Elon Musk who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had recently announced a new competition on the World Earth Day which is on 22 April 2021. The competition is hosted by XPrize and Elon Musk had entered as the chairman of XPrize in order to announce about the competition. Let’s look at what exactly is the competition about and How to enter the competition.
Elon Musk is one of the richest people in the world. He was born in 1971 in South Africa. He is an engineer, industrial designer and a business magnate. He is the founder of SpaceX, The Boring Company, and X.com. He is the co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAi and Zip2. He is the CEO of Tesla and the chairman of Solar City.
The Musk Foundation
The Musk Foundation is a private grant-making foundation. It was founded in the year 2002 by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk. They provide grants for renewable energy research, science, and engineering education, human space exploration research, the development of safe Artificial Intelligence to benefit humanity, and pediatric research.
On World Earth Day, Elon Musk had announced about a USD 100 million competition which is based on Carbon Removal. The main aim of the competition is to motivate innovators around the globe to come up with an idea to seize the carbon durably and sustainably.
According to the competition’s website, they require the innovators to come up with a large-scale project that will pull the Carbon-di-oxide directly from the atmosphere and oceans and should be able to seize it in a durable and sustainable manner. The competition is for the time frame of 4 years.
The winners of the projects will be based on proving by the team that their project can remove at least around 1,000 tones of carbon-di-oxide yearly and model their costs on a scale of 1 million tones on a yearly basis.
The teams will also have to show a way to achieve a scale of gigatons on a yearly basis in the future. The eligibility criteria for the competition are that the project should be based on any carbon negative solutions according to Elon Musk and the Musk foundation as the competition is funded by them.
The judges will review the submissions within one year of the competition and award up to 15 prizes with the prize money of up to USD 1 million each. The judges will later select one grand prize winner after four years who will receive an amount of USD 50 million. The judges will also select 3 runners up and they would receive an amount of USD 30 million each.
XPrize Foundation
XPrize Foundation is a non-profit organization. The organization was founded in the year 1994 and is located in California, the United States. The organization was founded by Peter Diamandis. Some of the notable trustees of the organization are Larry Page, James Cameron, Ratan Tata, and many more.
The Foundation designs and hosts public competitions. The main aim is to encourage technological development which is focused on benefitting humanity.
Marcius Extavour who is the Vice President of Climate and environment at XPrize said that climate change poses a greater threat in 2021 and it should be very clear to everyone that our Carbon-di-oxide emissions are the major reason for the cause.
He added saying that the prize is about the development and deployment of solutions that can be carbon negative as the race is to get to net zero.
You can visit XPRIZE’s Website to register for this competition.
XPRIZE Website
FAQ
What was Elon Musk’s first project?
Elon Musk founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003.
What is the net worth of Elon Musk?
The net worth of Elon Musk is 17,260 crores USD as of 2021.
Does Elon Musk drive a Tesla?
Musk is usually seen driving around in his Tesla Model S or the Tesla Model X
Conclusion
The main aim of the competition will be to remove carbon-di-oxide from the atmosphere and to turn the theoretical ideas into practical solutions. This will be a great platform for the innovators to showcase their ideas and towards making them practically possible.
Footfall counting or counting the number of customers visiting the store is crucial for retail stores. From performance of a promotional strategy, to staff efficiency and calculating sales conversion rate, many insights can be gained from the footfall data, and this is the reason why retail shops has been doing footfall counting over the years. While the ancient system of counting store visitors included manual counting and counting through a manual clicker, newer techniques include infrared counters, thermal cameras, WiFi analytics etc. Now with the entry of AI, footfall counting has become even more simple and insightful. Gurgaon based startup Veda Labs is harnessing AI to help retail businesses get more and real-time insights out of their footfall data, thus empowering the retails store owners and managers to take better decisions for crowd management, staff management, for enhancing customer experience and more. We interviewed Veda Labs co-founder Veer Mishra, to get more details about the startup.
Veda Labs is a super easy platform to adapt. All it needs is the existing CCTV camera. Once the solution is installed, it automatically connects to the cameras and performs all sorts of analytics like total footfall, age & gender of each walking in customer, along with repeat customer count & in-store consumer journey. Veda Labs uses computer vision and machine learning to offer deep and real time insights that retail businesses can use to enhance their operations.
Veda Labs lets you monitor which part of your store is more crowded and which is less crowded through heat maps
Not just retail stores, Veda Labs’ solutions can also be used in supermarket, restaurant, shopping mall, airport or any other real estate to gets analytical data on the visitors. CCTV footage being important for accurate analysis, Veda Labs also sends real time alerts if someone tampers with the CCTV infrastructure.
Veda Labs sends an alert when someone tampers with the CCTV infrastructure
Covid – 19 has brought with it new norms that needs to be followed at retail spaces or any other spaces where public gathers. To make it easier for businesses to ensure safety of their customers and staff, Veda Labs has now also come up with a Covid – 19 AI kit, that allows to keep a real-time check on parameters like social distancing, mask detection, fever screening, space occupancy and sanitization alerts.
Veda Labs’ AI solutions uses Real Time CCTV Footage for Footfall Counting and providing various insights
Veda Labs – Founders
Vivek Singh, Veer Mishra, Saurabh Shandilya and Saurabh Yadav are the founders of Veda Labs. The founders met at a Coworking center in New Delhi & quickly bonded over the common interest in AI and machine learning. Their passion to invent solutions using AI later lead to founding of Veda Labs in 2018.
Veda Labs Founders Saurabh Yadav, Saurabh Shandilya, Vivek Singh & Veer Mishra (Left to Right)
Vivek Sing is CEO of Veda Labs. Vivek held technical and managerial positions at companies like Confetti India Pvt Ltd (a paper machine equipment manufacturing company), Industrial automation company ‘Rockwell Automation’ and Singapore based trading company ‘Trafigura’. Vivek also founded a automobile care and servicing startup ‘Torque – HP’, which he exited in 2016. Another Ai based startup founded by Vivek Sing is Corseco Technologies. Vivek is a BE in Electronics from Nagpur University and did MBA from Symbiosis Centre For Management and Human Resource Development, Pune.
