The Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori-led health and fitness startup Cure.Fit has raised $120 Mn in a Series C funding round led by IDG Ventures, Accel Partners, and Kalaari Capital.
Chiratae Ventures and Oaktree Capital, along with Accel’s Growth Fund and Chiratae’s new fund, also participated in this round. Existing investor UC-RNT did not participate in the funding.
The development was confirmed by Cure.Fit’s communication team to Inc42.
This brings the total funding in the company to $170 Mn.
Cure.Fit plans to use the fresh funds to strengthen its technology platform by offering AI- driven health planning, create its own fitness devices, and also to expand to newer markets such as in Southwest Asia in the next 12-15 months.
“Health is an over $100 billion category in India and is ready for a new tech-driven approach for a much better consumer experience. With very high health awareness and rapid technology adoption among consumers, Cure.fit has a unique opportunity to become the go-to destination for all health needs for India,” Bansal said to ET.
Recently, Cure.Fit acquired Fitness First in India. With this deal, Cure.Fit also merged its subsidiary, Cult Fitness, with the Fitness First business in the country. The joint entity will now operate under the Cure.Fit platform.
Fitness First’s majority stakeholder, Oaktree, got a minority shareholding in Cult.Fit as a result of this deal.
Cure.Fit: Going From Strength To Strength
Founded in 2016, Cure.Fit has adopted an acquisition-led strategy to further its growth and scale faster. For instance, Cult was acquired by Cure.Fit in August 2016 for $3 Mn. Since then, it has acquired startups such as Tribe Fitness, Seraniti, Kristys Kitchen, and a1000yoga.
With its vision to make holistic health and well-being easily accessible to people, the Cure.Fit platform intelligently integrates an online-offline model to offer physical fitness (Cult.fit), mental fitness (Mind.fit), healthy food (Eat.fit), and to-be-launched primary care (Care.fit) — all on one app.
Cure.fit’s innovative and holistic approach has been adopted by over 100K active subscribers across various offerings with strong cross-usage between services.
Cure.fit has over 75 Cult and Mind.Fit centres and aims to increase the number to over 500 centres in the next three years. It has a strong presence in Bengaluru, is expanding rapidly in the Delhi-NCR region, and has made a recent foray in Hyderabad.
Eat.fit is servicing over 10K meals per day now and doubling every three months.
The driving factors for this growth include demand levers such as affluence, a sedentary lifestyle, and increasing awareness about health and fitness, backed by robust supply drivers.
Among other major players in the health, fitness and wellness space are startups such as Stratfit, Growfitter, Fitnapp, and HealthifyMe.
April 2018: Union minister for commerce and industry Suresh Prabhu convened the first ecommerce think tank meeting and promised to finalise the framework in six months
July 2018: Ecommerce think tank is ready with the draft policy to share with the public
Even as Indian ecommerce continues to witness intensified sales battles, acquisitions, protests, legal troubles, etc, the think tank working on the framework for a national policy on ecommerce is finally ready to submit its draft ecommerce policy today (July 30). Contrast this with the one year wait time for the draft Personal Data Protection Bill, which was tabled by the Justice B N Srikrishna Committee on Friday (July 27).
The ecommerce policy draft aims to ensure a level playing field for local businesses in digital trade in India, where deep-pocketed foreign companies are investing and contesting aggressively.
Inc42 had earlier reported that some of the aspects of the industry that will be covered in the ecommerce framework are:
Physical and digital infrastructure
Regulatory regime
Taxation policy
Data flow
Server localisation
Intellectual property rights protection
FDI
Commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu is set to chair a meeting of the think tank on Monday (July 30). The task force, which is working on a comprehensive policy on various aspects of digital trade, is led by Prabhu and comprises industry and government representatives.
It includes officials from the ministries of finance, home affairs, corporate affairs, and electronics and information technology. Representatives from telecom, IT, and ecommerce companies such as Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Jio, TCS, Wipro, Ola, Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, UrbanClap, Justdial, PepperFry, and Practo are also part of the think tank.
The government is likely to make public the draft ecommerce policy after the meeting.
Setting Up Of Ecommerce Task Force
The ecommerce task force, which was set up in April 2018, has since been deliberating on formulating an ecommerce policy, based on inputs received from various stakeholders.
The task force formed nine subgroups to deal with 14 core issues including competition, regulation, data privacy, taxation, and a host of technical subjects such as localisation of servers and technology transfer.
As earlier reported by Inc42, the ecommerce policy is seen as a critical step taken by the Indian government in view of the international attention the Indian ecommerce market has been attracting. On the global stage, a group of 71 WTO countries has launched extensive discussions on ecommerce; they recently met for the first time in Geneva with 13 other delegations.
Draft Ecommerce Policy To Support Indian Companies
According to a top official, the government is looking at ways to support Indian ecommerce players through the ecommerce policy, without violating its international trade agreements.
The government is considering including measures to promote Indian ecommerce companies by giving them incentives as China did, and engaging with global Internet companies to see if local companies can be given preference on websites within the country.
The discussions have also pondered upon the requirement of a nodal agency or more laws for the sector so that local companies don’t lose out to international players.
Along with this, the sources added, the idea is not to bring any restrictive or protectionist measures on ecommerce activity.
Notably, some participants of the task force said while the original purpose of the meeting was to help Indian ecommerce companies, there have been discussions on other issues as well.
Further, online travel company MakeMyTrip raised a concern saying how difficult it was for Internet companies to get listed in India, while digital payments company Paytm stressed on the need to store financial data in India and on data localisation.
On the other hand, hyperlocal startup UrbanClap and accommodation provider Oyo were concerned about expansion in global markets.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) representatives pointed out that while WTO regulations were open, it was mandatory that if Indian players are given preference, the same should be extended to international investors on Indian soil. Discussions were also held on foreign direct investment in ecommerce.
Another official said while the government was keen to make changes that would benefit Indian companies, one has to keep in mind that this is an election year and this might delay decisions on certain contentious issues.
Ecommerce Sub-Group Suggests FDI In Inventory Model
Inc42 recently reported that government officials have proposed to create a special group to keep a check on any violation of its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy by online retail platforms.
Earlier in July, a subgroup on FDI recommended that FDI be allowed in the inventory model. At that time, the commerce ministry was of the view that a decision in this regard shouldn’t be made in haste and that the issue needs to be deliberated upon.
FDI was among the 22 issues that were discussed by senior officers of the ministries of MSME, consumer affairs, electronics and information technology, and corporate affairs, along with the department of telecommunications, department of commerce, the CCI, and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade.
The official said that the government is also working towards bringing out a consolidated FDI policy by the end of August.
Indian Ecommerce Boom
The IBEF expects the Indian ecommerce to reach $200 Bn by 2026 while the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2018 revealed that India’s ecommerce market reached $33 Bn, registering a 19.1% growth in 2016-2017.
At present, ecommerce in India is on a high with global retailing giant Walmart acquiring Flipkart amid legal hassles, taxation tangles, and protests by Indian retailers and trade bodies. While Amazon continues to place bets on India with a $5 Bn commitment, Google is also set to venture into Indian ecommerce.
With rising global interest in Indian ecommerce and an increasing number of deep-pocketed players looking to get into the market, an ecommerce policy is much required to regulate the industry. The Suresh Prabhu-led think tank is right on track to provide Indian companies with the support they need to hold their own against giants such as Amazon and Walmart.
SBI Investment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SBI Holdings has invested $15 Mn in AntWorks as part of a Series A funding round.
AntWorks is a brainchild of former Infosys BPO head Asheesh Mehra. It is an artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent automation products and solutions company. AntWorks was founded in June 2015 by Mehra and Govind Sandhu with a vision to provide technical and business process solutions to clients in the healthcare and financial services verticals.
The funding will provide AntWorks with an impetus for their next level of growth in artificial intelligence and enterprise RPA, fuel R&D, strengthen their marketing and sales engine, and energise their foray into newer markets.
Along with the funding, the companies have also announced a joint venture between SBI and AntWorks to tap the tremendous opportunities in the emerging AI space in South East Asia.
Govind Sandhu, Co-Founder and CFO, AntWorks said, “With this investment, we will work together with SBI Group to bring end-to-end, AI-based Enterprise RPA to the globe in a way not done before. Our goal is to empower enterprises in emerging markets like Philippines, India, China, etc. — by unleashing the limitless potential of Machine Learning and Cognitive Automation.”
Bringing Data Ingestion, RPA, And Artificial Intelligence Under One Head
The company believes that its USP is in bringing together all three pieces of the Automation puzzle under one umbrella — Data Ingestion, RPA, and Artificial Intelligence.
AntWorks creates new possibilities with data through automation, digitisation, and enterprise intelligence. They provide an integrated, intelligent, automation enterprise-level product that is powered by Fractal Science and creates Intelligent Integrated Automation Stacks.
These can ingest and process all forms of data — from structured to inferred data— helping transform an enterprise’s operations and creating new business models for them.
Fuelled by cognitive automation and machine–learning capabilities, AntWorks delivers RPA — that’s powered by AI — using its ANTstein platform to enterprises of all sizes.
