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  • Voonik – Personalizing The Shopping Experience More Than Ever

    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 Voonik.

    There was a time when women/men used to take their friends to go shopping just to have a little help in the selection process. Roundabout the same time, people were paying huge amounts to the stylists and designers to get a personalized style statement.

    To shift this paradigm online and optimize the whole process to being smooth and handy came in Voonik in 2013. Get insights on Voonik’s Company Profile, Voonik Founders, Funding, Competitors, Business Model, Growth, Revenue and more.

    Voonik – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Voonik
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector eCommerce
    Founders Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan
    Total Funding $34.5 Million
    Net Profit Rs 28.9 crore (FY20)
    Revenue/Turnover Rs 44.76 crore (FY20)
    Expenses Rs 15.99 crore (FY20)
    Founded 2013
    Website Voonik.com

    Voonik – About & How it Works
    Voonik – Founders and Team
    How was Voonik Started?
    Voonik – Name, Logo and Tagline
    Voonik – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Voonik – Funding and Investors
    Voonik – Startup Challenges
    Voonik – Competitors
    Voonik – Acquisitions
    Voonik – Growth and Revenue
    Voonik – Awards
    Voonik – Future Plans
    Voonik – FAQs

    Voonik – About & How it Works

    Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan launched Voonik to personalize the shopping experience for men and women. Yes, Voonik initially was launched for both men and women but later they decided to only focus on women’s clothing.

    Now, Voonik is a personal clothing shopping app for women, allowing them to buy apparel from multiple brands and fashion stores, according to their body type, lifestyle, and budget.

    Voonik enables women customers to directly shop like on any other e-commerce portal or the customer can provide some inputs like her body shape, skin tone, height, and personal style to let the application advise some dresses for her.

    FableStreet Success story – Fablestreet Founder,Revenue.Funding,Business Model
    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information
    on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been a
    pproved by the organization it is based on. Female office goers often feel the boredom with kind of formal and semi-formal
    apparel that they …
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    Voonik – Founders and Team

    Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan are the founders of Voonik.

    Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan - Founders Voonik
    Founders of Voonik

    Sujayath Ali

    Sujayth did his MBA in Technology and Finance from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering from MepcoSchlenk Engineering College.

    Before Voonik, he was working as VP, head of Visa Checkout merchant program at Visa. He has also worked for Amazon as a senior product manager in the states for 7 Years.

    Before co-founding Voonik, he worked for Freshdesk as a Principal Developer, Narus Networks as Tech-Lead and Aryaka Networks as Technical Architect. Voonik originally started with a 12 member team which now grew to more than 150 employees.

    How was Voonik Started?

    Navaneetha and Sujayath went to college together and have known each other for more than 20 years now. Navaneetha was not very new to the startup scene because he had been a garage stage engineer at big companies like Zoho, Freshdesk, and Aryaka. And as we know, the other co-founder, Sujayath was in America spending 7 years at Amazon and Visa.

    “We first discussed the idea of starting something together over a Facebook chat session” Says Sujayath.

    Back then, Navaneetha had an idea for a SaaS offering based on his long and intriguing experience at Zoho and Freshdesk. On the other hand, Sujayath pitched an idea of creating an entirely new way of shopping to enable the users in buying what suits their build, lifestyle, and budget. The former was convinced by the idea of the latter, both quit their jobs and that’s how the idea of Voonik was originated.

    Voonik – Name, Logo and Tagline

    Voonik’s tagline is “Everyday Fashion”, suiting its tagline, Voonik offers a range of options in every fashion category for the Indian urban market.

    Voonik Logo
    Voonik Logo

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    Voonik – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Business Model

    Voonik basically is a marketplace where the retail stores register and get to showcase their products. Voonik brings multiple online stores into a single cart. So it showcases product ranges from stores like Jabong, Snapdeal, Fashionara, Fashionandyou, Yepme, Zovi, etc.

    Revenue Model

    The revenue model of Voonik is generated by charging a 15 percent commission on every sale to the brand or the seller. And the deliveries are done by a third-party logistics partner.

    Voonik – Funding and Investors

    Voonik has raised a Total Funding of $34.5 Million till date.

    Here is the Vooniks Funding Details:

    Date Amount Round Investors
    February 2014 $500k Seed SeedFund
    June 2015 $5 Million (~Rs 32 crores) Series A Sequoia Capital, SeedFund
    June 2016 $20 Million Series B Sequoia Capital India
    July 2016 $3 Million Debt InnoVen Capital
    February 2017 $6 Million Series C RB Investments Pte. Ltd.

    Voonik – Startup Challenges

    Costly Shipping

    Our biggest challenge for Voonik in the initial days was extremely costly shipping. It was particularly losing money on every shipment. And so the venture decided to work on projects where the team observed shipping across each category.

    They eventually came up with the right algorithms through permutations and combinations to make shipments more cost-efficient. And soon after, Voonik had a 20% gross margin on shipping.

    Marketing

    The second-biggest cost driver for Voonik was marketing. Apparently, to save recurring overheads, it stopped focusing on traditional channels like Facebook and Google.

    Instead, Voonik approached innovative channels for marketing to make money immediately. One of these initiatives was referral programs that allowed Voonik to make money from the very first transaction.

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    Voonik – Competitors

    Voonik’s Competitors – LimeRoad, Jaypore, FabAlley, Myntra, Jabong, FashionAndYou, Adoro Marketplace, ShopClues, Yepme and Snapdeal.

    Online fashion space is as crowded as it can get. New players are coming in fashion industry. And now with Instagram and its buzz, it has become very easy for people to sell fashion apparel online.

    Given that, there’s so much happening out there in the online fashion zone. Be it creative concepts like style cracker who customly assigns stylists to its customers to make a box of accessories paired with the dress. Be it bag fashion portals like Myntra and Shein, all of these along with Voonik are competing neck to neck to cater to the same audience.

    Voonik – Acquisitions and Mergers

    TrialKart

    Voonik acqui-hired TrialKart in 2015. TrailKart is a mobile platform providing a virtual dressing room experience to the users.

    Getsty

    In 2016, Voonik acquired Getsty which is a personalized shopping portal for men.

    Vilara

    In June 2016, Voonik stepped into the premium e-commerce segment by launching Vilara.

    Dekkoh

    In September of 2016, Voonik undertook an acquisition of Dekkoh which was a personalization and styling app.

    Dekkoh

    Voonik did not stop here. It has also acqui-hired three startups, Zohraa, Picksilk.com, and Style, to further build the platform and taking it deep towards personalization by adding more and more personal stylists and connecting them with its users through a chat-based app.

    ShopUp

    According to the reports in February 2020, Vooniks B2B business was merged with Bangladesh-based startup ShopUp. ShopUp is a platform that helps businesses go online. It enables e-commerce, store, logistics, sourcing, marketing and working capital requirements.

    Schoolay

    On February 2020, Vooniks B2C business was merged with kids activewear startup Schoolay.

    Voonik – Growth and Revenue

    • Voonik reported 264% jump from losses of Rs 17.63 crore (FY19) to the Net Profits of Rs 28.7 crore (FY20)
    • Voonik had a revenue of Rs 44.76 crore in FY20 as compared to FY19 i.e Rs 21.45 crore
    • Voonik had over 10,000 downloads in the first month with an average rating of 4.7.
    • Today, it has over 20 Mn registered users
    • Total 17 million application downloads
    • Close to 2 million unique visitors per month
    • Displays more than 15 Lakh products from 22,000 sellers.
    • Caters to an average of 20,000 daily orders
    • Currently has a rating of 4.1 at Google Play Store.

    Voonik – Awards

    2014 – Voonik was amongst the Microsoft Ventures India’s list of 16 startups for its summer batch of the accelerator program.

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    Voonik – Future Plans

    Voonik has big plans of taking onboard offline boutiques and launching chat-based features. Currently, the app is only giving recommendations to the customers, but the users are not able to chat with the stylists. Hence their main priority in the long term plan is to take personalization to the highest level on Voonik.

    Voonik – FAQs

    Who are the Founders of Voonik?

    Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan are the founders of Voonik.

    How much is Voonik Funding?

    Voonik has raised a total funding of $34.5 Million till date.

    How much is Voonik’s Revenue?

    Voonik reported 264% jump from losses of Rs 17.63 crore (FY19) to the Net Profits of Rs 28.7 crore (FY20).

    How does Voonik make money?

    Voonik basically is a marketplace where the retail stores register and get to showcase their products. The revenue for Voonik is generated by charging a 15% commission on every sale to the brand or the seller.

    What is Voonik store?

    Voonik is an online marketplace operating in products for women’s fashion.

  • India’s Work From Home Culture leads to Growth in Furniture Market

    The global pandemic has left an impact on the people and business in certain damaging ways. It has made the industries go through a tough patch of time experiencing uncertainty in jobs due to salary cuts, layoffs, unpaid leaves, etc.

    Before the lockdown, the Indian economy was expected and supposed to see exponential growth. This speculation was based on the changing buying behaviour of the consumer when it came to purchasing furniture or other necessities. The demand for rental furniture was on the hike making people choose to rent the furniture rather than buying it. But, with the global pandemic, even the furniture industry was impacted.

    But the culture of Work from Home adapted and implemented by the companies in India have revived the growth of Furniture market. Making people buy more and more comfortable furniture to work effortlessly at home.

    Overview of Indian Furniture Industry
    Forecast and Market Size of Furniture Industry
    Current Scenario of Furniture Market
    Demand and Future of Furniture Market

    Overview of Indian Furniture Industry

    Growth of Indian Furniture Market Size
    Growth of Indian Furniture Market Size

    Furniture generally refers to movable/immovable objects that support various human activities such as seating, eating, sleeping and majorly working on the desktops, laptops, etc. They are used to hold objects at an appropriate height for work or to store things.

    The popularity of home/traditional furniture has strengthened the demand for its manufacturing in India. Over the past years, the utilization of wooden furniture at home has increased. Apart from this, the demand for engineered wood furniture is rising significantly in metro cities and other places too. The reason behind is the rising popularity of ready to assemble work like home furniture in these cities.

    Adding more to it, the demand in India for modular furniture is growing exponentially. The development in the housing sector is changing the living standards of the population. The growing trend of home décor and home furnishing with innovative and stylish furniture is the major factor behind the growth of the furniture industry in India.

    There are more than a few numbers of market players in the furniture industry. Organizations like Featherlite, Godrej, Durian, and others have a good market presence in the Indian furniture industry.

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    Forecast and Market Size of Furniture Industry

    India furniture market growth is driven by various factors such as rising demand for state of the furniture among the population living in urban cities and fancy seating furniture. The market is forecasted to expand at a rate of 12.91% during the period of 2016-2023.

    Moreover, the rising growth of the furniture industry in India compensates the price of furniture. On the basis of these likeable factors, the furniture industry is expected to propel in India. Further, the rising trend of online Various furniture companies such as Woodenstreet, Furniturewalla, Pepperfry, Rentomojo, Urban ladder and others are creating huge demand from these online channels.

    The furniture market size in India has increased a lot. Also, the demand for furniture is increasing in the commercial sector. In addition to this, these growing numbers of small and medium businesses further boost the demand for low-cost plastic furniture products. It is believed to foster the growth of the Indian furniture market over the forecast period.

    Future Demand of Furniture market in India
    Future Demand of Furniture market in India

    Current Scenario of Furniture Market

    The furniture buying and rental industry are trying to make the best of the challenging circumstances. With the evolving environment, the furniture industry can speculate online selling and buying through digital marketing to be the key to any industry’s success, giving opportunities to the furniture rental startups.

