Tax is a liability that almost every citizen of a country has to bear if he/she makes an income within the taxable limit. Normally, progressive taxation on many taxes such as the income tax is implemented in every country, the more you earn the more you pay in tax.
So by the above-mentioned logic, a highly successful multinational company, say Apple pays way more amounts of money in tax than an average higher middle-class citizen right? Surprisingly, the answer is surprising No, as a matter of fact, Big Companies avoid paying taxes altogether in many cases
Is it illegal for them to not pay taxes? If yes, how are they getting away with it? Why the government is not intervening? In order to find the answer to all these questions, we need the answer to a crucial one first which is what exactly is Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion.
Although these two terms are always used as a substitute for each other there are a lot of differences between them.
Tax Avoidance is the use of various loopholes and elements in the tax code to minimize or in some cases completely avoid taxable incomes together. Some examples are using Deductions and Tax Credits as prescribed under the tax code. To sum it all up Tax Avoidance is LEGAL.
Shifting Subsidiaries to tax-free zones is a practice followed by many MNCs
Tax Evasion is the use of malpractices such as income misrepresentation, deduction inflation, and hiding of income to avoid paying taxes. Tax Evasion is ILLEGAL.
So the Large MNCs follow Tax Avoidance which is completely legal as it uses loopholes within the tax code to avoid paying taxes. Let’s take an example to better understand the various aspects of Tax Avoidance.
Tax Evasion is a bigger issue than Tax Avoidance
Example: Amazon 2018
Amazon paid exactly $0 in federal income tax for the year 2018 on an income of $11 Billion and they did it legally. As per the Tax Code in most countries, companies don’t have to pay taxes if they incur losses for that financial year, and for the first 6 years, Amazon’s business operated entirely on losses as they invested a lot of their earnings into the company growth and research & development overheads which are also nontaxable and acts as tax credits.
The income tax receipt shows that amazon made revenue of $11.2 billion yet they paid 0$ federal tax as federal taxes are based on profits and not on revenue
Furthermore, they set up subsidiaries and factories in countries where the corporate tax was much lower than in the USA (which has the highest corporate tax in the world at 21%, reduced from the previous rate of 35%). They also relocated their products to tax-free zones like Bermuda thus avoiding other taxes. After claiming more deductions, their net tax liability amounted to $0.
Reasons Behind Tax Avoidance
While the MNCs resort to loopholes in order to avoid paying high rates of taxes, the countries which act as their tax-free subsidiaries also have their own reasons.
Firstly, having a factory of a company like Apple or Amazon set up in their country is always a welcome sight as it helps in boosting their employment and growth rate and gives them exposure to the latest technological side of the market and after every successful venture more and more companies set up their factories in these countries. Bermuda is a prime example of how helpful it is to have large companies on board.
Other than being less taxable, these countries also have cheap labor and material costs so naturally, large companies gravitate towards developing nations for subsidiary purposes.
Possible Solutions
Although these tactics have a lot of advantages for both parties, there is an extreme amount of taxable income for the parent countries which gets completely nullified due to Tax Avoidance. So what possible solutions are there?
Lowering corporate tax is the first step, and although this may lead to fewer taxes in the initial stages, this opens up the door for the large companies to set up factories in the home country itself rather than shifting abroad. Let’s take an example to better understand the situation.
Suppose Company A is a small company that makes $20000 profit per year and pays a corporate tax of 20% which amounts to $4000. Another company B earns a profit of $200000 per year and in order to avoid paying high tax rates, it sets up all its factories in lesser countries and thus pays no tax at all. So the total tax is just $4000.
Now if the home country lowers its tax rate to 10%, this would encourage the large company B to set its other factories in the home country itself, so the total tax here will be (10% of 4000) + (10% of 200000) which amounts to a total of $24000, which is 6 times the previous amount despite being half the tax rate.
Another method involves the Unitary Model of Taxation whereby the taxes on charged at the place where the economic activity takes place rather than where it is reported. Many different methods of avoiding tax avoidance are being implemented but as of now, it seems like the situation will stay as it is.
Countries with the largest tax avoidance amount in the Us billion dollars
Tax rules differ from country to country with their amount and eligibility criteria also. However, it is one of the main responsibilities handed over to the citizens. Denying to pay the tax can result in criminal offenses and law charges. However, when we talk about the tax paid by multinational companies, it is astounding to notice that their tax is quite different from what we have imagined.
They take the help of possible loopholes in the tax code and minimize their tax amount. The above article includes information about how multinational companies avoid paying taxes.
FAQs
How do companies legally avoid paying taxes?
There are many ways companies can implement to avoid paying taxes or reduce their tax amount. Some of them can be opening offshore accounts, making use of loopholes in tax codes, getting paid in stocks rather than money, and many others.
What is not paying taxes called?
The term used to describe the group of people who deliberately deny paying the tax is known as “Tax Evaders”. And the term that describes the situation is called tax evasion.
What are tax-free countries?
Tax-free countries are those countries that have no rule of paying taxes or have a very little amount as their taxes. Some of the tax-free countries across the globe are Oman, Qatar, Panama, etc.
Which business is tax-free in India?
India is known for its agriculture business for a very long time. Hence, any business involving agriculture work is tax-free in India. For instance, the selling and processing of agricultural crops are tax-free.
Have you ever wondered how guys buying fewer undies could be a sign that the economy is decelerating? Would you believe there is a connection between the economy and the trash you throw out? Yes, your garbage disposal does serve as a barometer of how the market is doing. Did I hear you say how?
There are numerous approaches to forecasting the performance of the economy. Even the kinds that seem to be the most formal are occasionally strange. So let us take a look at them.
The following are some of the most bizarre and outlandish indicators that can provide an insight into the economic situation:
Growth of Global GDP from 2017 to 2022 (compared to previous year)
The Big Mac Index
It’s a rather well-known one. Every year, the economist releases the cost of Big Macs in several nations to evaluate currency values and per capita income. It simply indicates whether the currencies are at the right level or not. The indicator is often used to measure the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) between two currencies.
Men’s Underwear Index
As per this metric, an increase in demand for men’s underpants signals the nation’s economic general health or economic boom, on the other hand, a drop in sales says otherwise. Therefore, by monitoring the purchases of men’s underpants, we may be able to gauge the overall economic situation.
The Skinny Tie Width Indicator
It seems that men purchase more neckties during tough moments to give the impression that they are employed. Due to economic reforms initiated during prior conflicts, tie size was a consideration for the economic conditions.
The Champagne Index
Champagne is usually opened when there is cause for celebration. Purchases of champagne are therefore typically linked to increasing economic wealth levels. The consumer sentiment can be inferred from this by telling us if the consumers are purchasing luxury or expensive products.
It is a Japanese indicator that women in Japan tend to cut their hair and keep them short when the economy is declining and let them grow when the economy is doing well. A notion to explain this indicator is that women cut their hair short during times of crisis because they have less money to spend on their hair care products. As per Japan’s Nikkei magazine’s data, women cut their hair shorter in 1997, when Japan’s economy was facing a decline.
The Happy Meal Indicator
This one’s premise is that eateries reduce their freebies for children in an attempt to secure their bottom lines. An example to prove this is that Red Robin reduced their offering of free colours to children during the recession of 2009.
The First Date Indicator
Match.com, US-based Dating website
Individuals turn to connections for consolation when the market is in trouble to get over their feelings of melancholy and isolation. The indication demonstrates how dating website traffic has surged throughout the downturn. The 2008 financial crisis coincided with the largest visitor spike in over 7 years, according to US-based dating sites provider Match.com, which found similar trends.
The Alligator Population Index
The idea of this indicator is that the declining sales of high-end purses made of alligator skin show that people have less purchasing power. In 2009, alligator farms in Louisiana faced massive losses as the alligators there were producing but their skins had no demand in the market.
Buttered Popcorn Index
As a general rule, folks are said to become more thrifty when the market is struggling. Folks, however, also require a getaway when things are difficult, such as watching films with a bowl of buttery popcorn. With the help of this indication, we can see how the film industry may prosper even in tough times. Amid the 2009 financial crisis, the US movie business experienced one of its finest years before falling, once the markets recovered.
Marine Advertisement Intensity Index
According to the notion, folks attempt to enrol in the navy when things are difficult. If several individuals register then marine advertisement becomes more aggressive to filter out all the weaklings.
The Lipstick Index
According to this measure, during downturns, women frequently choose lipsticks over incredibly costly luxuries like expensive footwear and bags.
The Unclaimed Corpse Indicator
This is another unusual indicator that shows the economic conditions. This indicator is based on the idea that since funerals are expensive, fewer families identify their deceased, and more corpses are left for the government to bury during the time of crisis.
The Garbage Indicator
Individuals spend and consume more as their wealth increases. This remarkably precise predictor, therefore, shows that higher garbage disposal is projected to accompany an expanding economy. This metric, in the opinion of analysts, accurately predicted the U.S. economic output by 82% between 2001 to 2012.
The Baked Beans Sales Indicator
During the Great Recession 2009, baked beans sales rose nearly 22% compared to previous year
People will switch to canned foods to avoid spending more money on food, according to the theory underlying this indicator. In the UK (2009), the value of baked beans rose to 23% as people preferred canned foods over going to restaurants for dinners during the time of crisis.
The Cardboard Box Indicator
Since cardboard containers are used to deliver the majority of non-durable items, declining economic conditions would also affect the sales of these containers. The indicator is simply used to measure the production of consumer goods.
The economist’s index keeps track of how frequently the term “recession” occurs in the headlines. According to the theory, the use of frightening terms with an r increases during economic downturns.
Curse of the New Headquarters
There are many arguments for and against this, however, few folks continue to hold the opinion that anytime a firm declares that its Headquarters would be shifting, it’s time to sell the shares since the price is about to fall.
The Year of the Dragon Indicator
China is the nation with the largest population in the entire world. Therefore, it makes sense that the world economy would grow stronger if the majority of its inhabitants think that getting engaged, investing in real estate, and even procreating in the year of the dragon is a lucky omen.
The Skyscraper Boom Indicator
The idea behind this is that construction surges can make downturns appear worse, particularly when the world’s tallest skyscraper is being built. Some of the world’s largest skyscrapers were being built during the Great Depression.