Its ANTsteinTMplatform will be leveraged to automate administration and augment human judgement, creating new criteria for success: collaboration capabilities, information sharing, experimentation, learning, and decision-making effectiveness.
“AntWorks’ has risen through the ranks of global RPA, Automation and Artificial Intelligence companies with a ferocity that’s unprecedented in the industry. We are excited with the possibilities of ANTsteinand look forward to their growth in the Asian region through our joint venture, as well as globally,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, President, and CEO of SBI Holdings, Inc.
AntWorks is headquartered in Singapore and has delivery centres and offices in Singapore, Australia, India, the Philippines, Qatar, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Traction And Opportunities Ahead
The company claims to provide solutions to more than 450 customers with a presence in four continents. Also, AntWorks’ advanced capabilities in AI, NLP, and NLM allow training of BOTs which are proficient and highly accurate while performing higher-value tasks.
It also claims to have performed at an annual revenue growth in three-digit multiples. In Q4, the company is planning the launch of SQUARE, the new RPA product.
Soon after its launch in 2015, the company acquired US-basedBenchmark Systems, healthcare applications services provider at about $5 Mn. With the acquisition, AntWorks was expecting that Benchmark Systems will add about $10-$12 Mn to its top-line in a year, targeting overall revenue in between $15-$17 Mn by October 2016.
In the Indian Artificial Intelligence space, we have players like Infrrd, which is developing advanced algorithms used in intelligent data capture to improve the data processing, especially for financial services companies.
Research company Tractica forecasts that the revenue generated from the direct and indirect application of AI-based software is estimated to grow from $643.7 Mn in 2016 to $36.8 Bn by 2025. This represents a significant growth curve for the nine-year period with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56.8%, as the report mentions.
While Facebook, faced with a $5.7 Bn US tax bill, was just hit by a ‘Thanos Snap’ that wiped out over $120 Bn of its market value within 24 hrs, with its shares plunging over 20%, Twitter continues to be a Kurukshetra (battleground) for Orwellian discourses.
Trump apart, Aadhaar data security — which has been continuously challenged by hackers and security analysts — is the centre point of many such discourses on Twitter, with Twitterati trolling policymakers and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
However, this time for a change, an Aadhaar challenge was thrown by none other than the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Ram Sewak Sharma. An IAS, IIT-Kanpur and University of California alumnus, Sharma has also served as the director general of the UIDAI and secretary of the department of electronics and information technology (under the ministry of communications and information technology of the Centre) in the past.
Sharma, reacting to a Tweet challenging him to walk his talk by publishing his own Aadhaar number on Twitter if he had trust in the system, actually shared his Aadhaar number and threw a counter challenge asking anyone to harm him in any manner on the basis of this information.
While Twitterati reacted instantly by making Sharma’s mobile number and WhatsApp profile image public, the UIDAI, in a press statement, asserted that even if Sharma had made his Aadhaar public, nobody could actually fetch or mobilise any information that could be directly linked or cooked with his Aadhaar number.
The UIDAI also clarified that any information published on Twitter about the Sharma was not “fetched from the Aadhaar database or UIDAI’s servers.” In fact, it added that this “so-called hacked information” — Sharma’s personal details such as his address, date of birth, photograph, mobile number, email, etc — was already available in the public domain as Sharma has been a public servant for decades. It added that this information was easily available on Google and various other sites through a simple search without Aadhaar number.
Elliot Alderson has often rebuked Aadhaar security by publishing website links containing Aadhaar data on Twitter. The hacker also posted a video explaining, “How to bypass the password protection of the official #Aadhaar #android #app in 1 minute.”
Why Did RS Sharma Share His Aadhaar Number On Twitter?
An anonymous Twitter user tweeting from the handle @kingslyj challenged Sharma to share his Aadhaar number if he had “so much trust in this 13ft wall secured system”. @kingslyj tweet was a reaction to a recent article on ThePrint entitled ‘What harm can you do to me if you have my Aadhaar details, asks Trai chairman RS Sharma’.
In response to @kingslyj’s tweet, RS Sharma, on July 28, published his Aadhaar number challenging people to do him any harm with the information.
Sharma tweeted, “My Aadhaar number is 7621 XXXX XXXX. Now I give this challenge to you, show me one concrete example where you can do any harm to me.”
Following this, Aadhaar detractor and ethical hacker Elliot Alderson, in a series of tweets, posted Sharma’s publicly available information including his mobile numbers, email ID, and his WhatsApp profile images. However, Anderson erroneously claimed that no bank accounts were associated with the Aadhaar ID, to which Sharma responded, “I have linked all my bank accounts with Aadhaar, for your kind information.”
Very soon, some others posted his bank account details too.
Aadhaar Database Is Fully Safe And Secure: UIDAI Statement
The next day, on July 29, the UIDAI, in a thread of 17 tweets, dismissed any possible hacks of Aadhaar data, maintaining that any information published on Twitter about Sharma had not been fetched from the Aadhaar database or the UIDAI’s servers.
The Aadhaar database authority stated, “Certain so-called hackers while responding to a challenge thrown by Sharma to attempt to really ‘harm him by using his Aadhaar’, have claimed to have found his mob no., PAN & other details such as alt. mob no., DoB, email, photo, frequent flight details, etc, through Aadhaar. They boasted that they had got Sharma’s aforesaid personal details by hacking Aadhaar database. This so-called claim is a farce and people should not believe such fraudulent elements active on social and other media.”
“Aadhaar database is fully safe and secure and no such information about Sharma has been fetched from UIDAI’s severs or Aadhaar database. This is merely cheap publicity by these unscrupulous elements who try to attract attention by creating such fake news. Factually anyone can google or visit other sources and find out Sh. Sharma’s personal details without Aadhaar. For example, Sh. Sharma’s mobile number is available on NIC website as he was once Secretary IT, Government of India.”
This is not the first time, or the last, that the world’s largest biometric programme, Aadhaar, has been attacked on Twitter over a series of data leaks and security loopholes. In fact, such attacks on Aadhaar and its supporters are a frequent thing on Twitter. In fact, thanks to the Aadhaar controversy that the Indian government had finally accepted the Right to Privacy as people’s fundamental right after a Supreme Court’s verdict.
It, therefore, had a role to play in the formulation of a draft Personal Data Protection Bill, which was submitted to the government by the Justice Srikrishna committee on Friday, July 27.
However, the point of concern here is not that RS Sharma’s personal details could or could not be hacked out the Aadhaar database. It’s no secret, how Aadhaar data has been fetched right from the application phase to from buying access to its admin login IDs, the fundamental point, therefore, is why to hack Aadhaar if there are multiple leaks in the Aadhaar system! And, the UIDAI can’t shy away from the leaks that have already led to the UIDAI blacklisting and blocking of 49K Aadhaar operators.
Two former managing directors (MDs) – V T Bharadwaj and Gautam Mago from the Sequoia Capital are joining hands to launch a new $291 Mn (INR 2000 Cr) investment company A91 partners.
The duo will be investing in emerging companies across sectors such as consumer, healthcare, financial services, and technology.
The fund plans to start investments by early next year. It will look to cut cheques of $10-30 Mn, coming in typically at the Series-B stage startups.
The duo has earlier worked together at the McKinsey before and has spent a decade together at the Sequoia Capital.
They have been part of the investments in companies like Prataap Snacks, Hector Beverages, Star Health Insurance, Oyo Rooms, Indigo Paints, and Ola Cabs among others.
V T Bharadwaj, on the launch, said, “Gautam and I believe this is the right time for us to be embarking on an entrepreneurial journey in the investment business.”
He further said that they both want to be active, meaningful, long-term partners in the best emerging small and medium-sized private companies in India.
The company will be among a new set of investment funds started by leading executives who have gone independent after long stints at bigger investment companies.
Similar to this was when four Sequoia executives had moved out and had formed an independent fund in 2011. The four MDs of the India unit including Sumir Chadha,K P Balraj,Sandeep Singhal, and S K Jain had come together to revive WestBridge Capital as a primarily public markets fund.
A few similar exits include:
Rishi Navani, co-founder and MD at Matrix Partners had quit to launch Epiq Capital.
Kanwaljit Singh, Helion Ventures Partner’s founding partner had formed Fireside Ventures.
Earlier, in 2016, three senior executives from Helion Venture Partners – Ritesh Banglani, Alok Goyal, and Rahul Chowdhri had come together to start Stellaris Venture Partners.
Inc42 DataLabs, in its H1 2018 funding report observed that fewer startups are being able to crack seed-stage funding deals. However, amid this dry run of funds, mature startups or the startups at growth stage have been able to take in big-ticket size fundings.
“The number of deals in H1 2018 increased by 15% compared to H2 2017. However, the funding amount fell by 40% compared to H2 2017 and by 18% compared to H1 2017,” mentions the Inc42 tech startup funding report H1 2018.
Mumbai-based cold chain logistics startup Tessol has raised an undisclosed amount in a follow-on equity funding round led by early-stage venture capital platform 1Crowd.
Existing investors Infuse Ventures and Ankur Capital also participated in the latest funding round.
Tessol was founded in 2013 by IIT Delhi-Harvard Alumnus Rajat Gupta. The startup aims to revolutionise the cold chain distribution space in India using technology-based energy storage solutions.
