How Getmyuni helps youth discover their dream college

When it has become the norm to whip out our phones to check online reviews for everything—be it for a new restaurant or the latest Bluetooth speakers, the process for college search and discovery is still done the traditional way. Youngsters whittle down their list of colleges to apply to from magazine rankings or from what their peers are saying. They spend hours on end doing research work, making the whole process tiresome and time-consuming.

Hardik Thakkar and Upneet Grover found themselves in this exact situation when they were looking to pursue their post-graduate degrees. Friends since their days in Infosys, the duo would always discuss ideas and were sure that they wanted to start a company together.

In June 2014, they finally decided that they needed to start something that worked as a social college search platform. They launched Getmyuni last February to help students choose the right college through exhaustive reviews and peer ratings, engaging forums and alumni connect.

Team @ Getmyuni

Bringing in the peer connect

While choosing colleges for their PG, both Hardik and Upneet struggled to get relevant information from peers and also to communicate with fellow students/alumni to understand the pros and cons of each college.

There was scattered information available on different forums and they mostly had to rely on personal connections to get peer information. Thus they wanted to primarily focus on the social connect aspect of Getmyuni.

The duo started Getmyuni after substantial groundwork. Hardik has moved on from the team, which now has Nirmanyu Arora, who has plenty of hands-on experience with creating products in the edutech domain, Manish Gupta, an MBA in Business Analytics, and Tushar Mehta, a BE from NSIT.

The initial challenges for the startup included the difficulty in sourcing user-generated content and getting students to write college reviews without having to spend money on it.

“As a result we created campus ambassador programmes, strong referrals and in product marketing programmes and were lucky to have a good word-of-mouth going around. We were surprised by the number of students who were willing to help aspirants and hence wrote long, unbiased reviews,” says 29-year-old Upneet.

Breaking the market

He adds that they came up with a new revenue stream where they were enabling brands and companies to reach out to students via competitions.

“We were making enough money to support the business till we finally got the funding of $50,000 from Tlabs. With that funding plus our revenues increasing month-on-month we’ve been able to scale to a million users per month on the platform, something we are incredibly proud of,” says Upneet.

Apart from classified platforms like eShiksha, HT Campus and the India Today review, there also is CollegeDekho, a platform that helps students connect with colleges. It had raised a seed funding of $2 million from Man Capital, and also raised funding from GinarSoft.CollegeDekho has over 22,000 colleges listed.

However, Upneet believes that the classifieds space is tradition and has been built purely to generate leads. There isn’t much peer information.

“We saw a huge opportunity in the user-generated content space in education, given that there were clear winners in other industries and they all had one thing in common – they had UGC at their core, for example, Zomato for food, Tripadvisor for travel and Glassdoor for jobs,” explains Upneet.

Numbers and future

Getmyuni claims to have over 11,000 colleges listed and over 40,000 student-written reviews on its platform. Since its inception the team claims to have over one million sessions, growing at 60 percent month-on-month.

Their revenue run rate is at Rs 10 lakh. The revenue model of the platform includes generating and selling high quality, verified student leads to colleges that are the right fit, and also ads and student enrollment.

The team is looking for its next round of funding. The aim is to fortify its position as the best college search destination and kickstart sales for domestic colleges.

Getmyuni is also looking to tap into the market for students wishing to study abroad.

“We aim to build the strongest college recommendation tool. We believe that currently a lot of students are being misguided by offline consultants to suit themselves, and if there is a fair portal, which bases a student’s background, marks and abilities, using advanced algorithms, to present them with the right set of college recommendations, that product will be a super success,” says Upneet.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/08/getmyuni/

From Re 1 to a Rs 450 cr revenue company – the legacy of Agarwal Packers and Movers

Ramesh Agarwal just had Rs 1 after he quit the Indian Airforce in 1987 as he had donated all his earnings. With zero capital, while Ramesh was wondering what to do, Subhash Gupta, an officer of the Indian Airforce, suggested the idea of starting a packers and movers service.

The journey of Agarwal Packers and Movers started in an office space in Secunderabad, costing Rs 250 per month. From making four shifts for the Indian Airforce, using Airforce trucks, this 30-year-old logistics company works towards shifting close to 82,000 to 83,000 homes across the country.

With a team size of over 5,000 people, Agarwal Packers and Movers has 103 branches across the country. The company has more than 1,000 trucks, hires over 1000 trucks, and has over 2,000 locker facilities, which is expected to touch 10,000 in the coming year. It generates close to Rs 450 crores in revenue every year.

Working with the Indian Airforce

Being an officer of the Indian Airforce, Ramesh, 54, knew the difficulties the officers face, especially when they have to regularly shift base. When Subhash suggested the idea, Ramesh began working on setting up the organisation.

He says: “I thought of the idea and felt it made sense, I knew there were different nuances in play. You need to have invoices, bills, consignment notes and list of items. So beginning with taking a photocopy of a regular transporter from a fellow officer, I started this service for the Indian Airforce officers.”

