StayGlad, an on-demand Beauty Services Platform for women, has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Anil Chopra, Former CEO Lakme Lever.
The startup was founded by three IIT Kharagpur graduates, Kavish Desai, Shashank Gupta and Prateek Jain, have previously worked at Flipkart, Adobe and Amazon respectively in May, 2015.
StayGlad provides doorstep services for beautification, styling and ‘get ready’, etc., thereby avoiding challenges like traffic, weather conditions or finding parking space. Stayglad can help customers find verified, trained, experienced, and certified beauty service professionals who will use best products and standardised procedures. StayGlad’s mobile app for professionals acts as one point solution for all their needs from logistics, routing, orders, cash and inventory management.
The startup follows a strict process of selecting the professionals, who undergo process and skill training before onboarding. Professionals who fail to match the requisite skill set defined by StayGlad are removed from the platform.
Anil Chopra, says,
The beauty services industry is huge and growing at a rate of 20% + per annum. Most women, across age groups in SEC A & B, avail of beauty services at least once in three months, across big cities and smaller towns. The online and convenience of having these services at home will be a big game changer for the Industry and customers.
The startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed round of funding from Tracxn Labs and Sahil Barua in June this year. According to Prateek, they have been growing 20% week on week.
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Continuing his love for startups, Ratan Tata, has invested an undisclosed amount in Gurgaon-based services marketplace UrbanClap.
Founded by Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra and Abhiraj Bhal in October 2014, Urbanclap provides a marketplace for two simple models, standardised blue collared services like electricians or home cleaning, and white collared services like photographers, interior designers, yoga instructors etc. To use the services, customers can directly book and pay on the app itself.
“We are glad to have Mr. Ratan N Tata come onboard UrbanClap as an investor. Mr. Tata’s experience over decades, in building enterprises Indian’s trust, will be invaluable for us, as we build out a trusted services marketplace,” said Abhiraj.
Currently, Urbanclap is operational in Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. The startup is targeting to extend its services in 25 other cities and 100+ categories in next one year.
Quick Facts
Serves 5000 customer requests per day currently. It plans to take this number to 100,000 customers a day.
Has 25,000+ service professionals. The company claims to be sending them business worth $200 Mn annually.
Currently has over 80+ categories, plans to take this number to 100+
Tiger Global-backed Freshdesk has acquired Chennai-based in-app customer support startup Konotor for an undisclosed amount.
Konotor helps businesses engage with their clients/customers through features like two-way messaging, in-app support and marketing automation. The platform supports more than 40 Mn users through the apps it works with.
The acquisition would help the Freshdesk to serve an increasing number of mobile first businesses and to enhance its support channels and mobile solutions.
“Mobile-first companies face a unique set of challenges in customer support and user engagement, creating the need for a different solution. Konotor has demonstrated significant early success in addressing this need, by enabling marquee apps to engage better with their users. The addition of Konotor to our product suite will help us create powerful customer experiences,” Girish Mathrubootham, founder and chief executive, Freshdesk, said.
Konotor was founded in 2012 by Srikrishnan Ganesan, Deepak Balasubramanyam and Vignesh Girishankar. The founders have previously worked with companies like Verizon, eBay, and Zynga. Currently working with team of 9, Konotor counts Zomato, Times Internet among its clients.
In May 2014, the startup had raised $125K (INR 73 lakh) in funding from Qualcomm Ventures and Accel Partners. It had also won Qualcomm’s QPrize 2014 India edition. Post acquisition, Konotor will continue to operate independently and serve its existing customers.
Headquartered in the US, Freshdesk, was founded in 2010. It competes with other enterprise companies including Salesforce, Zendesk, Atlassian and others. It has more than 50K customers of which 25K customers were added in last 12 months (As of October 2015) and has raised around $94 Mn in funding so far. It counts Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management and Google Capital as its investors.
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It’s the end of the year and holidays are here! It’s time to reconcile and close what one started in this year and open accounts for the New Year. Startups are busy mulling how much they raised, how much they lost, who all they hired, who all they fired, how many customers they gained, how many they lost, how many times were their apps downloaded, how many times discarded! No matter how the year went by, the holidays always bring upon a spirit of cheer and a dash of hope for the coming year.
It is in this spirit that VC firm First Round Capital, which backs some of the hottest startups in the US such as Uber, has released its annual holiday video which gives startups a chance to participate in some year end fun! Now with the talks of the looming winter as far as fundings, bubbles, and firings are concerned in the Indian startup scene, we wish the video brings some cheer to Indian startups as well. After all the holidays are the time when startups can look back and say, “No matter what it was a good year, after all I still raised that series A!”
[The] year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instil in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
As the curtain closes on another exciting year, we at Inc42, like always, pause for a while to look back, contemplate, analyse, predict and come up with our series of year-end stories that would perfectly sum up the past year and offer near-perfect predictions for the next year (our predictive algorithm is top-notch).
We have neatly arranged the stories into three different buckets:
The Progress Reports
Last year, we came up with some pretty solid predictions for 2015 – the top startups and apps that will kick ass in 2015. It’s time to put our predictions to test and understand if these startups and apps really kicked ass or fell flat on their asses.
Here’s what we have for you:
How The Top 15 Apps Of 2014 Fared This Year
Did The 14 Picked Startups Of 2014 Actually Rock In 2015?
Growth Report (2014-2015) Of The Hottest Enterprise Startups Picked In 2014
Growth Report (2014-2015) Of The 7 Mobile-First Startups Picked In 2014
Growth Report (2014-2015) Of The Hottest Indian Hardware Startups Of 2014
The 2015 Review Articles
A flash back through 2015 to understand how the Indian startup ecosystem panned out over the past one year and showcase the key developments – the hits & misses, the highs & lows and pivots – in the form of concise listicles – all you need to know about the startup ecosystem in 2015. And yes, we also have the complete funding report of 2015 coming up.
Here’s what we have lined up for you:
The Complete List Of All The Startups Launched In 2015
Acquisitions Of The Year
Shutdowns Of The Year
Pivots Of The Year
2015 Startup Funding Report
2015 VC Funds Report
15 Startups Which Proved Their Mettle In 2015
10 Kickass Mobile-Only Startups Launched This Year
5 Startup News Makers Of 2015
10 Startups That Rocked Indian Startup Ecosystem This Year
Stories from the Oracle
These articles are the product of the state-of-the-art predictive algorithm, i.e our team. We have a proven track record and don’t shy away from putting our predictions to test – with our progress reports. This year too, we have a series of predictive listicles that will give you a sneak peek of 2016.
Here are our predictions:
10 Startups Launched In 2015 That Will Kickass In 2016
Top 2015 Indian Mobile Apps To Watch Out For 2016
Top 2015 Mobile-First Startups To Watch Out For 2016
And some more!
Stay tuned! These articles start rolling out from December 21, 2015. Need a reminder or a ping when a story comes out? Here you go!
Gurgaon-based on-demand grocery delivery startup, PepperTap has closed its Series B round of funding with additional $4 Mn from Innoven Capital, in addition to the $36 Mn raised recently from Snapdeal, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ru-Net, Beenext & JAFCO Asia.
This round takes total funding raised by PepperTap to around $51.2 Mn. Earlier in April, PepperTap had received $10 Mn Series A funding from SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital. Prior to that, it had raised seed funding from Sequoia in February.
Jiffstore Acquisition
The startup has also acquired Bangalore-based Jiffstore for an undisclosed amount in a cash and stock deal. The move will help PepperTap to tap into Jiffstore’s talent pool and rely on it for technical prowess. Jiffstore team will join Peppertap’s Gurgaon and Bangalore offices.
