Sight and touch have become top priority when one shops for apparel and accessories and overcoming this challenge has been a headache for product-based e-commerce majors and startups. To reduce the need for the ‘look and feel’ factor, e-commerce major Flipkart launched ‘image search’ for mobile app users earlier this year.

On similar lines, Alibaba funded Snapdeal announced the launch of ‘similar image search’ platform FindMyStyle, to enrich shopping experience by simulating an in-store experience online. The platform lets users have detailed and customised preferences to help them discover a product of choice with less effort.

Developed at Snapdeal’s Multimedia Research Lab, FindMyStyle is the brainchild of Gaurav Aggarwal, Nikhil Rasiwasia and Deepthi Singh. The trio’s startup Fashiate was acquired by the Alibaba-funded company in March 2015.

Genesis of FindMyStyle

FindMyStyle is a result of Snapdeal’s emphasis on building strong in-house technology. The platform has been developed by integrating Snapdeal’s cutting-edge technology and extensive consumer insights. Analysing customers’ browsing and purchase patterns, this feature uses intelligent technology solutions and smart algorithms to preempt customer needs and offer a plethora of choices with minimal search.

This essentially doesn’t segregate the category on the basis of price, brand or size, and adds a further layer of analysis in order to pick visual elements from a chosen product and suggest various clusters with similar patterns, detailing and style as the chosen product.

How it works?

For a consumer who has a certain product image in mind, it becomes easier to search through options that match the image in his mind, as opposed to sifting through a wide, albeit disparate, array of products.

FindMyStyle is an extension of acquiree Fashiate

Speaking of the reasons for launching FindMyStyle, Anand Chandrasekaran, CPO, Snapdeal, says,

FindMyStyle is a technology playground for our computer scientists and also for our users. We intend to learn from the insights we get and incorporate them into our core digital commerce platforms.

Anand Chandrasekaran, CPO, Snapdeal

On why the company opted the web route for this product, Anand adds,

We launched a web platform so code can be shipped and we can iterate quickly without need to get apps approved.

Last month, Snapdeal revamped its web and app presence and claims to reduce page-load time by 25 per cent for on web and one per cent crashes on mobile apps.

YourStory’s take

Recently, Snapdeal had announced a USD 100-million allocation towards building in-house technology and this product seems to be the first major technology play after Shopo. Shopo is a mobile-focused marketplace with a zero-commission model. We like the fact that Snapdeal is using computer vision and image recognition algorithms to find products which one intends to view.

The results, themselves, are not that appealing though we don’t know the difference between the styles shows — most of them look similar (marked in similar colors. See screenshots below). If Snapdeal had collated along with product names, one can probably narrow down what one wants faster.

Some kind of metadata, like collared tees, graphic prints, text prints, round-neck tees may help, especially in the denims section as all products look similar – collate by style, fit followed by colour).

Let’s assume if one likes text-heavy T-shirts (third section in first row in screenshot) when one clicks on it, you are shown a lot more of them. Also, the images are small and one can’t read the text most times. There is no enlarged preview, but only a redirect.

An option to filter by size, colour and price here would have been great. Organisation following some logic like popularity, price and fit style also would help.

Of late, Snapdeal lags in technology when compared to rivals Amazon and Flipkart and to spruce it up the Gurgaon-based company announced a massive hiring spree of 2,000 engineers and setting up presence in Silicon Valley to hire the best talent across technology, design and product management. Anand is leading the technology for Snapdeal; while some prominent names like Bhuvan Gupta and Jeyendran Venugopal have joined in as well.

Website

In line with the Centre’s smart city vision, Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation is seeking to provide Wi-Fi connectivity in the entire capital city and is currently working on initiating a pilot project in this regard. “Yes, we want to provide Wi-Fi connectivity at nominal rates to people to assess the feasibility, we have identified Sector 11 for testing the short-term implementation of the project. We will make our plans after seeing the results of this pilot project”, GMC Mayor Hansaben Modi told PTI.

“The budget for the pilot is around Rs 1 crore, and the idea is to turn Gandhinagar, our capital into a smart city. We are also exploring ideas of using solar energy by installing panels on government buildings, to save non-renewable energy”, she said. “We also want to tap the methane gas generated around cremation ghats to complement our fuel requirement”, she added. Hansaben incidentally is the first woman mayor of the young corporation, the first elections to which were held in 2011.

The mayor, who assumed charge early this year, says, this new civic body has been constituted, but still “we have very little power”. “We have been notified as a civic body but yet to inherit the powers from the state government. Currently, we have health and sanitation, and few other sectors under us, but we want the due authority to function as a local self-government. We are therefore striving to get the power of attorney to make decisions”, she added.

The GMC stipulates two 2.5 year-term each for the five year mayoral tenure on rotation basis, but first Mayor Mahendrasinh Rana, after the 2011 civic polls continued to hold the post for a four year term due to some legal wrangling. The planned city of Gandhinagar has 30 sectors.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Over the past few months, there has been a growing buzz around creating awareness on mental disorders and illnesses. However, we still have a long way to go not only in creating awareness but also in removing the stigma associated with it; especially learning and developmental disorders. In India, 13 to 14 per cent of all school children suffer from one or the other kind of learning disability.

Since there is a limited understanding and awareness of early learning disorders, Harsh Songra decided to build an app, My Child App, which will help parents screen mental disorders. By feeding a few inputs parents can now figure out if their child has any developmental or learning disorder.

Though intelligent and bright, Harsh had failed in one subject in the sixth grade. During his parent-teacher meeting, instead of supporting him, his teacher told his parents that they should be sending him to a school for disabled children. His parents were hurt and distraught.

“In India, you aren’t taken through regular tests. There is also a strong stigma associated with any kind of mental illness, making it impossible for many to discuss the issue openly,” says Harsh.

This incident stuck in Harsh’s mind, and he decided to build something in the future that would make other parents capable of screening disorders. When he turned 16, Harsh learnt Android programming, as he felt that technology was the perfect solution. After trial and error, Harsh came up with the app. “The app was able to screen those developmental disorders in 45 seconds which took my parents more than nine years to figure out,” adds Harsh.

The app takes inputs from the parent, like height and weight, and asks some ‘yes or no’ questions. After that, it displays the result informing about the areas of concern in a child, and suggesting the action to be taken.

The app was launched on the Play Store on January 26, 2015. As of this month, the app has got over 1000 downloads. It was also selected in the Facebook Start bootstrap program, and received $25,000 online credits.

“We have a roadmap ready. In the future, the app will evolve as a perfect guide for parents telling them what are the dos and don’ts of bringing up a healthy child.  We will also develop a community in the future helping parents to communicate with other parents/doctors through the app, and discussing their problems. We feel that we could actually bring a change in the world and make it better.”

Video Editor: Anjali Achal

Digital commerce companies seem to go to any length to bring scale, and in a latest bid Paytm is entering the financial services business over the next two weeks. The company’s association with Manappuram Finance and Muthoot Fincorp will enable Paytm to diversify its portfolio of services.

With this launch, the financial services business of Paytm will offer the customer the ability to repay his loans using Paytm.  Paytm will kick-start the services with gold loan repayment. Subsequently,  it would also provide the facility of renewing insurance policies on its platform.

Importantly, SBI General Insurance would be the first insurer to go live on Paytm. Currently, the Alibaba-funded venture does more than 100 million orders of various digital and physical goods every month.

Kiran Vasireddy, Senior Vice President of Paytm, said,

We are excited to launch financial services which will enable us to tap into the ripe market for online financial transactions in India. We believe that this segment isn’t fully explored yet and we are set to disrupt the space with our technology infrastructure. The beta version for the new arm is ready and we will be leveraging data from our existing business to set the ball rolling.

Last week, the Noida-based company had got Payment Bank License from the Reserve Bank of India. With this, Paytm will be able to drive its overall commitment to financial inclusion for the unbanked segment and modernize payment systems.

YourStory’s take

Paytm’s core business is payment, and inclusion of financial services and insurance make a lot of sense for the SAIF Partners backed venture. It’s worth noting that Paytm is only facilitating payment of installment (EMIs) and premium of insurance premium. The company is not aggregating insurance policies etc.

Users who visit Paytm platform for variety of reasons like utility bill payments, recharge (mobile, data and DTH) and shopping (via its marketplace) will not mind paying their loan and insurance premium installments via the company’s platform.

As of now, none of the horizontal digital commerce companies offer such services and it would be interesting to see whether other e-commerce majors will follow it or not. Currently, Policybazaar, Bankabazaar, Zibika among a few others operate in the insurance and EMIs loan payment space.

In a piece of news that has caused a ripple in the finance industry,the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on August 22, granted ‘in-principle’ approval to 11 entities for setting up payment banks in the country.

This is a move toward the RBI’s vision of financial inclusion. Amongst the 11 chosen for the license, Dilip Shanghvi, Managing Director of Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chief Executive Office, One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, were the only two entrepreneurs to get the license in their names. Although Vijay told the media in reports that he’s got the license on Paytm’s name, the RBI announcement narrates a different story.

Image Credit: Getty Images

At present, Paytm, a mobile payments and commerce company, claims to have crossed 100 millon users in the country, carrying out 75 million transactions every month. However, the number of active users, and number of transactions made by them every week or month is not known.

In February, the Alibaba-backed Ant Financial Services Group pumped $575 million in order to acquire a 25 percent stake in One97. If that wasn’t enough, March saw an undisclosed amount of funding going to Paytm from Ratan Tata. In the same month, the company crossed a Gross Merchandise Value of $1 billion, with a mere 15 per cent of customers choosing the Cash on Delivery (COD) option.

After reporting a 350 per cent growth between 2012 and 2013,Paytm became one of the largest digital commerce companies in India in 2014.

