Edtech unicorn Byju’s has acquired a Bengaluru-based maths learning startup, Math Adventures for an undisclosed amount.

Math Adventures was founded by a husband and wife duo, Ashok Nair and Vidya Jayaraman, in February 2012. It helps children learn through a combination of short videos and an activity-based approach that uses workbooks and tablets.

Investment bank Merisis was the advisor to Math Adventures on the transaction.

Post acquisition, the Math Adventures team will become a part of the Byju’s content and R&D team.

How Byju’s Will Be Leveraging Maths Adventure’s Acquisition?

Math Adventure’s model involves a Math Adventures facilitator taking up one math class out of the allocated weekly math classes and making students understand concepts they had learnt in the conventional class using activities.

It has partnered with 12 schools for classes from pre-KG to the grade eight and is currently imparting maths learning skills to 7000 students. Apart from Bengaluru, it has expanded its operations to small cities like Mysuru, Tezpur and Jodhpur as well.

“Math Adventures’ activities will help us with our K-3 product development,” said Byju Raveendran, chief executive of Byju’s.

Byju’s is currently offering learning programs for students in classes 4-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

This is Byju’s fourth acquistion so far. Last year, Byju’s acquired two startups: TutorVista and Edurite (July 2017) and Vidyartha (January 2017).

Byju’s: Claiming Its Top Spot In The Online Education Space

Launched in 2015, Byju’s claimed its unicorn status in March 2018 and is currently competing with players such as Embibe, Toppr, Avagmah, iProf, Meritnation, Simplilearn, among others. The BYJU’S learning app makes use of original content, rich animations, interactive simulations and engaging video lessons.

Till date, BYJU’S has raised over $200 Mn from Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Verlinvest, IFC, Aarin Capital, TimesInternet and Lightspeed ventures.

It has over 20 Mn registered students, 1.26 Mn annual paid subscriptions and sees an addition of 1.5 Mn registered students every month.

The company further claims to have an average time of 57 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from 1700+ cities.

Most recently, it announced to have crossed $14.5 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in monthly revenue in May 2018 and has revised its revenue targets for this year to $203 Mn (INR 1400 Cr).

Growing consistently at 100% annually for the last three years, Byju’s is now looking to expand its footprints internationally. It is launching the international version of its app, targeting school students in countries such as the US, UK, Australia, and South Africa.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Byju’s Marks Its Fourth Acquisition With Maths Learning Startup Math Adventures appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Singapore based healthtech company Mobile Health has acquired Bengaluru and Singapore based Songline Analytics which runs its deep analytics startup Uninstall.io for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in October 2015 by Alok Mishra, Pritesh Vora and Lennon Teng, Uninstall.io helps mobile app developers optimise mobile applications and tracks app uninstalls accurately, thereby helping to improve user retention.

On the other hand, Mobile Health was started by Dr Siaw Tung Yeng along with a group of doctors with earlier experience in healthcare, government policy and IT. It’s MaNaDr platform was launched in January 2017 and is being used by over 50 clinics and 200 doctors across Singapore and Australia.

Healthcare Plus Deep Tech Analytics: Where This Combination Will Lead To?

With the acquisition, Mobile Health plans to enhance its offerings by integrating the technology stack of Uninstall.io as well as implementing technologies such as data-warehousing, image analysis, machine learning, data analytics and predictive analytics.

Uninstall.io is one of the first acquisitions of the company. The startup claims to be the world’s first uninstall intelligence platform for mobile apps.

The Uninstall.io platform allows app developers and marketers to track uninstalled users and understand their behaviour. Uninstall.io also enables app developers/companies to re-target the users who have uninstalled the app and help in bringing them back to the app.

The startup had raised seed funding from some of the most prominent investors in the country like Rajan Anandan (Google APAC VP), 500Startups India, Hive Data India (backed by Arihant Patni) amongst others. It also counts Zalora, Axis Bank, Zivame, SnapDeal, BankBazaar etc as its customers.

Mobile Health has so far secured more than $10 Mn Seed funding from several healthcare providers and private investors and has grown its footprint from Singapore to Australia, Malaysia and Vietnam in the last 12 months.

Growing Healthtech And Mobile App Space In India

Interestingly, this year as per the App Annie 2017 Retrospective Report, India overtook the US to take the second spot in terms of the number of app downloads in 2017.

Meanwhile, globally there’s been a 60% growth in the number of app downloads with downloads exceeding 175 Bn. Consumer spending has more than doubled from 2015 and exceeded $86 Bn.

Recently, a Google-BCG report suggested that digital spending by consumers is expected to grow nearly 2.5 times to $100 Bn by 2020.

Overall, the global healthtech market is anticipated to reach $104.5 Bn by 2020, according to a new report by Grand View Research.

The Indian healthcare market is further expected to reach $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn, according to an IBEF report.

The post Exclusive: Singapore’s Healthtech Startup Acquires Bengaluru-Based Mobile App Uninstall Tracker, Uninstall.io appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Walmart India opened its second fulfilment centre in Lucknow on Monday with an aim to pace up its wholesale operations in the country.  The first such store opened in Mumbai in November 2017.

Wholesale here implies that these stores are only for stakeholders such as hotels, registered resellers and kirana store owners among others who want to buy goods in bulk and for cheap.

The fulfilment centre is a new format of Walmart’s best price cash-and-carry store model that will focus exclusively on FMCG products and staples and will not stock fresh food or electronics.

As Krish Iyer, CEO of Walmart India explained in an earlier media interaction, “While a full-fledged cash-and-carry store will take us about two-and-a-half years to open, the fulfilment centre in Mumbai came up within 60 days of us signing the agreement for the land.”

Thus, we can say the Walmart India’s fulfilment centres to be mini cash and carry stores with a limited range of products.

The Lucknow fulfilment centre will directly deliver grocery and general merchandise to Walmart India’s wholesale clients through ecommerce and other channels.

“We will open one more such fulfilment centre and study it before expanding them,” said Iyer. 

At present, Walmart has 21 full-fledged best price cash and carry stores in India. As Iyer said, the company further intends to double this number by 2020.

Walmart India: How The Change In Strategies Lead To Success?

Walmart has seen some tough times during the period between 2011 – 2017 wherein the company was forced to freeze its India expansion plans.

It all started in 2007. As per FDI regulations, the Indian government does not allow foreign retailers like Walmart to operate into multi-brand segment and open front-end stores in the country on their own.

Therefore, Walmart entered into a joint venture with telecom major Bharti Enterprises to create Bharti-Walmart, the consumer facing end of the US retail giant.

The idea was to build Walmart’s presence in the country until Indian government changes its FDI regulations. Till 2012, Walmart opened 20 cash and carry stores in the country.

The situation turned gloomy when Walmart found itself trapped in an alleged bribery probe that was unearthed in Mexico back in 2012. The probe soon turned into a scandal in countries like India, China, and Brazil.

Thus under the US anti-bribery laws, it was compelled to freeze the expansion of its Best Price Modern Wholesale stores in India till 2017. Not only this, the company also lost its partnership with Bharti Airtel in October 2013.

After attempts to set up its own ecommerce team in India during 2011-2013 (as per a Quartz report), later in 2014, Walmart opened up its cash and carry business to online buyers. Fast forward to three years, Walmart now owns a majority 77% stake in India’s ecommerce unicorn Flipkart for a whopping $16 Bn.

Further, Walmart narrowed its losses by almost 27% during FY17 compared to the 12 months in the previous fiscal. The company posted a loss of INR 75 Cr for FY17. It also witnessed a 10% revenue growth for the fiscal ending March 2017 as compared to previous 12 months.

The acquisition of Flipkart is in line with Walmart’s quest to mark its footprints across India. As Iyer said in a November 2017 media statement, “This year, India was made a priority market for Walmart, which means we’re getting more resources, more talent. This will help in accelerating stuff, and investments in the back-end and the supply chain will happen.”

With this planned acquisition, Walmart is diving straight into the battle with its arch-rival Amazon, which is exploring different mediums to build its presence in the Indian ecosystem. Also, Alibaba and Paytm-backed Paytm Mall is stepping steadily towards the third spot in the Indian ecommerce ecosystem.

But Iyer is confident on the growth of Walmart in India. As she said, “India is at an inflection point and is the most attractive market for us. Walmart’s business in India has grown in double digits since the first Best Price store opened in 2009.”

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Walmart India Ups Its Game In Wholesale With Second Fulfilment Centre appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“Now Rajasthan is no more limited to historical tales, but stands synonymous with the IT industry and technology which is sure to bring in golden future for the state.”

The Hon’ble chief minister (CM) of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje’s above statement reflects the progress the state has made in the past few years. The initiatives by the CM have not been limited to governance alone, but have made technology, which is the need for everyone today, reach the common man of Rajasthan. One such platform is Rajasthan Sampark or CM Helpline.

A glimpse of this was observed by Inc42 during the Digital Rajasthan Yatra in March 2018 by Inc42

Mohammed Kasim, an ordinary resident from a small village near Ajmer, expressed how he was facing electricity supply issues at his residence. It was faulty and irregular. He registered an online complaint via the Sampark Portal. And, he was surprised by the immediate response from the government officials. They visited his place within three to five working days and replaced the old transformers with new ones. This issue getting resolved not only benefited Kasim but the village on the whole.

Today, officials from Rajasthan Sampark are resolving a majority of complaints within twenty-four hours and have so far resolved more than 2.3 Mn complaints.

In the last four years, the ‘Rajasthan Sampark’ initiative has led the state government to improve the accountability of the system, as well as minimise the possibilities of corruption in redressing complaints and issues. At the same time, it has enabled the citizens of the state to take their issues directly to the state government most importantly in a convenient manner.

