As the Indian digital payments touch $200 Bn mark, the segment has started gathering the attention of traditional players to test waters. As per reports, Indian Railways’ subsidiary IRCTC is looking to launch its own digital payment gateway.

Speaking to Inc42, a senior officer of Indian Railways confirmed the development; he, however, could not confirm the deadline for the digital payments gateway launch.

As claimed, the platform sold 573K e-tickets daily in 2016-17.

Why Is IRCTC Looking For Its Own Payment Gateway?

In a report, a few of the LiveMint sources shared that IRCTC is looking for additional revenues and reduce dependency on third-party payment services providers.

At present, firms like Razorpay, Mobikwik and Paytm lead IRCTC’s railway ticket booking transactions through their gateways. The companies have to pay “a one-time licensing fee to integrate with IRCTC’s website and mobile app and in return share revenues with IRCTC on every transaction that goes through them.”

The licensing fee ranges from $115.2K (INR 75 Lakh) to $153.68K (INR 1 Cr).

The person cited informed that “Other than the revenues, the biggest motivation for these payment firms to work with IRCTC is to get access to an instant high volume of transactions.”

In February, Razorpay partnered with IRCTC to enable UPI-based transactions on the platform. IRCTC has been processing more than 1.2 Mn tickets a month.

What Are The Plans Ahead?

For this, the company is planning to start a pilot project for its in-house payment gateway, which is being initially called ‘ipay’, over the next 4-8 weeks. The gateway will be rolled out in phases after testing, but until then ipay will be one of the payment gateways the e-ticketing platform uses for its online transactions.

As IRCTC completed its PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance last month, it “plans to offer its payment gateway services to other state and central departments post the integration with the online ticketing platform, e-catering portal and tourism platform,” as per media reports.

The state and central departments could include Life Insurance Corp. of India and Employees Provident Fund Organisation.

On the payment gateway project, e-ticketing platform is working with “MMAD Communications to provide technology and back-end support.” Based in Delhi and Bengaluru, MMAD Communications will act as a technology partner for IRCTC.

An email query sent to MMAD Communications’ cofounder Gopal Krishna didn’t elicit a response till the time of publication.

Further, the platform has also been partnering with various startups to enable better services on its platform and in railways. Recently, it has partnered with Ola to enable cab bookings from its platform for its millions of passengers. E-catering has also been continuously expanded on the IRCTC platform.

Being a major client to most of the digital payment companies, the effect of IRCTC bringing its own digital payment gateway will be major considering the large number of e-ticketing transactions the platform provides to these companies.

The post IRCTC Looks To Join Digital Payments Bandwagon With Launch Of Payment Gateway ‘ipay’ appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments continue to surge in the country, the NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) is now planning to enable UPI-based payments for inward international transactions.

“The Virtual Payments Address (VPA) of the consumer is connected to an underlying bank account, therefore inward international remittance transfers can now also be settled through UPI,” reports ET quoting two bankers close to the developments.

The transactions, which were being done through Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and or National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), can now also be done using UPI.

The report explained the process, stating “Funds remitted to India land with a ‘landing bank’ from where it gets transferred to the beneficiary’s bank account. Till now, banks were using IMPS and NEFT for such transfers, but with UPI it would open up another channel for instant settlements.”

The banker added, “This would also mean that international remittance players like MoneyGram, Western Union and others will get access to UPI for settlements which, as of now, are using IMPS.”

The change in payment method is also not a technical hindrance for the banks, as the banks which are on the IMPS network have a direct integration with NPCI already. “The fund transfer agents were consuming my IMPS/NEFT APIs, but for now I will just have to tweak my back end to open up UPI which will be an additional field for us,” the report quoted unnamed banker as saying.

As per the data released by the NPCI, 171.4 Mn UPI transactions were reported in February 2018, a 13.5% jump from 151 Mn transactions reported in January 2018. Leveraging this growth, the bankers believed that “the international remittance market could be as big as $72 Bn, with the average ticket size of transactions being much higher at almost $8K.”

In the foreign remittance market, India is one of the biggest markets. In a report released in October 2017, the World Bank revealed, “Among major remittance recipients, India retains the top spot, with remittances expected to total $65 Bn this year(2017), followed by China ($63 Bn), the Philippines ($33 Bn), Mexico (a record $31 Bn), and Nigeria ($22 Bn).”

NPCI Focuses On UPI In India

The NPCI has been working to engage more transactions on UPI and QR codes, and to take it a step further, the organisation recently made it compulsory for every UPI application to be able to scan Bharat QR codes and respond to merchants’ payment requests.

Other mandatory provisions include that “all UPI apps should allow fund transfer using any UPI payment address, respond to collect request from other UPI addresses and even generate as well as scan Bharat QR and UPI QR codes.”

At the same time, reports surfaced that the government is in works to launch a common merchant app for BHIM to support Bharat QR code for all categories of merchants. With this, it aims to create a seamless network through a single application and a QR code for mobile transactions.

Digital Payments Growth In India

The penetration of digital payments in the country can be substantiated by the data released by the RBI recently, which said that digital transactions reached a record high of 1.11 Bn in January 2018, up by 4.73% from the 1.06 Bn mark touched in December last year.

The data released by NPCI revealed that of the $2.4 Bn value of UPI-based transactions in January 2018, the government’s BHIM app accounted for over 9.57 Mn transactions worth upwards of $57 Mn (INR 3.65 Bn).

A report by Credit Suisse predicted that India’s digital payments industry, which is currently worth around $200 Bn, is expected to grow five-fold to reach $1 Tn by 2023. While, the digital spending by consumers is expected to grow nearly 2.5 times to $100 Bn by 2020, according to Google-BCG report.

In the global remittance market, where India has been leading the charts, the easier and faster UPI-based payments by NPCI are bound to contribute to the increase in the number of such remittances.

The post NPCI To Enable UPI-Based International Payments appeared first on Inc42 Media.

We bring to you the latest edition Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding of the week.

This week 20 startups raised around $100 Mn in funding altogether in the Indian startup ecosystem. (The startup funding calculations are based on the startups that disclosed funding amount.).

One of the biggest Indian startup funding news this week was Flipkart infusing $79.6 Mn (INR 519 Cr) in fresh funding into Phonepe.

Indian Startup Funding Of The Week

Smaaash: Mumbai-based gaming company Smaaash raised $6.17 Mn (INR 40.2 Cr) funding from 23 High Networth Individuals (HNIs). The Sachin Tendulkar backed company allotted shares to Ravi Modi, founder of Manyavar; Lakshmi Narayanan, former vice chairman of Cognizant, and Vijaylaxmi Poddar of Balkrishna Industries amongst others.

Fynd: One of the biggest Indian startup funding announcement was made by Fynd this week. The Mumbai-based O2O fashion ecommerce platform, Fynd raised an undisclosed amount in Series C funding led by global search giant Google. Others who participated in the round include Fynd’s existing investors: Kae Capital, IIFL, Singularity Ventures, GrowX, Tracxn Labs, Venture Catalyst, Patni family office, and HongKong based Axis Capital among other angel investors. The startup plans to use the funding to enhance the way it engages with consumers and retailers in a better way.

Carmel Organics: Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh-based agritech startup Carmel Organics raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ankur Capital, an India-focussed VC fund backing early-stage startups.The startup will use the funding to scale-up its business, particularly targeting the global markets.

SmartCoin: Bengaluru-based micro-lending startup SmartCoin raised $2 Mn in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by an undisclosed Chinese venture fund. Others that participated in the round include the US-based Accion Venture Lab, Unicorn India Ventures and ISME ACE, a Mumbai-based fintech accelerator. The startup will use the funding to further invest in technology and grow its team as it continues with its expansion plans, with an aim to cover a much larger customer base.

The Print: Delhi-based online news portal The Print raised $535K (INR 3.49 Cr) in an extended seed funding round from existing investor Ratan Tata. Veteran journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Indian Express Shekhar Gupta had launched The Print in January 2016.

Cash Suvidha: Delhi-based online lending platform Cash Suvidha raised $1 Mn in a Pre-Series A funding round from Initia Holdings; Vipin Agarwal, Partner in India Industrial Growth Fund and others. The startup will use the funding to increase the loan books of the company and to further strengthen its technological infrastructure.

DriveU: Bengaluru-based on-demand driver aggregator DriveU raised $3 Mn in Pre-Series A funding led by Singhal Foundation, an NGO working for education of underprivileged children. Existing investor Unitus Seed Fund, Geoff Wooley of Patamar Ventures, Rajeev Madhavan of Clear Ventures and a few Silicon Valley-based investors also participated in this round. The startup further plans to expand its existing fleet of 6,000 drivers to 10,000 drivers by the end of 2018.

Creditas Solutions: Gurugram-based fintech startup, Creditas Solutions, raised an undisclosed amount in a Pre-Series A funding round led by its existing investor 1Crowd, an equity crowdfunding platform. The startup plans to use the latest funding for expansion of the team, data science capabilities and to make investments in technology, particularly to focus on providing banks with a single platform to manage the entire delinquency cycle.

USPL: Bengaluru-based fashion startup Universal Sportsbiz Pvt Ltd (USPL) raised $4.64 Mn (INR 30 Cr) in venture debt funding from newly launched venture debt fund Alteria Capital. The company plans to use the funding to invest in 80-100 startups in the course of next three to four years.

Roadcast: Delhi-based online vehicle tracking platform Roadcast raised $250K in an angel round of funding from high-net-worth individuals from the United Arab Emirates. The startup plans to use the funding to scale its operations across major cities in India and further expand its research and development programme, hiring technology talent and building infrastructure for its operations.

DelyBazar: Kolkata-based Delybazar, a raw meat etailer, raised $300K (INR 2 Cr) in a Pre-Series A round of funding from a clutch of investors. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its operations in cities like Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

FactorDaily: Bengaluru-based news media startup FactorDaily raised $116.65K (INR 76 Lakhs) from existing investors, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Girish Mathrubootham in an extended series A funding round. The company last raised $1 Mn in funding in May 2016.

Planys Technologies: Chennai-based underwater robotics and diagnostics startup Planys Technologies raised $151.9K (INR 99 Lakh) from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in what appears to be a part of the Series A round.

Predible Health: Artificial Intelligence-based cancer radiology platform Predible Health raised $35.3K (INR 23 Lakh) from the Hyderabad-based incubator, IKP Knowledge Park. Earlier in the month, Unitus Seed Fund invested an undisclosed amount in the company. At the time, the startup had planned to use the funding to scale its cancer AI platform as well as invest in regulatory approvals for its existing products.

The Ken: Bengaluru-based business news platform raised $225.63K (INR 1.47 Cr) from a set of HNIs, Siddharth Bhammar (Executive Director – JP Morgan), Anchal Jain(Portfolio Manager- Balyasny Asset Management and former MD FX Options – JP Morgan), and Murali A (MD – Graticule Asset Management Asia and ex-Fortis).

Survaider: Bengaluru-based customer engagement platform raised $276.28K(INR 1.8 Cr) from Axilor Ventures, Pratithi Trust, and The Chennai Angels in a seed round.

V Resorts: Noida-based resort management startup raised $271.63 (INR 1.77 Cr) between January and March this year from existing investor, RB Investments.

Myra: Bengaluru-based Myra, an online pharmacy, raised $1.84 Mn (INR 12 Cr) in funding led by Tokyo-headquartered management consulting firm Dream Incubator. Others who participated in the round were its existing investors Matrix Partners and Times Internet. It has been suggested that the startup will use the funding to fund its expansion in other geographies.

Benepik: Gurugram-based HRTech startup Benepik that provides a mobile-based solution for Employee Communication, Engagement, Rewards and Recognition, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding. The funding round was led by a group of investors including Vishal Bali, Yogesh Misra, and a Delhi based HNI. The startup claims to have over 15 clients across Financial Services, Consumer Appliances, Automotive and Manufacturing among others. And as part of its Employee Benefits portfolio, it has partnered with 1200+ merchants to offer preferred pricing to its corporate customers.

Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week

• Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group, along with global financial services firm Morgan Stanley and Singapore’s state-run investment firm Temasek might acquire one-third stake in Mumbai-headquartered payments bank and financial technology solutions provider Financial Information and Network Operations (FINO). For this, the company is expected to be valued at $308 Mn (INR 2,000 Cr).
• Homegrown cab hailing company Ola might acquire Mumbai-based Ridlr, a public transport app startup. With this, the company aims to improve its navigation technology and expand its services.
• Ola is in talks to acquire Uber’s Indian operations and the deal will be facilitated by the common stakeholder, SoftBank. The finer details of the deal are still under discussion and will be revealed in the coming months. However, the person close to the possible deal said that with Uber targeting initial public offering in the US in 2019, it is necessary for the company to cut off its losses, which the SoftBank has been continuously focussing on.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal owned Fundamentum raised an initial investment of $20 Mn from CDPQ, a Canada-based institutional investor, for its first growth fund  “Fundamentum Partnership – Fund I”.Beyond this, CDPQ will also explore direct investments in Fundamentum’s portfolio companies.
• Microsoft Ventures is looking to open an office and invest in tech startups using new age technologies like autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain.Till now, Microsoft Ventures has backed over 45 startups globally. Also, Microsoft India claimed that it is helping 650 India-based partners use the Microsoft cognitive services, IoT, AI and machine learning platforms to build solutions for India.
• SEBI has planned to amend and ease the game rules of angel funding to revive the same. The regulator is also considering to raise the maximum period of accepting funds from an angel investor to five years from the present limit of three years.
• Quona Capital, the Washington-based fintech impact investor, is now en route to raising its Fund III. It is also planning to broaden the scope of its investment portfolio by leveraging fintech to include sectors as diverse as education, healthcare and insurance and small business.
• Global energy major Shell selected five startups for the first cohort of its Shell E⁴(Energising and Enabling Energy Entrepreneurs) accelerator programme. The five selected startups are Detect Technologies, ION Energy, IoTrek, Trashcon and Ossus Biorenewables.
• New York-headquartered technology hedge fund Coatue Management is reportedly holding discussions with a couple of other investors to pump $50 Mn-$100 Mn in homegrown online food delivery startup Swiggy. This comes two months after the Swiggy raised $100 Mn in Series F funding round led by Naspers at a valuation of $700 Mn.
• Mumbai-based mid-market private equity firm SeaLink Capital Partners has closed its maiden fund at $315 Mn (INR 2,045.45 Cr). The amount has been raised from a clutch of family offices as well as business leaders based in India, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia
• Venture Catalysts launched its operations in Jaipur and hosted panel discussions on angel investment and its opportunities, with a specific focus on Rajasthan. With this, it plans to bring in about 50+ investors to be a part of the VCats angel network and gradually add more angels over the coming months.
• SAP SE  has signed a Statement of Intent (SOI) with NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), to adopt 100 Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education among secondary school children across India.
• NASSCOM announced that six of its incubated startups have been selected for the 2018 batch of Israel’s MassChallenge accelerator. Intello Labs Pvt. Ltd., Olivewear Pvt. Ltd., OCEO WATER, S&I Engineering Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Streamingo, and Ziroh Labs, will join a cohort of the early-stage startups in Jerusalem this April.
• Naspers announced to sell off 190 Mn shares (around 2% stake) in Chinese Internet giant Tencent gaining $10 Bn as part of the sale proceeds. Post the share sale, Naspers’ shareholding in Tencent reduced from 33.2% to 31.2%.
• SEBI board has approved the amendments to Alternative Investment Funds (AIF) regulations with respect to “angel funds” after recommendations of its working group. Also, the minimum corpus size required for an angel fund to register with SEBI will now be $770.5K (INR 5 Cr) and the maximum period of accepting funds from an angel investor has been raised to five years.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!

The post Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [26-31 March 2018] appeared first on Inc42 Media.

We bring to you the latest dope of movers and shakers in the Indian startup ecosystem.

K Guru Gowrappan Leaves Alibaba

K Guru Gowrappan, the Global Managing Director, Alibaba Group, has left the company. The company confirmed the development without indulging any further details.

Gowrappan has over 15 years of experience in the Internet industry and regarded as a thought leader in scaling mobile product and business operations globally. At Alibaba, he had advised Alibaba’s executive chairman Jack Ma with his early bets in India and was instrumental in investments in companies like Paytm, among others.

He had also joined the board of Paytm in October 2016. Earlier, he was the COO at Quixey and led the Product, Business and Marketing. Also, he worked as the COO for Growth/Emerging Initiatives at Zynga, where he served as Head of Zynga Japan and drove the company’s IPO process.

Foodpanda Appoints Anshul Khandelwal As Head Of Marketing

Foodpanda has appointed Anshul Khandelwal as its Head of Marketing to lead the brand’s creative and marketing mandates.

Anshul comes with a decade of experience with experimenting and treading a fine balance between traditional and modern-day marketing campaigns across several sectors such as ecommerce, education and healthcare. Prior to this, he has led marketing initiatives for organisations such as Bluestone, Little Black Book (LBB) and UpGrad.

At Foodpanda, Khandelwal will work closely with the company’s leadership team to assess and navigate through the foodtech ecosystem and to create a positive impact in the ways the company reaches out to its stakeholders.

In the last two months, Foodpanda has made several appointments which included Gautam Balijepalli as Head of Strategy, Anuj Sahai as the Head of New Initiatives and Nitin Gupta as Head of Engineering to its senior leadership.

Shradha Tripathi Joins As Sales Head Of WittyFeed

WittyFeed has appointed Shradha Tripathi as the Sales Head in India.

Shradha comes with nearly five years of experience in the sales and marketing department. Prior to this, Tripathi worked with BabyChakra as their Head of Business Development and Partnerships for more than a year.

Earlier, she has worked for more than three years with InMobi, as a Global Online and Inline Sales Manager and Group Sales Manager- LATAM.

At WittyFeed, Shradha will work towards implementing marketing strategies; analyzing trends and results to determine annual unit and gross-profit plans. She would also be responsible for drafting progressive sales plans, successfully implementing them and supervising regional sales managers to ensure that WittyFeed maintains its position in India and acquires new heights globally.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Movers And Shakers Of The Week!

The post Movers And Shakers Of The Week [26–31 March 2018] appeared first on Inc42 Media.

We bring to you the latest dope of the Indian startup news stories of the week from the Indian startup ecosystem.

One of the biggest news impacting the Indian startup ecosystem was Indian government sending show cause notices to both Cambridge Analytica as well as Facebook over the issue of social media data misuse. In wake of these events, Facebook accepted and apologised for misuse of the platform, and have also revealed new privacy and security settings.

At the same time, the Election Commission issued a statement to continue using the Facebook platform during upcoming Karnataka Polls terming the entire fiasco as mere ‘aberration’.

Another interesting development of the week was announced by music streaming majors in India. Reliance Jio Music and Saavn announced that the two have merged their synergies at a combined valuation is pegged at $1 Bn. The deal will combine the streaming media expertise of Saavn with the connectivity and digital ecosystem of Jio.

Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Consumer Affairs Ministry Conducts Survey For Consumer Protection Act 2018 And More

• The survey sent to ecommerce companies seeks to know the nature of consumer complaints, steps being taken on protecting consumer data and privacy, and policies needed to regulate the sector. The queries sent to consumers include liability of the ecommerce marketplace on private information being used by sellers, liability around defective products and whether regulations are required for the ecommerce sector.
• Ministry of Health has introduced the draft of Healthcare Security Act. The draft highlights that the owners have the right to privacy, confidentiality, and security of their digital health data and can also give or refuse generation and collection of such data. The Ministry has invited comments on the draft till April 21.
• The Indian government is looking to focus on artificial intelligence and has recently released its report on the adoption of AI in India. The report has suggested building an AI policy with a five-year mission with a targeted investment corpus of $184 Mn (INR 1200 Cr) spread across the different initiatives under various government departments.

Flipkart To Focus On Online Grocery and Books Business

Bengaluru-based Flipkart has earmarked several hundreds of millions of dollars of its investor money to bolster its online grocery arm. The company is also in works to launch an indigenous range of consumables and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) under its Billion private label. It is also planning to enter online ticketing segment.

Flipkart is also planning to revive the sale of books on its platform. For this, the company has doubled its catalogue of books to 7 Mn titles over the last six months and has also partnered with publishers to stock books closer to the customers ensuring speedy deliveries.

Also, Flipkart is reportedly planning to enter the online travel agency services through tie-ups with partners from specific industries.

No Aadhaar Breach From Our End, UIDAI Tells SC

In his recent presentation to Supreme Court, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey stated that Aadhaar is privacy by design and biometric is not shared with anybody except for purposes of national security.

UIDAI also announced that it will launch Face Authentication feature from July 1, 2018, to aid biometric authentication of those who have troubles due to old age, hard work or worn-out fingerprints. The face authentication would be permitted along with either fingerprint or iris or OTP for verification of Aadhaar details.

UPI-Based Payments Lead The Digital Payments Revolution

RBI’s data revealed that UPI transactions reached nearly 50% of the value of debit and credit cards swiped at stores in February. Transactions using UPI increased 100 times from a modest 92,000 to 9.2 Mn transactions in the first nine months of operation, according to a report.

WhatsApp Enables QR Code Based Payments

At present, the app comes with two payment options: pay through UPI and Scan QR code. To make payments through QR codes, WhatsApp’s Android beta users will have to scan the code under Settings > Payments > New Payments > Scan QR code, following which they will be asked to enter the payment amount along with the UPI ID. Furthermore, users have the option to view their own QR code through “Show QR code” on the payments panel of the app.

Amazon Prime Music Signs Three New Partnerships; Kindle Lite Launch And More

Amazon India has signed three content deals for Amazon Prime Music with Lahari Music, Muzik 247 and the Indian Performing Right Society. IPRS will provide Prime Music with an access to the IPRS repertoire of more than a million titles across multiple languages, eras and genres of Indian music. Muzik 247 will add Tamil and Malayalam music and Lahari Music will add more than 25K film and non-film music Telugu, Kannada and Tamil tracks.

Amazon also launched Kindle Lite App in India. The Kindle Lite App is less than 2MB and provides Kindle features including personalised recommendations, Whispersync (syncing your eBooks across devices) as well as free eBook samples and titles across English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam.

Also, Amazon India announced that the company will continue to invest aggressively in its digital payments arm over the next several months.

NPCI To Enable UPI Based Payments Across The Globe

The transactions, which were being done through Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and or National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), can now also be done using UPI. Till now, banks were using IMPS and NEFT for such transfers, but with UPI it would open up another channel for instant settlements.

IRCTC To Introduce Its Payment Gateway

IRCTC is looking for additional revenues and reduce dependency on third-party payment services providers. For this, the company is planning to start a pilot project for its in-house payment gateway, which is being initially called ‘ipay’, over the next 4-8 weeks. The gateway will be rolled out in phases after testing, but until then ipay will be one of the payment gateways the e-ticketing platform uses for its online transactions.

BookMyShow Losses Grow 138 Times

Mumbai-headquartered online ticketing platform BookMyShow reported a 27% jump in operational revenues to $46.2 Mn (INR 300.6 Cr) in FY17. However, its losses increased by 138 times, touching $21.4 Mn (INR 139 Cr) in the last fiscal, as opposed to a mere $153.6K (INR 1 Cr) of net loss in the year ending in March 31, 2016.

Government Rejects Proposal To Launch Google Street View In India

It has been suggested that the reason for such rejection was security and privacy concerns.  Google wanted to cover most parts of India with the Google Street view. The app records 360-degree panoramic and street-level 3D imagery and posts it online. However, the app, since its launch in 2007, has been extensively used in countries like the US, Canada etc.

India’s Future Lies In Startups, Says Union Minister Suresh Prabhu

He believes that the Indian startups should focus on building “business models” for the society in his speech that reflects his intent on further motivating the startup ecosystem for India’s future. According to him, the startups should build solutions which can solve crucial matters like water insufficiency in households or bring mass healthcare solutions to the rural areas.

Other Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Freecharge Enables UPI-Based Payments

Freecharge users can use all UPI based payment services via their @freecharge UPI ID. Customers can register for UPI in three simple steps; verify the mobile number, link it to the bank account of choice and set the UPI PIN.

Fino Payments Bank To Issue 10K Mobile PoS Terminals

The mobile PoS terminals will include an inbuilt fingerprint scanner, card reader, camera, printer, and tablet, in a portable form factor. The device is also interoperable and therefore, enables customers to use cards of other banks. Fino banking points will offer a host of services to customers-  account opening, deposit, withdrawal of money as well as the purchase of financial products.

Udacity To Build KUKA Robot Learning Lab, Udacity Universe

KUKA Robot Learning Lab is a practical, hands-on learning experience available exclusively to students of Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree programs, Self-Driving Car Engineer, and Flying Car Nanodegree Program. Udacity Universe is a virtual world where Self-Driving Car and Flying Car Nanodegree students will be able to simulate self-driving and self-flying vehicle fleets in urban and rural landscapes to tackle complex mobility challenges.

