Unified Payments Interface (UPI) managing body National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is looking to add near-field communication (NFC) capabilities to its payments infrastructure to take on its rivals Visa, Mastercard and another NPCI-owned service Rupay.

Visa, Mastercard and Rupay offer contactless tap-and-go payments at point-of-sale, using the NFC feature. The tap-and-go contactless payment is not only easy and convenient to use but has gained further impetus due to the pandemic.

The introduction of NFC payment system will allow NPCI to expand UPI’s reach to offline merchants by tapping the PoS ecosystem. Further, it will trigger more peer-to-merchant transactions, according to a Mint report citing sources. NPCI is in talks with several payment aggregators to push the product across point-of-sale (PoS) devices.

Once enrolled, a user can simply tap their devices on a PoS system, choose their preferred UPI payment app and add their pin to make payments. Meanwhile, for payment cards, users can make transactions below INR 2K can be made by simply tapping the card on a PoS device. The users need to add their pin for transactions above INR 2K.

To maximise UPI traceability, NPCI also wants to allow partner banks to issue prepaid cards and vouchers on the UPI network to help customers to make payments. This will be an alternative to QR codes and aim to target feature phone users, who had so far been left out of the UPI ecosystem.

“These functionalities are in line to add more use-cases to the UPI infrastructure. With zero merchant discount rate (MDR) now being a pressing issue, NPCI is looking at newer revenue streams for players and partner banks,” a payment analyst told the publication.

UPI is currently the most popular digital payments system, all thanks to its conveniences. The payment system has been growing rapidly and nearned 1.5 Bn transactions mark in July 2020. UPI has recorded 1.49 Bn transactions worth INR 2,90,537 Cr last month, against 1.34 Bn transactions worth INR 2,61,835 Cr in June.

Yet the NPCI is looking to cap transactions for digital payments players like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and others to prevent any negative impact in case the system was to collapse. NPCI has asked apps to limit their payments if they exceed 50% of all UPI transactions in the first year of the implementation of the rules, 40% in the second year and 33% from third year onwards. The body had reportedly taken the decision earlier in July, and will be applicable from April 1, 2021. It has been working on these capping guidelines since last August.

The post Soon, You May Have Tap-and-Go Offline Payment Feature For UPI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The joint Parliamentary committee (JPC) currently examining the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, (PDP) has called US tech giant Facebook to give its deposition on the matter in its second meeting on August 10. 

Representatives from the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Centre and L&L Partners-Law Office have also been invited for the meeting. 

The PDP Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in December last year by IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. The bill sets rules for how personal data should be stored, while also talking about people’s rights with respect to their personal information. The bill proposes to create a data protection authority (DPA) to monitor violations of norms and keep an eye on incidents of data theft, privacy breaches, among others.

The bill also mandates various penalties for violations of norms and incidents of data theft and illegal processing. For violation of certain proposed norms, the bill mandates a penalty of INR 5 Cr or 2% of global turnover, whichever is higher, while for data leakage or illegal processing, it stipulates the highest penalty of INR 15 Cr or 4% of the turnover. Almost all companies in India across all sectors dealing with customer data would have to comply with the provisions of the bill. Foreign companies operating in India and handling data of Indian users would also have to comply. The only exception for the bill will be “small entities” (businesses like small retailers that collect information manually and meet other conditions to be specified by the DPA).

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), an Indian digital liberties organisation, has previously expressed concern about the bill’s ‘reasonable purposes’ exemption under clause 14 of the bill, which allows publicly available personal data of users to be accessed for reasonable purposes. “We think that this is a backdoor towards profiling and allows collation of demographic/individual sentiments on issues. We also think this would allow the government (and other powerful data fiduciaries) to aggregate social networking activities without the need for individual consent. The right to privacy is applicable in public spaces. Therefore, we proposed that this provision be removed from the reasonable purposes exception since it is an excessive encroachment on people’s privacy in public spaces,” IFF’s submission on the bill reads. 

Government agencies have also been exempted from the application of the provisions of the bill under clause 35 of the PDP bill, which provides the government access to personal data for reasons related to national security, integrity and sovereignty, public order, friendly relations with foreign states, and for preventing any cognisable offence relating to above. 

The clause in the bill has been flagged by opposition members and domain experts for expanding the scope of exemptions while diluting important safeguards. According to a special report by policy think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), “blanket exemptions and lack of executive or judicial safeguards will fail to meet the standards laid out by the Supreme Court in the KS Puttaswamy vs. Union of India case, where it ruled that measures restricting the right to privacy must be backed by law, serve a legitimate aim, be proportionate to the objective of the law, and have procedural safeguards against abuse. Vague grounds that trigger exemptions, absence of procedure in granting exemptions and the lack of independent oversight are major concerns.”

The JPC deliberating on the PDP Bill has also held meetings with other stakeholders such as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). 

The post Parliamentary Panel Calls Facebook For Deposition On PDP Bill appeared first on Inc42 Media.

On Wednesday (July 29, 2020), HRD Minister Ramesh Nishank and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar announced the launch of new National Education Policy (NEP), after approval from the Union Cabinet under Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in the day. According to the government, the new education policy aims at making India a global knowledge superpower and emphasises on digital education and remote learning along with the question of equitable access to education given the digital gap in the country.

The new education policy has opened doors for edtech startups, where they can help schools, students and teachers in providing a seamless experience, thereby enabling students to identify their interest areas and skills. However, with the existing digital lag in rural areas, the need for solid technology infrastructure plays a vital role in order for this to work.  

Javadekar said that the new policy is crucial as there was no change in the education policy for the last 34 years. The new NEP will be replacing the existing National Policy on Education 1986, which was later modified in 1992.

Key Highlights Of National Education Policy 2020

• Universalisation of early childhood care education (ECCE)
• National mission on foundational literacy and numeracy
• 5+3+3+4 curricular and pedagogical structure
• Curriculum to integrate 21st-century skills, mathematical thinking and scientific temper
• No rigid separation between art and science, between curricular and extracurricular activities, between vocational and academic streams
• Education of gifted children
• Gender inclusion fund
• KGBV up to Grade 12
• Reduction in the curriculum to core concepts
• Vocational integration from class six onwards

According to the HRD Ministry, the present complex nomenclature of higher education institutes such as ‘deemed to be university,’ ‘affiliated university, ‘affiliating technical university,’ unitary university’ would be replaced simply by ‘university.’

Coming to the 5+3+3+4 curricular and pedagogical structure, the government has revealed a new 10+2 system, where the first five years of the school will comprise of the foundation stage including three years of pre-primary school and classes one and class two, followed by next three years will be segmented into a preparatory stage from classes three to class five, and the next three years of the middle stage from classes six to eight, and four years of secondary education stage from classes nine to 12.

In the secondary education stage, the government has included Korean language, among other foreign languages like Thai, Frech, German, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and Russian.

At the same time, the government’s three-language formula under NEP 2020 has faced criticism among the state government. Recently, the Tamil Nadu government rejected this and said that it will not deviate from two-language policy (Tamil and English).

Also, the schools will not have any rigid formation of streams of arts, commerce, science, and students can take up whichever courses they want.

In addition to this, the government has said that the new education policy suggests a reduction of the school curriculum to core subjects with a vocational integration, coding from class six onwards, along with developing a scientific temper in students from a young age, and would integrate 21st-century skills and mathematical thinking.

The government also said that the report card will include assessment of the students by both teachers and fellow students. It will also be introducing artificial intelligence (AI)-based assessment of students each year, where it plans to prepare teachers for the assessment reforms by 2023. Most importantly, the government also said that the board exams will test the students’ knowledge and its applications and not just role learning.

Speaking at the Smart India Hackathon 2020, Modi said that the new education policy focuses on interdisciplinary study and will ensure focus on what students want to learn. Further, he said that the government is focusing on the quality of education in India, and making sure that India’s education system is the most advanced and modern for students in the country.

Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor commenting on the NEP 2020, said that it is a much welcome move, however, raised questions as to why it was not brought up for a discussion in Parliament. “I am glad the Modi government has finally grasped the nettle, even if it took them six years to do so. Challenge is to ensure aspiration is matched by implementation,” he said, in his post on Twitter, where he added, “a number of suggestions made by some of us seem to have been taken into account.”

There is much to welcome in what we have seen of the #NewEducationPolicy2020 announced by @DrRPNishank. A number of suggestions made by some of us seem to have been taken into account. However,the question remains why this was not brought before Parliament first for discussion.

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 30, 2020

Startup Policies In July 2020 

Here are some of the biggest startup-related policy updates from across the country.

Govt Introduces New Guidelines For Online Classes

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has released new guidelines for online classes called ‘Pragyata.’ The new guidelines include limits set on-screen time for students and even on the number of sessions per day. This decision by the government comes into the picture after parents raised concerns about increased screen time due to online classes, which was being conducted the same as the pre-Covid-19 times.

Accordingly, schools have been given recommendations stating classes for pre-primary students should not exceed more than 30 minutes, for classes one to eight (two online sessions of up to 45 minutes), and for classes nine to 12 (four sessions of 30-45 minutes duration). In addition to this, the guidelines include eight steps of digital learning, including plan, review, arrange, guide, talk, assign, track and appreciate.

India’s Draft Ecommerce Policy Gets A New Look 

In a bid to ensure fair competition, consumer protection and data localisation, the government has made the second attempt at framing a draft ecommerce policy. The draft policy looks to tighten control over ecommerce companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Google among others, and is said to increase compliance worries for the tech giants.

In the 15-page draft reported by Bloomberg, one of the main highlights of the proposed new ecommerce law, include identifying information that will be restricted for harvesting, storage, use, transfer, assignment, processing and analysis.

In addition to this, the definition of ecommerce has been widened, and will now include buying, selling, marketing, distribution or providing access to goods, including digital products, or services. These will include aspects like B2C/B2B ecommerce marketplaces, internet-based consumer-facing content platforms, app-based ecommerce, connected device-based services and a hybrid combination among others.

Govt Releases A Second Draft Defence Policy To Reduce Dependence On Imports 

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced the release of the second draft of proposed new defence procurement guidelines, with a view to unveiling the formal policy later this year. Previously known as the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2020, have been renamed as the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020. According to a press statement, the new draft was amended by a defence procurement review committee in response to observations made by stakeholders on the first draft, which had ‘more than 10K pages of comments,’ along with the government’s reforms announced in May, which called for an increase in self-reliance in the face of supply chain disruption highlighted by Covid-19.

