Bengaluru-based online lending platform Avail Finance has raised $17.2 Mn in a Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners. The round is a mix of debt and equity.

Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola’s co-founders; Binny Bansal, co-founder & group CEO of Flipkart; Kunal Shah, founder of Freecharge; and Manish Patel, founder and CEO of Mswipe, have also participated in the round.

“Consumer lending to the blue-collared workforce is a large, untapped and hard to solve opportunity. We are impressed by Avail’s differentiated sourcing and underwriting strategy, and are privileged to partner with Ankush and Tushar on their journey. We believe it’s still early days of the India Fintech story and will continue to invest in the space”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Prior to this, Avail Finance also raised $200K in a funding round led by Bhavish Aggarwal last year.

Founded by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta in February 2017, Avail Finance caters to India’s blue-collared workforce, who are currently underserved by organised lending institutions. With low credit card penetration and the lack of structured credit history, this large segment of the Indian population resorts to availing credit from informal sources at high-interest rates.

In order to bridge this gap, the startup is leveraging alternate digital data and the power of the India stack (Aadhaar, eKYC, UPI).  It lends anywhere between INR 5,000- 60,000 as personal loans at a monthly interest rate of 1.2-2%.

As Ankush said, “By solving for the core of the problem in not having a credit history, using advanced technology, data sciences and artificial intelligence, we are bringing a new approach to an age-old problem.”

Matrix Partners India is an active investor in the Indian tech space. Earlier, it invested a significant amount of funding in startups such as DocTalk (healthtech), Gobasco (agritech), CreditVidya (fintech), LoadShare (logistics), TestBook (edtech)among others. It also participated in Treebo Hotels’ $34 Mn Series C funding round in August 2017.

According to a report by Credit Suisse, the global consumer and SME loan market is expected to reach $3 Tn over the next decade, owing to government’s initiatives to provide hassle-free and cashless financial transactions. Also, the online financial marketplace industry is expected to become a $2.3 Bn market by 2020. In this booming opportunity, to what extent, Avail Finance can scale its online lending activities with the latest round of funding, will be something to watch for.

The post Matrix Partners India Led $17.2 Mn Funding Round In Online Lending Startup Avail Finance appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bicycles have always been a part of the socio-economic culture of India. The arrival of the British in India brought bicycles to the country. Sometime down the line, it started representing the laborious middle class.

But in the present time, bicycles are not only owned by the low-income population simply because they can’t afford two-wheelers or four-wheeler vehicles, but they are transcending into lifestyle statements, thanks to brands like Hero cycles, Hercules, Atlas cycles, Montra, BMX cycles, Firefox, La Sovereign, etc.

It is being gradually realised that the role of cycling in promoting physical activity and healthy lifestyle is critical in a country like India which is witnessing an upsurge in the population. The growing population has resulted into not only congestion but also with growing income and the ease of doing business in India, there is an alarming increase in the number of motor vehicles in the country and as a consequence, diseases linked to unhealthy lifestyles and poor air quality is striking the Indian population like never before.

To tackle this menace, startups both local and global are exploring this terrain to tap into the opportunities of enabling lives to lead a zero-carbon-emission and healthier mobility.

It is with the aim of promoting sustainable mobility that startups in India such as Mobycy, Ola Pedal, Ofo, etc. are looking at pedalling options as a huge market potential.

Founded in 2017 by Akash Gupta and Rashi Agarwal, Mobycy is working on the mission to create sustainable mobility. The Gurugram-based startup enables dockless bicycle sharing and is actively working to change people’s lifestyle through the green tech.

Having worked in the NCR region to promote pedalling as not only an alternative means to travel short distances but also as an option of a healthy lifestyle, it is now expanding its services across eight cities in India.

Cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur, Gwalior and Sonipat have served as forts from whence the startup has gained mileage.

The greentech company that has been adopted by almost 40,000 users till date and is planning at adding over 50,000 bicycles in its kitty in the next six months.

But in light of the presence of many startups working in bicycle ride-sharing industry like Vogo Automotive, ONN Bikes, ZoomCar’s PEDL and giants like Ola and Ofo looking to gain a share in this domain in the Indian market, it will be interesting to watch Mobycy’s evolving strategies to gain its market share.

Mobycy And What’s At Dock For The Dockless Bike Sharing App

Aiming to make India a greener and fitter cycling nation, Mobycy is looking to present daily commuters with smart bikes for short-mile connectivity, while also reducing carbon footprints and improving the fitness levels of commuters.

It was in July 2017 during Akash’s tour to a university that the idea for the startup was conceptualised. The strenuous tour made Akash realise the daily ordeal of the students of the university and motivated him to startup.

The startup has made accessing bicycles for short rides leisurely easy. It makes use of integrated IoT-based GPRS lock technology along with other offerings such as cashless wallet payments, geo-fencing, etc.

Mobycy App users can simply locate the nearest bicycle at any public place, rent and unlock the cycle lock by scanning a digital QR code via the Mobycy app. Upon completion of the ride, the cycle can be parked anywhere on public pavements, except inside private compounds or gated colonies, etc.

As of today, Mobycy has deployed over 500 odd bicycles on the floor. Out of the 500 bicycles plying on the road, the startup gets about 1.5K to 2K bookings daily. Also, there are 40 to 45K downloads for the app already. The company is also planning to deploy the bicycles across places which are crowded with tourists and other travellers, small pockets of colonies where people can use the cycles for short distance rides are also its essential targets.

Here is a brief list of what Mobycy is targeting at:

• The startup is targeting to deploy 1,500 to 3,000 odd bicycles in the next three to four months.
• It is targeting students who can access the cycles to travel from one of the university to another; is in talks with 25 to 30 universities for the deployment
• It is targeting corporate office campuses in Noida, Bengaluru and Pune.
• It is looking forward to providing the service for small colonies in the cities
• It is targeting people who regularly travel short distances such as metro stations, bus stops, university campuses.
• It is working to collaborate with organisations that are a part of the government’s Smart City projects

“In fact, we are first implementing our concept in a university in Chennai. And one of the universities in Bengaluru is also planned soon for implementation,” says Akash.

Talking about the initial challenges that the startup faced, the founder quoted the reason as “hiring the right talent”. Hiring people to work for the startup was not easy as the bicycle-hailing model is still relatively new in India. So, even the candidates who were interviewed said ‘I don’t know if this will work in India’.

Akash further added that the startup is also facing challenges in replicating the model with the government. “It takes slightly more time to convince them and then there is also a hierarchy that needs to be followed,” he said.

As a testament to its growth potential, Mobycy was recognised under the Indian government’s DIPP–Startup India programme.

Backed by a US-based angel investor, founders of the startup believes that focussing on the business model and the vision on which the startup was founded is the key to making it successful. The startup is looking forward to raising $5 Mn in funding.

As far as expansion beyond India is concerned, Akash is of the view that, “If you look at Southeast Asia, there are countries like Indonesia where such startups are not mushrooming right now. There is also Sri Lanka and Nepal where this is very new. We have plans to go into Dubai where this can be a huge kit. So, we would like to go to places which are similar to India and replicate our India success in those countries.”

He says, “Replicating our success across regions in India along with extending operations in a few other countries and pursuing global tie-ups would be an interesting take for us. So, focussing on India for the next six months will be crucial.”

The Booming Indian Market For Dockless Bikes

Bicycles as a means of commuting are catching up in India. These dockless bikes appear to be just the thing required to ease the congestion of polluting vehicles, especially in metropolitan cities. Many startups are coming up to explore the potential of bike sharing as a viable alternative in India.

Ola has already come up with Ola Pedal, its bicycle-sharing service. There are already dozens operating in China, Southeast Asia and the US among other countries.

Similar business models in China led to the creation of bicycle-hailing startups such as Ofo and Mobike, which became pioneers of the category and have since expanded to other parts of Asia and even into the US and Europe.

Ofo will also launch its services in India in a tie-up with Paytm.

In the current scenario, Mobycy will be facing stiff competition from a  growing class of bike sharing startups, including Vogo Automotive, ONN Bikes, WickedRide, Stoneheadbikes and Rentabike, Tazzo Technologies and WheelStreet. Bicycle-sharing startup Cykul is currently operating over 2K bicycles in three cities Hyderabad, Gurugram and Jaipur.

Also, in September 2017, InMobi’s co-founder Amit Gupta launched Yulu – an IoT-enabled bike rental platform. Then there’s ZoomCar’s PEDL and LetzCycle too.

With rising interest in a healthy lifestyle and the burgeoning need to control pollution, dockless bike sharing startups like Mobycy that are green tech-focussed have the potential to rapidly expand their global footprints.

The post Fearless Mobycy Strides Ahead With Dockless Bike Sharing App To Contend With Ofo And Ola appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Hyderabad-based online gaming platform, Ace2three, which is owned and operated by Head InfoTech India, has acquired a majority stake in fantasy gaming platform FanFight with an investment of $1 Mn.

This move from the Ace2three comes at a time after Canadian investment firm Clairvest Group acquired a majority stake in the startup with an investment of $73.7 Mn in April 2017.

As stated by Ace2three in an official statement, it was already in the process to build a new fantasy platform. The investment made in FanFight will be used for improving the marketing, hiring people with tech and analytical skills, as well as scaling the online product.

Deepak Gullapalli, Founder of Ace2three said, “FanFight is an excellent product and we are confident that consumers will enjoy using FanFight’s platform. We are happy to begin our innings in this industry through FanFight.”

Ace2three And FanFight: A Quick Overview

Ace2three is essentially known as an online rummy platform. Interestingly, the iconic product of this startup is the innovative social casino games with a classical Indian touch.

The company claims that at present, it has more than 8 Mn people using their application on the mobile phones for playing online games.

On the other hand, if a person is passionate about playing online games and have an urge to earn a few dollars, then FanFight is the right destination for them. Interestingly, this app allows people not only to play virtual reality games but also gives cash prizes to the users. Recently, an Indian-origin user earned $122 (INR 8,000 ) while playing for a few rounds on FanFight.

Indian Online Gaming Industry: Current Status And Opportunities Ahead

With greater penetration of the Internet and smartphones in India, the mobile gaming industry has grown with a higher pace in the last few years. According to the reports, at present, India is the second largest consumer base for mobile phones and accessories not just in Asia-Pacific but around the world.

In Q2 2016, India bagged fifth position globally in terms of the number of game downloads, jumping two places higher as compared to the same quarter in the previous year. It is further expected that India will surpass both Brazil and Russia in online game downloads index within the next few decades.

Globally, gaming industry earned $100 Bn of revenues out of which mobile gaming generated $37 Bn of revenues in 2016 and India ranked at the 19th position with estimated revenues of $523 Mn, a meagre 1.6% market share of the global mobile gaming industry.

Although, the market share is less on the global charts, India offers a widely untapped opportunity to the online gaming companies worldwide. The latest acquisition of FanFight by Ace2three indicates how aggressively the Indian startup brigade is trying to disrupt the online gaming space. Going ahead, how well the latest acquisition can become fruitful for Ace2three, will be something to watch for.

