Eight years ago Shachin Bharadwaj stayed in a matchbox-sized home-and-office for over two years. He even felt embarrassed to invite his Bengaluru-based parents over to Pune. This was when the food-delivery startup TastyKhana had just begun gaining traction in the city.

Constantly running low on money, he even sold his prized possession he had then, the Hero Honda Splendor, for a paltry amount of Rs. 13,000 to pay his monthly rent.

Gone are the Splendor days, Shachin today drives a gleaming brown BMW. He is a proud father of a one-month-old son, and he is all set for his second venture – Sminq!

Things changed quite significantly over the last few years. TastyKhana was acquired by Foodpanda for approximately Rs. 120 crore around November last year.

The not-so-smooth transition into Foodpanda

The talks for the acquisition started in August of the same year, and the conversation gathered momentum too soon. Before anyone had time to bat an eyelid, the deal was sealed.

Berlin-based food delivery startup Delivery Hero, which invested $5 million in 2011 and owned majority stakes in TastyKhana, agreed with the local team to go ahead with the deal. Shachin and Sheldon were happy with the final deal as they were able to give a 10X ROI to some of their angel investors and handsome returns to team members who backed them during the early days of TastyKhana.

A few months after the acquisition, things did not go as expected. There were major conflicts between the two management teams.

When I asked him for more details, he refused to discuss the issues and mentioned that the work culture of Foodpanda was very different from what the 100-odd member team of TastyKhana had built over the last seven years.

Shachin added that he didn’t have any comments on how Foodpanda runs or manages its business, and said “it would be naïve of me to think that only my way of working is right.”

He and the others from the management team of TastyKhana quit Foodpanda in early March. Sources say that the founding team forewent crores of rupees that were stuck as Foodpanda shares.

“For us ethics and principles at building the business the right way was a matter which we had zero compromise. I would prefer to grow slow than taking unethical shortcuts. I am the kind of person who has not even bribed a cop ever. I once had my license suspended for six months for a genuine mistake on my part, but I didn’t want to pay a bribe and go scot free,” added Shachin.

When we spoke more about the exit and what people got at the end of it, he said, “I am happy with whatever I have. I did not want anything more. As we had missed paper work on ESOPS for some employees, we [Sheldon and Shachin], in fact, paid them from our own pockets. Life is too short to cut corners and step on the people who made you what you are.”

How ‘See Me In No Queue’ was born

After the short stint at Foodpanda, Shachin was suddenly in the thick hitting another life milestone. He was going to enter fatherhood, and he recalls how his life was all about ultra sonographies and gynecologist’s appointments.

“We spent hours waiting at every one of these places, and as you obviously know from your own experience, these waits are the longest. I kept thinking about how to make this whole waiting process more efficient,” said Shachin.

Shachin and his wife tried sneaking in meals multiple times but lost their appointments many a times.

“Why can’t these people manage their queues better? Technology can definitely solve this problem,” he wondered.

Shachin along with Sheldon, his former Co-Founder, and Santhosh, TastyKhana’s Chief Sales Officer, had already launched Sminq (pronounced as smink) and tied up with eight clinics in Pune.

How does Sminq work?

Sminq is a mobile app that helps companies manage customers. It manages live queues and sends SMS notifications to customers whose turn has come/whose products are ready for pick up. It shows customers the live status of the queue and lets people join these queues remotely.

The app is already driving close to 1,000 remote bookings per month with the doctors that have signed up with them. They are also piloting with an HR firm to help them manage walk-in interviews.

According to Shachin, the scope of Sminq is vast. It can be used in a variety of verticals, from clinics and walk-in interviews to Government services, like RTOs and Passport Seva Kendras, to car or bike service stations.

For vendors, the app can work as a CRM that can handle all customer management processes that happen in the backend. The product costs about Rs. 2,000 per month depending on the size of the customer base.

Many startups across the globe are doing customer queue management for select verticals, some for clinics, some for restaurants, but only two other companies, MyTime and Q-Less, are into queue management for multiple verticals.

What’s in store for the future?

“I’ve been through a lot, but also I’ve learnt so much. I am very happy that the team and I built a successful business with TastyKhana, now I am ready to do it all over again for Sminq,” added Shachin.

Of course he did not mean sleeping in a tiny room, nor did he mean selling his bike, he means that for him the entrepreneurial journey will continue.

Website

At some point in time, we all go through a phase when we have that urge to do something special in life. Five years ago, Shobhit Arora got this feeling to make a difference in people’s lives. He continued his efforts to bring this change through artistic beauty and design.

For Shobhit, it was not an easy decision to quit his comfortable corporate job and venture into a new area. It took him almost a year of late nights and weekends to do some research and validate the hypothesis. He spent a lot of time studying international markets and existing trends, meeting artists and designers in person, and visiting exhibitions. On one hand, this was a globally proven sweet spot and on the other there was a strong need for the social commerce model in this country. After a year of research, he was confident of the phenomenal opportunity.

In December 2014, he launched Worldartcommunity, a peer-to-peer online marketplace for artistic creations across a wide range of mediums and materials. Based out of Gurgaon, the platform connects appreciators of art with creators of uniquely designed or handmade works that will enrich the living spaces and enlarge the sense of beauty and joy.

“It’s a peer-to-peer platform, which is used by both buyers and sellers. We follow a simple sign up process where artists and designers can register to sell online. This is followed by a due diligence by our design team. Once approved, the sellers control their space completely,” says Shobhit Arora, Founder and CEO, Worldartcommunity.

The platform operates in the zone of lifestyle creations, whether it’s fine art, fashion or décor. “There’s no cost levied on artists and designers for selling on our platform. This enables them access to the entire dashboard, which includes product upload, shop look and fix the products price. A seller can even link their online presence, including social media handles, with their shop at the Worldartcommunity platform. We also allow them to offer discounts, if they like to offer, to select customers. We cater to a wide range of price points. It’s more a matter of taste than pocket. The fact that we have artists and designers selling directly, customers get the benefit of direct pricing,” says Appachu SK, Co-Founder and COO, Worldartcommunity.

The revenue model of this platform is commission-based. It charges a flat 10 per cent commission on a successful transaction. The initiative was initially bootstrapped. It raised angel funding of USD 200,000 in April 2015. This round was led by Viraj Tyagi, a serial entrepreneur and an investor.

Market and competition

 India exports almost 5,000 million art and craft products annually. This gives us an understanding of the potential of this segment.

 Craftsvilla, IndianRoots, CBazaar, Utsav Fashion, and Namaste Craft, among others, are some of the direct competitors of Worldartcommunity. In addition, many e-commerce platforms are catering to this segment. Early this year, Flipkart tied up with multiple government ministries to help artisans shift towards online sales. Snapdeal has partnered with India Post to enable Varanasi artisans to sell their work on the online platform.

On competition, Shobhit says that the category holds a strong promise and there are many players at an early stage. He believes that there’s an opportunity for all as the segment at this stage is quite fragmented and unorganised with low online share.

He further adds, “Our vision is to strongly entrench ourselves in the art and design ecosystem, which would be a mix of online and offline presence. We would be looking at brand extension to empower artisans and craftsmen to sell directly on our platform.”

Website

In the contemporary startup ecosystem, it is not unusual for entrepreneurs to focus more on the products and services they offer. Limited budgets often lead them to outsource matters like finance and accounts to professionals, as setting up in-house teams for financial solutions can be expensive. Also, a lot of time, which could be better spent focussing on their core competencies, is wasted in understanding complex regulatory issues.

Incorporated in 2010, Aristotle Consultancy is a SSAE 16 Type II verified organisation that provides end-to-end accounting, financial, and advisory services, and often functions as an outsourced finance department for startups. Currently operating out of Delhi/NCR, Bengaluru and Chennai, Aristotle Consultancy offers services such as Accounts Outsourcing, Virtual CFO, Payroll Services, Advisory Services, and Services for MNCs across several verticals to startups, SMEs, MNCs entering India, and Equity Investors.

The Genesis

When Deepak Dhamija, an IIM Calcutta graduate, was working as an Investment Manager for VenturEast Tenet Fund II (VET), he interacted with many startup founders, most of whom were looking for someone to manage their company’s finances and accounts. Deepak, who has also completed the the venture capital development programme at ISB, Hyderabad, noticed that there was a huge gap with the kind of services CA firms provided and the support the startups were seeking.  He saw an opportunity to fill this gap.

Deepak, who previously led a team at Infosys, offering business solutions to Daimler Chrysler, says, “During my interactions with various founders, I found that startups faced a lot of problems when it came to basic financial and legal matters. At the same time, startups can’t afford costly services, at least in the initial stages.”

Sanjeev Lamba, who is the co-founder of Aristotle Consultancy, heads the accounting and finance services at the firm.

Started with a seed capital of Rs.3 lakh, Aristotle Consultancy has been bootstrapped so far. The initial capital has been utilised to set up a delivery office in Delhi and hire manpower. Deepak says that they have been cash positive since their inception, and are therefore not looking to participate in the fundraising race.

Highlighting the challenges they faced in the initial days, Deepak says,

Companies are not very sure when it comes to sharing financials and outsourcing bookkeeping. So building trust with the client is quite important. Also, companies often face issues related to bad bookkeeping through ad hoc accounting practices. So it’s challenging to clean the backlog and historical data, not only from a statutory perspective, but also from the point of view of getting visibility on internal business performances.

21-day Mobilisation Process

Startups need experienced people and correct advisory, but these services are either not available or are very costly. The founders of most startups generally end up wasting a lot of their valuable time managing such services and fire-fighting regulatory, taxation, and compliance issues.

Deepak says,

Aristotle brings to the table its vast experience in handling and nurturing startups. The ’21-day mobilisation process’ is a special activity carried out by Aristotle during client on-boarding, where an expert team rigorously studies the client’s existing processes.

Packages for Startups

Aristotle offers a comprehensive package named Virtual CFO, which takes care of finance and accounting needs of a company.

Hiring a full-time professional CFO and maintaining an in-house finance team may not be in the budget of a small enterprise. Deepak points out that startups and SMEs often don’t even need a full-time finance team, but they do need quality service. Today, there is no dearth of demand for such services, but there is a dearth of talent.