With such behemoth figures, the question arises as to what Vijay Shekhar Sharma plans to do with the payment banks licensing.

What Paytm plans to do?

Vijay Shekhar, Founder, One97 Communications

Talking to the media recently, Vijay said that the payments business will be separated from the e-commerce wing, and will be called Paytm Payment Bank Ltd. This is because RBI has made it mandatory to add ‘Payment Banks’ to the names of new initiates in order to differentiate them from legacy banks.

According to Vijay, the license equips Paytm with the third part of their business model, concentrating around savings, with Buy and Pay being successfully integrated into their marketplace and wallets. Moving forward, the consumers will get added incentives (like interests) to keep balance in their wallets.

Following the same media report, the new entity will be registered in the next three months. One97 will hold a stake of less than 40 per cent, while the majority stake (51 per cent) will be going to Vijay. The remaining stakes will be allotted to One97’s subsidiary. This is in accordance with the RBI’s regulations, demanding that an Indian promoter should have a majority stake in the company.

Havinga separate leadership team with a new CEO, the new company will hire 2000-2500 people in two years, according to Vijay.

Despite different circumstances, this sounds more like the eBay and PayPal spinoff that happened last month. In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion; fast forward to 2015, they have split and eBay’s valuation for PayPal is $34.5 billion, a growth of almost 33 times since its last valuation.

Moreover, there is no doubt that PayPal was a driving force in eBay’s revenues. According to reports, out of eBay’s revenue growth of $396 million from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014, PayPal contributed $327 million, making it the industry heavyweight it is.

We tried contacting Paytm to understand more; however, no one was available for comment.

Will digital payments usher the new wave?

According to Abizer Diwanji, Partner & National Leader, Financial Services, Ernst & Young, most of the licensees chosen have two things in common. Either they have a strong distribution in the mobile space or own a complete ecosystem which people rely on.

Out of the 11 enterprises to get payment banks licenses, eight own authorised mobile wallets licenses. Moreover, payment banks open the door to a world of possibilities for mobile wallets to do a lot more, driving inclusion for the unbanked.

Abizer tells us,

“Mobile wallets just allow transactions to take place. However, the need today is to create digital channels and load more outlets where people can pay and receive, rather than just transact. This creation of various digital channels is where the efficiency will come. With lot more innovation coming into various modes of payment, the cost of intermediation will reduce leading to profitable models.”

Thus, payment banks seem to be the next obvious step where mobile wallets will be heading.

Launched four years back, Immediate Payment Services (IMPS) has set the tone for mobile payments in the country, helping transfer funds securely within seconds. Now, with the payment bank licensees with their innovation will take this product of the government to different corners and strata, ushering a truly digital and inclusive India.

So, why only Paytm?

In their insights on the mobile wallet market in India, research firm Technavio identified Citrus Payment Solutions (Citrus Wallet), One97 Communications (Paytm) and Oxigen Services India (Oxigen Wallet) as the three key vendors in the space.

With only Paytm getting a license out of the three, and staggering figures backing its argument, popular predictions remain with Paytm to emerge as a disruptor in this space.

Although, the RBI has stated that it would move towards giving more licenses regularly and virtually, opening opportunities to the other 30 contenders, Abizer tells us,

“The licenses to other players might not come early. This equips time advantage to not just Paytm but also the other 10 companies, since payment banks alone might take 18 months to set up.”

This might mean that distribution of the first set of licenses might be a pilot for the government to see how these companies leverage the platform while building other regulatory reforms around it.

Being the conglomerates that they are, Google and Facebook reached their height of glory by organising their respective spaces — information and databases of people. Similarly, with multiple digital payment entities functioning in the market, the entity which will organize the fragmented offline transaction space at a scale first will be the real winner in the space.

(With inputs from Emmanuel Amberber)

When the Kashmir region suffered disastrous floods last September, Danish Mir had to shut down his venture, Kashmirbasket.com, owing to huge losses. He then restarted it in May 2015 and worked on getting new and fresh products and building a new website interface.

Kashmirbasket.com offers an array of products like dry fruits, home décor, handicrafts, silk items, saffron, spices, Kashmiri tea, Kahwah, Kashmiri art and designs including wood carving and papier-mâché.

Danish says,

Even though our website was shut, the spark still stayed on and we rebuilt the site. Meanwhile, I started a WhatsApp group for offline sales and it has become a good marketing tool for me bringing in sales as well.

Appetite for entrepreneurship

When Danish, was pursuing his bachelor in Pune, he observed that people who have an appetite for Kashmiri products pay huge amounts of money to get them delivered. He happened to meet people fascinated by Kashmir’s natural beauty, traditions and culture of Kashmir and always received long lists of goodies he was to bring back.

This got him thinking. Though Danish was very keen to start his own venture, he needed experience first. So he joined Wipro where he gained enough experience to develop business acumen. Hailing from a middle-class family, he did not have enough money to set up his venture but his family and friends helped him a great deal.

Connecting to the manufacturers

Kashmirbasket works with small-scale industries, giving them a source of income and recognition in the market. The startup has more than two manufacturers for each category. To maintain stringent product quality, Danish himself makes all inventory purchases.

He says,

We derive satisfaction in providing original and hygienic products to our consumers, at the best possible rates. Through www.kashmirbasket.com, we receive good feedback from our customers. We are expecting the traction of at least to 80 to 100 orders a month .Since the products are procured locally by me, I can offer the goods 20 per cent lesser than the commercial market value.

Go Kash Adventures

Once Kashmirbasket was up and running, Danish started his second venture Go Kash Adventures last month. Having had a passion for travel from his childhood, Danish helped friends and colleagues plan trips to Kashmir.

He says,

Instead of waiting for loans to be approved for my venture, I visited Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Department which helped me out with a list of places to explore in order to have a deeper understanding of the tourism industry. My intention to start Go Kash Adventures was to offer affordable travel packages and services. It took me all of six months to come up with the best adventure and travel packages.

Danish runs both his ventures with a team of only 15 people because he believes that a dedicated few are enough to run the business with ease. Danish says that in its launching month itself, Go Kash Adventures crossed revenue of Rs 6 lakhs with more than 100 customers. As a part of its awareness campaign, Go Kash Adventures is going to organise photography workshops for all the photography enthusiasts around the world.

According to Danish, of the two ventures, Go Kash Adventures is generating significant revenue. For both the ventures, he is expecting consolidated revenue of Rs 60 lakh.

Danish says there were many challenges along the way but the faith people had in him fuelled his efforts to keep at it. He adds, “I would rather call my challenges ‘milestones’. Challenge is something that you don’t like to do, yet you have to do. But milestones in life are the learning that makes us strong at facing odds. I am grateful for the support and belief I’ve had from family and friends for turning my dream into reality.”

Market Overview

According to India Brand Equity Foundation, Jammu and Kashmir’s State GDP in 2014-15 was USD 14.46 billion, while the State NDP was 11.90 billion. The State accounts for 57 per cent of apples and 97 per cent of walnuts produced in India. Moreover, the State has come up with an industrial policy that offers attractive incentives and the facility of single-window clearance mechanism.

With the proliferation of demand for Kashmiri products, the market is set to script a new growth story. The last few years have seen the entry of many online players selling Kashmiri products, drawing attention to the significance of the takers for the products.

YourStory came across some players in this domain namely, Kashmirmarket.com, Kashmirvilla.com, Kashmirbox, Puremart.in, Best of Kashmir.com, Kashmironline.net and Kashmirlife.com. With such players selling similar products, it would be interesting to see how Kashmirbasket.com aligns its marketing policy to gain a competitive edge.

Website

One of the main reasons why Uber and Ola have been successful in Indian cities is because of the taking public transport creates too many hassles for people. The metro in Delhi or the local trains in Mumbai are splendid examples of a working public transport system but if you look at it as a whole, it is fraught with problems. Some cities have broken public transport systems, while in some, it is very hard to make use of the system owing to lack of information.

Team TransitPedia (Mehul in green and Vaibhav in black on the right)

This is a problem that nagged Mehul Sutariya and Vaibhav Vasa. Mehul had previously worked as a software engineer at Amazon and Google after obtaining a masters degree in Computer Science in US, while Vaibhav worked as a supply chain manager at Avery Dennison after completing his Masters in Operations Research. The childhood friends followed a similar career trajectory and decided to return to India for a number of reasons. Enthused by the startup scene in India, the duo got together in 2014 and boostrapped Transitpedia, with the aim of making daily travel in Indian cities smarter. Here’s how the app works: install and open the app, choose schedules or A2B, enter the start and end point, the app will give you the best route to reach your destination.

In the West, public transport authorities give two kinds of feeds: one being a fixed schedule of trains and buses and the other being a real-time feed which gives information about where a particular vehicle exactly is at any given time. This has given rise to startups like Moovit, which has raised $50 million to scale its public transit app. But when it comes to India, a lot of groundwork needs to be done. Both types of feeds from transport authorities mentioned above are non-existent. “Some of the authorities have their schedules online but in many cases, we need to go to them and get it,” says Mehul. And most of this information is not digitised. Transitpedia brings it in a uniform platform and puts it online.

The vision is grand but an enormous amount of work needs to go in to move the needle in India. Transitpedia launched two months ago and is currently live in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. There are local apps in India like the immensely popular m-indicator which is the de facto app for people travelling via locals in Mumbai. Most of these apps have great utility but lack when it comes to technology. “We are working hard to get clean data but our core competence lies in building this dynamic platform which will enable us to scale and also be more flexible,” says Mehul.