Bike Fatality Rates
On the checklist, it is among the most upsetting. Bike mortality rates typically rise during recessions. As per WHO, low and middle-income countries have a higher road traffic fatality rate than high-income countries.
Conclusion
While these causes or alterations in buyer behaviour may be the result of a lack of forethought on the side of the majority, they nonetheless reveal the unintentional decisions consumers make during recessions. Despite the ongoing plans to revive economic growth, the global indexes are still in a downturn and are unpredictably volatile. One of the topics that still is frequently debated is the possibility of a severe recession, and these metrics might aid in understanding current economic developments.
Facebook is one of the most commonly used social media platforms and learning to target the ad campaigns on the platform is one of the important skills that is required to help you in increasing your customer base and putting your business a step forward from your competitors.
As of 2021, the Social Media Platform has a monthly active user of around 2.80 billion and around 200 billion businesses around the world that uses the tools of the platform. It is found that every month the users spend an average time of around 19.5 hours on the social media platform. Let’s look at the Facebook ad campaign strategies.
Points to Consider Before Starting With Facebook Ad
Before actually running a Facebook ad few things needs to be re-checked. The terms and conditions have been updated by Facebook in the year 2019. While figuring out the ad targeting strategy it is not important to follow just a single one or pick a single strategy, it would be better if you do a trial and error and check which would work the best for your campaign.
The Facebook Ad campaign has provided a ladder of success to its users through the availability of a wide range of targeted audiences. Facebook is known to achieve great revenue from its advertising options made available to users.
1. Analytics
Basics of Facebook Ad Targeting
The perfect marketing campaign is supposed to be aligned with your Pay-Per-Click campaigns which provide valuable data which can be cross used. The analytics provide a lot of information, especially your Google Analytics which provides a wide range of information about your website traffic which helps in targeting your ads.
The overview of the analytics will help in breaking down the traffic of your website or your page into sectors such as location, interest, demographic, and device. All of this information will provide you with data that are highly useful for targeting the ads on Facebook.
This data is considered to be highly valuable as it will help in creating relevant and sectorial ads for the specific target audience. It also provides a huge understanding of what works for potential shoppers.
2. Using the Reach of Big Engagers
You can try to use the influence of the big engagers in the market to help in able to reach the target market of your campaigns which will provide more clicks and shares. The trick behind this strategy is to use the demographics to identify the people who are from the relevant field and is most likely to share the campaign.
You can add the highly influential engagers or viral makers in your specific niche so that they would click or share the campaign which would help you in reaching a higher number of people.
3. Targeting a Specific Brand Segment
It is said that you would probably miss out if you don’t target the audience who has liked the campaigns of other brands. This type of strategy would be successful as it is based on what the users have liked on their own and not the campaigns that they have engaged with or shared.
It is considered that targeting the users who is one of the biggest fans of your competitor is considered to be effective. It helps you by letting you know that they are already engaged and interested in your specific niche and hence you would just have to grab their attention.
Facebook’s advertising revenue worldwide in millions of US dollars (2015-2021)
4. Targeting Occasions
Another effective strategy in targeting Facebook ads is checking the occasions. For example, if you are an event management company that hosts birthday parties or if you provide the service of making customized gifts, you can target the friends of people who have their birthdays coming up or any special events coming up.
If you are a company that deals with wedding accessories then you will have to target the users who have their engagements or weddings coming up.
5. Utilizing Layering Target Option
This is another effective strategy to target your Facebook ads with these tools you can carefully choose the exact target market you are looking for. For example, if you are a logistics company that helps people in shifting houses.
You can easily target the users who have recently purchased a new house and also choose a specific age which you would like to target and it would reach the users. This will help you in creating creative ads and provide really good offers according to your target audience.
6. Remarketing
An example of “How remarketing Advertisement Works”.
Remarketing is one of the most effective strategies and most important strategies. It is an effort to market powerful strategies to connect with potential customers who have already provided an impression of the products or services.
The custom audiences will help in targeting the people who have recently viewed the page or website or the sales page or even people who have viewed a specific set of products.
It would provide you with detailed information. You would even have to option to remove the people who have purchased recently if you feel they wouldn’t require it soon.
Conclusion
Facebook has long passed the tag of just being a social media platform. Apart from being counted among the most commonly used platforms, Facebook has also been considered a great means of advertising.
Facebook advertisements have shown great results for the respective brands due to their wide range of users. There are plenty of advertising strategies one can imagine implementing on Facebook. Some of the best Facebook advertisement targeting strategies have been shared in the above context.
FAQs
How many targeting options does Facebook have?
There are approximately 13 targeting options available on Facebook for its users to take help from. Some of them are Website retargeting, lead form retargeting, customer list targeting, Facebook page engagement, etc.
What are the three types of targeting on Facebook?
While targeting on Facebook, one can have three different types of targeted audience options such as saved audiences, custom audiences, and lookalike audiences.
What are Facebook targeting methods?
There are multiple Facebook targeting methods available on the web to take help from. Some of the most preferred methods are target by location, target by demographics, target by interests, and target by behaviour.
Can we target Facebook ads by keyword?
Yes, just like Google, Facebook is also known to provide keyword targeting options for its ad campaign.
The mimicry of human intelligence is called Artificial Intelligence. Or the development of intelligent machines, thinking, and working like humans is called Artificial Intelligence. With the help of machine learning, we can develop Artificial Intelligence.
Machine Learning is an application of Artificial Intelligence that study the computer algorithm, learns automatically, and improves the experience. The computer, robotic machines, and machines have to learn how to respond in actions, it uses computer data structures and algorithms to create the Propensity Model.
The Propensity Model is a statistical model that is used to predict the behavior of your customer. The best example of artificial intelligence that we are using in our daily life is speech recognition like Alexa and Siri, problem-solving, learning, and planning.
How Artificial Intelligence is Helping in Business Today
Artificial Intelligence tools are supporting tools in our businesses today. It can work in the replacement of humans but it is facing many difficulties to complete common sense tasks in the real world. Artificial Intelligence is a form of software that can process and analyze data processes more quickly than human brains.
It can also return some actions and present them to human users. Artificial Intelligence can make decisions as opposed to traditional software. It can make the decision even in such a situation that has not been foreseen by the programmers before. It is very helpful in maintaining the relationship between the customers and the company.
Artificial Intelligence is changing the customer relations management system(CRM). High human intervention companies like Zohoand Salesforce have to remain up-to-date and accurate. AI helps these platforms to transform the customer relation management system into auto-correcting and self-updating that makes the best interaction with customers for you.
Artificial Intelligence In Business
Artificial Intelligence in Finance
Financial services are very important and too much use of AI in this industry. According to the McKinsey report, some companies have seen a profit margin of over ten percent higher than the industry average.
Artificial intelligence in finance can prove to be way much beneficial for the users. The decisions required in the financial sector might be needed to have a thorough check. With the help of AI, the work of checking the accounts can rarely take some time.
Also, it is scientifically proven that AI can make better data-driven decisions. AI can also help in financial service by completing some of the repetitive tasks in less time than human beings and with much proficiency.
The above graph shows the revenue collected from the artificial intelligence market worldwide in millions of US dollars for the years 2016-2022
Financial Services Using Artificial Intelligence
Financial services have seen a great peak in the use of artificial intelligence in their working pattern. Some of the most common uses are stated below.
Fraud Prevention
AI is used to increase revenue and cut the cost of the company. It is also very helpful in fraud prevention. In 2016, $16 Billion was stolen by fraudsters or identified as theft. The AI detects the client’s behavior, activities, locations, and buying habits that seem suspicious and unusual.
Trading
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are very helpful in trading. They can gather data quicker than humans which helps to improve each day. It helps to eliminate the emotional aspects of trading.
Personalized Banking
Many banks and fintech companies are using AI to make better customer relationships and better service.AI helps the customer to understand the risk factors of various policies. It can create your financial plan by tracking your spending pattern, income, and goals.
Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
The marketing industry gets a boom with the development of AI. It helps to gather more and more data to create the best marketing plan and able to enhance marketing practices as well.
Marketing Attributes
It is very difficult to quantify the impact of various marketing channels like offline marketing TV, and Radio Billboards. To overcome this problem we need to execute two popular marketing techniques:- The attribution model and the marketing mix model.
An attribution model is a set of rules or analytical science determining the tactics of marketing contributing to sales or conversion. A marketing mix model is a marketing technique that is used to promote the brand product and services in the market.
Customer Profiling
An example of how customer profiling is carried out by AI
Customer profiling is a way to create the profiles of customers to understand decision concerns for your business. By creating profiles the customers are divided into smaller groups and a representative is given to each group with a photo, name, and description.
Logistics is an important part of each industry. With the combination of Artificial Intelligence logistics becomes more efficient by creating AIapplications like automated warehouses and automated vehicles.
Automated Warehouse
The above images show the use of robots in the fully automated warehouse
In an automated warehouse, thousands of robots are moving from point A to point B to fulfill the demand. The automated warehouse also reduces the cost of transportation, less warehouse space needed, and reduces overall costs.
Automated Vehicles
With the development of AI, it is very important to develop autonomous vehicles. The development of autonomous vehicles is very helpful for humans, they need rest and sleep while driving which leads to late delivery, now no longer transportation is limited.
Tesla is the best example of autonomous vehicles. Rolls-Royce cars and Intel are also in the queue of developing autonomous vehicles but they are very less known. Together they built an Intelligence Awareness System to allow the autonomous chips.
Artificial Intelligence in Retail Market
The retail industry is one of the most competitive industries. They need new inventions and technology to stand out from the crowd. AI in the retail market is applied in various processes of the retailer’s products and service cycle.
Chatbots And Robot Assistants
Google also has its own AI-based chatbot named “Meena”
The chatbot is an application of artificial intelligence which is used as a conversational agent. They communicate with visitors by using two primary methods:- web-based applications and standalone applications. For example, Pepper is a social humanoid robot designed by Softbank that is used in physical stores to engage customers and provide personal assistance to the customers.
Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication
The Telecom industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. The value of this industry is very large so every difference matters. Three main artificial intelligence applications are used in the telecom industry:-
Churn Prediction Modelling
The prediction of detecting customers who are likely to cancel the contract or subscription is called churn prediction, It is very important as it gives a better understanding of future revenue. Churn prediction helps us to identify the areas of lacking customer service in your business.
