Rahul Yadav has made sure that Housing.com is constantly in the news. Recently, Housing.com sent an email to all students at IIM- A,B,C, and ISB announcing an event that invites applications for a new brand name that Housing.com is planning to launch. This new brand will be a separate business vertical which will tackle the problem of commercial real estate. A sector away from the media and consumer glare, commercial real estate deals with spaces dedicated to offices, retail and such. Here is the mail that was procured from one of the students:

Housing’s going to be back in the news soon. No, not for the reasons you are thinking of.

Now that our brand is a household name in the residential business, be it rent, buy/sell, short stays or PG accommodation, we plan to get into the commercial side of things very soon. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) entails all property that is solely used for business purposes. Examples of CRE include office towers, business/IT parks, malls, restaurants and convenience stores.

As this is a new business division that Housing is going to add to its portfolio, we want a new name. Yes, a BRAND NAME for this new business category / vertical! And, this is where we need your help.

The brand name ought to be simple, yet catchy. Attached is a document that gives a brief overview of the new category, the kind of brand personality we want to build and the kind of brand names we certainly want to avoid (as you may already know, we are not the one for cliches )

We need you to rack your brains in exchange for the following:

First Prize: MacBook
Second Prize: iPhone
Third Prize: iPad

This is an interesting move and in the document sent to all the students there is one clause which is rather intriguing:

Themes / Ideas / Creative Directions TO AVOID

We don’t know what we want, but we sure do know what we don’t want!

● Workspace (boring!)

● Offices (restrictive + boring)

● Business, Commercial (Duhh..)

The goal of the entire exercise is to develop a brand name for a new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) portal that will list all CRE properties (including office spaces, retail spaces, industrial spaces and commercial venues) and also run and maintain a fleet of branded office spaces across all top­ tier metros.

Rahul Yadav confirms the development but does not reveal any details. “We’re not happy at all with the conventional CRE models. Team is working on it is trying hard to come up with truly innovative and disruptive models. Let them do their work. Do not disturb,” says Rahul and ends the email with a smiley.

The commercial real estate space has hardly been talked about. Early 2014 interviews with experts in the space suggest that it was a great time to invest in commercial real estate. According to Ramesh Nair, CEO – India Biz, JLL, some of the key points to look at while investing in commercial spaces are:

• Capability of the developer,
• Not to have a herd mentality and look at current vacancy rates and;
• Look at property tax in the region.

The online commercial real estate space doesn’t have many players. 99Acres has a commercial offering and very recently, Propstac, a Mumbai-based startup which manages data around commercial real estate raised $3 million in a funding round led by DMGI (investment group run by ‘Daily Mail’) with participation from Real Capital Analytics. Hyderabad-based OfficeAdvisor launched its website last year and is now operating in Chennai and Hyderabad.

Globally, RealtyMogul is a giant online marketplace for real estate investing. It recently announced that it received $250 million in direct commitments from large institutional investors, who have sizable balance sheets and want to work with a leader in the online capital markets space. For Housing.com, the push has been to be a global company. And for CRE, the mail mentions,

Our vision is to evolve the way people ‘Search & Acquire’ commercial spaces that takes months and years today, and enable all CRE seekers in making leasing & buying decisions through a single platform ­ we want to revolutionise this industry!

Website: Housing.com

One of our big priorities,as office goers, is making sure we head out at any time other than peak traffic hours. Being stuck in traffic for hours on end, caught up in endless slow traffic races, inhaling petrol fumes is something that one would want to avoid. In order to help people do so, myofficecab was established. According to Bhaskar Chavda, Co-founder and CEO, myofficecab, less than 30 per cent of employees who are offered company transport take it. This, he says, means that many people are on the road, increasing both traffic and pollution. “And not all companies can provide transportation to their employees,’ adds Bhaskar.

Eco-Friendly Cab

According to Bhaskar, the reasons for not availing of company transport and companies’ not providing transport isn’t the cost. He adds that it is because of the lack of a reliable and trustworthy vendor. Myofficecab wants to remedy this and provide most companies with their transportation needs.

He says: “Our fleet will include LPG, CNG and electric vehicles. We are going about this not by buying vehicles, but by building an ecosystem where people buy these environment-friendly vehicles and attach them to our company. We also have software, which helps in routing of vehicles, so that utilisation of vehicles is maximised, hence reducing both pollution and traffic on the road.”

Apart from this, myofficecab also provides cab pooling for those employees that do not take company-provided transport, or those who don’t have the option to do so.

Myofficecab team with Bengaluru Traffic Police

Genesis

During their coffee break, colleagues Bhaskar Chavda, Vinod Kumar, Sailas Nulaka and Prashanth would talk about the common challenges they faced with their team. The biggest point that came up during the conversations was the fact that employee productivity was impacted by transportation. Bhaskar says that while most people complained about the traffic and pollution, they did little to combat it.

They decided to leave their comfortable management jobs to startup.”The key reason also was that we saw that the solution to both these massive problems (pollution and traffic) was feasible and in our reach. That’s where the idea of myofficecab was conceived,” adds Bhaskar.

Obstacles

Bhaskar says that while most of their struggles were similar to that of any startup, they faced other problems, like needing to meet with several different government officials, in order to understand their requirements and get the needed agreements. He also says that currently, they are looking to build a strong team and also reach out to VCs.

Currently operational in Bengaluru, the team plans to expand to Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune shortly. “Our traction so far has been really good, we were happy to see the positive response we received from various (more than 20) IT companies. It includes companies of all sizes, i.e. small, medium and large,” adds Bhaskar.

He also adds that all their vehicles are fully utilized, and more companies are reaching out to them. Apart from this, there are more individuals who looking at cab pooling, and more car owners who are interested in purchasing environment friendly vehicles and attaching them to myofficecab.

The website started early June this year. The team launched with five vehicles. Bhaskar says that this month there will be a mela for drivers interested in attaching their environment friendly vehicles to the organisation. The mela will be held along with vehicle manufacturers and finance companies. Minjar Cloud Solutions and Nalashaa Solutions have tied up with myofficecab.

Safety and service

In order to ensure complete safety, all myofficecab vehicles are fitted with GPS devices, apps for employees, drivers, and admin staff for companies. “The irony is that transport management departments in software companies don’t have any software solutions. We are providing them with software for efficient route management and live tracking of vehicles,” adds Bhaskar.

The vehicles also feature a panic button, and the employee apps too come with a panic button. Apart from background checks, drivers undergo training based on the rules and regulations of the Bengaluru Traffic Police.

Bhaskar says: “We treat our drivers as employees. We have provided training to our drivers on soft skills, business etiquette and customer service, the way IT companies provide training to their employees. Our customers have so far been happily surprised with both the good behaviour on the road, and the courtesy in conversation that our drivers have displayed so far.”

Differentiator and USP

According to Bhaskar, one of the biggest USPs of myofficecab is the fact that they focus more on the B2B aspects. Apart from the same, since myofficecab provides ecologically friendly cabs, they have been able to reducecarbon emission by 100,000 grams. “For the amounts that our vehicles still produce, we will plant one tree per cab per month, to not just cover what was left, but make the environment even better,” adds Bhaskar.

Myofficecab has a flat rate per trip, within Bengaluru city limits. “This has resulted in drivers focusing on ensuring employees reach office on time. They are not interested in increasing the number of kilometers travelled, and thus they do not increase their drive time. We plan to have a similar flat-rate model for cab pooling, where the cost reduces with increase in capacity utilisation,” says Bhaskar.

Market space

For myofficecab, every company that provides and even doesn’t provide transportation is a target. According to sources, the total addressable market is close to $10 billion. Bengaluru’s itself is close to $ 4 billion. Apart from regular cab companies, car pooling is fast picking up in cities like Bengaluru.

“We are working with entities based in Singapore/Germany to get electric taxis which can run 200+ km on full charge, and that can be charged within 30 minutes. We will also add bigger vehicles, including CNG and electric buses,” concludes Bhaskar.

Website

In this series, Sramana Mitra shares chapters from her book Vision India 2020, written to inspire entrepreneurs by sharing 45 interesting ideas for start-up companies with the potential to become billion-dollar enterprises either by focusing on the massive market opportunity in India, or by leveraging India as a development center catering to global customers. These articles are written as business fiction, as if we’re in 2020, reflecting back on building these businesses over the previous decade. We hope to spark ideas for building successful start-ups of your own. Feel free take any of these ideas, develop them, morph them, and if you need help, you can reach out to Sramana and the 1M/1M team.

Image credits: shutterstock.com

Very early in my life I knew where I wanted to go. The details may have been blurry, but the direction was clear by 16 years of age: I wanted to be an entrepreneur; I wanted to study computer science in America; and finally, I wanted to write.

These were not necessarily well thought through choices, but rather instincts, born of the circumstances that surrounded and made up my particular life. Nothing esoteric, simply that my father was an entrepreneur, there was a multi-generational history of studying abroad – in England or America – and a slightly older cousin whom I looked up to had suggested that computer science was where our generation’s most exciting opportunities awaited.

And so, in 1989, I left India with two dream-stuffed suitcases for college in western Massachusetts. This was long before the wave of information technology swept over India, dotting business parks across once ox-plowed fields. My Swiss Air flight roared over old Bombay, where stray cows and rickshaw traffic shrank from view.

When I arrived at Smith College in the fall of 1989, I had already made a few choices. I had chosen to attend a small liberal arts college instead of a larger engineering school like one of the IITs, Carnegie Mellon, or MIT. I did apply to MIT for undergrad, but with naïve honesty I told the man who interviewed me in Calcutta that my skills did not end with math and science. I was also a trained classical dancer, an avid watercolor painter, having studied with the renowned artist Sri Ramananda Bandopadhyay, and, heresy of heresies, that I wanted to continue indulging both my left and right brain. MIT rejected me.

Of course, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At Smith, I was free to indulge my natural instincts. I worked hard at computer science and economics, my two majors, programming till three in the morning, but I also managed to regularly choreograph and perform, write, take seminars in poetry and literature.