Tessol, which has developed solutions ranging from farm-level collection to home delivery, works with the largest FMCG, food processing, and ecommerce players in India.
The startup will use the raised funds to strengthen its current product suite and bring some disruptive products that were under development to pilot and commercialisation.
Anil Gudibande, co-founder, 1Crowd, believes that Tessol occupies a sweet spot at the intersection of India’s underserved cold chain architecture and a vacuum in environmentally-friendly clean energy solutions.
“Tessol’s farm-to-fork product range serves myriad use cases, application segments, and customer profiles, and the breadth and depth of its client roster bears ample testimony to the efficacy of their innovation-driven offerings,” he added.
Tessol: Filling Gaps In The Indian Food Industry
Rajat Gupta believes that there are huge gaps in the Indian food supply chain and that while there are several cold chain products available in the market, there is a dearth of viable solutions.
Tessol’s cold storage and transportation solutions eliminate the use of fossil fuel for cold chain transport systems. It’s PLUGnCHILL range of products for transport refrigeration use the proprietary PCM heat exchanger technology to provide 60% cost savings while eliminating the use of any fuel.
Tessol products are marketed across India and are being launched in the UAE to tap the middle-eastern market.
It has already customised 200 cold chain vehicles with modular TES units for bakeries, fruit, and vegetable vendors, dairy and ice cream manufacturers, and e-commerce, food processing, poultry and seafood companies, as claimed by the founder.
“At TESSOL, we believe in partnering with our customers and working out system-level solutions that can drastically impact costs while improving the performance. We further plan to expand our sales and service network across India and create more products,” he added.
Other emerging startups in the Indian agritech and food space are Ninjacart, Waycool, FarmLink, AgroStar, and Gramco Infratech, among others.
The Rajasthan government is on a no-holds-barred mission to digitally empower the people of the state, especially women, farmers, youth, and children, while changing the face of healthcare, education, agriculture, SMEs and other important pillars of the state’s economy. This is something that was starkly visible during the recent 10-day Digital Rajasthan Yatra IIundertaken by Team Inc42 across the desert state.
In this direction, the Rajasthan Digifest was held in Bikaner from July 25-27 with an aim to provide a platform to students, IT professionals, and aspiring entrepreneurs to interact, network, recruit and be recruited, and showcase their innovations.
The event saw a host of digital initiatives being launched by the Honourable Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, including Abhay Command Centres, iStart Nest, Rajasthan Wildlife Surveillance Systems, and more.
We bring you a glimpse of these latest digital initiatives being taken by the state to improve e-governance and the lives of people in the state.
Seven Districts Headquarters Get Abhay Command Centres
The government announced the launch of seven new Abhay Command Centres for the Rajasthan Police in district headquarters including Baran, Nagaur, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, Sirohi, Jalore, and Jaisalmer.
These high-tech surveillance centres, which combine information technology with agile policing for better governance and to ensure the security of citizens, are the most advanced command centres for any police department across India.
The Abhay Command Centres are already operational in seven divisional headquarters of Rajasthan.
Rajasthan Wildlife Surveillance Systems Launched In Two More Reserves
The chief minister also launched a high-tech surveillance system for Sariska and Ranthambore tiger reserves. The system, which has already been being successfully deployed in Jhalana Safari Park, Jaipur, enables automated monitoring of endangered species apart from video motion detection, prevention of poaching, and ensuring minimum animal-human conflict.
Rajasthan Security Operations Centre To For Data And Cybersecurity
The state government has launched a centre for data and cybersecurity called the Rajasthan Security Operations Centre. The centre applies artificial intelligence for predictive analysis and has garnered threat intel support from across the globe. It also does dark web monitoring with the aim of making data totally secure.
Rajasthan State Disaster Recovery Centre Opens In Jaipur
Data security and leaks are a big threat for any organisation or enterprise, making it imperative to enable real-time backups in the case of security incidents. The Rajasthan State Disaster Recovery Centre in Jodhpur has been designed to provide 100% server, data, assurance, and transactions back-up against any data attack.
iStart Nest To Help Startups In Kota And Jodhpur
The Digifest saw the digital foundation stone launch of iStart Nest incubation centres in Kota and Jodhpur. iStart Nest is the only centralised incubator in the country that provides free incubation to emerging startups. The incubation program is designed to help startups gain traction through deep mentor engagement, rapid iteration cycles, and fundraising preparation. iStart Nests have already been empowering startups in the state with centres in Udaipur and Jaipur.
Integrated Health Management Systems For Healthy Citizens
The free Integrated Health Management Systems serve as central digital interfaces for doctors, paramedical staff, pathological laboratories, etc, to ensure efficient and timely healthcare delivery for all citizens. These systems ensure accessibility to reports and management of patient records anytime, anywhere.
Jal Dhara Command Centre To Ensure Pure Drinking Water
Pure drinking water — a basic necessity — is increasingly becoming scare in these times of water pollution. With this in mind, the state government has launched a super control centre for drinking water resources in Jaipur. The centre, which has a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)-enabled water grid, will be the single point of control for water movement in the entire state. It will also have a disaster management system in place with early warning alerts.
Rajasthan Tele-Presence Project For Effective Governance
For effective governance, clear and constant communication is imperative. Recognising the need for better communication in the state for better administration and monitoring, the Rajasthan Tele-Presence project has been launched. It will serve as a central system connecting all government departments via video conference facilities.
Raj Wifi To Connect 10,000 Gram Panchayats
After the successful implementation of RajNet in the state which has provided internet connectivity to 10,000 gram panchayats, the Chief Minister launched Raj Wifi which provide free wifi services to residents across 2500 locations in the state.
Effective Communication With The People Through eSanchaar 2.2
The Rajasthan government has been striving hard to bridge the gap between citizens and its departments with initiatives such as the Vasundhara Raje app and Rajasthan Sampark.
The Rajasthan government recently launched eSanchaar 2.2 with a view to establishing an effective two-way communication channel between the state’s residents and the government. eSanchar is an IT-enabled telephony network that generates voice calls and ensures timely transmission of information to citizens.
A powerful tool for surveys and feedback, eSanchar 2.2 will educate people on various government schemes and services through voice calls. The government also feels that voice calls will accord a human face to the administrative machinery and help in building trust and faith in the government, besides bringing in efficiency and effectiveness in administration through greater transparency, accountability, responsiveness, and accessibility.
Jan Soochna Portal
The Jan Soochna Portal is an online platform that will make available all information about government schemes right down to the panchayat level at e-Mitra kiosks for citizens.
Rajasthan Digifest Bikaner Edition
Rajasthan Digifest is a flagship event of the Rajasthan government that was started in 2016 to strengthen the technology and IT ecosystem in the state.
The fourth edition of Rajasthan Digifest in Bikaner saw participation from over 25K participants and 50 startups. The aim of the Digifest was to provide a platform to students, IT professionals, and aspiring entrepreneurs to connect and showcase their innovations through activities such as Hackathon 5.0, which saw an overwhelming participation of 3,000.
Other events of interest at the Digifest were Green-a-thon and TecRush — a marathon that saw 10,000 people take part. A Job Fair was organised as well, to provide employment to the Rajasthan youth. Over 31,000 people took part in the job fair with about 1,500 securing their dream jobs on the spot.
Rajasthan, which was once known for its rich culture and history is now defining the future with digital technology, justifying its new rechristening to Digisthan. And the CM Raje-led Rajasthan government’s, with its #peoplefirst approach, is fast transforming the lives of people by digitally empowering them and taking the state to greater and greater heights.
Everyone is rolling up their sleeves to target the next million — and the millions after that — Indians expected to come online in the near future. With over 460 Mn internet users, India is the second largest online market in the world, second only to China. The number was supposed to reach 500 Mn by June this year and it is expected that by 2021, there will be about 635.8 million internet users in India.
And investors too are looking to have their fingers in this pie. Karan Mohla, partner and executive director at IDG Ventures India, is eyeing investments in consumer technology and media companies with a focus on the next 300 Mn-400 Mn consumers in India who are yet to be touched by ecommerce players like Amazon and Flipkart.
Mohla has been investing in the Indian internet consumer space for more than 10 years. He started his career back in the US with renowned investment bank Jefferies, where he focussed on helping early stage companies raise capital and also served as advisor for M&A deals.
Mohla’s tryst with the Indian startup ecosystem started when he moved back to India towards the end of 2006 to set up the India office of Jefferies. In this new capacity, he continued to focus on technology and media companies. He later joined IDG in 2010 and is based in Delhi.
For IDG, he has led investment in startups such as FirstCry, an online kids and baby products store; POPxo, a fashion, lifestyle, and beauty content site for women; HealthifyMe, a digital weightloss platform; Tripoto, a social travel platform; Little Black Book (LBB), local discoveries and recommendations platform; and Yatra, an online travel aggregator. All of these startups have made a mark in their respective fields.
In conversation with Inc42, Mohla described a concept that he calls the “Alternate Distribution for Commerce” model, using which he wants to reach the next few hundred million people who are yet to be untouched by ecommerce, but who are very important because they comprise the bulk of the consumer base is today.