Being an innovative e-governance project developed by the Rajasthan government’s Department of Information Technology and Communication (DoIT&C), Rajasthan Sampark now aims to empower the residents of the state by providing transparent and accountable means of grievance redressal.

”Rajasthan Sampark is India’s most innovative and robust platform for Grievance Redressal, to empower the residents of the state by providing transparent and accountable means of grievance redressal – well proven with more than 23 Lac Grievances redressed and people being happier,”Akhil Arora, Principal Secretary, IT&C, Rajasthan.

Rajasthan Sampark: Automating Grievance Redressal For The Masses

The Rajasthan Sampark platform covers all government departments, autonomous organisations, and academic institutions. It is a centralised platform that uses:

• A web platform
• A mobile app
• Jan Sampark centres with video conferencing facility, eMitra kiosks
• Toll-Free Call centres (Toll-free:181 within Rajasthan, 1800-180-6127)

These different means of connecting to the platform allow people to use multiple avenues for registering and tracking the status of their complaints. Upon registration, the resident receives a Grievance ID that can be used in the future to track the grievance, re-open it, give feedback, etc.

It further offers an automated workflow to state functionaries for processing the grievance till addressed.

Offering Real-Time Data To Enable An Effective Grievance Redressal Mechanism

The Rajasthan Sampark application includes SMS integration, GIS (Geographic Information System) linked inspections/ or visits, reality check functionality for disposed cases, provision to collect feedback and extensive monitoring of public grievances.

Rajasthan Sampark provides real-time information, thereby enabling effective monitoring of grievances and appropriate decision-making. The objective is to provide a user-friendly, transparent, accountable, effective, efficient and automated grievance lodging and redressal mechanism to residents and government functionaries.

Interestingly, if there is no proper solution in the recorded cases, there is a facility of being heard in-person with the concerned department on Thursdays of every month. Additionally, the platform also helps reduce the manual file processing at every level in the government, thereby making faster inter-department data sharing a reality.

Efforts To Communicate Directly With The Citizens By The Rajasthan Government

Apart from Rajasthan Sampark, eSanchar and iFact are the two services offered by the Rajasthan government for direct communication with residents through SMS, voice message and structure queries.

The eSanchar facility can be linked with any departmental application for sending event-based notifications to applicants or beneficiaries as well as officials. On the other hand, iFact can be used by any department through Rajasthan Sampark as well as a departmental application for real-time access to information.

Also, the CM launched an app — Vasundhara Raje mobile app – in 2016, to bring governance closer to the people and enable them to reach out to their state CM anytime, anywhere. Interestingly, the app provides a platform to the state’s citizens to give their feedback to the CM directly and receive inputs from the CM via the app.

No doubt, CM Raje, and her team along with the DoIT&C are spearheading their way into the ever-growing digital world, taking along the men and women of their state from the furthest corners. These initiatives are also helping the state to emerge as a preferred destination for businesses to launch their services owing to the increased technology adoption at the end of the users.

Like all other grievance redressal systems, Sampark may also have its own set of delays, however, it is still giving the citizens of the state, the confidence of – ‘Reaching the right department, on time and Getting heard.’

The post Rajasthan Sampark: A Grievance Redressal Platform For Rajasthan’s ‘Common Man’ appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In the increasing digital push by the Indian government, digital payment systems have been witnessing huge traction, with UPI already crossing 300 Mn transactions mark in June. However, none of this has been able to deter the dominance of cash in Indian economy. But a new revelation by RBI (Reserve Bank of India) may deter the trusted ‘Cash on Delivery’ payment mode.

Dharmendra Kumar of India FDI Watch, a grouping of trade associations, unions, farmers’ groups and small-scale industries working toward “building awareness and facilitating grassroots action to prevent the takeover of India’s retail sector by corporations” has recently filed an RTI application.

Through Right to Information (RTI) query, Dharmendra asked RBI to “confirm if cash on delivery payment collection and disbursement to ecommerce merchants by ecommerce marketplaces such as Flipkart and Amazon (are) covered under the definition of payment system and system provider of the Payments and Settlements Systems Act, 2007, No. 51 of 2007 by acting as intermediaries and system providers. If yes, are these payment systems authorised as per Section 8 of the said Act?”

To this, RBI had replied: “Aggregators/payment intermediaries like Amazon and Flipkart are not authorised under Section 8 of the PSS (Payments and Settlements Systems) Act 2007.”

To put into perspective, please note that a June 2017 report found that about 83% consumers in India preferred using cash on delivery as a mode of payment for online purchases.

Going further, RBI clarified that it has not issued any specific instruction in this regard.

What Is PSS Act?

As RBI elaborated on the definition of intermediaries in the PSS Act: “Intermediaries would include all entities that collect monies received from customers for payment to merchants using any electronic/ online payment mode, for goods and services availed by them and, subsequently, facilitate the transfer of these monies to the merchants in final settlement of the obligations of the paying customers.”

This definition was included in RBI circular DPSS.CO.PD.No.1102/02.14.08/ 2009-10 of November 24, 2009, on “directions for opening and operation of accounts and settlement of payments for electronic payment transactions involving intermediaries,” RBI said.

Experts have noted that these rules don’t necessarily invalidate cash on delivery. The Act mentions electronic and online payment but doesn’t make explicit mention of money received through the cash-on-delivery route.

After launching operations in India, Flipkart identified cash-on-delivery as a medium to reach out to online-conscious Indian customers. Experts said this was one of the reasons for ecommerce gaining a foothold in India.

Mixed Opinions Are In Air 

Lawyers have provided mixed views with some believing that cash on delivery is not unlawful, while others believed that there is potential for punishment.

RTI applicant Kumar said, “If ecommerce firms have been collecting cash on delivery on behalf of merchants without RBI’s authorisation, there must be a grey area in the law they are exploiting. The RBI should have a system in place to ensure such things do not happen.”

An All India Online Vendors’ Association (AIOVA) spokesperson said, “There is a systemic risk involved in the collection of cash on behalf of sellers. The cash is not collected directly by the ecommerce platform but by courier companies, they employ on their behalf. The ecommerce firms then transfer it to the sellers. This is a long chain where the sellers’ money is changing so many hands.”

In a report, 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. The digital payments in India have been growing with the support of UPI, debit card, credit card, net banking etc.

At the time when Indian ecommerce is expected to reach $200 Bn by 2026, online retail is expected to account for 12% of the country’s retail market by then, up from just 2%.

With Amazon’s $5 Bn commitment to India and Walmart buying a 77% stake in Flipkart, a legal trouble with cash on delivery can be a major bummer for the industry.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Cash On Delivery Is ‘Grey Matter’ Of Payment Modes: RBI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

What if you could reduce your loan rate, make it easier to update your contract, and ensure that you are able to collect any debt owed to you?

That and much more is the promise of smart contracts, a technology that is on the verge of being realistic.

Although smart contract hype has grown around Blockchain technology, the term smart contract was coined, 20 years ago, by Nick Szabo, a cryptographer. This term emphasized the goal of bringing the “highly evolved” practices of contract law and related business practices to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet.

Szabo described smart contract as follows:

“A smart contract is a computerised transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract. The general objectives are to satisfy common contractual conditions (such as payment terms, liens, confidentiality, and even enforcement), minimise exceptions both malicious and accidental, and minimise the need for trusted intermediaries. Related economic goals include lowering fraud loss, arbitrations and enforcement costs, and other transaction costs.”

To put it in simple words, Smart Contracts are computer protocols that can self-execute, self-enforce, self-verify, and self-constrain the performance of a contract.

Typical smart contract implementation includes ICOs and Cryptokitties[1].

Smart Contracts V/S Traditional Contracts

Smart contracts provide superior security against the traditional contracts and fraud prevention, reduced cost and immutability are associated with smart contracting.

Whilst it is uncertain that smart contracts will fully replace the traditional contracts, however, they can lessen the burden and the complexity of writing a new contract each time as the smart contract technology can be used to execute several terms of a contract between two parties automatically.

Smart contracts have certain advantages over traditional contracts:

• Certainty: Since the smart contracts are implemented by computer codes, there is no room for any ambiguous natural language as used in traditional contracts.
• Speed and Direct communication with the clients. Smart contracts eliminate the need for mediators and allows for clear, transparent, direct relationships with clients.
• Cost: The operating and clerical costs associated with the performance of smart contracts are low as there is almost nil human involvement at the performance stage.
• Fraud reduction and Recordkeeping. Smart contracts are kept in chronological order in a properly distributed blockchain network, wherein the outcome of such contracts is validated by everyone in that network and hence no one can publish and steal other people’s data.
• Immutable. A smart contract cannot be tampered with or broken.

 Smart Contracts: Potential Impact On Business And The Sectors

Smart contracts are well suited for business activities that involve purchase or exchange of goods, services and rights, especially when frequent transactions occur among a network of parties and manual tasks are performed by counterparties for each transaction.

This application is a match for many financial services transactions (e.g., simplifying automatic dividend payments, stock splits and cryptographic signatures on stock certificates; streamlining over-the-counter agreements).

It also describes many supply chain, manufacturing and retail transactions. However, the technology is still in its infancy, so most use cases of smart contracts today consist of the transfer of cryptocurrency and recording/changing ownership of land or other assets.

