Two brothers add a sixth stage to grief — starting up

Chandigarh-based brothers Ajay and Chetan Pal Singh launch a health food startup, AG Taste, as a tribute to their late parents.

When life gives you a sucker punch in the form of death of a loved one, what do you do? Isolate yourself, turn to friends and family or travel in search of life’s meaning – each of us deals with grief in our unique way. Some channel their grief to create something new. Like brothers Chetan Pal Singh and Ajay Pal Singh who decided to start up when their parents died within months of each other.

Their food venture, AG Taste, is multiple things in one for the siblings. The company, launched in January 2016, is a tribute to their food-loving parents. By creating preservative-free, healthy nutrition bars it is aimed at making people healthy, which is understandably a pet theme for the brothers. By working together, they are also able to help each other through their grief.

Brothers Chetan Pal Singh (left) and Ajay Pal Singh (Right), Founders of Chandigarh-based AG Taste

Family, food, and tragedy

Their mother Ajinder loved cooking and was able to recreate complex dishes, according to Chetan, after just a tasting. Their electrical engineer father Gurbir was born with muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that results in the weakening of muscles over a period of time. He loved exotic foods like stilton cheese and prosciutto but also used holistic food to manage his disease. The brothers inherited their parents’ fascination with food, with younger brother Chetan even becoming a trained chef.

Chetan, after completing his course at The Taj Group of Hotels (run by The Institute of Hotel Management, Aurangabad), moved to San Francisco to work at Michelin-starred Gary Danko and then at the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai and Four Seasons at Langkawi. Elder brother Ajay followed his dad’s footsteps to become an engineer and worked in advertising in Delhi, which allowed him to travel often to visit his parents in Chandigarh.

Life for the Pal Singh family was filled with food and travel, despite dad Gurbir’s condition. However, fate dealt a body blow when mom Ajinder was diagnosed with late-stage cervical cancer in 2014. She lost her battle with cancer in September 2014. Even as they were left reeling from the loss of their mother, their father’s condition deteriorated overnight and he passed away in January 2015.

Grief as inspiration

“My dad’s younger sister, who we are close to, suggested we all take a trip together to put the past behind us. The two of us, our aunt, and her family travelled to Turkey in April that year. There during one of our discussions, she suggested why not Ajay and I start a company together,” recalls Chetan, a state level shooter during his school days.

Food was a natural choice. In the US, I used to munch a lot on energy bars, so that was what I wanted to do. I had a clear vision of what the company would do then itself.”

Chetan, who along with his brother relocated to Chandigarh, began product development in 2015. “With my background at innovative restaurants, I had a fair idea of what flavour mixes would work,” says the 30-year-old. “We tested out few of the flavours with friends and placed them at a few stores in Chandigarh to get customer feedback.”

The duo zeroed in on three flavours – Berrylicious, Le Chocolat, and Nutcase. In January 2016, AG Taste or All Good Taste was set up. The name too is a tribute to their parents, as the ‘A’ and ‘G’ in AG Taste also stand for Ajinder and Gurbir. The bars are retailed under the brand name All Good Bars and are priced at Rs 50.

With production being done out of an industrial park unit in Mohali, the company makes about 500 energy bars daily. AG Taste bars were first launched across Chandigarh and are now slowly making a presence in stores in Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaipur. The energy bars are also sold online across 30 sites, including Amazon, BigBasket, GourmetBox, and Shophop.

AG Taste's nutri bars

Challenges and opportunities

Chetan and Ajay have now got the supply chain in place by sourcing high-quality ingredients from a handful of exporters and importers. “But we are always looking for better sources as we want to keep the quality of ingredients high even as production increases,” says Chetan.

The bigger challenge is educating retailers about the product. “People are still getting used to energy bars. Since we use only natural ingredients and do not use preservatives, the shelf life of ours bars is around three months. Supermarkets are looking for products with longer shelf lives,” says Chetan, whose unit employs five people for production and packing.

The last couple of years has seen the launch of numerous energy and nutri bar brands. RiteBite, YogaBars, On The Run, and MojoBar are a few of the brands in this space. Now, big food brands are also entering this space, drawn by the mainly young group of consumers. Kellog’s, for instance, has launched K Bars.

Competition, says Chetan, is good. Chetan says: It will make all of us focus on product differentiation. Also, all the brands are working at evangelising this segment and the growing awareness will help all of us."

The overall market is large – sales of health and wellness food products crossed Rs 10,000 crore in 2015, according to a 2016 report by Nielsen.

Miles to go

Chetan and Ajay are focusing on a few specific areas as they target growth. Chetan is working on new flavours for the energy bars. The company will launch other health food brands once the energy bars are well established. Expanding to other cities, most importantly Bengaluru, is on the cards. “In offline, we will target only a few stores that fit our brand and cater to our target segment of young customers,” says Chetan. He is also in talks with corporates for creating co-branded products but declined to share further details as talks are still on. “We will reach Rs 3 lakh per month revenue run rate by mid-2017 even if we do not get into new partnerships and stores. So the potential growth is much higher,” says Chetan.

