EduAwake is an exclusive online store that provides educational materials for school kids

India has one of the largest school-age populations in the world. Yet niche markets are still a far cry when it comes to school-related purchases such as text/reference books, educational DVDs, or general knowledge kits. To help fill the gap, Bengaluru-based e-commerce startup EduAwake was launched.

EduAwake brought all school purchases under one umbrella while connecting schools, parents, subject-matter experts, and vendors. Now schools have a common platform for educational bulk purchases and parents no longer have to run from pillar to post to collect various educational products for their kids. EduAwake provides a platform for writers, tutors, educational startups, and suppliers to sell their books or other products and services.

A startup built on empathy

“While getting school purchases for our own kids, we realised there was a whole new world of school material we weren’t aware of. For instance, midyear reference material for exams like Science Olympiad or NTSE exam. Like us, most parents have annual budgets so they are not prepared for many of these purchases until they become urgent needs. We felt all these heads must come under one platform,” shares Martin Paul, Co-founder of EduAwake. He along with his friend Saravanan Lakshmanan co-founded Givevalu Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd in August 2014 and launched school purchase e-commerce portal www.eduawake.com shortly afterwards. Both the founders are electronic engineers with more than 14 years of experience in technology/solution architecture and customer delivery management.

Product and revenue model

EduAwake is an integrated marketplace platform facilitating electronic procurement for institutions and sellers that cater to K-12 private educational sector. Recently, EduAwake’s B2C platform was launched with over 1,200 product listings such as learning aids, DIY activity kits, toys, school stationeries, puzzles, books, games, and reference material for competitive exams, online programmes divided into categories of grade, language, educational board, subject, type, format and exam. “In just few months, the B2C website has had more than 12,000 visitors and over 200 sign ups without any major digital marketing efforts. We look forward to the months of January to May since that’s the timeframe for the schools in bulk orders,” adds Saravanan.

How do they plan to earn from the platform? “Our revenue model is based on transaction fee from sellers/vendors as well as subscription fee from schools and advertisement revenue from schools/sellers. We would offer free subscription to schools initially and we also have a revenue plan from value-added services from sellers and schools through market insights and analytics,” shares Saravanan.

When it comes to edtech startups, there seems to be a plethora of them lately. “NASCOMM 2014 report says there are 190 edtech startups in the country. India’s online education market size alone is predicted to grow to USD 40 billion in 2017,” says Martin.

“There’s koolskool.com, Anything Skool, fastudent.com, and modelshop.in to name a few. However, they are either run by shoe manufacturers, book distributors, etc., and have very limited product choices and product categories. Most of these sell their own selected products and not a real educational marketplace. Moreover, none of them have product and services discovery and procurement system,” informs Saravanan.

So what makes EduAwake different? “Competitors for B2C marketplace model are major e-commerce players, but none of them are focussed on school/education vertical. We plan to further narrow down to more niche products. And for B2B, we don’t have any competitors,” says Martin.

Learning and future plans

“From day one, we saw ourselves wearing multiple hats from peon to coder to marketer to director, which was challenging, but mostly the freedom of thinking and slowly getting to see the positive outcomes of our efforts is gratifying,” says Martin.

The founders wish to launch EduAwake B2C mobile application by the end of February 2016 and B2B version by March 2016. They want to bring 500 vendors and take the product listing to 4,000 this year.

“Our vision for this product is to be the world’s best technology integration solution for conducting business for all the top quality educational products and services,” concludes Saravanan.

“DISE, Technopak Analysis had said that 1.4 million schools in India are in K12 school segment and with 0.3 million of these are private schools. This segment has an additional requirement of 40,000 more schools and two million additional teachers. We are addressing this opportunity,” adds Martin.

EduAwake founders are thus extremely positive to make a major contribution in organising the school purchase segment of this market.

Website: www.eduawake.com

The thought of buying art immediately invokes the image of someone in Tussar silks or Fab India khadis waltzing around a space with minimalist décor, nodding nonchalantly and making quintessential small-talk in breathy tones, of Picasso’s cubist rebellion. Here’s a revelation – it is as difficult for some genuinely talented upcoming and senior artists to create this simulation of high-society living for you as it is for you to keep up the façade every time you want to find an adornment for your walls. Your love affair with art can simply thrive as a silent conversation you have with the frame that you know belongs on the empty square above your bed, even though it is through a computer screen.

Where art thou?

Eikowa – the Greek word for ‘image’ – was born in December 2015 out of the need to break this barrier. Vaishnavi Murali, Founder and CEO at the brand, wanted to become a curator of meaningful art minus the nonsense of pretense. A two-time patron of the luxury brand industry, through retail brands like Madura Garment and Ethos, but an artist at heart, she started the portal after noticing a gap in the ecosystem. “The problem lies on both the demand as well as the supply side. While I was painting one day, I realised that there were hardly any avenues for upcoming artists to showcase their work. With limited wall space, new talent either gets sidelined or lost in the crowd. Reputed galleries seldom support upcoming artists. Local galleries lack the network or resources to promote artists, and good exhibitions are few and expensive. Serious artists, on the other hand, don’t get the right representation, as their works are mixed with hobby artists,”she explains.

On the buying side, art is accessible only to a few. “Many don’t know what to buy and where to buy from. Galleries are intimidating, and the other online galleries lack curation. Prices are rarely mentioned, and there is little information provided to the buyer. Ultimately, this scares the common buyer away, and limits the reach of the artist and the size of the ecosystem. At Eikowa, we create a lot of content around art through our blog, The Canvas, to help people understand the painting and the thought process behind the creation,” Vaishnavi adds.

And how art they different?

While sites like Fizdi choose to exhibit work by hobby artists also, e-commerce sites like Amazon and Pepperfry predominantly sell prints. Eikowa strictly sells original paintings by professional artists – senior ones, who have been around for over a decade, but in some cases, even upcoming ones whose work shows promise.

“There are a lot of hobby artists and professional artists at similar price points. We as a brand believe that it’s our responsibility to deliver value to the customer’s investment. We sell original art only. If there are multiple prints of original art in the market, the art loses its value. Art by professional artists tends to appreciate, hence we work with artists who have been painting for over 10 years and have developed a unique style of their own.  In case of a promising upcoming artist we do make an exception,” she explains.

All in all, Vaishnavi, who curates each and every painting on her site with the help of some mentors, likes to see evolution, steady themes and ideas, professional strokes, and a portfolio that has morphed into a distinct personality of its own.

“We differentiate ourselves on our curation.  From the cubist rebellion of Picasso, to the surrealistic renderings of Dali, every school of art will find a fan among this group of art connoisseurs,”she says.

Aficionados approve

Eikowa primarily focusses on three cites at the moment- Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. Anyone with a higher disposable income, collectors or first-time art buyers are their target customers.

Through Eikowa, a lot of artists get to share space with some established artist in the industry, not something seen commonly. “The ability to help deserving artists represent themselves well, reach the right people, and command the right price, gives me a high. It may be a mercurial and rocky journey, but I am finding it the most fulfilling,”Vaishnavi says.

There is no listing fee for the artist, and her revenue model is a clear-cut commission on sale. So far, she has curated the works of over 85 artists, many of whom are masters. They are the only startup in this space to have tied-up with so many master artists, within a month of launch. Some of the artists they work with are Madhuri Bhaduri, Biplab Biswas, Beena Pradhan, Dinkar Jadhav, and Niladri Paul.

The number of customers is limited but the value of transactions is high. They get close to 100-150 visits a day, and in a short span of two months, they have closed transactions worth Rsseven lakh and have recovered their set-up and operational costs already. They are on the way to sealing 80percent growth in March.

Devi Prasad Biswal (28) calls himself the aggressive ‘operations’ guy, while Avijeet Alagathi (28) is the ‘calculated’ risk taker. Their camaraderie dates back to 2011 when these management graduates (from MDI Gurgaon and IIM Kozikode) joined Goldman Sachs. Come 2014 and life took a slight turn for Devi when he joined his batchmates high street fashion startup Candidly Couture (CC) as operations head.

He stayed in touch with Avijeet (fondly called Avi), as he invested in Candidly Couture.

By 2015, the entrepreneurial bug was gnawing at Devi to startup. His idea came from the most unconventional place – a gym. Devi’s then flatmate wanted to join Bangalore’s Gold’s Gym for three months and was charged as much as Devi was paying for the whole year. To the entrepreneur’s surprise, the gym was almost empty and the prices didn’t make sense.

Devi dug deeper and realised that fitness centres were a mismanaged business lacking optimum utilisation. According to him, most gyms are usually fully utilised for four hours a day but are open for 17 hours. Moreover, only 15- 20 per cent of the customers renewed their membership with the fitness penetration in India being 0.4 per cent, which is the lowest in Asia.

Armed with this knowledge, Devi approached Avi with the idea to launch the Book Your Game (BYG) app on January 31, 2016.

Aiming to make it BYG

Currently available only on the Android Play Store, BYG allows consumers to book their fitness sessions at an adjusted price. Through the BYG app, one can buy gym memberships or choose fitness sessions in one’s locality, and pay per session with the ‘Workout Now’ option. The ‘Workout Now’ option proposes dynamic pricing from Rs 20-300 for a session. The company is also looking to launch their iOS version of the app this week.

Coupled with gyms, the app also allows consumers to book group sessions like Yoga, Zumba, Crossfit, Martial Arts,. and sporting activities like swimming, skating, and Kids Zone, which offers sports coaching and summer classes. As of now, 30 per cent of the consumers on the platform are subscribing to these group sessions.

BYG is also planning to introduce sports coaches and freelance personal trainers onto the platform over the next three months. This allows freelance fitness experts to go to different centers and train members.

Further, with plans to become consultants, the firm has also launched its CRM solution for gyms called Pulse. This will offer deep insights to the gym on the number of members at the gym, preferred workouts, repeat customers, etc.; Avi says such a solution is not currently available in this ecosystem. Moreover, the solution will also help gyms with member management, schedule management, lead generation, employee management in addition to deploying analytics on the ground.

This solution is strictly mobile since the co-founders felt that most gyms rarely use desktops. (50 fitness centres have already started paying for the solution while the rest will start paying by April).

Chasing the Metrics

Targeting audiences aged 10 – 65, the firm is operational in five cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Bhubaneshwar. When why they chose a Tier 2 city, the duo reply saying that in Tier 2 cities, people have more discretionary cash to spend on fitness but aren’t aware about the availability of these facilities. Also, Tier 2 towns have less resources and infrastructure.

This also aligns with their plan to provide information such as cost and demand to new fitness businesses that are planning to open in Tier 2 cities.

