Meet this man in remote Uttarakhand who has dedicated his life to preserving seeds

India had more than 10,000 naturally growing varieties of rice at one point in time. And this isn’t only with rice; different regions with their different climatic conditions automatically led nature to provide us with different seeds. Our desire for standardisation and urge to make a better world led us to experiment with seeds and produce hybrid seeds. This is probably why so many of us eat only white polished rice.

At our farm in Himachal Pradesh, we were looking to plant some indigenous varieties but were surprised that all fingers pointed us to the agricultural shops that sell seeds. Traditionally, most of the villages in India depended on exchanging seeds and it led to a beautiful, self-sustaining seed bank. For instance, if my farm gave good tomatoes this year and your land gave good cabbages, we’ll exchange the seeds next year. Everyone in the village has a good access to high quality seeds this way and the quality of seeds automatically goes up every year.

Our hunt for people working with this ethos led us to the doorstep of Vijay Jardhari of Beej Bachao Andolan in remote rural Uttarakhand. In a village called Upli Nagli near Tehri district in Uttarakhand, we reach Vijay Jardhari’s house after a full day’s bus ride and a two-hour hike up the hill. Perched atop a beautiful hill, the house provides for a very modest life for Vijayji and his family, which is dedicated to the cause of preserving seeds.

Path to Vijay Jardhari's house

Vijay Jardhari with his wife and two daughters

One of the key figures during the epic Chipko movement (primarily a forest conservation movement started in 1973) Vijayji has dedicated his life to preserving seeds. His farm is a prime example of abundance of nature and his treasure of seeds leaves one in awe. He showed us some 20 varieties of rajma (kidney beans) and holding them in the hands feels like holding valuable gem stones. “What scientists are selling to us today has always been provided for by nature,” says Vijayji. Through Beej Bachao Andolan, he and his colleagues spread the knowledge of traditional farming practices and more people moving to these methods is their only motivation.

Different varieties of Rajmah

To talk in terms of numbers, Tulip Das presents a case for Beej Bachao Andolan on her blog:

In this region of Uttarakhand, farmers were growing a distinctive variety of red rice called chardhan. The rice was nutritious and suited to local requirements and conditions. Farmers also grew indigenous varieties likethapchini, jhumkiya, rikhwa and lalbasmati. Agriculture here was untouched by modern practices and good yields were obtained without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. What the farmers here were doing was avoiding monoculture in a method called baranaja (12 grains), which involves the multicropping of a number of cereals and legumes. This diversification is security against drought and crop failure. Different crops are harvested at different times of the year and ensure year-round supply of food. This also maintains soil fertility by replenishing nitrogen.

Now, Beej Bachao Andolan has about 150 varieties of paddy from which 100 different varieties can still be grown. BBA has also collected more than 200 varieties of rajma. Effective pest control is accomplished by using the leaves of the walnut and neem, and the application of the ash and cow’s urine. The use of traditional farming methods and seeds has resulted higher yields, improved health of humans and increased conservation of soil fertility and agro-biodiversity.

Bottles from nature (these dried vegetables are used to store seeds)

Different types of grains

This story is not a celebration of Beej Bachao Andolan or any individual, because recognition will not bring about any change. “My only wish to talk is so that more people can live this way of life. We are causing immense damage to the earth and more people in the cities need to wake up to these realities since the massive changes percolate from city to the village,” Vijayji explains. In the case of farming methods and seeds, the movement calls for more decentralised systems that can fend for themselves.

Globally, the likes of Monsanto control the seeds market and more companies are growing with this intention. Baer, the pharmaceutical giant bought out Monsanto for $56 billion and we are moving rapidly towards an unnerving monopoly. There is no good or bad judgement over this but as humans, is this what we are on earth for? A war against nature? Our ‘Slow Tech’ movement is an initiative to put focus on these discussions and do things that feel right in our own small ways.

Vijay Jardhari’s Beej Bachao Andolan has reach in the Gharwal regions of Uttarakhand and there are many more efforts happening across India. Navdanya in Dehradun (started by Vandana Shiva), Auroville in Pondicherry has many farms working on these philosophies (Solitude farm), many holistic learning centres like CFL and Mudra Farms in South India and the likes of Sikkim on a State level are thinking along these lines. The idea for this article is to put more momentum in this direction and bring voices like Vijay Jardhari to mainstream.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/10/vijay-jardhari-uttarakhand-beej-bachao-andolan/

Surabhi Verma’s Sparsh has given wings to dreams of children with autism, dyslexia and learning disabilities

A multidisciplinary approach

At Sparsh, Surabhi functions as an Early Intervention Centre (EIS), as well as offers therapies and intervention techniques that range from special education, occupational therapy, play and study groups, speech and language therapy and psychological assessments and family counselling for differently-abled children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), learning difficulty/dyslexia, attention difficulties, speech and language difficulties, intellectual disability and social and emotional difficulties.

In other words, they provide an integrated and holistic service where different aspects of the therapy are planned in concurrence to enhance the child's capabilities, which otherwise may have remained untapped. Sparsh caters to children in the age group of 18 months to 20 years. The full-time and part-time employees include qualified special educators, occupational therapist, speech and language pathologist, and child psychologist. There are many volunteers who work with the organisation and provide help wherever required.

“The mantra is to start the interventions early to bridge the gap. We start therapies for children from the age of 1.5 years. Along with the children, their parents are considered as an integral part of the team and are equally involved for goal setting, planning and training the parents for achieving optimum results for their child. The goals and results are checked and updated on a regular basis to keep a check on the improvement graph of the child and also help in planning the next step.”

Recognition and awareness

Unlike the challenges other entrepreneurs face, Surabhi’s can get to be quiet frustrating. Finding quality professionals is a challenge but what’s more irksome is the lack of seriousness from parents and the perception of the society. “Erratic therapy schedule because of parents has an adverse effect on the child. Since each child and his/her needs are unique, innovative strategies have to be planned for each one of them. This also means that all children would not improve and progress with same speed and thus striking a balance between our expectations and the parents' expectations and helping the child move forward is the true challenge.” Finding institutions that can provide vocational training to these children after they reach a certain age and skill level poses a problem too.

