Every business thrives by offering value to its customers and earning profits to sustain the industry. A business model tries to reflect this essence in a clearly defined structure. A business model highlights how a company creates, delivers, and captures value for its customers. It acts as a framework to decode the firm’s profit strategy. It includes the USP, key resources, key processes, and the profit formula of a business.
A business model is a real competitive advantage for any business. A business model that helps and sustains a business gives it an edge over its competitors. Hence, companies study business models while doing competitive analysis.
Today we will understand what business model competitive analysis is, why it is important, and how to leverage it for business success.
A competitive analysis is in-depth research and examination of your business competitors. It aims to bring forth:
Main players or companies in the specific industry
Profit strategies
Key resources and processes
These three factors are crucial to business success. Firstly, you need to know who you are competing against. Then, you need to know their profit strategy. Do they earn by cost minimization or focus on a niche market to offer a premium-quality product? A business’s profit strategy is what matters the most when it comes to competitive industries because the resources and processes can be replicated. However, strategy implementation is subjective and can have different results for companies.
A business strategy comprises internal, external, and dynamic factors, which, in a nutshell, give a competitive advantage and define a firm’s performance. Internal factors include firm resources and policies. External factors include the USP and the company’s position in the industry. Contrarily, dynamic factors include creating unique resources to disrupt the market. One needs to analyze all the factors to get a comprehensive view of an industry. It is advisable to conduct such an analysis every year to stay updated on competitors and avoid sudden shocks. But what could be the benefit of studying your competitors so closely?
The Extent of Leadership Pursuing Different Operational Business Strategies Worldwide
Why Do Competitive Analysis?
Competitive analysis has been part of running businesses. It is one of the crucial elements of the planning stage. It gives a head start to many firms by giving an overview of what others are doing and what can be replicated. In addition to this, a firm runs a competitive analysis to:
Identify USP: “USP” stands for “unique selling proposition.” What sets you apart from your competitors? What is your market positioning? Why would customers choose you over your competitors? You need to know the USP of your competitors to understand why customers prefer your product. It will give you an understanding of customer needs and help you define a USP for your business.
Estimate Entry Barrier: Not every industry makes it easy for firms to start their businesses. For instance, as easy as it is to get into the food industry, it is difficult to get into the oil and gas industry. You need to identify the level of entry barrier and barrier also. You need to know why the industry you are dealing with is easy or difficult to get into. This will help you to choose your USP and pick resources that cannot be replicated.
Customer Expectations: What do other businesses offer that brings in more customers and loyalty? What are some of the most talked-about product features of your competitors? Why do people prefer other brands to yours? All these questions help you identify the customer expectations that help you enhance customer satisfaction.
Find Market Gaps and Opportunities: What is your strength that brings in customers for you? What are some untapped potential/ resources in the market that not many competitors are using? Why are some or more companies failing or succeeding in the industry? You need to find the strengths, gaps, and opportunities to sustain yourself in the industry. Similarly, you could look for risks in the market and your weaknesses that competitors can leverage on.
Overall, the competitive analysis makes businesses proactive by preparing them for any shocks and giving them a window to increase their profits. Anyways, a reactive business finds it much more difficult to analyze and prepare a strategy due to a lack of time and resources in the end moment.
For instance, what if you discover a new subsidiary of your competitors that will increase their profits by 8% during the competitive analysis? This will give you enough time to prepare and execute protection measures.
But now that we have discussed what and why, let us look at how to conduct a business model competitive analysis. It is a simple 4-step process, which might take a few weeks or months of deep research depending on its extensiveness, that gives you an edge and a head start in the industry.
How Do You Analyze Your Competitor’s Business Model?
A business model study is a small part of competitive analysis. Competitive analysis is a broader study. Here is a simple 4-step process to analyze your competitor’s business model. It revolves around studying your competitors’ USPs, processes, resources, and strategies.
Identify Competitors
You start by identifying the competitors in your business. This includes direct, indirect, and substitute competitors.
For instance, a direct competitor of Apple would be HP, Samsung, or Xiaomi, while its indirect competitor would be Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.
These will be companies or firms that you will closely study to understand their business model. Opt for both the top and bottom firms to identify success and failure. We need to identify what leads to a company’s profits and losses.
Examine Subsidiaries
The next step is to look into the subsidiaries if any. These give a wider scope of competitors to study. Companies like Tata and Reliance have many subsidiaries. It is their multiple subsidiaries that sustain their business. Here again, look for subsidiaries that make a profit and those that serve no purpose. Identify the existence of each one and the role that they play for the business firm.
For instance, Parle-G is one of the most popular products under its product line by Parle. However, it is not a profit-making product for the firm. Yet the company continues to sell it in the market to cater to market demand and build its brand image. It makes money and recovers the costs with other product lines.
Analyze the Competitor’s Technology Stack
Just like a business strategy, technology in itself can be replicated, but its derivatives cannot. Technology is just an enabler, and it totally depends on the business and how they use and leverage it.
So, look into the tech stack and other technology adoptions of the business that save them money. Understand the costs and implications of these in your business. The vital part of the technology is its implementation, not the technology itself.
Study Competitor Resources
The last step is to analyze competitors’ resources using the VRINE model. It stands for value, rarity, imitability, non-substitutability, and exploitability and is used to understand the competitive advantage of resources. It simply requires you to answer four questions:
Is the resource valuable? It should help meet market demand and protect against market uncertainties.
Is the resource rare? It should be neither scarce nor widely available to competitors.
Is the resource inimitable or substitutable? It should be difficult to replicate and yield similar benefits.
Is the resource exploitable? If all the above criteria add up to a positive result for the firm, then look to see if it is exploitable.
Be it tangible or intangible, you should run a VRINE test on all the resources to understand their performance and competitive implications.
Strategic leadership can be acquired only by combining the right resources and capabilities. One must develop a strategy while keeping resources in mind and defining a business positioning. This acts as a competitive advantage to boost the firm’s performance.
Conclusion
Every company analyzes its competitors in order to stay current and ahead of the competition. The three core factors to get an edge over a competitor are defining strategy, resources, and firm positioning that can not be replicated. Strategy and positioning are hard to copy due to various factors, including each firm’s subjective implementation and policy differences. The resources and processes need to be disruptive in nature so that competitors cannot imitate them.
FAQs
What is competitive analysis?
A competitive analysis is in-depth research and examination of your business competitors. It aims to bring forth the main players or companies in the specific industry, profit strategies, and key resources and processes.
How do I analyze a competitor’s business model?
There is a simple 4-step process to analyze your competitor’s business model:
Identify Competitors
Examine Subsidiaries
Analyze the Competitor’s Technology Stack
Study Competitor Resources
What is the VRINE model?
The VRINE model stands for value, rarity, imitability, non-substitutability, and exploitability and is used to understand the competitive advantage of resources.
As a business owner, improving customer satisfaction is crucial to your success. One way to achieve this is by implementing an automated answering system known as an auto-attendant. This phone-based system can handle a high volume of calls, directing them to the appropriate department or individual, eliminating the need for a live receptionist. This makes it an effective solution for businesses operating outside of traditional hours.
When it comes to improving customer satisfaction, companies often take various steps to achieve this goal. However, when faced with a high volume of customer requests, concerns, and complaints, it can be difficult to keep up. Fortunately, with the help of automation, automated answering systems are now available to act as customer service representatives and handle all customer inquiries on your behalf.
Automated answering systems can complement the role of a receptionist by helping to grow your business, manage customer relationships, and streamline processes. They do not replace the need for a human receptionist. It acts as a digital receptionist that is available 24/7 to handle all customer inquiries. This eliminates the worry of missed calls or missed messages, as the service will take care of everything on your behalf. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know about automated answering services.
What is the process of using automated answering systems and how do they function? This guide will provide a basic understanding for beginners.
Several companies have live operators on board to answer phone calls and take down key customer messages. Such companies generally rely on automated answering services that take care of the phone whenever the live operators are busy with other tasks.
Automated answering services are ideal for individuals who frequently receive important calls but cannot answer each call personally. In short, an automated answering service acts as a replacement for a traditional answering service, handling customer requests and inquiries and providing prompt responses without making customers wait on hold.
An automated answering service is a tool that manages inbound calls, as opposed to an automated calling service which primarily handles outgoing calls. It utilizes advanced AI technology to provide self-service options to customers, allowing them to quickly receive answers to their requests or inquiries without having to wait on hold. This makes it an ideal solution for individuals or businesses that receive a high volume of important calls.
How Does an Automated Answering Service Work?
An automated answering service can be customized to fit your business needs. Whether you need to accept payments, route calls to different teams, or perform other tasks, an automated answering service can handle it for you.
In other words, an automated answering service is a digital receptionist that can answer calls on your behalf, direct customers towards the relevant department, or guide them through a series of menus. An automated answering service generally works in three different ways
Answer the calls on your behalf using your existing phone number
Play a pre-recorded greeting message that is tailored to your business requirements
Guide customers through a series of menus and ask them for their intent and gather all relevant information
Global IVR Service Distribution by Region
An automated answering service can gather a significant amount of information, transfer it to the user, and then direct the caller to the appropriate department. Additionally, an answering service can also use a call deflection feature to manage high-volume calls.
What Is Call Deflection?
Call Deflection, as per the name, is an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) feature that automatically redirects a call from one point to another whenever a particular endpoint is busy. It is one of the many forms of call diversion.
Automated answering services can be tailored and customised to meet your business requirements and the needs of every client. When it comes to answering services, every time you receive a call, it will be directly routed to an operator who will then ask the caller/customer their name and the nature of the call.
Once the operator has obtained the information, they will check if the client has a record in their database. If a match is found, the operator will then route the client to the appropriate party. If no client record is found, the operator will take down the client’s message and then convey it to the client via text message or email.
Benefits of Automated Answering Services
Apart from saving you from high customer service costs, and improving customer services. An automated answering service serves several benefits such as
Professional Imaging
Based on the needs of your business, you can customize your answering service to ensure that all responses are prompt and enhance the company’s professional image.
Tailored Answering Service
An automated answering service can be used for a variety of purposes such as receiving payments, scheduling appointments, recording customer requests/complaints, handling inquiries, and more.
Saves On Operating Costs
An automated answering service acts as a digital receptionist that collects all customer information on your behalf, eliminating the need for a middleman or agent and ultimately reducing customer costs.
Minimum Missed Calls
Not every call requires an agent to be present. An automated answering service can assist by prioritizing important calls and saving time.
Wait Time Expectations/Queue Management
Customers waiting in a queue need to know how long they will be waiting before their request is addressed. An automated answering service can provide wait time expectations for better queue management.
Simplicity And Precision
An automated answering service can connect customers directly to the appropriate agent or department by asking them a few simple questions.