But it is not just all business for the brothers. Once the business stabilises, they intend to give a part of the net revenue to the Indian cancer Society and the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. For, finally, their goal is to ensure other families are not devastated by disease as theirs was.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/agtaste/

The untold story of 16-year-old Mahima Rathod, a real ‘Dangal’ girl

Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal, starring Aamir Khan, may be scoring big on numbers, but the actual story of the two girls from a village in Haryana who put India on the world map is far beyond anything that can be put on reel or even written about.

Geeta Phogat, 28, the first to win a Gold in wrestling at the Commonwealth Games and also the first female wrestler to qualify for the Olympics, has become a status symbol for women everywhere. Before the Phogat sisters entered the world of wrestling, courtesy of their father Mahavir Singh Phogat, India was grossly oblivious to the many struggles faced by female athletes in the country.

As seen in the film, the girls hailed from a small village in Haryana, where the barbaric practices of feticide and ‘honour killings’ are still a norm. While the average family is determined to spend its limited savings on the education and well-being of a son, the daughter’s only goal is to train in household chores until she is married off to an acceptable suitor. After watching Dangal, many protested at the apparent ‘dramatisation’ of the situation in Indian village societies, but even they reluctantly agreed that there was an element of truth to the story.

While scores of the same conservative Indians have now been professing their ‘confidence’ in the Phogat sisters after the film, another young girl was being taunted for wrestling boys in the outskirts of Maharashtra.

Sixteen-year-old Mahima Rathod felt like her own story was showcased through Dangal. Born into a family of wrestlers, Mahima began training in the sport under the tutelage of her father, Raju Rathod.

Raju, whose grandfather, father, and eight uncles were all associated with the sport, had also managed to qualify for the state-level championship. However, a lack of funds and facilities forced him to drop out of the game and resort to farm labour in order to make ends meet. However, like Mahavir, he was determined to pass on his dream to his first-born son and live vicariously through his successes. And like Mahavir again, he was blessed instead with a daughter.

We got in touch with both Raju Rathod and Mahima, both of whom were willing to give us details about what it’s like to be a female wrestler in a society that considers the sport ‘male-dominated’ and the countless other challenges that she has faced through the years.

Raju stated that his epiphany regarding his daughter’s future as a wrestler occurred through a casual conversation with his brother, Santosh. Both had been cursing their luck at not having been gifted sons when they realised at the same instance that their dreams could be carried out by their daughters instead.

“I had never forced Mahima to take up wrestling since I knew how uncommon it was for a woman in our society to take part in it. But she insisted that this was her dream as much as it was mine. I come from a family of ‘pehalwans’ and maybe that rubbed off on my daughter. I asked my brother what I should do and he said that I should just start training her in the sport,” says Raju.

While Santosh’s daughter decided to pursue a career in medicine, Raju’s Mahima was more than happy to rise to the challenge.

Much like the Phogat sisters, Mahima was the only girl in the entire village who dived headlong into the ‘manly’ sport and faced her share of censure for it. Raju, too, had to face the ugly taunts of the entire neighbourhood, which collectively marked the Rathod family a laughingstock.

“I started training Mahima when she was only seven, and the village erupted in scandal. They would make fun of me and my family, and ask me how I could make my daughter a public ridicule by training her in wrestling?” he says.

Undaunted, father and daughter carried on their training, and soon enough, Mahima was enrolled in competitions beyond the village. However, procuring worthy opponents became a bit of a task for Raju. Most of the boys in the village refused to fight her because she was a girl, and in desperation, Raju had to resort to bribing some of them with Rs 5 to ten so that they would agree to the same.

“Most part of my training involved male wrestlers because there were no other female wrestlers in my vicinity. At times, these boys didn’t want to fight me either and I had to ask my brother to step in instead. It was only when I reached the State Levels that I got the opportunity to finally fight a female wrestler, and that was a learning experience indeed,” says Mahima.

Eventually her reputation in the pit began to grow favourably, and she finally got the opportunity to play against another female wrestler when she was selected for the Taluka-level match.

After successfully winning a series of state and district level matches, Mahima is now set to represent Maharashtra in the National Wrestling Championship at Patna. As of now, the 16-year-old who entered the professional pit only two years ago has already played two state-level matches and two national-level matches against other female wrestlers. In these, she was proud to win the Gold at the state level and the Silver at the national.

At the same time, she is also is preparing to write her 10th standard board exams, which are a few months down the line, resulting in an arduous daily routine of balancing training and studying. When asked on how she does it, she says, “I can’t give up my education. After classes, I attend my tuitions and then spend the rest of the evening and night, practicing hard.”