Highlighting the significance of this alliance, Navneet Singh, co-founder and CEO, PepperTap said, “We have been reaching out to companies who can help us better our product offerings and boost customer experience. In this respect, Jiffstore seemed like an apt choice – they are an established name in Bengaluru with loyal customers and an ever increasing dealer base. We hope to utilise their talent pool and seek tech support from them through this acquisition.”
PepperTap will not venture into the same business as Jiffstore. While Jiffstore collaborates directly with the merchants and fulfil orders and passes on the customers, PepperTap handles everything from taking orders to procuring supplies and making deliveries, themselves.
Brainchild of four founders, Shameel Abdulla, co-founder, CEO, Satish Basavaraj, co-founder, CXO, Aswin Ramachandran, Co-founder, COO and Sandeep Sreenath, co-founder, CTO, Jiffstore enables grocery shopping in just a few clicks/taps on the phone. With the help of its mobile app (available on iOS and Android), Jiffstore allows customers to virtually browse through listed items, place orders and choose to get the supplies at their doorstep from any of its 120 partner stores.
Talking about the acquisition, Shameel, said, “Our idea of transforming the grocery shopping experience found the perfect synergy with PepperTap. Jiffstore’s simple and effective platform has got retailers and customers hooked. By joining hands, we hope to deliver an exceptionally delightful experience to the customers on a wider scale and a rapid pace.”
Launched in 2013, Jiffstore has previously raised funding from Unitus Seed Fund, Times Internet, Nasib BR and Ramesh Sethuraman. The startup was incubated in Startup Village, Kochi and was also part of Times Internet’s startup accelerator, TLabs.
Launch Of Vendor App On PlayStore
With this, the startup has also introduced a vendor app that will soon go live on Playstore. The app, that’s in its pilot run, comes in two versions – one for organised retail chains and another for standalone vendors.
By logging into the vendor app, the business representative will be able to see a comprehensive picture of his performance on PepperTap. The minute month on month, week on week and day on day updates will enable him to understand the value of a well-stocked store by seeing the incremental loss in sales in the absence of a particular product(s).
A vendor will also be able to get insight into the top 100 best-selling products from his store across categories.
Navneet Singh, added, “The aim of the vendor app is to put the power in the hands of the vendor. When non-essentials are out of stock at a vendor store, we follow a process where these are automatically removed from the app. Now, however, when the vendor procures the products again, he/she will be able to make them available on the app with just a click of a button. The product list will be updated and the entry will start showing within the next half an hour. In case there is a change in the MRP, the vendor will be able to update that as well.”
In the case of retail chains, the business manager will have access to updates from stores of the entire chain whereas a store manager will be able to see the sales, progress and information pertaining to only the particular store he/she is in charge of. To enhance the functioning of the app, soon there will also be an inbuilt “contact us” button. This will mean that the call is directly connected to the store/vendor’s key account manager. The next step will aim at integrating this service with Whatsapp.
PepperTap kick started its operations in November, 2014 and since then it has expanded to 18 cities across India with an employee strength of 1200.
As 2016 is approaching, it’s time to look at all the action that happened in the Indian startup ecosystem. We flashbacked through 2015 to understand how the Indian startup ecosystem panned out over the past one year and showcase the key developments – the hits & misses, the highs & lows and pivots.
Pivots are not new. Flipkart started as a book retailer and then pivoted to ecommerce. Snapdeal started out as a deals platform, and then similarly joined the ecommerce bandwagon. Similar behaviour was exhibited by mKhoj, now InMobi. Another well known brand, Myntra, was earlier an online store for personalised apparel and accessories. It pivoted in 2010 to sell fashion brands, and the rest is history.
For some, pivot is perceived as a weapon to hide brand failure, for some to start afresh in a new way, for some to simply shed some load. Whatever may be the reason, pivots are never an easy process. Directions are changed, models are morphed, and most of the time, it is accompanied by layoffs. All these are done in the hope that the new model will prove more sustainable than the last one.
Venture capital firms and investors believe that instead of following the same model and waiting for demand to meet company’s vision, it is better to reform and cater to the present needs and monetise out of it. However painful, pivots have become an integral part of the startup ecosystem. After all it’s better to change and evolve than be stagnant and become irrelevant in today’s fast paced business environments.
As Arnold Bennett rightly states,
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Let us look at some such startups who have pivoted this year hoping to sustain in 2016. Will they or won’t they, is a story for the next year!
Funding: Seed funding of $600,000 from Matrix Partners.
Reason To Pivot: Frankly.me was started as a video micro-blogging celebrity Q&A platform, and later it pivoted to a more horizontal video social network. It is now focusing entirely on campus ambassador program and a new viral video format that allows people to create video memes. Thus, it laid off close to 30 employees – about 40% of its team last month, firing employees from non-technical profiles – primarily celebrity managers, business development execs and offline marketing and activation team.
Founders: Chetan Kulkarni, Gaurav Chindlur and Vikram Nayak,
Funding: Total funding amount of $27 Mn from Ascent Capital, Intel Capital, Nokia Growth Partners, Inventus Capital Partners and Ojas Venture Partners
Reason To Pivot: Vizury, started as a digital CRM company and later pivoted to adopt a data-based marketing model. Earlier this year,the company announced Vizury Engage, a data and marketing Platform and targeted collective efforts towards Engage to realise its vision of becoming the world’s first Performance Marketing Hub. Consequently some aspects of its retargeting business had to be transitioned, and so it laid off about 50 employees across three cities in India.
Funding: $270K from LetsVenture and Times Internet and $200K in an angel round of funding led by Rudy Gopalakrishnan of Fidelity and ah! Ventures.
Reason To Pivot: Bluegape which started as a Delhi-based fan merchandise & customisation platform company was shut down due to the copyright issues. Bluegape was earning INR 1 Cr monthly at the time of shutdown. Within few weeks of putting full stop to its ecommerce operations, Bluegape was relaunched as a content publishing platform. Bluegape later launched a platform where anyone can make collaborative listicles with visuals, and people can add to the lists, they are visioned to convert world’s knowledge in the form of lists of visuals. And these lists can further be embedded on other sites. Now, the company has launched a new app and rebranded itself to Murmur, as part of its mobile-first approach.
Reason To Pivot: Seventynine started out as a mobile ad network company. It later spun off the product into an in-app video ad platform. Seventynine’s product Appjacket is positioning itself as an independent technology platform for ad serving and mediation on a licensing based model. Seventynine’s technology allows app developers to create custom ad spots at App Start, App Exit or at Native in-app locations. With Seventynine, owner SVG Media is now targeting large App publishers who maintain their own sales teams, and are looking to enhance their inventory offerings.
Founders: Ankur Singla, Vishal Pal Chaudhary, Vishrut Chalsani
Funding: Earlier this year, Sequoia Capital invested $16 Mn in Series B round. It had previously raised $5 Mn in Series A round and was incubated by Morpheus Accelerator.
Reason To Pivot: Helpchat was previously known as Akosha that started as an online complaints redressal forum. In July, the company pivoted to a personal chat assistant platform, Helpchat, that helps users ask for any service over chat. Later in October, the company fired 100 employees, which contributed as over 70% of contracted employees and consultants in brand management, who work from home on monthly-payment basis.
The company’s founder clarified that the company tried to scale its call center and quality team who were employed for a different business model. However, only a few could qualify to fit in the new business model. However, looking at different side of the coin, a few employees stated that the main reason of firing was shortage of funds in the company. We still wait to see what result does this pivot bring to company.