Often, it is arduous for startups to get a quality CA who understands their needs and matches their speed. Mentoring at a value-for -money price is something startup founders always scout for.

Aristotle works on a shared resource model, where the cost-saving benefits are passed on to clients. One can save 25-30 per cent of operational expenses incurred by clients by leveraging their services. Costs vary from Rs. 40,000 per month to Rs. 15 lakh per month depending on the volume and complexity of work.

Deepak says,

The idea behind the Aristotle model is that the large corporates should not be the only companies that benefit from experienced finance professionals. Current market offerings in the finance and accounting domain are either geared towards servicing corporates and are very expensive, or offerings are in the form of one-time solutions without any ongoing advice and support. Aristotle is here to fill that gap.

Client Acquisition

Initially, Aristotle Consultancy started off with Royal Bank of Scotland and India Hospitality Corporation. Today, they have expanded operations to geographies like Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Chennai, handling 40 clients including Jabong, Fabfurnish, FoodPanda, Tolexo (IndiaMart), GoJavas, Printvenue, and Xerox. It also has a couple of overseas clients, mostly in the Middle East.

Currently, Aristotle has a team of around 100 people, 20 per cent of whom are CAs. They also have in-house team for Payroll and Secretarial services, who operate from Aristotle’s office. For Finance and Accounts, based on client requirements and specifications, they build an in-house team that works from the client location.

Deepak says, “We charge the client strictly basis the resources deployed against the assignments. We have very competitive rack-rates and clients are billed accordingly. We recently introduced a “Start Up Booster” pack for non-funded startups. The purpose is to make our Services affordable to new startups so that they can focus on their core business.”

Growth Plans

According to Deepak, over the last three quarters, Aristotle Consultancy has been doubling their revenue and witnessing a sharp rise in business by bagging quite a few fresh tech startups. In the last fiscal year, the company achieved a revenue of Rs. 4 crore. They are targeting revenues of Rs. 6 crore in the next fiscal.

Aristotle Consultancy

As an avid sports enthusiast, Bimlesh Gundurao, was no stranger to injuries. Once, having sustained a severe ankle sprain that left him immobile for close to two weeks, he lost the prescription after his first visit to the doctor.

“There were so many medicines on the table, and none of us knew which one had to be eaten before and after food, what sequence the medicines had to be taken in, and how many times each day. We had such a tough time reaching the doctor who was a visiting consultant. Finally, when we managed to get the doctor, he had no clue who we were, and could not remember what he had prescribed. We had to read out the names of all the medicines and then make notes on his instructions,” says Bimlesh.

Bimlesh’s personal experiences further sealed this idea. On one occasion, his mother, who has issues with her thyroid and BP, fell ill as she had skipped a few doses. The family had no clue about her medication consumption pattern. Again, they were unable to find her prescription. Lack of data led the doctor to take decisions with very limited data. This led to treatment on a trial-and-error basis.

This incident happened soon after Bimlesh’s own injury making him realise how critical it was to have access to digital prescriptions and be able to digitally procure medicines and receive reminders.

Breaking the market

The complexity of this process is what gave Bimlesh the idea for his healthcare startup – Aguai Solutions, to make prescription management simpler. We are at the brink of a healthcare and healthtech startup revolution. With a billion-strong population, the healthcare market is believed to be growing at CAGR of 17 per cent. The total size of the of this industry is expected to be $160 billion by 2017.

Bimlesh started Aguai Solutions 2 .5 years ago. The company started by providing application and product development-related IT services to companies in the US and India. They also provide software technology solutions on web/cloud/mobile to healthcare and I-powered businesses.

Over the past year, the team has started building their own products with a focus on the medications and prescriptions space, while keeping the pharmacy at the centre of outpatient healthcare.

Bimlesh says he always wanted to do something that would help the Indian healthcare ecosystem. He looked at the electronic medical record (EMR) and patient management systems for children and senior citizens, but his market research proved that data entry wasn’t the means to help people manage data. This meant that a more holistic approach was needed.

The trio work approach

Aguai Solutions launched three products that connect pharmacies, patients and pharma distributors over the last six months. These include:

1. Pharmeazy and Distributeazy: This technology is used to partner with pharmacy retail chains, and is currently used by six stores in Bengaluru. The team plans to expand to 50 stores in south India over the next two years.
2. Medieazy – This platform has got close to 700 signups, and over 100 orders have been processed through the platform
3. Rxeazy – a platform for ePrescriptions for doctors will be launched by December 2015.

“Our connected healthcare approach is our biggest USP and key differentiator. We have a unified backend with different front-ends of data consumption using web/cloud/mobile interfaces,” adds Bimlesh.

Getting heads together

With this idea in place, Bimlesh roped in Madhur Rao, an IT Professional with over 15 years of experience, and Shreeram MC as the Key Technical Architects. Shreeram has over 10 years of experience, and has worked with other startups and powered several technology products.

Dr. Niaz, a healthcare IT professional, joined as clinician advisor and Tarun Bhargav as Sr. Product Development Leader. Saurabh K, vice-president of BioLife Sciences, was roped in as the Pharma Advisor.

How does it all work?

Once you take a picture of your prescription, send it to the pharmacy near you. The pharmacy gets the order via a phone/web application. The pharmacies then process the order and the medicines are delivered to your home. An app also allows you to set reminders, and take all your doses on time to complete your medication course.

The patterns of consumption are captured and can be shared with the doctor as ‘medication adherence.’ Pharmacies also stand to benefit as the platform links them to distributors, ensuring greater visibility and the ability to send notifications on stock re-orders and movements.

The team will also launch a doctor-consultation vertical, where the doctor writes a prescription on paper using Aguai’s digital pen. The notes on the paper will be captured on the doctor’s smartphone and can be shared in real-time with the patient. “Now the doctor can have a mini-EMR repository on his or her phone with a Patient and Prescription Management system,” adds Bimlesh.

YourStory Take

It is believed the per capita expenditure on healthcare is estimated to increase to $89 in 2015 from $61 in 2012. The market size of the sector in India was estimated to be $75 billion during 2012-13. While the healthcare segment is getting hotter by the minute, many doctors question if all this will ultimately really solve the healthcare problems people face.

Website

Shuttle bus service startup ZipGo on Thursday launched a membership-based exclusive bus service for women in Delhi-NCR. The service is currently piloted in pockets of Delhi like Gurgaon, Dwarka, and Manesar. The company plans to extend the pilot to Noida and Greater Noida in December.

Jitender Sharma, Co-founder, ZipGo, says that this is possibly the first truly women-only bus service. As an introductory offer, the team is offering free rides worth Rs 100 for new users and referral amounts of Rs 250 for every successful referral. There also is 50 percent bonus offered for those who choose to recharge using the Paytm wallet.

Jitender says the reason behind this move was in tune with the company’s mission to help reduce the usage of personal vehicles by providing comfortable and reliable mass transport facility for daily commute. As women contribute to a large segment of the commuter population in Delhi, he adds that this service was started to provide them convenience and comfort.

“The buses are clean and air-conditioned. Booking and tracking are quite easy. But the biggest value proposition is the peace of mind, comfort and relaxation that comes from knowing that all your co-passengers are women,” says Jitender.

According to him, while the taxi market addressed one portion of the market, a large portion of the daily commuters’ woes was still not solved.

Following an aggregator model, the ZipGo team meets the vendors, explains the system to them and on-boards the drivers. Jitender says that looking at the way the taxi cab business has flourished with the use of technology, the bus services are open to this idea.

Since ZipGo follows an aggregator model, the company is particular about the quality and personality of the driver. Apart from basic checks of background, documentation and police verification, the work histories of the drivers are monitored followed by a five-step verification and interview process.

The drivers are trained on etiquette and behaviour, as well. “We also have a zero-tolerance policy to even the slightest indication of misbehaviour,” says Jitender.

YourStory take

According to experts, the emerging bus service market is going to be larger than the taxi market, which is estimated at Rs 60,000 crore. In the past few months, many players sensing the growth have entered the segment.

Ola, which is one of the most formidable cab aggregators in the country, is said to be preparing to invest Rs 120-150 crore to launch bus services. With several players, the fledgling segment is going to be more vibrant and mature in the coming days.

However, there are several government policies in the way that act as roadblocks in the progress of these startups. ZipGo, which had initially begun its operations in Bengaluru, had a rather rough patch in the city owing to the policies and regulations.

With women-specific shuttle service, ZipGo may taste some success, however, women-only focused cab services like G cabs, Priyadarshini taxis and Viira cabs have been operational for the past few years but they struggled to scale up.

Ola was also slated to launch a ‘by women, for women’ line of taxis, but after the rape incident in Uber last year, Ola appears to have kept this plan on the backburner. Most recently, Oyo launched a new brand called Oyo WE, for women travelers with an all-women staff.

(Inputs by Jaivardhan)

Picture this. Your startup has just begun to scale up and your team size has grown from single to double digits. Your first order of business would be to get your office infrastructure in place. This need is what Anshul Purohit, who had worked in the corporate scene for over 15 years, decided to leverage.

He noticed that while the Indian e-commerce market had covered the B2C segment, they were yet to touch the B2B space, especially the $70 billion Indian telecom market.

“In the present market landscape, although there are e-commerce players like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon, they only deal specifically in the niche segment of selling mobile phones, mobile accessories, or Wi-Fi routers,” says Anshul.

This got him thinking, and he decided to launch Telecom Profit, an online B2B marketplace dedicated to telecom infrastructure. On offer is a range of products such as networking and mobility devices, Internet and point-to-point lease lines, and conferencing facilities, among other products.

Laying the lines

After doing due diligence and researching the market space, Anshul quit his corporate job and spoke to several industry experts to assess and mitigate the risk involved.

He knew he had to get a team in place, and decided to involve his friends Dheeraj Sethi, who joined as CMO, and Abhijit R, who came onboard as Head Alliance. Telecom Profit was launched in February 2015. Soon after, M. Siraj joined as Head of Operations.

Telecom Profit currently stocks over 50,000 telecom products and services across 11 categories and 55 sub-categories. “We have a built a network of 1,000 registered, specialised telecom vendors, and over 4,000 SME and large institutions in a span of six months,” says Anshul.