In 1992, the Smith CS department received a grant to purchase a transputer – one of the early parallel computing systems. The machine sat at the corner of the lab looking formidable and mysterious, but also rather lonely. Soon though, we were inseparable. I was the only student working on it, and I learned to dismantle it, understand it, and write programs taking advantage of its concurrency. That year, my advisor and I came up with The Inebriated Router Algorithm, a randomized routing algorithm for transporting traffic in multiprocessor interconnects. The resulting paper was accepted at the annual Transputer User Group meeting, and the week before my graduation in May 1993, we flew to Vancouver to present it at the conference.

This research, more than anything else, paved my way back to MIT – and back, I thought, to the office of acclaimed computer architecture professor, Anant Agarwal. But Anant remained elusive – rarely found on campus, he was deep in the throes of his first startup, Virtual Machine Works. So, I sought out a friendly senior graduate student in his group, John “Kubi” Kubiatowicz, as my mentor. I came into the Alewife project towards the end, with much of the system already designed. Kubi was its chief architect. He patiently answered all my questions as I tried to make sense of the vast number of design decisions and algorithms already arrived at. I quickly realized that at MIT, there would be minimum direct coaching, and a lot of following my nose, figuring things out. Sink or swim was the general idea, and I was not the sinking kind. Within a year I wrote the performance evaluation system for the Alewife multiprocessor and handed in my master’s thesis based on that work.
 Meanwhile, I got to know Anant better under unexpected circumstances. In January 1994, the Indian VLSI conference was in Calcutta, and Anant was one of the keynote speakers. I attended the conference with him, and one evening, I showed him around town in my 1972 Fiat. Zigzagging between bumper-to-bumper traffic, I explained to Anant my entrepreneurial aspirations. Anant, nervous about the traffic, resonated, encouraging me to keep going.

From 1994 to 2000, I founded and ran three companies – DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. Each leveraged the Internet in unique ways, and through each I learned the essentials of the Silicon Valley venture business: building products and teams, raising money, marketing and selling vision, ideas, solutions, and companies.

But as the technology industry melted down around me, I felt the need for a broader perspective than what startup CEO jobs typically allowed. The need to focus on an increasingly narrow niche is critical to the success of a fledgling venture, yet my own personal desire at that point was promiscuity, not focus. I wanted to be a consultant rather than a proprietor. In this capacity I led turnarounds, positioning and repositioning exercises, and strategic planning efforts. My clients ranged from zero-stage startups all the way to the $10 billion SAP and the $45 billion Best Buy. All told: 15-plus years as a Silicon Valley insider, stewarding ventures big and small, newborn and matured through the vast innovation ecosystem.

In 2005, my journalist friend Om Malik baited me to start a blog. “Just do it,” he said. “You’re so opinionated anyway. Just write what you think. Just be you!”

When I sat down to write, words tumbled forth without effort – piling themselves up for me to sift through, cut, chop, arrange, and finally hand over to my quickly amassing audience. The blogosphere was calling. And when, in the fall of 2007, the technology editor of Forbes.com, Elisabeth Corcoran, invited me to write a weekly column, it went from calling me, to calling me home.

Soon after, in February, I wrote a controversial column titled, “The Coming Death of Indian Outsourcing.” India, I said, for all its glory, remained the world’s back office. Its tech industry little more than a “services” industry, where the customers did the thinking. India executed. India, I wrote, had not learned to invent technology products of its own. Barring a few exceptions, the glut of venture capital chasing India found it difficult to be deployed. There was way too much money, and way too few deals.

I stood by this thesis then, and I stand by it today. Tech-sector VCs are now diverting capital to retail, real estate, hotels, and other non-tech sectors. India’s $30 billion IT/ITES services industry, meanwhile, is slowly and surely losing its competitive advantage. Most of the four million people that the industry employs have now “arrived.” They have breezed through the milestones that their fathers had to toil all their lives to reach. A phone. A watch. A TV. A car. A house. For the golden goose is still laying large, warm eggs, enough to feed the four million and their families, servants, chauffeurs, and cooks. Meanwhile, the workforce is getting comfortable in their cubicle chairs, just as the turkey gets comfortable before Thanksgiving.

Of course, this is a sensitive issue that called forth a deluge of hate mail. But not hate mail alone. I also received calls from many CEOs from the Indian outsourcing industry congratulating me for having the guts to point out, albeit in scathing words, that the outsourcing industry is in troubled water.

True, India has positioned itself as a software superpower on the shoulders of outsourcing. But is that all that we will ever achieve? With the right guidance, I am resolute that the Indian youth have the potential to build their nation’s next phase of development – systematic development rather than the haphazard, helter-skelter development we have thus far seen.

Development, for India, of course, will not be limited to the technology sector. Driving from Calcutta to Kharagpur, I experienced intimately the toll of one of India’s many unforgiving bottlenecked roadways. A highway cut to one lane because of a bridge that has stood derelict for three years. Outside Jaipur, where a thick mass of trucks constrict the flow of traffic, the scene is unchanged. And when I do finally persevere, make it home, find my bed, the noise pollution keeps sleep distant. I toss and turn in bed, listening through the walls to my family members’ coughing unrest due to the environmental disaster we have created.

These same trucks that clog my journey to Jaipur are caught up in similar jams up and down the length and breadth of India. They wheeze to a halt trying to deliver goods to train stations to be transported across the heartland of India, or to ports so ships can sail.

And the people? Dripping in sweat, hanging from fuming buses, packed like sardines in trains they trudge on. Living in postage-stamp-sized slum rooms amidst squalor, crime, and health hazards, the majority of twenty-first-century India’s citizens live a life far below “superpower” standards.

India needs clean water. India needs energy. India needs roads, ports, and bridges. But India also needs to look back as it strides forward.

In the name of development, India has managed to destroy much of its architectural heritage. Real estate entrepreneurs have mercilessly destroyed British-era jewels along with much of the traditional Indian heritage buildings. Such, I understand, is the destiny of developing nations. The same routine destruction runs from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It runs in Mexico, in China. It runs in Brazil, and in Romania. Darjeeling, the erstwhile queen of the Himalayas, once enchanted with pine-lined walks strung from house to house, today flashes neon signs to welcome tourists. In the heart of the Himalayas, the picturesque villages are upgraded from utmost poverty and poetry to mediocrity. Their sun-bleached Buddhist prayer flags that flap in the mountain wind no longer whisper their blessings. This is the era of cement, of development for development’s sake.

But what of beauty? Of preservation? Paris preserved. Kyoto. San Francisco. Will India fail to preserve? Will India fail to showcase the magic and the mystique of its past? Between consulting and writing, over the last decade, I have interacted with thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators, encountering hundreds of business case studies, and from that rich crop I have harvested ideas to answer these issues.

George Will once said, “Not only do ideas have consequences, but only ideas have large and lasting consequences.”

Vision India 2020 is my notebook of ideas on entrepreneurship in India. Set in 2020, this futuristic retrospective looks back on the building of a set of particular entrepreneurial ventures, gleaned from the many opportunities I see. Much, much in these ventures need yet be fleshed out. But if you start thinking about a venture in your own area of interest with the framework offered in one of these essays, I believe you will find directives – strategy, business models, references, comparables – that will guide you forward.

Whether in film or healthcare, education or rural development, I have dreamed freely, taking bold, ambitious measures to address impending crises such as water, energy, and the environment.

As you read this series, take with you that boldness. And afterwards, as your own ideas gestate, use my process of visioning – of imagining a manifestation, in as real of terms as possible, of the company that you will build, the change you will bring about.

It is a powerful experience to project far into the future – your future, based on your ideas, your dreams. But as you dream, be sure to work out the details requisite to your venture’s success. I have envisioned details as granular as logos and colors, not to mention margins and pricing. It is within such details that billions of dollars of GDP await – quietly, unregistered by the greater public, waiting for an entrepreneur’s magic touch. For in my model of development, it is the entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs alone, who wield the most potent weapons of mass reconstruction.

To build markets; to build nations; to build worlds.

HealthifyMe, the mobile fitness and weight loss program has announced their second round of funding from angel investors comprising of Gopal Srinivasan (TVS Capital), Sashi Reddi (AppLabs), Amit Gupta (InMobi), Pallav Nadhani (FusionCharts) and Dr Roopa Nath, among  others. This round comes close on the heel of their earlier round of funding that they had recently raised from Micromax.

In an effort to establish their global footprint, HealthifyMe is establishing their global head-quarters in Singapore. They intend to use the funds for growth and are planning to hire more than 1,000 nutritionists and fitness trainers. HealthifyMe also plans to introduce several low cost plans among and will include in-app real-time access to nutritionists, trainers, yoga instructors who work digitally with the user on their personal fitness and weight loss objectives. Users will get diet plans, workout plans, access to an online support community as part of the new structures that will be offered.

HealthifyMe was founded by Tushar Vashist and Sachin Shenoy, with the aim of providing a fun and creative mobile and web solution to simplify healthy living. Tushar, the CEO stated

We are on a mission to HealthifyIndia. I am glad to have received support from investors who believe in our mission. With this funding, we are going to democratise healthy living – providing fitness and weight loss at a fraction of market value, while simultaneously providing employment to hundreds of nutritionists and trainers.

The app allows customers to keep a track of their diet and workout progress and has been built with the Indian audience in mind . They are also working in partnership with health institutes such as Medanta, Apollo and Manipal, where the app has been used in treating and preventing clinical obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and other lifestyle diseases.

Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman & MD of TVS Capital Funds Ltd. believes that HealthifyMe, and it’s entrepreneurial energy sources Tushar, are harnessing outstanding tech abilities to make SwasthBharat a reality via their app and services package.  Their talent brings data on our foods in rich detail and accuracy to our mobile screens, backed by their team of dietetics and nutritionists.

With Indians becoming more health conscious, there have been many startups in this sector that are helping people eat healthier, guiding them through their workouts and also tracking their daily activity. Suhasini and Anindita Sampat Kumar started Yoga bars to help people eat healthier; Gaurav Jaswal and Gul Panag started MobieFit and launched FirstRun to guide people to take up running, There are many startups who provide fitness trackers and virtual coaches such as Vishal Gondal’s GOQii, Orobind, FitHo, GetActive etc. Xiaomi too has a fitness tracker called the Mi band.

