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  • Get My Parking Story – Interoperable Smart Parking Platform

    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 Get My Parking.

    Parking is an issue for everyone, from drivers to merchants to city governments. Unorganized parking creates a problem on multiple fronts. As per IBM Global Parking Index 2011, an average urban motorist spends 20 minutes more on road due to parking problems. This is not only a waste of time but also a loss of productivity. Thus, Get My Parking (GMP) was founded in 2015 by Chirag Jain and Rasik Pansare with a vision to make every parking transaction a sub-conscious experience.

    Get My Parking is the provider of an Interoperable Smart Parking Platform that connects all parking and mobility stakeholders on a common platform who were until now operating in silos.

    StartupTalky interviewed Rasik Pansare and Chirag Jain (Founders of Get My Parking) to know the Success Story of Get My Parking (GMP) along with getting a glance on GMP founders, Get My Parking Business Model, Funding, Revenue, Growth, How GMP works and more….

    Get My Parking (GMP) – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Get My Parking
    Founders Rasik Pansare (CMO), Chirag Jain (CEO)
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector Mobile-based Parking
    Total Funding INR 29.05 Crores ($4.476 Million)
    Revenue INR 14 crore (2020)
    Website getmyparking.com

    Lets go through the Journey of Get My Parking (GMP):

    Get My Parking – About and Vision
    How Get My Parking Works?
    Get My Parking – Market/Industry Details
    Get My Parking – Founders and Team
    Get My Parking – Startup Idea
    Get My Parking – Product/Service
    Get My Parking – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Get My Parking – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Get My Parking – Startup Launch and Customer Acquisition Strategies
    Get My Parking – Startup Challenges Faced
    Get My Parking – Growth and Current Status
    Get My Parking – Revenue
    Get My Parking – Funding and Investors
    Get My Parking – Acquisitions
    Get My Parking – Competitors
    Tools used by Get My Parking to run Business
    Get My Parking – Recognition and Achievements
    Get My Parking – Future Plans
    Get My Parking – FAQs

    Get My Parking – About and Vision

    Get My Parking is the provider of Interoperable Smart Parking Platform that connects all parking and mobility stakeholders on a common platform who were until now operating in silos. It comprises a team of doers with a clear mission to digitize the parking industry globally.  

    Get My Parking (GMP) was founded in 2015 by Chirag Jain and Rasik Pansare with a vision to make every parking transaction a sub-conscious experience. With a strong foundation of team, technology and partnerships, it is creating a future proof platform to connect the parking industry internally as well with urban mobility players.

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    How Get My Parking Works?

    Get My Parking offers end to end digitization of parking business in following three steps:

    1. Parking Connect: GMP IOT suite integrates all parking locations to the cloud, agnostic to hardware at an aggregate level as well as all equipment inside the individual parking lots with each other. This allows full control of parking operations to the real estate operators over the internet. (B2B model)
    2. Consumer Connect:
      The GMP platform helps operators to launch customised mobile apps enabling digital discovery and transaction for their consumers. Get My Parking (GMP) have helped launch 7 unique parking apps around the world in multiple languages. (B2B2C model)
    3. Mobility Connect:
      GMP Platform connects parking systems and data to multiple 3rd party mobility companies, transforming dumb real estate into intelligent mobility hubs. This enables seamless use of parking for pick up and drops of shared mobility, storage and deliveries for e-commerce, EV charging, and on the fly automotive services. (Marketplace model)

    Get My Parking – Market/Industry Details

    The global parking industry market size is valued at USD 100 billion and is expected to witness significant growth over the next few years with the advent of connected vehicles and new modes of mobility and gig economy. Increased usage of vehicles for all forms of mobility and logistics, especially in urban centers, is driving the demand for a tech parking platform.

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    Get My Parking – Founders and Team

    Rasik Pansare(CMO) and Chirag Jain (CEO) are the founders of Get My Parking (GMP)

    Get My Parking was founded in 2015. The CEO and Co-founder Chirag Jain had worked in the automobile industry and came up with this innovative concept. He then met with Rasik Pansare and started working on this as an experiment. By July 2015, they were convinced with the early results to plunge into this business full time and started Get My Parking officially.

    Get My Parking Founders & CEO
    Rasik Pansare(CMO) and Chirag Jain (CEO) – Founders of GMP

    Chirag Jain (CEO & Co-Founder, GMP)

    Chirag Jain is the CEO and co-founder of Get My Parking, a venture he started in 2015 (based out of New Delhi, India). Chirag graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in 2013 and worked in the Automotive Industry for 2 yrs before starting his entrepreneurial journey. He received the Young Entrepreneur Award from IIT Madras and also featured in business World- ’40 under 40′ Achievers. Chirag has keen interest in urban planning and was also awarded best delegate award at New York Global Young Leaders Summit under United Nations Development Program. He has spent over 6 months in South Korea, 3 months in Malaysia and other S-E Asian countries, and has sound knowledge of the overall ecosystem.

    Rasik Pansare ( Co-Founder & CMO, GMP)

    Entrepreneurial by attitude, Rasik is the co-founder and CMO of Get My Parking, an award winning startup that provides smart parking for smart cities. He graduated from FMS Delhi and was the President of the entrepreneurship cell there. He is an engineer and MBA by education but always aspired to be a change-maker. An engaging story teller, he has been a TEDx speaker, guest lecturer and speaker at several Smart City and Mobility summits in the past. He was awarded the Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices Academia Award-2019′ by Hon’ble Dr Manmohan Singh, Former PM of India at NDIM-Delhi. He likes to create, connect and share. An ardent foodie, he believes in the philosophy of “Live Life, not Exist” and encourages pursuit of passion.

    Get My Parking – Team and Work Culture

    Get My Parking (GMP) has been fortunate to have a very strong core team. Since the very beginning, founders have been very particular about the people they bring into the core team. It is a very close knit family with complementary skills. The core team comes from stellar backgrounds and has been critical in the formation of the organisation. GMP has 80+ young people with an average age of 28. It consists of highly motivated and passionate individuals who have been instrumental in driving the  organization’s success.

    GMP Team
    Get My Parking Team

    “We let our employees be a part of our culture definition process. We create polls, surveys, 360 feedback processes, etc. We have a talk with the employees, even during the pandemic we organized Virtual Peer Lunch, Fun Baithak, Annual Treat etc. We let our employees tell us how they want certain aspects of office culture to shape up” – Says GMP founders.

    Get My Parking – Hiring Funda

    The key to recruiting and retaining is mainly about meeting the needs on the top and thinking ahead, rather than waiting for a crisis to ensue.

    “A talent pipeline should be developed to identify potential candidates, who can be continuously nurtured and approached when vacancies arise. We always look for people who are independent workers with a strong work ethic” Says Chirag Jain (Founder & CEO, Get My Parking)

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    Get My Parking – Startup Idea

    As observed by Chirag and Rasik, billions of dollars have been invested in the mobility industry to make vehicles connected and ‘smart’ – but not in parking. It has remained an ignored and unorganized industry.

    The traditional parking equipment still operates in silos. This is what led Chirag to come with a concept that could integrate parking and mobility. Chirag also had worked in the automobile industry that was also a vital factor. He then met with Rasik Pansare and started working on this as an experiment.

    By July 2015, they were convinced enough with the early results to plunge into this business full time and started Get My Parking (GMP) officially.

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    Get My Parking – Product/Service

    When parking businesses use technology, the traditional equipment operates in silos; at best, it will work together with other products from the same manufacturer. In today’s new era of mobility, one needs an ecosystem of integrated hardware and software components regardless of which version or vendor they all come from.

    The GMP Platform delivers such an interoperable ecosystem. Get My Parking’s solution can retrofit existing equipment in a parking lot, and upgrade the entire facility to a digitized one. There are multiple things that make GMP’s concept stand out. The platform makes any parking equipment interoperable through IoT and retrofitting, it upgrades old parking infrastructure to a new future-proof ecosystem, thus transforming dumb parking real estate into intelligent mobility hubs. Also, it’s easily customizable and scalable solution for any parking requirement on the planet.

    In brief, GMP’s (Get My Parking’s) features are –

    • plug-n-play ready to deploy functionality
    • touchless parking solutions
    • retrofits with the existing system
    • speedy customizations
    • white-label solutions, and
    • low cost offering

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    The name was decided by Chirag (Founder & CEO of Get My Parking). The mindset of Chirag was to keep it easy to understand just as Book My show. The initial logo was designed by Chirag himself and later they got a professional designer to make it.

    Get My Parking Logo
    GMP Logo

    The original tagline was B2C focused but we changed it later to suit our pivoted business strategy to B2B2C mode – Says the GMP Founders.

    Thus, the Tagline of Get My Parking is ‘Where Mobility Begins’.

    Get My Parking – Business Model and Revenue Model

    GMP’s business model is pivoted towards B2B2C business strategy. Get My Parking (GMP) licenses its SaaS platform to the customers who are mostly big parking operators, smart city projects, and commercial landlords. It also charges for any additional customization (if required). And also, GMP licenses its parking data to automobile OEMs and mobility companies.