Having tied up with more than 780 fitness centres, the firm has clocked almost 3,030 transactions in the first 40 days of starting operations. Every day, the platform is adding 10 centres while closing almost 150 transactions across locations. With 99 per cent of their audiences going for fitness classes, 80 per cent of them have made two or more transactions. All this with zero funds invested in marketing.

The BYG app has 4,500 downloads with 1,700 users making active transactions.

In the next six months, the firm is aiming for 2,000 fitness centers on the platform followed by 10,000 freelance trainers, while catering to 2 lakh customers.

On the revenue front, BYG charges 20 per cent commission from the service provider on every transaction. As of now, the app is free and the platform doesn’t charge the customer anything. For their B2B CRM solution, the firm is charging trial fees of Rs 1,000. This will increase to Rs 3,000 once the fitness centres start full subscriptions to their solutions. 

Their turnover from gyms and customers combined has been slightly less than Rs 1 lakh in the first month of their launch, and they expect to reach Rs 25 lakh in cash revenue per month by August 2016. The firm is also raising an angel round of close to Rs 2 crore and is optimistic about closing a Series A before the end of this year.

Running into the future

In the coming five months, the firm is working to improve the Pulse platform, followed by introducing an events calendar listing all the fitness events happening in a city. On the consumer front, the firm is trying to solve the motivation problem. Devi tells us

“The success of fitness entities is completely based on consumer motivation.”

Therefore, in the coming months, the platform is trying to organise fitness socials while introducing capabilities to match a client’s performance with others through leaderboards, and helping them find fitness buddies.

The longer vision according to the co-founders is maintaining the user profile of each consumer, tracking his or her health level and performance through integration with wearables.

Is it any different? 

There are many adopters (raised $84 million in five rounds from 26 investors) of the US ClassPass model in India and the market is close to saturation. BYG competes with several of these like GymPik, which has a workout pass using which customers can workout in any of their partner fitness centers, or Playnlive, which is a discovery, classifieds, and transaction-based platform for booking fitness training from 9,000 facilities. There is also Gymer where users can pay on an hourly basis for sessions, with no upfront fees.

The larger of the two –GymPik – recently acquired FitnessPapa, which was providing the same services with its subscription card at Rs 999 month. Fitternity, which drove sales through classifieds and listings, is also in the fray.

All of them are trying to solve the same problem, but with a twist in their revenue models and commissions. Moreover, what can be a winner for BYG could be the presence of their mix of B2B and B2C offerings. This means that the firm facilitates fitness centres through the complete cycle right from acquiring a customer to managing his or her routine as well as maintaining the regular count (attendance) in the gym.

BYG’s B2B solution competes with India’s Connectpedia, which is an ERP management system for fitness centres.

What is surprising is that the boom of all these fitness startups began only in the last two years. Moreover, with so many of them crowding this space, it will be interesting to see how things will play out in the future in terms of acquisitions.

The highlight of the first-ever Bhasha festival that united entrepreneurs, experts and policy makers to stand up for our local languages was the showcase of 13 startups working to ensure that local languages thrive in the digital ecosystem.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture, along with language partner Reverie Language Technologies, the first-ever Indian Languages Digital Festival, Bhasha, organised by YourStory on March 11 in New Delhi opened opportunities for more such startups working in the language space.

The 13 startups include: BiliTutor, eReleGo, IndusOS, IndianTTS, Lipikar, Linguavista, Megdap Innovation Labs Pvt Ltd., Matrubharti, Planet GOGO, Pratilipi, Shabdanagri, Shradhanjali, and Tide Learning.

Here’s a brief about what they do:

BiliTutor: This startup combines the power of Kindle with Duolingo, that is, an e-book reader that gives the language learner an engaging and entertaining experience. The founder Amarsh Anand has had a successful pilot in China recently.

eRelego: eRelego Digi Media is a market place (e-commerce platform) for publishers, including those in local languages to sell the publications to online users across the globe. eReleGo publishes books, magazines, newspapers online for a new generation of readers who prefer digital over print publications.

Indus OS: This startup is addressing Digital India’s biggest challenge — to develop technology to cater to the diversity of the economic, social and regional diaspora. They use the smartphone as the medium to connect the digital world with the masses.  Indus OS’s technology team has developed the world’s first Regional Mobile Operating System made especially for the regional language user. It also recently signed a first-of-its-kind MoU with the Government of India’s Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) to develop a native operating system with integrated text-to-speech technology in regional languages. The company recently raised $ 5 million Series A funding led by Omidyar Network and is also funded by angel investors such as Snapdeal Co-founders Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl, Quikr Founder Pranay Chulet and InMobi Co-founders Naveen Tewari and Amit Gupta, Hari Padmanabhan and Mayank Singhal from Temasek.

Indian TTS: This is a text-to-speech system for local Indian languages with a strong significance on rhythm and prosody of speech that is closer to the natural enunciation. IndianTTS languages provides Indian accent voice. They build Hindi TTS API to use with IVR software for any kind of machines and any kind of mobiles. Earlier, IVR software was a pre-recorded voice which had an interrupted sound. Their solution provides normalization of the voice. Thus if IVR pronounces your name or order in a regional language or Hindi, it is more effective and improves customer’s engagement.

Lipikaar: Lipikaar is a patented solution that simplifies typing in all Indian Languages — currently supports 18 languages, including popular ones like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Telugu. The product suite comprises a multi-lingual editing software for Windows PC, keyboard app on Android phones, various browser plugins and a Web API. Lipikaar was awarded the 2008 Manthan Award South Asia for mass appeal and simplicity in product innovation. Its popularity comes from its easy and intuitive typing method. Lipikaar (unlike transliteration) does not require its users to be comfortable with English, allowing them to think and type in their native language.

Linguavista: Founder CEO Abhishek Chakrabarti started Linguavista with a simple vision of developing state-of-the-art language technology and combining it with outstanding language services to aggressively drive the businesses of global companies across the international markets. He started his journey with Linguavista at the age of 20 and has since led the company to having international presence in India, China, and Japan.

Megdap Innovation Labs Pvt Ltd.: Megdap was founded with the single goal of bridging the digital divide by creating an ecosystem for business that blends local relevance with a sustainable business model for all stakeholders. Megdap has created a technology platform, products and tools that enable real time delivery of content in multiple local languages. It provides a Language Technology Platform (TexLang) for consumption by third parties. This includes the ability to localize content for high churn areas like e-commerce, govt. media, travel and hospitality and education among others. TexLang will be a language technology platform that enables companies to localise their online/offline business, communications and every other customer interaction channels into local languages

Matrubharti: Matrubharti is a self-publishing platform for authors and an app for readers to download ebooks of authors in local Indian languages. In the last year, Matrubharti has achieved over 35000 readers, 900 writers, 3300 ebooks and over 3.6 lakhs of downloads of ebooks. Their milestone also includes reach in 22 Indian states, five languages and readers in 42 countries.

Pratilipi: Pratilipi is possibly the fastest growing self-publishing and reading platform for Indian language literature. In less than 18 months of its existence it already has over 2700 Indian language authors in six languages, including many who have won Sahitya Academy and Jnanpith awards, and their content has been read over 3.5 million times on the platform.

Planet GoGo: Gurgaon-based Planet GoGo is a lock-screen app for content discovery in local languages that delivers personalised content and news to Android users. Users are rewarded ‘GoGo points’ that can be used to redeem free talk-time from mobile operators, in exchange for reading content or even unlocking their phone.

Shabdanagari: Incubated in IIT Kanpur, Shabdanagari is India’s first social networking site in Hindi. They are addressing the content generation in local language piece of the puzzle.  The portal went live a little over a year ago and has been gaining traction faster than anticipated.

Shradhanjali: Sradhanjali.com helps people keep the memories of their departed ancestors and relatives. One can upload, store, publish and share biographies (multiple languages), family details, photos, videos, post condolence messages (multiple languages), set music and also set death and birth anniversary reminders year on year. The portal has more than 350 subscribers. It supports condolence messages in as many as nine Indian languages.

Tidelearning: Their mission is to develop tech-assisted learning tools, which will create new learning experiences in education for teachers and less privileged children across the globe. Technology Initiative for Development of Education (TIDE) intends to create a platform that while suitably providing a link is also dynamic in nature to address ‘wide-eyed’ students’ quest for knowledge and a committed teachers search for ‘answers’. At the same time it endeavours to keep the classroom in touch with its local culture, language and traditions. It intends to assist teachers in reinforcing their knowledge by making available suitable content, new concepts and facilitators in teaching while also tracking the progress of their learners. It is also developing an independent English as a Second Language app for the rural and less privileged audience.

Online insurance portal, Coverfox is expecting a ten-fold jump in its premiums to Rs 1,000 crore in next three years, a top official said. The company provides comparison of plans from insurance companies, recommendations from experts to buy insurance policies on its portal.

Varun Dua,Chief Executive Officer of Coverfox said,

In the next three years we plan to scale up our business and target to book Rs 1,000 crore worth of premiums from Rs 100 crore, we sell about 8,000 to 10,000 policies a month, and are seeing a steady growth of about 20 per cent month-on-month in sales.

The N R Narayana Murthy-backed start-up has about 70,000 policies till date and is growing at a steady clip of 20 per cent month-on-month in sales, he informed. Dua further said Coverfox which was launched three years ago is “well-funded” at the moment and would begin scouting for required capital in the next few months.

Related read: PolicyBazaar.com looks beyond insurance, to offer complete financial advisory through PaisaBazaar.com

“We are not actively looking for funding currently, but have initiated discussions with investors for required capital infusion in future, to execute our business plans, adding the company is “on course” to book Rs 200 crore worth of premiums in FY17” he said. At present, the company focuses on selling home, auto, health and travel insurance products, and is building its insurance product portfolio. It is looking at launching a ‘claim service’ targeting customer convenience, he added.

Co-founded by Varun Dua, a former employee of Franklin Templeton and Devendra Rane, an IIT-B alumnus, Coverfox raised USD 12 million in April, in a series B (second round) funding from growth investment arm of the US-based Accel Partners, besides existing backers SAIF Partners and Accel India. The round came six months after the Mumbai-based startup raised its initial funding round of around USD 2 million from SAIF Partners and Accel India.

In addition, Murthy’s private investment firm Catamaran Ventures also made an undisclosed investment in the company, Varun said.

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Switching tracks

When Misha and Amit Gudibanda first started up with their maiden venture in 2006, they were excited being at the helm of an idea whose time had come. “Sky Design was set up in 2006 on the belief that the potent combination of design and technology was a service that would have great value in the coming years,” they said in an interview. And in the decade since, Sky Design has done some ground-breaking work in films and the corporate sector.