Related read: Made in India fitness apps to keep you in the pink of health

Mentioning his dream of “one food item from Bihar in every Indian’s plate”, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has exhorted entrepreneurs to establish food processing units in the state and promised all help, including subsidies to them.

“My dream is to have one food item from Bihar in every Indian’s plate. There are huge possibilities in food processing sector here. Entrepreneurs should consider setting up industries here. We will provide all help. We also have plans to provide subsidies in this sector,” Kumar said.

According to PTI, the Bihar chief minister was speaking at ‘Agriculture and Food Processing conclave’ organised by ASSOCHAM and the state government. He rooted for food processing units saying better processing will cut down wastage of agricultural produce, add value to production, raise income of farmers and generate employment.

He added that 76 per cent of Bihar’s population was dependent on agriculture. The population is increasing, but on the other hand, agricultural productivity was also going up due to state government’s policies, as well as, a 10-year agriculture road map.

“In this scenario, food processing industries will also lead to better development of agriculture. The state is blessed with fertile soil, good climate, availability of water and hard working people. Food processing units will not have any shortage of primary products,” he said.

Kumar, however, said that food processing should be of “good quality” and efforts should be made to develop brands in this regard. Pointing out the need for food processing units, Kumar said all the maize from Bihar was going outside for processing and returning as poultry feed, which people buy here. He also said there were many possibilities with regard to food processing in litchi, mangoes, betel, rice and several other crops.

The chief minister said seed replacement taken up by the state government has led to a big jump in productivity, as well as, overall production in various crops. The comprehensive agriculture roadmap was focusing on increasing the income of farmers, storage facilities, processing and marketing.

Image Credit : Shutterstock

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Hardware and IoT startups are becoming mainstream in India with many entrepreneurs actively looking to develop and assemble their products from scratch. VCs are also showing interest and backing innovative hardware startups and entering the space that was previously considered ‘high risk’. 3D printing has gained popularity globally because of the diverse applications it offers and is gaining popularity in India as well with both large organisations and hobbyists taking it up.

Fracktal Works, a startup in the 3D printing sector, founded by Vijay Raghav Varada and Rohit Asil announced that they had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from 1 Neoteric Technology Solutions which values the startup at USD 3M. The startup was founded while the founders were still in college at Manipal Institute of Technolgy, Manipal. After their incubation period at MUTBI,, they shifted base to Bengaluru to continue developing and manufacturing their own brand of 3D printers ‘Julia’ and providing customised services to different clients, which include Cisco, Toshiba, L&T etc. Having built many products from scratch they look at themselves as a product development firm, though people know them more for their 3D printers.

Related read: How MUTBI is encouraging students and faculty in Manipal to startup

The fund raising process started in January this year, when their mentors from Aarin Capital introduced them to 1 Neoteric Technology Solutions. Vijay said that at that time they were not actively looking to raise funds and were happy assembling products and providing custom services to their clients, generating revenues and investing it back into their startup. Deepak Nataraj, MD at Aarin Capital advised them to aim at bigger goals and raise seed funding to focus more on R&D and specialized verticals under 3D printing and engineering services. Vijay said,

As tech guys we were not very sure about how to proceed but got good backing and guidance from Ranjan Pai and Mohandas Pai of the Manipal Group; Aarin Capital were the masterminds who guided us through the entire fund raising process.

They took about 20 days to reach an understanding and then Fracktal Works went through the due diligence process and recently closed their seed round.

Future plans

Rohit and Vijay back in college

The startup currently has 12 full time employees and multiple people working part time on contract. They plan to use this seed funding to expand the team and strengthen their product development capabilities by hiring industrial designers and embedded system programmers. Vijay says,

Karan Chaphekar, the founder of KCbots has been involved with 3D printing since 2009, and got us started with 3D printing. We bought our first 3D printing kit from him. We’re happy that he is joining us from next month. The last 1.5 years of bootstrapping have taught us how to utilize funds frugally and we will continue to do so.

Fracktal Works will use majority of their funds for future developments and R&D. They aim to focus on more niche verticals under 3D printing such as jewellery,dental and biomedical devices. Their other plans include getting more certifications, increasing their reach to more markets , outsourcing manufacturing and attending international expos.

Vijay added that Fracktal Works considers this more as a strategic investment rather than for the funds. They aim to utilize 1 Neoteric’s experience and expertise in market hardware research to help them focus on the right markets and work on the finer details about their upcoming niche products.

Website: Fracktal Works

While MakerBot, Stratasys, Fabbster, 3D Systems, Leapfrog, Flashforge and Optomec are well known on the global scale some interesting startups and companies in this sector in India are Altem Technologies, Imaginarium, Brahma 3, JGroup Robotics, Global 3D Labs and design marketplace, df3d. 

Dark chocolate or white chocolate? I like the less sweeter of the two. I think mint might go well with bitterness of the dark chocolate, so I scatter a few pieces on the bar. Or maybe a few honey roasted almonds might make the bar deliciously crunchy. Or sprinkling some chilli flakes over the bar will leave the person who eats this with a pleasant spicy aftertaste. Although may be it needs a little butterscotch so that the act of biting into my bar will be filled with gooey, nutty surprises.

I am definitely not a qualified chocolatier, but Happiness Bars helps chocolate enthusiasts like me design custom chocolate bars for my friends, family and most importantly, for myself. With over 65 ingredients to choose from, Happiness Bars can satisfy some of your wildest cravings when it comes to chocolate.

Lighting the spark

Shubra Acharya, Founder, Happiness Bars, started her career as an entrepreneur when she was still in college. In the 2^nd year of her Bachelor’s degree at Christ College, she started her B2B chocolate venture, in which she created and supplied chocolates to various business clients. Her company offered various chocolate products, like chocolates with fillings, truffles, and assorted chocolates with nuts and spices, for example. When Shubra graduated at 22, she involved herself completely with her business, focusing on developing it into a full-fledged professional chocolate company.

While processing B2B orders, she’d receive a number of requests to create custom bars of different ingredient combinations from her usual sets.Simultaneously, she she had also begun to build a reserve of capital from her B2B business, since the company processed large bulk orders as wedding favors and employee gifts. Shubra started researching business models that could allow her to sell custom bars to a large audience, including her friends and family, the original requestors. The challenge was keeping the model sustainable despite the small size of each order.

In her research, she found a similar portal in the US, and decided to tweak their strategy to suit the Indian audience. Three types of Belgian chocolate– dark, white and milk – are available as choices for the base of each customizable bar. Toppings of various varietiescan be added (not exceeding five per bar). There are 65+ options, categorized into nuts, candy, fruit, herbs and spices, decorations and others.

Shubra Acharya

The business of bars

Happiness Bars went live in 2014, and was run by 6 people, working out of one room. The number of orders that came in when the website went live promptly caused the site to crash. Shubra had no idea how so many people knew about the concept and the first week of operations passed in a lot of confusion. The team was used to the B2B format,in which bulk orders were wrapped up and sent off. However, in this case, each bar was different.It took time to build systems to categorize each bar and have it sent to the rightful owner. Also, delivering only a few bars at a time was a costly affair.The team tried out deliveries with a number of courier companies before settling on a suitable candidate.

As more orders came, the team learnt onthejob, and began to ship close to 40-50 bars per day during  summers and festival seasons, with the average order costing close to Rs. 350.

Shubra mentions that demand increases significantly during certain festive seasons, and the company times its campaigns to coincide with these festivals and holidays. The company has also undertaken corporate orders for employee recognition and birthdays. Clients include some of India’s top IT firms and large car showrooms, who sometimes use Happiness Bars in their branding efforts.

Initially, most of Happiness Bars’ customers try out a few conventional combinations. After the first attempt, they become adventurous and start playing around with different matches – coconut and cinnamon, or coffee and mint. Some of them start fashioning chocolates after an interesting dessert they might have sampled. The website also includes a section called ‘superstars’, pre-designed barsto cater to buyers who do not want to think about what ingredients to add to their bars. It’s evident that customers love creating their own bars; only 20% of sales come from pre-designed bars. Over 40% of the customers are return customers.

The future of Happiness Bars

Shubra is planning to roll out mini Happiness Bars and beef up her product portfolio. Mini Happiness Bars will have about 1-2 ingredients, and will be sold in the form ofbundles, so customers can try out more combinations. The team also plans to use its core strength, B2B sales, to gain more opportunities to market Happiness Bars. Although there are competitors (Lovely Chocos), Shubra believes that her customer service and consistent performance will distinguish her venture from the rest. Currently the venture has a pan-Indian presence, and also has plans to ship globally soon, using the pricing of its bars as a competitive advantage.

So it looks like we all can become chocolatiers. After all, it’s only a few clicks away.

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[ This article is part of the YourStory series called Startup Hatch, about incubators and accelerators in the startup ecosystem. See earlier profiles of incubators at IIT Bombay, BITS Pilani, NCL, Tata Elxsi, NID, IIIT-Bangalore, IIIT-Hyderabad, Vellore Institute of Technology, and PSG Coimbatore. ]

Professor Sabarinathan, PhD, is a faculty in finance and control at IIM Bangalore. He allocates his time in some random fashion across running the N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), teaching corporate finance, tormenting his colleagues at NSRCEL, enjoying the greenery on the beautiful campus and reading PG Wodehouse and inflicting his brand of classical (Carnatic) music on his family and neighbours. He joins us in this exclusive and insightful interview on the vision and accomplishments of NSRCEL, and outlook for entrepreneurship in India.

YS: What was the founding vision of your incubator, and how is it supported?

SG: NSRCEL was founded to promote education and research relating to entrepreneurship. Around the time it was being established, Global Internet Ventures proposed that an incubation centre may also be set up as part of the Centre. Thus the Centre started getting involved in both the academic aspects of entrepreneurship as well as ecosystem-related engagements.