Nevertheless, additional possibilities for future use abound, such as:

• Internet of Things Networks – There are areas where smart contracts intersect with other technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT)[2] is one of them. A combination of smart contracts and IoT is powerful and can enable significant transformations across industries, paving the way for new distributed applications.
• Agriculture – IoT sensors reading the environment and automatically initiating activities such as irrigation or deployment of insecticide, based on programmed trigger values.
• Insurance – The insurance industry can leverage blockchain technology in a significant way to transform their processes, such as claim fraud detection and claim settlement.
• Real estate – Automatically locking a house (through an Internet-enabled lock) upon a tenant’s nonpayment of rent and then unlocking it when payment is submitted.
• Health care – Securing access to personal health records, enabling doctors to provide insurers proof of completed surgeries, supervising drugs and other supplies, and enabling secure and timely sharing of patient information for clinical trials and research.
• Banking – Banking might be the primary industry where smart contracts appear to be the most significant alternative to the traditional model of transactions. Smart contracts make payments as well as loans, and nearly all others financial operations literally automated.
• Supply Chain – Another area where smart contracts can provide real-time visibility is supply chains. Smart contracts ensure granular inventory tracking, benefitting supply chain financing as well as reducing the risk of theft and fraud.
• Legal Issues – The traditional model of resolving legal issues and certifying documents is also giving way to smart contracts. Smart contracts eliminate the need for notarization, offering not only an automated and unbiased but also a cost-efficient solution. io illustrates the concept of notarizing documents using the Ethereum blockchain.

 The Future Of Smart Contracts

Despite various advantages and benefits of smart contracts and its use in the banking industry or the insurance industry, the blockchain technology is still in its nascent stage and it will take time to go mainstream.

Before using/embracing the technology, the legal and regulatory aspects in relation to the technology and smart contract needs to be looked into before it is recognized as a valid alternative to traditional contracts.

Smart contract platforms are intended to be more self-sufficient, self-governing, accurate and transparent.

The benefits of taking one’s business into the digital era are wide-reaching and fraud prevention, reduced cost and immutability of the smart contracts are unquestionably huge. Smart contracts can be used in all spheres of lives, from payment gateways to electricity bills etc.

This practically guarantees that smart contracts will be a foundation of the future global economy and a part of every person’s life.

Are We legally Equipped To Adopt Smart Contracts? 

It is not clear whether blockchain based ‘smart contracts’ (self-executed instructions) meet the basic requirements of a contract under the (140-year-old) Indian Contract Act 1872.

Will rescission of such contracts be possible? How will actions automatically executed upon wrongful determination of an event (for example, transfer of money upon flawed analysis of rented car damage) be reversed in the absence of human volition?

On the blockchain technology, there is no single entity collecting the information. As such, how will data protection standards and corresponding liability for failure to ensure protection be adhered to? Lack of KYC or reporting standards is an issue.

Contract laws in India recognises all agreements as contracts if they are made by the free consent of parties competent to contract, for a lawful consideration and with a lawful object, and are not expressly declared to be void (Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872). Hence, considering the same, smart contracts are deemed to be contracts under the Indian Contract laws.

IT laws in India at present deal with data collection by ‘body corporates’ [Section 28A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”)] and have set relevant standards of protection of such information.

Further, IT Act recognises and allows a contract formed through electronic means as valid and enforceable (Section 10 of the IT Act) and legally recognises digital signatures (Section 5 of the IT Act). Hence, considering the same, any contract duly authenticated via digital signature is legally valid and enforceable.

Further, as per the applicable provisions of the evidence laws in India, a contract authenticated by use of a valid digital signature obtained in consonance with the IT Act is admissible in the court of law (Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872).

The idea of Blockchain based technology is that the data is stored with various participants – participants who may be situated around the globe. As such, jurisdictional questions like the determination of correct local law to govern participants become important.

To think of it, what law will govern a transaction between parties with varying levels of statutory IP protection? What happens in a case where the laws are conflicting with each other? How will the CPC and CrPC tackle such cases?

Further, even though smart contracts are extremely secure – it would be appreciated that smart contracts are practically immutable and irreversible.

In cases like that, how are courts going to reverse fraudulently initiated transactions? What happens to a transaction executed on a ‘smart contract’ when it is deemed unenforceable – how will the gains be restituted?

 What Is The Way Forward?

Despite its disruptive implications, one cannot deny that the idea of a system without central oversight is a scary proposition. While touted as being the next big thing after the internet – the Blockchain based technology still lacks the form of data localisation or border control that the internet is subject to, in one way or the other.

As of today, while we can look forward to the adoption of smart contracts and the Blockchain based technology in various avenues – it is important that general awareness around the technology be propounded.

Humans are creatures of habit, and we naturally resist disruptions. But considering the benefits, adoption seems imminent. On the other hand, we feel that rushing legislation may not be ideal until the policy makers first understand the technology in its entirety.

[1] CryptoKitties is a blockchain based virtual game that allows players to purchase, collect, breed and sell various types of virtual cats.

[2] IoT is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which enables these things to connect and exchange data, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, resulting in efficiency improvements, economic benefits, and reduced human exertions.

The post Future Potential Of Smart Contracts – A Technology On Verge Of Being Realistic appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As the deadline for Data Protection Act nears, the uproar in the Indian economy has been increasing. After Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced its recommendations for data protection, the issues around data localisation have now come to light again.

The digital payment company Paytm has urged the government to push for storage of customer data within the country and not allow mirroring of the data overseas.

Kiran Vasireddy, chief operating officer at Paytm said, “On the data storage bit, obviously we believe that it should be stored locally. The moment data leaves the country, it falls under various jurisdictions, which in many cases, are beyond our control. It is important to keep all the data here so that the laws of the land can be made applicable to them.”

Addressing the TRAI recommendations, Vasireddy said it supports the move to identify the user as the ultimate owner of their data while every other player in the ecosystem is only a custodian.

He also emphasised that Google rejected 55% of the government’s requests for data as a strong point of proof for the government to push for storage of data locally.

Paytm further said mirroring of data is not the solution and many countries have disallowed companies from doing so.

“The ideal thing is to see whether data can be stored in India itself. It is not majorly a cost issue and for all these large players, the cost will be negligible. It is more to do with intent,” said Vasireddy.

In April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had asked all payment system operators in the country to store data relating to their customers in India to ensure that user details remain secure in case of privacy breaches.

The development came in line with reports claiming that Cambridge Analytica harvested the profiles of up to 50 Mn Facebook users without their approval during the last US elections, privacy advocates in India, as well as the government itself, have raised concerns that a similar breach could happen here to target voter opinion.

Later, it was revealed that data of over 87 Mn users was shared with Cambridge Analytica. Recently, Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg made the revelation that 562K people in India were ‘potentially affected’ by this global data leak crisis.

The payment system companies had been given six months to comply with the new norms. According to the RBI, at present, only a handful of payment system operators in India and their outsourcing partners store user data, either partially or completely.

RBI said that the payment ecosystem in India had “expanded considerably”, making it necessary to ensure “the safety and security” of data with data localisation.

Recently, in a June 2018 meeting with RBI officials and executives from payment companies, the finance ministry suggested that a possible solution could be that companies would be allowed to store their data offshore, as long as a copy was kept in India.

The directive by RBI received the support of players like Paytm, Google and Microsoft, while the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said that app makers were already heavily regulated under the IT Act.

Also, a white paper by the Srikrishna committee had examined the data localisation mandate saying that it could help protect the rights of users and prevent foreign surveillance.

As global players identify India as a high-growth market and place bets on the economy, data concerns can be a huge hindrance to the country’s growth.

 [The development was reported by ET.]

The post Paytm Continues To Support Data Localisation, Says Mirroring Data Is Not The Solution appeared first on Inc42 Media.

After welcoming Walmart for majority stake while saying goodbye to many others, Indian ecommerce company Flipkart has now decided to shut down eBay.in, with plans to launch its new platform to sell refurbished goods.

The company believes that the new platform has a different value proposition compared to its portfolio operations and will cater to a different target audience.

Flipkart acquired the Indian operations of global online retailer eBay in March 2017 after it raised the $1.4 Bn funding round from Microsoft Corp., eBay Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

To be noted, in May this year reports surfaced that eBay has decided to end its strategic partnership with Flipkart and relaunch ebay India focussed on cross-border trade. The operations on ebay.in will be closed with effect from August 14, 2018.

In an email to employees, Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy said: “Based on our learnings at eBay.in, we have built a brand new value platform launching with refurbished goods — a large market which is predominantly unorganised. With Flipkart’s customer base and F1 Info Solutions & Services in our group portfolio, I believe that we can solve the key barriers to refurbished — trust & convenience — at scale.”

“Our endeavour will be to ensure that all the eBay.in sellers and customers migrate to the new platform over time with a remarkably enhanced experience,” Krishnamurthy added.

eBay And Flipkart: One Year Relationship

eBay entered the Indian market way back in 2004. It began operations through the acquisition of News Corp-backed Bazee.com.

Later, it also invested a significant amount in ecommerce player Snapdeal to claim a pie of the burgeoning Indian ecommerce ecosystem and eventually wrote down a $61 Mn investment in the e-tailer in February 2018.

However, despite being a first mover, eBay continued to struggle to mark its presence in the Indian market which is dominated by Flipkart and Amazon India.

After Flipkart acquired eBay’s India operations last year, Flipkart decided to use eBay India platform for global outsourcing. Thus, in June 2017 it shut down Flipkart Global programme, which started in January 2016, as stated by the company in media statements earlier.

Some of the markets where Flipkart has already reached via Flipkart Global, included the United States, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. With the new partnership with eBay, Flipkart allowed users from about 200 international markets to purchase products on its marketplace.

With Flipkart ending operations of eBay.in completely now for sake of its own venture after Walmart acquisition, eBay has been left with no choice, but to start its India journey again, this time in the cross-border trade.

According to a present statistic report, the sales associated international selling sites will cross $3.5 Tn by 2019. whereas the global cross-border ecommerce market size will be doubled over the next four years to reach $424 Bn by 2021.