The post Online Gaming Startup Ace2three Acquires Majority Stake In FanFight For $1 Mn appeared first on Inc42 Media.

It is believed that the financial firms were the early adopters of the mainframe computers, the regional database, and yes the next level of computational power. Artificial intelligence today helps the financial organisations in solving the major problems and thereby increasing the efficiency of their workforce. It also helps in improving the results by applying the right methods that are derived from the human intelligence beyond the scale.

The computational race from the last two decades have revolutionised fintech companies. The technologies like Artificial intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Neutral Networks, Machine learning and evolutionary algorithms have allowed them to crunch, diverse and deep the data sets than ever before.

During the early ages of banking, the bankers believed to have a personal connection with all their customers, helping them assisting well in their future decisions. But now
when it comes to the digital world the personal connection that they had is lost. And then comes a question can technology help in bringing back this personal connection.
Artificial intelligence to this can be leveraged in bringing back the personal connection.

It helps in processing a huge amount of information to their customers. The data and information gathered are then compared to the suitable products and services that the
customers want. This essentially means that you are helping your customer’s find what is right for them, and hence can achieve customer satisfaction at a higher level.

How Are Fintech Companies Making Potential Use of Artificial Intelligence

Accurate Decision Making

The data-driven management decisions taken at a lower cost generally lead to a different style of management, where the insurance leaders and the future banking agents will have the right to question the machines rather than the human experts. Machines will then help them to analyse the data coming up with recommended results helping the leaders and their subordinates to take better decisions.

Fraud Detection And Claims Management

The analytics tool help in collecting the evidences and analyse the data that is necessary for the conviction. Artificial intelligence tools to this then learn to monitor the users’ behavioural pattern, identifying rarity and warning signs in terms of fraud attempts and incidences. Claims management can then be built using the different techniques claim management through machine learning.

By leveraging artificial intelligence and handling a huge data within a smaller period of time, the insurers can then automate handling the entire process of mechanism. This
will even help in reducing the claims, the overall processing time, and handle cost while enhancing customer experiences.

Chatbots In Financial Services

It is important to note that artificial intelligence does not only have behind the scene roles in the business world but is also allowing them to take a variety of internal and external communications. However, the artificial intelligence Chatbots are not just being used for communication purpose, but are now being implemented by all the financial institutions as self-service customer-facing tools. For example, HDFC bank has created their own AI Chatbots in order to help customers with a variety of tasks and enquiries.

Increasing The Automation Level

One of the most common benefits the fintech companies get to see through AI is automation opportunities. And when it comes to AI reducing the manual expenses, it automatically generates the expenditure and expense report quickly and easily without any errors. Artificial intelligence understands the work-flow of all the business organisations, allowing them to restructure and automate the expense tracking process. 

Balancing The Budget Of The Consumers Based On Spending Pattern

As mentioned above, AI plays a very important role in empowering the fintech companies. The technology is now used as financial applications that allow individuals to come forward and balance their budgets, based on their income and spending pattern. In short, AI has been implemented for a variety of processes and has been acting as a robo-advisor for individuals who could cut costs while boosting their bottom line.

To conclude, with a stiff competition in the financial industries today, it is of no surprise that companies are looking and adopting new technologies in order to stay ahead of their competitors. Choosing AI in the fintech world will help in eliminating the human error boosting up the productivity.

The post How Artificial Intelligence Is Empowering India’s Fintech Revolution appeared first on Inc42 Media.

After Facebook announced to ban cryptocurrency related ads earlier this year, it’s the search engine giant Google, which is set to ban all cryptocurrency-related ads including ICOs.

The $809 Bn company (Alphabet) has brought a new restricted financial products policy that will go into effect from June 2018 onwards.

While Google’s last Financial Services Policy had nowhere mentioned Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or any other related topics; however, the newly released restricted financial products policy restricts the advertisement of Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting and cryptocurrency-related product ads.

The policy stated,

Ads for the following will no longer be allowed to serve:

• Binary options and synonymous products
• Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice)

Speaking to CNBC, Google’s Director of Sustainable Ads, Scott Spencer stated, “We don’t have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we’ve seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it’s an area that we want to approach with extreme caution.”

The ban has come after many big companies have already turned their back on cryptocurrencies.

Many of the leading banks including Lloyds, Capital One, Bank Of America, Citibank and JP Morgan and HDFC Bank have already barred their customers from purchasing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with their cards.

Earlier in January, stating that misleading ads have no place on Facebook, the social media giant had announced a policy to ban all ads that promote cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Facebook called this, an effort by the company to prevent people from advertising “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”.

In the name of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, many Ponzi schemes have been running their ads on Google, Facebook and other platforms. Google, in its trust and safety ads report, has said that it took down more than 3.2 Bn ads in 2017 that violated its policies, which is nearly double the 1.7 Bn number it removed the year before. Since the parent company Alphabet’s 84% of the total income depends on ad revenues, Google appears to be ultra careful about the means.

The post Google To Ban Bitcoin And Cryptocurrency-Related Ads Including ICOs appeared first on Inc42 Media.

With tourism startups boosting the Indian travel market, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) recently organised Incredible India 2.0, an event geared towards promoting inbound, outbound and domestic tourism in India. The discussions at the event, which saw the participation of leading industry players, concluded that the Indian travel market is expected to generate $48 Bn by 2020.

At the event, Deep Kalra, Chairman and Group CEO, MakeMyTrip and Vice-Chairman of IAMAI said, “With the evolution of tech-enabled startups and newer concepts like staycation, adventure tourism, ecotourism, medical tourism and pilgrimage tourism across the country the industry is at the cusp of potential growth. As more and more people come online, smartphone penetration increases, technological disruptions and use of digital payments has actually changed the dynamics of the industry at large. At present this industry is standing at 2.0 knocking 3.0 for the next level to kick off.”

Incredible India 2.0 aimed to bring together domestic online companies and professionals from across the travel, tourism and hospitality industry – along with national and state Tourism Boards – to congregate and conduct business, arrive at solution-driven innovations to counteract economic uncertainties, and promote inbound, outbound and domestic tourism in India.

The event hosted several panel discussions on topics ranging from improving travel and accommodation infrastructure key to unlocking India’s potential; developing hotspots and promoting tourism as a multi-dimensional activity; the necessity industry collaboration is required to promote tourism industry in India; among others.

One of the several discussions concluded that technology and digital penetration can help in achieving the growth target of the industry. They also noted that online hotel booking has seen a substantial y-o-y growth of 60%.

The conference focussed on a series of recommendations on policies and innovative measures that India needs to implement to develop a competitive and sustainable tourism sector making it a major contributor to strategies aimed towards an inclusive and sustainable growth.

Following this, the conference also suggested that the government should lower the tax burden of the industry, ease rules and build infrastructure if it wants to ensure 15-20% annual growth in tourism in coming years. Issues pertaining to GST, opening up of the shared economy and facilitating the adoption of new tech could herald the next trillion opportunities for the sector.

The conference was inaugurated by Rashmi Verma, Secretary Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, Deep Kalra and Himanshu Shukla, Director of Tourism, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh.

Those participating in the conference include Amanpreet Bajaj, Country Manager – India, Airbnb; Sidharth Gupta, Co-Founder, Treebo; Janhwij Sharma, Joint Director General (Conservation, World Heritage, NCF, Website), Archaeological Survey of India;  Manish Amin, Co-Founder and CIO, Yatra; Rashmi Chadha, Founder, Wovoyage; Rishi Kumar Shukla, DGP, Madhya Pradesh Police; Anirudh Gupta, Co- founder, Tripoto and Abhishek Rajan, Head of Travel Business, Paytm among others.

Quoting data, IAMAI claimed that the tourism sector in India generated $20 Bn (INR 14.02 lakh Cr) or 9.6% of the GDP in 2016 and supported 40.343 Mn jobs or 9.3% of its total employment.

The sector is projected to grow at an annual rate of 6.8% to $450 Bn ( INR 28.49 lakh Cr) by 2027 (10% of GDP). The tourism ministry aims to double foreign tourist arrivals to over 20 Mn and double foreign exchange receipts to $52 Bn by 2020.

The Incredible India 2.0 campaign was launched in September 2017 by President Ram Nath Kovind on World Tourism Day. The campaign aimed to focus on specific promotional plans, with greater emphasis to be given to social media.

As the travel industry continues to be a major contributor to the Indian economy, the target of $48 Bn by 2020 set by Incredible India 2.0 doesn’t seem too farfetched.

The post Indian Travel Market Will Generate $48 Bn By 2020, Industry Players Concluded At Incredible India 2.0 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Continuing with its commitment to support and strengthen the technological ecosystem of the state, the Department of Information Technology and Communications under the Government of Rajasthan is organising the third edition of the Rajasthan IT Day from March 18-21 at Jaipur.

This year’s theme for the IT Day celebration revolves around providing a platform to e-mitras, education providers, students as well as startups. The four-day event aims to provide the participants an opportunity to portray their out-of-the-box products and services and seek support from the government.

There will be intensive panel discussions by reputed speakers across the nation, exhibitions on the latest innovations in the field of IT and e-Governance, along with workshops for tech wizards and emerging startups.

“Our vision is to digitally empower every citizen of the state to enhance their quality of life and become innovation and knowledge hub of the country.” Vasundhara Raje, Chief Minister, Rajasthan

The event will be graced by the presence of dignitaries of the Government of India and the Government of Rajasthan; officers of the Government of Rajasthan, specifically the Department of Industries, BIP, the Finance Department, the Department of Information Technology and Communication; IT industrialists and members of Rajasthan Venture Capital fund.

The four-day event will witness participation of dignitaries and influencers like Sh. Mohandas Pai (Manipal Global), Sh Rajendra K Pawar (NIIT), Suneel Shetty and many more.

Rajasthan IT Day 2018: An Overview

The four-day event will majorly host five programmes for the different community of individuals. This includes TechRush, Hackathon 4.0, Eduhack, Green-a-thon and eMitra/ITGK Connect.

Tech Rush

On March 18, 2018, the tech startups of the state can take part in the Tech Rush – a 5 km marathon that is being organised to commemorate the technology acceleration in the state. The marathon will take forward the agenda of making Rajasthan the digital supremo of the nation. People across the country will take part in this ‘run for technology’ marathon and will take home experience, inspiration and fine networking.

Hackathon 4.0

Between March 19 and 21, the Rajasthan government will be conducting Hackathon 4.0, a 36-hour non-stop coding marathon that will provide a platform for coders, developers and designers to use their solutions on numerous themes. The winners will take home prizes worth $49,942.89 (INR 32.5 Lakh), along with an opportunity to work with Government of Rajasthan.

e-Mitra Connect

From March 20-21, as part of Rajasthan IT Day 2018, the Government of Rajasthan is bringing “e-Mitra Connect” on the platform. This 24 hour-long activity will provide a platform where e-Mitra owners can pitch their innovative ideas about how to enhance and simplify the usage of e-Mitra services using electronic media.

The participants can prepare and develop a module, guide, video tutorials about how these services can be made available to the residents with ease. The categories for submitting and showcasing the ideas will be e-Service Delivery, IEC using Electronic Media and Banking Facility.