This means that if some information is changing or if a new city is to be added, it is easier for TransitPedia to accommodate and reflect these changes. “The app is free for use and we will be coming up with ad-based revenue models once we have good traction,” says Mehul. TransitPedia has more than 5,000 downloads as of now and the team is excited about the stickiness of the app. Based out of Mumbai, Mehuls tells us that the app has been able to flower a small community of early adopters who are using it and giving constant feedback.

If one goes a step above the startups, small and big, Google Maps already does this. But how many of us know about it? People have not formed a habit of using Google Maps for A->B public transport information. And when it comes to India, even Google finds it hard to get the public transport timings right. In this sense, TransitPedia has a huge mountain to climb but it has taken up the challenge and has started by taking up three cities.

If you’re on Android, try out the app and here’s the website.

Three waves of digital innovation have swept across India over the past decades: the software services boom of the 1980s, the DotCom boom of the late 1990s, and the more recent wave powered by SMAC technologies (social, mobile, analytics, cloud).

All three waves are overlapping now to present a tantalising opportunity for India to leapfrog its seemingly intractable problems, thanks to the potent force of entrepreneurship. TiE Bangalore brought together three generations of entrepreneurs for LeapFrog, an unprecedented day of grasping these megatrends and visioning NextGen breakthrough opportunities.

TiE LeapFrog 2015, Bangalore

Framing exercises, inspiring conversations, rapid-fire interviews and sectoral deep-dives offered a range of insights for Indian innovators and investors. The Ernst&Young report ‘Megatrends 2015’ was also issued, which identified the rise of high-impact entrepreneurship as a global megatrend. Other trends are the rise of Asia as a knowledge hub, globalisation of trade, digital disruption, urbanisation, resource competition, and data-driven personalised healthcare.

Here are my Top 12 takeaways and tips from LeapFrog 2015 for startups and society at large, on how they can transform the country not just within their lifetimes but within the decade.

1. The new India advantage: scale and speed

India has now reached the ranks of countries like the US and China where there are digital markets of the order of hundreds of millions, said Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. “India is big enough now for entrepreneurs and investors to explore and exploit,” added Diego Piacentini, Senior Vice President, International at Amazon.com. (See also my review of the BCG-IAMAI 2015 Report and takeaways from the India Digital Summit.)

Consumer adoption of digital technologies seems to have taken off a bit later than other societies, but has suddenly exploded in a spike-like manner. The founders of FlipKart and Ola Cabs both said they were surprised how quickly consumers have taken to e-commerce and apps for taxis, respectively.

Thomas Miller, Gray Bird Ventures

“Technology has a multiplier effect for solving social problems,” said Tarun Khanna, Harvard Professor and Chairman, Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Govt of India. For example, proper talent allocation helps meet many of the aspirations in emerging economies, he said, citing the example of one of his startups, Aspiring Minds, which offers tests and analytics for jobseekers.

The first IT boom in India solved the problems of foreign companies, whereas the current startup boom is solving India’s problems, noted Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education. There should be 100,000 startups in India in the next 10 years, he added.

“Stop saying that we are creating India’s version of an American product or service – we are innovating today in completely new ways,” said Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder of Infosys and Founding Chairman of Aadhaar.

2. Money talks

“India is now experiencing a ‘WhatsApp’ moment in financial services,” observed Nandan Nilekani. Just as WhatsApp disrupted the messaging space from 2009 onwards, digital innovation is changing the payment and banking space in India.

“India is more ‘mobilised’ in ecommerce than any other country – 41% of total ecommerce transactions are on mobiles. The move to ‘less cash’ has already started,” said Nilekani. In just a few years, electronic clearing has caught up with paper-based cheques.

Nandan Nilekani, Ritesh Pai, Adil Shetty, Vijay Shekhar Sharma

IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) was launched in 2011, and surpassed the volumes of India Post’s Money Order Service (which has launched in 1880 and discontinued in April 2015). IMPS will soon overtake credit cards and debit cards. Paytm (launched in 2010) is already doing more purchase transaction volumes than any Indian bank (though the cash value may be less).

E-commerce in India will grow by four times in volume in the next five years. “India has 900 million mobile users who do an average recharge of Rs 25 each month. LPG accounts for three million transactions a day, reaching over 120 million families. The government has announced 11 new licenses for payment banks, and Aadhar and e-payment will together transform this space, said Nilekani. By March 2016 there will be one billion Indians with Aadhar registration.

“The wet signature is disappearing, and digital signatures are on the rise,” added Adhil Shetty, Founder and CEO, Bankbazaar.com. Smartphones and portals help comparison shopping between banks at any time and any place, and millions of Indians are becoming comfortable with e-finance. “Qualitatively and quantitatively, online interactions improve upon the paper experience,” said Shetty.

“The smartphone will be your new identity card. Biometric smartphones enable one-click two-factor authentication, and this combines security with convenience,” said Nilekani. “The only scaleable infrastructure for payments is the smartphone – more than ATMs and POS machines,” he added. RBI estimates that in 2020, India will have 150,000 bank branches, 270,000 ATMs, 1.5 million POS machines, and 15 million retail outlets – all of which will be outstripped by the mobile boom.

“Mobile is the game, and not just a new strategy,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm; the company expects to have 500 million users by 2020. (See also my review of ‘The Power of Mobile Banking’ by Sankar Krishnan.)

Sachin Bansal, FlipKart

Another regulatory innovation from National Payments Corporation of India is the Unified Payments Interface which will enable peer to peer payments. Inter-operability between mobile wallets lays the foundation for P2P payments. In sum, the rapid enablement of paperless, cashless and even presence-less service delivery will transform financial services and bring millions into the formal economy.

3. Retail transformation

In e-retail, the promise is wide selection, low price and fast delivery, with a blend of online and offline strategies – and the e-commerce wave has spread to small town and rural India as well. “India is Amazon’s top investment destination today,” said Diego Piacentini of Amazon.com.

The big trend is machine learning and application of artificial intelligence in shopping tools as well as fraud detection, said Sachin Bansal, Co-Founder of Flipkart. “Indian consumers have been more receptive to e-commerce than we thought. Lots of leapfrogging is happening here,” he said. (See also my reviews of earlier TiE events on e-commerce and mobile here.)

4. Health is wealth

“India needs to urgently leapfrog in healthcare – using Western models only do not scale, and are too expensive,” said David Lawrence, Former, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Kaiser Permanente Healthcare. “However, healthcare is a long, slow, hard, slog with no quick fixes or returns. You need “patient” money, literally,” he said.

As compared to medical care, the leapfrog opportunity is in India’s healthcare sector, due to its trends like vast and growing population, urbanisation and the youth boom. Tech innovations can help reduce the number of doctor visits, medical costs in triage, rehabilitation, disease support, and screening. Technologies to watch include miniaturisation (eg. chip on a pill), bio-sensing, Big Data and smart algorithms. Other techniques like gamification for behaviour change can also be used here.

Mohandas Pai

Countries to watch in this space include South Korea, which has started a National Institute for Innovation in Healthcare Delivery, along with an innovation fund and a pool of private investors.

India’s opportunities in this space include new diagnostic technologies, large number of patients for clinical trials, large numbers of scientists to curate data, and solutions for data challenges, advised Thomas Miller, Partner, Grey Bird Ventures; Former CEO, Siemens Medical and Siemens AG.

“India will be home to 100 million diabetics. 50% of patients admitted to hospitals have chronic diseases,” said Vishal Bali, Co-Founder and Chairman Medwell Ventures. The Indian government’s spend on healthcare is only 1.2% of GDP and more private sector involvement and technology interventions are needed. Digital innovation offers a huge opportunity in personalisation of healthcare services, but startups rushing into this space should not sacrifice scientific rigour and professional reputation, he cautioned. “World-class innovations in healthcare are coming out of India, especially in Bangalore,” Bali added.

5. Unrelenting innovation and growth 

“Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart – you have to drive yourself to be the best every single day,” said Doreen Lorenzo, former President of Frog Design and Quirky. “An innovator creates trends, and doesn’t just follow trends,” she said.

“You have to innovate continuously to succeed in the market,” concurred Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola Cabs. (See also my reviews of the related books ‘Unrelenting Innovation’ by Gerald Tellis, ‘Eight Steps to Innovation’ by Vinay Dabholkar and Rishikesha Krishnan, and ‘The Road to Reinvention’ by Josh Linkner.)

“The challenge for companies and entrepreneurs is how to keep innovating and not stop,” said Diego Piacentini of Amazon.com. Lessons learnt from its China experience include the need to focus on fast growth and invest in customer experience – hence the focus on TV and outdoor ads, which are now clearly evident across Indian cities.

“Amazon is a large corporation as well as an entrepreneur,” said Paicentini. “We keep innovating – we have set up a warehouse in Manhattan to deliver books within one hour,” he cited as an example. “India is a complicated country, but I am Italian, I am used to handling complications!” he joked.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola Cabs

Innovation applies not just to one sector but a broader network of systems. “You make money from an entire ecosystem, not just one line of business,” said Paicentini. New marketing techniques will be needed for rural India as well. “There is huge scope in rural India. We are teaching rural retailers how to sell online and are using tea-carts for demos,” he explained.

6. Lead with empathy

Leadership is about theory of mind, with a blend of emotional intelligence and empathy, said Doreen Lorenzo, formerly with Frog Design and Quirky. In the rush towards technology and data, it is important to focus on why and how this will impact people’s lives, through techniques like storytelling (see my book review of ‘Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins’ by Annette Simmons). “The importance of Big Data is to learn how to make it small enough for people to understand and act on,” she said.

Empathy is key for organisations who want to leapfrog via innovation and customer connect. Such approaches are important in companies like Apple which have highlighted the importance of design in technology. “Design thinking is your ability to solve a problem without knowing what the answer could be,” said Lorenzo. (See also my article on ‘The ‘8 Is’ of design thinking for startups.’)