With zero capital, Ramesh was challenged with the task of marketing this across the Airforce base. Roping in his brother Rajendra Agarwal, Ramesh decided to give his number in the calendars that were a rage, which costed him Rs 4,000.

However, his friend Vijay Kumar’s mother came to his rescue and agreed to provide the capital, but in exchange for Vijay to be a part of the founding team. However, later Vijay decided to pursue his career in politics and exited Agarwal Packers and Movers.

The initial cost of their office space was given with the first four shifts they made. Ramesh says that they made a profit of Rs 8000, of which they returned Rs 4,000 to Vijay’s mother and the remaining money was pumped into operational expenses.

Ramesh Agarwal (Left) training the early staff in 1990

Building an emotional carrier

Starting from an era that was very different from today’s world of mobile apps and technology, Agarwal Packers and Movers has been able to differentiate itself from every other player in the market.

Today, there are several players in the home services and shifting market, but Agarwal Packers and Movers still claims to be in a leading position. There is Boxme that creates locker facilities and Mumbai-based BoxMySpace for people when they want to shift, and hyper-funded startups like UrbanClap.

Ramesh adds that one of the biggest differentiators he has been able to create is to work as an emotional carrier. Explaining this, he says

Shifting a home isn’t about shifting goods or it isn’t about the money. A person is shifting their memories with these goods, and memories always have emotions associated with them. If a home owner has a 30-year-old radio that isn’t working, it probably has zero costs to it. But it is still valuable enough to have packed, maybe because it was his father’s or grandfather’s. It is important that your team realises its value and gives it due respect.

He believes that no matter how advanced technology gets or what apps you use, emotions need to be ingrained into the team and the ground staff who actually do the shipping and moving.

Building a strong foundation

The task of hiring the first 10 people who can spearhead and bring that culture is difficult, but after that it becomes easier. The first 10 people is who matter, believes Ramesh. He roped in the first forerunners from his friends, people from Airforce and his village.

“It is a pleasant surprise when the packers behave in a cordial manner and treat your product the way you want them to be treated. They listen to what you need, and it is not a mindless rush,” says a 40-year-old banking executive, who has used Agarwal Packers and Movers services.

The team had procured their very first truck with the help of Cholamandalam Finance. They had approached Agarwal Packers and Movers with a truck that someone else had procured and hadn’t been able to pay for.

In 1993, GE Capital helped Agarwal Packers and Movers procure more trucks, and soon the fleet size began to expand and grow.

Present Core team at Agarwal Packers and Movers

Addressing every pain point

When they initially started, the market only had open bodied trucks. The team of packers had to climb on top of the truck and wrap it in a canvas cloth and rope.

It wasn’t a very efficient way of transportation and no matter how much they tried, the goods inside would move.

Thinking of an effective way of combatting this problem, Ramesh decided that they needed to build a complete steel enclosure. So in 1994, Ramesh with the help of a friend constructed a steel bodied enclosure for his trucks. This brought in a change in the way thelogistics business was done.

The team also found that the wooden boxes they used to pack were causing some damage due to hammering the box while while shifting.

Locker Cube Facilities

It was then the team decided to make portable boxes with hinges and have an insulation of 18mm sized thermocol sheets. The packaging innovations also drastically brought down the cost of the freight charges.

They replaced cartons that costed Rs 72 per carton with easy to use bags, which got down the cost to Rs 38 per bag. Flexible thermocol sheets were used instead of corrugated sheets, which reduced the cost to Rs 2.5 from Rs 7 per sheet. Air packed containers were used to avoid damage to petrol tanks of vehicles.

When the team realised that there were people who wanted exclusive trucks but couldn’t afford the cost of a whole truck and not even occupy half of its space, the team decided to build Trucking Cubes or Lockers.

Each of these lockers is given to the customer as per his or her requirements. The goods are packed in the lockers and shipped, the owner has a key and nobody is authorised to open those lockers other than the owner.

Packers and Movers in Action

Breaking the market

With these lockers in place, Agarwal Packers and Movers now aims to target the food and the pharmaceutical industry transport as well. Ramesh says that because of food being packed in close quarters, many expire before their dates.

“Every day close to 10 percent of the food and pharma industry goods get spoilt. Soaps, agarbattis, etc., are being packed along with biscuits and this can be damaging and dangerous. I think different lockers can be used for medicines, soaps, and food. I intend to make close to 10,000 cubes and we will touch a turnover of Rs 1,200 crore, and then will move it to one lakh cubes, which will reach a turnover of Rs 5000 crore,” says Ramesh.

He says that wherever there is a customer pain-point, the team aims to work relentlessly to solving the problem. He adds that gone are the days when you need to use carton boxes and gather all your friends and family to help you shift homes.