Roping in the players

The organisation has also tied up with several national and international Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) like TPLink and Zicom. The team intends to add 4,000 more telecom vendors, and over 10,000 more SMEs and large Institutions, in addition to tie-ups with more national and international OEMs. They also plan to expand their current 15-member team to 45 in the next six months.

Apart from the variety of products and services available online, Telecom Profit also allows you to request for quotes from various providers. The platform has a ‘customer buddy’ feature that allows you to seek complete professional assistance to help you choose and buy the right set of products and services.

System checks

However, their journey has come with its fair share of challenges and roadblocks. Apart from building the team, the big challenge was to communicate the idea to trade partners and customers. “It was important that they understood the difference between Telecom Profit and the other existing portals,” says Anshul.

He says that, initially, the trade partners and customers were sceptical, so the team started giving free demos and trials. They also realised that launching and managing operations across India would not be possible with their current infrastructure and manpower. They have currently shortlisted 10 cities for the first phase of their operations. Telecom Profit will be starting the second phase with 25 cities by March 2016.

Telecom Profit charges trade partners for its services and has different plans to cater to their requirements starting from a minimum of Rs.8,000 to Rs.32,000, depending on category and location. They also have revenues coming from OEMs for advertising and promotional campaigns.

Website

Rishikesh Joshi had everything going for him.

A hard-core sports enthusiast, he was working with the successful IPL team, Mumbai Indians,  overseeing their administrative setup since the franchise was created six years ago. Life was good for Rishikesh, and why wouldn’t it be? An avid sports enthusiast since the age of five, Rishikesh, who himself had played six sports at the national level, was living the dream by working with stalwarts of the game.

But like most entrepreneurs, he felt the need to do more. During his tenure with the Mumbai Indians, he had worked closely with Mumbai’s inter-school sporting system at Mumbai Schools Sports Association (MSSA), the same place he had competed at the school level. He was alarmed by the apathetic sporting environment, loosely scheduled competitions, inadequate infrastructure, and obsolete administrative processes. This made him reevaluate his contribution to the sporting environment in the country.

“All this while, I was totally focused, passionate, and motivated to grow and make a mark at my job with Mumbai Indians. A lot of frustration was building up in my mind when I saw the way inter-school sport was being conducted. I felt there had to be a “feel-good factor” about sports from the early stages of a child’s career evoking the passion and enjoyment that a child derives out of playing sports,” he says.

This drive led him to set up Sports for All (SFA). However, despite having worked closely with the sporting community, things still weren’t smooth:

“I didn’t decide one fine day that I wanted to ride the startup wave, and launch my own venture. It wasn’t as if I had a couple of ideas and would just give one of them a shot. I didn’t have that luxury. It was over a period of 20-22 months (since July 2013) that everything I had visualised about Sports For All (SFA) started to look feasible, possible and commercially viable. I made a thorough 15-year roadmap detailing and putting on paper the entire workflow I wanted at SFA. Only then did I decide to start off.”

Rishikesh just wished to fulfil his dream of improving the support and facilities available for sportsmen at the school and college level in the  winter of 2012. It was only a year later, by mid-2013, that the roadmap he visualised began to take shape on paper.

Ab Jeetega India

Today, SFA aims to be the country’s foremost inter-school sporting system that identifies sporting talent at the grassroots level in a structured and professional environment. Since 2 October 2015, 85 schools have registered with the platform.

Rishikesh says there are three components to the system:

• The on-ground event: SFA Mumbai 2015: Sports & Education Week: This event will be hosted at the D Y. Patil Sports Academy, from 24 – 31 December 2015.It aims to bring together as many as 11,000 aspiring champions from 500 schools across Mumbai City to participate and compete in nine different Olympic disciplines. Rishikesh tells us that they have devised a School Ranking System that will be based on a school’s overall performance across all nine sports, making every participant’s performance matter.

• The online portal: SFAnow.in : This is the backbone of SFA’s system. It documents and records the performance of every participating student and school through statistics or HD videos, thereby giving students and schools a chance to project their skills to one and all while maintaining their sporting records for life. According to the founder, they are enabling content-based strategy, through which they plan to record close to 2,900 videos at their first event, to be consumed and shared by participants/students across digital social platforms.

•  Partnership: Training and Development : SFA will tie up with reputed sport academies and devise programmes to ensure that appropriate and adequate training and skill development is made available to every aspiring athlete from schools in each city. The venture has recently struck a partnership with the Michael Phelps Swim School in Mumbai.

Traction and what lies ahead

The deadline to register for the SFA  platform has been extended to 15 December 2015. Through this member schools don’t just get to participate in events but also seek counsel and help for their students.

Currently self-funded, SFA has invested Rs 5 crore in the event and the venture. However, Rishikesh is confident that they will break even by January 2016 and is aiming for a revenue of Rs 50-75 lakh by the end of the first quarter of 2016.

With 110 schools and 4,200 students already registered on the platform, the firm’s revenue model is fairly simple. They plan to receive funds through sponsorships, merchandise, ancillaries, licenses, etc. Other revenue streams could be broadcasting, where talent seekers would require statistics and videos of these students. The venture could also be commercialised by sharing footage with TV channels looking to showcase the young talents in the country, or through commercials from sponsors on the video channel.

The team at SFA hopes to have a similar event for college students in place by mid-2016.

Rishikesh feels the avenues are vast. He also has a bigger ambition to maintain a database, where a statistical profile of every athlete is readily available. Moreover, by next year, they are planning to expand their base to four more cities – Pune, Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Chennai. This number is expected to grow to eight by the end of 2017.

By 2017, they also hope to organise 120 days of sporting events with an active database of 10 lakh students.

Supporting this endeavour is India Test and ODI Cricketer Rohit Sharma, who has pledged his support for the cause by paying the nominal fees for schools that cannot afford the platform.

Rishikesh explains his larger vision by using tag line ‘Ab Jeetega India’.

He tells us SFA’s real customer is “every child and parent who probably does not even know that a champion exists within him or her.”

He says, “Let’s first make our children fall in love with sport, everything else will follow.”

Ex-IITians Debprotim Roy, Vikash Choudhary and Ankit Agarwal founded Canvs.in with one goal – to create an active community of designers and artists in India. It would serve as a platform where they could upload their work, sell online, interact with peers, find jobs and projects, and participate and curate offline exhibitions/workshops. Debprotim says, “Canvs.in is all about bringing design and art to the forefront of the developmental revolution that India is going through today.”

Canvs.in has an advisory from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and is currently based in Mumbai.

The founders believe that Canvs.in aims to solve the following pain points:

1. Creating a vibrant community of the best designers and artists in India under one roof, thereby uncluttering the space once and for all. It will also serve as a platform for them to get to know and interact with each other
2. Helping the design and art community by bringing creative people together, making sales easy, creating jobs and projects for everyone, and getting queries and doubts answered by the community

The First Strokes

In addition to being a creative platform, the genesis of Canvs.in was rooted in a more practical need. Prior to this venture, Vikash and Ankit were running a bulk printing and merchandising business, while Debprotim was involved in a project of his own.  They three of them realised that they faced a common challenge – lack of availability of design talent. While merchandising needed a lot of design based work, Debprotim was on the lookout for a product designer. Debprotim, who was involved with photographers and artists during his tenure at IIT, realised they were finding it difficult to get freelance work and even exposure for the work they were doing.

This led the trio to start researching this space to understand the kind of problems that existed, and the scale they existed on, by speaking with designers and artists across India and joining online forums. This is what they found.

The Art and Design Scene in India

In India, design has evolved into a necessity rather than the luxury product it was once assumed to be. Art has seen a massive global upsurge, post the recession of 2008; in India, it has grown well beyond its pre-recession peak. Like most intellectual communities in India, the design and art community is growing, but stays eclipsed from the mainstream. Most lay people are unaware of where they can discover good artists they can partner with, or whose works they can admire.

Debprotim says, “At Canvs.in, we see users coming from small and big towns alike, with potential that matches the big cities. The difference is in the amount of exposure small towns get due to a lack of technical support or of the offline community building that happens in larger cities. We saw a rapid growth in users and crossed 1,000 users in four months, confirming our hypothesis of the need of the moment.”

The entry of Canva, a multinational design firm, is a clear indication of the potential the country has. Canva is an online graphic designing software that enables normal users as well as designers to create beautiful online collateral like emails, banners, posters, etc. It claims to get around 2,000 new users from India every day, and today has around 150,000 users from India. They plan on getting to 1 million graphic designers from India alone by the end of 2016. Canva recently got a boost of $15 million prior to their move to India. Roy says, “The numbers quoted by Canva are quite attainable, we have been working towards similar numbers since the inception of Canvs.in“

Other global players like Dribbble and Behance are also percolating the Indian markets via local events. While Behance has been on the scene since 2006 and set good standards in community creation, it focusses on projects and portfolios to some extent. They don’t allow the sale of works or posting of jobs.

Dribbble, a small but very active community of designers, has been able to tap into the US job market and is running profitably. Dribbble focusses on display of work and claims to be a place for designers to ‘show and tell’.

Quite recently, local firms like Bananabandy and Cupick have entered the market with slightly different offerings.

Bananabandy is an online marketplace for different designers. They host competitions that any designer can participate in. Cupick has been on the art scene for a while and allows artists from overseas and India to exhibit and sell their work. They have recently entered the jobs market as well.

What Sets Canvs.in Apart

Canvs.in, when compared to its peers, is growing very steadily as a community. It offers portfolio creation, sharing, discovery of artists, sale of work, access to jobs, and quite importantly offline exhibitions and events. This encompasses a wide horizon of design that is individually being targeted by global players separately.

Locally, Canvs.in is a frontrunner with its products and activities. With its focus on both art and design, Canvs.in also got into the Jobs space early; the competition has entered this area only more recently.

Future Plans

Talking about future plans, Roy says “We have been bootstrapped until now, but we received partial funding recently. We are looking for funds. We are currently a nine-member team. We are actively moving towards enhancing the product to bring together and concretise our community. On offline channels, we are looking at expanding our workshops and exhibitions geographically.”

Canvs.in is one startup to watch out for in the art and design space,.