Command and control approaches to leadership are now being transformed into leading via collaboration and empathy. Lorenzo explained that the old view of failure is “If you fail, you are fired, you are a failure” – the new view is “What did you learn and what can you share?” Unfortunately, many companies still think empathy is a “fuzzy thing” or a “woman thing.”

Lack of empathy can reduce productivity, drop innovation and increase attrition. Lack of empathy leads to lack of power in the long run, she warned. Companies like Ola Cabs have a sense of commitment and empathy and offer community services for the drivers, said Co-Founder Bhavish Aggarwal.

7. It helps to be an outsider

Many disruptive ideas for innovation actually come from outsiders, and not from incumbents. “I only knew how to code, I knew nothing about transportation! I don’t even own a car,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, who co-founded Ola Cabs. “My father did not speak to me for six months when I left Microsoft to start Ola Cabs,” he joked.

“I was so naïve early on that when an angel investor asked about org structure I had to Google it to find out! It’s OK to be naïve when you are a young entrepreneur, just do it!” advised Aggarwal. It was his insights into mobile as a tool for utilitarian needs that allowed him to break into the taxi sector.

8. Form alliances and bridges

India needs to build bridges between startups, corporates and governments to accelerate the benefits of entrepreneurship and generate more leapfrog effects, said Anand Sudarshan, Founder of Sylvant Advisors. “We need a good policy foundation for the future,” he said. The calls for government support for entrepreneurship these days are in stark contrast to the ‘benign neglect’ of government during the earlier software boom in the 1980s.

While a lot of process, service and product innovation is happening in India, there are still gaps in core technology innovation. One problem here is the siloed and segmented structure of Indian higher education, with separate colleges and universities for technology, medicine, arts and so on – in contrast with integrated universities in the West. Many Indian institutions are also seen as elite, with their academics preferring to be in their ivory towers. Fortunately, signs of change are here, with trends such as the Indian Institute of Science opening its campus to the InnoFest innovation festival (see my earlier photo essay: ‘Startups and ministers at Innofest 2015’).

9. Gamification and incentives

“Changing the world in a short span of time requires real breakthroughs. This can be done by framing problems in the form of challenges, with prizes to solve them,” said Zenia Tata, Executive Director for Global Development, XPrize Foundation.

Key incentives to motivate people for breakthrough innovation include money, the chance to be the first to invent something, and the opportunity to make a difference to the world. Examples of such incentives includes Napoleon Bonaparte’s prize for food preservation techniques (which led to the canning industry), the British Navy’s Longitude prize for sea navigation (won by clockmaker John Harrison), and the Orteig Prize for aviators to cross the Atlantic Ocean (won by Charles Lindberg).

More recently, the high-profile XPrize has been launched to spur innovation in education, genomics, learning, and even moon travel. Similar prizes can be launched to solve India’s seemingly intractable challenges, and the XPrize is aiming to tackle problems of water, waste, energy and women’s safety.

“The day before something is a breakthrough, it is still a crazy idea,” said Tata, citing Peter Diamandis, XPrize Founder. At the TiE Leapfrog conference, Tata also organised a workshop on Science Fiction Prototyping to help envision the future in a fun manner, while also unearthing assumptions about today’s world and what can be done to advance the current state. “Science fiction exercises help us revisit what it means to be human. Startups can use this to envision the future,” said Tata.

Other examples include the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ run by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in association with the Department of Biotechnology of India; two startups were among the six organisations that received the grant.

10. Macro-frameworks: attitudinal change

While funding startups can be done relatively quickly, the hard slog is in improving Indian society’s attitudes toward entrepreneurship, said Tarun Khanna, Harvard Professor and Chairman, Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Govt of India.

The Indian government’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has represented entrepreneurship initiatives in India in the form of a three-layer pyramid, with culture and social attitudes at the base, education and skills in the middle, and incubators and investments at the top.

Outside of the tech and startup community, mainstream India tends to view entrepreneurship with suspicion and distaste, dismissing it as ‘dhandha’ or ‘chalta hai’ activity or even corruption. Instead, entrepreneurship should be promoted as a creative risk-taking activity for change, with failure viewed as a learning opportunity, advised Khanna. In the pyramid’s middle layer, the Indian education system should encourage scientific thinking, digital literacy, exploration and problem-solving rather than passivity.

But India has had too many commissions and reports on entrepreneurship, joked Khanna – what is needed is good governance, accountability and an outcome-driven approach.

11. Eye on the future

The speakers suggested a range of technologies to keep an eye on, in addition to the usual SMAC stack, IoT, NFC, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. “In five years, India will go from data poor to data rich,” predicted Nandan Nilekani.

“Electric vehicles will become a reality in India much sooner than we think,” said Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola Cabs. The sharing economy and green economy will witness rapid acceleration, and we may even see motorbike-taxi like services in India.

Local language content and services are another rapidly expanding domain. “Indian languages will be a focus area for ecommerce in India, along with video and audio,” said Sachin Bansal of Flipkart. This will bring about a more inclusive economy.

In addition to technology, it should be emphasized that large scale social change can be brought about via artistic means as well. For example, Bogota’s solution to the problem of jaywalking was to have mimes make fun of the violators! No tech solution was needed, all the mayor did was to tap the skills of artistes to playfully make fun of rule-breakers and ensure compliance, observed Khanna, opening the door to new kinds of innovative thinking for India’s problems.

“Exponential technologies are now entering our daily lives. This is not science fiction – this is science reality,” said Zenia Tata of XPrize Foundation. This must be accompanied by changes in business models and social outlook. “You need to change not just your business model, but your mental model for the future,” said Nandan Nilekani.

The US has witnessed the rise of unicorns, or startups valued at over a billion dollars, such as Uber, AirBnB, SnapChat, Pinterest, DropBox and Palantir. India’s unicorns include Flipkart, Ola, MuSigma, Snapdeal, Paytm and Zomato.

A number of cities which are planning their own entrepreneur initiatives should learn from the example of Bangalore. Bangalore has hit the sweet spot of Startup India thanks to factors like its intersecting ecosystems, youthful population, can-do attitude and cosmopolitan society – but this model needs to appear in other cities as well. “Come to Bangalore, this is where the future is being re-written,” said Pai. Bangalore has over a million people already working in the IT and BPO sectors, and an enormous startup ecosystem is evolving.

“In 2020, we may have more IT people in Bangalore than in Silicon Valley,” predicted Pai. The largest commercial real estate market in the world is Bangalore as well. However, Bangalore is 15 years behind in its infrastructure, and there is a dire need to improve the roads and Metro rail system fast.

Zenia Tata, XPrize Foundation

12. Take stock of your life

Ultimately, entrepreneurship and change come down to people and their aspirational drive. People should have a sense of purpose in their jobs, and indeed, many employees are demanding this. “Today, employees want to know how their work connects to the world effectively, and this is something managers and leaders must address,” advised Doreen Lorenzo. On a personal and professional level, it is important to keep asking whether you are doing the right thing in life, and doing it right (see my book review of  ‘Invent, reinvent, thrive’ by Lloyd Shefsky).

Two years after college, Sachin and Binny Bansal took stock of what they had achieved so far. “We realised we were doing pretty mundane stuff. Most MNC work in India is quite boring!” joked Sachin Bansal – the duo then went on to found FlipKart, now the poster-boy of Indian e-commerce. “We wanted to do something big, and have realised over the years that the definition of big keeps changing,” he added.

“Every Indian wants to be an entrepreneur!” observed Ola Cabs’ Aggarwal. Indeed, looking ahead, it seems that a wave of new businesses is poised to take off on the current platforms being built by Indian entrepreneurs.

“The sense of destiny in India is stronger than it has ever been before,” concluded Anand Sudarshan of Sylvant Advisors.

Country’s third largest wallet Ola Money can now be used across a host of merchants online, outside of Ola’s offerings. With Ola Money, customers can use the balance saved in their mobile wallet to shop for a variety of products and services across leading merchants like Oyo Rooms and a select other partners.

Going forward, more merchants like Lenskart and Saavn will be active on the wallet for users. The wallet can be already used for Ola Cafe, Ola Store app and TaxiForSure bookings made on Ola app.

The expansion of Ola Money as a digital payment solution enlarges the scope of its wallet, which sees a high frequency usage and recharge from Ola’s user base.

Last week, the company had launched loyalty campaign, ‘Ola Select,’ with select sets of customers to offer a range of benefits like free in-cab wi-fi, upgrades at no extra cost, special discounts and a range of exclusive benefits from Ola’s partner brands like Myntra, Snapdeal, and Cleartrip.

Rushil Goel, Head, Ola Money said,

Payment is a significant element in any transaction in the digital world today. Ola Money was built to create a seamless payment experience for every request on our platform and is the most preferred mode of payment by a majority of our users today. By taking this experience to more merchants, we are enabling our users to do more with Ola Money and helping merchants gain access to one of the most convenient payment experiences we know of today. We are excited to introduce Ola Money in its new avatar to our users and welcome leading merchants who want to benefit from this solution.

With over 20 million customers on its platform, Ola Money is already one of the top three mobile wallets in the country by transaction volume.

YourStory take

Digital wallet penetration is witnessing an upsurge in India and the time appears perfect for Ola to extend its wallet to other merchants. Frequent Ola users prefer to pay via wallet to avoid hassles like change and the same user base may like to use it for availing services and shopping.

Ola has been aggressively pushing Ola Money from quite some time. The company has been time and again running Ola Money offers like recharge for Rs 599 and get Rs 100 cashback etc. Today, Ola is giving 50% cashback if you pay for Ola Auto with Ola Money in Bengaluru.

