worked with several not-for-profit organisations in Washington, D.C., decided to work with the Indian agricultural sector – a sector that contributes to 20 per cent of India’s GDP and employs 50 per cent of the population.

With research, he found that storage was a major gap in the food supply chain and that several small and marginal farmers were forced to sell their harvest due to lack of storage capacity. Other factors that fuelled the distress sale of their harvest were the impending monsoon and an urgency to clear debts.

Using data to fix the problem

This led him to set up Save Indian Grain. Org (SIGO) dedicated to the design, development and  delivery of modern grain storage solutions, subsistence market places and agri-supply chain directories, and cluster maps for small and marginal farmers in rural India.

Further, spot market prices of commodities during harvest season were much lower than the minimum support prices (MSP) offered by the government and therefore, a sale in open markets fetched a lower return during bumper seasons.

“We hope to sensitise people to the global endemic of post-harvest losses and in the process, stem post-harvest losses in our agri-market yards and warehouses in India,” says Anurag.

Analysing the spreadsheets and tables with data on losses requires domain and subject expertise, which often deters laymen from working with the data to understand the information made available. Agriculture statistics requires interest and expertise by an agro-economist or someone who is a stakeholder in the agriculture sector.

SIGO uses Google Maps and APIs to visually represent Big Data on a single page. Cluster maps are built based on the concentration of producers, agri-businesses, and institutions engaged in the agricultural or agro-industrial sub-sector. It helps them interconnect and build value networks, address common challenges and pursue co-aligned opportunities

“This project is being advised by a group of retired IITians, who seek to use their knowledge and their technical and professional experience for the social development of the nation,” says Anurag.

On-field research and its benefits

After developing a hopper-bottom silo, a high-tensile galvanized steel storage bin that can be used to hold wet grain, store seeds for the next harvest, or a bin for tempering dried grains, SIGO decided to go to market with this product. The product was aimed at solving the grain storage problem being faced by the farmers.

While they were developing a proof-of-concept model, Anurag had the opportunity to interact with professionals within the agriculture and food industry, who advised him to spend time with farmers on the ground to get first-hand knowledge of the problems they faced.

“I took their advice and visited mandis near Lucknow and interacted with farmers to understand their post-harvest experience,” says Anurag. After analysing the information gleaned from interacting with farmers and grain merchants at mandis, Anurag realised that analysing the Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) market was key to designing and marketing solutions.

With his on-the-field findings, Anurag went back to the drawing board and started work on the design and development of a flat-bottom farm bin.  He says that technology and business models must be designed and developed to serve and benefit the masses, instead of a select few. “In other words, develop products and services where focus is on access rather than ownership,” adds Anurag.

Figuring the regulations out

Setting up SIGO involved a fair understanding of the symptoms resulting in post-harvest losses and identifying the problem at hand, a fair understanding of State and Central policies and regulations, various drivers and stakeholders participating at each step of    the supply chain.

Anurag says, “If you were to ask a management accountant about design cost principles, you would be told that 70 per cent of the product cost is locked up in the design stage and the remaining 30 per cent in the manufacturing stage. We spent the first two years figuring out the symptoms, identifying the problems, and understanding our core stakeholders – the farmer and the end-consumer.”

Once they identified and understood the problems that their real stakeholders faced, they were able to design and tailor their solutions. The primary focus has been to serve the need of their core stakeholders with a neat solution at an optimal cost.

SIGO has just commenced operations and is in the process of reaching out to various    stakeholders within the agriculture and food processing sector. They have received expression of interest from the corporate sector, global NGOs, various state governments and the Government of India.

Also read: After making wood, Chloroearth aims to create cement and steel to build smart villages

Market space

Currently bootstrapped, SIGO is looking for investment.  Globally, four billion people make less than USD 3,000 a year or roughly USD 8 a day. 60 per cent of this Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) population lives in India and China, and 70 per cent of BoP households’ budgets are spent on food.

By 2060, the global population is expected to reach nine billion, and we will have to increase our food production by nearly 50 per cent from our current production levels to feed all. With shrinking land resources, unpredictable rainfall patterns and impending climate change scenarios, there is a need to stem post-harvest losses without any further delay.

SIGO wants to get this message to all Indians and sensitise them to the impending food security challenge that is round the corner.

Website

The retail process of fresh products have a 100 per cent increase in wholesale cost and probably 150–200 per cent rise on production cost. However, it is still not a case of supernormal profits either for wholesalers or retailers. Majority of this margin gets eroded within the supply chain due to the perishable nature of the products.

Nitin Sawhney and Sandhya Sawhney saw an opportunity to plug the gaps in the supply chain by getting products from farm to kitchen within 12 hours, avoiding wastage and pilferage. This process would make decent margins while offering a fair price to the end consumer.

Launched in December 2014, iOrderFresh, a fresh produce and grocery mobile retail platform, delivers doorstep food and grocery across Delhi and Gurgaon. The genesis of this business idea was simply the glaring supply chain gaps in the fresh food categories, especially fruits and vegetables.

What makes iOrderFresh unique and a safe option, according to Nitin, is that it does not keep any overnight inventories for fresh products and has only two delivery slots a day to ensure the freshest produce is being sent to consumers day after day.

Growth and funding

The co-founders started out the business with an initial investment of USD 20,000 from personal savings and help from friends and family. The amount was spent primarily on building a robust technology platform including Android and iOS apps. The duo follow a revenue model in which sellers on their platform pay them a listing fee, which is a certain percentage of their gross revenue.

On growth, “We serviced over 1,000 orders a day in September 2015 and are looking at a quarterly growth of 20–25 per cent for the next 12 months. We have over 100,000 customer registrations and repeat customers account for over 55 per cent of our daily orders. We hope to cross 250,000 customer registrations by March 2016 in Delhi-NCR alone. There are no plans to expand to another city for the next 12 months. We want to consolidate our base in NCR and become the biggest player in our segment,” says Nitin.

After launching the business, the platform received seed funding from known contacts for another USD 100,000. During July this year, it raised Series A funding of USD 1 million from Best Foodworks. “We are focussing on unit economics and making the business self-sustainable. However, further capital will be required and we are looking to raise another round of funding in Q1 2016,” says Nitin.

Market and competition

It is one of the biggest consumer segments in the country. It is currently valued at USD 330 billion with an expected market size of USD 1 trillion by 2020.

Bigbasket, Grofers, and PepperTap, among many other players, are the competitors of iOrderFresh in this segment. In the past few months, these players have been able to raise huge funding as well.

This year, Bigbasket raised $50 million from existing investors led by Bessemer Venture Partners. It earlier raised Rs 200 crore led by Helion Ventures and Zodius Capital in September last year.