Network Optimization
The improvement of the network is called network optimization. There are various ways to improve and monitor network performance:- global load balancing, minimizing latency, packet loss monitoring, and bandwidth management. By using artificial intelligence in network optimization we can increase speed, scalability, and effective result.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive Maintenance refers to the monitoring of the condition of in-service equipment to reduce the risk of failures. It is also known as condition-based maintenance. By using artificial intelligence it can maintain the historical data, sensors data, and weather data to ensure the proper condition of a machine or when the machine needed servicing.
No one can say the future of artificial intelligence but you can predict the future of artificial intelligence. For example, artificial intelligence is ready to do common-sense tasks and it is easily handled by computers. We can say that robots are going to be a part of our day-to-day lifestyle in the future. Tesla is also innovating driverless cars and many companies are trying to innovate with AI technology. In the future artificial intelligence is going to lead our life.
Artificial Intelligence stands for the power of machines to behave like humans and possess a similar tendency to take decisions. With increasing technology, there is a significant growth noticed in AI projects. In today’s world, many services are dependent on AI.
The basic examples of AI include help desk solutions provided by chatbots, banking software uses AI to make their work easy, etc. The above article details the changes brought by AI into the business world and how it is developing regularly.
FAQs
How AI is changing the future of business?
Artificial intelligence allows business owners to provide a more personalized experience to their customers. AI can analyze vast data way more efficiently. As for the future, AI can prove to be more than just a help for businesses and many work will be AI-dependent.
What is Artificial Intelligence in Business?
Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the ability of machines to understand the world around them, learn and make decisions, similar to the human brain. Thanks to AI, machines are getting smarter every day.
What are the benefits of artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence has many advantages in store for its opponent. Some of them can be minimal errors in work, improved customer satisfaction, fast-paced work, and automation of work.
How AI can solve business problems?
AI can solve business problems based on multiple factors. Some of the most common problems that can be solved by AI are security, scheduling and setting up appointments and working schedules for employees, improving customer and employee connections, etc.
The days when all the essential pieces of information from across the globe were shared by only the means of newspaper or the television screen are now the past of the present world.
Today, the news can be shared and accepted by just using a smartphone. There are several applications made across the globe that enable the sharing of news easily and fast. One such app is named Dailyhunt.
Dailyhunt is not something similar to other available platforms. Dailyhunt is one of the major platforms used for the sharing of news across the nation with many Indian languages accepted.
Introduced in the year 2010, Dailyhunt is a mobile-based news application and news aggregator platform giving a common point to all Indians. It is recorded to gain high popularity day by day mainly because of the multiple local languages supported by the platform. To know more about Dailyhunt’s business model, continue to read below.
Dailyhunt is a news aggregator and Indian content application that has its headquarters located in Bangalore, India. The company was formerly known as Newshunt and was launched in the year 2010. Dailyhunt provides news articles in local languages i.e., around 14 languages from different content providers.
Dailyhunt was previously named Newshunt
The mission of the company is “the Indic platform empowering a billion Indians to discover, consume and socialize with content that informs, enriches and entertains”.
The mobile application was produced by two ex-employees of Nokia and was then acquired by the founder of Verse Innovations. Later on, the mobile-based news-sharing service was renamed Dailyhunt during the peak of its popularity.
Dailyhunt is one of its kind of platforms that allows its users to share information in their own desired language rather than depending on any one language.
From the time of its introduction to now, Dailyhunt has seen great popularity in its name. Currently, Dailyhunt enjoys more than 350 million users monthly with its revenue around $127 million in 2022.
Currently, the platform is managed by Virendra Gupta who serves as the CEO of the firm, and Umang Bedi as the President of the platform.
Dailyhunt – Startup Story
Virendra Gupta – Founder and CEO of Dailyhunt
The most favoured local news platform Dailyhunt was started by two ex-Nokia employees in the year 2009. Soon, it was taken over by Virendra Gupta, the founder of Verse. The Verse Innovation was a value-added company. Verse innovation currently is a local language technology company and is counted as the parent organization of Dailyhunt.
The founder of Verse Innovation started his firm in the year 2007. But even after the success of the newly launched technology, something was missing in his innovation.
He believed that his product will not maintain its shine in the market for a longer period. At such moment, previously known as Newshunt came to his notice. Virendra Gupta purchased the Newshunt in 2011 and it was renamed Dailyhunt in 2015.
The vision seen by Virendra Gupta on Dailyhunt was to create a platform that provides content in vernacular languages. He believed that 70% of India consists of non-English speakers and that was the target audience for Dailyhunt. Hence, after taking over the Newshunt and with the introduction of better facilities, Dailyhunt kept on becoming a larger platform and giving tough competition to non-Indian platforms.
Dailyhunt – Business Model
Dailyhunt Group has different types of offerings which are mainly divided into 3 broad categories. One of the key features of this application is that they provide content in regional languages.
The company acts as a news aggregator through Dailyhunt, they also have another entity called Greynium Technologies that house news and various other platforms that provide content such as CareerIndia, OneIndia, Boldsky.com, Gizbot, etc. The company has also launched a platform named Josh which is similar to TikTok as a short video-sharing platform.
As mentioned earlier the important feature of all the application are it provides content in local languages. Dailyhunt provides content in 14 different languages, whereas Josh provides content in 12 different languages and the other content platforms provide content in 9 different languages.
The Dailyhunt group has a huge base of content providers which include 100K content partners, news content published in 14 different languages by content creators producing 250K news every day.
What Is Unique About the Business Model of Dailyhunt?
Dailyhunt’s business model is very unique compared to other content providers as mentioned earlier all the platforms of Dailyhunt provide various content in local languages. The English content providers will have to directly compete with already well-established global creators such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Whereas Dailyhunt concentrates on the Indian market by providing content in local languages. The application has also been able to secure a well-established position in the market.
Dailyhunt – Target Audience
Dailyhunt focuses mainly on the millennial group in the country where the age varies from 25-34 years. However, the company focuses on providing content in regional local languages through which it targets all the major populations in India including the people from rural areas as well.
Global Ranking Chart of Dailyhunt
Dailyhunt – Competitors
Even though Dailyhunt had stepped foot into the market at an early stage, they have many competitors in the news industry. With the growth of digital content, a lot of applications are racing to reach the number one position in the news aggregator Industry.
The competitors of Dailyhunt are Feedly, Google News, Flipboard, Inshorts, etc
There is no direct competition for Dailyhunt as they have content in various languages. One of the major competitors as a news aggregator for Dailyhunt is Google News.
Other than Google News some of the other competitors of Dailyhunt include Flipboard, Inshorts, Briefing, Feedly, etc.
Dailyhunt’s major source of revenue is through advertisements however, in the year FY19-20 the company was able to increase its revenue up by 100% year on year despite the pandemic. Other than this the application concentrated on raising funds and has had multiple funding rounds.
Recently in the year 2020, Dailyhunt had become a Unicorn Startup in India. The company has received a total funding of around USD 540 million and the most recent funding was USD 207 million which was through Series H funding.
The company also receives revenue through e-books as well as magazines. Anyone can read the news provided by Dailyhunt for free of cost but for downloading the books or magazines one will have to make a payment for it.
Conclusion
Dailyhunt was one of the unique platforms that gain popularity quickly despite the risks present in the market. From the time of its start to now Dailyhunt has seen significant growth in the news aggregator market and through its unique approach to providing content in different languages, the company was able to stand out from its competitors. The above text provides basic information about Dailyhunt and its business model.
FAQs
How does Dailyhunt make money?
There are multiple ways through which Dailyhunt creates revenue. One of the major sources of income for Dailyhunt is by the means of advertising. Dailyhunt earns money by selling out advertisements for different startups and services on its application.
Who is Virendra Gupta?
Virendra Gupta is the founder and Present CEO of the company, Dailyhunt.
Is Dailyhunt a product-based company?
No, Dailyhunt is not a product-based company. Instead, it can be considered a service-based company mostly used for sharing information.
Who are the investors of Dailyhunt?
Dailyhunt has more than one investor attached to it. Some of them are Kotak Investment Advisors, Luxor Capital Group, Baillie Gifford, Sumeru Ventures, and many others.
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 Freshworks.
Let’s be honest about the fact that a majority of the employees despise the software application they use at work. Business software has always been noted as cumbersome, costly, difficult to implement, and challenging to use.
Days are usually spent attempting to tailor a difficult software to use for a specific purpose as decided by the company. Sometimes it becomes so difficult that the companies need to recruit full-time staff to oversee the application, which is simply another hit to their finances. All of these can now be avoided with the emergence of Freshworks, which is a one-stop cloud-based software solution for businesses.
Freshworks was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy, and Vijay Shankar in Chennai. Freshworks agrees that every company needs better technology that is ready to use, easy to scale, affordable, and leaves a little room for configuration. All of the company’s products deliver on this pledge and are backed by world-class customer service. The best thing is that getting them to work is not very expensive.
Know more about Freshworks success story, its Founders, Business Model, Team, Logo, Startup story, Challenges, Competitors, Mission and Vision, Funding, Future Plans and more in this article.
Freshworks is a global Saas-based software solutions provider that helps enable businesses to get the best out of their software. Originally headquartered in Chennai, India, Freshworks is currently listed on Nasdaq with its headquarters in San Mateo, California, United States.
Founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010 in Chennai, the company brings in a range of product suites, including sales CRM software, recruitment tools, and customer-support helpdesk software to exceed customer and employee expectations.
With a focus on enabling all kinds of big and small companies and their increasing requirements, Freshworks builds and distributes easy-to-use SaaS software, and helps all of its customers drive clear business results. Freshdesk, Freshworks, Freshservice, Freshteam, Freshchat, Freshcaller, and other products are among the company’s offerings.
The company already boasts of enabling over 50,000 big and small companies across the globe.
Freshworks, now a California-based company, is a part of the Business Intelligence Software Industry. The company has 4000+ employees working on all of its sites and it has already witnessed an annual recurring revenue of more than $300 million in the month of February 2021.
Freshworks – Target Market Audience
Freshworks brings in cutting-edge SaaS customer engagement solutions for startups and other business professionals. It targets businesses of all sizes and all kinds and makes it easy for the operating teams to acquire customers and keep them engaged for life. The company currently operates in India and the US.