Multiple Routing Options
Many modern answering services have multiple routing options that reduce customer wait times. This allows customers to bypass the queue and speak directly with a designated agent to address their issues.
24/7 Customer Service
An automated answering service allows your business to be available 24/7, providing customers with access to customer service across all time zones.
Added Sales Opportunity
Automated answering machines are beneficial for both small business owners and large enterprises to improve and increase sales. Customized answering messages can be created to provide customers with the latest offers and product updates whenever they call.
Different Sectors That Use Automated Answering Services
As we mentioned earlier in the article, it doesn’t matter whether you are a small business holder or have a large enterprise, having an automated answering service will help your business grow and flourish.
Businesses of every stature and size can avail of the benefits that come with automated answering service to save time and cut down on operator costs. Furthermore, these services are perfect for businesses that run 24/7, have limited resources, and/or have international clients.
Moreover, automated answering services are largely dependent on the type of services businesses offer. Based on the services provided, the following are the places where you can find automated answering services used the most.
MSME: Medium Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) are some of the best businesses that prefer automated answering services. Although the volume of phone calls might be less, they can still reap the benefits associated with an answering service
HVAC Services: HVAC services, such as plumbers, often receive calls outside of standard business hours. This is where having an active service can come in handy. An automated answering service can take down inquiries and essential messages.
Growing/Transitioning Business: Businesses on the verge of transition or an update too tend to use answering services that are flexible and can adjust to their growing business needs
Real Estate:Real Estate generally happens out of work and on the field. At this time, real estate professionals need someone in the office to attend to client calls and inquiries. This is where a tailored automated answering service comes in handy
Medical And Dental Offices: Thanks to strict HIPAA regulations, medical and dental service providers have to adhere to strictly when taking down customer information over the phone. This is where you can customise an answering service as per HIPAA laws to ensure safe and secure client information
Insurance Companies: Insurance workers, like real estate people, tend to work odd hours to better match their clients’ schedules. Therefore, in such scenarios, even after-hours calls are equally important. Setting up an automated call answering service will help attend to those calls and give potential customers the information they want.
Spas And Salons: Unlike the good old days, modern-day spas and salons require you to make a prior appointment. Setting up an answering machine and customising it will help customers make that appointment with ease.
In short, having an automated answering service is a great option for businesses with multiple operations areas. Therefore, if your business operates in different areas, having an answering service is extremely supportive in growing your business.
Conclusion
Automated answering services can complement traditional agents at a call centre and help grow your business in many ways. With an automated answering service, you have a digital receptionist available 24/7 to handle all customer inquiries. This has made it even more important for businesses to have an automated answering service in place to ensure that they don’t miss any important calls, even when they are not physically present to answer the phone. With an automated answering service, businesses can ensure that all calls are answered promptly and efficiently, regardless of the time of day or the location of the caller.
By having an automated answering service, you can improve customer service, increase productivity, and streamline your business communication. It can also help you save on operating costs, time and staff resources, and provide you with a professional digital presence 24/7.
FAQ
What is an IVR dialer?
An IVR Dialer is an automated dialer that dials numbers from a given database and plays IVR (Interactive Voice Response) messages when connected.
What is an automated answering system?
An automated answering system allows your contact centre to answer phone calls without a customer service agent on the line. Instead of your team answering calls, an automated phone answering machine uses self-service and advanced automated AI to answer.
What is the function of an automated voice answering system?
Interactive voice response is an automated telephone system that combines pre-recorded messages or text-to-speech technology with a dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) interface to engage callers, allowing them to provide and access information without a live agent.
When working outside of normal business hours, your office may receive a large volume of phone calls from clients and potential clients. Even if you have a receptionist on duty, it may be inadequate if the volume of calls exceeds a certain limit. However, not every business requires a receptionist. An automated answering service can effectively route calls to the appropriate operator and can be customized to suit the specific needs and requirements of your business.
In the business world, second chances are rare. Missing a call can cost you a potential lead, client, or significant business opportunity. But with automated answering services at your disposal, you can ensure that you don’t miss any opportunities.
All answering service portals are user-friendly, so you don’t need a technical expert to set them up. To choose the best-answering service for your business, consider your current business needs and align them with your vision. This will help you make the right and most effective decision.
Some companies use live operators to handle phone calls and take customer messages, but they also use automated answering services to take care of calls when the operators are busy with other tasks. Automated answering services are also useful for individuals who receive important calls but can’t answer every call themselves.
In simple terms, an automated answering service is a type of virtual receptionist that handles customer requests and inquiries without making them wait on hold. It’s important to note that an automated answering service is different from an automated calling service, as it primarily manages incoming calls rather than outgoing calls. Additionally, an automated answering service typically includes a self-service option that uses advanced AI technology to answer customer questions.
An automated answering service generally works in three different ways
Answer the calls on your behalf using your existing phone number
Play a pre-recorded greeting message that is tailored to your business requirements
Guide customers through a series of menus and ask them for their intent and gather all relevant information
An automated answering service collects information from the caller and routes them to the appropriate department. It can also use call deflection to handle the high call volume.
Factors to Consider While Choosing an Automated Answering System
With the information provided about the top 10 automated answering systems for 2023, there are also other considerations to keep in mind when choosing an automated answering system. By taking these factors into account, you can make a more informed and efficient decision.
Multi-Level Call Attending
Automated answering systems route your client’s call directly to the specified operators by guiding the client through a simple menu. However, in case of multi-level call attending, this service goes up a notch by creating custom paths that allow for multiple callers. For example, one path might be reserved solely for accounting whereas another might go for technical support.
Account and Call Monitoring
When choosing an automated answering service, it is important to consider the call analytics feature. Many businesses use a dashboard to track customer interactions and this feature is activated every time a customer calls. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the dashboard is user-friendly, and up-to-date, and allows for easy management of users, permissions and various aspects of phone calls.
Live Call Answering Feature
While automated answering services can be helpful, having a live person available to answer calls can also be beneficial. Some clients prefer talking to an actual person rather than having a machine answer their query. Having a live person on the line can provide customers with better satisfaction as they have direct access to someone who can assist them with their inquiries or concern.
A live call answering feature is a valuable addition to a phone plan. Therefore, it’s important to check if the automated answering service you are considering has this option available.
VoIP Market Size By Region
Flexible Hours
Many businesses operate 24/7 and require answering services that can work continuously. On the other hand, some businesses only require automated answering services during regular working hours. Therefore, it’s important to select a company that offers flexible operating patterns that align with your business hours and requirements.
In addition to the factors mentioned previously, here are some additional features to consider when choosing an automated answering service:
Web/Mobile Chat
Post-Call Surveys
Conference Calling
Voicemail Transcription
Call Recording
CRM Integration
IVR
Top 10 Best Automated Answering Systems
Selecting an automated answering system is a significant change for businesses of all sizes. When making this decision, it’s important to consider how the system will improve and streamline operations for your business.
In order to make the best choice, you need to have the most suitable automated answering system. With many options available, it can be challenging to make a decision. That’s why we have compiled a list of the top 10 best automated answering systems for the year.
Nextiva
Rating
4.4/5
Best For
Small Businesses
Nextiva is a full-service VOIP phone system designed for businesses, but it can also function effectively as an automated answering service. It comes with several features that enable you to create a personalized greeting and set answering rules based on your business hours.
Nextiva
With these features, you can route calls based on factors such as area code, time zone, and other factors that dictate your call-handling process. Nextiva acts as a virtual receptionist, eliminating the need for a physical receptionist to answer calls before, during or after business hours.
Nextiva’s user-friendly administrative portal makes it ideal for small businesses and can be accessed from a computer or the company’s mobile app, allowing you to manage the entire admin portal. Additionally, Nextiva offers scalable features as your business grows, including advanced customer contact features, VoIP, video chat services, virtual voicemail, and more. It also has plans available that include a multi-level auto-attendant for more complex call routing.
AnswerFirst
Rating
4.2/5
Best For
24/7 Customer Handling
Answer First provides businesses with a professional digital presence 24/7 by giving access to features such as message taking and response, appointment scheduling, and assistance with purchasing and ordering. The company has a certified and dedicated customer service team, made up of professionals who have been connecting people with answers since 1998.
AnswerFirst
Here are some of the services that are available to you when you sign up with Answer First: 24/7 Dispatching, Systems and Security Management, Live Transfer, Message Taking, Scheduling and Reservations, Virtual Receptionist, and Voice Mail Services.
Answer First is an advanced automated answering service that offers exceptional customer service to all clients. It offers a wide range of third-party integrations and customizable pricing plans tailored to your specific needs and requirements. With Answer First, you can ensure that you never miss a potential lead, client, or business opportunity, and can always make a positive impression on your customers. The service’s 24/7 availability, live transfer, and message taking feature, scheduling and reservations, virtual receptionist, and voicemail service ensure that you are always reachable and able to provide professional and efficient customer service.
PATlive
Rating
3.9/5
Best For
All types of businesses and Customer Experience Management
As a business owner, you are constantly seeking out solutions that can meet all of your business needs, including 24/7 coverage. PATlive’s digital receptionists provide professional customer service around the clock, which can significantly improve your customer relations and strengthen your relationships with current clients. With their help, you can make sure that your customers have a positive experience with your company at all times, even when you are unavailable.
PATlive
Additionally, the digital receptionist service guarantees that you never miss a potential lead or business opportunity, which can help you grow your business. PATlive offers a 14-day free trial feature that allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the product before making a decision. Additionally, the bilingual service feature enables you to communicate effectively with people speaking a language different from yours.
With PATlive’s digital agents, you can easily book, manage, and keep track of your appointments using the software’s web-based calendaring service. This feature allows you to schedule, reschedule, and cancel appointments, as well as view upcoming appointments in a calendar format. This functionality can help you to manage your time moreefficiently and productively.
Voice Nation
Rating
4.3/5
Best For
Live Call and Chat Answering
Voice Nation offers top-quality automated answering services that are available 24/7 for your convenience. By signing up with Voice Nation, you gain access to a bilingual virtual receptionist that will answer your calls and respond to texts on your behalf. This feature ensures that you never miss an important call or message and can provide professional and efficient customer service to your clients.
VoiceNation
Additionally, when you sign up with Voice Nation, you also gain access to additional services such as order processing, message delivery, detailed reports, and a dedicated account manager that is included in each plan. With this automated answering service, you never have to send your customers to voicemail again, as you can personally attend to each customer at any time of the day. This can help you improve customer service and strengthen your relationships with your clients.
With Voice Nation, you can customize your call script to match the type of business and clients you have. The service also offers a mobile application that is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, providing you with flexibility and convenience.