In February 2015, Grofers raised Series A funding of $10 million by Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global. In April this year, it raised its Series B funding of $35 million, which was announced by the same investors.

In April this year, mobile centric hyperlocal grocery delivery service PepperTap raised $10 million from SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital.

On competition among innumerable players in the segment, Nitin says that no player will become big enough to enjoy a near-monopoly like dominance in this segment, even in the future. It is a highly localised market and players will have to cater to the tastes of the local population to remain relevant.

However, the biggest competition to his platform presently is ‘inertia’ on the part of the consumer to order using a mobile app or website. The challenge here is to change the habits of the customer and make them shift to online grocery shopping. A combination of convenience, quality products, and hard to find premium groceries will do the trick for them. E-commerce already has an edge over the local shops in the way of tailoring promotions based on customer behaviour, which local shops cannot readily offer. “For now, we plan to make the right customers realise that the entire supermarket is actually in their pockets,” says Nitin.  

Website

The food tech industry is going through a rough patch. You might have heard about the layoffs in TinyOwl and Zomato. Despite these issues, the food tech industry has a great potential to grow and make sustainable business in India. After all, people love to dine out, party, and order delicious food home. There’s no doubt about the fact that we Indians love a lot of discounts.

No one can stop entrepreneurs from innovating and coming up with new solutions for restaurants and foodies. Zomato has done a considerable job in getting these businesses online, but still a lot needs to be done. There is a huge market potential for new companies to take a pie of this hugely untapped market.

In our country, the dining out culture is slowly catching up. Today, the average Indian living in a city dines out approximately three to four times a month and spends an average of Rs. 1,500–2,500 for two people. Don’t forget that there are additional charges, such as VAT, service tax, and service charge, of up to 30 per cent on the bill.

It becomes imperative for people to look for discounts to make their dining experiences affordable.

But deal hunting is a very tedious task when you have to spend hours in searching for coupons. In most of the cases, coupons are either expired or have a limited time to redeem. There is always a question of coupon reliability and you may end up embarrassing yourself in the restaurant. Table reservation and deal sites like Eazydiner and Dineout have better coupon comparison, but they also offer fixed discounts.

In the crowded space of food tech companies, a little star is rising with the name of Pocketin, which is a real-time bargaining app for restaurant discounts. This can help a user get live quotes from multiple restaurants within seconds and book the table in a very quick and user-friendly manner.

Anirudh describes how they began the idea of Pocketin. “We used to dine out very frequently while in college. And being students with limited pocket money, we were always looking out for deals and offers. But no platform offered us the flexibility to choose our own time and day, and most of the times, we had problems convincing the manager that the coupon was legitimate. We knew a lot of managers, so we would often call up and get special bargains. But then bargaining with five restaurants would mean calling up individually and starting the conversation from scratch.”

To solve this problem, they built a platform to automate the whole negotiation process and get deals from restaurant owners/managers based on the budget and time of the user.

Anirudh said, “Now the problem of calling up multiple restaurants is eliminated. You can negotiate with a hundred restaurants through Pocketin app.”

Pocketin offers dynamic discounts, which means if you are visiting during a non-peak hour you may be rewarded with big discount as compared to hours.

What’s more? You can bid for more discount from a restaurant and the Pocketin team will try to get that approved. They give 100% guarantee of discounts, and you do not need any vouchers or codes. Just walk into the restaurant, your server will know about you and your negotiated discount before hand and your table will be reserved.

Pocketin is founded by three young engineers who just graduated this year. The Indian startup ecosystem is shining with student entrepreneurs participation.

Anirudh is a graduate of Thapar University, while Kshitij and Rahul graduated from Delhi University. Some might question the knowledge and experience of entrepreneurs coming fresh out of college, Pocketin’s founders think otherwise.

Kshitij says, “The kind of energy and enthusiasm we college graduates have is unparalleled. The kind of risks we can take without any inhibitions and the drive to work with the bottoms up approach comes only when one is a fresher.”

And as they say, there is no right time to start up. The founders knew that this was their calling. They had been working closely with a lot of restaurant owners on different projects in college, and they knew what the pain-points were for both the users and the merchant. Thus, they gave away their lucrative job offers to devote full time on Pocketin. Rahul was working with Amazon and Anirudh left an offer at Practo.

After toiling hard for three months after the launch, they are finally getting a good response from the users and restaurants alike. Downloads on the Android Play Store are close to 5,000, and they have added more than 100 restaurants on the platform.

Pocketin has processed over 550 transactions in the last 90 days with a GMV of more than 12 lakh. It is banking on that section of middle class in India which dines out an average of four times a month. As frequent as that may seem, the number lags behind the average in countries like Singapore and Hong Kong where the average is 35.

Pocketin started initially with capital pooled in from friends and family and is on the verge of closing its first external round this month. With fresh capital being infused into the startup, in the coming 12 months, they hope to process around two lakh transactions in three cities with a GMV of Rs 42 crore.

This article is a part of the CitySparks series sponsored by Verisign

Going to the movies has always been an experience people cherish and V.S. Pradeep realised this early on. His vision was to take Tamil cinema legally to every home through the online medium, at affordable rates, in brilliant quality and with flawless streaming.

The idea

Pradeep was pursuing an MBA in Hyderabad’s prestigious Indian School of Business (ISB) and wanted to watch a new Tamil release, Thuppakki, in the theatre one weekend. Since the movie went out of cinemas in just one week, he ended up watching a pirated, poor quality version. This experience got him thinking of alternative legal online options which led to the launch of HeroTalkies.com.

Early days

Armed with market insights gathered from relatives outside India, Pradeep coined an apt name, HeroTalkies. Traditionally, the word ‘talkies’ was attached to many cinema halls in the country. The word still gives a feeling of nostalgia related to movies and invokes memories of walking into an old-time movie hall.

“Once the idea was finalised, we started searching for domains related to the movie industry. We tried creative combinations of words that describe our business, and we landed on HeroTalkies.com,” says the founder.Their first choice, HeroTalkies.com was available  and was ideal because they were primarily targeting a global audience, i.e. NRIs (Non-Resident Indians).”

The startup was finally inaugurated on July 10, 2014, by director K. Balachandar and Thanu, and the first film online was ArimaNambi. HeroTalkies.com displays prominently on the home page: “We stream Tamil movies legally, in 1080p HD and 5.1 surround sound.”

Business model

The team started with the pay-per-view model, which didn’t take off very well. So it shifted to the subscription model fairly quickly, gaining good returns in the process.

Unfortunately, for movie lovers in the country, the service is not available here yet. Only customers outside the country can subscribe and enjoy the movies, many of which are not released in other countries, by paying USD 7.99 a month, or USD 79.99 a year, for unlimited access to the movie library.