YS: Which companies have graduated from your incubator so far, and which are currently being incubated?

SG: More than 35 companies have graduated from NSRCEL so far (see Table 1 and 2 at the end of this interview).

YS: What is the profile of the managers of your incubator?

SG: NSRCEL’s operations are usually headed by the Chairperson who oversees its entire gamut of activities. The Chairperson is usually a member of the faculty at IIMB. The day to day operations of the ecosystem-related activities of the Centre are headed by a professional manager working under the supervision of the Centre. The Manager is supported by an operational team.

NSRCEL is one of the few entrepreneurship centres which has its own faculty (two full time and one on a joint appointment with Darden Business School, University of Virginia) focussed exclusively on teaching and research relating to entrepreneurship: Professor Kumar K, Professor Suresh Bhagavatula (both full time) and Professor Saras Saraswathy (also see earlier YourStory interview with Professor Saras Saraswathy).

They in turn employ research staff to support their research endeavour. NSRCEL’s faculty collaborate extensively with counterparts elsewhere in the world and are among the most research active faculty in entrepreneurship in the country.

NSRCEL’s approach to entrepreneurship is also highly integrative, attempting to create a close connection between the theory and practice of entrepreneurship.

YS: What would you say are the Top Three opportunities for Indian startups and social entrepreneurs?

SG: I would like to go beyond the standard approach of identifying sectors and look at themes for opportunities. The big themes lie in the intersection of (i) the changing life styles of Indians of various demographics at the middle income levels and above, and technology; (ii) the potential for efficiency in many business processes and technology; and (iii) the need/potential for raising the quality of life in the lower middle income levels and below, and innovation.

I prefer this approach because this will enable an aspiring entrepreneur to look beyond the standard flavor of the season such online commerce, IoT for homes, healthcare/education delivery, logistics solutions, and so on. While those are certainly large opportunity areas, I believe they will soon be fully harvested with numerous ventures. Entrepreneurs instead need to reflect deeply on problems around them to come up with ideas.

For example, a faculty colleague of mine asks his students who take his course on business plans to come up with ideas and some of the students identify truly original needs waiting to be fulfilled. Similarly, those who are steeply engaged in specific verticals or processes can always come up with product/service ideas for improving some small aspect of their area of work. This solution can then be extended to other verticals. Similarly, a serial entrepreneur I know – Manjula Sreedhar – talks about micro entrepreneurship where the potential for coming up with ideas are limitless.

Net net, my take is good quality entrepreneurial thinking has to look beyond the beaten path for looking for marginal tweaks on the hot investment flavours of the season.

YS: What are the key challenges faced by startups in India, and how can you help bridge the gap?

SG: Startups and entrepreneurs have evolved a great deal in the past decade thanks to the development of the ecosystem. That said, they continue to face numerous challenges. First and foremost, the fact that startups need to acquire customers in order to validate the basic thesis of the enterprise is an obvious thing to state. The challenge is to try and figure out a business and revenue model that will persuade customers to sign up. Often what appears to be a lack of fit between product or service idea and the needs of the customer can be addressed by tweaking the business model. Startups can benefit in this area by having the right advisors and by following some contemporary approaches like pivoting. Talking to other entrepreneurs also helps. This is the big value that incubators and accelerators can add.

Second, startups need access to the relevant network. A very small set of investors seem to be able to introduce their investees to the right connections. But most early stage investors at present are still learning on the job, coming as they do from a motley set of backgrounds with an investible surplus being the only trait that is common to all of them. To some extent, the gap is being bridged today through meetups, conferences and so on. But they all provide the equivalent of a shotgun to borrow an often used hunting metaphor as opposed to a sniper’s rifle which enhances the efficiency of networking. In the olden days when every other startup was a software services enterprise, these shotgun approaches to networking would suffice. Not any more with the specialised enterprises that are coming up.

Third, funding for startups is still a challenge. There is a lot of money chasing too few deals not because there is too much money but because they are chasing the same few deals. By kick-starting another round of public-supported funds, this challenge can be addressed.

YS: What is the selection criteria for startups in your incubator?

SG: NSRCEL is an open incubator, which means that enterprises or entrepreneurs need not be affiliated with IIMB to qualify for incubation. The Centre is also sector agnostic. Within these parameters it follows a broad set of criteria for selecting enterprises to come on board. They have to be innovative, impact making and implementable by the team. For ease of reference we referred to them as the ‘3I’ criteria. Finally, NSRCEL brings on board enterprises that often have nothing more than a founding team and a slide deck, as long as the idea appears promising. This is based on the need that the Centre perceives in the market.

YS: What support and services do startups receive in your incubator?

SG: Apart from getting to locate in a facility in one of the best maintained academic campuses in the country and access to all the hard and soft infrastructure that goes with it, incubatees at NSRCEL get to meet a whole lot of people in the ecosystem whom NSRCEL invites over frequently to engage with the incubatees.

They also get to participate in the 30 or more events that NSRCEL organises every year in addition to the numerous talks and other events at the vibrant IIMB campus. These events double up as useful networking opportunities. These opportunities are in addition to the standard access to business services and mentoring for support.

NSRCEL also puts in considerable effort to present the work of its startups to the media. This has helped many incubatees get noticed. In short, it is a fairly unique package of social network and academic infrastructure that the Centre offers.

Image credit “ShutterStock“

YS: What kinds of IP are being created by your startups?

SG: Since NSRCEL is sector agnostic, the IPs created at the Centre vary considerably in terms of the nature of the IP (trade marks, copyrights and patents) and the field that they relate to (technology versus non-technology). Given that the Centre looks for innovative business ideas, the potential for creation of IP among the incubatees is relatively high.

YS: How would you differentiate your incubator from others in the field?

SG: NSRCEL’s first source of differentiation comes from its motivation. NSRCEL runs the incubator as a means to give back to the ecosystem and to stay engaged with the ecosystem to further its academic agenda of understanding and influencing the movement of entrepreneurship.

Second, as a corollary to the above, NSRCEL’s incubator is funded by a generous endowment from Mr. Raghavan. That allows the Centre to provide an affordable incubation facility with many of the networking events referred to above being offered as pro bono services.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, being located inside India’s leading business school provides the incubatee an unequalled access to academic firepower. The IIMB name also helps bring in many leading personalities and entrepreneurs who engage with the incubatees in multiple ways thanks to the IIMB brand.

Finally, as a matter of philosophy, while NSRCEL encourages its incubatees to realise their full potential, it believes that each entrepreneur should be given the space to follow their own individual style in building the enterprise. It does not believe in micro-managing the incubatee’s destiny.

YS: What would you define as success for your incubator?

SG: At the basic level the number of enterprises that manage to remain in business is one indicator. At a higher level, NSRCEL looks at the mobilisation of external funding by an incubatee as indicator of success. On both counts, NSRCEL is fortunate to report a decent performance.

YS: How do you compare and contrast India’s incubators with that of other countries like US and China?

SG: Indian incubators, more particularly accelerators, seem to model their activities along the lines of their counterparts in the US. But as with many other spheres of business, here too there are many contextual differences that make it important to evolve an approach that adopts best practices from the US and to adapt it to Indian requirements.

One key source of difference in India is that much of the incubation in the public space seems to happen in institutions which are not organisationally prepared or equipped to run a meaningful incubation programme.

Often they also do not seem to take cognisance of the need for adapting the incubation programme to their local settings. (For example a public institution running an incubator in a city like Bangalore or Chennai will/ought to have a programme that is different from that of an institution in a place like, say, Dharwad.)

Incubation centres also need to have a cadre of trained managers who are appropriately incentivised. The US may have learned some of these lessons. Literature seems to suggest that the incubators even in the US may not have managed to assimilate all these lessons adequately or uniformly across institutions and reflect the same in their practice. This perhaps explains the somewhat patchy performance of public as well as private incubators even in the US.

The recent performance of Y Combinator or 500 Startups is inadequate to arrive at any enduring conclusions or lessons about the performance of incubators or accelerators. There have been far too many false starts in the past that make me want to be wary of drawing any hasty inferences.

YS: What are your plans for the coming three to five years with respect to new startups?

SG: NSRCEL would like to grow its incubation activity and engagement with the ecosystem considerably. Our experience in the past five years or so suggests that we have the potential to continue to serve early stage entrepreneurship in distinctive ways in the medium term. We would want to leverage the positive externalities that will accrue to us as a Centre as well as to our incubatees by being part of and helping creating a large and vibrant community of startups.

This will in turn help build on our current understanding of entrepreneurship as an economic phenomenon.

YS: What are your recommendations for Indian policymakers to make business easier for incubators, investors, researchers and startups in India?

SG: First, the regulatory regime in India needs to become far more conducive to starting up. Over the years and decades, several factors have been pointed out to make it easier to start up. Instead some of the changes in the past five years such as the taxation of capital mobilised by startups, the process of issuance of capital and a one-size-fits-all set of compliance obligations under the new corporate laws are examples of changes that have gone in the opposite direction.

Second, there is a huge wave of IP-intensive businesses moving out of India in the form of externalisation transactions. The aggressive solicitation by the governments of Singapore and Hong Kong and relentless pressure from foreign VC and PE funds investing in Indian startups out of their off-shore domiciled funds seem to play an important part in fostering these externalisation transactions. But just as equal is the current regulatory regime in India that makes it easier for Indian enterprises to relocate. That is a compelling reason to think of a regime that thinks of the needs of startups afresh. The success of the State of Delaware is a great example of how the regulatory regime alone can help move the locus of economic activity.

Image credit “ShutterStock“

This relocation of business to more favourable destinations is likely to result in an economic damage to the nation that is as bad as the brain drain of the 1970s, if not worse. The watchful eyes that the RBI and other wings of the government cast on these transactions are no match for the gritty ingenuity of startups in coming up with structures that will allow them to relocate their enterprises to jurisdictions of their choice.