Grasshopper
Rating
4.5/5
Best For
Solo Enterpreneurs
Every business has a unique selling proposition (USP) that sets it apart from the competition, and it’s important to effectively communicate that USP to customers. Grasshopper’s software includes an auto-attendant feature that allows you to use pre-recorded scripts from the software’s database.
Grasshopper
You can assign different scripts for different client paths to help answer your incoming calls more professionally. For an additional fee, the software also offers a professional voice studio. Grasshopper’s software allows you to switch between live operators and digital receptionists depending on your preference, giving you the flexibility to choose who handles your calls. Grasshopper offers an easy 4-step process to add a business number and integrate your smartphone with a virtual phone system, allowing you to never miss a call and present a professional image to your customers.
Ooma
Rating
4/5
Best For
Small Businesses without IT Departments
Ooma is specifically designed for small businesses and includes an auto-attendant feature when setting up an account. It has a text-to-speech enabled feature and callers are greeted by a virtual assistant every time they call. You can select and assign a customized greeting which will be read out by a computer-generated voice to the caller. Additionally, the software’s dashboard includes a control panel that enables you to record audio files, which is a useful option if you are considering a virtual receptionist.
Ooma
Ooma is loaded with numerous features such as HD Audio, low international calling rates, a virtual fax system, mobile app integration, a complimentary toll-free number and free local phone numbers. These features are intended to enhance customer service, boost productivity, and improve overall business communication.
This automated answering service also offers a mobile application compatible with both Android and iOS, allowing you to check voicemails on your phone anytime and anywhere. As a small business owner, cost-effectiveness is a priority, and Ooma offers smart plans for every user. As your business grows, Ooma will ensure that your phone bill remains low. Therefore, not only does your business advance, but you also have the opportunity to make significant savings on your phone bill.
Phone.com
Rating
3.9/5
Best For
Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs
If you are looking for a solution to manage your metered subscriptions, phone.com is an automated answering service specifically designed for businesses with lower or fluctuating call volume. The software offers both metered and non-metered subscription plans. This allows you to customize and integrate your plans based on your specific needs and requirements. Additionally, phone.com provides access to various additional features such as live receptionist, international numbering and dialling.
Phone.com
The global numbers and international calling feature will be particularly beneficial for businesses with multiple marketing campaigns. Additionally, phone.com offers a wide range of features such as voice, video, text, call management, and other collaboration features commonly found in enterprise phone systems.
Furthermore, this answering service is highly versatile and can seamlessly switch between computer and phone. It offers a variety of options such as local, toll-free, and vanity numbers.
Vonage
Rating
3.5/5
Best For
All Businesses including Micro Businesses
Irrespective of the type and size of your business, it is important to have a flexible and cost-effective business plan that can help your business to grow without incurring high phone bills. An ideal plan would provide you with the necessary communication tools while keeping costs low.
Vonage
This can include features such as virtual phone numbers, call forwarding, voicemail, and auto-attendant, all of which can help to improve your customer service and increase your productivity. Additionally, many business communication solutions offer affordable pricing plans with different features, so you can choose the one that best fits your business needs and budget.
Vonage offers a variety of flexible options, including over 50 phone features with the ability to add advanced features at an additional cost. The basic plan includes 18 standard features such as call recording, internet fax, conference bridge, virtual numbers and more.
Additionally, a self-service mobile application that is compatible with both Android and iOS is available, enabling you to deploy third-party apps without needing professional services. Vonage offers a wide range of services such as contact centres, customer engagement, mobility, remote work, and more.
8×8
Rating
4.1/5
Best For
Unified Business Communication
8×8 is an automated phone attendant service that operates in over 48 countries and is ideal for companies with a large number of international clients. Additionally, the software has an economical subscription plan that allows you to save money on international calls.
8×8
The auto-attendant software has phone number support flexibility in over 100 countries, allowing your business to expand virtually in areas where you do not have a physical presence. However, the software’s collaboration features are currently limited to file sharing and video meetings.
Furthermore, the software utilizes AI to assist you in monitoring and managing your voice interactions, helping your team leaders and managers. The software also has an app that is compatible with both Android and iOS, allowing you to access all your business communication such as chat, video messages, voice calls, and more.
Aircall
Rating
4.3/5
Best For
Integration with CRM and Helpdesk Tools
Aircall is a cloud-based auto-attendant software that is perfect for e-commerce companies, enabling them to make their call centre more remote and efficient. It is an IT-approved, cloud-based solution that is ideal for sales and marketing teams.
aircall
This software is also easy to set up and enables you to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Aircall also comes equipped with CRM features, helpdesk solutions, and other essential apps that provide all the necessary information to clients when they call.
Aircall allows you to manage and monitor your work, analyze calls, and measure your call metrics to make measurable improvements. It also includes features such as a cloud-based IVR menu, skill-based routing options, and more.
Conclusion
Regardless of the type of business you run, an automated answering service can greatly benefit your business and contribute to its growth. An automated answering service allows you to customize it to provide all necessary information to your callers. By doing so, you can greatly reduce operating costs, time and staff resources. High-quality customer service is heavily dependent on your telephone system, and customer satisfaction improves when exceptional customer service is provided.
FAQ
What is the best phone system for business?
The best Business Phone Systems are as follows
PATlive
Nextiva
VoiceNation
Grasshopper
8×8
Vonage
Aircall
What is the automated phone answering system called?
Interactive voice response (IVR) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipients.
What is an IVR dialer?
An IVR Dialer is an automated dialer that dials numbers from a given database and plays IVR (Interactive Voice Response) messages when connected.
What are the limitations of telephone answering machines?
The Disadvantages of Using an Automated Phone Answering System
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Karza Technologies.
Non-performing assets (NPAs) and frauds have been plaguing Indian banks for the last several years. In 2021, the total amount of non-performing assets held by Indian public sector banks was approximately 6.17 trillion Indian rupees. However, as of March 2022, the percentage of gross non-performing assets in the banking sector fell below 6%, which is the lowest it has been since 2016, and bank loan frauds stood at INR 58,303 crore in FY22.
Karza Technologies has stepped in with big data analytics, business intelligence, and machine learning to carry out background checks and assess the creditworthiness of borrowers not just on their track record but also on their future potential and intent to repay. Karza is building an intelligent system that analyzes available financial information from the institutions and trawls the internet for lurking signals that will raise a red flag about the creditworthiness of the borrowers. Recently, in February 2022, this fintech startup was acquired by Perfios Software Solutions.
In this article, know about Karza Technologies, it’s business and revenue model, products and services, founders, startup story, and more.
Karza strives to be a one-stop solution for the financial services ecosystem. Karza is an analytics and automation platform that aggregates and stitches information from 850+ public databases to meet service automation, onboarding, due diligence, and monitoring requirements for the BFSI sector. Their services permit the seamless onboarding of customers and the mitigation of risks, allowing for a better assessment of any customer type, be it individual or entity.
Karza began providing its business intelligence, AML screening, KYC verification, and other services with a view to preventing systematic fraud through consistent innovation in the service of the larger public good. It has so far been successful in its stated objective of reducing fraud, having successfully prevented losses of over 2,500 crores by weeding out bad applications at the outset. It has also greatly simplified the customer onboarding process, with myriad solutions for KYC verification, including VideoKYC.
It is now acknowledged as being one of the preeminent KYC and business intelligence service providers in the country and has 400+ banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions dependent on its services to protect against identity theft, comply with AML and other regulatory obligations, and conduct customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence on their clientele.
Karza Technologies – Industry
The fintech market in India is a rapidly growing industry that encompasses a wide range of financial services and technologies. This includes areas such as mobile payments, online lending, digital banking, insurance, and investment platforms.
Digital lending includes services such as online personal loans, business loans, and other types of digital lending. Other important segments in the Indian fintech market include insurance, investment and wealth management, and blockchain technology.
As of FY2021, the fintech market in India was valued at INR 2.48 trillion. It is projected to reach a value of INR 9.27 trillion by FY2027, growing at an annual rate of around 24.96% during the period between FY2022 and FY2027.
Overall, the fintech market in India is expected to continue growing in the coming years, driven by increasing demand for digital financial services and the government’s efforts to promote digital financial inclusion.
Karza Technologies was founded by Omkar Shirhatti, Gaurav Samdaria, and Alok Kumar.
The co-founders, Gaurav and Omkar, knew each other from their college days, as they had pursued their graduation and chartered accountancy together, after which they took up different jobs. They are level-headed individuals with an enterprising mindset and a penchant for white-collar investigations. Omkar and Gaurav often engaged in conversations about their experiences with the BFSI sector and were struck by the massive gaps that could be filled by data-led, deep-tech approaches.
By March 2015, both Gaurav and Omkar had a fairly structured idea about the way forward, as they had already begun interacting with market stakeholders. Both had to quit their jobs, and the company was incorporated in June through personal investments. However, they were two chartered accountants who were starting a tech company and were in search of a tech expert.
The next challenge was to find a suitable developer. By reaching out to Gaurav’s friend circle, they were able to find some leads to begin the hunt for a tech co-founder, wherein close to 200 to 250 people were personally interviewed by Omkar and Gaurav. They narrowed down their search and found Alok, who has a Master’s in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur and had been working with Morgan Stanley. He was part of a 7-member global elite team that was working on global tech data, AIML projects, wire transfer frauds, and transaction pattern recognition to detect wire frauds and anomalies, etc.
They discussed the overall vision of Karza and the scale of the operations, including the complexities of profiling millions of businesses, detecting shell entities, and other AI, ML, and data science-related use cases. This excited Alok immensely, and he decided to take up the opportunity, put his Ph.D. and advanced learning dreams on the back burner, and come on board as a co-founder and CTO at Karza.
Omkar Shrihatti
Omkar Shrihatti – Co-founder and CEO at Karza Technologies
Omkar serves as the co-founder and CEO of Karza Technologies and also as the Chief Product Officer at Perfios (Karza Technologies’ parent company). Before co-founding Karza Technologies, Omkar Shrihatti served as a senior consultant at Ernst & Young, a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services. He has over 12 years of experience in the fields of fraud investigations, background checks, and so on.
Gaurav Samdaria
Gaurav Samdaria – Co-founder, Director at Karza Technologies
Gaurav is the co-founder and Director of Karza Technologies and Chief Business Officer at Perfios. Previously, Gaurav served as the co-founder and Director at Schbang Digital Solutions, an integrated marketing solutions agency. Prior to that, he worked as the Chief Financial Officer at M/S FoxyMoron, a marketing and advertising firm.
Alok Kumar
Alok Kumar – Co-founder, CTO at Karza Technologies
Alok is the Co-Founder and CTO at Karza Technologies. After completing his master’s from IIT Kharagpur with a focus on machine learning and big data, Alok specialized as a data scientist for Morgan Stanley for over three years, working on mining/natural language processing (NLP), and fraud detection.
