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 SleepyPanda.
With the advent of young Indian players and big brands in the Indian Mattress industry, many customers have switched from traditional street-side shops and local ‘Bhaiyas’ to branded mattresses. It is undeniable that the organized sector is multiplying in India with rising demand for good quality mattresses by customers. One of the startups in this industry, SleepyPanda is here with its innovatively designed mattresses.
Founded by Ms. Monica Thakur, Mr. Suhas Masuti, and Mr. Veerendra Koujalagi, SleepyPanda is gearing to disrupt the bedding industry! Since its inception, SleepyPanda has been growing immensely, with 35 mattresses sold in the first week itself. The company targets to sell at least 1200 mattresses per month and secure 100 Cr sales by the end of FY21.
StartupTalky interviewed Ms. Monica Thakur, Founder & J.MD of SleepyPanda to get insights into the Startup Journey and Growth Story of SleepyPanda. Know all about SleepyPanda’s products, How SleepyPanda started, its history, future plans, founder, competitors & more in the article ahead.
SleepyPanda deals with the mattress and provides comfort at an affordable price. SleepyPanda kicked off in 2020 with a simple idea to improve peoples’ well-being through comfy sleep experiences.
The long-term vision of SleepyPanda – To get into the furniture business as well.
The short-term vision is to get the change in sleeping style from using traditional to modern mattresses.
The Core Belief of SleepyPanda – “People should get this Quality and comfort across pan India”
SleepyPanda – Mattress/Bedding Industry Details
SleepyPanda Industry -The bedding industry
Target market size- Age group 20 to 60 years pan India
Future Prospects of SleepyPanda in the next five years – In Top 5 best mattress brand
The memory foam bedding market is gearing for growth of more than INR 300 crore by 2022. Given the current scenario, memory foam is touted as an ‘In’ thing. Body pain and aches are appearing to be driving up the demand for memory foam. Who would have thought that our key working hours and day will be spent working on the bed? Sleep has never been more critical – and challenging – during periods of stress, fatigue, and untimely routines. Changing lifestyle and working patterns —are leading to create this new market for the startups. The bedding industry and mattresses as a category have welcome news for this industry.
The wave of technology has revolutionized the sleep industry. With huge expertise in coir, cotton, and foam, the unorganized sector has a significant role in the Indian mattress industry. The Indian mattress market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10 percent and is on route to attain a USD 2.5 Bn mark by the year 2022.
Reminiscing the start journey of SleepyPanda, Monica Thakur (Founder of SleepyPanda) says –
“We got into the mattress business because I didn’t like the people who do not believe in Modern mattresses. As with thought, my mother and other family members too were facing back pain issues due to traditional mattresses, thus there comes thought for purchasing a modern mattress and to experience the WOW feeling!
When I went with my mother to shop for a new mattress. This idea of having a business in the bedding industry came to my mind. We were still sleeping on the mattress that we had purchased 7 years back after shifting to a new house. I wanted to continue with the same but the issue is not 1 or 2 they were many hence we decided to get a new mattress. I personally felt I should not repeat the same mistake that we have done 7 years ago. So was hunting for a good mattress to solve the issue of my family because, Good sleep=Happy Family.
After experiencing the buying process, I felt, nothing had changed, and we were depressed. The stores were dull and unfriendly, the salespeople pushy, and showed 2 to 3 varieties of the mattress. Also, we felt awkward to have a trial at a store in front of people and were uncomfortable too.
The sales and prices were different in every store, so it was impossible to compare the shops, and I later learned that this is actually a confusing state for us. We came back with an empty hand and my mind full of business ideas with the bedding industry. Which would not just build a better mattress, it would totally change the mattress buying experience.
When I did not find my wow feeling I decided to give this to all the people across Pan India with just a single click. This idea of having a bedding industry came to my mind with the behind the scene story which was matching with other business partners too and we decided to get a life for Sleepypanda comforts Pvt Ltd. Through various google research, we found that comfortable sleep requirement is never-ending demand. Hence we started with this”
SleepyPanda – Products/Services
Sleepypanda Comforts Private Limited is the manufacturer and wholesaler of Vita Ortho Memory Foam Mattress, Mattress Protector, vita Ortho and Luna dual comfort Ortho mattresses, natural yoga mats (Samba, Darba, Banana), Sofa cum bed, memory foam, and microfiber pillows.
USP and How the Product Works
SleepyPanda helps you to get rid of sleepless nights. Its Vita Ortho memory mattress helps to get relief in Backache, Cool gel technology used in memory foam helps to maintain the body temperature as per the room temperature, 100 night trial period – if the customer doesn’t like the product then they can return it with full refund assured.
Indian consumers are still unaware of the necessity of a modern bedding space in today’s hectic and chaotic lifestyle. As a result, they continue to use traditional products, which not only fail to guarantee quality but are also highly overpriced. SleepyPanda endeavors to change this perception. The brand also provides 100-night trials of ortho mattresses so that consumers can make experience-based decisions after using them firsthand. Other added benefits include free shipping and a whopping 10-year warranty.
Monica Thakur, Suhas Masuti, and Veerendra Koujalagi are the founding team of SleepyPanda.
“We are Mutual friends and one day I informed them of the idea behind good sleep and everyone showed interest to start this brand” Monica added.
Stressing on SleepyPanda’s Work culture, Monica says – It is flexible. Employees are encouraged to work when they like and how they like it’s just that the work should be effective and completed in time.
SleepyPanda – Name Meaning and Logo
The significance of the name SleepyPanda – As pandas live half of their life in resting, enjoying, and sleeping, Panda was incorporated in the name and logo. The team wants users of its mattress to experience the same sleep as a panda with no worries.
SleepyPanda Logo
SleepyPanda – Growth
Since its inception, SleepyPanda has been growing immensely, with 35 mattresses sold in the first week itself. The company targets to sell at least 1200 mattresses per month and secure 100 Cr sales by the end of FY21. Although the brand is present in PAN-India, it majorly aims to cater to the South India market, including Bangalore, Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad, Telangana, Kerala, followed by Mumbai and Goa.
Further, it looks forward to becoming a thought leader in the modern bedding space by crafting high-quality products to address all consumer concerns, while also giving back to society through various CSR initiatives, and thus making a difference in the world, globally.
SleepyPanda – Business Model and Revenue Model
SleepyPanda’s business model is simple, B2C i.e, Business to Consumers. It is the process of selling products and services directly between a business and consumers. SleepyPanda makes money by selling its products online.
SleepyPanda Revenue Model
SleepyPanda – Competitors
SleepyPanda’s top competitors are Wakefit, Sleepycat, Emma, flo Mattress, and Duroflex.
Few tools which SleepyPanda uses to run the startup – Google Analyticshelps SleepyPanda to track the traffic on its website and Freshdeskfor CRM ticketing tool.
SleepyPanda – Future Plans
SleepyPanda plans to add new technology depending upon the demand and requirement. “Once the bedding industry is set we will get into home furniture.” says Monica Thakur, Founder of SleepyPanda.
SleepyPanda – FAQs
What is SleepyPanda?
SleepyPanda deals with the mattress and provides comfort at an affordable price.
Who are the founders of SleepyPanda?
Monica Thakur, Suhas Masuti, and Veerendra Koujalagi are the founding team of SleepyPanda.
Is SleepyPanda an Indian Company?
Yes, SleepyPanda is an Indian company headquartered in Bangalore.
How SleepyPanda makes money?
SleepyPanda’s business model is simple, B2C i.e, Business to Consumers. it makes money by selling products online. Its products include – Vita Ortho Memory Foam Mattress, Mattress Protector, Microfibre Pillows, etc.,
When it comes to automobiles, millennials today do not believe in ownership and maintenance of their cars and bikes. They believe in renting, using, enjoying, and being merry! Exploiting this insight merely on its merit, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Abhishek Mahajan, Vasant Verma, and Amit Sahu started Drivezy in the year 2015.
Drivezy (formerly JustRide) is India’s largest marketplace for car and two-wheeler sharing. Through Drivezy, travelers can book scooters, motorcycles and cars from people living around them.
All in all, Drivezy is a car rental platform. Car owners can list their vehicles on Drivezy when they are not using it and the customers can rent it whenever they want to. It offers the following features to the users:
Bookings can be done on the website or from the mobile application.
18+ is the legal age to book bikes and cars on Drivezy.
The users can book the vehicles on an hourly, daily, weekly basis. They also have the option of fuel or no fuel vehicle bookings.
The security deposit on Drivezy is minimal. It can range from INR 0 to INR 999.
Drivezy provides its customers with home pickup service.
Drivezy releases instant payments to the car owners and refunds to the consumers in the given case.
Founders of Drivezy and team
The Drivezy founders are Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Vasant Verma.
Drivezy Founders
Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Drivezy – Ashwarya is a graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering. Also an alumnus of Y Combinator batch of 2016 and the first batch of Google Launchpad. He served as a mentor at Launchpad during his post-Graduation.
Hemant Kumar, Co-founder of Drivezy – Before launching Drivezy, Kumar was an application developer at Service Now and a senior consultant at Oracle India before that. Kumar has graduated in B.tech from MNNIT.
Abhishek Mahajan, Co-founder of Drivezy – Graduated from IIT Bombay, Abhishek was an Associate Consultant at PwC India. He is also a CFA Level 2 candidate.
Vasant Verma, Co-founder and COO of Drivezy – Before Drivezy, Verma worked as a global market analyst at Nomura. Vasant Verma has a graduation degree in B.tech from MNNIT.
Amit Sahu, Co-founder of Drivezy – After graduating from the MNNIT, Allahabad, Sahu worked as a vehicle testing engineer in Honda R&D India Dept. Performance testing of Various cars would fall under his domain. After this, he went on to work at Drivezy.