Accordingly, the government had decided to increase the cap on foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence from 46% to 76% and to introduce a new list ‘banning’ the import of unspecified types of defence equipment.

Govt Amends Export Policy On PPE And Masks 

Amid the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the country, the government announced that it will be revising the export policy on personal protective equipment (PPE) and masks. Accordingly, the export of medical equipment across all categories including medical goggles, masks, other than non-medical and non-surgical masks, medical nitrile and NBR gloves and face shields remain banned.

The government has, however, exempted surgical drapes, isolation aprons, surgical wraps and X-ray gowns.

The post Startup Policy Rundown: NEP Offers More Avenue For Edtech Startups & More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

At the outset of the nationwide lockdown in India, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in an AMA session with Inc42 that this pandemic will earn gaming a permanent place among Indian consumers. Almost five months since that day, with most Indians still limiting physical interactions to the minimum and the statement holds true now more than ever. 

As per Sensor Tower data, India saw close to 2.7 Bn game downloads in Q2 2020 over 50% higher than the 1.8 Bn downloads in Q1 2020. This was the highest number of game downloads around the world, followed by the United States and Brazil. This shows that the pandemic has indeed pushed Indians to look for newer forms of entertainment.

According to SuperGaming CEO Roby John, this consumer shift has come now because unlike YouTube and other passive consumption options, games are an interactive experience that also provides context to conversations. “You are talking to friends about what happens in the game and at the same time you are also talking about other things in life,” he added. 

SuperGaming is a social gaming platform for casual games. Launched just in June 2020, the app is expected to have features like group chat, voice calling, and game highlights among others. Currently, its list of games include Ludo Hero, Banate Raho (a version of the popular Pysch! for Indian audiences), Bull Fight, and Road Fight (driving and action) among others. The app also aggregates games that can be downloaded separately from the app store like Ninja Race and Gun Game. 

“Games like Fortnite are the new social network. They are a much more fun and authentic way of hanging out with friends than commenting on photos. However, these games are restricted to a more hardcore gaming audience. What we are building is a party hub around casual games, which is accessible to a much larger audience,” John told Inc42. 

He claimed that the games on SuperGaming are curated across categories to keep all interest groups in mind. It includes hardcore shooter games like battle royale but also our large category of casual trivia games. “We will only provide highly polished games here that we’ve been working on for three to five years, which have a day 1000 retention of 3%,”he added. 

Headquartered in Singapore with a development office in Pune, SuperGaming was founded by John, Navneet Waraich and Sanket Nadhani in 2019. John was previously the cofounder CEO of another gaming startup June Gaming, which is known for games like MaskGun and Ninjump Dash. Prior to that, he was also a cofounder at Y Combinator-backed educational games startup TapToLearn, so the SuperGaming founder has deep experience in the category.

Competing With A Bustling Gaming Field

SuperGaming has so far raised $1.3 Mn in seed funding from Dream Incubator, AET Fund (the venture arm of Akatsuki) and India’s Better Capital in late 2019. Global platforms competing with SuperGaming include Plato, Pago, Hoop, and more, while in India, the likes of MPL, WinZO, Zupee and others have also garnered a major share of the audience with their multi-game platforms as well. 

Speaking to Inc42 last year, MPL’s VP of engineering, Kaustubh Bhoyar said that following a multi-game approach allows startups to cater to a wide audience. “If you start building your own games, it takes lots of effort and time and you will still be limited to a few games. However, we have been able to cater to a varied segment of gamers. For instance, people are now looking for multiplayer games and we are providing that.”

However, this approach requires startups to be on the hunt for new IP and games as they scale up, and certainly requires plenty of capital. MPL, for instance, has raised over $40.5 Mn, while WinZO raised $5 Mn in Series A funding in July last year. The round was led by Kalaari Capital and messaging and payments platform Hike. Further, Zupee raised $8 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners India with the participation of Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, Orios Venture Partners. 

But the key difference in SuperGaming is the social media-focussed features. According to John, SuperGaming has been able to get a deep understanding of its users, over the years. “We are really good at understanding our target demographic about what they really like. We spent a lot of time talking to people everywhere to collect very specific information about users like their girlfriend’s name, or monthly budget, their preferred games etc,” he added.

Banking On Analytics For Freemium Success

Another competitive advantage of SuperGaming is that the founding team has over two decades of experience in game development. At June, John and Navneet Waraich worked on a gaming engine that helped developers track user behaviour. The June engine was capable of collecting data like how many matches a user has played, their winning rate, device type and even in-app spending history. Access to such data, enabled the company to understand user patterns and leverage them to achieve in-app purchases, noted John. 

Even though the June engine is not being used in SuperGaming, Waraich, who created June, is working on a similar feature set for SuperGaming. 

SuperGaming’s monetisation model follows a ‘free to play’ or freemium approach with in-app purchases and subscriptions. John claims that the new game engine helps the company to track every purchase that a user makes in the game including currency, gems, diamonds — everything is tracked in the system. Such tracking eventually allows the company to notice certain patterns emerge. 

A good freemium model looks like a recurring subscription, said the Supergaming cofounder. He claimed that once a player makes a significant purchase on the app and it improves their game, it incentivises them to continue making similar purchases. “If you spend more money and get a better gun which helps you win more matches — it inspires you to keep upgrading. It is similar to why users pay for Netflix subscriptions, to get the assurity of new and better content every month. 

Focus On Tier-1 Gamers

The initial launch of SuperGaming will be limited to 14 Tier 1 cities in India. Some of the customer acquisition strategies for the app include social media advertisements and Google universal app campaigns. The reason is to tap the core gaming audience in these cities and not the casual gamers who may want to join purely for rewards.

“Eventually this ends up attracting all classes of people,” claimed John, adding that the social network for gamers will only succeed when the engaged audience is into gaming and not just there because of trends. 

But such filtering out of users might prove to be a tough task, if indeed SuperGaming achieves the network effect. Given the fact that Tier 1 cities have a higher density of casual gamers than Tier 2 cities, the targeting might not be foolproof. 

Focus on Tier 1 audiences also limits SuperGaming’s addressable base in India, where about 60% of the population lives in non-urban areas and prefers to converse in regional languages. Most of the games on the SuperGaming are tailored for Hindi speaking audiences with the use of Hinglish phrases and references to Bollywood pop culture, which is again a strange way to try to attract Tier 1 gamers, who largely prefer English in everyday online communication and are more habituated to Netflix than Bollywood these days. 

SuperGaming plans to do a launch before Diwali, around October 2020. “As a creator, I am trying to make that last game after which I don’t need to make anything. Unlike any other profession, in game development, you just have to make one really good thing that people will continue playing for years,” said John.

With inputs from Amit Raja Naik. 

The post Social Gaming App SuperGaming Banks On Analytics Engine To Challenge MPL & Co In India appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Digital payment system Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is currently catering to over 250 Mn transactions monthly through QR codes, an RBI report has revealed. The report submitted by a special committee, which was analysing the prospects of QR codes in India, noted that QR are popular options of payment in restaurants, grocery shops and other bill payments.

However, the volume of digital payments made with Bharat QR is still “very low”, it added. The committee citing RBI data said that India has deployed over 20 Mn UPI QR since March 2018, of which 2 Mn have been deployed by acquiring banks.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in March 2018, had made it compulsory for every UPI application such as Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and others to all customers to scan Bharat QR codes and respond to merchants’ payment requests. NPCI had also reportedly proposed to give tax incentives on such transactions by this year to boost the system even further. Yet the merchants seem to be a little reluctant from coming on board for the QR Payment system, no matter how simple it is.

The latest report has specified that special attention needs to be paid to the lack of standardisation of Bharat QR enabled apps and commercial models, along with the merchants that are onboarding. The committee also believes that internet reach and other security challenges across QR code, app and backend needs to be dealt with in order to garner customers’ trust in this payment system.

Once the problems in the system are dealt with, the UPI QR code can be used to encourage and grow multiple interoperable QR, simplify merchant onboarding, enhance multi-currency and multi-language support, and strengthen QR code proposition. The RBI committee also believes that the collaboration with non-banks, fintech and banks have played a vital role to drive digital payment adoption among customers.

“The participation of non-banks and fintech will help to bring fresh investment to the payments sectors, enable rapid growth of acceptance infrastructure and innovative solutions for banks, customers as well as merchants,” the report read.

The report also noted that the fintech sector is a “very strong attractor” of foreign capital into India, with an estimated investment of more than $2 Bn in the last two years. The industry has spent more than INR 2,000 Cr in the last 2-3 years to promote digital payments and customer incentives and continues to invest about INR 1000 Cr on capex annually.

The post UPI QR Caters To 250 Mn Transactions Monthly, But Numbers Still Low, Says RBI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The Walt Disney Company, during its earnings call for the third quarter of 2020, noted that the India subscriber base for Disney+, the company’s subscription-based video-on-demand streaming service which has been launched in India as Disney+Hotstar, comprised 15% of the platform’s total 60.5 Mn paid subscribers globally as of August 3. The India subscriber base for the company is estimated to be around 9 Mn. 

The company representatives also noted during the meeting that while the Average Revenue Per Unit (ARPU) for Disney+ globally was $4.62, after excluding the Indian offering Disney+ Hotstar from the same, the ARPU increases to $5.31. The company mentioned that for their offering in India in collaboration with Star — a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company India which operates Hotstar — higher results are a reflection of lower programming costs partially offset by lower advertising revenue. Both of these drivers reflect the absence of cricket in the third quarter including a shift in rights costs for the Indian Premier League (IPL) which are expected to be reflected in future quarters and the absence of costs for the quadrennial ICC World Cup which aired in the prior-year quarter. 

The subscription cost for Disney+ in India is among the lowest in the world at INR 1499/year or $20. Further, an even cheaper subscription model, priced at INR 399/year or roughly $5.5 exists with limited offerings in terms of content available on the platform. 

After initial fears that the IPL may have to be cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the tournament is now scheduled to be played from September 19 to November 10 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In 2017, Star India won the global media rights for the annual cash-rich cricket league with a bid INR 16,347.50 Cr. 