Being sustainable

As a private setup, their revenue comes from the fees for therapy. The profit margins in this sector depend a lot on the fixed costs. “Since we are working with children with special needs, a lot of space is required to create the infrastructure for various therapies,” Surabhi points out. The overall profitability ranges between 12 and 25 percent, depending upon the fixed cost incurred and the pricing of the therapies.

“For parents and children belonging to economically-weaker sections, we also provide the services at a discounted rate as we believe that no child should be deprived from thetherapies that can help them overcome the difficulty,” she says.

Impact

One of the ways Surabhi measures impact is via the number of children her team has helped successfully integrate into mainstream schools and professional colleges. One such child is Amit (name changed), who joined Sparsh when he was 10 years old. He had trouble with thinking and remembering, attention span and learning ability. Over the years with therapy his understanding and other abilities improved. He went on to get a distinction in Class XII CBSE board and cleared hotel management exams and joined Bachelor's of Hotel Management with ITC Welcome Group at their institute in Manipal. He is now working with a five star hotel in Bengaluru.

These are the stories that keep Surabhi going. “I have never let what I do impact me negatively. So every time I look at a child and see what I can do to make things better and positive, and that helps me stay motivated and positive.”

What needs to change?

Operating in a niche area, sustainability is not a challenge for Surabhi. Driven as she is by larger goals of creating impact she has started reaching out to schools in Tier II and III cities to set up centres in the school for autism.

However, while Surabhi and Sparsh are there to help these children, a visible impact in this field will only be visible with a change in the perception of the society we inhabit. “The society should work towards providing equal opportunities to the children with special needs and should not discriminate against them. It is important to understand that these difficulties are not a form of disease and there is no cure. These are special and permanent emotional and psychological needs of such children.” And that is food for thought.

Are you a startup or a professional working in the IoT space and are already implementing IoT in different industries? This is the platform for you to network with experts in the IoT domain. If you are pro-developer/maker and have an idea in IoT, this event can give you directions to explore opportunities to develop solutions for IIoT use cases.Be there on October 6, Bangalore for the first meetup. Register now!

My search for data on the number of children suffering from autism and the disorder’s prevalence in India led to a huge disappointment. The website for National Centre of Autismin India, which should have provided all the details, simply shares the data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in April 2014 on the prevalence of autismin the USA. This speaks volumes about the lack of attention and importance autism has received in India and the scope of research and action that needs to be taken in India.

Children with special needs, learning disabilities and autism continue to be treated as pariah in the India society. In 2005, Surabhi Verma started Sparsh for Children, a multidisciplinary therapy centre located in South Delhi to help children with autism, dyslexia and other learning disorders and transform their lives.

According to the 36-year-old, across the globe one out of 56 kids has autism and five to six students in a class of 40 students are likely to have one or the other form of learning disability. “With better diagnosis and awareness, more cases are being identified, which were earlier passed on as weak students or someone who is not interested in studies,” she explains.

Surabhi started almost a decade ago with a team of three employees and five kids. Today, Sparsh caters to about 100 children with a dedicated team of 15 employees.

From passion to profession

During her graduation, Surabhi opted to study early childhood development. She was so fascinated by the topic that she decided to work with children with special needs and began training for the same. In 2000 she completed her graduation in Autism from University of Birmingham in UK and Masters in Child Development from MS University, Vadodara. Her stint with Max Hospital and a few schools and therapy centres made her realise the urgent need for a multidisciplinary approach and services under one roof to help children.

“It was a very disheartening situation; parents were running from one place to another looking for best therapies and there was no one to guide them correctly. A lot of their time was being spent in travelling, which was tiring for the parent as well as the child. The need for a therapy centre where all the services—early intervention setup, special education, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, play and study group therapy and psychological services—could be provided under one roof led to setting up Sparsh For Children.”

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/10/surabhi-verma-sparsh-for-children/

This adventure junkie from Gujarat made an eBicycle that gobbles up 100 km with just one charge

An active triathlete, marathon runner and long distance cyclist, for Ajeet Kumar, risk is sport, and winning at it involves a fool-proof algorithm of preparation and performance. Thus, when the government seemed to be preparing for the incoming e-vehicle wave by resolving to put seven million EVs on the roads yearly by 2020, Ajeet was ready to hold up his end of the deal, and put in a performance with the “Ride2Happiness,” which is his take on the eBicycle.

Ajjet Kumar, Creator and Founder of Ride2Happiness

Not a startup, but a mission

Kumar is an NIT Kurukshetra graduate in mechanical engineering. The 44-year-old grew up in a Gujarat village named Bihat – popularly known as mini Moscow in the 70s. His career’s first leg was a decade in manufacturing, mostly in the automotive sector. His leap was long in coming, but when the time came, it was also a story in itself – it was the day his younger daughter was born. “Looking back, it seems the timing was odd, as it’s on the top of my wife’s sin-list for me,” he jokes.

He first ventured into health snacks, which, he admits, was a bit ahead of its time. He also tried his hand at web and mobile application development, and eGrocery, miscalculating the timing once again.

But his next attempt wasn’t like the others. This one was a mission. To be precise, it was ‘the’ mission of his life. “Being an automotive guy, when I visited China, I was stunned to see that conventional bikes were completely banned from metros, and replaced by eBikes. But when I started digging deeper into the scenario here, everybody had a failure-story to share. This propelled me to take matters into my own hands,” says Ajeet.

E-Biking for the adventurous soul

An ongoing debate of great relevance has been whether eBikes must be considered for government subsidy. Currently, the government doesn’t provide subsidies for it, making it a non-starter for most. But Ajeet saw it this way - it was a cue to lay the foundation for a sustainable future.