Check out http://www.canvs.in/ for more details

People told me that I was making a reckless decision while leaving a settled job. And I never argued with them since that strong voice within me echoed really loud: “I will sail through this tough yet exciting journey of entrepreneurship.” And well I would say that’s not how this world functions. But the most important question is does it really matter to crazy entrepreneurs? No, it doesn’t when you sail through and yes, it does, when you don’t and your family and relatives do a chorus of ‘I told you so’.

For some, entrepreneurship is a matter of choice and for others it just happens. In my case, it’s an amalgamation. All I knew was that I couldn’t continue my monotonous job but I had the least clue on how to unveil my ambitions to make it big in life. That’s when I took the plunge of polishing the entrepreneur in me. To begin with, I took small projects of content writing, website development and other branding related consultancies. For almost a year, I tried my hand at many such diverse projects to understand the customers in the digital world and market as a whole. And that’s when with deep rationalising I conceptualised CrispTalks.com.

That’s a glimpse of my story. But I know many readers who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs will need a broader perspective to jump into this crazy-yet-amazing world of entrepreneurship. So here’s some entrepreneurial guidance from other innovators who believed in their ideas and lived them passionately.

Here’s what Pawas Jain, Founder, Blue Box Media Pvt Ltd., had to say:

“It is indeed an interesting question that you have raised. Here’s my threefold answer to your question. There were three reasons that made me jump from a safe and prestigious profession of chartered accountancy on to the risky and uncertain path of entrepreneurship:

1. The belief in my idea and moreover the belief in creative innovation. The more we thoughtfully conceptualise a product or service, better are the chances of sustainability of that business in the market. Digital media, the field we rightly chose, is at a budding stage in India and is bound to see manifold revolution in the upcoming years.

2. The motivation from people around. When you have a good set of people and a strong network surrounding the ecosystem, you are all geared up to face the challenges in a better way.

3. A good team to work with, and a co-founder that complements your skill set makes the journey of entrepreneurship easy for you and you are motivated even more to take the plunge.”

This was certainly one of the perfect examples of taking a planned way to entrepreneurship.

And here is Nitin Jain from Indibni, a personalised gifting solution provider for whom entrepreneurship just happened.

“After looking at many wedding gift options for a good friend from college, I was not able to find an apt gift. I decided to design something exclusive and personalised for the couple.

“So I took a photograph of both of them, converted it into a hand drawn sketch, and printed it on a golden foil and framed it between two glasses. When I gifted it to couple, everyone got excited.

“It was my #indibni moment. Gifting is not about price, utility, shape or size; it is all about the experience it gives to a buyer, and the feeling it evokes in the receiver. If what we are doing can touch people’s hearts and bring a smile on their face, we can actually pat ourselves on our back for a job well done.”

Entrepreneurs take the plunge because they are not worried about getting wet in the rain; they love to dance in it.

Do you have your entrepreneurial stories to share? If so, share your experience by dropping a comment. I would love to know what made you take the plunge.

About the Author

Rachna Ghiya is a startup enthusiast who is currently running her CrispTalks.com that serves other start-ups with affordable animated videos. Besides this, she is happily connecting with other entrepreneurs by organising informal meet-ups for entrepreneurs as City Mayor for EntrepreneurCafe.org – Jaipur chapter.

‘Think of us as your next-door Gupta Uncle.’ These were the words that caught my attention for Sendit.in, an online logistics marketplace. While the logistics sector today has a plethora of startups, Sendit claims to be more focussed on solving the logistics problem than just increasing the fleet of vehicles.

Anyone who has taken a road trip knows it is not complete without seeing a fleet of trucks on the highway. It was the same sight of a fleet of trucks during a bike ride from Bengaluru to Davangere that gave Naveen Bagrecha and Puneeth B. the idea to look at a technology-based, on-demand trucking solutions system. After getting their friend Pankaj Sisodia in, the trio roped in Darpan Jain and Gourav.

Acting as a connector

“In the current scenario, the user has to interact individually with operators. This raises a lot of issues of trust, pricing and customer experience. On the other hand, operators don’t have a common interface to receive orders. With transactions happening in isolation, there is not enough room for efficient optimisation of resources and time on the operator’s end,” says Darpan. The team says there is no common platform where the end user can interact with the transport operators and Sendit intends to act as a bridge.

The team provides solutions for intra-city and inter-city goods movement. For this, they have a fleet of vehicles which works on a per-demand basis. To shift goods, all the user has to do is book a vehicle on the platform. Based on the needs, a vehicle in proximity to the user is assigned for the movement. The platform allows real-time tracking, status updates, pre-booking facility and trip logs.
“We take care of trust, pricing and reliability issues and ensure that the goods are delivered in a timely and safe manner. On the transport operator’s end, we help them plan their transactions well, so that vehicles don’t run empty due to lack of information about orders in a particular area,” says Darpan.

Current scenario

Sendit is operational in Bengaluru and Pune, and there are plans to launch in multiple cities by the end of this year. Customers can book orders via website, Android app or a telephonic call. All the operators have a mobile client installed on their phones for efficient tracking and management.

Starting with one vehicle and four to five daily transactions, Sendit today claims to have over 40 to 50 transactions with average ticket size of Rs 400. The team is bootstrapped but is looking for funding to increase its fleet capacity, market expansions and for improving technology.

Darpan says that if one has to look at the complete logistics market that includes transportation, warehousing, VALS and freight forwarding, transportation itself accounts for 61 per cent of the market. “This is because most industries end up spending more than half of their logistics budget on this function,” adds Darpan.

“Our target area would be the metropolitan clusters. Overall, it is projected to be a $175-billion dollar industry in 2019. It’s all about connecting the dots now to increase the efficiency of operators,” says Darpan.

The market

Logistics has always been looked at as a fragmented and unorganised function of any business. However, with the rise of e-commerce and on-demand delivery companies, businesses and consumers are demanding deliveries and supply chain to be more organised, agile and transparent.

According to some rough estimate, the market size of technology in logistics in India is roughly $2 billion and is much larger in other markets like South East Asia and the Middle East. Globally, companies like ORION software, OnFleet, Bringg, Infor, JDA Software and Elementum are established players.

Website

Everyone wants to travel. Some travel during holidays, some over the weekends. Others take an extra day off and a few like me quit their jobs to travel. There are still many who long for adventure but do not set their foot out, because they are told travelling is an expensive affair.

This post is for those who think they can’t travel with less money and for those who have money but want to travel on a shoestring budget for the sake of constraint and the adventure it brings with it. I fit somewhere in the middle of these two categories.

I quit my job in July and started travelling within India. I calculated how much money I had and found that Rs 300 (less than $5) is what I needed to spend per day to last for a year on the road. It has been exactly 120 days of being on the road and I have learnt how to do exactly that.

Let me share with you the tricks and hacks I use to stay within my budget. Whether you set off for shores unknown indefinitely or travel intermittently between your work, you can use and adapt my tips for your convenience.

Before you go ahead and read, be prepared to be as rough and tough as possible. When you don’t have money, you have to have a strong willpower and inner motivation.

Long distance commute: You have two options: hitchhike or take the train. I won’t suggest State buses.

Indian trains: If you are in India, you are blessed to have the world’s most complicated and largest railway system which is as cheap as travelling for free. Of course, I am talking about the unreserved general coaches here. Do not worry about the crowd in these coaches; rather use this crowd to motivate you to travel in more such suffocating environments.

In general coaches, you might have to stand for six hours without having even enough standing space; you might have to sit close to the stinking toilets and, believe me, when the train slows down, the smell of toilet is stronger 1000 times over! But you do not have an option and remember that there is a beautiful destination waiting for you on the other side. In such situations, I take motivation from my fellow passengers. Most of them always travel in these coaches. For them it is as normal as it is for us to travel in an airplane. These include small children, pregnant women, old couples suffering with arthritis and other painful ailments. Surprisingly, you will find them perfectly normal. So I think, “If they can, why can’t I?” After that, everything becomes okay. These days, I have become part of such a group of people and whenever I have to commute long distances, I just show up at the station, take a general ticket and hop onto the next train. I don’t need to curse the IRCTC every day like everyone else.

Hitchhiking: Stand on the highway, stick out your thumb and wave it up and down as soon as you see an approaching vehicle (if you just stick out your thumb and do not wave, chances are that they won’t understand if you are appreciating the design of their vehicles or their driving style or asking for a free ride!). It can take a few minutes to a full day to get a free ride. But believe me, when you do, it is going to be the best ride ever and definitely an experience far better than that of travelling in the train.

There is no secret to hitchhiking. Follow your guts and be shameless. If you are lucky like me, you can also get a ride in a C-Class Mercedes Benz. You will make friends with truckers and learn more about their lives. Hitchhiking is the most preferred form of commuting for budget-minded travellers throughout the world.

Short distance commute: To commute locally in the area you are going to spend a few days, hitchhike. In India, most of the bikers will stop for you. Cars won’t stop so much but you can definitely try. Within the radius of  six to eight km, walk. Walk because you need to stay fit and walk because you don’t have money. Walk because after a few months of walking, you’d love walking and start saying no to free short-distance rides.

Accommodation: You have to understand the power of relationships. You need to be extremely sociable, moderately funny, definitely kind, and awfully shameless. You need to have no ego, prejudices, strong opinions or radical thoughts. You will be amazed to learn, after a few months, that being that way actually makes you a better and more peaceful person. You need to start talking to all your relatives, your long-forgotten friends, people who you extremely dislike, and people who have no morals and values but can be your valuable resources. The next step is to keep in touch with all such people. Ask them if you can spend a couple of nights at their place. You’d be surprised to see that most of those whom you thought were useless people will actually come forward to your help and many so-called closed ones will turn down your requests.

Apart from that, stay in ashrams, temples, monasteries, bus terminals, railway stations, road dividers, parks, and any other place where you don’t have to pay. Believe me, it sounds crazy and scary but it’s actually not. The most difficult part of any act is its beginning. Once you take the first step, the other foot will definitely follow you.

Water: If you had planned to travel 30 years ago, water would be free everywhere. But alas, you are living in a time when humans have commercialised such a basic resource that sustains life. But do not worry, you can still save your money on water. Keep a water bottle with you, fill it from the dhabas where you eat your food and from the taps you see occasionally on the road side. The things to remember is to carry a bottle and keep your eyes open. There is still ample free water available everywhere. If you are trekking through villages, knock on the houses and ask for water. No one has ever turned me down so far.