Raju’s limited salary as a soybean and cotton farmer has all but been spent on Mahima’s training and related expenses. His undeterred faith is what Mahima credits to her gradual climb up the ladder, much like Geeta, who dedicated her gold medal entirely to her father, Mahavir.

“The Government has not provided any backing for training or other purposes. I attribute my success and training to my father. He is and will always be my coach,” she says.

Although the many victories of the Phogat sisters across seas and within the homeland have refurbished the average Indian’s ‘support’ of female wrestling in the country, the struggle to receive government recognition still continues. Mahima received a scholarship from the Centre, but she still lacks the necessary funds that an athlete of her calibre is privy to. Similarly, it took Geeta Phogat a six-year-long wait to be appointed as DSP despite winning India the Gold while several of her male counterparts were granted the position on an immediate basis.

“The Government hasn’t offered any support to Mahima, except for a scholarship worth approximately Rs 7000. Mahima entered the rings two years ago and has managed to make the cut to the nationals. However, we’ve been training the same way we began – with no funds for even a wrestling mat, making us resort to practising on the mud-floors in the ‘kheti’. The roof over our heads may not have changed but that doesn’t deter us in the least. We have a greater vision,” says Raju.

However, Mahima’s dedication to her passion and her already promising athletic prowess has caught the attention of several activists and social organisations, including social worker Parsharam Narwade, who has orchestrated a fundraising campaign to help Mahima’s dream come true.

As for Mahima, whose international trials are set to begin soon, this is only the beginning. Following the outcome of the nationals, she intends to take admission in the training academies at either Haryana or Kolhapur.

The 16-year-old is determined to win Gold for her country when she represents it on an international scale. As she told me confidently, “The gold is ours for the taking and I am going to win it for my country, my India.”

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/mahima-rathod/

From Chennai, with love: The Postbox makes you nostalgic

A post box is an object that somehow makes you nostalgic, bringing back memories of an era of pen and paper, ink and warmth, and the excitement of receiving a little package, and this very sentiment was what inspired two youngsters from Chennai to start up.

Two friends — Madhuvanthi Senthil Kumar (23) and Nikhil Joseph (26) — named their product design firm ‘The Postbox’, wanting to get people to reconnect through design, and to give them a personal, nostalgic experience. Madhuvanti says, “The symbol of reconnection for us is a post box, in the most traditional manner. So we decided on the name instantly.”

Nikhil Joseph and Madhuvanthi Senthil Kumar

The Postbox’s philosophy in design and product development is influenced by the cultures and subcultures of India. “Ensuring utility and aesthetic sensibility, we design and create products for the Indian audience,” says Nikhil. Their catalogue has art and lifestyle sections; while there are postcards and wall art in the former, cushion covers, ceramic mugs, and the like make up the latter.

The two-year-old startup now has Rs 20–22 lakh revenue per month, with a profit margin of about 45 percent. Although they expect to be profitable this year, the journey has been a long one.

Building The Postbox

Nikhil and Madhuvanthi met through common friends. Having studied fashion design at Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and fashion management at Milan’s Istituto Marangoni, Madhuvanthi brings in the design expertise whereas ex-Facebookemployee Nikhil takes care of strategy, technology, and marketing.

For Madhuvanthi, design comes first. “Designers are not artists; we inherently become entrepreneurs when we set out on our own. So entrepreneurship was a by-product of my desire to reach out to people through design,” she says.

Starting out, both co-founders luckily had family support. Nikhil comes from a family of entrepreneurs in Kerala. “A first-generation entrepreneur, my dad had stressed on The Postbox being a sustainable business, and made sure we abide by the legal and financial framework set by the government.”

Even Madhuvanthi’s grandparents stepped in for resources and supply chain set-up. She says,

“My mother helped us out for the longest time at the packaging unit until we got a core team in place, and my father, with his HR skills, offered us his network of people and expertise.”

The Postbox went live as a platform for upcoming artists and designers on a curated level in September 2014. “For months after launching, I travelled to understand the market — Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Jaipur, and Gurgaon — working with artisans and weavers. I found out that there is a gap for niche product design. People want something unique in design and yet affordable,” Nikhil 

recollects.

Accessory case from The Postbox

From May 2015, The Postbox started selling their own products manufactured in Puducherry, Pochampally, Kolkata, and Jaipur. “Our revenue was Rs 40,000 per month in April 2015. When we launched our product line including laptop bags in September 2015, it became Rs 9 lakh per month,” Madhuvanthi recollects.

Nikhil and Madhuvanthi also interacted with craftsmen in Auroville. About 80 women, all tsunami victims, were skilled with lamps. The Postbox worked with them to turn their work into a contemporary product line.

“From December 2015, about 20 artisans from a village near Kolkata started to make all terracotta products for The Postbox, and 1,000 pieces per week are sold even now,” Nikhil claims. So far, The Postbox has had over 27,000 orders.