Veer Mishra is the CMO of Veda Labs. A serial entrepreneur, Veer Mishra has over 11 years of experience across startups. Veer holds a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electronics and Electronic Engineering. As the Chief Marketing Officer, Veer aims to create a strong brand recall through delivering the right set of campaigns to reach the relevant audiences at Veda Labs. With a deep knowledge in building and scaling AI products in the past, he works closely with the product development team as well as the sales team. Through the role at Veda Labs, Veer heads Strategic partnerships and has been focusing a lot on exploring international exposure and partnerships. Veer has multiple fields of interests, from hosting TVV shows (A unique podcast talking about all the crazy aspects of startups which feature industry leaders), designing graphics and at times even ideating about space technologies. Veer has also had the experience of being a TedX speaker at XIE, Mumbai in March 2019. The topic highlighted was Raising the capital to build the best in Tech and AI for a startup.
Veer Mishra is into film making too, as he started his professional journey as a filmmaker with his venture oasIs Production. Heading the operations for his venture mYwindow, under Veers leadership the gross sales grew from $0 to $150K in just 4 months. The venture moved from being bootstrapped to being cash rich. He also began Neuron, an Artificial Intelligence platform which uses Machine Learning as a core tech wherein he was responsible for leading the entire design team and Business Development. At Project Guerrilla, he helped Portfolio startups with strategies in Digital Growth. Suggesting technology hacks and helping them understand the user psychology.
Veda Labs CTO Saurabh Shandilya is a B.Tech in Electrical, Electronics and Communication. He started his career with ATRIM Electronics Private Limited, an Electrical and Electronic products manufacturing company as an Embedded Engineer. He also worked as a Research Scholar in Carnegie Mellon University where he researched on how to use Electronics for efficient solar power utilization. Saurabh worked as Senior System Engineer with Aviation & Aerospace company, Omnipresent Robot Tech, and later founded IoTfy, a company that provided enterprise IoT solutions for consumer durable in 2015. Saurabh exited IoTfy in 2017, to join Veda Labs as a co-founder.
Saurabh Yadav is the Head of AI at Veda Labs. He is a BTech in Electronics and Communication, and started his career as an Intern in Bharat Electronics. From 2013-2016, Saurabh worked with technology company Qualcomm. Saurabh Yadav also worked with Omnipresent Robot Tech as a Senior System Engineer before joining Veda Labs.
Veda Labs Teams
The Idea Behind Starting Veda Labs
In late October 2017 all the founders were sipping coffee in a co-working space in Delhi, and having an intense talk on the possibilities of AI & ML, when they stumbled upon the idea to to use AI to analyze the real time CCTV footage. They realized that this idea holds great potential, and so Veda Labs was started to put this idea into practice.
“With all our research and past experience in the field of AI, we were aware of the state of the AI on edge & realized that if we can create a EDGE platform that works on existing CCTV cameras, we will be able to have a huge breakthrough in making everyday CCTV cameras smart.” quotes Veer
The Global Retail Analytics Market
In the early days, the Veda Labs team worked with a few retailers very closely & tested their solutions over 100s of CCTV cameras for over 100,000 hours of videos. Based on the feedback received from all the early customers, the product was molded to develop the best viable product for retail customers.
Monitor Customer Footfall Trends with Veda Labs’ AI Solutions
Veda Labs – Name & Logo
The Veda Labs founders were on a business road trip to meet a potential client where we they were brainstorming on what could be the name of the startup. With deep fascination in ancient Veda scriptures, the team decided to name it Veda Labs.
The company’s Logo was simply made on Photoshop, and it simply represents A to Z behavior of Veda Labs Video analytics company.
Veda Labs Logo
Veda Labs – Business Model
Veda Labs is a B2B SaaS company which has a fixed monthly retainer every month for each store/location in which the company’s analytics services are deployed.
Veda Labs – Funding
Veda Labs has raised 4 rounds of funding till date. Below are the details-
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
December 2017
Pre-Seed
$50,000
Mr. Manish Gupta
December 2018
Seed Round
$60,000
Alchemist accelerator
Auguse 2019
Angel Round
$300,000
Satin Neo Dimensions
2020
Pre-Series
Undisclosed
Mr.Kumar Rangarajan, Mr. Vasu Devan, Mr. Gnani Palanikumar
Veda Labs – Marketing Strategies
The features of the platform were launched individually and for each launch the Veda Labs team targeted potential customers and channel partners.
The company got its first few customers through word of mouth and direct sales, but now Veda Labs has an established channel for sourcing potential customers.
Veda Labs – Challenges
As a retail analytics company, it was a very evident challenge when COVID and lockdown hit the market. It was extremely essential the company to rapidly innovate and adjust to the new normal. Thus the company tweaked its existing solutions and built a COVID Safety Kit that allows retailers to monitor the real time occupancy of the store/floor, also measures the temperature of each walking consumer along with if that person is wearing a mask or not.
Veda Labs – Advisors & Mentors
Mr. Mukesh Mowji
Mr. Ravi Belani (Prof. Stanford & Founder of Alchemist Accelerator)
Veda Labs has established key partnerships across the globe which has resulted in LOIs (Letter of Intent) for more than 4000 locations. The startup has a pipeline of more than $2Mn in revenue wrt the LOIs.
As for the future, the Veda Labs team envisions to build more solutions that are backed by technology to help retailers and enterprises grow their businesses with real time insights.
Veda Labs – FAQs
What is Veda Labs?
Veda Labs is an AI platform that helps retailers to grow their in-store conversions with real-time analytics and consumer insights.
Veda Labs uses existing CCTV infrastructure to perform video analytics that present business insights like total footfall, demographic overview, customer journey, and heat maps. It also provides the capability to end customers for tagging and identifying blacklisted people on the premises.