Within four months of launching the subscription model, HeroTalkies.com amassed close to 4,500 customers, which was a whopping 300% increase in sales from across 36 countries, ranging from bigger markets such as the US, UK and Canada to small ones in Iraq, Chile and Nigeria. “We are happy we are leading the digital revolution in Tamil cinema,” says Pradeep.

HeroTalkies typically adds new movies within three to four weeks of their theatrical release, and aims to build the biggest online library for Tamil films, with more than 220 movies uploaded on the website so far. “We are bridging a major gap in the movie distribution chain by taking new movies directly to the homes of customers,” explains Pradeep.

For the CEO, the biggest competition is piracy sites, and he believes converting customers to using legal sites is important. HeroTalkies is, hence, striving to differentiate itself with its high-quality content. He says “customers who have experienced our quality have never gone back to low resolution pirated sites.”

Future plans

The HeroTalkies team is upbeat about future growth, and has sound plans in the pipeline. With an upswing in customer base, investors from India as well as abroad are showing interest, and discussions are on for a seed round of investment from high net-worth individuals.

The Tamil industry is just the first step; the site will soon host movies in other southern languages and is targeting the close-to-three-million Indian families outside India.

Pradeep has words of wisdom for other entrepreneurs -launch your product quickly and test the assumptions. HeroTalkies has succeeded in moving a traditional industry to an online platform and provides viewing access to more people. Do you have a great idea? Put it into action, go global and go big with .com!

Hyderabad-based NumberMall, an app-based all-in-one payments platform for small merchants, has acquired all the businesses of Delhi-based BankSmarts Solutions, a banking focused analytics solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition aims to extend NumberMall’s analytics capability, customer reach and merchant offers. The combination is expected to enable new classes of products and services that meet customer needs in assisted ecommerce.

“We believe that analytics will play an increasingly larger role in creating value for the customers and position the company even better to dominate the space. We look forward to working closely with the NumberMall team to ensure a smooth transition and complete the transaction as quickly as possible,” says Kiran Gali, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NumberMall.

Incepted in 2012, NumberMall’s annual turnover is around Rs 120 crore, with business growing 10 per cent month-on-month, though the company has set its sights on 25 per cent month-on-month growth.  Besides, it has so far serviced more than 30 million customers on its platform through 16,000 touch points. During January this year, it raised Rs 5 crore in equity funding from SRI Capital.

“The assisted ecommerce space is addressing a very large opportunity, and NumberMall is one of the leaders in the space,” said Subinder Khurana, Founder and CEO of BankSmarts.

Founded in 2013, BankSmarts helps marketers reach the right customers for their products and services by creating customer maps, including customer preferences, purchase propensity, and responsiveness to promotions and offers, based on their profile and past purchases. The Solutions help design promotions optimally, then track effectiveness of promotions in real time, taking corrective action if necessary. The technology platforms work on streaming big data and leverage predictive analytics and machine learning. Kae Capital and SRI Capital are seed investors in the company.

Market and competition

Indian retail market is a $600 billion (source) market and there’re 13 million neighborhood retailers (small mom and pop shops) across India. These figures represent the potential in this space.

iPay and Storeking are the two platforms which compete directly with NumberMall.

iPay servers over 3 million customers across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with its retail network of 4000 plus retailers. Bengaluru-based StoreKing claims to have over 5000 kiosks across South India, delivers over 80,000 orders every month. The startup will be expanding into Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in the next couple of months.

Website

“When I was at IIT Guwahati, my hostel mate committed suicide. She was worried about her placements. This could have been avoided if we knew what she was going through. Even though we had counsellors and psychologists in the campus hardly any student was seeking their support or help,” says Richa Singh, Founder of YourDOST.

When Richa started working on this issue she discovered that many people around her were stressed because of job pressures and relationship issues. However, most of these people were not willing to talk about their problems fearing social implications.

Joining hands

While in today’s world technology has made connections easier, Richa believes that we are still lonely. With this belief, Richa along with a few friends started YourDOST – an emotional wellness platform. One can seek support from experts like psychologists, coaches, and other psychiatrists.

She brainstormed together with Puneet Manuja and tried creating a business idea. The fact that they did not come from the field of psychology was a drawback initially. Thus, the duo decided to approach many psychologists. They began with taking notes and writing blog posts on what the psychologists would tell them.

Richa’s friend Satyajeet helped with the coding of the platform. However, since he was based out of US, there were challenges. So Richa met Prakhar Verma, who joined as the CTO. “I remember we were sitting in Costa Coffee and he didn’t even spend a minute and agreed to take our product to the next level. Even since things have been falling in place,” says Richa.

Also read: With over 40 counselors onboard, ePsyclinic takes on mental health online 

Breaking down the key aspects

The experts can help in:

1. Creating healthy ppersonal relationships.
2. A productive and satisfying work-life balance.
3. A more focussed approach towards achieving your goals.
4. Building self-confidence.
5. The ability to deal with pressure of all kinds and from many sources – personal, societal, and peer.

YourDOST allows instant access to users to share their problems through an online interface. There is a team of over 75 experts. One of the key aspects of this venture is that people are kept completely anonymous throughout the platform.

This, Richa adds, is to reduce the stigma attached to seeking help for mental illness in our country and with the use of technology, make expert help widely and instantly available to people looking for emotional and mental well-being.

Mental but not necessarily mad

“However ironic it may sound, the word ‘mental’ is associated with madness and insanity. As a result, seeking mental counselling is a huge taboo in our society. Seeking support is considered a sign of weakness. Most of the times we keep our problems to ourselves because we are not very comfortable accepting our vulnerabilities,” adds Richa.

She adds that they believe technology is a potential contender for filling these gaps, especially in the case of anonymity and reach.

Mental healthcare as a field is largely in India. That’s one of the challenges mental health brings with it. Counselling sessions are mostly about empowering you to take decisions which would help make things better, not about preaching or prescribing medicines.
“With the attention that mental healthcare is able to grab today, from celebrities to investors, we believe we are at an inflection point of the mental healthcare industry,” adds Richa.

Life by numbers

Since inception in December 2014, the platform has received close to 70,000 users so far and has been growing at about 40 per cent month-on-month. With 10,000 registered users currently, a team of over 75 experts service around 300 one to one interactions on a daily basis.

“We were bootstrapped in the initial period of our operations. We have now raised close to $400,000 (Rs. 2.5 crore) in Angel round. Owing to the uniqueness of the idea, we were able to attract established entrepreneurs like Phanindra Sama (Redbus Founder), Aprameya Radhakrishna (TaxiForSure Founder), Aneesh Reddy (Capillary Founder) and many seasoned investors like Sanjay Anandaram (Seedfund), Venk Krishnan (NuVentures), etc., to our investor portfolio,” says Richa.