Food: In India, you will find a lot of local food stalls that serve food at an affordable price. Do not forget that India is home to millions of poor people and they all survive on less than Rs 100 a day. They are your motivation. Go eat in the local dhabas and don’t worry about your stomach. Our mind is everything. Keep that fit; everything else will be taken care of automatically. Eat at your host’s house but help them in cooking. Eat at temples, gurudwaras (Sikh temples) and ashrams.

Drink a lot of water and meditate regularly. You will never fall ill.

Alcohol: Don’t drink local alcohol to save money. You might die. Every now and then they are found poisonous only after a few die due to consuming it. So how do you quench your thirst for alcohol when you don’t have money? You wait. You wait for an offer, an offer from your host or an offer from the trucker (I got them a lot in Punjab). You should make good friends who drink. People won’t give a penny to a beggar or Rs 10 to a needy person but they will happily share their alcohol with you. This irony will work for you. You will meet such people in highways and roadside dhabas.

Mobile phone and Internet expenses: Well, you need to be lucky to get it for free. I am blessed with friends who take turns to do it for me. You need to know that this help is not a small one and you owe them a big one. You should pay them back with what you can. Your stories, your time, and when you start earning, your money. You need to genuinely take care of such friends. Period.

Others: Others may include a lot of things but if you can take care of all the above mentioned needs, you will take care of everything else. Trust yourself.

When we have less money, we will need people more than anything else. We will learn one thing about different people: that they are all the same. Their eyes glitter when they are loved and their bodies jitter when they are scared. Everything else is unnatural. You will learn that we need to know who we are without our possessions. We need to define ourselves by who we are rather than by what we have. We learn all this while travelling on a low budget. It changes us in ways beyond description.

This post intentionally excludes the options of getting a sponsorship, using Couchsurfing etc.

When you start earning through your travels or after your travels, do not forget the important lessons you learnt along the way. Remember all the people who helped you. Also remember that you can never pay them back for their help as the timing is more important than the help alone in isolation. So, help as many people in life as you can. Stay rooted to the ground. Have a wonderful life ahead.

About the Author:

Hitesh Bhatt, A travel enthusiast, a conversationalist and a storylover; I travel with a daily budget of Rs.300 to meet people, see places, create, share stories and experience life. I love to travel to less-traveled, unexplored places. For more about his blog visit Project Go Native & FB page.

Despite the growing number of healthtech and medtech startups in the country, doctors believe that few actually solve healthcare problems of the country. Viren Shetty, Director of Strategy, Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals spoke at an healthtech event in Bengaluru in September.

He explained: “There are many times when startups come in and pitch an idea. They believe that they have the perfect solution and aren’t open to listening. For the one hour we meet, almost 80 per cent of the time they will talk and they don’t listen. It’s important to have an open mind.”.

It was to bridge this very gap, a team of doctors – D.R. Srinivas, Ravi Nayar –  and serial entrepreneur Niranjan Subbarao started Cyclopsmed. It’s a medtech startup that works on diagnostic solutions for episodic neurological events like vertigo, using eye tracking technology.

A doctor’s problem

For over a decade now Dr. Srinivas has been treating patients with Episodic Neurological Events (ENE). ENE is a group of very commonly occurring and widely prevalent conditions, but grossly under diagnosed. Close to 100 million people globally are chronic sufferers of vertigo, which is one of the most common ENEs.

It is rare that these attacks would happen in front of the doctor for him/her to get a first hand understanding of the problem. The diagnosis is, therefore, based on patient inputs and clinical diagnosis. Conventionally, ENEs are diagnosed in a controlled clinical environment by inducing the attack.

But data thus captured is not the same as the original attack. The inputs from patients in most cases are ambiguous, and the clinical diagnosis cannot be similar to the actual attack.

In several instances, Dr. Srinivas has had to shuttle between patients’ homes and offices just to get a glimpse of the attack. It was during this time, Niranjan happened to be working with Srinivas on a surgical content project, and they both ended up discussing the problem.

Also Read: BITS Pilani alumni build fetal monitoring devices to address 3,00,000 annual perinatal deaths in India

Finding a solution elsewhere

They got to thinking if there was a possibility of capturing 100 per cent accurate data, without having to rely too much on the inputs from the patient. They came up with an idea that was similar to a heart Holter monitor, which the patient can take home.

Niranjan says,

“The device we are working on will be able to capture the required data when the attack occurs, in one’s natural setting. The device is in the form of spectacles with eye tracking cameras and a few other sensors and works in a cloud-based environment.”

Breaking down the bones

Being a medtech hardware startup, the availability of resources and labs for prototyping was essential but a huge challenge. So Dr. Ravi Nayar introduced the team to a bunch IIT Kharagpur alumni who had just returned to India after working in the US for a few years, and had set up a prototyping facility.

Though Cyclops was formally incorporated in January this year, the team has been working on the product for over two years now. “Dr. Shyam Vasudeva Rao, an industry veteran and also our Chief Mentor, helped by introducing us to a small team of developers which had extensive expertise in computer vision and image processing. This helped in building the core technology backbone for our product,” says Niranjan.

Also Read: Serial entrepreneur, corporate leader, and doctor join hands to create a Medtech accelerator to impact 25 million lives by 2025

The working prototype

Currently, Cyclopsmed has a clinical prototype that is set to go for final clinical validations in a week, post which the clinical variant would be launched in April 2016. The team is incubated at Centre for Biomedical Innovations at BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru.

“We are still in the process of building the core team. We are working on a shoestring budget and the objective is to get the product out. So, as of now, we are mainly working on outsourcing the model,” says Niranjan.

The revenue model will work around product sales and cloud subscriptions. Essentially bootstrapped, the team raised a pre-seed funding from a leading surgeon in Bengaluru. 

Website

While with Amazon Varun Bantia realized the endless opportunity in the innovative handcrafted products that the masses are uninformed about. Varun, who originally hails from Rajasthan, decided to combine his love for ethnic handicrafts and the knowledge of e-commerce to create a platform that caters to all the ethnic needs of the masses. He started preparing and planning for a venture and soon after quit his Job at Amazon.

In August 2015, Varun launched The Ethnic Story, a one stop e-commerce platform which sells ethnic and traditionally designed products such as ethnic home décor items, jewellery, apparels, accessories, and corporate gifting products etc. Initially for the first few months, he had to run the show all by himself. Later, he was joined by Deepesh Darla, who is now part of this team.

“The Ethnic Story is a platform where we bring craftsmen and buyers at on one platform. It is not an inventory based model but we have tie up with various vendors and craftsmen all over India; we help them with the photography and get those products on our site. Besides associating with core artisan and craftsmen, it also works with designers who paint and design home decor and gifting products,” says Varun, Founder, The Ethnic Story.

On his new entrepreneurial journey, he says that every day there is a new struggle coming, in terms of connecting with prospective craftsmen or the working capital to run the day to day activities. There is struggle in every step he takes. It’s a humble beginning for him and he has a long way to go.

Varun started out the e-commerce platform with the initial investment of Rs 4 lakh, which included all his personal savings, PF and other savings. The major chunk of money was invested on branding, website development, social media marketing and setting up small office space. “It’s been three months since we started this venture and looking at scaling up our business, and are looking at raising funds for the same.”

Growth opportunities and challenges

Ethnic Gifting and Handicrafts is a very big market and possess immense opportunities and challenges as well. Indian handicrafts are exquisite and valued worldwide. Every Indian state has a variety of handicrafts reflecting their enormous history and religious values and owning a piece of such magnificence is a matter of pride.

The platform received a good number of orders during Diwali and the festive season. It claims to have more than 25000 plus visitors on its website. “Considering this we think there is great prospect for these products and our venture.”

Down the line it would also like to implement augmented reality into its website and have customization option. “Right now we have products only from the region of Rajasthan and Gujrat, but we will also increase the category and region wise buying options on the website,” says varun.

Varun believes that the challenge in this segment is to offer different and unique designed products and to find the right craftsmen for the right kind of product.

Market and competition

In the Indian market where almost USD 5,000 million art and craft products are exported annually, many new players are making entry into the segment.

The Ethnic story has a direct competition with Indianroots, Craftsvilla, and Indikala to name a few. Besides, it’s also competing with other biggies like Flipkart and Snapdeal, who also cater to this segment. However, The Ethnic story differentiates itself from these platforms in terms of product category. It says though Indianroots and Craftsvilla are concentrating more into ethnic apparels, it will offer ethnic home decor and home furnishing products.

Website

Noida-based Fastudent, a startup in the education segment, has raised a round of seed investment from a group of angel investors, led by Ashish Gupta, Founder and Trustee, Ashoka University. The platform takes care of the education needs of students across age groups, and supplies a range of education products and services.  It will use the seed funding for team expansion, strengthening technology, and increasing its geographical footprint. The company plans to hire over 90 people over the next six months.

Founded by IIT-IIM alumnae, Gaurav Barman and Geetanjali Khanna, Fastudent is an educational products aggregator that helps students, parents, schools and teachers, ranging from play groups to post- graduation, fulfill their academic needs. Currently, Fastudent offers more than 20,000 SKUs across eight categories – books and stationery, academic accessories, uniforms, games, sports, digital products, and customised merchandise.

They are rapidly expanding their operations and plan to acquire over 10 million paying customers by 2018. They intend to extend to 32 niche and focused categories in the coming months. The founders say the platform solves a very fundamental problem in the Indian education system i.e. accessibility to academic supplies in the remotest nooks and corners of the country.

“With Fastudent we aim to compliment the shift in consumption patterns of the education fraternity. The blended model of physical educational needs coupled with consultative, customized and modularized digital learning. We are working relentlessly to streamline the difficulties students go through on a daily basis and let them focus on what they do best viz study,” says Geetanjali Khanna, Co-founder and COO, Fastudent.

Yourstory’s take

Education is a hot segment in the country today. According to data from Venture Intelligence, the Education segment attracted investment of $ 30 million in 2014, nearly double the funding received in 2013.

Many education startups have been able to raise huge funds this year as well. In this segment, online test preparation and K-12-focussed technology-based startups have topped the list. Toppr, Plancess, Simplilearn, Convegenius and Flinnt are some of the startups that raised funding this year.