The market opportunity is huge, but will eBay India get success this time, only time could tell.

 [The development was reported by ET.]

The post Flipkart Decides To Shut Down Ebay.In, To Launch Its Own Refurbished Platform appeared first on Inc42 Media.

New Delhi-based Corner Store Technologies, which runs subscription-based online pharmacy platform LifCare, on Tuesday announced to have raised $11 Mn in a Series B round of funding from SAIF Partners, Nexus Ventures and Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS).

LifCare was founded in 2015 by Krishna Killa and Rohit Mohta and targets patients with chronic illnesses.

The funds will be utilised in expanding LifCare’s geographical presence and further invest in its technology. Expanding from medicine delivery, LifCare will also be providing end to end services that chronic patients need to manage their diseases better.

Lifcare has earlier raised a Seed funding round of undisclosed amount in March 2016. Post that, it also raised $5 Mn as part of Series A funding round in October 2016.

Lifecare: The Network Expansion So Far

Lifcare uses intelligent technology and data science to automate medicine refills so patients never miss a dose.

Sandeep Singhal, MD & Co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners, said, “By focusing on the patients’ need to manage their disease, Lifcare is providing a unique value proposition in the medicine delivery market. The team has executed brilliantly over the last two years and we expect to see strong growth in the coming years.”

The company is also able to cut down the cost to end patients by running a more efficient supply chain.

Apart from that, Lifcare

• serves around 300K families in North India who take medicine refills every 30-60 days
• handles medicines for diseases requiring ongoing medication like diabetes, cardiac conditions, hypertension, renal disorders, thyroid, etc.

Krishna Killa, CEO & Co-founder of LifCare said, “In the last two years, we’ve aimed to build a simpler and better pharmacy experience. With this funding round, we look to further expand our geographic footprint. We will also look to expand our suite of services to become a full-service disease management platform for chronic patients.”

Online Pharmacies: Attracting Consumers, Govt And Investors Together

With the growth of online pharmacies like Pharmeasy, Medlife, 1mg, Netmeds, among others, the sector has attracted significant attention on three fronts: consumers, investors as well as government.

Last year, the government issued a draft of the Drugs (Sale and Distribution) Rules 2017, aiming at removing ambiguity on regulations to facilitate sales of drugs online.

According to the draft rules, which came out in March this year, no one can operate an online pharmacy without registering with the Central Licensing Authority and the supply of drugs by an online pharmacy will be regulated.

Later in April this year, country’s apex drug regulator and central licensing authority also mooted for a draft on online pharmacies regulations.

This seems to have further increased consumers trust on the online pharmacy platforms.

On the investors front, the Inc42 DataLabs team observed that in FY 2017, Indian healthtech startups had raised about $346 Mn across 111 deals.

Also, the financial analysis of companies like Netmeds and Pharmeasy among others (1mg and Healthkart) revealed that Netmeds is currently leading the online pharmacies bandwagon in India owing to good revenues and better expense management.

Other factors which are playing a prominent role in the growth of online pharmacies in India include:

• rising standard of living for the middle class
• Increasing internet and smartphone penetration
• Push for digital payments
• Busy lifestyle and nuclear families

Going ahead, the opportunity is certainly ripe and the market is far from saturation for now.

Online pharmacy platforms are expected to account for 5-15% of the total pharma sales in India, which would be largely achieved by enhancing adherence and access to the medicines for a large section of the underserved population.

The post SAIF, Nexus And Others Invest $11 Mn In Online Pharmacy LifCare appeared first on Inc42 Media.

A June 2018 report expected Indian retail ecommerce sales to witness a 31% increase to reach $32.7 Bn in 2018. And the report was put to test during recently concluded sales of Amazon and Flipkart— Prime Day and Big Shopping Days— respectively.

Amazon Prime Day was hosted for 36 hours on July 16-17, while Flipkart hosted Big Shopping Days for 80 hours from July 16-19.

The Flipkart event is the second Big Shopping Days sale since the announcement of Walmart acquiring 77% stake in the company in May 2018. In June 2018, Flipkart concluded four-day Big Shopping Days sale from May 13-16, wherein it claims to enable 300 sellers to become millionaires in a media statement.

Two Deep Pocketed Players, Two Big Sales: An Overview

During Big Shopping Days sale 2018, Flipkart claimed to generate four times its daily revenue and 2.5 times daily units sold.

The 80-hours sale generated sales that equal to 15 non-sale days in terms of value and sold as many units as 10 non-sale days. Also, the company claimed that traffic to the Flipkart platform increased was 150% of its daily traffic.

However, Amazon Prime Day sale was something new for India.

Bringing its global event Prime Day to India for the first time, Amazon India offered 200 exclusive new product launches, thousands of deals, and video and music selections especially curated for Prime Day. The Prime Day offers stretched further for one week on Prime Music and Video as well.

The research company RedSeer has analysed customer perspective to these sales.

Here are a few highlights from customer front:

• Awareness of either Amazon or Flipkart sale is 60% compared to 100% in BBD/Great India Sale last year
• Flipkart has a 60% mindshare during sale days compared to 40% for Amazon
• 59% of respondents have bought on Flipkart while 41% have bought on Amazon (10% overlapping on both)
• 68% of the respondents knew about the sale through low-cost digital channels
• 39% of the customer purchased consumer electronics on Flipkart followed by Fashion while 35% of the customers purchased Fashion on Amazon followed by Mobiles
• 60% of the consumers on Flipkart spent more than INR 5000 during the sale, while 70% of the consumers on Amazon spent more than INR 5000 during the sale
• The use of PhonePe was 13% of the total payments on Flipkart while 9% Amazon customers used Amazon Pay.

So, Who Nailed It: Flipkart Or Amazon India?

Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president and country head, Amazon India, said, “Extending Prime Day to 36 hours this year allowed us to further reward members with unbeatable deals, access to exclusive new products, and unforgettable experiences that highlight the many benefits of a Prime membership. We also want to thank our sellers, brands and our content partners who helped to make Prime Day bigger and better.”

To be noted, members streamed music in 18 Indian and international languages on Prime Music in the week leading up to Prime Day. The week leading up to Prime Day was Prime Video’s best ever, with the highest number of streamers in India ever, as claimed by the company.

On the other hand, according to Smrithi Ravichandran, Senior Director, Flipkart, “During Big Shopping Days, the success of the sale is a testimony to our customer’s faith in us, making us as the destination where India shops. We are overwhelmed to see the RedSeer survey findings that reinstate our commitment and celebrate this success.”

Some of the unconventional categories that were a great success during this sale included Furniture and IoT other than the hot categories like mobiles, fashion and appliances, she added.

Amazon Vs Flipkart: Expanding Product Categories

Recently reports surfaced that Flipkart is working to triple its warehouse workforce for upcoming festive season sale Big Billion Days.

Following the Walmart acquisition, Flipkart has been increasing its commitment to the Indian market with several new initiatives, including a foray into fintech for which it has sought NBFC certification.  Flipkart has also set its next target — a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $17.6 Bn by 2020-21.

It must also be noted that a Forrester report had recently revealed that Flipkart’s standalone market share was estimated to be 31.9% at the end of 2017 while Amazon India’s was 31.1%.

Amazon had started out in India with a 14% share in 2015 against 43% of Flipkart. Citi Research estimates that Amazon India is currently in second place in the Indian ecommerce market with about $5 Bn in GMV.

Amazon had committed $5 Bn investment in India. Recently, Amazon opened 15 fulfilment centres in Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai to create a specialised network for Amazon Now.

A Citi Research report had said that Amazon India is expected to reach $70 Bn in gross merchandise volume (GMV) and $11 Bn in net sales by 2027. The same report valued Amazon India at $16 Bn.

While Amazon India’s food retail plans have hit a roadblock, the company continues to expand its portfolio and has onboarded Indian handloom weavers, and also introduced Shutterbug.

At the same time, Flipkart has been expanding its bets on grocery, fashion, furniture etc as the company expects about 45% ($7.4 Bn) of its 2020-21 GMV target to be contributed by mobile phones, followed by large appliances and fashion at $2.7 Bn and $2.6 Bn, respectively. Groceries are expected to contribute another $1 Bn.

As the festive season sales preparations start for the ecommerce giants, the customers will certainly be benefitted from the increasing portfolio services of these platforms. Though the ecommerce giants can entice the online shoppers, will they be able to taste the real success which comes with the balance sheets showing profitability in this financial year, will be something to watch for.

The post Amazon Prime Day Vs Flipkart Big Shopping Days: The 2018 Showcase appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bringing the idea of entrepreneurship encouragement from homeland aka the US to India, Lightspeed India Ventures has launched Extreme Entrepreneurs – an entrepreneurial training series to connect a select group of Indian startups to the top guns of global technology and entrepreneurship.

The company runs a similar initiative Lightspeed summer programme in the US where it invites young founders from universities, usually, to come and hang around the offices and get mentorship from the Lightspeed partners and pick up some tools and tricks to build large companies.

The eight-week programme will begin in mid-September. It will have business leaders like Jon Steinberg, ex-Buzzfeed and now Cheddar, Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms, Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix and John Thompson, Chairman, Microsoft sharing some of their spark as well as the practical bits learned from being an entrepreneur.

Also, luminary investors like Anu Hariharan of Y Combinator and Jeremy Liew and Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed will bring their experiences of shaping highly successful companies.

Talking to Inc42, Vaibhav Agrawal, Partner at Lightspeed India Partners shared that the programme is a community initiative to help Indian founders build iconic companies.

He said, “Most of the partners here at Lightspeed, including myself, were founders before. I myself started up twice, once in India and once in the US and having gone through this journey, we know that how critical exposure and right advice can be early on. Therefore, we decided to start this community initiative to help Indian founders build iconic companies.”