Ramesh explains, When Agarwal Packers and Movers first started, we would begin the day at 4 am, procure boxes from stores nearby, pack the goods, use paper and cloth to insulate and then put them in the trucks. We would pack over 2,000 boxes, which would take 18 hours. However, today everything has changed. Starting from a single man army today, we have a team of people.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/08/agarwal-packers-and-movers/

Indian Evernote alternative Buno aims to make note-taking more intuitive with its minimalistic approach

Entrepreneurs generally start out on their journey with a basic Minimum Viable Product(MVP). It may not have an amazing user interface (UI) and multiple features, but it aims to get one particular task done well. Further on in the lifecycle of a product, entrepreneurs tend to add more functional features and improve the UI to enhance appeal. But adding too many features can be a problem as well, as it can add to the complexity and initial learning curve, putting off users.

Many entrepreneurs have utilised the concept of ‘minimalism’ well in the last few years to grow their startups. Through this thought process, entrepreneurs strip down a product to its bare essentials and try to make it perform one core task exceedingly well. Tumblr and Google Translate could be taken as good case studies of the minimalistic approach. An Indian startup Buno aims to make note-taking simpler through this same philosophy.

What is it?

Share directly

Short for ‘Bucket Notes’, Buno is a note-taking app which aims to make the job of jotting notes through a gesture-based system, quick and simple. With its simplistic and minimalistic approach, the founders aim to compete with the likes of Evernote and Google Keep by focusing on the users’ key need, which is simple hassle-free note taking.

The app relies on ‘swiping’ for different functions- users can swipe to take a note and then swipe again to save it. Then through real-time cloud sync, the notes are backed up and users can access it across multiple devices. To ensure security, Buno has a four digit PIN-based security system and the team claims to utilise the highest grade security techniques for end-to-end encryption.

Buno’s aim is to provide a minimal interface to avoid any distractions while taking notes, to help users focus on writing more effectively. Some other interesting features include-

File organisation- Bucket (folder) system for organising and accessing notes easily.

Social sign in– Buno has enabled Facebook and Google sign-ins to ensure quick access.

Share directly- To eliminate ‘copy-pasting’ across different screens and apps, Buno lets users share notes directly from within the app.

Word count and image integration– To let users keep track of their notes, Buno provides character, word and paragraph count on the screen along with the ability to add multiple images to the same note.

Jayant And Deepesh (HelloWorld Dev)

The story so far

Buno was developed by HelloWorld Dev in collaboration with 50x Apps. The core team of Buno includes Deepesh Sondagar (CEO), Jayant Rao (Design head), Puneet Kohli (Product lead) and Arun Swaminathan (Technical Architect).

Deepesh had earlier started a company to design custom phone cases and claims to have sold it at ten times the price within 18 months of its launch. He currently handles operations, finance and management at Buno.

Jayant looks after design and digital marketing and relies on his experience working with companies like Ogilvy and Featherlite Furniture. Arun has published research papers and worked with companies like Barclays and Cognisant in a technical capacity. He also has prior experience in architecturing apps to enterprise grade software.

Puneet has four years of experience in the app development space with his startup ReFocus Tech. Talking to YourStory, Puneet noted that Buno came into existence in November 2015, based on the founding team’s personal needs. He said,

Being a gadget freak, I generally change my phone every two months. I have the habit of taking notes throughout the day for various ideas including sensitive information. So I tried and tested a lot of apps but they were either too cluttered or too ugly for my liking.

Arun and Puneet (50x Apps)

While having dinner with a bunch of close friends, he realised that his friends too had faced similar issues. So they decided to work on an app that provided a clean, user-friendly and minimalistic interface to take notes. Puneet from 50x Apps says, “We all put a lot of thought into how we could make the process of taking notes really easy. It’s a pain to have to press so many buttons to take a note with current applications – especially during meetings.”

So they decided to make buttons redundant and developed a gesture based UI that helps users take notes with ‘swipes’ performing different actions. Buno is currently working on a web-based version of their product to help users sync their notes across their smartphone and web browsers to enhance user appeal.

Traction and revenue model

Available on Android and iOS, Buno is currently free to download and use. Going forward, the team aims to include some in-app purchases or a subscription model for premium features and are also exploring options like charging for storage space and cloud backup after a certain limit.

Puneet estimates that they have about 8,000 installs across both platforms, and according to their metrics, eight percent of their users use the app daily, while 21 percent of users use it at least once in a month. In terms of the demography of users, Buno found that 54 percent of their Android users were from Germany, while the iOS version is most popular in China, accounting for 40 percent of their users. Puneet also noted,

The average session length for Buno is 20 seconds, which is completely in line with our motto of making note-taking super easy and quick.

Sector overview

Smartphones have now become the default screen for most users. Though most people prefer desktops and laptops for typing lengthy emails and finishing reports, smartphones are extremely useful for jotting down quick notes and reminders. The three big players in this sector are Evernote, Google Keep and Microsoft’s OneNote.

Each platform has their own set of features that appeal to different users. Google Keep is estimated to be more streamlined, with better search integration, and quicker. Evernote, on the other hand, has API integrations and premium web clipper tools that make notes searchable in Google results.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/07/app-fridays-buno/

23-year-old Akshay Ahuja’s RoboChamps reaches 500 schools and 20,000 students through robotics learning

An alumnus of Chitkara University, Akshay Ahuja was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug at the age of 19. In the second year of his college, he undertook two projects-teaching school students basic circuits and electronic-related concepts, and a six-week industrial training for B.Tech students.