OLX Works Towards Online Safety With Webwise

Webwise will raise awareness among users about measures to keep oneself safe while transacting online. Under Webwise, OLX will be promoting online safety through its initiatives which include, product updates, user safety guidelines, awareness programs with law enforcement authorities and customer support.

Tribal Artisans Get Access To Global Ecommerce Market

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs, Jual Oram has launched ‘e-Tribes: Tribes India’. It includes the launch of  TRIFED’s websites including Tribesindia.com, Trifed.in and Retail Inventory Software and M-commerce app. The minister also launched ‘Tribes India’ Banners at ecommerce platform to bring tribal artisan made products to platforms like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm and government eMarketplace.

Grofers Enables E-Rickshaw Based Delivery In Delhi NCR

This will help Grofers to reduce the cost of delivery by 25% and cater to the growing influx of orders. In the initial phase, customers in South Delhi’s Okhla and Lado Sarai will receive their groceries via e-vehicles. Through this initiative, Grofers aims to transform the doorstep delivery ecosystem as well as contribute to building a better environment.

Facebook, Google, Hotstar Compete For BCCI Media Rights

These three packages are Global Television Rights plus ROW Digital Rights Package; Indian Subcontinent Digital Rights Package and Global Consolidated Rights Package. The BCCI extended the e-auction date from March 27 to April 3 to reach out to make the necessary clarifications to those who had picked up the tender document.Among those who have picked up this tender are Facebook, Google, Hotstar, Yupp TV, Jio TV and Sony Pictures Network.

Nissan May Set Up A Digital Hub In Kerala

If realised, the facility will be set up in Kerala’s IT park, TechnoPark. It will basically work as an R&D centre for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, as part of the Franco-Japanese strategic partnership. The facility will be a host to a team of engineers and scientists working to create innovations in automated and electronic vehicles space. The digital hub is further expected to create 300 to 500 high-end jobs in the first phase.

Hotstar Launches AdServe For Advertisers

A self-service ad tool, AdServe, aims to empower advertisers and allowing small and medium-sized companies to harness the power of digital video at scale.The tool also offers regional players an opportunity to scout for new markets nationally at affordable prices.The beta version of the service will allow advertisers to place in-stream video ads on Vivo IPL 2018. The service will be expanded to include entertainment programming over the next few weeks.

Stay tuned for the next edition of News Roundup: Indian Startup News Of The Week!

The post News Roundup: 13 Indian Startup News Stories That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [26-31 Mar 2018] appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“We are techies and selling doesn’t come naturally to us. We believe that data and our work should speak for itself. Unfortunately everything cannot be built overnight and as founders we need to articulate what the future holds to the world before it has happened. This is why it is called a pitch.”

Farooq Adam, the co-founder of O2O fashion platform Fynd suggested this definition when he first published company’s funding pitch deck in May 2016.

As Fynd gets added to the portfolio of Google-backed startups with its Series C round of funding, the founders have again reiterated their commitment and shared the latest pitch deck that made the global search giant invest in it.

As Harsh mentioned in his latest blog post, “This round was different and unique to us because of the type of investor that we are raising from.”

As Inc42 reported earlier, apart from Google, Fynd’s existing investors including Kae Capital, IIFL, Singularity Ventures, GrowX, Tracxn Labs, Venture Catalyst, Patni family office and HongKong based Axis Capital among other angel investors also participated in the Series C funding round.

Series C Pitch Deck: What You Can Learn From Fynd Here?

Fynd investor group for raising Series C funding included three types of institutional equity capital:

• Traditional VC/PE Funds
• Corporate Venture Funds
• Corporate Investment

“Among these structures, each of them have very different and distinct approaches, thesis and outcome expectations from an investment. Understanding the drivers of the above is key to communicating the story of your company — past, present and future. You will see this difference in approach when you compare our Series C pitch deck for a Corporate Investment with our previous one for Traditional VC/PE funds here,” added Harsh.

Here is the latest pitch deck for your reference:

As an early stage or growth stage startup, the deck offers majorly three learnings:

It’s Your Vision Which Will Inspire An Investor To Look Into Your Ideas

As they say, the first impression is your last impression. Similarly, the first few slides of any presentation have the power to cut-down any of your arch rivals. In case of Fynd, the first slide showcases in broad terms, “Building India’s Largest Fashion Retailer”. When you have unicorns like Flipkart, Shopclues in play; when every other day you find the startups like Koovs, Limeroad, and more cropping up, targeting several niche segments within the larger fashion segment – it’s only the strength of your vision which will work for bringing the ball to your court.

Your Team is Your Crown, Wear it With Proud

The second slide in Fynd’s presentation represents its team. The success of a company is nothing but the reflection of its team strength to execute the plans effectively in order to achieve the desired targets. The slide shares the same in a one-liner.

“Execution focused team with extensive experience in data, internet, and consulting.”

“Customer is The King”, So Find Your Fit There As Well

A startup is always recommended to find its perfect product-market fit. While in a B2B business model, it’s easier to increase your reach to potential clients, in a customer-centric business model, the difficulty increases due to the widely spread target market. Further, in the domain such as ‘fashion’, where a consumer choice changes every few seconds, it becomes necessary to build a strong ‘brand recall’ for yourself. Fynd has found its brand recall value in efficient and fast deliveries.

As the pitch mentions, “In a study covering 300+ customers, 83% said the most important reason for shopping with Fynd was fast delivery.”

Fynd: Betting High On Its Tech Stack And Investor’s Trust

As Sailesh Ramakrishnan, Partner, Rocketship shared in an earlier media interaction, “Through its technology and constant innovations, Fynd has tremendous potential in the Indian market. With a further infusion of funds, Fynd is sure to disrupt the fashion ecommerce space.”

Fynd, since its launch in 2012 has come a long way leveraging its tech-first platform and store-driven commerce approach without any inventory.  The startup is further betting on its inclination towards technology.

For instance, in May 2016, Fynd launched Fify– a fashion shopping “botfriend,” which is a conversational commerce bot for discovery and transactions. Following that, in December 2016, it also launched a new feature called ‘Fynd Store’, that aimed to provide retailers with an opportunity to increase sales through omni-channel user-engagement.

With more than 8K outlets onboard, the O2O fashion ecommerce startup has been working essentially to enable customers to discover fashion in real-time and know the exact specifications of the products available. The Indian online fashion market is pegged at $20 Bn (as suggested in the Fynd’s pitch deck). However, only a few players like Jabong, Myntra, Limeroad, Koovs among others are actually making a mark. In such scenario, despite crossing over five years of glorious success, the opportunity is still ripe for Fynd in the Indian online fashion market.

The post Here Is Fynd’s Pitch Deck That Made Google Invest In It appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Then he said, “Don’t quit your day job”.

This is supposed to be a funny way of saying, “You shouldn’t get out of your comfort zone. You shouldn’t try to better yourself. You shouldn’t strive for more. Don’t try to be rich.”

This is supposed to be a cruel way of saying, “Let other people be great. You stick with your job.”

So many people simmer with chronic despair, stuck in a job for five years, 20, 30, and they think they are too late.

But you aren’t. You never were. And you aren’t now.

We are here to explore. We are here to be curious. Not to argue at a 9:15 meeting. Not to cry in your cubicle.

This is what a job really is:

You are being paid MONEY in exchange for your UNHAPPINESS.

It’s a price on your unhappiness. Not your services. You decide what that price is.

Or you can take the red pill.

Some Things I Realized about a day job:

MONEY IS NOT A REWARD.

Money is a ceiling. It’s a bribe to stop you before you reach your potential as a human.

“Take this money so you can do what we want you to do and not what you want to do. Money is compensation for less happiness.”

And then they put in a false rewards system. A promotion. A raise. The false praise of a boss who has been a veteran prisoner only a few years more than you’ve been.

I get it. We need money. I need money. But…

The money is there to delay you from living your life’s potential.

FRIENDS DON’T LIKE YOU

I had a cubicle at my job. Depending on how close your cubicle was to mine, that usually meant you were a better friend.

Cubicle mates are forced friends. When cubicles are moved, I’d often lose touch. And when I left the job, I lost touch with everyone.

Now I had new friends.

If a friend got promoted, I’d get jealous. Maybe they got an office instead of a cubicle. Often that was the end of the friendship.

And where were my real friends? I don’t know. I was too busy with my forced friends to find real ones.

YOU SOLD YOUR DREAM

Nine to Five is a myth. It doesn’t start at 9. It doesn’t end at 5.

It’s 6 am wake up. Shower, clean, breakfast, then commute. Then a quick stop at the coffee cart. Then work by 8:45. The first meeting of the day at 9:15.

Counting down the minutes to five. Commute (watching the men and women looking down to the muddy floor on a subway).

I want to tell stories. I want to create. I want to make stuff up.

The subway is the underground animal kingdom. A shadow of what hell might be like. Filled with mysterious strangers all inches from dangerous intimacy.

I would wonder almost every day: what if the Apocalypse happened right now, outside of the subway car, everyone dead except us travelers through this one cave of hell. What a coincidence we were here!

Now I’d have to spend the rest of my life only knowing them. Would that woman be my new wife? Would that man try to kill me or eat me? Suddenly the homeless man, practicing for this new reality for the prior 12 years, just went from the Omega male on the subway to the Alpha male.

I’d better be his friend.

Fantasy over, commute over, get dinner, now I have to relax and de-stress. Because the 9-5 is chronic stress on a “low simmer”. Nothing can quite get cooked but everything is hotter than comfortable. And it never stops.

Now it’s 8, or 9. My favorite show. Read a few pages of a book. Fall asleep.

Where did the time go? The time I had set aside to play. Where did I leave the sandbox? When?

THE MONEY IS FAKE

On one side is the money. On the other side is this month’s bills.

Like a junior high school dance, the boys and girls start on their own side of the gym. Then by the middle of month, they rush to meet each other. Hoping for one dance, maybe a feel, or a kiss, by the end.

And then it’s over. By the end of the month (because the US savings rate is 0) the dance begins again, the money and bills still anxious to meet. Afraid to touch.

For every dollar you make, 40% goes to taxes. At least 16% of those taxes go to support wars. Or…somewhere…a bridge to nowhere.

30% on average goes to rent or mortgage. Some percentage might go towards student loans or credit card debt (100 million workers, $5 trillion in student loan debt or credit card debt equals a big % of monthly salary in interest payments).

Now: a tiny bit left for a few books. A Netflix subscription and Verizon payment plan. Maybe a few date nights. A suit. A car payment. One night of poker where you lose a little too much, too early in the evening. Throw some in the 401k which may go up or down. And if you live to 65 (or 59), you might get some of it back.

Nothing left over. The dream postponed one more month.

YOU’RE BEING HYPNOTIZED AND ROBBED

The “lowest rung” on the corporate ladder is actually the person who creates the product that is sent to the customer.

The lowest rungs do the work. The guy who makes the fries makes all of McDonald’s profits.

I was the lowest rung at my first big corporate job. I had a boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. Who then reported to a board of directors who reported to shareholders.

The shareholders have to make most of the money or they fire the CEO. The CEO makes a lot of money. And all the bosses in between me and him all made A LOT more than me.

But I’m the one who created value.

Out of every one dollar of value I created, I estimated I made about 1/10 of a penny in salary.

I call my mom and my dad. Did you enjoy your day at work?

Yes, I did, I say. I loved it.

Because I hated myself.

MILLIONAIRES DON’T HAVE JOBS

I’ve been rich and I’ve been broke.

Some years I’ve made my money from having a job. Some years from being an entrepreneur. Some years from being an investor. And some years I made no money at all (or lost it).

According to the IRS, the average millionaire in the United States has at least five different sources of income.

I remind myself of this every day. No one source will control my net worth. Ever.

A job, which is basically from 6 am (wakeup) to 9 pm every day, is only one source of income. And pays you less than 1% of the value you create.

And you have no time for anything else.

Every successful investor/entrepreneur in the world knows that diversification, taking calculated chances, and having the time necessary to be creative and unique is the key to making enormous amounts of money.

Ideas are the currency of the 21st century.

Ideas are where you have no ceiling on what amount of money you can make.

If you have a job, you have only one source of income, you’re prevented from taking risks, and you have no time.

So you don’t get the key. And the door is never opened.

ZERO LOYALTY

“I was at GM for 40 years,” a man told me. “I was middle management. So I wasn’t making the big bucks of upper management. And I wasn’t protected by a union like the blue-collar guys.

