How this real-estate startup founder moved into fintech to help people invest better

Investments in India are rarely planned, unless you happen to be one of the uber wealthy. While there are several investment platforms today, few people are even aware of them, and fewer still make use of them. This is one of the reasons why 32-year-old Aditya Agarwal started Wealthy. It is an online investment service that makes it easy for everyone to invest like a pro.

Aditya the IIT Bombay alumnus says: We are in the business of making people ‘Wealthy’ by helping them take smart investment decisions with even as little as Rs 5,000. We have also made it super easy to invest and our unique paperless process has made investing an Amazon-like experience.

From real-estate to fintech

The idea of Wealthy came to Aditya while he was running his real-estate investment platform getSquareFeet. While he personally was a part of several angel investing groups, he realised that most of his friends were struggling to invest their monthly surplus; they didn’t know where to invest the money and it would end up lying idle in their bank accounts.

“The problem was prevalent across different age and income groups in my social circle. My parents were also reliant on my brother-in-law for advice on their savings and investments,” says Aditya.

Team @ Wealthy

Looking at this clear need, Aditya ended up discussing the problem with his friend of 13 years Prashant Gupta, who was working at Morgan Stanley. It was Prashant who suggested the idea of automating the investment advisory and continuous portfolio management, thus making it available to retail clients across India. He had seen this being used by banks across the world for their wealthy clients.

Nuances of setting up a fintech startup

Once they tested the feasibility of automating advisory, they began working on a paperless method of KYC and onboarding. This, Aditya says, helped them set up an internet-only financial services firm in a short period of time.

After locking-in on the core services that Wealthy was to offer, the next big task was to find the right team to build the product and company. Aditya says that old networks and startup-focused platforms like Angel.co were of great help in finding the right team.

As a financial services provider, they also needed to comply with several regulatory requirements that came in with onboarding customers. Aditya says:Here, Prashant and my prior experience in dealing with regulators and lawyers helped us sail through. Our angel investors were also of great help, especially in connecting us to the senior leadership of large mutual fund companies. Because of those connections, we were able to launch our paper-less and instant KYC process in less than four months.

The core team now comprises of Somit Srivastava, a former Ola employee, Mohit Srivastava, a former MIT Senseable City Labs Singapore employee, and Tarun Khera, a BITS Pilani alumni.

Product workings

“Wealthy works in a simple and efficient manner, beginning with asking the user about the amount of investment they want to make. Basis plans are customised and provided to the user, and if they agree on it, they proceed to open an account with us using their email or social logins,” says Aditya.

Post that, users have to provide their PAN number along with some very basic personal details. Once their KYC status is ascertained by the system, which happens almost real-time, they can proceed to make their investment online.

The entire process takes less than two to three minutes. Post the online payment, investment folios are opened typically in less than 48 hours. Details of the investment are then available on a dashboard. Users can also make withdrawals directly from their Wealthy dashboard.

The differentiators

With over $285 million already invested in fintech startups within this year, especially in the lending segment, different startups are beginning to focus on the investment management space.

There are other platforms that work towards helping individuals choose different investment options like Policy Bazaar, Prudential.com, and even ICICI Bank, which has ventured into goal-based investment with iWish. There is also Rajasthan-based Goalwise, which focuses on investments. Wealthy, Aditya says, focuses on continuous management of the investor's portfolio.

In the next offering, the code will maintain asset allocation for each investor at all-times and dynamically re-balance the portfolio as and when the market conditions affect the allocation.

Wealthy's investment plans include different kinds of mutual funds, which are also selected using a rule-based system to eliminate human-bias in selection.

He adds that their focus is on automation. Aditya explains – In order to build a business that can penetrate deep into India and stay focused on retail investors, we need to have our cost structure right from day one.

Funding, revenue and future plans

For every rupee of investment that the team manages for their clients, they get a fee from the product manufacturers. The revenue model is akin to SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses, where they earn a subscription-like fee as long as the client continues to use the product. The difference is that the manufacturer pays Wealthy that fee instead of the client.

The team went online mid-February and claims to have processed more than 500 orders since then. Wealthy has raised investment from angel investors like Zishaan Hayath, Abhishek Goya, Rohan and Arjun Malhotra of Investopad, and some senior bankers.

“We want to build Wealthy as a service that can help put our users onto a financial path that gives them confidence about their future. Our next offering is a step in that direction, where we would be able to help an average saver invest his money smartly without needing to pour over financial data,” says Aditya.