    The basic need of the situation for the Furniture market is to develop an active supply chain response plan to alleviate the risk that the COVID-19 outbreak has caused.

    The furniture industry will have to look at various aspects like creating and anticipating new demands through social media, creating campaigns that focus on the industry as a support product rather than an asset, response with risk transparency, analyzing product capacity, need and optimization, logistics capacity, prior booking, route optimization, and supplier management.

    Demand and Future of Furniture Market

    The new normal work from home has created a huge demand in the market for work from home furniture, helping the furniture rental industry to begin with the business establishment. The furniture in this sector includes desks, chairs, comfortable seating, and multipurpose household furniture.

    The furniture industry witnesses a spike in demand for multifunctional furniture as one of the prime reasons driving the work from home furniture market growth. As people are habituated to work on a proper setup with desks and chairs. The new form of working has a high possibility to make people tired and get distracted. Almost 90% of the Indian companies have asked their employees to work from home, this situation is expected to go on the entire year, and furthermore.

    India Work From Home furniture market is speculated to grow from a $2.22 billion in 2021 to $3.49 billion by 2026 majorly on a rising number of companies providing an option of working from home to their employees adopting cloud-based solutions.

    Consumer preference for premium quality products, increasing urban population, and rising disposable income are a few other factors that are positively influencing the furniture market. It will change the lifestyle of consumers, especially due to lockdown, are some the major factors of Work From Home furniture industry in India.

    The India Work From Home furniture market is segmented into Furniture Retail Outlets account for more than 70% of the market share in India WFH furniture market in 2020. The Furniture Market by Competition, Forecast & Opportunities has evaluated the future growth potential of India till 2026.

    Conclusion

    The Work from Home furniture is an aspect of creation for the rental industry. The market is also anticipating the future of the furniture industry as people are becoming more aware of their home furniture layouts, being able to spend maximum time at home.

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    FAQs

    How to start a Furniture business in India?

    • Find your niche
    • Choose a location
    • Write a business plan
    • Purchase or lease machinery
    • Find inspiration for your designs
    • Create a website.

    What are the Innovative ideas for furniture business?

    • Wooden Furniture Making
    • Sell Used Furniture
    • Steel Furniture Business
    • Sell Woodcutting Tools
    • Wrought Iron Furniture

    How to promote furniture business?

    • Understand your customer’s demands.
    • Map your customers’ buyer’s journey.
    • Provide an omnichannel experience.
    • Leverage social media.
    • Don’t neglect your website.

  • Everything you Need to know about Hybrid learning Model

    In Today’s generation, tech-based learning is off the hook. Whereas on the traditional level of learning, the face-to-face interaction of a teacher and student is the prime learning procedure which may not be useful for a student at all times. Hybrid learning model is a model that combines traditional classroom teaching with online/remote activities.

    What is Hybrid learning Model?
    What is Blended learning and How is it different than Hybrid learning model?
    Pros of Hybrid Learning Model
    Cons of Hybrid Learning Model
    How Hybrid learning has improved education in the times of Covid -19
    FAQ

    What is Hybrid learning Model?

    Hybrid learning is a method of learning that combines classroom discussions with an online tech-learning, however replacing the element of the in-person class. Perhaps, Hybrid Learning is a contributing factor to the next level of learning techniques. Such combination of the e-learning methods and traditional classroom instruction is what we call Hybrid Learning.

    In addition to it, the concept of a ‘hybrid’ form of learning has been a living example over the last decade except the last few months, for the unusual global catastrophe brought about by the pandemic. Otherwise just not going to school and asking for an online class would have seemed like a far-fetched idea.

    What is Blended learning and How is it different than Hybrid learning model?

    Hybrid learning and blended learning are often mistaken as the same learning model, However, both are two distinct learning models.

    Blended learning

    In the Blended Learning model, It combines in-person teaching with asynchronous learning methods. Where students watch instructional videos and work on online exercises during their own time.

    Blended Learning
    Blended Learning

    Hybrid Learning

    In the Hybrid learning model, the teachers instruct in-person and remote students at the same time. In a hybrid learning model, some students can get hands-on experience, while some learners find those methods inaccessible due to geographic limitations.

    Hybrid Learning
    Hybrid Learning

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    Pros of Hybrid Learning Model

    For a productive hybrid learning, it needs an equipped curriculum setup of a different set of strategies in order to create a physical classroom environment. However through Hybrid learning, students gain better learning environment along with tailoring the learning experiences. With hybrid learning, the influence of education will reach greater heights.

    Advancement of active learning skills

    Through hybrid learning techniques, students get purposeful education. And therefore it is to say that, hybrid learning is poised to grow significantly for learners.

    Flexibility for busy schedules

    A hybrid approach offers the students a command over the flexibility of learning. This flexibility is often committed to regular attendance and good participation in the classes.

    Immediate Feedback

    Students participating in live lectures, live chats with teachers, customized assessments, can get immediate feedbacks to improve for the better.

    Lower transportation costs

    Students bearing hybrid learning, has less need to go offline, which in way saves transportation costs.

    Advanced Use of Technology

    The adoption of Artificial Intelligence has helped to tailor different learning styles that eventually lead to better learning outcomes. It has also helped to make the learning environment more entertaining and productive.

    Cons of Hybrid Learning Model

    As distance education don’t help in developing oral skills and social interactions, there may be some reasons that can be an obstacle in obtaining hybrid learning.

    Less participatory in asynchronous class

    Many a times teachers complain of students not participating in classes. Unlike in traditional method of teaching students are require to participate.

    Technology trouble

    Technology can cause trouble and be challenging challenging Rather Than Useful. Most of the students encounter problems like slow internet connection, or devices trouble.

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    How Hybrid learning has improved education in the times of Covid -19

    Covid-19 enforced the academies and its educators to test out online study technique for distance education in the correct form. Indeed, there was a lot of new skills and knowledge gone into the process. To implement the modern technique of education, many different online learning tricks and techniques were tested and evaluated for an effective participation, and hybrid learning is one such approach.

    As lockdowns and social distancing measures are likely to continue in some form and schools may have to remain closed for more months, as cases of infection research is alternating between periods of normal operation and quarantine.

    With flexible or hybrid learning, every school can exist side by side with a parallel virtual school. Teachers and students can meet their educational requirements remotely over the internet and online classes can be held on a regular schedule just like traditional classes for synchronous learning.

    Also if internet access is lacking, students can continue with the synchronous learning through self-paces lessons with the smart school system. Teachers have the flexibility to design and create digital lessons that are suited to needs of the students, whether taught online or in-person. Teachers are also getting access for a full digital curriculum with high quality content as found in textbooks.

    Other functions may also be shifted online according to means, further reducing the need for anyone to come to school in person. Students can be enrolled in classes through the internet using certain online school platform.

    Such platforms can be used to manage student enrollment online and to facilitate remote working for teachers and employees.

    FAQ

    What is the difference between hybrid learning and remote learning?

    In remote learning student and teacher are separated by time and/or distance, Hybrid learning combines traditional classroom teaching with online/remote activities.

    How can hybrid learning be improved?

    Plan effective interactions, Craft a learner-centered approach to learning, and Support student success are some methods to improve hybrid learning.

    Does hybrid mean online?

    Hybrid learning replaces a portion of traditional face-to-face instruction with web-based online learning (e.g., video lectures, online discussions, or activities).

    Conclusion

    With the use of smart test tools, online testing allows teachers to design and conduct examinations remotely, so that the functions of the virtual schools keep running smoothly, thereby ensuring that learning never stops.

    So even if we are self-isolated, it is to remember that we are all facing these challenges together. And with innovative tactics and broad support, the educators and students can get through this time in a biased way. Looking at the current scenario of Covid 19 and imposing lockdowns, it looks like the hybrid learning model is the future of education.

  • Spoonshot—Leveraging Artificial Intelligence To Predict Food Trends

    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 the organization it is based on.

    Artificial Intelligence is now penetrating almost every existing domain. Finance, healthcare, education, transportation and many sectors  are witnessing active use of AI. This intelligence is now being used for an upcoming niche: prediction of consumer tastes and food trends. Spoonshot, a startup based in Bangalore, is using AI to help businesses operating in the food and beverages sector serve their customers better by providing useful insights on future food trends and guest intelligence.

    Spoonshot’s AI-powered tool is saving FMCG companies time and money while enabling them to become trendsetters. StartupTalky interviewed Spoonshot CEO Kishan Vasani to understand more about the startup.

    Spoonshot – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Spoonshot
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Founders Kishan Vasani and Sai Sreenivas Kodur
    Sector FMCG
    Founded December, 2015
    Website www.spoonshot.com
    Parent Organization Spoonshot.com

    Spoonshot – About
    Spoonshot – Vision & Mission
    Spoonshot – Target Market
    Spoonshot – Founders & Team
    Spoonshot – How It Started
    Spoonshot – Ideation, Designing, & Prototyping Of The Product
    Spoonshot – Product/Service
    Spoonshot – How It Works
    Spoonshot – Work Culture
    Spoonshot – Name, Tagline, & Logo
    Spoonshot – Business Model & Revenue Model
    Spoonshot – User Acquisition
    Spoonshot – Startup Challenges
    Spoonshot – Funding & Investors
    Spoonshot – Advisors & Mentors
    Spoonshot – Acquisitions & Mergers
    Spoonshot – Future Plans
    Spoonshot – FAQ’s
    Spoonshot – Conclusion

    Spoonshot – About

    Spoonshot is a food AI company that is raising the bar for insight-led innovation. It believes in exploration as the catalyst behind the novel, successful products and uses it as the very fuel to help food and beverage companies shape the future and bring about new trends.  

    Spoonshot equips the food and beverage industry with unprecedented foresight of emerging market needs. By transforming long-tail, open information from diverse and authentic sources, Spoonshot’s proprietary food science infused algorithms connect disparate data sets, to deliver personalized insights, predict trends, and identify novel opportunities. Today, Spoonshot is supporting the world’s best-known brands in meeting the future needs of their customers.

    Spoonshot – Vision & Mission

    Spoonshot is on a mission to replicate human cognition in the domain of food. We humans have developed special skill sets—chef, nutritionist, doctor, foodie, scientist, psychologist, etc. Spoonshot’s core technology which is referred to as #foodbrain, is designed to adopt relevant components from each of these skill sets.

    Consumer tastes are influenced by many factors. Geography, purchasing power, external influence, mood, etc. are important determiners of  one’s taste buds. At Spoonshot, every variable that is likely to affect consumer taste is included to enable #foodbrain deliver the highest level of accuracy in prediction. This foresightedness is then used by the food and beverage companies while developing and rolling out products and services.

    “Today incrementalism is the go-to-strategy for most FMCG companies that want to create new products or flavors. And the sad reality is while 58% of R&D spending is directed at incremental innovations, only 14% is used for breakthrough or disruptive innovations. Under this scenario, Spoonshot  is working towards bringing about true innovation in the food industry” says Spoonshot CEO Kishan Vasnai  explaining how Spoonshot is making a difference.

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    Spoonshot – Target Market

    Spoonshot’s target industry is FMCG, where sales is forecasted to top $720 billion by 2020. Spoonshot’s target customers are large FMCG companies in North America.

    Spoonshot – Founders and Team

    Kishan Vasani and Sai Sreenivas Kodur are the founders of Spoonshot.