Disney+ Hotstar was launched in India on April 3 and according to a study by consultancy firm Media Partners Asia, could become the second-highest revenue-earning video platform in India by 2025, behind only YouTube. According to the study, Disney+ Hotstar’s revenue will grow from an annual $216 Mn last year to $902 Mn by 2025. That is despite forecast contraction to $175 Mn in 2020, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Hotstar is one of the most popular video-on-demand streaming services in India with more than 300 Mn active users. The platform and its India operator Star India were acquired by The Walt Disney Company as part of a deal worth $71 Bn with 20th Century Fox last year. 

The report mentions that the key to achieving these revenue targets for Disney+ Hostar would be the resumption of all cricket this year, and the company retaining cricket media rights until 2025. 

Disney+ Hostar competes with global streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, as well as local platforms such as AltBalaji and MX Player, among others in the Indian OTT market. The overall OTT market in India is expected to grow at 21.8% CAGR from INR 4,464 Cr in 2018 to INR 11,976 Cr in 2023, according to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023. A September 2019 report by KPMG predicts that India will have more than 500 Mn online video subscribers by FY2023. This would make it the second-largest market after China.

The post With 9 Mn Subscribers, India Accounts For 15% Of Disney+ Subscriber Base appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Edtech platform Springboard, which offers mentor-guided online learning sessions, on Wednesday (August 5) announced that it has raised $31 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Telstra Ventures with participation from Vulcan Capital and SJF Ventures, and returning investors like Costanoa Ventures, Pearson Ventures, Reach Capital, International Finance Corporation (IFC), 500 Startups, Blue Fog Capital, and Learn Capital. 

Springboard, which claims to have placed its students in companies such as Samsung, Cisco, LinkedIn and Salesforce, plans to use the latest funding to work on student employability in a changing job market both in India and around the world. The company plans to do this by creating new hiring-focused products and strengthening employer partnerships to help graduates land their dream careers. 

This would be done through a slew of innovative products which the company says it’s building. These would include a hireability forecaster, which would provide early indications of the potential roadblocks in employability through the company’s predictive technology and insights from a 1,000-strong global community of industry members. Similarly, there’d be a product named ‘Springboard Introductions’, offering students on the platform personalised introductions and job referrals from the portal’s community of fellow and former students and mentors, among others. Finally, the company talks about developing an AI-driven job recommender which would help a student find a suitable career which would match his/her unique skills and background. 

“India is witnessing one of its toughest challenges owing to the recent job losses that have impacted a large section of the workforce. It is therefore imperative for displaced workers to make the difficult transition into new, in-demand careers,” said Parul Gupta, co-founder, Springboard. “Our remote-first, mentor-guided model is uniquely positioned to serve not only these individuals but also universities and employers who need help navigating today’s new economic reality. We’re delighted to partner with a great group of investors, as we continue on our mission to transform over one million lives by 2030.”

Springboard claims that its work doesn’t end with focussing on in-demand technical skills, but also employability. The company claims that 94% of its students are placed within a year, with an average salary increase of $26,000. Springboard says that the portal has seen a 330% student enrollment growth from June 2019 to June 2020.

San Francisco-headquartered edtech startup Springboard was founded in 2013 by Gautam Tambay and Parul Gupta. The company claims to have helped more than 20,000 students in over 100 countries advance their careers. In December last year, the company raised $11 Mn in a Series A funding round led by Reach Capital. Venture capital companies such as Pearson Ventures, International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as its existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Learn Capital, and Blue Fog Capital also participated in the funding round.

In India, Springboard competes with startups such as Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, and Progate which are also leveraging their online platforms in helping tech employees upskill their skills and remain relevant to the changing times. 

As per a study by KPMG, the estimated market size for the online certification and the reskilling industry is estimated to be $463 Mn(2021) growing at a compounded annual growth rate(CAGR) of 38% since the year 2016.

The post Edtech Platform Springboard Raises $31 Mn In Series B Round appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In a bid to tackle Covid-19 pandemic in India, an IIITB-IMACX Studios incubated startup YoSync has partnered with Malaysia based global blockchain company BelfricsBT, where it has developed blockchain-powered Covid-19 tracking platform called ‘BelYo’ in collaboration with Indian Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) and funded by Mphasis F1 Foundation.

BeIYo uses the BelfricsBT Belrium blockchain platform to convert Covid-19 related clinical and vaccination data of citizens from the physical form into digital assets which can be retrieved by any contact tracing apps, including Aarogya Setu via APIs. The company in a press statement said that one can use these APIs to retrieve data.

For instance, users can scan and retrieve data (i.e colour coded results) through a QR code and the process is said to be 100% contactless and seamless at any point of entry during and post the Covid-19 crisis.

Further, the company said that the platform is currently being tested in a few clinics where it is enabling the authorities to track details of their Covid-19 tests that are being conducted. In the next couple of weeks, the platform aims to reach out to ICMR approved 730 government labs and 270 private labs.

The cofounders Praveen Kumar and Satish Shekar said that their platform could be tweaked to suit the vaccination plan of the government in the shortest time possible and they also feel that their API could be a great contribution to Aarogya Sethu during such a nationwide vaccination exercise. Most importantly, the platform is said to simplify the tracking of all the Covid-19 patients in India, from symptoms stage to vaccination certificate in a decentralised manner, without compromising the privacy of the data, shared Prof Sadagopan, Director-IIIT Bangalore and Chairman of IIITB-IMACX Studios.

Optimistic about BeIYo, Praveenkumar Vijayakumar, founder and CEO of Belfrics Group said that they are looking to onboard more testing centres, including hospitals and private labs by the end of 2020. “Going forward, the platform looks at 5% market share by 2023 of the total 100K clinical labs in India, which would help us to reach a gross revenue target of $200 Mn by 2025,” he added.

The cofounders said that its platform will issue certificates for Covid-19 clinical records and immunisation certificates on blockchain at a cost price of INR 20. “The final documentation for Covid-19 would be the vaccination record of citizens. When we reach that stage, then recording and retrieving such data becomes vital for any economic activity,” added BeIYo.

Blockchain Graph Of The Week: 

Blockchain Leaders Of Today And Tomorrow 

According to the PwC Global Blockchain Survey, new industry and territory leaders are emerging each passing day. The report projected that China will be leading the blockchain wave by 2023 at 30%, followed by the US (18%), Australia (8%) and India (6%) among others, compared to 2018, where the US was leading the blockchain race.

Blockchain News Of The Week

Coca Cola’s Bottling Supply Chain Company To Test Public Blockchain For Delivery

The beverage giant Coca Cola owned bottling supply chain company Coke One North America (CONA) services, recently announced that it will be trying out the Baseline Protocol, a public Ethereum blockchain technology targeted at enterprise use cases. With this, it plans to enhance efficiency across the beverage company’s supply chain.

In its blog post, it stated that CONA Services has launched this project in collaboration with blockchain startups Provide and Unibright, where it will conduct the trials between the bottler and franchise to bridge the gap in the supply chain. The initial version of the project is expected to be released in Q4 2020.

Dubai Looks To Launch Blockchain-Based Know Your Customer Platform 

The United Arab Emirates recently announced that it will be launching a blockchain-based know your customer (KYC) platform. This platform is said to become a nationwide system for exchanging verified customer data. Dubai’s department of economic development (DED) in partnership with state-run bank Emirates NBD will be rolling out this solution.

According to a press statement, Emirates NBD will be the first bank to go live on this platform. The bank, which already has more than 120 customers, will work with small and medium-sized businesses, where it will be enabling them to onboard digitally, and they will be able to instantly open bank accounts through Emirates NBD’s E20 Digital Business Bank.

HerdX, Fogo de Chão and UPS Leverages Blockchain For Food Traceability  

Texas-based agritech and data company HerdX recently announced its partnership with Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chão and logistics company UPS to leverage blockchain technology for food traceability.

With this, the agritech firm will be providing its consumers with provenance data from its blockchain partner network using its open-source platform, data collection and analysis capabilities. UPS, on the other hand, which has already built a tool that connects to HerdX’s blockchain technology will be providing authenticated data points throughout the supply chain journey. “My children will have the ability to know where their food comes from, and how it was made,” said Lauren Jones, chief business development officer at HerdX.

The post Blockchain This Week: India’s First Ever Covid-19 Tracking Blockchain Platform & More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Even as India’s restaurant and food retail industry scrambles to recover after the Covid-19 lockdown, the food delivery and aggregator focus has squarely been on cloud kitchens. And within this ultra-competitive space, cloud kitchen soonicorn Rebel Foods is looking to put some distance between itself and its rivals. 

With a focus on age-old FMCG success strategy, Rebel Foods is looking to double down on many of its categories — literally — to ensure market success and move beyond the discount-led competition. Cofounder Kallol Banerjee told Inc42 that the company is looking to create tiers within its various brands and food categories to better compete with rivals at full price. 

“We can react to any kind of competition or any new food trend very quickly as it is all a digital play.” 

The strategy here is product flanking, which is a competitive marketing strategy in which a company produces its brands in a variety of sizes and styles to gain shelf space and inhibit competitors. In the case of Rebel, the flanking comes from the introduction of different brands and products at different prices to cover as many market segments as possible. It is basically offering the same product in different sizes and price combinations to tap diverse market opportunities. 

This has been a key strategy for FMCG brands in scaling up and the successful implementation of this has already been done by major brands like Mercedes-Benz against General Motors, electronics giant Samsung and Xiaomi in their competition in India as well as other categories where there is heavy competition such as alcohol and tobacco brands. 

Rather than competing head-on and trying to crack the right pricing, Rebel is going for a market penetration approach. It’s competitors can either offer premium quality or discounts, but it’s covering both bases while reducing cash burn.

Banerjee told us that as the brand becomes popular, it starts to see competitive pressure. To deal with this, Rebel Foods adopted a category view. Here, the company decided to divide its brands into two— a power brand and an active brand. The idea is simple— keep a power brand to be the premium player and an active brand to wage discount war.

For the uninitiated, the Pune-based company was founded by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee in 2010. It operates multiple quick-service food brands independently, facilitating deliveries through its app or through online food delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy. The company generates 50% of its demands through Zomato and Swiggy. It has 12 in-house brands such as Faasos, Oven Story, Firangi Bake and Mandarin Oak. 

Banerjee explains that the company has two biryani-focussed brands— Behrouz Biryani and The Biryani Life, which is priced considerably lower than Behrouz. This way, Behrouz does not have to lower its price points to compete.