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    Get My Parking – Startup Launch and Customer Acquisition Strategies

    Get My Parking’s startup launch was different. Instead of targeting a bunch of customers with a made product, it first went to a potential big customer i.e., a large parking operator in Delhi and pitched the idea of digitized parking. Once the operator was convinced and gave GMP a pre-order, Get My Parking was launched and team made the product.

    Within a few weeks of launching, we had pre-orders for 45 parking lots. So what worked for us the best was traditional face to face sales for B2B onboarding – Says Chirag (Co-founder & CEO, Get My Parking)

    The next phase, to grow from over 100 parking lots to 1000, Get My Parking had to adopt a multi pronged strategy. The GMP team used trade exhibitions to do brand awareness and product demos, and industry events and competitions for establishing thought leadership.

    There was extensive role of digital marketing for targeted promotions. For international growth, GMP tied up with industry consultants who represented the company in those markets and strategic partners who could cross sell Get My Parking’s offerings along with their products. Overall, it took a lot of perseverance and resilience to get to 1000 and eventually 2500+ parking lots globally

    Get My Parking – Startup Challenges Faced

    Being a fast growing company, our team is our strength – Says Rasik (Co-founder & CMO, GMP)

    Hence the biggest challenge that GMP faces is hiring the right people, training, upskilling current team members, and maintaining the right culture.

    Other operational challenges that Get My Parking faced involves resistance from certain industry segments having traditional mindset. Being the market creator and pioneer, it took a lot of convincing to influence the entire industry from scratch. Get My Parking also faced funding issues several times at an early stage with minimal revenue, but the GMP team have mastered the financial equation over the last couple of years with good inflow of revenues.

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    Get My Parking – Growth and Current Status

    The smart parking platform is designed for every stakeholder in the parking and mobility ecosystem. Get My Parking has been able to deliver business growth and diversified value growth to its customers, who include some of the leading parking operators globally with multi-billion dollar turnover.

    • Globally, GMP has over 2200 active smart parking deployments with active work orders in 17 countries.
    • The smart parking platform has launched 7 different white label parking apps around the world in different languages and markets.
    • The Get My Parking platform has processed over 50 million parking transactions till February 2021 (and counting).
    • In India, in terms of active deployments, Get My Parking is present in 11 cities including Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.
    • In terms of static parking data, GMP is the largest aggregator and distributor of parking information, with comprehensive data of over 9000 parking lots of 50 cities in India.
    • It has also done multiple government and smart city projects.
    • One of the Get My Parking’s major clients is APCOA Parking, which is Europe’s largest parking operator.
    • Get My Parking also powered the world’s largest event parking, Maha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain and IPL tournament previously.

    Get My Parking – Revenue

    In 2020, Get My Parking clocked in revenue of over INR 14 crore. GMP is projecting double the revenue for the upcoming month (March 2021)

    Get My Parking – Funding and Investors

    Get My Parking’s total funding till date is INR 29.05 Crores ($4.476 Million) in 3 rounds of funding. GMP’s most recent funding was led by IAN Fund, BEENEXT and Indian Angel Network for $3 Million in September 2017.

    Get My Parking’s Funding details are as follows-

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    Jan 2016 Angel Funding $376k (INR 2.5 cr) The Chennai Angels (TCA)
    Feb 2017 Pre Series A $1.1 Mn (INR 7.35 cr) IAN, BEENEXT, The Chennai Angels, Hero Corporate Services
    Sep 2017 Series A $3 Mn (INR 19.2 cr) IAN Fund, BEENEXT, Indian Angel Network

    “Funding is an extremely significant aspect in line with meeting the vision of a business. These funding have helped us in acquisition, hiring, for expanding globally and to grow & sustain our business” Says GMP founders.

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    Get My Parking – Acquisitions

    Get My Parking acquired Bangalore-based Constapark in 2018.

    Constapark had managed 30,000 parking spots on its platform and parks 4,000 vehicles on a daily basis across Bangalore. It was also chosen as one of the Top 5 Startups by CNN IBN & Ericson. This acquisition helped Get My Parking strengthen leadership in the domestic market.

    Get My Parking – Competitors

    The top competitors of Get My Parking include Flash Parking (US), Passport (US) and Smart Parking Ltd (Australia).

    Tools used by Get My Parking to run Business

    The right set of tools lets one organize the to do its best work. It lets to plan tasks and track who’s doing what to make sure that the company is working in the most efficient way possible.

    One of the tools that Get My Parking used for internal communication is Slack. For task tracking/ reminder it uses Asana. Some other tools that we use are G-Suite, Final Cut Pro, Zoom, Mailchimp, Canva, Active Campaign, etc.,

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    Get My Parking – Recognition and Achievements

    Get My Parking got over 50 Million Parking Transactions processed by our platform in 17 countries. GMP also powered the world’s largest event parking, Maha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain in the first year.

    • 2017- Get My Parking got AWS Mobility Awards for the Travel App of the year in Emerging category
    • 2017- The company got the UK-India Tech Summit – Tech Rocketship Award for Top 10 Indian Startups
    • 2019- Get My Parking was awarded the NASSCOM Emerge 50 for the product – Smart Parking Platform
    • 2019- Get My Parking won the Geospatial Excellence Award at the GeoSmart India 2019 summit.

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    Get My Parking – Future Plans

    Get My Parking have performed extensive deployments in Europe and Asia for some of the largest parking operators that operate across thousands of locations. Now, It’s expanding its footprints with focus on the American market with the help of our partnership with ParkTrans (an American smart city solution provider). Get My Parking also has promising leads in Middle East Asia & Asia Pacific. It is also creating a global sales network with freelance consultants as well as sales enterprise partners.

    Get My Parking – FAQs

    Who are the founders of Get My Parking?

    Rasik Pansare(CMO) and Chirag Jain (CEO) are the founders of Get My Parking (GMP)

    How much is Get My Parking funding?

    Get My Parking’s total funding till date is INR 29.05 Crores ($4.476 Million) in 3 rounds of funding. GMP’s most recent funding was led by IAN Fund, BEENEXT and Indian Angel Network for $3 Million in September 2017.

    What is Get My Parking?

    Get My Parking is the provider of Interoperable Smart Parking Platform that connects all parking and mobility stakeholders on a common platform who were until now operating in silos.

    Who are the competitors of Get My Parking?

    The top competitors of Get My Parking are Flash Parking (US), Passport (US) and Smart Parking Ltd (Australia).

  • Pabbly Connect Review: One Platform to Automate All Your Integrations

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    What is Pabbly Connect?

    Pabbly Connect
    Pabbly Connect

    Pabbly Connect lets you create automated workflows and transfer the data between your favourite apps and services without any manual efforts.

    Pabbly Connect Working

    It allows you to automate the manual task through fully automated workflows. You can simply start a new workflow by picking a trigger and tweak it further by adding filters, actions, and field mappings.

    Pabbly Connect Features

    Automate Everything

    Pabbly Connects lets you create workflows. In workflows, you can select the apps you need to automate or you need to transfer the data between them.

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    Unlimited Number of WorkFlows

    There is no limit on the number of automation workflows in Pabbly. They offer such pricing that allows an unlimited number of automation workflows.

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    Pabbly Connect Reviews
    How Pabbly Connect Works?

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    Some Pabbly Connect Integrations
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    Pabbly Connect Reviews

    Below are the Pabbly Connect Reviews, we got from popular sites like Capterra and Crowd G2-

    Overall Rating: 4.3 / 5
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    Pabbly Connect launches 4-5 new integrations every week. And it is covering each and every tool for the integrations.

    What people are saying:

    Some reviews by users (Source: Capterra)
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    Pabbly Connect Lifetime Deal

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    Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)

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    Pabbly Connect is the best Zapier alternative.

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  • Boonbox- Taking Online Shopping to Rural India

    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 Boonbox.

    The advent of e-commerce in India in the past decade has been unprecedented. While a huge chunk of the population in Indian cities are reaping the benefits of e-commerce, the rural areas still remain untouched by the effects of digitization.

    With the masterly vision of taking e-commerce to rural India, the co-founders-Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan, Narayanan launched Boonbox in 2013.

    Boonbox – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Boonbox
    Headquarter Chennai
    Founder Ramachandran Ramanthan, Karthik Natarajan & Narayanan
    Sector E-commerce
    Founded 2013
    Parent Organization Inthree Access Services Private Limited
    Website inthreeaccess.com

    About Boonbox and How it Works
    Boonbox – USP
    Boonbox – Target Market
    Boonbox – Founders and team
    How was Boonbox Started
    Boonbox – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Boonbox – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Boonbox – User Acquisition
    Boonbox – Startup Challenges
    Boonbox – Competitors
    Boonbox – Funding and Investors
    Boonbox – Advisors and Mentors
    Boonbox – Growth
    Boonbox – Future Plans

    About Boonbox and How it Works

    Given the great idea and insight on which this startup is based, this is how the business functions. Boonbox has a local affiliate in each of the towns/villages that they are located in. These local affiliates assist the consumers with the products available in the application. These affiliates place the orders on the consumer’s behalf and collect the money. These products are delivered by Boonbox through their hub & spoke fulfillment model.

    In rural areas, there can’t be a platform to start a business as the ecosystem does not exist. Boonbox is an integrated player in this ecosystem. It owns the ecosystem and this is difficult to replicate. Creating connectivity takes time and requires a deep understanding of rural purchase patterns and consumer behavior. And Boonbox team has decades of experience in building rural networks.

