Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verifiedinformation ondifferent startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Rovity.
It took the telephone 75 years to reach its first 50 million users, the radio 38 years, while television needed 13 years; the Internet only needed four years to do so. The power of the Internet shaped the entire human civilization & brought a never-seen-before revolution to our lives. The Covid-19 pushed the digital evolution to a whole new level as pandemic badly affected.
This led to an exceptionally drastic increase in the needs for having a website or an online store. And any website need a good hosting server. Hosting is the heartbeat of any online business.
Meet Rovity, a revolutionary firm that outperforms conventional shared hosting and is committed to helping you to launch a fast, eye-catching website quickly. We asked how Rovity is better than other services to the team behind it. The team said the secret lies in how Rovity resolves the major challenges of the web hosting industry.
Rovity – Vision & Mission
Rovity contributes to a healthy internet by offering a super-fast, performance-optimized, highly secured infrastructure at a very affordable price. Their vision is to bring more people online as content producers. India is a country that experiences massive growth in internet connectivity. We will have better connectivity in every village soon.
Many people wish to start selling their products and services online, start blogging, and earn money. But a large portion still has no idea how to get started; they don’t have a way to design a modern responsive website without investing a significant amount of money. Rovity is successfully reducing this gap by offering free domains and intuitive web sites builder with every subscription plan. Rovity wants to help these newbies make their websites as easy as possible without pulling their hair.
“We are achieving all of this without compromising our service quality as we are a premium shared web hosting provider in the nation. Websites are the extensions of the dreams of millions of people & we want to give them wings so that their dreams can fly.” – Jafar Muhammed, the founder of Rovity
Stephen Hawking said a beautiful thing about the Internet: “We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.” Rovity claims to bring a new revolution in this giant brain of human civilization & it seems promising enough to achieve that.
Rovity – Features
Rovity’s Homepage
Scalability: Most shared hosting service providers are still relying on old hardware, such as dedicated servers. While dedicated servers are suitable if it is maintained well, it is not at all scalable.
Rovity is on the cutting-edge cloud infrastructure; this allows it to scale up quickly and efficiently whenever needed without pulling down the server or migrating the data between different machines.
Outdated Software: Software or languages in technology are rapidly changing. Having always up to date is a real challenge, especially for those who work with old technologies. Traditional hosting companies require to run on old Operating Software and PHP versions.
But since Rovity is a modern-era service provider that uses an agile methodology, it is offering the latest Operating Software like CloudLinux 8, updated PHP versions like 7.4 by default. It’s a fact that using updated stacks will always give them better performance and security. So, Rovity is continuously updating its infrastructure.
Support: Not everyone has technological expertise. If someone hosts a website, they will surely need help managing it, primarily if they have never hosted a website before. As per our experience, unfortunately, traditional hosting companies’ technical support is not efficient and humanly.
Most of the time, a support ticket will take at least 8 hours to get a response from the support team; and you know what? That reply will be useless as it will be a canned response that gives you zero value to solve your problems. That’s where Rovity’s technical support team differs. Team Rovity is proactive when replying to their customer’s support tickets & it provides personalized solutions that work.
Server Location: The web server must be located closest to the target audience for better SEO and high-quality overall performance. Traditional brands mostly have their servers located in the USA. If your audiences reside in India, there are at least 200 to 300 milliseconds in data transfer latency. This delay affects every file on your website.
Rovity’s servers are located in Mumbai and have a global CDN with PoPs in Mumbai and Bangalore. These nearest datacenters help visitors to access websites faster. The faster a website performs, the better the User Experience, Search Engine Optimization, and conversions.
Infrastructure – Rovity engineered its cloud infrastructure with Performance, Speed, Scalability, and Security in mind. That’s why the team built Rovity with AWS, CloudLinux OS, DirectAdmin, and LiteSpeed Web Server.
Free Domain Names for life – Rovity provides free domains for life with all subscription plans. As long as you continue to renew your hosting plan, you will never have to pay for domains ever.
Ultimate Support For Optimising Core Web Vitals – Rovity will optimize the Core Web Vitals of each website hosted with Rovity without charging anything extra; this will directly improve the SEO of the website. Rovity is probably the world’s first & only brand offering to optimize Core Web Vitals of sites hosted with them.
FREE SSL Certificates – It is essential to have an SSL Certificate for your domain. Their SSL certificates are A+ graded, and they offer them for free for all of your domains and subdomains.
Free Website Builder – Your website shouldn’t be just a place where you put some information together. Modern websites are mobile-friendly, very well designed, and optimized for performance.
Rovity offers a Free Divi theme builder to help you quickly launch your website. You can build any site with Divi, including an online shop, with ease.
No Need To pay More For Renewal – Almost all major service providers charge more when renewing a subscription plan; Rovity doesn’t do that. If you subscribe to any subscription plan of Rovity, you will be paying the same amount at the renewal that you paid for starting your subscription.
Robust Email Delivery System: Their conversation optimized email systems are robust and have partnerships with reputed Email Service Providers like Gmail to better the inbox delivery rate. Even if your domain is newly registered, your emails will be delivered to your recipient’s inbox.
30 Days Money-Back Guarantee: However, if something is not working as per your requirements, they have a 30 days money-back guarantee. Rovity will give you a risk-free opportunity to try it out.
Rovity – Unique Selling Proposition
The USP of Rovity is Zenith – India’s first fully-customizable shared hosting plan.
Rovity has three Deluxe Plans named Silver, Gold & Diamond with disk space of 1 GB, 2 GB & 3 GB, respectively. Only one website can be hosted with each of the deluxe plans.
Once an individual has a subscription to the diamond plan, he/she can upgrade to the Zenith plan for free. Once upgraded to Zenith, if a subscriber wishes to have an additional 10 GB for having more space for the website or storing emails, he/she can purchase this extra resource.
Similarly, if you wish to host multiple websites, you can host them within your existing account. You don’t need to subscribe to another plan. This method is way cheaper than placing a new subscription order for another website. This will give the subscribers more than a 67% reduction in cost.
Rovity – Founder
Jafar Muhammed, Founder of Rovity
Rovity was founded by Jafar Muhammed. Jafar had worked with 3 different organisations and gained 6 years of experience as a UI Developer before he founded Rovity in 2017.
“I started my career as a web designer ten years ago. As a freelance web designer, I served thousands of clients & I got the opportunity to work with various non-profit organizations, including Mozilla. This experience shaped my passion for bringing more people online & I wanted to create something marvelous using the Internet to empower people everywhere. So, I launched Host My Website Online & then rebranded it to Rovity.” – Jafar Muhammed, the founder of Rovity
Rovity – Name, Logo, & Tagline
RObert Kahn, VInton Cerf, and Tim-Berners Lee are known as the Founding Fathers of the Internet. Rovity is named after these three great visionaries.
Yes, ROVITY IS A REVOLUTION created with the names of founders of the Internet itself.
SSK Capital is a private investment fund driven by Ecommerce investments. Unlike VC’s or an Angel fund, SSK capital is smaller and invests in early-stage startups looking for Digital Expertise and Capital to scale not start. Sahaan Suman K is the Director of SSK Capital an E-Commerce driven investment fund with current investments in 5 companies. With his expertise in business and entrepreneurship, he is the CEO of a boutique digital agency ‘Bubble Network’ set up in London and Bangalore.
Sahaan is a 24- year old entrepreneur and is the Director of SSK Capital an E-Commerce driven investment fund with current investments in 5 companies. He started his first actual venture at the age of 18, though he failed multiple times testing small business ideas with little or no money during college. Learning cheaply from his own early days, he made his own mark with a boutique digital agency ‘Bubble Network’ set up in London and Bangalore, which today has serviced over 250 brands including names like Flipkart, CoWrks, Oberoi and Olive Group!
With the expertise, Sahaan gathered from there and his Alma Mater, Warwick Business school in England, he started SSK CAPITAL an investment fund on Ecommerce as he saw the fruits of being in that space and also where his expertise lied. Sahaan’s journey has been difficult and exciting as he built the entire company with no initial capital to a team of 20 completely bootstrapped from his college dorm at Warwick when he started.
These are three qualities Sahaan have always associated to the most: Ambition, Persistence and Discipline. In time, he also learnt that these traits only got stronger and became the core of my belief system today. In today’s world there are ‘Dreamers’ and ‘Doers’, he has always been a part of the latter, as they say “If opportunities don’t come knocking, build your own door.”
Sahaan Suman K- Job Responsibilities Over Time
Structure is Key. Sahaan has always been an entrepreneur first and investor second, at this age he has yet so much to learn however the fact that he started early gave him a head start to learn faster and think smarter. Running a business is very different from running an investment fund as your working not only with employees but also other entrepreneurs who are partners, each partnership works differently and makes it critical to clearly etch out your role in each company and not interfere in day to day operations as the entrepreneur running it knows what they are doing.
His value add has always been his own network and digital expertise, time and again via his agency Sahaan has scaled multiple Startups from 0 to 6 figures within 6 months, learning from that, Sahaan and his team know where to add value and where to not interfere.