“Rajasthan has a service delivery network with over 45,000 e-Mitra kiosks. These service delivery points are offering more than 350 services across the state and are giving an entrepreneurial knack to the rural and urban youth by providing employment opportunities,” stated a Rajasthan government official.

EduHack

The other major attraction of the event will be EduHack, which is a 24-hour hackathon, to be hosted on March 20-21. It aims to give a unique platform to teachers, professors lecturers and educationists of Rajasthan, wherein they can create path-breaking solutions to improve the state’s education system.

This hackathon will provide a collaborative and competitive environment to the participants to implement their out-of-the-box ideas and develop extraordinary solutions. The solution can be in the form of new learning software, new teaching method, smart algorithm or anything that will help the state’s education system grow better and smarter.

‘Green-a-Thon’

‘Green-a-Thon’ or the Green Hackathon is one-of-its-kind event aimed at encouraging young problem solvers and innovative think tanks to create and implement new ideas for a more sustainable future.

It will be an all-night-long marathon in which the participants will develop, programme and build a prototype for something that will help in making the world a greener place.

The hackathon will include a series of coding events with a sustainability purpose where students will showcase their solutions to real civic and environmental issues.

Job Fair

The event will also have a Job Fair on March 19 and 20 which will bring together recruiters, tech managers and candidates who are looking for that right company and opportunities. The platform will not only accelerate the hiring process but will also provide participants with insights on what companies are looking for.

Sessions And Workshops

As part of the Rajasthan IT Day, from March  19 to 21, eminent speakers will come together to discuss ideas, display the latest innovations in the field of IT as well as conduct workshops for emerging startups and learners. Additionally, it will include the unveiling of the latest citizen-centric projects by the Government of Rajasthan.

Showcases

Along with all of the above, the IT Day will give emerging Rajasthan-based startups the opportunity to showcase their products and services at the ‘Startup Expo’.

So, What’s In Store For The Participants In Rajasthan IT Day 2018?

• Rajasthan IT Day 2018 will provide you a unique platform to witness cutting-edge innovations, explore technological breakthroughs and getting inspired from global leaders.
• The event will offer you a one of its kind opportunity to win Projects worth rupees 32.5 lacs through the biggest coding competition of the year– Hackathon 4.0.
• The fun and gaming activities during the entire event will give you a chance to grab attractive prizes like iPad, Tablet, Cell Phones, and a lot more.
• The sessions planned during the event will give you an opportunity to directly interact with eminent speakers and business leaders to take home a lifetime experience.

The interested participants can register here.

Other Similar Initiatives By The Rajasthan Government

Information technology has played a crucial role in the evolution of Rajasthan as a startup hub. From e-governance to utilising APIs in setting up the working mechanism of different departments, the state officials have boasted time to time about the impact the adoption of IT has created on the state’s development.

Rajasthan IT day was first hosted in 2016 with an aim to recognise the power of small technology-driven startups in wealth creation and employment generation. It was a day’s event which acted as a platform for IT startups to display their expertise and efficiency and seek the valuable support of the Rajasthan government and venture capital organisations.

The 2017 edition was based on the theme, “Skills for employability”, wherein the state government also hosted a 24-hour hackathon. The three winners of the hackathon were Protonly, Yeppar and Ankoosh. They won Projects worth of $23,051.6 (INR 15 lakhs), $15,367.7 (INR 10 Lakhs), $11,525.4 (INR 7.5 Lakhs) respectively; with the Department of Information Technology & Communication, GoR.

In the past few years, the Rajasthan government has also organised a number of initiatives, geared towards boosting the growth of innovative startups from Tier II and Tier III cities across the state.

“The theme of Rajasthan #Digifest – ‘Improving Today Inventing Tomorrow’ is symbolic of how in a technology driven world, change leads to growth. The theme resonates with the fact that we must continuously grow and advance to be relevant in the world of tomorrow.” Vasundhara Raje, Chief Minister, Rajasthan

Most prominent here is Digifest, a two-day mega event organised by Rajasthan state government’s Department of IT&C. So far, two editions of Rajasthan Digifest have been conducted in Kota and Udaipur respectively.

The event is geared towards providing a platform to various individuals from the field of IT and e-governance to showcase their skills and innovation. The ‘24-hour mega-hackathon for startups’ and the ‘Investor Connect’ form the highlights of the event.

Most recently, in the Udaipur Digifest, the main tech themes on which solutions were built included AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, bioinformatics, and IoT. The participants also got a chance to build tech solutions for the Rajasthan government’s initiatives such as Bhamashah and e-Mitra as well as applications to promote state tourism.

Editor’s Note

As it’s said, “band muthi laakh ki, khul gayi to khak ki”, the Rajasthan government’s efforts to pull together the state’s startup ecosystem stakeholders, and bridge the gap between investors, startups as well as policymakers is an example of the same.

Nothing can beat an ecosystem which provides its entrepreneurs a robust infrastructure as well as a multitude of opportunities to grow to a global scale from their own hometown. For long, the state has suffered from brain drain with entrepreneurs shifting their base to Tier I cities in search for better operating infrastructure.

However, with the efforts laid by the Rajasthan government in organising events such as Digifest, IT Day and more, new generation startups are getting a ready platform to showcase their ideas and cash in funding and mentorship opportunities from eminent industry leaders of the Indian startup ecosystem.

The results are already visible. As per Inc42 DataLabs, 30 Rajasthan startups secured $148 Mn between 2014-2017. Further, the total number of startups in the state has now reached 750, a 83% rise from 410 (approx) startups estimated in 2014.

Going ahead, whether the sincere efforts of the Rajasthan government will help the state to become a leading startup hub to watch out for.

To know more and for participating register here.

The post Rajasthan IT Day 2018: The Four-Day Event Calls In Innovators And Startups appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Inspired by the popular award-winning cybersecurity-based American TV series Mr. Robot’s protagonist Elliot Alderson’s quote “A bug is never just a mistake. It represents something bigger. An error of thinking that makes you who you are,” an anonymous hacker has now rebuked the Aadhaar security of UIDAI by publishing website links containing thousands of Aadhaar data.

The hacker has also posted a video explaining, “How to bypass the password protection of the official #Aadhaar #android #app in 1 minute.”

The Twitterati had earlier criticised Paytm for asking mobiles’ root-access from Paytm users which the company stopped later. Root access is essentially one of the most significant entry points for any Android device which can manipulate the operating system of the phone.

As Elliot in Mr. Robot had said, “I wanted to save the world”, the vigilante hacker Elliot, in his defence, tweeted, “I want to say something. I’m not against #Aadhaar. Not I’m in favour of Aadhaar. I just think that a project of this size deserves maximum security.”

In recent months, a number of media investigative reports have revealed the extent of the vulnerability of Aadhaar. However, UIDAI, instead of acknowledging the weak spot, started harassing people reporting the Aadhaar-leak.

Responding to the breach, UIDAI had then averred, “Aadhaar data is fully safe and secure and there has been no data leak or breach at UIDAI”

It had further stated, “the Aadhaar numbers which were made public on the said websites do not pose any real threat to the people as biometric information is never shared and is fully secure with highest encryption at UIDAI and mere display of demographic information cannot be misused without biometrics.”

However, the self-proclaimed French security researcher under the pseudonym Elliot Alderson has published URLs on his/her Twitter profile, which included people’s biometric data as well.

Within few hours, the URL became null and void. However, Inc42 was able to check the accessibility of massive Aadhaar data using web cache before it started showing Forbidden.

The URLs shared by the hacker belonged to the Panchayat Raj, Andhra Pradesh Government site.

UIDAI, however, in series of tweets, rebutted Alderson’s claims. It averred, “UIDAI has dismissed the reports as irresponsible which appeared in a section of social and other media on security of Aadhaar system being questioned on account of a few Aadhaar cards reportedly put on the internet by some unscrupulous elements.”

The mother organisation of Aadhaar further added, “Aadhaar just like any other identity document, therefore, is never to be treated as a confidential document.”

It was the first time that documents containing entire Aadhaar data of thousands of people including their biometric details were easily accessible.

During early breaches, UIDAI had averred, “The existing security controls and protocols are robust and capable of countering any such attempts or malicious designs of data breach or hacking.”

Former CIA employer/American computer professional now turned a self-proclaimed flag bearer of freedom of press Edward Snowden seconded K C Verma, former Head, RAW, India  “Rarely do former intel chiefs and I agree, but the head of India’s RAW writes #Aadhaar is being abused by banks, telcos, and transport not to police entitlements, but as a proxy for identity-an improper gate to service. Such demands must be criminalised,”

He had also said, “It is the natural tendency of government to desire perfect records of private lives. History shows that no matter the laws, the result is abuse.”

In January, this year, The Tribune had reported that some unidentified groups were selling the Aadhaar data of over one billion people at just $7.88 (INR 500).

The link shared by these unidentified group on WhatsApp provided the login and password details to access all the necessary details of one billion Indians. One just needed to enter the Aadhaar number, and bang! It showed the rest of the details, claims the report.

After paying $4.73 more, the group even shared the entire Aadhaar software, which one needs to print one’s Aadhaar details.

Further India Today and The Quint, in their separate investigative reports, found Aadhaar nodal agencies were actively involved in trading database for professional uses such as sales pitching etc.

Hence the big question is: passed under the Money Bill, where exactly Aadhaar Aadhaar is heading, in absence of basic laws pertaining to people’s privacy and data protection?

In order to mitigate the chaos surrounding the security of Aadhaar details of the citizen, UIDAI has also announced plans to introduce another measure – Aadhaar face recognition. The move will come into effect from July 1, 2018.

In Supreme Court, a five-judge panel headed by CJI is hearing the Aadhaar case on a day-to-day basis. While the Court has already extended the due date of Aadhaar linking indefinitely, it remains to be seen whether the above-said breach by the hacker Alderson will be used by the petitioners against Aadhaar or not.

The post After Paytm, This Vigilante Hacker Is Now Dodging Aadhaar Security Of UIDAI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Digital payments player Paytm has announced the launch of two new services – Gold Gifting and Gold Savings Plan as a part of its wealth management offering Paytm Gold. Through these services, customers can now send 24K 999.9 Purity Gold to each other instantly.

Nitin Misra, Senior Vice President Paytm said, “Paytm Gold has been successful is drawing consumers to save Gold digitally in a cost-effective manner. We are excited to launch two truly differentiated wealth management products for our customers – Gold Gifting, which would address the need for gold gifting and Gold Savings Plan – a trusted and affordable means to save pure Gold regularly for long-term wealth creation. This year, we would focus on introducing these offerings to more customers, bringing a certain discipline to their savings habits and helping them achieve their financial goals.”

The Gold Savings Plan would help customers to conveniently and regularly save in gold as per their budget and requirement by entering the duration, frequency and amount of gold they want to save. There is no requisite minimum amount for investment. They can easily keep track of all transactions done using their Gold Passbook with the added convenience of no lock-in period.

The customer’s gold will be stored in MMTC PAMP’s secure and 100% insured lockers for free and they can get delivery of this gold at any time. This would eliminate additional fees associated with offline gold purchase like making and locker charges.