    Kishan Vasani & Sai Sreenivas Kodur | Co-Founders. Spoonshot

    Kishan Vasnai is the CEO of Spoonshot. He has 10+ years  of experience in the startup segment and 7+ years of experience in food tech domain. Kishan founded a digital marketing agency named ‘U Want Media’ in 2006, which he exited in 2011. Kishan is the ex COO of ‘Just Eat’ (India) and also worked as the head of international marketing in ‘Just Eat’. Besides, Kishan co-founded ‘One Cause’, a UK based NGO that promotes education as the solution to poverty

    Sai Sreenivas Kodur is the co-Founder & CTO of Spoonshot. Sai, who is a computer science graduate from IIT Madras,  has 5+ years of experience in the tech sector. He worked as a software engineer in Myntra, Zomato, and Kiwi, Inc. before joining Spoonshot.

    Kishan built the core team using LinkedIn, and came in contact with Sai through LinkedIn’s platform.

    When I first started looking for a technical partner, I quickly realized that I was not interviewing them, but that good candidates were really interviewing me, asking all sorts of difficult questions about my experience and the business model. I was specifically looking for someone with a computer science background, essentially a real geek, and while they didn’t need to have food tech experience, it was a great bonus. But the most important trait was that I needed to find someone that I could get along with, someone I could have a beer with. With Sai, I was lucky to get all of the above – Kishan

    When Kishan met Sai, the latter was at Myntra in a well-paid job. Kishan knew he would have to  work hard to on-board Sai. The duo met several times and discussed the industry and opportunity for hours before the decision to work together was established. Alignment on the opportunities in the food tech segment was relatively straightforward given that both Sai and Kishan had background in this domain. Also, Sai had a similar startup idea but didn’t pursue it. Finally, Sai and Kishan came together to start Spoonshot. Kishan even asked one of his friend, the CTO of a company, to interview Sai for ensuring his technical prowess.

    Spoonshot – How It Started

    Spoonshot founder Kishan Vasani’s, personal experience with food was instrumental in Spoonshot’s launch.

    During his stint at Just Eat Group in London (2011-2013),  Kishan stumbled upon several opportunities that interested him (like white-label apps for restaurants). Kishan noticed that the actual dining experience didn’t necessarily match the restaurant ratings and reviews available.

    One of my favorite dishes served by a restaurant in Bangalore has a restaurant rating of 3.1. Conversely, I’ve been to several highly rated restaurants (4.0+) and thought the food was average at best.

    With reviews and ratings being almost useless, Kishan wanted to find something that would give consumers more accurate insight on their dining/ordering experience.

    Initially, Kishan thought of dish rating as a good way to solve the problem because of its relevance and granularity as a data point. But further research highlighted that taste is subjective and varies greatly from person to person. A more innovative approach was required.

    “It wasn’t until 2015 after I had left Just Eat and started working at a London fintech startup called Osper, that I decided to jump off the entrepreneurial cliff. At Osper, I was working closely with the Founder & CEO, Alick Varma. Seeing him build his dream business with such passion and drive essentially drove me to leave and start my venture. ”

    Kishan and Sai did extensive research about the FMCG industry for almost 9 months. They met over 130 industry professionals to get a clear understanding about the problems and opportunities in the Food and Beverage industry before starting Spoonshot. Spoonshot initially started as a  B2C company that was building a personalized food discovery app for the Indian market. Spoonshot was then known as ‘Dishq'(a combination of dish and ishq, the hindi word for love). Dishq focused on shifting the notion of food ordering away from ratings and reviews to more visual and emotionally driven decision-making.

    Later, the company pivoted to become  a B2B company and re-branded itself as Spoonshot.

    Given that  Sai and I both previously worked in the food/restaurant tech, we made certain product and customer assumptions based upon our knowledge. In hindsight, we should have completed more thorough market research as this would have saved us a lot of time and pain – Kishan

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    Spoonshot – Ideation, Designing, & Prototyping Of The Product

    Spoonshot tested its very first insights through a Hackathon with Ferrero (the manufacturer of Nutella). Spoonshot received a positive response which gave the team confidence and conviction to further explore this opportunity.

    After 3 months of deep industry research in the US (Spoonshot’s target market), Spoonshot built its very first insights prototype for a US-based food startup called Milkful during the Techstars Farm To Fork Accelerator.

    Milkful’s product that comprises health snack bars has been created for a very specific audience. They wanted to understand new ingredient combinations that would meet their consumer’s needs. Once again, we received good feedback. This allowed us to iterate our solution further.

    The next version was used to deliver insights to a global ingredient giant. This project was far more complicated with high stakes. After 3 months of intensive engagement, Spoonshot delivered its insights and the client was satisfied with the results. This gave the Spoonshot team the conviction and validation to develop a full-fledged platform.  

    Spoonshot – Product/Service

    Spoonshot has built an AI-powered insights platform infused with food science to assist FMCG brands uncover hidden product opportunities and accelerate incremental revenue by leveraging Spoonshot’s unique insights.

    The platform is an innovation and trends research tool. It is designed to be the creative spark for product development by encouraging exploration, generating inspiration, a place for ideation. Following are some major components of the Spoonshot platform:

    (1) Ingredient Networks: A way to uncover emerging and novel ingredient combinations.

    (2) Startups Explorer: Details the innovation and product development of new food and beverage enterprises.

    (3) Trend Trek: A place to discover the latest food ingenuity around the world.

    Spoonshot has designed the platform such that users need not ask it questions, but are continually given answers or insights personalized to the user’s needs.

    The increasingly dynamic consumer landscape in the age of digital means that it is harder than ever before to track customer needs and tastes. There’s simply too much data and too many opinions. Quite frankly, it can be overwhelming. Also, legacy research and insights providers over-rely on lagging indicators and archaic methodologies, which lead to stale ideas. To add insult to injury, these agencies sell the same data to you and your competitors, so finding an edge is next to impossible.

    Spoonshot’s bleeding edge technology leverages the power of AI, food science, and large, diverse data sets, to give the companies a tool specifically for  early-stage product innovation, ideation, and inspiration.

    We want the consumers to have better, more relevant product choices, and not be overwhelmed by the current situation of over choice.

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    Spoonshot – How It Works

    Spoonshot uses domain knowledge (food science) as a means to contextualize and extrapolate insights based upon the changes it sees in its data pipelines.

    Food science refers to Computational Gastronomy and Nutrition Science.

    Computational Gastronomy refers to applying data science techniques to the chemistry of food. Spoonshot extends this by collecting data related to flavor, sensory and texture. Nutrition Science refers to the break up of nutrition in different items. Spoonshot also enriches this with data on how a style of cooking influences nutritional value.

    The company builds several types of ingredient networks using this data. These ingredient networks define how the ingredients are inter-related (e.g. ingredients could be similar in taste, smell, nutrition, substitution, texture, etc). This serves as a fixed knowledge base which acts as the backbone to build products.

    Spoonshot has built a trend data store which tracks food related data along with two key dimensions:

    1. Time.
    2. Geo-location.

    This gives the company information on which ingredients are trending and in which locations.

    Spoonshot – Work Culture

    Spoonshot currently has 22 employees comprising data scientists, food scientists, and developers with the common love for eating.

    We have a very friendly, no-hierarchy work culture and are as transparent about our decisions and plans with the team. We have a potluck once a month, team lunches, and learning sessions so that there is a good mix of fun and learning – Kishan says commenting on Spoonshot’s work culture.

    Spoonshot’s hiring funda is simple: Hire foodies with a problem-solving mindset.

    The five values below are the guiding stars for the Spoonshot team:

    • First-principles: Don’t make assumptions, but be curious and inquisitive.
    • Be bold: Don’t be afraid to think big and execute bigger and bring your personality to the problem.
    • Show passion: Commit wholeheartedly and with real belief.
    • Drive excellence: Lead by example, go the extra mile, and accept/deliver nothing less than great.
    • Give first: Be helpful, kind, and open.

    Spoonshot Logo

    The name Spoonshot has been derived from ‘moonshot thinking’.

    We are a great believer of the ‘moonshot thinking’ – a combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible. Our core technology is focused on enabling FMCG companies to stay ahead of trends. It’s almost like a crystal ball for early-stage product innovation, ideation, and inspiration – Kishan explains

    Spoonshot logo represents the spoon for the F&B and moonshot thinking. The tagline is ‘Be The Trendsetter’, and the company did an extensive marketing exercise to derive at this motto.

    Spoonshot – Business Model & Revenue Model

    Spoonshot is a SaaS platform and charge an annual access fee which includes a number of licenses/seats.

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    Spoonshot – User Acquisition

    Spoonshot got accepted in the Techstars Farm To Fork Accelerator in the summer of 2018. The power and reach of their network was incredible and changed the trajectory of the business. Spoonshot was able to connect to many of its customers through this channel. The second major channel for customer acquisition was through a leading industry event where Spoonshot presented a demo of its platform on stage. Within 24 hours of the presentation, the company had 30 new B2B customers on-board.

    Spoonshot – Startup Challenges

    Finding product-market fit in the FMCG industry was a major challenge. The next major challenge was and continues to be tech recruitment.

    Bangalore has many developers but finding good ones, with the values aligned to our business, with reasonable salary expectations is very difficult. We have tried many things to improve our recruitment process and still I don’t believe we have a winning formula. Perhaps the most pertinent point is that whether you are hiring or not, recruitment should never stop.

    Kishan shares the following few tips that he keeps in mind while hiring.

    • Do not Hire fast: There’s the risk of bringing in people who are either not technically sound or culturally right.
    • Do not hire someone who is not a culture fit.
    • Do not Hire too slowly: Too many rounds means you can lose candidates to other companies.
    • Be cautious while using an agency: We’ve used some of the ‘best’ agencies in Bangalore and it did not led to a new hire.
    • Think before hiring interns: The quality is mixed but you get great executional bandwidth. Great interns have been hired as full-timers. Interns even after joining full-time may want to pursue further studies. Also, they do not have any other work experience to benchmark against; this can be both good and bad.  

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    Spoonshot – Funding & Investors

    Spoonshot has raised a total funding of $1.712 Million in 4 rounds till date. Below are Spoonshot funding details-

    Funding Date Funding Stage Funding Amount Investor
    Early 2017 Angel Funding $37k HNI
    2017 Accelerator $120k Zeroth.AI
    2018 Pre-seed $555k Techstars, Arts Alliance & HNIs
    2020 Seed Round $1 Million SRI Capital

    The recent funding round on September 2020 was led by SRI Capital. This financing will be used to fuel the Spoonshot’s growth plan and for further investment in its Proprietary technology and team.

    Spoonshot – Advisors & Mentors

    Spoonshot has current and former executives at some of the industry’s leading US organizations including Cargill, Ecolab, McDonald’s, Conagra, General Mills, and the National Restaurant Association as its advisors.

    Spoonshot – Acquisitions & Mergers

    Spoonshot acquired Brisky, a restaurant analytics startup in 2018. Brisky provides restaurants and bars with customer satisfaction intelligence, helps them understand their customers needs better, and quickly highlights the areas that need attention.

    Spoonshot – Future Plans

    Till September 2019, Spoonshot was in the beta stage, and even then it  had over 40 companies, that includes over 15 billion dollar companies, testing its FMCG trends platform. The platform was publicly launched on 1st October 2019.