Rebel admits that the competitors in the biryani space were piling on a lot of pressure through discount — especially brands such as Biryani by Kilo and other delivery-only brands. 

“We don’t play the discounting game with Behrouz, so we let Biryani Life do that. If we look at a complete category, we should have a certain share of the category, for the brand we are going to keep premium. So the power brands are where we would be doing the TV commercials, we talk and more, but the active brand is just meant to compete on discounts and more,” Banerjee added.

As it sees more competition in a particular category, Rebel is just creating a new label from the same kitchen similar to how an assembly line works. The company changes product quantities, refines the taste to suit the target audience and more, but the process is similar to starting a new kitchen, which can even be scaled to a national brand. “We can react to any kind of competition or any new food trend very, very quickly because most of the work is digital, it’s done in one place in 30 minutes. So the rest is training people and all of that which takes time. But that’s the advantage of cloud typically,” he added.

At present, visibly the company has put the strategy to use for its biryani brands, but with its array of 12 brands already, with several others in the pipeline, it can constructively put the same strategy for other brands. For instance, with its brand Oven Story, the company competes with the likes of Dominos’, Pizza Hut, Pizza On My Plate, and more; while for its coffee brand Slay Coffee, it is competing with the likes of Starbucks, Cafe Coffee Day, Blue Tokai and more.

Banerjee confirmed that on the basis of customer response, the company will implement it further going forward.

While this isn’t a very unique strategy, and other players can leverage this, they would need a stronger presence and reach like Rebel Foods, which also involves huge operational investment. “You will have to put in the effort to put in the time, which cannot be short-circuited. You need to put in 300 kitchens, to build a national brand and 300 kitchens need time, to put the 300 kitchens and staff, training etc,” Banerjee said about the moat Rebel has made. 

With over $342.3Mn raised till date from investors like Coatue Management, Go-Jek, and Goldman Sachs among others. Clearly, it has a huge amount of capital at disposal to choose this strategy, unlike its peers. However, the company has strong competition from food aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy, who also have their own network of cloud kitchens. At the same time, other players in the cloud kitchen space include Ola Foods, FreshMenu, Box8, QSR Foods among others.

He noted, “Nothing that we do individually is something that cannot be copied or replicated. But to make the whole thing work you will still need to spend a lot of time, which we did.”

Banerjee is also confident of pulling off newer projects as these are “just another play”. For instance, the company is working on a meal kit product and Banerjee is confident of cracking the market which several others have failed to. He also noted that there are several examples of failures— Blue Apron, Fingerlix and more. Till now, the ready-to-eat market has mostly struggled to grow in the right direction amid larger FMCG players. For instance, Yumlane, which started in 2016 to sell frozen pizzas, decided to pivot to the cloud kitchen model while another player, Fingerlix has been struggling with limited products available on Amazon and the website has disappeared.

Many of these companies might have failed because meal kits were the only thing they were doing. For Rebel Foods, RTE is just one of the many things to do and hence, lack of dependency on adoption. What works for Rebel, as per Banerjee, is its kitchen and supply chain network. 

“So this is for us just another play, which we can execute very easily. We can work with our supply chain guys to make, let’s say a 200-gram rice pouch. Now that is not something that they will entertain unless you give them a certain value. So, these are things which are easy for us to do. And obviously, we don’t think that delivery-only proposition in itself will be easy to pull off. But it’s the combination of another opportunity that I think we are best placed to do,” he added.

The post Rebel Foods Steers Clear Of Discount Wars To Focus On Product And Pricing Tiers appeared first on Inc42 Media.

This too shall pass.

As one of the most popular self-help books ‘Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do,’ by Robert Schuller highlights that life is full of ups and downs, learn to deal with it. This is more relatable to the present day Covid-19 times than ever in the past few decades.

While earlier too people have suffered from severe anxiety, lifestyle disorders, depression, insomnia, work-related stress, and loneliness, which leads to self-doubt and self-harm, the pandemic and the lockdown have only brought these issues to the surface. Plus, with work from home, social distancing and self-isolation at its peak, the need for mental help is more evident than ever. And as seen in our past coverage on the topic, tech startups are looking to address these issues through intervention.

Mental health and wellness startups are not only capitalising on the opportunity by intervening when people most need their help, but also have found revenue and user growth to establish themselves as a presence in the market. Many industry experts also believe that the demand for such service is only going to increase given the uncertainty caused due to Covid-19, and the rise in anxiety related disorder, depression, work-related stress, is only going to increase, and the need for professional service becomes critical.

For instance, Bengaluru-based mental health platform Wysa which works to address the problem with a free artificial intelligence (AI) solution or chatbot app, claimed to have witnessed a 94% increase in new users during the lockdown from February to June 2020, as compared to the same period in 2019. The company believes that the freemium model, in a way, maximises its reach with minimal barriers limiting the acquisition of new users.

Further, it highlighted that the proposition of users who referred to Covid-19 during therapist sessions increased week-on-week during March 2020, from 5% in the first week to 60% in the fourth week. Surprisingly, a large majority of the users reached out to them mentioning their loss of access to care and human support; as well as higher anxiety levels in healthcare staff/professionals as compared to the rest of their populations, unsafe domestic settings, sleep disturbances etc.

Wysa believes that its business model is closely linked to its core mission of providing access to mental health support to the under-served, where the company looks to deliver its services in a ‘pyramid’ of care services, using a freemium model.

The way it works is, at the base of this pyramid, Wysa as an AI chatbot offers basic skill-building and resources for free, to people who are not able to afford to pay for services. “More than 95% of our users use this free service,” Ramakant Vempati, cofounder at Wysa-Touchkin, told Inc42, emphasising on the surge in demand.

Coming to the second layer, is a toolbox of evidence-based self-help techniques available on-demand, for a small fee (INR 300/month). For users who need more advanced support, the Wysa Coach service offers access to trained psychologists. Here, Wysa coaches offer text messaging-based support through five to eight sessions per month, plus unlimited journaling support where users can leave a message for their coach and get a response at a different time, at about INR 3500/month (which is as low as INR 400 per session).

Less Is More 

It has to be noted that this blended support model of combining AI chat with human psychologists is unique globally. It allows for mass customisation, where even basic services are tailored to individuals based on their preferences and offered at all hours, yet it can be built using robust clinical input to allow for delivery of a high standard, uniform level of care.

Wysa said that its business model is very amenable to scale, especially for public health systems, and at significantly lower costs of delivery versus traditional alternatives. For example, the company claimed that it can currently support 2 Mn users across the entire pyramid of care services, with only a 40 people team.

In terms of acquiring new users, Vempati told Inc42 that its go-to-market approach uses two channels. The first is direct-to-customer, where users currently discover Wysa through organic means, either on the app stores linked to their search behaviour, reading about it in the media, or through referrals. The other one is through institutional partnerships like the NHS and other public health systems, or employers, where the company is recommended to defined communities, particularly high-risk cohorts, people in stressful work or those on a waitlist looking for support.

“Right now, our approach is global and we implement evidence-based techniques that have cross-cultural validity, which has been tested in multiple geographies, so that they can serve a larger audience. As we are growing further, we’re also building in more capacity for languages so that we can crack that barrier of access too,” Vempati added, talking about its positioning in the market, compared to other players that are predominantly dominated by subscription models.

Backed by pi Ventures, Kae Capital and angel investors, alongside eminent professionals and clinicians like Dr Becky Inkster from the University of Cambridge, Wysa also said that it is witnessing a huge surge of interest from enterprise clients, including healthcare companies, providers, payers and insurers as well as employers.

“Another exciting thing that’s definitely happening for us is the expansion of access in terms of language. We’re looking at building out multi-lingual support, a feature that many of our global users have wanted for some time,” said the cofounder.

Raising Awareness Across Multiple Mediums 

“We need to reach where people are!” asserted Puneet Manuja, the cofounder of YourDOST. The company extensively leverages social media channels to conduct awareness campaigns, events and content. Additionally, it plans to collaborate with specific corporates, colleges and government bodies to amplify awareness for a wider audience, and scale accordingly.

Based in Bengaluru, YourDost was cofounded by Manuja and Richa Singh in 2014. The platform currently has over 900+ experts consisting of psychologists, career coaches, and life coaches and offers all its users 24/7 access to experts in various modes like chat, audio, video, face to face options. Its pool of experts also offers counselling support in nearly all major Indian languages, including Hindi, English, Kanada, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali among other 20+ languages.

“Through a lot of these awareness interventions, content and self-help materials which are ‘free’ on our website, people are able to understand more about themselves and their emotional wellbeing,” shared Manuja, where he believes that these efforts work together to fight the stigma of mental health in the country and help people understand that mental health is an inseparable and essential art of their daily lives.

Emphasising on how Covid-19 has brought this into public focus, Manuja said that there has been a significant rise in people’s anxiety levels in the recent past. “In the last four months, we have witnessed over a 100% rise in the number of sessions related to anxiety disorders. Also, our studies show that 57% of Indians have experienced a rise in their anxiety. Not all of them suffer from anxiety disorders, but the rise in anxiety has aggravated existing cases of anxiety disorders and triggered new ones as well.” shared Manuja.

Further, he said that over 55% of people also reported a rise in their stress levels, and stress levels do aggravate existing cases of depressive disorders as well as trigger new cases. Additionally, the lockdown has caused people to spend far more time indoors than usual, thus leading to a fall in exposure to sunlight which can cause or worsen depressive symptoms and even lead to seasonal affective disorder. “Again, in the last four months, we have witnessed a 50% rise in the number of sessions related to depressive disorders alone,” he added.

In addition to this, YourDOST said that the other issues which have seen a significant jump in terms of sessions taken by its clients include conflict with parents, time management, relationship issues and work-life balance.

Blending Pathways Towards Holistic Mental Healthcare Solution 

Similar to Wysa and YourDOST, Gurugram-based mental wellness startup ePsyClinic also saw an uptick in adoption. Founder Shipra Dawar told Inc42 that it has 100+ psychologists in its core team today and has helped more than 1.2 Lakh patients with direct therapy and counselling sessions in the last three months, and reached more than 3.5 Mn through its content.

Also, its IWill therapy app, where it charges its users on a subscription basis, cost anywhere between INR 3800 to 15K for first time users. Its ePsyClinic, however, is free for users, which is supported by government and funds.