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani is an IN Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) specialist, patient advocate and angel investor. He is the Founder and Director of the angel investment firm Malpani Ventures, which helps Indian entrepreneurs by investing in new startups. He is famous for his IVF centre, Malpani Clinic located in Mumbai. He is also a board member of IKS Health. He is the Medical Director (MD) of HELP.
He was born and brought up in Mumbai, India. He is married to Anjali Malpani, who is the co-founder of HELP. He has two daughters, namely Sanjana Malpani and Natasha Malpani. He has shared his routine in an interview, where he revealed his everyday activities. He tends to sleep late at night as he feels that some people are owls while some are night angels. It all depends on the circadian rhythm. Everyday he gets up at 8.00 am to play tennis, which counts as his major physical activity. He conferred that, being an IVF specialist, people take appointments and there is no emergency. Thus, he spends rest of his day without much physical activity.
Aniruddha Malpani – Education
He graduated from University of Mumbai. During his academic career, he won around 20 gold medals. He has established various websites for people to visit and counsel themselves through his blogs. He is highly passionate in his quest to empower patients. He believes that patients are the prime healthcare resources. He feels that the patient power should be used to heal our sick healthcare system. Moreover, he is an avid reader and a prolific writer.
Aniruddha Malpani – Professional Life
As an IVF expert, he has been invited to appear on the number of national and international TV channels like BBC, CNN, CBS and ABC. He has a Malpani Fertility Clinic in Mumbai. While he has also developed a website www.drmalpani.com, which attract patients around the globe. He has proliferated over multiple websites and used the innovative technology to educate infertile couples through cartoon films, comic books, and e-learning on his website www.ivfindia.com.
He is a prolific writer who expresses his views on a wide range of topics. He has authored four books:
How to Get the Best Medical Care
Successful Medical Practise
How to have a Baby
Using Information Therapy to Put Patients First
His write-ups are published in newspapers and magazines, including Times of India. He also writes for a number of websites. He is also the author at TheHealthsite.com.
Aniruddha Malpani – HELP Library
He believes that every doctor must have their own website. He himself came up with his own website called Health Education Library for people (HELP) (www.healthlibrary.com). He publishes various articles streaming on the issues of improving doctor-patient relationship. The website is absolutely free, people can counsel themselves through these blogs, without squandering any money. Aniruddha believes the fact that awareness empowers people and improves public health through prophylactic medicine has contributed to the foundation and growth of the library. HELP is India’s first Consumer Health Education Resource Centre. The library today swanks a large collection of educational books, magazines, journals, CDs and videos circumscribing all aspects of health appealing to all levels of society. It has become world’s largest patient education library. HELP has been a recognition for Aniruddha Malpani, which helped him secure the position of Board of Director in IKS Health.
Aniruddha Malpani – Angel Investor
The doctor soon turned to be an Angel investor. He believed that whatever he read, it gave him ideas to invest in start ups. He feels sterile if he does not use his knowledge that he gained by reading several books. He confessed that he does not measure on the return of the investments in startups as it has already been 10-15 long years as an angel investor. He discerns that its high time and Indian entrepreneurs should evolve with their innovative capabilities in front of the world.
Aniruddha Malpani – Malpani Ventures
Malpani Ventures Logo
Malpani Ventures is an angel investment firm that provides funds to the early start-ups. Aniruddha Malpani is the Founder and Director of Malpani Ventures. The venture provides investment to the diverse sectors of early stage start-ups, including Healthcare, Financial Technology, SAAS, Consumer Technology and Education Technology.
His venture invested for healthtech start up like Plus91, an EMR and digital marketing provider. It is basically an Indian market leader for creating digital media for patient education. It is presented on the board of Inventurus Knowledge Solutions, a healthcare BPO which provides RCM solutions for the US market. AllizHealth, Video streaming VdoCipher, and language learning platform MultiBhashi are also among the health-awareness technologies invested by Malpani Ventures.
Malpani Ventures also invested in Bibox and Avaz.Bibox makes science fun to learn for kids. It is basically a startup that creates educational robotics kits for Atal Tinkering Labs in schools. Avaz is yet another startup which develop apps for autistic kids.
Aniruddha Malpani – Controversies
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani on the Byju’s controversy
He was banned by LinkedIn for speaking up on the Byju’s controversy. He expressed his views on the working culture of the edtech Byju’s. He criticised the work culture, business model of the edtech. He published various posts of the unhappy user experiences. He was then banned by LinkedIn for posting defamatory content. Thus, his LinkedIn account was permanently restricted by the professional network. While Malpani conferred that he has no direct conflict of interest with Byju’s as he only wrote his opinions about the misleading sales tactics of the edtech company.
Aniruddha Malpani – FAQs
Who is Dr. Aniruddha Malpani?
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani is an IN Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) specialist, patient advocate and angel investor.
What books has Dr. Aniruddha Malpani written?
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani has written
How to Get the Best Medical Care
Successful Medical Practise
How to have a Baby
Using Information Therapy to Put Patients First
Is Dr. Aniruddha Malpani banned from LinkedIn?
Yes, due to his views on Byju’s work culture, he is permanently banned from LinkedIn.
Amazon had recently made an announcement of open sourcing one of its device software DeepRacer which means that the software DeepRacer is freely available for anyone to modify or redistribute according to their requirements or plans. The DeepRacer was first developed by AWS. Lets’ look at what exactly is DeepRacer which was announced by Amazon.
Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary company of Amazon Inc., The company comes under the web services and cloud computing industry. The company launched its web services in the year 2002 and cloud computing in the year 2006.
Some of the products and services of the company include computing, networking, storage, analytics, database, deployment, application services, machine learning, management and so on. The most popular is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
DeepRacer is known as AWS DeepRacer as it was developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company had introduced DeepRacer in the year 2018. The objective was to help the developers learn Machine Learning in an easier and a fun way.