It all started when one of the co-founders Ashwarya Singh bought a new car that met with an accident in the early days itself. Singh didn’t use the car so much but still considerably spent a chunk of his salary in the maintenance of the car. This got him thinking about creating a platform where one could rent cars.
There was one more thought that drove the inception of Drivezy, then justride.in, that the majority of people in India can’t afford to buy cars. He then went on to discuss this idea with his college friends, now the co-founders and launched Drivezy in 2015 in Bangalore.
Drivezy – Startup Launch
Drivezy was previously called Just Ride. In 2017, the team thought of adding bikes to their range of products to expand and increase their user base. Drivezy works on a model where the ideal cars and bikes of the owners are listed with them and the vehicle owners can generate cash even when they are not using the bikes or cars. The individual owners of the commercial vehicles are also registering with Drivezy to make money.
Drivezy – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Drivezy business model works on commission. Drivezy lets the vehicle owners list their vehicles on their mobile applications. The company takes roughly 20-25% of the revenue pooled from renting this vehicle.
The first and foremost hurdle for Drivezy was the trust issues amongst the vehicle owners. They wouldn’t just rent their cars to random strangers. Though Drivezy provides guarantees, aggregator model, a peer-to-peer sharing model, and background checks of the users, this is a major challenge in the Indian markets.
The second hurdle was difficulty in leasing and buying of cars due to the financial problems.
With the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, most of the businesses that relied on transport and communication, and mobility found themselves on unstable grounds. Drivezy is not an exception and therefore, after bearing with the economic downturn for over a year, the Bengaluru-based car and bike rental startup has finally decided to be acquired by Yamaha. The size of the acquisition will range between $45-50 million, as per reports.
Drivezy – Competitors
Drivezy cars kind of operates in a perfectly competitive market. There’s immense competition in the market with major players having massive market standing. Drivezy in totality competes with taxi aggregators and ridesharing startups like Ola, Uber, Bounce, LetsRide, PoolCircle, ZoomCar, Carzonrent, Wunder, and Ryde among others.
Drivezy – Funding and Investors
When it comes to funding, Drivezy has raised a total of $149.3M in funding over 10 rounds from various investors including Das Capital, Axon Partners, IT-Farm, Yamaha Motor Ventures, and Y Combinator, among others.
Here is a list of all the funding rounds of Drivezy:
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
August 2015
Angel Round
$1 million
Anirudh Damani, Alok Mittal, Niraj Singh
November 2015
Seed Round
$2 million
–
March 2016
Series A
$400K
Dheeraj Jain
August 2016
Venture Round
$120K
Y Combinator
November 2016
Venture Round
$3 million
Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures, SCM Holdings and ITFarm from Japan
October 2017
Venture Round
$10 million
Das Capital
February 2018
Initial COin Offering
$5 million
Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures and other exiting investors along with other HNIs from Japan and Singapore
April 20, 2018
Second Round of Initial COin Offering
$8 million
Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures and other exiting investors along with other HNIs from Japan and Singapore
November 2018
Series B
$20 million
IT-Farm, Das Capital, Yamaha
November 2018
Debt Financing
$100 million
AnyPay
The company, since inception, had raised total funding of $49.45 million before closing the huge asset financing deal. In 2018, Drivezy secured $100 Mn in an asset financing deal with which the Drivezy team plans to induct close to 50,000 vehicles. The company had raised an amount close to $149.3 million.
The company’s tagline is “Drive It Like You Own It!”
Drivezy Logo
As pioneers in the Indian self drive car rental industry, the company believes in the mantra- “Why buy a car, when you can rent one?”.
Drivezy – Growth
Drivezy’s growth is coming at what seems to be a key inflection point for the transportation industry. The company claims to have a customer base of about 1.5 million registered users and with around 93% of them coming from the 18-35 age bracket. Cofounder Ashwarya Singh told that it has processed over 4 lakh bookings, and has 500 employees in 11 cities.
Operating cities- 21 cities of India
Average monthly customers- 2,00,000
Average monthly pending requests- 2300
Average monthly revenue- $150,000
Average monthly GMV- $950,000
The company earns a 15-30% commission for every successful transaction. In FY18, it clocked a GMV (Gross Merchandising Value) of $32 Million, growing by 200% since 2017.
Drivezy – Future Plans
Drivezy clocked gross sales of $32 million in 2018 and is targeting $80 million in 2019. Besides this, the company plans to launch in the US by starting with a fleet of 200 cars in San Francisco. Drivezy also plans to lunch its operations in Southeast Asia soon.
Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs
How does Drivezy work?
Car owners can list their vehicles on Drivezy when they are not using it and the customers can rent it whenever they want toand they will be required to pay a nominal amount for every km travelled. The user will get the vehicle with full fuel tank and He/She has to return it with the same fuel level.
How much can I earn with Drivezy?
Drivezy claims that owners can earn up to INR 30,000/month by leasing out their vehicles.
Who are the Drivezy owners?
The Drivezy founders are Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Vasant Verma.
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 YourOwnROOM.
Searching for a new place to stay has always been a struggle for everyone. But now the times are changing and the days when you had to look for a broker and roam around the entire city to find a new home for yourself are going away.
Now, to help you with all this, PropTech (property technology) is driving transformation and efficiencies in residential real estate. PropTech is all the tech tools that help real estate brokers, developers, and agents fine-tune the way in which you buy, sell, rent, or manage a property.
YourOwnROOM is a PropTech residential real estate rental and property management company founded in 2016. It is an online platform where both tenants and owners can find and display places.
In this article, discover more about YourOwnROOM, its story, industry, founders and team, business and revenue model, and more.
YourOwnROOM is a residential real estate PropTech rental and property management company. It was incorporated in February 2016. The PropTech platform enables onboarding and management of residential assets in multiple formats including co-living homes, alternate assets, and family homes.
YourOwnROOM – Industry
Residential RE Rental Market is $13.5 billion as per Primus Partners, 2020 and the Shared Living market is $6.4 billion with a penetration of only 2.5%with demand being fueled by migrant millennials moving to cities. Coliving,Student Housing and senior homes will be the new reality growth drivers. Demand will continue to be fueled by Migrant Millennials.
Real estate as a sector is the backbone of the Indian economy and its market size is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030. Real Estate will grow to a $650 billion market size by 2025, growing at 19.5% CAGR, contributing to 13% of our country’s GDP and generating 75 million jobs, and almost 1/6th of this is going to be residential real estate.
The recently approved Model Tenancy Act will help bridge the trust deficit between tenants and landlords by clearly delineating their obligations and will eventually help unlock vacant houses across the country. It is a big step towards institutionalising Rental in India.
Prabhat Kumar Tiwary – Founder, CEO, and CMD of YourOwnROOM
YourOwnROOM was founded by Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, along with Sachin Joshi and Rewat Laxman, with a deep interest in Entrepreneurship, Business and Technology.
Prabhat Kumar Tiwary is the CEO and Managing Director and drives growth. He is an alumnus of Stanford Business School. In addition, he is also the COO. Sanjay Singh is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer.
The total team size is about 25 across Bengaluru and Pune, with the bulk of the team based out of Bengaluru. YourOwnROOM has a very flat organisational structure where each team member has access to the founders and leadership team. YourOwnROOM has a mix of senior leaders, experienced team members, and freshers. About 60% of the team includes freshers from various colleges.
Advisors and Mentors
The team is extremely fortunate to have some very accomplished Industry leaders who have invested in them and provide strategic direction. This includes Ravi Chaturvedi from the US who is a former president of P&G, K Narasimha Murthy who is the co-founder of a health tech company based out of the US and Venkat Shiv Dasari, who is a senior executive for an MNC IT services company.
YourOwnROOM – Startup Story
“We initially started YourOwnROOM to solve the challenges faced by singles while looking for a decent place to live. However, what got us even more intrigued is the bigger picture” says Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, Founder,CEO, and CMD, YourOwnROOM.
YourOwnROOM’s core belief is that it will no longer be just about the Asset.The Real Value of the Asset will unfold when you apply a tech-based service wrapper on top of the Residential Asset and channel it to the right unmet demand. PropTech-based Rental and Property Management companies like them will play a critical role in the next 5 years in driving transformation and efficiencies in Residential real estate.
YourOwnROOM’s vision statement says, “Our vision at YourOwnROOM is to deliver higher economic returns to our Residential Real Estate Property Owners over the Property Lifecycle using our Proptech-based Residential Rental & Property Management Solutions.”
YourOwnROOM – Name and Logo
YourOwnROOM Logo
YourOwnROOM considers tenants as their primary consumers with Homeowners, Developers, and Vendors as partners in delivering the services. The logo brings focus to 3 things – home at the epicentre, location, and vibrant colours which resonate with their young millennial tenants and homeowners.
YourOwnROOM – Product and USP
YourOwnROOM acts as a trusted custodian of residential assets for property owners and offers multi-year rental and property management services to them. It helps them get continuous cash flow, higher rental yields and higher capital appreciation from their residential assets. Their rental management services include finding KYC-verified tenants, drafting and executing rental agreements, move-ins, rental collection, service request management, renewals, and exit settlements.
Their property management services include property onboarding, offboarding, audits, maintenance, and project management across painting, interiors, and civil work. The company partners with PropCo companies and Developers as Asset Managers to increase the sales velocity, rental yields, and capital appreciation of their residential asset portfolio.
The company’s biggest differentiator is its prop-tech platform. It integrates their golden execution capabilities and helps them deliver better management for their Asset Owners and a better living experience for consumers. This provides it with the foundation to profitably scale its business across multiple cities and multiple residential asset formats.