The two wealth management plans come as the company endeavours to offer customers access to trusted and affordable gold savings for the long-term. It was last April when the digital payments player had collaborated with MMTC-PAMP to launch Digital Gold, enabling users to buy gold online and store it in MMTC-PAMP’s vault free of charge. Flipkart-owned digital payments platform PhonePe followed in its footsteps as well, forging a partnership with SafeGold to launch a digital gold product last December.

As per the company’s claims, more than 60% of Paytm Gold purchases are from tier 2 and 3 cities with millennial constituting the majority. The platform also claims to have witnessed repeat purchases of Paytm Gold worth up to $7.7 (INR 500) at regular intervals, pointing at an increasing trend of consumers choosing Paytm Gold.

In this respect, the new Gold Gifting and Gold Savings Plan will hopefully further Paytm to augment demand for digital gold, at the same time boosting its wealth management services. In January this year, Paytm also set up its financial products arm Paytm Money Ltd. Paytm Money is set to focus on building investment and wealth management products for its users.

The post Paytm Launches Wealth Management Products Gold Gifting and Gold Savings Plan appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Parenting social network startup, Healofy, has raised $1 Mn in a seed funding round from Omidyar Network.

On the investment, Siddharth Nautiyal, Investment Partner, Omidyar Network said, “Healofy, with its tailored and habit-forming parenting social network, is tackling this problem head-on. Healofy’s engagement numbers are a testament to the high value perceived by their target audience, and we are excited about this opportunity to help the company achieve its full potential.”

The company intends to use the latest funding to hire talent in leadership positions across product, technology and data science; to build onto the existing personalisation engine and layer in multiple regional languages on their platform.

The company had earlier raised funds from Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com and Jitendra Gupta, founder of Citrus Pay and other Silicon Valley-based marquee investors in October 2017. They were also selected in Y Combinator in 2017.

Growth Story Of Healofy

Founded in May 2016 by Gaurav Aggarwal and Shubham Maheshwari, Healofy has a verified and moderated community of doctors; experts; expectant parents and new parents in the journey of pregnancy; baby care and parenting (newborn, infant or toddler).

It is a peer-to-peer platform that allows parents, particularly moms and moms-to-be to discover, connect, ask and chat with like-minded users to make an informed health and lifestyle decisions.

As Gaurav Aggarwal, CEO, Healofy claimed, “Over the last six months, we have become the fastest growing and highest ranked parenting app in India. And now, with Omidyar Network’s support, we plan to grow our active user base 10x in 2018.”

In October 2016, Healofy was also selected for FbStart, the early stage, mobile-focussed startup programme of Facebook.  Under the programme, the startup had received $40 K worth of credits and services from Facebook and its partners including UserTesting, Dropbox, and MailChimp.

The app currently has 300K downloads and supports eight local languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi and Tamil.  The founder further claims that the active user base on the platform spends over 10 Mn minutes a month on the app.

Talking about the growth, Shubham Maheshwari, CTO, Healofy adds, “Healofy is performing at par with Facebook on key social networking metrics like DAU/MAU ratio and that makes us believe we are in for something crazy and big especially as the Network Effects kick in for us within the next few months.”

In the parenting segment, Healofy competes with players like Parentlane, Tinystep, BabyBerry, Ratan Tata-backed Firstcry, Mahindra Group’s BabyOye, HopScotch, etc.

In January 2017, Bengaluru-based parenting-focussed social network Tinystep raised $2 Mn funding from ecommerce giant, Flipkart. While in October 2016, Mumbai-based parenting social discovery platform Babychakra raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Seattle-based VC fund RoundGlass Partners.

As Healofy marches ahead with its strong growth and parenting services, the results of the latest round of funding will be much awaited.

The post Parenting Social Network Startup Healofy Raises $1 Mn In Seed Funding From Omidyar Network appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In a step further to broaden its reach, fashion e-tailer Myntra is now offering EMI (Equated monthly instalment) payments on its platform starting from $0.78 (INR 51) a month on the purchase of clothes.

According to reports, the EMI facility is now available on the platform for some products that are worth $20 (INR 1300) or less. For this, the company has tied up with HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Citibank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Amex, HSBC and others and will charge 13% to 15% interest on credit card purchases of selected items that can be paid over three to 24 months.

According to persons directly related to development, this has been done to “encourage consumers who can buy first and pay later and it will help Myntra compete with brick-and-mortar retailers.”

The facility, however, is not available on Jabong, which Myntra acquired in July 2016.

An email query sent to Myntra didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

Experimenting With EMI On Ecommerce

This is not the first time that an ecommerce company is offering the facility of buy now and pay later. Earlier it was Flipkart, which owns both Myntra and Jabong, that introduced the scheme ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’.

In a blog post, Flipkart had explained, “Customers can purchase goods on Flipkart throughout the month up to an enabled limit (INR 5–10K) without having to go through the payment process every time. Instead, they can complete their purchase at one-click, receive the products, use them and validate their quality, and later pay. The payments can all be bunched up and paid at one go next month.”

Myntra Expands Its Footprint

Flipkart-owned fashion portal Myntra has been exploring different avenues of growth. The company opened its first offline store with Roadster in 2017 and recently was planning to open its beauty and wellness store.

It also recorded a turnover of $314.6Mn (INR 2000 Cr) in the fiscal year 2016-17 and claimed a 100% growth for the accessories category in FY17.

Recently, reports also surfaced that Myntra is planning to acquire a 5% minority stake in Bengaluru-based outdoor gear and sports apparel company Wildcraft. This came as a part of Myntra’s brand accelerator programme, where Myntra has on-boarded brands like Chemistry and AKS.

Also, Myntra has been aggressively building a robust private label business, which now accounts for nearly a fourth of its revenue. Some of its private labels are Roadster, HRX, Mast & Harbour, Dressberry and Ether, which had returned a positive EBITDA of 5%, as claimed by the company.

In December 2017, Myntra also announced the launch of its multi-brand offline stores, where customers can see all the private labels that are available on its online platform. The stores are expected to be launched by the end of 2018.

The recently-published Indian government’s Economic Survey 2018 revealed that India’s ecommerce market has reached $33 Bn, registering a 19.1% growth in 2016-2017. Further, the Indian online fashion market was pegged at $3.7 Bn in 2017, wherein Flipkart, with its subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong, claims to hold a 70% share.

In light of the increasing potential of the ecommerce market, Flipkart, along with its subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong, has been toying with age-old models like O2O, brick-and-mortar merchant stores to further bolster its growth.

Amid this, the introduction of EMI payments on fashion platform Myntra is just another attempt to woo Indian customers. However, the results of this along with Flipkart’s pay later option will be much awaited.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Following In Parent Flipkart’s Footsteps, Fashion Marketplace Myntra Now Offers EMI Options appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Mumbai-headquartered data analytics company Fractal Analytics has acquired behavioural architecture company Final Mile.

On the acquisition, Srikanth Velamakanni, Group Chief Executive and Executive Vice-Chairman, Fractal Analytics said, “Final Mile’s track record in influencing human behaviour through behavioural science, combined with Fractal’s data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, will help our clients drive lasting behaviour change internally and externally.”

The acquisition comes on the heels of a successful partnership between the companies that began in 2017.

Founded in 2008, Final Mile applies behavioural sciences to understand decision-making and influence consumer and social behavior. Final Mile has helped solve behavioural challenges in financial services, healthcare, consumer goods, ecommerce, and developmental and nonprofit sectors.

The company uses innovative research methods like games and simulations to truly understand the subconscious reasons behind what people do and develop interventions to drive sustainable behavioural change.

Commenting on the development, Biju Dominic, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Final Mile said, “Data and AI can dramatically improve our understanding of human behavior, inform better hypotheses, and complement our work with clients in achieving sustained behavior change. We see extraordinary opportunities to deliver greater value to our clients in partnering with Fractal over the long term.”

US-based Fractal Analytics was founded in 2000 by a five-member team including IIM Ahmedabad alumni Srikanth Velamakanni and Pranay Agrawal,along with Nirmal Palaparthi, Pradeep Suryanarayan, and Ramakrishna Reddy. Fractal Analytics is a strategic analytics partner to the top Fortune 500 companies globally and helps them power every human decision in the enterprise by bringing analytics and AI into the decision-making process.

With over 14 offices worldwide including London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Singapore and Dubai, Fractal, with a team of 1,200 people, caters to clients in over 100 countries. Fractal’ flagship product ‘Customer Genomics’ is aimed at helping marketers learn complex customer behaviour at an individual level.

In May 2016, Fractal Analytics raised $100 Mn (INR 667 Cr) from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad at a valuation of $300 Mn (INR 2,000 Cr). Earlier, in June 2013, it raised funding worth $25 Mn from private equity investor TA Associates.

In January 2015, Fractal Analytics acquired Singapore-based mobile Big Data startup Mobius Innovations for an undisclosed amount.

With the growing number of startups working on latest technologies like AI, Internet of Things etc, the acquisition of Final Mile by Fractal Analytics merges the Big Data energies of the two companies and gives them a boost to further deepen their foothold in the global market.

The post Fractal Analytics Acquires Behavioural Architecture Company Final Mile appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, which was one of the early investors in Snapdeal, is looking to sell its stake in the ecommerce firm, as per two sources in the know.

An ET report stated that the venture capital firm has held conversations with the company’s promoters to sell its stake, in entirety or partially. However, there is yet no guarantee that a successful secondary deal will necessarily happen.

However in case it does, Kalaari Capital could sell its stake in Snapdeal for $6.1 Mn-$7.7 Mn (INR 40 Cr-INR 50 Cr) which would entail a massive cut from its overall investment of about $20.8 Mn (INR 135 Cr) in the company.

As per the report, Kalaari Capital is also believed to have held discussions with other investors for the sale of its stake.

Kalaari Capital holds about an 8% stake in Snapdeal. If the deal goes through, this could further see Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal tighten their grip on the beleaguered ecommerce marketplace which resisted being acquired by rival Flipkart in much drawn out deal negotiations last year.

The collapse of the Snapdeal acquisition by larger rival Flipkart last year had dealt a blow to the venture capital firm. Had the deal gone through, Kalaari Capital was expected to get around $70 Mn-$80 Mn.

The firm, along with Nexus Venture Partners, had demanded a special payout, estimated at $100 Mn from SoftBank for agreeing to the deal. But this request became one of the major stumbling blocks to a successful completion of the acquisition.

The proposed $850 Mn acquisition fell through in July last year as both Snapdeal founders – Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal – as well as early-stage investor Nexus Venture Partner and minority shareholders like PremjiInvest had expressed reservations against the proposed deal.

At that time, Vani Kola, Managing Director of Kalaari Capital, who had resigned from the Snapdeal board in May last year (a position she had held since 2009), had expressed deep disappointment with the Snapdeal founders’ decision to call off the deal and pursue an independent path.

Thus after a failed share sale last year, it appears Kalaari Capital wants to try selling its stake  again in Snapdeal as it reportedly gears up to raise its fourth investment vehicle. It remains to be seen if this time, the venture capital firm will be able to offload its shares in the ecommerce firm.