Akshay Ahuja, Founder, RoboChamps

Luckily, he managed to get 29 B.Tech students from all across Chandigarh to train them on the use and functioning of Atmega8 IC technology. Building a teaching centre while still a student was a challenging task. The students were provided training on the roof of a building under construction.

What caught Akshay’s attention was the speed at which kids at the summer camp were learning, in comparison to BTech students. This instigated him to try an experiment. He put one of the kids, Aryaman Verma, from the summer camp workshop in the industrial programme with the B.Tech students. To his surprise, the nine-year-old learnt the Atmega8 IC technology better than the B.Tech students. This confirmed to Akshay the need for RoboChamps, which he then launched in 2013 in Chandigarh.

Creation of robotics module

RoboChamps creates robotics modules for students to help understand various scientific and technological concepts. These modules are made keeping in mind the relevance they hold to the different scientific and mathematics concepts students learn in schools.

According to Akshay, the components for every kit are sourced from different parts of the country, including Delhi and Chennai. Some more sophisticated components like breadboards are imported from China. Currently, RoboChamps has close to 40 such modules.

The startup conducts workshops in its academies and has tied up with various schools to conduct open workshops. With the intention of giving back to the society, RoboChamps also conducts free workshops in slums.

We do not rent out or buy entire properties for our academies. Instead, we have tie-ups with different schools and organisations that allow us to use their premises for the required hours of coaching,” explains Akshay.

Bootstrapping

Akshay bootstrapped RoboChamps with his own money of Rs 20,000. More than the financial hurdles he found it difficult to get the right set of talent that was equally motivated. Other challenge he faced was the multiple rejections from schools, which found it difficult to trust a young entrepreneur.

Akshay Ahuja with students

In January 2013, RoboChamps' module was rejected by close to 50 schools. Akshay one day visited a well-known school in Jagraon, a district in Ludhiana and got the chance to meet the principal, who was impressed by the learning method. That’s how RoboChamps got its first client.

Overcoming all the initial hiccups, RoboChamps just started to take off, when Akshay’s co-founder scooted with all the money the company earned in the initial few months. With no resources left, Akshay had to put in a considerable amount of money again and start from scratch.

Today, RoboChamps has 10 academies and 50 teachers who regularly conduct classes and workshops in different cities in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, and has covered more than 500 schools and reached 20,000 students.

Creating a network of schools

RoboChamps will be conducting an event, Build Your Bot, on August 28, in Gurugram. It is set to bring together around 20,000 students and help RoboChamps associate with more than 100 schools from Delhi-NCR region as well.

For the upcoming Build Your Bot event, we require a good amount of money. But all of that will be raised through students’ fee and sponsorship deals. The money raised through the event will be used to open more eobotics academies in the coming years,” Akshay adds.

The robotics courses are priced at Rs 1,600 per month for a 16-hour training period, including training services. The company targets students from Classes III to XII. By the end of 2016, it is looking to open 32 robotics academies, in cities like Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Bathinda, Amritsar and Chandigarh.

Market overview

A recent report by Research and Markets estimates that the global industrial robotics market was $28.22 billion in 2014, and is predicted to reach $41.18 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 6.5 percent for the period. Schools are now increasingly focussing on incorporating robotics learning as a part of the regular curriculum, and startups have sensed this as a huge business opportunity.

Similar to RoboChamps, Noida-based Robotech Labs is a service provider in robotics and embedded education that conducts training workshops for colleges. Jay Robotix built the ROBOX line of educational robotic kits for K-12 students, which include building blocks.Robotix Learning Solutions provides robotics-based STEM education to students from Classes IV-XII.

Reference: https://yourstory.com/2016/07/robochamps/

[Startup of the day] How two friends from Jaipur set up a global polo equipment brand

Two friends took the old adage ‘choose a job that you love and you will never have to work a day in your life’ to heart when they started up. For, Jai Singh and Vikramaditya, friends from Mayo College, bonded over their love for horses. The two would end up spending hours on end at the stables at their college.

“We would admire the beautiful imported riding gear that some of the students had. But what we found frustrating was that quality polo equipment and gear were not available in India, and if one had to buy, imported products were the only option. This frustration later became the seed idea that resulted in the formation of Polofactory,” says 31-year-old Jai.

Dedicated to polo and horses, Polofactory was established in Jaipur in 2012 to manufacture polo equipment and luxury lifestyle merchandise that is inspired by horses and polo. The brand’s luxury lifestyle merchandise includes clothing, accessories and luggage.

Polofactory today caters to different polo clubs, teams and patrons and also organises polo holidays across UK, New Zealand, Argentina and India. The team also provides consulting support on team management, tournament organisation, off-site polo events and polo infrastructure development.