Third, the state ought to loosen up the purse strings to support a host of new initiatives to make funds available to startups. The phenomenon of too much money chasing too few deals in India is not as much due to the surfeit of funds as it is due to the paucity of investment opportunities. There is plenty of evidence and learning available now based on which policy planners can come up with mechanisms to ensure that companies are not affected by the bandwagoning tendencies of private capital; instead money flows to other promising sectors and the attractiveness of those sectors is demonstrated in the process. Even a small fraction of the money that is spent on so many other sectors of the economy can help address these needs.

These interventions can help broaden and deepen entrepreneurship in India. There is an urgent need to raise the quality and quantity of entrepreneurial activity in the country. As with many other spheres of life we have this habit of living in our “hoary past” and delude ourselves that the quality of Indian entrepreneurship is great. That is possibly true to the extent that Indians have the potential but I suspect that this potential has been successfully destroyed through years of an indifferent if not hostile environment and social stigmas which prevail to-date.

The reality is that both the quality and quantity have still room to grow. Unfortunately this starting end of the chain does not seem to receive adequate attention, a realisation that is acknowledged by the Europeans in their context.

YS: What are your recommendations to the startups and entrepreneurs in our audience?

SG: First, entrepreneurship is a great economic activity to engage in. The prospects for entrepreneurship are brightening in spite of an administrative regime that is anything but supportive thanks to its growing social acceptability and the evolving supportive ecosystem. And it is only getting better by the day.

Second, that said, enterpreneurship is not for all. And it is something to be embarked upon with thought and pre-meditation. The decision to plunge has to be the result of an “inner calling,” to borrow a colleague’s metaphor, and a clear sense of the business one wishes to be in.

An example that was cited by Dominique Turpin, Dean of IMD, in a speech some years back of how an entrepreneur in Switzerland zeroed in on an idea, comes to my mind. The entrepreneur started a bakery chain because he wanted to start a business that would not require him to fight the Chinese and the Indians in the marketplace, a product that would make customers come to him every day, where he did not have to explain the product to the customer, and the customer was not price sensitive. It is an example of clear entrepreneurial thinking that results from a lot of observation and cogitation. From my perch at NSRCEL I wish I could see more often such clarity of thought which is reduced to simple propositions. I present it as an example of good and clear entrepreneurial thinking.

Third, do not let the media hype inform or influence the why of your decision to take the plunge, the how (what business do I start) or the when (the timing). Accidental entrepreneurship of the Phani Sama (redBus) kind is not the norm. (Sama reportedly decided to aggregate demand for bus tickets because he could not find a ticket to go home for Diwali – and the rest as they say is now history.)

Entrepreneurship requires some thought and reflection.

Entrepreneurship is not a one-way street to instant wealth, fame and freedom from the tyranny of bosses. It may not give you any of these and you have to be ready to ride the yin and the yang, even if not with equanimity. (On a partly humorous note, that is why I never see myself as an entrepreneur.)

Fourth, some sections of the media give the impression that to be a successful entrepreneur one has to be young and impulsive. Neither is true.

In short, turn to entrepreneurship only when you are sure you really want to be one, not because the media tell you it is groovy, when you have a good sense of the business you want to be in and you are confident and self-assured enough to be able to say to yourself: ‘This ride is going to be fun though it ain’t going to be easy; but I am ready for it.’

Finally, in the past few years, an unfortunate view has been gaining ground that the only entrepreneurship that is worth doing is the Flipkart or Ola variety that involves blasting into billions of dollars of sales before one can say Indian Jones, backed by VC funding. Painstaking research by Professor Amar Bhide and other scholars in the US, perhaps among the most entrepreneurial economies, suggests that the bulk of the entrepreneurial world is made up of humbler, simpler businesses that stitch uniforms, run eateries or salons and so on that grow at humbler rates, are profitable, yet are not VC funded.

It is time to reiterate that lifestyle enterprises can be as much joy and economic utility as long as they are profitable and financially self-sustaining.

Table 1: Current NSRCEL Incubatees

Table 2: NSRCEL Graduated Incubatees

When you hear Paras Waykole use business jargon, you know he means serious business, but when he suddenly mentions semester exams, you realize he is just an 18-year-old.

Paras

Just like any other teenager, Paras dreamt of cracking the IIT-JEE after school to get into one of the country’s reputed engineering institutions, but he did not make it. This did not deter his spirits, as he already knew what he was passionate about – gaming and game development — and he didn’t need a fancy degree to nurture this obsession. He joined an engineering college in Sangamner, Maharashtra, and decided to do what he would have done anyway. Says Paras,

I spent a lot of time reading about the startup ecosystem and the success stories I read always inspired me. This led me to building Vovero Technology early this year.

Eureka moment

Paras, whose parents ran a computer course center in Jalgaon, had access to computers since early in his childhood.  His obsession for video gaming started from the time he was four years old, but his interest in developing games was not a stroke of chance.

“One day, I wondered about how games are built and went over the internet in search of this knowledge. After a lot of research, I found myself coding a PC game in the next few days,” says Paras, who started building games when he was 12 years old.

Paras did not have a medium to distribute his games to people out there, so he just emailed it to a few friends – who loved it and urged him to build a few more. He built four more PC games after that.

Birth of the startup

“I wanted to find a medium to build and save games. I had lost all my previous games because of the lack of a medium to develop on. Google Play solved my problem, and then I started building Android games,” he adds.

The next step was launching his gaming company. With an initial investment of one lakh rupees from his parents, Paras registered Vovero Technology in February 2015.

The startup has three team members, including Sandip and Shailaja Waykole, who take care of the administrative aspect of the business. On paper, the Vovero office is the Waykole’s residence, but this teenager does most of his coding sitting in his dorm room while simultaneously juggling engineering coursework at the college.

He knew it was not going to be easy, especially in the early days. Paras says,

I know our initial days aren’t going to be great because we are still struggling to make revenues, but I spend a lot of time trying to research and explore new ways to generate revenues in gaming industry.

What are the Vovero games?

Vovero has four signature game titles (all built by Paras): Aquafishing, Pattern, Meteor Falls, and Candy Math. Aquafishing is a fishing game in which users have to catch fish from a pond. Then there is Pattern, which is an innovative version of Tic-Tac-Toe in a multiplayer setting.

Meteor Falls is an action game in which the player has to steer clear of falling meteors. The last game, Candy Math, is a game built for those who want to improve their math. In this game, the player has to pick the candy with the right answer before the problem disappears from the screen.

So far so good

Within a short span of three months since the launch of the startup, Vovero has amassed quite a few loyal gaming fans across India, Indonesia and USA. The games have got a total of around 4000-5000 downloads with a minimum rating of 4.3 on Google Play.

Future plans

“Right now, I am working on a Facebook app idea that will change the way people update their statuses on FB. Meanwhile, we will continue to build games for Android, and will soon be expanding our operations to iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry,” says Paras.

Website

Stating that startups in e-commerce segment are asking for too high a price for parting stakes, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata today took a dig at the fledgling sector, saying “valuations” and not “evaluations” are driving the play.

“Its true that the valuations (of e-commerce) are very high and valuation seems to driving these companies more than traditional matrix of evaluation,” Tata said at the 107th Annual General Meeting of Indian Merchants’ Chamber.

Interestingly, Tata’s personal investment portfolio comprises equity interests in e-commerce start-ups, including Snapdeal, PayTM, Urban Ladder and Bluestone.

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Tata, however, said the current trend is similar to what has happened elsewhere in other sectors. “We have to give these young entrepreneurs a chance to prove themselves, shoulder to shoulder, with traditional business,” Tata said.

Asked about whether the e-commerce bubble will burst, the veteran industrialist said this is the new trend in the country’s commerce.

“It’s actually a feeling that e-commerce is really the new trend for the Indian commerce. It serves millions of people. It’s my personal money and not company’s money. I don’t see where the debate is. I believe that Indian enterprise needs to be encouraged. One needs to lend mentoring to young people, to give them a chance. One feels very proud when this new segment is emerging in the country,” he added.

According to PTI, Tata felt overseas investors in e-commerce companies will make sure that founders and the management maintain high standards of governance. “The fact that they have external investors is very good because they will exit if they feel that the company is operating in a grey area,” he added.

Related Stories :

7 inspiring pearls of wisdom from Ratan Tata

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Snapdeal to sell homes online, enters into partnership with Tata Value Homes

If you are planning to create a website, keyword analysis is important. It is vital that you choose the right keywords when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). SEO helps make your website favourably navigate the World Wide Web’s various search engines. Both keywords and keyword phrases play a very important role in making or breaking your website’s search engine rankings.

Image credit “ShutterStock“

Keyword selection 

• Selection of the keyword/s depends on your company, and the products or services that you sell.
• Internet users use specific terms while searching on the internet.Having those specific terms in your website’s content can attract traffic, thereby improving your sales and increasing your revenue. For expert help regarding choosing the right keywords and optimizing your website, enlisting the help of an SEO company will be of great help.
• Using the right keywords on your website is very important for SEO, but keyword stuffing should be avoided.
• Use of digital marketing technology ensures that you have search engine optimized websites.

Here are some basic tips that will help you pick the right keywords so that your website can attract maximum traffic by securing a high search engine rank.

Identification of relevant keywords

There are various free tools on the internet that can help you identify the right keywords. However, it is better to first think about the keywords yourself. What keywords would you use when searching for a business similar to yours? Now write them down and use a free tool like the Google AdWords Keyword tool to plug in the keywords you have come up with. This would help you to select keywords based on traffic level and competition.

Choose keywords specific to your business

It is crucial that you choose realistic keywords for the best outcome. The keywords must truly indicate the business you are in. Popular keywords face a lot of competition. Hence, keep the keywords specific to your business so that you have better chances of getting a higher rank.

Follow a planned procedure

• Make your own list of keywords that you think can attract potential customers browsing for your service, product or information.
• Include synonyms too.
• Use search engines to find keywords that can help detect competing websites.
• Visit their sites and note down their keywords.
• Use sites that tell the most searched keywords.
• You can use web analytics software to find out which keywords have already attracted huge traffic.

These will help you use the correct keywords for your website and thereby make it a huge success.

