Delhi-based mobile pharmacy chain CareOnGo raises pre-Series A funding
By Himansu
Delhi-based mobile pharmacy chain CareOnGo, on Wednesday, announced
raising an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A funding. The round was
led by Farooq Oomerbhoy of FAO Ventures, followed by Anupam Mittal and
Anand Mittal of People Group; Ravi Garikipati, Head of Flipkart’s Ads
Business; Vibhu Garg, Co-Founder of Unicommerce, along with Singapore
Angel Network and Konglo Ventures, among others. The founders of CareOnGo
Founded in August 2015, by IIT-IIM alumni Aditya Kandoi, Ritu Singh
and Yogesh Agarwal, CareOnGo claims to be India’s first mobile chain of
co-branded pharmacy stores. Through its co-branded network of pharmacies
across eight cities, the firm helps pharmacies procure, manage and sell
through technology.
CareOnGo, with its B2B ERP and analytics solution, also enables bulk
procurement for these co-branded pharmacies, provides an analytics
platform, ‘Pharmalytics,’ giving sales and inventory insights, while
enabling automatic customer profiling by capturing localised data of
supply and demand.
The company claims to have grown by 200 percent since inception.
CareOnGo’s customer app is adding 25,000 chronic patients every month
onto the platform. The funding announcement comes exactly two months
after the company raised its seed round of $300,000.
Yogesh mentioned that the funds raised will be invested in research
and further development of technology offerings, with special focus on
analytics product. The company plans to further expand its B2B offerings
deeper into the pharmacies by providing seamless analytics, advance
Point-of-sale (PoS) solutions and aggregating micro-pharmacies in India
under a single umbrella of co-branding.
On the Android Play Store, CareOnGo has reached 50,000 downloads,
while planning to quickly ramp up its co-branded stores to over 150
across metro cities of Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad. In the
coming year, the firm also plans to expand its footprint to Mumbai,
Chennai and 11 other cities.
Farooq, who had also invested in the seed round, said that CareOnGo
has helped its partner pharmacies to grow their topline by 20-30
percent. He believes that the company aims to disrupt the pharmaceutical
sales chain by bringing about a seamless integration for the
micro-pharmacies, from procurement to sale of medicines, with an added
layer of deep analytics. The other side The team at CareOnGo
The retail pharmacy and wellness segment seems to be a huge, untapped
market. Various players are already functioning in this space of
preventive and wellness cure, including names like 1mgAyush.com,
Healthkart, BigChemist, Healthgenie, Healthadda, mChemist and Deemark.
This April, CareOnGo’s competitor- digital healthcare platform 1mg
raised Rs 100 crore in Series B funding led by Maverick Capital
Ventures. The past couple of months have seen more online pharmacy and e-pharmacy startups getting funded. Some of them include NetMeds, which raised $50 million from OrbiMed, mChemist, started by the ex-president of Ranbaxy, Medd, DeliMedi, and MediDali.
Further, data from IMS states that the retail pharmacy pie is
expected to cross $11.5 billion by the end of 2015, growing at a rate of
20 percent year-on-year.
However, the online pharmacies are believed to be facing strong
resistance from All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists
(AIOCD), which called for a nationwide strike last year, calling the
sale of medicines online was illegal. Additionally, prescription
verification is tricky. In several cases, people produce fake
prescriptions, which, unfortunately, aren’t difficult to create. Website: www.careongo.com
How this duo from Trichy beat all odds to build a
Rs 4- crore bootstrapped company in four years
By Himansu
It is never an easy task to walk away from a secure job that pays
well, especially when you have your family depending on you. But when
the calling to start up came for Tiruchirappalli-born George Christopher and Suresh Kumar G, they quit their jobs at Cisco,
forgoing a salary of Rs two lakhs per month, turned down offers of the
coveted H1 visa and became entrepreneurs. With George having a
three-month-old baby and Suresh and his wife expecting their second
child, one could imagine how hard that decision would have been. George Christopher and Suresh Kumar G
The duo started an app development company MacAppStudio in 2012 in
Chennai and have, so far, created 120 apps for various platforms,
including iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OSX. The apps have seen three
million downloads with four lakh daily users.
Some of the apps they created include MoneyBag (manages day-to-day
finances), TasksBox (helps manage daily tasks), Declutter (helps create
smart folders based on file names) and Wishjar (to write down your
wishes in a beautiful interface).
They have won many accolades in the past, including the Intel
BlackBelts Award and three Intel developers app challenges in 2010 and
2011, with a reward of cash money of $100,000. Even Intel requested them
to create an app store inside Google Play to showcase apps optimised
for their X86 processor.
The duo have worked with 30 clients (including Fortune
10 companies) since August 2014. Suresh says that betting on their
world-class design and development, they charge 10 to 20 times higher
than their peers.
Was it that easy?
While the duo were celebrating their apps making it to the top of the
charts on the Mac App Store, the revenue growth was unsustainable as
they lacked effective marketing campaign.
However, instead of searching for an investor, we
focussed more on creating a great product,” says Suresh (34) who is a
BTech from Mookambigai College of Engineering, Tiruchirappalli.
For the first two years, the duo went solo, and hired no one else.
They even developed products in 1 mbps Internet speed with poor voltage
fluctuation.
Today, the duo owns three ventures MacApp Studio, BlueInnovations and
RocketXLabs. BlueInnovations (launched in 2012) is into RealSense,
two-in-one devices and X86 for Android. RocketXLabs (January 2016) is an
IoT (Internet of Things) laboratory creating products and services in
the IoT platform.
A simple development process
On receiving requirements, MacAppStudio finalises the design and
creates the first version of the app. Then it continues with successive
iterations incorporating the feedback of the consumers, complete
integration testing, and submit the app for validation. MacAppStudio Team
“We keep adding the other remaining features one by one to the app.
This helps customers get a clear visibility of how the app gets
developed, and hence avoids any sudden surprises at a later stage during
the final delivery,” says George (35), who did engineering at PSG
College of Technology, Coimbatore.
The duo follow a framework-based development model, where they reuse
pre-built components to build apps, thereby reducing the development
process time. The Chennai-based startup currently has 42 employees.
Growth rate
Last year, MacAppStudio witnessed a revenue of Rs 4 crore, with
year-on-year growth of 141 percent, and is targeting Rs 16 crore in
2016. The startup also hopes to have 10 million users by the year end.
It is currently working on an online integrated school management
system, Happy School, to enhance communication and collaboration between
parents, teachers, students and school administrators. It has also
launched a next-generation learning tool called MySchoolTab, an
educational tablet comprising books, apps and games specifically
customised for the school syllabus.
A glimpse into the mobile app development market
According to an industry estimate, Internet users are expected to
reach 462 million by June 2016, with revenue from paid apps in India
estimated to reach $317.6 million. India is all set to become the
largest base of mobile app developers by 2017, according to a report by
Deloitte.
OpenXcell, Sourcebits, Konstant Infosolutions, TechAhead, QBurst are some of the mobile app development companies in India.
“Of the 60 percent of development studios we interviewed, nearly 65
percent of them confessed that mobile brings them more than 50 per cent
of their revenue. The startup segment contributes to over 50 percent of
the demand for app development,” says Ashwin Ramasamy, Founder of
ContractIQ, a marketplace that connects real enterprises and startups
with app developers that build real products.