Mohla believes that most areas of consumer retail are dominated by brands that have been there for many years. But today’s consumers, with new-age aspirations, identify differently with brands.
We also sought to understand IDG India’s strategy of focussing on disruptive models that have no or little precedent and creating omni-channels to focus on India-specific needs. Here are the excerpts of the interview in this week’s Moneyball.
Karan Mohla Of IDG
Inc42: What is your investment thesis? Karan Mohla: We look at disruptive business’ models that may not exist in India today or are very new. We were one of the first investors in the country to invest in the ecommerce segment (around 2009-2010), as can be seen in our investments in the likes of Myntra, FirstCry, and Lenskart. We were also early investors in the sharing economy sector with the likes of Flyrobe, Nestaway, and RentoMojo.
Our approach is to identify sectors before they become mainstream in India.
One other thing that we look at is whether the entrepreneurs will be able to build a business out of India, who is not necessarily building these business’ so that someone can come and acquire them… we like entrepreneurs with a large vision, which is very important
Inc42: How much stake do you take and at what stage do you come in? Karan Mohla: We are an early stage investor and look to come in at the Series A and Series B stage and, sometimes, as an exception, we come in during pre-Series A and also later growth stages. On an average, our investment size is $3 Mn and the amount of stake we take is on on a case-by-case basis, but we take that decision knowing that we are the lead investors in these rounds.
Inc42: Where do you see the next opportunity coming from? Karan Mohla: There is this concept that I call ‘Alternate Distribution For Commerce’ in India, which is basically reaching the next 300 Mn-400 Mn people that a Flipkart or an Amazon may not be getting to today. This is important because that’s where the bulk of consumer base is today.
Most areas of consumer retail are dominated by brands that have been there for many years but the new-age aspirants of today identify differently (with brands) and we have seen that in a small way through our own portfolio companies. Non-English focussed content and community platforms is another big opportunity.
There are fragmented industries where technology can play a crucial role in aggregating demand and supply and bringing them onto platforms. Take. for example, business-to-retail platform Bizongo, which is taking advantage of this scenario.
Inc42: What are some of the opportunities in the consumer Internet industry? Karan Mohla: When we started looking at ecommerce, we felt that for a venture fund like us, it would be better to build vertical ecommerce platforms rather than invest in the same area as Flipkart or Amazon, because that would take a lot more capital as the segment already had established players.
Another opportunity that we see is in the sharing economy because if we fast-forward to a couple of years and even look at today, the demographic of India comprises a large population of youth.
We feel that the necessity to be tied to certain assets will decrease in value with a lot more of the population becoming mobile. Sectors that will be affected by this include housing, clothes, and furniture.
Inc42: Creating successful online-to-offline touchpoints — you have spoken extensively about this model. Could you elaborate? Karan Mohla: As a business model, we didn’t look at the whole online-to-offline strategy as a retrofit. It was a strategy that we believed in from day one. When we were looking at Lenskart and FirstCry, the former had plans to go offline, but they weren’t sure as to when they should do that. Whereas FirstCry already had two stores operational and that was part of the founders’ vision. We partnered with the entrepreneurs who built these businesses which were online-to-offline almost from day one.
So, we didn’t have to retrofit like many business’ are having to do today. Our focus on creating opportunities and executing our plans were equally focussed on both the online-and-offline models.
The minute you have to start retrofitting these models, it becomes a bit difficult because it takes a lot more time to succeed but it’s not like it can’t be done.
Inc42:How does this play out in ecommerce? Karan Mohla: Ecommerce, especially for product categories like eyewear and babywear (apart from diapers), requires the touch and feel aspect early on. What FirstCry founder Supam Maheshwari had done was to create those offline touchpoints in largely Tier II and Tier III cities right from the beginning, because in those kind of cities, there were no babycare stores that existed and, typically, one would go to the chemist to purchase.
As you want to try and build a brand, having those online-to-offline touchpoints helps in eventually driving conversions online at a later stage.
We employed some of the above learning in our portfolio company Flyrobe, wherein the value proposition for fashion rentals needed offline touchpoints for discovery. The startup today has eight-nine stores across the country and will be opening many such stores in an accelerated manner in the years to come.
Certain categories benefit disproportionately from having an offline strategy.
Inc42: You became investors in Flipkart when Myntra was acquired by the former, what is your view of the Flipkart-Walmart deal? Karan Mohla: There were two main takeaways, one — there are large global platforms that see India as a large market and many naysayers have been silenced. Two — it did take away the opportunity of an Indian company to be built the way Alibaba or Tencent did in China.
We do believe that one can build global companies sitting out of India. Just look at our investments in enterprise software startups (like Unbxd, Uniphore, and Manthan) — they have started from India but have gone on to acquire international clients and the same thing can be done with consumer companies.
Inc42: How did your three-year experience of working in the Silicon Valley help you? Karan Mohla: When I moved there, we used to focus on working with early stage private companies. If you look at the time period, Youtube was a company that had just started, Android was established the next year, and Facebook hadn’t even started.
I worked on everything related to the Internet and mobile, I saw how technologies worked and this was also very crucial because I come from a non-tech background. It showed me the power of entrepreneurship and the power of networking.
I can see some of the Silicon Valley culture is getting translated into the Indian ecosystem where you have founders, investors, and entrepreneurs increasingly partnering instead of competing all the time.
There is an underbelly of cooperation that is being seen, which will help us as we go forward. Even the Chinese ecosystem is very much relevant to us, no matter how different it is from Silicon Valley.
I believe the best entrepreneurs get exposure to these ecosystems and networks because they can get a clearer idea of what possibilities can be explored.
Inc42: In 2015, you had said that the digital consumer Internet sector is going to see consolidation and leaders will emerge. How do you see it now? Karan Mohla: Companies in India that have grown and found homes in recent times have done it not because of foreign firms, but because of Indian leaders who have created large platforms and led consolidation themselves.
If you look back at 2014-15, the leaders were companies such as Flipkart, Ola, Snapdeal, and Quikr. In the last couple of years, we have seen the advent of new leaders such as Zomato, Swiggy, and Firstcry, whom we could describe as the next set of unicorns, and thats been a little bit of a surprise. Indian startups acquiring other Indian startups is a good thing because it builds an ecosystem that depends upon itself and I see no reason for this to not continue.
Inc42: How has funding changed for consumer Internet companies? Karan Mohla: Earlier, there was a disproportionate amount of funding across most of the sectors and that has maybe changed in the last couple of years. The type of investors you had three-four years back and the ones you have today are different with more Chinese investors coming in.
I go to China two-three times in a year and, through my interactions, I have understood that they see India as a strategic market and are patient and not in a hurry.
Also, the domestic capital coming directly into Indian companies is many times higher than what it was a few years back, and that capital, whether it is institutional or family led, is patient because they know the ground realities and they are able to wait it out.
These reasons will play an important role in building a long-term sustainable ecosystem and this is something that is keeping us very optimistic about the markets.
Inc42: Any tips for people looking to pitch? Karan Mohla: The simpler the things, the better they are. Whenever you meet an investor, always be clear and crisp while communicating what you are you trying to build, why you’re building it, and how will you build it.
You should also have clarity about your own and your team’s strengths and weakness. A great founder in a bad market can find good opportunities but that does not work the other way round.
Bengaluru-based healthtech startup HealthPlix has raised $3 Mn in a Series A round from IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital.
Founded in 2014 by Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Sandeep Gudibanda, and Prasad Basavaraj, HealthPlix aims to transform the way diseases are treated in outpatient care in India.
Sandeep Gudibanda, co-founder and CEO of HealthPlix, told Inc42 that the company would use the fresh funds to strengthen its technology and expands its medical specialities.
Prior to this, HealthPlix had raised $23.84K (INR 1.6 Cr) in two phases in an angel round from two senior executives of global corporations and a Bengaluru-based HNI. It planned to use the funds to strengthen its technology and product.
HealthPlix claims to cater to people across 20 states and 130 cities in India spanning specialities such as endocrinology, diabetology, cardiology, nephrology, oncology, and internal medicine.
At present, the company has established a strong presence in North, South and Western regions of India. The east has also started showing promising results from the previous two quarters.
Gudibanda told Inc42 that till date, 1.2 Mn patients have been treated by the doctors using the platform. He claims that the company has been growing 25-30% M-o-M.
“For post-clinic follow-up care, patients can consult their doctors online. Doctors who provide this service to their patients earn anywhere between INR 20K – INR 1 lakh per month,” he added.
HealthPlix: Connecting Doctors And Patients Online
HealthPlix is a full-stack SaaS based EMR (electronic medical records) platform assisting doctors and hospitals digitally. HealthPlix EMR incorporates protocols and clinical guidelines to assist doctors at the time of treating patients.
Further, the platform automates the entire workflow in the clinic/hospitals, ranging from lab reports, billing, e-prescriptions, etc, and brings the workflow seamlessly under one umbrella. It offers facilities such as e-prescription, lab reports, billing, dashboards etc.
The company is offering its model as a software on which a doctor can write a prescription in 30 seconds.
When it had launched, HealthPlix had started with a focus on diabetes. Gudibanda said nearly 400K diabetics are on the platform.