[The development was first reported by ET]

The post Venture Capital Firm Kalaari Capital Looks To Sell Stake In Snapdeal appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Once called the ‘Land of kings’, and known majorly as a tourist destination, India’s largest state Rajasthan is now posing as a top contender in DIPP’s state ranking challenge. Being home to over 750 startups, multiple accelerator as well as incubator groups, the state government is leaving no stone unturned to pave way for a robust startup infrastructure to nurture innovation and foster the spirit of entrepreneurship in the state.

While an attempt has been made to set the right direction for the startup ecosystem stakeholders with the startup as well as IT/ITES policies, considerable efforts have been taken to strengthen the entrepreneurship roots right from the ground up in the state.

For instance, in the month of January, the state information technology and communications department in Rajasthan announced its plans to help promote startups by college students with an aim to support 500 of the top student developers to create startups.

iStart, Rajasthan Digifest, Startup hackathons, Rajasthan IT Day: the list of initiatives tagged under the Rajasthan state government is increasing continuously. This is further attracting the investors as well as the startups to set up their base in Rajasthan’s Tier II cities like Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota and more.

Home to growth and late-stage startups like GirnarSoft, Gemporia, CultureAlley, Finova Capital and more, the land of kings has had its way of leading development by examples. Therefore, Inc42 brings to you an exhaustive compilation of early-stage startups from Rajasthan, pulling in innovative concepts with the potential to rise and shine on the global front.

Here Are The 26 Early Stage Rajasthan-Based Startups To Look For In 2018

Srjna

Founded in 2014 by Vivek Pathak, Sharad Bansal, OP Godara and Kapil Arya, SRJNA is a hybrid education model using real and virtual teaching aids to impart 5D classroom experiential learning and smart online assessment platform with deep analytics for K-10 students, teachers, and parents.

The startup helps schools to set up and manage innovation labs and tinkering labs. It is working to foster curiosity and invention among kids through a “learning by doing” approach.

Srjna, a brand of Elation Edtech Pvt Ltd, initiated by four alumni of IITs and XLRI is now a team of 15 enthusiasts who want to make a disruptive change in school education.

It has developed over 200+ innovative, economically feasible and portable subject learning physical models for schools that are worried about the low quality of learning outcomes through conventional teaching methods.

ToRoots

The Jaipur-based startup began with an aim to enable people to shed the shackles of mainstream tourism and experience travel through culture and tradition.

ToRoots provides a supporting ecosystem to co-create experiential travel products. The objective is to help travellers easily discover and book unique verified travel experiences created by authenticated escape artists. Their specialties are: experiential travel, adventure travel, rural travel, nature & wildlife travel, eco and agri travel, and spiritual and religion travel

Founded by Naveen Meena and Mohit Sharmain 2015, it provides experiences of diverse nature such as camping on an small island, deserts, nomadic life and walking through the snow or cycling along the hilly regions of Kerala, Rajasthan or the Himalayas.

Myly

Myly is a cloud-based mobile app that enables communication and financial transaction between schools and parents while offering a learning platform for students. The communication includes messages, attendance, homework, and images. The app has partnered with mobile wallet Paytm to enable regular fees and activity fees payment.

The app which was created by Gaurav Mundra and Madhup Bansal in 2014 acts as a digital diary, with rich communication features and facility to share images and videos. It enables a two-way communication between students or parents and educators.

The app is also useful to universities, coaching centres, tuition and hobby classes. The app went operational in March 2015. It claims to have 120 schools on its platform with 30,000 students.

ScooNews

ScooNews is a media platform for the education sector. The platform helps the stakeholders in the education sector to remain updated with the latest updates. Headquartered in Jaipur, it was founded by Ravi Santlani and specialises in education news, K-12 education news, school news, and edtech.

ScooNews is present across mediums and formats – print, online, online TV (currently on YouTube.) The  independent online TV channel launch is planned for July 2018. It also conducts events – all focused on the education sector.

The team has also created the ScooNews app which is a unique app that brings to you the latest news on the go from the K-12 segment. It enables readers to stay connected with incisive articles, in-depth interviews, and a roundup of schools across the country and a general observation of educational trends.

Freshokartz

Freshokartz Agri Products is aimed at becoming a one-stop-shop for all the fruits and vegetable needs to run food businesses. Based out of Jaipur, it works on basis of the on-demand procurement model to provide the farm fresh fruits and vegetables directly procured from farms.

The startup which was founded in 2016 by Nagendra Yadav and Rajendra Lora operates in Jaipur, Rajasthan. It brings fresh farm produces directly from the farms and does the sorting, grading and packing as per customers order but orders need to be placed at least one day ahead. It only delivers to hotels, restaurants, cafe, retailers and other commercial kitchens.

Mr And Mrs Pet

The Jaipur-based startup is aimed at becoming a one-stop solution for pet lovers.

Founded in 2016 by Ashish Chhanwal and Ankita Singh, it features animals for selection according to the breeds for families looking for pets. The website also listed a variety of services for the pets such as pet hostel, pet walkers, pet health, etc.

It also aids the pet owners to learn about food and nourishment for their pets along with spreading an awareness about their pets’ health via veterinary services, etc.

Brickcart

Brickcart is a Jaipur-based startup that provides a digital medium for homeowners to design, build and decorate their dream homes. It is an online platform to meet every need related to home construction or renovation.

Interestingly, the website reflects live quotes of a wide range of building materials along with the total available stock. Brickcart claims to be the largest marketplace for all home construction and home renovation related needs.

They provide services for “bulk deals” and ‘turnkey solutions’, which includes design, labour services and materials.

The startup, founded in 2016 by Atal Khandelwal, Sumit Sonkia, Vivek Dhanopia, and Brijesh Sharma, also offers building materials listed on their website from the top brands. Some of the construction categories they work in are: building material, kitchen, plumbing, bath and faucet, wood and plywood, sanitary, walls and flooring etc.

ETACUDER

ETACUDER is a Udaipur-based startup which has launched an AI-powered digital tool called munshiG to meet every type of accounting needs of small vendors.

The startup was founded by Nishant and Prateek in 2017 and its software provides a 360-degree accounting solution to retailers such that billing, accounting, book keeping and filing taxes, mitigating the need to go to an accountant.

The three main services catered by munshiG include invoicer for businesses, POS for vendors and ERP for startups.

The app is also helpful to generate bills on the voice input for kirana vendors, make records of purchases of customers. The interesting part of the app is that ‘Purchase Bills’ can be transferred to customers through an e-mode via SMS, email, etc. on the spot, with which customers can track the records of their purchases bill. Vendors can select payment mode during purchases and can see daily, weekly, monthly and even an all-time insights of overall usage pattern of payment mode.

Green Bharat

The Green Bharat is a social project, focussing on of environment and employment. In this project, anyone can plant as many as tree(s) and can also track location and growth of the Tree at his/her home.

The prime objective of the project is to enable the people to plant trees, who don’t own land and don’t have sufficient time for the plantation. The plantation can be done as many times as they want by ordering plants online through Green Bharat App even they can track the plantation process as well.

To the farmers who own land, the Green Bharat will provide free plants and offer some money for the plantation till the plant become fully grown. Of course, the farmer will have complete ownership of the plants and its products (fruits, etc.).

The startup is based out of Jaipur.

Cattle Mettle

Jodhpur-based Cattle Mettle was founded by Nikhil Bohra as a social venture with a mission to increase the current productivity of India cattle. It is operated by the startup Krimanshi Technologies Private Limited which was launched on June 2015.

Currently, farmers rely on intermittent supply of green and dry fodder, and food grains which do not fulfill the nutritional requirements of cattle. Also, the concentrate cattle feed available in the market is expensive for these small farmers.

The startup aims to provide a solution to address these challenges by incorporating locally available resources into the food chain of cattle which are not being used at present. Interestingly, the startup utilises farm waste, mandi waste, forest waste, etc. and based on the nature of the waste, develops cattle feeds.

The startup is yet to launch and is currently engaged in the groundwork. As part of its pilot programme, it has already tied up with organisations such as Ambuja foundations, who have reached over 2000 farmers with their farm-based products. In 2017, it had received a funding of $261K (INR 1.7 Cr) from Startup Oasis.

As shared by Nikhil with Inc42, Cattle Mettle is currently working with a team of four full time and 10 part time employees and with its cattle feed, there has been seen a 20-25% increase in milk production, and milk fat. There are also plans to scale the operations to Jaipur.

Bodhi AI

Founded in 2017 by Prashant Pandey and Gaurav Sanghai, Bodhi AI is an edtech startup based out of Jaipur. It offers an AI-based test creation engine which instantly and automatically creates tests that are personalised and customised for each student based on their performance and learning abilities.

The startup also creates strategies best suited to learning pattern of each and every student. It is currently serving coaching institutes which help students prepare for government job examinations including SSC, Railways, IAS  as well as Army examinations. It also helps colleges and institutions to run student programs for aptitude examinations in order to prepare them for campus placements.

As shared by Prashant with Inc42, Bodhi AI currently has the partnership with 10 leading educational institutes of Rajasthan wherein five of them come from the Army background. Also, there are 16K students registered on the platform.

Urban Kisan

Urban Kisan was established in 2015 by Ankit Rawat and Keshav Modi as a full-scale hydroponic farm at Jaipur. The word, ‘hydroponic’, comes from Latin and means working water. Simply put, it is the art of growing plants without soil.

As implied, the startup is thus working to find ways to making organic farming more effective. It claims to utilise new age techniques to grow the crops at a 30% faster rate and with 80% less water. And the most interesting part is, the crops donot require soil to grow.

The farms are enabled by latest soil-less vertical farming technology of hydroponics developed by NASA as research to grow food naturally in outer space.

Majorly, the startup is serving the needs of the top hotels, multi-cuisine restaurants and retail outlets. It is only by 2016, the team took their first order from Dubai and Malaysia, for the supply of strawberry, herbs and microgreens.

Kooky Infomedia

Jodhpur-based Kooky is an inspiration for Tier II startups who aim to make big and scale globally. Maker of digital products, the Kooky team specialises in premium UX/UI design, mobile app, games development, website design & development, animation & art, video production and digital marketing.

Till 2013, Kooky founders Ravindra Prajapati and Gulshan Solanki were working solely on games development. With time, they got a big client and collaborated with them for games. By 2014-15, they formed a private limited company and expanded to international market.

Prior working experience in a startup gave  them the idea to help other people in their MVPs by putting their personal interest to make a successful and outstanding products. Now, Kooky team has more than five partners across the world and yet counting the success.

Apart from India, the company has the presence in Australia, Nigeria, the USA and the UK.

The Pink Paddles

Based out of Pink City Jaipur, the startup endeavours to inculcate cycling as a habit. Founded by Pooja Vijay, just seven months back, Pink Paddles found its inspiration from traditional India.

The earlier generations in India found cycle as the medium for day to day commute. With rapid civilisation, we have now switched to faster mode of commutes. However, while saving time, we have paved the way for several health disorders as well as pollution.