Mental healthcare is still in its nascent stages and has started to see an influx of startups trying to enter lately. Currently, YourDOST is looking at helping individuals, they also intend to help conduct sessions with corporates as well.

Their plan is to focus on the Indian market and crack this completely. They want to become a one-stop solution for people’s wellness, be it personal, professional, or academic. “The raised funds will help us scale our efforts and have a pan India presence with a great portfolio of experts on the platform, says Richa.”

What does data say?

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) study, India is home to the largest number of depressed individuals. The WHO World Mental Health Survey 2010 also lists suicide as the third largest cause of death in 15 – 35 year olds. India accounts for 32 per cent of the world’s suicides.

Today, with the need to create awareness of seeking help in such cases, several organisations like The White Swan Foundation, Live Love Foundation, and HealthEminds among many others are striving to break the stigma associated with mental illnesses.

Website

When the present conventional health system does not have answers to many prevailing health conditions, our ancient and evolved medicinal traditions and disciplines like yoga, Naturopathy and Ayurveda offer solutions to issues cropping up from present day lifestyle like diabetes, hypertension and asthma. Taking this as a starting point, Shrinivasa Sharma and Dikshant Dave began talking to experts and practitioners in the field and realised that a lot of research is happening in this area. Places like Stanford and UCLA have dedicated groups and departments for research and to further evolve these sciences.

At this point, the duo discovered their Eureka moment and decided to take this information and knowledge to the world. They began with certain experiments to see if people are open to natural or alternative means. The experiments gave them deep insights about the existence of such unsatisfied groups of people, resulting in the formation of CureJoy.

Launched in October 2013 and based out of Bengaluru and San-Francisco, CureJoy is a platform for natural health and wellness content and information. “People can find credible content, answers to some of the most common health questions and health advice from experts. The platform provides curated content on natural health and wellness by experts usually associated with large universities like Stanford or UCLA, and merges it with global trends and patterns,” says Dikshant, who is the CEO of CureJoy.

Growth and funding

CureJoy claims to have had a quarter-on-quarter growth of almost 100 percent over the last six quarters and has now expanded to almost eight million site visits per month. The portal also boasts of an active Facebook community with about 2.7 million users that makes it count among the top three companies globally, in terms of Facebook engagement.  Currently, it prioritises its impact in India, USA, Australia and the English-speaking European countries. In the next six to eight quarters, CureJoy envisions reaching 50 million users including those from countries like Germany, Spain, France etc., with localised content in multiple languages.

In September this year, CureJoy raised Rs seven crore ($1.15 million) funding in pre-Series A round, led by Accel Partners. The funding round also saw participation from serial entrepreneurs, including Subrata Mitra, Larry Braitman (Founder of Flycast & Adify) and Venk Krishnan (Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nuware Technologies), among others. The company will use these funds to further expand their services in India and other countries and strengthen its team to complement their capabilities.

The company also intends to move into adjacent verticals such as food, beauty and parenting.

Market and competition

At present, approximately $200 billion is spent on natural and alternative health globally. In India alone, this would be around $4.5 billion.

“Looking at the current trend, where people are growing in awareness around their own health and options, this number is growing much rapidly as compared to conventional health remedies. More people every year are switching over to natural and alternative means of healthcare, fully aware of its benefits. We are at present looking at about Rs four crore as annualised revenue. We are targeting to reach Rs 100-120 crore in the next two years,” says Dikshant.

EverydayHealth.com, a listed company, is a direct competitor of CureJoy. Many media houses too are focussing on natural health; Buzzfeed and Yahoo have been at this for few years now.

On competition, Dikshant says that the space is quite niche and that the platform has specifically carved out a unique position for itself. The industry is huge and highly fragmented in which no single player can dominate the space. “We think we have the right lead, a capable team and an honest vision to be the top destination when it comes to natural health and wellness,” Dikshant adds.

Tackling challenges

“Starting up is hard. There are multiple factors that can affect your growth or even survival. We had our share of ups and downs as well. The initial parts of identifying the end user needs and gauging the overall market was not easy. We had a series of experiments and analysis to navigate through all the noise and clutter to finally arrive at the shape of product we want to offer. While we did cross that stage, the battle for a startup is a continuous one and that is by design. We continuously try to beat the status quo and go beyond or challenge the norm. We have been fairly successful so far and I am hoping to continue that for future as well,” says Dikshant.

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Made in China. It is a label that often conjures up images of inexpensive electronic products. But for Sreejith Moolayil and Puru Gupta, it was the inspiration for their startup, Healthyworld. And what better inspiration for Healthyworld’s healthfood brand, True Elements, than the land of green tea. But while the benefits of Chinese green tea may have triggered the idea, True Elements sources its raw material from different parts of India.

True Elements has a portfolio of more than 30 products, which includes breakfast cereals, tea, snacks and health supplements. HealthyWorld as such has 3000 products that not only promote nutritious food products, but also educate customers to compare and validate what they are eating.

Not for all the tea in China

Sreejith and Puru saw that the growing demand for wellness products was largely based on ‘want’ rather than ‘need’, fuelled by increased awareness, rising disposable incomes, and new government guidelines.

This trend, coupled with the need for health solutions, had created a surge in demand for nutritious and functional food products. After looking at different permutations and combinations, the duo decided on the space of healthy foods.

“Many Diseases are still in a preventable stage – and one can mitigate the impact or reduce the side effects with proper diet and nutrition,” says Puru.

This trend, coupled with the need for health solutions with demonstrated efficacy, has created surged demand for nutritious food products. They launched in Delhi and began with distribution with the intent of owning the entire supply chain of health products.

However, the duo soon realised that their strength was in building customer relationships. Thus, they decided to pivot to an e-commerce platform. Armed with their strength in building customer relationships, they launched their e-commerce platform HealthyWorld in 2014,  and subsequently they launched True Elements in 2015.

It helps customers identify and validate functional foods (foods that have a health benefit associated with them and reduce the risk of diseases) and buy them directly on one platform. “Many diseases are still preventable – and one can mitigate the impact or reduce side effects with proper diet and nutrition,” says Puru.

Also read: Two sisters are on a mission to make your snack healthy with ‘Yoga-Bars’

Expanding their horizons

“Since our launch in April 2015, we have already become one of the top food suppliers on Amazon and are present with almost every online grocery player,” adds Puru. Their offline presence is currently limited to Mumbai and Pune, where they are focusing on driving distribution in key category stores.