“We are positioned as a clinically strong, high outcome based service through IWill structured therapy. And our inclusive free service at ePsyClinic with funds and government partnerships help us bring mental health to the masses. Therefore, we have provided both exclusivity and inclusivity and that is our positioning,” added Dawar, founder at ePsyClinic.

She added that her experience with dealing with depression helped her realise the vision for the company, which was founded in 2015. ePsyClinic has partnered with the state governments in Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and funds (ACT grants) with the agenda to disseminate mental health awareness. At the same time, its IWill therapy has one of the biggest social media communities on Facebook and also many corporate partnerships, through more than 15K blogs, stories, webinars.

On the other hand, Mumbai-based Trijog, a holistic mental wellness platform that provides access to emotional and mental wellness solutions to individuals, corporates, educational institutes, enterprises, following a hybrid approach, claimed to have steady growth of 20% MoM, however, in the last four months has witnessed a 60% revenue growth, across verticals.

Founded in 2015 by Arushi Sethi and Anureet Sethi, Trijog is backed by GHB Group led by Yugank Sharma.

The company also told Inc42 that during pre-Covid times, it had impacted the lives of around 3500 people through its services, and now looking at the shear magnitude of users availing its services, the company now aims to touch 8K to 10K individual lives by FY21, along with its plans for international expansion.

While pandemic has come as a blessing in disguise for mental health space, it has removed the social stigma and medium from the equation — you don’t have to physically go somewhere to get therapy done, everything can happen with a click of a button, said Arushi Sethi, cofounder at Trijog. She said that previously, the sector was completely unorganised, where there were only a handful of clinics, hospitals and practitioners. Trijog, with its venture looks to knit the gap across segments through online counselling, training institute and webinars among other things.

Finding A Niche 

While there are numerous players offering solutions in conjunction with broader healthcare programs, there is also a very clear need for a more singular, dedicated approach to mental wellness.

Gurugram-based mental wellness platform Mindhouse, which was founded by Zomato cofounder Pankaj Chaddah and former Zomato chief of staff Pooja Khanna, plans to capture the niche audience by tackling mental health problems through meditation. “We are concentrating on making modern meditation-based mental health solutions accessible to everyone in a convenient and easily consumable format, and hoping that more individuals make a regular habit of practising it,” explained Khanna.

Speaking of Mindhouse’s revenue model, the company offers access to all the live classes and library of meditation based content on its app on a subscription model. It currently has two subscription plans, quarterly plan at INR 399 and annular plan at INR 699. Also, to encourage beginners to make this a part of their routine, Mindhouse has started to offer a one month of free access to all the content in its app for all users. Subsequently, followed by the subscription plans.

“On the B2B side, we are working with multiple corporates to conduct regular live meditation classes, as part of their wellness programmes. We also offer customized wellness solutions for corporates based on their specific needs,” Khanna added.

The Question Of Data And Confidentiality

With therapies and counselling getting digitised at a rapid pace, the data generated from users are playing a crucial role for these startups to scale their growth, where various models have emerged keeping in mind the affordability and accessibility aspects for the patients.

At the same time, this information shared with the doctors is vulnerable to data breaches at times, therefore, it becomes paramount for companies to safeguard the data of users, and any misuse of it can have detrimental effects on the patients, where attackers can use it against them.

To tackle this issue, Wysa said that it has incorporated absolutely anonymous, high levels of clinical security and safety, passcode features with no login. This, in a way, makes it easy for someone to keep this a private space so that they can let out thoughts within, especially when they are battling stigma around them.

Giving patients the option to remain anonymous, Wysa aims to bridge the current treatment gap at both the ends of the care cycle (pre-diagnosis as well as continuing care). Its AI conversational agent provides reflective listening with guided self-help techniques in a safe, anonymous space, which can be accessed 24/7 for free. Further, the company said that those who need greater help can get daily therapist support through live chat sessions, still staying anonymous if they choose.

Wysa claimed to help people complete a million cognitive restructuring exercises at a negligible incremental cost. This is an effort equivalent to the output of at least 2K full-time therapists. “Hence, this approach offers hope for scaling early support and creating low friction pathways to expert help so that stigma, lack of access and cost are no longer barriers to support for people who are struggling,” the cofounder added.

YourDOST cofounder Manuja told Inc42 that the doctor-patient confidentiality remains the same across media, be it face-to-face, online counselling, text-based solution or anything else. Traditionally, in order to breach the confidentiality agreement or access the information of the patients, the authority needs to have a court order or legal requirement in the case of any ongoing investigation, particularly life-threatening, self-harm, suicide among others.

In fact, online counselling and digital medium create a safe space for users to be open about their problems, compared to physical clinics where there still exists a stigma around the patients not being comfortable to seek help given the fear of being judged or watched by known people.

Similar to Wysa, YourDOST also claimed that its users can choose to remain anonymous while availing the service, alongside protected by the confidentiality clause. “This way users also feel more comfortable in sharing their feelings and problems, without any hurdles or fear of being judged” said Manuja.

Mental Wellness: Need Of The Hour

For decades, the mental wellness space was associated only with NGOs and ‘not for profits.’ This is slowly changing now as private players, investors are entering into this space, but there’s still a long way to go, as the industry is still in the nascent stages in the country.

Today, if we look at a standard measure for the burden of diseases is disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which refers to the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death, and India alone stands at 48.6 Cr. In fact, the contribution of mental disorders to the total disease burden in India in terms of DALYs increased from 2.5% in 1990 to 4.7% in 2017. The country is at 2,443 DALYs per 1 Lakh population. In other words, when it comes to mental disorders, India has been going through an epidemic for a while now. According to WHO, India is estimated to suffer economic loss to the tune of $1.03 Tn between 2012 and 2030 due to mental health conditions.

Overall, this illustrates the importance of mental health more than ever, and urges the need for quality mental health care in the country as more and more players enter this space. Most importantly, this is essential for the country’s long term growth, wellbeing and economy, since the wellbeing of people contributes greatly to economic and social productivity.

The post India’s Mental Health Startups On Unlocking The Business Of The Mind In Times Of Crisis appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In a bid to expand its offerings, edtech unicorn BYJU’s has acquired Mumbai-based Whitehat Jr. for $300 Mn.

Founded in 2018 by ex-Discovery Networks CEO, Karan Bajaj, WhiteHat Jr is a live online one-to-one coding platform that teaches the principles of coding—sequence, structure, logic, commands and algorithmic thinking – to young kids, who don’t usually get this training in the formal education system.

The company claims to have a revenue run rate of $150 Mn and has raised $11 Mn from investors like Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network India and Owl Ventures. Owl Ventures is also an investor in BYJU’s.

“Empowering children with the right future skills has always been part of our vision at BYJU’S and coding fits well into this. WhiteHat Jr’s coding product capabilities, combined with our pedagogy, expertise and scale, will help expand our learning offerings for school students,” Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, BYJU’S said.

After launching their courses in the US in February earlier this year, Whitehat Jr claims to be growing at more than 100% MoM in the US. It also recently announced plans to expand to other global markets like Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand after the stellar growth in the US for its one-to-one online coding classes.

After the acquisition, BYJU’S will make significant investments in WhiteHat Jr’s technology platform, product innovation, while expanding the teacher base to cater to demand from new markets. WhiteHat Jr. Founder, Karan Bajaj will continue to lead and scale this business in India and the US.

The acquisition comes amidst the Indian Government’s push for skills such as coding from early classes with the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Launched in 2015, BYJU’S is the world’s most valued private edtech startup with 64 Mn students using its platforms. The company claims to have 4.2 Mn annual paid subscriptions and an annual renewal rate of 85%. It doubled its revenue from INR 1430 Cr to INR 2800 Cr in FY 19-20, according to the official statement.

Since the lockdown, it has on-boarded 15 Mn new students and reported INR 500 Cr in revenue last month alone. In June, it launched a comprehensive online tutoring programme, BYJU’S Classes, to offer personalised after school tuition classes.

Valued at $10.5 Bn, BYJU’s has raised closed to $1.5 Bn in funding to date from investors like BOND Capital, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Tencent, Naspers, Sequoia, Qatar Investment Authority, and Canada’s Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) among others.

Whitehat Jr. is BYJU’s fifth acquisition. Last year, the edtech unicorn had acquired Palo Alto based Osmo for $120 Mn. Its other acquisitions include — Math Adventures, Tutorvista and Vidyartha. According to recent reports, BYJU’s is also in talks with Doubtnut for a $150 Mn all-cash transaction.

According to DataLabs, Indian edtech startups have raised a total funding of $2 Bn across 353 deals between 2014-H1 2020 and over 43 edtech startups have got acquired. From $247 Mn in 2017, the opportunity in India’s online education market is estimated to soar to $2 Bn in 2021, according to DataLabs by Inc42+’s Edtech Opportunity Report.

The post 18 Months, $150 Mn Revenue, $300 Mn Exit; BYJU’S Acquires Whitehat Jr appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Early-stage venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners’ has finally announced the third cohort of its seed-stage acceleration programme Misfits. The two-year-old Misfits accelerator offers mentorship and funding between $500K to $1.5 Mn to early stage ventures.

The programme lasts up to six months and is held twice a year. So far, it has hosted nearly 20 startups since its launch in 2018. Anup Jain, managing partner of Orios Venture Partners, said that Misfits addresses the challenges faced by young startups including scaling up efficiently, hiring the right talent and raising funds. “We are proud of the response from 200-plus VC funds received to the latest batch from Misfits-3. It is a validation of the program,” he said.

The Misfits Demo Day was held virtually on August 4 (Tuesday) for the third cohort. Some of the marquee venture capital firms that attended this year’s Demo Day include Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Norwest Venture Partners. Global investors including Global Founders Capital, Vertex Ventures, the VC arm of Temasek, Picus Capital and ADB Ventures, the newly-established venture unit of the Asian Development Bank, were also scouting for deals at the demo day.

Startups in the Orios’ portfolio includes GoMechanic, MissMalini, LetsMD, Pretty Secrets, Pharmeasy, Zostel, Country Delight, Zupee and more. The company has exited Sapience after it was acquired by Credit Suisse, and Pipemonk which was acquired by Freshworks.

Here are the nine startups in the third cohort of Misfits

Karbon Card
Founder: Pei-fu Hsieh, Amit Jangir
Founded In: 2019
Karbon Card offers corporate cards to Indian startups with funding of at least INR 25 Lakh.