“I aim to make R2H the preferred mode of local transportation for the masses. That meant it had to cover decent range (that is, the distance covered between recharges), at an affordable cost,” says Ajeet.

80 percent of the Indian population travel less than 40 km a day. So Ajeet created a prototype of an eBike that can cover a distance of 50 km - 100km per recharge. Moreover, today’s lifestyle diseases are one of major epidemics in the world. R2H lets you combine fitness with economics. “So say, on a nice pleasant morning, I will paddle an R2H to my office, and can use the motor during my return,” says Ajeet. He is gunning to make “cycling to work” a thing.

For starters, R2H resonates with users whose daily commuting patterns are less than 40 km, those who are more sensitised to environmental issues, students who cannot use conventional bikes before a certain age, and senior citizens, who are unable to use conventional bikes due to their heavy weight and high speed.

Stayed in India, Made in India

“Most eBikes are created through imports – in parts or as a whole. We decided to go ahead with 100 percent localisation. It will not only provide us very good control on pricing, but also on the quality of our product,” says Ajeet.

At this stage, two models have been engineered. R2H – Pluto can run a distance of 50 km with the juice of a single recharge, while R2H – Eryx can cover a distance of 100 km. The products are available in multiple frames and colours, packed in with various accessories like a disc brake, suspension fork and mud guard so the users need not spend money on having these extensions installed externally. This compares well to a market-peer Spero, India’s first “crowdsourced ecycle”, which travels about 30 km on a single charge. The more expensive models of the Spero, though, can run up to 60 km and 100 km on a single charge. And like the Ratan Tata-backed Ampere, R2H is also designed and manufactured from scratch locally.

The bike uses MTB, which is a high performance type of frame. It also employs a high performance Lithium Ion battery. Plans are underway for building the BLDC motor locally, as well, which will provide them better control and understanding of customer.

With the maximum speed on both Pluto and Eryx being 25 kmph, both variants go from 0-25 in ten seconds. Weighing 25 and 28 kg respectively, the former takes 6 hours to charge fully, whereas the latter takes a span of 10 hours to attain 100 percent charge. That is because the latter has a superior motor rating at 48 V/ 250 W, compared to Pluto's 36 V/ 250 W.

To ensure that eBicycles catch on as a full-fledged - and the most preferred - mode of local transport, Ajeet has priced the Pluto at Rs 24,500, whereas the Eryx is Rs 37,500, which is slightly lower than Spero’s bikes ranging from Rs 29,900 to Rs 50,000, but higher than Ampere, the prices of which range from Rs 20,000 to Rs. 30,000.

“You are here”

They are now in the process of establishing dealerships across India. “We prefer to route most of our sales through dealerships, as it will assure the customer better personal attention and support,” says Ajeet. R2H already has over six dealerships across NCR, and plans to set up at least 15 more across Delhi and Chennai by the end of the year.

Set to launch in a fortnight, R2H has a pipeline of over 100 customers who have pre-ordered their eBicycles, and they are targeting sales of 1,000 R2H bikes per month at this stage. They plan to maximise their reach to tier II and tier III cities across the country by 2018.

Sector overview

As per the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020, the potential for electric two-wheelers is around 3.5 to 4 million units of sales per year. The Government of India, however, trumped that projection by announcing its ambition of putting seven million electric and hybrid vehicles on the road every year by 2020.

Spero and Ampere are currently leading the charge, the latter now moving upwards of 200 bikes a month. But Ajeet points out that some flagship concepts by the government, like FAME to promote EVs, have been lobbied against, and no serious effort is being made to localise major products - like motors or batteries - because this is a low-margin segment. So, whether this technology finds more takers in what has so far been an unpopulated market remains to be seen.

Website

Are you a startup or a professional working in the IoT space and are already implementing IoT in different industries? This is the platform for you to network with experts in the IoT domain. If you are pro-developer/maker and have an idea in IoT, this event can give you directions to explore opportunities to develop solutions for IIoT use cases.Be there on October 6, Bangalore for the first meetup. Register now!

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/10/ajeet-kumar-ride2happiness/

How big companies can innovate and create lean models, the Amazon Way

“We live in a world of complete digital revolution. Everything is connected and digitised. If we move from the old world of less experimentation and higher collateral damage to a phase of lean innovation, you realise it is evolved over the years,” says Gaurav Arora, Head of Startup Ecosystem, APAC, Amazon Internet Services.

There are instances of how lean innovations have given industry giants a run for their money, with several examples to be seen in the realms of automobile manufacturing, hospitality and retail. The focus here is to reduce customer uncertainty and focus on delight and happiness. “Think of the use of tokens to reduce queues in a bank, it reduces clutter and customer uncertainty,” adds Gaurav.

The idea is to think big, start small and stay honest. Many think that small organisations have the agility to work on innovative models, and that it is more difficult for larger organisations. But it is important to retain your startup mindset as you scale the business. Explaining how this works at Amazon, Gaurav says:There are a lot of business segments at Amazon that are experimented with every time. Not all of them work, but it takes one successful experiment like Amazon Web Services (AWS) to get that working.

The maths of innovation

Innovation, Gaurav says, is a function of organisation into architecture raised to the power of mechanisms and culture. In terms of the organisation, the first thing you need to think of is how to divide the workforce into single threaded teams, which are cross functional and capable of delivering end-to-end solutions

Gaurav explains that the notion here is simple- if you are working late at night and someone orders in pizza, and if that isn’t enough for your team, then your team is too big. An oversized team results in you getting bogged down in details, at which point you need to break down your teams.

When you go to the Amazon website, more than 250 services are at play at the backend. And each of these services are managed by our teams, who are operating together in parallel. All of them are focused on customer services and their core metric and performance. This helps Amazon be more agile.