In December 2014, Healthyworld raised $15,00,00 from a group of investors. At that time, they were doing around Rs. 3-4 lakhs worth of business each month from e-commerce. “And now, we are on our way to reaching a Rs. one crore topline by March 2016, growing more than 30 times in less than 15 months. We are also in the process of raising Series A in the next few months,” adds Puru.

Crunch and health in a bite

The team is in the process of building a tech-based validation platform for customers, which should be out in the next couple of months. If you look at the numbers, the healthfood market, especially the market for cereal/granola bars and energy/nutrition bars, is projected to be close to $8.3 billion by 2016 in the US.

Other brands like RiteBite and Nature’s Value, too, have begun gaining popularity. These brands were established around 2005-2006, when the idea was relatively unknown in India. Today, the market for fitness products is growing exponentially, with nearly 40 per cent of Indians looking for health and fitness-related products.

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London & Partners, the Mayor of London’s inward investment company, is on a mission. A mission to identify the top 20 high-growth companies in India that could become relevant on a global scale. It is with this in mind that that they have launched the global India Emerging 20 (IE20) programme. IE20 is also supported by BDO India, Newland Chase, UK Trade and Investment and British Airways.

London & Partners has a proven track record of working with over 2,000 international businesses, and helping them with their global expansion plans. “We have developed the India Emerging programme to support Indian businesses looking to succeed globally, offering a unique opportunity for 20 fast-growing businesses to showcase themselves on the international stage,” says Gautam Sehgal, vice president and chief representative, London & Partners, India.

With an unprecedented number of leading companies hitting global scale and reach, IE20 aims to discover the 20 most promising global Indian companies and provide them the visibility and platform to make a mark in the global arena.

IE20 is a unique opportunity to position businesses on the global stage. The winners will gain attention and visibility among global media and trade, which in turn will facilitate international partnerships, alliances and other opportunities.

The winners will be flown to London, and will get an opportunity to meet and interact with senior business leaders and decision makers. The award ceremony will be an unmatched platform to network with global advisors, investors, employees, and customers.

Eligibility parameters

Gordon Innes, CEO of London & Partners, adds that, “As one of the world’s fastest developing economies, India is an important business partner for London and the UK. With a growing technology sector and a highly skilled workforce, India has developed shared strengths with London and it is no surprise that India is our second biggest market for foreign direct investment into London.

In order to be eligible for nominations, companies must be:

1. Based in India, have been established in or after 2000, and have global ambitions.
2. Working in Information Technology, Communications, Creative, Life Sciences, or Financial and Business Services (predominantly knowledge-based companies)

Rating parameters

The companies will be a part of a three-stage process that has a robust rating model developed by ValueNotes, the knowledge partners. “Our selection process and rating model has the flexibility to assess companies based on their business models and across a variety of industries,” adds Gautam.
While there’s a standardised form for all companies, the rating parameters and weightages differ depending on the business environment, products, and services.
The companies would be rated on three broad parameters:

1. Global scalability
2. Innovation and differentiation
3. Performance

Gordon adds that London’s easy access to European markets and world-class talent pool, makes the city an attractive destination for Indian businesses looking to go international, and London & Partners looks forward to helping the next wave of Indian businesses choosing to make London their home.

Gautam says that these organisations will get an opportunity to meet and interact with senior business leaders and decision makers from leading global companies, thereby enabling them to gain attention and visibility among global media and trade, which in turn will facilitate international partnerships, alliances and other opportunities. The Awards ceremony and an exclusive programme for the IE20 companies will be organised towards the end of February 2016 in London.

Website

Delhi-based laundry care startup Tooler has raised angel funding of USD 110, 000 from a group of angel investors led by Raghu Khanna, Founder and CEO, CASHurDRIVE and Sameer Gupta, Ex­-GM, Paytm.

The platform plans to invest the funding to increase the supply-chain and come up with offline outlets in areas of Delhi, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad to attract location based customers. Currently, it accepts orders via mobile app and website only and offers services in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. “We realize that there’s a large proportion of potential customers who want to use our services offline as well. This step will help the company to be a name not just in the online laundry market but as well in on-ground market,” says Vishal Gupta, CTO and Co-founder, Tooler.

He adds that amount will also be spent on marketing of the product and building iOS version app for the iPhone users.  It is also planning to adopt franchise model. “The funding will help us reach out to more customers as our main focus now becomes on expanding the marketing strategies and extending our operations. Our aim is to create a brand in this segment.”

Launched in June 2015, the platform claims to handle around 100 orders per day with close to 80 percent repeat orders. Within the next 6 months, the company targets to deliver 10,000 orders in a month and cross the GMV over Rs 30-35 lakhs per month.

Market and competition

According to KPMG reports, unorganised laundry in India is around Rs 2.2 lakh crore opportunity. The report believes that market is set to grow even more as more middle-class people with better mobile technology want to outsource their laundry pain to on-demand service providers like Tooler.

However, Tooler is not new in the segment and faces stiff competition from Pick My Laundry in Delhi, including some horizontal platforms like Housejoy, Doormint and Zimmber, among others. Bengaluru-based My Wash is another startup which works in the same segment.

With a tight competition on the market front, Raghu Khanna, one of the angel investors applauds the Tooler team and says, “When I first met the team, I could sense the dedication these men had. They were stern on being the daddies of e-­laundry.”

Website

A few months ago, when we covered the Roadrunnr story, this is what we saw: At 5:15 in the evening the bustle of activity at the Roadrunnr office begins from the basement. There are close to 100 delivery boys seated on chairs, holding their forms and waiting for their turn to be a part of this B2B online hyperlocal logistics startup.

Today, the scene is very different. For a few days now, the startup world has been reeling in shock with the stories of vandalism and delivery boys revolting on new compensation structure. Twitter talks and whispers speak of firings and unrest drawing several parallels with the ill-fated Tinyowl situation.

However, the deeper you dig, the bigger the problem seems to be. The tale from Roadrunnr’s team seems to bring out some red flags. The Roadrunnr team believes that it is a planned attack. The talk is about the change in payout scale brought in three weeks ago.

The end comes first

The story took a turn for the worse on 22nd November when close to 60 people vandalised the Roadrunnr office within a span of a few minutes. Mohit Kumar, Co-Founder, Roadrunnr, says, “The picture that seems to have gone viral is that of the basement area. Some parts were vandalised by the delivery boys.”

Mohit says he was warned by a few restaurant owners of something being amiss a few hours before the attack took place.

To verify the claim, we spoke to Aruj Garg, Founder of Bhukkad, which uses Roadrunnr’s services. He says that a few of the Roadrunnr delivery boys were behaving oddly. “We did speak to Mohit and asked him to look into it, but we didn’t know what the reason could be or what would happen,” explains Aruj.