“The company went out of business. So I had no job, little savings, no union, and too old to get a new job.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He laughed. “Nothing wrong with bagging groceries for awhile.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAUGHTER?

The average child laughs 300 times a day.

The average adult…5 times a day.

I don’t know why this is. I asked a therapist who works with hundreds of people. He said…responsibilities.

But why is it sad to have a family and a home and the bills to pay for the things you enjoy? It can’t be responsibilities.

It’s because when we were kids we loved to laugh. And at a regular job, the laughter is stripped away by meetings and bosses and office politics and drudgery work.

“Can you get this spreadsheet done by 2pm?”

I guess I have to.

JOBS ARE GOING AWAY

I don’t know. They say jobs are going up. But I don’t believe it.

I went to NYU one day and interviewed students about their student loans. But I ran into some recent graduates. One guy said, “I wish I hadn’t gotten the degree. Now I work in an eyeglass store selling glasses to pay off over $100,000 in loans. I majored in filmmaking.”

The next generation is being stripped of its hustle. It’s creativity. They are crushed into round pegs to fit the meaningless holes waiting for them.

There are real jobs out there. But they are getting fewer.

I look at my friends who are happiest. They have created their own jobs. If they wanted a TV show, they started a YouTube channel and grew it.

If they loved health, they made their training business scalable with videos and online courses and scaled it.

Even worse, you have to go to the bathroom next to your boss. Nothing is more disgusting and humiliating. But we think we have to take it.

Energy is about movement, curiousity, passion, love. Use it or lose it.

I need to move, Move, MOVE!

DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB

I quit.

I had started a company on the side.

I built it up for 18 months while I still had my full-time job. I had to learn so many things. Particularly how to sell a service and how to delegate some of the work I did.

I had to learn to balance a double-life. I had to work day and night for awhile.

Maybe I was too conservative. I was so scared to quit my job.

But I had my EVIL PLAN. I started my company, I built it up slowly, and finally, I quit my day job when I felt ready.

Do you have your evil plan?

I’ve been sad. I’ve been scared. I’ve gained so many millions and then lost all of those millions and more.

I’ve met so many people on this path.

People who have taken different roads all of their lives and now flourish and survive in the universes they created for themselves. They chose themselves.

Choosing yourself is not about quitting your job. It’s about choosing your life. The universe you create for yourself.

I quit my day job.

It was horrible. It was blissful.

I never looked back.

[This post by James Altucher first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.]

The post 10 Reasons You Have To Quit Your Day Job appeared first on Inc42 Media.

He refused to have a phone in his office calling it a “distraction”, spent most nights reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, and almost worked himself to death.

Alexander Graham Bell, credited with inventing the telephone, followed his curiosity to discover his purpose. For millions suffering from a lack of direction, Bell’s life is a blueprint for realizing why we are here on planet earth.

“When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

Is it possible that our purpose is staring us in the face, and we just don’t see it? Alexander Bell’s career as an inventor began at age 12 when he witnessed his mother going deaf. Later, while working as a professor, he would marry one of his students, also deaf – and Bell was determined to invent a technology that would help people like his mother and wife. That technology turned out to be the telephone, which did not accomplish its original task but brought people the world over closer together.

As happened to Bell, what is taking place in our lives that we feel compelled to fix? What are we curious about? Perhaps, when it comes to career and business planning, the question isn’t so much “what should I do?” but rather “What can I help solve?”

“A person, as a general rule, owes very little to what he or she is born with – they are what they make of themselves.”

Once we find a problem to help solve, and dedicate ourselves to it, we have an obligation to be the best we can be. Alexander Graham Bell believed it wasn’t natural gifts that led him to success. Instead, it was his decision to work hard at finding the answers he sought. A life purpose becomes clear, and entrenched, through commitment and laser focus.

“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

So many of us are hoping for a “break” “chance” or even a miracle. But we have forgotten that studious preparation is the only pathway to results. Let us begin today – to take a single baby step towards our dream. Each day need only to have one step. Bell never took his eye off his goal, at one point borrowing money from one of his own employees. It was a humbling experience, but one of many steps towards carrying out his mission.

Alexander Graham Bell, Born In Scotland, Was A Doer From The Start

At age 11, he decided to give himself a middle name (likely because both his father and grandfather were named “Alexander” and he wanted to stand out from the family crowd). He was bored by the school – often failing to show up, and achieving poor to average grades.

It was by witnessing his mother Eliza become deaf (from a childhood disease) that the young inventor would find his passion, taking a keen interest in sound and the human voice. Bell was upset by his mother’s deafness and shared his father’s desire to do something about it.

Still, a teenager, with the help of his brother, Bell created a “mechanical talking head” which used wind to create verbal sounds. From there, he conducted bizarre experiments with animals, including the family’s dog, trying to make them appear to speak by manipulating their vocal chords.

The young Bell spent time assisting his father who had created “visual speech” demonstrations to help deaf people communicate. By his early 20s, Bell was teaching deaf people in Boston – both at Boston University (even though he had no degree) and as a private tutor (one of his students was Helen Keller).

But it wasn’t enough. He yearned to find a way to make technology help deaf people like his mother to communicate.

Bell would teach by day and experiment by night, often losing incredible amounts of sleep. He developed severe headaches, working to exhaustion, but persisted anyway.

Eventually, he chose to conduct experiments full time and took under his care, two of his pupils – a six-year-old boy who was deaf since birth, and a 15-year-old girl named Mabel (who would later become his wife). Bell would try various creations to see if they could help his students.

One such creation was called an “acoustic telegraph” designed to transmit sound.

At age 27, Bell and his assistant, a machinist named Thomas Watson, were working on the telegraph in a Boston boarding house with wires running from the top floor to the floor below. According to folklore, Bell, who was in the top room, spilled battery acid on his pants. Watson, in the bottom room, could hear Bell asking for help, saying “Mr. Watson, come here.”

An excited Watson ran upstairs to tell Bell he could hear him over the wire. According to Watson, Bell forgot all about the acid he spilled, realizing what had just happened – the telephone was born. It was several months later that Bell and Watson held a phone conversation between Boston and Cambridge, a distance of two miles.

Years later, Bell had delusions about his invention saying it would lead to communication through mental telepathy.

Eliza Bell was very protective of her famous son. Two other sons had died of tuberculosis in Europe, so the family moved to Canada in 1870. Eliza, despite being deaf, was an accomplished pianist who home-schooled her son in his early years, teaching him to focus on “abilities” not “disabilities.”

Alexander Graham Bell was actually not the first person to come up with the idea of the telephone. Other scientists gave it a try as early as 50 years before. But it was Bell who filed a patent for a working phone before anyone else – including Elisha Gray, an American electrical engineer who created a telephone prototype before Bell did. (Some historians contend that Bell stole Gray’s concept). Bell beat Gray to the patent office and to this day, the family of Elisha Gray disputes that Bell ever invented the telephone.

A short time after his invention was made public, Bell wanted to sell his patent to Western Union. But unbelievably, the company dismissed the telephone as a “useless toy” that would never amount to much.

Bell and his financial backers decided to go it alone and form their own company (which later bought out Western Union).

The year was 1877 and Alexander Graham Bell created the wall phone. The first phones by Bell had no microphone so users had to yell loudly into the mouthpiece in order to be heard at the other end. A magnet with coils wound around two poles alongside an iron diaphragm created the vibration to transmit the human voice.

While Bell was highly sympathetic to the plight of deaf people, he once referred to them as “defective” and believed that deaf people should not marry for fear of passing down their deafness to their children. (It is true that deafness can be hereditary but Bell’s position was hypocritical since he himself had married a deaf woman).

Bell was a strong supporter of trying to teach deaf people how to speak and understand speech (a practice known as “oralism”), believing it to be superior to sign language. The debate as to which is the better route to take continues to this day. (The organization Bell created, The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, continues to promote speech and listening skills).

Alexander Graham Bell is seen here with his wife Mabel. The two met when Mabel was only 15 and Bell was her teacher. Bell fell instantly in love with Mabel but she initially did not return the feeling. In her words, “He dressed badly. I could never marry such a man!” Later, Mabel would admit: “Every day I see something new in him to love and admire.”

It was in 1877 that Bell married his deaf student Mabel. She was 19, he 29. It is believed that Bell’s telecommunication experiments, including his early work on the telephone, were desperate attempts to restore his wife’s hearing. (Mabel had become deaf around age five from Scarlet Fever). In that sense, today’s smartphones and communications can be attributed to Bell’s desire to help his wife to hear.

Bell loved Mabel so much, he gave her all of his shares in the Bell Telephone Company as a wedding gift, keeping only 10 shares for himself. But surprisingly, only a short time later, Mabel signed a Power of Attorney, handing over her shares to her father (which made him President and Chairman of the company, which, in the U.S., became American Telephone and Telegraph, known as AT&T). (The company in Canada – Bell Canada Enterprises – still has Bell’s name and is the largest communications company in Canada).

The marriage of Mabel and Alexander Bell lasted 45 years until Bell died. They had 4 children – one of whom Bell wanted to name “photophone” after one of his inventions, but his wife over-ruled him and the child was named Marian. (Their two sons died shortly after birth).

This 1882 image shows a prototype of something called a “photophone” which Alexander Graham Bell created after he invented the telephone. Bell once said that the photophone was his “greatest achievement.” The idea was to transmit speech on a beam of light, removing the need for wires. The gadget did play a key role in the development of today’s fibre-optic communication systems.

Bell continued to work into his old age, helping to start National Geographic Magazine and inventing the first successful hydrofoil, setting a speed record of almost 71 miles an hour.

In 1922, Alexander Graham Bell passed away peacefully at age 75 at his home in Nova Scotia, under moonlight, gazing at the mountainous region of Cape Breton. (He had suffered from complications due to diabetes). His wife Mabel is said to have whispered into his ear “Don’t leave me” to which he responded, by hand gesture apparently indicating he was not going to leave her, then lost consciousness and died.

Upon news of Bell’s death, the entire phone system in North America was shut down for a moment of silence.

Sadly, almost the day after her husband’s death, Mabel began to lose her sight. She would die of cancer only a few months later.

Alexander Graham Bell did not view himself as a world-famous inventor, but rather as a teacher of people with hearing disabilities. While he was never able to find a way for technology to restore his wife’s hearing – he gave the world the gift of instant communication.

Bell’s angst over his mother’s deafness and that of his wife, put him on a mission to search for solutions. Today, we too can look at our lives and identify problems to solve, thereby forging our purpose.

In the early 1900s, as people began to depend on the telephone to communicate over vast distances – many predictions were made about how the phone would change the world. Some believed the phone would lead to world peace, bringing nations closer together. A few, notably British reporter Kate Field (who had known Bell) accurately predicted in 1878 that one day, the phone would allow people to see each other across the globe. 

[This post by Cory Galbraith first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.] 

The post How To Find Your True Calling – Lessons From The Inventor Of The Phone appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Gurugram-based restaurant search and food delivery startup Zomato reported a two-fold growth in its revenues to $61.2 Mn (INR 399 Cr) in revenue for FY17. Currently operational in 23 countries, the foodtech unicorn generates revenues from advertising as well as food delivery.

As per its financial results, the company also managed to significantly reduce its net losses to $59.7 Mn (INR 389 Cr) from $90.5 Mn (INR 590 Cr) in the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2016.

To achieve this, Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal waived off his remuneration, while the other co-founder Pankaj Chaddah nearly halved his salary to $53,729.3 (INR 35 Lakh) from October 2015, the company’s financial documents available on Tofler reveal.

Earlier this month, Chaddah announced that he was moving away from the foodtech unicorn. In a blog post, Goyal broke the news of Pankaj’s resignation. The two together began Zomato’s journey back in 2008.

Recently, in February 2018, the foodtech unicorn raised $200 Mn in a funding round led by Alibaba Group. The investment was made through Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba.

 How Zomato Overcame Adversities To Become Profitable

Established by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008, Zomato has raised about $423 Mn funding and has made about 11 acquisitions till date.  In 2015, amidst rising losses and competition, the foodtech unicorn made headlines for showing the door to 300 employees. The startup’s last funding was in September 2015, when it raised $60 Mn from Temasek and VY Capital.

Later in May 2016, Zomato rolled back operations from nine countries out of 23 international markets, in a bid to cut costs. It was around the same time that investor HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India) marked down the company’s valuation by half to around $500 Mn.

By adopting a strategy focussed on diversification, and redesigning its ad serving product, the foodtech unicorn managed to cut losses by 34% in 2016-2017. In the annual report for FY17, Zomato reported an 80% surge in revenue to around $60 Mn. The restaurant discovery and food delivery platform witnessed an 81% drop in the annual operating burn for FY17 at $12 Mn compared to the $64 Mn in FY16.