Freshworks will continue to acquire new customers and catalyze global brand awareness using a variety of Google resources. Freshworks expects to use Google Translation Services to expand globally as its product range grows.
Freshworks – Startup Story
The founder of the company was an employee of Zoho Corporation. While Girish was reading an article on Hacker News, he found Zendesk raising their prices from 60% to 300% and how the Zendesk users were unhappy about it. He found a comment, where it was written that there’s a big opening in the market for someone to come inand take all of Zendesk’s and eSupport’s customers. It was a slap on his face.
Girish knew that the opportunity was sitting right in front of him and also that he had knowledge about the transition taking place. He then thought that he should do something in the customer support market delivered as SaaS.
The next few weeks turned out to be stressful. He was very excited about this new idea but didn’t expose the fact. Mathrubootham spoke to his friend Shan Krishnasamy about the matter and they immediately agreed. They both resigned from Zoho and coupled with Vijay Shankar to bring Freshworks into existence with a team of six people as Freshdesk.
The founder trio soon set up a 700 sqft warehouse in Chennai to launch their IT helpdesk company in 2010. This new startup not only started to change the ways the customers interacted with the companies using social media but also helped the companies to address the customer complaints across diverse channels.
It was around eight years of hardwork, which led the company to scale its revenue to touch the $100 million mark. Soon after, Freshdesk was rebranded to Freshworks, the success of which followed and helped it set up its headquarters in the US, thereby bringing the company closer to a majority of its userbase.
The founders of Freshworks are Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar. It was founded in 2010, in Chennai.
Girish Mathrubootham
Starting his career as a Member of Technical Staff at HCL Cisco ODC, Mathrubootham served as a Senior Software Engineer at eForce and then went on to become a Lead Engineer and a Product Manager AdventNet Inc.
After staying with the company for over 4 years, Girish landed a job at Zoho Corporation, where he joined as a Director and was later promoted to the position of Vice President – Product Management. Girish Mathrubootham worked with Zoho for over 5 years before founding Freshworks in 2010.
Girish Mathrubootham (Left) and Shan Krishnasamy
Freshworks CEO and Founder Girish Mathrubootham has been given $233.41 million in stock awards, which will be vested over the next 7 years, which will make it one of the biggest compensation packages received by an Indian business leader in recent years. Girish Mathrubootham received a salary of $611,980 in 2021, and the additional stock award that he will receive is exclusive of his salary.
Shan Krishnasamy
Shan Krishnasamy is also the Co-Founder of Freshworks. He too used to work at Zoho Corporation as a Technical Architect, where he worked for over 9 years before co-founding Freshworks. Shan pursued his Bachelor’s degree from TPGIT and is currently serving as a Co-Founder and CTO at Freshworks.
Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar is the Co-founder and Director of Solutions Engineering at Freshworks. He is the principal solutions consultant of the company. Vijay had worked for the company right from the initial stages and is experienced in building multiple high-performance support teams from scratch.
Vijay started his career as a Tech Support Engineer at HCL, who then went on to work for Zoho Corporation as a Pre Sales Technical Consultant. Then, he went for Millicent Technologies and finally founded Freshworks along with the other 2 founders.
Freshdesk is currently 4K+ employees strong.
Freshworks – Name, Logo and Tagline
Freshworks Logo
Freshworks, as the name suggests refers to a “Fresh” helpdesk that creates a customer service management platform to help businesses improve the market experience by ‘refreshing business software’, which is the company’s tagline.
Freshdesk got rebranded as ‘Freshworks’ in June 2017 meanwhile evolving its products as well.
Freshworks – Vision and Mission
Freshworks’ mission statement says, “To help companies better engage and communicate with their customers and employees with refreshing business software that is easy-to-use, feature-packed, and accessible to businesses of all sizes.”
The vision of Freshworks is to become “One of the most loved companies in the world.“
Freshworks – Business Model
The Freshworks business model depends on upmarket sales and its products. The company has got a unique global inside sales model. Business software is expensive and hard to use. People waste hours to get things done. In the end, corporations hire employees to take care of the software.
To tap into this market, Freshworks decided to provide quality and ready-to-go software, which is easier to use. This is why the customers trust the Freshworks products and are also backed by impressive support.
Freshworks’ emphasis in 2010 was on creating and selling goods to small and medium-sized businesses. Due to the effective and easy solutions that the company came up with, it began to gain prominence within larger corporations throughout the years.
Freshworks started the transformation and evolution of its services by expressing its broader vision of helping companies win lifetime loyalty. The unique Indian democratic design principles of Freshworks help the company create software that is simple, scalable, inexpensive and encapsulates true craftsmanship, all the while enabling businesses to be self-reliant.
Freshworks has a wide range of products for small and medium-scale businesses, entrepreneurs, and business professionals. Freshmarketer, Freshsales, and Freshdesk are some of its core products, which have been bundled together in the form of a unified product suite for startups launched by the company on November 11, 2021. This is a part of the company’s startup initiative that was launched in 2019 and has successfully onboarded 2,500 startups so far, out of which 500 of them are paying customers of the company. Freshworks claims that its products are used by 150+ unicorns or around 20% of the unicorns globally.
Here’s a look at the products list of Freshworks:
Freshteam
Freshteam Homepage
This Freshworks product is a smart HR software that aims to provide businesses with an opportunity to modernize their HR department.
Freshservice
Freshservice Homepage
Freshservice from Freshworks helps the companies to modernize their ITSM (IT Service Management)
Freshmarketer
Freshmarketer Homepage
This product from Freshworks is designed as a marketing automation software that will let businesses personalize their messages
Freshsales
Freshsales Homepage
Freshsales from Freshworks is built to aid the companies in accelerating their revenues via content-driven sales
Freshdesk
Freshdesk Homepage
Freshdesk from Freshworks brings effortless customer service solutions that turns the service agents into customer champions.
Freshchat
Freshchat
Freshchat is a smart chatbot service from Freshworks that helps the customer-support employees expedite calls and more. Through Freshchat the customer service executives can focus on more challenging support queries and solve them while the integrated bots answer the common questions. Freshchat further freshens up its smart chat service for enterprises by re-architecting the application to include a unified customer record, as per the reports dated July 23, 2022..
Freshworks extends Freshdesk as an omnichannel service provider.
Freshwork’s remarkable growth curve is a reflection of how companies are searching for new and creative ways to engage with their customers, as well as the company’s creativity and tenacity.
In mid-February 2021, the company announced it surpassed the $300 million mark in its annual recurring revenues, thereby growing by around 40% year-over-year even in the challenging, pandemic-strick times.
By opening offices in Paris, the Netherlands, France, and Utrecht, the company expanded its corporate network. This followed the expansion of the current London office. It also hosted Refresh19 London, which was the city’s first meeting, and was attended by about 400 people.
Furthermore, the company also expanded its presence in APAC outside of Europe by collaborating with OrangeOne Corporation, a leading tech company in Japan. Freshworks currently has offices in Hyderabad, Melbourne, and many other cities across the globe. All of these show how the business is expanding on a wider scale.
Some other prominent growth highlights of the company are:
Freshworks has enabled over 50,000 small and big companies across the globe to exceed customer and employee expectations.
Freshworks’ products are used by the people and businesses of over 120 countries around the world.
Freshworks claims to be the first Indian Saas company to have been listed in Nasdaq, US.
Freshworks claims to be the first Indian Saas company to reach a billion-dollar valuation.
Freshworks CEO and Co-Founder, Girish Mathrubootham, post its IPO listing on September 22, 2021, announced that around 500 employees having shares in the company have turned into crorepatis almost overnight, following the listing.
Furthermore, around 70 of them are aged under 30 years, “People who have graduated college a few years ago and they fully deserve it for believing in us over the past ten years”, as reported by the Freshworks CEO. The company currently boasts of having around 4,300 employees globally.
Freshworks Financials
Freshworks has reported around 46% growth in its revenues, which stood at $96.6 million during the third quarter between July-September 2021 for the company. The company reported an increase in its total revenue, which was recorded at $114.6 mn, thereby exhibiting a 42% YoY growth in the first quarter (Q1) of FY2022. With this, the US-listed Indian company has successfully recorded more than $100 mn in revenue for the second consecutive occasion.
The consolidated losses of the company increased to $107.4 million, including the July-September 2021 quarter, which came on the back of a huge rise in expenses at 305% to $214.63 million. Freshworks losses were recorded at $49.1 million during the January-March 2022 quarter, which was quite an increase from the net losses of $2.4 million reported in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
Freshworks – Funding And Investors
Freshworks has raised a total of $484 million in funding over 9 rounds. The company is funded by 6 investors, Steadview Capital and Accel are the most recent investors.
Date
Transaction Name
Money Raised
Lead Investors
January 1, 2020
Secondary Market
$85 million
Steadview Capital
November 4, 2019
Series H
$150 million
Accel, CapitalG, Sequoia Capital
July 31, 2018
Series G
$100 million
Accel, Sequoia Capital India
November 1, 2016
Series F
$55 million
Sequoia Capital India
April 20, 2015
Series E
$50 million
Tiger Global Management
June 12, 2014
Series D
$31 million
Tiger Global Management
November 21, 2013
Series C
$7 million
Accel
April 26, 2012
Series B
$5 million
Tiger Global Management
December 2, 2011
Series A
$1 million
Accel
Freshworks – IPO
Freshworks was looking forward to raising up to $912 million through its IPO round, as per the regulatory filings of the company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission dated September 13, 2021.
The company then decided to sell 28.5 million of its Class A common stock between $28 and $32 per share. It was also announced that if the shares of the company would successfully be sold at the higher range, then it would raise around $912 million, thus increasing the valuation of the company to around $9 billion.
Freshworks further confirmed that it would be going public and had already filed the initial public offering in the United States, where the company is presently headquartered. According to the company’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Freshworks was then looking to raise around $100 million, in an IPO round led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase. However, that was just a placeholder amount.
The company finally went public on September 22, 2021, and successfully raised over $1.03 billion in its IPO round. Soon after its IPO listing, Freshworks also listed itself on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The price of the shares surged to $36 per share from $32-34 per share or $28-32 per share, which it announced a week ago. The last share price of Freshworks was recorded at $19.25 in Feb 2022.