Check the competition

You can check the competition for your keywords by typing them into Google. Read the content and title tags of the first page of searches. Check the usage of keywords there. If they have used it a lot then there is tough competition. Go for something more specific.

About the Author: Anand is the Founder and CEO of DiggDigital, a SEO company in Bengaluru)

Chennai-based Termsheet.io has announced its fourth deal since the launch of its beta version last year. It has facilitated an investment of $120,000 (Rs. 75 lakhs) for the seven-month-old Bangalore-based startup Cupick.com, a marketplace for creative artists. Several angel investors from the US and India have participated in this round, which include JKN Partners (an angel syndicate), J.K. Patel, Sushil Agarwal from India, and Kalpesh Shethia, Rajeev Mudumba, Dinesh Tadepalli and Sudheshna Vuppala from the US.

Cupick.com, cofounded by Shaishav Todi, Justin Alva, and Rituraj Dowerah in November 2014, helps artists from all over the world to convert their artistic assets (for example, painting) into a merchandise of seven products (t-shirts, hoodies, posters, art prints, canvasses, greeting cards and post cards). The merchandise is sold on the startup’s website and the price is usually marked up by the creative artists, and Cupick adds a small margin to it. The startup was ignited by an idea of Shaishav Todi, its cofounder CEO, who had an interest in printing art and design on various products (t-shirts, mugs, etc.). He soon realised that finding high-quality art and design was difficult. So he hit upon the idea of converting his friends’ art into merchandise and launched Cupick.com in November 2014. To his surprise, the merchandise was selling well (Shaishav says, “customers stumble upon us”) and artists from outside India also signed up. Cupick.com now has artistic output of 2500 artists, 30% of whom are from more than 30 countries, converted into more than 9000 products. T-shirts and hoodies, followed by posters, are hot sellers followed by art and canvass, which is sought after by mature customers.

Cupick has run successful campaigns like painting an Ola Cabs’ car by artists on each of the three days of Comicon Bangalore (with which it was a partner) this year. It ran a successful poster campaign for the recent Bollywood release Bombay Velvet, in which artists were called upon to design posters for the film. The jury, consisting of director Anurag Kashyap, picked up 10 winners, including one from Mexico and Armenia. On Valentine’s Day this year, in association with Titan, Cupick secured user love stories, which were illustrated by carefully curated artists. It reached more than 2 million people, thanks to Titan’s social media campaign. Cupick also co-curated Emerge Music and Arts Festival in which Alt-J, an award-winning indie rock band performed. Some work of the Cupick’s artists was showcased at the venue of the performance in Bangalore and Gurgaon.

Commenting on the deal, CEO Shaishav Todi, in an exclusive chat, told YourStory, “Our major challenge was acquiring artists with very limited resources at our disposal, and along with that, customers. Additionally, we couldn’t add features and product lines as quick as we’d liked to have.” He added that the present round of funding will help Cupick hire key talent and scale faster.

Vivek Durai, founder of Termsheet.io, was impressed by the work of Cupick.com. In an exclusive conversation with YourStory, he said, “We generally discourage entrepreneurs aiming to solve real world problems from building out technology first. We ask them to figure out a way to validate it first before investing time and money with tech development. With Cupick, it was different. They had clear validation – a sticky user base of visual artists, early monetisation, a superb tech platform, previous startup experience, a mature well-thought out asset-light approach to growing into a startup with global reach. These guys are all-rounders.”

Website: Cupick

Online investment platform FundsIndia.com has raised Rs 70 crore from Faering Capital, Foundation Capital and Inventus Capital Partners to fund its expansion plans. The company would use the investment to widen the reach of its online financial services across the country. It would also be utilised to enhance its service offering with special focus on mobile platforms.

Of the total Rs 70 crore investments, the round was led by domestic asset management company Faering Capital followed by FundsIndia.com’s current investors – Foundation Capital and Inventus Capital Partners, the company has said. “FundsIndia.com currently has investor base of 70,000 and plans to increase it to over 225,000 by 2016,” according to FundsIndia.com CEO CR Chandrasekar.

Launched in 2009, FundsIndia.com known for its, zero-cost, automated mutual fund investment services. The platform also offers equity investing, fixed deposits, and other retail financial products. The company is targeting to increase transactions through mobile platform to nearly 40-45 per cent from current 25 per cent within next one year.

“Over the last six years, we have demonstrated that technology enabled advisory services (robo-advisory) using online platforms is the best way to deliver good financial advice to lot of people. This round of funding will further strengthen our efforts towards maximum reach and maximum impact without diluting quality,” the CEO added.

According to PTI, Faering Capital founders Sameer Shroff and Aditya Parekh have been inducted in the board of FundsIndia.com.

Image Credit : Shutterstock

Raveen Sastry has had the good fortune of having been involved in startups working on technologies and businesses ahead of their time. Back in 2001, he was in the US with Xora, working on GPS technology at a time when Google Maps were not even around. He was with the company for three years before coming to Bengaluru to setup a Xora office here. This was, again, a time before the tech scene in Bangalore flowered. Post Xora, he earned an MBA from Canada, which happens to be his birthplace. On his return to Bengaluru, he began to look around for his next challenge.

He did a few odd jobs before he chanced upon a meeting with Mukesh Bansal, who had just started Myntra. “At that time, we used to have branded shops and personalized clothing. We brought in machines, would print most of the things, and tied up bulk deals,” recollects Raveen. It was only in 2010, when Tiger Global came in as an investor, that the focus shifted towards online and fashion. Raveen stuck around for a while till the company grew to 300-odd people; but then his urge to move to a smaller setup got him thinking again.

 (L-R) Anubhav, Alok and Raveen, co-founders of NudgeSpot [Suresh Harikrishnan is the 4th co-founder]

There are emails, SMSs, apps and many other channels via which customers are notified. But for an online business, it becomes very difficult to maintain all these channels. Thinking about it, the duo decided to pursue solving this problem, and thus started NudgeSpot along with two others, Alok Shankar and Suresh Harikrishnan.

The market is huge. There is a large set of SMEs growing online that are facing problems with their outbound communications. The key is to have a unified dashboard, and the ability to monitor all activities. This is the vision towards which NudgeSpot wants to work, and according to Raveen, they’re only 25% there, currently. Globally, Intercom is the company NudgeSpot would want to be competing with. Intercom raised a $6 million series A funding in 2013, followed by a $23 million series B in 2014 and is growing very rapidly.

Back home in India though, NudgeSpot pretty much has an open playing field. The startup already has more than 50 customers onboard, out of which 50% are paying customers. “We have the likes of Ola, Bluestone, and Zivame already using us. For e-commerce, we target players which have high-touch products. Apart from that, we are mainly looking at enterprise companies,” says Raveen. Enterprise companies are a segment which are not talked of too often; but there are some global companies of this type being built from various parts of India. Here’s a list of 30+ upcoming ones; and with more seasoned professionals entering the space, this number will only go up.

Nudgespot is a team of about 15, based in Bangalore. It is currently expanding both its technology and business teams. Its intention is to get more and more paying customers, not chase investments. Their $650k seed round of funding closed in a week,meaning they could easily look for another round, but Raveen is a bit wary and wants the business to prove itself before raising more.

Website: Nudgespot

Online automobile classifieds have gotten a second wind in India. The used car classifieds segment was considered highly promising a few years ago,but saw a lull in investor interest till fairly recently. However, the space bounced back in the last year, and proceeded to amass $100 million from venture capitalists.

While most of the online classifieds startups focus on transactions for second hand vehicles, some of the focus is on aggregation of user generated advice, expert views, ratings etc. One such startup is Cartoq. It’s a platform where car buyers can talk to car owners and experts, and get advice.

Currently, media and car sites provide a lot of information in terms of reviews, specs, pricing information etc., but no one is addressing the advice quotient. Nitin Shrivastava, CEO, MWG, says

When we are in the process of buying a car, apart from this research, and taking it on test drives, we also ask people in our network about the car, especially those who already own the car we are planning to buy

MWG is a leading content marketing company with many IT, consulting, lifestyle and automobile brands as its marquee clients,and is present in American, European and Asian markets. Nitin is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and in his previous engagement, he worked with Avendus Advisors as Chief Knowledge Officer.

Cartoq wants to become the informal advice network for car buyers in India. Unlike ​other platforms, which have​ enthusiasts and experts sharing information with each other, Cartoq is a discussion platform for people who don’t know much about cars, which also gives them the ability to ask experts questions. Nitin adds,

We made questions and answers the core feature of the site, and then added news, features, expert reviews, and research tools to the mix to ensure the buyers get all the information they could need from us.

Cartoq is one of the biggest social sites dealing with automobiles in India, with a reach of over 10 million people on Facebook every month. Almost 70% of its traffic comes from mobile, and the remaining from desktops. The company doesn’t have an app yet, but is developing an app for Android that will be out soon. Nitin points out,

We are on track to becoming the #1 media site in the auto ​sector​ in the next 3 months. With a good lead among media sites, and on Facebook, we will be expanding our reach through our mobile app, and taking it to social media channels like Twitter, Whatsapp and FM radio as well.

About 80% of Cartoq’s traffic comes from the country’s top 10 metropolises. “Our (projected) traffic for June is 1.6 million visits, and we are projected to cross 2.5 million by July,” says Nitin.

Recommended read: Sandeep Aggarwal vrooms ahead to launch automobile-focused classifieds marketplace Droom

 The company is expanding content and advice regarding used cars in the coming months, leveraging its community and social reach to create high-quality content through users.

How is it different from online auto classifieds startups?

Nitin emhasizes,

Nitin Srivastava, Founder & CEO, MWG

We are not a transaction site, nor do we have used car listings or sales. We are focused on research and advice, and unlike other sites, we provide advice through a real-time, interactive platform.

There is a rigorous rating system on the platform.Each answer gets a quality vote from the user in the form of a ‘like’. If the user wants to express stronger satisfaction with the answer, then he or she can click a‘thanks’ button. Members who answer questions accumulate likes and thanks, and based on their cumulative scores, move up in platform-defined expertise levels.