AWS DeepRacer
AWS DeepRacer is a race car with an autonomous 1/18th scale. The car is designed to test the reinforcement learning models by conducting virtual races or physical races. The virtual races will be conducted in the AWS DeepRacer Console and the physical races will be conducted on a track at Amazon Web Services or customer events.
Objective of DeepRacer
The main objective or idea behind AWS DeepRacer is to teach the developers basics of machine learning. After the introduction of AWS DeepRacer in the year 2018, the company has conducted various physical races with DeepRacer known as AWS DeepRacer leagues and recently they have conducted a wide range of virtual races as well.
In order to encourage new people to get involved with the technology and to encourage the machine learning process, the company had reorganized the leagues last month. The announcement of open sourcing is also another step taken by the company to increase the number of participants.
It is a step to increase the interest of developers as it is a chance to make it their own and they will be able to customize it and add new layers to the cars which were not possible until now. This is a significant step taken towards encouraging the machine learning process.
After the launch of AWS DeepRacer in the year 2018, it has evolved significantly which has led the company to announce a new step which is open sourcing the software of these cars. The DeepRacer car is a mini computer that is running using an Ubuntu Linux and a Robot Operating System (ROS).
Both the software is open source elements. The open sourcing will enable the users to change the car’s default behaviour and the company believes that by open sourcing the device, there will be a lot of creative uses of DeepRacer coming forward by the software developers.
The open source for the AWS DeepRacer will enable the software developers to easily change the device code of the race car which is programmed only for the track into anything useful and creative.
Some of the changes you can make are you can deploy countermeasures into the car so that it won’t let other cars to overtake it or you can deploy your own counter algorithm which will make it run faster from a specific point to another.
The company wrote in its blog post about these examples and added saying that you just need to dream it and code it.
AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car designed to test RL models by racing on a physical track.
What is AWS DeepRacer league?
The AWS DeepRacer League is the world’s first global autonomous racing league for developers.
Which geographic regions is AWS DeepRacer available in?
AWS DeepRacer simulator is available in the US East (N. Virginia) Region.
Conclusion
AWS DeepRacer is one of the most efficient ways to learn machine learning for developers. It is designed for developers of all skill levels and even the ones who have no experience in Machine Learning.
Wildlife Photography is the dream job of a lot of individuals and for good reasons, it has everything one would expect from their dream job. However, as fascinating as it may seem to people from the outside, being a wildlife photographer is not easy in any way, shape or form. Along with having elite photography skills with the camera, one must also have knowledge about different terrains, experience in tracking a certain species and most important of all, an incredible amount of patience to get the perfect shot.
Every breathtaking picture of a rare animal we see on social media, magazine covers or posters have days or in some cases, months of effort behind it.
Today, content related to wildlife photography is available in numerous platforms by various sources. However, this was not the case always.
India has the highest viewed content relating to Tigers
Photography came to India in 1840 and in a short amount of time, India became a major go to place for aspiring photographers, due to the monuments and varied culture and the diverse wildlife. But the cameras and other photography equipments during this period were not nearly compatible to generate decent content of wildlife photography. Most animal photos during this time were of stuffed toys, zoos and domestic animals. This remained mostly the same until the 1880s when quick photography emulsions and much quicker shutters were invented, after this, wildlife photography became much easier than before and was picked up by large masses either as a leisure or even profession. This only became more apparent when National Geographic became the first major platform to publish wildlife photos in July 1906.
Due to being under the colonial rule at this point of time, India was a hotspot for wildlife photography and was up to date with most of the developments in the field.
The year 2020 has been a monumental one for the future of wildlife photography in India as Aishwarya Sridhar, 23, became the first Indian Woman to win the best Wildlife Photographer of the year award for her exceptional work of capturing a picture of the ever elusive and endangered Indian fireflies on the western ghats.
The picture was captured at an indigenous plum tree where the artistic movement of the fireflies was captured in an almost hypnotizing pattern.
Some of the other notable wildlife photographers in India with a notable social media following and equally respectable works of photography are, Rathika Ramaswamy, Jayanth Sharma, Sandesh Kadur, Sudhir Shivaram, among many others.
India is undoubtedly one of the best places for wildlife photography, it is impossible to narrow down all the places into a ranked list but some of the standout places are listed as follows:-
Nagarhole National Park, Karnataka
This is one of the best spots for tiger spotting in India right apart from the Sunderbans. The park comprises of sandalwood, teak and bamboo groves along with a variety of animal and plant species.
Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, Andaman Islands
Although not as prominent like the other main stay places, this national park is slowly becoming one of the most prominent places to visit in India.
Hemis National Park, Jammu and Kashmir
This national park is always on the visitor list of everyone who visits Jammu and Kashmir and that’s an achievement in itself as Kashmir has world renowned tourist spots.
Sunderbans, Kolkata
For as long as the very art of Wildlife Photography has existed, the Sunderbans has been synonymous with it. The spotted deer, crocodiles and the famous Royal Bengal Tiger are the three elements along with the exceptional natural beauty of the place itself that makes Sunderbans the face of wildlife photography in India.
Satpura National Park, Madhya Pradesh
This park is home to leopards, exotic birds and the elusive Sloth Bears. Located in the central highlands of Madhya Pradesh, this park is dubbed as Photographer’s Paradise.
Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan
This park is situated between Jaipur and Agra and is home to numerous exotic bird species and plant lifes.
Is Wildlife Photography In India Sustainable?
Approximate Values, taken as an average of reports from various sources
This is the question which always occupies the top spot of the FAQ section regarding wildlife photography. The average salary of a wildlife photographer in India ranges anywhere between Rs.30000 to 5 Lakhs per month. The salary for beginners in the field is usually lesser than 20000. However with much more attention towards the craft of wild life photography these figures are only going to rise in the future.
Due to the mainstream presence of Indian Wildlife content on television channels like Nat Geo Wild, Animal Planet and Wild tv along with documentaries on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hotstar, the scope and opportunities for a career in wildlife photography in India looks bright indeed.