Jai Singh(L) and Vikramaditya(R)

Bringing in the quality

The ride however wasn’t easy for the team. The duo had begun with their journey with building their signature product – the polo saddle.

Vikramaditya had gone on to work in New Zealand under the tutelage of Ross Ainsely, a leading polo pony trainer. He spent six years there learning more and more about horses and realised that the equipment one uses makes a major impact on the psyche and the body of the horse and therefore effects the performance of both the rider and the horse.

While the idea was strong, they found it difficult to convince artisans to work in a particular way, stick to the design given, and use the best leather, quality threads, rivets and other raw materials. Jai adds,

We would reject most of what was made. Most people kept suggesting that we needed to cut a few corners, else the final product would be too expensive and no one would buy it.

There was some truth in what was said, as the cost of making their products turned out to be three times higher. Thus, their final product cost much higher than what people were used to paying. However, the duo were sure that the quality and durability wasn’t something they were willing to compromise.

When the duo found that the utility of Polofactory’s products was limited to polo players and horsemen, they decided to take polo and horses to everyone else, by venturing into fashion and lifestyle.Also read: This trio is ‘Making in India’ for the European markets

Spreading the reach

The core team at Polofactory currently comprises concepts and product design team, accounts, digital and offline sales, distribution, production and polo and horse training. Jai adds that the people on the team come from varied backgrounds like advertising, banking, software engineering, design & visual arts, polo, and NGOs.

Polofactory claims to clock a revenue growth of 18x since the time of its inception. From supplying to 10 clients in 2012-13, in 2015-16, Polofactory supplies to over nine countries including UK, Zambia, Australia, USA, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, Kuwait, Kenya and Qatar.

Polofactory supplies equipment for over 300 horses and over a 100 players and to almost all leading Indian polo professionals like Samsheer Ali, Lokendra Ghanerao, Simran Shergill, Abhimanyu Pathak, Gaurav Sahgal and Uday Kalaan.

It also has now has begun to export to clients, like Micmar Polo, and Surrey Polo, across the globe. The startup aims to be the global leader in polo equipment. The current revenue model is a mix of direct online retail and wholesale supply to teams, clubs and stores.Also read: This Make In India ‘chair’ brings you closer to health and wellness goals

Smattering of equipment suppliers and manufacturers

However, polo is a niche sport in the country restricted to royalty, people in the army and a few teams. In India, there are several unbranded companies around regions like Kanpur that produce the leather equipment needed for the sport.

There also is SC Baug & Co in Kolkata that is known to produce bamboo balls and other equipment. Then there is SK Saddlery, which is a Kanpur-based polo equipment supplier, which claims that 85 percent of the equipment it sells is produced by artisans around Kanpur, and there also is Shamlal & Sons. However international brands like Casablanca, Oakley for Polo Glasses are still considered among the best.

Currently, Polofactory’s focus is to achieve better global presence. Jai adds that they are working hard to be more accessible to customers across the globe. The team intends to emphasise more on direct retail – online and offline and eventually distribute as a mono brand concept store that works on the franchise model.

“Such stores would be one-stop shops for the best in polo – equipment, fashion and services. Our current website is modelled on this idea. We are hard on expanding our product range and on increasing the brand’s visibility to move to this model. On the polo front we want to collaborate, provide support, co-brand with the biggest polo events in the world,” explains Jai.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/07/polofactory/

Ten Year Old Indian Boy Is Addicted to Dog Milk

Meet Mohit Kumar, a 10-year-old boy from Manaitand, India, who has been feasting on dog milk ever since he was four. His parents are desperate to get him to stop sucking the milk of stray bitches in their town, but so far they’ve been unable to find a way.

Mohit was weaned at two years, but at the age of four he developed a rather strange habit – sucking the milk of stray bitches. “Once Mohit was playing with stray dogs outside and happened to suck on the breasts of a bitch. Since then he does the same whenever he gets a chance to do so,” his mother Pinky says. “Bitches of the area have also taken a liking to him and feed him whenever Mohit wants them to.” His worried parents don’t even allow the boy to go outside without supervision, for fear that he will seek out stray bitches to get his milk fix, but he sometimes gives them the slip. “We do not even allow him to go to school fearing that this habit may only get worse,” Pinky adds.

Photo: Ruptly/YouTube screengrab

Most of the female dogs in Manaitand know Mohit and let him suck on their breasts, but the boy did get in some trouble recently when a a bitch from another colony bit him. His parents had to take him to Patliputra Medical College Hospital (PMCH) for treatment, and he is now taking vaccine to avoid rabies, but they have no way of preventing this from happening in the future, as Mohit’s craving for dog milk seems insatiable.

The fact that Mohit was born mute makes matters even more complicated for his parents, who have trouble understanding what makes dog milk so appealing to him. Sometimes he runs off, and it’s only after neighbors come to complain about him sucking on the breasts of strays in the streets that they that his family learns what he was up to.