Going further, the company wants to add value to make India healthy and, therefore, its focus is to ensure that a doctor runs his own clinic and own pharmacy through the HealthPlix EMR platform.
Gudibanda told Inc42, “About 60% of our prescriptions are in regional languages. Based on the patient’s regional language, the prescription will be generated in his/her preferred language. At present, the company supports 22 languages, which include Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Telugu, and Kannada, among others.”
Indian Healthtech Industry
According to 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.
Globally, there has been a 60% growth in the number of app downloads with the total figure exceeding 175 Bn. Consumer spending on apps has more than doubled since 2015 and has exceeded $86 Bn.
In the Indian healthtech space, there are players such as MedPlus, 1mg, NetMeds, Punit Soni’s Suki, Visit, Innovaccer, Zoctr, Lybrate, and Tricog, among others.
The market for diagnostics services has been growing in India over the past couple of years at a rate of 15%-20% and stood at nearly $5.82 Bn (INR 40,000 Cr) as of 2016.
Healthcare is one of the biggest revenue and employment generating sectors in India and was expected to touch $ 160 Bn by 2017.
Overall, the global healthtech market is estimated to reach $104.5 Bn by 2020, according to a new report by Grand View Research.
The Indian healthcare market is expected to reach $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn, according to an IBEF. With the latest funding boost, HealthPlix looks ready to diversify its offerings and cater to a wider audience in this growing market.
This fourth and final article is in continuation to the three earlier growth hacking articles. The first article shed light on some of the big misconceptions about Growth Hacking, the second article covered top 10 most effective growth hacking techniques while the third article covered how some of the fastest growing Indian startups have successfully leveraged growth hacking techniques.
It cannot be more exciting then to learn the growth hacking tips from the person who coined this term. Yes, you are right. We are referring to growth hacking tips from Sean Ellis.
Sean always provides actionable tips which really require extra efforts to put into the practice. In this article, we are going to uncover some of the tips from the best-known growth hacking experts including Sean Ellis, Nir Eyal etc.
Growth Hacking Tips From Sean Ellis
Focus on true ‘North Star Metric’
Marketers miss picking the right metrics and focus on the metrics which satisfy their ego and ultimately it misleads them. Often marketers focus on metrics like time spent, sign-ups etc. which may not reflect what is the most important growth factor.
This can be corrected by picking true “North Star Metric” which provides real value to the customers. Sean Ellis mentioned that North Star metric is the single metric which best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers.
Focus on the first interaction of the customers
Building multiple features for your product, and ignoring what you want your customer to achieve during their first interaction is the path to disaster.
Sean advised that 50% of the effort you put into your product should go towards users’ first experience. If they can’t complete what you want the first time, they won’t be coming back for the other cool features.
Be a show’er then a grow’er
Focusing on a product which does not grab anyone’s interest is the quickest way to fail. Sean mentioned that if 40% or more would be distraught then you should start to scale.
If not, go back to your product – there’s more work to be done. Sean suggested to get customer’s feedback through a survey. If users are not sharing feedback through a survey, then it is better to email or call them individually and have one to one discussion.
Get early feedback
The most common mistake made by entrepreneurs is spending endless hours to make a perfect product with the dream that customers will love their end product.
In traditional marketing, the product passes through multiple rounds of development, testing, and is finally rolled out, expecting that there will be minimal changes in the future.
In the new-age method, the growth hacker will instead crawl towards the creation of what marketers call the minimum viable product (MVP), which fulfils the basic requirements of the customers.
The growth hacker will introduce the advanced features of the product only after taking the early adopters’ feedback and gathering insights about users using advanced analytics.
Growth Hacking Tips From Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal is the Author of book “Hooked”.
Nir Eyal has very well explained how to create Habit-forming products. As per Nir “A company that forms strong user habits enjoys several benefits to its bottom line”.
Every company wants to keep users activated and engaged on their platform. And one of winning techniques to keep the user engaged is by Hooking them to your platform.
One of the core component of Hook model is Trigger.
Trigger ignites the Hook model. Triggers can be internal or external.
External triggers grab users’ attention by alerting them with an instant short message like outlook’s email notification, Facebook’s browser notification of comment by your friend and more.
While the internal triggers are invoked without marketing or external stimuli, external triggers need to align with an internal trigger to enable the users’ action. Make sure to introduce right external triggers which map with user’s internal triggers.
Growth Hacking Tips From Neil Patel
Neil is the founder of CrazyEgg, HelloBar, KissMetrics.
Don’t target everybody
Every product goes through a lifecycle. There are various stages in which marketers should understand. This is known as the law of diffusion of innovation.
The third level is the most appealing level to reach the masses and to achieve it, you need to cross the 1st two levels.
Create a product which is appealing to innovators and early adopters.
If you want to reach out to everyone then you are going to lose the focus to reach out to the first set of 14-16% of innovators or early adopters. And for this, it is very important to know your customers.
You can know your customers by interviewing them, competitive studies, reading about the success or failure of the similar products.
The outcome of this should be a unique customer profile which describes an individual getting the benefit from this product. To begin with, just focus on these set of customers.
Growth Tips From Dave McClure
Dave is the former marketing director at PayPal.
Every customer is unique and follows a different journey during every purchase of a product or service. The growth hacking funnel, therefore, should define all the progression paths clearly to enable the audience throughout their purchase cycles.
In order to convert, the audience has to progress through various stages of the funnel, and the growth hacking funnel differs a lot from the traditional marketing funnel.
Dave McClure understood this difference and came up with his version of Growth hacking funnel which is known by acronym AARRR:
Acquisition: Audience lands on the website through various sources.
Activation: The first experience makes the visitor happy.
Retention: Spends time and comes back again.
Referral: Tells her family and friends about the product.
Revenue: Completes the transaction which helps in monetizing the product
As the growth hacker or marketer, you need not apply the same metrics. Pick up the relevant metrics which works for your business. Although the threshold might be different.
About The Author
Apurva Chamaria is an investor and a bestselling author. His first book, You Are the Key, was a national bestseller. His second book, “Master Growth Hacking” is open for orders on Amazon and Flipkart now. Gaurav Kakkar heads the digital marketing engagements for HCL’s clients in North America.
Over the past couple of years, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in India have undergone major transformations to keep up with the growing demand in the country’s credit market.
Subsequent to the ease in regulations, a number of new NBFCs were established to supply credit to consumers. However, access to financial services was only restricted to a small segment of consumers/ borrowers with existing credit histories and profiles.
On the other hand, the unbanked sections of the population, or those with limited exposure to institutional credit were not affected much with these developments, finding themselves in more or less the same situation as before.
In the last five years, however, innovations in IT and development of new digital tools and technologies have simplified the way consumers access banking and financial services.
Simultaneously, the rising popularity of alternative credit models and lending products from around the globe led to the creation of the online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform (sector) in India.
A form of crowdfunding which uses an online platform to match lenders with borrowers to provide unsecured loans, P2P lending’s origin can be traced as far back as 2005 when the world’s first platform was launched in the UK.
How P2P Lending Is Bridging India’s Credit Gap
The development of financial technologies, or fintech, by integrating banking processes with information technology has enabled the creation of financial products and services that can be delivered to consumers at scale, and at a fraction of the cost incurred by conventional banks and NBFCs.
The alternative lending sector has a greater relevance in a country like India, where more than half the total population is unbanked or underserved.
A large number of these are new-to-credit consumers with no credit history or record of transacting with traditional banking and financial institution.
But it is the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector that truly stands to benefit from a unique credit model like P2P lending platform.
Historically, MSMEs have been underserved by the traditional banking sector which has generally categorised these enterprises as risky due to their small size and the lack of usable financial data for effective assessment of their creditworthiness.
In addition, the costs involved in delivering credit to this segment have generally been higher than the returns derived from it, making them less lucrative prospects for traditional lenders in the country.
As a result, there are more than 50 Mn MSMEs with an unmet demand for credit worth $198 Bn, according to the Fintech Trends India Report 2018 by PWC.
The alternative lending sector, including P2P lending platforms, took advantage of the limitations of traditional banks in India, which have grown at a dismal rate due to mounting losses, tougher regulations, and years of under-investment in technology and modernisation of existing infrastructures.
The peer-to-peer (P2P) lending model enables borrowers and lenders to interact directly with each other through an open and transparent online marketplace, without the involvement of banks or financial intermediaries.
Borrowers registered on a P2P lending platform simply need to provide their funding requirement along with their personal and financial details which lenders can access in order to decide whether they want to invest in a borrower or not.
A single borrower’s loan may be funded by one or more lenders on the platform and monthly repayment must be made to each of the individual lenders.
Thus, by eliminating intermediaries and their incremental margins, borrowers can access credit at lower costs, while lenders can make higher returns on their surplus and idle funds.
Furthermore, with the development of advanced technological architectures that enables deployment of products at scale, P2P lending companies growing at a greater pace than traditional financial institutions.
Tech-driven P2P lending eliminates the long delivery processes and leverages analytics and automation to manage and analyse huge volumes of alternative data generated by consumers and facilitate credit for borrowers in real time.