    The rural ecosystem has a lot of human elements associated with it. There is touch and feel of human connectivity. To be a successful startup in rural India, the required building blocks are human touch, credibility & trust, accompanied by an integrated ecosystem. As Boonbox has been able to selectively identify the relevant trust elements within rural communities and has built them over the years, this platform is viewed as a trusted element in the rural ecosystems. Boonbox pivoted from being a single product seller to a multi-category catalog that empowers the rural customers with choice and convenience. The venture was pivoted in the year 2015.

    Boonbox is a technology platform for providing products and services to consumers who live in tier-4 towns and villages and are deprived of access to these products. Through the company’s “Rural Last Mile” logistics network, products are delivered at the doorstep of the consumers in remote villages. Boonbox also ensures that regular follow-up takes place with the customers, and promises them after-sale service to provide a top-class purchase experience.

    Boonbox – USP

    Boonbox chennai based startup, is an unique venture that aggregates the demand of rural customers and fulfills them by placing an order with the merchant. In simple words, it’s a vehicle to enter the rural markets. The main idea of the startup is to be a desired brand for every rural household and be a part of their everyday lives. Also, Boonbox is of the ideology that every rural customer craves and deserves a top-class customer experience. With Boonbox online shopping has never been easier for the rural population!

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    Boonbox – Target Market

    Boonbox was selling solar lamps in Rural Tamil Nadu and Karnataka during the peak power crisis in 2012-13. While seeking customer feedback, the Boonbox team received responses that indicated demand for Mobile Phones, White Goods (TV, Fridge, Washing Machine) and also Induction Stoves and Mixer Grinders. All these products were wanted by rural consumers during the peak power crisis. Thus, throughout the entrepreneurial journey, seeking customer feedback helped them deduce that Rural Customers are ASPIRATIONAL and CONSUMPTION is driving the Rural Economy.

    70 % of India which is close to a billion people live in Rural India. Rural India contributes to 47% of the country’s GDP. And these statistics were sufficient enough to indicate a massive market in a less than 30,000 population towns. These people in those towns were the target market of Boonbox.

    ” We foresee a consumption explosion in Rural India and expect Rural India to lead India’s economy in the next 5 years.” said the Co-founders of Boonbox positively.

    Boonbox – Founders and team

    Ramachandran Ramanthan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan are the Co-founders of Boonbox.

    Co-Founders Boonbox
    Ramachandran Ramanthan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan

    The trio has an exciting story about how all of it began! While Ramachandran Ramanathan and Karthik Natarajan were colleagues, they met Narayanan through a common friend. Narayanan had created the rural network in Tamil Nadu for Tata Teleservices and immediately caught on to the potential of the idea. The co-founders then went on to build the team by selling a dream, which made many people leave their lucrative jobs in the corporate world to join in the Boonbox adventure. The fact that they were working in an exotic area, a white space, building for Bharat and also generating cash in the business, attracted many people to the Boonbox team.

    Ramachandran Ramanathan is a Chartered Accountant by qualification. He has also held senior management positions in the RPG, ICICI and TVS groups. Boonbox adventure is a great opportunity for him to follow his passion i.e., to create business strategies in uncharted markets and build a great team for scaling the business.

    Boonbox co-founder Ramachandran Ramanthan

    Karthik Natarajan is a management graduate from a financial services background with stints at Citigroup and Fullerton. Karthik is the ‘Zero to One’ man in the co-founder circle and his strength is his excellent ability to smell business opportunities and develop concepts into businesses.

    Narayanan is also a management graduate who worked extensively in the telecom world straddling all the major brands including Airtel and Tata Teleservices. A meticulous planner, he works on business excellence and takes the Boonbox businesses to scale.

    How was Boonbox Started

    The idea to take on the rural markets with a technology platform struck to the co-founders Ramachandran Ramanathan and Karthik Natarajan when they were working on the TVS group. TVS’s consumer strategy was architected by the late Dr.C.K.Prahalad and focused entirely on capturing the rural markets. These two co-founders were working on creating alternate networks in rural markets and while doing that, the massive potential of this white space dawned upon them.

    Boonbox was built based on these two co-founder’s experiences in the rural market. In fact, they did not do any formal market research. Instead, they focused on using customer feedback as a mechanism to drive Boonbox to success.

    Specialists were consulted to come up with the name Boonbox. The co-founders finally zoomed in on Inthree which is a Coined Name – coined from the ethos of the business which is the Inner India Initiative. Inthree is the registered name and BoonBox is its customer-facing platform. So Ideally the Boonbox company is a sister concern of Inthree and is launched in select districts of TamilNadu and Karnataka. Which is why the Boonbox website can be accessed from inthreeaccess.com.

    Boonbox Logo
    Boonbox Logo

    Boonbox – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The Boonbox business model is simple, it takes orders from rural customers and delivers products to their households. Considering that the rural market has a broken ecosystem and a virtually non-existent distribution network, this venture gets both the distributor and retailer’s margins which makes Boonbox’s Unit Economics very strong.

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    Boonbox – User Acquisition

    Rural India is characterized by a huge trust deficit. Boonbox has sold products to 2.5 million customers to date. Their focus is mainly on customer experience and to ensure that every single customer complaint is addressed on time and they now have 2.5 million happy customers. The rural market works on word of mouth marketing and Boonbox is a formidable brand now. Hence the key strategy for Boonbox has been to focus on customer experience since the initial days.

    Boonbox – Startup Challenges

    Rural is a white space, the founders had no benchmarks to follow. The company’s business model was formulated after multiple iterations and is not more than three years old. The model is based on continuous learning and building on the co-founder’s experiences. Also, It is not something that others can replicate over a short period. Boonbox is consistently working towards solving two major challenges :

    • Gaining the trust of consumers living in towns and villages with a population of 30,000 and below
    • Catering to customers who live in locations without a proper address or pin code. In such areas, it’s important to ensure that products reach customers on time.

    This venture is the pioneer in this field and the co-founders are continuously trying their experiments and learning from them. There have been as many failed experiments as successful ones, as the business itself is one huge hack!

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    Boonbox – Competitors

    Though Boonbox does not have any direct competition in the market. But unicorns like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have been trying to get inroads in rural markets, some e-commerce startups like iPay and StoreKing solely focus on rural markets.

    Boonbox – Funding and Investors

    Boonbox has raised a total funding worth INR 34 Crores in two rounds till date.

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    August, 2014 Angel 9 Crores IAN, Keiretsu Forum Chennai
    August, 2018 Series A 25 crores Ventureast, Orios & IAN Fund

    Boonbox – Advisors and Mentors

    Boonbox does have mentors who have contributed their ideas in Business Strategy, Customer Experience and HR throughout the entrepreneurial journey.

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    Boonbox – Growth

    Boonbox operates in 16 States. This includes acquiring customers and delivering products to 3,00,000 villages which accounts for 47% of India’s universe of villages. Since inception and till date, Boonbox has sold products in rural markets totaling to INR 450 Crores.

    Boonbox is the largest rural partner for Samsung mobiles and has been the largest partner for them for the last three consecutive years. Some of the other products and brands include:

    • Consumer durable: Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Whirlpool
    • Kitchen appliances: Prestige, Preethi, Premier, Jaipan, Hawkins, Butterfly

    Boonbox – Future Plans

    The Co-founders are expecting to close 2019 with a turnover of INR 300 Crores, and with a Gross Profit of INR 75 Crores. They are expecting to reach a turnover of INR 1,000 Crores by 2022.

    The long-term plan of the venture is to be a pan India player, providing products at customer’s doorstep in remote villages and that too backed by top-notch customer experience. Given that the following are the goals for the coming decade:

    • Become a multi-service offering for the rural consumer
    • Building a robust direct channel for selling to the consumer with a fintech offering
    • Adding categories like FMCG, fashion, apparel to the product mix in addition to mobile phones, consumer durables, kitchen appliances, and cookware
    • Designing subscription models that can be relevant for the rural consumer
    • Creating loyalty and membership programs to build long term value for customers

    There’s ideally nothing better than growing together. Boonbox’s initiative of empowering rural India with the services that they deserve is a marvelous concept. After all, great businesses are always built out of satisfying needs rather than creating wants.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    Who are the Founders of Boonbox?

    The Co-founders of Boonbox are Ramachandran Ramanthan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan.

    What is Boonbox?

    Boonbox is an unique venture that aggregates the demand of rural customers and fulfills them by placing an order with the merchant on their behalf and delivers it to the individuals.

    Is Boonbox only available in Chennai?

    No, Boonbox operates in 16 States including Chennai and are planning on expanding further.

  • FOReT – Sustainable Fashion is the Future!

    FOReT is a Mumbai based startup creating eco-friendly fashion accessories through a perfect fusion of natural elements and trendy designs. Their products besides giving you an elegant look, keeps you connected to the nature.

    StartupTalky interviewed FOReT founder, Supriya Shirsat Satam.

    FOReT Highlights

    Startup Name FOReT
    Headquarter Mumbai
    Founder Supriya Shirsat Satam
    Sector Fashion
    Founded December, 2018
    Website link www.foretstore.com
    Parent Organization Uniquity Retail Pvt. Ltd.