Speaking about the boy’s unusual addiction Dr D K Singh said that dog milk “is not hazardous to human life, but the risk of rabies infection is always there.” I’d say rabies is pretty hazardous to human life…

Reference: http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/ten-year-old-indian-boy-is-addicted-to-dog-milk.html

Delhi-based student deals platform BigDeal raises funding from EVC Ventures

BigDeal, a discovery platform for students looking for discounts, has raised Pre Series-A funding from EVC Ventures. The round was led by Anjli Jain, Managing Partner, EVC Ventures.

(From L-R), Ashish Singh and Damanpreet Singh

The platform will use the funding to expand the team, further enhance its technology and pursue customer and merchant acquisition. It says that it is aiming for a tenfold growth in customers over the next six months and an increase in transactions per customer by 2.5 to 3 times a day.

“As a student, it was always difficult to find deals online or offline, relevant to our pockets. We as students have limited spending power, however, no platform curates discounts and deals exclusively for students,” says Aashish Singh, Founder and CEO, BigDeal. He has recently graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology.

He adds that he wanted to solve this pain point and founded BigDeal as a platform to help connect students and merchants.

BigDeal’s tech was upgraded with the I-MADE Platform and is now the exclusive student discount platform for 35,000 institutions in India. It says that with this platform, it aims to help 20 million students save more money. It is present throughout the student ecosystem including deals, coupons, food, mobile recharges, online shopping and commuting.

It is currently live in more than 25 colleges in India and the US and has deals offered by more than 500 merchants. It aims to generate 1,000 transactions per day with 80 percent repeat users within the next few months.

According to the platform, the app aims to be both a discovery platform for students looking for discounts and a significant sales channel for merchants looking to tap the 16-25 year-old demographic, enabling retailers to operate a single cohesive student programme. Merchants can maintain the supply of real-time deals to students across sectors like, food & beverage, travel, mobile recharges and e-commerce with a hassle free, just-in-time platform to market their services.

"BigDeal is targeting one of the most sought after market segments- college students. And with its partnership with I-MADE, it is positioned strategically to be a leader in the space,” says Anjli Jain, Partner, EVC.

According to an estimate, O2O is a $40 billion market and various platforms are competing in it. Nearbuy (formerly Groupon), Crown-it and Little are the behemoths in the segment.

Last July, Zovi founders Manish Chopra and Satish Mani jumped on this bandwagon with the launch of Little, an app-only consumer lifestyle deals marketplace. They also raised $50 million in funding, led by Paytm along with a big, unnamed investor, with participation from existing investors, SAIF Partners and Tiger Global Management.

Starting out with a couple of rounds of angel investments, Crownit raised $5.5 million in a Series A round of funding from Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners in May 2015.

Last August, Groupon India, the daily deals and local commerce company, rebranded itself as Nearbuy, in which its US-based parent firm, Groupon, does not hold a majority stake. Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm specialising in startup investments, helped Groupon India split from its Chicago-headquartered parent firm.

Since its launch, Groupon India has scaled up its presence across the country. In 2014, it said it sold over 7 million vouchers with a redemption rate of 97 per cent among its customers.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/07/bigdeal-funding/

Eyesight for the blind — Aami using NLP research to make reading easy

Four engineers — from different engineering streams and different schools — came together in Bengaluru over an idea that could make an impact on children’s lives. Nagasravya Tandule (21-years), Vikram Rastogi (24-years), Aneesh Durg (19-years) and Piyush Anand (20-years) met through online engineering forums to build a device that could make reading easy for dyslexics and the blind. According to the UN, there are a total of 15 million blind people in India, of which 25 percent are children. There are no numbers to estimate the total dyslexics in the country The four engineers wanted to go after this segment because of their expertise in Natural Language Processing technologies. In computing language, NLP means that the machine is trained to use human languages to communicate with people.

The beginning

The idea was born — in October 2015 — at ISM Dhanbad, where Nagasravya was in her final semester. She created a framework for a device that could use natural language processing algorithms and read books like a normal human being. She contacted Vikram Rastogi in Bengaluru, through a post on a social media channel that he was scouting to partner with projects that could change India. Vikram, being an IIT-Kanpur alum from 2012, was keen on working with ideas that could be challenging from a technology perspective and also from a social perspective. He was also awed by the entire IoT revolution that was sweeping the world. That’s why he teamed up with Nagasravya in January this year to build an affordable ring device that could read books. “The idea was to design and build a product that could be affordable and whose production could be scaled up to different markets,” says Nagasravya, Co-founder of Aami.

They were quickly joined by two more partners, Aneesh Durg and Piyush Anand. Aneesh is a sophomore engineer at the University of Illinois who again through a social media post discovered Nagasravya and Vikram. Piyush was Nagasravya’s junior at ISM. The company they formed was called Aami (‘ami’ in French means ‘friend’) and so was their NLP device. The four founders have invested a little less than Rs 3 lakh on their idea and have demonstrated the robustness of their product at SAP Labs and places like FICCI in Delhi.

The product is built on Python and C++ using open-source libraries like OpenCV and Tesseract. The four founders say that their product can identify text of variable sizes, fonts and orientation.