However, unlike other education startups, education products aggregators have not been very popular among investors. In the past, due to dearth of funding, many such websites such as AllSchoolStuff and SchoolShop have shut down. According to experts, the USD 30 billion market is extremely fragmented and is yet to witness the emergence of single largest players.

The recent funding of Fastudent is a new development. It would be interesting to observe the growth in this particular area for education startups in the future.

Website

Did you know that 3.2 million children worldwide are living with HIV? Most of them were infected by their HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, childbirth or breast feeding. And over 35 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV/AIDS.

World AIDS Day was established in order to spread awareness on the subject and get people to discuss it on open forums. With the number of different healthtech and medtech startups cropping up, it seems to have made it easier for people to ask AIDS/HIV-related queries online.

“Since January this year, we have received over one lakh queries related to HIV/AIDS on our platform and the question bank continues to grow given the lack of awareness that exists about the subject,” says Saurabh Arora, CEO, Lybrate, a healthcare platform that connects patients and doctors.

What do the numbers say?

Over 70 per cent of the queries that they receive on HIV/AIDS are from men, he adds.

Age group:

• <18: 5%
• 18-25: 52%
• 26-40: 36%
• 41-60: 6%
• 60+: 1%

Queries from Metro cities: 40%,

Queries from Non-Metro cities – 60%

Top 6 cities from which maximum queries on HIV/AIDS are received:

• Delhi
• Mumbai
• Chennai
• Kolkata
• Bengaluru
• Hyderabad

Question samples

The most commonly asked questions on the platform, according to Saurabh, revolved around what AIDS actually is, how it is contracted and its treatment. Some of them are:

• What are the main reasons for becoming an AIDS patient and how does it affect the body and how can we control it?
• Are HIV and AIDS the same thing?
• My husband has HIV. Can I still get pregnant if I have physical relations with him?
• Is there any counter-effective medicine that can be taken after getting in contact with HIV positive person?
• What are the indications for individuals affected with HIV?

There were also some other questions that clearly showedhow unaware peopleare on the subject. These included:

• I am a 23 year old guy. I have had protective sex five days back. Today I have sore throat and a bit of feeling like fever. I also have one or two rashes itching on my neck. I am afraid if there’s a chance of HIV. Please suggest.
• I went to a restaurant. I ordered samosa. After eating, I noticed that the waiter who served me the samosa has a fresh wound on his finger. He used that hand. If blood from his finger came in contact with samosa or food by handling it and suppose he has HIV positive, would I get HIV from that food?

 Noticing the bottlenecks that stopped people from consulting doctors for problems related to HIV/AIDS/sexual health, Lybrate was designed to keep the identity of its users completely anonymous. Their contact details are never shared even with the doctors. “It is entirely on the user to share those with the doctors they are consulting, if they wish to do so,” adds Saurabh.

Answering the queries

The queries are answered by doctors on the platform. Saurabh adds that they have distinguished sexologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, internal medicine specialists and homeopathic doctors associated with our app that for users to ask questions related to HIV/AIDS/sexual health for free and also to get multiple opinions from them.

They can also consult doctors of their choice privately after payment of fees. In both instances, contact details of the user are never shared with the doctors.

Other than that, Lybrate has a health feed consisting of health tips on HIV/AIDS and sexual health that are posted by doctors themselves.

Social stigma

AIDS/HIV has had strong social stigma and negative social implications associated with it. According to WHO, despite the advancement in scientific research and understanding, most people living with HIV or who are at risk do not have access to care, prevention measures or access to treatment.

However, despite these challenges, new efforts have shown some promising signs. The WHO says that prevention has helped reduced the rates in some small number of people in countries.

A wedding in the family, dropping the kids off at school when both of you are working, finding a parking spot when you rush out to an important meeting. Your daily commute is fraught with little challenges, and booking a cab or an auto is not always an option. It was to solve these little problems that DriversKart was born.

It’s a mobile app that provides verified professional drivers on demand. All you have to do is book a driver and a verified and trained chauffer drives you around in your own car. The idea came to Saksham Grover, when he was partying with his friends one evening. Like most cases, one of his friends refused to drink, as he was the designated driver.

Pooling in the ideas

This got Saksham thinking, and after interacting with his other close associates, he realised there were several instances where people needed a reliable drive at short notice. There were several use cases – dropping family members around on a working day, finding a parking spot on a busy street – the list was endless.

At the time, Vinit Srivastava and Lakshmi Potluri were also looking at working on a similar startup. Badminton buddies Saksham and Vinit discussed the idea one day, and finding themselves on the same page, included Lakshmi to create DriversKart.

Addressing road bumps

“We provide you with professional, background-verified drivers, who can take you around in the comfort and safety of your own car. DriversKart is all about offering a perfect blend of professionalism, security, and convenience,” says Vinit.

He adds that their startup aims to create a platform that meets the need for a reliable chauffer, who is available on-demand. DriversKart follows a per-minute pricing band, which offers the flexibility to pay as per the time used.

They provide service in the following segments:

• Driver on demand
• Subscription packages
• Valet parking

DriversKart’s users typically include:

• People preferring to travel in their own car, but not wanting to drive themselves
• People travelling to office/other places within the city, who like to multi-task during their travel time
• People visiting places like shopping malls/ hospitals/ religious places, who prefer to avoid the hassle associated with parking
• People going out partying, who would prefer being driven back to their homes
• Families where both parents work, who prefer having their kids dropped to and picked from school/ tuition

 Working models

Available on the Playstore and AppStore, the app lets the customer request for a driver at a specified time and from a specific location. This request is received by the operations team, which sets out to identify a suitable driver.

The process of ‘Trip Time Calculation’, billing and notifications are completely automated. Once the trip ends, an SMS with details of charges is sent to the driver and the customer.

For a cashless transaction, DriversKart is integrated with Paytm for wallet and online payments. For a customer who has a longer-term subscription, they have partnered with Instamojo.

Onboarding drivers

The team has always believed that their drivers are their key assets, and their method of sourcing and screening them forms the foundation of their enterprise. They have set certain non-negotiable characteristics to help weed out doubtful and suspicious profiles.

They only onboard drivers who successfully clear their five-phased screening test. This includes aspects that help them evaluate their overall personality, technical knowledge and behavioural etiquette, in addition to their driving skills.

Once selected, they are taken through detailed behavioural and app-based training as identified in the DriversKart manual. The team also provides them with a Driver Checklist and complete kit comprising a t-shirt, bag, cleaning cloth, and floor mat, among others. For drivers who don’t have a smartphone, mobile phones are provided against a deposit .

Vinit says their focus has been to ensure that they have verified and trained drivers, who deliver great customer experience. He says they have developed innovative processes to identify and manage drivers in a predictable manner, and keep drivers motivated through regular income, supplemented by incentives based on performance. “Our key strength is in matching the customer requirements with the driver profile,” he adds.

The core team

Prior to Driverskart, Saksham was working as a senior product developer at Cognizant Mobility. An engineer, his strength lies in his strong understanding of usability, scalability, performance, and optimisation. Lakshmi, an alumna of Columbia University, is an angel investor, mentor and advisor, and has been part of the founding team of Jabong. She has also worked for IBM and Goldman Sachs.

Vinit is a graduate from IIM Calcutta with over 15 years of experience in the education, healthcare, ITeS, and hospitality segments. He has also co-founded the pre-school chain Little Einstiens, and is a member of The Chennai Angels, LetsVenture, and a charter member at TiE Chennai.

On the operations side, they have dedicated people handling activities such as marketing and business development, customer care and driver management, finance and accounts. “Our supply head has experience heading similar activities at TaxiForSure, and is an expert in driver operations and supply. We are keen on bringing people with relevant domain expertise, coupled with a great attitude, who will work toward the common vision of DriversKart,” adds Vinit.

DriversKart follows an aggregator-based, asset-light model that offers driver services to customers across India. DriversKart does not own any cars; the business model involves having tie-ups with driver agencies and onboarding independent drivers. “We have had a high repeat rate and encouraging feedback from customers who have been satisfied with our services,” adds Vinit.

DriversKart also has a subscription model, which allows one to buy hours in a block of 10 hours, starting at Rs 799. The team is currently bootstrapped and are in the process of closing their first round of funding

Mileage seen

The team claims to be seeing a month on month growth of 300 per cent and are fulfilling about 80 to 100 rides in a day. They have onboarded a team of over 70 drivers. “We have partnerships with all the key pubs, clubs, leading hospitals and hotels chains and have a 100 per cent conversion rate,” says Vinit.

Currently, they’re a core team of six members, supported by an operations team, managing a pool of drivers. They are looking to expand their presence across multiple cities and managing a pool of over 1,000 drivers in the next few months.

For the future, the team is working on building a predictability engine, and other customer-friendly features that will help increase customer loyalty.

Others in the space

Apart from other small driver operators, DriversKart is similar to DriveU. Both organisations are founded by strong teams, and are looking to solve similar problems. However, both companies fall under the ‘Habit Forming’ group, creating which is an uphill task.

Car ownership in India is currently at 13 per 1,000 people. It is expected to increase 6x in the years to come. With increased car ownership, and the infrastructure to support it not growing at the same pace, traffic problems will only worsen. For car owners, this would means more time stuck in traffic.

Having a professional do the hard work of navigating tiresome snarls can prove a win-win situation for all involved.

Website

Most of the brick-and-mortar stores (irrespective of the type of business) are feeling the pressure from the growing online sales. Customers are easily getting attracted to online sales and deals while the offline stores struggle to tap them. Even after spending considerable amount of money to get customers into the stores, brands are still finding it difficult to get the best value from them.

Team bfonics felt that providing a new set of cost-effective tools, which can create real-time, in-store engagement by pushing relevant information including deals and messages, can make a big difference. Most customers use their smartphones while they are inside a store. So effectively engaging customers via their smartphones while they are in-store can lead to increased sales and improved ROI for store owners.