The IPO has increased the market cap of Freshworks to over $10 billion, which was $9 billion earlier. With a market valuation of $10 billion, Freshworks was leading the band of Indian Saas startups, even ahead of Postman valued at $5.6 billion, and Browserstack valued at $4 billion. Besides, Freshworks also became the first software startup of Indian origin to be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Freshworks was even valued at $13.56 billion on November 2, 2021, when the intraday high peaked at $53.35 per share, where the Girish Mathrubootham-led company also overtook Zendesk, which was valued at $12.1 billion then. The Freshworks market cap is $4.57 billion, as of May 2022.
The company had earlier mentioned that it has a large addressable market of around $120 billion ahead, in its regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier in September. It has also estimated the annual potential market opportunity for its products to be $77 billion.
It might use a portion of the proceeds for acquiring complementary businesses, products, services, and technologies, said Freshworks while it was filing its IPO with SEC.
Freshworks Shareholding
Freshworks listed its shareholders in its IPO papers filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC), where the company has recorded Tiger Global as the majority stakeholder with 26% shares in Freshworks. The others that follow are Accel, Sequoia Capital, Capital G, Girish Mathrubootham, and Others.
Freshworks Shareholding Pattern
Freshworks – ESOPs
Freshworks on November 9, 2021, announced the initiation of a share sale worth $500+ mn from its board of directors, top management, current, and former employees, third-party consultants, contractors, and more. This cashout is certainly counted among the largest cashouts in recent years.
Freshworks has acquired 13 organizations to date, and the acquisition of Flint on Jul 9, 2020, is its most recent acquisition. Here’s a glimpse of the Freshworks acquisitions:
Acquiree Name
Date
Amount
About Acquiree
Flint
Jul 9, 2020
–
Flint is the most advanced and innovative open standards-based automation platform.
AnswerIQ
Feb 26, 2020
–
AnswerIQ is an artificial intelligence service in the customer support space.
CanvasFlip
Sep 17, 2019
–
CanvasFlip is a cloud-based design collaboration and testing platform.
Natero
May 21, 2019
–
Natero harnesses your data to predict, analyze and drive customer behavior.
Zarget
Aug 29, 2017
–
Zarget is a SaaS-based conversion rate optimization company that provides comprehensive solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses.
JoeHukum
Jul 20, 2017
–
JoeHukum Is Your Virtual Personal Assistant. From Flight Booking To Food Delivery
Pipemonk (Formerly ZapStitch)
Jan 4, 2017
–
Pipemonk is a data integration platform that allows companies to synchronize and move data amongst multiple cloud apps quickly and easily
Chatimity
Oct 18, 2016
–
Chatimity is a social chat application helping people discover others based on locality and interests.
Airwoot
Apr 13, 2016
–
Airwoot is a real-time customer support provider enabling brands to provide customer support on social media.
Framebench
Feb 22, 2016
–
Changing how people interact with files on the web & mobile
Freshworks – Awards and Recognition
The most recent awards and recognition of Freshworks are:-
Year
Recognition Name
2019
Supreme Software Award for 2019
2019
Expert’s Choice for 2019
2019
Great User Experience for 2019
2020
Summer Leader 2020
2020
Spring Leader 2020
2020
Top 10 Fastest Growing Software in Q1 2020
2020
Top 10 Most Searched Software in Q1 2020
2020
Best call center software for 2020
2020
VoIP phone services for 2020
Freshworks – Competitors
The top Freshworks competitors are :
Zendesk
Salesforce
Zoho
ServiceNow
Microsoft
Cherwell
Oracle
Coheris
Freshworks – Challenges Faced
Freshworks, being a fast-growing Business-to-Business, Software-as-a-service company with thousands of B2B and B2C clients, including legacy corporations, which are fast-growing billion-dollar businesses, must ensure that its services have minimal downtime, outages, or latency.
“To do this, we need to have visibility into the infrastructure, how it is behaving at any given point of time and how our customers are using our products from an infrastructure standpoint,” says Pradeep Thangavel, Engineering Manager, at Freshworks, “Because Freshworks is integrated on to the customer’s platform, any traffic that comes to the customer’s platform is as good as traffic to the Freshworks platform.”
Further, Pradeep explains how this challenge is difficult because no other Indian B2B SaaS company functions on the same level as Freshworks’, which means the company lacks simple access to industry benchmarks or learnings in terms of aligning their infrastructure optimally for daily services.
Freshworks – Future Plans
Freshworks presently assists businesses by providing intelligent customer engagement software which improves their IT operational efficiency.
Employees at Freshworks were able to see the magic in action, which added to the excitement of the trip. All of this entails pursuing bigger deals meanwhile still expanding our existing customers.
The company has grown from a small startup producing tools for small businesses to a mid-sized business that caters to larger businesses, pushing them to rethink their marketing and sales strategy.
In 2020, a freshworks spokesperson told, “We are actively focusing on building the business, driving growth in new markets, and strengthening our position in existing markets. We will aim for an IPO if and when a public offering proves opportune for the business.”
Freshworks’ expansion has been aided by solid financials, an acquisition-led growth strategy, and the bundling of a suite of services with individual goods.
FAQs
What does Freshworks do?
Freshworks is a cloud-based company that creates sales & support solutions that help businesses improve the market experience. The company’s services facilitate connectivity and enable teams to interact and engage customers and subordinates in order to tackle technological concerns.
Is Freshworks an Indian company?
Yes, Freshworks is an Indian company founded by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar in Chennai, in 2010.
What is the valuation of Freshworks?
Freshworks is currently valued at $4.57 billion, as of May 2022.
When was Freshworks founded?
Freshworks was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar.
Who is the founder of Freshworks?
Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar are the founders of Freshworks.
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 Airbnb.
Have you ever felt anxious about accommodation when you’re planning on a trip out of the city or country? The uncertainty of stay, their hospitality, and their safety often give us the creeps. Leaving the comforts of our home alone causes massive distress, which is further coupled with the apprehension of staying outside whenever we decide to stay outside. Therefore, staying in a place that is decent enough and secure is something that most of us look up to.
What if we could find a place that makes us feel at home when we are on a vacation or a business trip? Wouldn’t that be great?
Modern technological advancements have made that possible and simple to find suitable accommodations for any kind of trip we make with the emergence of dependable lodging companies, and one of the most popular of such companies is Airbnb.
Right from choosing the quarters to offering support around the clock until we part, it brings all sorts of convenient measures right into our hands. Airbnb is one such wonderful platform that serves as an online marketplace to help people find accommodation during their trip as per their needs. Airbnb serves over 220 countries and regions across the world today.
You have certainly heard of Airbnb already, and thus if you are wondering to know more about this brand, then here we bring you all about Airbnb, which includes “when Airbnb started?”, Airbnb founders and creators, Airbnb company history, Airbnb success stories, Airbnb parent company, funding and valuation, growth, revenue, competitors, future plans and more.
Airbnb expanded as Airbed and Breakfast is an online marketplace to connect people in need of accommodation with the people (host) who are willing to rent their home or space in a particular locality.
Airbnb is based out of San Francisco, California, and offers the convenience of a website and a mobile app for users from around the world to list, discover and book accommodations.
The idea was originally conceived in 2007 by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia which was brought into shape in August 2008 along with Nathan Blecharczyk. Starting with 2 hosts, Airbnb has over 4 Million hosts with about 5.6 Million listings scattered across the globe today. They claim to have served more than 1 Billion guests as of September 2021.
Airbnb offers a significant advantage over hotels in terms of cost, amenities, customer satisfaction, service, and many more. They create value for both the Host (free listing of their asset) and the Guest (offering a unique and authentic experience at an affordable cost).
There are numerous Airbnb subsidiaries including Luxury Retreats International Inc., Tilt.com, Accomable, Aibiying, Trooly Inc., Deco Software Inc., Trip4real Experiences, S.L., Lapka Inc., Airbnb UK Limited, HotelTonight, and more. Airbnb with the help of these subsidiaries operates a platform for stays and strives to transform experiences for guests worldwide.
Airbnb Success Story
Airbnb – Industry
Airbnb falls under the lodging sector of the hospitality industry. This industry is expected to reach a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 8% to reach $5891 billion by 2022’s end. The hospitality industry is broadly classified into the following sectors: lodging, event planning, recreation, travel and tourism, and food and beverage services. This industry is considered to be more of leisure than basic needs.
Brian Joseph Chesky is the CEO and one of the co-founders of Airbnb. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, Industrial Design. The Airbnb founder started his career with 3DID as an Industrial Designer and then became the Principal of Brian Chesky Design before founding Airbnb.
He was acknowledged as TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2015. At the age of 35 in 2016, he became the youngest one to be named on the Forbes 400 list. Chesky also joined ‘The Giving Pledge’ campaign initiated by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
Joe Gebbia
Joe Gebbia is known as the co-founder of Airbnb, who is also the chairman of Samara, Airbnb’s design studio, and of Airbnb.org. He too attended RISD and secured a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in Graphic and Industrial Design. Before founding Airbnb, Gebbia served as the industrial designer at Chronicle Books.
This Airbnb founder is a member of RISD’s trustee board and has donated $300,000 for a scholarship fund. Joe joined ‘The Giving Pledge’ campaign in 2016.
Nathan Blecharczyk
Nathan Blecharczyk is another co-founder of Airbnb. He earlier worked as an engineer in OPNET Technologies before joining Airbnb. At Airbnb, he was initially designated as Chief Technology Officer and designed the company’s website. In addition to CSO, he is the chairman of Airbnb China. He is also a member of ‘The Giving Pledge’ campaign.
Blecharczyk is a Harvard University graduate with Computer Science. Starting as a Bioinformatics Programmer at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Blecharczyk had served as the Intern Program Manager for Visual Basic .NET at Microsoft Corporation, and then as a Research Assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and eventually became a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. Blecharczyk had also previous experiences of serving as a Software Engineer at OPNET Technologies, Inc. and Batiq. The Airbnb founder was then the owner of Consult Mavens, LLC. and then joined hands with the other co-founders and founded Airbnb.
When last reported in 2020, Airbnb had an employee strength of over 5597 employees.