"It costs less than the commercial solutions currently available in the market," says Vikram, Co-founder of Aami. The best Braille reader machine costs $13,000 and the cheapest ones are around $1250. Aami is supposed to be one-tenth of that cost.

The company's product is still in the R&D phase and iswaiting to be signed up with hospitals and schools to spread the idea of using such a product for the blind. The product is worn on the index finger when the magic begins. Its powerful camera (working with software that behaves like the eye and the brain) reads every word in a jiffy. The product works on battery and for an hour's charge the device performs for over eight hours. It is also connected to an inbuilt speaker which reads out words to the user.

Several of the IoT companies in the market today, among which IoTranic, Altiux and Cooey are a few, are Aami’s competitors.

"Any company needs to validate the product in the market and only then will they be able to figure out the next phase of the product," says V Ganapathy, CEO of Axilor Ventures.

It would be nice to see Aami progressing beyond the idea phase, and to achieve that, the four entrepreneurs are in talks with a few companies to build a pilot case study to make reading easy for the blind. Let Aami be their friend.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/07/aami/

Indore and Mumbai based Tsar Watches is building a lifestyle brand around wooden watches

Few products have undergone an evolution as dramatic as the watch has over the years. From being a useful tool for telling the time, it became a fashion accessory and post-that, a wearable communication device. Today, the Burberrys, Fossils and Calvin Kleins watch in dismay as Apple and Google make a forays into the market. It was in this scenario that two entrepreneurs with an artistic bend of mind dared to launch a wooden analog watch brand recently. Tsar (meaning Emperor in Russian) is a lifestyle watch brand that sells wooden watches.

Team Tsar Watches

Driven by the passion for introducing eco-friendly and sustainable products, the Tsar founders advocate craftsmanship and vintage fashion. Based in Indore and Mumbai, Tsar Watches sold 72 watches within four months and had a revenue of Rs 3.15 lakhs in that period. “Today, we get around 300 visitors on our website and around 80 collaboration requests every day,” shares Co-founder Abdul Kadir Bhandari (23). Abdul, along with his friend Haider Ali Lashkar (23), founded the startup in September 2015. Most of this traction has been from India and the Middle East and recently, they started operations in Africa. For the Southern India operations, however, they roped in their well-wisher and guide Abbas Akbari who was with the Ford Motors Company earlier.

“People prefer a brand while buying a watch. So we created a brand that sounded European, conveying Middle Eastern values and paid a lot of attention to craftsmanship,” adds Haider. Tsar Watches are made of koa wood from the USA, dark sandalwood from Africa and walnut wood from Canada. “Each wood has a different kind of characteristic, like walnut wood helps us in developing clarity and focus. When you wear wood, you notice its color evolving over a period of time. Unlike metal watches that wear down over time, wooden watches actually look even better with age. The natural oils on their skin personalize the wooden watch to its owner,” adds Abdul.

But anything to do with wood is directly related to trees and the environment. “For this, we have a policy of planting a tree with each sale. We have tied up with a noted national NGO ‘Grow-trees’ that works in the field of environment conservation. This forms our core values and also fulfills our CSR activity,” informs Haider.

Tsar Watches Founders

‘Every wrist is their real estate’

Tsar Watches has a simple revenue model of online and offline selling channels. Apart from its own website, Tsar is available on Amazon, Paytm and Flipkart and with certified Instagram retailers. “We have agents or channel partners across the country like in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kuwait, Dubai, the UK etc. They are responsible for heading the operations in various cities. They not only stock the products but also bring in institutional sales, facilitate various collaborations, grow dealer networks and help in buzz promotion and directing the feedback. In addition, we have offline retail outlets that form the major chunk of our sales. We don’t give any kind of credit to the retailers but sell to them on full-cash. If any retailer is not satisfied with the purchase, then he/she may return the remaining products within 60 days from the date of sale and claim for refund. This way their money is also safe,” informs Abdul.

The Indian watch market grew by 19% in 2015 to reach total sales of Rs 76.7 billion in India alone, thanks to the role played by urban consumers and growing luxury consumerism (Source: Euromonitor). “Although the Indian watch market is mostly dominated by global brands like Timex, Fossil, Diesel, Cartier and Tag Heur, the likes of Titan are giving stiff competition to these MNCs. Yet India lacks indigenous watch brands in this sector,” shares Haider.

Tsar Watches prices range from Rs 3500 to Rs 5000. “In International markets, we do have competition in wooden watch sectors where Jord, We-wood and Original Grain are established brands. Their major operations are in the U.S. and Canada only. However, these brands are also not older than five years,” he adds.

They don’t seem intimidated. Abdul says, “We would appreciate more competition as this would generate greater buzz about this concept.” Tsar has plans of building a team of professional designers, marketers, PR professionals, artists and expanding in various other cities of India like Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Jaipur and Chandigarh, as well as other Tier II cities. There’s international expansion on the cards too in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Egypt.