People are hooked to their smartphone device irrespective of where they are. Unni Peroth, Founder & CEO, bfonics, says,

This is making it difficult for traditional advertisement channels – print media, outdoor advertisements and more- to engage people. This challenge opens up the need for new types of engagements. We felt that a highly contextual, mobile technology-oriented push notification based engagement is the right way to go.

bfonic, which was one of the Tech30 startups in Yourstory‘s TechSparks this year,is a brainchild of Unni, Romy Mathew, Binoy Mathew and Arun Raj. Unni is a serial entrepreneur and earlier founded YourSeeder (seed/angel funding initiative based out of India), Nfonics (one of the fastest growing IT service companies in India) and Centrica Global, among others.

Romy has over a decade’s experience and has worked with MNCs like Spectrum Infotech, Ushus Technologies and Hewlett Packard. Arun and Binoy are also serial entrepreneurs and served as co-founders at Nfonics. Binoy has over 10 years of IT industry expertise as a technology specialist in travel, banking and storage domains.  Romy explains,

After realising the difficulties faced by retailers, our team decided to build a beacon-based technology platform to create real-time consumer engagement.

Initially, the team started out as a ‘BYOB’ ( bring-your-own-beacon) platform, and later jumped into the hardware side, by realising the role of BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)/beacon technology. While marketing the BLE beacon-based solution in the Asian markets, the team realised that many of the consumers do not turn on the Bluetooth on their smartphone, but always have the Wi-Fi turned on, as they are looking for free data.

This triggered the team to build the first-ever Wi-Fi beacon, which works on both BLE and Wi-Fi. This is a major breakthrough for bfonics.

How it helps brick and mortar merchants to tap business

Unni points out,

It is all about providing the right information real time. With our platform and beacons, we help retailers,both big box and brick-and-mortar stores, engage their customers, real time and in-store. Beacon and Wi-Fi technology based, proximity marketing platform is a win-win for both consumers and store owners.

bfonics equips the store owner with a cost-effective channel to engage customers in-store, while the consumer gets the right information when it matters the most.

The company offers a flexible engagement model which opens up different channels of revenues. It primarily makes money through selling beacons, monthly subscription fee, enterprise sale (via pay-as-you-go model), advertisement (from beacon network) amongst others channels.

YourStory take

Location-based marketing, in which the focus is on beacon and Wi-Fi-based, proximity marketing, is a multi-billion dollar market opportunity throughout the globe. The beacon technology market is poised for 10 times growth over the next five years. According to a report from Juniper Research,the mobile context and location services market in the United States alone will reach $43.3billion in revenue by 2019, rising from an estimated $12.2billion in 2014.

Bfonics competes with US-focussed Swirl and InMarket. The good thing is that the technology is fairly new, which means that all the competitors are also new to this game and learning. With its Wi-Fi beacons (built based on its patent pending technology), bfonics is poised to play an important role in the proximity-based marketing arena.

On hardware front, it competes with Estimote, Kontakt and Gimbal. Bfonics has an interesting team spread across different continents and an equally interesting hardware and tech play. Proximity marketing is a huge opportunity in global markets as well as in India, and bfonics appears to have clicked the right balance between product and tech. Going forward, it would be exciting to watch how bfonics and its beacon technology evolve.

Website

Digital disruption

Once upon a time, there were monopolies and oligopolies. Even conglomerates had such concentrated market power that customers did not always get the best bang for their buck. Remember the days when Air India and Jet Airways ruled the Indian skies? Compare that with today’s budget carriers and everyday low fares.

The market has undergone dramatic transformation in every sector. Once, the odds were heavily stacked against anyone aspiring to be an entrepreneur. Market incumbents had formidable scale, control over distribution channels, instant brand recall, and customer relationships built over decades, which posed significant barriers to entry. Think of Unilever, P&G. These competitive advantages are no longer seen as insurmountable by new entrants with innovative business models.

Today, it is interesting to note that the market cap of Hilton Hotels is much lower than that of AirBnB, which had no real hospitality assets. Lufthansa’s market cap has shrunk to €5.5 billion, half its value a decade ago, while the top dozen mobile apps have a valuation of €88 billion.

According to Digital Vortex “Digital disruption now has the potential to overturn incumbents and reshape markets faster than any force in the industry”.

In the Banking sector, big lenders are giving board-level attention to the rapid growth of Financial Technology (Fintech) startups in markets ranging from mortgage lending and wealth management to SME loans.

This raises the question: What has brought tech entrepreneurs to the wildly exciting Fintech party?

A huge 12 trillion dollar assets is controlled by a handful of banks. The Bank of England has pumped £375 billion of quantitative easing (QE) into the market and has artificially held low interest rates since the 2008 crash. The US has pumped $3 trillion in QE into the market.

Banks, the biggest spenders on IT, are today known for their archaic systems that no longer respond to what millennials need. The digital disruption of systems in banking, one of the oldest industries known to mankind has spawned a budding ecosystem of Fintech players, with some providing value added services to the old guard, while others chip away at the giants of yesterday, bit by bit. However, banks did not see Fintech as a threat, at least, not until 2015. At the end of the day, the Fintech industry is after an estimated $ 50 billion prize, small change for these banks.

With the growing mainstream popularity of technologies such as Blockchain, the massive disruption has been something of an epiphany for banks. IN 2015, Jamie Dimon, Head of JPMorgan, issued a clarion call to his peers that Silicon Valley clearly had the Banking sector in its sights. This disruption is not the kind imposed by a regulatory body like the Federal Reserve Bank or a crisis like the credit crunch, or even the bankruptcy that befell Greece, all of which affected the world’s banking community collectively. It is the slow but steady growth of Fintech’s influence on the world.

It could be as conspicuous as paying at your retail checkout with ApplePay Wallet or accepting card payments anywhere with Square or Crowdfunding on Kickstarter, or as inconspicuous as the Uberisation of payments in the modest car ride and the “Ripple” of international remittances.

It won’t be long before a digital signage offers a student loan, a first-time mortgage or a vacation deal based on your activities on the phone, your gender, age, face, and even emotions! Unilever already has a smile-activated ice-cream dispenser!

In the retail sector, technology has invaded form, function and payments. Retail stores are now experimenting with HD content, background music, sound effects and ceiling LED lighting coordinated to respond to customers when they enter a store. Samsung Galaxy S3 has smart stay technology built into the phone to detect and track eye movements.

From data analytics and biometrics, to cryptocurrencies and wearables, digitalisation is reshaping our experiences and expectations as retail customers. Banks must accept that they are increasingly becoming part of broader ecosystem that customers are constructing around themselves.

We are facing something more disruptive than, and as pervasive as, the global financial crisis. It’s the coming together of several game-changing technologies, starting with the iPhone. The increase in computing power, a billion-fold per dollar from 1965, has led to the convergence of mobile devices, retail, Internet of Things, payments, and banking.

Constant and unrelenting change based on the increasing accessibility and functionality of new technology features such as AI, data analytics, wearables, and customers who can’t get enough of these new gimmicks – this is the new world order. The stuff that the traditional banking industry considers new such as Facebook, iPhones and Wi-Fi is commonplace for Generation Y. Banks have to become adept all things virtual and at being digital repositories of their clients’ money. And all this means bigger opportunities for Fintech.

Fintech affects the broader economy. That is why the global investments in Fintech have crossed $12 billion till date. Fintech Storm, headquartered in London, considered the global Fintech capital, focusses on disruptive finance and features pioneering thought leaders from across the globe.

For example, Square provides a simple tech-driven solution to a wide problem of merchants accepting credit cards at the point of sale. Square sends merchants a free mobile-compatible CC reader. You just download an app and start accepting payments. Today, Square is valued at $6 billion.

Yodlee’s Fintech influencer survey has identified five significant Fintech trends.

1. Cryptocurrency and Blockchain – the technology behind it
2. Innovation and convergence in payments
3. Focus on customer experience and the evolution of customer-centric initiatives from banks
4. User authentication and security (data security)
5. New and alternative models of lending (Online lending and peer-to-peer marketplaces)

These trends are even more prescient for India, which has a ripe market and enthusiastic masses, and everything good gets magnified hundred-fold. Ask Mark Zuckerberg about the most critical inflection point in the growth of his company. He would say it is when every Indian wants to be on Facebook! India offers 112 million monthly active users to Facebook out of a total 250 million active mobile Internet subscribers, of which 100 million access Facebook via their mobile devices, while 70 million use WhatsApp.

About the author

Ms Arifa Khan is the founder of Fintech Storm, and lives in London. She is an investment banker, Fintech evangelist, works on cross-border Fintech advisory between Europe and India, and writes extensively on Fintech and Blockchain. Arifa has an MBA from Wharton School of Business, Pennsylvania, and a B.Tech from IIT Madras. Arifa has recently launched Europe-India Conclave on Future of Banking, Payments & Technology.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory)

Have you ever idled in an auto fretting about all the tasks you could have completed in the time spent on endless commutes? That’s exactly what occurred to the founders of Yaatra Smart, a solution that wants to help you use your travel time more effectively.

Aparna .T.S, Najeeb Narayanan, and Saurabh Kulshrestha, having braved hours of Bengaluru’s killer commutes, decided that if people had to spend a chunk of their lives on the road, it made sense to put that time to good use. Research has shown that the average auto commute lasts 20-25 minutes.  

Not everybody has graduated to using smart phones and even then, it’s often difficult to hang on to your phone while travelling, much less get any work done. At present, large sections of non-tech-savvy middle-class people are wary of using e-commerce and are unable to navigate payment processes. Yet, they offer the most potential for e-commerce players.

That’s where Yaatra Smart comes in with its concept of assisted commerce. According to Najeeb Narayanan, founder and Director of the company, commuters are uniquely positioned to receive and avail of targeted promotions when they are free. And Yaatra Smart gives the average middle-class traveller the option of using his or her commute time to make payments and get discount coupons from stores in the vicinity, without needing a smart phone or an internet connection. “We make money from traffic jams, or rather, we help in minimising time wastage while in traffic jams,” explains Najeeb, adding, “We also create a new revenue stream for drivers without deviating from their existing business.”

All you need is a mobile phone and some cash

Founded in 2015, the company has tied up with auto drivers during the pilot phase and installed tablet computers/secured mobile kiosks with the Yaatra Smart app in their vehicles. These tablets are connected wirelessly to the company’s control centre and help passengers pay their electricity and other bills, recharge their mobile currency, and browse through the best offers and discounts available at nearby stores. If a passenger likes an offer, they simply key their mobile number into the tablet and the coupon is transferred to their mobile phone through a simple SMS.