Founders: Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal and Vaibhav Aggarwal
Funding: Backed by Swedish investment giant AB Kinnevik and Berlin-based Rocket Internet AG,
Reason To Pivot: FabFurnish.com started its operation as an online shopping destination for furniture and home ware with a diverse range of products, ideas to grace home and unmatched customer service. It has now redone its business model by evolving itself into a content-driven platform for discovery and sale of curated home products. It will now offer design inspirations for greater customer engagement through its new segment called FabFurnish.com. The pivot comes as it aims at positioning itself as an end-to-end home and interiors solution provider.
For this, FabFurnish has beefed-up its content, design, marketing and technology teams to engage with users through feature stories, curated brand shops and designer shops. It has also roped in category influencers and fostered collaborations with top interior designers through referral programmes, content partnerships and product listings. The company has also roped in interior designer, Aprajita Suri Davar and senior creative director Tanuj Ahuja.
Founders: Advitiya Sharma, Rahul Yadav, Abhishek Anand, Sanat Ghosh, Neeraj Bhunwa, Abhimanyu Dhamija and 6 others
Funding: Till date, the three-year old startup has raised $145 Mn from investors such as Falcon Edge, DST Global, Qualcomm, Helion and Nexus Venture Partners and is valued at around $347 Mn. In the last round, it raised $90 Mn from SoftBank Group.
Reason To Pivot: Started as a real estate portal, Housing.com is now restructuring and shifting its focus on its home-buying and selling segment. Towards this, it laid off 200 employees in November. This layoff is also meant to drive further efficiencies across the company. With this development, the company is now reorganising its teams to execute this new strategy. CEO, Jason Kothari had stated that Housing will now be laser focused on solving the pain points in home buying and selling.
This is part of our special series, In Focus: 2015 In Review, wherein, we look back, contemplate, analyse, predict and come up with our series of year-end stories that would perfectly sum up the past year and offer near-perfect predictions for the next year. Stay tuned for more.
As the curtain closes on another exciting year, we at Inc42, like always, pause for a while to look back, contemplate, analyse, predict and come up with our series of year-end stories that would perfectly sum up the past year and offer near-perfect predictions for the next year (our predictive algorithm is top-notch). This article is a part of this endeavour.
All through this year, we brought you all the piping hot news on the Indian startup ecosystem. This article brings you the people, brands and companies that created those news – the startup ecosystem newsmakers of 2015.
Rahul Yadav
The most talked about Housing.com’s ex-CEO Rahul Yadav has all the essentialities of being at the top as newsmaker in 2015. He left no stone unturned to brand himself as both ‘bad boy’ and ‘big-turner’ of the startup ecosystem. From passing derogatory comments on social media to finding a girlfriend, everything said/done by him made headlines in the mainstream and online media.
There was so much highlighted about his disputable popularity that he was also offered the position of a contestant in reality TV’s controversial show Bigg Boss.
The IIT Bombay dropout of metallurgical engineering, in his final year, had a tryst with entrepreneurship at the time of launching of Exambaba.com in college, that provided IIT -B’s previous years exam papers. However, it was only Housing.com that made him reach the zenith of early startup success. Controversies only followed when a mail sent by him to Shailendra Singh of Sequoia was made public.
This was followed by his comments on Magicbricks & Times Internet and then, the CEO of Infosys – Vishal Sikka, Ravi Gururaj and founders of Ola and Zomato. However, he got the lens zoomed at him, when he announced distributing his personal equity in Housing.com, worth INR 200 Cr. to its employees.
“I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get serious about money, etc,” said Yadav in an interview after being fired on the grounds of his behaviour towards investors, ecosystem and the media.
His dismissal from Housing.com CEO by the company’s board of directors, this July—made him accoladed with all the media heavy limelight. Soon after he was fired, Rahul Yadav announced his plans for starting a new venture which later garnered funding from star entrepreneurs like Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal and Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata needs no introduction. This year, the chairman emeritus of Tata Sons has been investing heavily in startups all across the globe. At a recent event, he even implored budding young entrepreneurs to think what they can for the country. Tata said, “Entrepreneurs create enterprises because they are attracted to create something that they believe in. In India, we need to create an environment that enables and supports people to risk their time and spend an important and sizeable amount of their lives to build the business they believe in.”
On an entrepreneurship fostering spree, he has been investing in his personal capacity in many emerging startups. Tata’s investment is seen as a hallmark of trust for the company invested in, and hence, provides a major boost to its credibility, as seen in the case of following startups: Snapdeal, Bluestone, UrbanLadder, CarDekho, Paytm, Xiaomi, Kaaryah, Lybrate, Ampere, Ola, Infinite Analytics, HolaChef, Abra, LetsVenture, YourStory, Sabse, Crayon Data and UrbanClap.
LiveMint, in an attempt to decode Tata’s investment, came to the conclusion that almost every startup that Ratan Tata has invested in over the past 18 months has seen a significant jump in valuations. Tata usually invest somewhere between INR 10 Lakh to INR 10 Crore.
Besides, Tata is also an advisory in couple of Venture Capital Firms including Kalaari Capital, Jungle Ventures and IDG Ventures.
Narendra Modi
PM Narendra Modi easily manages to be a news maker, but he is in this list because he has been seen as a big time supporter of startups and innovation, be it via his Make In India campaign or via his slogan Stand Up India Startup India. The popular “startup India, standup India’ slogan has reached every nook and corner of the country. While addressing the nation on the 69th Independence Day, he said, “We are looking at systems for enabling startups. We must be number one in startups… Startup India; Stand up India.”
The initiative is to encourage entrepreneurship among the youth of India. He even stated/asked that each of the 1.25 lakh bank branches should encourage at least one Dalit or tribal entrepreneur and at least one woman entrepreneur.
While he was at the Silicon Valley, the Mecca of finest startups, his interaction with the CEOs of biggies like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, apart from signing of seven MoUs between India and the US generated a wave of optimism in the industry. Winning the hearts of aspiring, and established entrepreneurs alike he said “When I shifted to Delhi last year, I thought of my government as a startup. So, I also saw some of the bumps you face on the road. I understand your challenges, but also the wonderful feeling of creating something new.” However, most impressed by the growing acknowledgement of startups by the government is the Youth, gladly so, after the PM said “India’s own ecosystem of startups is evolving rapidly. It is driven by the energy, enterprise and innovation of our youth. We have a huge market with rapid growth and untapped opportunities in every sector” However, the PM has time and again stressed for startups to be more active in aiding to solve India’s problems through social entrepreneurial ventures.
PM’s love for being in the limelight was made evident in a video clip where Modi apparently pulled aside Mark Zuckerberg so that the camera could capture them standing side-by-side with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. The video went viral on social media.
Deepinder Goyal
Forget a spoon, Deepinder served oodles of news on a platter to the byte-hungry media, all year round.
Here are a few ripples that the company and its founder created:
When the company ditched its heart logo and adopted the spoon, Tanmay Bhatt of AIB commented that it looked like a sperm. This spawned about 300 retweets and many hilarious tweets. Zomato finally retorted with a funny response “So glad we managed to sneak that by the censor board ;)”. Deepinder, during a Reddit AMA session, declared that the company will stick to its spook-logo and cheekily stated, “The sperm is what you get ;).
The company was in news for human resource reasons as well. It fired over 300 employees in one go to shift focus on transaction based business. Deepinder even blamed his sales team’s lacklustre performance for the company’s revenue crunch.