    In 2020, Spoonshot is planning to scale the business in the following ways:

    • Launch new features (as demanded by its customers).
    • The company is currently focusing on North America, and has plans to launch new markets (locations being evaluated include UK, Japan and China).
    • Launch a version of the platform designed for large restaurant operators.

    Sharing his vision, Spoonshot CEO Kishan Vasani said, “We believe our technology (#foodbrain) and the platform will become the de facto choice for the food industry, across FMCG and restaurant/food services, for being on-trend and providing customers with the choices they need and want”

    Spoonshot – FAQ’s

    Who are the Founders of Spoonshot?

    Kishan Vasani and Sai Sreenivas Kodur are the Founders of Spoonshot.

    What is Spoonshot?

    Spoonshot’s technology leverages food science and artificial intelligence to predict consumer tastes and food trends. It’s AI-powered tool is saving FMCG companies time and money while enabling them to become trendsetters

    How much funding was raised by Spoonshot?

    As revealed by the founders, Spoonshot has raised a total funding of $1.712 Million in 4 rounds till date. The recent funding round on September 2020 was led by SRI Capital for $1 Million.

    Who is the CEO of Spoonshot?

    Kishan Vasnai is the CEO of Spoonshot.

    Spoonshot – Conclusion

    Spoonshot delivers food & beverage innovation intelligence by leveraging AI and food science. Our insights reveal the future of food through a deep understanding of emerging and evolving consumer and market needs, enabling us to accurately predict trends and uncover innovation opportunities.

    58% of R&D spending is directed at incremental innovation, while only 14% is used for breakthrough or disruptive innovations.

    While incrementalism is fuelling the revenues of companies today, they have forgotten to look at how they can create revenues for the day after tomorrow. Consumer panels and surveys are square pegs in a world increasingly made of round holes. Incremental gains are a band-aid for a bullet wound.

    At Spoonshot, we believe that exploration is the catalyst for novel and successful food innovation, the very fuel to help you shape the future, to set the trend. We examine the root cause, start at the very beginning, and build from first principles. We adopt the mindset of our inner inquisitive child, always learning, never biased, always curious, never fearful. We believe that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. #bethetrendsetter

    That’s ‘Spoonshot thinking’.

    You can find out more about our thoughts and research on our YouTube channel.

  • ByteDance’s Success Story—World’s Most Valued Startup

    A survey carried out by TCS in 2011-2012 revealed that the younger generation in India prefers smartphones over television when it comes to entertainment. Not just India, around the world, today more and more people are turning to their smartphones for entertainment, information, and more, and one company that is making the most of this trend is ‘ByteDance’. Founded in the year 2012, this technology company has developed many platforms for information, education, inspiration, and more, and these platforms are being loved and used by people from all around the world. One of the most popular platforms developed by ByteDance being TikTok, which has over 800 million active users worldwide as of 2019.

    In the current scenario, owing to the growing tension between China and many countries in the world, made-in-China products including apps are being boycotted by many countries like the USA, UK, Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, and India. Though the growing hate for China has led to ByteDance losing many users, but from the startup point of view, ByteDance no doubt has done a commendable job, as it rose to be the ‘World’s most valuable startup’, just within 8 years of its inception. This article is a compilation of some important and fascinating facts and figures about ByteDance that you will love to know.

    COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS

    Startup Name ByteDance
    Headquarter Beijing, China
    Founder Zhang Yiming
    Founded 9th March 2012
    Industry Internet
    Parent Organization ByteDance Ltd.
    Website bytedance.com

    ByteDance—About
    ByteDance—Founder & Team
    ByteDance—Acquisitions
    ByteDance—Funding & Investors
    ByteDance—Competitors
    ByteDance—Growth
    ByteDance—Future Plans
    FAQ’s
    Conclusion

    ByteDance—About

    ByteDance Logo

    Based in Beijing China, ByteDance is a multinational internet technology company, and it has developed many popular mobile-first products. Some of the popular products of ByteDance’s include –

    • Douyin is similar to Tiktok and is available in China. Douyin lets its users create short-form mobile videos.
    • Toutiao or Jinri Toutiao, ( meaning today’s headlines) is one of the most popular content discovery apps of China. The company’s algorithm is designed to serve customized content to its users.
    • Tiktok – Similar to Douyin that operates in China, Tiktok is a platform that operates outside China. Tiktok lets its users create various interesting short lip-sync, dance, comedy, and other videos
    • Xigua – Earlier known as Toutiao video, Xigua video is an app through which users can discover, enjoy and share short as well as long-form videos.
    • Helo – Developed especially for India, the Helo app curates content in 15 Indian regional languages and provides customized content to each user.
    • Lark – Collaboration and communication platform Lark make work easy for a remote team through various features like messenger, video conferencing, cloud storage, calendar, and online docs and sheets.

    Besides these, there are several other platforms by ByteDance like, BaBe, which is Indonesia’s leading news and content app, Gogokid –  an English learning platform for kids, and Vigo Video – a video-making app. However, as per recent reports (June 2020), ByteDance is set to shut down Vigo Video in India.

    ByteDance—Founder & Team

    Zhang Yiming | Founder, Chairman, and CEO of ByteDance

    Founder, Chairman, and CEO of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming is an entrepreneur and philanthropist. A Chinese national, Zhang Yiming, presently is 37 years old. He completed his graduation (software engineering) from Nankai University in Tianjin. Yiming’s personal wealth is estimated at $13 billion, which makes him the 9th richest man in China.

    In the year 2006, Yimimg became the fifth employee and first engineer at the travel website Kuxun. Later he became the technical director at Kuxun. In 2008, Yiming joined Microsoft, however found it tough to cope up with the company rules of Microsoft which made him leave Microsoft to join Fanfou (Twitter clone in China). In 2009, Fanfou was shut down owing to certain controversies, and that very year, Yiming started his very first startup 99fang.com, which is a real estate search portal. Meanwhile, smartphones began to take over and more and more people started using smartphones, and Yiming could very well see the opportunity underlying it, which made him leave 99fang.com to start ByteDance in 2012.

    Currently, ByteDance has over 60,000 employees in 126 cities.

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    ByteDance—Acquisitions

    ByteDance has acquired several companies to date –

    • In 2017, ByteDance acquired ‘Flipgram’. Flipagram, Inc. is a place where cropping and editing of videos are made simple along with making a video, adding music to that, and making it a film.
    • In November 2017, the global news app News Republic got acquired by ByteDance.
    • Musical.ly, (a lip-sync video making and sharing platform) is another major acquisition made by ByteDance in 2017. In 2018, ByteDance merged Musical.ly with TikTok.
    • In 2019, ByteDance acquired big data firm Terark.
    • Baike.com, China’s local online encyclopedia was also acquired by ByteDance in 2019.
    • In 2019 itself,  ByteDance acquired Shanghai based mobile game developer, Mokun Technology
    • In January 2020, ByteDance acquired LevelupAI, An AI startup that provides AI solutions for Video Game Industry.
    • Baikemy.com, is the latest acquisition by ByteDance. Acquired in May 2020, Baikemy.com is one of China’s largest medical information portals.

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    ByteDance—Funding & Investors

    ByteDance has raised funding worth over $ 7.4 billion to date. Below are the details of the funding raised by ByteDance so far –  

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    January, 2012 Series A $5 Million SIG China
    January, 2013 Series B Undiclosed Yuri Milner
    June, 2014 Series C $100 Million Sequoia Capital China, Source Code Capital, Weibo
    April, 2017 Series D $1 Billion K3 Ventures, CCB International, Altimeter Capital, Sequoia Capital China, Qiming Venture Partners
    August, 2017 Private Equity Round $2 Billion General Atlantic
    October, 2018 Series E $3 Billion General Atlantic, SoftBank,Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Primavera Capital Group
    April, 2019 Debt Financing $1.3 Billion Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley
    August, 2019 Funding round – GGV Capital
    March, 2020 Seconadary Market – Tiger Global Management

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    ByteDance—Competitors

    In China, major Competitors of ByteDance are Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.

    ByteDance took a larger piece of the digital advertising market than fellow Chinese companies like Tencent and Baidu during the first half of 2019. ByteDance has overtaken Baidu to become the second-largest performer in China. ByteDance took 23% of all digital media to spend in the first half of the year 2019, which is equivalent to $7 billion.

    Globally, ByteDance is competing with giants like Facebook, Google, and Snapchat.

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    ByteDance—Growth

    Many platforms developed by ByteDance have received wide popularity. As estimated by mobile app analytics platform Apptopia, one of ByteDance’s top popular products TikTok’s revenue raised by 310% to over $50 million in the last quarter of 2019.

    ByteDance’s revenue increased to $ 17 billion in 2019, from $7.4 billion in 2018. Again ByteDance’s profit for 2019, is reported to be $3 Billion.

    Talking about valuation, ByteDance is reportedly worth over US$100 billion as of May 2020 based on recent prices for the Chinese company’s shares on secondary markets, according to the Financial Times. Thus now ByteDance is valued over one-third higher than that in November 2018, when it was valued at around $ 75-$78 billion. The company is no doubt growing into a potent online force.

    ByteDance—Future Plans

    Amidst the coronavirus crisis, while many companies are busy cutting down their workforce, ByteDance in April 2020, announced that it is hiring staff to fill 10,000 vacant posts in different domains. In 2020, ByteDance is planning to hire 40,000 employees, in a bid to match Alibaba’s headcount. Besides, ByteDance is looking forward to strengthening its position in areas such as e-commerce and gaming. The company is also expected to go public soon.

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    FAQ’s

    What does ByteDance mean?

    ByteDance is the developer of the video-sharing social networking services and apps TikTok and Douyin, the Chinese-specific counterpart to TikTok.

    Who is TikTok owned by?

    A US trading firm reportedly owns 15% of TikTok-owner ByteDance, a stake potentially worth more than $15 billion. US trading firm Susquehanna reportedly owns 15% of TikTok-owner ByteDance, a stake that is potentially worth more than $15 billion.

    Is ByteDance a good company to work for?

    Even though the recent layoff, it’s very much satisfying to do a job here. Work culture, management, policies are excellent and I wanna go along with my ByteDance family for many more years.

    Is TikTok owned by Chinese government?

    TikTok is owned by the Chinese technology giant ByteDance. And while TikTok has taken steps to distance itself from its Beijing parent company, both the Trump administration and some Republicans and Democrats in Congress fear the Chinese Communist Party could use TikTok as a tool to spy on Americans.

    How does ByteDance make money?

    One obvious way TikTok makes money is by running ads. In June of 2020, the popular video-sharing app launched TikTok for Business as a way for brands to run their own ads within the app. There are several types of TikTok ads, including In-Feed ads, Brand Takeovers, and Branded Hashtag Challenges.

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    Conclusion

    ByteDance is a global tech company which is headquartered at Beijing, China. The company is operating on a range of platforms allowing people to connect across languages, cultures and geographies to create, discover and connect. The company has products mostly in social media applications. The company has a portfolio of applications available in over 150 markets and 75 languages, which includes TikTok, Helo, Douyin, Resso, Lark, Toutiao, and BaBe.

    Are you looking to work for ByteDance? They’re looking for creative, bold people who embrace ownership and are driven to make a positive impact on the world. If you’re excited to collaborate with diverse global teams and lead fast-paced initiatives that make a difference from day one, work with us and challenge yourself to move the world!

  • WinMagic Toys – Energizing Childhood with Wonderful Toys!

    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 the organization it is based on.