The cultural mechanisms

However, what is more important is the cultural mechanism. It is what defines the process and workings of an organisation. “One of Peter Thiel’s biggest pieces of advice is – Don’t mess up the culture.” In Amazon, there are several leadership principles, and that is what makes it unique. These aren’t the aspirational leadership principles; it, in fact, is what drives the behaviour of the team in every situation they work in.

“Always start from the customer and then move to the artworks. The mission of Amazon is to create the most customer-centric company. And in that, every single action matters. So this means, it just isn’t working along what is your job but across different things.”

Gaurav adds that when they have to come up with any new product idea, the first thing done is to come up with a mock press release to understand the customer perspective. This includes mock customer quotes, which are shared with the internal stakeholders. If nobody asks questions, then it means the team needs to look back strongly at every single line of code.

But if there are strong questions, we understand that the people are interested. It is then that the team takes it to the next level by building detailed FAQs, where all aspects of the customer are important. The project is then broken into several levels and each of the teams works on it and builds an end-to-end solution.

You need to think of everything – processes, people, culture and mechanisms – that aids and builds innovation.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/10/gaurav-arora-techsparks/

Dental surgeon-turned-entrepreneur rides the mobile revolution with Queppelin

In 2013, on behalf of the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications, Cologne Institute for Economic Research conducted a study that revealed that India’s per capita GDP will grow by $51 per year between 2010 and 2020 due to, hold your breath, rising mobile phone subscriptions.

Pulkit Mathur

According to the study, mobile devices will contribute to economic growth with increased use. The report stated that mobile subscriptions’ contribution to India’s GDP per capita growth will be 11.4 percent (2010-2012), 4.9 percent (2012-2015) and 2.1 percent (2015-2020).

Sensing this growth graph there has been an influx of tech companies since 2010 in the domain of mobility, such as location-based services, mobile payments, internet messaging and social networks, among other categories.

Meanwhile, Pulkit Mathur, a practising dental surgeon who was heading the dental wing of a major private hospital in Jaipur, got bitten by the entrepreneurship bug.

It happened while he was involved in mobile healthcare implementation and soon found he was interested in mobile technologies.

In 2010, when the mobile technology market was preparing itself for the coming revolution, Pulkit, and his brother, Prafulla Mathur, and Vikas Saxena, an investor, decided to be the part of the coming mobile revolution.

In 2011, they launched Queppelin, an end-to-end mobile applications provider at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona. The company shot to fame with the development of multimedia streaming and compression platform, which was later used in apps like Gaana.com and Reliance BigFlix.

“Our technology capabilities have grown with time. We have developed multiple apps which have been among the top 10 apps in India for the last six years,” says 30-year-old Pulkit Mathur, CEO and Co-founder, Queppelin.

The journey

The Jaipur-based platform raised two rounds of angel investments in 2010 and 2011, which came up to around $150,000 back in 2010-11.

“We didn’t have to raise more capital as we have been very cash-flow positive ever since,” adds Pulkit.

The platform has served more than 200 clients till date, including large corporates and successful startups from India, US and Japan. The company’s mobile and web solutions have helped clients in verticals such as e-commerce, healthcare, travel, utility, real estate and education.

The client list of the platform includes Facebook, MakeMyTrip, Oxigen wallet, Gaana.com, Reliance Bigflix, The Times of India, Allgeier, Aon Hewitt, Nissan Micra, Nokia, Aircel and others.

Sharing his early journey, Pulkit says, “We received two unexpected calls in the first year of our business, which gave us significant impetus as a company. One was from Red Herring when we got selected amongst the best emerging startups in Asia (Snapdeal was also selected the same year) and the other call was from Facebook’s country head. He was keen to work with us for the brand’s backend mobile technology.”

On challenges, he says that the most important part is to be the first to develop and deliver a solution in the market and take the competition by surprise. This makes or breaks a product. We have been achieving this for our clients time and again, he adds.

The largest tech market

According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), India accounts for approximately 67 per cent of the $124-130 billion tech market, the world's largest sourcing destination for the information technology industry.

Experts say entrepreneurs are now starting app-first and sometimes app-only businesses. That itself talks about the market opportunity. From the smallest of startups to the largest corporates, they are all focussing on developing their apps.

Growth opportunity

Mobile and web tech is now being adopted by even the largest of organisations.

The process of product development has also evolved over time. Tech platforms are changing by the hour. They are using new-age tools like Basecamp for project management and Github for version control, providing full transparency and accountability.

“As an IT service company, the focus always has been on innovation and it's important for us to keep up with the times so we can suggest what is best for our clients. We are working on a unique mobile solution for one of the largest private banks that wants to combine the offline and online world through mobile. A new wave of Internet of Things is coming up enabled by mobiles. We are living in a world where even mobile-based fintech, e-commerce, travel is considered traditional mobility,” says Pulkit.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/09/queppelin/

How a daily wage worker earning Rs 3 per day built a multi-crore real estate company

Even today, 54-year-old Tenzin Negi takes special care of his labourers and their needs. Having worked his way up from a daily wage worker himself, Tenzin knows how difficult life for a worker can actually be.

Tenzin started working as a daily wage worker when he was just 16. However, building roads and earning Rs 3 daily was not enough. Curious, helpful, and hardworking, Tenzin worked his way up. Today, he runs his own construction company worth crores.

Early days

Tenzin was born in Khorkhai village, Himachal Pradesh. His parents were Tibetan refugees who worked on daily wage and lived in a makeshift tent with no electricity or water supply. “Life was extremely difficult,” Tenzin recalls.

Tenzin remembers the days of rains and snowfall, and the fear they brought along. His parents would be building roads in risky terrains even during such weather outside. Tenzin recalls:

“Even for such risky work, finding labour work daily was a major struggle. On days my parents didn’t find work, we had to manage without food.”

Turn of fate

Fate took a turn for Tenzin’s parents when the Indian government started building camps for Tibetan refugees. Tenzin’s father was given a piece of farmland in Surguja district in Madhya Pradesh. The government also built houses for his family to help them integrate into local workforce.