YourOwnROOM – Business and Revenue Model
YourOwnROOM’s core business is automated and runs on its PropTech Platform which is also one of the startup’s biggest differentiators. In addition, it uses several tools to manage CRM, IVR, and Ticket Management. The startup has also built an integration with KYC systemsand various payment gateways. YourOwnROOM also has an online method to sign agreements with its tenants, owners and vendors.
YourOwnROOM Revenue and Business Model involve 3 steps:
1. Onboard Property
It signs a 3-5 year MoU with owners to manage their propertyand rentals. With developers and propcos, it signs a 5-7 year MoU for the same.
YourOwnROOM onboards the property on its PropTech Platform and conducts quality assurance checks.
It gets into an arrangement with the owner and seeks 30-45 days to rent out the property to tenants.
YourOwnROOM assists the owner to onboard the property by conducting a quality check, helping with repairs, and helping procure furniture and appliances.
2. Onboard Tenant
YourOwnROOMactively scouts for suitable tenants, run marketing campaigns and organizes site visits.
It books a tenant and signs a rental Service Agreement. This is done between the tenant, owner, and YourOwnROOM
It then onboards the tenants into the property.
3. Engage Tenant and Asset
The tenant will pay a fixed rental to YourOwnROOM through the tech platform.
YourOwnROOM pays rent to the Owner minus its commission.
In addition, the tenant pays for admin and move-out charges and service requests (requests for repair work and other complaints) after 14 days.
YourOwnROOM manages service requests, audits, renewals, exits, and refills.
The owner and tenant interact with YourOwnROOM using the technology platform, which includes the interactive tenant and owner dashboards.
YourOwnROOM acquired its initial 100 tenants mainly through word of mouth, social media sales, and a strong direct sales team. Getting customers to buy their business model was key, as co-living in the early days was a developing concept with only a few options. The company’s initial inventory was of very high quality and located just 15 minutes from the business parks, which accelerated the sales process.
YourOwnROOM – Challenges Faced
“Most challenging part of our business was to build long term trustamong our tenants and homeowners” says Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, Founder, CEO, and CMD, YourOwnROOM.
The real test of the business was to have repeat customers. For the first 2 years, YourOwnROOM focused heavily on picking the right asset, managing the same and servicing its tenants. This built great trust among tenants and homeowners which was key to building long-term associations. Today most homeowners sign over 5-year rental and property management contractswith YourOwnROOM.
YourOwnROOM – Growth and Turnover
The company’s Asset Under Management is 1 million square feet valued at over Rs. 400 crores ($50 million) spread across 500 properties in Bengaluru and Pune. YourOwnROOM’s annualised revenue run rate is about Rs. 10 crores. It is operationally profitable and will be EBITDA positive in the next 3-4 months. Post that, the company is looking for a multi-city expansion which will help fuel its growth.
YourOwnROOM – Funding and Investors
YourOwnROOM has raised a total funding of $1.3 Million from Angles in US and India.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
2019
Seed
$1.3 million
Angels – US and India
YourOwnROOM – Awards and Recognitions
YourOwnROOM received several awards. The most prominent ones are:
It was an honour for YourOwnROOM to get recognized by International Brand Equity in the India Properties Award – 2020 as the Best Coliving Company in South India. The award was felicitated by Senior Politician Tanveer Ahmed. Grabbing the award for best Coliving company in India in one of reputed India’s National Real Estate Awards platforms is proof of the credibility of the company.
Your Own Room Received ETNow Award 2019 for Excellence in Real Estate as the Company of the Year (Co-living Spaces). This is one of the most significant achievements for the company in Real Estate.
YourOwnROOM received Paul Writer’s 50 hottest Brand for 2019. YourOwnROOM was proud to share the stage with Brands like Swiggy, BYJU’S, BigBasket and the like.
Over the last 6 years, they have built a well-established business model, growth, profitability, governance, and brand. This has stood the test of time, especially COVID. It also built a Proptech platform that will drive operational consistency and performance and allow them to profitably scale across cities, offerings, and asset formats.
Increase the sales penetration of rental and property management services in Bengaluru and Pune.
Offer Property Manager Tech Services to PropCos, Developers, and Channel Partners to exponentially scale.
Expand their presence in Hyderabad and Chennai.
Upgrade features and UX of Proptech Platform (Portal, Mobile App & BPE) and make it SaaS enabled for Property Managers to manage multiple asset formats.
To support the company’s growth, they are planning to raise a Series-A investment. The company is looking for strategic and institutional investors who can provide them with the capital, connections, and guidance to scale their business. Investments will fuel growth and they plan to invest in developing their offerings, adding new cities, new partnerships, digital marketing and taking their PropTech Platform to the next level.
FAQs
What is YourOwnROOM?
YourOwnROOM is a residential real estate PropTech rental and property management company. The PropTech platform enables onboarding and management of residential assets in multiple formats including co-living homes, alternate assets and family homes.
Who founded YourOwnROOM?
YourOwnROOM wasfounded by Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, along with Sachin Joshi and Rewat Laxman,with a deep interest in Entrepreneurship, Business and Technology.
When was YourOwnROOM founded?
YourOwnROOM was launched in 2016 and is headquartered in Bengaluru.
How much is YourOwnROOM’s turnover?
YourOwnROOM has an annualized sales turnover of Rs. 10 crores ($1 million approx).
Who are YourOwnROOM’s competitors?
YourOwnROOM has the following competitors in the market:
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 Fanzart Fans.
Indian lifestyle has been undergoing a major transformation, especially since the last few years. There has been a growing inclination towards luxurious high-end designer products. Homes are fast becoming smart homes and home appliances are becoming modern and stylish. With everything else, the ceiling fans are also getting upgraded to designer ceiling fans in Indian households. For many, ceiling fans are not merely an appliance for keeping the rooms cool, but is also something that enhances the home interiors.
To meet the growing demand for Designer Fans in India, Fanzart, a Bangalore based startup is offering premium designer fans to add that zing to your interiors.
Fanzart is a Bengaluru based startup, which is the ideal destination for designer fans. They provide a great range of products for specific use cases – fans for dining tables, bathrooms, kitchens, living/drawing rooms, offices, and more.
Fanzart’s USPs include:
Fan Designs – They have over 100 designs of fans to suit any interior or exterior.
DC motor fans – fans are eco-friendly and absorb 70% lesser power.
Human sensor – These fans have a human sensor that smartly adjusts its rotation based on where humans are seated.
3D oscillation – Fanzart offers the first 3D oscillating fans in India.
360-degree rotation – The first 360-degree rotating fans in India.
Summer– Winter feature – Over 30 of Fanzarts’ models rotate bi-directionally. Anticlockwise for a cool breeze and clockwise direction for a cozy warm air effect.
Reversible blades – The blades can be flipped upside down for a different finish or look.
Whisper Quiet – Fanzarts’ fans are under 50 dB of sound.
Specific use cases – Fanzart designs suit specific use cases – all kinds of rooms, dining, kitchens, walk-in wardrobes, offices, retail showrooms, outdoors, manufacturing units, Hotel back offices, lobbies, restaurants, gardens and more.
Smart – Using sensors and automation, Fanzart aims to achieve a lot with fans.
Fanzart Designer Fans
It is the commitment, desire, and attention to detail that has seen Fanzart leapfrog its competitors and soar to the top in such a short period. Today, the company has risen to prominence as a pioneer and leader in the luxury designer fans segment, and we’re known to create products that not only look stylish, simple and artistic, but also efficiently robust.
Fanzart Fans – Industry Details
In recent years, India has gone through significant changes regarding lifestyle, employment, and migration from one place to another. Indians are now getting fast-paced and are developing a taste for a high-end lifestyle. A good lifestyle starts with a well- designed home, and Indians nowadays prefer their homes to be luxurious and comfortable. This is the reason for the rapidly growing interior design industry in India.
We believe that Designer Fans will have the same revolution as the LED did – says Tarun
Fanzart targets a market size of 3% of the Indian market – HNI & UHNI. Further, Fanzart is working to gain a share of about 20% of the Designer Fan Segment. However, this segment does grow YoY.
Fanzart Fans – Founders and Team
Anil Lala, Tarun Lala & Sangeeta Lala are the Co-Founders/Owners of Fanzart Fans.
(L-R) Anil Lala, Sangeeta, Lala, Tarun Lala
Mr. Anil Lala is the founder & director of Fanzart. A visionary, and first generation entrepreneur Anil, has over two decades of experience and worked as managing partner of ‘Cosmos Electronics’ and ‘Managing Director’ at Theme Apparels India Pvt Ltd. He is known as one of the pioneer industry leaders to bring luxury fans to India.
Tarun Lala, Executive Director of Fanzart, is an electrical engineer from Northeastern University, USA. A technologist at heart, Tarun besides Fanzart, also founded Levo Labz, a technology development company. Passionate about designs, Tarun also started a podcast for Architects & Interior designers called ‘Interior Vibez’ to give the world a little sneak peek into the art and science of designing spaces. Having learnt the nitty- gritties of entrepreneurship form Stanford School of Business, Tarun returned to India in 2012 after a two-year stint in the US to collaborate with his father on the next big thing in the world of fans – Fanzart.
Sangeeta Lala is the President, Retail at Fanzart. She has a hospitality background and has worked with hospitality majors like TAJ and Oberoi groups. Sangeeta is a people’s person and supervises Fanzart’s Retail and Sales tasks with expertise
Fanzart currently has 30 core members and franchise partners.
Fanzart Fans – How it Started?
Having discovered fancy grandeur fans in the United States, the Fanzartowners wanted to install the same at their house in Bangalore. But they could not find the designer fans they were looking for, in India. It is out of this situation that the idea behind Fanzart has taken shape.