    India has traditionally been a risk-averse market, and most toy distributors focused on traditional categories like dolls, vehicles, and guns. Then came WinMagic Toys, which was launched by Mukesh Jagwani and the senior management team in 2017, which disrupted in the toy industry by launching new trendy categories and global brands into the market.

    Read this article to know about the success story of WinMagic Toys, founder, growth, vision, mission, and funding.

    WinMagic Toys – Company Highlights

    Startup Name WinMagic Toys
    Headquarter Mumbai, India
    Sector Toys & Games
    Founder Mukesh Jagwani
    Founded 2017
    Parent Organization WinMagic toys pvt ltd
    Website winmagictoys.com
    Contact Sayali.gaidhani@winmagictoys.com

    WinMagic Toys – Vision and Mission
    WinMagic Toys – About and How it Works
    WinMagic Toys – Products/Services
    WinMagic Toys – Target Market Size
    Founders of WinMagic Toys and team
    WinMagic Toys – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    WinMagic Toys – Startup Launch
    WinMagic Toys – Marketing Approach
    WinMagic Toys – Business Model and Revenue Model
    WinMagic Toys – Startup Challenges
    WinMagic Toys – Growth
    WinMagic Toys – Future Plans

    WinMagic Toys – Vision and Mission

    WinMagic Toys is a company that creates and distributes world-class marketable & unique products that bring happiness for kids and fulfillment for parents.

    They aims to be the ‘go-to’ company that makes it easy for all the international brands desirous of entering India in the kids & games space! WinMagic Toys acts as a catalyst that ongoingly transforms the industry and promotes the cause of India at international platforms.

    For the customers, it is a marketing-oriented company that always creates new and innovative categories at retail, provides a significant product or price differentiation, and drives strong communication campaigns to create consumer demand and affect shopper conversions at retail.

    For the employees, it is a company that empowers them to create the future they dream of, for themselves and their families, which makes them spring into action every day.

    WinMagic Toys is a company that delivers a veritable portfolio in its space, that touches consumers from birth to their full lifecycle. They sees their final play to be a company with two separate and equally thriving divisions, third party distribution and owned portfolio marketed globally, with a host of owned brands, being made in India!

    WinMagic Toys – About and How it Works

    WinMagic Toys creates and spreads happiness, pride, and oneness amongst kids and families! A full portfolio-kids’ product creation, manufacturing, marketing & distribution company, that touches consumers from birth & remains a companion for life, through its product offerings.

    The company dominates the pre-school retail aisle with Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, and Peppa Pig toy lines that are the top 3 licensed content and toy properties globally as well as in India. Similarly, this fastest-growing toy company of India has also transformed the girls’ aisle with brands like L.O.L Surprise! Dolls, Hatchimals, and Shopkins.

    WinMagic Toys Products
    Products

    To ensure product quality, the company only works with global brands that are already supplying to the US and Europe. Their products comply with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), European Standard EN 71, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and other independent standards likes Facility and Merchandise Authorization (FAMA) certification by The Walt Disney Company.

    Recently, the government of India conducted a survey where 66% of imported toys failed to comply with quality standards – these are all unbranded toys. WinMagic Laboratories have claimed that not even a single toy that it has offered into the country has ever failed a test.

    WinMagic Toys – Products/Services

    Fisher-Price and Thomas were given a run for their money, with WinMagic Toys distributing Spin Master’s – Paw Patrol, which is today the number 1 preschool licensed toy property at retail. Paw Patrol is a TV series that runs on Nick Junior, a content co-owned by Viacom and Canada’s Spin Master Entertainment (SME).

    Paw Patrol Toys - WinMagic
    Paw Patrol Toys – WinMagic

    Spin Master Toys, a top 5 listed toy company globally, and a sister concern of SME owns the global rights to Paw Patrol toys. Through its distribution partnership with Spin Master, WinMagic Toys brought into the country many trendy toy lines, like Hatchimals for example – that became toy retailer Hamleys’ number 1 selling toy when it was launched in 2016, while the inventory lasted.

    Hatchimals - WinMagic
    Hatchimals – WinMagic

    Hatchimals is an egg-shaped tech toy, that has a unique hatching feature, where with a kid’s love & care an electronic pet hatches itself out of an egg and there are various play possibilities at pre-hatching, during-hatching, and post-hatching stages. Hatchimals has since then developed into a veritable array of collectible and tech toys that have become one of the best-selling toy ranges in the girls’ aisle.

    Through its partnership with Spin Master, the company is set to launch toy lines like Bakugan, a massive hit from a decade ago that is being relaunched by Spin Master globally, Batman & DC action figure lines based on the popular entertainment franchises and Monster Jam Monster vehicles lines based on World’s Number 1 Monster Truck racing show.

    The company has created the category of girls collectibles in India literally from scratch. Shopkins, from Moose Toys of Australia, was its entry into the girl’s collectibles aisle which took the industry by pleasant surprise in 2015 and kickstarted the trend of girls collectibles in India, like in global markets a few years ago. Along with Hatchimals, L.O.L, Hairdorables from Just Play, Bananas, and Twisty Petz apart from others, WinMagic Toys has been leading in the girl’s collectibles category in the Indian toy industry.

    WinMagic Toys – Target Market Size

    With 26% of the population under the age of 15 years, it’s no surprise that the Indian toy industry is accelerating. Valued at USD 1.5 Billion in 2018, registering a CAGR of 15.9% during the year 2011-2018. According to market research firm IMARC, the market is further estimated to cross USD 3.3 Billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 13.3% during 2019-2024.

    The estimated Rs 2-lakh-crore global toy market is dominated by China (from a manufacturing point of view, America is the biggest from a consumption point of view), which sells close to Rs 1.4 lakh crore worth of products annually. In India, the toy market is dominated by unbranded Chinese products with 90% of the market being unorganized.

    In a post COVID scenario, toys & games, and in general kids play assumes even more relevance with kids and parents staying more at home.

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    Founders of WinMagic Toys and team

    Mukesh Jagwani is the founder of WinMagic Toys.

    Mukesh Jagwani - WinMagic Founder
    Mukesh Jagwani – WinMagic Founder

    Mukesh has over two decades of practice including leadership roles in setting up multinationals in India to leading start-ups to profitability and turnover goals. He is a complete believer in empowering people to be the best they can be, unconditionally, and, in keeping commitments ruthlessly!

    The management team comprises of:

    • Heena Natu – National Sales Manager (Key Accounts & Exports) with over 13 years of experience in modern trade (retail chains) account management, ex Mattel, Ex Pepe Jeans.
    • Shailesh Kumar – National Sales Manager – General Trade with over 18 years of experience in general trade distribution, Ex Funskool, Ex Nuby.
    • Surabhi Mathur – Marketing Manager (INDIA & SAARC) with over 10 years of experience in Marketing communications – ex EURO RSCG, EX Times of India, Ex Business Standard.
    • Sandeep Nirban – Finance Manager. Chartered Accountant, MBF with over 7 years of experience, Ex Reliance, CIPLA.

    Heena, Shailesh, and Surabhi are part of the founding team along with Mukesh.

    The current company size of WinMagic Toys is around 50 employees. The recruiting team is very selective about hiring talent. They always look for character and not personality. Since the team firmly believes that character is in-built and personality is what you acquire and get trained in.

    To elaborate, they look for qualities like energy, enthusiasm, willingness & intent to take responsibility for not only their job description but also have a natural intent to help & support others, humility, integrity, and authenticity. In addition to character traits, they work on training people on maturity and ability to get things done through a work environment that is straightforward and holds people to account.

    They focus a lot on training people for their development and growth – not just for business but overall holistic growth of an individual and the team looks at life as one. Not a split between work and life. When people grow, they bring all about growth to be it at home or work.

    Winners with the magic of play made WinMagic Toys!

    WinMagic Logo

    WinMagic Toys – Startup Launch

    WinMagic Toys are known for their freshness and new ways to play at retail. Since its inception, India has seen some of the categories that never existed in the country in the toys and games aisle before. It created Collectables as a category with iconic brands like Shopkins. They launched all globally successful brands including – LOL Surprise! Dolls, Hatchimals Colleggtibles, Hairdorables, Soft n Slo – squishable, etc.

    WinMagic Toys always offers brands and play patterns that are trending globally. They are dominating the retail aisles with the latest DIY trends. For the girls, the categories were limited to dolls and a few accessories, however, the company has brought all these different categories into the country.

    Preschool aisles were dominated traditionally by brands like Thomas or Fisher-Price which are owned by legacy players like Mattel, who has been in the country for 30 years. And nothing changed for the past 30 years, companies were averse to getting anything new to India. But, WinMagic Toys decided to change that and offered consumers products that have been trending globally and created that access for Indian consumers to world-class toys.

    It launched the 3 biggest Preschool properties in India- Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, and PJ Masks, which are the dominating brands at retail as well as on TV as content. From a retailer point of view, they always bring in a portfolio that is unique or differentiated from a price perspective.

    The success of the WinMagic model can be attributed to three major factors that are key to their way of working:

    • Firstly innovative, on-the-trend, and unique feature-driven products and a category domination approach.

    “We do not mind cannibalizing ourselves at the aisle, as, if we do not, then we are leaving ourselves open for a competitor to do that. We grow by increasing our category share even if we may have brands that compete within a category. Like Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig and P.J Masks, or the many collectible brands in the girls’ aisle.”, explained Mukesh.

    • The second factor is retail visibility & break-through marketing that enables their products to stand out at retail and have a strong recall amongst the kid fans.

    “For example, at Toys “R” Us, we have 26 dedicated brand spaces and at Hamleys all our brands are present with key brands like Paw Patrol and Hatchimals occupying dedicated spaces. This approach has enabled us to be a top 3 vendor at all the retail points including an over 20% share of the shelf at top mom & pop retail outlets in the country.”, said Mukesh Jagwani, founder of WinMagic Toys.

    • Finally, the company’s industry and functional expert teams apply the right load of energy, ownership, and meticulousness from product selection to business operations at all levels.

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    WinMagic Toys – Marketing Approach

    They are a marketing-oriented company and their marketing team does not follow the box-in-box-out approach. They believe in launching unique marketable concepts and back them up with 360-degree marketing efforts. WinMagic Toys’ social media campaigns are appreciated by retailers and the team is the trailblazer on the digital front in the industry.

    Some of the key marketing tie-ups of the company include:

    • Youtube Sensation and a famous toy reviewer – My Miss Anand
    • Hatchimals video that was viewed 4.2M times –
    Hatchimals video
    • Wrapples Dance challenge with 3.8M Views –
    Wrapples Dance challenge
    • WinMagic Toys has also partnered with Child actor Myra Singh, from Kulfi Kumar Bajewala.
    • Wrapples Dance Challenge
    • WinMagic Toys’ Social Media Handles

    WinMagic Toys – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Revenue Generation Model – WinMagic Toys directly sells to retail chains, and resellers on Amazon, Flipkart. It also sells to sister concerns of Amazon, Flipkart, etc. Being a foreign-funded company, they cannot do multi-brand retail. In the General trade sector, it supplies to the sub-distributors who then in turn supply to mom and pop stores. The company caters to 3000+ stores. It works on a Firm sale Model.

    “We cater to an upmarket target group and follow a consumer-centric ‘perceived-value’ pricing model. We always strive to position our products well within the perceptual price elasticity that our consumers are willing to accept, happily. To achieve that we follow a line pricing financial model, and always work with suppliers who understand the Indian consumers’ price sensitivity and are willing to move most favorably on unit costing.”, added Mukesh Jagwani, owner of WinMagic toys.