CityCash
Founder: Vineet Toshniwal
Founded In: 2017
CityCash is an offline transit-based payment ecosystem that allows users to make tap-and-pay based payments in public buses, metros and small retail.

MoneyOnClick
Founder: Vishal Chopra, Himanshu Gupta
Founded In: 2018
MoneyOnClick is a Bengaluru-based lending startup that aims to provide unsecured loans to underserved customers.

Gully Network Retail
Founder: Ajay Nain
Founded In: 2019
Gully Network Retail is a technology-enabled chain of small-format kirana stores for hyperlocal delivery

Intelligence Node
Founder: Sanjeev Sularia, Slavcho Ivanov, Yasen Dimitrov
Founded In: 2012
Intelligence Node is a real-time retail price intelligence platform for D2C brands and sellers

GolBol
Founder: Shanu Vivek, Karandeep Singh Gujral, Kaushik Mahato
Founded In: 2019
GolBol is a social network platform for users from Tier II, Tier III and beyond to share content in regional languages.

Krishify
Founder: Rajesh Ranjan, Manish Agrawal
Founded In: 2019
Krishify is a social network for farmers to discuss and solve for their agri input needs.

Leher
Founder: Vikas Malpani, Atul Jaju
Founded In: 2018
Leher is a video social network for content creators, influencers and vloggers.

YumLane
Founder: Hitesh Ahuja
Founded In: 2016
YumLane is a D2C food brand with a range of ready-to-eat hot snacks and meals.

Besides Orios Venture Partners, other leading venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, WaterBridge Ventures and YourNest Venture Capital also have a seed-stage accelerator programme.

The post Meet The 9 Startups From Orios Venture’s Third Cohort Of Misfits appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Though Jammu and Kashmir is on the same page with the rest of the country on digitisation of education, work and other prospects, however, it has been a struggle over internet connectivity for a year now.

The internet shutdown has been a setback to the infant startup ecosystem in the region. Though the J&K Startup Policy of 2018, which also covers the Union Territory of Ladakh, does not focus much on tech as much as the non-tech sectors, which have pulled the region’s economy so far, it has been struggling to run such services when the customers don’t have access to the internet. However, local startups have been finding their way around it.

Talking to Inc42, Ishan Verma, director of J&K Startup Association and founder of tech startup Nentoir, highlighted that though startups don’t face such internet issues as high-speed internet services are available on broadband, customers have been facing major issues. He noted that several startups have been finding different ways to reach out to customers without any hiccup.

In April, Srinagar-based agritech startup efruitmandi had collaborated with local startups Fastbeetle, ElanMart and FARM2U to keep the supply of apples up and running in Kashmir Valley during the high-demand Ramazan season. In order to enable customers to access services without any disruption, efruitmandi had decided to take orders through phone calls, WhatsApp messages or Google forms, which need lower bandwidth.

Shah told Inc42 that they had to rethink their business model in order to incorporate an offline model to enable a wider set of customers to place their orders.

Similarly, the Chemist and Druggist Association of Kashmir had been looking to offer some relief to those in Kashmir valley by facilitating doorstep medicine delivery through phone calls. Though the internet wasn’t the issue here, restrictions imposed by the police and paramilitary forces on internal travel was a big issue.

Fayaz Azad, president of the Chemist and Druggist Association of Kashmir, highlighted that security forces should allow delivery of medicines, as it comes under essential items. He also emphasised that the police should allow people from the pharmaceutical industry to pass through after checking their documents.

Region Struggles Without Proper Internet

Last year on August 5, the government of India abrogated the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and divided the region into two union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. With this, the government had imposed a curfew in the region and shut down internet services. In the Jammu region, users have access to broadband and telephone services, but the Kashmir region has been stripped of that for months.

This continued till January, when the government decided to revoke the order and allow 2G mobile internet services in both Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh region. Though, it is important to note that all communication and social media platforms were barred in Kashmir until March 2020. As India went into lockdown the same month the government has proved to be effective in bringing education, work and all its services online (safely), the region has still been left in the shadow of the 2G network. Notably, the 4G services were restored in the Ladakh region in December 2020, 145 days after shutdown.

Nearly 200 organisations and advocacy groups located across 75 countries, who are a part of #KeepItOn campaign against internet shutdowns, have written an open letter to the government in April 2020, demanding restoration of 4G services in the J&K especially due to increased online activities during the lockdown. Even the Supreme Court has asked the Central government to reinstate the full mobile-data services in the region, but the central government is yet to act on it.

Moreover, the J&K administration, in an order issued on May 27, has claimed that the internet speed restrictions have not posed any hindrance to the Covid-19 control measures ranging from accessing online education content or carrying out business. Meanwhile, businesses and students have been complaining about the issues faced by them in accessing online services and classes due to slow internet.

Startup Policy Paralysis Hits J&K Ecosystem Equally Hard

Meanwhile, Verma also noted that the internet is not the only problem in the regional startup ecosystem, but it has been equally affected by the paralysis of J&K Startup policy.  He elaborated that the policy does bare minimum for the ecosystem, and startups have to take on the burden on themselves to grow.

The J&K Startup policy has specified down on seven focus sectors. These include:

• Food processing and allied activities
• Agriculture including horticulture and floriculture
• Textiles, apparel & fashion technology
• Renewable energy
• Handicrafts & handlooms
• Electronics systems design and manufacturing
• Information technology-enabled services

Previously Sumit Bhat, cofounder of BHU-incubated healthtech startup Doctors Around You, noted that the focus area of the J&K Startup Policy was something that was relevant in the 1990s. Now that India is heading towards a much more tech-enabled economy, the policy should be updated as well, he said. Doctors Around You set up its base in Jammu but had to move to Pune because of the lack of support from the local ecosystem.

“The registered startups include coaching institutes, manufacturing units, farms, but those are not startups. You cannot consider normal businesses as startups. We should be looking for more innovative startups that are actually solving a problem,” Bhat added.

Besides this, the regional startup ecosystem has also been struggling to find investment opportunities in the region. Some of the prominent startups in this region are Kashmir Box, PureMart, Fast Beetle, viaENS, efruitmandi and TravelersDost, among others.

You can read up more about the J&K startup ecosystem in Inc42’s three-part series:

• J&K Startup Hub: Fighting To Survive In The Times Of Political Instability
• Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh Startups Fight Back After Internet Issues, Policy Paralysis
• J&K, Ladakh Startups: Funding Remains The Biggest Hurdle Amid Multiple Challenges

The post Running A Startup Without Proper Internet: A Story Of Startups In J&K appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government is reportedly planning to partner with online grocery delivery platforms such as BigBasket, Grofers and JioMart to facilitate home delivery of rations to 1.7 Mn households in the city, who are beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS). 

On July 21, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that his government had approved the ‘Mukhyamantri Ghar Ghar Ration Yojana’ for home delivery of rations to the beneficiaries. Sources told Economic Times that the government has since held virtual meetings with some companies, asking them if they would be willing to partner for the scheme. 

“That meeting was just to brief us on what their requirements were,” said the source cited above. “Their criteria was companies should be able to handle end-to-end logistics of the programme as they are trying to modernise the PDS.”

If the deal comes through, Delhi would be the latest among states who have partnered with private companies to modernise the PDS system. In 2015, Kishore Biyani-led Future Group tied up with the Rajasthan government to manage the state’s ration and PDS shops. In 2018, the Future Group also tied up with the Bengal government to convert ration shops into mini malls, where it sold non-PDS items at discounted prices. 

BigBasket and Grofers didn’t reply to Inc42’s queries. 

Earlier this year, Indian foodtech unicorns Zomato and Swiggy also started their online grocery delivery services in a bid to offset the decline in revenue from their traditional food delivery business during the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown. However, within two months of the launch of its grocery delivery platform Zomato Markets in April in 80 cities, Zomato shut down its grocery delivery operations after finding that the business wasn’t scalable. 

During the lockdown, Grofers and BigBasket too faced difficulties in running their businesses. At that time, most of the hyperlocal players were running low on stocks and with no control over inventory and timely product delivery. Moreover, the companies were facing a shortage of manpower with many of their delivery workers having left the cities for their home states during the lockdown. 

Further, the commissions in the grocery delivery space aren’t as attractive as compared to what Zomato gets with the delivery of cooked food. The low order value also makes it very difficult for hyperlocal delivery players to actually make anything substantial out of it. Other problems include stock management as most of the retailers often don’t update the stock while taking orders.

Nevertheless, both BigBasket and Grofers witnessed a surge in demand and sales during the lockdown. While BigBasket reported a 35% increase in sales in April, Grofers registered a 60% increase in its gross merchandise value (GMV), compared to pre-Covid-19 levels. US-based market research company Forrester Research noted that India’s online grocery market could make $3 Bn in sales this year, representing a whopping 76% hike compared to $1.7 Bn last year. The research firm has attributed this growth to the demand for fresh produce and staples during the nation-wide lockdown.

The post Delhi Govt Likely To Partner With BigBasket, Grofers & JioMart For Home Delivery Of Rations appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Thursday (August 6), has announced that it will be setting up an ‘Innovation Hub’ to promote innovation across the fintech sector. Governor Shaktikanta Das, during his monetary policy speech, also noted that RBI will bring startups under the purview of priority sector lending (PSL), which will allow them to borrow capital from banks smoothly.

“With a view to aligning the guidelines with emerging national priorities and bring sharper focus on inclusive development, the Priority Sector Lending (PSL) guidelines have been reviewed,” Das said.

Notably, banks are required to assign 40% of adjusted net bank credit or credit equivalent amount of off-balance sheet exposure, whichever is higher, to the priority sector. Currently, RBI has brought agriculture, MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), education, housing, social infrastructure, and other sectors under the ambit of priority sector lending.

Renewable energy sectors including solar power and compressed biogas plants were already eligible for priority lending, but with the current revenions the cap of borrowing has been raised for this sector.

Commenting on the latest development, RBI said, “With a view to align the guidelines with emerging national priorities and bring sharper focus on inclusive development, the guidelines have been reviewed after wide ranging consultations with all stakeholders.” further, he revised guidelines also aim to encourage and support environment-friendly lending policies to help achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The latest development comes as a relief for the Indian startup ecosystem that has been struggling due to the dried up cash flow during the pandemic. With this, even investors have been very picky about which startup to invest in.