Backend secrets

ThePostbox website is hosted on Shopify. All UX and UI changes are done internally. “Every time we work on a UX/UI change, we try to show maximum content in a seamless manner over a few minutes and gauge what the user wants to see based on history, purchasing pattern, and so on.”

The Postbox uses multiple sources for customer data, the most significant being Google Analytics. “We believe strongly in the practice of R&D. We experiment and develop each product using different materials and later test it on durability, utility, and aesthetic comfort,” Nikhil adds. Artisans and manufacturers are also involved in the design process as they can simplify the construction of each product.

The Postbox’s target audience is from 18–34. “We reach out to them through Instagram, Facebook, and collaborative stories through content-sharing websites and pop-ups,” says Nikhil.

In terms of product feedback, it works two ways.

Ceramic mugs from ThePostbox

“Every time a new product is launched, we reach out to the first 50 customers after 14–21 days of having the product delivered to them, and we ask them specific questions. Based on the analysis, we decide on what to act upon and what to eliminate and what makes sense in the long run.

“Every product after the sampling stage is tested by the team on an everyday basis for almost 14–21 days. Any sort of important utility change is then taken back to the production team,” Nikhil says.

About feedback on product design, the team considers how it will affect product positioning and pricing and impact customer experience. “For instance, after getting customer feedback, we added key holders inside bags so that finding the key is easier. A lot of our products have changed since the launch. They come with a utility factor, so we ask the customer how we can make it better,” Nikhil adds.

Mentors and funding

As with most startups, The Postbox’s toughest moment was when they were raising funds. Sify founder and lead investor at Chennai Angels R Ramaraj was their mentor. Since they were bootstrapped at the time, The Postbox couldn’t scale beyond a point although they were making Rs 15–16 lakh per month. So Ramaraj put in the bridge round and introduced them to Kanwaljit Singh. Soon Chennai Angels pitched in, as did Facebook’s Ritesh Mehta (who heads economic policies for Southeast Asia), and Bengaluru-based theatre artist Aruna Ganesh Ram.

Roll-up wallet from The Postbox

“When funds were drying up, we emailed everyone — including Ratan Tata. We got lucky; he invited us to meet. It was a unique pitching, not on metrics and numbers, but around product and strategy. He wanted to know where the leather was coming from and how old it was. We got clarity about taking our brand forward. He told us to scale vertically in one, before across verticals, for better brand recall. We implemented that, although he did not invest,” says Nikhil.

Future plans

The Postbox is now a team of 13 — in marketing, operations, design, and customer experience. They claim to have 100 percent annual growth. Designer bags and accessories which stand out with their style definitely have a market, especially with the likes of Chumbak and TheCrazyMe establishing themselves.

Being based in Chennai has its merits, Nikhil says. “It’s a virgin market — there are not many startups like this. The city is not too costly, it’s a leather hub, and provides proximity to artisans from Pondicherry. Those who manufacture our leather products also do it for brands like Land Rover,” he adds.

The Postbox claims that their success lies in the fact that there are now over 300 artisans across the country that are back to believing in the craft they grew up with, strengthening it, and willing to even scale it up.

There are plans to take the omni-channel route too. Madhuvanthi says, “We’ve been getting multiple requests about whether we have an offline space. So we are launching our first offline space in Chennai in March.”

The Postbox aims to cater to a large segment of people, rather than remain a niche player. There is no better time than now.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/postbox/

Much before Google, this platform has been offering digital services for MSMEs and SMBs

Early January this year, Google global CEO Sundar Pichai launched Digital Unlocked, a training programme for micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India.

(From L-R) Sahil Mehta, Anuj Shah and Ishan Doshi

Throughout his speech, Sundar talked about the contribution of MSMEs and SMBs in the growth of the country’s economy. It’s pertinent for the sector, which contributes to 37 percent of the country’s GDP and employs around 120 million people, to be digitally connected.

Engineering graduates Ishan Doshi, Anuj Shah, and Sahil Mehta concur with the view and vision of Google’s CEO. With the rising digitisation in the country, they aim to combine the power of digital, web, and mobile and apply to businesses to create and maintain their virtual presence in a cluttered marketplace.

In April 2016, the trio launched iTransparity, a digital consulting and engineering firm which offers full-stack solutions to SMEs, enterprises, and startups.

The Mumbai-based platform claims to offer services such as web design and development, e-commerce design and development, social media strategies and campaigns, digital marketing campaign, mobile apps development, and content writing.Also Read: How e-commerce changed in 2016 for Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal

“We observed that agencies and creative boutiques which claim to offer digital solutions to SMBs are not up to the mark. We spotted a lot of loopholes in the business process of these agencies and came across gaps in terms of transparency and client redressal. We were confident that we have the potential to fill these gaps and add real value to brands which focus not only on innovation but on transformation,” says 28-year-old Ishan, Co-founder of iTransparity.