Tenzin along with his elder brother and two younger sisters, started going to the local public school, while his parents worked in the field.

Back to Himachal

After living in Surjuga for eight years, Tenzin’s father decided to go back to the Himachal. Coming from an ingenious Himalayan tribe, Tenzin and his family found it hard to settle in central India. “The weather, especially summers, was unbearable,” Tenzin recalls.

This time they settled in Shimla. Tenzin, now 16, started accompanying his parents in their resumed road construction work. Tenzin’s work included levelling of roads, carrying stone and sand, and pouring tar during construction. Recalling those days, Tenzin says: “Although I was 16 years old, I was given only half the wage adults earned. My parents made Rs 6 daily, while I was working equally hard and making Rs 3 per day.”

Slow and steady

After years of hard work, thanks to his education, Tenzin was found suitable for a supervisor’s job in Shimla Municipal Corporation. He jumped to the opportunity. As a supervisor Tenzin had to manage 10-15 labourers, ensure they were adequately distributed and that they were paid on time.

Working as a supervisor, Tenzin observed how a contractor worked. He realised that he can take contracts himself and work on them. “My parents were growing old. Working as a supervisor, I could have never lifted my family out of poverty. I decided to become a contractor,” Tenzin says.

Tenzin’s first contract was of Rs 600. The bid was to perform ‘surface dressing’ on a road that was being built. Tenzin worked hard to deliver good results, and soon, he started receiving more contracts.

Although Tenzin was taking up projects, he was not registered as a contractor. This meant that the projects he received were sub-contracted to him, yielding lower profit and infrequent payment for all the hard work he was putting in. Tenzin recalls: “The contractors used to receive their cheques on time from the government, but they delayed our payments. This is when I decided to register as a contractor myself and start my own business.”

Rags to riches

Tenzin started taking small contracts, but with his reputation in quality and timeliness, he was soon a favourite among locals. Sub-contracts and labourers liked to work for him as well, as he was fair towards them.

Slowly, as his own capacity grew over time, Tenzin started taking bigger projects. In November 2000, he started a company called ‘Tenzin Construction Private Limited’.

His company soon started undertaking projects from the Himachal Pradesh government in electrical, housing, education, and healthcare sectors. He also worked on private construction projects. Tenzin recalls: “We built everything. From houses, to shops, restaurants, shopping complexes, hospitals, and schools. Our timeliness, quality, and sincerity is what brought us so far.”

What sets Tenzin apart is his willingness to give back to the society. Well-known in Shimla for his charitable work, Tenzin has built a hospital with 50 beds where the poor can receive free and affordable healthcare. The hospital was meant to be Tenzin’s house. However, after a social worker shared with him the need for an affordable hospital, Tenzin decided to use the building as a hospital instead.

At 54, Tenzin does not feel any tired. A happily married man with two sons and two daughters, Tenzin today owns a construction company with an annual turnover of Rs 25-40 crore. “I never thought I would come this far. I only worked hard and with honesty with whatever I was doing. I guess, that is the only way to attain success with satisfaction,” Tenzin says.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/09/tenzin-negi/

How this 18-year-old Russian payment gateway CyberPlat is breaking into the Indian market

Ask anyone in the startup space, and they’ll tell you that it seems to be the age of fintech. And among the various sections of the fintech ecosystem, none has received more attention than payment gateways.

And yet, CyberPlat has been on the scene even before the term fintech existed. Possibly amongst the first electronic payment systems of Russia, the integrated multibank internet payment system was introduced in 1997 within the e-commerce department of Platina Bank, with an aim to provide IT-support for effecting cashless transactions in all financial services of the e-commerce sector, from ‘micro’ payments to interbank transactions.

Today, with offices in Russia and Mumbai, CyberPlat claims to have more than a million transactions per day. They say that they have been growing in the double digits since their entry into India, being profitable for the past four years.

Cyberplat’s first online payment was effected on March 18, 1998 for the Garant-Park Company in Moscow, and the first payment to a cellular communication operator, Beeline, was carried out on August 12, 1998.

In 2000, CyberPlat was incorporated as a separate open joint stock company. By the end of 2015, the system was processing payments made in favour of more than 4,700 service providers, including mobile and stationary communication companies, cable TV and wire-based and mobile internet providers, security alarm systems, and utility and power supply companies across virtually all regions of Russia.

CyberPlat has been in operation for 18 years and is the largest, most reliable and well-adjusted electronic payment system in Russia and the CIS countries, along with operations in Germany, Austria and India.

Due to constant upgrading of its technological platform, the CyberPlat payment system is currently capable of processing more than 1,400 financial transactions per second.

Breaking into the India market

“Today, when I look at India, I believe that, like Russia, India too is on the cusp of a payment boom and both have a similar financial legacy. The regulatory policies in both the countries are conducive for a robust growth in the sector,” says Alok Jha, MD, CyberPlat India.

When the team set up CyberPlat in Mumbai in 2009, India, they say, was experiencing and enjoying the growth of the internet and there was an upsurge in its users. Alok adds that it was the perfect time for the team to enter the country.

CEO and Founder of CyberPlat says: India seemed liked the right place for CyberPlat as the economy and the market place was conducive for the growth of Payment aggregators like us. Having a leadership position in CIS countries, Austria and Germany, India was a natural choice. Even from a legacy perspective, Russia and India have shared a healthy economic relationship. We are very aggressive in our growth plans for India and would want to become the number one payment aggregator in the country.

However, building the organisation from the ground up and staying profitable was a challenge as there were already established players in the market, resulting in CyberPlat having to jostle for place in an established market in which they were the last entrants.

“But this did not deter us, and we focused on offering the right products to our clients at the best price. We remained consistent with our core business proposition and grew business by building strong, trust-worthy relationships. We believe in being the growth partners of our clients and keep introducing new products to meet their requirements. We also offer customised and tailored solutions to befit their business model,” says Alok.