 The company’s food delivery service made headlines for raking in over 3 Mn monthly orders for the first time in July 2017. As per a blogpost by the company, Zomato’s food business has high customer retention. The company claims that about 65% of its newly signed up users for the food ordering business order again from Zomato in the next 12 months.

 In August 2017, the foodtech unicorn said that it on-boarded 21,500 subscribers for its paid Zomato Treats service. The company also claims that its cost of acquisition is negligible. The company claims to get over 120 Mn visitors a month across all platforms – consuming restaurant information, referencing content generated and shared by other users, placing orders for food delivery, or making reservations at restaurants.

A month later, Zomato acquired Bengaluru-based B2B online service provider platform Runnr, as part of a move aimed at bolstering its hyperlocal logistics services. Around the same time, the Indian arm of Japan-based financial holding company Nomura marked up its valuation to $1.4 Bn till March 2019.

In the same month, it invested in Hyderabad-based foodtech startup TinMen. Later in October, the food delivery startup announced plans to introduce zero commission model for the partner restaurants, after claiming to have become profitable throughout the 23 countries it operates in and across all its businesses.

Between October and December last year, the company launched a slew of new initiatives to gain a stronghold in the online food delivery space against rival Swiggy. Among these were its #MissionGiveBack programme, which waived off table reservation fees for restaurant partners globally and Project Fairplay which was geared towards curbing malpractices.

It also launched its international paid subscription programme Zomato Gold in India. Towards the beginning of this year, in January, Morgan Stanley marked up the valuation of homegrown foodtech unicorn Zomato to $2.5 Bn.

In light of the recent fire breakout at Mumbai’s Kamala Mills Compound, the foodtech startup also announced that it will start displaying fire safety licenses of restaurants on its platform, starting from February 2018. Most recently, in the second week of March, Zomato touched 150K+ user mark on its subscription-based service, Zomato Gold. In a blog post, the company claimed that more than 2K restaurants have joined the Zomato Gold services till date.

According to a study by Netscribes Research, the online food delivery segment in India is expected to expand by 34%-36% between 2015 and 2020. The rising opportunity in the online food ordering space is also calling in unicorns like Flipkart, Paytm and Amazon India to test waters.

At a time when its chief rival Swiggy is in talks with Coatue Management and a few other investors to raise $50 Mn-$100 Mn, having already secured $100 Mn in Series F funding round led Naspers last month, the strong financials of Zomato hints at its growing footprint in the country’s online food delivery market.

 (The development was reported by Livemint)

The post Alibaba-Backed Food Delivery Unicorn Zomato Clocked Two-Fold Growth In Revenues To $61.2 Mn For FY17 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As the government increases its focus on electric vehicles, major players in the automobile industry viz Tata Motors and Mahindra and Mahindra, have continued to lead the upscaling process of their products. The companies are now working to introduce electric powertrains.

In a report, Livemint quoted people familiar with the matter as stating that Tata Motors is working on an electric model of its light commercial vehicle (LCV), Tata Ace, that can carry up to 1 tonne. At the same time, Mahindra and Mahindra is also working to develop its electric powertrain for its offerings in the sub 2-tonne segment.

One of the persons revealed, “Tata Motors is developing an electric variant of the small commercial vehicle Ace and is at the development stage now. It should be in the market by late 2019 or 2020. Given the way the Union government wants to encourage the use of the EVs in commercial purposes, this is perfectly suitable for ferrying goods and passengers within city limits.”

According to the reports, the rationale behind the electric powertrains is the idea to use these for transporting goods within a city or a town. And therefore, a single charge would be enough to operate them throughout the day, unlike other electric buses and vehicles.

Further, the report said, “Tata Motors is trying to consolidate its position in the electric commercial vehicle front. It has already launched electric buses and has been testing some of them in different states. With the introduction of the electric variant of Ace, the firm will further try to cement its position. Also, in the long run, this may help them get some lost market share back from M&M in the LCV space.”

In the electric vehicles segment, Tata Motors launched its electric Tigor and Mahindra and Mahindra launched its electric passenger vehicle eVerito previously. The companies have also been supplying these vehicles to the government-run Energy Efficiency Services Ltd.

However, Tata Motors’ Ace and Mahindra and Mahindra’s Jeeto are used to move freight within cities. Therefore, it is suggested that, with electric powertrains, these vehicles can be used by fleet owners as operational cost will be much lower.

The acquisition cost is also expected to come down as reports have surfaced that under FAME II, which is expected to be launched on April 1, the government is expected to provide subsidies for the purchase of the commercial electric vehicles.

The companies are counting on this benefit to introduce their electric powertrain and expect that the electric powertrain in the LCV segment will get a lot of traction in the market. However, one of the persons quoted above stressed on the importance of pricing “since one section of the users are first-time customers and getting the vehicle financed is a problem initially”.

The competition between the majors of the automobile industry is at the peak with Mahindra and Mahindra leaving behind Tata Motors in LCV sales in the past two fiscal years. In an email query, Tata Motors told Livemint, “As you are aware, we had showcased Magic EV at the Auto Expo 2018. However, as a policy, we do not comment on future product innovations and launches.”

Also, Mahindra and Mahindra has partnered with American automotive giant Ford to jointly develop midsize and compact SUVs as well as a small electric vehicle.“Built on the Mahindra platform, the new SUV will drive engineering and commercial efficiencies and will be sold independently by both the companies as separate brands,” the companies said in a statement recently.

What’s Happening In The Electric Vehicles Space In India?

In a major boost to electric vehicles in the country, the government is reportedly planning to extend financial support of up to $1.3 Bn (INR 8,730 Cr) under the second phase of FAME India.

Scheduled to be implemented from April 1, of the total $1.3 Bn financial support under FAME II, around $851.8 Mn (INR 5,550 Cr) will be kept as demand-side incentives over the next five years. Apart from that, it will earmark over $383.6 Mn (INR 2,500 Cr) for electric buses and $153.4 Mn (INR 1,000 Cr) for four-wheelers.

Also, the government is planning to offer incentives to local battery makers, with the aim of facilitating the establishment of more manufacturing units in the country. For this, the government is also looking to forge alliances with other countries for an adequate supply of raw materials needed for lithium-ion batteries.

Furthermore, NITI Aayog has proposed the removal of all permit requirements for electric vehicles. Created to offer suggestions on clean transportation, the task force has argued that electric vehicles are largely environment-friendly and should, therefore, be promoted more actively by the government.

In a related news, Nissan has announced that it aims to sell 1 Mn electric vehicles annually, starting from 2022. The focus, as per Nissan’s spokesperson, will be on low-emissions, all-battery and gasoline-hybrid cars, instead of more expensive EV technologies such as plug-in hybrids.

With electric vehicles becoming the centre of survival and growth for automobile majors like Tata Motors and Mahindra and Mahindra, what new offerings the companies add to their existing fleet will largely depend on the government’s policies and subsidies.

The post Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra To Launch Electric Powertrains appeared first on Inc42 Media.

A report titled ‘Mobile Internet in India 2017’, published jointly by the IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India)  and KANTAR-IMRB, estimates the number of mobile Internet users in India to reach 478 Mn by June 2018.

According to the report, the country recorded 291 Mn urban mobile Internet users and 187 Mn rural mobile Internet users as on December 2017. The number of mobile Internet users reached 456 Mn by December 2017, an increase of 17.22% from the previous year.

Some of the key points highlighted in the report are:

• Urban India witnessed an estimated 18.64% Y-o-Y rise, while rural India witnessed an estimated growth of 15.03% during the same period.
• Mobile Internet is predominantly used by the youngsters, with 46% of Urban users and 57% of Rural users being under the age of 25.
• Urban India has around twice the proportion of users over the age of 45, while the age range of 25 to 44 has almost an equal distribution of the users in urban and rural areas.
• Young students are the most prolific users of most of the services. The middle-aged and older men show the greater propensity of using the social networking and browsing websites; with older men having lower habits of audio or video streaming.
• Working women have the highest propensity for social networking and browsing, while non-working women have the highest propensity for text chatting.
• Expenditure on voice has been steadily decreasing from 2013; and with the popularity of VOIP and video chatting, the expenditure on voice services has decreased dramatically in the recent times. In just five years from 2013 to 2017, the ratio of Data: Voice went from 45:55 to 84:16.

The report also highlighted that with 59% penetration, urban India is expected to show a slowdown while rural India with only 18% mobile Internet penetration is clearly the next area of growth.

It also went on to reveal that affordability on the mobile Internet has been the primary factor for the huge surge popularity of the service; “so much so that internet penetration in India is being driven by Mobile Internet.”

The growth of the mobile Internet has been attributed to various stakeholders such as telecom operators, handset manufacturers and Internet service providers.

Emphasising on the scope of growth, the report suggested that the advent of digital entertainment has had a considerable impact on the mobile Internet usage and streaming services have a symbiotic linkage with usage growth.

Also, the report has noted that many telecom service operators have now bundled subscription of such services to lure the customers; while the latter is more likely to take-up higher quality connections to ensure lag-free streaming and better audio or video quality.

In the coming year, the report expects that the National Telecom Policy 2018, that focusses on new technologies like 5G, will promote a better quality data services at more affordable prices and can be expected to help address the digital divides and promote the Internet penetration in the rural areas via mobile Internet.

A report ‘Internet Trends 2017’ by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB), revealed that India had 355 Mn internet users in June 2016 which rose to 277 Mn broadband users in March 2017.

According to a recent study by Google-KPMG, India is expected to have 735 Mn Internet users by 2021.

With the recent report of IAMAI which estimates Internet users in India to reach 500 Mn by June 2018, the perspective of mobile Internet usage gives an insight into the growing dependency on mobile Internet and the growth of digital spending in the country.

The post Mobile Internet Users In India To Cross 478 Mn Mark By June 2018: IAMAI Report appeared first on Inc42 Media.

While cryptocurrency leads the dark web space, a currency is one of the primary reasons behind all the illegal and sinister things that happen in the society, even when it is just a legal tender of getting things done.

Speaking at a NASSCOM Conclave, Bengaluru, Rohas Nagpal, Cofounder of Primechain Technologies, a blockchain startup explained, “Currency itself is not a resource. Read the INR 2,000 note, it doesn’t say anything but, ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of two thousand rupees,” followed by the signature of the RBI Governor General.”

If you could recall, “Soon after the demonetisation, as PM Modi announced that the 500 and 1000 rupee-notes’ won’t be a legal tender anymore, the notes became nothing but a piece of paper,” he added.

Why is there so much fuss about currency?

After all, the fact of the matter is, currencies are just another way to get what you want. However, the underlying power is the perceived timeless value that most of the conventional currencies offer. This creates a desire amongst the people to want to store more and more currency values. And, the sinister mishaps start from there.

Besides, a few still believing in the #HODLGANG, most of the people are uncertain about the Bitcoin value in the long term.

While cryptocurrencies are bound to replace all the conventional currencies in the future, as more and more Internet connectivity and consumer awareness are realised, the structure that allows a few people capturing the entire currency continues.

In India and many other countries, if it is the top 3% of the citizens who own over 70% of the wealth or the currency in the country, in the case of cryptocurrency as with Bitcoin or Ripple, the power equation remains the same.

What if, we could add additional parameters such life-span of cryptocurrency transacted against certain trade, and storage capacity (depending upon the nature of account/wallet) of wallet to the existing architecture of cryptocurrencies? The architecture that would allow the value of transacted cryptocurrencies only for a certain period of time, depending upon the time-flag set by the user!

While this could stop the unnecessary storage and mining of currencies and transactions allowing more space for the democratisation of currencies, it might take another decade reach to such point of consensus.

Moving on, let’s take a look at the recent developments from the world of Cryptocurrency!

Twitter Bans Cryptocurrency-Related Ads Including ICOs

What began with Twitter blocking impersonating accounts of Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin and McAfee like personalities, that were luring people to send or receive cryptocurrencies, has clearly entered the next level, banning cryptocurrency ads on the platform.

As reported earlier, Twitter has announced a ban on cryptocurrency-related ads including the ICOs, as part of increased effort to stop giving publicity to speculative ads that could lead to potential fraud or investment loss at large.

In a confirmation made to Reuters and The Verge, a Twitter spokesperson stated, “We are committed to ensuring the safety of the Twitter community. As such, we have added a new policy for Twitter Ads relating to cryptocurrency. Under this new policy, the advertisement of ICOs and token sales will be prohibited globally.”