“We currently operate from Indore, Mumbai and Kuwait offices while our allies are present in Chennai, Delhi and Dubai,” says Abdul, adding “We are working on more designs which are not just attractive but also deliver the TSAR experience. We have plans in the pipeline to increase the collection and offer more choices to our patrons.”

Abdul, an alumnus of Shishukunj International School Indore, did his BMS from Narsee Monjee College, Mumbai and M.Com from the University of Mumbai. He has worked in Home Décor and ezzybazaar.com. Haider, on the other hand, has done his BMS and M.Com from Hinduja College, Mumbai and has worked in Al Jawhara Press, Wood Ware and New Carpet House. The two believe that “brand is not created overnight but after a gradual series of multiple functions which should play simultaneously.”

Reference: https://yourstory.com/2016/07/tsar-watches/

70-year-old scripts startup success story with Rs 2 lakh in hand

Every day, we share success stories of youthful India, which is brimming with energy and potential and stacking up revolutionary businesses. Tales abound of entrepreneurs, many in their early 20s or even younger, who are making a mark in the startup ecosystem. But, how often do you come across a man who steps into the shoes of an entrepreneur post-retirement, at the ripe age of 70?

Lalit Mohan Mathur (third from left) with his core team members

While working for a company that made specialty wires, Lalit Mohan Mathur visited a customer in New Zealand who complained about the poor quality of cables he was importing for comfort heating applications from another manufacturer.

A while later, after retiring from the company, he contacted the New Zealand importer and asked him if he still faced the cable problem; and offered him a possible solution.

Lalit sent the customer some samples made on improvised, hand-made machines. Delighted both with the samples and the price, the importer decided to source his complete requirement from Lalit. This spurred Lalit on to launch a company.

In May 2005, at the age of 60, he incorporated Wipe Hotwire India Thermal Equipment (WHITE), a manufacturer, supplier and exporter of insulated heating wires, cables, mats and heating equipment.

After the incorporation of the company, various related issues started rearing their head. “There weren’t adequate testing facilities in the country for specialty cables and we had to put in effort to get international certifications. There was a problem of finding skilled manpower since the product is primarily for export and the domestic market doesn’t offer a training ground. The issue of funding was another major factor which would decide the growth of the company,” says 70-year-old Lalit, Founder of WHITE.

Lalit, who holds an engineering degree from the University of Baroda and is an alumnus of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, began his career with Tata Electric Company at Mumbai. He subsequently worked with state electronic development corporations KELTRON and Uptron, in their R&D department. His last assignment before retirement in 2005 was managing the R&D portfolio for a mid-sized manufacturing unit for specialty cables.

Institutions refused to stake their money

Starting out with a modest sum of Rs 2 lakh from his personal savings, which went into buying raw materials and machines, Lalit struggled to find an investment source. After incorporation, WHITE quickly got a kitty of orders and applied for a loan with a nationalised bank. The loan was promptly turned down because the company’s founder was 60 years old and it seemed a risky investment for the bank.

Later, Lalit’s two friends, who became his partners, invested around Rs 12 lakh in the company, which he put in buying some critical machines, raw materials, and in hiring talent. In 2010, the platform raised an investment from its client in the Netherlands.

When slow and steady wins the race

Starting out with modest production, the company claimed to produce three million metres of cable and clocked a revenue of Rs 12 crore in the last fiscal.

Lalit set up a small unit in Sahibabad. In a few years’ time, he moved the unit to Neemrana in Rajasthan. Currently, he runs two production units in Neemrana, driven by a 100-people workforce.

According to Lalit, the company build its credentials primarily by word of mouth via customers. WHITE also participates actively in trade shows around the globe – that helps it connects with new customers and suppliers, as well as stay abreast with upcoming market trends.

Today, the company caters to the world market, primarily Europe and New Zealand, and is trying to enter North America.

Sharks in the seas

According to Ken Research report, India’s wires and cables market revenues have grown at a CAGR of 16.4 percent from 2009 to 2014.

According to the research report, the country’s wires and cables market will grow at a considerable CAGR rate and will reach over Rs 590 million by 2019 due to the increasing number of manufacturers and rising investment in different sectors.

According to experts, the world wire and cable market was valued at $4.65 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.7 percent from 2015 to 2020. Currently, the commercial and residential application holds a large share in the underfloor heating and snow-melting market. The growth of this market is fostered by increasing concerns about energy efficiency and the global environment.

In the cables category, especially which offers solutions for heating needs, there are only a few large companies in India that have a similar product portfolio. Thermopads is one of the largest manufacturing and export companies. Tefkot and Garg Associates are other two NCR-based companies that are in exports.

And these Indian companies face fierce competition from another market, China. They say they face severe competition from big and small manufacturers in China, Mexico, and Russia.

Give back to society

“Having fostered WHITE for 10 years, I feel content that it has served its objective of providing employment and training to the youth. Through WHITE, I am also fulfilling my desire to give back to society – we actively support a charitable eye hospital and have adopted a primary school at Neemrana,” concludes septuagenarian Lalit.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/07/70-year-scripts-startup-success/