But when they no longer had something to prove the duo realised that this was not work their heart was in. Misha says, “While Sky Design was doing well and growing dramatically, in our hearts we yearned to do something that created real value for people and was fun for us, too. In 2013, we took a much-needed break and thought about what kind of products we wanted to make.” The idea that appealed the most was to create an antidote of sorts to the plethora of impersonal mass-market products that drown the market in these times of e-commerce reign.

Misha says, “We zeroed in on ‘DIYs’ (do-it-yourself kits) and handmade ‘giftables’, as they have a high emotional attachment compared to mass-manufactured, readymade products. They evoke feelings of joy, love and most importantly, association. We played with our two biggest loves: paper and hand-painted art, and created some DIYs which we listed on our Etsy shop.”

The plan was to gauge the market reaction and take it slow and steady. Competing with paper crafts when you’re up against any number of shiny, pretty more durable objects is a venture as risky as any. But the reception was positive from the start. Misha says,

We were thrilled to have our work featured on the Etsy Blog, Disney’s Babble, Buzzfeed and This is Colossal, among many others. We got reviews and messages from customers all over the world, loving our work and asking for more. Hospice patients were making our DIYs for visiting relatives; autistic and disabled children were able to improve their motor skills with our toys; and many family memories were created with parents and children enjoying the DIYs together!

Sky Goodies

“So, we started building Sky Goodies as a cohesive brand. We put our savings into manufacturing physical DIY kits which were pre-cut and pre-creased. The idea was to make them so easy to put together, without using scissors or knives, that anybody could experience the joy of making. The vision for Sky Goodies is to create a world of lovely affordable giftables with high visual and emotional appeal, and which make people happy,” says Misha.

Misha and Amit were classmates in National Institute of Design. They belong to different schools of design-he is a product and she a graphic designer. But apart from sharing a keen love for quirky aesthetics they are passionate about their work. They started out as friends and moved on to becoming co-workers, life partners, parents and of course-co-founders. Sky Goodies is the culmination of their shared journey.

Sky Goodies sell original design paper products and crafts. We design paper craft kits that can be folded into different forms, to make useful objects and gifts; thus making the ‘making’ a part of the product experience. Our products are covered with intricate hand-drawn illustrations. We want art to be accessible and part of everyday objects.

Our art is inspired from Indian street art and truck art forms, and many products come from our love for vintage. We give pre-cut and pre-creased kits so that ‘making’ is not an activity just for paper cutters and craft lovers, but for everyone and every age. We also have other product ranges like notebooks, gift boxes, planners and labels, but all with the common goal of making the owner happy; to bring a smile to their faces every day while being used,” explains Misha.

Sky is the limit

Sky Goodies is based in Mumbai and the word sky has special memories for the founders. “We starting our careers traveling in Mumbai locals, jam-packed with people. It was all bearable as long as we could catch a glimpse of the sky through a window. ‘Sky’, to us, represented freedom and space, without limits,” says Misha. While Goodies can be taken to mean the goodies on sale, it also refers to what friends refer to the two as, instead of their comically long surname of Gudibanda.

Sky Goodies has experienced an impressive growth curve in the two years that it’s been in existence, especially since DIY crafts was a virtually untapped market in India before it emerged on the scene. Misha says, “Without risk, there can be no gain. Yes, we were aware of the risks, but we also had a clear vision, and saw that what we had in mind, did not exist at all in the Indian market, and in a limited way in the international market. While our products were appreciated abroad since day one, initially it was difficult to carve a space for DIY gifts in India.”

What eased it along, Misha feels, is the hyper digitized era in which we live. “The very fact that the digital world is taking over our lives, calls for something more hands-on and physical; so that people can take a break from their over-digitized lives; so that children who are used to instant gratification, ‘undo’s and ‘restart’, can learn to deal with failure; so that people can build connections with each other through effort and hand-made gifts.”

The firm recently opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Mumbai which, given the city’s cut-throat real estate offerings, is a testament to its upward growth route. Misha says, “The revenues from one vertical are fuelling the building of other verticals and so on. Revenues are growing as we explore new channels of selling, and also expand our product range. It is a natural growth curve and we will continue on this path for some time, till we have established all the verticals as planned.”

The couple have received several investment offers but are choosing not to go down that road as of now. Misha explains,

While it is tempting, we will take investment from people who understand our product and philosophy, at a time when we know the company and brand ‘Sky Goodies’ have been established the way we want them to be.

Sky Goodies was bootstrapped to begin with. “As sales picked up, it reached a sustainable level by the second year. Although, we are now injecting more funds into it, into another completely different vertical in the business. We have been working on building this from scratch over the past year, and aim to take it to market by mid-2016,” she says.

Braving the worst

When it comes to naming the worst thing about starting up, Misha has a ready list of pointers: “The hardest part of being an entrepreneur in India has got to be the tax system and the compliances expected of a startup. Always the biggest pain has been dealing with the paperwork. A small example: if we wish to participate in a 3-day exhibition and sell our products outside Maharashtra, one has to apply for a temporary VAT number in that state. It is a time-consuming, painful and expensive process, which discourages young companies from spreading their wings freely. While regulations are necessary, imposing them in initial years is detrimental to growth.

We were very happy to read about Mr Modi’s proposed Startup plan. We really hope it comes into practice soon.”

By comparison the best, according to the Gudibandas, has been worth every effort. Misha says, “The freedom to create value. The knowledge and feeling that our work creates joy, is truly invaluable. And the ability to achieve a high standard of quality, instead of confirming to prevalent standards and compromising on our vision.”

Advice

Misha says the best advice she ever received was from her AC provider who discouraged her from buying a bigger house, saying that from one office they would be able to make many offices. But from a home, they would not make many homes. “So we live a simple life, drive a small car and invest in our business,” she says.

In turn she is happy to pay it forward and offer some advice from her own journey. She suggests,

Build a good product/service that actually helps enrich people’s lives. Build good partnerships, with absolute clarity right from the start. Being an entrepreneur can be stressful. Take care of your own mental health. Have a hobby. And keep at it, till you succeed.

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More than any other symbol, our generation has come to fear the dark powers of the asterisk sign on offers. Nothing ever pans out as it appears – and certainly, nothing comes free. As a kid, I learnt that Kaun Banega Crorepati is in fact, Kaun Banega 70 lakh pati. As an adult, I realised that availing any offer probably requires you to go cowabunga off a cliff yelling the brand’s name loud enough for the entire population of the valley to hear. And once the e-coupon age set in, absurd offers like “spend an obscene amount to buy this deal to maybe win a free meal,” would fill my screen. All this drove us to go sniffing for the dead rat in practically every deal we encountered. It also prompted three 25-year-olds to build a brand to kill this dead rat.

Millennials helping millennials

Started by three childhood school friends Rohit Lala, Ankit Moorjani and Adit Dave, who have been friends for more than 15 years, Grabstr is India’s first credible giveaway platform where users win free stuff – no strings attached. The trio hadalways wanted to build a brand that today’s youth could relate to and would associate with on a regular basis.

CFA and IT Engineer, Rohit was working with Deloitte, where his electric engineer friend Ankit also worked for a while, in addition to completing a stint at J.P. Morgan. Adit on the other hand, came from a pure finance background with previous experience at PwC and Total Sports Asia. Their childhood chemistry, friendship, and shared ambition not only reassured them while taking the plunge together, but has been the key reason for their successful partnership so far.

As every e-comm portal resorts to deals-and discounts-based marketing activities, brands are always scouting for new and innovative ways to cut through the clutter and stand out. Grabstr engineered the perfect hack. “Distributing free stuff isn’t an acquisition strategy for us, it is our business model. Many companies run gimmicks to lure customers but Grabstr is the only app that has derived a business model out of distributing free stuff and, in turn, benefit the user directly. We saw a lot of apps doing cash back andcoupons, but there wasn’t a single app, whose model was to give away free stuff. That’s how the idea struck,” says Rohit, Founder and CEO at Grabstr.

It is all about ‘Giveaway’ and take

Their business model is running simple lucky draws or “giveaways” on their app every week, for winning free products or services from their partner brands. The way to sign up for each lucky draw is by watching a short 15-second video of the brand in question. These giveaways range from fashion merchandise to restaurant vouchers, from electronics to entertainment passes, from spa and salon sessions to mobile recharges. “Our model allows a brand the flexibility to advertise itself, and its products and services, the way they want,to increase its social footprint, brand awareness and visibility, and ultimately reach out to new potential customers. We believe we have struck the right chord between consumers and brands. It’s a win-win situation,” says Rohit.

Every Monday at 12 am, a new set of giveaways starts. One can apply to one out of three lucky draws at any time in the week, and winners are declared every Sunday evening on the app itself. You can change your mind throughout the week, but the choice that’s registered on Sunday evening determines your final entry.

The platform scales the quantity of the giveaway with the value of the product. Users can select Tier I prizes valued between Rs 10-100 –recharges, 3D printed glasses–that they have 50-80per centchance of winning, by virtue of how many are up for grabs. The second tier includes more attractive prizes valued between Rs 200- 500 –beers, meals, movie tickets, passes to entertainment venues,– and users have a 10-30 per cent chance of winning. Users who feel especially lucky can go for the third tier grand prizes –fashion accessories, headphones, spa vouchers–valued between Rs. 500-5,000, but they only have a 1-10 per cent chance of winning those.

The app also lets them double their chances by sharing the selected giveaway on Facebook. Lightning may never strike the same place twice, but you can win a Grabstr any number of times, as long as you keep applying.

Who’s feelin’ lucky?

Grabstr’s revenue model is to charge brands for running the weekly giveaway campaign.“Our largely millennial audience gladly watches short ads for the chance to claim free gifts.We sell views not impressions. Thus, the primary revenue is through advertisement.Currently present in Mumbai, they have roped in more than 75 brands from verticals like F&B, e-commerce, salons &spas and entertainmentvenues, all of which cater to their millennial audience.

“In the next few months, we will add daily and monthly video campaigns for brands, and increase the giveaways with more products in the form of daily and monthly draws,” says Rohit.

With 21,000 app downloads in five months and a 20 per cent growth rate every week, Grabstr has distributed prizes worth Rs. 6,00,000 to over 6,000 users.

“Since we have built a credible platform for freebies by gaining the trust of users, it has resulted in strong word of mouth, which helps us keep our acquisition costs very low. Users come back and apply for giveaways week after week. Thus, the stickiness remains and cost of user retention is negligible,” explains Rohit.