Karza Technologies – Startup Story
The idea behind Karza stemmed from conducting investigations at our previous workplaces. Having worked with global consulting firms such as EY, their focus had been on fraud investigation, during which they identified several gaps in the processes followed by the BFSI sector. They were investigating loan frauds, hawala transactions, security market frauds, conducting market surveys, due diligence, etc., which gave us insights into identifying how money gets siphoned off in fraudulent transactions, how hawala and money laundering work and the way shell companies are floated, etc.
They did a lot of secondary research to identify, piece together, and gather all the scattered information to understand how Karza could solve problems with its data-first approach. While investigating loan frauds, they realized that banks used a lot of manual processes, which led to inefficiencies and were not able to keep pace with the technological advancements in the sphere. Even though the government had already begun to take huge strides in digitization, promoting their vision of a digital India, banks were unable to effectively capitalize on the opportunity with their existing resources, and their processes largely remained manual.
The inspiration came from the above-mentioned scenario, where they realized the power of leveraging technology to build solutions where intelligent information relevant to an entity can be searched and profiled based on various official sources.
Initially, they were able to meet people in the industry due to the social circle of their partners. Some of the interactions were instrumental in creating their first products. From the smallest cooperative banks to large PSUs, private sector banks, etc., they were all pivotal in helping them understand how to build robust products that cater to the BFSI segment. The initial set of clients came in through conversations at BFSI summits and conclaves, where the need for their solutions was immediately recognized, giving us a head start.
Karza Technologies – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Karza Technologies Logo
The name ‘Karza’ came into their focus as it was catchy and roughly translates to ‘lending‘ in several Indian vernaculars. They were looking for names that could be relatable and easily remembered. They reckoned that as a company that provides money-lending technologies, they must keep it simple and go ahead with ‘Karza’, a term specific to India.
Their aim was to revamp how consumers approach BFSIs and the overall journey to get a loan and to revolutionize the lending process by automating every aspect of it. This way, the name will be associated with a service that smooths this process.
Karza Technologies – Mission and Vision
They are now exploring other avenues to expand into, with a continuing focus on the BFSI sector. Karza Technologies is constantly innovating and looking to build products that can increase credit access and availability and, among a host of other things, is looking at the NBFC Account Aggregator framework, the creation of workflows, and improving our analytics and scoring services.
The traditional BFSI ecosystem has various limitations that make organizations slow, inefficient, and unable to service rising demand:
Scattered and Unstructured Data:
Data is scattered across the web and not available in a consumable, intelligent manner.
Evidenced by multiple licensing requirements, high requirements for statutory and compliance filings, several state-level regulatory bodies, and regional language portals.
Lack of credible intelligence also hinders the ability of institutions to service smaller and newer credit customers, inhibiting financial inclusion.
Manual Processes:
Processes such as onboarding, verification, and collection of data, when undertaken manually, have a high turnaround time and lead to huge operational costs.
Moreover, these processes are prone to error and/or manipulation and can lead to fraud and misappropriations remaining undetected.
Karza Technologies endeavors to eliminate these inefficiencies by harnessing the power of big data and AI to provide automated, scalable, and customizable solutions, enabling the digital transformation of businesses. They provide a multitude of services applicable across the lending lifecycle and to different industries.
They started with commercializing Total KYC, onboarding, and the verification suite. Karza Technologies adopts the principle of research-driven innovation to constantly roll out updates, improvements, and new features to its services. Over the course of their research, they also found a need in the market for a product that would allow enhanced due diligence to be carried out effectively and a need to increase access to credit for SMEs. Accordingly, they have built a due diligence platform, KScan, that enables them to conduct due diligence on all business entities registered in India, including identifying litigation filed against these entities.
They supplemented this with our GST and Income Tax solutions, which enable banks to effectively assess the credit risk of lending to SMEs. Most recently, they have gone live with their skip tracing solutions, improving the contact ability of defaulters and improving recovery rates for financial institutions.
Karza Technologies combines human and artificial intelligence through a research-driven development process to create products that address the gaps in the BFSI sector, payment companies, and larger corporates. With data collected from 800+ publicly available sources, they combine alternate data sets to provide maximum insights that no other player in the market can currently provide.
Karza Technologies – Business and Revenue Model
Karza Technologies is a B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company and works closely with various players across a multitude of industries, including lending, insurance, payments, corporates, law, investment, and several others. Their services are consumed both in the form of APIs that directly integrate with the core banking systems for large players in financial services and in the form of consumer-friendly dashboards that make the consumption of information as easy as possible.
The pricing will vary from product to product and be based on the level of customization required by clients. On account of the highly customizable nature of our solutions, they do not have fixed pricing models. They also offer batch modules for their clients so that they can directly share their insights in the form of reports.
Karza Technologies – Startup Launch
Their initial response from potential clients was positive, as the clients were in dire need of the sort of products that Karza was building. However, the onus was on Karza to prove its mettle and deliver working prototypes, EPIs, etc. that would lead them to use Karza for their business functions. For starters, Karza had to start small by packaging micro-services and catering to the first customers through the initial connections.
Later on, growth was solely through word of mouth. They ended up revamping or digitizing processes for several organizations, with the first year and a half going into researching, identifying resources, and offering offline reports. Furthermore, eliminating fraud was a serious concern for banks, as they weren’t getting the right sort of intelligence for processing the loans seamlessly.
Karza Technologies – Marketing Strategy
In the year 2017-18, there were 32 clients, 66 clients by March 2019, and crossed the 100 client milestone in October 2019, reaching a total of 142 clients by March 2020. This was achieved only by the word of mouth alone, as clients were extremely satisfied with the utility of the products that were being delivered. Now, the platform boasts of having 400+ clients.
Karza spent zero money on marketing and PR until June 2020. They were getting all their leads from existing client referrals; it was completely word-of-mouth. This speaks a lot about the utility and advanced products that Karza has to offer. They fulfill market demand by being a one-stop solution for the entire lending transaction cycle. However, for the next phase of growth, their focus could be on building better marketing and branding strategies now that Karza has managed to make a name for itself in the financial sector.
The NBFC-Account Aggregators ecosystem is improving, which opens up new opportunities for Karza. Entities weren’t able to look into banking analytics earlier; however, through public information sources, a proper official channel can be merged with external intelligence, making the lending process even faster. India has always been a credit-hungry country, and there will be enough space for Karza to expand its presence and build the necessary onboarding and due diligence infrastructure in the long run.
Karza Technologies – Funding
Karza Technologies has raised a total funding worth $1.1 million in over two rounds.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Jul 1, 2019
Series A
$750k
–
Jun 21, 2017
Seed Round
$388.5k
–
Karza Technologies – Recognition and Achievements
Recognized as Top25 startup in India to work with, in 2019 by LinkedIn
Winner of HDFC Bank’s Digital Innovation Summit 2020
Super Winners (Won every category) at Technoviti 2020 by Banking Frontiers
Winner of Amazon AI Award 2019 for Fintech
Winner of FinTech Spot Pitches at Fintegrate Zone 2018 held at BSE
Winner of the FinShare 2018 challenge held by ShareKhan
Maharashtra start-up week- Winners- August 2020
Karza Technologies – Challenges Faced
Like every other startup, Karza too has gone through ups and downs during its overall business cycle, as it has had to be cognizant of cash flows. With minimal balances, they initially faced challenges in managing resources to pay off employees and run the organization in parallel. However, the intention was always to be profitable and build a sustainable business rather than go after the valuation game, and they have since been cash-flow positive.
There were challenges also with banks when Karza tried to crack it through. They started with fintech companies, who were the early adopters of our offerings, as they could discuss the services and their applicability openly with the founders and make the right kind of propositions. Later on, they reached out to slightly larger NBFCs, which often had centralized decision-making and a close-knit setup because they would have a single product or offering, which made communication easier. However, with banks, they realized that getting through to them would be tough, as it could take several months or a year to close an agreement with them.
Well-known banks often expect major partnerships while participating in large-scale RFPs, and these challenges can be overcome with time. Karza had gone through a learning curve in the initial months, trying to understand how to bid on RFPs and mature as an organization.
Their other aim is to be cash-rich and maintain healthy liquidity. On the business decision front, the challenge has been getting the right talent. Bangalore is leading the country in terms of producing top-quality tech talent, and attracting the best tech workers to Mumbai was the biggest hurdle. It took two and a half years for them to get the first 20 people on board. In 2018-19, they got 20 more techies, and 40 more in 2019-20. Therefore, getting highly motivated and talented tech experts has always been challenging.
Karza Technologies – Competitors
Some of the competitors of Karza Technologies are:
Karza Technologies is the partner of choice for 400+ clients across banking, lending, payments, insurance, investments, and commerce for digitization, verification, and diligence, including all four credit bureaus, processing over 10 million transactions per month.
Their APIs are integrated with 40+ workflow providers and cover all leading LOS players. Their top clients include Google Pay, Cash Bean—a digital lender—IDFC First Bank, Bajaj Finance, and ICICI Bank, among others. While their only office is based in Mumbai, they work with clients situated across India, from large cities to even rural communities.
Karza Technologies continues to create solutions that transform the consumption of BFSI solutions. Their future plans include expanding and enhancing their existing product suite with additional data, investing in technologies such as advanced natural language processing and computer vision to strengthen their analytics offerings, and building automated solutions for partners.
FAQs
What does Karza Technologies do?
Karza Technologies provides business intelligence services to transform the ways financial institutions lend money. It takes care of the complete lifecycle, from onboarding to diligence and monitoring to collection.
Who founded Karza Technologies?
Karza Technologies was founded by Omkar Shirhatti, Alok Kumar, and Gaurav Samdaria.
Who is the CEO of Karza Technologies?
Omkar Shirhatti is the CEO of Karza Technologies.
How much funding has Karza Technologies raised to date?
Karza Technologies has raised $1.1 million to date.
When was the last funding round for Karza Technologies?
Karza Technologies’ last funding round took place in July 2019 from a Series A round.
Which company has acquired Karza Technologies?
Perfios Software Solutions has acquired Karza Technologies for INR 597 crore.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish detailed and verified information on every company. This article has been checked and approved by theEVeez team.
An ebike subscription business allows customers to rent or lease electric bicycles for a certain period of time, rather than purchasing them outright. This model can be beneficial for customers who only need to use an e-bike occasionally, or for those who want to try different models before committing to a purchase.
The e-bike market in India is still in its early stages, but it has been growing rapidly in recent years especially with the increasing concerns about air pollution, traffic congestion, and the need for more sustainable transportation options. Additionally, the Indian government has been promoting the use of e-bikes through various initiatives such as tax incentives and subsidies.