A quick run-through of his conventional day would be waking up at 7 am followed by meditation and grace, post which he plans all his calls and meetings for the day, so he knows how much time he has to divide that across the businesses that need his attention. He has an internal team called at 10:30 and 11:00 to delegate and monitor work post which he jumps in with the activities of the day.
Sahaan loves what he does even though it’s long hours, multiple deadlines, stressful days, and many times firefighting. He takes Power naps very often along with short breaks to either read or simply relax, which helps him recharge and increase productivity.
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Journey
While running his digital agency Bubble Network, he focused on only working with Ecom & B to B clients. After working with over 250 of them, he and his team got really strong with Performance ads and data tools which helped them to scale sales online really fast. That is when Sahaan started investing in companies and stayed actively involved with them as using these skillsets helped him reap the direct benefits of their expertise.
However, coming from a lineage of business families, he believes that business comes to him naturally as he grew up in an environment where Sahaan saw this around himself every day.
Sahaan Suman K- Investing in Startup
SSK Capital is a private investment fund driven by Ecommerce investments. Unlike VC’s or an Angel fund, SSK capital is smaller and invests in early-stage startups looking for Digital Expertise and Capital to scale not start. They invest in more product-driven startups rather than services and a critical check box for them is that the product must be scalable online as their expertise lies there.
SSK Capital tends not to make irrational optimistic forecasts by hoping the startups turn profitable a few years later, they rather invest and work on businesses with lean financial models where these startups are already profitable operationally, however, need assistance to scale. These startups have running operational costs that are minimal and are directly proportional to growth, ensuring the burn rate is low and helps them spend more money on Ads, PR, and Production making it easier to scale.
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Mantra
There are certain KPI’s they look at before investing, a few primary pointers would be:
Who is the entrepreneur and what has their track record been?
Vision alignment between the entrepreneur and us.
Do they need money to start or scale?
What is the current burn rate?
Are they profitable and what are the margins in that industry?
How huge is the market potential, competitors and are there any opportunities for a blue ocean in that space?
Can the business be scaled online?
Will our expertise and network add in a significant value to the brand allowing it to grow?
ROI Period and equity ratio
He does not invest in any business and does not understand irrespective of the profitability as he loves being personally involved and match the passion of the entrepreneur.
Sahaan Suman K- Few Signs to Trust a Founding Team
Education is the least of their concern. Sahaan believes anyone who can start and showcase a positive track record is great. They tend to look at numbers and facts, profitability, and vision alignment between him and the founder is critical. Post that, they also look at the synergy they bring together, if one plus one is three when they work together that’s a win-win for both.
Sahaan Suman K- Aid to Startups
Sahaan does not consider himself to be a mentor, he never can, as he believes there is no end to learning, as a peer entrepreneur he only helps or assists others in any way he could. Primarily, he has helped many entrepreneurs start their journey and also help them avoid making the mistakes he made when he started.
Sahaan also consults startups on their digital strategy allowing them to understand what to look at while scaling online and what markers to look out for while doing so. He is also humbled to have been invited as a keynote speaker at multiple schools, and platforms such as AIESEC India and the Youth Forum.
Sahaan Suman K- Learning Hacks
As they say an idiot with a plan can beat a genius without one. With time they all get complacent and tend to just wing their day to day activities. Post a certain period this is not possible; it becomes critical to have a routine and plan your activities to ensure higher productivity.
Sahaan Suman K- Right Time To Invest in A Startup
Sahaan is a strong believer in starting small and raising funds only to scale a company and not to start. Funds, many a time, give the entrepreneur a deluded or a faux sense of progress and with that mindset, many loopholes get left uncapped and lead to problems in the long run which can only be solved with more funds and the loop continues crippling the company.
Every investor looks at two primary aspects. Firstly, they want to know who you are, what is your track record, your passion and hunger towards the business, and also how invested you are in what you are doing. Remember Investors invest in the entrepreneur more than just the business. Secondly, they want to know raw, real, and true facts of the company, how much has been invested, are you currently profitable, if not what is your burn rate and near-future forecasts.
Fundamental things a pitch should contain:
What is the problem your business is solving
Product/Service offering – A quick brief on the company
Vision of the company
A little about the founders
Past Track Record
Market Size
Current sales & projected sales
Profitability & Burn rate
Contingency plan
Current Equity break up and what do you want from the investor.
Take any successful entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, Mark Cuban, we will see a majority of them start very small and test the market-product fit. Only once they see, learn, adapt, and finesse the product they would start scaling the brand and pulling in investment. If one wants to build a clothing empire start by selling one T-shirt not build a showroom.
Spend less and get the business to an operational breakeven so market validation alone will bring in the investors, money and so on.
Sahaan Suman K- Best Way To Divide Equity Among Founders
This depends from business to business however he looks at three aspects while looking at equity break up:
Funds one brings in
Value (Network or Technical expertise)
Active involvement in the business
Sahaan Suman K- Early Movers vs Late Movers
Sahaan believes if positioned strategically this can actually be a pro rather than a con. “Late Mover Advantage” can be a way of looking at the early movers and learning from their mistakes and hurdles and launch a product filling in these gaps.
On a strategic note, one can add multiple value propositions to stay ahead, for instance, if Apple and Samsung launch a smart watch first, brands like Fossil and Titan can understand the market gap and take advantage of it, maybe add feature consumers wanted, sell it a different price point, make adaptations to product design based on consumer reactions and so on.
Sahaan Suman K- Retaining Equity While Negotiation
Primary mistake early stage entrepreneurs make is give out too much equity too early in the business as during these nascent stages the growth potential may be high however company valuation is still low due to smaller turnovers. During these stages’ investors would ask for a larger chunk of equity to hedge their risk.
If it is the right time and a founder wants to raise funds look at hybrid deals such as either debt + equity or royalty + equity, so this helps hold on to more equity while negotiating.
Sahaan Suman K- 3 Private companies To Invest in
Sahaan Suman K comes from a tech and digital background, looking at the market today and how this space is growing rapidly all three of his investments would be in this space.
Fiverr(Global Freelancer Platform)
Masterclass(EdTech platform)
Urban Clap (Services on Call)
Sahaan Suman K- Indian Startup Ecosystem
In regard to Indian Entrepreneurs, due to the cultural and demographic stigma, people many times tend to build castles in the air. For instance, they get deluded by forecasts and market size to an extent where they lose sight of being rational and realistic with numbers, which eventually cripples the company. As they say, it is best to think like a global firm but work like a startup.
With VCs, they can see great progress in the number of amazing Indian VC funds coming up along with supporting accelerators and incubators, so they only sees an upside to the startup ecosystem if this growth continues.
Sahaan uses Google Calendar to set meetings and calls, Calendly to schedule my calls, Trello to monitor the company’s activities, Monday.com as a productivity tool and daily task manager. These tools really help bring in a sense of clarity and direction when there are many brands and many tasks which need attention.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verifiedinformation ondifferent startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Builder.ai
Builder.ai is a human-assisted AI that empowers everyone to independently build and operate tech products through two products that work together to be their virtual engineering team. Builder.ai is on a mission to turn ideas into developed products for everyone. Whether you want to build something new or are already operating on the cloud, they empower a single user to achieve more by doing less; and that’s why it says: Build. Run. Scale.
Builder.ai offers a platform for entrepreneurs and enterprises to build, run and scale any idea, no knowledge of coding required. They help the world’s best ideas transform into great innovations that in turn support and enhance the work of entrepreneurs and businesses.
Building software can often prove to be complex, risky and inefficient. They level the playing field for companies that recognise the importance of having an online presence, but don’t have the technical knowledge to bring it to life. They believe that software development should be simple, immediate and efficient to make all kinds of ideas a reality.
Its human-assisted-AI platform lets one create on-demand, tailor-made software using a library of reusable features and a network of verified expert talent from around the world. Their recently launched and globally-recognised platform Studio Store, has been helping SMBs and SMEs amid COVID-19 to access quality software at lower costs and in most cases is delivered to them in 8-10 weeks. Just a few weeks ago, they were awarded at CognitionX 2020 for “Best COVID-19 Innovation for Recovery” and chosen as “the Hottest Startup – AI” at The Europas.
Builder.ai- Founders
Builder.ai is founded by Sachin Dev Duggal & Saurabh Dhoot.
Builder.ai Founders | Saurabh Dhoot & Sachin Dev Duggal
Saurabh and Sachin first met when they were both pursuing their engineering at Imperial College London. As founders, their roles are thorough: going and run right from the big picture down to microscopic detail. Therefore, both of the founders oversee different functions- from strategy to execution- pretty smoothly. Sachin sees it as the beauty of working with his best friend, Saurabh. Not too long ago, they had also co-founded Nivio, a cloud computing startup, taking it to $100mn in evaluation and exiting it after a major strategic sale in 2012.
Their partnership doesn’t end there. Saurabh and Sachin are also passionate about breakthrough technological innovations that have the potential to enhance society and environment. They are also working to bring necessary education to 100 million children within the next 50 years. Their projects keep growing.