Reward apps are really picking up in India, but Grabstr is the first of its kind giveaway application here. An app called Claim it is their counterpart in USA.

Currently bootstrapped, the trio is now looking to raise a round of funding. Scaling up entails making the user experience even better by distributing even more free stuff over the week. Grabstr is also looking to share its love beyond Mumbai, soon.

Their website

Starting and running a company in India is not easy. A 2015 World Bank report ranked India 130th out of 189 countries in terms of ease of doing business. With the government’s ‘Startup India’ initiative, 2016 looks to be better, but the country still has a long way to go to be regarded a conducive environment for startups.

Despite knowing the difficulties involved, Kshitij Marwah decided to launch his hardware startup – Tesseract – in India, although he could have easily chosen the more conducive US as his base. Here is the story of how Kshitij and his team built a 360 degree camera in India from scratch.

Story so far

Kshitij Marwah(28) started his journey at IIT-Delhi and was exposed to the world of technology and innovation through short stints and internships he experienced at Harvard Medical School and Stanford. After graduating from college, he decided not to follow a traditional career path and spent six months backpacking across Europe engaging in photography. After he returned to India, based on his friend’s advice, he applied to MIT Media Labs and got through.

After a wonderful experience at MIT, he returned to Mumbai as the Head of MIT Media Lab India Initiative, and launched its first design workshop. Holding workshops across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, he was able to bring designers, technologists and product folks together. He then started working on light field camera (LFC) technology to build a 360 degree camera.

Related read from 2014: Kshitij Marwah: From third last in his IIT- Delhi class to head of MIT Media Lab India Initiative

Over the course of six months, Kshitij and his team at Tesseract went about developing a 360 degree camera. The aim was to build a camera that could create photos, walkthroughs in 360/3D/virtual reality, giving viewers an immersive experience of a house, street, hotel, restaurant or locality.

From concept to prototype

Starting from Bengaluru, the team explored multiple design ideas from a six camera structure on a spherical surface, to five cameras in different planes and then finally had a working model with a four-camera design. A major downside though was that the setup required three people to operate.

They also realised that the four-camera setup was causing parallax errors as the cameras were spaced apart. They tried multiple software solutions but couldn’t fix it. On the hardware side, they found calibrating four different cameras challenging.

They tried three cameras and then two cameras, but both failed. After in-depth research, they found that the one-camera design worked best when rotated on a particular axis. They named the device – Methane. The next challenge was figuring out the most suitable battery configuration to run the camera. After a month of testing different batteries and charging circuits they were finally able to crack it.

Kshitij and the team were able to find printed circuit board (PCB) fabricators in Mumbai who would manufacture the board for them with a turnaround time of less than three days. The team decided to go with an Anodized Aluminium finish, with black and red matte finished rings. For the milling process, the team realised that an industrial park just behind their Mumbai office could do it for them.

In the company’s blog post Kshitij adds,

If it took you x time to make a working prototype, it will take you at least 10x time to get into a product, 5x if you don’t have weekends off and work 20 hours a day.

The last leg

With hardware and software engineers, graphic designers and product architects working in tandem, Kshitij believed that it was really possible to make Methane in India. The team got the camera lenses manufactured and got a dual-core 1 GHz processor with 1 GB RAM to run the device combined with their custom hardware for battery management, battery monitoring, motor drivers and status indicators. They also developed a mobile app to serve as the remote control for Methane.

Packaging the product was next on their agenda. Kshitij had read stories about how Apple spends a lot of time, effort and money in product packaging and decided that they should look at all options to source the best possible packaging.

They found their answer in Dharavi, Mumbai, Asia’s largest sum. Kshitij was surprised but realised that Dharavi had a thriving industry for leather, hardboard packaging, injection molding and even consumer goods. Kshitij added,

So they got our product boxes developed at Dharavi at a relatively low cost with a leather finish and gold emboss of Tesseract logo and ‘Made in India’ etched on it.

The team then moved on to the quality and control stage and found that they had one last hurdle to overcome – the Wi Fi hotspot on the camera was transmitting signals at reduced strengths. After some digging, they realised that they were facing the same issue that the iPhone faced in 2011 – the aluminium body was absorbing the WiFi signals. So like Apple, they corrected it by making the entire body the antenna.

After many months, multiple iterations, jugaad and co-ordination among multiple teams the product was ready to be shipped. At a recent TEDx Hyderabad talk, Kshitij reflected,

The most beautiful part about the whole journey is that we cracked the manufacturing scene out of India. The product end to end from hardware, to software to product design and manufacturing is done from different cities and towns out of India.

Future plans

With a current team of 10, Tesseract is currently shipping Methane to customers within India and also countries like Brazil, USA, China, UK, Denmark and Japan. While most of their customers are from the travel and hospitality, real estate, and mapping space, they are also seeing interests from hobbyists and individual professionals.

The current lead time required to fulfill orders is three weeks. Methane is available in two variants, with the basic version priced at Rs 1.5 lakhs and more advanced pro version equipped with 3D sensors priced at Rs 2 lakhs.

Tesseract is currently bootstrapped and is not looking to raise external funding. Kshitij mentioned that angels and institutional investors have expressed investing in them, but the startups current focus is on improving their current product and R&D on their upcoming product – ViCAM, a 360 degree virtual video camera. Kshitij said,

Our current focus is on strengthening our ties with businesses. And in the future when we go after the B2C segment, we may take the crowdfunding approach to help us streamline orders and raise money.

Based on the learning’s from their first product, Tesseract’s new product ViCAM will be smaller and sleeker and have more internal storage capabilities. Based on their market research and talking to potential customers, they see a lot of demand for such a product in movie making and video shoots.

There is immense global interest in the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology and in 360 degree camera technology. Facebook believes that 360 degree videos will be the centre of the company’s social network and is currently pushing heavily on videos. Samsung recently revealed their Gear 360 Camera, which is equipped with two lenses. Then there are players like Panoporter, 360fly and 360Heros (paired with GoPro cameras) in the same sector. So there is enough market validation for Tesseract to go after in this segment.

Having witnessed the startup environment in India and in USA, Kshitij firmly believes that there is no real reason to look abroad. He said,

There is enough talent and passion in India. Though it may harder in some aspects, we don’t have to move to the west to build successful hardware startups from scratch. It can be done in India.

Website: Tesseract

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is becoming an increasingly acceptable concept in the startup space. Here are my views on the benefits of BYOD and a bit on how to handle it in your startup.

Reducing depreciating fixed assets in your startup!

The most pressing issue in any startup is the fund. The concept of BYOD has gained a lot of traction. It decreases cost and increases productivity.

Laptops and mobile devices are fixed assets and they depreciate over time. With BYOD, you’ll have a stronger balance sheet with one less depreciation expense to hog up your profit and loss (P&L).

Feeling a little relieved? Yeah, I too was.

I had no idea about P&L, balance sheet, depreciation and fixed assets until recently. Nevertheless, it would always be better to have an idea about what they are.

Build an awesome customer support culture

If you can call/email an inbound lead within 60 to 120 seconds, you will have a better chance of converting them as a customer. In a startup scene it is fortunate, right? I believe that once you have a great product and a support culture, the rest will follow. BYOD and mobility allows you to respond to customer queries in no time.

Result, you will ultimately win the heart of the customer and gain more customers.

Work from anywhere

BYOD allows you to work from anywhere – your home, or on your commute, or while on your vacation.

Improve productivity – Reducing the learning curve and time to settle down:

It is not that easy to switch machines, you might have different keyboard layouts, different operating systems, and you might not have files you were working on. If you face this frustration every single day, will you be happy?.

I will be more comfortable if I can complete personal and official things from the same system or phone. I guess it is the same for everyone. With BYOD, employees do not have to switch between their personal and company devices. They gain more flexibility and will have better work-life continuity.

The result, they are happy and productive. As founders, we are happy too.

You can concentrate on your work rather on IT tickets

Employees will be more careful while using their own devices. They will also fix any issues related to it themselves. Thus, this will help reduce the stress level and request/tickets related to user devices.

Security risk and team culture:

Deploy countermeasures to promptly identify and mitigate security risks. Educate your team about the security aspects and trust them, they are part of your startup family. From an employee perspective, it is an immense pleasure to feel you are an integral part of the team and that you have earned their trust. Every single team member should have this feeling, it will improve the entire culture and atmosphere.

The result, highly motivated and productive employees, which reflects on the overall growth of your organisation.

Note: when you hire, give utmost priority for the culture and attitude. Hire him/her only if you get that family feel.

Using EMM/MDM tools to manage BYOD:

Deploying a tool requires your time and money. Thus, spend your time and money wisely. There are free tools too, but sometime it might be costlier in terms of time and effort. There is no free lunch, it would be better to think about the total cost of ownership when you choose any tool.

Think about an EMM/MDM tool when you are at that stage, where you can’t survive without one. Spend your time wisely and choose the one which is affordable and saves your time (time is precious) and effort in managing the devices.

Best of Luck, go and make your dream come true.

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

A tale of two startups

Jassu Sekhon and her husband Amit Sinha returned to India in 2011 after many years in the US, to be a part of the fast-changing Indian city life. They settled down in Amit’s hometown Kolkata and started up a design studio called Salt Architects. While setting up their home, the only furniture that appealed to the cosmopolitan couple were the clean simple lines of the colonial era. But most of the city’s antique dealers displayed the heavy wood ornamental furniture that were all wrong for apartment living. “On the rare occasions that we did find them, we were completely enamoured by their character, craftsmanship and the restraint shown in their construction,” Jassu says. But these finds were few and far between.

“After buying our first few pieces, we could no longer find more. So we spent the next few months traveling the countryside, building a network of middlemen who could help us procure more pieces. We didn’t realize it then but it was the beginning of an addiction that turned us into die hard collectors.

We filled up the house with barely any room left to move, then our office and finally rented a go down where we could start storing these pieces. It was difficult to stop and we were quickly running out of space and funds, but we needed to feed our addiction and Calcutta Restoration Company was the only way out,” says Jassu.

The couple now found themselves helming two startups: one dealing with the past and the other the future. While Amit and Jassu’s design studio is all about industrial design and modern silhouettes, their work with Calcutta Restoration Company takes them down the bylanes of history and romanticism.

Calcutta Restoration Company               

Though they’d been collecting period furniture since 2011, Calcutta Restoration Company was officially launched in 2014. Jassu confesses that it was started quite reluctantly: “Like any collector hesitating to part with their finds, we started Calcutta Restoration Company quite reluctantly. But then it taught us the joy of sharing with others who were also looking for the same thing. Most people buy a piece from us because it rekindles a distant memory. Being able to facilitate that connection is very satisfying.”