Eveez is one such company which provides an all inclusive electric mobility as a service (eMaaS) on subscription.
In this article, you’ll get to know more about Eveez, its Co-founders, products and services, business and revenue model, and more.
The core belief behind running EVeez has been two-fold. First, to accelerate EV adoption in India which is absolutely essential if we are to leave a better planet for our children. Deteriorating Air quality and Pollution are severe health hazards and such a situation cannot be allowed to fester forever. Making a positive change towards cleaning up our environment, even if we started small, was a wholly important part of our mission.
Second, it is to give freedom, flexibility, access to finance and EVs for the millions of gig workers across its major cities. What founder has noticed so far in the gig economy is that individuals are getting trapped due to the heavy burden of bike EMIs, huge fuel costs and maintenance bills. They are getting trapped permanently in an ecosystem which is supposed to be a temporary gig, a seasonal job or mostly just a stepping stone for a better life. So, a comprehensive electric mobility as a service (eMaaS) offering like EVeez is needed for people to check in and out of the gig economy at will.
EVeez – Market/Industry Details
Given the accelerated pace at which the EV and eMaaS sectors have been growing, following are the projections for 2025 –
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) – B2B & Shared Mobility Electric 2 Wheeler market – 2.5 million eBikes.
The above estimates have been made using Mcksiney’s future of mobility report published in July 2020.
EVeez – The Idea and Starting Up
I was backpacking in Europe and had the good fortune of experiencing riding an electric cycle on the country roads. We rode cross country across the alps in Austria on an electric cycle and it was the best way of exploring the pristine beauty of the landscapes. It was clean and green while also being a fun activity at the same time. When I came back, I explored if India had a similar ecosystem to explore nature here, especially the hills. This was around 2019. I also checked what kind of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of such electric cycles were there in India. I got in touch with a couple of them and started a travel and tourism company which provided electric cycles on rent to people visiting tourist towns like Rishikesh, Manali, Goa, Jaipur etc. We had a small, closely knit, yet growing community of travel enthusiasts, both from India and abroad who loved to explore India through this innovative concept. During the course of this business, people from the delivery ecosystem began to get in touch with us with requests for electric cycles on a monthly subscription basis. These conversations gave us the Aha moment and we realised that there is a huge latent demand for such a service in the commercial sector for last mile deliveries, logistics etc. – Gaurav Rathore (Co-founder, EVeez)
EVeez provides an all inclusive electric mobility as a service (eMaaS) on subscription. The key problem company is solving is taking away all barriers to EV adoption. The USP is an end to end service including maintenance, consumables, insurance, and battery swaps, all without a lock in period.
EVeez – Founder/s + Team Details
Gaurav Rathore, Co-founder
Abhishek Dwiwedi, Co-founder
Gaurav is an IIT Bombay grad who has worked at Deloitte consulting for a host of MNCs like Schlumberger before turning to full time entrepreneurship. Founded the hugely successful Political Strategy Consulting firm – PoliticalEDGE, prior to EVeez. Worked on a wide range of for-profit development projects with international NGOs and foundations. Gaurav Rathore takes care of strategy, finance and tech.
Gaurav met his co-founder Abhishek while working on some projects in the for profit development sector in 2009-10.
Abhishek Dwivedi is an NID Ahmedabad Alumni and possesses the unique skill set of amalgamating design thinking with strategy and operations. He is a travel enthusiast and a biker as well. One of the biggest mindset challenges with regard to EV adoption has been range anxiety. Just to shatter this myth, Abhishek undertook a 400 km trip on an eBike from Manali to Leh, one of the most difficult terrains in India. His earlier experience in the development sector also helps the company in getting a deeper understanding of the gig worker, who continues to be our primary focus as a user. Abhishek Dwiwedi takes care of Ops, Procurement, Hiring and Branding. .
EVeez is now a team of approximately 70+. Its work culture is that of taking ownership. No individual is discouraged from taking any creative initiative of their own in order to further company’s mission. It kindles an entrepreneurial spirit among all colleagues. Even while hiring, company looks for people who have a more holistic/creative approach to problem solving.
EVeez – Name, Logo and Tagline
EVeez just means – EVs with ease and it was a pretty obvious name that came to us once we knew what business we were getting into.
EVeez – Business Model and Revenue Model
The business and revenue models are pretty straightforward. EVeez provides weekly or monthly subscriptions of eBikes to gig workers, individual riders and small to medium businesses. EVeeza is EBITDA positive as of Dec’22.
Company had the distinct advantage of potential customers from the delivery ecosystem directly reaching out to it before even it had an eMaaS offering. After formulation a marketable eMaaS plan with the right eBikes, Abhishek Dwiwedi and Gaurav Rathore went to swiggy/zomato hubs and markets across Delhi NCR to do demos of the electric bikes highlighting their features to gig riders.
EVeez – Startup Challenges
The major challenge EVeez has faced was people’s mindset towards EVs. The riders had massive apprehensions about the range, payload capacity, and ability of EVs to go on inclines/slopes. The general disbelief towards the capabilities of an EV were extremely high.
EVeez convinced heavy lifting operators such as atta chakkis to give it their feedback and videos of delivering 25-50kg wheat on EVeez’s eBikes without any hassle. Such initiatives were taken in the early stages to convince riders.
Similarly, Abhishek’s 400 KM Manali-Leh trip on the most difficult terrain highlighted that eBikes were capable of tackling both inclines/slopes and assured people of range and reliability.
A second big challenge was – how to get financing for the eBikes especially at a time when the ecosystem was not this evolved. For this, company came up with a unique partner programme to which several individuals including salaried employees and businessmen signed up for to finance eBikes for its operations as the returns given by it were higher than FDs and even mutual funds in most cases.
However, now EVeeza has access to many more options for financing these eBikes at an institutional level.
EVeez – Growth
The company had the distinct advantage of potential customers from the delivery ecosystem directly reaching out to them before even they had an eMaaS offering. After thye formulated a marketable eMaaS plan with theright eBikes, founders went to swiggy/zomato hubs and markets across Delhi NCR to do demos of the electric bikes highlighting their features to gig riders.
As of Jan23 EVeez is operating in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore with 1500+ individuals, 150+ small and medium businesses, 40+ logistics companies.
Few of their notable clients areZomato, UberMoto, Swiggy, CABT, Sploot.
Few notable partners of Eveez are Sun Mobility, Battery Smart, Hero Electric, SES Electric, Amo, Leaf Round, OTO Finance, Alt Mobility, GripInvest, Sateek.
EVeez – Funding
EVeeza is a seed funded company and the lead investors are EV2 ventures and Ah! Ventures. Company raised a seed round of just under $1 Million.
Funding has helped EVeeza in hiring the best talent, building the tech stack, and leverage more finance from its eBike finance partners.
EVeez – Competitors
Zypp Electric
Yulu bikes
Lightning Logistics
EVeez – Future Plans
EVeez wants to immediately add a couple of more locations and reach 5000 eBikes before March’23 and 25,000 eBikes by the end of March’24. In terms of features, EVeez continuously works with all partners and tech team to enhance safety, reliability and range. Company also has an upcoming rewards programme.
FAQs
What is EVeez?
EVeez provides eBikes on subscription to businesses who is looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
Who is the founder of EVeez?
Gaurav Rathore and Abhishek Dwivedi
What is the size of EV market in India?
Indian electric vehicle (EV) market size was valued at USD 1.45 billion in 2021.
StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.
Digital lending refers to the process of borrowing and lending money using online platforms and digital tools. This can include peer-to-peer lending platforms, online banks, and traditional financial institutions that offer digital loan applications and services.
Digital lending has become increasingly popular in recent years due to the convenience and speed of the process, as well as the potential for lower borrowing costs. The lending market in India grew to Rs 174.3 lakh crore in March 2022, up by 11.1 % on an annual basis, as compared to March 2021. However, it is important to carefully research and compare different digital lending options to ensure that you are getting the best terms and rates available.
For this Interview, we invited Mr. Ajay Chaurasia, VP of Marketing, Product & Business, RupeeRedee, where we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the lending industry.
StartupTalky: Ajay, please tell us about RupeeRedee and the vision & motivation behind starting it.
Ajay Chaurasia: RupeeRedee is a Digital Lending company with an NBFC license to offer lending solutions to Indian customers across the country. We are a tech-enabled company in the financial sector solving gaps in the lending industry with customers.
Even if it’s 2022, India still has a huge population that is not connected to Digital Banking and Lending Solutions. There is a huge population of Underserved customers, who cannot get a loan from a bank or a big NBFC as they might not have ITR or Proper documentation to take a loan.
Also, the ticket size that we offer is customized which allows our users to take loans for small purposes as well. The vision is to reach out to the masses and offer them our services when they are in need and fulfill their short-term dreams.
StartupTalky: Ajay, according to you what are the USPs of your products?
Ajay Chaurasia: Well since we deal in digital lending, we try to customize loan products for the users and we offer many options like multiple tenors, instant availability and credit check, paperless process, strong KYC process, IMPS transfers post-approval.
StartupTalky: Ajay, if we talk about the lending industry in particular, how has the Lending industry changed in recent years and how has RupeeRedee adapted to these changes?
Ajay Chaurasia: Industry has grown more than 2Xin recent years as more and more Indians are coming onboard on such platforms for their needs. Technology has enabled every industry to grow and offer the best experience. India has moved on to a mobile app-driven user base, and because of this, the financial sector has transformed drastically. The entire sector has become fast and is now focused on customer delivery and delightful experience. Our company has also adopted the same and designed the product accordingly to offer the best to customers and compete with our competition.
StartupTalky: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in your industry?
Ajay Chaurasia: RupeeRedee is a part of the IAMAI Fintech convergence council. We also monitor the market, and RBI Guidelines, and thanks to Media stories, we get to know the changes.
StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?
Ajay Chaurasia: In our sector growth is dependent upon multiple factors. User Acquisition, User retention, No of loans Disbursals, Repayments, loan portfolio, Collection efficiency. As a Fintech– NBFC we have to look after all the aspects to track growth and stay in profit.
StartupTalky: You talked about metrics and performances, what were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?
Ajay Chaurasia: Getting new customers was a challenge in the market as there were so many big giants and players already available. Attracting new customers, building trust and branding was a big challenge for us. We expanded our acquisition channels in the last year. Reached out to the masses via different media. Made a market-fit product to communicate the needs of the customers.
StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.
Ajay Chaurasia: We have been using multiple strategies which should be our secret. But broadly we use Affiliate partners, Online campaigns, OEM Channels, Social Media platforms, google, and many publishers-based campaigns to reach out to our audience and deliver the promise.
StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen within states in India?
Ajay Chaurasia: Fintech and Lending industry has huge opportunities in the coming time while doing any type of transaction has already become very easy in today’s time which opens up accessibility to consumers in India.
The world is becoming one, we can see companies crossing borders, Cross border payments are becoming easier. Global brands are connected with multiple fintech based on the countries they are providing their services. There is still a huge population in India and the World who are still connected with Mainstream banking.
Every state in India has different consumer behavior, values, culture, and languages. This is why most brands have multilingual apps and websites to connect with consumers. Some states have a high demand for certain products, some states have different income groups. Some have different age groups. We have to analyze each city with Pin Codes while running a business like lending to map the risk of the consumers.
StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?
Ajay Chaurasia: We certainly know “what not to do” in the coming year. What we can do is still in the plan, we will try to achieve the same for the growth of the company and the satisfaction of our consumers. There is an area for improvement in everything that we do. We also have plans to improve and be better than last year. Our future plans can be summarized in the below points. ● Increase customer base ● Improve customer satisfaction ● Build new products ● Improve our position in the Industry
StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, product, and team base in the future?
Ajay Chaurasia: We have plans to increase, thanks to Digital Media and Networks getting customers today is not a problem. Problem is to convert them by offering the right fit product. We have tied up with some big agencies and networks to boost traffic on our App and Web Platform.
Product and team base always increase with the demand and rise in the business. We have been hiring and doubling the size of the team in the last 1 year. We will see how 2023 unfolds for us.
StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with people reading this article who want to get into entrepreneurship?
Ajay Chaurasia: Don’t daydream of only making money, today entrepreneurship has been linked with success and money. But in reality, the path to success is very difficult. Do your research, understand the basic things of the business you want to start, and then take the risk. Improve yourself every day and handle the challenges. If all things go well, you never know, maybe you could be building the next unicorn for India and generating jobs.
We thank Ajay Chaurasia for spending his valuable time and sharing his learnings with all of us.
StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.
The footwear industry has grown significantly in recent years, driven by a number of factors like an increase in consumer demand, advancements in technology, and the growth of e-commerce.
People are becoming more conscious of fashion and are willing to spend more money on high-quality footwear. Additionally, consumers are also becoming more health-conscious and are looking for footwear that provide comfort and support.
Advances in technology have also played a role in the growth of the footwear industry. New materials and manufacturing techniques have allowed for the creation of new, innovative footwear products.
Another trend that is driving growth in the footwear industry is the increase in customization and personalization of shoes. With the rise of 3D printing and other technologies, it is becoming easier for consumers to create their own unique shoe designs.
The Indian footwear market is valued at approximately $13 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 12% during the forecast period from 2021 to 2028. The production of footwear in India reached around 2.8 billion pairs in the year 2020.
For this Interview, we invited Harshwardhan Patwardhan, Founder of Chappers, and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the footwear industry.
StartupTalky: Harshwardhan, What’s Chappers all about? What was the motivation/ vision with which you started?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan:Chappers is a footwear brand that offers customization to anyone who loves to have their style using AR technology. We offer various styles right, from Kolhapuri Chappals to Belgian loafers, mojdis, Peshawari sandals, and more, for both men and women.
I have been fond of Kolhapuri chappals since college, and when I went to study in the UK, I took my favorite footwear along. It received much appreciation from my friends and other people around me, but the only challenge around wearing Kolhapuris was the need for more color and design. This gave me the idea to build a world-class footwear brand that could offer unmatched design and color innovations and give Kolhapuris a contemporary avatar. This is the vision with which I started my journey with Chappers.
StartupTalky: What other products/features have been added in the past year? What is/are the USP/s of your products?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: Chappers is a brand unlike any other in the Indian footwear market. We have created a unique fusion of Indian and western footwear to create stylish, high-quality, durable, and comfortable footwear. Alongside expanding the range of Chappers customized footwear, Chappers, which started as a men’s footwear brand, recently introduced some SKUs for female customers with the festive and wedding footwear demand in mind. The uniqueness of Chappers lies in the usage of cutting-edge design and AR technology in order placement. We encourage our customers to create designs with colors, materials, and even personal symbols or accessories for footwear.
Thus, our customers can make their style statement through footwear. This kind of designer footwear is offered to them at far more affordable prices than other international brands providing such services.
StartupTalky: How has the footwear industry changed in recent years and how has your company adapted to these changes?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: The footwear industry has been steadily growing in size over the years. However, there has yet to be growth when it comes to innovation. All major brands keep producing thousands of pairs of almost identical-looking footwear. Chappers has identified the unaddressed demand for personalization and introduced a cutting-edge software-driven approach that ensures limitless creativity and options for personalizing footwear. Along with high quality and the right price, our footwear has been gaining rapid market acceptance and is now available for delivery all over India from our e-commerce portal. Customers can also order the footwear through our offline stores in Pune, and we are working towards expanding our retail network to different parts of the country.
StartupTalky: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in your industry?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: I attend most of the industry events and exhibitions. It is inspiring to see how Indian entrepreneurs are coming up with newer technology and innovative manufacturing techniques. I also research many foreign brands that have made a mark on the footwear world, like Christian Louboutin, Versace, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Giuseppe Zannotti.
StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: We track Month on Month sales growth and the number of customer touchpoints added. We want all Indians to experience the power of customization. We believe our model will change the footwear industry forever.
StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: In the early stages of Chappers’ evolution, we faced challenges related to the procurement of raw materials. Still, we overcame those through extensive research and visits to leather makers across Maharashtra, especially the Mumbai region. In recent times, we have had challenges with the pandemic. Still, we have built a full-fledged eCommerce website to ensure that customers can order Chappers footwear from their homes across India now and get them delivered in three to four days from order placement.
StartupTalky: Repeat purchase is one of the most important parameters on which most eCommerce brands are betting. How do you keep your customer engaged to stop churn?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: Chappers is a one-of-its-kind footwear brand in India. We offer customers freedom of choice to get their footwear made the way they want. We have built a patented AR software that lets them choose materials and colors and add personalized elements such as accessories or signs. They can visualize the look and feel of the product through AR tools, and if they are satisfied with the design, they can finalize it and place an order. This is the only brand currently offering right-priced footwear options in this country. This has been a critical driver for Chappers retaining its customers and getting many repeat orders. Even the comfort and quality of the products are very high, making the customers choose Chappers over other brands.
StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: We have been using different content marketing approaches and increasing online brand visibility through media coverage and footwear style guides. Further, Chappers also participates in a lot of exhibitions and fairs. We also run social media and search engine marketing to optimize our customer reach.
StartupTalky: What are the important tools and software you use to run your business smoothly?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: Chappers is a technology-driven brand, and we have built our proprietary AR software to enable customers to design and visualize the footwear even before it takes shape. For sales, we use the latest e-commerce technologies and keep improving the tech stack to streamline operations further.
StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry in India and the world?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: As a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, a strong audience is keen to buy stylish, high-quality, personalized footwear. We have revamped the iconic Maharashtrian Kolhapuri footwear and made it apt for consumers worldwide. Chappers has already received several orders from foreign countries. In the long run, my vision is to make Chappers available in every shopping mall across India and through eCommerce channels in every part of the world.
StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: Covid was a challenging phase for all of us. We must stick through the bad phases in life to see a brighter future. Testing times are always short-lived, and there’s always a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. Never give up! The past year has seen a tremendous rise in sales of high-ticket-value items, which was surprising for us.
StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, SKUS, and team base in the future?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: We keep track of the most popular Chappers designs and frequently upgrade our database with new SKUs based on these designs. Chappers recently unveiled a range of footwear for women, and we will expand it in the year ahead. Further, there are plans to introduce kids’ footwear and include products based on various other ethnic footwear from different states of India, such as more from Rajasthan.
For market coverage, we are leveraging a kiosk franchise model under which we offer franchises to people to set up kiosks in shopping malls. Four such outlets are already operational in Pune, and in the long term, the vision is to have one kiosk in every shopping mall across India. We will expand our team of craftsmen and other professionals in sync with the brand’s growth.
StartupTalky: With so much hype around d2c brands spending on ads, what will be your growth strategy organic or inorganic? How to plan to work around SEO and content marketing?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: Digital marketing is the key to success for any D2C brand today. Chappers generate many organic leads as customers who use our products recommend the brand to others. We currently use SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and even search engine marketing to engage the audience. In the future, we will leverage influencer marketing and other D2C-centric marketing channels for faster growth.
StartupTalky: So finally Harshwardhan, one tip that you would like to share with another d2c founder?
Harshwardhan Patwardhan: I personally believe that d2c is a misunderstood term. People relate d2c just to online businesses. That is not true. Direct to Consumer businesses can run offline sales channels too. Online business is highly overrated. It is good for marketing and customer acquisition. But businesses must build the right mix of online and offline sales points to gain traction. Do not restrict yourself to any particular point of sale. Eventually, sales growth is essential; whether it comes online or offline does not matter.
We thank Harshwardhan Patwardhan for spending his valuable time and sharing his learnings with all of us.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Wellthy Therapeutics.
Standing in a doctor’s waiting room is both cliché and terrifying, especially if you are afraid of the deadly virus. Here’s the game changer in the world of medical science: Digital Therapeutics (DTx). Digital therapeutics have been on the market for about ten years, but there have only been a few of them. DTx is a part of the broader digital health landscape, where the product is software-driven and evidence-based.
Wellthy Therapeutics is one such digital therapeutics company, focused on improving patient health through proven clinical interventions and behavioral models. In this article, you’ll get to know more about Wellthy Therapeutics, its founders, products and services, business and revenue model, and more.
Wellthy Therapeutics – About and How Does It Work?
Wellthy Therapeutics is a digital medicine platform with proprietary clinical intelligence at its core and with therapy area expertise, behavioral algorithms, data analytics, and user experience design to assist all healthcare stakeholders in achieving real-world clinical and business outcomes. Wellthy Therapeutics designs and deploys clinically validated behavioral interventions for chronic disease management.
The platform candidates (for each therapy) are delivered through an industry-leading, prescriptible, patient-facing Android and iOS app, coupled with connected devices for monitoring and behavioral intervention and a constantly learning chatbot for real-time feedback.
Wellthy Therapeutics was born out of the realization that episodic care is not nearly enough to help individuals manage their chronic conditions effectively. Low health literacy, inadequate follow-up care, and poor adherence to treatment, caused by low beneficiary engagement in-between healthcare touchpoints, have led to poor non-communicable disease (NCD) outcomes.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Industry Details
According to the WHO, an estimated 1.28 billion adults worldwide aged 30-79 years have hypertension, with the majority (two-thirds) living in low- and middle-income countries and an estimated 46% unaware that they have the condition. Furthermore, only 42% of adults with hypertension are diagnosed and treated.