With over nine years of experience in entrepreneurship, serial entrepreneur Ishan founded his first startup iThink Infotech in 2009. Anuj is a tech wizard who has pursued B.Tech (IT) and holds an MBA in finance. Sahil is a graduate in electronics engineering.

The co-founders bootstrapped the business with an initial investment of Rs 2 lakh. In less than a year’s time, they claim to be a cash-flow positive company.

Business growth

The platform claims to serve over 300 clients from different categories such as apparel, pharmaceutical, real estate, entertainment, travel, and others. And the client list includes Dell, Reliance, Myntra, Club Mahindra, Aditya Birla Group, Ambuja Cements, Punjab Grill and Cafe Infinito, among other small businesses.

The platform takes up one-time projects as well as follows a subscription and retainer revenue model.

“The most interesting statistic which keeps us inspired is that over 70 percent of our clients opt for a 360° suite of services which we offer. We are growing currently at 27 percent YoY0 and accelerating towards at least 35 percent in the next financial year,” says Ishan.

During January this year, iTransparity strengthened its foothold and announced the acquisition of Bengaluru-based CRM and integrated digital marketing firm ReachAll, founded by MediaForge Business Solutions.

ReachAll is an online marketing web application that helps local businesses create awareness, build long-term relationships and consequently builds customer loyalty and has seen widespread adoption in F&B industry.

On the acquisition, Ishan says, “Our plan is to expand iTransparity globally and increase its presence across geographies. ReachAll's excellent suite of brands and top talent, together with iTransparity's end to end tech and digital service offerings and ventures will be the best combination. We look forward to acquiring digital agencies to fuel our growth in India as well as to enter International markets like Singapore, Middle East, Australia, and the USA.”

The team size at iTransparity was 22, and with the current acquisition of ReachAll the strength of the organisation has increased to 32.

Digital market

In the e-commerce segment, there are multi-category e-retail companies offering full-stack solutions to sellers.Also Read: Indian e-commerce to hit Rs 2,11,005cr in 2016: IAMAI study

Launched in 2011, Zepo claims it can help one create and run an online store in under five minutes. The Mumbai-based DIY e-commerce platform offers a well-planned front-end, a simple dashboard and accepts online payments with a free payment gateway, as well as helps in logistics with a Bluedart partnership.

A similar platform, Kartrocket, offers end-to-end e-commerce solutions – setting up the website, integrated payment gateway, traffic generation tool, listing on marketplaces, and more than 200 apps along with automated shipping solutions. It plans to expand its presence and even has an app to solve problems around cataloguing and traffic generation.Also Read: Cloud-based inventory management startup Browntape raises close to $1 M from Seedfund & Krishnan Ganesh

Goa-based Browntape, founded in 2012, is yet another cloud-based software that helps online merchants manage orders and inventory for e-commerce markets. It has an enterprise model crafted for large brands and retailers who have little experience in scaling sales on online marketplaces.

Experts say that in today’s world of digital technology, legacy business models are out of date and ineffective. So, brands are working with a broader portfolio of agencies to meet the ongoing need for digital expertise.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/itransparity/

If you’re selling online, this AI-based app will click the most ‘sell-able’ pictures using nothing but your mobile phone

Twenty-five-year-old Siddharth Chilukuri and 26-year-olds Neelesh Soni, Gaurav Raj and Ankit Jain were all batch-mates at NITK Surathkal in different streams of engineering, while 28-year-old Akshay Sathaye was studying computer science at Mumbai University.

They started hacking away at their ideas right from the final year of college. Having registered their company, Rhapsody Labs, they were working round the clock, building an augmented reality (AR) product, that is, virtual trial solutions (of outfits on fashion e-commerce sites) in 2012. They turned down their offers during campus placements, and chose to commit to what they had started. “We all knew that the life we were choosing would be challenging and would consume the entirety of our lives, but we realised that to create value, we had to take the plunge and take the world head on,” says Siddharth.

Team Pictor

While, in 2012, e-commerce had taken off in western markets, in India, it was yet to hit the mainstream. In the meetings for their virtual trial, the clients – largely fashion e-commerce portals - repeatedly cited issues in the picture quality of the photographs listed on their platforms. And good photography was a prerequisite for using their product. After speaking to hundreds of retailers, they realised that this was a major problem in the cataloging industry. “At first, we started off with DSLR cameras and built an automated box around it, but as the e-commerce market took a shift to the marketplace model, we had to innovate using the ubiquitous mobile phone. This was the time Pictor was created, in November 2015,” explains Siddharth.

Behind the scenes with Pictor

Pictor heavily relies on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for its products. The Pictor app helps online sellers and manufacturers click online-ready photographs of their products using their mobile phones, without any external equipment. “In the app, we guide the user to click with the right angles, help him get the background right, correct his lighting setup and prompt them for various other photography parameters required to click a good product shot,” Siddharth elaborates.