Airbnb – Startup Story
The startup story of Airbnb or the Airbnb origin is quite interesting. The Airbnb company history started in 2007 in San Francisco, when Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were roommates. They were worried about their rent, which was due because they didn’t have money at that time. While thinking of ways to pay the rent, they came across the design conference scheduled to be held in San Francisco that weekend and found that all the hotel bookings in SF were sold out.
An idea picked up and they immediately decided to host some guests from the conference in their room. They got three airbeds and hosted three guests, thus planting a seed for Airbnb. Later when the guests left, Joe and Brian gave further thoughts to this idea and decided to move further.
Joe Gebbia reportedly wrote a letter to Brian Chesky informing him of his idea. Here’s a copy of the subletter;
Airbnb Letter from Founder to Founder
Nathan Blecharczyk joined them in early 2008 and they together rooted Airbnb firmly in the market.
The idea for Airbnb was planted when Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia managed to host three guests for $80 per night. However, then they lacked the investment to construct the idea further. So, they decided to crop ‘Breakfast’ from Airbed and Breakfast for the time being and started selling breakfast targeting the 2007 presidential election campaign. This helped them keep their dreams alive.
Airbnb mission statement focuses on creating “a world where anyone can belong anywhere”. They were keen on attaining this purpose through their dedicated employees and loyal hosts. Airbnb has evolved as it grew. With their earlier statement of ‘Unlocking unique experiences worldwide’, they evolved into a vision of “Belong Anywhere”. They strive continuously on their vision to make their customers feel at home always, irrespective of the place they are in exploring the world of their dreams.
Airbnb – Name and Logo
Airbnb Logo
The name Airbnb was derived from the company’s initial name Airbed and Breakfast. The company was addressed as Airbed and Breakfast even before its formal inception in 2008. The founders reasoned the name as a reference to air mattresses rented out to three guests they hosted in 2007. Later in 2009, the name was changed from Airbed and Breakfast to Airbnb.
Earlier, Airbnb’s logo carried the entire name of the company, Airbed and Breakfast. When the company was renamed in 2009, the logo too was reduced to Airbnb written in blue.
The logo was again changed in 2014 with a symbol, which the company calls TheBelo, saying it is the universal symbol of belonging. This logo, when dissected, depicts four other symbols that represent People, Places, Love, and Airbnb, when combined together forms the Belo logo.
Airbnb – Business and Revenue Model
Airbnb is an online platform that connects people (guests) in search of accommodation with the hosts who are interested in renting out their place. They help the host to find guests by allowing them to display their place on Airbnb’s platform for free of cost. On the other side, the customers get a chance to choose their accommodation from myriad places showcased, as per their needs. Airbnb collects the payment online, retains it until 24 hours after guest check-in, and then pays the host.
Airbnb’s revenue comes from the two-way commission charged from both the host and the guest. They charge 3% from the hosts and typically around 14% from the guests for every transaction made.
Airbnb – Challenges Faced
Local Laws and Regulations
There are different rental laws and regulations for every country and sometimes even city. For example, New York rental laws prohibit renting properties for less than 30 days, unless the tenant is living there. Airbnb took the issue to court but finally, in 2019, they agreed to share information of listings that New York City laws demanded.
Racial Discrimination by Hosts
There were widespread complaints faced by Airbnb on hosts discriminating against guests on racial and other backgrounds. As a result, Airbnb hired Eric Holder, a former Attorney General, to create and regulate anti-discrimination policy to resolve this issue.
Fraudulent Listings
A travel blogger named Asher Fergusson found that some hosts used fake and fraudulent information to get through Airbnb’s background check. This unauthenticated hosting resulted in a number of negative incidents like privacy invasion, booking cancellation, refund refusal, and some rare incidents of corpses spotted on the lawn and even murder. Airbnb is still struggling to completely eradicate such fraudulent listings.
Logo Controversy
When Airbnb introduced a new logo in 2014, it received a heavy backlash and sparked controversy saying that the logo has sexual connotations. However, Airbnb stood firm to their Belonging theory, and the issue faded away slowly.
Since its inception in 2008, Airbnb received a total funding of $6 Billion. Airbnb’s market valuation surpassed $100 Billion after the company went public in December 2020 and is considered to be the biggest trading debut in the United States so far.
Date
Round
Money
Investors
September 5, 2020
Series G
$635K
Global Secure Invest
April 14, 2020
Debt Financing
$1 bn
Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Oaktree Capital Management, Apollo Global Management, Benefit Street Partners, and Owl Rock Capital
April 6, 2020
Private Equity Round
$1 bn
Silver Lake, Sixth Street
September 22, 2016
Series F
$555.5 mn
TCV, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Geodesic Capital, FirstMark, CapitalG, Altimeter Capital
November 20, 2015
Series E – 2
$100 mn
FirstMark
June 28, 2015
Series E – 1
$1.5 bn
Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital, Horizons Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, Fidelity Investments, Tiger Global Management, General Atlantic, Temasek Holdings, Baillie Gifford, Groupe Arnault, Hillhouse Capital Group, China Broadband Capital, Manhattan Venture Partners, Slow Ventures, Tim Ringel
Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, CrunchFund, Jeff Bezos, Oliver Jung, Ashton Kutcher, General Catalyst Partners, Y Ventures, Tuesday Capital, SV Angel, GreyLock, Axel Springer Digital Ventures
November 10, 2011
Series A
$7.2 mn
Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Greylock Partners, Ashton Kutcher, Jeremy Stoppelman, Elad Gil, Keith Rabois, Y Ventures, Dave Holmes
April 1, 2009
Seed
$600K
Sequoia Capital, Y Ventures
January 1, 2009
Pre-Seed
$20K
Y Combinator
Airbnb – Acquisitions
Airbnb Acquisitions
Airbnb has made around two dozen acquisitions and the most important ones were Hotel Tonight and Luxury Retreats. Here’s checking out the other acquisitions of Airbnb:
Acquiree Name
Date of Acquisition
Price
Accoleo
June 2011
–
CrashPadder
March 2012
–
DailyBooth
July 2012
–
NabeWise
July 2012
–
Fondu
October 2012
–
Localmind
December 2012
–
Pencil Labs
December 2014
–
Vamo
September 2015
–
Lapka
September 2015
–
Trip4real
September 2016
–
Luxury Retreats
February 2017
–
Tilt
February 2017
$50 mn
ChangeCoin
April 2017
–
Deco Software
May 2017
–
Trooly
June 2017
–
Accomable
November 2017
–
AdBasis
November 2017
–
Koko
November 2018
–
Luckey
December 2018
–
Gaest
January 2019
–
HotelTonight
March 2019
$400 mn
Urbandoor
August 2019
–
Airbnb – Growth
Started in a room in San Francisco, today they’ve their listings in over 1,00,000 cities around the world. Airbnb is one of such companies, which grew from nothing to a $30 bn firm in just 11 years.
The funding started to flow in gradually from $20,000 in the form of the Pre-Seed round to the highest amount of $1.5 Billion in Series G. The Covid-19 pandemic came as a terrible disaster to their business operation. However, when the company went public in December 2020, Airbnb made a remarkable achievement by entering a $100 Billion market valuation right on the first day of their IPO. The Airbnb share value surged to a record high of 113% from $68 per share to $144 per share. This was one of the highest first-day rallies in US history.
The number of guests going Airbnb has grown tremendously year on year. Where Airbnb saw around 540,000 guests on new year’s eve back in 2014, it welcomed close to 4.5 mn guests on 2019’s new year’s eve.
Airbnb New Year’s Eve Guests Growth
Airbnb is nothing but an accommodation marketplace that provides access to over 6 million unique places to stay comfortably and at their leisure in nearly 100,000 cities and 191 countries. Interestingly, Airbnb also offers access to local communities and interests through more than 30,000 activities run by hosts across over 1,000 markets around the world so that you can be a traveler and not just a tourist. It entered India in 2016. Since its inception in India, the company has had around 45,000 listings with Goa being the most popular Airbnb haunt with 6000+ listings.
Airbnb has last been valued at over $75 bn in December 2020.
Airbnb – Awards
Airbnb won the ‘App’ award in the South by Southwest Conference in March 2011. Later in 2020, employee work satisfaction was analyzed through ratings and reviews, and Airbnb secured the Best Company Perks & Benefits award.
Airbnb – Competitors
Although Airbnb commenced its operation with a unique idea, they’ve gained a handful of rivalries as they grew by. Here are some of the top competitors:
Vrbo – Vrbo or Vacation Rentals By Owners is a subsidiary of HomeAway and focuses primarily on vacation rentals. HomeAway was later acquired by Expedia Group in 2015 and they provide a competitive environment to Airbnb.
FlipKey – FlipKey is another vacation rental site that provides a safe and easy marketplace for customers to find the best place of their choice. It is a subsidiary of TripAdvisor, a travel booking company.
OYO – OYO and Airbnb have a common goal but operate with different business models. Since Airbnb hasn’t rooted deeply in India, OYO stands to be their replacement and holds a good market position.
Airbnb aims to transform Travel into a Living. To achieve this, Airbnb introduced more than 100 upgrades and innovations to its existing services that ensure flexibility among hosts and guests.
Airbnb is keen on creating a new kind of travel for its guests in the post-pandemic situation. They recently launched 4 new property types namely, Vacation Home, Unique Space, B&B, and Boutique for a flexible user experience.
Brian Chesky said that Airbnb is concentrating beyond traditional connotations of work travel and leisure for its success in the future.
FAQs
What is Airbnb?
Airbnb is an online marketplace to connect people in need of accommodation with the people (host) who are willing to rent their home or space in a particular locality. The Airbnb founded date is listed as August 2008.
When Airbnb started?
Though the Airbnb idea was germinated in the minds of Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia in 2007, it was only after Nathan Blecharczyk joined them in 2008 that the journey started for Airbnb. The company was founded in August 2008 by the Airbnb creators.
What is the Airbnb origin story or the story of Airbnb?
The Airbnb origin or the Airbnb story is closely connected with the Airbnb founder story, which began in 2007 when Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were roommates and they lacked the money that was due as their rent. While thinking about how they can pay their rent, they were to attend a design conference in San Francisco on the weekend, where they soon discovered that all of the hotels in SF were booked. This helped them with the idea that they also host some guests by themselves. In no time, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia arranged for 3 airbeds for 3 guests, which was the start of the hospitality business that would later be known as Airbnb. Soon they were joined by Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008 and Airbnb was founded.