There are over a billion people globally who have or are at risk of a cardiometabolic condition, with a global cost of over 2 trillion dollars. 240 million diabetics live in Asia, and 800 million hypertensives are projected to live in Asia by 2025.
Wellthy Therapeutics’ target beneficiaries are individuals suffering from or at risk of NCDs such as diabetes, hypertension, CKD, and dyslipidemia, both in India and globally.
Wellthy Therapeutics was founded by Abhishek Shah, Aradh Pillai, and Prayat Shah.
Abhishek Shah
Abhishek Shah – Co-founder and CEO of Wellthy Therapeutics
Abhishek Shah is the co-founder and CEO of Wellthy Therapeutics, which inspires and enables people to prevent, manage, and control their chronic health conditions. Abhishek is a thought leader in DTx globally and in Asia. Prior to Wellthy Therapeutics, Abhishek co-led an early-stage capital fund, where he invested, built, and scaled healthcare ventures in Asia, and prior to that, he held leadership positions in a media conglomerate, a contract research and manufacturing pharmaceutical business, and a medical consumables business.
Prayat Shah
Prayat Shah – Co-founder and VP, of Partnerships and Alliances at Wellthy Therapeutics
Prayat Shah is the co-founder and VP, of Partnerships and Alliances at Wellthy Therapeutics. Previously, he worked at KPMG as a management consultant, at Nielsen as a Client Solutions Executive, Customized Research (Pharma and Life Sciences), and at PwC Consulting as a Retainer – Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences. He holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business and a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biological Sciences from Singapore’s Nanyang Technical University. Hailing from a family of doctors, chronic disease management comes as a second skin to him, and he is passionate about solving the problem of chronic health conditions in developing economies.
Aradh Pillai
Aradh Pillai – Co-Founder and VP of Design and Engineering at Wellthy Therapeutics
Aradh Pillai is the co-Founder and VP of Design and Engineering at Wellthy Therapeutics. He is an entrepreneur and avid problem solver. Earlier, he worked as the Senior Product Designer at OLA, the Lead Mobile Product at LetsVenture, the Head of Mobile Products at Antfarm, the Managing Director at Simrge Inc., the Head of Mobile Products at Verbat LLC, an Open Source Contributor at Cyngn, and he also founded CheckROM.
They all met through common connections and soon realized that they shared a common thread: their respective immediate families were battling chronic conditions like hypertension or diabetes. Thus, the team had a similar challenge to battle out. What is more important is that they all were and are like-minded and shared the same vision and approach, which makes it easier to work together.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Startup Story
The idea of Wellthy Therapeutics arose when Abhishek and Prayat’s respective parents had chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension. Therefore, the company understands the challenges faced by chronic patients.
Wellthy Therapeutics then identified the gaps and developed its products and services. The company first began its operation with a lean team of five members and a solid plan to fight chronic disorders systematically. With continuous positive responses and feedback, they focus on aligning their efforts with their goals and mission.
Abhishek’s mother has had hypertension for a long time and was recently diagnosed with diabetes. The realization that the episodic nature of their healthcare systems was inadequate for chronic care management was the genesis of the idea of Wellthy Therapeutics.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Name, Logo, and Tagline
Wellthy Therapeutics Logo
An oft-repeated phrase that Wellthy Therapeutics has grown up listening to is ‘Health is Wealth’ and thus the name ‘Wellthy’ emerged as a combination of the two words “wealth” and “health.” The logo depicts a victorious individual with two hands raised.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Vision and Mission
Their vision is to inspire and enable 10 million beneficiaries to control, manage, and/or reverse their chronic conditions by the end of 2030. In the process, they aim to save up to $10 billion in payor and national health costs. With their current partners spread across the pharma and insurance sectors, Wellthy Therapeutics projects to impact more than one million patients across six therapies and multiple markets.
The product aims to solve health problems by combining science, technology, and design to bring continuous, real-time care to beneficiaries 24×7 as a complement to the existing health infrastructure. In the process, Wellthy Therapeutics is pioneering an entirely new category of medicine known as “Digital Therapeutics” (DTx).
They design clinically validated digital health interventions for NCD prevention and management, which are deployed through a cloud-based technology stack comprising prescription therapeutics for beneficiaries, dashboards for health coaches, physicians, and paramedical staff, program analytics, and an AI-powered Chatbot that can be deployed across multiple languages and digital mediums.
The team equips healthcare professionals with patient data and decision support through coaching, physician dashboards, and EHR-integrated reports. They also extend these modular capabilities to real-world evidence (RWE), contract research organizations, and insurance for digital clinical trials and disease management.
As the last piece of the puzzle, Wellthy Therapeutics creates population-level dashboards for enterprise partners for aggregate analytics, pharmacovigilance, adverse event tracking, and RWE for live and pipeline medical products. Their technical expertise is complemented by a robust design thinking process that involves mapping patient empathy maps and journeys and solving unaddressed pain points. Their solutions have been catalyzed by a boost through regulatory approvals and recently enhanced internal data capabilities.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Business and Revenue Model
In a nutshell, Wellthy Therapeutics develops patient-focused, clinically validated solutions for healthcare partners (at various stages of the patient journey) and then shares a portion of that new revenue through a B2B2C channel based on proven outcomes.
Their business model has been successfully tested and implemented in the private healthcare sector in India and Singapore. Their platform is ready to scale across the Indian public health system and is designed to engage beneficiaries at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, and ensure financial protection to 50 crore Indians with national healthcare insurance.
The company started with basic social media outreach by creating a Facebook group and creating an event. This helped them reach out to a filtered audience, especially those with chronic conditions. An informal roundtable discussion with tea or coffee was organized. Company representatives, including the founders, visited Marine Drive (a bustling locality in Mumbai) and distributed fliers about the company.
Soon after, Wellthy Therapeutics even reached out to doctors and partnered with them, as doctors are the primary influencers for patients. This helped them build their brand and procure their first set of beneficiaries.
To date, Wellthy Therapeutics has raised funding worth $8.5 million from various investors like Cipla, IIFL Finance, Saama Capital, BEENEXT, Currae Healthtech, growX ventures, and more.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Dec 16, 2020
Venture Round
–
India EdisonTM Accelerator
Apr 13, 2020
Seed Round
$4 million
Saama Capital
Feb 18, 2019
Corporate Round
$1.5 million
Cipla
Mar 5, 2018
Seed Round
$3 million
BEENEXT, Currae Healthtech, growX ventures
Wellthy Therapeutics – Recognitions and Achievements
And, here’s when Wellthy Therapeutics is unstoppable:
Part of Google for Startups Accelerator 2020
Part of GE Healthcare Edison [X] startup program 2020-21
Part of Plug&Play Health, Silicon Valley 2020
Winner of the Ferrer4Future Challenge 2020 by Ferrer Pharma, Spain
2nd Place Winner and Judge’s Price holder for the ‘Boston Scientific Connected Patient Challenge 2020’ sponsored by Google & Boston Scientific MA, US
Finalist at Ayushman Bharat’s ‘Grand Startup Challenge’ (Top 3/350+ startups). [Ayushman Bharat is the World’s Largest state-sponsored health scheme with 50 Cr potential beneficiaries]
Economic Times Health Award 2020: Best Technology Solution for Chronic Conditions
Won Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Leadership Award (India) 2020
Winner at GINSEP (German Indian Startup Exchange Program) Live Pitch 2020 (Category: Health)
Won the NASSCOM Top 10 most innovative technology products and services startups in November 2019
Bayer G4A Accelerator of the Growth Cohort 2019
Won Cipla Innoventia 2018, chosen from ~800 startups from Asia Pacific region
Recognized by American Diabetes Association as a Global Innovator in diabetes management in 2018
Frost & Sullivan Price/Performance Value Leadership Award 2018, for the South Asia Digital Therapeutics Market
Judges Pick Prize at the MSD Digital Innovation Summit 2017, chosen from ~600 Health Tech Companies from the Asia Pacific region
Graduated from Merck KGaA’s Digital Health Accelerator in June 2017
Graduated from Swiss Re’s Global InsurTech Accelerator in 2017
ICICI Lombard’s NOVA InsurTech Accelerator in 2016
Endorsed by RSSDI (India’s foremost Diabetes Research Organization) as India’s first prescribable intervention for T2DM in India
Wellthy Therapeutics – Challenges
The most difficult aspect for Wellthy Therapeutics was creating categories. Because the category of telemedicine or digital health did not exist, category creation was the primary focus.
When they started, the category was still in its infancy, and it is still not fully defined. They formed a group of like-minded individuals who saw potential in this field and shared a desire to make a difference. In 2017, one year after the company’s launch, the company received additional funding from evangelists such as GrowNext, BeeNext, and Ranjan Pai, and the first Minimum Viable Product was presented. This was followed by another 13 pilots.
Wellthy Therapeutics – Competitors
Some of the competitors of Wellthy Therapeutics are:
Omada Health
Welldoc
Lark Health
Wellthy Therapeutics – Future Plans
Wellthy Therapeutics is currently headquartered in Mumbai, with a base in Bangalore. They have formed partnerships with leading players from the pharma, health insurance, medical devices, and hospital systems sectors.
The company has partnered with leaders in two segments: pharmaceuticals and insurance. In the pharmaceutical industry, they have alliances with companies like Roche, Cipla, Intas, andAbbott. In the insurance domain too, the company has partnered with prime industry players like ICICI Lombard and Aviva.
As they look to grow, they will be expanding their reach to other markets, both in APAC and the EU. Wellthy Therapeutics will also continue to drive product innovation and new business models with their partners in pharma, medical devices, and insurance to achieve further scale while continuing to make their product reimbursable through major private and public payers and becoming a credible voice for shaping policy around innovation and technology in public health.
FAQs
What is Wellthy Therapeutics?
Wellthy Therapeutics is a digital therapeutics company, focused on improving patient health through proven clinical interventions and behavioral models.
Who is the founder of Wellthy Therapeutics?
Wellthy Therapeutics was founded by Abhishek Shah, Aradh Pillai, and Prayat Shah.
When was Wellthy Therapeutics founded?
Wellthy Therapeutics was founded in the year 2015.
What are remote meetings ? Also known as virtual meetings, remote meetings happen when a group of people, who are dispersed across different locations, use video and audio facilities to connect online. Remote meetings are extensively used by organisations who hire hybrid teams.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of remote meetings as in-person meetings became restricted. This was specifically true with multinational corporations with a global presence. The shift to remote meetings was quick and absolute. It became necessary to define ways that would maintain the purpose of remote meetings and design creative ways to bring the team together. Some key benefits of remote meetings are –
Recorded meetings
With time-zone differences, it may not be possible for everyone to join. In such a scenario recorded meetings allow team members to catch up on what transpired adding context to the notes taken at the meetings.