    This ensures that they can make the right pricing available to the consumer. For a target group looking at a lower price band, they have their private labels and they plan to aggressively expand this business. WinMagic Toys provides a price point of as low as Rs 50 to as high as Rs 15,000.

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    WinMagic Toys – Startup Challenges

    The challenges that WinMagic Toys faced were – Duplicates, unorganized nature of trade, government regulations, experiments: cash & carry model, launching collectible toys, new/trending brands like Paw Patrol, Hatchimals – even though expensive, PJ Masks, and branding the generic category like bubbles.

    In India, the toy market is dominated by unbranded Chinese products with 90% of the market being unorganized. These Chinese toys do not comply with the channel, quality or safety norms and thus turn out to be much cheaper for the Indian consumer, whose purchase decision is heavily influenced by price. It’s not uncommon to see small mom and pop stores selling Chinese replicas of the Disney/Marvel or DC line of toys due to their ever-increasing demand.

    However, making licensed, high-quality international brands available in India continues to be a challenge due to tough import norms and the recent increase in import duty. As a result, small businesses, who wish to legitimately license and sell these products suffer, while low quality, low-cost Chinese toys continue to flood the market.

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    WinMagic Toys – Growth

    With a veritable portfolio of world-class brands of toys, games & kids merchandise, WinMagic Toys has a presence across all the major toy retail chains namely Hamleys, Toys “R” Us, Landmark Stores, Shoppers Stop, Crossword, Hyper City, Lulu along with 3,000 Mom & Pop stores and over 20,000 outlets for mass products through wholesalers.

    The company has also partnered with all major online channels including Amazon, Flipkart, Firstcry, Hopscotch, etc. With legendary brands in the portfolio like – Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, Hatchimals, Shopkins, etc., WinMagic Toys is the No.1 third party distributor in India in the toy specialty channel.

    In under 3 years, the company has grown its portfolio to 40 plus brands and plays in 84% of addressable toys & games categories at retail. The year 2020 is the year of boys, with the likes of Batman, DC, Monster Jam and Bakugan from Spin Master slated to launch in the next few months, and brands like Infinity Nado, that was recently acquired & re-launched, and Treasure X the boys collectible brand launched in the first half of 2019, going steady at retail.

    WinMagic Toys today are India’s largest independent distributor in the toy specialty channel, competing with a few of the legacy players, like Mattel, Hasbro, and Funskool who have had their presence in India for more than 30 years. In 2019, they sold more than 100 crores worth of toys from retail, which marks the fastest growth by any player in the industry over the years!

    Some of the suppliers of WinMagic Toys are Spinmaster – World leader in innovative toys, Just Play – A manufacturer known for its high-class plush toys, and Moose Toys – A company that created a revolution in the collectible’s category. Some of the customers are Hamleys, Toys “R” Us, Crossword, Amazon, Flipkart, and Firstcry.

    WinMagic Toys – Future Plans

    WinMagic Toys has plans to constantly innovate & upgrade their portfolio. They will be soon adding world-class toys like Batman & DC action figures, Bakugan, Monster Jam vehicles, and its own unique private labels in categories like Games and Puzzles, Sports Goods, & Impulse Play.

    The top 3 ranked vendor, with retailers like Hamleys & Toys “R” Us, WinMagic Toys has always been ahead of the curve. Having already crossed Rs. 60 crores in revenue in 2019, the company is sure to cross Rs. 100 crores by FY 2020. Marching forward, WinMagic Toys aims to go for listing besides generating a turnover of over Rs. 500 crores in the next five years.

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  • The Economic Outcomes of the Suez Canal crisis

    The recent news about the blockage of the Suez Canal has gained a lot of popularity on social media. The pictures of the blockage have been widely spread in the online world as memes. But the economic outcomes of the blockage of Suez canal are severe.

    Let’s look at the Economic Outcomes of the Suez Canal crisis

    What happened at Suez canal
    Economic outcome of the Suez Canal crisis
    Loss due to the Suez Canal crisis
    Effect on Crude oil prices
    Other consequences due to the Suez Canal crisis
    FAQ

    What happened at Suez canal

    A giant cargo ship which is 400 meter in length has blocked the Suez Canal. The Canal has been blocked by the ship for the past few days. The ship which is operated by the Taiwanese transport company evergreen marine is one of the world’s largest biggest container vessels.

    The ship weighs 200,000 tones and has a maximum capacity of 20,000 containers. It is said that the ship had lost control after it entered the narrow passage of the Suez Canal from the Red Sea. The salvage company which is trying to refloat the ship has said that it might take weeks for them to complete the task.

    Peter Berdowski who is the CEO of Dutch company Boskalis who is also one of the rescue teams trying to free the ship has said that depending on the situation, they can’t exclude that it might take weeks.

    Economic outcome of the Suez Canal crisis

    The ship has stopped 12% of the world’s seaborne trade and has already cost losses of billions. Almost 50 percent of the container ships pass through the Canal on a daily basis and around 30% of the global container traffic passes through it.
    The current situation is expected to cause a great damage to the global trade. It is expected that the prices of all essential commodities will increase.

    Suez Canal Crisis
    Suez Canal Crisis

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    Loss due to the Suez Canal crisis

    The experts fear that the blockage has led to severe effect on the economy and the global trade. The blockage is costing around 400 million (around INR 2.8k crores) per hour, as ships are asked to take a longer route to reach their destinations.

    Experts have said that this is the worst ship blockage ever witnessed. It is said that many cargo ships which have been diverted would take another 5-6 days to reach their destination.

    Effect on Crude oil prices

    It is said that more than 200 containers carry crude oils through the Canal on a daily basis. Experts have also told that the major hit would be for the small tankers and the crude oil exports from Europe to Asia.

    The director of Asia oil at FGE Sri Paravaikkarasu has said that around 20% of Asia’s Naphtha which is crude oil is supplied through the Suez Canal. He said that re-routing of the ships would add more amount of fuel consumption for the ships that is around 800 tones and increase its operating expenses.

    The shortage in the availability of the crude oil will lead to a jump in the crude oil prices. It is said that the crude oil prices have already increased due to the fear of the crude oil Suez Canal blockage in the past few days.

    Data from Refinitiv has suggested that around 30 oil tankers have been waiting at both the sides of the Suez Canal. David Fyfe who is a chief economist at Argus Media which is a market research firm said that around 5-10 percent of the global shipments passing through the Suez Canal are crude oil, refined oil, and liquefied natural gas shipments.

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    Other consequences due to the Suez Canal crisis

    Lars Jensen who is an independent container shipping expert based in Denmark has said that basically anything you see in the stores would be in shortage because of the blockage in the Suez Canal.

    This includes everything from toilet papers, coffee, furniture, clothes, shoes, exercise equipment to car parts, carpets, and electronics. The blockage has also delayed e-commerce product deliveries which even include food.

    Ian woods who is a marine cargo lawyer and partner at the London-based firm Clyde and Co. has said that, there are commodities worth millions of dollars on other ships waiting for the blockage to be cleared.

    If the blockage is not cleared quickly then they would consider taking longer routes which will increase the operational charges and these extra charges will be carried down to the consumers.

    It is said that eventually the consumers will have to pay the price and this blockage would have a deep impact on the end consumers. The exact amount and the exact effect of the blockage are not yet analyzed but the more it delays the consequences will increase.

    Each day of delay will add more billions of dollars of losses towards the global trade and the economy.

    FAQ

    What country owns the Suez Canal?

    The Suez Canal is operated and owned by Egypt.

    What country built the Suez Canal?

    In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a canal 100 miles across the Suez.

    Why did Great Britain want to control the Suez Canal?

    Great Britain wanted to control the Suez canal, because it allowed them quicker access to its colonies in Asia and Africa.

    When did Britain buy the Suez Canal?

    In 1875 Britain bought Suez Canal from the Egyptians in £4million worth of shares.

    Conclusion

    However, Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority is looking forward to cooperating with the United States in efforts to refloat the container ship which has blocked the Suez Canal for the past few days. According to Arab News, the Canal revenue for Egypt was $5.6 billion in 2020.

  • Ankur Jain: Founder—Bira 91 & B9 Beverages Pvt. Ltd.

    Ankur Jain is an Indian entrepreneur who founded Bira 91, an Indian Multinational craft beer brand. He is the CEO and Founder of B9 Beverages Private Limited. The parent company B9 Beverages manufactures the beer Bira 91. He launched his beer venture in 2015 and it eventually grew and executed exceptional results from 2017.

    Ankur Jain- Biography

    Name Ankur Jain
    Born 1981
    Born Place Delhi
    Age 39 (2020)
    Nationality Indian
    Education Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
    Profession Entrepreneur
    Known For Founder, Bira 91
    Net Worth Rs.160 Crores
    Father Architect
    Mother Author, Interior Designer
    Marital Status Married

    Ankur Jain- Personal Life
    Ankur Jain- Education
    Ankur Jain- Professional Life
    Ankur Jain- Success Story
    Ankur Jain- B9 Beverages
    Ankur Jain- Bira 91
    Bira 91 – Name & Logo
    Bira 91 – Funding
    FAQ’s
    Conclusion

    Ankur Jain- Personal Life

    Ankur was born in 1981 in Delhi. He moved to United States in 1998. His father is an urban planner Architect and his mother is an Author as well as an Interior Designer. He went abroad for his education. He is married and expecting a baby post lockdown.

    Ankur Jain, Founder Bira 91

    Ankur Jain- Education

    Ankur completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Illinios Institute of Technology, Chicago in 2002. He worked with Motorola for a short while. He then started his first venture in Healthcare Revenue Management in New York.

    Ankur Jain- Professional Life

    After completing his studies in 2002, Ankur continued with his entrepreneurial journey for four consecutive years in US. He then returned to India after selling the New York health-care start up to an undisclosed healthcare provider network. The Healthcare Revenue Management got a new owner and Ankur got good returns. In 2007, he got a job at Reliance Industries but left it post a year. He further decided to start his own venture as a beerpreneur. He has a great taste in beers. He accorded that he wants to taste each and every beer of the world.

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    Ankur Jain- Success Story

    When Ankur acceded to his father that he wanted to become a beerpreneur, his father didn’t spoke to him for around four years. Though his beer brand Bira 91 was launched in 2015 via B9 Beverages, but his journey of becoming a beerpreneur started when he returned to India in 2007.

    In 2008, Ankur started his own venture by importing 20-30 types of beer, which did not exist in India. His engagement in the beer import aided him to learn the taste of the youths. He started discerning the fact that the youth generally preferred lighter flavors and wheat beers. He was well acquainted with the correct point price that made Indian customers delighted to shell. Ankur was thus ready to establish his own beer brand with brilliant efficacy.

    It has been a tough journey for Ankur to escort investors and make them believe in his business plan of international expansion. Today, his venture is one of the fastest growing craft beer brands out of India.

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    Ankur Jain- B9 Beverages

    Bira 91 & B9 Beverages

    B9 Beverages Private Limited manufactures alcoholic beverages. The company offers varied flavors of beer. The company serves the customers across United States and India. B9 Beverages owns and sells craft beer brand Bira 91. It is headquartered in New Delhi, India.

    Ankur serves as the CEO of the B9 Beverages. He founded the company in 2015. The company has raised $20 million in bridge financing from investors – India’s Sequoia Capital and Belgium’s Sofina.