    About FOReT and How it Works
    FOReT – Founder
    How was FOReT Started
    FOReT – Name, Tagline and Logo
    FOReT – User Acquisition
    FOReT – Startup Challenges
    FOReT – Future Plans

    About FOReT and How it Works

    FOReT was started with a passion to create fashion that embodies the essence of Nature. They provide sustainable fashion accessories and their collection includes handbags, wallets, belts and jewellery. At FOReT, the products are made from genuine cork ensuring the grains and strands of nature are evident. Every design and every project FOReT undertakes reflects the ethos of nature: Simple, Diverse and yet Sophisticated.

    FOReT envisions to be a global sustainable fashion and lifestyle brand. At the core of their business is to create sustainable fashion products that does not call for any changes in the users lifestyle.

    The ethos behind FOReT is to embody and articulate the beauty and spirit of Nature and create products that have a positive impact on our environment. We aim to carve a niche for natural fashion without compromising on the latest trends. Style and Elegance is the cornerstone behind all our accessories and we use the finest of materials that resonate with being earth-friendly and responsible

    FORet is also doing its part towards conserving nature, as for every purchase, they plant trees and support the livelihood of farmers.

    while you worry about what you have to wear for the party tonight, we will take care of how it has a positive impact on our environment.

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    FOReT – Founder

    Supriya Shirsat Satam is the founder of FORet. Supriya is an engineer with an MBA in marketing. She worked with one of India’s premiere airline and led Mobile Commerce and Mobile Marketing prior to starting her own venture – FOReT.

    How was FOReT Started

    Supriya is a vivid nature lover. Though she was a workaholic and practically worked 24/7, travelling and exploring new places was something she always managed to do. She often takes out time to run away from the chaos of everyday life into the lap of nature and wander on off-beaten tracks. She also loves to do landscape painting, where very minute observation of the details of nature is required, which further deepened her love for nature. FORet is Supriya’s way of giving back to the nature.

    Being a conscious nature lover, she always explored for possibility of making eco-friendly fashion accessories.

    While we speak of organic clothing, organic food, organic colors and natural cosmetics, I wondered if my handbag could be made from natural material. I wanted something that could look stylish and I searched but was not fully convinced of the style or the fabric – Supriya FOReT Founder, says

    Being convinced that there is no adequate and quality eco-friendly fashion accessories available in the Indian market, Supriya started doing research on natural materials that could be used for making nature friendly yet stylish fashion accessories, and came across the beautiful Cork material, that comes from the bark of the Cork Oak tree, well known as the cap of your Wine bottle.

    Moreover, making the cork material does not harm the tree but gives it more life. At the spur of a moment,  Supriya wrote to a couple of Cork suppliers to send her some swatches, and Supriya was completely bowled over by the material.

    What got me attracted was that the Cork material resembles the texture of the natural bark. You can notice every grain and the texture of the bark. And this makes every product unique and exclusive, as no two product will be the same.

    Cork is extremely soft, anti-microbial, water resistant and extremely durable. It was a complete and wholesome material just as it is in nature. Supriya soon sketched a bag  and got it made, and though getting manufactured just one bag cost her a lot,  the bag was incredibly beautiful and way beyond her expectations. This paved the thought for launching products that articulated nature.

    I worked on my prototype and the end product was convincing enough. However, I did work on a plan and how I wanted to execute it. I also had several brain storming sessions with my husband, sisters and friend. They are fully supportive and are an indelible part of this journey

    Supriya’s way of validating the idea was also interesting. She simply used to carry her handbag to parties and public places to see how people react to it.

    The idea was never to tell them to see the product but to check if they enquired on their own and they did.

    Supriya also showed  the product to some senior Corporate executives and they too fully supported the same.

    To start production commercially was however was not easy.

    Initially Supriya tried to get the handbags produced in India. But, cork is an expensive material and bringing the material to India and working on different cork fabric patterns and style was a lengthy process. As it was a new concept, the learning curve for tailors was steep and the time that the factories were willing to contribute was minimal as the proposition started looking extremely difficult. This led Supriya to focus on working with the experts who have established themselves in manufacturing and designing with Cork.

    I wanted all accessories to be as per global design standards and make and I realized that it would need a lot more of resources to create some from the start. Our belief is that a luxurious material such as cork needs to be witnessed by a larger audience and working with established partners helps us bring out a new collection that spans across categories easily.

    Today, some of  FOReT’s pieces are designed by Supriya, however, as a collection FOReT works with the best teams of cork fabric suppliers, artists and designers and manufacturers as a private label. Their collection is manufactured in Europe with genuine Cork and makes use of European charms and metal hardware. She wants the FOReT brand to be synonymous with sustainability!

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    FORet Logo
    FOReT Logo

    The name FOReT encapsulates the essence and the core beliefs with which the company has been set up and how it envisions to see itself in future.

    Some moments cast an indelible mark that manifests itself in some beautiful way, and Supriya’s trip to Pench, a forest in Madhya Pradesh a few years ago, was one such impacting moment. It is from this experience she had at Pench,  that FOReT’s name was conceptualized.

    An early morning safari at 5am with dull sleepy eyes soon waking up to the cool breeze and the dark blue sky. As our jeep whirred through the forest, we were trying to capture quick movements of the animals amidst the trees and the grass. In search of the lone tiger, we stopped by a small lake. The first blush of the morning was filling the air. The lake was glistening and the leaves had an irresistible luminance. The dry grass below the trees magically shone in the dazzling sunlight. And in it, the forest majestically came alive. I can’t describe the essence, but it had me there. FOREST was only a word before this, but now it actually had a meaning. And the essence of that experience is what I have tried to capture in my venture, FOReT, French for Forests.

    FOReT is a word for forest in French. Home to the flora and fauna, forests are an integral part of our ecosystem. As FOReT’s products inculcate the concept of drawing from Nature without processing them, Foret was the apt name.  

    Foret in French is written as Forêt and pronounced as For-hae.  The logo is ê (e-circumflex), a Latin alphabet adorned with another accent made to resemble the soul of the forests, the tree. This, invariably reflects the connection to the nature. ê also stands for elegance and essence, the two main pillars of the company.

    FOReT’s tagline, ‘Fashion meets Sustainability‘ is an epitome of the company’s vision to create an viable intersection of fashion, lifestyle and environmental consciousness.

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    FOReT – User Acquisition

    FOReT while in the Beta participated in a pop-up festival for vegan and earth friendly products. As a first primary response, they have garnered huge support from the audience there. This helped them build trust and market for themselves in the real world.  

    In the current digitized world social media platforms act as the best marketing networks. Similarly, for FOReT Instagram has played a crucial role in promoting their products and showcase their brand and carve a niche for themselves in the fashion space.

    FOReT – Startup Challenges

    FOReT started with making handbags. As the products are made from exquisite and expensive cork, a not so widely used material, only a few limited edition pieces could be created; which also means limited audience. Only mature buyer willing to pay more were likely buy their products.

    Hence, in order to overcome small consumer base FOReT expanded into jewellery section. Now, with Jewellery, FOReT products appeal to women and hence attracts a wide customer base.

    FOReT – Future Plans

    FOReT’s final goal is to distribute its products globally and this strategy helps it in creating products that are acceptable as per global standards and distributing the same. Also, as Cork comes from Southern Europe, working with the teams in Europe who understand the material strengthens its positioning to cater to an International audience. The company also has plans to get some of its designs made in India as a bridge between the two creative forms of design.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    Who is the owner of FOReT?

    The Founder of FORet is Supriya Shirsat Satam.

    What does FOReT mean?

    Foret is a French word for that means forest.

    What is FOReT?

    FOReT is an Indian Sustainable brand that makes accessories.

     

  • The Startups That Are Funded By Alia Bhatt

    The Covid 19 pandemic has affected the startup ecosystem in India, as many startups found it difficult to find investors or get funds. Another industry that had a tough year was film industry, as the theaters were closed and many movie releases and productions were halted. Which is why many A-list Bollywood celebrities have resorted to investing in startups that are innovative and have potential.

    Bollywood actresses like Alia Bhatt have not only backed and invested in startups but have also started their own ventures like the Ed A Mamma. These celebrities are known to have a large following and platform to reach out to more people, which is why it is no surprise as to why startups now prefer to be funded by popular celebrities or even for endorsements and investments. Over the past few years popular celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Shilpa Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Pakudone, etc have shown considerable interest in funding the budding startups.  

    Having a celebrity to endorse and invest in the venture helps startup get noticed in the overcrowded startup space. When it comes to Alia Bhatt, the actor chooses to tread safely while making investments in startups or even starting her own venture. The Raazi actress, is known to invest in FDs and Bonds showing that she does have some business acumen and is not a risk taker when choosing the right startup to invest in.