THE STORY OF FAMOUS ENTREPRENEUR AND THE GOD OF RELIANCE INDUSTRIESDHIRUBHAI AMBANI
Fiery
instinct, futuristic outlook, indomitable will, and a burning passion
was all that Dhirubhai Ambani had when he set out to work his way for a
living in the lanes of Bombay, way back in 1958. From being a spice
dealer to a cloth merchant to a textile producer, it was his overarching
ambition, inexhaustible energy and never-say-die spirit that led him
through all the obstacles to emerge as the business tycoon of India. He
established and laid the foundation for Reliance Industries, which has
become one of the largest conglomerates of India today. It was through
his futuristic vision and strong business acumen that Reliance
Industries created history in the Indian industry, a legacy that would
serve as an inspiration for generations to come! Dhirubhai Ambani’s life
is surely the rags to riches story, as he took one step at a time to
become one of the industrial giants of the country. Fuelled by an aim to
‘Think Big, Think Differently, Think Fast and Think Ahead’ his
capacities in the entrepreneurial sector were in stark contrast with his
competitors, as he promised his dealers a deal that was revolutionary,
‘profit we share, losses are mine’. It was through his zeal, bonhomie
and invincible spirit of conquering the universe that he transformed his
men from clay into steel and helped them attain the pinnacle of
success. For more on his life and profile, read on.
Childhood & Early Life
Dihrubhai
Ambani was born in a Modh baniya family to Hirachand Govardhandas
Ambani and Jamanaben in the village of Chorwad in the district of
Junagarh. His father was employed as a school teacher while his mother
was a homemaker.
Raised
in frugal living conditions, right from an early age, he was aware of
the insufficiencies that the family dealt with due to the meagre income
of his father and large expenses.
While
at school at Junagarh, he was elected as the General Secretary of the
Junagarh State Union. He organized a rally on Indian Independence Day,
defying the rules of the Nawab, head of the state.
Next,
he became a part of the Praja Mandal Movement that organized rallies to
bring about constitutional reforms in the state. The result was the
fleeing of the Nawab to Pakistan and Junagarh being a part of the Indian
Union. It was his passion and active political involvement that brought
him to the notice of political leaders.
In
1949, a new Socialist party emerged from the Congress of which he found
himself a part of. For the upcoming municipal elections in Junagarh, he
started campaigning for his favourite candidates, which eventually
resulted in their victory. Though he was offered a place in the Party,
he declined the offer to walk on road of his true calling.
Leaving
aside his political pursuits, he concentrated on academics and gave his
matriculation exams. However, due to the ill health of his father and
impoverished living condition of the family, he had to give up on his
education and take up a job offered in Aden
Career
At
Aden, he took up a clerical job at A. Besse & Co, the largest
transcontinental trading firm east of Suez. The company dealt with
trading all sorts of goods to European, American, African and Asian
companies.
Curious
to learn the tricks of the trade, he soon started working
simultaneously for a Gujarati trading firm. It was there that he learnt
accounting, book keeping and preparing shipping papers and documents. He
also acquired the skill of dealing with banks and insurance companies.
Soon
he took to speculative trading, in all sorts of goods and made
profitable deals, a fact which made his competitors think of him having a
knack for trade. He was then promoted to the oil filling station at the
newly built harbour. It was therein that thoughts of building a
refinery first shaped his dream.
Meanwhile,
Yemeni movement for independence curtailed opportunities for Indians
living in Aden. Thus, he moved back to India in 1958 and started
exploring business opportunities in Bombay.
Since
he could not make large investments, he settled as a spice trader under
the name Reliance Commercial Corporations. He soon started trading
spices, sugar, jaggery, betel nuts and such to Gulf Emirates. He focused
on low profits, high volumes and rich quality.
Not
the one to be contented easily, he soon shifted focus to yarn trading,
which though had high levels of risks involved, promised richer
dividends as well. Starting on a small scale, he soon made big deals in
yarn to the point of being elected a director of the Bombay Yarn
Merchants Association.
His
foresightedness and ability to judge helped him crack two most hefty
deals in the yarn market that earned him the flush of capital required
for the future Reliance Textiles. Playing on his idea of establishing a
manufacturing unit, he soon realized the same by setting up a textile
mill in Naroda, Ahmedabad in 1966.
Every
weekend, he flew from Bombay to Ahmedabad to check on the progress of
the establishment of the factory and troubleshoot any problems faced by
the workers. His main aim was to produce the best quality nylon in the
quickest way possible and in largest quantities.
He
tripled the workforce to fasten the building of the factory. However, a
drop in the valuation of the rupees globally steepened the project
costs. Nevertheless, not the one to get scared to taking risks, he
continued with the project.
By
August 1966, the construction work had finished and the equipment and
machineries were being installed to meet the September 1 deadline of
starting off with the productions. Meanwhile, he accumulated a workforce
of 35 men from Calcutta, Indore and Bombay to work in the factory.
Production started as planned on September 1, 1966 but took a couple of
months to stabilize.
By
January 1967, his dreams started to realize as the Naroda factory began
producing the finest quality of Nylon; but the new company had no
buyers in the market as the wholesalers refused to buy fabric from
Reliance at the instance of established big mill owners. .
Not
the one to accept defeat, he soon stepped out on the road and started
selling his stock directly to retailers. His daring attitude and gutsy
behaviour impressed all and soon the market for ‘Vimal’, the name of his
fabric, grew and started expanding. In no time, it became the finest,
best-selling fashion fabric of its times
Increased
demand led to increased sales and greater profits. With the excess
money, he started expanding his mill by adding new machineries and
better facilities for workers. Soon the Reliance family grew large and
prosperous with influx of a whole new gamut of fresh and experienced
workers.
By
1972, Reliance became huge and thriving, a stark contrast to its
starting days. Three years later, it received a nod of excellence from
the World Bank, a fact that speeded the upgradation and expansion of all
plant operations.
In
1981, his elder son Mukesh joined the business and he initiated
Reliance's backward integration journey from textiles into polyester
fibres and further into petrochemicals, petroleum refining and going
up-stream into oil and gas exploration and production
In 1983, his younger son, Anil Ambani joined the business and took over as the chief executive officer at Naroda.
Between
1984 and 1996, the mill experienced a grand makeover as computerized
and high-tech machines replaced the old traditional ones making Reliance
the grandest composite mill in the country.
Over
the period of time, the Reliance industries diversified into other
sector, such as, telecommunications, information technology, energy,
power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and
logistics.
Major Works
He
was the mastermind, the initiator, conceptualizer and the visualizer
behind Reliance Group. Starting off as a mere yarn dealer, he wrote
history by establishing Reliance Industries at grassroot level and
making it the largest business conglomerate in India.
Dhirubhai
revolutionized the way capital market functioned by drawing large
amount of retail investors in a market till then dominated by financial
institutions. He shaped the 'equity culture' in India and generated
billions of rupees in wealth for those who put their trust in his
companies.
Reliance was the first Indian company to feature in Forbes 500 list.
Awards & Achievements
For
his excellent business acumen and never-say-die spirit which made
Reliance one of the topmost business empires in the country and the
world, he was conferred with numerous honors including Dean’s Medal,
Lifetime Achievement Award for Corporate Excellence and Man of the
Century award. Additionally, he was named ‘Man of 20th Century’ by the
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Posthumously, he was conferred with the ABLF Global Asian Award at the Asian Business Leadership Forum Awards.
Personal Life & Legacy
He
married Kokilaben in 1954. The couple was blessed with four children,
Anil Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar.