FAQs
What is the salary of wildlife photographer in India?
photographer salary in India per month 7,000 – 12,000 depending on the company. But once got enough experience, they can earn like anything between Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 5 lakh a month.
How to become a wildlife photographer in India or How to be a wildlife photographer in India?
Learn Basic Photography
Assist Someone
Look For Photogenic Environments
Start Off With Safe/Basic Species
Be Patient
Do Research And Carry Necessary Gear
What education is needed to become a nature Photographer?
A two or four-year degree in photography should give aspiring wildlife photographers the ability to learn basic as well as advanced photography techniques necessary for a successful career.
With all the portals online that provide effortless shopping experience online, it becomes difficult for the consumers to determine the best prices of their desired products. To make this task handy and simpler, Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray founded MySmartPrice in 2011.
Read this article to know more about MySmartPrice, how it works, founders, business model, revenue model, challenges, competitors, funding, wiki, and growth.
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison. Also for categories like footwear and fashion, MySmartPrice has a range of filters like best discounts that help the platform to come up with a consolidated bestseller list with the popular products and their specifications. So all in all, the idea is to provide the users with the best deals but also provide information about all the deals.
So basically, what MySmartPrice does is that it lists the prices of all the products across top eCommerce sites. Because of the dynamic pricing models of the e-commerce portals, these prices are periodically refreshed by MySmartPrice to improve the accuracy of the product pricing. In the cases of extremely popular products, the prices are refreshed every 15 minutes.
This portal makes sure that all possible discounts are informed to the user with embedded coupons so that the user can make wiser purchases. The co-founders had initially started the portal with books and then they gradually moved to mobile phones, comparing prices of various stores. Soon the mobiles category picked up, this portal attracted over 1 Million users a month. The co-founders in the long run also plan to list every single product that is sold in the Indian online space, on the MySmartPrice website.
“If it is sold online in India, it is available on MySmartPrice”, says Sulakshan.
MySmartPrice is all about letting the consumers make a smart and informed decision about their shopping aesthetics. Hence it’s USP is the portal that lets them compare the product prices across all the major platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, ShopClues to name a few.
MySmartPrice – How It Was Started?
MySmartPrice Logo
“We had been planning an entrepreneurial journey for almost eight years but could not muster enough courage. Finally, we felt it was now or never,” said Sitakanta Ray.
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray met in 1998 when they joined NIT Rourkela. After taking their degrees, both the co-founders joined Oracle in Hyderabad. From there they parted ways when Ray joined IIM Bangalore and Kumar joined Infosys.
“Odd as it may seem, I spent time studying management but handled engineering and marketing, while Sulakshan pursued engineering but is today involved in management,” added Sitakanta Ray.
What unites the co-founders is their zeal to take on their entrepreneurial journey. For both of them, their chance at the entrepreneurial journeys looked perfect with the price comparison/shopping research platform for the Indian market ideally because it involved the expertise of both product development and technology. And that’s how Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray decided to launch their venture – MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan Kumar & Sitakanta Ray | Co-Founders, MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan has a Bachelors’ in Mechanical engineering. He is an alumnus of NIT Rourkela, and also has worked with Sitakanta at Oracle. Before launching MySmartPrice, Sulakshan had also worked at Infosys.
Sitakanta is an alumnus of the prestigious IIM Bangalore, with around seven years of working experience with big names Oracle and ICICI Bank.
MySmartPrice – Business & Revenue Model
MySmartPrice as a website allows users to take a detailed look into the best products ranging from mobiles, electronics, computers, fashion and lifestyle, cameras, books, appliances, and personal care. As we know that the price comparison engine on the portal enables users to find the best price, deals, and offers from major e-commerce stores.
So directly or indirectly, it allows users to access over 10 million products from more than 100 online and offline stores. MySmartPrice also provides exciting things like coupons, offers, gifts without hiding information. MySmartPrice gets revenue as a service paid for each successful transaction done through the portal.
This portal has partnered with a lot many online and offline stores and there it charges a commission for lead generation. With conversion rates going up, revenues also rise. More than 80% of the revenue for MySmartPrice comes from the affiliate income i.e., a commission from promoting affiliate products on the site, and close to 18% of the revenue is generated from advertising and online directory services.
One of the major challenges MySmartPrice faced was when they started in 2010. This challenge was a limited budget. So to reach their target audience, it stuck to its core value of creating a robust product and focusing on Search Engine Optimization to get the first few customers onboard. This tactic really helped the company in developing a strong product range and retaining a large customer base.
There was one other challenge that the company faced in its initial days of inception. It was the very hurdle of attracting the right talent in the organization. However, MySmartPrice as a company never compromised on the kind of human resources it was looking for to build a team. To date, acquiring the right people continues to remain a big challenge, but the problem today is to choose the right talent rather than attracting more candidates.
MySmartPrice – Competitors
MySmartPrice has quite a few competitors in the market. For instance, Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice has received total funding of around $12 million till now.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
2012
Seed Round
$370K
Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
January 2014
Series A
$1 Million
Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors – Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
MySmartPrice – Growth
Initially, the company had ventured into just offline listing. Soon it went on to online and offline listings in cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi MySmartPrice claims to have offline partners generating business worth $2-3M every month. More than 4 million users across the country make use of the service every month.
MySmartPrice – FAQ’s
What is MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
Who is the founder of MySmartPrice?
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice.
What services does MySmartPrice provide?
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison.
Who are the investors of MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors – Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
Who are the competitors of MySmartPrice?
Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice – Conclusion
MySmartPrice is a high-growth venture-backed startup that runs the largest comparison shopping site in India with over 20 Million user visits per month. They help people easily find ‘what to buy’ and ‘where to buy from’ and help them make better and wiser purchases. The company is present across multiple categories including Mobiles, Electronics, Computers, Books, Apparel and Shoes, Fashion accessories, Home décor etc. MySmartPrice aims to provide users with the best price of products both among online stores as well as the local retailers near them.