Pink Paddles thus aims to play its part by serving a threefold purpose of reducing environmental pollution, motivating people for a healthy living and at the same time earning its revenues out from the venture.

The startup provides cycles to morning and evening walkers of their choice at very nominal charges at the major gardens and parks of the city. The team of four claims to have a huge fleet of top international brands cycles available on first come first serve rule. It also provides “The Tandem cycles”, with two seats and four pedals.

As Pooja shared with Inc42, she has already reached break even in a short span of time and is now looking to expand Pink Paddles outside Jaipur. She also claims to have motivated 6000+ people so far to cycle and on an average 50 people cycle daily with Pink Paddles’ fleet of high-end international cycles.

India OuttaBox

Working with the motto of “Friend-ism is the new Tourism!!!”, India OuttaBox is aiming to bring customisation to the Indian travel industry particularly for the foreign tourists. The startup was founded in 2016 by Vinny K Williams, who aims to provide an umbrella of services to the foreign visitors including tourism, business, education or medical reasons.

From customising the travel itinerary to making available comfortable stays with Indian families, the startup is doing everything digitally, thus making it easier for the travellers to make the most out their India trip.

At the same time, it is also partnering with different service providers be it hotels, ticket booking, mobile sim providers and call them as ‘Travel Dost’ on Indian Outtabox platform. It has also partnered with AVIS, which is a global car rental service provider and has a fleet of more than 450K cars.

Parallel Campus

Parallel Campus is a cloud campus automation platform, where the team is on mission to improve communication between all entity of educational ecosystem to reduce pressure, improve classroom attention, discipline and simplify and automate all aspects of operations for Campus.

Parallel Campus, thus, provides a single centralised platform for managing a campus and give a single point of contact for all-teachers, students as well as parents.

At the same time, the startup also offers enterprise SaaS services, to manage day to day campus processes including inventory management, payroll processing, digital library and more.

At present, Parallel campus claims to have over 80K students and a strong, global network of channel partnerships with customers in more than 50 countries. Also, the platform currently supports over 12 languages.

Bykup

Inspired by Indonesia’s GoJek, Bykup, a bike pooling startup, went live in August 2016 with a simple motto of connecting a biker and a rider on prescribed city commute routes.

The Jaipur-based company managed to raise $200K in angel funding in two tranches of $100K in January and October 2016 respectively. It is currently operational in Jaipur, Hyderabad as well as Pune.

With India being the second biggest two-wheeler market in the world, targeting Tier II and Tier III markets particularly, the founders, Shashank Kansal and Ruchir Gupta, are aiming to leverage the existing on-road fleet of two-wheelers and 530 Mn smartphone users (to reach by end of 2018) in India.

The team is insistent on pushing the service for the bikers as a source for second income is targeting the emerging 18-30-year-old population from non-urban India. They are also eyeing the global economy with a Master List of 100 cities in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe.

Dream Wallets

Jaipur-based crowdfunding platform, Dream Wallets, owned by SeedLogix India Pvt Ltd, was founded in July 2015 by Nikhil Agrawal and Manish Harodia.

It is a reward-based online crowdfunding platform and showcases initiatives on diverse interests relating to short films, documentaries, arts and crafts, social causes, photography, environment, film and video, technology, food, etc.

Dream Wallets provides direct linkages with donors such as corporates, NRIs and individuals.The company claims to have over a thousand registered users who regularly endorse and support the projects listed on its platform.

In May 2016, the startup secured an undisclosed amount of funding in a Seed round led by Rakesh Gupta and Aditya Aggarwal. Siddharth Banerjee, Vikas Ranjan, Anshul Jindal, Sunil Koul, and Sanjeev Agrawal also participated in this round.

Xatalog

Jaipur-based Xatalog Technologies, founded in 2016 by Aditya Kedia and Deepak Sharma is envisioned towards simplifying the online catalog creation and management. With millennial customers ruling the digital businesses all over the world, the need has also risen to maintain online catalogues to give user a better purview of the available products and the services.

Xatalog helps businesses maintain their product/service catalogues in a number of file formats including excel, ppt, pdf, etc. The data is stored over Amazon cloud, and the services are available in the price range of $290 – $1490.

The startup primarily targets manufacturers and wholesalers of jewellery, apparel, footwear, handicrafts and pharmaceuticals industries among others.

Qriyo

Jodhpur-based Qriyo Infolabs is a startup that aims to provide avenues for a fitter and active lifestyle.

Founded in 2015 by Mudit Jain and Rishabh Jain, Qriyo offers plethora of courses at home from wide domains including academics, co-curricular, extracurricular and fitness with philosophy. These semi-customisable courses offer quick, focused learnings with qualified, trained instructors and powerful curriculum.

With a vision of creating a “new breed of offline freelancers”, Qriyo also aims to provide employment opportunities to skilled individuals in their respective domains, encouraging skill development on a large scale.

The startup also raised $160K in its Seed round of funding from early-stage venture capital firm, Idein Ventures.

Rays Culinary Delights (Sattviko)

Rays Culinary Delights Pvt. Limited operates an online marketplace for yogic products and services. Sattviko also runs a quick service restaurant in Gurugram and Jaipur, and its a platform that sells various yoga products ranging from fresh food, daily groceries, yoga classes, yoga stays, ayurvedic medicines, and others.

Rays Culinary Delights Pvt. Limited was incorporated in 2013 and it started online delivery of packaged foods in February 2015. The startup was founded by three IIT-Roorkee graduates Gupta, Ankush Sharma and Rahul Gupta.

In November of 2017, Sattviko had raised its first angel investment in a Pre Series A funding round. Prior to that, it had also acqui-hired snacks company Indori Chotore based out of Mumbai and Pune.

Blackboard Radio

Blackboard Radio is an AI- powered, gamified mobile app for learning the English language, targeted towards children below the age of 10 years.

The app was created by Vatsal Dusad and Shubham Gupta and engages children by creating an immersive speech-driven environment and thereby reducing need of language trainers, constant parental supervision and cost.

All the activities on the app are speech and diction focussed, with ML in the back end to create a personalised and adaptive engine for the user.

Founded in 2016, it is focussed on B2C sales where students, parents and teachers can listen to podcasts, messages and radio shows from their schools. It is headquartered in Delhi.

The app features a community platform where parents can showcase their child’s creative audio content (poems, stories etc) and share with family and friends. The solution is focused on tier II and tier III cities in India.

Through the product, the app is aiding in collecting speech data from Indian children who speak English. The makers of the app aims to use the data to create machine learning algorithms which will provide feedback on speech characteristics such as pronunciation, fluency, and diction in the near future.

Apnagodam

Apnagodam works to efficiently manage agri-based warehousing. The startup was founded by Sanjay Agarwal in 2016 and is headquartered in Jaipur.

Mainly working as a B2B startup, it attempts to find closed factories, old sheds, idle cement godowns which are vacant and no longer in use. The team of Apnagodam then repairs those spaces and convert them into agri warehouses.

These warehouses are used by the farmers and the traders who keep their agri produce over there and they are also able to avail financial facilities pledged by the startup to avoid distress sale of the produce.

These warehouses are listed on the portal, to which the farmer can log in to check the nearest and cheapest warehouse.

The startup is aiding to solve the day-to-day problems faced by the farmers or farm owners in storing their cultivated crops as there aren’t sufficient places to store the produce securely.

Newndra

Newndra Innovations is a disruptive and frugal innovations-focused startup recognised by DIPP. The startup manufactures exoskeleton belts which are unpowered, lightweight, efficient and affordable to assist manual workers of which JaipurBelt, is a flagship product of the company.

The startup was founded in 2014 by Ganesh Jangir and is headquartered in Jaipur. It develops and markets its products to create better impact for manual workers and society.

Newndra Innovations was amongst the top 10 Promising Startup of the Year (CII, Industrial Innovations Awards 2016). It has also been awarded by India Today’s Trails Blazer Award 2016.

Newndra Innovations is is an awardee of the Indo-US Science and Technology Endowment Fund and the TePP, DSIR Grant. It is collaborating with institutions like Dr P.K. Sethi Rehabilitation Center and MedSpark, USA.

The startup already has over seven national and international patents.

Amogue

Amogue, an application which is a ‘Smart Shopping Assistive Mobile’ platform currently being tested over Android Platform integrates multiple ecommerce portals in the clothing and accessorising sections. It then generates various looks and combinations for a user and gives personalised dressing suggestions.

Founded in 2017 by Gautam Bhatheja in Jaipur, Amogue helps people to dress and shop better. It updates its users with the latest fashion trends in the fashion world.

MLoyal

mLoyal is a pet services aggregator that encompasses the needs and pain points of pet parents (owners) and pet service providers. The startup offers mobile application, website, food, insurance, mobile crematorium and a number of other value-added services.

The founders aim to make mLoyal a one-stop shop for both pet owners as well as service providers right from pet food to medicines and from veterinary doctor to pet salon. While the consumers can access all kinds of pet products and services, service providers can manage their clients on the mLoyal app in an efficient manner, thereby increasing ratio of the returning customers.

The founders Nipun Biyani, Manas Mehra and Arpit Mehra, themselves are pet lovers and are also fans of Roger A. Caras who once said, “Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. Is it without a doubt the best deal man has ever made”?

While Nipun has partnered and managed veterinary clinics in Jaipur with key role in client servicing and promotions, Arpit has great working relations with a lot of vets and shop owners of Jaipur and some other parts of Rajasthan as well.

The startup was launched in September 2017 and is currently planning to scale up on a pan India level. In the next five years, the startup is planning its presence across nine cities in India (sic metros and three-tier II cities) as much as increase the number of its app users by 5,000.

The Department of Information Technology and Communications under the Government of Rajasthan is organising the third edition of the Rajasthan IT Day from March 18-21 at Jaipur. To know more and for participating register here.

The post The 26 Rajasthan Based Startups To Look Out For   appeared first on Inc42 Media.

To outplay the latest aerial, indoor and 3D mapping innovations by HERE Maps and other competitors like TomTom and Bing – the undisputed leader of mapping solutions, Google Maps, has launched new tools to improve the navigation feature and the user’s experience.

Google Maps has added voice navigation in six regional Indian languages. In addition to English and Hindi, Google has brought voice navigation in six additional Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. 

Voice navigation in Hindi was added three years ago.

It has also introduced Zippr like Plus Codes, which are six character Plus city codes for locations. The codes can be generated, shared and searched by anyone by entering into the search field on Google or Google Maps. This will further enable searching temporary or time-bound addresses such as of events, business meets, etc.

It is not clear whether the Plus codes and other features will also be available on Google Maps Lite.

Suren Ruhela, Director, Google Maps Next Billion Users in a Google note stated, “To use a Plus Code, simply enter it into the Search field on Google or Google Maps on your mobile phones or desktops. That’s it. You’ll be instantly shown the location! Plus Codes can be used for a wide variety of reasons including communicating the venue of a temporary event, guiding emergency services to afflicted locations and providing an identifiable location for complicated addresses.”