A stroke in 1986 somewhat slowed him down and he handed over the reins of the company to his sons.
He breathed his last on July 6, 2002, after a major stroke.
Trivia
This man from an impoverished Guajarati household built India’s largest private sector company,
Reliance Industries
Blogger and Photographer Pooja Kochar wants to
change what you see when you look into the mirror
By Himansu
In the fairy tale, Snow White and the seven dwarves, the
Queen’s incessant query “Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest
of them all?” gives little girls the subconscious lesson that being
beautiful will lead them to the happily ever after of a Disney princess.
From Cinderella to Ariel, beautiful usually means fair, very slim with
perfect features, and flawless skin. Pooja Kochar is on a journey to
help women learn to love themselves, and cope with the kind of
unrealistic expectations that society imposes on them. Blogging for the 30ish
Pooja, 32, an avid blogger and passionate photographer, had been
working with TCS for 10 years. She quit her job last year to focus on
her blog 30ish, which she had started in 2014. As the name suggests,
30ish focusses on themes and issues that women in their late 20s and
early 30s can relate with. Since she is her 30s, she knows that this is a
very crucial phase for women.
Women in this group have usually walked quite a bit on their chosen
career path, are married/in a serious relationship, and have had or are
considering having a baby. Serious decisions and milestones are,
therefore, the hallmark of this age group.
Photography without photoshop
When it comes to her passion for photography, Pooja says,
“Photography is very intuitive and personal. I have no formal training
in photography. I sync emotionally with my clients and that’s my
strongest virtue as a photographer.” She wants her photoblog called
PhotoblogHER as well as 30ish to be digital brands focussed towards challenging stereotypes against women. A child at Pooja’s workshop chose the word that best describes her
Blogs have a global reach, as most of the issues are universal in
nature. Social influencers and bloggers usually prefer to feature women
who look like models, aesthetically dressed up, shot in flattering
lights and with a final photoshop touch up. Women follow these and
internalise a sense of inadequacy. Her fight is to keep blogging real.
She does a lot of work in the space of women empowerment. From
photographing the children of sex workers in Kamathipura to shoots of
new mothers, PhotoblogHER is this Mumbai girl’s attempt to talk about
self-esteem and positive body image amongst the most vulnerable section
of our society, teenaged girls and young mothers. A young mother’s postnatal stretchmarks
Since many of her photography clients are young mothers who follow her blog and approach her for shoots, most of her photography covers pre-natal shoots and mothers
with their babies. Over the course of the shoot, many women have shared
their stories and insecurities with her. Sometimes women tell her to
make them slimmer or hide stretchmarks. Stretchmarks on a new mother should be like the battle scars that a warrior carries proudly on his body, feels Pooja. She had a rare client who felt that way and wanted a photo of her scarred stomach to cherish for posterity. Start with the little ones
To tackle body shaming in the formative years, Pooja has started
conducting workshops and seminars across schools in Mumbai for girls in
the age group of 12–16. What she wants young girls to understand is, “Beauty
is fearless. Beauty is not flawless. Beauty is when you OWN your flaws
and decide to live with it; that is when you are really beautiful.”
Blogging gives Pooja the opportunity to form strong relationships. As
social influencers, bloggers have a very wide reach and can use their
platform to deal with various issues. Bloggers have flourished promoting
an aspirational lifestyle. But the rules of this game are changing and
that is the reason why her blog strikes a chord with women. Vlogging is
the next step for every blogger and Pooja has her own channel on
YouTube, which is an extension of her blog. A beautiful future
Having completed MBA from Mumbai University in 2007, Pooja has also
done a management development programme (MDP) from ISB in 2014. She uses
the money she earns from photography as well as her savings to finance
her workshops for teenagers. She is hopeful of receiving corporate
sponsorships so that she can continue her work on a larger scale. Her
husband and parents constitute the support system of this woman of
substance and travelling is her way of unwinding as well as getting to
understand the stories of people the world over.
Women flourish in groups, says Pooja, that’s how we are built as
humans. We love to empathise and be there for each other. As a woman and
a photographer, she wants to help other women see themselves the way
she does. Being fit and dressing well is important, of course, but Pooja
feels a woman’s self-esteem starts from her mind. Once she is
comfortable with herself, all the physical aspects of perceived beauty
will fall into place. “It is just one life, you need to live it
completely. You need to be true to yourself, to the essence of your
personality.”
Young Sabrina Pasterski, considered the next
Einstein, built her plane and flew it solo at 14
By Himansu
“When you’re tired you sleep, and when you’re not, you do physics,”
says Sabrina Pasterski, ‘The Next Einstein’ as named by Harvard
University. She flew a plane before she drove a car. She doesn’t own a
smartphone. Unlike most millennials, she also avoids social media; you
won’t find her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even LinkedIn.
However, she does keep her website PhysicsGirl updated with her many
accomplishments and accolades. Image: Scoop Whoop
Sabrina Pasterski is a first generation Cuban-American. She was born
in Chicago in 1993, then enrolled in the Edison Regional Gifted Center
in 1998. She graduated from Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in
2010. Sabrina began taking flying lessons in 2003 and by 2006, started
building her first kit aircraft, reports Inc.
An MIT graduate and Harvard PhD candidate, she is interested in
answering some of the most complex questions in physics. She began
experimenting with the subject at a very young age, which led to the
construction of a single-engine plane she built herself and flew solo
when she was just 14 years old. MIT Professors Allen Haggerty and Earll
Murman recruited “PhysicsGirl” after watching the video of the plane she
was creating on YouTube. “Our mouths were hanging open after we looked
at it. Her potential is off the charts,” said Haggerty. Even though she
was initially waitlisted, she was accepted and graduated with a grade
point average of 5.00, reports Latin Times.
Most high-achieving students graduate from high school with
transcripts and resumes filled with lofty grades and test scores and a
battery of extracurricular activities. Sabrina has soared past those
accolades since her plane and solo flight. “At first it was really a
challenge, because I was 12 when I started working on it. It’s an
amazing experience that you really can’t get from textbooks,” she said.
She is now a certified light sport air manufacturer. Image: Scoop Whoop
What stands out to principal Eric McLaren of Illinois Mathematics and
Science Academy is Sabrina standing as one of just 23 women named as a
US Physics Team semifinalist, an honor afforded to a pool of about 300
students. The experience made Sabrina aware of the under-representation
of women and minorities in the sciences. She is now working on a
documentary to encourage them to study science. “She certainly has a lot
of abilities in math and science and she’s taken what she knows and
applied it to real-world things,” said principal McLaren. But the most
compelling thing for me is that she is committed to creating a path for
other young women and other minorities to pursue science, reports Chicago Tribune.
Already an accomplished speaker, Sabrina has given talks at
Princeton, Harvard (including the Faculty Conference), MIT, and Forbes
Summit Philadelphia. Apart from NASA showing interest in Sabrina, Jeff
Bezos, the founder of Amazon and aerospace developer and manufacturer of
Blue Origin, has also offered her a job.
This startup just became the first Indian investment for PayPal Co-founder
By Himansu
Indian tax filing platform ClearTax on Tuesday announced raising $1.3
million in a seed round from 10 Silicon Valley investors, including big
names like PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin, serial investors Scott and
Cyan Banister, Dropbox Vice-President Ruchi Sanghvi and WhatsApp’s
Business Head Neeraj Arora.