The Fanzart team initiated research to gain a better understanding of the designer fans market. In the process, they got in touch with Designer Fan product brands from other countries, spoke to them, visited them, and then started looking out for Design Firms and Factories.
Fanzart’s validation process involved interior architects, designers, HNI / UHNIs, and understanding the buying process for fans. In the process, the Fanzart team understood the existing gaps in the fan industry mainly from architects and interior designers. Hence, when architects and interior designers were told about the concept of Fanzart, they received affirmative response and immediate support.
Fanzart Ceiling Fans
Fanzart Fans – Name, Tagline and Logo
Fanzart adds the ‘art’ factor to the fans, as such the company’s name is a combination of the words ‘fans’ & ‘art’
Fanzart fans Logo
We were bringing art to fans and the only options were artisan and fansart, and we finally froze on Fanzart – explains Tarun.
Fanzart Fans – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Fanzart business model is flexible and includes: B2C, B2B2C and B2B. Their products range from INR 6990 to INR 1,27,990.
Fanzart Fans – User Acquisition
Fanzart, for its initial customers, relied on different mediums and platforms which include Showrooms, Online channels, and Via Architects & Interior Designers. After gaining the first lot of customers, Fanzart has widened the scope of their marketing techniques. Currently, the company acquires customers though online marketing, offline marketing, architects & interior designers and through strategic partnership. The company has partnered with Hometown (a Future Group subsidiary).
Last Mile purchase has been the major challenge for Fanzart, which they overcome by fostering and strengthening collaborations with Architects & Interior Designers.
Fanzart Fans – Awards
Fanzart has been awarded several times by different platforms. The awards received by the company are –
Power Brands – Rising Star
Best Product Brand in Interiors
Entrepreneur of the Year.
Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.
Best Designer Fan Brand in India.
Fanzart Fans – Future Plans
Currently, Fanzart has 60 showrooms across India. Fanzarts aim to become the go-to brand for luxury fans – for architects, interior designers, HNIs, and UHNIs.
Fanzart Fans – FAQs
What is Fanzart Fans?
Fanzart is a Bangalore based startup that offers premium designer fans to add that zing to your interiors.
Who are the Fanzart owners?
Anil Lala, Tarun Lala & Sangeeta Lalaare the Co-Founders/Owners of Fanzart Fans.
What is the price range for Fanzart Fans?
The Fanzart Fans range from INR 6990 to INR 1,27,990.
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 Enguru.
India is the world’s second-largest English-speaking country. Contradictory to this data, there are many Indians who are not confident to speak English. While speaking good English is much needed to get a good job in India, many educated youth are not equipped to speak fluent English. However all thanks to the boom in the ed-tech sector, learning English is no longer tough or boring.
An ed-tech startup that is working towards simplifying speaking English is enguru. Established in 2014, it is a mobile app that teaches English in regional languages, all the way from the basics to more complex job-specific functional English.
Founded in 2014, by Arshan Vakil & Udit Hinduja, enguru English learning app is a self learning app, that aims to solve the problem of access to a high quality English language training. It offers industry-specific English courses in over 12 different vernacular languages & has a focus on speaking through AI-enabled stimulated conversations.
This is also the only educational app that is available both on android and iOS and also the JioPhone – an extremely popular smart feature phone which has sold over 70 million devices in less than 2 years.
The app makes learning easier as it starts teaching the users right from the basics up to more complex conversations. Users go through a placement test when they first use the app, which identifies their starting point. This test includes a combination of English proficiency and general preference questions including reasons for learning English and career aspirations etc.
The app course is split into 10-minute short modules. Each module consists of a lesson and a conversation or comprehension. Lessons comprise a variety of questions including image, text, audio and speech questions coupled with an adaptive algorithm that ensures questions are based on the user’s past performance and career preferences. Conversations are based on workplace-specific scenarios that force users to speak into the app and provides feedback on their pronunciations.
Also, there are live classes that students can take. With live classes, enguru app aims to provide their users with an even more personalized learning experience by connecting students from across the country with Cambridge qualified English teachers in an online group setting. The first live class is completely free. Students then subscribe to various plans by using enguru coins. It covers one topic a day at multiple times, thereby giving students the flexibility to choose a time slot as per their schedule.
The company also partners with organizations across India to upskill their staff or students. This is done through a second app – enguru for enterprises – which is similar in most ways to the free B2C app. Key differences include dashboard access to track and monitor user progress, customized programs based on organization needs, & operational support.
What differentiates enguru is the focus on employability which goes beyond just marketing collateral as is the case with many of its competitors. Emphasizing on its USP, CEO Arshan Vakil says-
“One of the most important learning was to focus on immediate benefit through industry specific content. Our target audience likes to learn things that are directly related to their careers. Industry specific courses which allow them to learn functional vocabulary related to their jobs is critical in keeping them engaged and potential making them pay. This is something only we offer.”
enguru app screenshot
enguru – Target Market
There are over 400 million internet users in India with 250 million non-English speaking internet users. Non-English speaking internet users is expected to reach 550 million by 2021. enguru’s core focus is on young adults between the ages of 15-34 which makes up 75% of internet users in India.
A recent report by Google & KPMG projected online education in India to grow at 52% to reach over USD 2 billion by 2021. The report included English language learning as a key category in online education in India.
enguru has two core target audiences within India. The primary target customers are young adults – college students, recent high school and college graduates looking for jobs and working professionals who are still relatively new to the workforce. More specifically, the focus is on young adults who are looking to enter fields like retail, automotive, hospitality, IT, BPOs, BFSI.
The secondary target audiences are general English learners, especially women. For housewives, English is aspirational and often also a way to create job opportunities.
Arshan Vakil along with his friend Tahem Veer Verma started Kings Learning Private Limited (enguru’s parent organization) in 2014.
Tahem and Arshan were roommates at the University of Pennsylvania for 3 years and both lived in Mumbai from 2012-2014. They moved to Bangalore to start Kings Learning in February 2014. They recruited the head of content and programs, Laurie May from the UK and built the tech team starting with tech lead Sanju Kurian. In 2017, Tahem left Kings Learning to pursue higher studies and Udit Hinduja joined the team in June 2017 as COO.
Presently, Arshan Vakil is the CEO and founder of enguru. Hegraduated with a dual degree, cum laude, with a BSc in Economics from the Wharton School and BSc in System Science Engineering from Penn Engineering. Before founding the company, he was working as a product manager and founding member (1st employee) at Hopscotch, an eCommerce company in Mumbai. At this time he also founded a mentorship initiative called Project Vahana, which helped undeserved young adults get career ready. Having worked as a Product Manager and having a degree in System Engineering, he focuses a lot of his time on enguru’s products. In addition to product management, he also leads all digital marketing, analytics, and finance.
Arshan Vakil,Founder & CEO, enguru
Udit Hinduja is the COO of enguru. He graduated with a B.A. in Economics & Politics from New York University in 2012. He then moved to Mumbai and worked at KPMG for a year and a half in their advisory practice. After KPMG, He worked at Micro Housing Finance Corporation (MHFC), an urban microfinance company that provides small-sized home loans to low-income families to help them buy houses. After 3.5 years at MHFC, he joined Arshan – his friend from school in Mumbai – at enguru as COO, where he oversees the entire B2B vertical – from sales to operations.
Arshan is tech-savvy and has a very clear vision around the product. As an engineer, he has a keen sense of how the app should look and feel, what features should be added and product road map for the future. He also has a very analytical mind, so he understands user trends and makes data-driven decisions based on app metrics.
Udit loves delivering a premium service to clients and has a solid knowledge of what it takes to run a sustainable business. He handled the entire business side of enguru – client partnerships, operations, etc. His attention to detail and obsession with processes have allowed the company to scale up its enterprise partnerships & got them to close INR 2.5 Crore in revenue for FY 18-19, a 100% increase in FY 17-18 figures.
Currently, enguru has a team of 50 members. The company has an open, flat culture, where employees are empowered to learn & grow. They also offer several benefits to staff, including ESOPs, medical insurance & training.
enguru was started with a mission to ensure that access to English language training does not become an impediment to career opportunities. The idea is to provide affordable employability focused English language & communication skills training through innovative technology products and then helping link English speaking levels to appropriate job opportunities.
The idea of a self-learning app struck Arshan Vakil when he noticed how poor English training hampers career growth while working as a Product Manager at an e-commerce start-up and running a mentorship initiative for undeserved youth. English was an impediment across the board- from the kids they mentored in the program who were looking for basic entry-level positions in retail, hotels, etc. to Engineering graduates with whom he worked and struggled with internal communication. enguru co-founder, Tahem Verma, was already working in education and recognized how much students struggled with English due to the lack of focus on English training. This was the exact moment when they recognized there was a big opportunity here and a high latent demand for affordable English training. With the zeal to solve this problem, they launched enguru in 2015.
“enguru is envisioned to solve the problem of access to high-quality English language training. English is the language of the workplace in India yet most students do not have access to good English language training, which hampers their career growth. The majority of Indian students study in their local languages with English just being one subject – they inevitably only learn to read and write English to pass exams and are not able to speak well, which is what is expected in the workplace. This issue is prevalent across various levels, right from engineering and medical students to industries like retail and hospitality. The need for an accessible and effective English learning tool across the spectrum cannot be debated. Our 30 million downloads with very little marketing are proof of this.”, said Arshan Vakil, co-founder.
Arshan and Tahem began with an offline English Language business. The founders always knew that they wanted to go online but the initial approach was to understand the users, their needs for English, behavior patterns and access to technology, etc. One of the most important learning was to focus on immediate benefit through industry-specific content.
enguru– or English guru – came about to create a brand that resonated with the Indian audience. A “guru” is a revered figure in Indian culture, and they wanted to ensure that the users felt that they were learning English in a safe environment, from their English guru. The guru logo is inspired by a design Arshan saw on a t-shirt worn by his father. They wanted it to be the first name that came up when you thought of spoken english enguru app.
enguru Logo
enguru – Startup Launch
When the company was launched in 2014, they started by teaching students English offline in their centers.