How many users are using Airbnb currently?
There are over 4 Million hosts with 5.6 Million listings around the world. They’ve hosted more than 1 Billion guests so far.
What is the average earning of the host?
The all-time earnings of the hosts until October 2020 were recorded at $110 billion. The average earning of a host stand at $9,600 per year.
What is the commission rate charged by Airbnb?
Airbnb charges a 3% commission from hosts. Guests are charged typically around 14% for every successful transaction.
In India, the biotechnology sector is a fast growing industries. The companies underthesebiotech startups are known for providing better diagnosis, high-quality drugs, and making medicines and MedTec products available at a reasonable price. They aim at getting the best outcome for developing health awareness and upgrading diagnosis facilities for betterment. With the developing technologies, the health care sector is also increasing their quality with the help of these startups in India.
Amid the pandemic, one of the industries that made a huge growth has to be the biotech industry without a doubt. Apart from the prescribed medication, people were also flocking to get in touch with daily vitamins and other possible nutrients too. This has enabled the biotech industry in India and all over the world take off and flourish. So, let’s get to know what are these biotechnology startups in India in a little bit more detail.
Founded in 1978, Biocon is one of the top biotech startups in India. It started with a budget of INR 10,000 as a company that used to sell the enzyme papain. The focus of the company changed in the 1990s by the founder, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. To make a change, she decided to shift from selling enzymes to selling biopharmaceuticals. Gradually she got enlisted among the richest women in India.
The annual revenue of Biocon sums upto INR. 4,709 Crores in 2018. By 2020, they have also given access to more than 2.1 million patients through their biosimilars. As of now, their manufactured pharmaceutical ingredients are being sold in more than 120 countries throughout the world.
Sea6 Energy
Founded: 2010 Founder: Nelson Vadassery, Sowmya Balendiran, Sailaja Nori, and Shrikumar suryanarayan Headquarter: Bangalore
Sea6 Energy – Biotech Startups in India
This startup was launched as a way to come up with the solution to the problem of over-consumption of energy in India. Four IIT Madras graduates, Nelson Vadassery, Sailaja Nori, Sowmya Balendiran, and Sayash Kumar came forward with the help of their professor, Shrikumar Suryanarayan. Together, they founded the startup in 2010 and currently it is considered as a top biotech startup in India. The primary aim of the startup is to convert photosynthetic biomass, for instance, plants and algae to fuels – Something that will definitely come in handy in the near future!
It enables these elements to work into battling against the unending commercial use of energy. It is funded by the Department of Biotechnology and is incubated at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-Camp). The startup incorporated a few patented techniques in order to facilitate the large-scale cultivation of selected sea plants. The Government of Karnataka has given to the company, the title of “Emerging Company of the Year” in the year 2012.
Founded: 2013 Founder: Sam Santhosh Headquarter: Bangalore
MedGenome – Biotech Startups in India
Sam Santosh founded the startup, MedGenome, in 2013. It works at providing personalised genetic tests and medicines. It has its working genres scattered for a range of ailments, such as cancer, neurological ailments and diabetes. The largest next-gen sequencing lab in entire southeast Asia, MedGenome has its headquarter located in the USA as well as in bangalore, India.
The startup crossed a funding of INR 192 crore in 2017. In the following year, 2018, it bagged the MedTech Breakthrough Award for Biomedical Research. It is leading globally in personalized medicine that provides unique genomic solutions. The areas of their conduct are mainly immuno-oncology, ophthalmology, diabetes, cardiology, and a few other rare diseases.
Bharat Biotech
Founded: 1996 Founder: Krishna Ella Headquarter: Hyderabad
Bharat Biotech – Top Biotech Startups in India
Bharat Biotech was founded in the year 1996. The Hyderabad based company was founded by an well known Indian scientist, Krishna Ella. In India, it is the very first pharmaceutical startup that has successfully developed a generic drug.
It has achieved a huge milestone globally as they developed and received the patent the vaccine Zikavac. This one has been formulated to fight the prevailing Zika virus. It has done indigenous work in developing the covid vaccine – Covaxin. The operating revenues of Bharat Biotech International Limited, generally range over INR 500 Crore.
GANIT Labs
Founded: 2010 Founder: Dr Vinay Panda and Dr Vijaya Chandru Headquarter: Bangalore
Ganit Labs – Top Biotech Startups in India
The Bangalore based startup, GANIT Labs, has been founded in the year 2010 by Dr Vinay Panda and Dr Vijaya Chandru. The abbreviation GANIT Labs stands for Genomics Application and Information Technology Labs. As per the latest report on Zoominfo, the company has reached $3.8 million by 2019.
The primary aims of the company are to study genomes that are related to oral cancer. It also helps in mapping their respective genes. This company has been involved in manufacturing analytical equipment that will effectively analyse and manage genome data on a large scale. It is mainly from the genome sequencing of disease tissues such as cancer.
Forus Health
Founded: 2010 Founder: K. Chandrasekhar Headquarter: Bangalore
Forus Health – Top Biotech Startups in India
K. Chandrasekhar, the founder of Forus health, created the startup in 2010. The basic mantras of the company are being claimed as ‘Innovate’, ‘Implement’ and ‘Impact’. The company works to eliminate preventable blindness through an Ophthalmology device, which includes an intelligent pre-screening technique.
At present, the company operates in 14 other countries other than India. As of the financial year ending on 31 March 2019, operating revenues of Forus Health Private Limited has been displayed between INR 1 Crore – 100 Crore. However, as per the recent information given out by Zoominfo, the revenue has reached $5.7 million by 2020.
So with the growth of these biotechnology startups in India, the economy has also gotten a boost. As many of the above companies are actively participating in international transaction, the revenue can also possibly get a favourable development over the year. According to the reports, Indian BioEconomy is dwelling at around $33.6 billion. It has been predicted to grow in size upto $100 billion by 2025. With over 2,600 emerging biotech startups in India, our country has also included 50 BIRAC-supported incubators as well.
FAQs
Which is the biggest biotechnology company in India?
Biocon Limited is the largest Biotechnology Company in India.
What is the best biotech company in India?
Some of the best biotechnology companies in India are:
Biocon
Sea6 Energy
MedGenome
Bharat Biotech
GANIT Labs
Forus Health
Who is owner of Bharat Biotech?
Dr. Krishna Ella is the Chairman & Managing Director of Bharat Biotech International Limited.
Well yes, speaking can get you enough money. When talking about speakers the two professions that come to our minds are comedy or professor. Ever thought about how one speaks to motivate but at the same time is earning. If not, here’s how.
It may seem difficult to break into the field of professional public speaking. However, by following a few basic methods, you may start and maintain a career as a motivational speaker/ Life coach.
Many of the major turning points in your own life occurred when someone said something to you that had a profound impact on your thinking, feelings, and actions that you never thought, felt, or acted the same way again. We often hear the few words shared by popular personalities that are in return taken as advised by the audience.
For motivational speakers, it is the same scene but with a change and that is the speaker speaks with a motive to make their audience follow it. Workshops, seminars, conferences, schools, and other events often feature motivational speakers. Some speakers are awarded fame, name, and wealth as a result of their successful speaking.
Former politicians and athletes have turned to motivational speaking for the financial incentives and the chance to encourage their audiences. Before pursuing a career as a motivational speaker, aspiring orators must first comprehend the speaking circuit’s paying system.
Importance of Credibility for Motivational Speakers
To earn a good living as a motivational speaker in India, you must first establish your credibility so that people would invite you to speak at events. Now think of Indian names in this industry be it Sandeep Maheshwari, Robin Sharma, Deepak Chopra, Ranveer Allahbadia, and many more.
Indian Motivational Speakers- Sandeep Maheshwari, Robin Sharma, Deepak Chopra, Ranveer Allahbadia
These people had first built their credibility or had established enough to reach a platform where they could start motivating others. How To Build That Credibility?
You can write a book about something you know a lot about. When you hold a book with your name on it, it naturally makes a positive impression.
You can start your own YouTube channel. The more subscribers you have on your channel, the more credible you become.
You can personalize a website that presents you as a motivational speaker; this is an effective tool for showcasing what you do and can do.
You can begin speaking at small events for free, and as you gain more experience speaking at events, people will begin to believe in your abilities.
Now that you know who your audience, as well as your field, is, it’s time to polish your speech writing skills so you can amaze them.
How to Kickstart Your Career as a Motivational Speaker?
The introduction, the body, and the conclusion are the three sections that most speeches have. Begin by studying how to write effective introductions. You might begin your speech by thanking the folks who put the event together, citing a famous person, asking a question, or doing something completely different.
To be a paid motivational speaker, you should be an excellent speaker at the very least. That implies you must practice speaking at all times and in all places. You should deliver 100 motivational speeches and polish your talents before you ask for money.
Market Yourself
You will spend 80% of your time selling and marketing yourself. You’ll have to get used to asking for business and figuring out how to get out of your way. You must believe in yourself and understand why you are special and why people should listen to you. You need to understand how to assist others in obtaining their goals. You must learn to pay attention to others.
Pay attention to their interests and requirements to create a program that is meaningful to them. You’ll have to learn how to market if you want to succeed. First and foremost, your reputation is really important. Do exactly what you claim you’ll do. Establish clear values for how you want your business to operate, and then live by them.
Build A Professional Presence Online
Creating a website that professionally describes your work is a much-needed tool for a motivational speaker. Apart from that, one can also try other tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter. They are great for having a business contract digitally. After all this, one must have some of the content prepared to share on these platforms.
An Example- Sandeep Maheshwari Website
This step is similar to showcasing the work you have done to gain the trust of your clients before even you have talked with them directly. Educational blog entries or videos are a terrific approach to demonstrate that you know your stuff. Producing high-quality site content can influence people’s decisions to cooperate with you.
Those blog entries and videos offer solid proof that you’re one of the top motivational speakers around, assisting you in your quest to learn how to speak in public. This could be on YouTube, Instagram, and so on.
Local Gigs & Small setups
There are almost likely dozens of speaking opportunities in your town or nearby area. Local events may not appear to be flashy or thrilling. They will, however, assist you in gaining the credibility you need to further your profession. Look for local events or conferences to speak at and offer your skills to them. You won’t be able to immediately participate in national events.