Archit Gupta, Founder & CEO, ClearTax
The funds will be deployed to scale up the product and technology
team from 65 to 150, while the rest of the proceedings would go towards
brand building and marketing activities. This also happens to be the
first Indian investment for PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin.
So how did ClearTax
manage to rope in the investors? Archit Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of
ClearTax says that being a Y Combinator alumni helped to make the
initial connects. But what really got them to invest was the organic
growth and traction the platform achieved without any funding.
Claiming to be catering to almost three percent of the taxpayers in the country, ClearTax
has close to 10 lakh users filing their taxes on the platform. The firm
also has an active network of 10,000 chartered accountants and tax
experts.
On the investment, Archit says,
We are fortunate today to have the best Silicon Valley
investors come together to invest in us. The investors have seen
startups grow at a large scale and we believe their mentorship will
bolster our growth. We were also lucky since this round of funding was
oversubscribed and we were able to choose the right set of mentors.
Investors Scott and Cyan Banister will assist the business in
expanding into newer business areas, while helping the team get their
basics right. Neeraj Arora will assist the business in building a lean
team.
Apart from their B2C play, ClearTax is also a SaaS solution provider,
offering ClearTDS (as a software) to almost 5,000 Indian businesses for
preparing their TDS returns and quarterly withholdings.
In 2014, ClearTax processed tax return e-filings for three lakh
individuals and was selected for Y Combinator’s summer batch of 2014. It
claims to be the fourth Indian startup to be ever funded by Y Combinator and the first one with a focus on the Indian market.
The market
Although financial assistance services (for startups) is growing as a
market, tax filing still remains to be a niche sector. This could be
owing to either the lack of domain expertise in this sector or the
inability to envision disruption in this space.
However, some players like Makeyourtax.com and Taxmantra
are already functioning in the space. ClearTax is dipping its hands
into in B2B financial advisory through analytics along with handling the
B2C side of the business. However, the firm doesn’t plan to leave its
niche while continuing to disrupt the tax filing space.
The next obvious route for growth for the firm is the largely
untouched tax savings market, while also introducing prediction
capabilities through the analytics and data collected on its clients and
customers. Website: www.cleartax.in
With a $600 humanoid, Sirena Tech aims to make robots the ‘next smartphone’
By Himansu
Over the past few weeks, the world quickly went from going gaga to becoming sceptical
about ‘virtual bots’ and their potential applications. But the world of
IoT and robotics has been going strong for the past few years and it
has the potential to make an even bigger real-world impact.
Indian company Sirena
Technologies has developed a humanoid robot- with design, research and
development (R&D) and manufacturing done in India at a low price tag
of $600(eventually), while Libre Wireless has been developing a suite
of wireless technology solutions which power WiFi speakers and LED
lamps. With these innovations, Sirena Tech aim to revolutionise the
world of education and research make robotics and IoT more mainstream.
Story so far
Hariharan Bojan with Humanoid robot- Nino
Libre Wireless was founded in 2013 by Hariharan Bojan (VP Engineering
& India Operations), Hooman Kashef (CEO) and Jordan Watters (Chief
Revenue Officer), a bunch of colleagues who had earlier built a
streaming audio product- Bridge Co India. As it got acquired by an MNC,
the trio chose to move out and build their next media streaming
platform, with Libre Wireless.
Sirena Technologies, which is also backed by Libre Wireless
solutions, is a high tech product company, designing and developing
products like humanoid robots from scratch from their Bengaluru design
centre. Talking about Libre Wireless and Sirena Technologies, Hariharan
said,
I started Sirena Technologies and Libre Wireless with a
vision to impact the education system in India through technology
(robotics) and also to create affordable high-end products for the
Indian market – WiFi speakers, power plugs, LED lamps with speakers and
in general IoT (Internet of Things) products.
With their humanoid- Nino, soon to be launched in India, Sirena’s
goal is to make it the most affordable global product in the niche
robotics category it is going after. Sirena aims to position its
humanoid as a teaching tool or assistant for technical colleges and
universities where students can learn, experiment and develop new
technology and innovations around it. For school students, the humanoid
can assist the teacher by narrating stories, singing nursery rhymes etc.
So, Sirena is also positioning its technology as a content distribution
platform for publishers.
Talking about the tech side, Gurmeet Singh, VP, Ecosystem Management, explained,
We are the first company from India to develop a servo motor or actuator- SiReef, which is a key element in any robot.
Currently, SiReef 1.0 has been designed for medium torque(~2 Nm) and
for personal robotic requirements. The team has laid out a roadmap till
October 2017. Its long-term vision is to develop a more advanced servo
that possesses higher torque and can be used for general purpose robots
and also robots with special joints.
Coming to IoT products, Libre has designed and developed complete
WiFi multi-room audio solution from India, which can be operated through
iOS and Android apps. With the goal of bringing IoT to audio, Libre has
seen great success with its products like LED lamps and speakers. While
introducing GoogleCast for audio last year, Libre Wireless was
recognised as the official system integrator. Then in September 2015, Marvell, a global producer of semiconductor products and Libre announced that they had joined forces to work on WiFi/Bluetooth IoT technologies and homekit applications.Hariharan said,
We are connected to some of the best ODM/manufacturing
companies in China. We work with the very best of brands and partners,
including Google and Apple.
With offices in Bengaluru, US, China and Japan and funded by VCs from
across the world, Libre Wireless claims to be close to breaking even
this year. There are about 100 employees and a huge ecosystem driving
everything. The humanoid division at Sirena is being run by 20 employees
from vast disciplines. Looking back at their journey so far, Hariharan
said,
The progress in the last one year has been phenomenal. We
have a working model now which we could start deploying in schools and
colleges. No other company globally has built a humanoid platform within
a year and at a price point (lesser than $600 eventually) that we are
going to sell at.
Working on complex robotics and IoT systems with quick go-to market
times of a few months can be challenging. So, Sirena Technologies and
Libre Wireless have a seven-day weekend work culture with almost zero HR
policies to give employees the freedom to work on their own
terms. Libre and Sirena believe in open and flat organisational model,
with minimal managers.
Sector overview
Robotics is considered to be a big disruptive technology with
continuously increasing demand for both industrial and service robotics.
A recent report by Research and Markets
estimates that the global industrial robotics market was $28.22 billion
in 2014 and is forecasted to reach $41.18 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of
6.5 percent for the period.
Sirena Tech, though, is going after a niche robotic market that is
still in its early stage with its humanoid bot. Alphabet, Samsung,
Rethink Robotics, Softbank Robotics and Toyota are some of the
established giants that have keen interest in this space.
On the other hand, McKinsey estimates
that the IoT market could have $11-trillion impact by 2025. Utilising
IoT effectively has the potential to reduce maintenance costs by upto 25
percent, cut unplanned outages by upto 50 percent, and extend the lives
of robots and machines by years. So there are multiple synergistic
areas where Libre Wireless and Sirena Tech can leverage their strengths.
Future plans
Nino
In the long term, Sirena envisions a world where we will bring robots into our homes as assistants and companions. Gurmeet said,
Our end goal is to make robots so affordable, that
everyone would like to buy one, the way we own a smartphone today. We
plan to bring robots to sub Rs One-lakh level, and then subsequently to
Rs 50,000 as and when volumes grow.
Adding to its current range of products, Libre aims to come out with
more products in its Wi Fi multi room portfolio, in the coming years
with WiFi adapter for audio systems and WiFi power plugs, which are
currently in design phase.