While Twitter is yet to update its policy log, as per the reports, the ad policy will be updated by today and will be circulated to everyone over the next one month. However, the public listed cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets such as Remixpoint and Metaps Inc in Japan and can continue to showcase their crypto and ICOs ads on Twitter.

Following the line, Linkedin has also banned the crypto adverts.

AirAsia To Launch Its Own Cryptocurrency Called BigCoin

Malaysia-based leading budget airlines for passengers, AirAsia has announced its plans to launch its cryptocurrency dubbed as BigCoin.

Speaking to Nikkei Asian Review, Tony Fernandes, Founder and group CEO, AirAsia stated that the company is using its substantial operational data to launch forays into fintech services and cryptocurrencies.

He said that starting in April, ticket prices will be quoted on the group’s website in conventional currencies as well as in BigCoin. It will be possible to pay for seat upgrades, in-flight meals and other services using the digital currency within three to six months.

While the CEO is agnostic about going for ICO, Fernandes averred that the digital currency is a tool to alleviate currency fluctuation risks from overseas revenue. In the future, he envisions BigCoin being accepted by third-party businesses.

BigCoin will further help boost the company’s mobile wallet service BigPay which will be used to exchange BigCoins later.

DICCI To Launch Bitcoin Mining Training Across 30 Cities In India

Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) has partnered with the social entrepreneur and the treasurer for Democrats Abroad India, Tausif Malik, to launch a training programme for bitcoin mining in 30 cities across India, reported Bitcoin Daily.

Representing the 32% of the backward class in India, DICCI and Mahabfic, with this initiative, plan to create the “World’s 1st and the largest Bitcoin Mining Training Program (BMTP) for self-employment”.

Founded by Malik, Mahabfic is a platform promoting investments in the State of Maharashtra for blockchain, fintech, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency.

As per DICCI Founder and Chairman, Milind Kamble, “Empower the rural population especially the youth from the farming community to earn income from their hometown or villages, this would create new economic development in these areas.”

Thailand To Tax Cryptocurrencies

The military government-run Thailand might regulate cryptocurrency trading in the country, which might result in the taxation of investments made over cryptocurrencies, reported Nikkei.

In an annual meeting on March 27,  Thailand’s Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong stated that under new laws to regulate cryptocurrencies and digital tokens, investors will have to pay 7% value-added tax on all crypto trades and a 15% capital gains tax on their returns.

It is worth noting that earlier in February, the Bank of Thailand, had banned local banks from investing or trading in cryptocurrencies.

Five Cryptocurrency Exchanges In Japan Shut Down Their Operations

After the Coincheck fiasco, Japan has further tweaked its cryptocurrency regulation in the country. Five cryptocurrency exchanges have now withdrawn their applications deciding to shut down cryptocurrency operations in the country.

As the Financial Service Agency (FSA), Japan has tightened cryptocurrency regulations, furthermore, exchanges are expected to follow the closing.

Besides the five down, currently, 16 exchanges have been successful to receive the operational licenses from the FSA. However, 11 other exchanges whose license applications are pending with authority are also allowed for operations till the jurisdiction.

Trading below $7K, many have already started writing off Bitcoin, the most valuable currency across the world. Talking of Bitcoin, Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee, counted the drawbacks, “The much larger structural flaw is its public ledger that’s simply incompatible with having an enduring mechanism for trade. You cannot have a life-long history of everyone’s purchases, all of their interactions be available to everyone and have that work out well at scale.”

“When we talk about which cryptocurrencies are interesting to me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Zcash for me is the most interesting right now because the privacy properties of it are truly unique but we see more and more projects that are trying to emulate this and I think this is a positive thing,” he added.

In contrast, another software professional and veteran John McAfee is still of the view that the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin value might cross $1 Mn too.

The post Cryptocurrency This Week: AirAsia To Launch Its Own Cryptocurrency Called BigCoin And More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

One of Amazon India’s largest seller entity Cloudtail, is trying to align with third-party sellers, as per reports. The move aims to build a more controlled and larger inventory for doing faster deliveries.

Cloudtail is a joint venture between Amazon Asia and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s personal investment vehicle Catamaran Ventures. The seller has been facing several issues post the strict FDI norms announced by the DIPP in March 2016.

According to the DIPP’s new FDI rules, an ecommerce entity will not permit more than 25% of the sales effected through its marketplace from one vendor or their group companies. Also, ecommerce entities providing marketplace will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services and shall maintain level playing field.

In order to adhere to these guidelines, Cloudtail stopped the sale of mobile phones via Amazon India platform in September 2016. Mobile phones contributed towards a significant portion of Cloudtail’s revenues. Fast-selling brands such as Samsung and Apple were then sold by newer sellers who get priority display at Amazon as compared to Cloudtail.

As a result, Cloudtail’s revenues dropped considerably for FY17. The company posted a 24% jump in its revenue for FY17, showcasing a net revenue of $883.1 Mn (INR 5,688.7 Cr). However, this is significantly less compared to the 300% surge to $712 Mn (INR 4,586.9 Cr) the vendor reported in FY16.

It is now playing an important role as ‘category builder’ for Amazon India. It will focus on the growth segments like the FMCG, lifestyle products and consumer electronics in the future. These products have the much lower unit value as compared to smartphones and Cloudtail will be able to comply with the limit mandated by the FDI ecommerce vendor norms.

Amazon India is also pacing up to add more variety of products which can be shipped in the next day or two of the deliveries. With stricter FDI guidelines, it has become a tough task for Amazon to transform the overall business experience of its seller partners independently. It is also working closely with Appario Retail, the seller entity formed under the joint venture between Amazon and Patni Group.

Appario Retail is the wholly owned subsidiary of Frontizo Business. Formerly known as Aristotle Sales & Marketing, it functions as a reseller, distributor as well as stockist for a variety of goods, services and merchandise. Additionally, it provides a technology platform for commerce transactions. Most recently, Appario Retail also raised $18.8 Mn in January 2018 from parent Frontizo Business Services.

It is expected that this new strategy for aligning with third-party sellers will help Cloudtail revive its revenues. At the same time, Amazon’s association with Appario Retail will help the company in reducing its dependence further on Cloudtail. However, with the Indian government getting murky over ecommerce operations and the locals trying to weed out the foreign competition, Amazon India has some tough days coming up in the years ahead.

The post Amid Strict FDI Rules, Cloudtail Looks To Onboard Third-Party Sellers On Amazon appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Taking another step regarding Aadhaar, UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) has reportedly restored the ban on Airtel to conduct Aadhaar-based eKYC verification of its users, but subject to specific conditions.

A report by the PTI quoted sources close to the development to reveal that Airtel will have to submit quarterly reports on compliance with the Aadhaar Act and adhere to directions issued by the UIDAI.

However, the suspension hasn’t been lifted for Airtel Payments Bank’s eKYC processes.

The company will be required to “submit quarterly compliance reports till further orders and the UIDAI reserves its rights to verify such reports on its own or through an auditor appointed by the authority,” the report revealed.

The report also revealed that the UIDAI has lifted the ban to ensure that customers do not face any inconvenience. Furthermore, the UIDAI has taken the decision after contemplating regular compliance updates provided by the Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank. The government body observed that Airtel has complied with “critical issues”.

Also, the audit report of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was examined by the UIDAI. “As per the DoT audit report, it was noted that, at present, the processes and applications used for mobile customer’s re-verification and the new acquisition are in compliance to DoT’s instructions,” the report said.

When Did The Trouble Brew For Airtel?

The UIDAI sent the first notice to Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank on September 18, 2017 on the basis of allegations that the telecom major was using Aadhaar-based SIM verification of customers to open payments bank accounts without their “informed consent”.

On this, both the entities stated that the opening of a bank account had been “de-linked” from the e-verification process of new mobile connections.

The second notice was issued by the UIDAI on November 24, 2017. The mobile service provider responded by stating that no new bank accounts were being opened without the consent of the customers. The company also gave the assurance that additional safeguards had been put in place to protect the security and privacy of the customers.

Authorities remained unconvinced since the UIDAI was still receiving multiple complaints of the unauthorised opening of payments bank accounts from its customers.

As per a report by The Indian Express, bank accounts of more than 2.3 Mn Airtel customers were created, with over $7.3 Mn (INR 47 Cr) being transferred to these accounts.

Furthermore, many Airtel customers also complained that the company was redirecting LPG subsidies to these accounts without their consent. According to some sources, subsidies amounting to $26 Mn (INR 167 Cr) of nearly 4.7 Mn LPG customers had been transferred to these accounts without their knowledge.

Later, in an order issued on December 15, 2017, the UIDAI temporarily banned Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank from conducting eKYC of customers using Aadhaar.

As a result of this ban, Airtel was not able to conduct e-verification of its telecom customers nor will it be allowed to link customers’ SIM to Aadhaar during the interim period. Additionally, Airtel Payments Bank was barred from opening new accounts using Aadhaar-based eKYC. It will, however, be able to open bank accounts through “alternate methods”, if available.

After making a payment of $21.2 Mn (INR 138 Cr) in DBT subsidy, Bharti Airtel was given a conditional approval to perform Aadhaar-based e-KYC verification of its telecom users till January 10. However, the latest move completely restores the eKYC licence of Airtel.

At a  time when the UIDAI is addressing the Aadhaar case in the Supreme Court, the decision to restore the ban on Airtel is bound to create ripples. The result would be positive or negative, only time will tell.

The post UIDAI Lifts Ban From Airtel For Aadhaar-Based eKYC Verification appeared first on Inc42 Media.

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He took forever to make a decision, lived his last days in extreme pain, and gave away his fortune to charity.

At his peak, billionaire Howard Hughes was one of the most brilliant minds on the planet – daring, inventive and passionate to a fault. Today, we can learn from the best of Hughes to ignite our careers and start living to the fullest.

“Passion will make you crazy, but is there any other way to live?”

Hughes followed his passion. His fascination with flying put him in the cockpit. His love of the movies made him a producer and director. He didn’t wait for the “perfect moment” or seek the approval of others. How many of us today allow our doubts to stop us? It is but one life. Let’s follow our passion and see where it leads.

“I intend to be the greatest golfer in the world, the finest film producer in Hollywood, the greatest pilot in the world, and the richest man in the world.”

Howard Hughes made his lofty dreams public, knowing that public disclosure would forge an inner commitment. Today, many of us keep our hopes to ourselves, out of fear they won’t happen and we’ll look foolish. Perhaps the opposite is true. By proclaiming our goals, we can cement them in our minds and hearts, directing our subconscious to carry them out.

“The human brain is still undergoing rapid adaptive evolution.”

Scientists now tell us that the brain is capable of processing 30 billion bits of information per second and that no person is born “stupid” or “intelligent”. We make a conscious decision to limit ourselves. Hughes realized that his mind could do amazing things if he let it. We all need to respect our minds more. The processing power at your disposal awaits your decision to use it.

Howard Hughes Hated When Anyone Told Him He Couldn’t Do Something

His objective was to prove them wrong. In fact, it could be argued that Hughes accomplished all that he did, not because people knew he could do it, but rather, because they said he couldn’t.

As an only child, Hughes became a millionaire at age 18, inheriting the tool company built by his father. But tools were not a passion for Hughes who was drawn instead to the glamour of Hollywood.

His movie career began at the tender age of 21 when he created a film called “Swell Hogan” but Hughes, a chronic perfectionist, hated the film, blaming the director he hired, 1920’s actor Ralph Graves, who had never directed before. Hughes ordered that the comedy film be burned. (Apparently Hughes and Graves were the only people who ever saw the movie).

Hughes hired much more experienced directors for his next movie “Two Arabian Knights” but they all said Hughes was impossible to work for – some left, others were fired. In the end, Hughes appointed himself the director. The film won an Oscar.

Believing himself to be the best director in Hollywood, Hughes sat in the director’s chair for his movie “Hell’s Angels” about World War One pilots. But to make the picture realistic, he used real vintage planes and staged real aerial fights – costing the lives of three pilots. Hughes flew one of the planes himself and crashed it.

Despite these horrors, the 1930 film was a hit, cementing Hughes as a respected leading figure in the movie business.

Hughes would go on to produce more movies and date many of tinsel town’s leading ladies. In 1943, he directed actress Jane Russell in the movie “The Outlaw”. Hughes was obsessed with Russell. She was already married and a devout catholic, dead against affairs. Years later, Russell insisted she never had an affair with Hughes although the Hollywood rumor mill said Hughes got his way.