To get students to come to the centers, we used a combination of online marketing, SEO & leveraging interest from nearby educational institutes. Most people who visited our offline centers for classes were either working professionals or college students, most of whom found us online via Google searches or student referrals – Arshan says about the initial days of the startup.
Their app was launched in early 2015 – first with only general English as a course and no regional language capability. They saw a massive increase in engagement when they added industry-focused courses and vernacular languages to the app as part of enguru 2.0. With version 3.0, they launched the popular conversation modules, which gets users to speak out into the app and practice various industry-focused scenarios (for eg. Greeting a customer in a retail outlet).
The enguru business model is simple. The company currently has two apps – enguru spoken English app (B2C) and enguru for enterprises (B2B).
The enguru B2C app has close to 30 million downloads and is available for free. In August 2019, they also launched live video classes on the app – this is the primary source of monetization from the B2C app. Currently, users can book classes by using enguru coins earned through playing levels or by paying money. Live classes are still at a relatively nascent stage, so prices have been heavily discounted to gain initial traction.
The enguru B2B app is used to partner with organizations in the retail industry (like Trent, Titan, Godrej Nature’s Basket, Raymond, Manyavar, etc) to train their customer-facing staff. enguru charges per app license and offer staggered and bulk pricing options. Almost all of the revenue comes from these clients. Apart from retail, it also work with clients in other service industries like healthcare, hospitality, skilling centers, etc. to upskill their staff or students.
enguru is also available on the Jio Phone, the INR 1,500 feature phone launched by Jio in 2017. They are currently the only education app on the phone and have close to 22 million downloads on the device. They are not into monetizing this product at all.
Over the next 5 years, the aim is to monetize the B2C users through live classes and certification and at the same time building brand through B2B partnerships.
One of the major challenges they faced and continue to face is engagement on the app. Users download the app but don’t end up spending as much time as they’d like on completing levels. To increase this engagement, they keep reinventing the app.
enguru – Funding and Investors
The enguru app has raised $4.1 million in two rounds of funding.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
September 2017
Pre-Series A
$2.5 million
Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Village Capital, Weihua Yan
November 2018
Venture Round
$1.6 million
Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
enguru – Advisors and Mentors
The Board of Directors includes Mr. Weihua Yan, a Chinese-American investor who co-founded Diapers.com, which was acquired by Amazon in 2011. Mr. Rahil Rangwala, a director at the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, also advises the team on the strategic direction.
With its head office in Bengaluru and offices in Mumbai and Delhi, enguru is operating Pan India. In FY 2018-19, the company earned a revenue of INR 2 Crore. The app has close to 30 million users across India and is adding 1.5 million every month. Besides, enguru has worked with over 150+ organizations across the country and have upskilled over 25,000 staff. Clients include Trent, Godrej Nature’s Basket, Oberoi Hotels, Magic Bus India Foundation, NSDC, etc.
For the android app some key metrics are:
Cumulative Downloads- 6,578,942
MAUs (Monthly Active Users)– 300,000
DAUs (Daily Active Users) – 25,000
For the JioPhone app, some key metrics are:
Cumulative Downloads- 21,861,425
Monthly Active Users – 1.3 mn
Daily Active Users –100,000
In B2B they have three primary programs – a completely app-based training program, a blended training program, and a teacher-led training program. Currently, they have 33 ongoing contracts – 8 online, 16 blended and 9 teachers led with 5,000 MAUs. ARPU( Average Revenue Per User) for a 3-month program is 500, 1710 and 2188 for online, blended and teacher-led programs respectively.
enguru’s biggest achievement to date is being the only education app available on the Jio Phone, the INR 1,500 feature phone launched by Reliance. Over the past 2 years, the app has been downloaded organically by 22 million people across India. Other major achievements include:
Village Capital: Winner of Education Cohort 2016 for the investment of $50,000.
Reliance Jio GenNext: Selected to be part of the Winter 2016 Cohort.
Google Play App Excellence: Selected to be a part of the Class of 2019. The program is for early-stage startups, who demonstrate the potential to be drivers of quality and excellence in the apps they are building.
enguru – Future Plans
Over the next 5 years, enguru aims to monetize its B2C users through live classes and certification, while at the same time building the brand through B2B partnerships. The company envisions to be synonymous with affordable English learning in India. The goal is to be the best free accessible English learning tool in India- catering to the next billion users.
enguru – FAQs
enguru app is from which country?
Enguru app is headquartered in Bangalore, India.
Who are the Founders of enguru?
Arshan Vakil & Udit Hinduja are the founders of enguru app. It is an English learning app. Arshan Vakil and Tahem Veer Verma started Kings Learning Private Limited (enguru’s parent organization) in 2014.
Is enguru app free?
enguru app allows our first day of live classes FREE of charge. They offer UNLIMITED classes for the subscription period- 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.
How much funding did enguru raise till date?
The enguru app has raised $4.1 million in two rounds of funding.
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 FindMyHealth.
Artificial Intelligence is now penetrating almost every existing domain. Finance, healthcare, education, transportation and many sectors are witnessing active use of AI. The idea of this startup was born when Gaurav Bhalotia realized there is a lot to health beyond medicine, and that our bodies need to participate very strongly to recover from any illness. Gaurav thus started FindMyHealth in 2018 with a vision to give individuals control of their health, and to help them stay healthy and recover quickly.
However, the seeds of the current product was sowed in April 2019 after the successful Proof of Concept (POC) of its computer vision technology. The platform allows users to get a peek into their inner health based on an Ayurvedic framework. It starts by analyzing the face to identify the body constitution and visual aging or obesity, which is followed by a conversation with its AI doctor to identify the state of the inner health.
Read this article to know more about the Journey of FindMyHealthalong with its Business Model, How it works, Funding, Growth, Competitors & More.
The inspiration behind this idea is Gaurav’s health experiences (self and family) where he moved from being a skeptic towards alternative medicine to becoming a believer in the body’s power and participation in recovery. There is a lot of subjectivity in both discovery and assessment in the alternative medicine space today.
The journey started with an attempt to use technology to bring the power of Ayurveda and alternative medicine to more people. The biggest gap which Gaurav saw to start with was helping people identify what herbs to take, many people were consuming Ayurvedic herbs but most of it through ad-hoc recommendations from friends and family.
Over the last one year we have managed to use the knowledge from Ayurveda to build a framework for remote assessment, AI-driven recommendations, and doorstep delivery of Herbal Supplements, says Gaurav Bhalotia, founder of FindMyHealth.
FindMyHealth – Target Market Size
The healthcare market in India is expected to reach US$ 372 billion by 2022, driven by rising incomes, greater healthcare awareness, lifestyle diseases, and increasing access to insurance. We are combining AI and Ayurveda to build these solutions. Ayurveda market in India is expected to be around $9 billion by 2022.
There will be 130 million Health Conscious Individuals (HCIs) by 2022. Increasingly people will seek out more control over their health, as is showing up in fitness products today. There will be a demand for solutions that connect our everyday actions to health outcomes. E.g. what we eat, our lifestyles, etc. So essentially coupled with awareness, we will see greater participation in staying healthier.
FindMyHealth – Products/Services
FindMyHealth (website), the company’s first offering allows users to get a peek into their inner health, based on an Ayurvedic framework of what health is. It starts with a face selfie analysis to identify the body constitution and visual aging/obesity, which is followed up by a conversation with their AI doctor to identify the state of the inner functional health.
FindMyHealth Product
This together is used to generate a detailed health fingerprint of the user and identify recommendations for herbs, foods, and a healthy lifestyle. They also offer a personalized supplement, which compounds all the recommended herbs into a single pill for supporting health and recovery.
FindMyHealth – Founders & Team
FindMyHealth is founded by Gaurav Bhalotia.
Gaurav Bhalotia | Founder, FindMyHealth
The founder, Gaurav Bhalotia, is an expert in information retrieval, personalization and building large scale systems. He is passionate about holistic health and traditional Indian Health Sciences and Medicine. FindMyHealth, a preventive healthcare platform (startup), grew out of his belief that everybody deserves a healthy lifestyle and that it is viable to take control of our own health through personalization and AI.
He likes to address his startup as a scorecard for one’s inner health and their personalized supplement buddy. Gaurav is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology – Mumbai – and has an MS in Computer Science from the University of California Berkeley.
On the core team, Dr. Payal Khandelwal is the resident Ayurveda expert. She has an MD in Ayurveda from Tilak Ayurveda Institute and is an Expert at treating lifestyle and chronic diseases. She won the National Herbal Research Award in 2010. The team currently is made up of engineers, data scientists, doctors and nutrition experts.
FindMyHealth’s Team
FindMyHealth – Name, Tagline & Logo
The team felt that the biggest problem that people have in healthcare is a lack of control. Health is so much of a personal thing. One has to be aware of one’s body and health work daily to maintain it. The company wanted to build something that gives people control of their health and helps them identify, interpret, and work with their inner balance. Hence, the name FindMyHealth (help find where the balance is and then help find a fix).
FindMyHealth Logo
FindMyHealth – Business & Revenue Model
The FindMyHealth business model works on a freemium model, the assessment is free (so is the identification of the right herbs). They intend to monetize the personalized supplement that is custom-built for the user. They will also have personalized diet plans very soon. Right now, the company has two paid offerings on the website – personalized Ayurvedic herb mix for INR 999 and therapeutic (disease reversal diet plans) for INR 6,999.