    Alia Bhatt is a one of the highest paid actress of India, known for her work in movies such as Gully Boy, Udta Punjab, Dear Zindagi, etc. Besides her acclaimed acting career, Bhatt has also launched her own line of clothing and handbags as well as a production company known as Eternal Sunshine and is the founder of the ecological initiative called CoExist. Here are the startups the actress has invested in:

    Ed A Mamma
    Nykaa
    StyleCracker
    Frequently Asked Questions

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    Ed A Mamma

    The actor launched her own sustainable clothing apparel brand for children known as Ed A Mamma in October, 2020. The brand is said to make clothes only for children from the ages of 2 to 14 years old. Ed a mamma focus creating a clothing line that is environmentally friendly as they us natural fibers including plastic free buttons and trims. The company is self-funded by Alia Bhatt and is also a homegrown brand that goes with “Made In India” ethos. The brand is keen on making gender neutral t-shirts from organic cotton, while the products come in an affordable range of Rs 349 to Rs 1,499 where the starting price for organic t-shirt is Rs 799.

    Another interesting fact about the brand is its waste management, the company reuses and recycles by using leftover clothing and cloth scrapes to make hair ties and potlis bags. The actor turned investor and now entrepreneur said that she specifically choose to make clothing line for children because they were already many fashion labels that made clothes for the age groups of 25 to 45 years old with high competition in the market. Which is why the Alia and her team decide to bridge the gap and create a made in India and a world class children clothing brand. The company hopes that with the brand the children will develop a love for nature at a young age.

    About Ed a mamma 

    There a many ecofriendly benefits that come along with Ed a mamma products such as non-synthetic garments, buttons that are not made from plastic and even seed bombs that can help you grow a garden. In an interview Alia added that, “children are extremely caring and if you create planeteers at a young age you can help save the planet for years to come.” Alia has also launched CoExist which is an ecological initiative done to raise awareness on the welfare of the street animals. The Ed a mamma clothing line has already said to have sold over 70% of its first season’s collection through Firstcry.com which is an ecommerce website for kid’s products.

    The brand is called Ed a mamma because Alia was inspired by a story series she was working on which was based on a little dog named Ed and his mamma a little girl. According to the actress the idea that she derived from this was to create a universe where the girl and the dog would go on adventures and save the planet from pollution. Another focus of the company was to make a homegrown brands for promoting the Made in India initiative. As a result the company manufactures its products in factories from Mumbai, Tripura and Kolkata among others.

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    Nykaa

    Nykaa is a popular ecommerce platform that sells cosmetic and beauty products and is now a Unicorn Company. After actresses like Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt also invested an undisclosed amount to Nykaa in 2020. Nykaa which was established in 2012 has grown into a unicorn company with the help of many such investments. The company also received an investment of Rs 100 crore from Steadview Capital in May, 2020. Founded in 2012 by Falguni Nayar, Nykaa is the number 1 online marketplace for beauty and wellness products in India.

    Nykaa logo and products
    Nykaa logo and products

    Nykaa now has a presence over 70 stores in India and also sells products from luxury brands like Tom Ford, Jo Malone London, Dior and Givenchy. The competitors of Nykaa competes with companies like Amazon Fashion, Flipkart Fashion and lastly Myntra. The website currently has over 5 million monthly active users and handles more than 1.5 million order per month. It also has a portfolio of more than 1,500 brands with a variety of 1.3 lakh products available on all its platform like website, apps and 70 offline stores.

    Not only that Nykaa also offers a wide range of beauty and grooming products for men, along with Nykaa Pro the company also caters to their customers with beauty needs and special offers. They are also known for their in-house beauty products known as Nykaa beauty which makes cosmetics for lips, eyes, face and nails among other skin body care range. In an interview CEO and founder of Nykaa, Falguni Nayar confirmed Alia funding and added, “There are three reasons to why she wanted to invest in Nykaa, it was because it has Indian roots, it is founded by a woman and is the proof that the best in India can take on the best in the world.”

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    StyleCracker

    StyleCracker is another startup that is funded and backed by Alia Bhatt. StyleCracker is a fashion tech startup which was founded by Dhimaan Shah and Archana Walavalkar in the year of 2013. The company is known for its advancements in technology that develops the StyleCracker Box which helps people to get styled and look good. The company offers many options for personalization to its customers and has a huge opportunity when it comes to using technology to decode the fashion requirements of the Indian consumer. The company is known for celebrity customized boxes that usually contain apparel, cosmetics, accessories, and sometimes even footwear.

    Alia Bhatt with the founders of Stylecracker Dhimaan Shah and Archana Walavalkar
    Alia Bhatt with the founders of Stylecracker Dhimaan Shah and Archana Walavalkar

    The company has its headquarters based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The procedure to get one these boxes start with the customers filling a form based on their like/dislikes and preferences, their personal details which are the measurement of their body shape, size and the budget range. Based on that information the customer receives a fashion box that is curated by many celebrity stylist. Once they receive the box, the customers have an option to keep or replace some or all items that they don’t like. The customized boxes are currently priced at Rs 1,999, Rs 2,999, Rs 4999 and even Rs 6,999, while the customers can choose boxes between the four.

    The company has shipped over 50,000 customized boxes in more than 35 cities. In an interview Alia Bhatt disclosed on why she backed the startup company stating that, “What I like the most about Stylecracker is that it bridges the gap between the individual and the expert”. This company is the country first ever online personal styling portal that is designed to make life easier and convenient especially for the women that are busy or need experts help to improve their style. The website also allows women to choose between work wear, western style or even ethnic fashion among others and also have style for sizes up to 4XL.

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    Frequently Asked Questions

    Who is Alia Bhatt?

    Alia Bhatt is one the most popular and highest paid actress of Bollywood.

    What are the startups Alia Bhatt has invested in?

    The startups Alia Bhatt has invested in are StyleCracker and Nykaa.

    What is Ed A Mamma?

    Ed A Mamma is sustainable clothing apparel brand for children started by Alia Bhatt.

    What is Nykaa?

    Nykaa is a popular ecommerce platform that sells cosmetic and beauty products.

  • How Can a Small Company Partner With a Big Company

    The partnership is one aspect that lends a competitive advantage to any business. A partnership can be between any two parties – businesses dealing with the same or different products, two divisions within a company, businesses of different demographics, etc.

    But here we will be dealing with a specific kind of partnership, a small business partnership with large businesses which is an established one. So let us have a look at how to approach a company for partnership and different aspects of setting up a partnership.

    Aspects of Setting Up A Partnership

    1. Choosing a Company
    2. Partnering With the Company
    3. Post-Partnership

    Tips For Successful Partnerships

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    Aspects of Setting Up A Partnership

    • Choosing a Company
    • Partnering with the company
    • Post-partnership

    Choosing a Company

    Companies have their own reasons for being in a partnership. Sometimes people get into a partnership for capital, sometimes for expertise, and sometimes for connections. If these expectations are not fulfilled can strain the partnership. The motives, visions, and values of the companies are different, it is important to discuss them before signing the contract. Also, a clear dissolution and modification plan needs to be made as needs and expectations change over time.

    Be clear with what are needs of your company are or what problem you are facing right now. Is it distribution, product design, or reaching the demographic? Understanding the problem right will help you shortlist the right companies to partner with.

    Research

    You need to find a company to partner with. But it cannot be just any company. A sound partnership involves great cooperation and mutual benefits. The partnership need not be with your competitor. It can be a company that commands an entirely different area. Take the recent Starbucks-Spotify partnership for example. Make a list of the big partnership companies you’d like to partner with. Email them to see if they would be open to a partnership. Also, be ready to face a lot of rejections at the start. The key is to be patient.

    Business- Matchmaking Programs

    This is a matrimony conference for business. Utilize the various business workshop-conference seminars held all over the country. You must attend them and by doing so you might gain valuable contacts, the know-how from people in the field, and a list of companies looking to partner.

    Network Online

    Scout companies online. Most corporate have a strong online presence. Read their content and understand the way to approach companies with partnership potential. Let a business know that you admire their strategy, or congratulate them on a successful launch on behalf of your company. People respond well to compliments and are mindful of the people who make their day. Leave a trail in the minds of people you want to strike a partnership with.

    Aligned Goals

    It is important to find companies whose goals align with yours. The goal need not be product-specific. Take for example RedBull and GoPro. Red Bull is primarily known for energy drinks and GoPro for its portable cameras. Both companies are associated with adventure and action. This led them to partner and mutually market products. The partnership can also be based on a campaign-sustainability, women empowerment, body positivity, and pride.

    Work Ethics

    The way a company works can be a game-changer or deal-breaker for small businesses looking to partner. If you want to expand your business to reap profits, find a cut-throat company with a killer business strategy. If you want to increase your brand popularity, partner with a company that has visibility. Work ethics can be stringent. Don’t pick a company whose culture violates yours.

    Understand the partnership

    Clearly define why you want the partnership. Understand what you can offer and what you want out of it. A rookie mistake would be to sign over the intellectual property rights of your project without something more substantial in return. Consult a lawyer to translate all aspects of the agreement from the lawyer- to layman-speak. Beware of hidden clauses. Stay aware of how the partnership proceeds and speak up when you feel unethical practices are occurring.

    Once you’ve decided on the type of help your startup needs, you can start looking for the right partner.

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    Partnering With the Company

    Once you have chosen the company, here’s how to convince a big brand to partner with you:

    Break The Ice

    Don’t let your first meeting be about the partnership. Building successful partnerships means having an unorthodox means of contact first. Remember a few compliments I mentioned above? A tweet in reply, or commending their efforts publicly are good ways to go. An informal conversation is a good start. A good first impression of the business owner will increase the chances of a partnership.