The services offered by Microsoft such as Azure is replacing the practice of storing all the data in server that you purchase which can be expensive. Cloud services are essentially the new and advanced method of storing and accessing data and provide software subscriptions mainly for the example like Microsoft office 365 suite.
Microsoft Azure formerly known as “Windows Azure” is a cloud computing service that provides provisional computer resources that including other Microsoft’s own products and technologies. It provides a range of cloud services, including compute, analytics, software, storage, databases and networking.
It also offers open source technologies such as Linux technologies which can be deployed inside a virtual machine. Users can pick and choose from these services to develop and can even scale new applications or run existing applications in the public cloud. Microsoft also offers Microsoft Azure training.
The Azure platforms aims to help businesses manage the challenges that they face and meet their organizational goals.
You can create you own Linux virtual machine in minutes from the wide selection of marketplace templates while Azure will host your apps and services
It offers tools that help support all industries including e commerce, analytics and finance is compatible with other open source technology.
Azure also offers managed SQL relational database from one to unlimited number as a service.
You can use Azure as a resource to build your application and to launch it in a virtual machine, Azure provides an affordable alternative to the heavy budget that is required for resource provisions.
With azure it is easier to create and globally deploy applications that compatible on popular web and portable platform. Which come along with safe and highly accessible data storage.
It is adaptability to any environment so startups can compete with fortune 500 companies and then later transition to other bigger setups.
Another add on service available under Azure is that Visual Studio team services offer a complete application life cycle management (ALM) solution in the Microsoft cloud.
Microsoft charges for azure on a pay as you go basis, which means that the subscribers receive a bill each month that only changes them for the specific resources they have used. Azure offers 4 different forms of cloud computing which are Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), Software as a service (SaaS) and server less.
Microsoft Azure Services
1. Infrastructure as a Service (LaaS) –
This is the base of the service that Microsoft Azure provide their clients a server in the cloud. They control the virtual machine and give full autonomy of the management to the client, from the operating system to the application that they’ll be deploying.
2. Platform as a Server (PaaS) –
The clients are also given an operating system, a database, a web server, a code executor and other services along with the server in the cloud. It deals with the operating system and other minor details so you can focus on your work.
3. Software as a Server (SaaS) –
This service is for building an application that is hosted on third party vendors. Most applications are built on a cloud in order to avoid costs and ease of availability.
Microsoft Azure – Training
Microsoft itself offers preparing in Microsoft Azure through their Microsoft Virtual Academy. They offer levels of training as the beginning structure from beginner to middle of the road and afterward advance course. Anybody from understudies to individuals who work intimately with Microsoft Azure can increase some intensive understanding, as Microsoft even offers free courses to its clients.
The beginner can try Microsoft Azure for IT Pros Content Series: Introduction to Microsoft Azure, and a progression of six courses. Microsoft has a whole preparing page on its site explicitly for Microsoft Azure, which are all free. Individuals taking the course will be given confirmations for their Microsoft Azure preparing. Microsoft Learning is another device that shows you Microsoft Azure through the Microsoft Virtual Academy and paid preparing. After the courses and exercises, you’ll be offered certificate tests.
1. Just as other cloud platform, Azure also relies on technology known as virtualization. Most computer hardware can be emulated in software because most computer hardware need a simple set of instruction which is permanently or temporarily encoded in silicon.
2. By using an emulation layer that maps software instructions to hardware instruction, virtualization can be executed in software as if it were the actual hardware itself.
3. The cloud is a set of physical servers in one or more data centers that execute the virtualized hardware for the customers. With this the questions that raise are how does the cloud create, start, stop and delete millions of instances of virtualized hardware for millions of customer at once?
4. To understand how this works, we should look at the architecture of the hardware which is in the data center. Inside each data center there is a collection of servers that are arranged on server racks. And every server rack will contain server blades as well a network which provides network creativity and a power distribution units (PDU) providing power. Racks are further grouped into larger units called Clusters.
5. Each rack or cluster are designated to run these virtualized hardware instances for the customer. Some of these servers run cloud management software called fabric controller, which allocates and monitors the health of the server and heal server when it fails.
6. Each instance of the fabric controller is connected to another set of servers that run cloud orchestration software known as front end. The internal Azure database is used for all the functions the cloud performs.
Like other open cloud suppliers, Azure basically utilizes a pay as you use model that charges depending on the amount of utilization. However, if a single application utilizes various other Azure services, each service may include different price points. What’s more, if a client makes a long term commitment to a certain service, Microsoft offers a discounted price.
Given the numerous components of cloud service pricing, the organization must review and manage cloud utilization to limit costs. For example, Azure native tools, can help screen, visualize and enhance cloud spending. It is also possible to use tools like Cloudability or RightScale, to oversee Azure usage and related expenses.
Microsoft Azure – FAQ’s
What is Microsoft Azure used for?
At its core, Azure is a public cloud computing platform—with solutions including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) that can be used for services such as analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more.
Is Microsoft Azure free?
Azure is an extremely big and powerful cloud platform that you can use to develop and run your applications. These are services like Cosmos DB, Cognitive Services, Azure Active Directory and many more. If you are new to Azure or if you want to run an experiment on Azure, you can use it for free, for 12 months.
What is Microsoft Azure and why is it used?
Microsoft has leveraged its constantly expanding worldwide network of data centers to create Azure, a cloud platform for building, deploying, and managing services and applications, anywhere. Either option provides secure, reliable access to your cloud-hosted data—one built on Microsoft’s proven architecture.
What are the Microsoft Azure Services?
Microsoft Azure comes with a range of data services: Azure Storage, Azure SQL Database, Azure DocumentDB, Azure StorSimple, and Azure Redis Cache. Below is an overview of Azure Storage, one of the most prevalent data services provided by Microsoft Azure.
Does Azure require coding?
Azure as a platform can be learned without knowing any programming at all. Although if you wish to deploy an application to Azure then you may need to write some configuration code or a deployment script. But for normal infrastructure management and other tasks you can use Azure. There are many ways to learn Azure.