With extending its wallet to third party merchants, Ola money will be able to get more traction and process more GMV. Adoption of digital wallets are all set to increase in India and it would be interesting to see how Ola Money will compete with Paytm, Mobikwik, and a slew of banks who are in process to launch their wallets soon.

Website

Qyk, a Bengaluru-based hyperlocal mobile marketplace has raised a round of pre-Series A investment by Growx Ventures. This is the second round of investment this hyperlocal startup has raised. Earlier in March, this mobile marketplace had raised a seed round of funding by Tracxn Labs, Powai Lake Ventures, and Sahil Barua, Co-founder of Delhivery.

The investment amounting to USD one million will be used for market expansions and further enhancing their product lines.”We’re seeing a growth of close to 200 per cent month-on-month,” adds Deepak Singhal, Co-founder and CEO of Qyk.

The services range from over 100 categories from photographers, event organisers, interior designers to personal yoga tutors. According to Co-founder and CEO Deepak Singhal, all it takes is a few minutes of effort for the customer and he gets connected to the best professionals.

Today, Qyk has grown to a 70-member team and intends to build a team size of 200 by the end of the year. Currently, the platform showcases over 100 categories with over 10000 different professionals.

Market penetration and expansion

With this round of funding, Qyk intends to go deeper into the existing markets and cities – Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. “Before we expand or open operations in other cities, we would like to completely penetrate deeper into these seven cities with more vendors and clients,” adds Deepak. However, the team aims to touch 15 cities by the end of this year.

According to Deepak, Qyk’s secret sauce is their technology. He says that they built highly efficient algorithms to match service providers with customers saving everyone’s time and effort. “We see this as a tech-led solution. We have a brilliant team and the right skill sets to make this happen,” adds Deepak.

When YourStory spoke to Qyk in May this year, Deepak stated that the team has grown from zero to over 100 requests per day in less than three months. The team had aimed reach 5000 requests per day across five cities within the next 12 months. Currently, Deepak claims to have over 80,000 app downloads.

Product development

The team aims to improve the matching algorithms on the app. Deepak says that this will ensure that the results the consumer receive will be much improved and better. The app has also launched a chat facility that enables the consumer to directly converse with the vendor. “We’re also building a rating system, which will help consumers choose vendors and also rate them on quality,” adds Deepak.

With Qyk, customers can find the best, verified service providers in the quickest time possible. Deepak says that the app uses algorithms to intelligently match demand and supply based on parameters like specific requirements, location, availability, and budget.

Ashish Taneja, MD, GrowxVentures, says that the Qyk model is similar to US’s Thumbtack . He adds that the growth and success chart of both seem very similar. Abhishek Goyal, Co-founder Tracxn Labs, adds that the Qyk team has displayed a positive growth and the scalability of the product and their model is positive.

The hyperlocal mania

In a research piece YourStory covered, over 27 deals have been announced in the hyperlocal segment. The industry has gone through a rapid evolution too in a short span. Firms like LocalOye, Grofers, SpoonJoy, Zopper, and Swiggy are attempting to solve a wide variety of daily problems faced by consumers, ranging from getting groceries to finding reliable handymen.

A combination of contributing factors, say entrepreneurs in this industry, has led to this spurt in startup and investor activity. Changing customer behaviour is the primary reason. “Behaviour is tending towards on-demand world over,” says Neeraj Jain, 37, Co-founder of Noida-based Zopper.

About 40 million consumers purchased something online in the entire year, according to an Assocham-PwC report, and this number is expected to go up to 65 million this year. Indian consumers spent about $22 billion on e-commerce transactions, according to a Deutsche Bank report, and this number is estimated to reach $86 billion in the next three years.

The year has definitely seen an expansion and investor interest in the hyperlocal segment. However, whether the traction and growth will continue on this trajectory is yet to be seen. The space is yet to see the consolidations that other spaces have seen earlier.

Qyk

The 4th edition of MobileSparks was very special as this was the first time we had a Hackathon focused in the mobile space. Over a hundred people participated in the Hackathon and a lots of amazing apps were built. The Hackathon was sponsored by Groffers, Flipkart, OyoRooms, MicroMax and Reverie.

There were three tracks for the participants, they could choseeither one and work on a hack of their choice. The first Track was focused on “Make for India”, which required participants to work on an app to solve problems faced by us in daily lives.

The Second track focused on “Utility and Games”, where people could either choose to work on a battery optimizing application or a camera based app which could use the camera in conjunction with other sensors in an innovating manner. One could also work on Social Games which one can play with their friend circle.

The third track was focused on Consumer Behaviour and Machine Learning, where the sample data was provided to participants to predict their buying patterns across different cities. The participants had to work on algorithm which could provide actionable insights into consumer behaviour. Ex, their future purchase based on their past history. Or demographic trends across different geographies, or even their buying patterns too.

There were prizes upto two lakhs for grabs for the same. Very Interesting app ideas were implemented and there were four winners who worked on some really interesting stuff. One of the winning team, Team Thea worked on a Pulse detection app wherein the user only had to look at the camera and an algorithm would give their pulse in a few seconds. The app was very accurate when the results were checked with other devices.

With unending supply of food and paper boat, participants were on a constant energy boost and worked really hard for 18 hours.

(Video edited by: Anand)

Even though ‘entrepreneurship’ sounds like a buzzword, a walk into a business minefield can always be challenging. It takes pure determination and street smarts to overcome challenges enroute. Starting up your business is the easiest thing, but sustaining the productivity and growth is a totally different ballgame.

Serious entrepreneurs will carefully plan each step to ensure they sidestep each challenge that comes along , by adequate resolution techniques. Most businesses are most vulnerable to failure during the early years. Statistically, 20 per cent of the businesses fold within the first year. These figures shouldn’t scare you off, but should prepare you for some of the challenges entrepreneurs face whilst starting up. With hard work and an awareness of such issues, your new business can be a great success.

In my career, I have met several business owners, and one of the most important criteria they speak about, is to have motivators who have faith in your inspiration near you. Entrepreneurship is challenging and few people may understand why you spend so much time nurturing it. It may be difficult to convince some people that you need to struggle for a bit to keep your dreams alive. So how do you clear this air of negativity while starting up? Ignorance is bliss. Ignore the negative people and your productivity and intelligence will increase.

A particularly toxic remark to hear while you are starting up is: “You will fail”. The road to success is dotted with failed attempts. Winning a race is not without the miles you put in during training and exercise. Similarly, there is no success without a few lessons in failure. Remember, YOU are the only person who can bridge the level between what you are and what you want to be. Avoid people oozing negativity, from your physical and mental vicinity. Focus on your business. Your greatest pleasure should be in doing what others said you cannot do.

People who tell you to choose one option amongst many are dangerous as well. When you step into the entrepreneur shoe, you will be tested hard. Research and planning are vital in ensuring your idea is well received in the market. This needs time and focus, but there’s never one choice. There are multiple ways to try and test your product, if failure is at hand. When you find someone asking you to choose between them and your business, unless it’s really critical, never set yourself off the target goal.

Every person has a fair share of bad memories which they wish had never come their way. But this is better than people reminding you of those memories and the “mistakes you made” in your past. Just when you realise you’ve started making progress in your entrepreneurship journey, suddenly comes a moment where someone close reminds you of your goof ups. Everyone fails, but what matters is how well you handle yourself in the situation. Let it go. Forgive yourself for things you have done but learn your lesson and strive to improve. The best way to handle a difficult situation is to learn from the past. The future of your business lies in how you handle the past to live in present, for growth in the future. Beware of those people who tell you not to take risks just because you’ve failed in past.

Every successful entrepreneur was an amateur first. It’s just that they have trusted themselves to follow their dreams. When someone you know achieves something great, the feeling of jealousy can creep in. There is nothing wrong in it but it is important how you tackle the thought. A mature person will feel excited about the achievement. Then there are those who will go around saying it was luck that brought that person success or explain to people how “worthless” their accomplishments are. These are immature people and so are their thoughts. If something is important enough, even if you find the odds against you, you must do it. But as a professional, you should always be mature even if some tries to belittle what you have achieved. If you want to achieve great heights, start respecting other people’s accomplishments.

You know your dream is real when you can’t go a day without thinking about it. You know who you really are, and what it will take you to reach your business goals. But the most important factor that can let you down in this race is the ‘toxic you’. Beware of overconfidence and bad attitude. Every time you climb the entrepreneurship ladder, make sure you develop gratitude. It’s how you treat people around you, may it be your team, people who support you or, for that matter, even your enemies, that tells it all. The start is always a hustle but the real shine is when people around you feel respected by you. Surround yourself with people who will only make you better.

If at all you want to bring about change, what stands between you and the change is your approach. The pessimist complains about the wind and the optimist expects it to change. Instead, be a leader and adjust the sails.

Image credit “ShutterStock“

We often run a Google search on the top industrial honchos to learn from their words of wisdom. However, we seem to have lost touch with our own rich intellectual heritage. Why not go back to our own roots, and learn from words of wisdom that are truly eternal? Our great epics (religious or not), surely have quotes that stand true to the modern times, even better than ever before. I am sure many of us must have explored or heard some great treasures hidden in ancient scripture Bhagvad Gita. Below are a few shloks which I tried to decode. I hope it will help entrepreneurs take away something from them.

“KarmanyeVadhikaraste Ma PhaleshuKadachana,

Ma Karma PhalaHeturBhurmaTeySangostvaAkarmani”

A lot has been said and heard about ‘karma’, but the true essence lies in these two simple lines. Every entrepreneur should focus on their work i.e. karma without anticipating the result or outcome. You should not concentrate so much on the final product and just enjoy the process of reaching there. We get swayed by our vision and rely on its success too much. We forget it is pivotal to enjoy the whole process rather than just hoping for something that you know is anyway uncertain. Remember, having hopes or being optimistic is not wrong, but without actions, your path will be dreadful.