FindMyHealth – User Acquisition & Growth
What has worked for FindMyHealth is the selfie analysis, people find it unique and it enables high click-through rates and reasonable acquisition costs. While the selfie brings users, their deep insights into inner health help keep them. According to the company, more than 60% of the users are going through completing the entire assessment, sometimes spending up to 10 minutes on it, which is a lot in terms of internet time.
The company has tied up with Hyderabad based Healtheeliving to provide them the technology platform for their therapeutic nutrition plans. One of the campaigns that went almost viral is their Corona Risk Calculator. They started seeing a lot of people share it on Facebook and WhatsApp and a significant proportion of traffic coming through these shares.
The biggest challenge has been the marriage of technology and medicine, to get Ayurvedic doctors and nutrition experts and engineers/data scientists to think and work on a common plane. FindMyHealth has built a very strong culture of data-based science, high ownership, and building for scale.
The next challenge has been creating awareness and sometimes a strong positive awareness of Ayurveda. A lot of people are exposed to Ayurvedic medicines and treatments but in a very ad-hoc manner, the startup wishes to make it easy and accurate to access and consume Ayurveda.
FindMyHealth – Competitors
There are other players in the space like 1balance delivering personalized supplements, and Jiva Ayurveda, Dr. Vaidya’s, Cureveda, Organic India, etc., trying to create a new-age brand for Ayurvedic supplements. On assessments, there are players like NadiTarangini and Ayurythm building technologies for Ayurvedic assessments of Individuals.
Personalization is the distinctive benefit of their AI, enabling them to identify the unique health situation of an individual and connect them to appropriate targeted actions drawn from the wisdom of Ayurveda and other natural techniques. An additional strong aspect of the company’s technology is that it can be done in a non-invasive manner and remotely on the app.
FindMyHealth strongly admires CureFit which has been able to create an aspirational brand around health and fitness. They would like to similarly create a great brand that will help individuals take control of their inner health and use the platform for regular assessment, recommendations, and supplement needs.
The company closed an angel round in July last year for an undisclosed amount. The team is focusing on fine-tuning the technology and monetization model before raising additional funds.
FindMyHealth – Recognition & Achievements
The company received the most promising healthtech startup of 2020 award by CIOReview India.
FindMyHealth – Future Plans
Having just launched, the company is nearing 20,000 completed assessments on the platform. Their target Market currently is India and they want to be the platform for personalized Ayurveda – starting from deep assessment to technology products that support individuals’ journeys back to balance and good health.
“We are working on personalized diet plans driven off our AI, that will be Ayurveda compliant. Diet is a significant part of who we are and diet corrections can have a huge impact on healing and recovery”, says Gaurav Bhalotia, owner of FindMyHealth.
FindMyHealth – Conclusion
Findmyhealth are on a mission to revolutionize healthcare delivery to individuals. They are a team of technologists, data scientists and Ayurveda experts. They combine modern technology and trusted science of Ayurveda to give users the tools to take control of their everyday health. Findmyhealth patented AI based selfie analysis and health score identifies the unique constitutional balance of an individual. They then offer users the ability to design their own personalized Ayurvedic herb mix for overall health and wellbeing.
FindMyHealth – FAQ’s
How are our products differ from other nutritional supplements?
Nutritional supplements are used to cover for deficiencies of the essential nutrition that a person is not able to get from food. Ayurvedic herbs on the other hand have rejuvenated property, helping restore the body’s balance towards equilibrium.
Will there be any side effects? Are these safe to be taken daily?
The products are 100% natural and have been time tested to have no unintended side effects. The herbs have no chemical ingredients and are designed to be taken twice daily. Regular and continuous use is necessary to induce the body’s recovery towards the natural balance.
How long will I have to take these supplements?
One can start seeing improvements in one month, however, findmyhealth recommends that you take them for a minimum of three months. If you take a three-month subscription, they will recommend you to retake the online assessment every month.
Can I take other medicine with FindMyhealth?
Yes, you can continue taking your regular medicine along with FindMyhealth supplements. Findmyhealth doctors do not recommend stopping or modifying the dosage of your current medication without consulting a doctor.
Do I need to consult a doctor before consuming them?
Findmyhealth system has been designed by experts in both Ayurveda and Computer Science and these recommendations have gone through thorough testing. In addition, every recommendation is individually reviewed by the doctors before getting shipped.
How do I contact Findmyhealth?
For any other questions, you may have, please write to contact@findmyhealth.com
What do we as consumers want today? Only one thing, that the products and services that we avail should facilitate our tasks and activities in the most optimized format. And why not! When everything today is built and availed only with the sole motive of easing the process be it business or individual, this certainly feels the right philosophy to follow! One such software is Kapture CRM. Founded in the year 2011, by the Co-founders Sheshgiri Kamath ( CEO), Vikas Garg (CTO ), Pearl Tewari (VP), this is a software that helps enterprises manage their service and sales teams on one single platform.
Kapture CRM runs on a very simple vision which is to enable businesses to use software in a better and more efficient way and to be the number one productivity platform choice for enterprises. Kapture CRM helps enterprises manage their service and sales teams on one single platform. Being omnichannel, Kapture unifies operations seamlessly.
While the initial product was more focused on marketing, once they pivoted to the sales and service CRM model, thy witnessed great traction. They pivoted because the first product wasn’t gaining traction and realized that sales is a larger problem to solve. In 2016 they launched the service cloud, which today is their fastest-growing product.
Kapture CRM Product Image
Kapture CRM – Founders and Team
Sheshgiri Kamath, Vikas Garg and Pearl Tewari co-founded Kapture CRM. All the members of the founding team are passionate entrepreneurs.
Convincing the founding team was not tough since everyone was very clear about the need to be an entrepreneur. The time, idea and the team were right and we started up! – Sheshgiri says
Kapture CRM CEO Sheshgiri Kamath, is a commercial pilot from Cloud Dancer Aviation in Daytona, USA
Vikas Garg is the CTO of Kapture CRM. Vikas holds a BTech – CSE (Computer Science and Engineering )from IIT Guwahati.
Pearl Tewari, Vice President, Kapture CRM holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Punjab University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Wales.
Regarding responsibilities, Vikas heads technology and the ops teams. Pearl takes care of Marketing & international sales while Sheshgiri works on business development and strategic initiatives.
Today Kapture CRM is a fast-growing team of 200 people. While they believe in transparency and empowerment of the people, they also look for smart people who are self-motivated and don’t believe in micro-management. Majority of the leadership team today has grown internally from the grassroots.
How was Kapture CRM Started
Sheshgiri ,Vikas and Pearl started Adjetter , a platform for offline marketing automation in 2011. While that product was well-received, it didn’t take off the way it was expected to. However, their customers started loving the CRM interface that was bundled with the product, which led to the idea of starting Kapture CRM.
In 2014, Kapture launched as a standalone CRM. Today, 5 years, 500+ customers and 12 countries later, Kapture continues to be the preferred choice of growing enterprises looking for a transformational CRM experience.
Kapture CRM
Kapture CRM – User Acquisition
The first 10 customers were the most difficult ones. They did a few free pilots, got some good feedback, but never got paid! That’s when all of them argued and agreed not to do any Free POC’s anymore. Their first customer was a real estate developer in Bangalore whom they had to chase for 3 months. Once they got on board, The Kapture team managed to sign up another 5 builders. And then, they tried their luck with medical devices companies and that scaled up pretty quickly! One of their strategies is going deep into a vertical and then getting a reference from existing customers. That’s a better strategy due to the lower cost of customer acquisition as well
Kapture CRM’s sales team is split across different channels. They have separate teams for inside sales, pre-sales, enterprise, international and channel sales. As said by Sheshgiri Channel strategy has helped them scale pretty well.
Today, we are partnered with the likes of Wipro, who helped us sign up customers that otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to connect with – the Kapture CRM CEO quotes
They have a laser-sharp focus on the churn rate. They believe that for a SaaS platform to scale, churn rates have to be super low. Every lost customer is discussed, debated and worked on. This has made them a lot better as a product and definitely as a team.
They also don’t spend a lot on marketing. Their marketing efforts are more towards generating better content that helps potential customers understand their products better.
Kapture CRM – Name, Tagline and Logo
This story is as simple as it gets. They looked for capture CRM as the original name, but it wasn’t available hence they opted for ‘Kapture’
Their first startup, Adjetter, was named so because they were looking to first aggregate airline and travel advertising inventories.
Kapture CRM – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Kapture business model is based on a SaaS-based platform. Subscription revenue forms the bulk of their revenue. The packages are sufficiently priced in the range of 25-35 USD per user per month. They are currently profitable, thanks to a healthy gross margin and well-disciplined financial planning. Kapture CRM also boasts of a good retention rate. As Sheshgiri quotes,
Most of the customers start with one of our modules and then they grow with them across teams and products. Over 30% of our year on year revenue growth comes from the retained existing customers.
Kapture CRM – Funding and Investors
Kapture CRM raised a $200k angel round in 2014 and now they are planning on a fundraiser in the US in the next financial year.
Signing up the first few clients in the US and international markets was a huge challenge. Being an overseas startup with no feet on street or brand recall, they struggled to get meetings. As a result, they tried emails, calls, LinkedIn and what not. However, they kept iterating. Today, 30% of the company’s revenue comes from the US market and they hope to grow it to over 50% in 18 months.
Kapture CRM – Advisors and Mentors
The Kapture Team believes that their customers, partners, team members are their greatest mentors and advisors.
Kapture CRM – Acquisitions & Mergers
They acqu-hired 3 different startups with the view to get the right teams on board.
Kapture CRM – Awards & Recognitions
Kapture CRM was part of the Google Launchpad Accelerator program.
Their biggest achievement has been the ability to shift enterprises from well established big name CRMs to Kapture CRM based on its product’s capabilities.