Once the picture is clicked and uploaded to their servers, the image is subjected to a blast of image processing and Machine Learning algorithms, to make it compliant to online marketplaces. A team of graphic artists also assesses the quality of the images and gives them final touches.

For their clientele, two primary concerns are the increase of sales and the reduction of costs. So, the app is free to download, but the user is charged on an image basis to get them retouched, which, depending on the complexity of the article and the quality of the photograph shot, costs between Rs 8 and Rs 45 per shot. A real-time quote is provided to the user, based on their images.

“The backend work is where the real magic happens; we use a host of Deep Learning and artificial neural networks to get the results. Right from object segmentation to real-time pricing, we have heavily invested in Deep Learning, and have reaped exceptional results,” says Siddharth.

As of now, all the images shot go through the graphic artists compulsorily, but they will be adding a new app that will automatically enhance photos without human intervention. “We have already achieved 40 percent automation; in the next six months, it should be 90 percent automated,” he says. It also helps that they are built to scale, and as they receive and process more images, their machines provide better results.

Trial and error

How it works

One of biggest challenges they faced was the quantifying of the image editing process, which, until now, was aesthetically driven. In the initial stages, they operated like a traditional photography house, to understand the entire process, from photography to image editing. Here, each person working on the images was essentially an artist, thus producing different outputs every time. In fact, their image processing algorithms also failed to deliver as the input images varied considerably.

However, the alternative approach of quantifying the image editing process did the trick. “We reduced the number of decision points of the image editors from 40 to three by employing an assembly line model in image editing. Each part of the assembly line was designed to put different types of Deep Learning models in place to automate it. This ensured scalability and consistency in the output, and maintained the overall quality of the service,” says Siddharth.

And photography is just one part of a big puzzle they are trying to piece together. Stuff like sentiment analysis, catalogue likeability factors, real-time analysis of product pages of a website, and product level comparison to increase saleability are some of newer technologies being explored, and they intend to roll them out soon.

Pictor-perfect

Pictor’s clients predominantly belong to one of two sets - e-commerce companies or online sellers. The huge amount of data they needed to get their algorithms in place was provided by enterprise e-commerce sellers. And like any B2B business, they took the route of direct selling to net prospects.

Enterprises such as Flipkart, GS1 and Amazon Now are using Pictor for their cataloging. Pictor is also at the pilot stage with other big Indian e-commerce companies. “We have processed over two lakh images till now, and the count is going up week-on-week. Our app is being used by individual sellers from Amaravati to London,” says Siddharth. Having started with a four-member team, Pictor now employs thirty.

Every product that goes online has to go through the process of cataloging. Cataloging, globally, is a multi-billion dollar industry and is typically run in the KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) model. There are many traditional players in the industry locally, such as Online Becho and Moksha. Globally, some big names in the industry are Pixc and Pixelz. Apart from them, there are websites that rely on image processing algorithms such as Background Burner and Mr clipping, which offer a self-service portal for editing out the background.

“Our USP has always been the quality of our output, the prices at which we offer our services, and our turnaround time,” Siddharth states.

The young company recently made it to the top ten of our flagship event MobileSparks owing to the robustness of their technology, and impressive strategies to scale. They also received Rs 1 crore as seed funding in May 2016 from Quarizon, a Delhi-based manager of private investment partnerships. They are currently in the process of raising more capital for the new products being developed.

On an e-commerce website, a product’s photograph is its salesman. The better the catalogue score, greater are the chances to sell. And if one were to look at the buying patterns of users in India, better photographs instill a sense of trust with the brand and grant it prestige, inducing the user to choose it over another, relatively poorly presented competitor.

Research has shown that better images in the catalogue increase the sale of the product multifold. In fact, adding an additional image in the catalogue increases the saleability by 10 percent.

For five buddies waiting for their chance to create something valuable for the world, the gap in this space was too wide, and these stats too irresistible, to not be acted upon.

Hyderabad-based husband-wife duo helps you achieve daily health goals

Husband-wife duo Gopi Lingala and Saneesha Rao were struggling to get nutritionally balanced food. Gopi was working 12-14 hours a day and had all his meals at the office, while Saneesha needed a special diet because of her pregnancy.

Gopi Lingala and Saneesha Rao (Co-founders of LeanSpoon)

After meeting with nutritionists and doctors, and trying out various food delivery services, the duo realised that making a balanced meal required a lot of time and effort. With this in mind, they founded LeanSpoon in May 2016 in Hyderabad with their personal savings and by taking a bank loan, and assembled a team of skilled nutritionists and chefs to prepare meal plans based on individual health requirements.