On the name of the startup, Jassu explains, “This venture is clearly borne out of this city, its craftsmen and the families who have used and cherished these pieces for generations. No other place in India could have inspired and influenced the work we do in the same manner. Also, most of the pieces we procure are in a state of disrepair and need to be brought back to their original state. The process of restoration is therefore integral to the work we do.”

Design dilemma

Talk of vintage Bengal furniture usually evokes specific kind of images in our minds. Think Devdas, Lootera, Parineeta and/or any number of Tagore’s big-screen adaptations. Heavily carved teak four-poster beds, giant gilded cheval mirrors, ornate tables with heavy claws etc. These pieces were the norm of the Zamindari age when their purpose was to display wealth and grandeur.

But the confluence of the Bengal Renaissance and European aesthetics pushed for a more sophisticated expression of taste and style, where subtlety and restraint reigned supreme and enabled the production of a wholly different kind of furniture. Retaining the exquisite craftsmanship that is the defining statement of that era, but becoming more streamlined and minimalistic, these pieces of furniture are reminiscent of the time in history when aesthetics began to give in to functionality.

Jassu and Amit are no antique dealers. They are designers at heart and through the Calcutta Restoration Company they salvage a rapidly disappearing art. Jassu says,

We work in close association with a network of dealers and collectors. Each piece needs to make the cut before it makes it to the website. This selection is based purely on the design of the piece, its simplicity and its suitability in today’s context. The authentication is done by studying the construction of the piece, its style, joinery, quality of wood used, polish etc.

She continues, “Every piece brings with it its own story embedded in its construction and style; a stamp if we are lucky. Its imperfections and erosions; hidden photos, newspaper clippings tell us about its past. A relationship is built with each piece, starting from the hunt all the way up to the end of the restoration process when the story is completely and finally revealed. This process of discovery is unique to every piece.”

Challenges and growth

Calcutta Restoration Company has surpassed the couple’s expectations with the positive reception they have received from collectors and enthusiasts all over the country and internationally. “The response has been overwhelming, from young professionals setting up their first home, to retirees looking to furnish their second homes,” says Jassu.

Since they don’t have mass market pieces, the challenges the startup faces in catering to this reception have been the predictable few. “Being a purely online store, Calcutta Restoration Company faces the usual logistical challenges of any new venture,” she explains.

The venture is self-funded and the couple are not ambitious about its scaling plans. Echoing their love for the design and historical aspects of their work, Jassu says, “We do not harbour the same business goals as other entities that do. We cater to the discerning buyer who sees it as buying an asset.

To this buyer, the end product is as important as the history and the process that has gone into restoring or making a piece. We would like to continue introducing new pieces and widen our reach. We have been shipping both domestic and internationally. No particular growth targets though.” They have turned down funding offers from angel investors, preferring to go solo to maintain the core integrity of the venture.

Advice

It’s impossible to conclude this article without reflecting on the ironies of Amit and Jassu’s startup journey where the duo are simultaneously cradling extremes. Their first startup is a rigorously planned culmination of their professional training while the second one is a serendipitous creation from an accidentally discovered hobby. The first deals with the vagaries of modern living while the latter delves deep into the poetry of the past. Amidst switching her work from the past and the future Jassu offers wisdom that time cannot wither:

Your idea is only as successful as your perseverance.

Website

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

“A lot of food tech businesses are founded by ‘tech people’ as opposed to ‘food people’,” observes Gaurav Jain, founder of Mast Kalandar. He adds, “But they realise soon enough that this is a different ball game from tech.” He believes tech is an enabler in the food tech business, not the core of the business and says, “If the focus is not on food, the business is not going to succeed.”

Gaurav is well placed to comment on this distinction given that Mast Kalandar was among the most successful chains in the food business for several years before successfully transitioning to the food tech business in the form of MK Dabbawala. It was an early instance of two people giving up lucrative corporate careers to venture out on their own. The year was 2006 and the word ‘startup’ wasn’t in the ordinary Indian’s lexicon.

Gaurav and his wife, Pallavi, set up shop in a 3,000 sqft space in Bengaluru and, over the years, developed the Mast Kalandar brand to become synonymous with light, delicious, home-style food. Their unique selling proposition remains authentic home-style North Indian food, a mix of cuisines from Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Delhi. Today, they have over 600 employees and 45 outlets in four cities – Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Going .com

Their first website, mastakalandar.com was set up in 2008, a simple corporate website in the pre-app and pre-smartphone era, with the ‘store locator’ function being its primary focus. Over the years, the site has evolved, adding functionalities and finally metamorphosing into MKDabbawala.com in 2014. Customers logging on to the website now have the option of ordering from a daily menu or from the full menu.

The name MK Dabbawala was chosen because the daily-changing menu is very much like the dabbas people take from home to their offices. The team chose a .com domain name since it remains such a familiar and popular top level domain. “We never even thought of anything but .com,” says Gaurav.

Then and now

Food tech startups have been the rage in the past 18 months and Gaurav realised that the segment addressed pain points that exist in the traditional restaurant model. While ordering food over the phone, typical issues a consumer faces include inconvenience in getting through to the restaurant or error in capturing the correct delivery address by the person taking the order. Repeating one’s address and other details during each and every order is annoying. Ordering through an app or a website, where the basic information of a consumer can be saved, takes away these pain points and makes the entire system easier and hassle-free.

Gaurav says, “The daily changing menu, called ‘Aaj ka Dabba,’ is both efficient and exciting. It is efficient because of the smaller number of dishes offered, which allows for a higher number of orders that can be managed in lesser delivery time. It is exciting because the menu changes every day, which is not possible for a traditional restaurant.”

Aaj ka Dabba

While restaurant profitability is governed by space availability (a restaurant that seats 50 at a time, can barely handle more than 200 customers during peak hours), the online delivery format brings with it the flexibility to handle many more orders. The MK Dabbawala app is available on Android and iOS and while app downloads have surpassed expectations, the website remains a significant generator of traffic and orders. The full menu is accessible via the website and at the restaurants. Both platforms together have driven huge revenue growth month on month.

According to the founders, existing retail outlet kitchens of MK Dabbawala have doubled the orders due to traffic on their app and website. Dedicated kitchens have also been set up to handle the additional demand.

Gaurav clarifies, “I have never believed in going the app-only route. Customers who are more comfortable with the website should not be forced to use the app. We plan to continue with both options.”

MK Dabbawala continues to grow with its .com. What about you? Go Big, Go .com!

Register your .com at www.gobigwith.com

The exhilaration of perfectly capturing carefully-arranged frames plummets as soon as you return home, laden with three memory cards full of raw footage that demand a sleepless night and some heavy-duty sieving to be converted into a coherent video. Now, there is a way for you to find your own bunch of do-gooder elves, or shall we say, Mystery Monks, to swoop in overnight to knit all your chaotic visual raw material together. Aditya Vikram built the platform that would facilitate that in 2014, at the age of 18.

Never have I ever

The fiery entrepreneur is no ordinary 20-year-old. Perched at the helm of a seasoned portal that has kept the cash registers chiming for over a year-and-a-half now, Aditya is a self-learned app developer who never even went to college.

“Right after completing school, I decided to drop a year and study what I wanted to learn. I found that Stanford is offering open courses where they provide lectures, assignments and other study material online on iTunes U. I took these courses and started freelancing in app development. I was making good money and convinced my parents I could do a lot more without going to college,” he quips.

This also implied that he would probably never be eligible for a job, which he was more than alright with. “I never wanted to get a job because I knew that would restrict my abilities,”Aditya adds.

The monks who build your video

When he wasn’t getting enough app development assignments, he decided to foray into editing videos using iMovie. “I started thinking of problems I was facing. As a professional, customer discovery is difficult.  People want to get videos made, but it is a pain. They face multiple problems. The need to find multiple freelancers, like scriptwriters, voice artistes, graphic designers etc., who will entangle them in a web of technical language and delayed deadlines. Plus, the whole affair costs a bomb,” Aditya points out.

He wanted to give customers a one-stop solution. His friend Kartik Puri came on board and in February 2014, they started working together, and launched the first version of Mystery Monks in June 2014.

Mystery Monks is a platform for creative professionals to collaborate with each other and work on a video for a customer. “We provide tools and technology to make collaborations easier than ever. Our process is tailor-made for a layman. Our intelligent system will automatically assign a team of professionals – like video editors, animators, creative writers, voice artist, graphic designers, etc.– to your order who’ll collaborate and work on your video,” Aditya explains.

Decoding the mystery

The parties involved on this aggregator platform are sellers, who are professionals looking to offer their services in collaboration with other professionals, and customers, who are businesses looking to create marketing or advertising videos, or individuals looking for non-commercial videos, like video gifts, YouTube video editing etc.

The professionals must sign up at Mystery Monks and qualify a series of tests that evaluate their talent and qualification, after which they simply need to make their status available on their dashboard, and start accepting orders. Once the client places their order, a chat window, is generated where they can swap the brief and specifications, and exchange footage. Mystery Monks collects a 30-percent cut on each order.

Currently, the startup is using third-party tools integrated with each other to make this possible, but a new version of the platform which is fully automated will be ready in about three months.

Editing to make the perfect team

They received pre-seed funding in February 2015. Their angel investor has worked with them as a mentor since the beginning. Together, the three scaled the platform to 39 professionals, and reached their first 50^th-transaction mark in October 2014.

The startup has a seven-member team of designers, coders and marketing professionalsand Gaurav Arya as its CTO. It is clocking between $3,000and $5,000 monthly.

Mystery Monks is only available in a few countries, but it is working on expanding its reach. Other platforms in the space are US-based Videobrewery and Fiverr, the latter having a much wider gamut of services. But Aditya feels that the former doesn’t facilitate collaboration among their artists, and doesn’t vet them as thoroughly as Mystery Monks, while the latter is more expensive.

His greatest learning is that you must build for users. “If they don’t like it, there’s no point in building it.  Keep taking feedback from users. Build a product so good that people start talking about it enough for you to never have to spend much on marketing,” he adds.

Website: Mysterymonks.com

It was in 2010 when Sahil Chopra and Jacob M Goerge conceptualised the idea of iCubes. Sahil was then working with Hong Kong Tourism Board in the digital marketing division. But India was not a preferred destination for digital marketing business during that period as the entire Internet business was at its nascent stage.