Zomato was blacklisted from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) placements over slotting issues. The blacklisting came after Deepinder vented his frustration on twitter after Zomato was denied a one-day slot. He stated, “Campus placements in India are broken. Placement cells optimise only for money. Growth, esops, quality of work is secondary.” He also tweeted: “A placement cell head told us that she doesn’t value esops. Couldn’t grasp that the esops we gave students last year are now worth >1crore.”
Zomato faced turmoil again when the company posted risque ads on porn sites to drive its late-night deliveries. However, after facing some criticism from the public, the campaign was scrapped.He commented that “People said we were ballsy for trying this at all, and that we broke new ground for doing this in a country where porn has long been a touchy topic. But there were a few things said that we simply couldn’t ignore. Some folks got offended by the campaign, felt the campaign was in poor taste, and it wasn’t something they expected from a brand of our standard. Some also said that all porn is not legal, and by advertising on porn websites, we are financially supporting abuse – certainly something we don’t want to do. Ever,”
If that wasn’t enough for the year, in an interview with Indian Express, Deepinder stated, “With reservations coming soon, we want to ensure that we are the first in the market.” Dineout, who have been into table reservations since long, trolled Deepinder in an open letter.
Post his four year stint as a consultant with Bain and Co., Goyal, a mathematics and computing graduate from IIT Delhi, started his entrepreneurial journey as co-founder of Foodiebay at the cafeteria of Bain and Co.
Foodiebay, in order to avoid any confusion with Ebay, later renamed it to Zomato, and the rest is history.
Yuvraj Singh
After guiding India to countless victories, one of the most dangerous hard-hitters of the cricketing world, Yuvraj Singh guided many startups to their financial victories with his venture, YouWeCan Ventures Technology Llp. He set up a INR 50 Cr. fund to invest in the startups in healthcare, travel, hospitality, real estate and media sectors.
The venture invests about INR 1 Cr – INR 1.5 Cr in a co-investment model for 12-15% stake in its portfolio companies. SportyBeans, Vyomo, Moovo, Healthians, Edu-Kart, JetSetGo, Black White Orange Brands and Cartisan are among his portfolio.
Raghav Bahl
Media Mogul Raghav Bahl was the founding/Controlling Shareholder & Managing Director of Network18 group until the takeover by Reliance group. This deal reportedly earned him a whopping $700 Mn.
Post his exit from the Network18 group, Raghav co-founded the cross-platform digital content venture, Quintillion Media, with his wife Ritu Kapur. However, this is old news.
This year, Quintillion Media went on an investment spree and invested in a number of companies. The company remained in the news for its investments:
Invested an undisclosed amount in TheNewsMinute.com this month.
Invested INR 4 crore (Rs 40 Mn) in YKA Media, the company that runs online news and views portal YouthKiAwaaz.
It also backed sheroes.in, a career community for women.
The company is currently working on a new digital news product, which is in the pipeline.
Dhiraj Rajaram, Mu Sigma
Move over Mukesh Ambani and Dilip Shangvi, Dhiraj Rajaram is catching up fast. This year, the 40-year old founder of Bangalore-based data analytics firm, Mu Sigma, turned out to be the Indian who registered the biggest gain in wealth over the past one year. His personal wealth grew over six-times, to INR 17,600 Cr. His ranking on the Hurun India Rich List rose from 127 to 38.
Dhiraj left the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to start the company with mere $200,000 in savings. Little did he know that today, he’ll be counted among the country’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and create India’s only Unicorn that has been profitable since its inception in 2004. Microsoft was its first client in 2005 and continues to do so. The company registered a revenue worth INR 684 Cr (38% growth from previous fiscal), raking in a profit of INR 380 Cr, in FY 14-15.
The company also plans a Nasdaq IPO in the next four years. It also plans to increase its annual sales to $1 Bn in the next five-seven years from the current $250 Mn.
Mu Sigma is the only Indian ‘Unicorn’ that has been profitable since inception. Rajaran’s stake makes him worth INR 17,800 Cr. and the richest Indian startup founder.
TinyOwl And Founders
Image Source: Medianama
Ever thought a company’s founder can also be held hostage?, Well this is what happened in Pune recently, where Gaurav Choudhary was held hostage for straight two days by “laid-off” employees in Pune. The TinyOwl saga doesn’t end here. It also includes absconding founders and jaded employees.
Setting an example of what all can go wrong in a promising startup, TinyOwl’s reputation hit a Major blow. Losing its nest and plot to a complete mess, it was just a 40 minute meeting in which company’s employees were told that company’s coffers were empty and they were excess to requirement. After being ensured of some immediate relief, only eight security guards showed up at the office. The directors were clearly absconding.
“No one came. We called the founders and their phones were switched off. We called their hotel and were told they had checked out. There is no one to tell us what to do next,” said a senior executive in a media excerpt. By the end of the day, TinyOwl was left struggling to deal with an angry group of employees. Founded in 2014 by IIT-Bombay graduates Mandad, Gaurav Choudhary, Saurabh Goyal, Shikhar Paliwal and Tanuj Khandelwal. It raised Rs 100 Cr from Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners in February this year, and another bridge round of Rs 50 crore from the same set of investors in October. TinyOwl is inclusive of big names like Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal as investors.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma And Paytm
Recently been in limelight for predicting a Jihad against Net neutrality, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the CEO of Paytm has generally been in news for good reasons. Headlines struck Vijay Shekhar Sharma bold when Paytm was invested upon by Ratan Tata personally.
March got more merrier for Sharma, who in the same month received a whooping investment from Chinese giant Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial Services Group.
Heavy Sponsorship agreements have further worked wonder for the company and the founders. Vijay also garnered headlines when he was awarded as the CEO of the Year by the prestigious SABRE Awards, organised by The Holmes Group, one of the most respected authorities on the business of public relations to be in the list of Economic Times ‘India’s Hottest Business Leader under 40’, Vijay has developed Paytm into a powerful brand with a formidable market reputation.
Vijay has spent his childhood in Aligarh, before taking admission at the Delhi College of Engineering, when he was just 15.
For Sharma, the triggers for shifting the base are twofold — on one hand Paytm is struggling to find great engineers in Delhi, and secondly, he wants his two and half year old son to grow in a more “middle class, grounded” environment.
Kunal Shah And Freecharge
From being a BPO employee to selling his company – FreeCharge to Snapdeal, at a whooping $400 Mn this year, Shah has a interesting journey so far.
‘Founder @FreeCharge, Serial entrepreneur, Traveler, Foodie, Tech enthusiast’ — as he describes himself on Twitter, Shah has also been a harbinger of patented technology.
Hailing from a business family, Kunal always knew he was destined to be an entrepreneur, but FreeCharge turned into something, he had never imagined. After studying Philosophy at Mumbai’s Wilson College, Kunal, an MBA dropout, started his career as a junior programmer at a startup. This is where Kunal met Sandeep Tandon, who not only invested in the company, but also became its co-founder.
FreeCharge was founded in 2010 as a mobile recharge and coupon firm where the customers get coupons worth the recharge amount; these coupons can be redeemed from the respective issuing merchants. Prima Facie, the business model still remains the same, but today, you can recharge your Metro card, pay electricity bill and even shop at Snapdeal from FreeCharge.
During a Reddit’s AMA session, his response to the question, “Why did he sell Freecharge?”, was brutally honest. He said that for a startup founder, it is very necessary to keep away the emotional attachment with their company. Giving examples, Kunal said that instead of treating their startups like their spouses, they should treat them as their kids, and let them watch them grow
“Our real competition is cash. We need to drive the shift from cash to cashless.”