The art lies in walking the tightrope and enjoy doing it. If the guy who walks the literal tightrope is scared or too excited, he will certainly fall. The trick to his success is that he enjoys it while he walks in order to reach the other end successfully.

“vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya

navani grhnati naro ’parani

tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany

anyani samyati navani dehi”

It is easy to say versatility and adaptation are the keys to success. But the biggest lesson for any entrepreneur is learning to adapt to changes quickly. Do not get stuck with your initial vision. Learn to adapt, innovate and implore new opportunities. Pave your journey like a traveller, who is not attached to the city he visits or the hotel he stays in but enjoys the experience of it all.

Do not be adamant; be innovative, open minded and ready to absorb experiences like a sponge. The faster you adapt to a change, the better it is. Remember, change is the only constant.

“krodhaadbhavatisammohahsammohaatsmritivibhramah | smritibhramshaadbuddhinaashobuddhinaashaatpranashyati ||”

It is imperative for all entrepreneurs to have control over their anger. With anger goes away our ability to reason and we tend to become delusional. The confusion and chaos generated by anger leads to memory loss. The individual is moved away from his purpose and goals. Anybody who seems to have forgotten their goals or lost their clarity of thought cannot succeed. Therefore, it is important for people to free themselves from anger. A simple solution to this problem is focus. Never lose your focus and never underestimate the virtue of patience.

“tasmad asaktah satatam karyam karma samacara

asakto hy acaran karma param apnoti purushah”

Inculcate the habit of being open to everything and being attached to nothing. Attachment does give strength to work and love beyond ourselves, but it also limits us and makes our journey and growth difficult, especially if the object of our desire is taken away from us. Too much desire can be bad, as it turns into greed. Greed takes you away from your true calling and dream, be it to achieve, create or innovate.

Do not be super attached to your work, as it makes your journey as an entrepreneur difficult and closed. You cannot wear binoculars and run the rat race. You have to keep an open mind about the ever-evolving market changes, adapt to them. Keep a close eye on your goals but do not get obsessive.

“dhumenavriyate vahnir yathadarso malena ca

yatholbenavrto garbhas tatha tenedam avrtam”

This simple shlok has the deepest meaning. It is like a dissuading curse – as everything pure has a covering that can often be misleading. For example, fire is covered with smoke, which prevents us from nearing it and if a mirror is covered in sheen, we cannot see what it is reflecting before removing the sheen. Similarly knowledge is covered with desire that we must ignore or get rid of. We must ignore the curtain of desire in order to imbibe knowledge that will help us grow. This isn’t as easy as it looks but wise man is one who knows what to avoid and what to select.

In the annual letter to JPMorgan’s shareholders this April, President and CEO Jamie Dimon alerted, “Silicon Valley is coming.” The recent global investment trends and his statement both are a testimony to the fact that the finance industry is all set to be disrupted by technology. Needless to say, in all the fintech battles, consumers stand to win from all sides.

While access to relevant information about financial products is becoming more common, the focus will now be shifting to technologies enhancing convenience of transacting from anywhere, as well as security.

Biometrics + Wearable Technology

Biometric verification implies usage of one or more distinguishing biological traits to uniquely identify a person. The most common identifiers include fingerprints, retina patterns and voice waves. What has been the most alluring about biometrics is its application in securing financial transactions, since biometric identifiers are hard to fake.

Despite immense R&D, biometrics hasn’t picked up big time in consumer applications in the financial sector. However, with more advancements in wearable devices, it seems like a lucrative bet. Companies, world-over, are working on authenticating payments using one’s fingerprints, heart rate and retina. With wearable devices such as smart watches, fitness bands and connected glasses, implementation has become much easier and more convenient for users.

One example of this is the world’s first biometrically authenticated, wearable device, which will enable, secure and authenticate credit card payments using a person’s heartbeat. This has been launched by MasterCard in association with Nymi and TD Bank Group. The wearable device, known as The Nymi Band, identifies and validates a user based on his/her unique heartbeat (electrocardiogram patterns) through their proprietary technology. The band is integrated with NFC technology which will communicate with any modern POS terminal which accepts Tap & Pay. Though in its very early stages, this solution could be the key to payment via smart-watches, thereby reducing friction as well as fraud.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of wirelessly connected smart devices that communicate with each other. According to popular belief, the financial sector has very less to do with IoT, but truth couldn’t be further away from it.

Insurance is where IoT can make the biggest impact. While the concept of telematics is already in application for car insurance, it can easily be extended to cover health and property insurance. For example, a fitness band measuring one’s vital parameters, on detecting erratic heart rate or a serious health hazard, can immediately modify one’s health insurance to suit the present situation in the best possible manner. In a similar way, smart household appliances can impact property insurance claims.

Another example could be in retail spending, where payment instruments communicate with consumer electronics. If a refrigerator detects low count of fruits, it can automatically place an order at a grocery store and transact using one’s credit/debit card or wallet.

Integrated Experience

A combination of the above, along with data analytics, heuristics and predictive technologies, will pave way to seamless transactions and a much more personalised payment experience. Payment, as a process, will become an inherent part of everyday ‘things’ around, rather than being explicit, with every touch point equipped with handling transactions.

Digital Currencies

Currency is nothing but a system for exchanging value using a common denominator. Latest technological advancements have given birth to digital currency like Bitcoin, which has taken the payments world by a storm. It is nowhere near to dislodging any traditional currency in the immediate future, but it is one of the most powerful innovations in fintech that has the potential to disrupt global finance. It is a new form of currency for the digital age that does not involve third-party institutions, or any fees, and can be transferred online and managed easily via digital wallets. The digital currency revolution, if and when it happens, will slash financial fees all across, make payment processors obsolete as computers and algorithms do the job, and create huge spending and earning opportunities for people who currently do not hold a bank account. The key benefit lies in the way payments are processed and transactions finalised. Where a credit card settlement takes few days and 2-3 per cent of transaction fees, a Bitcoin transaction could be settled in minutes with no fees involved, as all records are maintained in a non-personally identifiable public ledger. Although facets such as security and volatility are still a concern for its adoption, it is a decent beginning that only has the potential to grow further.

At present, technology is disrupting financial industry by giving individuals better access to information, enabling them to borrow, invest and transfer money at lower rates and reducing friction and improving the overall experience. However, we can imagine the future not to be less than a Sci-Fi movie! In years to come, the financial industry will undergo complete metamorphoses. With every devise turning into a POS machine and digital currency blurring geographical boundaries, we will witness a new payment landscape. All financial services will blend into the physical world in ways that are unimaginable now, but which will become commonplace characters of our environment in the future.

Image credit “ShutterStock“

For a long time, buyers shied away from the used car domain in India, while in western economies, three used cars are being sold for every new car. The major roadblock in this direction has been the asymmetry of information present in the process of used car transactions.

The used car market is highly unstructured with independent dealers and curbsiders comprising a large chunk of the market. The information asymmetry involved in the process leads to the problem of moral hazard. Independents charge anywhere between 10 and 30 per cent on cars. Now, for a layman, choosing from a pool of mint and lemon-coloured cars entails a good probability of adverse selection.

Genesis of Spinny and the team behind it

To weed out the nexus of independent consultants, Niraj Singh, Ramanshu Mahaur, Ganesh Pawar and Mohit Gupta floated Spinny. It is all about bringing transparency and convenience to the used-car buying and selling experience. It covers the entire value chain, right from the inspection of the cars to providing test drives to taking care of the registration transfers to providing warranty on cars to buyers.

Niraj and Ramanshu are IIT, Delhi alumni, while Mohit is from IMT, Ghaziabad and Ganesh studied at IIM, Ahmedabad. Niraj is one of the partners of investment firm OutBox Venture and sits on the boards of companies like Tripoto, Shaadisaga and JustRide. Ramanshu has close to five years experience with Adobe. Till recently, Mohit served at e-commerce major Flipkart as an associate director. Ganesh has also worked with Flipkart.

Tech and control on entire value-chain are Spinny’s USPs

Being a tech-driven company, Spinny aims to become, by default, the destination for used cars and bring an end to information asymmetry while taking care of all the touch-points and keeping customer convenience at the centre of every experience.

Speaking about exponential growth of used car searches on the internet, Niraj says,

The searches for used cars have doubled from last year. In June alone, 1,37,790 searches for used cars were made (from all over india) which is 58.3 per cent higher than the searches made last year in the same month.

Globally, 8,01,100 monthly searches for used cars are being made, US being the biggest contributor with 56.8 per cent of the searches. It is followed by UK and India with 16.2 per cent and 10.9 per cent of the searches respectively (based on Adwords Keyword Analysis). Niraj adds,

With increased internet penetration and growing dissemination of information, people are seeing pre-owned cars as an economical alternative to new cars.

Traction and strong emphasis on vehicle inspection

As of now, the company has processed more than 150 car transactions and is currently doing six to seven transactions a day. Niraj adds,

Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai are the preferred brands among people looking to buy used cars. Most of buyers are able to make a decision on their first test drive itself. On an average, we inspect four cars against every car we list.

Spinny’s quality control begins with its inspection process. The cars are assessed based on detailed 200-point inspection checklist that allows the company’s inspectors to evaluate every aspect of the car.

The company has an in-house inspection team of qualified experts with many years of experience. Their experience is key to ensuring the cars Spinny hosts are the best pre-owned cars in the market. The inspection is conducted by using a standardised workflow followed by all the inspectors, to ensure greater efficiency.

What led an angel to become a part of startup?