The Howard Hughes movie “The Outlaw” launched the career of Jane Russell. But the censors didn’t like it, saying it showed a little too much of Russell. They forced Hughes to take out half a minute of the film (considered too racy), allowing it be shown briefly in 1943. Hughes was a genius at marketing, launching a secret campaign to ban his own film, knowing that would only make the public want to see it even more. It worked, and “The Outlaw” received general distribution in 1950 to rave reviews. (The movie poster seen here had also been banned).

Hughes was officially married twice, first to socialite Ella Rice. Almost immediately after marrying her, it was reported that he completely ignored her, causing her to leave. His second marriage was to actress Jean Peters (1957-1971) who observers say was the only woman Hughes really loved, despite his many affairs. When the relationship ended, the possessive Hughes had security officers follow Peters wherever she went, informing any man interested in her, to stay away or Hughes would ruin their careers.

While in Hollywood, Hughes proposed marriage to many women who turned him down. He once offered the husband of actress Billie Dove a great deal of money to divorce so Hughes could marry her (a scheme that failed).

In this old publicity shot, the photographer created a dark circle behind the billionaire to make sure Hughes could be seen clearly.

Howard Hughes loved his airplanes. In the words of an engineer who once worked for Hughes, Robert Runnel, “Howard loved the drama of flying. I think it was his one and only true love.”

Hughes launched his high flying business, simply named “Hughes Aircraft Company” in 1932. For years, it was small but exploded in size as a result of World War Two, going from only four full-time employees to 80,000. (General Motors eventually bought the company in 1985). Hughes set not one, but two records in the flying time between the west and east coast.

As a manager, Howard Hughes was hands-on. Unafraid to get his hands dirty, he could be seen repairing aircraft himself. His philosophy was to accomplish big goals through smaller steps – each one leading to the prize. He hired people who shared his values of hard work and dedication. For all of these reasons, he was greatly admired by the people who worked for him. In his prime, Howard Hughes was viewed as one of the greatest business leaders of all time.

But his days in the limelight would fade. The transformation from successful, dashing young billionaire to deteriorating recluse, came on July 7, 1946 when Hughes crashed his experimental twin-engine army plane in a Beverly Hills neighborhood.

The enormous plane tore much of the roof from a two-story dwelling, with the right wing slicing through an upstairs bedroom of another home (narrowly missing the occupants).

The plane exploded almost killing Hughes, who was given a 50-50 chance of survival. A year later – the unstoppable Hughes flew a second version of the plane, this time successfully.

However, Howard Hughes would never quite be the same.

Hughes crashed his twin-engine plane directly into a residential neighborhood in 1946 and almost died from his injuries. The magnitude of the devastation can be seen in this photo.

Howard Hughes had a remarkable ability – at least for a while – to follow his passions despite his demons. Throughout his life, he suffered from a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He would spend endless hours measuring the size of the peas he would eat on his plate. Often, he would watch the same movie hundreds of times.

In the late 1940s, Hughes locked himself in a film studio to screen his own films. For months, he stayed inside, never venturing to the outdoors, consuming only chocolate bars and sitting naked. In the room, he surrounded himself with Kleenex boxes, placing them on top of each other in various arrangements. He emerged four months later without having taken a single bath or cut his nails. (He would later have his nails cut only once a year).

Medical experts say Howard Hughes appears to have suffered from a condition called allodynia which can cause pain from even the slightest touch. It can result from nerve damage and injuries, such as those he likely suffered in his plane crashes.

Hughes was also plagued by an irrational fear of germs, refusing to touch anything without the protection of tissue paper. He demanded that other people in his presence remove any trace of dust on their bodies and clothes.

Eventually, the once very-public Howard Hughes would refuse to see anyone, communicating only through notes slid under the door.

In happier times, Howard Hughes is seen with one of his Hollywood girlfriends, Jean Harlow, who would die young at age 26 from the same disease that killed Hughes.

By the 1960s, Howard Hughes became a recluse, living in the penthouse of various hotels. He continued to work and study, staying awake for days with little or no food, injecting his body with codeine to numb his pain.

The end for Hughes came, fittingly, in an airplane on a flight from Mexico to Texas in 1976. The official cause of death was kidney failure. Hughes was a tall man at 6 foot four, but at the time of death, he was 90 pounds and unrecognizable. One of the richest people on earth was the victim of severe malnutrition. He died at 70 years old.

According to medical reports – while his body was ravished, the mind of Howard Hughes was in perfect condition to the very end.

It was a mind that saw no limits – one which filled itself with passion and relentless determination – serving as an inspiration for us today, so we can make every second count.

Today’s science and medical professions have Howard Hughes to thank. To avoid paying too much in taxes, in 1953, Hughes put his aircraft company under a non-profit organization he named “The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).” (It was a move challenged by the IRS for many years). Since Hughes did not leave a will when he died, the Institute had the authority to sell the aircraft company to General Motors and benefit from the proceeds. Today, it specializes in biological and medical research and education. While Hughes is remembered for his days in Hollywood and helping build the aeronautics industry, it was his decision to create the medical institute which is his most enduring legacy.  

[This post by Cory Galbraith first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.] 

The post Follow Your Passion To Live Life To The Fullest: Lessons From Billionaire Howard Hughes appeared first on Inc42 Media.

When you’re building something that you believe in — whether it’s something that has the huge power to shake the foundations of everything that has come before it or just a simple idea that keeps you awake at night — your dream is to innovate.

Innovative thinking requires boundless thinking. It requires you to shake off the shackles of the standard and systemised and popularly accepted thought processes and patterns that you’ve been imprinted with. It requires you to conceptualise without limits.

That’s why innovation doesn’t need permission.

“In fact, it’s why innovation bucks against permission, and bucks against the staid and the conservative, and bucks against the frameworks that regulate the world.”

The problem is, while innovation doesn’t need permission, it needs a few things that are a whole lot more important.

It needs empathy. Empathy for the people and the cultural mores that are swept aside or discarded by technological and social innovation and change.

It needs sensitivity. Sensitivity to the factors that go beyond the spreadsheets and the dashboards and the conversion charts.

It needs ethics. Ethics that guide what we can and can’t do, in the mission to build and grow and acquire and change. Ethics that tell us what is and is not acceptable behaviour.

It needs inclusion. Inclusion that can ensure that we don’t just innovate for people who look, talk, dress and fuck like us. Inclusion that could stop us from building hand soap dispensers that only recognise white people.

Uber innovated. But they also showed an astonishing lack of empathy, sensitivity, ethics, and inclusion that have damaged their brand, distracted from what they set out to do, and poisoned so much of the positive innovation they created.

Innovation is a human good. We need it. I believe in it. It’s why I’m in startups today. But it’s not an absolute good, and it needs to be tempered and forged with elements that bring out its positivity and its edge.

[This post by Jon Westenberg first appeared on Medium and has been reproduced with permission.]

The post Innovation Doesn’t Need Permission. Here’s What It Does Need. appeared first on Inc42 Media.

While Silicon Valley’s tech companies have a long-standing history of making elaborately planned and detailed out announcements of out of the world product launches around April Fool’s Day, this year their Indian counterparts aren’t that far behind. While most of these turn out to be pranks, some of them turn out to be the real deal many a time.

As the Indian companies kickstart new financial year on April 1, 2018, a series of out of the blue announcements have kept the media corridors buzzing for almost the entire past week.

This included many interesting prank announcements such as OYO announcing its own ICO, OYO Smart Coin; Urban Ladder launching ‘The Urban Ladder’, a high chair that comes with built-in speakers, a thermal mug holder, and a charging station, amongst others.

Inc42 decided to dig up further and found some interesting stories on the grapevine. Let us know what you think 😉

Go-Jek Launches In India With It’s First Disruptive Product – KYS

Majorly popular as a bike-taxi service in South East Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and after acquiring a number of the Indian startups as well as setting up its research facility in Bengaluru, Go-Jek finally made its entry into the country with a new product launch – KYS.

Built on the lines of KYC (Know Your Customer), KYS is focussed on the consumer segment and stands for Know Your Self.

KYS can be used to answer the ancient question often asked by sages, “Who am I?”. By solving this existential crisis, GO-JEK has got the first mover-advantage in bleeding-edge technology that will spill over to the core of automation, artificial intelligence and eventually, blockchain. And cryptocurrency. And Ethereum. And Bitcoin.

KYS was developed by GO-JEK Tech’s 200 engineers. The revolutionary product will NOT require any biometric data. KYS will be seamlessly integrated into the one-stop solution GO-JEK app that will authenticate its plethora of products and services.

“We will be adding one more stacked full developer to our leaner than usual lean engineering team to bring this product to the mass market. Our agile approach to engineering along with world-changing growth hacking will broaden our impact and this will be a billion dollar industry with trillions in the taking for GO-JEK. For all those companies insisting on KYCs and folks who love corporate jargon, we’re sorry. You’ve just been disrupted. Again. And bitcoin,” shared a Go-Jek spokesperson in a media statement.

Zomato-Swiggy To Merge; Deal To Be Announced Next Week

The Indian foodtech duopoly, Zomato and Swiggy, are set to merge after months of covert negotiations which concluded early this week, as per rumours heard by Inc42. This will be one the most prolific deals ever seen in the Indian startup industry.

Reports of a merger first came out in November with prior discussions between the company officials taking place in the days following last Diwali. But those talks hit a roadblock over the structure of the deal and the valuation, with Zomato’s offer valuing Swiggy at $225 Mn.

The companies hadn’t apparently abandoned the idea but were focussing on raising their own set of funds while backchannel talks continued to take place with the blessing of Ant Financial and Softbank. Softbank remains eager to get a larger chunk of the Indian foodtech space and is looking to invest in the combined entity.

The deal terms are currently being worked out, but a consensus has been reached on the overall valuation, which was not disclosed, and the agreement may be announced as early as next week.

This deal will value the combined entity at a valuation north of $3.2 Bn, making it one of the most valuable food tech companies in the world. Also, it will bring together investors such as Naspers, Softbank, Meituan-Dianping and Ant Financial, giving the combined entity a unique positioning amidst its global rivals such as UberEats.

myHQ Launches Coworking Work Stations In Delhi Metro

Gurugram-based coworking startup myHQ has launched shared workstations in Delhi Metro. One can reserve an entire coach in the Delhi metro with the best of work amenities including free wi-fi, ample charging points, free office stationery,laptop-friendly desks and free coffee.

According to the company, an average commuter in Delhi spends 10 hours a week in just commuting from one place to another! myHQ aims to make these unproductive hours count, particularly for the startup fraternity.

Using the myHQ app, users can reserve a seat on the coworking coach by entering the stations you’d be boarding from and getting off at. Just scan the QR code at the entry, hop on to the coworking coach, connect to the Wi-Fi and enjoy a seamless work experience.

The myHQ coach is going live from April 16. The first 500 startup entrepreneurs can avail this opportunity to work seamlessly on the go.

Flipkart To Merge With Paytm Mall To Put A Check On The Rise Of Amazon India

Alibaba backed Paytm Mall has agreed to merge with Flipkart, a move that puts a renewed focus on countering Amazon’s increasing dominance in the Indian market. Inc42 spoke with a few people who shared this insider grapevine going on in both the companies but have asked not to be named.

Although details of the agreement were not immediately clear, what is clear is that talks have been ongoing for a while now and that the deal comes after extended back and forth between the company executives.

Softbank, which has invested in both Alibaba and Flipkart, is known to be wary of the rising Amazon tide and has looked to address that by infusing $2.5 Bn into Flipkart in August while  the firm has already invested $1.4 Bn in Paytm. Paytm Mall had last raised $200 Mn from Alibaba, Ant Financial and SAIF Partners in March 2017.

Paytm Mall is trying to get offline sellers to use their platform and it can try to synergise this aspect with that of Flipkart’s superior logistics, strong online presence and great brand recognition. Flipkart on the other hand has been looking to partner with brands to pursue offline sales and Alibaba’s experience in this field, for example in China where it has mastered the formula of offline brand partnerships, can prove crucial. Paytm Mall, which is a division of Paytm, has had some hiccups on the logistics side and quality of products so far, which it can now look to resolve.

The sources shared with Inc42 that on the urging of Softbank, both the companies held talks over a period of three to four months and great care was taken so as not to leak any details of the development to the media. Softbank had earlier pushed for the merger of Snapdeal with Flipkart which never materialised.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been busy in building its product stack in India. Also, Amazon India is flush with cash with the company already having committed to spending $5 Bn in India whereas Flipkart has burnt through nearly half of the $6.1 Bn funding it raised from investors over the last decade, since it started operations in 2007.