Bringing in a differentiator

CyberPlat in India differentiates itself from competition by way of service, technology robustness and a wide range of products. The team adds that they offer a secure and reliable platform with a 2048 bit electronic digital signature encryption facility, ensuring a high degree of security for transactions.

Alok adds that their disaster management services, among other facilities, make them the preferred partner for top telecom providers, DTH providers and utility service providers. “We are a technology-oriented company offering a wide range of products and services to choose from,” says Alok.

In India, the team considers Oxigen and Euronet Worldwide as their competitors. Both these players started from the B2B space and eventually forayed into the consumer space, while CyberPlat continues to serve the business requirements in the B2B space.

Being a multi-category service provider, the team claims their core strength is the aggregation of consumer payment products, a wide distribution network and the enabling of micro flexible top-ups. “Further, we enable channel partners with this set of payment products across wide variety of verticals. We also enable networks that are not tech savvy to modernise themselves (especially the SME industry) with our web and mobile-based white label solutions,” says Alok.

The team claims to have partnered with over 300 B2B and B2C clients across retail, e-commerce and mobile applications. CyberPlat also helps new partners with a single platform for various digital payment products, enabling their businesses to function faster.

The exploding payment gateway market

The market for online payments is growing rapidly in India, and Harshil Mathur, Co-founder of the payment gateway Razorpay, estimates that the market has grown by 50 percent over the course of the last year. With a lot of startups coming up in India, the need for payment gateway solutions is bound to surge. He pegs the market size of the sector to be around $54 billion in India.

Globally, Stripe is a major player in the payment gateway space, having raised $280 million, along with making two acquisitions. Currently, Razorpay directly competes with players such as PayU and Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU. Instamojo is also a player in this space, but focuses more on individual payments.

Payments have become synonymous with fintech. It was one of the first segments where startups began to grow and disrupt the way people transacted, and it was also among the early regulated players. The second highest funded space, this year there have already been nine deals. The total amount of funding made between last and this year is $866 million.

Paytm has even tied up with financial institutions to provide collateral-free working capital loans for small merchants and kirana store owners.

“With the United Payments Interface (UPI) and IndiaStack coming in, the flow of money will be easier and product development simpler. There is inclusion at the bottom level, and at the top levels, the regulator is opening the ecosystem, making it easier for startups to bring in technology,” says Harshil.

With the fight in the payment space getting heated, mergers and acquisitions or alliances seem like an outlet to beat competition and stay ahead of the game.

Staying ahead of the curve

The CyberPlat team believes that the payments landscape in India is at a point of inflexion. Alok adds that with intense competition and strategic collaboration among market participants, the lowering of the costs of banking and underserved and unbanked consumers beginning to find utility in formal financial services, the opportunity will be immense.

He believes that the players in the new payments ecosystem will supplement as well as ride the wave of smartphones, internet penetration and recent policy initiatives like Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Digital India to find creative ways to deal with each other in the new marketplace.

The team claims that CyberPlat is growing at 100 percent year-on-year. “We will soon open our second office in India in New Delhi and expand our team strength. We will also be introducing new innovative products and services this year, along with adding new partners in the multi-category businesses to increase our footprint,” says Alok.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/09/cyberplat-india/

What we learnt while raising capital for Treebo Hotels in a peak and in a trough

If you have interacted with anyone in the startup ecosystem in the last 9-12 months, chances are it would have taken only a few minutes for your conversation to drift towards the gloomy investment climate. And, of course, there is no smoke without fire. Aggregate startup funding did dry up significantly this year. A recent YourStory analysis revealed a 40-percent drop in the capital invested in Indian startups between H1 2015 and H1 2016.

We at Treebo Hotels raised our Series-A round in June 2015, when investor confidence and feel-good about India was at its peak. And boy, was it anything but a super quick raise, or, dare we say, a relatively easy one. Towards the beginning of this year, however, when we hit the road to raise our Series-B round, we found ourselves bang in the middle of the proverbial nuclear winter. With the heady days of 2014-15 behind us, the normal contours and considerations of raising capital were now at play. By the time we closed our round in July, having seen these contrasting environments, we had gathered some valuable learnings regarding fundraising, which we thought we’d share through this article. We’d talk about the four questions – a) how much to raise, b) when to raise, c) who to raise from, and d) how to run the process.

How much to raise

Unfortunately, given the somewhat misplaced sense of pride associated with raising capital, this question often gets only a frivolous answer. And that is, “as much as you can”. Instead, having a fact-based, well-thought-through answer to this question should be the first step of the fundraising process. We found it immensely helpful to have this clarity upfront. And it prevented us from pursuing tempting but suboptimal—possibly even damaging—outcomes.

Raising too little is surely not desirable. It can, in best-case scenario, stifle your ability to make big and bold bets for the future, and, in worst-case scenario, sound the death-knell of the organisation at the slightest sign of turbulence in the market. It was for these reasons, that some of our well-wishers with experience in the startup world pushed us into raising our Series A in June 2015, soon after we decided to start up. In hindsight it was absolutely the right decision for us.

Raising too much, on the other hand, can have even more perilous consequences. A) It can murder innovation. We saw around us hyper-funded organisations developing almost a compulsive DNA of throwing money at problems rather than figuring out their viable solutions. B) It leads to unwarranted dilution of founders’ stake, thereby disturbing the critical alignment between company success and their long-term wealth creation. And c), if not justified by commensurate value creation, it can fundamentally distort a key performance metric - ROCE, or return on capital employed, which tests a company’s P&L success not just in absolute, rather against the aggregate funding raised by it.

On balance, given our requirements and the environment, we decided to plan for a 15-18-month runway with our Series-A raise, and 24-30-month runway with our Series B. The ‘runway’ metric is key. Raising a large amount to secure the business for a longer period in a difficult investment climate makes sense. Raising a large amount to spend more on business just because you can does not. Business should dictate capital raised. Not the other way around.