Is Azure owned by Microsoft?
Microsoft Azure commonly referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers.
Microsoft Azure – Conclusion
So fundamentally, Azure is a huge collection of servers and networking hardware running a complex set of distributed applications to orchestrate the configuration and operation of the virtualized hardware and software on those servers. It is this orchestration that makes Azure so powerful, because users are no longer responsible for maintaining and upgrading hardware because Azure does all this behind the scenes.
On 23 April 2021, the Reserve Bank of India had barred American Express and Diners Club International Limited from onboarding new customers to their platform. The ban is expected to come into effect from May 1. Let’s look at why both the payment system operators American Express and Diners Club International Limited were banned by RBI from adding new customers.
The Reserve Bank of India had initiated a ban for the payment system operators from onboarding new customers into their network as they were not able to follow the norms with the data storage put forth by the RBI.
The Reserve Bank of India in a statement said that both the entities have been found to be non-compliant in respect to the directions on storage of data of the payment systems. The RBI has added that the action towards both the entities was taken based on the powers which are under Section 17 of the PSS Act.
American Express Banking Corp and Diners Club International Ltd are payment system operators in the country who has the authorization to operate card networks in India under PSS Act (Payment and Settlement Systems Act), 2007.
American Express Banking Corp is a multinational company that focuses on financial services. It is located in New York, the United States. The company was founded in the year 1850. American Express is considered to be the 23rd most valuable brand in the world according to the Forbes 2017 list.
Some of the products offered by the company are Charge Cards, Traveler’s cheque, Credit Cards, corporate banking, etc. In India according to a report by Financial Express, American Express has a market share of around 2.53 % of the total market with around 15.6 lakh credit cards outstanding.
Diners Club International Ltd
Diners Club International is also known as DCI is a charge card company. It is a finance-based company that has its headquarters in the United States. The company was founded in the year 1950. Diner Club International was the first payment card company in the world.
The company is owned by Discover Financial Services. Some of the products of Diner Club International are charge cards and credit cards. In India, Diners Club International distributes its cards exclusively through HDFC Bank and the exact number of active users is unknown.
Why did RBI restricted American Express, Diners Club from adding more customers
In the year 2018, in a notification, the Reserve Bank of India had noticed that all the payment system providers did not stored the data of the payments in the country. The notification said that there was a significant growth witnessed by India in the payment ecosystem and such systems depend completely on technology.
The notification added that such an ecosystem has a necessity for a continuous measure of safety and security that were best in class.
The Reserve Bank of India had then directed all the system providers to ensure that the entire data which are related to payment systems should be stored in a system that is only in India.
The data which are stored should include the full end-to-end transaction details, information, carried, collected, and processed as part of the message or payment instruction. This was mentioned by RBI in its notification.
If there is any foreign transaction, those data can be stored in the foreign country if it is required. The compliances with the new rules were supposed to be followed by the system providers within 6 months and they had to report the same to the Reserve Bank of India.
In addition to this, they were also required to submit a report which should be approved by the board a System Audit Report (SAR). It should be conducted by the CERT-In empanelled auditor within the time duration that is specified.
The ban of American Express Banking Corp and Diners Club International Ltd by RBI is because they have failed to follow the statement given by RBI in regards to storing the data which was issued two years ago.
In India, American Express offers a full range of travel, financial and network service products.
What type of credit card is Diners Club?
Diners Club is an International Credit Card.
Who owns RBI?
RBI has been fully owned by the Government of India since its nationalisation in 1949.
Conclusion
The ban on both the entities would not affect the existing customers. The Reserve Bank of India had clarified in a statement that the ban will have no impact on the customers of both the companies.
The digital fintech startup Paytm has recently announced that it has launched a platform for its users to learn about investing. It has launched a video-based wealth community platform(Currently in beta stage) for the users to learn investing. Let’s look at the further details of the New Community Platform Launched by Paytm for Learning Investments.
Paytm is an Indian based multinational startup company. They are an e-commerce payment system and a financial technology company that has its headquarters located in Uttar Pradesh, India. The company was founded in the year 2010.
The abbreviation of Paytm stands for “Pay Through Mobile” and it encourages it with its famous tagline ‘Paytm karo’. The company was founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Some of the company’s products are Paytm Mall, Paytm Payments Bank, Paytm Money, Gamepind, Paytm Smart Retail.
The services offered by Paytm are Payment systems, digital wallets, mobile payments banking, online shopping, etc. Some of the key investors of the company are Ant Group, SoftBank Vision Fund, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, etc.
Paytm Wealth Community
On 26 April 2021, Paytm which is one of the largest fintech companies in India announced that it has launched a platform that is a video-based wealth community to revolutionize the Indians to learn, discuss and trade in the capital markets.
Paytm Wealth Community is considered to be India’s first community which will be based on investing. The platform will be video based and there will be live sessions conducted for the users of the community to ask doubts and discuss on the topics.
The live sessions will be conducted by the industry experts and will cover a wide range of topics for the users such as stocks, futures and options, ETFs, Mutual Funds, IPO, Gold, Fixed Income and Personal Finance.
Paytm Wealth Community
The platform will provide a chance for users to learn from the experts in the industry, discuss their doubts with them and also chat and grow together with their fellow learners. The users on the platform will discuss on various wealth related topics.
In today’s world, the way the youth learn, interact and transact has seen a rapid evolvement. The social interaction between peers has been greatly influenced by the growth of apps and other social media platforms.
It is seen that the social media platform and communities on various other sectors have seen a considerable growth, the digital platforms communities and groups have grown over the years, but there has not been a trustworthy digital platform and a reliable platform for wealth management.
Paytm intends to cover it up and build a trustworthy and reliable wealth management platform for the youth through its new community. It is taking a step to fulfill the requirements of the Indian Investors by launching the platform.
The platform will contain live video content with an interactive chat platform and creators are planning to conduct the sessions for a time period ranging from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. The sessions are expected to be launched in various languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, English and many more.