For a long time now, Google Maps-enabled Uber and Ola users have also been struggling with the issues of missing addresses. To facilitate the process of accurate and easy searching on Maps, Google has also introduced ‘Add an Address’ – a feature that enables users, to contribute to the Maps experience from the Google Maps app.

“Similar to adding businesses, users can submit new or missing addresses through this feature and we’ll make sure the address is searchable in due course after verification. And yes, you do get Local Guides points for each valid submission!” added Suren.

Over the years, India has been a key market for Google and Google Maps.

In December last year, Caesar Sengupta, VP, Next Billion Users had announced the introduction of the two-wheeler mode in Google Maps as an India-first feature.

He stated, “Another India-first feature is the new ‘two-wheeler mode’ in Google Maps. India is the largest two-wheeler market in the world and the millions of motorcycle and scooter riders have different navigation needs than drivers of automobiles. Two-wheeler mode in Maps shows trip routes that use ‘shortcuts’ not accessible to cars and trucks. It also provides customised traffic and arrival time estimations.”

“And since so many Indians rely on local landmarks for navigation, two-wheeler mode will show major landmarks on the route so that riders can plan their trip before starting and don’t have to keep checking the phone on the go,” Sengupta further added.

While Google Maps has been focussing on localising its solutions to provide better navigation results, its competitor HERE Technologies has joined hands with NAVER Corporation to collaborate on autonomous indoor mapping technology.

The collaboration aims to combine NAVER LABS’ Scalable & Semantic Indoor Mapping (SSIM) technology, autonomous robots and AI-based image recognition capabilities with the HERE Open Location Platform to create, maintain and publish 3D maps of indoor environments such as airports and train stations.

Such maps are useful in various ways, from helping people find their way at complex transit interchanges to supporting the last mile guidance enabling a more efficient logistics.

Over the last few years, HERE Technologies has customised its mapping solutions for fleet management, shipping and other B2B-oriented projects.

HERE has also deployed a fleet of mapping vehicles equipped with motion sensors, 360-degree cameras and laser light radar (LiDAR), a combination of satellite and aerial imagery which helps process data to generate highly accurate maps.

In India, besides HERE Maps, while competing with Google Maps, Delhi-based MapMyIndia offers an entire API stack, IoT devices and a map app. MapMyIndia has mapped over 10.54 Mn unique destinations (Points of Interests), expanded coverage of over 2 Mn kilometres of road network, 7068 cities at street level with house address level data for 80 cities, 6 Lakh villages, and 3D & 2D landmarks in 86 cities.

Besides adding local features such voice navigation in regional languages, plus codes, Google Maps, meanwhile, has also introduced “wheelchair accessible” routes in transit navigation. However, the navigation facility will be initially available only in few cities like London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Boston and Sydney.

The post Google Maps Introduces Voice Navigation In 6 Additional Indian Languages, Plus Codes For Addresses appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As the game for a slice in the Flipkart pie continues, SoftBank is reportedly preparing to sell a part of its share in the company to the US-based retail giant Walmart. The development comes in line with Walmart’s recent indications to enter the Indian ecommerce space by acquiring a 25% to 51% stake in Flipkart.

As per reports, people familiar with the development have revealed that Walmart plans to invest in Flipkart through a mix of primary and secondary purchase of shares.

As suggested by the sources, the $10 Bn-$12 Bn secondary share sale will take place at a discounted valuation. It was also estimated that if the deal goes through, Flipkart’s valuation will rise to $20 Bn from its current valuation of $14.2 Bn.

“SoftBank will likely sell part of its shareholding. There is a change in how it is thinking now. As much as 30% of the stake that Walmart will get in Flipkart is being routed through a secondary sale of shares,” a source said.

Other than SoftBank, investors that hold a substantial stake in the online marketplace include New York-based Tiger Global, which currently holds a 20.5% shareholding in the ecommerce unicorn; China’s Tencent, eBay, Microsoft and Accel Partners. The Flipkart founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, hold 10% stake together.

However, this is not the first time an existing investor is compromising its shares in the company. Earlier in November 2017, the US-headquartered hedge fund Tiger Global made a partial exit from the venture, when it sold shares worth over $424 Mn in Flipkart to Japanese investment behemoth SoftBank.

Sources revealed that most of these investors will lower their stake or completely exit for Walmart to enter the company. However, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy will continue at his position.

An email query sent to Flipkart didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

In earlier media reports, it was speculated that SoftBank won’t be willing to shed off a part of its 23.6% shareholding in the company. The Japanese conglomerate invested $2.5 Bn in Flipkart in August 2017, which was a follow-on to the earlier $1.4 Mn fundraise from Microsoft, Tencent and eBay.

However, analysts believe that SoftBank is expected to gain almost $2 Bn from its last investment in the company if the Walmart deal goes through.

Why Is Walmart So Keen To Invest In Flipkart?

The growing heat in the Indian ecommerce sector is forcing bigger players to join the bandwagon. As Walmart’s rival Amazon is competing for the top spot with homegrown player Flipkart, the US retail giant, being a global leader in brick-and-mortar stores, has been eyeing a stake in the Flipkart since 2016. Inc42 had then reported that Flipkart and Walmart were in early talks for an alliance.

In February 2018, Inc42 also reported that under this proposed investment, there would also be a provision to set up a chain of retail stores across the country. This was speculated to benefit Flipkart as the company had been eyeing offline expansion for quite some time.

At present, Walmart has a strong presence in the country through its B2B arm, which currently boasts a network of 21 Best Price Modern Wholesale stores. Therefore, with the partnership, Flipkart is bound to win on its deposits as well as expand its offline presence in the country.

The arch-rival for both the companies, Amazon has already entered the food retail segment in India. Reports suggested that Amazon will now sell locally made and packaged food to the consumers directly and will compete with other leading online grocery and food retail marketplaces like Grofers, Bigbasket, Supr Daily, who received similar approvals from the government for food retailing. Amazon is also boosting its presence in other verticals in the country with products such as Amazon Pay, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Pantry, among others.

The attraction of Walmart towards India’s ecommerce industry comes as no surprise since, as per a report by Morgan Stanley, the market is expected to grow to $200 Bn by 2026.

Fighting off for a slice of the pie of Indian ecommerce market, global giants Amazon, Walmart and Alibaba have been continuously investing in the country. However, the decision of SoftBank siding off for Walmart to enter Flipkart is a huge surprise and makes it more interesting to watch out for the scoreboard when and if the deal goes through.

[The development was reported by TOI.]

The post SoftBank To Sell Part Of Its Stake In Flipkart To Walmart: Is It A Done Deal? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

California and Bengaluru-headquartered AI focussed startup Peritus.ai has raised $2 Mn in funding from VC firm Ideaspring Capital and early-stage fund The Hive.

According to the reports, the company will use the funds to strengthen its development team in India.

On the investment, Arihant Patni, managing director, Ideaspring Capital said, “Data centre growth over the last 15 years has created significant growing pain in data centre management. Tasks that once could be done manually by IT teams have hit the limits of scalability, cost, and efficiency and Peritus is solving that by automating.”

Peritus.ai was founded in 2017 by Santhosh Srinivasan and Kamesh Raghavendra with support from The Hive, a startup incubator focusing on Artificial Intelligence-based applications. It works on automating professional services, support delivery and incident resolution for data centres.

The company utilises latest Artificial Intelligence-based technologies to automate and customise end-to-end service workflows. It also works on recognising the support needs and incident features from patterns mined across product designs, past incidents, configurations and log data.

At present, Peritus.ai’s product transforms the economics of support delivery for enterprises, cloud service providers, and data centre system vendors, the statement added.

Commenting on the development, Srinivasan, Co-founder and Vice President for Engineering at Peritus.ai, said, “We are looking forward to help from Ideaspring for support in building and guiding our development team in India.”

Growing AI Rage In India

Artificial Intelligence has been recognised as one of the fastest growing technologies in India. The sector has fared so fast and so well that even the Indian government has taken steps in the direction of further growing this sector.

This was highlighted in Union Budget 2018 which was presented in February by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. This year, the government allocated $480 Mn for Digital India initiatives focused on new age technologies including artificial intelligence among others.

During the Budget 2018 session, Jaitley announced that the government will be investing extensively in research, training and skill development in robotics, Artificial Intelligence, digital manufacturing, Big Data intelligence and Quantum communications, among others.

The Finance Minister also announced that the government-run think tank NITI Aayog will be launching a national programme, with the aim of facilitating research in Artificial Intelligence-related areas. Furthermore, the programme will be geared towards developing new applications of the AI technology.

To highlight this further, it is to be noted that as per Inc42 DataLabs H1 2017 report, the sector picked up by 100% in H1 2017 in comparison to H2 2016, in terms of deals. With Bengaluru being the major breeding ground for AI startups in India, about $87.85 Mn was raised across 58 deals in the Artificial Intelligence space.

With far-reaching applications in ecommerce, fintech, banking, surveillance, customer service and support, big data analytics, intelligent shopping assistants or conversational bots etc, artificial intelligence has been the foundation of many startups.

Some of the leading players in the space are Halli Labs, Absentia VR, Niki.ai, Flutura etc.

Amid this, AI rage continues unabated, with the global AI sector poised to grow to $16.06 Bn by 2022. As the growth of AI in India remains unparalleled, the funding raised by AI-based startup Peritus.ai highlights the growing potential of the industry.

The post AI-Based Startup Peritus.ai Secures Funding From Ideaspring Capital, The Hive appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India’s mobile wallet companies are in a complete state of bafflement after the Apex Court, on March 13, 2018, extended the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar Card to avail various government services and welfare schemes.

Voicing his concerns on Twitter, Bipin Preet Singh, CEO, MobiKwik said, “The timing couldn’t be worse for this SC decision – it’s leading to all sorts of confusion.”

The mood in the country’s mobile wallet industry is sombre as companies are trying to complete mandatory KYC (Know Your Customer) verification of their customer base as directed by the Central Bank a few months back.

As earlier reported by Inc42, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had refused to extend the deadline for KYC (Know Your Customer) beyond February 28, 2018, stating that enough time has already been granted to adhere  the prescribed guidelines.” Notably, the completion of the KYC involves linking of Aadhaar card and PAN card to the e-wallet mobile applications.

The RBI had stated that the customers, who are not willing to follow the KYC process, can close their PPI accounts and get the balance money transferred into their respective bank accounts.

It seems that such directives by the Supreme Court have not only created ripples in the Indian mobile wallet industry but have become an impediment to the future growth and expansion of mobile wallet companies such as Paytm, MobiKwik.

According to a person close to the development, “The new norms by Reserve Bank of India are disastrous. It is now like opening a bank account. So why will anyone want to go through the hassle? This will result in de-digitisation.”

According to him, despite the last-minute rush to meet the KYC norms, “the number of customers who would have completed KYC by February 28 will be in single digits (in percentage).”

These directives from the court come at a time when the digital transactions in India are at a peek. According to the RBI, in January 2018 2017, transactions worth $2 Tn (INR 131.95 Tn) were carried out on mobile wallets, This is in sharp contrast to the  $1.9 Tn (INR 125.51 Tn)  clocked in December 2017.