Sirena, on the other hand, has started signing MOUs with Indian
engineering institutes, Jain University being the first, to build and
maintain robotic and IoT labs for them. They have also started receiving
orders for their humanoid bot- Nino and will be
Website- Libre Wireless and Sirena Tech
OYO founders admit, without reservations, there’s room for improvement
By Himansu
It was 1 am by the time Ashwini S, a Bengaluru-based marketing
professional, checked into the hotel in Mumbai. Business travel was
routine for her and she wasn’t worried as, over the past few months, her
OYO Rooms booking had gone through without a hitch. But this time
around, she didn’t feel the same comfort. The room wasn’t clean, the
hotel looked seedy and there was no hot water. It wasn’t the OYO
experience she was used to. What had gone wrong, she wondered.
The past few months have been rickety for OYO. There have been
negative reviews on room standards, Wi-Fi connectivity, quality of
service and also about the bookings. The tipping point was a Facebook
rant by Manoj Thelakkat, which went viral on social media, detailing his
ordeal, right from the wrong hotel room booking to multiple shifts to
rooms that didn’t meet basic cleanliness standards to the lousy
breakfast he was served. The post ignited speculation of whether OYO had
lost its focus somewhere along the way.
A lot riding on their shoulders
From starting Oravel to changing it to to OYO and getting Softbank on board, Ritesh Agarwal just had one dream: making budget travel and stay easy for the Indian traveller. “There was a time when we booked a hotel room and didn’t
expect much. Today the world is different, and I would like to believe
we have contributed to it in some way,” says Ritesh. He and Abhinav
Sinha, COO, OYO Rooms, gamely took part in a candid conversation with
YourStory on customer complaints and challenges of scale.
We conducted a 100 percent re-audit of every hotel in the
country, run by both Abhinav and me. It wasn’t just (Manoj’s) post, but
a complete purge exercise to ensure we get back on track,” says Ritesh.
On its part, OYO refunded the money to Manoj and after due feedback,
shut out the hotel from its operations the same day. He points out it
was a bold move for the team, as the owner of that particular hotel
happens to be the head of the Indian Hotel Associations.
A popular belief in the hospitality industry is that models like OYO
don’t work because aggregators have little control as own the property.
“The quality of all the rooms and selection of hotels cannot be ensured
at all times, especially when you are looking at scale,” says a customer
who doesn’t want to be named.
From 72 to 4,200 in a year
It has been a fast growth for OYO, which began operations in 2014
from one city – Guragaon. Today it claims to partner 4,200 hotels in
over 170 cities, booking close to a million room nights a month.
Quarterly cohort analysis puts the repeat rates at 20 to 25 per cent.
The year the team stayed in Gurgaon, it ensured that hotel occupancies,
reviews and repeat rates increased.
After the market validation in Gurgaon, the team decided to scale up
and from January 2015, began to expand to other cities, starting with
Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. By March 2015, OYO had already raised three
rounds of investment — from Lightspeed Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Greenoaks Capital —
and by August 2015, raised another $100 million from Softbank. These
investments went a long way in helping it scale rapidly across the
country and even look at the Southeast Asian markets.
By December 2015, OYO had touched 150 cities. The number of hotel
tie-ups, a mere 72 that January, rose to 4,200 by the end of the year.
The bookings saw a growth of close to 110x. But such overwhelming scale
and pace brought their own challenges and OYO began face problems and
rising customer complaints.
Competition snapping at the heels
Simultaneously, from being one of the earliest players in the market, today it has stiff competition from other brands like Zip Rooms, Treebo Hotels, Stayzilla and even from Paytm,
which is now entering the last-minute hotel booking space. These
players are not only giving OYO a run for its money but are also making
biggies like MakeMyTrip and Goibibo sit up and take notice.
With rising competition, many players are now realising the need to
go that extra mile to impress customers with value and service. Zip
Rooms, for example invested considerably in training and monitoring
hotel staff and management.
Treebo Hotels has a ‘Friends of Treebo’ system, a crowd-sourced
quality audit program which includes students, travellers, corporates,
and even freelancers, who can conduct a mystery audit on any of its
properties and give the feedback to the team. MakeMyTrip has gone that
extra mile by creating a dedicated Value+ category to go head-to-head
with these new-age brands. All the more reason for OYO to focus on
customer service.
The curious case of room shifts
One of the common complaints was shifting of rooms.
Customers would say when they went to the hotel they did not get the
room they were promised, admits Ritesh. The team saw that close to 3.8
per cent of the total customer base had been shifted to another room, or
had got one that wasn’t standardised as per OYO’s requirements.
The three core promises OYO upholds are ‘Availability, Predictability
and Affordability’ and two of them weren’t being upheld. So in order to
standardise the process, the team went back to the drawing board.
The purging process: shutting out 200 hotels
The team realised that close to seven to eight percent of the hotels,
which took in 10 to 15 percent of the business, had 95 per cent of the
complaints. “We felt that the easiest way to solve the problem was churn
these guys out,” says Ritesh.
The team built a 3C (3 Crosses) scoring system, which measures
complaints-based weightages. Each complaint against a hotel is given a
cross basis the weightage given. If a hotel gets 20 crosses, it is
removed from OYO’s system.
For example, Ritesh says, shifting a room is the biggest complaint
with the highest weightage, and it gets saddled with four crosses. So if
a hotel gets the same complaint five times, it is removed from the
system. There are different deltas for each issue. Like, say, unclean
rooms get between 3.5 and 4 crosses. With this 3C audit process in place, OYO Rooms today has shut out close to 200 hotels across the country.
Abhinav adds, We have a built an app for the owners,
which is now used to effectively communicate every problem with the
hotel. Only 200 of the 4,200 hotels needed to churned, because the
others improved. We realised there was need for effective communication
with the on-ground and hotel owners; they just needed the right
information to see and improve.
Technology and data to the aid
With the aid of technology, the team does a root-cause analysis and
educates hotel owners how mistakes can be rectified. There is an auditor
for every 40 hotels, and each property goes through a strict audit
every three to four days on a 30-point checklist. Each auditor has a
dedicated app garnering intelligence from occupancy reports and customer
feedback and tells these auditors what to do on a day-to-day basis. The
auditor cannot file his/her report on the app until and unless he/she
is on the geo-fencing of the hotel. Audit timings aren’t fixed.
Even as the fixes on the hotel and property side were being made, the
team realised that customer service challenges needed to be addressed
immediately. To ensure this, it began to keep a closer watch on the
hotels, checking the number of calls made each day, the number of issues
resolved and those that weren’t and why.
In cases where the issues aren’t resolved, I handle it
with the team personally. In many cases, it is my call if I need to
personally contact the customer myself or monitor the team during the
conversation, says Ritesh.
Tipping the domino
After mapping every room and a 100 percent re-audit, the team has
marked rooms that aren’t standardised, ensuring they’re not made
available to guests. So now on the mobile app, people have an option of
various different rooms while these ‘black rooms’ cannot be chosen.
Explaining this experience, Ritesh says that if the hotel has agreed
to a green room 104 but gives the guest a black room 105, within 10
minutes the guest gets an SMS that states, ‘OYO is happy to host you in
room 104 and we hope you’ve checked into your room. If not, please give
us a missed call on the number.’ If the guest gives a missed call, the
hotel is marked and crosses given under the audit. The auditor nearest
responds immediately and helps the guest check into the right room.