How was Builder.ai Started
Four years ago, Builder.ai started out with a dream to be the connection between every great idea and a fully realized product. The ideology behind Bulider.ai was to empower everyone to build their ideas, regardless of their understanding of code. To achieve this, they went back to the drawing board on how software is made today. They looked at best practices across industries, naming-ly what Henry Ford did for the automotive industry with the assembly line.
They are applying this methodology to custom software by employing a human assisted AI to the software assembly line. This system brings together building blocks of frequently used features – such as Facebook login or shopping cart – alongside the best human talent from across the globe to work directly with the customer and ensure the software is built on time without errors.
They started their journey from there and the premise was to make software development accessible to anyone, anywhere. It stemmed from the belief that everyone should be able to unlock their true potential, to make their vision come to life irrespective of what they know, what they have and what they are potentially afraid of.
Builder.ai- Company Size & Work Culture
Builder.ai expanded from 30 employees to over 250 in just 2 years and now has offices in London, Los Angeles, Delhi, Dubai and Tokyo. This level of rapid global expansion had the potential to cause severe rifts in communication; something that wasn’t so much of an issue when it was just a few of them working together. Builder.ai is going through an exciting phase where they are seeing quick yet strategic growth, supporting both active digital markets and those that are ripe for digital transformation.
They work from different parts of the world and the solution to most business challenges is teamwork and constant alignment on goals making ‘precise communication’. A consistent transfer of knowledge and transparency across departments became a priority, so that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.
Sachin believes having inspirational leadership figures that keep their teams in the know and constantly empowered is critical to this. Video touch-bases, Slack messaging, project management tools are key to successful day-to-day communication, especially nowadays. Besides this, they ensure sending-out department-wide emails regularly, and conducting global town halls each quarter.
Builder.ai- Name, Logo and Tagline
When Sachin and Saurabh founded the company in 2016, they named it Engineer.ai with 2 essential products – DevOps and CloudOps. As Engineer.ai, they did some exemplary work with some of the best brands across the world. They built software that could solve all kinds of problems. Halfway through 2018 they decided to review their identity and conduct a branding activity and in early 2019 brought on board one of the best global creative agencies in London to support.
Builder.ai Logo
They wanted to simplify their brand to directly correlate and connect with its product offerings and their customers. That branding session led us to a huge realisation – that a lot of their customers were finding it confusing to deal with three different identities – DevOps, CloudOps and Engineer.ai. They learned that the name ‘Engineer.ai’ as a product in itself wasn’t effective. People aren’t simply looking for an engineer, instead, they’re looking for someone to help them build their dreams.
Hence, they renamed it as Builder.ai and the interpretation is quite simple: they don’t just build software. They help companies build phenomenal, revolutionary, business altering ideas.
Builder.ai- Industry Details
India has established approximately 48 million small businesses over the past decade, nearly double the number of the US. However, unlike the US, most businesses in India are hesitant to invest in digital transformation due to a lack of tech expertise, resources or both. For a country like India, that is the fastest-growing trillion-dollar economy in the world and the fifth-largest overall, a necessary shift to stay competitive is the democratisation of software development so that ideas can transcend borders, compete in the global market and take India to number one.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further nudged Indian decision makers to escalate their focus on harnessing technology in various sectors. Today consumers and businesses are utilizing online channels to promote their products and services and this is helping the country’s tech sector. Technology solutions have helped achieve key results in segments like healthcare, F&B industry, education, salons, etc. In the next 5 years, this trend will continue steadily till every business on the planet is a digital one. It is the only way to crisis-proof your business in uncertain times.
Needless to say, the market opportunity is huge. There are now 574 million active internet users in India, a growth rate of 24 per cent from 2019, according to data from consulting firm Kantar. It says India’s active number of monthly internet users are predicted to reach 639 million by the end of this year, with the coronavirus-induced lockdown a factor in this increase.
The platform brings together all the required pieces to bring to life a customer’s dream – i.e. to build, run, and scale a business. All that someone needs are an idea. Creating these apps is as simple as ordering a pizza.
For example, if you’re wanting to create an app to launch in the market. Anyone can create apps in as little as 2 weeks, by simply using Builder.ai’s Studio store by logging on it, then select a pre-packaged app template be it an e-commerce app, grocery store app, gym app or even a spa app your looking to develop, then add the features to the list (just like adding pizza toppings), you need not have any technical or coding experience, this request will then be taken up by their global pool of experts to iron out the precise ask, custom features for example and finally the app will be delivered to the partner in weeks at a fraction of the cost otherwise and to add to it, Builder.ai will provide the first three months of live service for free.
Builder.ai Everyday Phenomenal
Key Products:
Builder Studio: A unique software building interface so easy anyone can do it
Builder Care: Keeps your software updated so you’re never blindsided by 3rd party changes
Builder Cloud: Get scaled automatically with Builder Clou
Builder Now: Prototype your big idea in less than 10 mins and it’s free
Builder Studio Store: a new range of pre-packed apps – beginning with e- commerce and delivery designed to bring about digital transformation for businesses both faster and at a fraction of the cost to help the SMBs amid COVID-19
Studio Rapid: A newly launched latest no-code product offering, Studio Rapid, which enables enterprises to build fully native custom apps.
The ideation to start Builder was to empower everyone to build their ideas, regardless of their understanding of code. They started their journey from there and the premise was to make software development accessible to anyone, anywhere. It stemmed from the belief that everyone should be able to unlock their true potential, to make their vision come to life irrespective of what they know, what they have and what they are potentially afraid of.
They got together all the required pieces for their dream – i.e. to build, run, and scale a business. All that someone needs are an idea. They started with the following products including Builder Studio, Builder Care, Builder Cloud, Builder Now and since they believe in constant evolution of technology, when COVID-19 heavily impacted the businesses (specifically small and medium-sized businesses), they stepped up and launched “The Studio Store” to help all SMBs & SMEs build business apps.
This launch was part of Builder.ai’s larger mission to make the process of building a digital future more accessible, cost effective and efficient. Their mission is to give wings to the dreamers and for that its approach has always been progressive, they are constantly upgrading their product to give the best services to their clients, soon they are launching its new product to provide even better assistance.
Builder.ai- Funding
Year
Stage
Amount
Investors Name
Late 2018
Series A
$29.6 million
Lakestar, Jungle Ventures with participation from Softbank’s DeepCore
Builder.ai- Business and Revenue Model
Builder.ai was bootstrapped for a considerable period of time. Their big chunk of customers are entrepreneurs who operate in the fashion, retail and hospitality businesses, along with some enterprise technology players. They have been registering just under 100 percent growth over the last three to four years with revenues tripling during the same period.
They have also succeeded in significantly shrinking costs and timelines around software development for their customers. Some of their apps are delivered in as little as 2 weeks! Then of course, their latest no-code product offering, Studio Rapid, enables enterprises to build fully native custom apps in a day.
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 FreightBro.
In a world, where everything is accessible on the screen touch of the smartphones, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we had a technology that made the logistics process swift and easy as a fiddle. One such initiative is FreightBro founded by Raghavendran Viswanathan, Mohammed Zakkiria, and V Anand Babu in the year 2016. FreightBro is an intuitive digital platform that enables forwarders to procure rates faster, reduce inefficiencies, boost sales, make data-driven decisions and provide a seamless customer experience.
Read the full article to know more about FreightBro, Founders & Team, Funding & Investors, Future Plans, Awards & Recognition, and its Business Model and many more.
Jan 2020 – FreightBro Becomes the First Indian Company to Integrate Maersk Spot on its Digital Platform. FreightBro now allows to book container space online with Maersk Spot APIs
Oct 2019 – FreightBro becomes first Indian startup to join Digital Hub Logistics Hamburg
Jun 2019 – FreightBro started to digitize UAE’s freight and logistics industry. FreightBro Signs MoU With The National Association of Freight and Logistics, Dubai
FreightBro – About & How It Works?
FreightBro is an online freight marketplace where we provide end-to-end digital solutions to shippers and freight forwarders. We aim to equip the forwarders with latest freight rate automation tool which not only enables them to generate instant freight rates but also allows them to get competitive freight quotes, online.
The idea behind FreightBro is to democratize technology for freight forwarders and enable them to digitize their services to deliver an exceptional user experience. The mission here is to enable the digitization of global trade. Digitization of global trade can be attained by making technology accessible to freight forwarders. FreightBro helps tackle shipment inefficiencies and uplift the freight forwarding experience with solutions such as rate management, price discovery, instant quote creation, quote management, shipment management, shipment tracking all on a single platform.
As SaaS (Software as a Service) based company, FreightBro offers web and mobile-based applications to forwarders & 3PLs which can digitize their key processes like sales, procurement, operations and give an end to end visibility to their customers. Digitization here refers to the automation of the manual and repetitive tasks that increase overall efficiencies and reduce logistics costs considerably. FreightBro platform impacts an approximate reduction of 50% of sales costs and 70% of operations costs.
FreightBro Dashboard
FreightBro – Target Market
The entire logistics market is estimated at 4.3 Trillion which includes 700+ billion 3rd party logistics service providers & 150+ billion freight forwarders. Top 50 players hold major market share. Freight Forwarding is a 150 billion dollar industry globally. The Indian logistics Market size is 17 million TEU. There has been an approximate 10 percent growth year on year for the SME Market and a steady introduction of small and medium-sized players in the industry. Therefore, the demand for digitization is increasing and thus poses a promising potential for growth.