“Hardly anyone understood digital marketing and when we spoke about email marketing we always got a blank stare. We had already seen a vision of the future and understood the potential so the substantial gap and therefore the need that existed was also fairly clear to us,” says Sahil.

iCubes is a digital marketing solutions provider that helps brands acquire and retain customers through web, mobile, email, videos, rich media and so on. It is a performance-based online marketing expert that helps companies optimise their sales and provides personalised and behavioural re-targeting with split testing and real-time analysis.

It offers fully outsourced email marketing services, including campaign consulting, concept, design and implementation, as well as self-service solution, enabling clients to self-manage their email broadcast campaigns.

The operation is broadly divided into two parts: iCubes – Email Marketing (customer retention) and iCubeswire – Affilaite Ad: Network (customer acquisition). They launched ‘Email Vidya’ in 2011 to train the industry on email marketing.  And in 2012, they set up their own affiliate ad network to cater to a huge demand of digital inventory, from web, mobiles, video and rich media.

“Technology is the backbone for both iCubes and iCubeswire. We work on SaaS platforms and there is huge quantum of big data that helps us predict and re-target the customers with the right kind of offers and propositions,” says Sahil, 32, who met Jacob (40), during a stint in Hong Kong. Jacob was the marketing manager of HCITEK Software Pvt. Ltd, with which Hong Kong Tourism Board has tied up with for major promotions. Sahil says their interactions over the years helped them better understand some critical missing links in the digital marketing space, which led them to launch iCubes.

Clients’ acquisition

Given that digital marketing was a new concept, convincing brands of iCubes’ value-add was a huge challenge. In 2010, both Myntra and Snapdeal were taking baby steps to set up their operations and team. Sahil and Jacob knew Ashutosh Lawani (Myntra) and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal) very well and therefore managed to explain to them the concept of iCubes.

Sahil recalls,

They were convinced that this will definitely add lot of value to their marketing initiatives and agreed to sign up iCubes for their email and marketing and lead generation partner.”

Currently, iCubes works with 5,000 customers globally , including Taj Hotels, Lalit Hotels, Radisson Blue, Titan Watches, American Swan, MTS, Uninor, IndiaMart, FabIndia, Snapdeal, FREECULTR, Myntra, Shopclues, Foodpanda, Koovs and more.

“India is the largest revenue-generating market for us and we plan to keep on investing our efforts in the India marketing for at least the next two years, before we look at the global markets,” states Sahil.

Business operation

With a headcount of 100 employees, iCubes has offices in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Cochin. So far, the startup has done more than 35 email workshops including a major email marketing summit in Dubai. Its email education portal, emailvidya.com, comprises educational series, workshops and certifications in email marketing, accredited by Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Sahil says,

Co-branding and participation fees are the revenue sources for the workshops. The lucrative part of EmailVidya is that majority of these events turn out to be deeply engaging sessions where the industry speaks about their experiences as well their expectations on email as a marketing tool.

The startup charges $500 to $20,000 per month and its revenue has grown at a rate of 40 to 60 percent year-on-year.

In a bid to meet market expectation, iCubes will launch iCubesPro, a cross-channel marketing communications management platform with powerful remarketing capabilities. Remarketing is one of the key tools of digital marketing that enables marketers to publish targeted ads for the defined audience who search for particular products, services or visit a website for a particular purpose.

Impact of digital marketing

Digital marketing is usually defined by the usage of multiple digital channels to promote or market products and services to both consumers and businesses. With the influence of digital marketing in India, customer retention saw an 80 percent increase since 2011. The impact of integrated campaigns increased by 84 percent, from 31 percent in 2011 to 57 per cent in 2015, revealed Octane Research. For 72 percent India marketers, ‘websites’ was the primary e-marketing activity in 2014.

A number of retail marketers think that behavioural targeting has brought significant changes to their campaigns. Thirty-three percent of Indian marketers think that over 50 percent of emails are viewed on mobile devices, witnessing a YoY growth of 25 percent.

Going forward, iCubes will emphasise more on going mobile and working towards making effective mobile strategies, and invest significantly on technology especially on big data.  In the upcoming fiscal year, the startup aims to target $10 million.

“We have been bootstrapped for the last six years and have a consistent growth trajectory for all these years. While so far we never thought of infusing any external capital, our financial roadmap could be re-visited in the coming years as we are looking for multi-fold investments into technology,” says Sahil.

iCubes

With the high volume of content generated each day across the Internet, it sometimes becomes difficult to discover or find relevant and accurate information. Research has shown that personal recommendations from a trusted circle is the numero uno driver of long-term engagement and transactions.

So in a world that is going digital and relying heavily on the ‘app economy’, Reach, a peer-to-peer (P2P) discovery and sharing platform is looking to leverage this trend. The app, which recently raised  $500,000 in funding led by Japanese VC firm Rebright Partners, is looking to create a social graph through sharing of content validated by peers. With over 50,000 users so far, Reach claims it has over 16 million files and more than 2 million file events on its network.

Story so far

Reach was founded by brothers Akshay Pruthi, Abhay Pruthi, and their friends Ashish Kumar and Ayush Verma in 2015 in Gurgaon. It all began when they were in college, and Abhay and his friends in the hostel transferred various media only via pen drives or USB cables. He wondered if this experience could be taken online through a mobile app.

So, the brothers and their two friends got together to start Reach and went on to build their P2P engine in-house. While Akshay functions as the CEO and looks after overall growth, Abhay oversees the product. Ashish and Ayush lead on the front end and back end technologies of Reach, respectively.

The beta version of the Reach app was launched on 23 March 2015. After months of experimenting and constant feedback sessions with users, they launched their Version 1.0 in 2016.

Reach v1.0 lets users discover and access apps, audio files, games, and other media available on a friend’s smartphone. Abhay added,

The social emotion of peeking inside your friend’s phone and discovering content opens up new ways of discovering valuable information. It changes the way people exchange content via their phones today.

How does it work

Reach functions like a social network and users need to send a friend request and get permission to access his or her mobile collection. The user has complete control over exactly what their friends see and can keep certain content hidden, if they wish. Personal files are hidden by default.

Reach also includes an in-built music player that lets users play their own music or stream music from their friends’ phones. Talking to YourStory, Akshay explained that Reach doesn’t upload any files onto their servers and all shared files get transferred directly across mobiles (P2P) over the Internet.

As files are transferred over the Internet, users are not restricted by location and need not be in the same vicinity. Users can also pause and resume file transfers at their convenience and the app is able to resume transfers in case of connection breaks.

Future plans

The team believes that their patent-pending P2P technology and the interface of the app will help them capture a global audience. Akshay added that he recently interacted with American technocrat and billionaire Mark Cuban on Cyberdust and got praise and validation for the idea, giving the team a morale boost.

Reach recently announced that it had closed $500,00 from investors led by Takeshi Ebihara (Rebright Partners,), with participation from Sol Primero, Ankur Warikoo (CEO, Nearbuy), Ankur Singla (CEO, Helpchat), Sudhir Anandarao (Entrepreneur in Residence at Bessemer Venture Partners) Durgesh Kaushik, Pritesh Gupta, and Anunay Gupta.

Takeshi (Rebright Partners) says,

We envision Reach to be the ‘go to’ app for the millennials in India for discovering content from their friends and communicating with them seamlessly.

Currently seeding the product, Reach aims to add B2B monetisation channels once it reaches a certain user base. Eventually, Reach plans to introduce links as another file type and a provision to share images, pictures, and videos using the app, with the user controlling what is visible to others and what is not.

Sector overview

We are now slowly entering a world where consumers are showing a robust appetite for ‘Sharing economy’ because of the convenience, cost effectiveness, and positive environmental impact. But a recent report by PwC stated that 69 per cent of people polled admitted that they don’t trust sharing economy companies until they are recommended by someone they trust.

On the global scale, Airbnb revolutionised the hospitality industry, while Uber, Lift, and Ola (in India) have revolutionised the automotive industry with shared taxis. This phenomenon is now spilling into Media, ecommerce and other sectors.

Coming back to Reach, there is sufficient market validation with other players in the space. Teamviewer is a popular desktop app that lets users control remote computers or start online meetings. Russian social network VK combines multiple social features with file sharing capabilities. Then, there is ShareIt a popular file sharing app that is constantly at the top of the app stores.

What we liked?

Reach is a well-thought-out and designed app that is simple to use. It has unique value propositions for ‘App Junkies’ looking to discover new apps and also for late adopters who wish to try out popular apps that they might not be aware of. The in-built music player is an interesting value addition that aids in music discovery.

The ability to remotely peek into someone else’s smartphone and see the apps they use is interesting and as more users get on the platform, they will be able to notice patterns about app behaviour.

What could be improved?

While Reach plans to expand into more categories like links and videos, adding a tab that includes statistics about the most popular apps in a user’s network and similar data points across all their contacts would be a useful feature.

Additionally, a monetisation strategy for Reach could be to integrate music streaming services and recommend music based on a user’s preference or a friend’s playlist. Reach could also engage with celebrities and tech influencers to get them on the platform and give users a bird’s eye view of their mobile habits.

YourStory take

Reach is an interesting app and concept and though it is still early days, there are a lot of interesting possibilities to leverage the ‘mobile lifestyle’ of users. With a lean team and backing from marquee investors, it will be interesting to see how they grow their userbase and also how they go about with their monetisation strategies.

Download the app here

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

Also download the YourStory Android or iOS app for more updates.

Last August, hundreds of individuals in the Bay Area opened their Facebook Messenger app to discover M, the Messenger’s new virtual text assistant. M claimed to help make reservations, book getaways and do other such chores, through its chatbot. Four months later, in December, Google was reported to be building a much smarter mobile messaging service, tapping into similar integration of chatbots that answer questions inside a messaging app.

Right when the segment is heating up, Gurgaon-based YANA is all set to make its mark, with a personal chat assistant helping users book cabs, order groceries, look up for contacts, all the while conversing like a friend. The platform also allows users to compare prices of cabs and groceries, letting them know the cheapest rates across platforms.

How did they get there? 

For co-founder Rahul Gupta, the vision was fairly simple: to integrate all services on one platform on your mobile phone.  The inspiration came from US-based Magic, a texting service where customers could request most things delivered at their doorstep. In February, requests to Magic blew out of proportion, with over 17,000 messages in just 48 hours.

After graduating from IIM Bangalore, and finishing a course in association with Cornell, Rahul went on to join Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. But the need to do something big made him leave GS in 2013. He was then associated with Narendra Modi’s campaign for the 2014 General Elections. He states to be the founder and executor of ‘Chai pae Charcha’, which was well received during the campaign.

When the election was over and the campaign team moved to Delhi, Rahul met Ankit Sharma and Aashish Gupta through common friends and chose to stay with them. The three then decided to build the product together.