Pranay Chulet, Quikr
One name that strikes immediately when someone talks of online classifieds is Quikr, and its owner Pranay Chulet has left no stone unturned to make his name reckon with the brand. Chulet’s Quikr now stands with an estimated valuation of $1.5 Bn.
Quikr has been actively entering new verticals such as automobile with QuikrCars, real estate with QuikrHomes and jobs with QuikrJobs. Recently, Quikr was all over the news over reportedly acquiring online real estate portal, CommonFloor in a stock-and-cash deal for $200 Mn. There have been numerous speculations about the same. Recently, the company, in an emailed response to our queries, stated that, “As part of our verticalisation strategy, we are strengthening our focus in our largest markets such as C-2-C, Cars, Real Estate, Jobs and Services. However, we cannot comment on market speculations at this stage.”
Quikr recently forayed into the entertainment industry after it signed an MOU with renowned film industry veterans such as filmmaker Vivek Bohra and casting director Aadore Mukherjee. As per the MOU, a joined entity will build a platform for actors, casting professionals, directors, producers and other segments to help meet the unique needs of India’s growing entertainment industry.
“I am an entrepreneur because I am a creator. All through my life, if there is one thread that’s common, it’s the thread of creating something.”
Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati And Ola
Ola has been in the news all through this year. From raising big bucks (details below) at growing valuations (the company is currently valued at around $5 Bn) to launching a slew of different offerings such as its ride sharing service called Ola Share in Delhi NCR to its Shuttle service called Ola Shuttle. The company also engaged in multiple partnerships to strengthen its business
Strategic partnership with China’s Didi Kuaidi, US-based Lyft and Malaysia’s GrabTaxi, which will allow passengers to book rides on any of these four services using just one app.
Partnership with customer-based chat services company, Haptik, which will allow users to book Ola cabs through instant messaging on the Haptik mobile app.
Partnership with MapMyIndia.
In terms of acquisition, the company acquired TaxiForSure for $200 Mn in March, Geotagg in November and a minority stake in Zipcash in November. Its also venturing into grocery delivery.
In terms of funding, last month Ola raised $500 Mn in its Series F funding round. Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, DST Global and Didi Kuaidi participated in this round of funding.
With the current round, Ola has closed over $1.3 Bn of external funding, of which over $1.2 Bn has been raised over the past year. In April 2015,Ola raised $400 Mn of funding led by DST Global in Series E and prior to that, $210 Mn from SoftBank Group as part of its Series D round in October 2014. Ola counts Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Accel Partners US and Falcon Edge also amongst its existing investors.
According to the company, it has grown by over 30 times in the last one year, now clocking over 1 million booking requests a day. It has over 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform. According to 7Park Data – a mobile app intelligence company – the weekly active users (WAU) of Ola, as a percentage of mobile device users in India (panel), was 8.93% as of October 2015 – whereas it was only 5.75% for Uber.
Its team grew from 3800 in January 2015 to over 7000 employees currently.
Sundar Pichai
When Chennai born Sundar Pichai graduated from IIT Kharagpur, little did he know that after 21 years, he would have branded India as a destination of producing the most qualified IT professionals. After being announced as Google CEO in August this year, Pichai was in India recently to talk about Google’s initiatives to improve internet access and connectivity for Indians. Pichai, who is touted as the most inspiring figure amidst Indian students and professionals alike, has recently announced slew of internet reforms.
More so, even after rising to the position of Google CEO, Pichai has been in news for constant positive interaction with Indian polity and policy. A blue eyed boy for PM Modi, Pichai appears to be a key flag bearer of Digital India ambitions of the Indian government. Pichai has already announced typing in 10 Indian languages, including Gujarati; apart from making Indian Railways available on Google maps. Lest to forget, the world’s largest public connectivity initiative by Google – to extend WiFi coverage across 500 railway stations all across India.
Apparently, Pichai’s career graph goes in sync with the popularity of products that he developed at Google. Before joining Google, Pichai worked as a consultant with McKinsey and Company, and is accredited with development of Google Chrome and Chrome OS, Google Drive, apps of Gmail and Google Maps. Roughly two years ago, it was Pichai who added Android as one the Google products, and later even became Senior Vice President of Android at Google, while heading Chrome simultaneously.
“You do need entrepreneurs to build things for India and globally. All the elements which you need are already here.”
Nikesh Arora
Former Google executive and now SoftBank’s COO and President, Nikesh Arora is the stalwart among the newsmakers of 2015. Today, the total worth of the 47 year business tycoon stands at an astonishing 70 billion dollars.
In August this year, mere announcement of Nikesh’s plan buy $483 Mn worth of SoftBank shares, made its stock climb up to 2.2 percent. Jitters were also felt when SoftBank announced an annual compensation of $135 Million to Nikesh, an amount unheard of in Japan, and much higher than what his contemporaries like Satya Nadella and Indira Nooyi have been receiving.
It was only in 2014, that he joined SoftBank to head its global Internet investments. 10 months later in June 2015, he was rewarded for helping SoftBank grow its international Internet investments, by being appointed its President and COO.
“Yes. He’s 10 years younger than me, and he has more abilities than me, he’s a ‘strong candidate’ to lead the company” said SoftBank’s founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, when asked about the candidacy of Arora in effectively leading SoftBank. Nikesh attributes his success to three important factors – luck, hard work and being able to adapt to any situation.
The risk-loving entrepreneur has had his career developed according to the risk he took both professionally and personally. An electronic engineer from the BHU, now IIT Varanasi, Nikesh started his career at Wipro – selling computers to the government.
He moved to the United States at the age of 21 and did his MBA from Northeastern University.
In an interview with a business daily, Nikesh talked about his several job rejections and how he survived with just $3000 given to him by his father. Arora began his career at Fidelity Investments in 1992 where he held top finance and technology management portfolios, and later became its vice president ( Finance). Post Fidelity, he undertook a journey to become the fourth most important person in Google, and highest grosser in terms of salary paid.
This is part of our special series, In Focus: 2015 In Review, wherein, we look back, contemplate, analyse, predict and come up with our series of year-end stories that would perfectly sum up the past year and offer near-perfect predictions for the next year. Stay tuned for more.
One of the most talked about startup celebrity, Rahul Yadav has now got yet another star investor. Yuvraj Singh, who started investing in startups this year via YouWeCan Ventures has invested undisclosed amount in Yadav’s new startup, Intelligent Interfaces.
Intelligent Interfaces will be used by various government departments, and will help them use internet and technology tools to save cost and expedite service delivery.
Speaking on the investment, Yuvraj Singh said, “Proud to back Rahul Yadav and Intelligent Interfaces (ii) in helping the Government govern 100x better with the help of technology.”
Flipkart founders, Sachin and Binny Bansal, Paytm founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma & Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma are also investors in Yadav’s new startup.
Housing.com’s ex-chief of staff, Azeem Zainulbhai, has joined Rahul in his new startup as co-founder.
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B9 Beverages, a Delhi-based craft beer company, today raised a $6 Mn round led by Sequoia with participation from a select set of super angels including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal from Snapdeal, Deepinder Goyal from Zomato, Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital, and Mayank Singhal from Temasek.
This is a first for a blue chip venture capital firm to invest in an alcoholic beverage brand in India. Traditionally, stringent government regulations and political intrusions have kept investors away from this sector in India. However, this homegrown beer brand has managed to be an exception and attract the attention of the Silicon Valley based VC firm as well as other tech entrepreneurs and investors.