FreightBro – USP
FreightBro is trying to solve issues regarding inefficiencies & speed in the logistics and freight forwarding industry that have never been addressed before. The time taken from inquiry to quote to book to actual cargo movement to visibility & data insights isn’t smooth and comes with major inefficiencies. Multiple communication channels are involved and activity as basic as procuring rates essentially comprises of multiple emails, phone calls or complex spreadsheets. Workflow automation is very much required in everyday operations and here is where FreightBro steps in. This provides real-time visibility and information, data standards and predictive analytics for businesses. FreightBro’s solutions help save 70% time, 50% cost that further increases sales by 30%.
The fact that the FreightBro platform is built to be an enabler is the biggest differentiator as a product in the industry. We built the product around the whole belief that the for the digital revolution to thrive in the industry, it needs more enablers than disruptors – Raghavendran quotes explaining FreightBro’s USP
The FreightBro team believes in enabling the forwarders to grow and stride the digitization wave in the industry rather than disrupting the ecosystem or wiping freight forwarders off. Therefore FreightBro aims to emerge as an enabler of change and not a disruptor in the ecosystem.
Raghavendran Viswanathan, V Anand Babu, and Mohammed Zakkiria. A. are the co-founders of FreightBro.
Raghavendran Viswanathan | CEO, FreightBro
FreightBro CEO Raghavendran Viswanathan, is responsible for strategizing and managing the team at FreightBro. With his expertise in technology and logistics, he aims to solve the freight forwarding industries’ complex challenges. Before FreightBro, Raghavendran was the Business Development Manager at Panalpina, a Swiss company and one of the world’s leading providers of supply chain solutions. Before Panalpina, he was the Territory Manager at DHL handling diverse responsibilities. He has earlier worked at Vodafone and HCL Technologies in technical roles.
Raghavendran is an MBA in Sales, Distribution, and Marketing from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, where he was also part of the entrepreneurship cell. He studied engineering from Anna University, Chennai in Electrical and Electronics.
V Anand Babu, Director & Co-founder, FreightBro heads the Partnerships vertical while mentoring and nurturing organizational growth. His primary aim is to research and enable synergies between various partners and vendors enabling organizational growth through the creation of global opportunities.
A veteran in the logistics industry, Anand was associated with AP Moller Maersk Group, a leading logistics company, for over 25 years. Anand has also been a part-time faculty at the Indian Institute of Logistics and was actively involved in social causes as the President of the Rotary Club of Chennai for a significant period.
Mohammed Zakkiria is responsible for strategizing the company’s growth and heads marketing functions. Mohammed quit his well-paying job to realize the dream of solving real-world freight forwarding problems using technology and innovation. He has been involved right from the ideation stage and along with like-minded industry, veterans have built a core team that is rich in extensive industry knowledge and expertise. With over 14 years of experience in international freight forwarding, he has held a broad range of leadership positions across sales, marketing, and global customer management has generated 20+ million sales deals and managed logistics operations of many Fortune 500 companies for their India movements.
Before FreightBro, Mohammed held the position of Sales Head of Cargo Partner, responsible for top-line growth including direct sales and strategic initiatives. He has also been associated with leading organizations such as Panalpina, DHL, and Damco in the past.
Mohammed was born in Pollachi and graduated in Computer science, he also holds a Masters in International Business from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. Mohammed lives in Chennai with his wife and a daughter and is a startup enthusiast. He is also a keen photographer and loves trekking. He aims to make FreightBro a global brand in logistics technology space and build a solid ecosystem in India.
Mr. Viswanathan worked with Mohammed Zakkiria at Panalpina and they used to brainstorm about how all other industries leveraged technology to improve user experience to drive business and growth. They drew parallels to the logistics industry and intended to do the same for the industry that had overlooked delivering an excellent end-user experience for quite some time. After careful understanding of the business and weighing in the risks of industry adaptation, they met Mohammed’s ex-colleague Anand Babu. The discussion between the trio assured that they were in the right space and time and further led three of them to start FreightBro to simplify freight forwarding processes for hundreds of enterprises globally.
Currently, FreightBro’s employee strength is 70+ between Mumbai and Chennai offices.
FreightBro – How It All Started?
Mr. Viswanathan always wanted to have a business of his own. His career in the logistics sector was an unplanned one and happened by chance post his MBA. Working with DHL and Panalpina gave him an understanding of the logistics and freight forwarding industry and the nuances of the business. His ex-colleague, Mohammed whom he met at Panalpina and now the current partner of FreightBro, played a major role in its inception. After analyzing the business implications and a meeting with Anand Babu (also a current Co-founder at FreightBro), this magnanimous entrepreneurial journey began.
The trio designed an initial MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and regularly did feedback visits with possible customers. About the product validation stage, Raghavendran says-
Feedback visit is when you visit a possible client with the Minimum Viable Product which is still in ideation/ conception and seek their feedback about what they think of the product and will it be a good one. So on one such visit we met our first client, he listened to us and was excited about our product and was kind enough to give suggestions to improve as per the industry
Ideation and prototyping happened together. In B2B SME space, the customers would like to see the product rather than listening to an idea. Hence they went with the first cut of working product to their first customer and the willingness to pay for the skeleton or just the concept was the proof of the pudding.
The FreightBro founders also spoke to one or two representatives from all domains of the supply chain apart from speaking with their potential customers. They wanted to get feedback from the supply chain ecosystem as logistics is just a network-driven play. The team kept correcting their product based on the feedback and strengthened their value proposition.
FreightBro pivoted twice from the initial product. Both times, the pivot was market-driven and to cater to customer needs. The pivot is specific to the Indian market and as a startup, they intend to keep their ears on the ground and pivot if necessary for other markets as well.
Freight forwarders were called FreightBrokers / FreightBrokerage firms in the past. FreightBro is a short form of Freight Broker that just stuck with all the key members as a catchy and relevant title.
FreightBro Logo
The logo is a representation of the digital elements of 1 and 0 as i and o connected by a curve which can also be interpreted as a connection between input and output in a digital context. The colors used are Blue, Orange, and Black each of them representing the ocean, air, and surface respectively.
FreightBro – Business & Revenue Model
FreightBro is a cloud-based SaaS platform and has a pay per user model. It can also work on a per-bill value model.
FreightBro – Funding & Investors
FreightBro raised seed funding in May 2018.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
May 2018
Seed
Undisclosed
Suresh Kumar (former global CIO of Bank of New York Mellon)
FreightBro – Partnerships
FreightBro partnered with Port Of Wilhelmshaven, Germany’s only deep-water port situated between the river Ems and Western, as their official digital partner to facilitate trade and digital transformation of shipping. Port Of Wilhelmshaven is the first port to be a part of FreightBro’s official partner ecosystem that consists of all major shipping lines, transporters, insurance companies, trade, and finance entities. It is a significant central transshipment location for bulk commodities. The partnership promises both of them access to each other’s market and connection with stakeholders in respective countries.
FreightBro, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The National Association of Freight and Logistics, (NAFL), Dubai, to help their 400+ members to digitize their services. With this partnership, the forwarders in the Middle East region can now access import rates of China and India on the go and book shipments instantly. The platform enables them to manage quotations, shipments, communication, and visibility on the go.
Also, they have recently joined the Digital Hub Logistics, Hamburg as the first Indian Startup to join the network of German startups and corporates.
FreightBro – Startup Challenges
Since they do not have direct competition and the product isn’t a regular ERP convincing the industry the need or rather creating a need for it as a solution for logistics way forward was an evident challenge. To convince that this product would be imperative for the survival of a Freight Forwarder without using it in the first go was a challenge. The benefits of the platform can only be understood after a freight forwarder has used it firsthand which was evident from the fact that after one Freight forwarder started using it, the word of mouth marketing worked.
FreightBro – Competitors
There’s no direct competition to FreightBro in the market but that doesn’t mean that it operates in a monopolistic market. There are players like iContainers solutions SL, COGO Freight Pvt Ltd, Cargomatic to only name a few that provide similar and other kinds of services.
FreightBro has been listed in NASSCOM 10000 Startup-2016 and CIBA- Centre for Incubation and Business Acceleration and Startup India-2017.
Won E-commerce Startup Award at 10th South-East India Cargo & Logistics Awards 2018 (Chennai)
Digital Transformation Award – Finalist at by Lloyd’s Loading List Global Freight Awards 2018 (London)
Best SaaS Solution of the year- 4th Indian ISV Awards under Startup category
FreightBro – Future Plans
They started with bootstrapping mainly. The initial capital came from promoters, friends and family. FreightBro has grown 100 percent quarterly to date. From a bootstrapped startup to a million-dollar revenue in two and a half years, they have come a long way. And they plan to continue working on their IP to ease the workload for freight forwarders and save their time.
FreightBro – FAQ’s
What is FreightBro?