What Is Extreme Entrepreneurs Programme?

During the programme, eight selected startups will undergo mentorship sessions and will also attend community events.

He believes that the complete training programme is the reflection of Lightspeed’s years of experience in shaping the companies from scratch to huge. Extreme Entrepreneurs will certainly help startups take their company to next level, as claimed by Lightspeed India.

However, Vaibhav emphasises that the programme can not be termed as an accelerator as any funding deal either equity or debt is not included as part of Extreme Entrepreneurs.

No terms- No contracts, but a 100% pure community initiative, is how Vaibhav describes Extreme Entrepreneurs.

On every Tuesday at Lightspeed’s Bengaluru office, the selected eight startups will participate in three sessions:

• Morning session: The startups would participate in an invite-only masterclass from leading members of the technology and investing world both in India and abroad. The discussions would be business luminary speaking and sharing candid learnings with selected startups.
• Afternoon session: The startups get to work with a Lightspeed professional one-to-one. Vaibhav shared the benefit startups get will be like Lightspeed’s portfolio companies have from having a board member for eight weeks and beyond. The selected startups will have their processes and points of view torture-tested and grilled by an experienced Lightspeed India investor.
• Evening session: During the community events, startups get an access to the community of high-quality startups and investors along with access to a host of services, cloud credits, marketing credits, etc

And the best part is, there is no particular sector or idea stage that the company is looking at. All Lightspeed is looking at is people who are hungry to learn, have a passion to build something that can be potentially large and impact creating.

Vaibhav summarises, “We select eight startups that have high potential.” Interested startups can apply here.

Lightspeed Ventures: Betting Big In India

Lightspeed Venture Partners via Lightspeed India has been investing in India since 2004, with a focus on direct and cross-border businesses. It generally invests $1 to $25 Mn in growth or early-stage startups seeking to disrupt or transform large markets in the domestic economy.

Lightspeed Venture Partners has some of the most notable startups in its portfolio including OYO Hotels, BYJU’S (which recently acquired a unicorn status), ShareChat, Udaan among others.

Some latest updates around the company include:

• Has five partners— Bejul Somania, Dev Khare, Akshay Bhushan, Harsha Kumar and Vaibhav Agarwal.
• Closed its second India fund with a corpus of $175 Mn in July this year.
• Now looking to invest in another batch of 25-30 early-stage startups as well as in few deals at Series B and C stages.
• Total capital under management in India stands at $310 Mn. This includes a $115 Mn India-specific fund, raised in 2015
• Also appointed former Andreessen Horowitz executive Hemant Mohapatra as its sixth partner.

The Indian startup ecosystem is currently home to more than 5200 tech startups and has been growing rapidly with investors interest being continuously confirmed with increasing investment in India. Indian Tech Startup Funding Report H1 2018 found that $3 Bn was invested across 372 deals, after $13.5 Bn invested across 885 deals in 2017.

Vaibhav had shared that some iconic companies have come out of Lightspeed India’s US programme, some they have not even invested in. The successful programme in the US assures Indian startups are expected to make it huge with the Extreme Entrepreneurs programme.

The post Lightspeed Introduces Extreme Entrepreneurs To Help Founders Take Companies To Next Level appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Ever since the Centre launched the Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) with a corpus of $1.5 Bn (INR 10K Cr) in January 2016, the DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion), Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and selected alternate investment funds (AIFs) have been aiming at the maximum disbursal of the allotted funds till 2025.

Though the initial fund disbursement was low, since the beginning of 2018, the AIFs have sped up startup investments under the Fund of Funds.

For instance, in early 2018, it was reported that DIPP has released $76.9 Mn (INR 500 Cr) to SIDBI in FY16 and $15.3 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in FY17.

These numbers were really low considering that the entire Fund of Funds corpus has been earmarked for allocation across two finance commission cycles (2015-2020 and 2021-2025).

However, in an April 6, 2018 circular, SIDBI claimed that it has committed $170.57 Mn (INR 1,136 Cr) to 25 VC Funds, who in turn have invested $85.44 Mn (INR 569 Cr) in 120 unique startups.

The circular further said that the modification of the definition of startups in May 2017 and improvements incorporated in the recognition process have helped reduce the time taken for grant of recognition certificates to one-four days from 10-15 days previously.

Note: The AIFs data shown above is as of March 2018.

Other Key Facts Highlighted By SIDBI Circular

• Compared to 797 startups in 2016-17, 7,968 startups received recognition in FY17-18, bringing the total number to 8,765 since the fund launch in January 2016.

Of the recognised startups, 15% are from IT services, 9% healthcare and life sciences, 7% education, 6% professional and commercial services, 4% agriculture among others. It was also revealed that 35% of all the startup directors are women.

6,954 startups have reported employment generation for 81,264 people

88 startups have been certified for claiming tax exemptions by the Inter-Ministerial Board.

This is an increase on all the previous metrics. Previously, Inc42 had reported that, as of December 2017, about $92 Mn (INR 605.7 Cr) was released to 17 AIFs by SIDBI, and 75 startups had benefited till that point in time.

Fund Of Funds Startup Portfolio: The Current Status

The disbursement of allotted funds under the FFS seems to have finally picked up speed and the DIPP’s efforts to smoothen out processes for the same are now more visible.

Recently, on July 2 this year, Union Minister Suresh Prabhu tweeted that overall 128 startups have received a total funding of around INR 600.5 Cr.

Note: The Inc42 DataLabs team was able to collect detailed information on 116 unique startups only, funded by the 25 AIFs registered by SIDBI.

The post The 128 Startups That Raised Funding From The DIPP’s Fund Of Funds appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based insurtech startup Digit Insurance has raised $44 Mn (INR 302.6 Cr) in its second round of funding from Fairfax Holdings. Fairfax also invested $1 Mn (INR 6.8 Cr) in Digit Insurance’s parent company, Digit Infoworks, taking the total funding in this round to $45 Mn (INR 309.5 Cr).

Digit Insurance plans to use the funding to work on its mission of “making insurance simple” by investing in new lines of products. It also plans to expand its distribution network across the country.

Founded in 2016 by Kamesh Goyal, Bengaluru-based Digit Insurance is a tech-driven general insurance company building a technology platform that can offer customised insurance products at reduced costs and provide efficient customer service as well.

Kamesh Goyal, founder and chairman, Digit Insurance, said, “Our long-term investment is directed towards bringing in technology that can automate and fasten processes and resolve customer pain points.”

With the latest funding, the total capital of the company has reached $94 Mn. Earlier, in 2017, Fairfax Holdings had invested an undisclosed amount in Digit Insurance.

Fairfax Holdings is a holding company founded in 1985 by Indo-Canadian billionaire V Prem Watsa. Fairfax, through its subsidiaries, is engaged in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance and investment management.

Digit Insurance: Plans With Latest Fundraise

The Digit Insurance team has 525 people, including industry veterans and new-age technology specialists. The company has launched products across three categories — motor, travel, and personal accessories.

Goyal claimed that 100% of Digit’s flight delay insurance claims are automated and are processed within minutes, and 87% of its claim approvals happen in just 24 hours, due to innovations such as smartphone-enabled self-inspections.

“We also believe that claims are the sole reason why a customer buys our policies, so, for us, claims are good,” he added.

In a media interaction, Goyal further shared his near-term growth plans for his company. He said that Digit is now targeting to spread to Tier 2 and 3 cities such as Siliguri (West Bengal), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Patna (Bihar), Guwahati (Assam), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), and Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), among other places.

Also, by September this year, the company plans to increase its headcount by 200. To further amplify its services, Digit Insurance aims to reduce the time taken to settle claims from 10-12 minutes to 7 minutes.

The company is settling around 20 claims per day on mobile phones and plans to scale up this number to around 100.

Digit Insurance, which has forged partnerships with companies such as Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Sterling Resorts, and 1,500 retail agents across India, claims to sell around 6,000 policies every day to its customer base of more than 400K.

The Insurance Space In India

At present, the insurance space in India is dominated by banks and government agencies such as LIC, GIC, etc. Also, a number of insurtech startups such as PolicyBazaar, CoverFox, Acko, among others, have come up in recent years. The sector has also witnessed interest from digital payments company Paytm.

According to the IBEF, insurance penetration in India is as low as 4% despite the Modi government efforts to spread awareness on the importance of insurance with its proposed Modicare and other government-backed policies.

The central government has increased the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) limit in the insurance sector from 26% to 49% under the automatic route, which will further help attract investments in the sector.

However, currently, only 3%  insurance is bought online in India in an $80 Bn market. This share is likely to grow given the rising access of consumers to online insurance services.

Overall, according to Inc42 DataLabs Indian Startup Funding report 2017, the Indian fintech industry has received $3.01 Bn across 111 deals in 2017.

The sector continued to witness growth. According to the Indian Tech Startup Funding Q1 2018 report, fintech as a sector witnessed the highest funding in the first quarter.

With increasing awareness and sales of online insurance in the country, Digit Insurance, with its funds infusion, stands a good chance to make it big in the highly competitive market.

The post Insurtech Startup Digit Insurance Raises $44Mn From Fairfax Holdings appeared first on Inc42 Media.

While India is set to witness the accelerated adoption of technologies such as blockchain, the India Data Threat Report 2018, published recently by defence grade technology-maker Thales eSecurity, says that incidents of data breaches in India are higher than the global average. The report further emphasised the need for India to change its security strategies to prevent increasing cases of data breaches.