Bank Loans May Comes As A Rescue Amid Reduced Cash & Capital Flow In Startups

Infosys cofounder and former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Kris Gopalakrishnan had also previously warned that almost 25% of the Indian startups have less than six months of runway left, and could end up in serious troubles if the disturbance caused by the Covid-19 pandemic continued.

Speaking at Inc42’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ series, 3One4 Capital’s founding partner Siddarth Pai had also noted that the days of easy money is over, and startups really need to prove their business to raise funds during times like this. He had elaborated that venture capitalists were going to focus on ‘Portfolio Protection’ in order to save companies that exist in their portfolio, instead of making new investments.

Sequoia India’s managing director, GV Ravishankar, in conversation with Inc42, had said that the VCs will raise the bar for investments and the companies that do not have a unique model might not get capital anymore. Besides this, entrepreneurs will have to answer some tough questions to VCs and funding rounds may take a little longer than usual to close.

As per DataLabs by Inc42 in its Business In The Times Of Coronavirus: India And The World report Indian startup ecosystem recorded 154 in January and February, a hike of 29%  compared to 119 deals in the same time period last year. The report highlighted that the fall in funding deals has become more evident since February and has recorded a downward trend since then due to the slowdown in several industries. Growth-stage startups have been hit the hardest by the impact in Q1 2020.

In such a scenario, bank loans will come off as a low hanging fruit helping them to extend their runway, and rethink their business plans in order to build a more sustainable business.

The post RBI Opens A Lifeline For Startups, Puts Them Under Priority For Bank Loans appeared first on Inc42 Media.

India has been one of the fastest-growing nations when it comes to digital payments. The 2016 demonetisation gave India a push to experiment with digital payments and since then there has been no turning back. However, the glass ceiling is still far from breaking.

According to the Digidhan database maintained by the IT ministry, Indians averaged about 3.85 digital transactions per person between July 2019 and July 2020. But there has been a stark difference in terms of the rate of adoption across states.

While Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have been recording the highest number of transactions per person, Chhattisgarh and Jammu & Kashmir have been amongst the states with lowest transactions. Even North-Eastern states of Mizoram, Manipur and Meghalaya have recorded the lowest digital transactions.

The Digidhan database keeps a tab on all digital transactions across National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) operated channels — RuPay cards, UPI interface BHIM, and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)  — based mobile transfers. The data mentioned above was collected between June 2019 to July 2020.

An Economic Times added that digital payment industry executives estimate that the grass roots campaigns in states like Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as well as sizable populations in small towns across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have contributed to the surge in digital payments in these areas. These experts have also pointed out other factors like higher income levels, better internet and banking infrastructure, and reliable power supply as driving factors behind more digital payments in these regions.

Payment gateway CC Avenue’s CEO, Vishwas Patel, also told the publication that “Higher per capita income, English language familiarity, availability of good bandwidth, banking and financial infrastructure, internet service, communication devices and 24×7 power supply are key differentiators at the state level.”

In January 2020, Reserve Bank of India’s governor Shaktikanta Das had claimed that digital payments account for around 97% of daily payment system transactions in terms of volume. “This has been made possible with the accelerated growth of over 50% in the volume of digital payment transactions in the last five years,” he added.

Further, he noted that the extent of digital penetration can be gauged from the fact that each day on an average, the payment systems in India process more than 10 Cr transactions of nearly INR 6 Lakh Cr.

According to RBI data, the currency in circulation across the country increased at a CAGR of 10.2% over the past five years  —  between the financial years (FY) 2014-15 and 2018-19. “The rate of increase is lower indicating a perceptible shift away from cash. Although cash is deeply embedded in the payment systems in India, planned efforts post-demonetisation have shown a marked shift from cash to digital payments,” said RBI’s report.

The post IT Ministry’s Report Reveals Regional Imbalance In Digital Payments Adoption appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The government of Telangana has decided to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles (EV) across the state in order to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion. The Cabinet approved the new Telangana State Electric Vehicle and Energy Storage Solution Policy during the meeting held at Pragathi Bhavan on August 5 (Wednesday).

The state cabinet has also decided to encourage the production of electric vehicles by giving them incentives. The new policy is aimed to make Telangana a preferred destination for EVs and component manufacturing units, besides making the state a major base for EV and energy storage sectors by attracting large scale investments and creating employment.

Chart Of The Week: Market Forecast To 2025

EV News Of The Week 

TATA Nexon Rolls Out Monthly Subscription Plan

Tata Motors had decided to offer a monthly subscription plan with all-inclusive fixed rental plans for its electric SUV Nexon. The range starts at INR 41,900 per month and includes several tenures starting with a minimum period of 18 months.

The offer has been provided through a collaboration with Orix Auto Infrastructure Services Limited, and will initially be available only in five Indian cities — Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

EESL Issues Tender For 250 Four-Wheeler EVs 

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is looking to procure 250 electric vehicles with three-years standard warranty and comprehensive annual maintenance contract (AMC) up to eight years. The AMC includes design, manufacture, on-site supply and maintenance support for electric cars pan India basis.

According to a Rush Lane report, EESL has called out for 100 four-wheelers with more than 4 metres of length and 300 Km of range, along with 150 four-wheelers with less than four-metres of length and range equal or more than 250 Km.

Ampere Electric Launches Battery Subscription Plan

Ampere Vehicles, a wholly-owned electric mobility subsidiary of Greaves Cotton Ltd., announces its partnership with fintech company Autovert Technologies to offer a battery subscription plan through an IoT-backed platform. The company believes that this will make electric scooters even more affordable.

The latest model will be starting with a few select dealers in Bengaluru, but will be expanded nationwide soon. Vinay Sharma, cofounder and CTO of Autovert said, “The battery subscription is possible, given the modular nature of the EV, which lends itself to decoupling the battery from the vehicle and specific services offered around its lifecycle.”

Dive Into EV Ecosystem With Inc42’s Reading List

Change In Consumer Behavior For Electric Vehicles After Pandemic

The future of mobility looks very different now than about three months ago, where we had seen a big shift towards shared mobility and a push for public & sustainable transport.

EV Headlines From Around The World

Tesla’s Chinese Rival Xpend Bags $400 Mn

Chinese electric car maker Xpeng Motors has reportedly raised $400 Mn ahead of its listing in the US. Existing investors Alibaba, sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala have participated in this round, according to an CNBC report.

The publication added that the Tesla rival was looking to raise $300 Mn initially, but an additional investor came on board taking the investment to $400 Mn. The company had raised $500 Mn only last month.

US Gets Its Cheapest EV, All Thanks To China

Chinese EV manufacturer Kandi will be launching its latest offering, Kandi K27 and K23 models, at only $12,999 – $20,000 after the federal tax credit, making them the cheapest electric car in the US. The Kandi K27 is a small compact vehicle with only a 17.69 kWh battery pack — limiting it to a range of an optimistic 100 miles. It starts at $20,499, but goes down to $12,999 after federal tax credit.

The K23 is a bigger brother to K27, and starts at $29,999. After tax credit, the EV should cost around $20K. Johnny Tai, CEO of Kandi America, said, “Kandi’s mission is to make electric cars accessible to all. With these first two models, we are starting an Auto EVolution that will enable anyone, regardless of their financial status, to afford a reliable, high-tech EV.”

The post Electric Vehicles This Week: Telangana Govt’s Big Push; Tata’s New Plan For Nexon & More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As the market in metros and Tier 1 India reaches the saturation point for ecommerce companies, the next growth avenue will come from the massive base from smaller cities and Tier 3 and Tier 4 locations. Recently, Fireside Ventures’ Vinay Singh told Inc42 that to crack the so-called Bharat market, the key points are — engagement through video, vernacular content and voice interactions. And while video-based vernacular content and ecommerce platforms are more or less covered, regional language voice capabilities can be the next space for innovation. 

Recently, Flipkart introduced a voice assistant to enable consumers to discover and buy products using voice in multiple languages, starting with Hindi and English. While this was developed internally by Flipkart, Slang Labs is looking to bring its voice-to-action SDK (software development kit) to other ecommerce marketplaces, D2C brands and online travel agents. 

The brainchild of Satish Chandra Gupta, Giridhar Murthy and Kumar Rangarajan, Slang Labs has been around since 2017. Rangarajan and Murthy had previously founded Facebook-acquired Little Eye Labs, while Gupta has worked with Microsoft Research and Amazon. The startup is essentially providing multilingual in-app voice assistant tech to ecommerce players as well as brands that are running their native online stores. 

Explaining the product and the core functionality, cofounder and CEO Rangarajan told Inc42 that the company has built a voice layer on top of any existing app, which is seen as an overlay whenever a customer tries to interact with it. The unique selling point for Slang Labs is its multilingual capabilities. The company lets customers interact with the platform using five languages—Indian English or Hinglish, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.

Slang Labs: How Does Multilingual Voice Tech Work?

Rangarajan told us that the app has five layers of technology on the client-side. Once a company integrates Slang Labs SDK on its platform, the use begins with automatic speech recognition.

Here using deep learning-based algorithms, the SDK is able to convert speech from recorded audio into text. It is further contextualised on the basis of the app and the sector or category it is serving. Next, using natural language processing (NLP), the product narrows down on the meaning of what the user said to understand the intent. “If a user has given any data, the app will extract that as entities as data points, extraction and conversion are done then,” Rangarajan said.

Further, on the app-end, the software identifies the missing information and asks follow up questions. On the technology end, the SDK converts text back to speech to ask a verbal question to the user, in the language opted by the user and takes the next step accordingly.

This is a built-in dialogue manager, which helps the system understand what the next question should be. Giving an example of contextualising the questions, Rangarajan said, “For instance, for a travel platform, if a customer says “show flights from Delhi to Mumbai for 2 days later”, the text is contextualised to understand the date two-days from now and show the options accordingly. Further, if a user just mentions, “show flights to Delhi”, the system will prompt asking for the source and follow up accordingly.”

Currently, Slang Labs is enabled till the Add to Cart step in the ecommerce flow, but Rangarajan said, it is working to enable the further process of payments as well in a few months for a complete voice-based journey. 

While initially, it took a few months for the SDK to be deployed as the developer had to work on low-level items and use cases as well, as the product has grown, Slang Labs has been able to integrate the SDK in a few days with any app. “We also take a few more weeks to polish the experience for a user and in a single sprint cycle, the product can be launched for customer use,” the cofounder added. 