FreightBro is an intuitive digital platform that enables forwarders to procure rates faster, reduce inefficiencies, boost sales, make data-driven decisions and provide a seamless customer experience.
Who is the founder of FreightBro?
Raghavendran Viswanathan, V Anand Babu, and Mohammed Zakkiria. A. are the co-founders of FreightBro.
What services does FreightBro provide?
FreightBro offers web and mobile-based applications to forwarders & 3PLs which can digitize their key processes like sales, procurement, operations and give an end to end visibility to their customers.
Who is the CEO of FreightBro?
Raghavendran Viswanathan is the CEO of FreightBro. He is responsible for strategizing and managing the team at FreightBro.
Which is the targeted market of FreightBro?
The entire logistics market is estimated at 4.3 Trillion which includes 700+ billion 3rd party logistics service providers & 150+ billion freight forwarders.
In India, there has been a growing gap between the industry needs and the skills of students. A study by employability assessment company ‘Aspiring Minds’, carried out in 2017, shockingly revealed that 95% engineers in India are not fit for software development jobs.
Technology is not something which can be learned once and for all, it is a must to keep oneself abreast of new developments. While it is not possible and convenient to go for formal offline education at all stages of one’s career, online technical education can do a lot to keep one up-to-date with new technologies, without giving up the current job.
Codevidhya is an Ed-Tech company converting classrooms of Indian schools into programming powerhouses with a vision to empower the young generation to innovate.
Read this article to know more about Codevidhya founder, funding, courses, business model, tagline, logo, challenges and future plans below.
Codevidhya is an EdTech company highly inspired by technology to facilitate technical education besides contemporary learning. The company is dedicated to explore new future of young minds through integrating the learning with creativity, sharing and collaboration. They develop the concepts to help understand the future needs and to make complex learning easy with effective tools and techniques.
“We believe in the future that would be written by code. In fact, the ability to code could be the ‘Next level of Literacy’.” – Shiv Ram Choudhary, founder of Codevidhya.
As an EdTech startup, Codevidhya follows the ‘Learn by Doing’ approach. Adhering to this philosophy, the company integrates such tools in their platforms and practices that leverage students’ learning and knowledge. The startup has ambitious plans underway to expand to more schools and has already partnered with 50 schools catering to 20,000 students.
Mr Shivram Choudhary in a classroom
Codevidhya differentiates itself by offering a futuristic Computer Science curriculum that empowers the future generation. Students are encouraged to find out real problems of the real world and solve it with the help of technology.
Codevidhya – Target Market Size
“We consider ourselves to be in the Online(Platform) + Offline (Text Book) market both. Currently there is no player in the Indian industry who is offering this approach for coding.”, says Shiv Ram.
As such, the startup consider the entire Indian education industry from Grade 1 to Grade 10 as their market, the size of which is upwards of 250 million. Since this is a new market that is being created, they are yet to identify the potential of it, however the startup has seen a 100% YOY growth in terms of student acquisition for the past 2 years.
Codevidhya – How It All Started?
Codevidhya was built around the idea that in India we have around 45% of the population under age 24, yet there is a big unemployment pool. Initially, Shiv Ram, founder of Codevidhya, had a discussion with several experts and each one of them had their own views. When he collated those thoughts and did differential analysis he came to one conclusion that we are not adequately skilled. Finding the solution to this issue was itself a problem as the education system in India is still archaic.
When the founder visited Canada to attend a seminar with Robin Sharma, he met this young kid Tanmay Bakshi. He had a discussion with him for more than one hour and it was an enlightenment for Shiv Ram. Then & there, Codevidhya as an idea was incepted, that the problem is in the core. If we shape our children from the grassroot level then in future they will have a skill.
As Shiv Ram says, “Right now everyone is thinking in a reactive way, I thought why reactive and let’s be proactive and catch them young and shape their future. There is a drawback in this thinking that the results of your efforts will come after 10-15 years, but yes we are ready to take that risk, as it is a noble cause as well as we are addressing the issue from very basic, making things foundational.”
Shiv Ram came back to India and discussed with his in-house tech people (people in his school) and met Rajesh, who along with a team of four developers gave basic shape to the idea. Basic concept or say mission and vision of Codevidhya is to Enable Students to Create; using Technology leading to Entrepreneurship and become Global Powerhouse of Skill Development for tomorrow’s world.
Codevidhya – Products/Services
Codevidhya’s latest offering is ‘Live 1-1 Classes’ with India’s best educators. ‘Codevidhya Live Coding Classes’ are for digital classroom where you can start learning from your trainer.
Codevidhya’s flagship product is Annual School Curriculum that focus on Coding through a hands on approach wherein the startup offers Text Book and an online platform for students to practice their exercises; the same platform is used by the teachers to assign quiz, assignments and projects.
Also, Codevidhya offers a well-structured coding curriculum for Schools to teach coding right from Grade 1. The curriculum is at par with the latest trends in programming languages such as Python, HTML and JavaScript to prepare young manpower for future challenges. Currently working with 50 schools in the Rajasthan & South region, the startup aims to grow all over the country in the coming years.
Codevidhya Courses
The program offered by Codevidhya to schools consists of the following set of resources:
Curriculum books for Grades 1 to 10.
Access to Codevidhya online tools such as QuickBook and CodePlay.
Multiple Training Sessions for Computer Science teachers for the whole academic session to equip them to teach conveniently and more effectively.
Regular workshops for students to introduce them to the coding concepts and the latest innovations in the field of Computer Science.
Online Assessments to track the students’ performances.
Program Monitoring.
One to one support for teachers and students.
Coding Challenges for students to create the competitive environment.
Codevidhya – Founders & Team
Shivram Choudhary is the founder of Codevidhya.
Shivram Choudhary | Founder, Codevidhya
In his role as Chairperson, Mr. Shiv Ram considers himself responsible for equipping the students with all the skills necessary for the 21st century. Having identified a considerable gap between what is being taught in the schools as part of the Computer Science curriculum and what is it that the market demands, he wanted a curriculum that could cater to the students in sync with the need of the hour.
Vikas Bahar, CEO of Codevidhya – He is equipped with extensive and diverse experience, and is tremendously skilled with knowledge in IT strategy, Market Research, Management, Pre-sales, Business Process, Re-engineering as well as Business Development. With an MBA degree from the prestigious S.P. Jain Centre of Management, Singapore, Vikas Bahar is a functional & process re-engineering specialist with experience of working in distinctive streams of Information Technology and Service industry in the domain of Banking & Financial Services.
Subhash Bohra, Technical Officer of Codevidhya – He looks after all the technical and product development aspects. Subhash carries the vision of the work as his motivation and wants to achieve this unique goal of teaching students code at an early age. Subhash believes that in the coming years the world will be technical so that every student from the coming generation should learn everything that can ease their complexities for the future.
The company currently has 15 Full-time employees and 10 Part-time employees/interns. The average age of the employee is 25, the team is young, ready to experiment, open to learn and willing to stretch.
Majority of the current team has been with the firm since the beginning and the rest have come through references. The entire team believes in the concept and the importance of teaching coding to students from an early age. Anyone who believes in it is welcomed with open arms to join the team.
Codevidhya – Name, Tagline & Logo
Codevidhya has a clear focus on what the output of the program is. Since they believe Coding is also a Vidhya that needs to be learnt by students to be ready for the upcoming Tech Driven world hence the name Codevidhya.
The startup’s tagline is an extension of what they are trying to do, “Teaching Kids to Code”.
Codevidhya Logo
Codevidhya – Business & Revenue Model
The startup’s flagship offering is Annual School Curriculum for students from Grade 1 to Grade 10, this is their B2B offering for schools. The Codevidhya revenue model is on a subscription basis, where they charge on an annual basis per student with prices varying from 800-1200.
Under B2C offerings, they have Self Online Learning, LIVE 1-1 Coding Classes and Byte Sized Courses. The prices of these courses depend on the duration and technology, they start as low as INR 1,200 and go up to INR 12, 000.
Codevidhya – Startup Launch
“We were lucky to have a school trust us and allow us to run the pilot program for 400 students. This pilot gave us enough confidence on the need of the program as well as feedback on things to improve.”, said Shivram Choudhary, founder of Codevidhya.
Codevidhya – User Acquisition & Growth
The startup haven’t used any sort of marketing campaign, the first 10,000 customers came to them through reference and word of mouth promotion. The team believes that satisfied customers are their brand ambassadors and this clarity has not only made their services and offerings good but also made everyone using the platform happy.
The company has seen 100% growth in terms of students using the platform for the past 2 years thus making the team believe in the product as well as the mission they are onto. They believe the awareness of coding to be included in schools is going to increase leading to more schools and students willing to join the platform.
Codevidhya – Competitors
Codevidhya being in the edtech industry definitley has stong competition from other startups who have been around longer and have aggressive marketing techniques. Some Competitors of Codevidhya are :
The biggest challenge that the company face even today is the lack of qualified people who are interested to move to Jaipur and join the team, specially Tech and Trainer. They offers ESOPs to certain candidates who they think believe in the vision of the firm.
Codevidhya – Funding & Investors
Codevidhya is currently a bootstrapped company.