The company has an on-premise “tap-first” launch strategy across bars and restaurants and offers two variants of its specialty craft beer, Bira Blonde and Bira White. Bira91 was launched in February 2015, and is today present across seven cities in India, growing at a 30% clip month on month. The company has an Uber-like City CEO model, and has already achieved 70% penetration across all its markets including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Goa, Pune and Chandigarh.
“Despite having never developed a taste for beer, I was fascinated by the unique flavors of Bira91. As I got to know the brand better, I discovered them to be a perfect blend of a great product backed by solid branding and a very smart go-to-market strategy. That is perhaps what led to Sequoia’s belief in Bira91.” said Mayank Singhal, an early stage investor in Bira91 who has also backed companies such as OS Labs, formerly FirsTouch, and Hugefly.
The company was founded by Ankur Jain, a beer enthusiast and serial entrepreneur who ran and sold a healthcare startup in New York before he returned to India to explore his love for all things beer. While his previous venture was being incubated in New York, he frequented Brooklyn Brewery and those visits created a big impression. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. The company’s top leadership team comprises of seasoned executives from within and outside the industry, including brands like Carlsberg and Sab-Miller.
Bira91 has undertaken significant efforts to understand the gaps in India’s beer market, including the absence of high quality specialty and craft beers at affordable price points. Having understood this gap, Bira91 worked with breweries in Belgium to address the gaps in the Indian market.
The brand is fuelled by tremendous word of mouth publicity (that’s how I got to know about it) as a result of its quirky brand positioning and has been able to go viral across all of Bira’s markets without spending a single dollar on traditional marketing efforts.
Based on its initial success, the company is looking to expand to a number of cities and become the largest specialty beer brand in India with plans of setting up production facilities across the country.
The year 2015 reported $9 Bn of total investment in startups, making India the fourth-largest base for young businesses in the world. With over 3000 technology startups, mostly based in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Pune, India is expected to be the largest startup market with over 11,500 startups by 2020.
In its endeavor to connect startups with a global pool of mentors, investors, collaborators and business leaders, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) is organising TiECON Mumbai 2016 themed on Transformation Lead By Disruption.
TiECON is held in over 15 cities globally and it is regarded as one of the world’s largest entrepreneurial forum. TiECON Mumbai 2016 will be a melting pot of entrepreneurs, mentors, investors and businesses from across the globe – bringing together the complete entrepreneurial ecosystem. It seeks to be a point of convergence for entrepreneurs around the world who have set the ball rolling for a change with their disruptive business models and transforming the way business is conducted.
At the same time, it will be a platform for all aspiring entrepreneurs to turn their bright “startup ideas” into reality by connecting them with a global pool of mentors, investors, collaborators, business leaders, etc.
We caught up with Dhanpal Jhaveri, President – TIE Mumbai chapter and Managing Partner – Private Equity at Everstone, an India and Southeast Asia focused private equity and real estate investor with approximately $3 Bn of assets under management to know more about TiECON Mumbai and the current startup investing scenario is India.
Here are the edited excerpts:
Inc42: What is the reason behind choosing the theme of ‘Transformation’ this year?
Dhanpal: ‘TiECON 2016’ focuses on the core theme of ‘Transformation’ because India is at the cusp of a phase of rapid change and a palpable effect of this change has been on businesses – old and new. There is a collective effort on improving our ranking from the current 130th among 189 countries in the scale of ease of doing business. The push for ‘Make in India’ is translating into creating a conducive environment for startups. Almost everyday we see new disruptions being brought about and new rules being set, and this has been the case across all the sectors – Technology, Media, Entertainment, BFSI, Retail, Healthcare, Investors, Government, Travel and Hospitality, Social entrepreneurship, etc.
Inc42: How will the plenary sessions of the conference pan out?
Dhanpal: There will be various sessions during the conference that have been designed to bring out transformation game plans, new models, balancing acts, technology disruptions for the future. And also those are being developed, besides showcasing new concepts and ideas, looking at some of the social impacts of disruptions and deliberating on possible inclusive disruption models. The concept will be dealt across various verticals such as – Technology, Media, Entertainment, BFSI, Retail, Healthcare, Investors, Government, Travel and Hospitality etc.
Inc42: What kind of turnout do you expect this year?
Dhanpal: TieCon 2016 will be attended by 1500 delegates, ranging from top CXOs, entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and policymakers from India and abroad. Our key speakers will be Ratan Tata – Chairman Emeritus Tata Sons, Harsh Mariwala – Chairman Marico Industries, Ronnie Screwvala – Founder Unilazer Ventures , Ritesh Agarwal – Founder & CEO – OYO Rooms, Kunal Shah – Founder Freecharge and Kunal Bahl – Founder Snapdeal.
Inc42: Tell us about some of the highpoints about TieCon 2016 that you are expecting?
Dhanpal: Firstly, it’s the general gathering that makes the conference stand out. It will be a window to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem for our startups. Out of the 200 curated startups, five most innovative ones will pitch their ideas to a global panel of investors. They will be sponsored to visit TiECON Silicon Valley to meet key ecosystem partners.
We also expect our specially designed workshops on Fair Valuation, How to pitch, Women Entrepreneurs and IOT to be a big hit among participants.
Inc42: Private equity investments in the country witnessed a record high of $20 Bn in 2015. What would be the scenario like in 2016?
Dhanpal: 2016 is likely to continue the trend of PE investments, albeit at a much more measured pace. India is emerging as the fastest growing economy in the world and the 3 Ds – democracy, demography and demand will drive further investments into India.
Inc42: Do you agree with Nikesh Arora’s view that startup valuations have jumped far ahead of what they should be? Do you think angel investors, VC and PE firms are holding their horses before making big bets on startups?
Dhanpal: Startup valuations is even more imperfect science (as against valuing established growth businesses) as in most cases, the business and revenue model is not established. In addition, there was a ‘being left out’ syndrome which afflicted the market and investors were rushing in to deploy capital leading to a rapid inflation in valuations.
With reality not keeping pace with investor expectations, we have seen a rapid deflation in valuations, and to a certain extent a ‘flight to quality’ where fewer and better performing startups are receiving capital. There’s also an emerging trend of industry consolidation with markets leaders consolidating markets share through acquisitions or backing new startups to accelerate their moves into new adjacencies.
Inc42: An increased number of private equity players have started investing in startups. However, there is a general consensus that PE funds and entrepreneurship don’t go hand-in-hand; startups generally prefer VC funds. Do you agree with this? What are the merits of choosing PE funds for startups?
Dhanpal: I do not subscribe to the thought that PE funds and entrepreneurs don’t go hand-in- hand. It’s a question of what each investor brings to the partnership other than capital. VC firms have a better understanding and appreciation of the unstructured (somewhat chaotic) environment in which startups operate. However, once the business model is established and revenue streams are clear, PEs have a better understanding and experience with how to manage the complexities of fast growing businesses including managing organisation change, attracting talent, etc. Each investor has specific capabilities and it’s important for the entrepreneurs and investors to be aligned with strategy and execution.
TiE, a non-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals, was started in 1992 to foster entrepreneurship and nurture entrepreneurs. Presently, it has over 13,000 members across 18 countries.
Prior to joining Everstone, Dhanpal has held the senior leadership positions with Future Capital Holdings and Vedanta Resources, Head of Investment Banking at ICICI Securities, and as a Partner at KPMG. Dhanpal holds a degree in Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai and an MBA from Babson College, Graduate School of Business, United States.