Currently built on the top of pre-trained models, on which more user data can be added in a matter of days, the SDK can also be scaled across multiple apps within a single company or platform thanks to the microservices-based architecture. 

The Growth Journey

With a team of 16 people, predominantly in the engineering team, Slang Labs invested the first two years of its life on research and development and released the final SDK earlier this year. En route, it raised $1.25 Mn funding from Endiya Partners.  

With eight clients including SpiceJet, BigBasket among others, the company now has 25K-30K monthly unique users. The company now aims to hit 1 Mn end users by the end of the year.

On the monetisation model, Rangarajan said, “The pricing is based on a monthly Slang Users basis, where the client pays per unique user of the voice medium. We charge anywhere between INR 2- INR 8 per user per unique user in a month.” Essentially, the company earns every time a customer uses Slang Labs to order via Voice.

What’s Working In Voice Tech In India

Highlighting the trends among users, Rangarajan said that for ecommerce apps, the predominant language is English. “Other languages make 25% of the ecommerce business, and in that Hindi is the dominant one. In non-ecommerce apps like travel, the user demand is 50% in English and 50% in Hindi. We see more Hindi users on these travel applications,” he added.

Consumers often tend to mix voice and typing together, so the number of users able to finish transactions is high. Otherwise, with just typing or only voice, the cart drop rate increases.

“We see consumption continues to be English but customers want interactions to be in vernacular language.”

In the voice tech space, there are a lot of players— from global tech giant Google to ecommerce giant Amazon. The companies have voice technology as a service through their own SDKs and also consumer facing voice assistant apps. Amazon and Google are looking to endow Amazon Alex and the Google Assistant with regional language voice capabilities, and both already offer Hindi. 

Among the startups that are offering voice assistant SDKs for speech-to-text conversion or speech recognition are full-stack products such as Alan, however, it does not support regional languages.

In India, in the conversational AI space, Bengaluru-based SaaS startup Vernacular.ai has also gained attention. Backed by AngelList, LetsVenture, Exfinity Ventures and others and with over $5.1Mn in funding, the company offers a voice-tech platform which is an intelligent, multilingual platform that can help automate up to 80% of call centre operations. The company is focused on voice solutions for calling operations and isn’t in the direct competition of Slang Labs.

Hence, the company with its multilingual in-app voice assistant product, Slang Labs is targeting a niche and unique market space. Rangarajan said that the company is now looking to explore international growth as well in the next year, as the problem of voice as a medium to interact with apps is a global issue. The company is also looking to actively raise funds going forward to scale up its growth.

The post After Little Eye Labs, This Founder Duo Looks To Fix Ecommerce Penetration With Voice AI appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Thursday (August 6), announced a host of measures to boost digital payments in the country. Among the announcements made by RBI governor Shaktikanta Das was a soon to be launched pilot for offline-based digital payments which won’t require internet connectivity. 

The RBI governor, while observing that the lack of internet access in some areas was proving to be an impediment in the adoption of digital payments, said that an option for off-line payments through cards, wallets and mobile devices is expected to help in this regard. 

Das added that the details of the pilot project for the service would be announced soon. 

Recently, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also launched the UPI AutoPay feature to enable e-mandate for recurring transactions, and a RuPay business credit card for small business and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). 

Both offerings are expected to further the growth in digital payments. With the launch of UPI in 2016, the digital payments market in India received a boost and is expected to scale, in terms of volume, from $5.35 Bn in FY19 to $59.77 billion in FY23 at a CAGR of 287%.

ODR Mechanism For Digital Payments Soon

Das also announced the introduction of an online dispute resolution (ODR) mechanism for digital payments.

In a statement following the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, Das said, “A scheme of retail payments in offline mode using cards and mobile devices, and a system of on online dispute resolution (ODR) mechanism for digital payments will also be introduced.”

“Recourse to technology-driven redressal mechanisms that are rule-based, transparent and involve minimum (or no) manual intervention is necessary to deal with them in a timely and effective manner,” the statement read.

In 2019, an RBI-appointed committee headed by the non-executive chairman of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, suggested a host of measures to boost digital payments in the country, including an online dispute resolution system to handle complaints. Other suggestions were elimination of charges, round the clock RTGS and NEFT facility and duty-free import of point-of-sales machines.

The RBI governor announced that priority sector lending guidelines for banks have been amended to help startups avail credit facilities. 

“With a view to align the guidelines with emerging national priorities and bring a sharper focus on inclusive development, the guidelines have been reviewed after wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders,” Das said.

The RBI governor noted that supply chain disruptions in the economy persist, also adding that inflation pressures were evident across segments. Further, it was conceded that India’s real GDP growth for 2020-21 was likely to be negative. “Inflation remains elevated in the second quarter but is likely to ease while the recovery in the rural economy is expected to be robust,” said Das. 

The post RBI To Roll Out Offline-Based Digital Payments Through Cards, Wallets appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Local drug stores and pharmacies have played a prominent role in India’s healthcare ecosystem for decades. Even till this day, people in rural and semi-urban areas, who have limited access to healthcare facilities, rely on them as the next best alternatives or ‘aadha doctor’ (half a doctor).  

With Covid-19 in the picture, a lot of these local pharmacies, that link doctors and patients in less developed regions are in dilemma and fear that e-pharmacy startups such as Netmeds, 1mg, Medlife and Pharmeasy will soon replace them, similar to what happened when ecommerce giants Amazon and Flipkart took on retailers, the repercussions of which are being felt today with the protests by vendors and sellers.

Coming to the rescue of such local pharmacy stores in rural and semi-urban areas is MedCords, a healthtech startup from a small town in Kota, Rajasthan, which is currently working on digitising local pharmacies across the country via localised, hyper-local delivery model.

Headquartered in Pune, MedCords was founded in 2017 by Nikhil Baheti, Saidanaik Dhanavath and Shreyans Mehta. The company started its journey with digitizing patient health records and providing doctor teleconsultation service to rural parts of the country. With its latest Sehat Sathi app, it looks to digitise local pharmacies in a matter of minutes (~5 minutes) and aims to eliminate the trust deficit that exists in the healthcare ecosystem.

“During the Covid-19 lockdown phase, a lot of these e-pharmacies were semi-operational, and there was a shortage of delivery executives to deliver medicines to patients. At that point in time, we started analysing the situation and began developing a product [Sehat Sathi], where we onboarded physical medical stores and converted them into digital stores, where they themselves can deliver to nearby customers,” recalled cofounder Mehta.

MedCords believes that eliminating the fear of local pharmacies that epharmacies will take over and offer them some relief from the deep discounting and delivery pressure.

MedCords: Is The Future Of Retail Pharmacies Hyperlocal?

Prior to the launch of MedCords’ Sehat Sathi app, the company was operational in four districts of Rajasthan, including Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar. After the launch of its new hyperlocal app, MedCords has expanded to 13 states, including UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (primarily Hindi speaking states), where it has more than 200-250 networks of retail pharmacies across each state. The company said that by leveraging these networks of medical stores, it has helped MedCords to get new users at a very less customer acquisition cost of INR 6 per user.

“For medical stores, the entire ecosystem opened, where users didn’t have to go anywhere else to buy medicines and can directly access nearby medical stores. For us, this completed the ecosystem, where patients record, doctor consultation along with medicines delivery all happening in a hyperlocal manner, in a way, optimised the entire operations to a whole new level,” added Mehta.

Further, sharing the growth metrics with Inc42, MedCords highlighted that the platform has completed close to 60K orders till date, and claimed to have grown organically, earning revenue up to INR 10 Lakh, in the span of three months of its app launch.

It has to be noted that MedCords presence in the urban, Tier 1 and metro cities is typically smaller compared to other online pharmacies and hyperlocal players like Dunzo, 1mg, Netmeds, PharEasy among others, which are catering to a larger set of audience.

“Often, patients in rural areas go to the city to buy medicine, and with our platform, they are not only getting their health records digitised and doctor teleconsultation for individuals and family at an affordable price, but we are also providing them the access to nearby medical stores on the go,” revealed Mehta, saying that building the trust factor is just as essential as delivery.

Covid-19 Brings Telemedicine Into Focus

Backed by Info Edge and WaterBridge Ventures, MedCords claims to have digitised close to 2 Mn health records for 25+ Lakh users and has a network of 5K doctors for teleconsultations. Before the pandemic, it only had about 1000 doctors on its platform. Recently, the company has also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Astarc Group, CIIE and other investors.

In terms of revenue generation, MedCords is not charging anything from pharmacies or doctors as it believes that these stakeholders need to earn more given the present-day situation, however, the company said that it earns its revenue from consumers and individuals directly via consultation fees and subscription plans.

In fact, in the last four months, MedCords said that it has witnessed 5x growth in terms of paid consultation and subscriptions, with 4x growth in terms of users. From 300 stores in pre-Covid times, it now has 7000+ stores. “Now, patients in rural India have realised the importance of digital healthcare service as it solves most of their queries, which otherwise would have taken five years easily.”

To further boost this growth, at a local level, MedCords will be adding more retail pharmacies and will be making them the brand ambassadors for the Sehat Sathi app. “When local pharmacies recommend our network of doctors to the patients and vice versa, it automatically builds trust in the entire ecosystem, and more and more people will start using our platform,” Mehta added.

“Today, there are benchmarks to reach urban audiences, but no benchmarks for rural audiences, where users are actually ready to spend on their health. Through this strategy, we will not only be generating more revenue, but also will be adding more subscription, teleconsultation,” said Mehta, commenting on its hyperlocal connected health model. In other words, the cofounder hinted that reaching out to more people in less time means more revenue.

Going forward, MedCords told Inc42 that it plans to have more than 5 Cr users, and digitise more than half a million medical stores by 2022. In terms of product development, the company said that it will be looking to automate prescription-writing, add video consultation services and also help pharmacies connect with local suppliers and newly-launched pharmaceutical products through the retailer-facing app.

“We are also developing a Uber-like model for doctors (doctor aggregator platform), where they can earn by consulting patients, on-demand and availability, and patients, on the other hand, will get to reach doctors with just a click of a button” concluded Mehta.

The post Why Info Edge-Backed MedCords Went From Digitising Pharmacies To A Healthcare Marketplace For Bharat appeared first on Inc42 Media.