Codevidhya – Recognition and Achievements
Got Silver Badge in QRATE program by ISTART Govt. of Rajasthan.
Selected in top 5 most innovative and scalable startups of 2018 by TIE Global (CNBC Young Turks Program).
Featured by CIO magazine amongst 20 top most promising EdTech startups of 2018.
Codevidhya – Future Plans
At Codevidhya, the team believes that every student of this nation should have the opportunity to learn to code and create. For this opportunity, the startup is about to launch a subscription based Codevidhya Program for individual students also. AI and ML are new trends and also the future of programming. In step 2, they will be introducing AI and ML as part of their program.
Codevidhya is India’s first company that introduced Coding e-learning. The company has grown to educate 20,000 Young Keen Coders in its curated Codevidhya Annual School Curriculum alone. The Young Keen Coders grew to blossom into National Award-winning Coders at competitions such as the Google Learn to Code Contest. Codevidhya scientifically developed curriculum is molded to effectively educate children from the age of 6-16 years of age.
Codevidhya’s research and expertise curate a large variety of well-researched and structured curriculums and programs that ensures students’ smooth transition into Coding.
Codevidhya – FAQs
Who is the Founder of Codevidhya?
Shivram Choudhary is the founder of Codevidhya.
What is the state of Codevidhya Funding?
Codevidhya is currently a bootstrapped company.
What does Codevidhya offer?
Codevidhya, an EdTech company is highly inspired by technology to facilitate technical education besides contemporary learning. Codevidhya follows the ‘Learn by Doing’ approach. Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Database etc. with Codevidhya.
What are the future plans of Codevidhya?
AI and ML are new trends and also the future of programming. In coming days they will be introducing AI and ML as part of their program.
Nagpur is the educational and commercial hub of Vidarbha and is an upcoming ‘smart city’ of India. The state government of Maharashtra has funded an incubation center which brings in a lot of opportunities for the technology aficionados and startup enthusiasts in Nagpur. This post by StartupTalky highlights some of the most successfulstartups in Nagpur.
Rahul Tarnekar and Abhijeet Thakare are the founders and directors of Kizora Software private limited. Kizora Software provides IT services to small and mid-size businesses in India and overseas.
The company has a team of software professionals who quickly understand, learn, develop, and deliver software to customers. The company provides an advantage of lean execution to its customers in software development, maintenance, support, and technical documentation. Kizore Software pvt. ltd. was founded in 2012 and is located in Nagpur (India).
Sangharakshak Neel, the founder of Nagpur-based FoodbyMood, is a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. FoodbyMood is an app that allows foodies to discover dishes and different flavors in the beautiful city of Nagpur. It gives a preview of dishes from all of the restaurants in Nagpur and helps the customer with ordering food. The app has seen a considerable growth of more than 15% in profits.
Deepak Menaria, the founder of Lemon Ideas Innovations Private Ltd., has done considerable work on talent innovation. Lemon Ideas Innovations gives a push to people on their entrepreneurial journey through academic projects. The company has nurtured and supported around 1000 entrepreneurs and innovators till date and continues to expand its initiative. More than 50,000 jobs have been created by Lemon Ideas’ platform.
Shubham Jadhav, the founder of LiveNapt, has always been fascinated by the internal workings of a business. His baby steps were as a club manager at e-cell VNIT (Shubham is an alumnus of VNIT) where he played a critical role in the group’s progress. His passion for business spurred him to come up with LiveNapt. Shubham Jadhav has created an online invoice manager for individuals in the corporate sector as they tend to claim a lot of reimbursements from the accounts department regularly.
Shubham pursed his bachelor’s in mining and mineral engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology. He believes in creating and adding value not just for his customers, but also for his close-knit team. Shubham advocates the need for continuous learning and development.
Haldiram Foods International Logo | Startups in Nagpur
One of the most famous companies in Nagpur, Haldiram was first established in 1937 in Bikaner, Rajasthan by Shri Ganga Bishan Agrawal. Haldiram Foods International Private Limited is now based in Nagpur and is one of the leading players in the snack food industry. Haldiram is recognized as a ‘Star Export House’ by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, a department working under the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India.
Haldiram manufactures over 400 products. Its product catalog includes traditional namkeens, western snacks, Indian sweets, cookies, sherbets, papads and pickles. The company also produces ready-to-eat food products.
Manish Khanchandani and Sagar Bhajani, the founders of Khichadiwala, believe that the presence of foreign fast-food chains in India has caused today’s generation to indulge a bit too much in unhealthy food.
Khichdi is a prime example of healthy food and the duo wanted to revamp the food dish from being a boring, bland one to a favorite among the new generation. Khichadiwala infuses western and modern flavors to the traditional dish, making it more enjoyable and innovative. The company takes around 120-130 orders on a daily basis and serves its products at a reasonable price.
One of the top Nagpur startups, Tsecond was founded in 2014 by Sahil Gurucharan Chawla. Tsecond is an electronic manufacturing company. Tsecond has partnered with LocationGuru Solutions, Mumbai for sales. Tsecond Generation provides LBS services for telecom infrastructure companies. The company is technically supported by Napino Auto Electronics Ltd (Gurugram), a leading manufacturer of power and auto electronic products. Napino Auto Electronics manufactures components for several companies, including Hero and Honda.
Tsecond has successfully developed E-Funnel, a fuel monitoring system. It is an IoT device and is installed at the inlet of fuel tanks to give real-time notifications of fuel events. A US patent has been granted to the product.
Bloom Consulting Services Logo | Startups in Nagpur
Manish Gidwani, the founder of Bloom Consulting Services, has extensive management experience and has done his Master’s from the University of Florida in Engineering Management and pursued his under-graduation from Nagpur University. He has been a sales manager, business development manager, and launched Bloom Consulting Services in 2014. The company has its presence in Singapore as well.
Bloom Consulting Services is a software development company specializing in the development of web applications and mobile apps for other companies. Its mobile apps run on iOS, Android, and Windows phones. Bloom has a team of 50 in-house developers, designers, and advisors.
Polo Rooms
Founders : Sudhanshu Jagdish Yardi and Ameya Patil
Polo Rooms is a brand of premium budget hotels providing travelers standardized accommodations for ‘any time duration’ at the most cost-effective prices. While travelling outstation, people now won’t have to negotiate on pricing or pay for an additional day if they need a ‘good hotel’ for a few hours, want to check-in early/late, or in other unforeseen situations. Just book ‘ micro-stays’ with Polo Rooms! Polo Rooms is quite popular among travelers who avail short and frequent stays. Corporates, small, and medium-scale business owners are its customers.
Sangharakshit, the founder of the White Elephant Process, has done his undergraduate and postgraduate studies from the University of Mumbai. He has expertise in brand management, marketing, promotion, selling services, etc. Sangharakshit launched the White Elephant Process consulting firm in August 2012. It focuses on marketing and search engine optimization consulting, Google analytics, digital marketing, implementation support, IT process consulting, and business improvement diagnosis.
LocationGuru
Founder: Shaheer Ahmed
Industry: Mobility Solutions for Enterprises
LocationGuru Logo | Startups in Nagpur
LocationGuru is a leading provider of location-based service (LBS) and enterprise mobility solutions for telcos and enterprises. It enables end-to-end LBS ecosystem for telcos via its ‘SmartGeo Location Intelligence Platform’ and a suite of enterprise & consumer applications. With its proven middleware platform, mobile operators can quickly leverage the huge opportunities in the LBS market through low cost deployment & operations with a very less time-to-market. The company also offers location-based solutions to the telecom industry. Airtel, Vodafone, TomTom, Motorola, Qualcomm, and Samsung constitute its clientele.
GAGS is a hyperlocal delivery start-up based out of Nagpur provide urgent /1 hour delivery solutions for all kinds of business and Individuals.
GAGS is founded by Kush (Khushal) katara, Meet Bhanushali, Chinmay Naidu and Rohit Thakur in 2019. They have now executed more than 70,000 deliveries, partnered with 300+ businesses, and delivered 300 deliveries a day.
GAGS is redefining Nagpur city logistics by creating an efficient process and handling on-demand delivery requests for the urban population. They are also launching an App for individuals to order all kinds of products Including food, meat and groceries and much more.
Nagpur is the third-largest city of Maharashtra and an emerging metropolis. It is good to start a business in Nagpur, as it is one of the major commercial centers for an innovative groups of people for introducing new technologies. Many startup companies have started establishing their base in Nagpur.
Which business is most profitable in Maharashtra?
Tourism Business
Fast Food Centres
Real state
Recruitment firms and consultancies
Textile Industry
What are some of the best cities in Maharashtra for business?
Mumbai
Pune
Nashik
Nagpur
Aurangabad
This was our list of successful startups in Nagpur. If you know about other startups in Nagpur or if you have one of your own, please contact us.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by SportVot.
SportVot has made streaming sports tournaments a one-click process with the use of smartphones. It is a digital TV for local sports talent and emerging leagues in India. SportVot provides a platform for sport bodies to stream their games online, local sports talent to show their skills, make them more marketable and helps them get discovered by a network of scouts/coaches as well as connect the fans to their local heroes.