With these warnings, the Roadrunnr team decided to hire a few security guards to ensure the safety of the women employees and those who aren’t involved in the drive operations in the office.

“I called the private security agency guys by around 9:30-10 am in the morning anticipating a strike and protest. But I did not think it would turn violent,” says Mohit.

Besides the earlier alerts the team had received, red flags were reportedly raised in Delhi and Mumbai for the revised compensation structure. According to Mohit, close to 50 people had gone into the Mumbai Roadrunnr office and demanded a minimum pay order structure, and said they wouldn’t work with the revised structure.

 The management in Mumbai spoke to these people and requested them to try out the new compensation structure for 15 days. The scene in Bengaluru played out differently. When the internal team looked at the CCTV footage, they found that close to 20 people weren’t even a part of the Roadrunnr team, according to Mohit.

With the footage, the team filed a complaint against those 20. Around 11 were arrested. There were three other ex-employees, earlier fired by Roadrunnr, who were part of the mob.  The others in the mob comprised some regular employees of the company.

The team claims that the layoffs were done close to six months ago, and mainly driven by non-performance and behavioural complaints of the riders.

While there were claims that the management team was unwilling to talk, Mohit disagrees and adds that they were open to revising the compensation structure.

“They refused and wanted to resign with three months compensation. We accepted this and were even open to get the people back on the basis of a minimum guarantee structure. But later this turned into violent threats,” says Mohit.

When we got hold of a Roadrunnr rider and spoke to him, he said on condition of anonymity,

“I have worked with this company from its inception. I don’t have any problems with the team as of now. Those who have a problem are different from us.”

Sources claim that many delivery boys who were part of the upheaval were threatened to doing so. It is also alleged that in several areas, the delivery boys were using stealth mode like not wearing the stipulated Roadrunnr T-shirts or turning over the delivery bags.

The man in the shadows

Simmering for a while now, the final explosion began with one e-mail that is believed to have hit most media houses early on Saturday. We received this email two days ago.

Attempts to contact him went without a response. This was followed by another email that told us where the article was first published, followed by an individual take on how Roadrunnr is losing its client base, and how the unit economics for hyperlocal businesses is unhealthy.

The email went on to add that the next dig would be on the grocery models and how consolidations are in the works.

“We believe this e-mail id is a shadow, and the emails were circulated as early as 18th November and by noon on 23^rd immediately after the media coverage. We strongly suspect it to be a planned attack,” says Mohit.

What does the audience want?

This incident has, however, not sounded the death knell for the startup. Aruj of Bhukkad says, “Roadrunnr is one of the few delivery startups we truly believe in. And we intend to remain loyal to them no matter what. Their values resonate with us.”

Rant from delivery boys isn’t a new thing. Earlier, Grofers had to stop operations in Noida for a couple of days as riders were unhappy with the compensation.

“Dealing with delivery boys becomes challenging as they aren’t professional and startups need to be extra cautious while negotiating new terms with them,” says Rohan Diwan, Co-founder of Quickli.

While food startup Masalabox uses Opinio currently, Harsha Thachery, its Co-founder, believes that B2B delivery startups like Roadrunnr make life easy for them. “It’s an additional cost to hire and manage the delivery boys and logistics. It’s much more cost-effective and manageable to outsource this aspect,” she says.

And the plot thickens

Roadrunnr says that some of the agencies they’ve been associated with, especially the pay rolling ones, have suddenly become difficult to deal with. Mohit says that the percentage of commission that these agencies get for referring the delivery boys, Roadrunnr decided to give as a performance-based incentive to the delivery boys directly.

These agencies help either in the sourcing of the delivery boys or work along a payroll model. Mohit says that the delivery boys wanted to join Roadrunnr directly looking at the incentive offered by Roadrunnr. This, according to Mohit, has caused some friction.

“We have a no-poach policy, but the agency guys are adamant that their attrition has increased due to us, and we need to compensate the same. They’re in fact very insistent and aggressive on this,” says Mohit. The sourcing model works well, but there seems to be some friction in the pay rolling aspects.

A few Delhi-based startups say they have been hiring through similar agencies but have never faced such a grim situation. “We have been hiring people through agencies and on a few occasions also fired them in bulk. However, agencies didn’t raise concerns over layoffs,” adds a team member of one of the leading B2B hyperlocal delivery networks based out of Gurgaon.

Several sources believe that currently, top on-demand B2B delivery startups do seven to 10 orders per rider (in busy areas). If the volume is less than five per rider then pay-per-delivery approach is the best option.

Companies like Shadowfax follow pay-per-hour model. “We follow an hourly pay model. That model becomes pointless when you don’t have enough volume, but volume isn’t an issue for us,” adds Abhishek Bansal, Co-founder and CEO of Shadowfax.

The situation in the startup world has been grim over the past couple of days. Is then Anand Lunia, Founder of IndiaQuotient, right when he says there is an anti-startup agenda brewing in the country?

(With inputs from Jai Vardhan in Gurgaon)

Rapid urbanisation is one of the key factors impacting the socio-economic fabric of our country. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that cities will house 40% of India’s population and account for 70% of the GDP by 2030. From a marketing perspective – rapid urbanisation is interesting as it leads to new psychographic consumer segments and provides opportunities for brand growth.

There are many new consumer segments that have emerged over the past decade – however, this article has been focussed on the un-metro guy.

Ranjit is 23 years old and has recently moved to Bengaluru from Warangal. After completing his engineering at a local college – he followed his seniors to the big city in search of a job. On securing a position in a small IT firm, he moved into a paying guest accommodation for ‘Andhra Boys’ where he lives with his friends. Ranjith works US hours and hence is asleep during the day. His free time is spent connecting with friends and family on Facebook and watching Telugu movies on his phone. Ranjith loves the big city as it provides him with the freedom of anonymity and a chance to live life on his own terms. However, at a deeper level he grapples with feelings of isolation and loneliness. He desperately wants to be part of the Urban Tribe but is yet to learn their language. He is looking for brands and experiences that will help him adapt and fit in.

Most of us have come across someone like Ranjith at our workplace. In fact, with rapid urbanisation the workplace is likely to be filled with more white-collar migrants like him in the near future. For a marketing person – this segment is exciting as it did not exist two decades ago. Prior to economic liberalisation, most people who were born in smaller towns stayed home due to the lack of opportunities elsewhere.

The un-metro guy is a psychographic profile – defined by his stage in life. We chose to understand him better using the social media content generated by un-metro guys themselves – using our proprietary research technique called Netnography. Based on our analysis, we arrived at five points that could help marketers target address their needs better.

Who are they: Young male, Sec AB, lives in metro but is from a smaller town, graduate and currently working in a company.