Enthusiasts and experts are thus recognized strongly on the site for their efforts in advising owners and buyers with their queries.

Cartoq currently monetizes their platform through AdSense. They ​will soon be ​rolling out​ native advertising solutions (sponsored content) for brands looking for targeted reach and engaged users. “We have eCPM of Rs 120 and ad CTR of over 1.6%,” adds Nitin.

Over the next 12 months,Cartoq intends to deliver a range of solutions to brands, including cost-effective, targeted reach through native advertising, and qualified leads through better data about engaged users.

Website

PS: We have updated PVs in headline with visitors.

One of the golden rules of building a great product is to focus on one or two key problems and solve them well. While Facebook may have taken over social media, people are now overwhelmed by the variety of notifications they receive and do not act pro-actively on requests, invites and messages on social platforms.

Unbundling of apps is now a regular occurrence with Zomato,ixigo, Facebook etc doing so to focus on specific areas. FlapApp aims to tackle the pain point of co-ordinating and getting people together for an event.

What is it?

FlapApp aims to be a quick event planner, organiser and discovery platform. It allows users to manage personalised events and also discover public events. Users can create and manage events like birthdays or casual get-togethers with friends and family even on short notices and discover events such as concerts, exhibitions etc happening in their city or at the location of their choice. The app allows users to join, RSVP for events sent out to them to give the organisers and invitees an idea of the headcount they can expect for the event.

Kirti Joshi

FlapApp was launched by Kirti Joshi and his team of four from Indore in February this year and are now close to 10k downloads. Their primary aim was to understand user behaviour and initially, they did not market the product but kept it among a small group of beta testers to improve the app. Kirti adds,“For almost two months after the product launch we did not add keywords to rank ourselves and tried to learn from a small set of users and kept on improving our product.”

Kirti has worked with corporates like iGatePatni, CSC and WM across different countries such as Germany, Paris and India for the last 12 years. He had worked on numerous applications for corporates and with FlapApp aims to target the masses. They are still experimenting with different monetization strategies based on user behaviour and have currently gone with in-app purchases and ads.

Other well-known event planners include Google Calendar and Sunrise Calender etc which are mainly used to schedule one-on-one corporate meetings but can be used for other events as well. Some people also use social media and messaging platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp to send out invites for events. Coming to event discovery, there are platforms such as Events High, 10Times, Nearify, Outsy and Explara that are organising this sector.

Features

-FlapApp provides access to location of events on the map, and users can keep tabs on the RSVPs and add comments. Invitees can upload photographs and share it with their friend across different social networks.

-Users can view upcoming and past events and keep track and share cards or attachments to add context to an invitation.

– The app provides users reminders and push notifications for events and also allows people to notify and reschedule an event in case of last minute changes.

– The‘Quick Invite’ feature allows users to share events with non-app users but RSVPs and photo sharing are accessible only through the app.

What we liked

 The app has a pleasing user interface and provides a decent user experience. It has an appeal for millennials who wish to plan an outing with friends or family and do not wish to rely on chatting apps to co-ordinate through multiple group chats. It can also be used to schedule appointments or one-on-one work related meeting.

The ‘Quick invites’ feature is useful. The app allows users to select from a variety of possible events such as ‘pool party’, ‘farewell party’,‘anniversary’ and ‘birthdays’ etc. They can also include a short description and set different parameter such as date, time, venue, and select an end date for RSVPs.

What could be improved?

The user experience is good but is partly spoilt by in-app ads which are not contextual, instead random in nature. While we understand the need for ads as a source to generate revenue, the ad strategy can be improved. The public events section currently has a few events and is not as extensive as one would expect to facilitate event discovery.

YS verdict

While nothing can replace the warmth and thoughtfulness behind personally visiting or picking up our phones and calling a friend or relative to invite them for an occasion, the app provides a good alternative for the younger tech savvy generation who generally do not adhere to social conventions.

But considering the environmental impacts of printing thousands of cards and the effort needed in sending them out to people, digital invites are a good alternative and with time may be considered acceptable for all occasions. It will be interesting to see how FlapApp scales up and gets more users on board and different ways the app can be used for.

Website: FlapApp (The app is available on Android and iOS)

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

What do you think about this app, do let us know in the comments below. Also do check out other apps under our App Fridays and Pursuit of APPiness series.

If you have an interesting app that you feel could be featured on App Fridays please apply here.

This article is sponsored by Innovate for Digital India Challenge

Innovation is not easy, especially consistent breakthrough innovation. According to research by Boston Consulting group, companies in fast growing economies, like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations, generate more than 20% of their sales from new products and services created in the past three years.

Companies that are strong innovators make sure to incorporate innovation as an integral part of corporate culture. There are parameters in place to identify and reward innovation. These companies also consciously avoid bottlenecks in their processes that can bury the new product or idea before it is given a chance.

Intel has been fostering innovation since its inception. Driven by Moore’s Law, it has been initiating various programs that create economic value resulting in social advancement for over two decades in India. Innovation has to be an ongoing process for companies to survive and perform well in rapidly changing markets. It is no wonder that Intel is a world leader in the microprocessor and semi-conductor chip manufacturing industry, while consistently featuring in top 50 Innovative Companies lists. The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), for example, is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition. It provides an annual forum for more than seven million high school students from about 70 countries to showcase their independent research as they compete for prizes worth $5 million annually.

As participants in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2014, Daksh Dua and Abhishek Verma, two young science enthusiasts from Delhi, found a new, effective solution for giardiasis, an acute form of diarrhoea. The chemical drug used to treat the same has severe side effects, such as nausea and headaches. But doctors continue to prescribe the same drugs as there is no better option. The plant-based solution with no side-effects, won them the Best of Category Award, and a chance to participate in an Intel International Science Fair in China.

Another initiative taken up by Intel recently is contributing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India campaign. In 2014, the Government of India unveiled a visionary blueprint of a Digital India, which aims to provide Digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen. This could see governance and services on demand in the near future. India faces tremendous challenges that stem from, among other things, a lack of pervasiveness of knowledge and technology across the geographical expanse of the country.

Intel, in association with the Department of Science & Technology (DST), wants India to innovate more in order to make the dreams of a Digital India a reality through the Innovate for Digital India Challenge.

Challenge themes
The challenge aims to encourage the creation of intuitive, easy to use products and solutions.

•  Innovation to create citizen’s device platform with features that are relevant and drive mass adoption of technology such as biometric sensing capabilities, peripherals using other sensors, intuitive user interface, gesture recognition, and multi-lingual and voice support.
•  Innovation to create apps that accelerate delivery of e-governance services through eKranti/MyGov apps on mobile platform.

Phases
Participants have to go through multiple phases to bring their ideas to life and make them commercially viable.

• Application Submission – The entry submission phase ends on 22nd June, 2015, on or before 6pm IST.
• Accelerator Program (July to September 2015) – 20 shortlisted teams will be mentored in Bengaluru and Pune for a period of up to 12 weeks.
• Go to market Preparation and Prototype Day (September to November 2015) – 10 chosen teams will have access to development grant of up to INR 5,00,00 per team.
• Early adopter interaction & Pilot Phase (November 2015 to January 2016) – Participating teams will receive additional mentoring and top three teams will be identified.
• Demo Day & Showcase (January 2016) – Top 10 teams will showcase their products to key market players via demo day.

More about the accelerator program
Each of the 20 identified teams will have access to grants of INR 500,000 per team to be used towards further development of the product. The remaining teams will be given the opportunity to continue in the program.

Participants will receive:

• Six-month incubation that includes a three-month accelerator program in Bengaluru and Pune
• Go to market preparation through participation in the Prototype Day to showcase functional prototypes to experts from varied backgrounds
• Technical mentorship by Intel and mentoring by industry experts and advisors
• Support towards industry linkages for field immersion and pilot testing
• Access to grants / seed fund / equity investments of a total amount of up to INR 1.5 crores
•  Introduction to key market players for potential commercialization through Demo Day participation
• Opportunity to showcase products at a large scale event at the end of the program

Eligibility
This challenge is open to innovators, aspiring entrepreneurs, product designers, students and startups alike.

Prizes

• 20 prototyping grants of up to INR 2 lakh each
• 10 product development grants of up to INR 5 lakhs each
•  Three seed funding/ equity investment of up to INR 20 lakh each

To participate, candidates must log on to http://www.innovatefordigitalindia.intel.in and register their projects at the earliest. There is less than three days left as registration closes on June 22nd, 2015.

Send in your entries for the ‘Innovate for Digital India‘ challenge. Apply today!

Website

Early in 2015, Adobe acquired New York based Fotolia, a marketplace for stock content. Started by Thibaud Elziere, Oleg Tscheltzoff and Patrick Chassany in November 2005, Fotolia operated in 23 countries and has websites in 14 languages. Financial details weren’t disclosed but Adobe announced its intent to purchase Fotolia in December 2014 and the acquisition was confirmed a month later. Fotolia still exists independently but building over it, Adobe recently launched Adobe Stock. The integration is complete and this provides all current and future Creative Cloud members with the ability to access and purchase images and videos.

Adobe Stock is a curated collection of 40 million-and-growing high-quality images and is deeply integrated into the latest releases of Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC. Adobe claims the stock image market to be at $3 billion and according to the giant, an estimated 85% of creatives who buy stock content use Adobe tools and more than 90% of stock content sellers use Adobe software in the preparation of their photos and images. This is the biggest advantage for Adobe as the entire loop for a creative professional closes within the software.

On the flip side, the pricing is on the higher side. Pricing for Creative Cloud individual and team customers is $9.99 for a single image; $29.99 per month for 10 images monthly (with rollover of unused images); and $199 per month for 750 images monthly. Talking about the move at a press conference in Bangalore, Umang Bedi, MD of South Asia said, “We’ll take in that feedback. But this is the first step. We’re likely to arrive at a more reasonable price point over time.” He also talked about how the INR 499/month subscription for the Creative Cloud has been a huge success. The entire software was priced at around INR 60,000 which was very high for most people and resulted in rampant piracy. The move to subscription has turned out on the positive side and Adobe is now married to the concept.