Founded by Siddhant Agarwal, Shubhangi Gupta and Yash Bhagwatkar in 2019, SportVot has managed to build its presence in local areas by covering 5000+ games across 56 different sports, profiling 20,000+ athletes in just 12 months!
StartupTalky interviewed Shubhangi Gupta (Co-founder & CMO, SportVot) to get an insight on the Startup Story of SportVot. Also get a glance on SportVot Revenue model, funding, growth, marketing strategies and more in this article ahead!
SportVot is a digital TV for local sports talent and emerging leagues in India. Grassroots or local sports tournaments have a longer recall and emotional value with kids, parents and their friends and family. But unfortunately broadcasting them via traditional media platforms is not an economical fit for both the Sports bodies and media houses, leaving about 94% of the ecosystem uncovered.
SportVot with its technology and services has made broadcasting economical and easily accessible to these sports bodies. SportVot provides a platform for sport bodies to stream their games online, local sports talent to show their skills, make them more marketable and helps them get discovered by a network of scouts/coaches as well as connect the fans to their local heroes.
“There are around 10m athletes and 100k tournaments worth streaming in India, we want to grow from 150 to 1000 tournaments in the next one year (by 2022) and unearth more hidden talent in the country” says Shubhangi Gupta, Co-founder & CMO, SportVot
In India, there are approximately 10 million aspiring/emerging athletes (U-19), and around 100k+ semi-professional/ professional tournaments that takes place annually. But most athletes do not get access to the right set of tools and platforms to showcase their talent. This results in a lack of transparency in talent discovery which in turn increases the number of dropouts in the Indian Sports Ecosystem.
The sports media revenue in the Asia Pacific is estimated to grow to up to USD 6.6 billion by the end of 2024. Out of this, 40% is estimated to be through the OTT/digital channels. These estimated numbers are across the super-premium level. Currently, there are more than 10 Billion Impressions on local sports content scattered over YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. There can be see an increase in demand & engagement for local sports content with limited supply available. In India, sports as an industry is scattered and disorganized, SportVot has been strategically designed to create unique IPs and generate revenue from this fragmented sports economy.
Siddhant has 8 years of experience building software and technology products. He has Worked with Oracle and Cashcare in the past. Built Thisgameweek, the first cross geography real money multi currency fantasy gaming platform, operational in India and Africa, partnered with Nazara games (largest mobile gaming platform in India) for publishing the game across geographies. Exited it in late 2018. Currently, at the helm of SportVot since January 2019.
Yash Bhagwatkar | Co-Founder & COO
Yash has 3 years of operational experience, with 2 years of corporate operations at Accenture. He has spearheaded the sports operational network of broadcasters, content creators, sports talent, and data collectors in Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.
Shubhangi Gupta | Co- Founder & CMO
Digital marketing and Branding executive with around 4 years of experience. She has developed around 40+ brands including some marquee brands. She also had 2 other startups in the past. One named EthKnits, a handicraft online boutique, and Nite Owls, a small Digital Marketing agency specializing in startups.
Siddhant and Yash being a passionate sports lover, they used to work on cricket & football analytics together and also had their own YouTube show named The Free Hit Project. A couple of months into their show, they kept interacting with a couple of sports enthusiasts and saw the need of more sports coverage beyond the regular International Football and Cricket leagues. A lot of upcoming talent came to them to make their cricket performance reports to help them get better placements. That was the beginning of the idea of SportVot’s core product and vision of the company. To create a technology to cater to the grassroots sports.
SportVot – Products/Services offered
With the rise in penetration of 4g and affordable smartphones, high speed internet is available to everyone at a reasonably low price. SportVot has made streaming sports tournaments a one click process with use of the hardware that you all possess i.e. your smartphone, thus reducing the dependency on the use of external hardware and software. The SportVot ecosystem enables these tournament organizers and clubs to make their tournaments fully digital right from streaming, instant highlights, scoring to fixture management. This, in turn, makes these games and the athletes participating in them more marketable and discoverable to a wider audience.
SportVot Streaming App
SportVot – Name Meaning and Logo
The SportVot team wanted to keep the name Indian friendly.
“We were just joking about the fact that how Indians say namak shamak, kal wal, etc. So we came up with SportVot, with the intention that we may not just limit ourselves to sports but other talent as well at some point in time.” Shubhangi added.
SportVot Logo
SportVot – Business Model and Revenue Model
Currently, the primary sources of revenue of SportVot are – direct income from streaming services and advertisements/sponsorships. Pay per view has been tested at very low scale on a pilot basis. They basically get paid to acquire its own consumers.
The first 100 users of SportVot were via streaming DSO games and building a sports community on social media channels. The team made sure to put relevant content to build the community on Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook. With the help of that, SportVot kept growing and its name became more evident in the sports community.
Apart from community building, SportVot received incredible partnership opportunities with Barcelona Academy Delhi for live streaming their annual Asia Pacific Cup in January 2020. It also covered some esteemed games like Rajasthan Basketball League, Yuva Sena Kabaddi League, etc.
The main marketing strategy of SportVot that helped the company a lot was building a sports community for all kinds of sports. It now has a good fan base on its digital platforms, who are loyal and keep approaching the platform for more content.
Figuring out the camera set up for live streaming at low cost was a challenge. Not every tournament organizer can afford expensive set up and a lot of the team’s time went in research and development for the right set of tools required to make this process cheap and easy.
SportVot – Growth and Current Status
In just 12 months, SportVot has managed to build its presence in local areas of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala and Delhi by covering 5000+ games across 56 different sports, profiling 20,000+ athletes, and building a strong community of more than a million sports enthusiasts on its digital channels. This passionate sports community of tier 2, tier 3 and rural areas of India helps the team to get more brand sponsorships which in turn assist these unique sports talent, and even tournaments, to get more support and visibility.
SportVot – Funding and Investors
SportVot recently raised AUD 25,000 from StartupBootCamp in an accelerator programmer. Prior to this, SportVot received INR 25,00,000 as Friends and Family round.
SportVot has no direct Indian competitors in this domain yet. Some indirect competitors of SportVot are Overtime, Pitchvision, Dfocus.
Tools used by SportVot
Airtable, Gsuite, Slack are tools used by SportVot to run the startup.
SportVot – Recognition and Achievements
SportVot received recognition from local and political event organizers for streaming events at very low cost.
SportVot – Future Plans
SportVot wants to expand to more geographies in India and work on interesting features on the app to promote talent discovery. There are around 10m athletes and 100k tournaments worth streaming in India, SportVot wants to grow from 150 to 1000 tournaments in the next one year and unearth more hidden talent in the country.
SportVot – FAQs
What is SportVot?
SportVot is a digital TV for local sports talent and emerging leagues in India. SportVot provides a platform for sport bodies to stream their games online, local sports talent to show their skills, make them more marketable and helps them get discovered by a network of scouts/coaches as well as connect the fans to their local heroes.
SportVot has no direct Indian competitors in this domain yet. Some indirect competitors of SportVot are Overtime, Pitchvision, Dfocus.
How does SportVot make money?
Primary sources of revenue of SportVot are – direct income from streaming services and advertisements/sponsorships. Pay per view has been tested at very low scale on a pilot basis. They basically get paid to acquire its own consumers.
Bitcoins are considered to be one of the best cryptocurrencies available in the market and has the largest market capitalization among cryptocurrencies. But other than the volatility recently a new controversy has raised against the digital coin. In this article let’s look at how this cryptocurrency consumes a lot of energy which is more than the consumption of certain countries.
Tesla had recently announced that it would not accept the payment through bitcoins for the purchase of their electric cars citing the reason that mining of bitcoins consumes a lot of energy and it is harmful to the environment. In this article let’s look at how this cryptocurrency consumes a lot of energy which is more than the consumption of certain countries.
How Bitcoin consumes so much energy?
The mining of bitcoins is where the major energy is consumed. It is considered to be power hungry where the top end computers are used to verify transactions that use heavy software which consumes a lot of energy.
It is estimated that bitcoin mining consumes around 121.36-terawatt hours of energy on an annual basis which is not expected to reduce until the price or value of the cryptocurrency falls. The rising of price and demand for bitcoins will let the miners to run more and more machines which will increase the power consumption.
It is considered that if bitcoin was country, then it would be part of the top 30 energy users around the world. It was found that bitcoin consumed more energy can certain countries like Argentina, Netherlands and United Arab Emirates.
The energy consumed by bitcoin is expected to power up all the kettles used in the United Kingdom for the next 27 years.
If the bitcoin miners have to mine the bitcoins, they will have to connect to the cryptocurrency network using the specialized computer systems. The miners will have to verify the transactions and record them on the blockchain network and they would get a bitcoin in return as a payment.
The miners to increase their profits they would often connect a large network of miners into the network, at times even a full warehouse of miners. This would lead to an increased usage of electricity as the computers or the systems would be working constantly to record the transactions on the blockchain network.
In the beginning, when bitcoin was introduced, mining of the cryptocurrency was much more easier and didn’t required the high-end systems but as the demand increased the bitcoin miners are forced to use a specialized system that are fast enough to withstand the competition.