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    Ankur Jain- Bira 91

    Bira 91 is a beer brand manufactured by B9 Beverages Pvt. Ltd., launched in 2015. The company distill beers with ingredients imported from France, Belgium, Himalayas, and Bavarian Farmes. This is how the beer is brought in India with the essence of ingredients circumscribing different parts of the globe.

    In 2019, the company developed two new breweries in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The company is expanding locally as well as internationally to bid a quadruple production capacity. Currently, it operates four breweries in India and has a presence in 400 cities across 10 nations.

    It has been anticipated that Bira 91 may achieve a $502 billion mark by 2025. The market is expected to grow owing to the heavy demand of craft beers. The company counts more than 5% share in overall beer market and more than 20% in premium beer.

    Bira 91 Logo

    Bira 91 derived its name from Punjabi word Bira which literally means elder brother. Bira also signifies the brave one in Bengali. While, 91 represents India’s country code, connoting the brand’s roots. The reverse B in the logo signifies a spirit of nonchalant. The monkey mascot represents the urban millennial as the key consumer of Bira 91. Moreover, it manifests the idea of presenting the brand with a playful identity. Bira 91 has also launched its T-shirts, bags, growlers, ice-bucket and beer mugs.

    Bira 91 – Funding

    Initially, B9 Beverages received an investment of worth $6 million from Sequoia capital India in 2016. Ankur raised $1.5 million from the first investment. It was the very first investment of Sequoia Capital in the Alcohol Beverage segment. Some of the Angel investors of India also invested for the firm.

    In 2018, the company has received a funding of  $50 million by Sofina, a Belgium investment firm. This investment helped the company to grow with $100 million funding. In 2019, Sixth Sense Ventures invested for the firm of worth $4.3 million.

    The apt investments succored support and encouragement and the company eventually expanded to more markets in the United States and Southeast Asia. The funding will also help Bira 91 to leave a footprint on the global market of beer business.

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    FAQ’s

    What does 91 mean in Bira 91?

    The name Bira does not stand for anything literally, however, colloquially it is how a Punjabi would call his brother, and 91 represents India’s Country Code. The reverse B in the logo represents a spirit of irreverence.

    Is Bira Beer good for health?

    Bira 91, recently launched one of the first low-calorie beers to be introduced in the Indian market (90 calories for a 330 ml bottle). According to Jain, said, “Bira 91 Light is the lowest calorie option for any alcoholic beverage in the bar.

    Which Bira is best?

    Bira White is a favorite among the most vehement opposers of beer. It’s a delicious wheat beer that contains a hint of spicy citrus with a soft finish, ideal for the non-beer-drinkers.

    Why is Bira so famous?

    With the Belgians being world-renowned for their brewing expertise, Bira 91’s two initial beers were quickly a hit in India. So much so that Bira 91 couldn’t import the bottles quickly enough, and in 2016 it started making the beers at a facility in the central Indian city of Indore.

    Why is it called Bira 91?

    Originally named after the Punjabi word for brother, Bira, the 91 is derived from the country code you dial for India. Ankur Jain, founder-CEO, describes the beer as “smart and fun at the same time, but not pretentiously so.” ‘Can’t be a Delhi-ite,’ I think, as he says it, though the brand debuted in Hauz Khas Village.

    Conclusion

    “I am a very big beer drinker and work and play is all the same for me. To bust stress I like to go on a weekend trip, and also like cooking vegetarian fare,”  says Ankur Jain.

    Ankur Jain wants to be more proactive to make the Bira 91 premium brand in the Indian market. Bira 91, a whole new beer world, full of flavours, has been discovered and the beer is going to rule the world. The name Bira does not stand for anything literally, however colloquially it is how a Punjabi would call his brother and 91 represents India’s Country Code. The reverse B in the logo represents a spirit of irreverence.

  • Abhinay Choudhari: Simplified Grocery Shopping Through BigBasket

    The Indian startup ecosystem is well known for its versatility, thereby home to some of the best companies in the world across industries. Starting from OLA, which ruled the transportation sector, Zomato which ensures that you don’t work with an empty tummy, to OYO, which provides affordable hotels for tourists and travelers, there’s no dearth of market leaders. One such unique venture is BigBasket. This startup provides home delivery services for grocery items and is a major name in the circuit.

    The grocery retail market in India is growing at around 20% CAGR. E-grocery accounts for only 0.1% of this share. As per statistical data, the online grocery market is expected to be around $10 billion in the coming time. Thus, bigbasket.com has its hands in a pie with a bright future. Abhinay Choudhari was able to build an empire through bigbasket.com; let’s find out how.

    Bigbasket’s—CoFounder
    Bigbasket’s—Success
    Bigbasket’s—Path To Success
    Bigbasket’s—CoFounder’s Guidance
    FAQ’s
    Conclusion

    Bigbasket’s—CoFounder

    The dot com bubble burst was a deciding factor behind the fortune of many big organizations that are wildly influential today. But, it was far from a smooth journey for these companies. The founders of the big basket, including Abhinay Choudhari, had a similar experience. They decided to use the lessons learned from the dot com bust and create a website that could firmly face obstacles of any kind. The five founders of BigBasket initially created a website named Fabmart.com in 1999. This was supposedly India’s first e-commerce store. However, the team realized that not only India but even the rest of the world wasn’t ready for this kind of online store.

    Within a short period, Fabmart merged with a brick-and-mortar chain and by 2006, the founders of Fabmart sold the company. The turning point for the FabMart founders came in 2011. They wanted to try their hand at something new, an out-of-the-box offering. The result was bigbasket.com.

    Bigbasket’s—Success

    Bigbasket is one of the leading online grocers in India today. The company offers same-day delivery across cities with 99.3% on-time delivery, 99.5% order fill rate, and no questions asked on customer return policy. These parameters have highly contributed to BigBasket’s success. BigBasket has also implemented new options like fresh-cut fruits and vegetables and a range of recipe mixtures. A bakery has been launched in Bangalore that delivers bread on order. The company has both iOS and Android apps to allow customers to order groceries any time, any place. There are unique features like “Smart Basket”, a prediction engine about what a customer needs more often.

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    Bigbasket’s—Path To Success

    Abhinay received a first-round investment of nearly 10 million USD from Ascent Capital. This funding was used to expand BigBasket’s reach in the market. For many startups in India, the biggest issue is sustaining their business model in this country of diversity and differences. After researching for over nearly 5 years, Abhinay and his team realized the best way to make their presence felt was by providing personalized service to people across Indian cities.

    BigBasket has taken into consideration the eating habits in different Indian locations; this is a major reason behind people being loyal to BigBasket. The company increased the availability of leafy greens in Mumbai and the supply of a special kind of rice in Bangalore. BigBasket ensures no compromise on the quality of its products. To improve customer experience, the BigBasket team ensured near-time-perfect delivery services for their customers.

    Albinder Dhindsa: CEO And Co-Founder Of Grofers
    Albinder Dhindsa is the CEO & Co-Founder of Grofers, an online delivery facilityfor everyday needs such as grocery, bakery items, flowers, fruits, andvegetables. Apart from these, Grofers also provides delivery services for babycare products. Unlike most businessmen/businesswomen, Dhindsa had no …
    StartupTalkyPiyush Mishra

    Bigbasket’s—CoFounder’s Guidance

    While the company has grown into one of the biggest Indian brands, BigBasket still faces intense competition from local startups like LocalBanya, PepperTap, and Grofers. The company was facing heat from many rivals and hence, it was time for Abhinay to gather his team and plan new strategies for BigBasket. The aim was to race ahead of everyone. BigBasket grew its presence in 25 cities with a combination of 150 million customers and considering the expansion, Abhinay decided it was time to bring in a partner. The team aligned with Alibaba which boosted the company’s image over the next two years.

    JioMart VS BigBasket: Top Contenders Of Online Grocery Market
    In the year 2019, Reliance Industries launched their own online groceriesordering website called JioMart, this was meant to be an alternative for theother grocery websites like BigBasket which is a well-established company in themarket for the last few years. BigBasket has the experience and expe…
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    FAQ’s

    Who are the founders of BigBasket?

    • Hari Menon
    • Vipul Parekh
    • VS Sudhakar
    • Abhinay Choudhari
    • VS Ramesh

    Who is Abhinay Choudhari?

    Abhinay Choudhari is the co-founder of the BigBasket. He is an alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad. He has worked with leading IT companies on consulting engagements with key retail majors like Tesco and LEGO.

    Who is the CEO of BigBasket?

    VS Sudhakar and Hari Menon (2011–Present)

    Is BigBasket making profit?

    BigBasket loss widens 6.7% to INR 611 crore, revenue up 36% in FY20. Supermarket Grocery Supplies, which operates online grocery store BigBasket, reported a consolidated net loss of INR 611 crore in FY20, a 6.7 percent rise as compared to the previous financial year at INR 572 crore.

    Is BigBasket successful?

    Today, BigBasket is India’s largest online grocer that receives over 100,000 orders per day. Online grocery shopping is fast gaining popularity among Indians. According to a Redseer report, India’s online grocery retail market is all set to touch $10.5 billion by 2023.

    Conclusion

    Abhinay is an inspiration for many. In an age were rising from the lowest rung of the ladder is more than just a challenge, he and his team established a company after the dot com bubble burst. BigBasket has grown at such a rate that celebrities like Shahrukh Khan endorse the brand. Under Abinay’s leadership, bigbasket.com plans to not only retain its position as the largest online grocery store in India but also become a major player across the globe.

  • List of Indian Companies With Chinese Investment | Indian Startups Funded by China

    With the tension escalating at the Indo-China border, the Chinese-funded companies in India are currently at risk. The people of India are now boycotting Chinese manufacturers and organizations that sell their products in India. As a result, Indian startups funded by Chinese investors are also facing severe backlash.

    Among India’s top 30 companies and startups (entrepreneurial ventures worth over $1 billion), 18 have received funding from the Chinese.

    Chinese investors are quick in identifying the potential in Indian startups. They find investing in India enticing because India has an attractive risk-return trade-off and remains the second-fastest growing economy in the world. Chinese investors have funded over 18 Indian unicorns; it amounts to around $3.9 billion in investment in 2019. But the growing conflict between the two countries is making it challenging for these unicorns to receive further investment capital from China.

    1. BigBasket
    2. Dailyhunt
    3. Healofy
    4. Paytm Mall
    5. Paytm
    6. TicketNew
    7. Vidooly
    8. XpressBees
    9. Snapdeal
    10. Zomato
    11. BYJU’s
    12. Ola
    13. Doubtnut
    14. Flipkart
    15. Niyo
    16. Gaana
    17. Khatabook
    18. MX Player
    19. MyGate
    20. Pine Labs
    21. Pocket FM
    22. Practo
    23. Swiggy
    24. Udaan
    25. Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd
    26. Marsplay
    27. Oye! Rickshaw
    28. ShareChat
    29. ZestMoney
    30. OYO
    31. PolicyBazaar
    32. Delhivery

    BigBasket

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Bigbasket – Chinese Investment In India

    BigBasket is an Indian online grocery delivery service. Alibaba invested in BigBasket in 2018. The investment assists BigBasket in competing with the US-based Amazon and India’s Flipkart. The company’s valuation exceeded $1 billion with the help of Chinese investment. The decision to boycott Chinese products affected BigBasket in several ways.