According to James Cook, Thales eSecurity sales director, South Asia, around 52% of Indian respondents reported data breaches last year, while the global average stood at around 3%. Thales surveyed more than 1,200 senior IT security managers, including 100 in India, between October-November 2017. Indian companies with revenues in the range of $100 Mn to $1 Bn were covered in the study.

The study also found that Indian companies are adopting advanced technologies such as blockchain, big data, IoT, mobile payments, etc, on a large scale. This makes it all the more urgent for the Indian government as well as enterprises to formulate and implement strict, well-defined security policies and strategies to curb data breaches.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the developments in this week’s block.

Important Developments In The Indian Blockchain Ecosystem This Week

Uttar Pradesh Govt To Build Blockchain Infra For Data Security

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has directed its officials to build blockchain infrastructure within the next six months. The move is aimed at leveraging the technology to ensure the security of land and revenue records.

According to UP chief secretary Anup Chandra Pandey, to begin with, blockchain will be utilised in land registration and verification and in prevention of forgery and tampering. The state government will explore its usage in other state departments as well.

The UP government has requested the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), to give suggestions to make the government’s startup policy more focused and productive with regards to the technology.

TRAI Taps Blockchain To Curb Unsolicited Calls

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed telecom operators to adopt blockchain technology to register telemarketers and to improve the complaint redressal system for unsolicited calls.

It has asked the operators to ensure that only registered telemarketers have access to consumers phone number databases. TRAI’s move comes in the wake of rising spam calls to mobile phone users despite restrictions on telemarketers.

Earlier, in May, the regulator had published draft norms that proposed using the technology to ensure that telemarketing messages are sent only to subscribers.

Walmart Pilots Blockchain Project To Procure Farm Produce In UP

Global retail firm Walmart is carrying out a blockchain-based pilot project in Uttar Pradesh (UP) for procurement of farm and agricultural produce in the state. Walmart, which recently acquired a 77% stake in Indian ecommerce company Flipkart, has long been engaging with farmers in UP both to procure farm produce as well as to make a social connection with them.

Walmart India president and CEO Krish Iyer said in a media report, “The proposal will be discussed with the state government soon, before being implemented.” Walmart also plans to implement the technology to help in the validation of transactions and efficient management of deliveries.

Blockchain Developments Around The World

Google Partners With Digital Asset, BlockApps To Push Blockchain Dvpt

Search giant Google announced that it is partnering with Digital Asset and BlockApps to enable “customers to explore ways they use distributed ledger technology (DLT) frameworks on Google cloud platforms (GCP),” as it said in a blog post.

New York-based Digital Asset provides DLT software for financial services while BlockApps (also based in New York) is a service platform for enterprises to develop blockchain apps. Google plans to enable open-source integrations on GCP with blockchain platforms Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.

Digital Asset CEO Blythe Masters said, “This will reduce the technical barriers to the DLT application development by delivering our advanced distributed ledger platform and modelling language to Google Cloud.”

South Korean Blockchain Startups May Get Tax Breaks

The South Korean government is likely to lower taxes for blockchain startups as part of its plan to open up more opportunities for technological innovation in the blockchain.

The decision was announced after the South Korean ministry of strategy and finance recently met ministers from eight different economic and financial regulatory agencies to deliberate on the matter. Besides amending the tax code, the government also decided to lower the tax reduction threshold for blockchain startups and other companies.

Currently, to avail of tax reductions, companies must allocate 5% of their previous year’s gross sales to research and development (R&D) and 10% of their R&D investments to new growth technologies such as blockchain.

At the meeting, the ministers are said to have proposed reduction of the R&D investment requirement for claiming tax breaks to 5%. They said that many startups do not make enough profits to be able to invest 10% R&D tax incentive threshold. Further updates on the matter are expected to be announced on July 26.

Points Raises $8 Mn For Credit-Scoring Protocol

Singapore-based blockchain credit rating protocol Points has raised $8 Mn in a seed funding round from a number venture capital firms including DHVC, Cherubic Ventures, Ce Yuan, Ontology Foundation, Nest.Bio Ventures, and Zhong Cheng Xin Credit Technology.

With the latest round of funding, the startup seeks to leverage blockchain technology to develop a credit-scoring protocol that will enable banks, institutions, tech companies, consumers, etc, to participate in sharing of proprietary data. Points aims to build a credit-scoring protocol on top of the recently-launched Ontology blockchain.

Points Founder Sarah Zhang said, “With blockchain as a core technology for Points, we’re able to incentivise partners to participate in risk-free data sharing, which, combined with AI, means truly accurate credit scores.”

Blockchain Startup Nervos Network Raises $28 Mn

China-based Nervos Network has raised $28 Mn in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital China and Wanxiang Blockchain with support from Polychain Capital, 1kx, Multicoin, Matrix Partners China, Ceyuan Ventures, imToken, and others.

The startup plans to use the funds to develop products, build teams, and accelerate the development of business blockchain solutions. It provides a hybrid solution that combines the benefits of public and application chains, with a view to enabling businesses to develop and deploy decentralised applications without the need to maintain the infrastructure themselves.

Columbia University, IBM Partner To Set Up Blockchain Research Centre

Columbia University, in collaboration with global information technology company IBM, is setting up a new centre dedicated to research, education, and innovation in blockchain technology and data transparency.

The Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency will focus on key issues related to policy, trust, sharing, and consumption of digital data while using blockchain. It will bring together teams from the academic, scientific, business and government communities. 

IBM research director Arvind Krishna said, “With Columbia, we are able to bring together leading thinkers on applying the technology and data best practices based on extensive research and business experience and together prepare a new generation of technologists and business leaders.”

The centre will also include an innovation accelerator to incubate business ideas from entrepreneurial students, faculty members, and others from the startup community, according to a press release.

[Stay tuned for next week Blockchain This Week]

The post Blockchain This Week: TRAI Taps Blockchain To Curb Spam Calls, Walmart Pilots Project To Procure Produce From UP Farmers, And More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Collaborative coworking space provider Awfis has raised $20 Mn in a Series C funding round from existing investors Sequoia Capital, The Three Sisters: Institutional Office (TTS:IO), and InnoVen Capital.

Awfis was founded by Amit Ramani in 2015, with strategic backing from The Three Sisters: Institutional Office (TTS:IO). It offers customers the facility to book workplaces for durations ranging from an hour to 11 months.

It is being speculated that, with the latest funding, the valuation of the company has reached more than $130.8 Mn (INR 900 Cr).

Awfis plans to use the funding to bolster and deepen the Awfis network across India, launch new and innovative products/services and further enhance the existing technology platform.

Till date, the company has raised about $51 Mn in risk capital, including a $20 Mn Series B round from Sequoia in April 2017.

Abhay Pandey, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital – India said “We are thrilled with the demand side traction for Awfis product especially from SMEs and Corporates, thereby validating our hypothesis of a massive market opportunity. Awfis has generated tremendous momentum with its unique supply acquisition models. It is re-creating the workspace landscape for the benefit of both tenants and landlords.”

25K Seats, 55 Centres And Counting

At present, Awfis claims to have about 25,000 seats across 55 centres. The member base at Awfis includes a growing network of more than 1200 companies ranging from India’s leading startups/MSMEs to Fortune 500 companies.

Apart from its own managed coworking spaces, Awfis also offers a repository of third-party meeting rooms in hotel chains such as Lemon Tree, Hyatt, and Trident, among others, across India. Awfis has a nation-wide network of 55 centres across nine cities and 45 micro markets.

Amit Ramani, Founder & CEO of Awfis said, “With the growing demand for coworking spaces, there is a focus on transforming under-utilised real estate assets and providing affordable workspaces for entrepreneurs. The additional capital will aid us in expanding our footprint in India with over 100 centres with more than 40K seats in the next 12 months. Our priority is to deepen the penetration in existing markets and enter new cities with a focus on Tier II locations.”

The Coworking Space In India

In the coworking space segment, Awfis competes with US-based coworking startup WeWork, BHIVE Workplace, Innov8, 91springboard, and Creator’s Gurukul, among others.

Recently, Creator’s Gurukul raised an undisclosed amount in a fresh round of funding and also went live with its flagship centre near Cyber City in Millennium City, Gurugram.

At the same time, Bengaluru-based IndiQube raised $15 Mn (NR 100 Cr) equity funding in a round led by WestBridge Capital.

In 2017, the size of the coworking market in India increased by more than 50%. JLL India said that by the end of 2018, India’s coworking market is expected to grow by 40% to 50%, reaching over 1 Mn square feet of leased areas with a total investment of $400 Mn.

Coworking space providers are expected to lease about 8 to 9 Mn square feet of the total workspace in India by 2020.

Notably, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru have the biggest concentrations of coworking spaces due to the growing number of startups — nearly 70% of India’s startups are based in this three cities.

The post Coworking Space Provider Awfis Raises $20 Mn In Series C Funding appeared first on Inc42 Media.

This article is in continuation of two growth hacking article shared earlier. The first one shed light on some of the big misconceptions about Growth Hacking and the second one covered top 10 most effective growth hacking techniques.

In this article, we are going to cover how some of the fastest growing Indian startups have successfully leveraged growth hacking techniques:

Shopclues

About the company

Shopclues, an online marketplace owned by Clues Network Pvt. Ltd was established in July 2011 in Silicon Valley by Sanjay Sethi, Radhika Aggarwal, and Sandeep Aggarwal. The idea for Shopclues was born in California when Radhika and Sandeep Aggarwal, who was then with Caris & Company, met Sanjay Sethi, who was working for eBay. The three of them, with their families, moved from California to India to start Shopclues, a marketplace for the masses.

The company joined the unicorn club with a valuation of $1.1 Bn. It has Tiger Global, Helion Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners as its major investors.