At present, in India, there are millions of people who are making the transaction via e-wallet. For instance, Paytm which is the market leader in the category, alone claims to have over 200 Mn users. Additionally, there are other players like Amazon Pay, MobiKwi, and Oxigen that have similar offerings.

What Does The SC Decision Mean For Mobile wallet Industry?

The apex court’s latest ruling to indefinitely extend the linking of Aadhar has further created troubles for the mobile wallet companies. It is believed that a majority of the users will not take the initiative to fulfill KYC in order to avail services.

Basically, these companies are still urging the Centre to rollback stringent KYC guidelines or give some relaxations for the same so that they don’t lose their customer base.

In response to an earlier email query by Inc42, an Amazon India spokesperson had said, “We request the regulator to reinstate the proportional KYC framework. 90%+ of PPI transactions are of small value (<10,000). Asking customers to submit an officially valid document to be permitted to make such transactions adds friction and will send the customer back to cash.”

It was also reported that these mobile wallet companies are at risk of losing up to 40% of their user base, resulting in a reduction in profit making, limiting revenue stream and increased competition from banks and other non-banking players.

However, a few of the companies also promoted positive sentiments on the matter. In an email query by Inc42, a spokesperson from The Mobile Wallet stated that the apex court ruling will not have any immediate bearing on its user base.

“We have almost crossed the finishing line to comply with the full KYC compliance norms for PPIs and thus the court order is not going to pinch us in any manner. For us the SC order can best be called as an ex-post event as the order is applicable only for telecom and bank account linking and not for wallets and will not have any bearings on our business,” she added

Controversy Revolving Around Aadhaar Card Scheme

During the Budget 2017, the BJP-led NDA government rolled out a provision, making it mandatory to submit the 12-digit Aadhaar Card number while applying for PAN card as well as when filing Income Tax returns and availing other government subsidy schemes. The main aim of this exercise was to link the PAN with Aadhaar and thereby, also identify tax evaders.

However, in the past few months, Aadhaar has faced severe criticism primarily on fronts of security. For instance, recently in January, the Aadhar system was hacked by a self-proclaimed French cybersecurity expert who goes by the alias, Elliot Alderson. The expert posted a video on social media, detailing how to crack into the application in just a fraction of seconds.

Another complaint of leakage was reported after an unidentified group on WhatsApp shared links containing the login and the password details of 1 Bn Indian citizens. Not only that, this group even shared the entire functioning of the Aadhaar software from which an individual can easily print one’s Aadhaar details hassle free.

Meanwhile, there have been accusations against the present government of denying the Supreme Court’s concerns. The apex court judges are currently looking into a number of petitions, challenging the legal validity of Aadhaar. The Supreme Court had itself asserted in 2013 that Aadhaar should be voluntary, not mandatory.

In Conclusion

With such stringent measures, it seems that India’s dream of becoming a cashless economy is far-fetched. This dream cannot manifest without adequate consumer support and changes in the behavioural pattern. It is a known fact that Indian businessman majorly prefer spending and saving cash in order to avoid taxes and convenience.

Moreover, at present, India is still home to one-third of the illiterate population, who are unable to even ign. The same section cannot, hence, enjoy an access to a host of services necessary for digital India, including smartphones, mobile wallets, and digital platforms.

At the same time, to thwart security concerns, and bring digital inclusion throughout the country, linking of Aadhaar to all major processes looks like the need of the hour.

While the central government and authorities like RBI stand totally in support of linking Aadhaar / KYC at the earliest, SC judgment and the recent changes in its judgment brings a different equation, invoking a number of other parameters too. However, the moves are definitely affecting not only common lives but digital payments and other companies at large, adversely.

Will the Indian SC be able to take a balanced action, which will fare well for both consumers as well as mobile wallet companies, is something that only time can tell.

The post A Major Setback For Mobile Wallets As SC Extends Aadhaar Linking Deadline appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Let’s take a look at the following gruesome facts about the indoor air quality in India:

• According to a report by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the ill-effects of indoor air pollution result in about 2 Mn premature deaths per year in India. Of this, 44% are due to pneumonia, 54% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and 2% from lung cancer.
• In 2012, indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 Mn deaths globally, compared with 3.7 Mn for outdoor air pollution.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report, over 10-50% of indoor environments in India, North America, Europe, Australia and Japan are estimated to be affected by indoor dampness. This figure suggests that mold could be a highly prevalent issue in locations spread across the world.

Therefore, with India rapidly gaining momentum in creating smart cities, there is also an equivalent emphasis to improve air quality using technology in Indian homes.

As much as the Indian government is working to improve the indoor air quality through initiatives such as the National Biomass Cookstove Programme (NBCP), efforts need to be paved towards improving the indoor air quality, so that the future homes in India can have clean air to breathe. Towards this, Ceraheat Oy, a Finnish tech startup with its innovative indoor glass heating solutions is looking to offer tangible solutions to improve indoor air quality in Indian homes.

In an interview with GOIntenational, Anita Saariaho, founder of Ceraheat Oy revealed how the Finnish tech is crucial to prevent bad indoor air quality for India’s Smart City vision.

Ceraheat: The Progeny Of Design And Finnish Tech

Ceraheat Oy combines aesthetic design with high-end Finnish tech to create safe and healthy heating solutions. It is specialised in developing, manufacturing of high-quality heating glass products based heating glass and radiant heater technology. Through its glass heating technology, it can create healthy and high designed heaters for people to get better air quality inside the house.

Through its efficient heating solutions that prevent moisture collection in the room and doesn’t need additional fuels, the Finnish tech company is also creating healthcare applications due to its positive impact on air quality.

Anita says, “Ceraheat Oy is the first Finnish corporation member of the World Design Organisation. Our company’s agenda is set to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals based on our high quality and highly designed products with energy saving and health benefits.”

Ceraheat’s USP lies in its design which has personalisation features. The heaters which make use of glass tubes are easily installed on the walls and ceilings. The heaters emit only pure heating without needing any other forms of fuels. This prevents the environment of the room from dampening and thereby aids in preventing moisture and mold from setting in which in turn improves the air quality for improved breathing.

Considering the myriad problems in indoor air quality across the world caused by damping and mold, Ceraheat poses as a probable solution to improve the indoor air quality of urban India.

Anita says, “Based on latest international studies, if our heating glass products were to be used all over the world, they would create a healthy living environment for all. So, we felt that we needed a good and strong partner to spread our products’ healthy message globally; hence the membership with WDO was seen as a natural fit.”

What’s Going To Be On The Ceraheat Platter?

Ceraheat is already exporting products to Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia among other countries. But as mentioned by Anita, India is vital for its expansion.

Anita reasons why, “After conducting a limited market research in India, we realised that we have a product which will directly help to address this problem.”

To mitigate the issues of poor indoor air quality, Anita is keen to set up a pilot project in India to explore how the heating solution cannot only provide clean heat but improve air quality within buildings too.

She elaborates, “It can create a better quality of life! The World Design Organisation is backing us and we are keen to publish the pilot project’s findings with a view to spreading Ceraheat’s health message all over the world.”

The high-end Finnish company is optimistic about how its products will be received in an emerging economy like India.

In view of the widespread recognition relating to the challenges in maintaining healthy indoor air quality, there is a need to develop world-class solutions to improve the indoor air quality in different countries so that the larger issue of the health menace emanating from the poor quality of indoor air may be effectively addressed.

Anita offers the answer to this pertinent problem through the Finnish glass heating technology that requires no additional fuel.

She says, “Ceraheat Oy’s focus is on contributing to the creation of smart high-performance homes and buildings; with greater energy efficiency, lower life-cycle cost, better indoor air quality and higher levels of wellbeing. Ceraheat-heaters can prevent even lung diseases and create lower social costs of lung diseases.”

As part of her plans to bring Ceraheat Oy technology to India, Anita is in search of local partners, investors, and distributors in India.

Ceraheat Oy And Its Keenness To Work In India

In the recent years, Finland has been increasingly showing its interest to partner with India in India’s developmental projects. Just last year, GoInternational Finland’s Bizhack winner Cityfier announced it will launch the ‘Smart City Planning Tool’ in India.

On a similar line, Startup and Growth Finland Unit at Nordea has also shown interest to work on a bilateral project to boost the Indian startup ecosystem. Finnish companies have been reaching out to find partners in India and t increasingly looking at having deeper collaborations among startups in both the countries.

With all these on the platter and India’s Smart City Project playing out, Ceraheat Oy’s keenness to work in India is also a testimony of India’s growing bilateral relationship with Finland.

With more and more Finnish companies entering the Indian market, Cereheat Oy is out on the search of an Indian partner who will determinedly take the strides along with Ceraheat to grow on a global scale as a leading innovator and producer of healthy heating solutions.

Lastly, Anita Saariaho concludes by saying, “We hope to find more partners, who are as equally passionate about sustainable development goals as the Ceraheat Oy team is.”

The post Finnish Tech Startup Ceraheat Oy To Help India Improve Indoor Air Quality appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Fashion company Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has announced the launch of its online store in India to further accelerate its growth in the country.

According to the reports, the company is bringing all its products to Indian customers with H&M’s Shop Online, which will showcase the complete range of its collections and also several ‘online-only’ products.

The H&M online store will feature clothing in ladies’, men’s, teens’, kids’, plus-size and maternity wear categories. Additionally, it will offer a complete collection of lingerie and accessories. The move is expected to strengthen its presence in metro cities and also extend its reach to tier 2 and tier 3 cities across India.

At present, H&M has 29 stores in 12 Indian cities. India is the 45th global market where H&M has launched its online store. The company claimed that its share of online sales to overall sales is 12.5% globally and it expects India to be a bigger market.

Commenting on the features of the online store, Janne Einola, H&M India Country Manager, said, “H&M has also introduced the scan-and-buy feature that allows customers to buy products online if appropriate size is not available in physical stores by scanning barcodes.”

Einola also informed that the company is going online on its own capacity and is not taking support from other ecommerce players, even though for deliveries, it will partner with third parties. Also, the company claimed that it will cover most of the Indian cities.

O2O Model Gets Renewed With H&M Exploring Online Stores

With the online store, H&M is signing on to compete with online fashion marketplaces like Myntra, Jabong, StalkBuyLove, Koovs etc. It is to be noted that the Indian online fashion market was pegged at $3.7 Bn in 2017, wherein Flipkart, with its subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong, claims to hold a 70% share.

The recently-published Indian government’s Economic Survey 2018 has revealed that India’s ecommerce market reached $33 Bn registering a 19.1% growth in 2016-2017.

In the ecommerce segment, as H&M forays into online sales from its offline store, other major players have been toying with age-old models like O2O, brick-and-mortar merchant stores to further bolster its growth.

Flipkart-owned fashion portal Myntra opened its first offline store with Roadster in 2017 and recently was planning to open its beauty and wellness store.

In December 2017, Myntra also announced the launch of its multi-brand offline stores where customers can see all the private labels that are available on its online platform. The stores are expected to be launched by the end of 2018.

Whether the arrival of a global player like H&M will intensify the competition in the Indian ecommerce fashion space remains to be seen.

[The development was reported by ET.]

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