Fun Fact about Public Speaking
Starting with the simple steps such as giving out the speech in a small gathering and then working up the way to the intermediate crowd and then finally practising for the larger crowd is the basic path to gaining success being a public speaker.
Becoming a well-paid, highly sought-after speaker necessitates a consistent commitment to self-improvement. Smaller venues, such as rotary clubs, community centers, and small business organizations, are ideal places for beginning presenters to hone their skills.
They also join groups such as Toastmasters International to improve their speaking skills and receive constructive criticism. Marketing oneself as a motivational speaker using social media and local advertising can also help to boost a speaker’s visibility and bookings.
Speakers can also supplement their income by selling motivational speeches on CDs or DVDs, as well as creating books that propagate their message. On their blogs, some speakers sell e-books that elaborate on the topics they deliver in their lectures.
6 Methods Through Which Motivational Speakers Can Earn Money
When we listen to the term motivational speaker, the thought that crosses our mind is a big stage with a large amount of audience listening carefully to the speaker with intermediate applause. However, that is not the fact of how motivational speakers are earning their money. There are many ways through which motivational speakers can earn money. Some of them are discussed below:
Private Consultation
There are several people out there who need some motivation. For those types of people, private consultation can be helpful. Providing private consultation as a motivational speaker is almost similar to providing emotional therapy to the person. One can create their visiting cards and promotional websites to market themselves and get their contact shared with needy ones.
Hosting Workshops and Seminars
Not necessary that motivational speakers talk all about mental health only. Some motivational speakers help employees to boost their confidence also. Providing workshops on the selected topic can surely attract the attention of needy people. With that, the speakers can have their joining fee from the audience to join the workshop and learn the art shared by the speakers.
As per the report published by SpeakerFlow, 85% of motivational speakers have shifted to virtual platforms
Arranging Public Seminars
The best scenes associated with motivational speakers are of public seminars only. Speakers can be paid a good amount of fees to stand there on stage and share some of their tips. Apart from this, the speakers can also get some percentage of money from the sale of tickets and products sold under the name of the speaker.
Advertising for Different Firms
Motivational speakers can easily advertise for the product in their speech in return for the advertisement charge that will be paid to them. Motivational speakers who have their comfort level coordinated with digital platforms can easily advertise the products in their videos. And for the offline world, speakers can recommend the products in their speech in their way. This is also a good source of income for motivational speakers.
Visiting Different Organizations
Many organizations call out for motivational speakers to come and inaugurate their function. For such events, the speakers can charge a fee and work for them in exchange. This type of event is a win-win situation for both the organization as well as the speaker. Public Speakers can get much recognition at such events and can also earn enough money.
Marketing Self
One can also earn money while trying to market the self. For the motivational speakers to have their own YouTube channel or a published book, they will be paid with their amount of share if it is found to be successful. Motivational speakers can earn a good amount of money from social media posts, publishing books, writing e-books, writing guest blogs, and creating their channel or website.
As per the report published by SpeakerFlow, 70% of public speakers are Solopreneurs and create their own marketing strategy
Motivational speakers work to create a positive effect on their listeners. They speak on various topics and in a different manner but with the same goal of motivating the listener.
Motivational speakers can sometimes be hired by the company to push up the spirits of the employees or they can be a single-man army showcasing their talent by the means of different platforms. Some of the basic information about how to become a motivational speaker and how they make money is shared in the above context.
FAQs
Is a motivational speaker a career?
Motivational speakers can earn a good living amount by implementing proper strategies and taking up good chances. Hence, it can be estimated that Motivational speaking is a career.
How do I market myself as a motivational speaker?
There are various means of marketing the self as a motivational speaker to the audience. Some of them are writing a guest blog, writing E-book, using Social media platforms to create posts and share them with others, publishing a book on the topic that you know the most, etc.
How much do top motivational speakers make?
I believe a report from ZipRecruiter, the top motivational speakers earn around $12,125 per month.
Do I need a degree to be a motivational speaker?
No, becoming a motivational speaker does not require any particular degree. However, people with basic degrees in the native language of speaking can be more fluent with their words getting them an additional advantage over others.
He dared to dream, and dream big. And then he decided to do it. And how!
At the young age of 26, he carved out a niche for himself that most dream of doing. He built a Rs 4 crore tea empire that continues to grow under his leadership.
Who is he, you ask? He is Prafull Billore, the man behind the hugely successful brand MBA Chaiwala. His story is as unassuming as the man himself.
Prafull is the older son of Sohan Billore and his wife. He was born in Dhar, Indore, Madhya Pradesh on 14th January 1996. Not much is known of his childhood or his family. However, in his interview, Prafull mentions that he grew up in modest circumstances. It was his parent’s wish that he completes his MBA in order to secure a high-paying job.
Prafull tried hard to fulfil his parent’s wish and even attempted the CAT (Common Admission Test) in order to secure admission into IIM (Indian Institute of Management) at Ahmedabad. He was unsuccessful and, well, uninterested. After three failed attempts at clearing CAT, he gave up on formal education.
Prafull Billore – Career
“I wanted to be a big man. Bachpan se bahut tang samay dekha tha (Have seen tough times since childhood), and so my only passion was to make more money and live a comfortable life.”
Prafull readily admits that his aspirations did not lie with his parents. As a young man of 20, he was still struggling to understand what he could do. He travelled to various cities in India which gave him the opportunity to meet people from diverse backgrounds.
Meeting and talking to them gave him many insights. He read success stories about American businessmen like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. Prafull realized a common thread between these people. All of them, at some point in their lives, had worked for McDonald’s.
Prafull joined McDonald’s in Ahmedabad and earned Rs. 300/- a day. His interactions with customers there were educational. Says he, “I also took a part-time job at McDonald’s to see how it feels to work. The salary was not much and it made me think “aise bada aadmi kaise banunga, MBA ke baad bhi aise he kaam karta rahunga (how will I become a big man if even after MBA I’d work like this}?” Although Prafull quickly rose up the ranks from the housekeeping staff to the cashier, he was not satisfied.
Prafull began exploring business opportunities and quickly realized that most businesses asked for a very high initial investment. An amount that he did not have. So, he settled for a simple plan.
He decided to start selling tea. He called his father and borrowed Rs. 8000/- from him under false pretences. He, then, invested that money towards buying the inventory that he needed to start a small roadside tea shop. All the while, he kept his day job working at McDonald’s.
Prafull says he is not a tea drinker and he had no idea how to make it. The first day that he made tea, he could not sell a single cup. Not one to give up, he came up with a plan. The next day, he began approaching people, engaging them in conversation.
Praful Billore selling tea
The fact that a roadside tea seller was speaking fluent English was fascinating for people. To top it up, Prafull was serving tea in earthenware cups with a slice of toast and tissue paper – a complete antithesis to the image of a regular tea seller. Soon he became the talk of the town. His tea was becoming famous, as was his conversation.
His growing fame came at a price. The other tea vendors in the surrounding area were unhappy with the new kid on the block. They conspired to close his operations and resorted to bullying and threatening Prafull.
Sensibly, Prafull decided to close his stall, but, undaunted, he approached a hospital owner and with his permission and help from other authorities, opened up another stall near the hospital. He named it MBA Chaiwala. He jokingly says – “MBA stands for Mr. Billore Ahmedabad”.
To increase his customer base, Prafull deepened his customer engagement by creating a small corner for job seekers. He put up a whiteboard for the job seekers to write down their details so potential employers could contact them.
Such was his fame that YouTubers put up videos of him further helping him reach a larger base. This was how his parents first heard of him selling tea instead of earning a degree. Initially upset with him, they, however, understood his motivation.
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Prafull continually found ways to engage with his customers. Organising cricket matches, ludo games or even just a place where people could leave messages for loved ones were various activities that people looked forward to anytime they visited his stall. Two years of operating from Ahmedabad allowed Praful to expand to his first franchisee café in Bhopal.
Now five years later, the brand that is MBA Chaiwala is more than 50 franchisee outlets strong and growing stronger. They undertake large-scale catering orders for parties, weddings, etc.
MBA Chaiwala Franchise
It is Prafull’s ambition to grow the brand presence to 200 outlets by the end of this year. “If anyone asks me to make chai today, I won’t. I don’t like it. I was struggling when I was making tea on the street but now, I am focusing on expanding my business,” he quips.
First and foremost a focused, goal-oriented businessman, Prafull wears several hats. His goal is to create a millionaire from every village through his franchisee business model.
The MBA Chaiwala Academy
Prafull has launched the MBA Chaiwala Academy. The focus of this academy is to share entrepreneurial knowledge with other budding stars. It will include the ‘How to…’ instructional guidance for building a sustainable and thriving business. The complementary peripheral topics associated with self-development, mental growth, trading, marketing, etc will also be addressed.
Social Media Presence
This tenacious young entrepreneur is a strong presence on social media and an avid YouTuber. He maintains that his social media presence also helps him to spread more awareness for MBA Chaiwala.
Philanthropist
Taking advantage of the growing fame of MBA Chaiwala, Prafull has organised various events like Poetry/Singing nights, ‘Mehfil-e-Kavita’ to encourage budding artists and afford them visibility and educational sessions for youth with guest speakers talking about entrepreneurship. He has hosted fundraisers to support various causes like upliftment of the underprivileged, treatment for cancer patients and the Kerala Flood Relief Fund.
The Motivational Speaker
Prafull Billore has been invited to talk at colleges like IIMs, IITs, Josh Talks, TEDxKIET, TEDxMDI GURGAON and Lovely Professional University.
Prafull Billore burst on the Indian business scene with a steaming hot cup of chai and is serving his way to the top. His dynamism, energetic approach to life and willingness to learn and engage has won him many admirers. He is like a duck – calm on the surface and paddling furiously beneath to reach his goal quickly. Here’s wishing him all the luck in this journey.
FAQs
What is the net worth of Prafull Billore?
The net worth of Prafull Billore is approximately $3 million.
Who is Prafull Billore?
Prafull Billore is an entrepreneur and founder of MBA Chaiwala.
Why is MBA Chaiwala so famous?
Prafull Billore built a 4 crore business around tea without having much knowledge about business is what intrigues people.
Damini Bhandary