P2P Lending As An Extended Credit Enabler For The RBI
Over the past few years, major global economies such as the USA, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and China, have taken steps to regulate P2P lending in order to establish it as a mainstream financial service sector.
From October 2017 onwards, the online P2P lending industry was officially recognised in India as a financial services segment to be regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The RBI devised a regulatory framework for all P2P lending companies, which will be categorised as NBFC-P2Ps, stipulated the minimum NOF (Net Owned Fund), laid down various regulatory and prudential requirements within this framework.
Effectively P2P lending platform has been recognised as NBFC- P2P industry with better credentials and respect in the mind of the Lenders, Investors, and Borrowers.
The RBI’s decision to recognise and regulate the P2P lending industry has given a much-needed push to the cause of financial inclusion in the Indian economy.
Given the technology behind P2P lending is relatively new and still evolving, the RBI’s move serves to recognise its value and its implications for the Indian economy’s growth.
Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by an NGO, Telecom Watchdog, the Delhi high court, on Monday, issued notices to the centre, ecommerce companies Flipkart and Amazon.
Filed through the advocate Pranav Sachdeva, the PILalleged that the two companies have violated FDI norms defined under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and circumvented the norms by routing popular products at much cheaper rates through proxy controlled sellers.
Further, the companies were also blamed for cornering small businesses and brick-and-mortar retailers in the market.
A bench of Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar have sought the responses from the Centre, Amazon, and Flipkart by November 11.
According to the petition, Flipkart and Amazon circumvented the Press Note 3 — a document that spells out FDI norms for ecommerce. “… to circumvent the PN-3/2016 (Press Note 3), both Amazon and Flipkart have created multiple entities and/or created ‘name lending’ companies and/or ‘controlled sellers’ through which they route such hot-selling stocks,” the petition filed by the NGO said.
The petition added that both the ecommerce giants, under the names of lending companies, were buying branded goods in bulk (at discounts) from manufacturers, rendering small sellers uncompetitive by a wide margin, thus influencing prices, which was in violation of FDI norms.
Through these sellers, the two maintain complete control on the price of goods sold on their platforms, a practice that violated the FDI norms of the country, the PIL said.
Both Amazon and Flipkart are backed by heavy foreign funding and operate through a marketplace model under which they’re not allowed to influence the prices of products sold on their websites or to hold inventory.
The petition also mentioned the example of Cloudtail, which sells on Amazon.in. It said “…FDI is not allowed in an entity operating on the inventory based e-commerce model…. Cloudtail buys goods in bulk from many manufacturers and sells them on the online platform of Amazon Seller.”
The PIL alleged that FDI norms were circumvented, and that Amazon had created a new company named Prione Business Services, which was a joint venture between the Amazon Group and the Catarman Advisors LLP. This entity is the owner of Cloudtail.
Meanwhile, after the new FDI norms came into force with the issue of Press Note 3, Flipkart had devised a new method under which it looked for some name lenders that would form companies and, through them, the invoicing for goods would be routed.
Flipkart, in order to avoid any direct linkages, was also using completely different names which had no correlation with the names of their respective companies. For example, Superconnect is the brand name that appears on Flipkart’s screen whereas the actual name is Shreyash Retail.
Earlier, Inc42 had reported that a special group would be created to keep a check on violations of FDI policy by online retail platforms.
The separate wing was to be a transient measure to enforce the existing policy and handle any grievances related to the implementation of Press Note 3.
Recently, ecommerce companies such as Shopclues and Snapdeal welcomed the government’s decision to reinforce the implementation of Press Note 3 for FDI, stating that it would facilitate a level-playing field for marketplaces as well as sellers.
Earlier, in April, the Indian Cellular Association (ICA) had urged commerce minister Suresh Prabhu to take action against Amazon and Flipkart, alleging that the ecommerce companies were violating FDI rules by offering discounts on mobile phones and other products through intermediaries or partner companies.
Bengaluru-based healthtech startup HealthSignz has raised $5 Mn in a Pre-series A funding round led by New Zealand-based Nirvana Health Group founder, Dr Kantilal Patel.
The startup plans to utilise the fund towards scaling its artificial intelligence (AI)-based health intelligence engine (HIE) that monitors users’ health records and comes up with apt solutions — whether it be medicines, yoga, meditation, or doctor consultation — based on their age and sex.
According to Hanumantha Rao, co-founder and CEO of HealthSignz, the platform, which caters to both B2B and B2C users, is currently running in a pilot mode. The startup plans to commercially launch the platform by August this year.
“Accessibility and affordability to basic healthcare treatment continues to be a challenge in India. We see HealthSignz delivering great value for capital intensive tertiary care centre to stand alone practicing providers for treating illness, and enhancing overall wellness through disease prevention,” Rao said.
HealthSignz was launched in 2014 by Rao along with three other co-founders Dr Vinod P Nair, Dr Rampapa Rao Ambati and Surendranath Ch. The founders had infused around $2 Mn to start the platform. Currently in its pilot phase, the platform has already gathered over 10 lakh individual users and 400 B2B partners. It charges a flat rate to its B2B clients who can also customise their healthcare services for its clients using the platform.
As part of its offerings, the startup has also developed an application Enliva for consumers, which is powered by HIE, for mobile users. The application is available to individual users and even doctors, diagnostic labs and pharmacists to manage patients appointments, creation and sharing of personal health records (PHR) along with financial records.
Nirvana Health Group founder Dr Kantilal Patel said, “HealthSignz digital platform creates a unified connect between every consumer and multiple facets of the healthcare ecosystem enabling scalability, geo-spread and efficient medical delivery to all. We are excited to partner with the HealthSignz team.”
Healthtech Startups And The Industry
Just today, another Bengaluru-based SaaS platform HealthPlix raised $3 Mn in a Series A round from IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital. HealthPlix offers a full-stack solution for doctors and clinics by automating lab reports, billing, e-prescriptions, etc.
Similarly, other healthtech players like MedPlus, 1mg, NetMeds, Punit Soni’s Suki, Visit, Innovaccer, Zoctr, Lybrate, and Tricog, among others are offering various healthcare solutions in India.
According to Inc42India Tech Startup Funding Report 2017, the sector witnessed an all-time high with 111 deals in 2017. The healthtech startups raised over $333 Mn in funding in 2017.
The sector continues to be one of the biggest revenue and employment generating sectors in India. IBEG report suggests the sector is poised to reach $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn. With the latest funding, HealthSignz looks ready to diversify its offerings and cater to a wider audience in this growing market.
Soon after entering the Unicorn club with $210 Mn in fresh funding, food delivery company Swiggy has now launched its membership programme — Swiggy SUPER — which gives users unlimited free deliveries across all restaurants, irrespective of the distance or time of day.
Further, the membership aims to make ordering food online more affordable and accessible by offering benefits such as no surge fee and quicker issue resolution of issues through a dedicated customer care team.
Available to select customers across seven cities, the company is offering one-month and three-month subscription plans, with the current fee ranging from INR 99-INR 149 for a one-month plan.
Anuj Rathi, VP of product at Swiggy, said, “With a very large restaurant partner network and an industry best delivery time, Swiggy has become an integral part of the food ordering experiences of Indian consumers. SUPER is the result of understanding some of their biggest pain points when it comes to food delivery and making it more convenient, affordable and simple. In the coming months, we will continue to bring more value through SUPER by adding more benefits and growing the existing offerings on this service.”
Going further, the company plans to add more benefits to this membership, including exclusive offers from its restaurant and payment partners.
Swiggy Services: Focus On Customers
At the time when the industry is abuzz with the reports that Swiggy is all set to capture a larger share of the delivery pie by extending its services across the entire hyperlocal delivery market.
Inc42 had reported that Swiggy is launching a concierge-like service and will enable buying and delivery of products from any store in the city, including pharmacies, electronics, groceries, and even flower and gift shops. It will also feature a customer-to-customer pick-up and drop service.
The foodtech company started with a cloud kitchen and also introduced a new supply chain, while aggressively working to hike up its market share in the food delivery segment.
Over the last several months, it has launched a slew of new services such as Access, long-distance deliveries, and Capital Assist, to help restaurants serve consumers in new and better ways.
Swiggy Scheduled enables users to plan and order their meals for lunch, dinner, breakfast, or party menus in advance. With this service, users can select from slots of 30 minutes to place orders a minimum of two hours and a maximum of 48 hours in advance. They won’t be charged any delivery and cancellation fees until the order becomes live.
With continued product diversifications and over 35,000 restaurant partners spread across 17 citie, Swiggy posted a record increase of 500% in its revenues in FY17 and saw order volumes nearly double since its previous funding in May 2017.
As of now, Swiggy claims its average delivery time of under 35 minutes is an industry benchmark.
Zomato Membership, Treats
With a 45% year-on-year growth on a revenue of $74 Mn in FY 18, Zomato is aggressively focussing on its Zomato Gold service, where it partners with restaurants to offer deals like 2+2 on drinks and 1+1 on food and has partnered with 2,000 restaurants.
The Gold subscription, launched in November last year, and priced at INR 1,899 for a year, has over 150K subscribers.
Zomato’s food delivery services now available in 21 cities in India and its premium subscription program Zomato Gold already has over 400K paid subscribers and over 2500 partner restaurants in India.