Auto drivers have been trained to use the tablets, and are able to explain how the device works to passengers. And while the interface is easy to use, if a user gets stuck at a particular step – and that doesn’t happen often – the auto driver can turn the device around to do some basic troubleshooting. There are colour-coded buttons for each option to make the transaction easier. After a passenger fills in all the details, the auto driver will verify and validate the transaction. Once the transaction is completed, the passenger simply hands over the cash to the auto driver. The passenger no longer has to stand in long queues or hunt for a recharge kiosk in the rain, and the auto driver earns a commission. Yaatra Smart also gets a percentage of the transaction from the merchant. Small businesses wanting to advertise with Yaatra Smart can simply upload their offers via the Android app.

How everyone involved benefits

“Every journey is converted into a mutually beneficial opportunity for all parties – the passenger, the auto driver and the local small business owner,” says Najeeb. “In the larger scheme of things, it’s about digitising the masses and helping the middle class adapt to the latest technologies from within their comfort zone.”

The commissions make it lucrative for auto rickshaw drivers to treat their passengers well and encourage them to run a ‘virtual’ errand during the ride. “You are changing their lifestyle. This prompts them to be nice to the customers. Each driver is running their own business through this, and feels empowered,” says Najeeb. He adds that auto drivers often drive as much as 35 km a day looking for passengers, wasting fuel and clogging up already-crowded roads.

However, the real challenge lay in creating the ecosystem and finding the right drivers and training them from time to time. Aparna, who was a teacher, also proved a shrewd businesswoman. Being multi-lingual, she was able to successfully convince and on board 450+ auto drivers in just six weeks. What helped was that auto drivers were recruited as operation managers, which increased the credibility of the offer.   

Co-founders Najeeb and Saurabh, both former employees at Intuit, came on board because they believed that technology could positively impact blue-collar workers’ lives. Saurabh, who had also worked at Microsoft, re-architected the solution to achieve better scalability and performance, and created the payment + wallet infrastructure using Azure services.

Sumit Bansal, also a former Intuit employee, contributed to driving the technology development in the company. The team is also planning to on board team members to handle business development and marketing.

What’s in the works…

Yaatra Smart currently has 1,000 Bengaluru auto rickshaws registered for this service and have piloted the programme with ~90 autos. They have also tied up with the Peace Auto initiative. In addition to utilities and mobile payments, the company has tied up with a real estate company to conduct surveys and generate sales leads from passengers, who are given token gifts of appreciation such as discount coupons or free mobile recharge vouchers for taking surveys during the commute. Data privacy is always assured.

“Homemakers traveling in autos are often the ones who gather information for important decisions the family has to make. This also applies to decisions about which flat to buy and budgets. We capture their profile through a survey during the commute,” says Najeeb. Yaatra Smart is also working with an employee referral company to provide job listings and recruitment solutions. Each auto driver is connected to at least five businesses, whom he gets interested and gets incentives for the advertisements he brings in.

The tech behind it all

Yaatra Smart is a cloud-based service for internet-connected hardware and mobile phones. Najeeb decided to try out Microsoft’s Azure when he began developing the technology. He found it easier to work with it than anything else he had tried. “I had no previous cloud experience, so I always struggled with technical complexities related to developing, how things need to be pushed to the cloud, and synchronisation,” he says. Even though he didn’t have enough cloud experience, he found it very easy to deploy Azure, which helped him stay focused on business rather than worry about infrastructure and technology

Learning Azure had other advantages. Having become well-versed with Azure so quickly, the team entered the Azurider contest and went on to win an iconic Harley-Davidson bike.

The venture is currently bootstrapped and making some good traction.  The team is trying to scale the company and operations by increasing revenue from commerce and advertisements. They are also looking for funding. Going forward, Yaatra Smart wants logistic companies to use their fleet. The company, which hopes to expand to other cities,  is also working on patented algorithms to further improve passengers’ experience.

Website

Seven years ago, before the dawn of the smartphone era, Umesh Sachdev and Ravi Saraogi had a vision to build a mobile product with a rural focus. “We visited several districts in Tamil Nadu to start a pilot project,” says Umesh, CEO, Uniphore Software Systems.

Of the many problems and issues that the duo came across, what stood out was low literacy and the prevalence of multiple dialects. Looking for a solution, they zeroed in on using a speech analytics software to bridge the digital divide.

It took them a year to develop a working prototype, and within a month of developing the prototype, they received a seed funding of $100,000. During the early days, the team focussed on using standard phones to allow users access to the services.

As customer engagement grew, their technology also evolved to provide speech analytics, voice biometrics, and virtual assistant solutions to enterprises.

Today, Uniphore has over 70 enterprise customers and over 4 million end users. In Q2 of FY15, their speech analytics software auMina witnessed exponential market traction with as many as six pilots underway across the country; these will likely turn into full-scale deployment very soon. “We have also received appreciation for our products across The Philippines and the UAE,” says Umesh.

Understanding the voice of the customer

“For us, the eureka moment was the realisation that voice will always play a central role in any customer service and that service will be seriously hampered if it does not have the voice channel. We envisioned that if automation were to truly become a part of customer engagement, then machines should understand, process, and respond to human speech,” says Umesh.

The idea of Uniphore’s solutions is to extend the power of speech to revolutionise and transform human and machine interactions. Their solutions allow any software application to understand and respond to natural human speech, thus enabling humans to use the most natural of communication modes, speech, to engage and instruct machines.

One of Uniphore’s recognised pilot runs is the work they did for the financial inclusion project in rural areas.  They saw that smart card and finger print device initiatives used by micro-finance organisations and rural banks were capital-intensive.

“We spoke to the institutes and told them that today, everyone has phones with speech and voice biometrics, you can do banking without a card or a device,” adds Umesh. This converted the capital-intensive exercise into an op-ex mode of transaction.

This helped the team scale up; additionally, Uniphore was adding 1000s of users every month. “Our product and technology improved, as we were dealing with a larger problem,” adds Umesh.

Covering a larger base

Close to 70 percent of the population does not have access to the same resources and modes of communications that we do.  “Vernacular voice was the lowest common denominator, our first thought was to start something like a JustDial for villages, with the use of local languages,” says Umesh.

However, from a business point of view, this just wasn’t scalable. That’s when they decided to automate the whole process, which gave rise to their three product solutions:

1. auMina (Speech Analytics): auMina is a speech analytics software solution that provides real-time actionable business insights. It measures and continuously improves contact centre agents’ knowledge, demeanor, sales skills and adherence to processes and policies. It also helps cut down cost and time dramatically, thereby increasing revenue. auMina supports over 25 Indian and international languages that allow businesses to cater to their audience in their native languages.
2. amVoice (Voice Biometrics): It assures user authentication by using every individual’s unique voice-prints, believed to be as unique as fingerprints. The team believes amVoice has the potential to completely replace the passwords and pins required for financial services. It reduces the costs and risks associated with authentication that requires passwords or sharing of sensitive data. It also allows for remote verification through any mobile and cuts the identification and verification process to less than 15 seconds.
3. Akeira (Virtual Assistant): Akeira is Uniphore’s 24 X 7 virtual assistant solution for contact centres that allows consumers to ask questions in their language, and get the desired answer regardless how the question is asked. It provides support for more than 25 global languages and more than 150 dialects. It reduces the customer care costs dramatically without compromising customer satisfaction.

“Our technology is new and our biggest challenge lies in the fact that enterprises are hesitant to try out new offerings. We have SaaS-ified the business and adopted practices like ‘try and buy’ to overcome this,” adds Umesh.

Back to the beginning

Starting out in 2008 as an IIT Madras-incubated company, Uniphore’s very first client was Thomson Reuters. The duo had read an article that talked about a Thomson Reuters service that was dedicated for farmers called Reuters Market Life (RML). “They were planning to send updated market prices and weather data to farmers via SMS,” adds Umesh.

Having run pilots with farmers, the team believed that SMS was not the best means to communicate with the farmers, as the rural literacy rate was low. “This was the main reason for us to focus on speech and language recognition. After reading the article, I reached out to the lead for RML at Reuters via LinkedIn at that point in time,” says Umesh.

After cold calling the person involved, they pitched Uniphore’s solution to the team. In two months, RML became Uniphore’s first customer. After RML, the farmers’ financial inclusion project came in, and then there was no looking back.

7 years. 7 itches

Over the past seven years, Uniphore has seen different types and levels of scaling challenges. The early days, Umesh says was all about getting the initial team in place, get an understanding of how to scale and build a business. “At this point, we were first-time entrepreneurs, our challenge was to understand how to execute the idea,” says Umesh.

In fact, when the team won Thomson Reuters as a client, one of the main concerns was how Uniphore would be able to provide much-needed support. They asked the team how they would manage scaling up if several crore farmers began using the product. At this point, the fact that Uniphore was incubated at IIT Madras helped.

After the first 10 customers were onboarded, they targeted the next 50 customers.This meant scaling up sales operations, putting processes around marketing, and building a strong support system.

Today, it is about getting the right talent. “It’s a huge talent war out there, and it’s getting really hard to find the right sort of talent for the company,” says Umesh. He adds that now with the funding in place, and with most processes being set, getting the right senior team in place is a challenge.

Voice of the future

The core team comprises of Umesh, who had also co-founded Singularis Technologies, and Ravi Saraogi, the COO, for whom this is also a second venture. Sanjeev Gadre, the CMO,has over 20 years of experience marketing software products around the world with companies like Adobe, Subex, Aricent, Verifone India and Wipro.

Ram Sundaram, the Director Core Technology,has around 15 years of experience with companies like Microsoft and Broadcom. Rohit Maheshwari, the Head of Professional Services, has over 18 years of experience in Solutions Consulting, Business Development, Sales and Program Management.

Uniphore supports over 25 global languages including 14 Indian languages with over hundreds of dialects. It offers its solutions as SaaS (Software as a Service) on a subscription-based model.

Their investors include Kris Gopalakrishnan, IDG Ventures, India Angel Network, Yournest Fund and Stata Ventures.

Uniphore has recently opened a new office in Bengaluru and plans to add around 100 people in the next 15 months. They currently have offices in India, The Philippines, Dubai and plan to expand to the US very soon.