When to raise

Fundraising is sometimes thought of as a periodic activity, where you announce to the investor world at large that you are raising money and that’s how interest and eventually capital is secured. We initially thought so too. But we soon realised that while this may sometimes happen at very early stages of a venture, fundraising is usually a continuous process with a combination of ‘inbound’ and outreach. This is increasingly true in today’s saner investment climate where investors like to evaluate companies (and therefore, teams) over a longer period of time.

Great investors are looking to have these conversations and do not wait for a formal fundraising process to begin because it is already too late for them to start engaging if the company is a potential winner. Over the last 15 months since we launched, we have regularly been in conversations—introductory to exploratory to late stage—with investors.

However, the final decision on the fundraise should also depend upon whether the company is ready to take in the said amount of capital. Equity capital needs to be thought of not as a privilege but as a responsibility. Raising too early without significant value creation can be very harmful. It often leads to companies chasing the wrong goals, eg., a very early-stage company focussing on growth to justify its valuation vs. chasing product market fit.

Who to raise from

Assuming one does have the choice, there are many answers to this one depending upon whom you ask, from “the first one over the line” to “whoever is paying the highest price” to “the one with the largest cheque” and so on. In our limited experience, this is not the right path to go down. Choosing the right investor is as important as deciding on your company’s strategy and just like the latter, the choice of investor has many nuances.

To start with, money matters but the colour of money matters as much if not more. One needs to look at investors, especially early stage ones, as more than just the source of capital. Getting on board a high-quality, reputed investor is also the biggest signal you can send to the broader ecosystem. Even if the better quality investor comes in at a lower valuation, it is totally worth considering.

Second, one needs to find the best investor, not in general but for one’s own specific company. So you should be asking the question “What do we really need help on?”. Depending upon the team’s skillset and the space you are in, the answer could range from product/tech to marketing to retail distribution etc. The answer to this question should influence the choice of investor. For instance, having an investor experienced in brand building was key and did influence the Series B outcome in our case.

Third, it is imperative to find a partner with whom you have complete alignment. While alignment is easy to come by when the going is good, one needs to think through how the relationship would work in difficult times when things don’t go well. Last thing an entrepreneur wants in tough times is a fundamental misalignment on key choices such as growth-experience-profitability trade-off, customer segments, new business lines etc.

In our case, one of the Series-A investors asked us when we presented our business plan during the pitch, “Why wouldn’t you do a lower scale if you must, to deliver a fantastic experience if you are really building a brand?”. We immediately knew that this partnership would work well.

Lastly, there is one additional thing to consider, and that is the topic of dirty terms. Imagine this – you have just walked out of the pitch after shaking hands and verbally agreeing to the offer. An hour later, you receive the term sheet and you eagerly examine its contents. Everything seems in order – the investment amount, dilution etc. Except it isn’t. Lurking in a corner is the ask for a superior liquidation preference (a downside protection element for the investors). To make matters worse, the anti-dilution clause looks very different from what your entrepreneur friend said it would be.

You have just been hit by what is described in the investment world as a ‘structured term sheet’. At this point, the wise thing to do would be to stay as far away from this as possible. Not the most talked about aspect of fundraising, structured term-sheets can kill you. They can dramatically tilt the payoffs and create misalignment amongst shareholders. And impact of these terms only becomes worse as you go along. As these terms get ‘unboxed’ over time, they can create situations that are completely onerous for the founders. If you have the choice, it is a no-brainer to pick a clean term-sheet over a dirty one, no matter what the valuation or size of investment is.

How to run the process

Fundraising can be quite an emotional roller-coaster, with the peaks and the troughs linked to outcomes of investor discussions. One doesn't need the fundraise process itself to become a source of anxiety. Here are a few things that we found helpful.

First, don't let the whole organisation or the whole management team or even the whole founding team become a part of the process. After all, the primary job of business is to do business, not to raise money. We heard from an investor about another startup where growth plateaued for the three months that the founders spent on raising their next round. We were careful from the beginning about not letting this happen to us. So between us, one person took the explicit responsibility of leading the process with the other one getting involved only as and when necessary.

Second, fundraise or no fundraise, keep your books, your legal contracts, your data and dashboards all in top shape and readily retrievable. Aside from being the hallmark of a good, transparent, data-backed business, this readiness of your information could be a huge asset during the fundraise process. It can help expedite the process as well as further strengthen a prospective investor's belief in the quality of team and processes set by them.

Finally, when it comes to negotiating the terms of the investment, push for granular discussion and alignment on the key terms at the term-sheet stage itself. All term sheets have an exclusivity clause that prevents companies from prospecting any other investor till the completion of the current process.

This exclusivity could leave the company stranded without options if for any reason the current process falls through. To prevent this, it is highly recommended to discuss and lock the major clauses—the ones that could lead to an impasse in the process—early on, even if it takes a little longer. Following the same approach allowed us to move from term sheet to definitive documents quickly and smoothly, without any surprises.

Aside from the specific ones above, the other overarching—and heartening—learning we had was that for good businesses, money is still available in the Indian market, and will likely always be. Investors taking long to evaluate a business can only be a good thing for a good business as it signals the making of a solid partnership foundation.

Of course, we are far from being an authority on this topic, and these learnings are not absolute. So, would love to hear about your experiences and views in the comments section.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/09/lessons-while-raising-capital-treebo-hotels/

How these students from 49 remote village schools are learning in state-of-the-art digital classrooms

The Indian government has achieved significantly in strengthening the rates of children’s enrollment to school. But, the real problem is in their learning outcomes. 85 percent of the 1.3 million schools in the country are in rural hinterlands, causing an acute shortage of good quality teachers, as well as a failure to create a confluence of cultures and exposure from the outside world, for the student. As of 2011, eVidyaloka is that nexus. A service-delivery model that aggregates passionate people across the world as volunteer teachers, eVidyaloka orchestrates sessions and lectures in schools in remote villages of India, by conjuring up a “digital classroom.”