Hello, YANA!

The trio ran a pilot similar to Magic’s, floating a WhatsApp number allowing people to request for things.  In two months (May and June 2015), the team received almost 50,000 messages, which helped build YANA’s intelligence.

Today, YANA responds to users with grocery platforms when they ask for tomatoes, potatoes, bread etc.; allows them to book for cabs and home services, while also providing contacts of businesses around them.

The founders claim that the artificial intelligence engine is 100 percent automated with no human jumping in to reply if a certain query doesn’t go through. The engine uses machine learning technology, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and neural networks to get users what they need.

The platform also suggests users places to dine out, which is powered by not just Google Places but also its proprietary ‘YANA places,’ which has more than 10,000 vendors and businesses listed across the country.

But Rahul rather laughs and tells that places, services or booking cabs is not what YANA is used for. Rather, amused consumers use it for conversations which comes out as their strongest functional category for usage.

In the coming month, the firm is looking to strengthen YANA’s capabilities to allow consumers to order food, get recharges as well as book travel itineraries and movies. The founders admit that shopping and news might also be in the charts.

To facilitate the existing services on the platform, the business as of now has seven vendor partnerships, including known names like PepperTap, ZopNow, Ola, Uber, HouseJoy, EasyFix, JetSetClean and more.

It is looking to bring 15 more known brands in play.

All five major categories of YANA (Groceries, Places, Cabs, Home services and Conversations) are fully active in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad, while limited services are available in other cities like Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai and more.

Since the launch of the app in early February, the app has got more than 3,000 downloads with 1,500 weekly active users. The platform is also closing five to 10 transactions every day. This doesn’t include users requesting for contact information, which the co-founders says is also high in number. Rahul says,

“We are trying to create the first transactional chat assistant platform in the world. The experience is so integrated that the consumer doesn’t need to leave the platform to pay or doesn’t need hundred apps installed on his phone.  He can do it all with just one interface.”

In the next six months the firm is working towards closing 1,000 transactions on the app on a daily basis, with the vision to introduce suggestions by YANA before the user calls for it.  The firm is also eyeing international markets like the US, UK and Europe

YANA makes money

According to the founders, the platform’s revenue is through charging a commission to vendors, ranging between five and 10 per cent for every transaction.

Last November, the firm secured an angel round of investment of an undisclosed amount from Puneet Gupta, Executive Director of Goldman Sachs, Hong Kong. The investment was used to build the technology platform.

The startup is all geared up to raise its next round of funding by this year.

YANA’s take on competition

The notorious technologists have built an interesting take for YANA to answer on competition. She wishes her competitors like Haptik, Helpchat luck for survival.

But the real proposition of the business here is concierge services with multiple players flocking the segment.

In the concierge segment that YANA competes in, Haptik works on a similar model with 50 percent of the queries being answered by the machine and rest by the 150+ chat operators  It has five lakh downloads on the Play Store, with about two million messages being exchanged every month  in May 2015.  Haptik also enabled cab bookings with Ola in November.

Helpchat (previously Akosha) raised a Series-B of Rs 100 crore from Sequoia, last May. With over 30,000 consumer inquiries every day over the web, telephone and its Android chat app, the company was working on manual chat operators with humans replying to consumers.

Then there are others like Qlivery, which gets anything done and delivered within 90 minutes, from personal shopping to deliveries to tasks like photocopies. All this by messaging or making a call to their helpline. This month, it raised a funding of $230,000 from Hong Kong-based Swastika. There is also Lookup, which connects shoppers with local businesses, raising a round of $2.5 million of Series A funding.

Therefore, there is no dearth of investments in this segment owing to the opportunity size. But what lacks is the use of technology and making truly an automated assistant which YANA has proven to create.

However, the founders say the uniqueness of the platform lies in the technology, and in closing transactions in less than a minute with 100 percent automation.

Website: www.getyana.com

“We’ve stuck to being green in our gifting for over 15 years and have carved a name for who we are and what we stand for,” say Mala Sathyanarayanan and Leena Munot of The Giving Tree, Domlur (Bengaluru).

YourStory met Mala and Leena on a sunny morning recently, at The Giving Tree’s airy office in Domlur.

According to the founders, The Giving Tree is a place where one can plan and customise gifting using exotic and eco-friendly gifting options in handmade paper. They do hand-crafting of utility products for corporates, using Indian folk art forms like warli, madhubani and kalamkari. They also embellish their products using ‘block print’ designs.

Mala and Leena are passionate about representing Indian aesthetics in an eco-friendly manner, and this gave rise to them floating a whole range of Indian souvenirs, and incorporating popular landmarks of the country in the form of ink sketches and watercolour images.

While Mala and Leena are in the business of making people feel special and nurturing long relationships through innovative gifts for the last 15 years, they have recently taken this to a whole new level.

They have introduced ‘Goals Mantra‘ – a complete ‘goal achievement’ kit, which helps people set, achieve and celebrate their life goals. “With this product, we are creating a life-changing transformation by giving the user the tools and techniques to live the life of their dreams,” the duo explain. Goals Mantra contains a 420-page template journal to help users record their life goals in a structured way for 52 weeks, daily planner, weekly planner and place to record daily wins and gratitude. It also has vision cards, wallet cards, thank you cards and music to anchor users in a space of creativity each day. Leena, who is the author of Goals Mantra, has been invited by leading universities and corporates to deliver her goal-setting workshops.

Work culture and work style

Mala and Leena’s style of working is with hand skill. A trained team of five people helps them create masterpieces in paper, like notebooks, diaries, calendars, journals, bags and gift hampers.

The Giving Tree started out in the year 2002 and in 2010 won the Best Business Plan award at ISB, with the 10,000 women initiative of Goldman Sachs.  Mala and Leena are active members of BNI, the world’s largest referral organisation for over eight years.

What have they learnt along the way?

The duo say that they have learnt to stay out of the retail markets, since they are capital-intensive and require a different skill-set to compete with the cheaper products in the market. They are focussing our efforts on the corporate companies to help drive the green initiative through large numbers.

Setting up of systems and processes to streamline production, orders, quality control and a strong accounting division has helped The Giving Tree automate a large part of the work, which means the business continues without the founders around at all times.

As of now, there are no other players in the eco space who deal with handmade paper products. The founders say there are a few, but that they make very different products.

“Our future plan is to grow to become the go-to brand for all eco and innovative gifts, among corporate companies. We want to reach out to at least 5,000 companies in the next two years,” the founders say.

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

If the sight of freshly baked vanilla cake or a chocolate lava cake makes you want to whip up some sugary magic of your own, then being a pastry chef might be your life’s calling. In addition to surrounding yourself with sweet and savoury delights, you get to sink your teeth into your own creations, so what greater incentive do you need? So how does one embark on this dream career? Professional baker Vinesh Johny, who is passionate about his craft, brings world-class culinary education to India through his Academy of Baking Science & Pastry Arts – Lavonne. Vinesh was featured in the inaugural ‘Forbes 30 under 30’ Asia list for 2016 in the Arts category. Lavonne won the Times Food Award 2016 in the best confectionery category.

The master at work

Vinesh set up Lavonne in 2012, at the age of 24, along with his co-founders Avin Thaliath and Lijo Eapean in Bengaluru, with the aim of making pastry arts a mainstream career choice.

The idea of Lavonne, India’s first international baking academy, came up when Vinesh was pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management at Christ College. He then discussed the idea with his professor Avin and his batch mate Lijo and there was no turning back. Vinesh says, “Back in 2008, when I was a student, I wanted to pursue an advanced-level baking course. At that point in time, we didn’t have anything in India. We had to travel to Australia, Malaysia, or France. So that’s when I released that there was a void in the Indian market, when it comes to teaching pastry making and high-level baking.”

After graduating, he went on to work with The Oberoi Group of Hotels and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. He pursued his Diploma in Sugar Art and Wedding cake decoration at Feves de Choco Academy of Pastry Fine Arts, Malaysia, before finding his true calling as an educator.

The art of learning

Lavonne offers a range of courses suitable for amateur as well as experienced bakers. They offer flexible course options – from a 480-hour diploma programme, to hobby classes over the weekends. There is something for everyone. Students train with international chefs, and get a world-class education in this field. Vinesh says “We provide entrepreneurial training for students. We include a lot of skill training such as wedding cakes and sugar art during the course. We also conduct workshops on how to go about starting up.”

Vinesh brings his expertise to the table through the masterclasses he conducts in addition to heading the diploma programme at Lavonne. He says that they have made the course very competitive by ensuring their students understand the basics of baking and confectionary thoroughly, and what prospects they have after completing the programme.

Students are offered an internship after they complete the diploma course at Lavonne. Students are then offered placement in five-star hotels. Vinesh adds, “Most students finish the course and do a funded internship elsewhere. Some start their own venture and a few continue their career in baking and confectionary.”

Lavonne also offers weekend courses, which are mainly hobby courses, for those who are enthusiastic to learn about baking.

At Lavonne, apart from getting to savour those mouth-watering desserts, you will learn the theory and the science of baking. Vinesh adds, “We are able to connect the dots for the students, which makes it easy for even a beginner to come and learn at Lavonne.”

Lavonne imports the finest of ingredients from Belgium and France.

Challenges and the science of baking

They faced quite a few challenges before they could startup. Vinesh says, “None of us have a business background, and we didn’t really understand how to go ahead with the processes like documentation, and what licenses were required. We also had issues with our landlady. Everything was in place until we were forced to leave the place just one day before the launch. Then, we were back to square one for almost three to four months. We didn’t have any place at all. Our equipment had arrived and it was too late to pull back from going ahead. So, we had to re-plan, redo, and re-strategise the entire thing. Finally, we found the right place and we are doing very well.”

Vinesh says, “Baking is the most straight forward sort of department. You don’t go via assumption. You follow the recipe. There is a lot of chemistry involved while baking. I really enjoyed the science of baking.”

“Follow the recipe, make sure you learn the proper techniques, and most importantly bake with love,” Vinesh concludes.

Future prospects

Lavonne, affiliated to City & Guilds, London, currently gets students through word of mouth and social media. Apart from the award-winning patisserie attached to their academy, Lavonne have plans to set up cafés in and around Bengaluru, which will be run by students so that they get hand-on experience on how the business works. They also have plans to expand globally. It is currently bootstrapped and there are plans to raise funds next year.

Baking is a multi-billion-dollar business. The number of players in this segment is increasing slowly in India. Home bakers are also starting to take this up as a profession after doing short-term or long-term courses.

Some of the competitors in the sector include IBCA, CCDS and AIBTM.