On August 15, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message of “Start-up India, Stand Up India” was loud and clear from the ramparts of the Red Fort, and still echoes in the Indian startup ecosystem. After a long hiatus, on January 16, 2016 at Vigyan Bhawan, Modi aims to act upon his message by unveiling the full action-plan of ‘Start-up India Stand Up India’ in an event. The event will see the participation of all major higher educational institutions online.
“On August 15, I had made an initial mention of ‘Start-Up India Stand Up India’. After that it has been discussed in all government departments. Can India become the start-up capital of the world? On January 16, the government will launch the full action-plan of ‘Start-up India Stand Up India’. I will come before you to discuss this in detail and would welcome your suggestions. I would request the state governments as well to take this forward,” said Modi in his Mann ki Baat programme on All India Radio, in December 2015.
In his 20-minute address, Modi said the government would design the programme according to the needs of the country. He also stressed that it was wrong to assume that talented people were not limited to cities alone and that’s why the ‘Start-up India, Stand-up India’ should not be limited to only some cities but spread across every nook and corner of the country. Towards this, he also urged the states also to push this campaign, full details of which will be unveiled on 16 January.
The event will be attended by more than 1500 people, where Modi will be announcing the startup Action Plan. Global leaders, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists including Masayoshi Son (Founder and CEO, SoftBank), Travis Kalanick (Founder, Uber) will be special guests.
The who’s who of the Indian startup ecosystem are making a beeline for the event. Are you interested in being a part of this significant event? Inc42 is giving away ten passes.
Interested startups can apply here. Applications closes tomorrow (6th January) at 3 PM and the winners will be announced by 12 PM (7th January). So #StartupIndia, stand up and apply!
Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has raised an undisclosed amount in an funding round led by Ratan Tata.
Tracxn was founded in 2013 by Accel alumni Abhishek Goyal and Neha Singh, who was an analyst at Sequoia. Working like Bloomberg + Gartner for startups, Tracxn helps VCs and private companies, looking for good startups to invest in, by providing a database covering over 20 Mn companies. It provides information on startups across 100 sectors to over 6,000 clients across India, the US, the Middle East, South-East Asia and Europe.
“We learnt the importance of Trust in business from his stories. Now we get a chance to learn from him directly,” said Abhishek Goyal.
According to the company, in 2015, its subscription ARR (annualized recurring revenue) grew by almost 10x as compared to 2014 and its team has grownfrom over 25 team members in 2014 to over 250 in 2015.
Earlier in June 2015, the company had raised a funding round from Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal alongwith a few other angels also participating for launching its incubator called TracxnLabs. Prior to that, in April, it had raised $3.5 Mn from SAIF Partners.
The startup also has a fundraising platform called Tracxn Syndicate which help budding entrepreneurs accelerate. A few startups that have raised raised funding from Tracxn Syndicate include Tavaga, Klozee, Parcelled and Stayglad.
Crowdfunding platform, Ketto has won the Wharton India Startup Competition, held yesterday in Mumbai. The startup received $30K as prize money alongwith 150 hours of legal advice from Khaitan and Co.
Ketto will also get an opportunity to pitch at the annual conference to be held in Philadelphia, USA planned for March 25, 2016.
Founded in 2012 by Varun Sheth, Kunal Kapoor and Zaheer Adenwala Ketto is said to be the Asia’s largest crowdfunding platform for social, personal and creative projects, according to crowdsurfer.com. It helps non-profit organizations to raise funds for supported and listed causes.
Ketto has raised over $700k in funding led by Pradyumna Dalmia, deal champion of Calcutta Angels and Sudhir Rao, deal champion of The Chennai Angels, co-founder of IndusAge Partners and others in July, 2015.
To mark its 20th anniversary Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF), a student-run India-focused conference hosted its annual conference for the first time in India. WIEF was started by a Wharton school MBA student, Venkat Badinehal, 20 years back with an aim to connect the western world to India’s business potential and facilitate tie-ups.
The top ten startups that pitched during the event were shortlisted from 750 applications on the basis of having a product or service for the Indian market, both for profit and social ventures.
Apart from Ketto, Kheyti, an agri-tech startup, received the People choice award with $5K as Prize money and Trebene, a startup founded by Bushera Bashir – won the Powerhouse award of $15K. Pratilipi, Amazon’s kindle Direct Publishing for Indian languages, won the powerhouse award of $25K.
The pitches were judged by Kirthiga Reddy – Managing Director, Facebook India, Sasha Mirchandani – Founder and Managing Director, KAE Capital, Ravi Gururaj from Nasscom, Sandeep Murthy – Partner, Lightbox Ventures, Pravan Malhotra – venture capital investor, International Finance Corporation, Rajan Mehra – Co-Founder and Managing Director, Nirvana Venture Advisors and Sri Peddu – Founder and Managing Director, Powerhouse Ventures.
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The world’s largest video streaming company Netflix has finally launched in India, with plans starting from INR 500.
Netflix will be offering three plans, which includes – Basic, Standard and Premium, priced at INR 500, INR 650 and INR 800 per month respectively.
The company made the announcement and the service went live in over 130 new countries during a keynote by Co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings at CES 2016 today.
“Today you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network,” said Hastings. “With this launch, consumers around the world — from Singapore to St. Petersburg, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo — will be able to enjoy TV shows and movies simultaneously — no more waiting. With the help of the Internet, we are putting power in consumers’ hands to watch whenever, wherever and on whatever device.”
For one month price, members around the world will be able to get access to Netflix original series including Marvel’s Daredevil and Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Narcos, Sense8, Grace and Frankie, and Marco Polo, as well as a catalog of licensed TV shows and movies. In 2016, the company plans to release 31 new and returning original series, two dozen original feature films and documentaries, a wide range of stand-up comedy specials and 30 original kids series — available at the same time to members everywhere.
With this, the company has also added Arabic, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese to the 17 languages it already supports
Since Netflix launched its streaming service in 2007, the service has expanded globally, first to Canada, then to Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan to include 60 countries. It has over 70 Mn members in over 190 countries.
In India, Netflix will compete with Hooq, Hotstar, Ogle, Big Flix, Ditto TV and Spuul among others.
After making headlines for months, Quikr, today, finally acquired Commonfloor to merge it with its real estate vertical QuikrHomes. This is Quikr’s fourth and the biggest strategic move in the real estate category since the launch of QuikrHomes about four months ago.
The merger, which is expected to be completed over the next two to three months, will give CommonFloor.com access to Quikr’s 30 Mn consumers and harness the potential of the cross category nature of the platform, while QuikrHomes will benefit from CommonFloor’s structured data and domain expertise.
Given that the two companies have the same technology stack, the CommonFloor.com team will have expanded scope across Quikr’s four other verticals in order to further accelerate its growth.
In an email with a subject – “This new year, we’ve got Bigger & Quicker” forwarded to all his employees, Sumit, Jain, Founder, Commonfloor – highlighted and clarified what will be the immediate impact of the merger and how will the two entities will operate.
Here is the snapshot of the mail:
Commonfloor was launched in 2007 by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani; and counts Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Google Capital as investors.
Online travel company, MakeMyTrip, has announced that China’s Ctrip.com International, Ltd., a leading travel service provider has invested about $180 Mn in MakeMyTrip through convertible bonds.
In addition, MakeMyTrip has granted Ctrip permission to acquire MakeMyTrip shares in the open market, so that combined with shares convertible under the convertible bonds, Ctrip may beneficially own up to 26.6% of MakeMyTrip’s outstanding shares. As per the terms of the deal, Ctrip will acquire the right to appoint a director to the MakeMyTrip board of directors.