Zomato also recently launched Zomato Piggybank – a reward points program with which all its online ordering users. The company claimed that Zomato Piggybank crossed over 200K member sign-ups within 48 hours of its launch.
The unicorn recorded $11 Mn operating burn in FY18, in comparison to $15 Mn in FY17.
Globally, Zomato is present in 24 countries and claims to serve more than 50 Mn users every month.
The company claims that every month, over 19 Mn users in India use Zomato to make informed food choices.
According to a study by Netscribes Research, the online food delivery segment in India is expected to expand by 34%-36% between 2015 and 2020. Besides, the country’s hyperlocal market is poised to touch $345 Mn by 2029.
With the two biggest Indian food delivery players — Swiggy and Zomato — coming on par with their respective unicorn statuses and membership programmes, the food war is set to heat up further.
India is known for its rich cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity but this often plays a role in hampering communications throughout the country — a problem that can be easily resolved using the cutting-edge technology that we see around us today. Taking this idea forward, the Indian government has launched e-Aksharayan — a desktop software for converting any scanned or printed Indian language documents into fully editable text.
Screenshots Of What Appears To Be e-Aksharayan Software At Work (source-Wikipedia)
The application, which is available in seven Indian languages, was launched yesterday by Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
At the event, Sawhney commented upon how demand for regional content is growing and that we should take the idea of India stack ahead and create ‘India language stack’.
Sawhney also laid emphasis on the fact that barrier-free communication is critical for the country and that the goal is to have real-time translation capability in each of the Indic languages.
Swaran Lata, Program Head and Director of the Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) initiative undertaken by the government, said that they have developed a technology that will convert text to speech in 12 Indian languages and are working on all languages simultaneously to enhance the content.
According to its website, TDIL is a program initiated by MeitY, with the objective to develop information-processing tools to facilitate human-machine interaction in Indian languages and to develop technologies to access multilingual knowledge resources.
“By 2021, Indic language users will grow from current 234 million to reach 536 million, and there is a need to localize Indic languages and find ways to incorporate it to the internet,” said Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director, Public Policy, Google.
Out of more than 90 million digital users surveyed under a study undertaken by Times Internet earlier this year, more than half were found to be non-English readers. The study also revealed that regional languages among younger audiences were fast growing, with consumption among Indians in the 25-34 age group being the highest.
Whether it be government departments, OTT players, investors or television executives, everyone is realising the importance of vernacular content and this is only going to grow.
After the Sridhar Vembu-led Zoho, Freshworks has officially become the second unicorn to emerge from SaaS hub Chennai. Freshworks just received a $100 Mn investment, taking the company’s valuation to $1.5 Bn, post-money.
The round was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners, with participation from CapitalG.
The latest funding round has raised the total investment in the SaaS company to $250 Mn.
The company, founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, was initially named Freshdesk and was rebranded to Freshworks later in June 2017, in line with its increasing suite of applications and bundled multi-product suite.
Freshworks plans to use the funds for international expansion in its key markets — the US and the UK — as well as to continue investment in its integrated SaaS platform and the Indian SaaS market.
The funding announcement came a few weeks after Freshworks claimed to have crossed $100 Mn in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and launched its fully integrated cloud bundle — Freshworks 360.
127 Countries, 150K Clients, And Counting
Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, believes that Freshworks is a truly global company with customers across 127 countries.
Sequoia first invested in Freshworks during its $55 Mn Series F round in November 2016. It also acted as a lead investor in the Series F round.
“Sequoia first backed Freshworks in 2016 and didn’t hesitate for a moment to double down on the investment. Girish and his team have worked relentlessly to build Freshworks into a leading SaaS company from India,” said Bhatnagar.
Freshworks is currently headquartered in San Bruno, California, in the US, and has offices in India, the UK, Germany, and Australia.
It claims to have over 150K clients worldwide using the Freshworks software product suites, including leading companies such as NHS, Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba, and Cisco, among others.
How Freshworks Paved Its Path To Success
So, what gives Chennai-based SaaS companies their sass? In the case of Freshworks, we assessed three major driving factors that led the company to become a unicorn within eight years of its launch:
Strong financials
An acquisition-led growth strategy
Bundled suite of services with individual products
Here’s a deep dive into these factors:
Strong Financials
According to Freshworks’ FY17 MCA filings (as accessed by Inc42 DataLabs), Freshworks reported a total revenue of INR 199.2 Cr ($30.65 Mn) last year, an increase of 109% from its FY16 revenue of INR 94.89 Cr ($14.16 Mn).
Interestingly, it has doubled its revenue every year since 2014. The company claims to have reached $100 Mn in annual recurring revenue.
This means that it would have clocked a revenue of more than INR 680 Cr ($100 Mn) in FY18. The financial statements for FY18 have not been filed with the MCA yet.
Further, the revenue split for FY17 shows that 98% of Freshworks’ revenue is from sales of software services.
If we talk about expenses, in FY17, it recorded a total spend of INR 171.70 Cr, a spike of 111% from its total expense of INR 81.55 Cr in FY16.
Like in the case of its revenue, Freshworks has doubled its expenses every year. However, the percentage increment has come down as observed in the year-on-year trend.
The Inc42 DataLabs team also noted that in FY17, 75% of its total spend was on employee-related expenses, amounting to INR 128.10 Cr ($19.7 Mn). Going ahead, the company’sadvertising expenses were quite low at INR 28.11 Lakh in FY17.
Strong Leadership And Acquisition-Led Growth Strategy
So far, Freshworks has acquired nine startups. The majority of them were aqui-hires, intended to bolster the tech team of the company. With the latest funding round of $100 Mn, Freshworks is open to more such acquisitions in the near future.
As Arvind Parthiban, director of marketing at Freshworks, told Inc42, “All our acquisitions so far have either been to bolster our team or fill a gap in technology. If there are similar scenarios in the future we will definitely consider that option.”
Recently, the company has also appointed Suresh Seshadri, the former vice-president of finance and treasury at AppDynamics, as its chief financial officer.
“With the addition of Suresh leading our financial management and strategy towards a path of free cash flow breakeven and our latest, and likely last, private funding round in place, we believe we have a unique opportunity to attract customers from around the globe who have been let down by legacy solutions,” Girish said.
Bundled Suite Of Services With Individual Products
According to Parthiban, Freshdesk was the product they started with, as their flagship platform. However, soon they took the multi-product route and also rebranded in line with the same.
“Transitioning into a multi-product company was always on the cards, but we have managed to crack it well. We have bolstered our team with top talent and built new products through smart acquisitions. We are also very focused on Freshworks’ path to becoming an integrated customer engagement platform and the initial reception has exceeded our expectations,” he added.
At present, apart from its bundled Fresh360 offering, the company offers seven individual products.
As Parthiban said in an earlier interaction with Inc42, “Being able to emulate the Freshdesk support model across different SaaS segments and expanding our product line to CRM, ITSM, Caller, Chat, etc, has been our biggest driver.”
Chennai Express: How The City Is Becoming The SaaS Hub Of India
Inc42 DataLabs suggests that in the period between January 2014 and June 2018, Indian SaaS startups raised $2.79 Bn across 520 deals.
Of these, Chennai alone was home to 32 deals, raising $289.73 Mn in the said period.
The Chennai SaaS saga goes back over two decades. It started with Sridhar Vembu-led Zoho, which led an impressive growth with 21 years of profitability and no external VC funding raised so far. Zoho is now a unicorn.
The unprecedented growth of Zoho opened up the road for SaaS-based startups such as Freshworks, Indix, and Ramco on the international platform. This has made Chennai the primary contender for becoming the SaaS hub of India.
Freshworks is walking in Zoho’s footsteps and has become another inspiration for SaaS startups based in the city. Parthiban says that it is heartening to see the entrepreneurial activity in Chennai.
Earlier, about a year ago, when Inc42 had asked Vembu about the evolution of the Indian SaaS market, he had said about 10 years ago, there was hardly a SaaS market in India. This was primarily due to very poor broadband penetration.
He later said in an interview with Inc42, “Today, thanks to the rapid spread of mobile broadband, the market is a lot more ready to consider cloud-based solutions. The Indian customer is now ready. India is on the threshold of a massive wave of technology adoption, as part of a major growth wave.”
Expected to reach $1 Bn by 2020, the Indian SaaS/enterprise software market currently accounts for 9% of all software sales. It expected to cross $50 Bn in the next 10 years, according to a report by Google and Accel Partners in 2016.
Despite these market projections, most SaaS founders believe that while India is the best place to build SaaS products, it’s not an ideal market to sell them. However, the Indian SaaS market is growing slowly but surely and may just prove them wrong.
Coming back to Chennai, Parthiban said: “There is clearly an abundance of talent in the city and thousands of yet to be explored opportunities; we will continue to support the Chennai ecosystem in every way we can. Entering into the unicorn club certainly is a significant milestone, it is also something that was bound to happen. Now that we are here, we see it as the beginning of another journey.”