Meet the ideator

Venkat Sriraman is an engineering graduate from the class of ‘95 at BITS Pilani. A momentum that was set by his engineering degree transported him to civil engineering for three years and software, for 14 years. But, for Venkat, his plunge was a ‘smooth transition’, into an alternate career. At least, it felt like that, because he was driven by his principles coupled with his professional competencies, to create a model built on years of research. “eVidyaloka was not an aha idea, but a diligently explored and evolved model of innovation,”says42-year-old Venkat.

What is eVidyaloka?

Registered in Bengaluru in 2011 and governed by Section 12A of the Income Tax Act 1961, the eVidyaloka model brings together qualified Indian nationals currently living across 110 cities, leveraging the power of technology to enable access to high quality teachers for the children in the remotest villages and tribal zones of India. It focuses on children aged between 10 and 14 years (6th‑8th grade), delivering live interactive classes in the local medium, through a powerful partner ecosystem.

What do the kids have to look forward to?

Predominantly, the state board’s curriculum itself is being taught by the volunteer teachers, with an objective of augmenting it with rich digital content like videos, visual flows, pictures, activities, etc.

They have even engineered their own softwares to facilitate the sessions, like My eVidyaloka 3.0, which digitises the various process frameworks that are involved in the working of the sessions. They use Skype, Google Hangout for tuning the teachers in.

Who is teaching?

Over 70 percent of the volunteer teachers are qualified professionals in various fields, post-doctorates, homemakers, retired teachers, graduate students, Ph.D students and working professionals from India and abroad.

Who are the allies?

eVidyaloka values regional idiosyncrasies and leverages them by empowering the existing grass-root level organisations to work with the government schools in their villages. It is designed to be a complimentary or supplementary component to the established Government Education System. The respective authorities in the State Education Department are in the loop about the functioning and the value proposition of the programme and necessary consent is obtained, prior to the start. In regions like Giridih, Jharkhand, they received overwhelming support from the technological government institutions like NIC alongside the District Administration.

The journey

It all started with a trial, a virtual Summer camp in a village called Thenur, in Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu, in the year 2010 (April and May). The camp was put together with the Projector infra and the recently obtained BSNL broadband by the locally functioning NGO called Payir Trust, and with few handpicked passionate individuals across Chennai and Bengaluru.

Two fundamental things were well established in this eight-week experimental phase. Despite fragile internet connection and digital infrastructure, the children just thoroughly enjoyed the experience of learning. Secondly, the teachers were developing emotional connect with the children and expressed eagerness to continue their time beyond the summer camp.

In June 2010, the classes were extended to the same children from class6th to 8thafter the school hours for Maths, Science and English, in the NGO premises. From there evolved the first model of remote class delivery – a local-partner driven, outside-learning centre.

Improvising – an indispensable part of entrepreneurship

In July 2010, eVidyaloka drew a two-year pilot plan for their documented delivery model, defining three offerings- the ‘after school, NGO premises, NGO managed’ format, the ‘after school, rented premises, eVidyaloka directly managed’ format, and lastly, the ‘in school, NGO managed’ model.

Executed between April ‘11 and March ’13, they were able to establish six centres across TN, AP and JH, over 40teachers had taught over 250 children, over a span of more than 450 hours – completely online, of course. The students were showing results, too. Seventy percentof the children scored at least 50 percent in their academics back in school.

What Venkat learnt from this experiment is that the biggest catalyst of this innovation is the children’s instant acceptance of the virtual world, for a child’s mind is absolutely unbiased. And that the internet was still unstable and unavailable in villages is a myth - over 100,000 villages, as of 2012-13, were broadband connectivity powered, and it was only going to get better. Having said that, the connection was certainly not up to the mark. Moreover, erratic power supply was more of an issue than the internet. This was addressed by making a UPS system to handle the digital infra. Finding alternate broadband connections has been a constant part of the equation– as they shifted from BSNL Wired broadband to WiMax, mobile 3G and now, Reliance Jio.

Trial and error

Testing the waters with three models, the first, ‘after school model’ didn’t work as well as the ‘NGO premises/managed’and ‘eVidyaloka managed’ models. It was because the former would eat into their play hours, and girls found it difficult to make it beyond 6 pm because of social and safety reasons.

Having established sound fundamentals, a three-year-plan was laid. It was decided to replicate and scale it upto 50 villages across five states, reaching out to over 3,000 children with over 300 teachers from across the globe.

Moreover, based on the reviews from three schools in the Dharwad regions, which spread in all the lands, a total of 50 government school teachers assembled from the CRC, and spent time to understand how the eVidyaloka model works. Three of the panchayats where the eVidyaloka school is running, came together and invested resources to make sure the digital classrooms look neat, clean and conducive. The district administration of Jharkhand has even offered to take care of the entire school’s infrastructure and have eVidyaloka serve the KGBV schools, a phenomenon repeated in the adjacent district of Deogarh.

The result: 175 out of the targeted 300 were headhunted to teach at about 25 centres by 2015.This number was raised to 338 teachers, 49 centres across 49 villages from Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, 3,000 students and modules in four languages by 2016.

Kodak moments!

The team of 20 was able to rope in the inventor of Google Glass himself, to interact with the children of Jharkhand and even give them a live demo of the product, in a memorable session.

“I go and proudly tell my friends that my school is no less or better than most schools in Hyderabad”, says Genus, the Headmaster of Juvvalapalem School, a partner organisation in Andhra Pradesh

Venkatesh P, a volunteer from Hyderabad, heartily narrates, “I am engineer, but always wanted to be a teacher. eVidyaloka is a dream come true for me where I am realising my passion.”

Reference: https://yourstory.com/2016/09/evidyaloka/