    Have a pitch ready

    If the first informal meeting hits off, and they are interested in partnering, you can’t be empty-handed! Have a pitch handy. Strive to make it different. Corporations deal with hundreds of partnerships. How to convince a big brand to partner with you? how to partner with a company? How to ask for a business partnership? These questions can be answered by only identifying What makes your business unique? How will your company benefit them?

    Thus, anticipate questions and have answers ready. Being unprepared will not convince the company of your seriousness. Hire a person if necessary to prepare your pitch in such a way as to convince the company.

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    What You Have To Offer

    Layout your terms and be very clear. Leaving room for misinterpretation and loopholes will backfire. Make sure you can uphold your side of the agreement. Understand your capacity before making commitments. Don’t offer anything that you might regret later. Trading property rights for equity might seem like a profitable advantage, but then you would lose the innovation process and freedom to extend your product lines exclusive of the company.

    What They Have To Offer

    When you sit with them to brainstorm, try to understand how your product can help their company. Be it helping their process, image, or any other aspect. You know best about your company and they know best about theirs. Work together to ensure a smooth journey. There is a bonus point if both teams get along better than on a business level. To be on the safe side, have a lawyer look through for any possible areas of misinterpretations or loopholes. And also, if the exchange is mutually advantageous monetarily. An idea good on paper might not necessarily be profitable, so prepare the questions to ask before becoming a partner in a business beforehand. Be thorough before you finalize the partnership.

    Personal Contacts

    It is always better to approach a person you know in the company and test the waters rather than jumping right in with the business emails. The contact might give you insider advice on the company’s work methods and how you should go about nailing the partnership. Personal contacts are your first point of contact with the company and might be willing to help you by lending credibility to your business if you play things right.

    Liaison

    The head of the company meeting the partner every day to carry out the partnership is impractical. Instead, a liaison for this specific purpose seems a better choice. Someone who is naturally good at corporate relations and is enthusiastic about the partnership is ideal. That person must also be aware of the ins and outs of both companies as well as the partnership agreement. The liaison’s actions can affect the agreement so be sure to choose carefully.

    Your Company’s Capacity

    A partnership is exciting. A partnership with your dream company? Best ever. But know that enthusiasm is not a substitute for resources. Missing a deadline pre-partnership would only mean the loss of one customer, and even then the customer might accommodate you. Missing deadlines post-partnership where you provide products/services to the corporation may make them lose customers which can hugely impact them. So don’t overextend your employees and resources.

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    Post-Partnership

    Once the agreement is placed well, here’s what you need to do to strengthen your company’s foundation; not just as a partner but also as a successful business after the partnership ends.

    Add It To The Resume

    A successful partnership is a feather in the cap. When looking for partners in the future, make it a point to mention past partnerships. It will not only show that you have experience in the area but also make them more willing to think of you first when an opportunity arises. Stress the highlights of your partnership and how both of you were able to achieve your goals. And it’s not always a bed of roses. Talk about the parts where you struggled and explain how you overcame them.

    Contacts Within The Company

    Don’t limit yourself to your point of contact. Interact with people from all divisions of the company. Who knows, you might find a person who introduces you to your future business partner. Despite that, it is good to interact with individuals and the company as a whole.

    Partnerships are akin to marriages, they have to be a match made in heaven. An uncooperative partnership will have both companies incurring losses while repairing mistakes. A successful partnership on the other hand will do wonders for both partners. On this note, I wish you, happy partnering folks!

    6 Ways – What makes a Successful Business Partnership
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    Tips For Successful Partnerships

    Here are listed plenty of tips for you to create a successful partnership:

    Identify Your Strengths And Weaknesses

    What are you good at? What do you do well? Your partner should complement you. If you focus on exploring out people who have different skill sets from yours, you’ll be stronger together than you are apart. Don’t be scared to be dependent on your partner. In a good partnership, both people bring something equally important to the table.

    Discuss Your Long-Term Goals Upfront

    Are they similar? Are they compatible? You might disagree about how to get there, but you and your partner should share the same vision. The crucial question to answer is, will you both be able to achieve your goals by working together?

    Define Your Roles Explicitly

    You don’t want to overlay in your efforts. Before you get started, form out who is responsible for what. These roles may change over time for both partners. But they must be verified upfront to avoid conflicts.

    Communicate Regularly

    This piece of advice seems obvious, but it’s very important. How do you communicate? How often do you communicate? Is it working for both of you? Setting a recurring time and date will help facilitate talking about any problems that arise — which inevitably will.

    Remember That no One Likes Surprises

    When in doubt, don’t be afraid to get your partner’s approval. Ask for their reviews or ideas too.

    Respect One Another

    As we all know, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Don’t misuse or take advantage of your partner’s weaknesses just because you can. It’s not worth it.

    Put Things in Writing

    Having an operating agreement in place will help clarify your goals.

    Pick Up The Phone.

    Using email to communicate about important matters is a surefire road to disaster. Tone and intention are too easily misinterpreted.

    Take Full Responsibility For Your Actions.

    Take full responsibility for your actions in partnerships whatever you do.

    If you Make a Mistake, Admit It Quickly.

    The sooner you cop to an error, the more quickly you will both be able to move on. Your partner will appreciate not having to call you out.

    Don’t Let Your Discontent Fester

    You will feel worse, not better. If you avoid airing your grievances, you will begin to blow things out of proportion. Get what you need to off your chest.

    Define What Small Problems vs Big Problems Are

    Not everything is a big problem. Most things aren’t. It helps to be reminded of that.

    Support One Another

    If you find yourself secretly wishing your partner ill will, something has gone fatally wrong. Partnerships are a never-ending work in progress. Don’t let issues that arise be swept under the rug. They always bubble to the surface anyway.

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    FAQs

    How to convince a big brand to partner with you?

    Tips to convince a company of a successful partnership:

    • Be unique.
    • Remain persistent.
    • Think big.
    • Plan for fast growth.
    • Prepare for scrutiny.
    • Build on existing partnerships.

    What are some examples of big partnership businesses?

    Small business partnership with large business Examples:

    • GoPro & Red Bull.
    • Pottery Barn & Sherwin-Williams.
    • Casper & West Elm.
    • Kanye and Adidas.
    • BMW & Louis Vuitton.
    • Starbucks & Spotify.
    • Apple & MasterCard.
    • Airbnb & Flipboard.

    How does a general partnership work?

    A general partnership is a business made up of two or more partners, each sharing the business’s debts, liabilities, and assets. Partners assume unlimited liability, potentially subjecting their personal assets to seizure if the partnership becomes insolvent. Partners should create a written partnership agreement.

    How do I partner with big partnership companies?

    5 steps to take to successfully partner your startup with large partnership companies:

    1. Define what you want out of a partnership.
    2. Know what you bring to the table.
    3. Find a personal contact at the larger company.
    4. Make sure goals align.
    5. Be patient.

    How to Find Partners for Your Startup?

    • Make a List of Your Goals as every startup has short-term, long-term, and stretch goals.
    • Consider Your Needs (Once you know where you’re going, you have to figure out how to get there).
    • Consider Their Needs.
    • Know Where to Look.
    • Have a Reasonable Timetable.
    • Stay Organized.

  • Simple Rules of Writing that will Help You Improve Instantly

    Writing about a piece of information requires a lot of effort. But if you follow certain methods, it would make it easier for you to write. It will also keep your readers engaged in the content.

    Here are some rules you should know to improve your writing instantly.

    Read
    Be Specific
    Purpose
    Simple Words
    Active Voice
    Short Paragrpahs
    Don’t over-explain
    Proofread
    Practice
    FAQ

    Read

    You should start with reading a lot of articles and books. This will instantly increase your vocabulary skills. Reading articles on the topic you wish to write about will help you in gaining in-depth information about it.

    Reading will also improve your concentration and further gives you an idea of how to write more efficiently. It will help you in formulating more meaningful sentences. Reading would help you in getting to know ‘new words’ which can improve your writing.

    Be Specific

    You should ensure that you are specific to the point and don’t beat around the bush. You should ensure that when you are speaking about a specific topic, you would provide proper information about it and not unwanted information.

    Make sure you just don’t brief about a topic but explain it in more detail. This will interest your readers and provide them more information. This will make your readers find your content more interesting. Being specific will improve your writing and help your readers as well.

    Purpose

    Before you start writing identify the purpose of your article. Make sure you know what you would require to communicate to your readers. This will make your writing faster and the process would be easier.

    When you wouldn’t have a purpose to say then your sentences would just be meaningful and wouldn’t deliver anything for the reader. Always find the purpose before you start writing. This will help to improve your writing and making the content more effective for the readers.

    Simple Words

    You should ensure you use simple words in your article. Most of the time the technical words or jargon would be not known by all your readers. This will make your writing look very complicated to understand.

    Always use simple words so that even the most common man would be able to read your writing. This will improve the quality of your writing and make it accessible to all the readers.

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    Active Voice

    Using active voice in your sentences would make your readers feel like they are part of the writing. They would feel an inter-personal relationship with your content and this will help them to build a good relationship with you and you’re writing.