Hyderabad-based LeanSpoon helps people achieve their health goals through personalised nutrition, by integrating nutrition and lifestyle advice considering the user’s medical background, dietary patterns and health goals.

While funding was available easily, we wanted to take our time to getting the service and the product right before going for any external funding. We, however, had other challenges,” says Gopi (36), an MSc in International Business who brings 13 years of work experience in the BPO and consulting sector, with a focus on services supply chain management.

Saneesha (29) is a Computer Science engineer and started her career as a technical artist in game development before she took up painting and sculpting full time when she moved to Latin America.

Preparing the food

LeanSpoon has a team of over 20 people, including a culinary team and a nutritionist team. They select only nutritionists with a degree in nutrition and a good understanding of the science backed by work experience at hospitals.

Their chefs, too, are backed by degrees in hotel management and experience in five-star hotels or flight kitchens. The kitchen has eight staff and one nutritionist, who works closely with them.

“Getting a multi-course meal that is nutritionally balanced across both macro nutrients—fat, protein, carbs—and micro-nutrients—fibre, vitamins and minerals—and that is flexible to portion control for different dietary requirements is an intricate solution. And doing this for a rotating menu that does not repeat for ten weeks is a complex task,” says Gopi.

LeanSpoon offers subscriptions on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, with five, 22 and 70 meals respectively. The customer has the flexibility to take only nutrition advice or include breakfast and/or lunch packs (presently only in Hyderabad) as part of their subscription.

LeanSpoon Team

Nutrition advice includes a personal nutritionist for each customer to better understand his health goals and medical background and work with the kitchen team and other nutritionists to prepare customised meals.

This nutritionist can be reached over call, email and chat for any queries related to nutrition, health, and exercise for the entire subscription period during working hours. The nutritionist also shares relevant information and articles related to the challenges and health goals of their clients.

A monthly subscription to nutrition advice, breakfast and lunch comes to about Rs 9,000, while a three-month subscription to all three comes at about Rs 25,000. The average meal pack comes to around Rs 175–205, including nutrition advice, portion controlling, delivery and tax.

Making money

Currently, LeanSpoon caters to over 1,000 orders a month. According to Gopi, the startup gains a clear operating margin from every meal it delivers. This year, the startup will open its second production centre in Hyderabad and aims to take the number of meals it delivers to 25,000 per month.

“Over the next 2-3 years, we are looking at leveraging technology, including wearables, to gather the data to further customise our offering for users. We are also looking to working with diagnostic testing and genetic testing to help people personalise and plan their health goals accordingly,” says Gopi.

According to an India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) report, the total size of the healthcare industry is expected to touch $160 billion by 2017 and $280 billion by 2020. Diet plan is the new buzzword in the healthcare industry, with a handful of emerging startups customising diet plans according to customers' health goals.

Gurugram-based First Eat not only serves nutritious meals but also educates people the importance of nutrition through a network of dietitians. The HealthyBox serves organic healthy food in Delhi and Gurugram. Mumbai-based Grubit caters to people on different diet levels - the strict diet followers, conscious foodies who like to try different cuisines, and for the moderately active people.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/leanspoon/

Square Yards raises $10M in convertible notes from multiple investors

Gurgaon-based Square Yards, a real estate investment advisory player, has raised $10 million in the form of convertible notes from multiple individual investors.

Square Yards team

According to Tanuj Shori, Founder and CEO, Square Yards, he wanted to maintain a healthy mix in their balance sheet without diluting too much of equity at this stage of growth. The notes are issued for a fixed term at a pre-determined coupon rate and with an option to convert into equity (at a discount) on reaching the next funding milestone.

“A part of the investment will go into strengthening all the three verticals — NRI market, global real estate, and mortgage broking. The funding will go into it to grow the market share. Another part of the investment will be utilised to launch some new initiatives such as broker aggregation and property management. The new financing will help us accelerate our expansion into newer international geographies and at the same time strengthen our existing distribution network in over 10 countries,” says Tanuj.

This is Square Yards’ second round of investment in three months, the previous one being the $12 million equity funding raised from the Reliance Group’s private equity arm last November. During May last year, Square Yards had raised an amount of $11 million in pre-Series A funding from a clutch of investors in Singapore and Hong Kong, who hold senior-level positions with leading asset management and private equity houses. The new investment takes the total amount of funds raised by the company to approximately $33 million since its inception in 2013.

Square Yards claims to have acquired a leadership position in the transactions space. It currently boasts of a net revenue run rate of around $1.5 million and also claims to have crossed $1 billion in gross transactional value (GTV) in terms of total value of properties sold on its platform.

Market analysis

According to IBEF, the Indian real estate market is expected to touch $180 billion by 2020. The housing sector alone contributes between five and six percent of the country's GDP.

There is a horde of players who offer solutions to the realty market — both offline and online.

In the online category, Magicbricks, 99acres, PropTiger, DoorKeys, and many other players provide selling, buying, and renting facilities.