Kapture CRM – Growth
Kapture CRM is headquartered in Bangalore with offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, and Florida (USA). They work with 500+ customers across 12 countries. The average customer has 75 users and they have been profitable for the last two years. Some of their clients include Exxon Mobil, Sun Pharma, Bigbasket, Bahamas Paradise Cruise, Swiggy, Netmeds, Stanley Black and Decker. They have grown 200% in the last few years and 2019 has been extremely encouraging for the team.
Kapture CRM – FAQs
What is Kapture CRM?
Kapture CRM helps enterprises manage their service and sales teams on one single platform. Being omnichannel, Kapture unifies operations seamlessly.
Who is the Kapture CRM founder?
Sheshgiri Kamath, Vikas Garg and Pearl Tewari are the Founders of Kapture CRM.
What is the Kapture CRM revenue?
Kapture CRM’s estimated annual revenue is currently $9.9M per year.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verifiedinformation ondifferent startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
With the time, humans have made a plea to show humanity and compassion to the animals. Taking the same ideology forward, Mr. Sujit Paul with his cofounder Rosie Paul founded the startup Woofwoofnow- a global pet consulting platform, in 2018. The idea behind Woofwoofnow is to be the most Pet-friendly Institution and to build a place where Pet Parents can rely on. It’s a platform where one can come and look for pet services to avail.
Read this article to know more about the Woofwoofnow, founders, logo, business model, revenue, growth, challenges, funding, and achievements.
Woofwoofnow is all about making pet care easier and better by providing various features and solutions to the pet parents. Woofwoofnow is getting features on their platform one after another. Unless one is truly compassionate for animals and understands the animal ecosystem it becomes very difficult for them to workout the terms that facilitate in the Pet ecosystem. Hence it’s more appropriate and comfortable for the Woofwoofnow team to roll, the way they have been doing.
The team has successfully done Dip sticks on Tele-Consultation and Video Consultations. Other notable features on the platform include:
Customer Engagement Models – a complete solution for Pet Health
Customized Solution Approach to each pet (Specialized pet food products that are rich in vitamins, thereby ensuring a high-quality diet for pets.)
Access to experienced doctors and world-class Online Consultation (E-Consultation – initiated through the app)
Build pet care hospitals with advanced surgical treatments and the latest medical options. (Pet Hospital)
A place for pets to socialize and play (Day Care)
A place for pet’s grooming (Pet Grooming & Salon)
A solution to commuting woes of four-legged companions (Pet Taxi – no 1, A preferred Pet Cab in Bangalore )
Emergency Health Care at door Step (Doctor on Wheels – Pet Ambulance) Handy Health Records at a click (Health Record Management – On Cloud Storage – in-app)
Woofwoofnow – Target Market
Pet ownership in India & worldwide has increased substantially over the past decade owing to change in the urban lifestyle and rising number of nuclear families. With an estimated 19 million pets, and 600,000 pets being adopted every year, the pet care industry in India shows massive potential. There is an increasing awareness about pet nutrition & well-being and pet owners are becoming more conscious about the products they buy and the services they avail. Pet owners are now focusing more on essential products that enhance the health and well-being of pets. They are no longer restricting themselves to just buying stuff for their pets but are now focusing on the overall development of their pets and providing the best environment to them. According to Petex.in, the pet care market in India was valued at $265 million (₹ 1700 million) in 2017 and is expected to grow at 13.9% annually to become a $430 million (₹ 2780 million) market by 2020.
Woofwoofnow – Founders & Team
Sujit Paul & Rosie Paul | Co-Founders, Woofwoofnow
Sujit Paul and Rosie Paul are the founders of this compassionate startup who also happen to be husband and wife. They both share a love for animals and have been an excellent combination of frequency match for the same.
Rosie Paul is an avid animal lover since her childhood and has multiple episodes in her life where she has worked in the pet care industry. Rosie was an academic scholar and has graduated from Mahadevi Birla High School, followed by her stint at Calcutta University and MBA from IMT Ghaziabad. Her interest areas include traveling and she has extensively traveled to Germany, Brussels, Italy, Bangladesh, Switzerland, Thailand, Singapore, Egypt and many more.
Dr. Sujit Paul carries over 25 years of experience in the industry. He is a proven leader and a part of Top Management with board-level experience. Sujit has worked for diverse organizations such as Retail, Hospitals, Health and Wellness industries. With his broad array of experience, Dr. Paul has extensive exposure in small medium and large multinational as well as large-sized organizations in various corporate cultures like Columbia Asia Hospitals Pvt. Ltd, Trust Chemist, and Druggist, Emeditek Services Limited, Apollo Hospitals, City Info Services, Chandras Chemicals, Kodak, Bata and Asian Paints. His recent assignment is being the Managing Director of a new startup “Stayhappi Pharmacy”. This has again got his various accolades and achievements in setting up the brand with a mere one store to scaling up to 300+ stores Pan India in 365 days. All in all, he is currently associated with a startup that has ambassadors like Vidya Balan and Sourabh Ganguly who have endorsed the brand.
Dr. Sujit Paul is the author of innumerable books including his recent publication of Freeing Your Inner Self-awareness in the year 2018 and Journey of Awakening in the year 2019. Also, he is the founder of www.sujitpaul.com. He has received multiple awards and recognitions, the recent being conferred by Brand Vision and Times Now at a Global Stage, along with Gaur Gopal Das, Sunny Leone, Vidya Balan, Ayushman Khurana, Sonakshi Sinha, and many more. This versatile founder of Woofwoofnow also got featured in the Annual Coffee Table book. He was also nominated with the Top 100 Executives as “World Greatest Leaders 2018 – 19” by Asia One Magazine. He was felicitated with this award in Dubai.
Woofwoofnow has quite a lean team with 6 core initial members. However, the executive team consists of Dr. Sujit Paul at the helm, Rosie Paul – Founder and COO of the group, and Shaily Dubey – one of the early members in the company and a well-rounded professional with a computer science engineering degree and an MBA. Shaily started her career in the technology space and worked with leading MNCs. Post her stint with Intel SE Asia, she returned to Bangalore and found her calling with GPC. Since then she has been focusing upon how technological innovation can be leveraged in the pet care space to build solutions that pet parents can rely on and conveniently discover any service they may want to avail.
If there’s one thing that Sujit is very particular about, it’s the work culture of his ventures. Not just this venture, but he’s always ensured an amicable work culture in all his previous ventures as well. Culture is always top-down with complete transparency and high integrity in the internal team and with external entities. This is one of the strong foundations for Culture development. Dr. Sujit said: “Our employees are never questioned about the hours they put in the work, rather than their output of deliverables.”
Dr. Sujit very strongly believes that “people are the Strength of organization and candidates who aspire to join Global Pet Consulting truly need to love their job, be compassionate towards animals, should have high ethics, value, and integrity.” He is of the opinion that all members should drive towards the common organizational goal. Sujit does not even care for micro policing with his employees rather gives them ample freedom. He genuinely believes that employees should be part of the Growth Story of the Company.
Woofwoofnow – How It All Started?
It all started in the year 2016 when the couple lost their pet – Daisy. The family was on an out of station travel and Daisy was in her favorite boarding. Suddenly one night when she was not feeling very well. The boarding attendant neither got any vehicle who would allow taking Dogs into the clinic nor did he have access to any Doctors in the night. As a result, they lost their beloved pet Daisy.
The pain of losing Daisy germinated the idea of their startup- Woofwoofnow. The couple started with the research in 2017. Their first respondents were family and friends and when they looked further they got to hear similar stories from them. Simultaneously the cofounders realized that there is no true ecosystem for Pet Care in India.
They were quite surprised. Given India’s growth in Pet and the rate of pet adoption, how was this whole sector overlooked? Therefore in 2018 conceived this company “Global Pet Consulting” with the brand name of Woofwoofnow. Early in 2019 the website and the mobile application got ready to hit the markets. And then they started meeting the best Veterinary Doctors in Bangalore. They carefully evaluate the doctor’s experience before getting them on board in their venture because they want to ensure that the best service is provided to the pet parents. By this time the cofounders had realized that working with animals needs more compassion and the aggregator model of logistics would not work. Hence they rolled out their own fleets of Hatchback, Sedan, and SUV and started with the service in April 2019.
While the cofounders were doing their primary research, they figured that the need for a pet consultation is not only in India but also in the UK and the USA. The Indian market is growing rapidly and the opportunities are enormous. Parallel in the international market every second house has a pet but without any pet consultations available which makes the target market size almost double than the Indian market. Hence the company was named “Global Pet Consulting” – and the logo to depicts pet animals like a dog and a cat.
The idea behind naming the venture Woofwoofnow was the fact that though animals can’t talk but they can very well communicate through their voices. So to signify responding immediately to these pets, this name seemed quite appropriate.
Woofwoofnow – User Acquisition
The first customer for Woofwoofnow online vet consultation was a gentleman from Gurgaon. His name was Sudipto Chatterjee who had a lab dog. This man was particularly tired and frustrated with the local vets for various reasons. And he was looking to get a second opinion with them.
There onwards, they have done Pilots with various rescue cases wherein the customers wanted Teleconsultation/Video Consultation with the Doctors. Woofwoofnow’s first Pet Taxi Customer was a case wherein an Indi dog was run over and the leg was fractured. The customer had tried contacting a lot of emergency services and waited for a long time but nothing happened and none of them came. That’s when Woofwoofnow took over and the customer was so overwhelmed with the service that he agreed to give a Video footage feedback about his views on Woofwoofnow.