    Active voice will keep the writing lively and most of the time the readers would end up reading the entire article. Using passive voice would make your readers bored. Ensure you keep your readers active the entire while they go through your writing.

    Hemmingway Quote
    Hemmingway Quote

    Short Paragrpahs

    Keep your paragraphs as short as you can. You would have observed the news articles in a newspaper, where the paragraphs are very short.

    This is because our brain would take in more information, when it is broken down into small pieces. Short paragraphs would make the reading easier.

    Long paragraphs would make you feel tired even before you start reading it. Your readers would get a sense in their head that the paragraph is too long or too big. Hence using short paragraphs will improve the quality of your writing.

    Don’t over-explain

    Before you start writing ensure that you have an idea of what you are going to explain. Don’t over-explain about a topic. Make sure that you would provide only what is necessary.

    Make sure you organize your thoughts in your mind before you begin writing. This helps you to keep your article very simple. The goal is to provide your readers only the information that is required and not overburdening them with information.

    Proofread

    Once you complete your article make sure you read it again. Reading it twice or thrice would help you rectify your mistakes. It puts you in the perspective of your reader and you will be able to correct yourself and make some sentences more simple and easily understandable.

    It helps you to understand whether your content would flow smoothly. This will help you improve your writing and will make it more effective.

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    Practice

    To improve your writing, you need to practice every day and as often as possible. As the saying goes “practice makes a man perfect”. Practicing makes you understand where you go wrong, it makes you understand your weakness and you will be able to work on it. The more you practice, write content, edit it and correct it you would get better at it.

    FAQ

    What should one avoid in good writing?

    Avoid Long/Confusing sentences and avoid incorrect use of commas.

    How do you find mistakes in writing?

    Reread it and use a checklist to find mistakes in writing.

    What are the most common grammar mistakes?

    Missing a comma, Incorrect capitalization, Missing a hyphen, Leaving too many white spaces between words are the most common grammar mistakes.

    Conclusion

    Writing is not a profession. It is a life skill which everyone needs. It helps in developing other important skills like analysing, marketing, etc. Follow the above points to improve the quality of your content. Make sure you practice the above tips on a daily basis. This will make your content effective and you would be able to see the improvement in the quality of your writing.

  • What led Uber, Lyft to Build a Database of Drivers?

    Uber and Lyft are working together in creating a database of their drivers. They are creating a database of the drivers who have been accused of sexual assault from the customers. They are taking the list of drivers who have been banned from the platform for sexual assaults and other crimes.

    They are creating a database of people who have raised passenger-safety concerns in their platform. This safety programme is done because of the promise made by Uber, they will look into the crimes related to sexual assault. 15 months ago, they had revealed around 3,000 sexual assault cases had been reported on the company’s platform by passengers.

    Let’s look at the new initiative taken by Uber and Lyft towards increasing customer safety.

    Database of drivers
    Reason for Creating a Database of drivers
    Increased safety of their customers
    Advantage for other Companies
    FAQ

    Database of drivers

    The database developed by Uber and Lyft will contain information about the drivers who have been banned from the platform. Due to their involvement in sexual assaults and other crimes.

    In the initial stages, Uber and Lyft will list the drivers who have been banned by the platforms in the U.S. This database will be overseen by the company HireRight. HireRight is a company that specializes in background checks and they will take care of getting more detailed information about the drivers and listing them on the database.

    Reason for Creating a Database of drivers

    Uber and Lyft have been criticized in the past by U.S lawmakers regarding the safety concerns for their passengers. Since then both the companies Uber and Lyft are working together towards antitrust and privacy-related concerns.

    Sharing the information about the sexual assault faced by passengers by the drivers is really important. Most of the time the victims don’t file a formal complaint against the drivers. This acts as an advantage for the drivers who have been involved in those crimes and they easily escape from facing the consequences for their actions.

    These drivers would easily shift from one platform to another as there are no legal procedures and actions taken against them. This would increase such crimes and the safety of the customers would be at risk.

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    Increased safety of their customers

    This database platform is mainly concentrated on increasing the safety of the customers. This will make the companies in selecting the right drivers for their companies which will increase the safety of the customers.

    Uber and Lyft have said that they would maintain the privacy of the victims, and wouldn’t provide any information about the victims of the incidents.

    They have categorized the incidents for dismissing the drivers in six different categories which are

    • Attempted non-consensual sexual penetration
    • Non-consensual touching of a sexual body part
    • Non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part
    • Non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part
    • Non-consensual sexual penetration
    • Fatal physical assaults

    Uber and Lyft have said that only a very small amount of the drivers have been involved in behaviors that are listed in the above categories. Hence, the companies who have access to the database can allow drivers to provide services for their platform after their own background checks and investigations.

    What women are experiencing during the rides
    What women are experiencing during the rides

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    Advantage for other Companies

    The Companies which are involved in food deliveries, e-commerce deliveries, and companies involved in similar business models would get access to the database. Since there is a third-party company that specializes in background checks, the companies will be able to get detailed information about their drivers.

    Any company that has access to the information in the database is free to hire those drivers according to their own background checks. This database will help the companies in maintaining their goodwill and increasing the safety of their customers.

    This added layer of protection is being added because of the criticization made by Rape, Abuse, and Incent National network. It is a victim’s rights group which stated that the platforms are not doing a proper screening of their drivers.

    FAQ

    Who are the Founders of Uber?

    Travis Kalanick, Garrett Camp are the founders of Uber.

    What is the valuation of Uber?

    As of May, 2019 Uber’s valuation was $75billion.

    Who is the founder of Lyft?

    Logan Green and John Zimmer are the founders of Lyft.

    Conclusion

    Uber has been asked to pay a fine of $59 million by California’s Public Utility Commission. When Uber had released the details of the past abuses faced by the customers, the commission had asked for the details of the victims. Uber refused to provide the details of the customers as it wanted to maintain the privacy of their customers and hence the company was asked to pay a fine.

    Lyft is waiting for Uber to solve the issue related to privacy concerns so that they can release the reports about the past issues faced by their customers. This joint initiative from both the companies can be really helpful for a lot of companies and make the customers using their platform to feel more secure and safe.

  • Why Alibaba might be Fined $1 Billion by China

    Alibaba Group was founded on 28 June 1999. It is known as Alibaba Group Holding Limited and also as Alibaba.com. It is a multi-national company which is based in Zhejiang, China. Alibaba group specializes in e-commerce, technology, retail, and the internet.

    Alibaba is one of the world’s largest e-commerce and retail companies. It was also rated as the fifth largest Artificial Intelligence company in the world in 2020. Jack Ma is the founder of the company. The company has around 117,000 employees as of 31 March 2020.

    The company’s name was derived from the character Alibaba from the middle-eastern story, One thousand and one nights. The name signifies that the company is Universal.

    The company is considered one of the 10 most valuable corporations. Alibaba group is named as the world’s 31st largest public limited company according to the Forbes 2000 2020 list.  As of 2020, the company has the sixth-highest global brand valuation. The company owns and operates different organizations in different business sectors across the globe.

    Alibaba group has been facing certain legal actions from the Chinese government. The company is being criticized and the company is asked to pay around $1 billion as a fine to the regulators. Let’s look at the reason behind it.

    Reasons Why Alibaba might be Fined?
    What Jack Ma said about Alibaba being fined?
    Consequences of the Fine
    FAQ

    Reasons Why Alibaba might be Fined?

    Alibaba Group has already faced legal actions in the past. Alibaba Group had forced their e-commerce sellers to pick any one platform. They have stopped their merchants to list themselves on other platforms which are against the rule of the Chinese Government.

    Alibaba is said to have alleged the anti-competitive practices by the 2008 antimonopoly law. It is said that the company had acquired its competitors without getting approvals from the government. The company had declared themselves that the acquired companies were not their competitors.

    In addition to this Alibaba group’s founder, Jack Ma’s business empire is being investigated by the Chinese Government as he had spoken against the Chinese regulatory system in October 2020.

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    What Jack Ma said about Alibaba being fined?

    Jack Ma said that good inventions will be able to exist with regulations but they wouldn’t exist with old-fashioned regulations. He gave an example saying that one cannot manage an airport the same way they manage a train station. He told that in the same way, we won’t be able to manage our future the way we manage the past. This was a statement made for the regulations laid down by the Chinese Government.

    He also spoke about the financial system of China saying that they should develop and depend more on credit system development. He said that they should move away from the pawnshop mentality within the financial industry.

    Annual revenue of Alibaba Group
    Annual revenue of Alibaba Group

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    Consequences of the Fine

    China’s state administration has asked Alibaba group to pay an amount of $1.3 billion. The fine was implied for breaking the 2008 anti-monopoly law. This is the maximum fine collected under the law.

    The Alibaba Group was fined for investing an amount of $692 million in Intime during the year 2014 and for bidding an amount of $2.6 billion in 2017 for privatizing Intime.

    This will be the highest fine ever paid by a corporate in the history of China. Alibaba group has also been asked to cancel its association with the company’s founder Jack Ma. The regulators have told that if they fail to disassociate with their founder the company will have to face actions.

    They will have to pay the fine only if they don’t follow the rules of the Chinese government. Also do not end the policy where they force the merchants to sell only on their platform. The company is also been asked to withdraw its investments from some businesses. The regulators want the company to remove non-core businesses from its core retail operations.