What do they buy/use: Branded apparels (online and offline), mobile applications (for entertainment, communication, information, and commerce), motor cycles, travel services (inter and intra city), financial services (banking, loans, credit cards), and household related (FMCG, services, etc,), etc.

How do they interact with the world (language of expression): We found this segment behaves differently from the urban born in terms of language and expression. Extensive use of vernacular words in vernacular script on social media, gifts, poetry, and movie clips, etc. Rich and varied material curated and created by them – to express themselves.

Image projected: This segment appears to project two types of self-image based on posts, gifts, images, and videos shared. Images overlap – perhaps triggered by their state of mind while posting on social media.

Self Image 1: Cool and trendy

Confident and poised in an urbane situation – posing in dark glasses on bikes, holding a drink at a pub, hanging out with female co-workers, going on road trip with buddies, posing in front of key landmark building, foreign location images, etc.

Self Image 2: Struggling but inspired

Posts about missing ones family (especially mother), cribs about un-supportive bosses, lamenting the lack of a special someone, financial worries, etc. They also post inspirational poetry, spirituality related gifs, religious quotes, etc. In contrast to the urban born, they reveal vulnerability and share their struggle to fit into life away from home.

It is this interesting dichotomy of self-image – that needs to be addressed by brands looking to tap into the segment.

Role of brands: Brands can address this segment in two ways – depending on their positioning:

Mass urban icons: urban tribe badge value

These brands are symbols of urban life. The un-metro guy will buy Levis (on sale), wear Ray Bans, drink Coke, and bank with ICICI. They want the comfort of ‘Big Brands’ that helps them fit into the big city life – just like the rest of the urban tribe. They are not yet ready for niche brands or cool cult players.

Niche solution providers: Help ease the transition into big city living

These brands help the un-metro guy adjust to big city living. Presently, a slew of mobile apps are helping this segment of consumers find a place to stay, eat ‘homely’ food, manage their finances, find the right places to hang out and much more.

Perhaps the beauty of mobile apps is that it allows the un-metro guy to overcome his ignorance in privacy while providing much needed information that is currently not available to him

In summation

The un-metro guy is a well-defined consumer segment that is likely to grow rapidly with urbanisation. While they are likely to aspire for mass urban icons – the untapped growth opportunity appears to be in brands which will help them survive the transition.

In my opinion, marketers need to address the needs of this segment by respecting their challenges and helping them adjust to big city life. Brands that are authentic, speak their language and gain attention via word of mouth, peer endorsements, and third-party recommendations are likely to succeed.

Who says one mustn’t combine work and pleasure? Bal Krishna Birla, “just a small-town guy from UP,” as he likes to describe himself, was your typical corporate fixture who spent 11 years working for giants like Infosys and Amazon. But he had a secret. “My early life in Infosys was a big struggle. I was a bad performer and my technology knowledge was pretty bad as I had spent most of my college life in doing cultural and social things,” he says.

Part of the reason why being just a chocolate chip in a big fat cake didn’t work for Birla was because he was living a dual life. He moonlights as a binge artist, a gourmand and dreamed about having that cake and eating it too! His day job was feeling more and more like living a lie, and then something happened that simply pushed him over the edge. “When I was in Canada, a customer wanted to prove that Indians are not good at software. A great sense of patriotism hit me at that point, so I studied all the books I was supposed to study during my engineering and came out with flying colours,” he remembers.

Guess what came next

But he wasn’t about to waste this new-found wealth of knowledge and passion at a corporate, again.  His true calling was the one habit every parent has tried to smack right out of us on the dinner table: playing with food. And he is no different from the rest of us who snap pictures of everything we intend to eat and shove them in the faces of all our friends who are struggling to stick to their diets. Very much in keeping with that trend, Birla engineered a way to turn this into a fun game.

“The entrepreneurship bug did not just bite me but ate me up and I began my journey to start interesting companies around food, technology and music, until I stumbled upon something fun, interesting, as well as helpful for users,” Birla says.

Thus came about Guesstaurant, and it is exactly what it sounds like – an app and website where one could indulge in fun quizzes about the food in their localities. Birla explains, “I am also an avid foodie and known for that in my friends circle. I have been putting up quizzes around food on my Facebook over the years and it builds amazing engagement. People love teasing their friends about the food they’re eating, and social media is also suddenly flooded with food photography. But digging a little deeper, I found that both people as well as restaurants stand to gain if this was done in a more organised fashion. It also helps in food discovery in a very interesting and involved manner. After seeing these games becoming very interesting on FB, I decided to start this as a separate product.” Guesstaurant is a Tech30 company.

Giving consequence to foodies

“This product is all about foodies. It enables them to showcase what they are eating and also enable people to discover great food visually. It engages users in a friendly quiz which helps them figure out where to eat a particular dish,” Birla adds.

The quiz requires users to upload photos of specific dishes they eat, along with the restaurant they are eating it at. The app plugs in nine automatically generated wrong restaurants along with the right answer, and turns it into a quiz. Right answer wins the guesser some ‘spoons’, and the wrong answer wins the uploader ‘spoons’ – which is a reference to the earlier practice where customers would often steal spoons from restaurants.

“Food is eaten visually, not through reviews or descriptions or restaurant names. More often than not, these pictures have triggered a desire in people to visit a restaurant, and this sure is a whole lot more effective than a friend recommending a mere restaurant name to you,” Birla explains.

But the biggest challenge is to build traction for an innovative product. “This is trying to create a new user habit and takes much longer life cycle to become popular. My research has focussed on observing how people respond to food posts on my Facebook wall,” he adds.

Tapping on all the potential around this yummy subject

Another use case is a quirky way of creating restaurant listings, where they can be traced based on what dish you search for. Foodies can use the platform to discover all the great dishes, as opposed to restaurants, in their localities and beyond. The website houses a gallery with photos of dishes uploaded by users, with information on where exactly it can be found.

“I was recently talking to a friend who told me that his dinner plans changed because of what he saw on Guesstaurant. Such instances are the milestones we want to see more and more,” he says.

Their Facebook community has over 7,500 members, and with a subject like this, prospective diversifications are bound to be galore. Birla intends to also create a platform for restaurants to share photos of their dishes, as well as promote their new innovative products and offerings, thus making advertising revenue from restaurants his primary revenue model down the line.

“We also want this to evolve as a platform where food companies can launch their new products and drive traction for their products. We are beta testing our app and looking for adding lots of gamification elements there. A contextual notification system and tighter social media integration is on the cards,” he adds.

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I want to disappear. I want to move into an old apartment building in a place where I would never talk to anyone.