Bitcoin Energy usage compared with other countries
Environmental Damage due to Bitcoin Mining
David Gerard who is the author of the 50-foot blockchain had explained that bitcoin is actually anti-efficient. He conveyed that even if someone finds a hardware or a system which is efficient it would just compete with the similar hardware and make it inefficient. This means that the energy usage of bitcoin and the emission of carbon di-oxide will just increase as the demand for the cryptocurrency keeps increasing.
The only solution as of now is to move to a sustainable source of energy. As the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk had announced that they would start accepting the bitcoins when the cryptocurrency starts using a renewable source of energy, in the same way using a renewable source of energy that is not harmful to the environment should be used.
As electricity is generated mainly through the burning of coal, it releases a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere so it is suggested that bitcoin miners should resort to another sustainable source of energy.
FAQ
How much electricity does a Bitcoin transaction use?
Bitcoin currently consumes around 110 Terawatt Hours per year
Why does Bitcoin use so much energy?
As Bitcoin gained popularity more miners started mining in it, which increased the computing power required to crack bitcoin.
How much does it cost to mine 1 Bitcoin?
The cost to mine one BTC is 8206.64$.
Conclusion
However, another important fact to be noted is that the energy consumed by the unused home appliances in the United States would be enough to power the bitcoin mining for a year. The major energy consumption in most of the countries is due to the unused home appliances.
The cryptocurrency Polygon which is also known as Matic has gained more than 30 % on 12 May 2021 in a 24-hour cycle. The Matic crypto had gained from a low of USD 0.85 to a high of USD 1.2. The cryptocurrency has seen a major growth in the year 2021. Let’s look at what exactly is this Polygon crypto and Is polygon crypto a good investment or not?
Polygon is a framework or more of a protocol for building and connecting the blockchain networks which are compatible with Ethereum connections. It is an open-source technology that will help the developers with certain tools that will help them to ready the network and deploy them or a secure sidechain that will help to leverage the security of the Ethereum network through smart contracts.
Matic Network is a cryptocurrency that is used to power the transactions and to pay the fees on the Matic network. Matic had recently merged with Polygon where the Matic Network got rebranded as Polygon.
The Polygon crypto was launched during the year October 2017 under the name Matic Network. It was formed by a team that had contributed to a number of projects that were associated with the Ethereum ecosystem.
In February 2021 the Polygon (Matic) had rebranded from the name Matic Network. During the time of rebranding, the token had seen a surge in its price from USD 0.0175 to USD 0.446 as of 12 March 2021. The crypto saw an increase of around 2,548 %.
Reason for the Rise in price and Further use of Polygon
The rise in the price of Polygon or Matic Network is due to the rise in the price of Ethereum. Matic Network or Polygon is a highly scalable network that will help the users who are looking to transfer the cryptocurrencies at a very low transaction fee.
The crypto and their network have a lot of advantages which include scalability, user experience and security. You can check the website of Polygon as they are working with a lot of companies and also undertaken a lot of interesting projects.
Polygon Projects
Matic Network is mainly used by the people in order to transfer their crypto funds through the Ethereum network at a very high speed and little expense. Since the Ethereum network is usually at its peak transferring crypto directly through the Ethereum takes a lot of time and is really expensive.
This is the major reason why people use Polygon instead of Ethereum which will help them transfer their crypto assets to the Ethereum chain without worrying about the expensive fee or the long duration. As the price of Ethereum increases the network of Ethereum becomes more congested and hence people shift to Polygon.
These are the major factors for the rise in the price of Polygon and the experts believe that Polygon has a huge potential to grow in the near future.
Investing in Polygon again depends on your risk appetite. Like any other cryptocurrency, you should be investing the money you are ready to lose so that your emotions don’t play a role.
However, the experts believe that as the decentralized finance industry, cryptocurrency is gaining traction in the recent years, it is believed that tokens such as Polygon will have an increased demand in the future. This is because a lot of users would opt for a faster and much cheaper option to transfer the cryptocurrency funds.
FAQ
What is Polygon Coin?
Polygon (MATIC) is an Ethereum token that powers the Polygon Network, a multichain scaling solution for Ethereum. Polygon aims to provide faster and cheaper transactions on Ethereum.
What is Matic network?
Matic Network is a blockchain scalability platform which provides secure, scalable and instant transactions.
Where can I buy a crypto polygon?
Polygon Crypto is available on major exchanges including Binance and Coinbase.
Conclusion
Polygon is more like an alternative for the Ethereum network and the investors have started preferring it because of its advantages and scalability options. The Polygon token would be a crypto to be watched out for in the coming years.
UAE can be considered as one of the best places to set up a new business or to expand your existing business internationally. The country’s economy is the fourth largest in the middle east and has a GDP of USD 421 billion. There are few steps you would have to follow in order to set up a business in UAE.
1. Select the Right Jurisdiction for your Business in UAE
The most important step of any business is to select the business activity and that should be your first step. But for setting up a business in the UAE you should have a basic idea of the different jurisdictions first and accordingly move forward with the rest of the steps.
The UAE market is divided into different economic zones. The different zones in the UAE are Mainland, Free zone and Offshore. These economic zones are jurisdictions and each jurisdiction has a different set of rules and regulations.
Mainland
A business that is set up in the Mainland of UAE will be able to do business anywhere in the UAE market. This means that the company will be able to do business in both inside and outside the UAE market. It is mandatory to have a physical office space with a minimum requirement of 140 sq. ft.
Free Zone
A business that is set up in the Free zone of UAE has certain restrictions in doing the business. They will only be able to conduct the business in the jurisdiction of the Free zone and outside the UAE. It is not mandatory to have a physical office space and a virtual office space would do.
Offshore
Offshore companies are business entities that will be registered in the UAE in order to conduct the business outside the country or outside the jurisdiction. The offshore companies are allowed to set up multi-currency accounts in UAE and to carry out the business internationally. An important point you should notice is Offshore companies are tax free in UAE.
2. Choose the Type of Business you want to Setup in UAE
The first step would be to choose the type of business activity you would want to set up in the UAE. For example, certain Free zones would allow only a specific type of activity in their area and it is wise to set up a business in the zone where it is closely related to your activity.
If your business is concentrated on import and export it would be better if the business is set up near the port or an airport. However, choosing the business activity will be the major step in setting up your company in the UAE.
3. Select a Name for your Business in UAE
The next step would be to choose the name of the company for your business activity. In UAE there are certain restrictions in regards to the name of the company. You will not be able to use any religious names that are referred to Allah, Him or anything related to the religion.
You will also be restricted from using the names of various political groups such as the FBI or Mafia and if you choose to register the business under a person’s name then he or she should be registered as a partner for the business.
4. Paperwork for your Business in UAE
You will have to finish the paperwork after selecting the activity and the name of your business. You will have to fill an application with the activity and the name you have chosen for your company. You will also have to submit a copy of the passports of shareholders to the government authorities.
It is to be noted that certain Free zones will require additional papers and documents such as a business plan or a NOC (Non-objection certificate) which is a letter from the current sponsor that they don’t have any issues to set up another business in UAE.
If you seek an expert help then it wouldn’t be so complicated as they would take care of the major challenges and advise you on the paperwork and help you in completing it.
5. Obtain a License for your Business in UAE
The easiest and the most important step is receiving your license. After all the steps you will receive a license from the government after checking all the applications and the documents submitted.
You will also have to apply and receive a trade license which is also called as the business license. There are different types of business licenses in the UAE such as Professional License, Industrial License, Tourism License and Commercial License.
These licenses are important for UAE Mainland companies but for Free zone company it would defer according to the business activity and the jurisdiction.
The next important step is to open a bank account in UAE. The country has a lot of banks both local and international ones. Some of the local bank accounts in the country are Emirates NBD, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and many more. The major global names are Citi Bank, HSBC and Barclays.
You can choose any bank and approach them or the business set up partner you have approached will try arranging a meeting with the bank of your choice and this may help you understand the policies of the bank and then make a decision.
7. Submit an Application for your Visa in UAE
This is the final step of setting up your business in the UAE. You will have to submit the application for processing your visa, according to the economic zone you select it will let you process the visa for your dependents and employees as well.
The Visa processing will consist of 5 simple stages such as Entry Permit, Status Adjustment, Medical Test, Emirates ID registration and Visa Stamping.
FAQ
Which is the best business in UAE?
E-Commerce Solutions, Travel and Tourism, Real Estate Agency, and Health Sector are some of the best business you should consider in UAE.
Is UAE good for business?
Low tax rates, low import duties, free trade agreements, a competitive economy, strategic location, state of the art infrastructure, are some of the benefits that make United Arab Emirates (UAE) one of the best places in the world for business.
Which business is best in Dubai?
Restaurant, Construction, Health and wellbeing, Transport, Freight and cargo, Real estate, and Cleaning services are some of the best business you can start in Dubai.
Conclusion
The UAE Free zone is more common in between the foreign entrepreneurs than the Mainland and offshore economic zone. The company formation in UAE is easier and they have a speedy process with strong incentives which makes it one of the favourite location for the foreign entrepreneurs.