The pieces on the chess board are moving and Indian consumers may very well end up being the King/Queen.

Say Goodbye To Your Traffic Woes With Droom FLY

Packed roads, vehicles stuck bumper-to-bumper for kilometres on end, and traffic moving at a snail’s pace are so common now that people in India often wish their vehicles could sprout wings and fly. But while flying cars might be still be a long way from becoming a reality anytime soon, Bengaluru-based online automobile transactional marketplace, Droom, has announced the imminent launch of Droom FLY, the most advanced pair of hover shoes in the country, to help Indians beat their traffic blues – by literally soaring over it!

As shared by the Droom team with Inc42, these innovative hover shoes are capable of achieving a top speed of 80 km/h and can fly up to an altitude of 1,000 feet and possess features like self-balancing, soft cushioning, fast-charging, and a battery life of up to five hours.

As Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder & CEO – Droom, shared, the company has already launched campaign promotions for Droom FLY on Facebook and Twitter and has received an encouraging response for the pre-bookings. It is offering Droom FLY at an introductory price of INR 9,999, with an additional early bird discount of 25% for the first 100 customers. With the sale set to go live from April 1, the offer is certainly worth grabbing.

Ola Launches News Channel ONN

In what can be said as a significant diversification from its cab-hailing services, Ola has announced its very own news channel, ONN – Ola News Network.

The company posted a teaser video on social media, which showed a multiplex of screens, and a few weird news announcements. The ONN logo is all the more exciting and has ‘Coming Soon’ written underneath.

The company also announced its tag-line, “With ONN, You Will Get Hyperlocal New – News That You Can Use”

Further details on the development are yet to be disclosed.

Ixigo Launches Ixigo Kawach- A Lock That Gives A Shock

Ixigo, one of the leading travel apps in the Indian ecosystem, has brought something very unique and useful for the mass population. Every year, thousands of bags, suitcases get stolen from public places, particularly railway stations.

To combat this, ixigo has launched ‘ixigo kawach’– a unique lock which gives the thieve electric shocks. The lock creates an electric shield over the suitcase/ bag which gives a shock as it moves more than 5 meters away from the owner.

It also has a sound alarm, which indicates the thieve that he is the culprit. Also, it gets unlocked only with the owner’s fingerprint. So in case you are vying for a smart locking solution on the go, ixigo kawach is something you can look for.

Locus Launches NanoLocal

For a while now, hyperlocal has been stealing all the swag in the delivery ecosystem for giving instant deliveries from the nearby stores. However, the Bengaluru-based logistics management startup Locus is aiming to bring another revolution in the delivery segment, being on its mission to deliver end-to-end automation from point of dispatch till the order reaches the end customer.

Locus has now introduced Nanolocal, to take a step further and solve the big house woes and the hunger pangs of the Indian millennials. As mentioned on the company website, “Delivering from your Kitchen to Bedroom, in 60 seconds. Unlike Batman, it is the Hero you deserve, but don’t need.”

One can now register his fridge, kitchen and munchies drawer with NanoDrone and can summon the nano drone with the Locus app or just whistle with Alexa.

In case it wasn’t obvious already, these were some great prank campaigns launched by Indian Startups (as well as Inc42 team) around April Fool’s Day. There were many more along the lines of blockchain and ICO’s (1, 2). We, however, refrained from covering those as the world of ICO’s still feels like a big prank in the making and you never know if companies are actually serious about it 😉

The post April 2018 Starts Off With A Blast: Zomato-Swiggy Merger, GoJek Enters India, Droom FLY Launch And More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“The year 2017 has been about market corrections and this trend is set to continue in 2018.”

An overall glance at the Indian tech startup ecosystem will exhibit a much finer picture: 100th position in terms of ease of doing business; 37th position on the global startup ecosystem comparison chart; several partnerships with the foreign governments to facilitate cross-border startup opportunities to the Indian entrepreneurs.. And the list continues.

However, post the 2016 funding winter, the industry experts in the Indian tech startup ecosystem have become wary of even the slightest of the highs and lows in any segment. The Inc42 DataLabs observed this trend and clearly highlighted in its Annual Tech Startup Funding Report 2017, that “only a handful of startups that will be able to crack through to late-stage fundings will dominate with big ticket size rounds, given the fact that investors have lesser options to bet on.”

While analysing the data, Inc42 DataLabs observed that if we remove the top five fundings of 2017 including the billion dollar cheques infused in the Indian consumer internet companies, the funding amount falls down to $6.46 Bn which is technically a rise of 38% in comparison to the funding raised in 2016.

Further investigation showed that around 12 startups raised $8.84 Bn through 19 deals, leaving almost 98% startups with 30% of the total funding amount. This, along with the observation of Seed and Series A crunch, suggested a growing funding vacuum in the ecosystem.

The Inc42 DataLabs’ tech startup funding report 2017 also suggested that with lesser startups being able to make it to Series A and many ‘me-too’ startups at the seed stage, the funding disparity will continue.

With the closing of the first quarter of 2018, it’s time for us to corroborate our predictions and tally our present observation of the funding scenario for 2018.

India Tech Startup Funding Q1 2018: An Overview

In accordance to the data collated between January-March 2018, the tech startup funding deals were found to have increased by 20% while the deal amount fell by a staggering 50% in comparison to the previous quarter.

The QoQ trend shows, the number of funding deals in Q1 2018 was 42% higher than the previous quarter, but it’s 19% low since Q1 2017. Further, in terms of amount, the numbers have fallen drastically; a fall of 99% as compared to Q4 2017, and 56% as compared to Q1 2017. The numbers show an all-time low compared to the first quarters of the last three years.

Inside The Funding Stages: Seed Fund Crunch Shows Sign Of Recovery

The aberration from the spray and pray policy of investment observed during the years of 2015 and 2016, continues into 2018. Investors are more constrained and are relying on sustainability metrics and profitability for making an investment.

On the bright side, the trend of seed funding crunch seems to be making a fair recovery in Q1 2018. Although the number of deals in seed stage is still 18% lower than that of Q1 2017, the numbers have increased by 43% as compared to Q4 2017.

A similar recovery is observed in Series A stage. The number of deals has in fact increased by 22% as compared to Q4 2017 providing some relief to the burgeoning Series A crunch observed since mid-2016.

Another interesting observation we made when we look at the amount in all stages is, while the amount in seed stage has grown 3.5X as compared to the last quarter (Q4 2017), there still lies a significant fall in the late stage funding growing to 81% in Q1 2018.

A Deep Dive Into The Sectors: Fintech & Healthtech Continues To Top The Chart

The tech startup funding trend in each sector continues without many digressions. Fintech and Healthtech continue to top the chart with 30 and 25 deals respectively. As compared to Q4 2017 the number shows a dip in Q1 2018, however, that can be attributed to the overall funding low in this quarter.

Interestingly, the tech startups in the enterprise application and service space are getting attention in terms of funding and together the two sectors garnered 33 deals and $269 Mn in amount.

In Q1 2018, the Inc42 Datalabs observed that late stage startups like BrowserStack, Icertis, Lendingkart, NestAway, Pine Labs, Global Sports Commerce (GSC) received more than $50 Mn tickets each cumulating to $500 Mn. This essentially suggests 3% of the startups that were funded account for 50% of the total funding this quarter, reaffirming the “Funding Vacuum” Inc42 DataLabs first reported in its Indian Tech Startup Funding Report Q3 2017. The following pie gives us a complete funding landscape of the sectors in Q1 2018.

Having A Look At The Geographical Segmentation

Bengaluru remains the top destination for the Indian tech startups. Around $400 Mn funding was made through 69 deals in Q1 2018. RazorPay, HackerRank, Zoomcar, Capillary Technologies and NestAway were able to secure ticket size of more than $20 Mn. Despite topping the list, in this quarter (Q1 2018) total funding for Bengaluru startups are at an all-time low since Q1 2015. Trailing Bengaluru are the cities of Delhi/NCR, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Mergers & Acquisition Trends: Setting The Table For The New Play

In any sector, the ongoing amalgamations have the power to overthrow the existing market leader. In most cases, such deals set an option for quicker and easier exits for both the startups as well as the early-stage investors.

Once posed as a system where the powerful one gobbles up the smaller or the weaker one, mergers and acquisitions are now observed as a means to combine their synergies and gain a dominant position amidst the cut-throat competition.

Furthermore, with the change in startup funding philosophy and saturation of sectors like ecommerce and consumer services, exits and M&As are observed to have gained momentum in the Indian tech startup ecosystem. However, since Q2 2017, the numbers have been falling till Q4 2017. In Q1 2018, we observed an increase in M&As by 17%. With market correction happening in the ecosystem, this trend is expected to grow further.

The Investor Landscape

Finally, coming back to the proposition of changing investment strategy amongst investors, this could be confirmed by investigating the investor data collated by the Inc42 Datalabs. The number of unique investors has been falling since 2016 till Q4 2017. Q1 2018 observed a slight growth in the investor participation by 5%.

Having a look at the type of investor participation in the funding rounds in Q1 2018, the Inc42 Datalabs observed that the trend has been the same as that of 2017. Angels are receding and corporates and venture capitalists are to the rescue.

The first quarter of the year 2018 is about to fold its arms. With the overall observations made around the Indian tech startup funding from last year, it would be fair for us to assume that the assumptions of trends made in 2017 are yet to be confirmed or debunked.

Further, the recovery in growth stage funding adds more hope for the Indian startups. However, it is yet to be seen what the year holds ahead for the Indian tech startup ecosystem as a whole.

The post Indian Tech Startup Funding Report Q1 2018: $1.17 Bn Invested Across 196 Deals appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Marking another milestone, UPI enabled app BHIM  has recorded one billion transactions in FY 2017-18, crossing the value worth $15.36 Bn (INR 1 Tn).

In a tweet on Sunday, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) CEO Dilip Asbe said, “Goodbye 2017-18; NPCI processed BHIM UPI ~1 billion in volume and ~1 trillion rupees in value. 2018-19 brings in new players, use cases & superior UX.”

Post demonetisation, the digital payments have gain a quick pace in India. The increased adoption of the digital payment methods in the country can be substantiated by the data released by the RBI, which said that digital transactions in the country reached a record high of 1.11 Bn in January 2018, up by 4.73% from the 1.06 Bn mark touched in December last year.

Since its launch in 2016, the growth of UPI has been phenomenal since its launch. According to data released by the NPCI, 171.4 Mn UPI-transactions were reported in February 2018, a 13.5% jump in comparison to 151 Mn transactions reported in January 2018.

While the value stood at $2.9 Bn (INR 19,100 Cr), $2.4 Bn (INR 15,571.2 Cr), $2 Bn (INR 13,174.2 Cr) and $1.5 Bn (INR 9,669.3 Cr) for the month of February 2018, January 2018, December 2017 and November 2017 respectively.

Of the $2.4 Bn value of UPI-based transactions in January 2018, the government’s BHIM app accounted for over 9.57 Mn transactions worth upwards of $57 Mn (INR 3.65 Bn).

Prior to this in March, reports surfaced that NPCI is now planning to enable UPI-based payments for inward international transactions. This means, that the transactions, which were being done through Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and or National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), can now also be done using UPI.

Recently, NPCI mandated inclusion of Bharat QR code with UPI. In a notification, NPCI mandated all banks running the UPI applications to adhere to such guidelines by April 16. If the banks fail to do so, the ‘transactions might be declined for non-compliance’.

Other mandatory provisions include that “all UPI apps should allow fund transfer using any UPI payment address, respond to collect request from other UPI addresses and even generate as well as scan Bharat QR and UPI QR codes.”

The digital payments space in the country has seen entry of giants like Google, which introduced Google Tez; Facebook with its chat-based application WhatsApp has pivoted WhatsApp Pay, which is under beta stage at present and ecommerce giant Amazon, with its wallet Amazon Pay among others.

Indian giants in the space continue to be Paytm, which recorded 68 Mn UPI-based transactions on its platform in February 2018 along with homegrown ecommerce player Flipkart’s PhonePe among others.

A report by Credit Suisse predicted that India’s digital payments industry, which is currently worth around $200 Bn, is expected to grow five-fold to reach $1 Tn by 2023. While, the digital spending by consumers is expected to grow nearly 2.5 times to $100 Bn by 2020, according to a Google-BCG report.

With such promising growth of digital payments and increasing integration of BHIM UPI across the mediums in FY 2017-18, the growth of Indian digital payments space is bound to get more competitive.

The post BHIM UPI Transactions Cross 1 Bn Mark In FY 2017-18 appeared first on Inc42 Media.