We hardly see angels turning entrepreneurs (generally, it’s otherwise). Explaining this transformation, Niraj says,

I wanted to become part of the learning process of these startups so I decided to put my money on this rather than investing in real estate.

Road ahead

Spinny also has an in-house training programme to ensure enough supply of quality automobile inspectors as it looks to rapidly expand and establish presence pan india and add a lot of cars on its platform. Niraj adds,

Very soon, we would be adding at least 100 certified cars every day on our platform and we would be able to make a car live on our platform within 90 minutes from receiving the listing request. Once the car is live, it would be mapped with potential buyers instantaneously.

Team Spinny

The company plans to expand to other cities within the next three months and in long term it aims to reach the top 20 cities by mid 2016.

YourStory’s take

With 3.5 million used cars sold in the last financial year, the used car market is valued at about USD 15 billion (GMV). The market is growing at 20-22 per cent CAGR.  A recent CRISIL study forecasted the sales of used cars to reach around 8 million units by 2020. This will value the market size at around USD 45 billion by 2020.

At present, there is a slew of companies notably, Carwale, Cartrade, Cardekho,  Droom, Zoomo, 19miles, Truebil and CredR, operating in the used car space. The company competes with these startups as well as the horizontal classifieds platforms like Olx and Quikr Cars.

Unlike verticals like jobs and real estate, automobile classifieds is not disrupted so far and with debut of players like Droom, Truebil and Spinny, the space looks very interesting. Recently, horizontal classifieds major Quikr also announced separate automobile vertical Quikr Cars and OLX also slated to launch automobile-focused separate vertical.

Website

When it comes to mobile phones, the instant messaging apps are probably the most used apps on your smart phone. In the recently concluded mobile sparks we met several mobile design companies engaged in some interesting work in the field of mobile. One of them was Perdix Business Solutions, a little known startup which had a lot going on behind the scenes and is doing some remarkable work in the mobile space.

To capitalize on the opportunity, a few students from IIT Guwahati got together after their studies to start up Perdix business solutions. Started in 2012 By Manish S Sugandhi and his friends, Perdix is a design company based in Bangalore. However, what sets it apart from others is they made the most of the wave at the right time.

Perdix had already started building stickers for Instant messaging apps.The three year old design company has managed to bag some big names in business as their clientele including the likes of Nimbuzz and WeChat.

Their success is evident from the fact that most users now communicate using stickers on every instant managing platform. When Hike was launched, their biggest selling point was stickers, and now stickers have come on facebook too.

They are betting big on mobile and Instant messaging in future. We caught up with them in MobileSparks.

Video Editor: Anand

You might also like: This 2-year-old bootstrapped design startup has clients like WeChat, Line and Flipkart and is hitting 8-figure revenues

Education has always been important for the economic growth and development of any nation. In the US, 7.6 per cent of the nation’s GDP accounted for educational spends. And edutech accounted close to 2.5 per cent of the spends. In India, the market is currently estimated to be close to Rs 5.9 trillion and will touch USD 40 billion by 2017.

Organisations like Xamcheck, Purple Squirrel and many others are however differentiating themselves by solving different problems of the sector. A trend seen in this space is the use of virtual reality and gamification, to making learning easier.  One such organisation is GreyKernel. It is developing edutainment content over a home-grown, community-based platform for high-end mobility and low-cost virtual reality devices like Google Cardboard and GearVR. From utility standpoint, it claims the platform would serve as gamified How Stuff Works for virtual reality.

“We are going to redefine word education by giving users first-hand experience of how stuff works, using the arcane powers of immersive virtual content,” says Abhishek Gupta, Cofounder and CEO, GreyKernel.

Building the core team

He adds that the idea stems from the notion to make education interactive and fun. He says that we’ve all had our experiences of learning/exploring from the days of our childhood and still believed that learning could be more fun if done the interactive way and the team saw virtual reality as a tool to be able to make it how everyone wishes learning to be.

The core team at GreyKernel consists of Abhishek Gupta, who has had over seven years of experience in technology management; Pranshul Chandhok, a video game developer and Sushim Gupta, an IIM Calcutta and IIT Delhi graduate with five years of sales experience.

Abhishek and Pranshul shared the same office space at their last job and believed in breaking the stereotypes through technology, while mutual friend Sushim wanted to make a breakthrough in edutainment.

Abhishek, Pranshul and Sumit, Core team @ GreyKernel

The product and its USP

The team believes that there are several issues – lack of interaction and engagement being the predominant ones – which limit the effectiveness of one’s learning experience. Others, Abhishek says, include possibility of context related disengagements and unavailability of quality content.

Through the platform, the team wants to organise quality content to engage audience via high amount of interaction. It will also feature content to take users to unexplored areas or domain.

“The USP of our product is high level of interaction, which we deliver through virtual reality. We believe that users will adapt to the new technology to gain access to next level interactivity. Social integration’s, leader boards and high fidelity content would help users see unique value in our platform,” says Abhishek.

Challenges and way forward

Although, six months back, when the team began work, everyone believed that virtual reality was a game changer, no one wanted to take the bold step, because of the uncertainty involved from the technology standpoint.

To address this issue the team says that it kept the content agile, by porting it to multiple platform/devices in best possible time frame, this even helped keep up with most technological advancements in the space. The team is aiming to cater to a user base of over one billion smartphone users across the globe.

“One can still explore content from our platform even if a user doesn’t possess a cardboard/GearVR,” adds Abhishek.

As a source of revenue, the team has created virtual credits required to unlock content. This could be earned by completing module-based activities or could be purchased using currency.

“We met many teachers and trainers from the region and represented some of the demos we have done. ‘Wow’ is the sentiment we always hear back from them. We also did content trials with more than 200 students and youngsters,” says Abhishek. The team intends to integrate multilingual capacities in the platform covering as many languages as possible. The beta version of the product will be launched in October this year.

Website

Kiran Kulkarni noticed that there was a large pool of NRIs who wished to invest in Indian real estate, but could not due to lack of reliable information and sources. So he started working on Propertyloop, in stealth mode, to provide value-added-services (VASs) that would make NRIs more confident of investing in Indian real estate. He officially launched it about five months ago.

What do they do?

Propertyloop acts as the first level of liaison between the buyer and the builder. They act on behalf of the buyer, making sure the builders and properties are legitimate. They also check that the properties have the required approvals from organisations such as BDA, BMRDA, CREDAI and others, and verify the documents as well. Kiran added,

For builders, we enable their properties to be purchased online through our secure platform, and initiate the transactions between buyer and builder.

Propertyloop focuses on residential plots, villas and flats across India. They consider their strength to be their ability to provide accurate and transparent information about properties, through their patent-pending 3D section view, and virtual walkthroughs. Kiran added,” We recently added a feature(Link), where by clicking on the wall and cabinets you can change their color. This gives the buyer different color options and allows them to visualize better.”

These assist buyers in making educated and well-thought-out decisions about buying/renting properties of their choice. Through their offerings and online listings, buyers of projects (lands, apartments, villas) can virtually walk through the property, using a technology created by Propertyloop’s architect team based on builders’ drawings, and book the property online. In addition, Propertyloop also focuses on the livability index of the areas where the properties are located, and aims to improve the same.

The story so far

KIran Kulkarni and his team

Kiran Kulkarni is a veteran in the Information Technology industry, having performed various roles in his time. He has spent lot of his time in research and implementation in the field of solid waste management, waste water treatment, and other environmental remediation projects. He is an active environmentalist, fighting on several fronts to save some of Bangalore’s lakes and environmental landmarks. From 2009 to 2011, he was the vice-chairman of ISNT’s Bangalore chapter and also dealt with Aerospace Industries. He is currently a member of CAF (Citizen Action Form).

His entered real estate with Propertyloop.in through his exposure to several established real estate builders in waste management and Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) projects. He has studied the pain points and gaps in real estate portals and wants to address them in a better way, to help both buyers and sellers solve some of the problems in existing real estate listings platforms. He currently has a team of five people across different roles, such as development, design, 3D animation etc. While working in stealth mode, Kiran says,

We first reached out to a few known friends abroad, and then to the Indian ecosystem where they all congregate for social gatherings. During conversations with prospects in North America, feedback our team received from everyone was that we should play an active role in improving the living conditions of the communities that we sell properties in.

To that effect, Propertyloop is developing livability conditions at grass-roots level, by contributing towards lake water cleaning and solid waste management as part of corporate citizenship. Kiran added, “Our first step is the rejuvenation of Yamalur lake. Titan (Tata Enterprises) has partnered with Propertyloop to clean up the lake and thereby create an environment for people to make a purchase.”

How does it work

Propertyloop offers a platform for builders to promote their properties through their networks, in national and international markets, and reach out to pre-qualified and educated buyers.They provide for integration with credit verification services, wherein a buyer is verified based on their credit standing in North America. Kiran added,

We also check and certify the feasibility report for the performance of equipment and processes such as lifts, STP, DG set (diesel generator), waste management etc.

For buyers, Propertyloop liaisons, verifies, and authenticates all legal documents and services through their back office.They then verify the actual property onsite, the community ecosystem on the ground, and other buyer-specific needs too. They attain detailed information about the property and the neighborhood.

They consider ‘buyer-driven walkthroughs’ to be one of their main USPs. They have developed a software in-house to generate their 3D-rendered drawings of plots. “We approach builders for 3D drawings of their plots, to generate the 3D-rendered drawings. In some cases, builders only have access to 2D drawings, but we can still generate 3D models from them through our software.”