    Dailyhunt

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Dailyhunt – Chinese Investment In India

    Dailyhunt is one of the fastest-growing startups in this list. Dailyhunt is an Indian news content aggregator. It is considered as one of the world’s top mobile applications for staying abreast of the latest happenings across the globe. With 22 million users and 30 billion page views per month, Dailyhunt has indeed cemented its status in the Indian startup ecosystem. Alibaba holds an investment in Dailyhunt.

    Healofy

    Chinese Investor: Ant Financial

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Healofy – Chinese Investment In India

    Healofy is India’s largest women-oriented social network; it helps women connect with other women. Healofy raised $1 million in seed fund from Omidyar Network in 2018. Healofy then received $8 million in fresh funding from Alibaba-backed parenting platform BabyTree Group and BAce Capital, a fund anchored by Alibaba’s Ant Financial.

    Paytm Mall

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Paytm Mall – Chinese Investment In India

    Paytm launched the Paytm Mall app in Feb 2017. Paytm Mall follows a business to consumer model. It is an e-commerce platform that allows consumers to shop from 1.4 lakh registered sellers. Alibaba invested in Paytm Mall for a 40% stake but refused to fund Paytm Mall further. Paytm is one of the biggest e-commerce organizations to be featured in this list of Chinese-funded companies in India.

    Paytm

    Chinese Investor: Ant Financial

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Paytm – Chinese Investment In India

    Paytm is an Indian e-commerce payment system and financial technology organization. Paytm was valued at $10 billion in January 2018. Paytm valuation was $16 billion in 2021. Ant Financial has become the largest shareholder in One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, by investing $680 million.

    TicketNew

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    TicketNew - Chinese Investment In India
    TicketNew – Chinese Investment In India

    TicketNew is a privately owned company that provides online ticket booking services for movies, theatre plays and sports. Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba has reportedly provided over $30 million in funding to TicketNew and has acquired the ticket booking platform..

    Vidooly

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Vidooly – Chinese Investment In India

    Vidooly is an online video analytics and marketing company. It provides video analytics tools and video marketing services. Vidooly raised over INR 15 crores from the Alibaba group.

    XpressBees

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    XpressBees – Chinese Investment In India

    XpressBees is an e-commerce logistics firm that offers delivery, order management, shipping, and tracking services. Founded in 2015, XpressBees secured over $35 million in funding from Alibaba in 2017. Again in 2019, the e-commerce giant invested $10 million in the logistics starteup.

    Snapdeal

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Snapdeal – Chinese Investment In India

    Snapdeal is an Indian e-commerce behemoth. Snapdeal received over $500 million in funding from three of Asia’s largest tech companies: Alibaba, Foxconn, and SoftBank. Snapdeal is another e-commerce giant that made it to this list of Chinese-backed companies in India.

    Jack Ma: China’s Richest Man And Co-Founder Of Alibaba| Jack Ma Story
    Quite often you would come across motivational and awe inspiring posts of howJack Ma dealt with his struggles. Jack Ma’s net worth is $44.3 billion, Jack Mais China’s richest man and one of the richest individuals in the world. Startinghis career as an English teacher, he co-founded one of the la…
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    Zomato

    Chinese Investor: Alibaba

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Zomato – Chinese Investment In India

    It is an Indian restaurant aggregator and food delivery start-up that provides information, menus, and user-reviews of restaurants. Zomato also offers food delivery options from partner restaurants. Zomato has raised over $150 million from Alibaba.

    BYJU’s

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    BYJU’S – Chinese Investment In India

    BYJU’S is an Indian educational technology (edtech) and online tutoring firm. It is considered as the largest ed-tech company in the country as well. Tencent, one of Asia’s largest valued Chinese tech company investor, has invested in Byju. The amount invested on the ed-tech was undisclosed.

    Ola

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Ola – Chinese Investment In India

    Ola Cabs is an Indian ride-sharing company offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, taxi, and food delivery. Ola was founded by Bhavish Aggarwal and Akit Bhati. Ola raised over $1.1 billion in funding from Tencent.

    Doubtnut

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Doubtnut – Chinese Investment In India

    Another ed-tech company, Doubtnut is an Indian online tutoring platform. Doubtnut operates as an e-learning platform that enables users to ask questions related to Physics, Chemistry, and Math. Tencent provided over $15 million funding to Doubtnut in the year 2020..

    Dream11

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Dream11 – Chinese Investment In India

    Dream11 is a fantasy sports platform that allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, and basketball. Tencent has a $100 million investment in Dream11 in the year 2018. Dream11 has become the first Indian gaming company to enter the unicorn club.

    Flipkart

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Flipkart – Chinese Investment In India

    It is an Indian e-commerce company based out of Bangalore, India. Flipkart was founded in 2007 and has been one of the e-commerce giant in India by serving . Chinese investor Tencent Holdings  have invested more than $300 million in Flipkart.

    Niyo

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Niyo – Chinese Investment In India

    Niyo is one of India’s largest and fastest-growing fintech ventures with the vision of making banking simple, smart, and transparent for everyone. Niyo got its funding from Tencent, although the amount raised were not disclosed to the public.

    Gaana

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Gaana.com – Chinese Investment In India

    It is the largest Indian commercial music streaming service. Gaana.com was founded in 2012. Gaana raised over $115 million from the Chinese internet giant Tencent. Again in 2020, Tencent invested $50 million and in 2021 another $40 million on the music streaming app.

    Khatabook

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Khatabook – Chinese Investment In India

    Khatabook is a mobile app targeted towards small shopkeepers and kirana store owners in India. Khatabook app helps them manage their books by tracking the money owed to them through the means of a digital ledger. Tencent has invested over $75 million in Khatabook app.

    MX Player

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    MX Player – Chinese Investment In India

    MX Player is an entertainment app that offers its viewers quality, digital-first content, it is a very popular OTT service in India for giving access to many exclusive content to it audinence. MX Player gained popularity as an Indian OTT platform. Tencent has invested over $11q million in MX Player in the year 2019.

    MyGate

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    MyGate - Chinese Investment In India
    MyGate – Chinese Investment In India

    MyGate is an India-based security and community management app for gated premises. The security management startup raised an undisclosed amount from Chinese tech company Tencent in the year 2019.

    Pine Labs

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Pine Labs - Chinese Investment In India
    Pine Labs – Chinese Investment In India

    Pine Labs is an fintech startup and an Indian merchant platform company. Pine Labs provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology through its help your business can accept different modes of payment. Tencent has invested and undisclosed amount in Pine Labs.

    Pocket FM

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Pine Labs – Chinese Investment In India

    Pocket FM is a social audio platform for Indian languages where users can find great quality audio content comprising audiobooks, stories, and podcasts. Tencent invested in this entertainment app, although the amount invested was not disclosed to the public.

    Practo

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Practo - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Practo – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    It develops and distributes medical information systems. Practo Technologies Private Limited offers an online software platform that provides automated appointment scheduling, billing solutions, and storage of medical records. Practo raised over $55 million from Tencent.

    Swiggy

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Swiggy - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Swiggy – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Swiggy is one of the most popular a food delivery company in India. Swiggy is one of the unicorn in India and in fact, it is also India’s fastest unicorn. In 2018, Tencent invested on Swiggy again in 2020, Swiggy got a good amount funding from Tenvcent. Both the times, the amount is not diclosed.

    Udaan

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Udaan - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Udaan – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Udaan is a network-centric B2B trade platform designed specifically for small and medium-scale businesses in India. Udaan brings traders, wholesalers, and retailers into one place. Udaan raised funds from Tencent,the amount invested was not diclosed.

    Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd

    Chinese Investor: Xiaomi

    Hungama Digital Media - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Hungama Digital Media – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Hungama Digital Media Entertainment serves as an aggregator, developer, publisher, and distributor of Bollywood and Asian entertainment. Xiaomi made its first investment in an Indian company by pouring $25-million in Hungama Digital Media Entertainment.

    Marsplay

    Chinese Investor: Xiaomi

    Marsplay - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Marsplay – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Marsplay is an online platform that allows users to discover and share fashion and beauty tips. Marsplay Internet Private Limited, the parent company of Marsplay, raised funding from Xiaomi in 2018, although the exact amount was not disclosed.

    Oye! Rickshaw

    Chinese Investor: Xiaomi

    Oye! Rickshaw - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Oye! Rickshaw – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Oye! Rickshaw is an electric rickshaw mobility platform that connects driver-partners and users. The best part is it is environment-friendly and is on a mission to make people commute without any problem. Oye Rickshaw raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Xiami in 2020.

    ShareChat

    Chinese Investor: Xiaomi and ShunWei Capital

    ShareChat - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    ShareChat – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    ShareChat is an Indian Social networking service, and it was incorporated on January 8, 2015. The main attraction of this app is that it support over 15 languages. ShareChat raised funds from Xiaomi and ShunWei Capital, a Chinese venture capital firm. Both the investment amount was not disclosed

    ZestMoney

    Chinese Investor: Xiaomi

    ZestMoney - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    ZestMoney – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    ZestMoney is the largest and fastest-growing consumer lending fintech company in India. ZestMoney’s platform enables instant approval and disbursal of small-ticket loans. Xiaomi invested an undisclosed amount in ZestMoney in 2018.

    OYO

    Chinese Investor: Didi Chuxing

    OYO - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    OYO – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    OYO, the multinational hospitality chain is famous for its budget rooms and it is considered the biggest network of hotels in India. It is also spread in more than 199 cities and serves its people. In the year 2019. Didi Chuxing a transport company invested $100 million in OYO.

    PolicyBazaar

    Chinese Investor: Tencent

    Policy Bazaar - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Policy Bazaar – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    Policy Bazaar is a company that provides online life insurance and general insurance. The Indian multinational fintech company has been here for 14 years and has been serving people. Tencent invested $150 million in PolicyBazaar in the year 2019.

    Delhivery

    Chinese Investor: Fosun

    Delhivery - Indian Companies with Chinese Investment
    Delhivery – Indian Companies with Chinese Investment

    This Indian logistics and supply chain company’s main service is to transport parcels and provide third-party logistics for e-commerce companies. In the year, 2017 Fosun, a Cho9nese conglomerate company invested $3o million in Delhivery.

    FAQs

    How many Chinese companies are there in India?

    There are 105 Chinese companies in India.

    Is BigBasket funded by China?

    BigBasket is an Indian online grocery delivery service. Alibaba invested in BigBasket in 2018. The investment assists BigBasket in competing with the US-based Amazon and India’s Flipkart. The company’s valuation exceeded $1 billion with the help of Chinese investment.

    Is flipkart funded by China?

    Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company based out Bangalore, India. Chinese investors like Tencent Holdings and Steadview Capital have invested more than $300 million in Flipkart.

    Is Paytm owned by China?

    Paytm launched the Paytm Mall app in Feb 2017; Paytm Mall follows a business to consumer model. It is an e-commerce platform that allows consumers to shop from 1.4 lakh registered sellers. Alibaba invested in Paytm Mall for a 40% stake but refused to fund Paytm Mall further.

    What are the Chinese Investment Companies in India?

    Top Chinese Investment Companies in India are:

    • Tencent
    • Alibaba
    • Xiaomi

    How many Chinese companies are listed in Indian stock market?

    There are a total of 16 Chinese FPIs registered in India.

    What are the top companies that received funding from Chinese company in India?

    Top companies that received funding from Chinese company in India are:

    • Bigbasket
    • Dailyhunt
    • Paytm
    • Dream11
    • Ola
    • BYJU’s
    • Flipkart
    • Swiggy
    • Udaan
    • Practo