There are pros and cons with most careers and businesses. However, if you add a spoon of dedication, a pinch of patience, and a cup of determination to your tray of inspiration, you will have the recipe for a successful baker.

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

Students of Jamia Millia Islamia have built an eco-friendly food vending cart which has provisions for waste disposal and solar power generation. The cart was one of the submit showcased at the Festival of Innovations at Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi.  The project, which the university is in process of patenting, was among the six entries selected out of 114 sent for presentation at the recently concluded Festival.

The other entries were from IIT Kanpur, Central University of Jammu, IIT Madras, NIT Tiruchirpalli and IIT Delhi.

“The product named ‘Innokart’ is an economical food vending cart that provides proper storage, shelter and hygiene.The cart promises to transform street food selling in India for the better,” said Mini S Thomas, Honorary Director, Jamia’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE).

“Besides the storage drawers, the cart has two sections for waste disposal-for dry and wet waste each.The top panel has been kept free for advertisements while there is a plan to set up solar panel on the rooftop,” she added.

The product has been developed by three students from the University’s Faculty of Architecture-Huma Pervez, Faiza Jamal and Faraz Khan. The university is now planning to test the cart in its premises and then work on its commercial viability.

For now, the cart will be used by our canteen people for selling food in streets inside the university campus.We will then see if there are any flaws that need to me removed and further work on its commercial viability, Thomas said.

On October 14, 2015, Tesla Model S owners across USA woke up to a surprise. While they were sleeping through the night, Tesla had rolled out a major upgrade to all their cars to enable the now famous autopilot feature. And the most interesting aspect was that the upgrade was entirely through a software (firmware) update-‘Tesla Version 7.0’. Balaji S. Srinivasan, CEO at 21.co, noted,

Tesla’s use of an over-the-air update to create self-driving cars is one of the most important things ever to happen in technology.

Historically, almost all major product upgrades generally required companies to make changes on the hardware side. But now companies are able to make drastic changes and improvements through software and firmware updates remotely, having already planned in advance on the hardware side. Tesla, in fact, had equipped the Model S with specific hardware: radar, cameras and ultrasonic sensors, almost a year in advance, for the incremental introduction of self-driving technology.

India-based CREO, which recently teased the launch of its new smartphone, seems to be going down the same path as Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors, and promises to provide- ‘A new phone every month’ after the phone is shipped, through monthly software updates that go beyond just UI changes.

Story so far

Mango Man Consumer Electronics was founded in 2013 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra. The startup’s first product offering was Teewe – an HDMI media streaming device(a Google Chromecast competitor) that was launched in September 2014. It then went on to launch Teewe 2 in May 2015 and claimed to have established itself in about 50,000 households across India. Most recently, the startup re-branded to CREO, and announced its plans to develop a new smartphone based on its proprietary Android-based OS, Fuel.

A YourStory TechSparks 2013 Tech-30 startup, CREO had raised Rs 11 crore in seed funding from Sequoia Capital and India Quotient Fund in March 2015, and prior to that had raised angel investments from multiple well-known angels and entrepreneurs. In January 2016, it announced that it had raised $3 million from existing investors- Sequoia India, India Quotient and Beenext Ventures.

Related read: The team behind Teewe raises $3M funding to develop proprietary Android-based OS

Sai, CEO of CREO, spoke to YourStory about Mark 1 and explained how CREO aims to break the clutter of the smartphone industry with a device that ‘stays new, always’. CREO aims to change the playing field from hardware specifications to the end user experience by leveraging the hardware-software integration in a better way.

CREO’s philosophy

CREO believes that software experiences are the only differentiators in an industry where hardware is overtly commoditised. So, while relying on a stock Android UI, it aims to develop OS level features that are currently not prevalent in the market.

This premise is based on the fact that smartphones tend to lag after a few months from purchase. The slowdown is generally attributed to the lack of updates sent out from the phone manufacturer’s end to its existing devices. Talking about their brand’s promise and creative ethos, Sai says,

We promise to send out regular updates each month that empower users with functional and smart features that improve the performance of the phone as well as give users the feeling of ‘a new phone every month’.

A community-inclusive update system

Sai notes that today most operating systems’ updates and features come from a company’s own team of engineers and developers. CREO promises to include a community-inclusive update system that takes feedback and suggestions from users to build new features every month. He adds,

Moreover, we plan to credit every feature publicly, to the people who suggested it. We’re developing an application that will enable our users to tell us what they’d like to see in the next update.

Xiaomi has been using a similar feedback mechanism for some time now by reaching out to fans through their forums.

CREO declines to reveal the price point of the phone as it is currently finalising certain aspects with partners. But Sai confirms that Mark 1 would be a high-end phone targeted at the tech-savvy audience who wish to push the envelope, OS experience-wise.

On the nature of the updates and if 12 updates a year could maybe put off the non-tech savvy population, Sai says, “We are not going to change the UI every month. The updates will be functional in nature and include new features. While it may not appeal to an older or non-tech savvy population who don’t like regular changes there is always an option to ignore updates.”

Sai believes that in a value-conscious country like India, a phone that regularly reinvents itself with new features would probably see a lot of consumer interest.

Future plans

While CREO promises 12 updates a year, Sai says that though they have an overall roadmap, they haven’t finalised chalking out the nitty-gritty of every update, as they will be relying on feedback from end consumers too. So their aim is to have fluid long-term plans.

CREO currently consists of a team of 70 makers, engineers, developers and designers, spearheaded by the founders, Sai and Shubham (CTO). The other core members overlooking different veritcals include, CPO Rachit Rastogi and VP Products Gulsher Singh, who work on designing and managing the product, respectively. Vartika Verma is the CMO, while Lalit Mohan handles partnerships and sales as the Chief Sales Officer and Nishtha Pangle leads Branding and Design. In the long term, CREO plans to licence its software out to other players.

Sector overview

A recent CMR study on the ‘State of Mobile Operating System Adoption In India’ concluded that while hardware is being commoditised, it is software that will be the ‘key differentiator’ in the future. The research further suggests that OEMs will have to adopt an experience-driven approach enabled by OS features as the ‘spec-war’ reaches its peak. Most brands (95 percent), according to the study, only customise the software at the user interface (UI) level, which is cosmetic and affects only the OS’s appearance.

India is estimated to be the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. Urban India has already adopted smartphones and the mobile Internet user base grew by 65 percent in one year, to reach 197 million in October 2015. The smartphone and mobile Internet user base in rural India was expected to reach 87 million by December 2015 and 109 million by June 2016. Smartphone shipments in India reached 25.6 million in the December quarter, up 15.4 percent from 22.2 million units in the same period a year ago, according to a recent IDC report.

Samsung recently retained its number-one position after the December-2015 quarter results having increased its market share by almost five percent (from 22 to 26.8 percent). Micromax, on the other hand, lost four percent of its market share, slipping to 14 percent. Lenovo Group Ltd surpassed Intex to take the third position, with a market share of 11.6 percent, while Intext and Lava took the fourth and fifth positions, respectively.

Chinese players like Xiaomi and One Plus are also seeing good traction and response in India for their ability to sell mid-segment devices at low price points. More recently, the Indian audience witnessed the rise and fall of Freedom 251, which promised a smartphone at Rs 251. So there is immense interest and room for growth in the smartphone segment in India.

Website: CREO

National security, invasion of privacy and high-tech espionage. No, we aren’t talking about a new television series or a work of fiction. We are talking about the worry most people have of having the state-run intelligence US organisation National Security Agency (NSA) peeping into their inbox. Whether it is web history or data privacy, the ongoing debate on whether government agencies keep tabs on civilians and their Internet history has reached an interesting turn.

Students from Harvard and MIT are working towards ‘building an Internet that protects privacy’, starting with email. So, basically, they have built a super secure mail service that can keep even the NSA out. It’s called the ProtonMail.

Their wesbite says: “We are scientists, engineers, and developers drawn together by a shared vision of protecting civil liberties online. This is why we created ProtonMail, an easy-to-use secure email service with built-in end-to-end encryption and state of the art security features. Our goal is to build an Internet that respects privacy and is secure against cyber attacks.”

The Swiss Security

Jason Stockman, Co-founder of ProtonMail, said that it was the Snowden leaks that got them started. He told The Huffington Post that they were working at the CERN, the nuclear research facility in Switzerland and the incident really got them thinking.

ProtonMail has its servers in Switzerland and uses end-to-end encryption software that protects users’ email communications. Jason has been quoted saying that even if ‘they’ do somehow manage to tap into the Internet and extract the data, all they are going to get is completely scrambled and encrypted information.

Being in Switzerland, the servers are located outside US, making it inaccessible under the PRISM Program, believed to be a clandestine surveillance programme, where the NSA allegedly collects Internet communications from some of the major Internet companies.

The advocates of Internet privacy believe that security cannot be trusted to any corporation, as it might be forced by authorities to hand over data or even decrypt it. This is why the founders of ProtonMail ensured that even they cannot decrypt (or read) the information that is being communicated, thus ensuring foolproof security.

After starting a crowdfunding campaign in 2014, ProtonMail, which was invite-only, has opened its doors to civilians and is live on both Android and iOS apps. They had explained the delays on going live date to stalling and issues faced from the US government.

The closed beta has been tested by journalists, activists and businesses. The team at ProtonMail predicts that end-to-end encryption is going to be the future standard for web-based services. But they agree that every system can be hacked and nothing is simply 100-percent secure.

To secure or not to secure

The past three years has seen several debates on privacy breach by the US government and NSA. The most famous being the Snowden issue, where a former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed that global survalliance programmes were run by the NSA. While the complete list is unavailable to all, it is believed that the NSA was harvesting millions of email and instant messaging contact lists, searching email content, mapping and tracking the location of cell phones.

Most recently, the tiff between the FBI and Apple too has wrought mixed debates.  There are two very strong voices at play here. Invasion of individual privacy and national security. It is a very chicken-and-egg situation, however, and one cannot deny the legal right of an individual to his or her own privacy. Once long thought of as ‘conspiracy theories’ seem very plausible and strong in today’s day and age.

The issue isn’t black or white. With the growing world of technology, we are looking at powerful tools of information and networks. Many believe that while the transparency of the platforms are great they also lubricate several criminal networks around the world. The stakes in fact are growing. There is a significant amount of data that is captured every minute today. While we might willingly open up about our holiday plans and trips on the Internet, the government accessing private Internet communication is very George Orwell’s 1984 like.

Many might believe this to be more of an American problem, the Snowden episode showed that privacy of people across the globe can be affected. No wonder then that people are now taking steps to ensure security of their private and business data.