I would order delivery for all three meals a day. I would learn to talk to my neighbors, who spoke every language but English. 

From online printing to a B2B gifting company, 5By7 has seen a lot of changes. After an initial round of angel investments amounting to Rs.40,00,000, the company, founded in 2012, has not received any funding. Despite that, they claim to have a CAGR of more than 50 per cent. Following the launch of their online platform last year, they have seen a 3x increase in traffic without incurring any acquisition costs.

With a catalog of close to 5,000 products, specially curated and filtered for their clients, which include both startups and large companies, 5By7 supplies gifts or branded merchandise for clients, employees, promotions and events. “We have worked with over 500 companies including 50 global brands and aim to emerge as a top player in the present $1 billion gifting market in India,” says Piyush Suri, Founder 5By7.

Back to the drawing board

5By7 started out as VitaminPrint.com, an online printing company in 2012, but realised within a few months that there was a much larger gap in the Indian online B2B gifting market. The market was highly fragmented, inaccessible, and had a reputation for being unreliable, supplying poor quality and design.

The pilot was initiated with Opera Software, a Norwegian company that outsourced their entire merchandise production and management to the team. The feedback they received from Indian clients was positive and their online-curated platform soon began seeing significant traction in India.

Today, they serve clients in India, the Middle East, Europe and the US and are, for the first time, launching products that can be sold in the retail/consumer markets as well.

Brainstorming and building

Like most startups, 5By7 began with a group of friends and known associates. Ripun Jai Mehta and Piyush met while working in New York, and Rahul Kumar was Piyush’s classmate at college. Given their consulting backgrounds, the trio were keen to build something that was scalable and evaluated several businesses before deciding to pursue online printing.

“The 5By7 that you see today is a result of a few iterations based on our strengths as a team, market gaps and feedback from clients. Most of our core team has been with us for over three years and we have worked hard to build a solid base with the right processes, a large vendor and customer base, and a highly motivated team,” says Piyush.

Seeing the market evolve

The emergence of e-commerce, according to Piyush, has resulted in a more tech-savvy and design-conscious buyer who is looking for reliability and impact rather than just cost. On the supply side, they have seen a fast-growing retail market but limited growth in B2B/bulk buying, creating an opportunity for them to establish a presence.

On the demand side, he says that both consumer and bulk buying have grown exponentially. Piyush says that 5By7 sees a role beyond B2B, moving towards bulk selling to consumers in niche markets like such as weddings and personal gifting.

“5By7’s differentiator has been our focus on automation and data,” ‘says Piyush. He says they have continuously invested in building a vast repository of product data that is the backbone of all their work today.

Additionally, over the past few months, they have automated various processes in order to address pain points that clients face in the B2B market. These include idea generation for clients using predefined filters, workflow tools to track processes, and pitch PDF generators to decrease the sales cycle.

The segment realities

According to a rough industry estimate — B2B e-commerce is a $500 billion market at its early stages in India. There are 4.8 crore SMEs that need to secure bulk supplies making this a much bigger opportunity than B2C e-commerce.

Website

Thanksgiving is here! Let’s put on those gratitude hats on!

“We don’t celebrate thanksgiving in India,” is the usual response.

But weren’t we taught to be grateful in India? Besides, Indian or American, being grateful doesn’t need a day of celebration now, does it?

Then again, why would anyone decide to be grateful on this particular day of the year when we haven’t had the time to notice the good things in our life, all throughout the year?

I don’t believe in answering the question. Why? Let’s instead get to how and what. That just makes life far easier; at least it does for me.

Gratitude just sounds rather fancy, but basically the idea is to say thank you. How many times in a day are we thankful? How often do we say thank you for the things that we take for granted? The number of things that we take for granted is just endless. Be it the breakfast laid out on the table when your mother is around, the ironed clothes, folded sheets or polished shoes. Wait! That was only till we got out of home.

Then we started finding temporary gratitude for the electricity that comes back just in time for you to take a shower in the morning, the red light that turns green for us to make it in time to office or that chaiwala, who diligently brings your cup of tea every morning and afternoon. You realise your attachment to that cup of tea and the favour he does only on those days when both you and the chaiwala decide to take off.

Strange that most of us have had those days in college when with just Rs. 30 we managed to treat a gang of five to chai and samosa. And also had some change left for a coffee afterwards. I don’t know about you. But for me, the best part of those days was the fun, the conversations, the company and the gratitude in that time spent together. Invariably, most of them were always broke, but we always managed to scrap something to spend those few moments together.

Even with the risk of sounding old and may be a little wise, I choose to ask the question. Where is that gratitude now for all those simple things in life? Today with all that money we make, how far are we willing to go with acknowledging gratitude for those simple things in life? How can we build grand ideas and dreams and, more so, companies without the gratitude for the simple things in life?

So instead of answering the why, this Thanksgiving although I’m no American, I have decided to answer the what’s and how’s of being grateful for simple things in life. I think I will start with the maid in my office. I’m grateful that she takes the trash out every day. Thanks to her, I don’t have mosquitoes thrashing me all day. As for the maid at home, I think I should express some gratitude to her as well and thank myself for being patient with me and taking care of me. Surprise! Surprise! Who said anything about expressing gratitude only to others? What about yourself?

Image credit “ShutterStock“

Stelae Technologies, an enterprise software company based in Bengaluru and Chennai, has raised an undisclosed amount through a Pre-Series A round funding, led by Earlsfield Capital, UK, Saha Fund, former Infosys veteran Mohandas Pai and other Cross Border Angels. Stelae Technologies, initially bootstrapped, generated funds through customer revenue. The company, with this round of funding, aims to improve its delivery processes and its direct sales in order to acquire more flagship customers in their focused sectors.

The company’s product, Khemeia, which is pending patent has automated content transformation and unlocks content in any format to be analysed, which could not be analysed or searched before. “Our uniqueness is in the different algorithms in the software. We have about 70 of them that analysis content exactly like the human eye, it recognises titles, paragraphs, images and more,” explains Aruna Schwarz, CEO, Stelae Technologies.

Being an enterprise company, Stelae Technologies, believes that innovation is constant in their algorithms. Aruna believes that their product is changing the whole manual game and is replacing their competitors either in-house or are being asked to use their software.

Since its launch, the company has focused and strived to build the best product in the enterprise spectrum and ensured it solves its customers’ day to day problems with its product. “We focused on our product niche, we focused on one problem and excelled at solving it,” says Aruna. “We really built the product with the customers, who have followed us along our journey and big name came along like Rolls Royce to fine tune the product,’’ she adds.

Stelae Technologies, despite all the success has a very clear vision of being acquired by one of their technology partners. The company has now built a brand and is focusing on expanding their horizon throughout the globe.