For Adobe Stock, competition is steep. ShutterStock went IPO in 2012 when it had 750k active users and over 21 million downloads every quarter. istockphoto and gettyimages are two more large players in the sector. Closer to home, ImagesBazaar is a stock image company that started in 2006 and focuses on Indian images. Editorial companies, enterprises, creative individuals are the major users for such services. With more businesses coming online and news consumption also moving online, the need for creatives (images, video, etc.) will only rise. Services with larger data bases and good categorization will have an upper hand in getting more users.

Website: Adobe Stock

Startup Saturday, on the 13^th of this month, saw an overwhelming number of over 500 start-ups, listening to start-up pitches, an investor’s panel on how to raise funds, and Sumit Jain, (Co-founder and CEO, Commonfloor)’s take on the growing trends.

Sumit Jain on entrepreneurship

To begin with, Sumit said that entrepreneurship is not only about people leaving their comfortable jobs and work on an idea; it is about what drives you. “From personal experience, I can say that you can do what you want, but it all depends on how badly you want to do it,” said Sumit.  He added that while he had several options, including being part of the family business, he chose to start up.

“When I was looking to start up, I was focussed on creating a strong self-image. You need to be very sure of yourself and what you do,” says Sumit.

He adds that while looking for a Co-founder, you need to be very sure before hiring. “Look for someone with skill sets complementary to yours,” adds Sumit. He says that all three founders of Commonfloor complemented one another, supported one another, were very passionate about starting up, and highly focussed on success.

Panel discussion – All about raising funds

Unlike a regular panel discussion, this panel was open to questions from the audience from the beginning. The panel consisted of Sumit Jain, Sanjay Swamy (Managing Partner at AngelPrime), Sharad Sharma (Co-founder and Council Member at iSPIRIT), Sanjay Jha (Founder at LetsVenture), Sanjay Anandram (Venture Partner Seed Fund), Manish Singhal (Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor and Angel Investor), and Girish Rowjee (CEO at Greytip Software Pvt. Ltd.)

Idea v/s execution

Beginning with the difference between preferential shares and equity shares, the panel discussed how important it is how entrepreneurs to execute their idea. While the idea is important, Sanjay Swamy added that it is not the reason a business succeeds. Manish Singhal tacked on to that by saying that if an entrepreneur thinks that his business idea is something that only he or she understands, then the chances of its survival are low.

Manish told the audience that intellectual property is a very broad concept, not be limited to one aspect of a business.

“When we hear the word intellectual property, we tend to associate it with a secret algorithm that only the entrepreneur is the custodian of.” He says that 99.9 per cent are not of that category. Most are on faster, cheaper and better, which means that execution is crucial.

Tech Startup Bubble

Are we in a tech bubble? Absolutely, says Sanjay Swamy. Sumit adds that India is offering great opportunity for tech startups and there is still is a lot to be accomplished in this area. “Companies are building interesting businesses, which provide great solutions. Most of these businesses are here to stay, and we still have a long way to go,” says Sumit.

However Sanjay Jha said that while there are daily reports of interesting figures and numbers in the startup ecosystem, the angel round of funding has no such bubble. He said that the angel rounds are pretty sane even today.

“Everything is a bubble depending on your time horizon. The single biggest signal that shows growth is the number of exits we have. It is easy to put money and people in to get high valuation; the question is more about exits. Until that happens in a similar ratio to investments, it won’t be healthy,” says Sanjay Anandram.

Post exits

While exits are important, Sumit says that entrepreneurs need to be more focussed on creating value. He adds that, while IPO is one of the obvious ways of exits, many are working with SEBI to see if rules for start-ups to go public can be relaxed. Sumit feels that investors should continue looking at supporting startups and not worry too much about short-term returns.

“A lot more exits are happening than are being written about,” says Swamy. Taking the example of Silicon Valley, Swamy adds that lot of exits there too are in the $30 to 100 million range. He says that while these don’t get publicity, they are what keep the ecosystem going. He says that as the companies start getting bigger, we will see global acquisition and exits as well.

“As long as you’re creating long term sustainable value and are focussed on that, and you’re solving real problems, you can never go out of business, whether there is a bubble or no bubble,” adds Swamy.

Factors investors look at before funding

Swamy says that AngelPrime has always wanted to work with great entrepreneurs. The investors believe that there are several softer aspects that investors look for in entrepreneurs. It is important for an investor to feel comfortable with the entrepreneur. The scope for growth of the domain and space is looked at as well.

Investors also see if entrepreneurs have the capacity to take a step back and look at newer ideas and methods of growing their business. There needs to be belief in that the relationship between the entrepreneurs and the investors will be symbiotic.

Anandaram adds that another thing investors look at is how much capital a company can take, and what  the financial returns they can expect, depending on the stage, are.

From an entrepreneur’s point of view, Sumit says that the team really matters even for the entrepreneur.

“It’s like a marriage, so different factors need to be considered. There is no wrong VC or wrong entrepreneur. Their ideas and plans need to gel. What you sell needs to be what you believe in, and what you would buy for yourself,” says Sumit.

Girish warns people to steer clear of investors who only financially invest in a business. “This is because investors need to get a good return on their investment. There has to meeting of minds. The investor has to support the entrepreneur in order to achieve the business goals they had set out to achieve,” says Girish.

He adds that the moment investment happens, it is the beginning of a huge responsibility on the part of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur has to be able to keep all the commitments he has made. Investors are nothing but the supporting cast. Manish adds that there are many entrepreneurs who want money, but want everyone else to stay out of the picture. Then, there are investors who want to take over. Manish believes that both are dangerous.

Entrepreneurs can learn and network from investors. “They need to learn to leverage that network. The onus is completely on the entrepreneur to leverage the goal; if investors don’t see that happening they intervene,” adds Anandaram.

Investors believe that ‘Bad news takes the escalator and good news takes the stairs.’ They urge all the entrepreneurs to share the bad news first.

Gauging the market

If the market is non-existent it’s difficult. If you are creating the market, you need to do research. Market research reports are important as a starting point for entrepreneurs in approaching investors. It also is important to figure out what it will take to get a customer. What does it cost to acquire one customer? And how do you find a thousand others? This will help estimate all other details and statistics.

It is also important to talk to as many people as possible before coming to your own decision, build a market for your target audience, and determine what it costs to create that market.  Swamy says

“If you’re not an expert in your business, don’t start it. While it is important to talk to people and get opinion, it is your decision that matters in the end.”

Headstart is looking at two more events this month – Co-founder search and an event on Student entrepreneurs. The next Startup Saturday is on IoT.

Video Editor: Anjali and Anand
Cameraman: Rukmangada Raja
Video Reporter: Dola Samantha

Logistics companies are mushrooming at every corner on a daily basis this leads one to wonder whether it is even possible for a new venture to distinguish itself from the pack. Startups will have to offer a radical product if they want to carve a niche for themselves in the logistics sector. Some ventures are doing that by bringing about significant improvements in the process or timing of deliveries.

Delivree King is a premium delivery-cum-promotion service provider, which not only provides four-hour delivery, guaranteed same- and next-day delivery, but also offers promotional services for its clients.

The start

Neeraj Bisht (Co-founder & CEO) & Akash Sharma (Co-founder & COO) have known each other since 2010, when Akash came to Delhi to join IIT. They met through a common friend at a party. Neeraj completed his law degree in 2012 and then joined Thomson Reuters. He quit a year later to start his own company Giftooz.com that dealt with corporate gifting. The venture didn’t takeoff as planned, but Neeraj enjoyed being an entrepreneur so much that he stayed on the lookout for another big idea.

Akash worked in Housing.com after graduation in 2014. Then the duo decided to capitalize on the e-commerce boom by starting their own logistics company. It went live this year on 26^th February. They felt that there was scope in the space although there were other players. Neeraj states, “The rising volume of transactions meant that quality of service was sometimes compromised. Also, product requirements are either immediate or urgent. We wanted to set our startup apart by giving customers their products as fast as possible.”

Along with premium logistics services, the team also offers promotional services such as collecting video reviews from consumers, and distributing coupons and vouchers. This way, the venture facilitates a direct connection between the consumer and the client.

The growth story

Delivree King has delivered nearly 30,000 packages in three months, and will hit 50,000 deliveries by June. They started operations on 1^st March, 2015, working out of a small office with a team size of five, catering to one city. Currently, they are handling more than 18,000 shipments a month, with a team size of 60, achieving 100% same day deliveries. The venture has three offices in Delhi, nine in India, and 10 clients, including Lenskart, Happily Unmarried, Talking Threads, eCourierz, Pick Parcel, Meal Hopper, and Omsi. Delivree King has also signed SLAs with more than six large e-commerce ventures.

The team believes that specialization is the key to providing good service. Delivree King has separate teams for same-day delivery, four-hour delivery and the 120 minute reverse pick-up. At first, the company offered employees salaries higher than market rates to attract the best talent in logistics. Experienced employees from larger firms joined Delivree King to facilitate the package delivery process, and in turn contributed to the creation of a strong team. They have stayed on because of the promise of growth and competitive wages.

Offering promotional activities has also helped the firm win more clients. The founders do not want to be labelled ‘just another delivery company’, and are determined to change the way the logistics sector is perceived. They feel happiest when they have kept a promise to the customer and by deliveringa product on time.

The future

Delivree King has raised seed funding from Sumit Agarwal (Head Partner Network, Nimbuzz) and Vipula Malhotra (Mumbai Angel). They are hoping to get more funding soon to channel towards the development of a mobile app, which customers can use to provide reviews, track their product real-time, and receive notifications about delivery.

The venture is also planning to expand its operations in the country, especially in all metros and the North-East. By this June, they are looking to establish their presence in more than 15 cities, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Indore, Jaipur, Agra, Dehradun, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chandigarh. The team is currently looking into channels that enable same-day delivery in other cities, and hopes that scaling up will help them move into other exciting sectors, including local food delivery and hyper-local logistics.