The company will focus on further strengthening its leading market share in the Indian online travel market by offering customers the best mobile booking experience across its full service travel products platform.
Ctrip CEO and Co-Founder, James Liang commented, “Today’s announcement marks the beginning of the strategic relationship between Ctrip and MakeMyTrip. Through this transaction, Ctrip has now gained exposure to India’s fast growing online travel market.”
Morgan Stanley acted as the exclusive financial advisor to MakeMyTrip while Latham & Watkins LLP served as the legal advisor to MakeMyTrip on this transaction.
Founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip is India’s leading online travel company created to empower Indian traveller with instant booking and comprehensive choice. Beginning its journey from US-India travel market, the company followed its success in the US by launching its India operations in 2005. Over time, the website has evolved into a full-service portal extending its offerings to online hotel-reservations, holiday-package bookings, and rail & bus ticket bookings.
MakeMyTrip’s Investments & Acquisitions So Far:
February 2011: Acquired 79% stake in Singapore-based Luxury Tours & Travel Pte Limited (LTT) for around $3 Mn.
August 2011: Acquired majority stake of 76.6% for $18.5 Mn in online travel meta search engine iXigo along with SAIF Partners
November 2011: Acquired Delhi based MyGuestHouse
November 2012: Acquired majority stake in Thailand-based hotels aggregator ITC Group for $3.2 Mn. Also acquired South East Asia-focused Hotel Travel Group for $25 Mn.
February 2014: Acquired entire equity interest in EasyToBook.com for around $5 Mn to strengthen its travel technology stack and improve its hotel offerings in Europe.
September 2014: MakeMytrip launched an $15-Mn innovation fund to invest in startups working in travel-related technology.
May 2015: Acquired 18% stake Inspirock Inc which is an online planning tool for developing customizable itineraries. The deal was made by the company’s Innovation Fund.
July 2015: Partnered with travel and holiday information portal, HolidayIQ and invested $15 Mn.
Other operating in this space include – Cleartrip, GoIbibo, Yatra.
MakeMyTrip reported revenue of $62.5 Mn in the quarter ended September 30, 2015, an increase of 3.2% (an increase of 12.1% in constant currency) over revenue of $60.5 Mn in the quarter ended September 30, 2014.
Ctrip joins other leading Chinese conglomerates who have been investing in Indian startups i.e. Alibaba and Tencent. Recently, China-based Didi Kuaidi, a cab-hailing startup has invested in Ola.
Bangalore-based artificial intelligence startup Snapshopr has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from top technology executives. The funding was lead by Amod Malviya, former CTO, Flipkart and saw participation from other angel investors including Pallav Nadhani, Apurva Dalal, Saran Chatterjee, Rahul Chari, Bikash Barai and Bragadish Sureshkumar.
With this funding, startup plans to double down on product innovation and continue to build out visual intelligence platform for online retailers. Earlier, the firm had announced its first investment from Amod Malviya as part of its ongoing round in September last year.
Founded by Navneet Sharma, Debashish Pattnaik and Vivek Gandhi in September 2014, Snapshopr helps its customers improve the search and discovery experience of their users using its visual search and recognition products as part of its cloud-based visual intelligence platform. Instead of using text to describe visually rich categories of items like fashion and home decor, the end users of its visual search solution can simply use images taken from their camera or uploaded from their devices for search based on visual content of the image.
“The role of AI in solving day-to-day issues is often underestimated by companies. I liked the fact that Snapshopr goes about solving these day-to-day problems that matter, instead of confining themselves to labs alone. They bring immediate value to companies, thanks to their specialised AI talent,” says Amod Malviya, ex-CTO, Flipkart.
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Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Entrepreneurs..? Well they are from another galaxy altogether! And that’s exactly why the 24 hours of a day in earth’s time is always short for all that they want to do. That’s exactly why they never have enough time for a five minute lunch, their phones are always busy, and the only numbers they remember are their valuations and funds raised in the last round.
So when you mention the word “relationship” or “dating” to an entrepreneur, don’t be surprised if he/she gives you this look:
Poor maverick! The only long committed relationship that an entrepreneur knows is the one he/she has with his Macbook or iPhone! And for them relationship/dating is replaced by networking and speaking at events. After all he/she is not your typical person who eats, breathes and sleeps his/her startup 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And that’s exactly why he/she needs help with starting every other thing in his life including relationships.
Hence the dating app TrulyMadly in its latest event ‘Speed dating for Startups’ brings a marvellous opportunity to startup founders, so that in addition to finding their passion in the business world, they can also find the one partner who can share their passion in real life! The dating app is organizing a speed dating event for startups in Delhi this Sunday to enable these lost souls hit upon that one partner who will be more exciting than their current valuation!
This one-of-a-kind speed dating event for startup founders and employees will witness 10 mini-dates with participation from 20 singles (10 girls meeting 10 guys) and provide them with an opportunity of finding like-minded partners. Being innovative and quirky will be the key for guys, as they only get 7 minutes to make a favourable impression on every girl they interact with.
After each mini-date, the participants would express their interest in meeting other person through a scorecard and within 48 hours, TrulyMadly would send the contact details of matches across.
And with luck, who knows one of those Very Cool girls/guys might actually consider investing in you! So if you are in Delhi this weekend, prepare your winning pitch, get out those clothes you normally don’t wear ( and not the rumpled ones you wear to office), prepare to talk about something else besides startups and investors ( we know it’s difficult but still), do not carry your laptops please( it’s just one evening!), and be on time for once ( remember this could be a life changing pitch).
LetsVenture has launched its much coveted angel summit, LetsIgnite 2016. It will act as a platform for startups to connect with angel ecosystem and raise funds.
The startups will get a chance to raise $250K to $1.5 Mn from over 250 angels and 25+ VCs. Startup with a prototype ready and looking to raise funds between $200K to $1.5 Mn can apply for the event.
Selection Criteria
The startups will undergo three rounds before the final winners will be announced:
Round 1 will include dividing the applications into three sections viz startup information, team information and funding information. Based on curation by the LetsVenture team 300 startups would be selected. The criteria for the selection would be the idea, the business model, team execution capabilities and the industry domain.
Round 2 will have startups curated from the Round 1, who will be mentored to pitch for next stage. There will be around 100 startups who will pitch to lead investors. The startups will be invited to send their investor deck, financial projections and cap-table. Startups will be connected to a Mentor to pitch for the next stage. The criteria for the selection would be based on parameters like market, differentiators, product, traction, execution (team), risk and financials.
Round 3 final 20 startups, who will be selected from Round 2 based the angel investors/mentors feedback will be invited to LetsIgnite to pitch in front of 250+ investors for fundraising.
What Will Startups Get?
Startups will get a chance to raise angel funding
Top 300 Startups will get valuable feedback from a panel of experts
The event will have eminent speakers like Nandan Nilekani, Indian entrepreneur, bureaucrat and politician; Kunal Bahl, founder Snapdeal; Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO at Capillary Technologies Naveen Tewari, founder & CEO InMobi; and Shanti Mohan, founder of LetsVenture.
LetsVenture is an online platform that acts as a bridge between startups and investors and also facilitates angel and seed investments. Founded by Shanti Mohan and Sanjay Jha in 2013, LetsIgnite witnessed 180+ Investors, 30 Angel Curated Startups, 25+ VCs and 50+ Speakers, last year.
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