Around 70% of its gross merchandising value (GMV) is received from tier-II and tier-III cities in India. Shopclues is now India’s first and largest managed marketplace with more than 10 crore monthly visitors on its website and a 70,000-plus seller base.

Growth Techniques

Shopclues deployed various growth hacks to pull more users to its platform and convert them into transacting customers. A few significant hacks were:

• personalised targeting of visitors via email
• personalised product recommendations on marketing channels
• continuous testing and optimisations on ad creatives
• identification of high lifetime value (LTV) customers via user path analysis

Most of these techniques started with simple ideas that came up in the conversations and evolved with quick experimentation. Once the impact was established via the A/B testing approach, a planned approach was deployed to scale these experiments rapidly.

Shopclues achieved its first success with personalised email targeting of visitors. These emails were user-specific, featuring products having the highest propensity of being liked and purchased by the users.

These emails were developed using the data generated by the past behaviour of the users as well as the behaviour of users with similar personas and platform interaction history. Various A/B tests were run to decide the best email content. The conversions from these emails were monitored and improved versions were continuously tested.

All these efforts translated into:

• A conversion jump of 20% with the transacting user base doubling over a six-month period.
• LTV of customers growing by 30% for the users after targeting via personalised mailers and notifications.
• Creation of a lot of in-house and management capabilities for Facebook. Shopclues has built creative automation technologies, which was a first for the market and helped the company see a 20–25% improvement in our click-through rates (CTRs) and a 20% improvement in customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• The best part of it all was that the team was able to customise this completely to their business. Shopclues also achieved a 30% improvement in Facebook ad conversions by altering ad creatives as per campaign-wise performances.
• Cost savings from improvements in CAC and CTR helped the team explore other mediums, thus helping it grow the user base by 25% in six months.
• A tremendous growth in LTV of users through its growth hacking measures. Personalized targeting of site visitors with emailers led to a doubling of the transacting visitors in six months.

Now, other companies have followed suit, and even Facebook is developing these features as a generic-use case for all advertisers.

Zomato

About the company

Founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Zomato is a global restaurant discovery and food-ordering platform. It boasts of 12 crore visits and 5.3 crore active users monthly. In January 2018, investment bank Morgan Stanley has valued this home-grown food-tech unicorn at $2.5 Bn.

When Deepinder and Pankaj were at Bain, they noticed how their colleagues struggled to find the menus of restaurants around their office. They had to either go to the pantry area or ask friends for the menus so that they could order food or physically head to a joint. This need triggered the idea for Zomato.

The platform began as Foodiebay.com and in November 2010 was renamed Zomato. The company decided to keep the idea of food at the centre of the business and choose a name that was short, easy to remember and made people think of food. The name ‘Zomato’ has got a zing to it and is a play on the word ‘tomato’.

Zomato currently operates in over 10,000 cities across twenty-four countries, including Australia and the United States. Their core content features include restaurant information such as scanned menus and photos sourced by its massive feet-on-the-street team across cities it is present in globally. Users can rate and review restaurants and also create their own personal network of foodies for trusted recommendations.

Growth Techniques

Zomato has always been a very limited-cost marketing player. Zomato has never done TV in a big way or outdoors, other than a small outdoor campaign recently where it used quirky messages targeting millennials. It focused a lot on near-zero-cost marketing, such as deploying below the line (BTL) materials like stickers and tent cards in restaurants, building strong online communities, organic social media, etc. Zomato was able to scale fast and do it sustainably because of its zero customer acquisition cost.

Some of Zomato’s successful and famous growth hacks have been the following:

• About three years ago, the team activated banners on the mobile web asking its users to download its app. The campaign started with a banner on the top of our mobile web page and also on the inner search and restaurant pages which garner the highest page views on Zomato.
• The team tried simple things like prompting the user to download the app after four photos are displayed or to download the app to view the menu because the experience on the app is much better.

These small tweaks were rolled out at that point— resulted in a 30% month-on-month growth in mobile downloads coming organically to Zomato, and 50% of the downloads were through mobile web. Team inculcates this thought in everything they do.

• Zomato also introduced an ‘order online’ feature next to the call button on the app and website at the same time. Zomato already had a lot of traffic that searched for food options on it on an everyday basis.
• Many users would call the restaurants to place their orders and Zomato was not able to monetize these calls. Now, these calls started shifting to online orders.
• Back in 2011–12, Zomato used gamification on its platform which encouraged users to share their reviews and ratings for restaurants and win points.
• Team also created a leaderboard with thirteen levels of foodies across four categories—Foodie, Big Foodie, Super Foodie, and Connoisseur.

This resulted in an exponential growth in user reviews, ratings, and photos on the platform, which in turn helped millions of users make informed decisions about the restaurant they wanted to go to or order from.

Zomato also launched some below the line (BTL) marketing, ensuring that every restaurant has ‘Review us on Zomato’ stickers and tent cards, which gets people to review them on its platform. This benefits the restaurants as it results in more content for them.

Zomato has never received any objections from restaurants, except maybe from some fine-dining places which do not allow stickers and tent cards on their premises.

IndiaMart

About the company

In 1996, Dinesh Agarwal returned to India after working with HCL Technologies in their US office to set up his own business. This was the time when the Internet had just been launched in India.

He realised that there were many Indian exporters whose products were in great demand in the West, but lack of Internet penetration in India at that time kept them from connecting with the buyers there. It was then that he decided to build an online directory of merchants who wanted to sell their products abroad.

Today, the Noida-headquartered IndiaMART, founded by him and Brijesh Agarwal, is India’s biggest online marketplace connecting buyers with suppliers.

The online channel focuses on providing a platform to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), large enterprises and individuals too.

The company features more than 4.3 Cr products and has a supplier base of more than 40 lakh and a buyer base of more than 3.5 Cr.

Growth Techniques

IndiaMART team deployed various growth hacks. While some of these strategies have been conscious and resulted from a planned approach, others have evolved gradually through constant experimentation.

For instance, its award-winning product, Buy Leads, has been a gradual development from just handling inquiries. By FY 2013–14, IndiaMART’s platform had aggregated over 10 lakh suppliers and 1 Cr products.

This meant that if a buyer wanted to connect with a seller, he had to patiently skim through the large pool of options available. After a lot of research and brainstorming, it was found that a common practice was to offer filters on the platform, but IndiaMART’s team felt this would only make things complex for the users. The team believes in keeping everything simple and quick.

After a lot of brainstorming on how IndiaMART could assist buyers in fulfilling their requests for quotes, expressions of interest, tenders, invitations to bid or in simply talking about their buying need, its buyers’ marketplace was born.

It then started encouraging buyers to share or post their buying needs. A dedicated team was appointed to verify the details immediately upon a buyer posting her requirements. The content was then published as a buying lead on the buyer’s marketplace.

Anyone could view the full requirement; only the contact details of the buyer were not available. This was the genesis of its award-winning Buy Leads, which was not only a simple and effective product but also one based on a unique ‘pay-per-seen lead’.

It was for the first time that any company in the world had introduced such a model. Even global marketplaces like Alibaba and other Indian classifieds like JustDial were not working on any such model. This product has been a great source of growth for IndiaMART.

The price for access to Buy Leads was initially variable but was soon standardised at INR 200 per lead, an amount that has remained unchanged until today. And while IndiaMART’s team was allocating around twenty-five inquiries every six months in 2014 to the companies listed on its platform, now it is allocating a minimum of seven inquiries every week depending on the subscription plan.

Soon after the introduction of Buy Leads, there were over 1,00,000 active buying requirements on the IndiaMART platform. Today, it is generating more than 2.5 crore inquiries every month.

Through Buy Leads, IndiaMART has been able to witness growth in its seller and buyer user base. So at one end, while it increased the buyer fulfilment rate from 10% to 45% at the other end its seller churn rate came down to 5%.

During the early days, IndiaMART’s team used to send thousands of postcards every day to enrich its database. It also used to attend events and trade shows towards the same end. Those postcards were its first growth hacking strategy, and they got IndiaMART’s first customers. IndiaMART’s growth hacking success happened twelve or thirteen years before the term was even coined.

The author of the article is an investor and a bestselling author. His second book, “Master Growth Hacking” is open for orders on Amazon and Flipkart now.

The post Best Growth Hacking Stories From Fastest Growing Indian Startups appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Noida-based online property solutions provider MagicBricks has announced a growth of 48% in Q1 FY19 revenues for its online operations, reaching $6.9 Mn (INR 47.5 Cr).

The factors driving the revenue growth were product innovation, new revenue streams, and market buoyancy.

Building Blocks Of MagicBricks

Sudhir Pai, CEO, MagicBricks, believes that the company is leveraging its scale and market position to push deeper into the market. “We’ve now aggregated about 80% of all supply and about 60% of all buyers in the market,” he added.

He further said that about 45% of all landlord listings on MagicBricks are now exclusive to the company. Besides scale, it will continue to innovate on new services that help curate, enrich information, and enable buyers and sellers to transact on its platform.

The company hosted over 1.1 Mn active properties as on June 30, 2018, with over 45K properties being added daily. It also claimed to be leading its “nearest competitor” (which it did not name) by 30% in properties for sale and 70% in properties for rent.

Other major players in the online real estate segment include Quikr, which launched QuikrRealty, an online-offline brokerage business in both B2B and B2C domain, apart from 99acres.com, Housing.com, Proptiger.com, and Square Yards.

The platform reportedly had more than 45K active paid sellers by the end of June 2018, out of which 2,400 were developers, 14K were brokers, and the remaining 29K were paying individual sellers or landlords.

The company also said in a media statement that its new products — a certified agent programme, remarketing solutions, and an e-auction platform — have been well received.