Challenges of scale
The challenge of scale, however, was multi-pronged for OYO. The team
started to notice that towards 2015 end, newer hotel owners, unlike
their early predecessors, began to view the aggregator as a commercial
partner. This meant that the team had to work even on the hotel owners’
side. So it began by holding celebration programmes with all staff
whenever any hotel touched the 100-day mark of partnership.
All this, say Ritesh and Abhinav, helps build great chemistry both
internally and with the partners. OYO is now building a stronger focus
on technology and using data to create better customer experience. Its
mobile app, available on Google Play Store, already has one to five
million downloads OYO is now eyeing the Southeast Asian markets and
plans to penetrate deeper into different levels of hotel experiences and
services.
Says Ritesh, We’ve made mistakes and, yes, there are
issues. In hospitality, there are some very tough and subjective issues:
the whiteness of the sheets and even water temperature. We as
entrepreneurs take these very seriously and are working to ensure that
the customers get the best experience. There were mistakes made; we
accept them and are ready to resolve them and change. Our focus even
today remains on ensuring a traveller gets a decent budget hotel stay
experience in every corner of India.
Ajit Babu: My father asked me to get a job in
the railways or postal department under handicap quota. I said no
By Himansu
Ajit Babu, who has cerebral palsy, said no to his father’s advice
about taking a job under the handicap quota, and instead founded three
startups in Bengaluru.
This is his story.
A little history
Roughly 26 years ago, in the month of July, a baby boy was born. It
was not yet time for him to come, but he was in a hurry to see the
world. The preterm child, who weighed 1.4 kilograms at birth, was kept
in the incubator for over two months.
Soon the doctors realized he had cerebral palsy, as he did not grow as much as the other children his age.
Today, Ajit is just about five feet tall, and walks with a slight
limp, but he studied in one of the better schools in the city, with
constant help from the Spastics Society of Karnataka. He grew up to love
journalism, psychology and English Literature, which is why he opted
for those subjects when he joined Kristu Jayanti College.
Unable to cope with lab work, which was part of psychology class, he
dropped out of college in 2008. But none of this stopped him from doing
the things he loved.
His two startups in the media space
“My love for journalism and media egged me into beginning my first
startup. I could write, I could speak, and the whole of South India was
doing in-film advertisements, so I thought I should try my hand at it,”
said Ajit.
He, along with his best friend, Harish Narayan, started Dream Click
Concepts in 2009. They also simultaneously founded another startup,
Street Light Media, which made TV shows, music videos and advertisements
for clients.
“We are very passionate about the two media companies we [Harish and
Ajit] have built. We are both huge movie buffs and love shooting photos
and videos,” he added.
After three years, Ajit decided to do something in the entrepreneurship space.
“In 2012, I started doing consulting on branding, and began teaching
people how to run startups. I gave motivational speeches. I was even
making some money. Then, the idea for LifeHack Innovation struck me,” he
added.
Over the next six months, he remained confident about the idea, but
he needed the money to build the first prototype and run the company –
seven lakhs’ worth.
“I thought money would be a problem, but no. All I had to do was post
on Facebook and offers for help poured in. I just said that I was
building a renewable energy company, and random Facebook friends asked
for my number, talked to me, and gave me cash,” said Ajit, who
crowdfunded the money from around 15 to 20 friends.
He quickly gathered a five-member team of techies and legal associates, and founded LifeHack Innovations in July this year.
What does LifeHack Innovation do?
He also realized that sustainable energy was going to boom, and that
the biggest challenge was to bring these sustainable and renewable
energy products into everyday life.
LifeHack’s first product is the solar and wind-powered portable power
bank, which also can be charged with electricity. The product will be
available for purchase by October 2015.
The startup, which is incubated at the VelTech Technology and
Businesss Incubator, Chennai, will be working on over 45 products (and
patents) over the next three years.
He took a third leap, is he a serial entrepreneur?
Yes, he is a serial entrepreneur, but with strong opinions on entrepreneurship.
“Starting up is overrated, and calling me a serial entrepreneur is
too much. Startup founders try to incorporate all their knowledge into
one startup, and sometimes it doesn’t work. So they think the next one
can be better, and start another. This goes on till they figure out
their true calling,” said Ajit
What about the future?
“I will study more. I will finish journalism. I will even do a
Master’s, maybe from Columbia too! After all, this field is the only one
where you can make money out of the freedom of expression!” said Ajit.
When asked about his fundas in life, he says in a serious note,
When you have a choice between do or die, it’s easy to
choose die. But when you wake up in the morning and you only have the
option to ‘do’!
Leonard Willoughby said, “As you begin to live according to your own
guidance and your own daring everything changes completely.” Ramesh
Babu, the barber who became a millionaire, did exactly this when he was
shaping his dazzling destiny. Stories of personal perseverance, the ones
where heroes overcome severe obstacles and achieve dizzying heights of
success, have been around since the beginning of time but they never get
old. They inspire us and inflame our passions, making us believe we too
can follow suit. Ramesh Babu bought a Maruti Van with his
meagre savings in 1994. By 2004, he had a fledgling car rental business
with seven regular cars. In 2014 he has a fleet of 200 cars.
What is even more extraordinary is the 75 luxury cars on the fleet- a
range of Mercedes, BMW’s, Audi’s, five and ten seater luxury vans and,
his ultimate pride, a Rolls Royce.
Much of Ramesh Babu’s early life was spent in a struggle for
survival. Now, ensconced in the lap of success, he remains true to the
vocation of his heart- a barber. Babu took up to sniping locks in high
school, a profession he inherited from his father, to keep his family
afloat. It is one that, even now, he does with great aplomb. He charges
only hundred rupees for his services. He has been featured in television
channels and newspapers all over the country. His phenomenal success
coupled with his disarming humility has earned him the moniker,
‘Millionaire Barber’. It is the title he used while giving a TED talk
earlier this year. This has made him something of an urban legend. Here
Ramesh Babu, the Millionaire Barber, shares his utterly inspiring story.Difficult Beginnings:
I was born in a poor family. My father was a barber. He passed away
in 1979, when I was just seven years old. My mother started working as a
maid servant to make ends meet. My father had left behind a
saloon business on Brigade road which my uncle took to running. He would
give us five rupees a day from that. Five rupees, even in
those days a pittance, was too less to see to me and my brother and
sister’s physical and educational needs. We took to having one meal a day just so we could survive.
From when I was in middle school, I took up various odd jobs to make a
little extra cash. I would deliver newspapers and milk bottles and
whatever else was convenient to ease my mother’s load a bit. This way I
somehow managed to finish my tenth standard and joined evening PUC. Breaking Point
Sometime in the nineties, when I was in my first PU, my mother had a
bitter fight with my uncle. He had simply stopped paying us any money. I
told her I should take over the saloon and run it myself. She was
adamant that I prioritise my education, but I started working at the
saloon too and learning the ropes of the business. In the mornings, I
would be at the saloon and evenings at college. Then again at night I
would return to the saloon, which would remain open till 1 in the
morning. Since then I have been called a barber. Breakthrough Idea
Later in 1993, I bought a used Maruti van. My uncle
had bought a small car and petty pride made me buy one too. I pooled my
tiny savings, took a loan and felt grim satisfaction at having bought a
marginally grander vehicle than him. My grandfather had to mortgage his
property to enable the loan. The loan interest was six thousand and
eight hundred rupees and I was reeling from having to make the payments.