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

How Gurgaon-based Deyor Camp is helping landowners monetise their assets

Earlier, a trip anywhere would hinge on friends or family staying in that place, who would host you, and take you around to explore all the tourist trappings. But now, visiting offbeat destinations has become one of the latest trends in the tourism sector in India. The lack of information had previously posed a hindrance for people who wanted to embrace adventure travel. The scenario has however changed in the past few years with the evolution of online travel industry.

When four friends Dheeraj Jain, Chirag Gupta, Gautam Yadav and Aakaar Gandhi conducted a small pilot in a handful of sites in North India, they discovered that the adventure travel market is very fragmented and unorganised, despite a 200-percent year-on-year growth. They were inspired to launch Deyor Camp in April 2016 to enable travellers to discover various forms of alternative accommodation, verify details for each campsite, and help campsites to build trust with their potential customers.

(L-R) Gautam Yadav, Aakaar Gandhi, Chirag Gupta and Dheeraj Jain

The idea behind Deyor Camps is to make the process of discovering, verifying and booking a campsite a seamless process. It was created to address the needs of this ever-growing class of campers, trekkers and adventure enthusiasts,” says Chirag (23), a commerce graduate from University of Delhi. He successfully finalised four investments in the startup space in India, through Redcliffe and has been associated with NGOs like Naz Foundation, Friendicoes and Happy School Project.

Gurgoan-based Deyor Camp is a marketplace connecting campsites, lodges, cottages with customers interested in booking alternative accommodation. The startup is backed by Deyor Rooms, an aggregator of budget hotels founded by Chirag and Dheeraj in October 2015, and is valued at $50 million. Deyor Rooms and Deyor Camp are two separate entities.

Initial days

Recalling the early days, Chirag says that the operational challenges were similar to what other online travel agencies face when they enabled hotel bookings on their platform across all hotel categories – poor coordination between camp owners and managers, lack of a scientific inventory and pricing management mechanism and inadequate customer management.

Moreover, their experience in building Deyor Rooms (which is also in travel space) helped them deal with the initial hiccups with Deyor Camps. They have received a number of queries from land owners across the country through social media to help them set up campsites on their properties and thus help monetise their assets. Deyor Camp does not invest money in building campsites and follows a marketplace model.

The team first conducts a recce of the property before shortlisting locales. The team then builds content, in collaboration with the local activity provider of that destination.

Deyor Camp has set up over 100 campsites across more than 40 locations, including Ladakh, Dharamshala, Rajasthan, Lonavla and Munnar, and will push it up by 70 more by the end of this year. The company provides tents, Wi-Fi, food, transportation and other leisure activities at these campsites. The company says its cluster managers are always on the ground across cities to ensure quality of the location, food and basic amenities. Now, Deyor Camp is planning to explore in Northeast region. Currently, the startup has 15 employees.

Setting up campsites

Deyor Camp has achieved a revenue of Rs 45 lakh in the first quarter of operations, with a gross margin of Rs 6.5 lakh. It has sold to over 3,500 customers and it charges a percentage on every transaction. The startup has an order book of Rs 1.2 crore, gains a margin of 18 percent per transaction, and is expecting the figure to go up to 22 per cent by 2017. It plans to open 200 campsites that will charge Rs 1,000-4,000 per person per night.

Deyor Tent

There are between 500 and 600 campsites in India, while our research indicates that the adventure travel market size is approximately between Rs 800 and 1,000 crore, and is increasing by 200 percent year-on-year. We are already in talks with operators in Nepal to expand into the adventure travel market there and by mid-2017, we intend to start expanding into Southeast Asia,” says Chirag.

The startup is planning to automate the whole website, allow users to discover the campsites by location, accommodation options, verify campsites and book in real time and find amenities.

Opportunities in travel industry

The overseas travel industry is growing at 40 percent CAGR year-on-year. The leisure travel market in India as of today is about $80 billion annually, which is set to grow to $150 billion by 2024. According to a KPMG report, the travel and tourism sector contributed Rs 1,92,000 crore to India’s GDP in 2012, and is expected to reach Rs 6,81,800 crore by 2023.

Though biggies like MakeMytrip, Cleartrip and Yatra have witnessed phenomenal growth, a lot of trip-planning startups have also made their space in the travel industry. iXiGO trip planner equips user with all the possible information associated with a trip,TravelTriangle allows users to build personalised holidays at an affordable price, HolidayIQ helps users research and plan their trip, Traverik provides a 'social' angle, wherein people can share their itineraries and collaborate, Holidayen deals with planning trips once a user is at the destination, and Elan Adventures helps with planning adventurous trips across India.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/08/deyor-camp/

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/