Freshworks is one of the few SaaS startups that have mastered the secret sauce of phenomenal growth and scale, along with positive revenues. The unicorn tag is the jewel in its crown. But not one to rest on its laurels, Freshworks is indeed looking to start the next stage of its journey with its newfound boost of funds.
Bengaluru-based CSR lifestyle management platform Goodera has raised an undisclosed amount in a Series B funding round led by SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, and Omidyar Network.
The startup had raised Series A funding of $5.5 Mn from Nexus Ventures Partners and Omidyar Network in 2017.
In another development, Mumbai Angels (MA), which had first invested in Goodera in 2015, also announced its exit from Goodera. Nandini Manisghka, CEO and managing director of Mumbai Angels, in a press statement, said, “Our focus on exits is key to the value we add as a network.” The first exit by Mumbai Angels was when Goodera raised Series A funding in 2017.
We expect more of our companies funded at the angel round to become the investment of choice for VCs as they look for quality investments.”
Goodera has developed a platform for companies to keep track of the progress of their corporate social responsibility projects (CSR) and conduct measure-impact assessments. The platform offers companies a dashboard through which they can manage grant requests, among others. The startup was founded in 2014 by Richa Bajpai and Abhishek Humbad.
Goodera has more than 150 large enterprise clients and over 24 Global Fortune 500 companies have adopted its solution to manage, measure, and report their CSR projects across more than 30 countries. Goodera competes with startups such as Corporate 360, CyberGrants, Yourcause, CAUSECAST, and FLUXX, among others.
The energy sector leads in terms of CSR spends, closely followed by financial services, IT and ITes, metals and mining, FMCG, auto, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, engineering and manufacturing, chemicals, and finally, telecom companies.
Chemical and telecom are the sectors that spent the least on their CSR activities, even though chemicals showed a positive growth of 53% in FY17.
The two-day event of Healthon 2018 focused on highlighting rural health and wellnesssolutions developed by startups has concluded with Medblocks, Medsamaan, and Arogyam Medisoft emerging as winners.
In the 24-hour hackathon, 10 startups brainstored to code, build and design the solution using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), open data, among others, read the statement.
The event was organised by incubator Indigram Labs Foundation (ILF), atechnology business under the Department of Science and Technology (DST). ILF said that 55 ideas were received from over 240 students applications for the Healthon.
The winner of Healthon 2018, Medblocks, started by a third-year student Sidharth Ramesh from Kasturba Medical College in Manipal has built a platform for storing medical records using a peer-to-peer technology.
Similarly, the runners-up, Medsamaan –a startup started by Romita Ghosh, Amita Das, Ritz Chatterjee –optimises the procurement and supply of medical devices and disposables. Arogyam Medisoft Solutions started by Partha Chakraborty and Oli Biswas has developed a remote health monitoring platform used for various health-related tests.
Indigram Labs has also announced to start an accelerator program starting August, aimed at leveraging agri entrepreneurship ecosystem. In a media statement, the incubator said, “Starting mid-August, we will launch Northeast Agri Accelerator program, which will go on for six months covering the 7-8 northeast states.”
Indigram Labs was founded in 2016, aimed at fostering creativity and innovation in agriculture, renewable energy and rural healthcare industry. Indigram, as a group, has been around for 18 years and has promoted, incubated multiple ventures in these years. It has set-up more than 1,800 agri-based ventures through its ACABC programme and is currently promoting 250 FPOs.
Founder of Indigram Labs, Sunil Khairnar, earlier told Inc42 “At Indigram, we follow rigorous identification and selection process, followed by proper mentoring and business capacity building. We ensure that our incubates get access to appropriate technologies and essential funding, thus creating a market-ready incubated venture.”
According to its website, the Labs aims at incubating 100 startups in next 10 years.
Gurugram-based healthtech startup MyHealthcare has raised $2 Mn in a Series A funding round led by Delhi-based Hunch Ventures and angel investor Ajay Nanavati. The startup has built a mobile-based healthcare application that connects patients with doctors, hospitals, and offers services such as outpatient therapy, physician, and pharmacy services.
Shyatto Raha, founder and director of InnoCirc Ventures, said, “In the next phase we are working towards the use of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) for predictive analysis for assisting caregivers in the diagnosis process.”
MyHealthcare is operated by Gurugram-based InnoCirc Ventures. The mobile-based platform aims to provide information on the benefits of healthcare to users by engaging with their healthcare needs and records, along with providing emergency services, video consultation, health monitoring, etc.
According to Raha, MyHealthcare works in consultation with its network of hospitals. Currently available in India, the startup is looking to take the platform to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Myanmar. The platform has added private healthcare providers such as Fortis Group of Hospitals, Cygnus Hospitals, PH Siloam Hospitals in Myanmar), on its client’s list, according to its statement.
Its latest investor, Hunch Ventures, has previously led funding for legaltech startup SpotDraf and online marketplace startup vClusive, among others. The private VC firm is founded by Karanpal Singh, founder and managing director of Hunch Ventures.
MyHealthcare: Solving The Post-IPD Challenge
MyHealthcare aims at bridging the availability gap of doctors, specialists, and fulfil the demand for healthcare givers. “We believe this gap can be bridged with data-driven healthcare solutions by transitioning the care process from paper to digital form,” Raha said.
Another investor, Ajay Nanavati, was cited in the statement as saying, “The challenge of post-IPD (indoor patient department) patient care, given the pressures on hospitalisation, needs a robust, data-driven delivery mechanism, which MyHealthcare offers.”
MyHealthcare is operated by digital healthcare company and VC firm InnoCirc. It was founded by Shyatto Raha, Aneesh Nair, and Divya Laroyia. The company specialises in creating digital strategies, digital roadmaps for brands and organisations, along with designing and developing mobile-based applications across healthcare, education, retail, media.
The healthtech sector in India is buzzing with activity. Just this week, two Bengaluru-based startups raised capital. SaaS platform HealthPlixraised $3 Mn in a Series A round from IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital while AI-based HealthSignzraised $5 Mn in a Pre-series A funding round led by New Zealand-based Nirvana Health Group founder, Dr Kantilal Patel.
Recently, Mumbai-based healthtech startup Clinivantage Healthcare Technologies raised $1 Mn from US-based investor group Metaform Ventures LLC.
Meanwhile, armed with new funds, MyHealthcare looks ready to diversify its offerings and cater to a wider audience in this growing market.
Technology is developing rapidly and the world as we know is changing accordingly. New technologies are looking to increase convenience and ease of interaction for the general consumer in various sections like e-commerce, grocery, transportation, and banking.
For example, peer-to-peer lending, robo advisory, and UPI are just some of the elements in this new wave of evolution which is looking to aid the general consumer. The objective of it all remains seamless user experience, increased security, and greater convenience.
In 2018, a number of these technologies will come to the fore (some of them already have) and look to evolve how we transact our finances.
To throw some more light on these new fintech tools that can change the world of finance, I decided to take a look at some imminent solutions.
The Ease of Digital Banking
Banks in India have slowly but surely accepted the idea of providing services to consumers at the touch of a button. They realised that bringing the solutions directly to the consumer’s smartphone allows them a greater chance of interaction, rather than waiting for them to come to the bank.
At the consumer’s end, the transaction with mobile apps is easier and faster than standing in a line or filling up a document to make a transaction.
As a result, the new wave of digital banking has the capability to provide more power to the consumer while allowing banks to gauge their preferences and create custom-tailored services.
One of the real show-of-faiths in this regard is the release of digital bank account services by some banks, which allows a consumer to open an account without even visiting a bank.
As banking services evolve beyond just transactions, consumers can be sure to enjoy a wide variety of solutions.
The Emergence of Blockchain Storage
Blockchain systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum have become popular due to their ability to ensure security in transactions and retain verifiability of information stored.
There is no single repository, yet information can be easily stored and accessed. However, the blockchain algorithm works in a way, which creates a secure repository for various types of information.
Using this technology, confidential data like consumer KYC can be stored and made accessible to banks and financial institutions. Today, consumers need to reproduce their KYC information for every instance of a financial transaction, whether it’s a loan, credit card, or buying a new car.
However, with blockchain-powered storage, institutions can easily verify the information without the need for consumers to reproduce the KYC documents. At the same time, the information remains safe so that unauthorized third-parties cannot hack into it or change the KYC information.
Robo Advisory Will Provide Better Solutions
Financial advisors are supposed to offer real fiscal advice depending upon the consumer’s need and aid effective matchmaking. However, that might not always be successful. With the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, robo-advisors can leverage big data to offer more efficient matchmaking between consumer needs and products.
Typically, robo advisory would use consumer insights and historical data to understand their choices, lifestyle, and needs to help with portfolio allocation, banking services, and such. A robo-advisor would be able to track investor mistakes, their reactions to market events, and accordingly offer advice.
Not only that, they can analyse savings and expenditure data to offer customized strategy so that consumers can meet their financial goals.
Fintech Tools Will Change How We Interact
As a result, the world around us is developing at a pace that can soon have us conduct all our banking on smartphones. You can open an account, make a deposit, transfer money, create new portfolios, store KYC documents, and even create a new fiscal strategy, without even talking to a human being.
It will provide increased convenience for the consumers while allowing businesses to offer better products and services.
platform to enterprises of all sizes.