The lady whose house my mother used to work, Nandini akka as I like
to call her, asked me why I don’t rent out the car instead of it just
lying around. She taught me the basics of doing this kind of business.
She became like a sister to me and remains a big part of my life even
today. She called me to her daughter’s wedding and showed me off! Building a successful business:
From 1994 onward I seriously got into the car rental business. The
first company I rented it out to was Intel because that’s where Nandini
akka was working and she helped arrange it. Gradually, I started adding
more cars to the fleet. Till 2004, I only had about five to six cars.
I was focused on getting the saloon business off the ground, so this
was not my priority. The business was not doing well as the competition
at this level was intense. Everyone had small cars. I thought of getting
into luxury cars because that is something that no one else was doing. On Taking Risks:
When I was buying my first luxury car, in 2004, everyone told me that I was making a big mistake.
Forty lakhs in 2004 for a car, even a luxury car, was a very big deal. I
was extremely apprehensive, but simply had to take the chance. I told
myself that I would sell off the car if worse came to worst. Fortunately
for me, the risk paid off remarkably. No other car rental service had
luxury cars of this stature. There were ones who had purchased second
hand models and the conditions of those cars were far from pristine. I
was the first person in Bangalore to invest in a brand new luxury car
and it did very well. If you want to do business, you must be willing to take risks.
When I bought my Rolls Royce in 2011, people warned me about the scope
of failures against buying such a tremendously expensive car. I told
myself that I had taken a risk in 2004, why can’t I take one again
almost a decade later? It cost me almost four crore rupees, to buy the
car. But once again, it was a risk that paid off. It’s been three years
since, and it’s has proven to be tremendously popular. In December this
year, the EMI payments will be over.
Biggest Challenges:
Every business will face challenges and pitfalls. Last April, I had to pay over three crores in road taxes alone.
I still don’t know how I managed to pull the amount together. I
borrowed from so many people and put up property documents to get the
cash. Every business will have recurring formidable challenges. The idea
is to embrace them wholeheartedly and tackle them vehemently. I had
been in the red for a while with the road tax, but in another year or so
we will be free of that. Ideas for the Future:
Earlier we used to pay taxes quarterly. As of now, I have had to put a
hold on the plans for expansion because the taxes have become sky high.
In 2015 we are going to buy some stretch limousines and other such
vehicles. Message to Aspiring Entrepreneurs:
Ramesh Babu reiterated the simple message to entrepreneurs that he told students to follow in his TED talk.
The last year and a half have been nothing short of a thrilling
rollercoaster ride, with ups and downs in equal measure for us at PepperTap.
Rewind to sunny September 2014, in Galleria market in Gurgaon. The
coffee shops here were the conference rooms in which I pitched what was
just an idea then, to potential team members. And what an idea we
thought it was, simple as it comes – we were going to revolutionize
grocery shopping. No more queues, no more parking hassles, no more
bickering with sabzi-wallahs. We would bring the existing inventory of
local stores online to our app and then deliver customer orders through
our super-optimal, well-trained delivery fleet for a minimal charge.
Fast forward one year, our diverse team of highly intelligent and
ambitious individuals was racking up the orders in 17 cities all over
the country – by October 2015, PepperTap was one of the top 3 grocery
delivery services in India with an average of 20,000 orders delivered
daily. We were the only business in town to be operating on a 100%
inventory-less model.
Customers seemed to be loving it – the app was easy to use and we had
great introductory discounts and sales. Local stores that were live on
our platform were thrilled – we were improving their sales by an average
of 30-40%. With our mobile-first approach, geographic expansion was
fairly easy – we could go wherever the smartphone went.
The momentum at the top was intoxicating. There was just one problem. The integration of our
app with our partner stores was not great. In the race to pepper the
whole country with PepperTap, we had brought too many stores online far
too quickly. Our customers were, at times, unable to see the entire
selection of items from a store and sometimes even essential items were
missing from the catalogue visible to them. This was not an impossible
problem and we set out to fix it right away. We had to convince the
smaller of these stores to adopt electronic inventory management and
billing systems. For the bigger chains and hypermarkets, we needed to
take the data generated by their systems and plug it into ours. To give
our customers up-to-date prices and availability, this needed to happen,
at the very least, thrice a day. And then, there came another problem. To keep
enticing customers to buy from our platform, we were spending a lot of
time and energy to devise clever sales and discount schemes. In a world
where everything for sale through an app (think electronics, taxis,
food) is synonymous with vastly cheaper prices than physical stores,
this exercise often simply resulted in higher outright discounts with
every passing week. This was not hugely problematic in itself – we had
money in the bank and investors were on board with this plan. After all,
we were in it for the long-haul and this was the way to build a loyal
customer base by showcasing the quality of our service, and getting them
to adopt it as a way of life. We told ourselves that the convenience we
would bring to PepperTap loyalists would become of such great value
eventually, that these discounts were simply a cost of doing business
while we perfected our processes. And then a third problem started to rear it’s head.
We were in it for the “long-haul”. This meant we needed to constantly
build buffer capacity in our logistics and operations teams. If we were
going to stick to our 2 hour delivery promise (which was rapidly
becoming a key differentiator in the markets for us), we needed to build
spare capacity in every one of the 17 cities in which we were present.
Compounded with the necessity for discounts, this meant that the cash we
were burning on every single order was increasing rather quickly with
no immediate end in sight. To us, this too was not insurmountable.
PepperTap was born to be a logistics company – the one thing we could
call our core competency was optimisation of delivery fleets, routes and
general logistics. We just needed to revisit some of the basics of the
business, this time with a stronger technology lens, and set the wheels
in motion. Also read: No one is telling you the dark side of becoming an entrepreneur
The most logical thing to do to solve all three of these problems
simultaneously, was to halt operations in some cities. We decided on
this list by looking at the size of our customer base in each city, and
the pain we would cause to all stakeholders by shutting them down.
Relatively new cities with a small customer base were selected for
closure.
The impact of this move on the business, was profound. With some
focussed work and really solid initiatives, we managed to increase the
value of our average sale twice over and our retention rate (how often
the same customer transacts on the app in a given period of time) soared
400%. We were finally beginning to build value and loyalty – the
cornerstones of a sustainable business. We were still financing orders
and discounts with capital but now this was a more concentrated burn
with a clear goal, timeline and geography in mind. However the timeline
and the path to profitability was looking long (very long in fact) and
arduous.
The harshness of a pessimistic funding environment
globally also started creeping in; and as the increasingly inclement
investment climate began to become obvious, we found ourselves at the
toughest node in the decision tree yet.
Losing cash on every order (no matter how small or how controlled or
how goal-oriented the burn) meant one day we will run out of cash –
perhaps we could slow down the process but mathematically speaking, this
was a certainty. We couldn’t shake off the feeling that we were walking
(not racing like some other companies) towards the edge of a cliff
hoping that things will get better before we reach the abyss.
At this point, we were forced to ask ourselves whether our continuing
to operate in the grocery delivery space was not, in fact, doing a
massive disservice to our current investors and employees. Because the
unique challenges of this business are not solvable in the short term
and certainly not solvable without massive injections of capital, we
would have to confront this issue sooner or later. Must Read:Why my first startup failed and what I learnt on that journey We decided that sooner
(read: while preserving a large amount of the capital we had raised)
was better than later (on the way down to the bottom of that abyss we
talked about earlier). If anything, having a large chunk of equity
capital from our last round still sitting in the bank made this decision
infinitely harder. Had we tried everything? Were we convinced that this
was not the space for us? Was hyper-local commerce finished as a
sector? The answer to all these questions was a resounding “No.”. But
let us be clear about one thing, we haven’t taken the task we set out to
do in the late summer of 2014 to its rightful culmination in the
limited time that we have had. And that’s the simple truth.