In the past two years, the real estate startup market has observed many new developments.

The PropTiger-Housing merger was the most recent development in this category. In April 2015, PropTiger had announced the acquisition of Makaan.com for an undisclosed amount.

During early 2016, online classified major Quikr acquired realty portal CommonFloor for an undisclosed amount. During November last year, QuikrHomes, the real estate arm of e-commerce marketplace Quikr, acquired Bengaluru-based home rental marketplace Grabhouse.

Experts say that the consolidation hasn’t impacted the market much, rather helping it maintain its sanity.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/square-yards-funding-2/

5 things every entrepreneur building a marketplace should know

Marketplaces like Flipkart, Fiverr, and HomeHero seem very profitable at first glance — all you have to do is build a portal and bring merchants on board to sell products or professionals to offer their service. But this is not as easy as it seems. Building marketplace-driven brands is complicated. Very complicated.

I have been building the same for the last two years and thought it would make perfect sense to share the lessons learnt with aspiring entrepreneurs. So, here’s what you need to know if you are thinking about building a product or service-driven marketplace:

Merchants/providers will take time to join

There is no chicken-or-egg question here. You have to get the merchants/service providers on board first and let me tell you it is not going to be easy. Locating merchants and convincing them to join will require a lot of effort, online as well as offline. Let’s say if you approach 100, only 20 will agree to hear you out. Out of those, only eight will say that they will join, and only two will actually join.

One more thing — the above example applies only if you are approaching highly relevant people. Don’t even think about buying a generic email list and shooting with a mail blaster. (Check out this HubSpot post for reference)

In the first month of operations, Amazon received orders from 45 countries, but remember, this was back in 1994. Now there are established brands out there in major marketplace models, so don’t even think of launching a marketplace if you don’t have the patience and grit to keep going.

Pick the technology carefully 

Marketplaces are not online stores where a small catalogue of products will go on sale or a few people will offer their services. It will host thousands of merchants/service providers and cater to tens of thousands of customers. Hence, a website built on an ill-suited technology won’t cut it.

You need a technology that can guarantee stability, security, and performance to your mega online store. Most entrepreneurs coming from non-technical backgrounds don’t know much about technology selection, and that’s why you first have to speak with a technology consultant.

I have the perfect example for this. In its early days, Paypal almost made the mistake of switching to Windows from Unix but was saved by the CEO switch. This might have killed the current giant of online transactions. Paul Graham (Co-founder of Y Combinator) shared the same in this interesting blog post written back in 2006.

Marketplace cloning software aren’t any good

If you have been scrutinising ways to build your online superstore or services marketplace, you must have come across marketplace builders. They are readymade software that are marketed as quick solutions to launch clones of Amazon, Freelancer, and similar platforms. But the truth, like always, is a bit twisted.

95 percent of the turnkey marketplace solutions are not even worth looking at. The remaining will come at a decent price but will require major customisations and plugins to deliver your envisioned marketplace.

Personally, I won’t recommend building your e-commerce/people marketplace with a turnkey software. If you have no other option due to budget constraints, be very careful while selecting your multivendor store builder and clone software.

Marketing spend will be huge

Building a marketplace is an expensive affair but that’s certainly not the end of spending. Marketing is going to demand a big investment as well. From online banner ads to SEO, PPC, media coverage, and social media, everything will demand money, and I’m not even counting the offline spend yet.

Most startups are so focused on building a website and launching it that they never take the time to plan and save for marketing. This puts the future of their marketplace startup in jeopardy.

Also, please don’t begin with the assumption that someone will fund your venture to take care of the marketing spend because that’s not going to happen until you have something unique. Need some numbers?

Angels and seed deals stood at 845 back in 2015. 2016’s number (from January to September) stood at 540. Check out this VC Circle post for more stats.

Great development teams are hard to find

There are probably millions of IT companies in the world but the ones that have the expertise to build powerful marketplaces are very few. A great development team will:

Guide you about technology (but I still recommend speaking to a consultant)

Think about UX and search performance while planning architecture

Share feature recommendations and follow transparent development processes

Finding such a team will be a tiring process. This is the reason startups choose to build an in-house team to handle the development work. One more thing — don’t fall in the costly-is-better trap. There are lots of IT firms out there that charge a premium price but don’t deliver quality.

The bottom line

Nothing about launching and scaling a marketplace-based venture is easy. So many things need work that it is almost a risky proposition. Rob Kramer is probably the perfect example for aspiring entrepreneurs — the serial

entrepreneur and founder of HipSwap (a US-based marketplace for used goods) has vast experience in building online businesses but still failed with many ventures (the most notable among which was PopRule).

In short, building the next Amazon or Fiverr will take everything you have, so start only if you are ready to give the same and have the right knowhow.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/entrepreneur-building-marketplace/