    Ant Financials which is a subsidiary of Alibaba group has been claimed as a risk for the Chinese Financial system. The company was asked to undergo certain changes which are said to affect their business model.

    Alibaba Group had to temporarily stop the IPO plans of Ant financials due to the allegations. The authorities of Beijing stopped the IPO issue of Ant financials which was supposed to be for $37 billion.

    FAQ

    How much does Jack Ma earn per second?

    Jack Ma earns $0.32 per second and $1,141.55 per hour.

    What percent of Alibaba does Jack Ma own?

    Jack Ma owns 8% of Alibaba group.

    Who is the richest person in China?

    Jack Ma is the richest person in China with a net worth of 48.2 billion as of July, 2020.

    Conclusion

    Mr. Ye Han, a partner at Beijing-based law firm Merits & Tree told that the message was clear. The companies are supposed to seek approvals from the government for such deals in the country. He is a person who has a specialization in anti-trust, mergers, and acquisitions.

    Alibaba Group has said that they would actively corporate with the regulators regarding the case and their business operations would remain normal during that time.

    The regulators took strict actions against the company after the founder Jack Ma’s speech during the Bund Summit in October. He spoke about the countries strict regulations and the over dominance over the banking industry. This has led the Chinese regulators to take strict actions against the company.

  • Create Videos Within Minutes with InVideo

    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 InVideo.

    Videos are one of the most effective ways to convey thoughts, ideas and concepts and is fast gaining popularity among the netizens. According to YouTube reports, mobile video consumption increases 100% year after year. Facebook generates 8 billion video views on average per day, while 53% of customers engage with a brand after watching a video on social media.

    However, to take advantage of this growing popularity of videos, one must concentrate on creating effective and creative videos, which is not a simple task for everyone. But now with ‘InVideo’ making great videos is indeed becoming everybody’s cup of tea. InVideo is a web based software that helps you create fantastic videos, no matter whether you are an expert or an amateur in video making.

    InVideo – Company Highlights

    Startup Name InVideo
    Headquarter Mumbai
    Sector Video Creation
    Co- founders Sanket Shah, Pankit Chedda and Harsh Vakharia
    Founded 2017
    Parent Organization Abstrakt Video Private Limited
    Website InVideo

    About InVideo and How it Works
    Founders of InVideo and Team
    How was InVideo Started
    InVideo – Name, Tagline and Logo
    InVideo – Business Model and Revenue Model
    InVideo – User Acquisition
    InVideo – Funding & Investors
    InVideo – Advisors and Mentors
    InVideo – Future Plans

    About InVideo and How it Works

    InVideo is a software on the web that provides seamless creative video creation services. It helps marketers, entrepreneurs, agencies, other small businesses to create professional-looking videos with ease. InVideo works with an intention to make video creation an effortless and friction less process.

    While there are video making software, which are either too simple that creates videos which is no better than PowerPoint presentations, there are some other software that are too complex to be used by a non-expert. InVideo’s USP is that it is a synthesis of both simple and complex video creation softwares available, thereby, having the best of both in one place.

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    Founders of InVideo and Team

    Engineering graduates Sanket Shah, Pankit Chedda and Harsh Vakharia Co-founded InVideo.

    Invideo Founders
    Sanket Shah, Pankit Chedda and Harsh Vakharia

    Prior to InVideo, the trio founded ‘Massblurb‘, an online automated platform, helping restaurants manage their end to end online presence. After ‘Massblurb’ got acquired by ‘Mobikon’, they decided to come together to set up InVideo.

    Currently, Sanket Shah is the CEO of InVideo. An Electrical and Electronic engineer by qualification, Sanket did Master of Science in Quantitative management from University of Michigan. Sanket worked with organizations like ‘Right Relevance,Inc’ and ‘Mobikon Asia Pte. Ltd’ in different positions. Apart from being a founding member of Massblurb, Sanket also founded ‘Visify Books’ – an interesting platform that presents main content of various books in video format. At InVideo, Sanket leads the Marketing and Sales department of the company.

    Pankit Chedda is the CTO of InVideo. After completing his B.E from University of Mumbai, Pankit studied ‘Masters, Information Systems Management’ from Carnegie Mellon University. He worked in technical positions with organizations like ‘comScore, Inc’, ‘CouponDunia’ and ‘Mobikon Asia Pte. Ltd.’ At Invedio, Pankit manages core tool technology.

    Harsh Vakharia, a chemical engineer by qualification, did M.S. in Industrial and Operations Engineering form University of Michigan. He worked in companies like A.T. Kearney and Mobikon Asia Pte. Ltd. Harsh looks after video technology and its details at InVideo.

    InVideo currently has a team of 45 people.

    How was InVideo Started

    A personal problem faced by the founding team has led them to establish InVideo. Back in 2012, the founding team were working on creating 10-minute video summaries of non-fiction books. The process of video production was a major hurdle for them back then as it consumed a lot of time.

    The team started looking for alternate solutions and realized that there are only two kinds of video creation tools:

    1. That allows the user to create a very basic video (which is worse than a presentation).
    2. Or one that will require a trained video editor to create a video.

    While the simple video creating platforms have minimal scope for creativity and customization, the advanced versions are too complicated for a normal person to create high-quality, innovative videos. Identifying such a gap and personally experiencing the absence of a platform that caters to the needs of an ordinary individual who wants to create innovative high-end videos; Sanket Shah, Pankit Chedda, and Harsh Vakharia have put in collective effort to create the InVideo company.

    When we researched, there were only simple video editors and complex ones; it did not work that way. So we did it! We ended up sitting beside a customer, observing them what we did – says Sanket, InVideo CEO

    Before launching InVideo, the team studied the customers’ needs extensively through primary research. They reached out to large news channels and eventually validated the idea. Further, they built a basic engine to get a direct response from the customers before launching on a full scale.

    InVideo Logo
    InVideo Logo

    The company deals in Video making, and hence the name ‘InVideo’

    If there’s any piece of content, our goal is to help people transform that content into great videos. So it’s like your content in the video. Thus the name ‘InVideo.’ – Sanket on explaining the thought behind the name.

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    InVideo – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The InVideo business model operates as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. It is basically a software distribution model in which InVideo hosts applications and provides them to the customers over the internet.

    The InVideo revenue works on a freemium model, with paid plans starting at just $10 per month.

    InVideo – User Acquisition and Growth

    InVideo has over 800,000 users from more than 150 countries who have created videos in over 75 languages.

    When we had started building the technology, we had found partners like Republic TV, Network18, etc., who helped us in understanding what we should build.

    As InVideo was been built taking input from the customers, the company has managed to emerge strong and successful. With strategic planning, the team was able to build a market fit product, and from thereon, the mouth referrals have helped the company to get popular.

    So we built this company with our customers. And so it’s so successful. We went ahead and built the entire company with our customers.

    Furthermore, InVideo has undertaken intense marketing campaigns and growth hacking. Besides, they also adopted numerous other strategies and techniques to popularize the platform.

    InVideo takes great care of customer expectations and designs its products in sync with customer demand. The company also has a 24/7 customer support team that responds in minutes.

    Adobe Creative Clouds revenue is 6.5 billion, and they are only targeting professional video editors. We think that our market size is at least 10x because we are targeting anyone who is desiring to create a great video – says Sanket about InVideo’s target market

    Apart from this Launching LTDs has also helped them a lot in gaining new users.

    InVideo – Funding and Investors

    The InVideo Funding details are listed below:

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    May 2018 Seed Undisclosed Haresh Chawla, Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, Ashish Tulsian (Posist), Nishcal Shetty (Crowdfire), Kunal Shah (Cred)
    October 2019 Seed Undisclosed Sequoia Capital India’s early-stage accelerator programme Surge, Blume Ventures, Omidyar Network & Lightspeed Venture Partners
    February 2020 Seed $2.5 Million Sequoia Capital India’s early-stage accelerator programme Surge, Anand Chandrasekaran & Gokul Rajaram
    October 2020 Series A $15 Million Sequoia Capital India

    InVideo – Advisors and Mentors

    Haresh Chawla, who is also an investor in InVideo is mentoring the startup

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    InVideo – Future Plans

    InVideo’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) has increased by almost five times, from 12 to 59 in just three months.

    Over the long-term, InVideo envisions to create an ecosystem like Adobe, enabling every marketer, entrepreneurs, who desire to create a video, to be able to do that easily. Now, InVideo wants to expand from a web platform to a cross-device and cross-function space. They are aiming for 5 million users in the next two years. The team is also planning to create a platform that will help users in creating templates.

    Our vision has been very simple, that actually we want to take over the world. When people think about video, they need to think about InVideo.

    So, if you are on the lookout for making a video, do give InVideo a try!

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    Who are the InVideo Founders?

    Sanket Shah, Pankit Chedda and Harsh Vakharia are the Co-founders of InVideo.

    What is InVideo?

    InVideo is a web based software that helps you create fantastic videos in a matter of minutes, no matter whether you are an expert or an amateur in video making.

    Is InVideo free?

    InVideo works on a freemium model so you can access InVideo for free but the customization options and the features you will be able to access are limited.