There are many lessons we have learnt from this journey but one that I
would like to focus on in particular. Because our training and
background was in running point-to-point logistics, it was clear to us
from our expansion days at PepperTap that as we forayed into smaller
cities, delivery networks got more fragmented and lethargic. This needed
to be researched more and understood better. We found that while tiers 2
and 3 of Indian cities are being served to some extent by new-world
logistics providers doing cool things like one-day shipping, there was a
whole slew of tier 3.5+ cities which are connected to the world of
ecommerce but, in simple terms, have to sometimes wait up to 30 days to
receive their orders.
This was exciting – with our expertise in running logistics at Nuvo
Ex, we knew how to get ecommerce orders to the closest hub quite easily.
Having spent the last year at PepperTap developing and testing
technology to efficiently run last-mile delivery networks, we realised
we already have the tools to cut these delivery times significantly. We
began to test some of these ideas at Nuvo earlier this year and the
results were exciting enough for us to pitch to our existing investors
as an alternative way to use the capital we have already raised. Could
this be a new focus worthy of all the things we have accomplished at
PepperTap? The answer to this question for us was a clear “Yes.” Read also:How my first startup ended in a loss of Rs 15 lakh and shut down in a year
The journey so far has left us deeply humbled. But before we take our
faculties in this new but related direction, I want to take some time
to say our thank yous. I want to thank our investors for giving us the
opportunity to create and run PepperTap and for their continued support
in these new times. I want to thank our competitors – you have been more
than worthy adversaries-in-commerce and I will eagerly follow your
progress in the grocery consumer business. Most of all, I want to thank
the PepperTap family. The family that stuck together through thick and
thin to make 37,000 orders a day possible in less than nine months since
inception; the family that shared my vision from those sunny Galleria
afternoons and didn’t hesitate to chastise me when I was out of order.
There is one apology that I must make before I conclude this piece, and this is to the customers of PepperTap.
It is you who made this journey possible and I’m sorry for not being
able to see this through to the end. You made it clear that the service
we provided was valuable, perhaps a little before it’s time, but
valuable nonetheless. We will miss the reviews and criticisms – some
that emboldened us, some that made us laugh and some that made us cry.
And so we transition to this new project at hand. The PepperTap
family marches on with learnings from our mistakes and from the
successes that we have had, to work on a new problem – which we believe
we have all the necessary tools to solve for good. To ourselves, to the
friends whom we have to leave behind, and to all other stakeholders, we
make this commitment: we will work tirelessly, without rest, shedding
our sweat and tears if we must, until we have cracked this new problem
that we have chosen.
We must, as we owe it to the people who have supported us throughout our journey.
[App Fridays] Mobstac’s app helps you
automatically connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots around you
By Himansu
WiFire automatically connects users to free WiFi hotspots around them
without the need to enter passwords or fill out web forms. The app
connects users to public networks that are added and socially verified
by the community of users. It focuses on crowdsourcing and is not a
hacking tool.
Currently, WiFire has access to around 1,000 hotspots across the
major metro cities and some tier two cities in India. Through a
map-based user interface, users can also navigate to and get within
range of available hotspot locations.
Story so far
WiFire is one of the products of parent company – Mobstac, which was
co-founded by Sharat Potharaju and Ravi Pratap in 2009. The startup
initially focussed on helping publishers create and manage mobile
websites, until it received funding from Cisco in 2014. They then
shifted focus to proximity marketing solutions.
As the CEO, Sharat is responsible for crafting the overall strategy
and execution of the company. Prior to founding MobStac, he spent
several years working in investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New
York. He has a master’s degree in Engineering Management from Duke
University. As the CTO, Ravi is responsible for technology strategy,
product innovation, and engineering execution at MobStac. Prior to
Mobstac, he spent four years at a Washington D.C.-based technology
startup Hillcrest Labs as a Manager in its Software Products Group. He
has a M.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis.
Ravi and Sharat both earned their Bachelor’s degree in Chemical
Engineering from IIT Madras.
Currently consisting of a team of 24, Mobstac’s core focus is on
iBeacon technology. They currently offer three custom iBeacon solutions
(including hardware and software), depending on the need and scale of
enterprises and startups. Prices start at $89 and go up to $699. Related read:Bengaluru startup’s beacons bring online-style customer intelligence to the offline world
Though WiFire can be considered a side project, it has some synergies
with what Mobstac is doing with their core focus. Their proximity
marketing solutions rely on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals and WiFi.
Currently seeded in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai,
Kolkata, Hyderabad and others, WiFire is adding more networks on their
platform on a regular basis as their user base keeps increasing. Mobstac is currently not looking to monetise through the app till
they hit a certain user base. Their aim is to keep the app free for the
end user and focus on B2B models to generate revenue. Mobstac is
currently relying on a mix of digital and offline marketing and word of
mouth to help them gain traction. They are also in the
process of adding more features and functions to the app.
Current USPs include
-Users get notified while they are within the range of verified WiFi
networks, and can connect without needing to enter a password.
-At public hotspots, WiFire can automatically enter the users phone
number, collect the one-time password (OTP), and auto-fill the web form.
-Gamification: Users can unlock badges and earn points for adding and sharing new networks.
Sector overview
Over the last few years, high-speed WiFi has become a need rather
than a luxury. Most enterprises recognise this and coffee shops,
restaurants, and airport offer free WiFi to their customers to get them
to stay longer and earn additional revenue because of the convenience
offered. Google India recently brought free WiFi to Mumbai Central railway station and aims to reach 100 Indian stations by end of 2016.
These developments have brought WiFi managers in focus.
Stockholm-based Instabridge is a big player in this space and claims to
have over three million WiFi passwords in its database. In late 2014,
the company had raised a $1 million seed round led by European VC Creandum. Then there are other players in this space like WiFi Map, WiFi manager,Wiffinity and WifiMapper.
What we liked
WiFire
is well designed and executed. Through the app, users get information
about the closest available WiFi hotspot in their vicinity and can
quickly pinpoint its exact location through Google maps. Simple to use,
the ability to add unverified networks, give back to the community and
get badges and rewards for the effort adds to the gamification and
stickiness of the app.
What could be improved
WiFire currently has a small database of saved WiFi networks on its
platform and hence it will rely heavily on its early adopters to help
them achieve necessary growth. Although WiFire requests and guides
people to only add public WiFi networks onto their platform, it is
possible for users to game the system and add private networks too.
Currently owners can email the team and request for their network to be
removed or they can change their password. In the future interactions of
the app, WiFire will let recognised people claim ownership of WiFi
networks to make it easier and speed up the process.
YourStory take
WiFire is a well-thought out app and with mobile Internet users in
India projected to increase to 500 million in 2017, there is a large
market to be tapped. With mobile Internet networks sometimes becoming
unstable, easier access to public hotspots makes the lives of people
easier. It will be interesting to see how Mobstac grows this ‘side
project’ and how they leverage it to increase their core business.
Website: WiFire
0 comments:
Post a Comment