Business model and marketing

Propertyloop monetizes mainly through B2B channels – by charging builders subscription plans for their services – as well as through ads on the platform. They also aim to earn through roadshows that they conduct at social gatherings at different locations in North America and other parts of the world. Kiran adds, “Different aspects of inventory and sales incentives data are maintained on our platform. We have tight controls and policies defined at every step of the process, in close cooperation with the builders and our team. Our platform can be integrated with builders’ websites to provide integration and branding experience as well.”

The startup is currently self-funded, and is mainly looking to market themselves through word-of-mouth and referrals. Kiran added, “It is comparatively easier for us to verify the claims of NRIs and provide accurate information to builders, because of the frameworks in place abroad. But, with Digital India and Aadhar picking up in India, we can soon reach that level of credibility here too.”

Sector overview

Through surveys, Propertyloop found that their main target audience is IT professionals in the age group of 25-35 who are abroad, or those in India who do not wish to travel to different parts of the city straight off, but want to do their initial research online. Kiran added, “The Indian real estate space is full of many different players, each with different USPs, but the market is big enough for many players.”

The real estate sector has witnessed a lot of activity in the recent past. Many platforms have been trying to provide solutions to the consumers through virtual solutions. Housing started of with a map based UI and SliceView, CommonFloor introduced CF Retina. Real estate advisory firm, Square Yards(which had raised $6M) , and online portal, Realizing.in, merged to capture the NRI market. Housing.com acquired Homebuy for $2M, CommonFloor.com had acqui-hired Bakfy at the beginning of 2015, and News Corp has increased its stake in PropTiger.com to 30%.

Future plans

Propertyloop is looking to further develop their platform and reach out to their target audience through online channels such as social media, and offline channels such as events. They are also considering developing a mobile app to add to their web presence. Kiran added,

We are partnering with major financial institutions to qualify and apply for mortgage services through our platform.

Website: PropertyLoop 

Within a week of announcing the launch of ‘Flipkart One Stop’ for sellers, the company has now moved to please the customers with the launch of ‘Ping’, a ‘social shopping’ experience on the Flipkart app. Using Ping, Flipkart users will get to chat with friends while shopping, and share experience using text, photos, and emoticons in real time.

Interestingly, the company’s CTO and Head of Engineering, Peeyush Ranjan, had recently stated in an interview with YourStory that the future of e-commerce is close to commerce in real life which involves instances like taking suggestions from friends and family, comparing and other situations.

What is Flipkart Ping?

According to Punit Soni, Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, shopping is a social activity involving friends and family whereas online shopping, on the other hand, has largely remained a solo experience. Flipkart’s in-house research revealed that the inability to shop collaboratively is the number one barrier for online shoppers these days. To bridge this gap, ‘Ping’ will allow users to talk to each other real time in order to make decisions and decide on what to buy.

Ping in its beta stage of development and will be available to customers through an invite only model in the first phase.

This is the team that made @FLIPKART ping possible. They pulled off something not many didn’t even dare to think. pic.twitter.com/vUDdf8xrPL

— Amar Nagaram (@_Amar_N) August 25, 2015

Technology and features of Flipkart Ping are:

1. It employs highly advanced architecture to ensure that dynamic traffic surges are handled well.
2. It has been optimized for efficient results even on slow 2G networks.
3. It will also support Android wearables where user can read and reply to messages from their Android watches.

F1-Stop for sellers

With the aim to create the ultimate ecosystem for sellers, Flipkart launched Flipkart One Stop to enable sellers by equipping them with necessary information and procedures to kick start and grow their business online.

Seller-Panel management happens to be the key for the success of online sellers. A lot of on-boarded sellers request for guidance on growth strategies for online selling.

According to Flipkart, close to 70% of sellers struggle to get their business registered and up and running online. With F1-Stop offering services ranging across registration, training, cataloguing, packaging to financial assistances, sellers can pick and choose as per their requirements. Currently, available for sellers in 10 key cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Surat, and Jaipur etc, this initiative will be extended to top 20 cities by end of this year.

Flipkart has tied up with full service agencies like Sellerworx, 99yrs.com, BluBox, Chikiweb, Browntape, and others to help SMEs, wholesales, manufacturers and retailers from across the nation start their online journey. Currently, the company has tied up with about five-10 agencies and plans to get 50-60 agencies by the end of this year.

With its recent round of funding, Flipkart is valued at almost $15 billion, close to the valuation of Indian Oil Corporation. The e-commerce giant has raised over $3.5 billion and on-boarded some high profile talent from Silicon Valley. Simultaneously, some of its key people, including the CTO Amod Malviya, VP Products Saran Chatterjee, and engineering head Sameer Nigam have left in the last few months.

Born in a small town of Sangli in Maharashtra, Aniket Awati belongs to the family of farmers and electrical engineers.  Whether it was choosing a startup over MNCs or shutting down his own startup after raising money, Aniket has never shied away from taking tough decisions. The 26-year-old technology entrepreneur is our Techie Tuesdays for the week. Here are the edited excerpts of our conversation with Aniket where we talk about his tryst with technology and more.

The branch and college for family engineering!

Aniket’s father was a professor at a local engineering college and his mother was a homemaker. It was only his father’s generation which had pursued higher studies in an otherwise farming family. Eventually, his family produced five electric engineers from the same college in Sangli, which according to Aniket, is at least six decades old. He recalls his childhood,

The atmosphere around home was stimulating with machines around. But the introduction to computer took some time. I had to win a bet with my father by scoring in a scholarship exam to get the computer after my high school.

Aniket’s older cousin taught him his first lesson in programming in the eleventh standard which he used to write the whole ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ program. By this time, it was clear to Aniket that he wanted to be an engineer. He wrote the entrance exam and got into the same college where his family members had pursued their engineering.

Of programming and prizes

Aniket learnt C, C++, Python, MATLAB in his first year of engineering and got interested in programming. Though he had enrolled for electrical engineering, his heart was totally into computer science. In the first year, he had built a lot of games, including a Sudoku solver.  When he demoed it in some of the college competitions, it won him a lot of prizes. After that, Aniket started participating in programming competition at regional and state level winning many of these. He says,

I used my programming skills in electrical engineering where I had written codes for a lot of algorithms and submitted them in the college library as well. They were primarily procedures and calculation in MATLAB and Python.

Starting up was not an option we had heard of

In his final year of college, Aniket had multiple offers from some of the multinational companies but he had already fallen in love with the concept and work at startup. Though it was not very common in Sangli, he came to know about a startup through one of his friend who was interning at a Pune startup. Aniket met the founder who was a college dropout and joined his venture, Webonise Lab. He joined as the seventh employee in the products & services startup where his focus was building games and similar products. Within eight-nine months, Aniket, along with his two other friends at Webonese, left the company and started working on an independent product, a custom ROM.

200K app downloads in 2 months, in Nokia Ovi store

In 2010, Nokia Symbian was one of the most popular platforms and Aniket decided to build a Sudoku solver (and generator) app on Nokia Qt. With two months of the launch on Ovi store, the app witnessed more than 200K downloads. Later on, Aniket built a few apps (including Farm Keeper) for Samsung Bada competitions as well but didn’t have a great luck there. He had developed mobile apps for J2ME, Android, Samsung Bada & Qt frameworks in this time.

Startup, funding, shut down

In 2011, Aniket and his friends, Ratnadeep Deshmane and Akshay Deo, co-founded Appsurfer, a product which runs Android apps on the web itself, helping developers generate more visibility and more downloads for their apps. Initially, it came as a idea of a tool for developer. Though BlueStacks was launched only three-four months ago, Appsurfer was different in a way that it had everything running on a server and not on developer’s machine. It took the trio 10-12 weeks of time to build this Java applet based tool running on virtual server.

At a startup showcasing event in Pune, team Appsurfer got feedback from some of the prominent people from tech industry and investors. This made Aniket and others consider taking the product to consumers. However, Appsurfer couldn’t figure out a way to monetize, even after raising Rs 1 crore funding from One 97. Aniket says,

We created an actual product from prototype and received a lot of attention and good use cases. We had monetization plans around native advertisements. In order to demo the apps on our platform, we needed to have access and permissions from developers. Since the top 500 apps on store keeps on changing every month, it was not easy to get compliance from the developers so quickly. For users, it made more sense when they could try top apps on our platform.

Amidst all these issues, when one of the co-founders left last year, gradually we all left.

Aniket accepts that one of the biggest challenges he has faced was to take the small success of Appsurfer to a global level which he failed to do.

Coding in Hindi, Marathi and other regional languages

Aniket along with Ratnadeep is working on an interesting open source project. Ratnadeep wanted to teach programming to his brother in the eighth standard, who was not good in English. Both of them developed code4all.betacraft.co, a platform enabling users to code in their own languages. Currently, the tool supports Ruby on Rails language.

New product, new journey

Earlier this year, Aniket co-founded Twist with Amit Yadav and Akshay (from Appsurfer). The hardware device allows you to seamlessly play all your mobile games on TV in high definition and enjoy online and offline media from your phone, laptop and tablet (on TV). Aniket says,

This is the real problem that I had faced. I am a big movie buff and like to play games. When I brought Chrome Cast, my gaming experience was bad.

He was thinking about what to do next during this time and decided to work on making this experience better. He believes that some people can buy XBox but because of its high cost, it’s not affordable for all. He adds,

If we can make a really cheap device and give a similar experience on a larger screen using the same smartphone, we can crack this problem.

The major work has been around software experiences as hardware development was more about  choosing the right platform from the many available options which Twist did through consultancy of betacraft.co.

Technology and gyan

According to Aniket, technology is a means to solve problems. He recalls one incident where he had created a new UNIC code for TV by trial and errors involving a combination of sensors and injecting lubricants.

Aniket signs off with the only major learning of his life,

Do not to listen to most of the people and their gyan. In today’s chaos, it’s way more important to listen to yourself.

You can follow Aniket on twitter.