The platform is under beta testing and Paytm has onboarded a limited set of users. All the creators will have to go through a KYC process which will be a step for ensuring the safety of the retail investors. All the contents will be recorded and checked.
The roadmap of the product and technology is expected to completely transform the user experience. Over the period of time, the users will be able to create a customized discussion room by setting up their creator account and will also be able to chat in a controlled environment.
Paytm expects that the next 100 million capital market investors will be originated through investment communities and social groups and the wealth community of Paytm intends to be a leader and helping the investors to save, trade and invest better.
Beta testing
Paytm has said that users who have received the access to the wealth community launched by Paytm will be able to see a calendar that will have a list of the video sessions available on the platform. The beta testing feature is expected to be for the period of two months and later it will be opened to access to all.
The CEO of Paytm money, Varun Sridhar said that Paytm money was a natural choice by the company for its beta testing platform for the wealth community. Paytm money has direct access to a broad range of investment communities and has a reach across India.
Paytm Wealth Community also offers an opportunity for the experts in the industry to create a personal brand by creating their content and sharing their knowledge with millions of budding investors. This will be a platform to create a personal brand in the capital markets industry.
The company is supporting anyone with the required skills and has a significant social impact to create a personal brand. For starting the registration process, they will have to mail to pwc@paytm.com.
FAQ
Who is the current owner of Paytm?
One97 Communications Ltd is the owner of Paytm.
Who is CEO of Paytm?
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the current CEO of Paytm.
Is Paytm Chinese company?
PayTM is owned by an Indian company by the name of One97 Communications Ltd.
Conclusion
The capital investors in India have seen a significant rise in the last two years because of the pandemic. People are looking forward to growing their wealth through capital markets due to the layoff of jobs. Platforms such as Upstox, Groww, Zerodha and Paytm money has seen a subsequent increase in their user base.
Today the primary growth engine for any business is to have its e-commerce presence. With the change in business due to technological advancements, it is imperative for all businesses to work on e-commerce platforms. The meteoric growth that the e-commerce industry has witnessed in the recent past has also given rise to several e-commerce challenges. Many studies claim that e-commerce is expected to take over 22% of the industry by the year 2023. With such an increasing demand for e-commerce and online business, riding the commerce wave is so not easy, still Unicommerce has managed to be the first choice of every eCommerce store.
Impact of e-commerce on total economy
The digital world has compelled businesses to adopt digital solutions to complex supply chain issues and many other challenges that prevail in the e-commerce websites. Technologies like payment gateways, SaaS (software as a service) based solutions; effective inventory management, efficient delivery systems, and many other aspects are becoming more prominent with time.
Unicommerce is one such company that helps businesses to overcome the complex challenges of e-commerce. Know more about the Unicommerce startup in this article.
Found in the year 2012, Unicommerce is a platform that is leading globally in providing e-commerce solutions to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, sole proprietors, and e-commerce sellers. The platform enables users to automate their supply chain operations for online and offline stores for making more sales.
Unicommerce enables businesses to sell at multiple marketplaces and carts at the back end. It comes pre-integrated with more than 100 leading market places, carts, shipping companies, accounting, and Enterprise Resource Planning software. Unicommerce is a cloud-based SAAS (software as a service) solution where there is no need of having separate investments required for servers hosting, etc. The attractive factor about the platform is that it adds new features and functionality to the product almost every month and keeps value proposition at the highest priority.
In the very initial years, Unicommerce was regarded as the backbone of the e-commerce supply chain industry. The company was receiving almost 100 million + orders annually. The company has its presence in more than 250+ cities in India and the Middle East. Since its inception, the company has seen immense growth and has been profitable in India and the Middle East as well.
How Unicommerce was formed?
Three friends and Delhi IITians- Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla, and Vibhu Garg came together in November 2011 to start a set up their own venture. At that time they knew each other for about 12 years. While Ankit and Karun were working at corporate, Vibhu had just quit iXiGo. The trio had quit their jobs after they were sure about their intentions to set up a venture related to e-commerce since at that time it had just started blooming in India and had a lot of potentials.
After doing a lot of research and brainstorming, they shortlisted two options, either to start a venture that simplified the payments or to go for a business that would provide warehousing solutions. After discussing with many players in the market and taking their suggestions, they finally decided to work on SaaS based warehousing solutions, and in February 2012, they registered their company and this is, How Unicommerce was formed.
Initial Challenges that Unicommerce faced
Clientele base
The biggest initial challenge for Unicommerce was to get the faith of e-commerce companies in their product Uniware. It took the organization time to get the faith of e-commerce businesses in their warehouse and inventory management system. The solution then was to give them detailed explanations and plans to work with them.
The very first client of Unicommerce was Histreetlabels. The major challenges were to convince clients about the solutions and data safety and security since it was cloud-based. Things started going well when e-commerce giants like Jabong, Snapdeal, Cartlane by Tanishq, and many others started using Uniware.
Even though Unicommerce was an early mover in the industry of e-commerce solution provider, now there are many other players in the market that offer similar services.
Here are the top seven Unicommerce competitors in India:
Browntape
Easy Ecom
OMS Guru
Prima Seller
Webgility
Fishbowl Inventory
Zoho Inventory
Achievements of Unicommerce
YEAR
ACHIVEMENTS
2013
In Red Herring Asia 2013, Unicommerce was one of the finalists
2014
Unicommerce was entitled to be one of the Most Promising Cool Startups of the year
2017
Unicommerce was named to be among the Best Warehouse Management Technology Solution Providers by CIO Review.
Unicommerce – FAQs
What is Unicommerce?
Unicommerce is a platform that is leading globally in providing e-commerce solutions to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, sole proprietors, and e-commerce sellers.
What does Unicommerce do?
Unicommerce helps businesses to overcome the complex challenges of e-commerce.
Who is the founder of Unicommerce?
Ankit Pruthi, Vibhu Garg and Karun Singla are the founders of Unicommerce.
Shubham Kumar