A Three-Pronged Strategy For Growth

MagicBricks has a three-pronged strategy in place and it plans to remain strongly focused both on growth and profitability. It plans to:

• Continue aggressively scaling on its core platform
• Reposition itself from being a discovery platform to a full-stack solution
• Build a number of adjacent products and services to enhance the entire ecosystem

The company is further looking forward to launching a chat-based communication interface to address the privacy concerns of buyers, a Brand Store, and a MagicBricks TV content platform. It will launch these exclusive services on its online platform only.

“Brand Store will aim to help aspiring developers, both mid-size and small, to scale up, build brand values, and be loved by consumers. MagicBricks TV will attempt to simplify real estate for end users by un-complicating it,” the company said in an official statement.

The e-auction platform will also see the launch of exclusive projects by developers, who have also taken a liking for this new innovative sales channel.

According to a blog published in 2017, the real estate business in India is expected to touch $180 Bn by 2020. Of this, a major part is the brokerage industry, which is increasing at the rate of $4 Bn per year.

The post MagicBricks Announces 47% Growth In Revenues In Q1 FY19 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Early-stage B2C ecommerce startup SaleBhai will open its initial public offering (IPO) to the public on July 27 and will close the issue on August 2.

SaleBhai was launched in September 2015 by Vishwavijay Singh and Purba Kalita. The startup aims to be a discovery platform for migrant communities to source authentic products from their native places.

The company offers a range of products including sweets, bakery, beverages, spices, dry fruits, namkeens (savouries), chocolates, and pickles. Customers can also purchase handicrafts, handloom goods, paintings, puja items, and herbal and wellness items on its website.

With this IPO, SaleBhai is looking to raise INR 23.73 Cr through the BSE’s SME platform. Also, it is the first startup to raise money through public route by getting listed on BSE at such an early stage.

It will use the funds raised through the IPO towards growing the company through increased customer acquisition, improved IT platform, the addition of more authentic sellers as well as product categories, and make the customer experience even smoother and effortless. It further plans to add 400 sellers by end of 2018.

The reports of SaleBhai IPO surfaced in May 2018 when it filed a draft prospectus with the SME platform of BSE Ltd. The development was confirmed once it received in-principle approval from BSE to launch its IPO.

SaleBhai & Its IPO: A Brief Overview

SaleBhai says it is focused “on the requirements of over 17 diaspora communities living in big Indian cities as well as those who live abroad.”

With 8,500 products sourced from over 100 cities and 300 select vendors, the company provides people with an opportunity to buy products in various categories from sellers across India as well as discover new items from different communities and cultures.

As on March 2017, the company has 22% buyers who have ordered at least twice from the website and 19% buyers with more than five orders.

The company has 31 permanent employees on its payroll.

Here is what the company is looking forward to with its IPO.

• issuing 22, 59,600 equity shares against 26.58% of the company’s equity
• Monarch Networth Capital Limited (Monarch) is acting as the issue’s Lead Manager
• Skyline Financial Services Private Limited will act as the Registrar to the issue.
• already received funding and support from 71 high net worth individuals
• Minimum application is to be made for 1200 shares and in multiples thereon

Vishwavijay Singh, Co-founder, SaleBhai.com, said, “SaleBhai is at the cusp of an unforgettable transformation. Taking our products offer as a business model into the market, we expect a positive reaction.”

Is SaleBhai’s IPO Worth Investing In?

SaleBhai has raised more than $1.5 Mn capital from investors such as Times Group’s Brand Capital and 71 HNIs, among other investors.

As mentioned in the company’s draft prospectus, having raised initial equity at par, it raised further equity in the price range of INR 950 to INR 1500 per share between April 2016 and February 2018. It has also issued bonus shares in the ratio of 9 shares for every 1 share held in March 2018.

As on 31.03.18 it’s paid-up equity capital was INR 6.24 Cr. Post issue, its current paid up equity capital of Rs. 6.24 crore will stand enhanced to INR 8.50 Cr.

Here is a summary of the company’s financial performance in the last three years:

“As per offer document, it is showing Infibeam Incorporation as its listed peers. Infibeam is trading at a price/earnings ratio (P/E) of around 672 (standalone) as on 20.07.18. (as per March 31, 2018 earnings). Peer is not comparable in stricter norms,’ said analyst Dilip Davda, a veteran journalist associated with stock market since 1978.

He further added, “For last two years it has posted average negative earnings per share (EPS) of INR (416.14) and an average return on net-worth (RoNW) of (148.31%). Hectic premiums collected for further equity helped the company to have a net asset value (NAV) of Rs. 97.93 as on 31.01.18. However, as on March 31, 2018, its NAV is around INR 18.88 and on the basis of it, asking price at a price to book value (P/BV) of 5.56. Due to negative earnings, its P/E remains negative. ”

The financials indicate a negative picture for the company. According to Davda, “only risk-savvy cash surplus investors may consider investments at their own risk” in this IPO.

As SaleBhai ventures into brave new territory with its IPO at such an early stage, the eyes of the entire Indian startup ecosystem will be on the company.

The post SaleBhai To Launch IPO On July 27, Looking To Raise INR 23.73 Cr appeared first on Inc42 Media.

New Delhi-based enterprise application provider LoginRadius has raised a $17 Mn Series A funding round led by ForgePoint Capital and Microsoft’s venture fund, M12.

All existing major investors — including Real Ventures, BDC Capital, and Yaletown Venture Partners — also participated in the round. ForgePoint Capital and M12 will now join LoginRadius’s board of directors.

Rakesh Soni and Deepak Gupta founded LoginRadius in 2011. Being a global company, LoginRadius’ cloud-hosted service provides the platform to securely manage and transact with billions of customer identities while keeping privacy and compliance regulations (such as GDPR) in mind.

Leveraging over 200 pre-built integrations, turnkey configuration and customer identity and access management (cIAM) solutions-focused data security and access management functionality, LoginRadius enables businesses to deliver an unified customer registration, login, and self-service experience in months.

The funds will be used to accelerate product innovation, customer acquisition, and global expansion. It further plans to accelerate product innovation and expand globally to serve the fast-growing $20B customer identity market.

“Forward-thinking companies are looking for secure, cloud-based identity solutions that can serve a global customer base and handle complex scenarios,” said Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president at Microsoft and global head of M12. “We’re excited to invest in LoginRadius because they are delivering on their promise to simplify customer identity management, which allows enterprise companies to more easily achieve their digital transformation ambitions.”

LoginRadius: Triple-Digit Growth Since 2016

Since its launch in 2012, LoginRadius has been relentlessly focused on customer identity and has experienced triple-digit annual growth for the past two years.

The company has grown to support global offices in Vancouver, London, San Francisco, Sydney, and Jaipur, with plans to more than double its workforce in the next 12 months.

“With increasing customer experience expectations and growing cybersecurity threats, enterprises need a modern cloud-based identity platform that can be the foundation for digital transformation and provide peace of mind when it comes to security,” said LoginRadius CEO and co-founder Rakesh Soni.

LoginRadius’ enterprise-grade identity platform is being used by over 3,000 businesses, including brands such as Weather Network, Vogue, Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC), Viacom, Avatar, and Kind Snacks.

It is currently serving over 700 Mn identities and handling 7.5 Bn API calls per month. The platform has been deployed on new and legacy applications across multiple channels including web, mobile, IoT, POS and kiosks.

“Customer identity is at the intersection of security, digital business, and compliance. This requires significant expertise to build and maintain in-house, resulting in an extended go-to-market time,” said Deepak Gupta, CTO and co-founder, LoginRadius.

“LoginRadius provides the answer to this critical challenge with its out-of-the-box solution,” he added.

IBM, ILANTUS, Happiest Minds are a few other notable names in this segment among others.

The post Enterprise Application Provider LoginRadius Secures $17 Mn In Series A Funding appeared first on Inc42 Media.

There’s finally some good news for troubled ecommerce company Snapdeal — it claimed it turned cash flow positive in June this year.

Snapdeal, which once held the No. 2 spot in the Indian ecommerce industry, has been in troubled waters for the past few years, with frequent office changes, bursts of hirings alternated with layoffs, and investors writing down investments. It was even dragged to the courts by some of its sellers over alleged non-payment of dues.

In a letter to the Snapdeal “family”, founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal said: “The last 10 months at Snapdeal have been one of immense focus, determination, and sharp execution. We exited a period of great uncertainty in July last year and strode ahead confidently on our chosen path to create a self-sustaining business.”

The founders shared that the company has been cash flow positive in June 2018 which means that the company is now earning money from its business.

The duo shared that they have achieved this target ahead of demanding deadline they had set for the company.

The founders also shared that “stellar professionals” have joined Snapdeal and at the same time, many former “SDians” have returned to the company.

An email sent to the company did not elicit any response till the time of publishing this article.

Snapdeal: Are Better Days Coming?

Since Snapdeal stepped out from the Flipkart merger deal, a lot has happened at the company. The company has suffered a lot in all aspects whether it is the brand value, financials, consumer trust or others.

However, despite facing odds, the company is now claiming to recover from the shades of failure.

Since the company claimed to achieve the milestone of becoming cash flow positive, here is a small dive into the past, asserting major events the company has gone through.

The Indian ecommerce industry, which is expected to reach $200 Bn by 2020, is set to witness a war between the Walmart-backed Flipkart and Amazon India, which is gearing up its war chest.

The Snapdeal founders’ claim in their letter that the company has no current or future dependency on funding, has made the industry sit up and take notice. Now, all eyes are on Snapdeal once again to watch whether it rises back to a position of dominance or keeps struggling for survival.

The post Troubled Ecommerce Company Snapdeal Claims It Became Cash Flow Positive In June appeared first on Inc42 Media.