Optimal Use of Time
Virtual meetings with a set agenda are focused and to the point. They are time-bound, agenda bound and aim at a results-driven approach.
Outlining all the advantages while, at the same time, building a process that is an excellent case study for making remote meetings extremely effective is GitLab’s Remote Meetings process.
What is GitLab?
GitLab is a DevOps software package that combines the ability to develop, secure and operate the software on a single application. Ukrainian developer Dimitry Zaporozhets and Dutch developer Sytse Sijbrandij created this open-source software. GitLab Inc. was founded around this pre-existing GitLab software project by these developers in 2014 as a limited liability corporation. In 2018, GitLab Inc. was considered the first partly Ukrainian unicorn to be valued at more than USD 1 billion.
GitLab Annual Revenue from 2020 to 2022
As the largest all-remote company in the world, GitLab has approximately 30 million registered users with one million being active licensed users. Since its inception, GitLab has been centred around remote work.
GitLab is a free platform that offers a range of paid services. The company adopted a policy not to accept new customers unless it’s legally required. Additionally, they even prohibited political conversations in the workplace.
GitLab Remote Meetings
As an all-remote company with employees scattered in 65 regions across the globe, GitLab is an example of how to practice clear communication to stay connected and work efficiently. Working towards this agenda, GitLab has built a framework of policies and guidelines which help maintain the sanctity of a remote meeting.
GitLab Policies
Anti-harassment policies
Code of Business Conduct and Ethics
GitLab’s Whistle-blower Policy
Confidentiality Policy
Social Media Policy
These policies are enforceable and are also within the purview of the law of the land in which the company operates. Any deviation or deliberate action against what these policies specify is punishable by law and GitLab adheres to these policies firmly.
Guidelines for Effective and Responsible Communication
As a company that functions in the virtual space, GitLab’s guidelines are process-driven, practical to implement, encouraging and inclusive. These guidelines work across borders and are applicable in every region their staff operates.
Follow Company Values
Assume Positive intent and begin with a position of grace
Be kind to colleagues and refrain from sending negative messages
Express thoughts responsibly and inclusively
If one says it, he or she owns it
Be a role model of specified company values
Give and receive feedback regularly
Asynchronous 1:1 communication is necessary to clear misunderstandings and a zoom call is effective for this
It is important to adhere to GitLab policies
Avoid discussing things that are not under the direct influence
Every team member in the meeting is a moderator
Avoid topics of a sensitive nature involving politics, religion, etc.
The culture and working style of GitLab is a poster child of modern-day professionalism. Globalisation has given businesses access to talent across the world and technological advances have eased the working culture that is no longer boundary-limited or time-bound.
Hiring and Working all over the world. No central hiring
Flexible working hours
Writing and recording knowledge
Written processes
Sharing of information
The results of work – over the hours put in
Formal communication channels
Key Practices During Meetings – Internal or External
Effective, efficient and focused meetings are a result of a team that is well-organised, clear on expectations, results-driven and solutions-focused. GitLab’s best practices during meetings are a shining example of remote meetings.
Keep the video on during the entire meeting. This is a way to communicate undivided attention and it promotes comfort between both parties
Have a list of clear agendas to be discussed during the meeting. This agenda must be shared via email before the meeting so everyone is aware of it.
Follow the 70/30 Rule. Allow the other attendees to speak 70% of the time by asking open-ended questions. This ensures equal participation for all
Taking Notes is a valuable skill as it helps retain and recall important information
Record all meetings. This way if someone is unable to attend, they have access to all discussions
Conclusion
It is true that what an in-person meeting or a personal touch can accomplish, goes far beyond the studied brilliance of remote meetings. However, the world is becoming smaller with technology. The Metaverse is a near-future reality. How companies will evolve to utilize this technology remains to be seen. In the meantime, GitLab’s success at conducting remote meetings is worth a study and, if possible, put into practice wherever applicable.
FAQ
What are some advantages of remote meetings?
The following are the advantages of remote meetings
Everyone Can Be Involved
Less Expensive
Shorter Sessions
More Frequent Meetings
The Chance to Record Meetings
Minimal Scheduling Needs
Better for Health
How do I know if my virtual meeting was effective?
You can ask for feedback in your meeting follow-up email. You can also take steps to make your meeting as effective as possible in the planning process.
Are there ways to improve remote employee engagement in my virtual meeting?
You can improve employee engagement by using icebreaker questions, sharing meeting itineraries and objectives, and carefully moderating your meeting to make sure everyone participates.
What is the purpose of a virtual meeting?
The purpose of a virtual meeting is to discuss important issues, achieve critical goals, or build and maintain healthy office relationships.
StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.
Paper bags are bags made from paper or paperboard, which is a type of thin cardboard. They are commonly used for carrying groceries, food items, and other small items, and are a popular alternative to plastic bags due to their environmental benefits.
Paper bags are often preferred over plastic bags due to their environmental benefits. They are made from renewable resources and can be recycled, whereas plastic bags are made from non-renewable resources and can take hundreds of years to break down in the environment. In addition, paper bags have a lower carbon footprint than plastic bags, as they require less energy to produce and transport.
There are also a number of government initiatives in place in India to promote the use of paper bags and other sustainable packaging solutions. For example, the government has implemented a ban on single-use plastic bags in many states and has implemented other policies to encourage the use of alternatives such as paper bags. These initiatives may also contribute to the growth of the paper bag industry in India.
The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the sustainable packaging market varies depending on the source and the specific segment of the market. However, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global sustainable packaging market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.2% during the forecast period of 2020-2025.
This growth is driven by increasing consumer awareness about the environmental impact of packaging, government regulations promoting the use of sustainable packaging, and growing demand for eco-friendly products.
For this Interview, we invited Mr. Sushant Gaur, Founder & CEO of Adeera Packaging, and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the Packaging industry.
StartupTalky: Sushant, What is Adeera Packaging all about? What was the vision with which you started the company?
Sushant: Started in 2019, Adeera Packaging is one of India’s largest manufacturers of sustainable packaging. We replace around 20 plastic bags per second with environment-friendly packaging and save 17,000 trees per month from being chopped by using recycled or agro-waste-based paper to make bags.
Adeera Packaging’s purpose is to make the planet a better place for future generations which we want to achieve by creating a global presence to democratize supplies of environment-friendly packaging.
StartupTalky: What are the major USPs of your packaging paper?
Sushant: At Adeera Packaging, we use odor-free, food safe and high-strength paper made from sustainable sources tracked by the forest stewardship council. We are a BRCGS grade A facility for manufacturing of food safe products along with having many other certifications. However, we consider our always-on-time & just-in-time service to be our USP. As a provider of take-away packaging, we know our value is in consistently timely delivery across the world.
StartupTalky: How has the paper bag industry changed in recent years and how has your company adapted to these changes?
Sushant: The paper packaging industry has become extremely price-sensitive over the last 3 years due to frequent fluctuations of raw material prices. Due to our relationships with suppliers, we have always remained informed of the short-term price trend and have been able to hedge our customers to give them price stability. Keeping track of macros was irrelevant to our industry for the longest time but now we have started to see paper behave more as a commodity than ever before.
StartupTalky: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the paper bag industry?
Sushant: We have strong relationships with industry leaders in India and across countries like USA, Indonesia, China & Czech Republic summation of whom are able to give us a clear picture of the macros. We track industry publications for innovations and global indices for current price trends and also track all available imex data for competitor analysis apart from having eyes on the ground through our sales and procurement leaders.
StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check company’s growth and performance?
Sushant: We track our production efficiencies uniquely, we optimize for keeping 15-20% of our capacity free for any sudden spike in demands, delays in RM or new product development. Mostly this remains unutilized for 80% of any given year but we cannot promise the customer no delays unless we keep this capacity as spare.
StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges Adeera faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?
Sushant: We faced a challenge when 90% of our production team went back to their home-town during the start of the first lockdown. As a culture we always want to be there for our team members as much as we can so we paid full salaries even to the people who were back home. Not only did we get our people back as soon as it was physically possible for them to come but we never faced a challenge in technical hiring as news of what we did percolated to the larger technical community in our industry.
StartupTalky: What are different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off?
Sushant: Back when we started we used colloquial terms for search engine optimization despite all consultants advising us against it. Some of the larger advertising channels laughed us off when we asked to be listed in the “Paper Lifafa” category.
Adeera Packaging Paper bags made for clients
So we did not list ourselves on any platform but used 25-30 free classified post websites to market ourselves. We knew our customers think in their mother tongue and will search for paper lifafa or paper thonga and we were the only ones present on the web for these keywords. Since we did not list on any large platform we had to further innovate. We started India or probably the world’s first youtube channel for sales of paper bags that is still running strong.
Apart from this, we introduced selling by weight instead of pieces which was a pseudo-viral move for us as a change of unit of sale is a drastic change no one in the market was able to copy us for 2 years even though the market loved it as it removed any chance of skiving on quantities or paper grammage.
StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in paper bag industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen within states in India?
Sushant: The usage of Paper Packaging in FMCG goods is rising and will soon grow to become the highest segment in the paper bag industry in India and around the world.
In states with higher literacy levels, the market sentiment is against the use of single-use plastic even if the law is not strictly implemented. This change is very positive for our country as SUPs are being looked at as an environmental hazard which they are.
StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?
Sushant: We have been researching the US market for the last one year and observing a trend of growing use of recycled paper. We believe our future is in becoming a truly global organization by diversifying into different geographies across the world starting with the USA as a sales & a manufacturing hub.
StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, Product and Team base in the future?
Sushant: We have started hiring from the top-B schools in India and want to build the best team in the world for industry. To do this, we have also started to work actively to attract talent. Our culture has always been attractive to young minds to grow and be independent.
We are diversifying our products by adding new production lines every year, next year we plan to grow our capacity by 50%, most of it will come from new products. We have the capacity to make 1 billion bags per year as of now and will be taking it to 1.5 billion.
One of our core tenets is long-term relationship building backed by quality and great service. We are perennially hiring in our salesforce for expansion and are growing capacities to feed this growth.
StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with people reading this article who want to get into entrepreneurship?
Sushant: I would recommend studying great entrepreneurs, how they built their businesses, and especially how they behave when given tough problems. Books (printed & audio), blogs, podcasts & Youtube channels are great sources for study material. I dedicate at least 2 hours every day, sometimes more, for the last many years towards this.
We thank Mr. Sushant for spending his valuable time and sharing his learnings with all of us.
Gorish Dua