Woofwoofnow – Business & Revenue Model
Reports reveal that India is the fastest-growing pet care market in the world. Urbanization, rise in nuclear families, changing perceptions towards pets and pet owners are driving the growth, with which India pet care market is expected to continue to record double-digit value growth on the back of pet humanization coupled with growing disposable income. India’s pet care industry is growing rapidly as the middle class increasingly demands quality pet care and services.
Woofwoofnow’s business model rotates in the Pet ecosystem and the conveyance. As Ola and Uber is for human rides, Woofwoofnow Pet Taxis are for Animal rides. They are already now the most Preferred Pet Taxi in the Silicon Valley of India. The revenue model rotates from the Interlinked Business right from Pet Tele and Video Consultation to Pet Taxi logistics and the Pet Clinic and Hospitals.
In their current POC from April 2019, they have done quite a few Tele and Video Consultation with the Vets for the rescue cases. Woofwoofnow is growing consistently month on month in the Pet Taxi Bookings and other relative services.
Challenges are inevitable for startups especially when it has no backing of the robust funding. When the cofounders started their journey they understood the cash burn right during the website and application development stage. The team believes in quality and well understands that it takes time to build traction. Hence they have to carefully measure the cash burns.
There’s one incident that challenged the company’s existence. A dummy customer booked a pet taxi and called in a remote location. When the cab arrived, it was vandalized by a local competitor. In such incidences, loyal customer support can put the firm back on the map and that’s what fortunately happened with Woofwoofnow.
Woofwoofnow – Competitors
Unfortunately, this sector from a Healthcare perspective is unnoticed and untapped for multiple reasons. This sector cannot be ventured by everyone because one needs a deep understanding of the animal ecosystem. Indian market does have brands that cater to pet food and other hygiene products and services but there’s no venture dealing in health and technology services to facilitate the immediate treatment of pets.
Woofwoofnow – Funding & Investors
Currently, Woofwoofnow is bootstrapped. Though the team is on talking terms with various investors for the seed round. The investors seem to be interested. But the team feels that it’d add value to the venture if it is invested in by an investor who understands the pet ecosystem and has extreme love and compassion for them.
Woofwoofnow – Growth
For any startup, it takes time to stand out in the market. Woofwoofnow is growing consistently at an organic pace. As mentioned above their Pet Taxis are the most preferred ones in the IT hub of India – Bangalore. Their sole motive is “Genuine Service,” For the same, the cofounder and COO, Rosie Paul has recently bagged the Startup Women Entrepreneur of the Year on 26th September 2019 from the DY Chief Minister and Principal Secretary of Karnataka. Along with all this, they are also working to garner Series A funding.
e-Consultations typically last between 05-15 minutes.
What can I expect during an Tele/e-Consultation?
You can request a Tel/e-Consultation for non-critical guidance on pet-related issues. e-Consultations are intended to provide clarity for pet owners and as an alternative to Internet searching for answers which can often be misleading. Tele/e-Consultations provide pet owners with peace of mind with service from their trusted veterinarian.
Can the veterinarian prescribe medication during the Tele/ e-Consultation?
Prescriptions cannot be provided during an e-Consultation generally, however, in certain instances, it may be possible as well.
How do I schedule an Tele/ e-Consultation?
Members should log in to the Woofwoofnow platform, and complete the -step set-up process. Payment is made in advance usually and a wide selection of appointments are available. e-Consultations are conducted on our secure platform via webcam, similar to a Skype chat.
What information does a pet health record contain?
A pet health record includes the basic records of the Pet’s health.
Where do I access my pet’s health record?
Members can access their pet’s health record from anywhere in the world using any device with an internet connection. Simply go to the Woofwoofnow website and click “Sign In” to enter the platform. You can also access the information using the app platform.
Woofwoofnow – Conclusion
Woofwoofnow do not believe in a one-solution-fits-all Pet Parents. The Doctor’s custom solution approach means working closely with the Pet lovers to provide services that not only fit their Pet’s Consultation requirements but also offers a high degree of Speed and Seamlessness. Regardless of the Pet, all the Pet parents would have access to experienced Doctors as well as to world class Online Consultation experience to ensure all Consultations have desired outcomes. The company’s Mission and Vision is to be the most Pet friendly Institution; to build a place Where Pet Parents can rely on and come to find and discover any Pet service they might want to avail.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verifiedinformation ondifferent startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Factoreal.
No matter how big an organization is, when it comes to marketing, there’s no dearth of mundane and repetitive tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting and even campaigns. Marketing automation platforms remove the hassle from marketing execution and allows businesses to streamline, automate, evaluate tasks and workflows – not just for the sake of efficiency, but to provide a more personalized experience to the consumers, eventually leading to higher conversions and business growth. However, these tools have become complex over time, difficult to operate and messy to integrate and customize.
Factoreal is a Bengaluru based startup offering an omni-channel customer engagement and marketing automation platform designed from the ground up to help marketers execute their job effortlessly and boost revenue. Taking a clean slate approach powered by the fuel of simplicity, it enables businesses to define end to end customer journeys in minutes, delivering hyper-personalized campaigns and capturing those micro-moments of engagement effectively.
Factoreal is a startup funded by Comviva Technologies (part of the Mahindra group), looking to disrupt the Omni-Channel Customer Engagement industry. It is a tool designed for marketers. The tool is Simple, Intelligent, and Effective.
The startup aims to make customer journey automation SIMPLE and AFFORDABLE for all businesses. They strongly believe that simplicity is the essence of universality.
The team started with only one guiding light, “To build the most trusted simplest platform”. Simplicity still remains the most important guiding principle for every decision they make. Whether it’s deciding the product roadmap or hiring – simplicity is always at the heart of everything they do.
Here are the top 5 challenges that customer engagement automation can help a business overcome:
Unengaged customer
Low lead conversion
Marketing inefficiencies
Lower than expected Revenue growth
High TCO
Factoreal – Customer Engagement Platform
Factoreal – Target Market Size
The marketing automation market size is growing at double digit CAGR and expected to be a USD 25 billion industry by 2024. The increasing need for automating repetitive marketing processes, retention of users for business growth, increasing demand for personalized marketing, and better predictive lead scoring are some of the major factors expected to drive the growth of this market.
Marketing automation software solutions help enterprises to manage the entire lifecycle of marketing channels effectively across various digital medium which is one of the major factor for adoption of these software by enterprise globally.
Aditya Dhruva is the Founder & CEO of marketing automation platform-Factoreal.
CEO of Factoreal, Aditya Dhruva
Aditya Dhruva, the CEO of Factoreal is a thought leader with a stellar track record of business innovation, strategy, and running profitable businesses. He has done his entrepreneurship education from MIT and is a graduate in Electronics and Communications. He has authored 5 patents and in his past, he has held various leadership positions at Comviva, Cisco and Nokia.
“There are two schools of thought in the startup world – One prioritizes time-to-market. Get in there as early as you can, get the bean counter flowing early, pivot and iterate to find a reasonably strong play.
The other evangelises getting the right product-market fit. In highly innovative markets with strong competition, getting the right differentiation and core value proposition is extremely important. In Factoreal we are favouring the second approach” – Aditya Dhruva, founder and CEO of Factoreal.
Factoreal Team
Factoreal – Parent Company (Comviva Technologies USA Inc.)
Comviva is one of the leaders of mobility solutions providers and cater to over two billion platform users globally. The technology products offered enables customers to increase revenue, operate profitably and make a drastic impact. It is a value-added services provider for mobile telephone operators. Comviva has customers in over 90 countries, In 2012, Tech Mahindra bought a 51% stake in Comviva.
Factoreal – How it Started?
Comviva Technologies has been a leader in Mobility Solutions for nearly 2 decades. Predominantly working with Telecom customers, the portfolio spans across Mobile Financial products, Messaging and infrastructure, customer value management and lifestyle solutions.
As part of the growth strategy for the group, they wanted to leverage their expertise in building highly scalable carrier grade solutions and bring it to an internet scale offering directly to the enterprises in a SaaS model. That was when marketing automation platform, Factoreal was born.
Factoreal is an omnichannel customer engagement and marketing automation platform, delivering best-in-class journey automation, channel coverage, and budget control. The product capabilities include:
Engagement automation
Let’s you automate the customer engagement lifecycle, you can ensure seamless, engaging, customer conversations everytime.
Simplest Workflow modeling and ready-to-use journey templates
Social ads & shares
E-mail automation
Real-time triggers
Omni Channel
Let’s you orchestrate and automate customer experiences across multiple touchpoints.
Let’s you use a credit store (FactCoins) to control all your marketing spends based on real-time needs.
ROI Analysis
Budget management
Ecommerce Integrations
With their pre-integration with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, you have the ability to run all your conversion and acquisition campaigns right out of Factoreal – down to each product and customer.
Real-time actionable insights into the ecommerce journeys
Predictive analytics
Recommendations
Factoreal – Name, Tagline and Logo
Factorial (!) is the mathematical symbol for a multiplicative expression. The core value of the Factoreal Brand is to provide a multiplying benefit in every aspect to the user : experience, value and simplicity
The placement of the logo in the wordmark has been kept in the exact centre. This adds a dimension to the narrative of the brand story, implying that the user is receiving relevant data and facts in real time. The company’s product acts as a catalyst by highlighting the vantage points of data. The placement of the monogram also enhances the visual recall of the brand.
Factoreal logo
Bringing together every aspect, the monogram is a representation of marketing automation. The beauty of the monogram lies in the fact that it is also the mathematical representation of factorial itself.
It represents churning of a large amount of consumer data on an omnichannel platform to generate segmented, meaningful pieces of information, which helps you derive accurate marketing insights – all through a simple automated tool.
Factoreal’s revenue is subscription based and they have a Pay-As-You-Grow model allowing customers to increase their spend based on their business growth. The startup’s unique credit store concept (called FactCoins) enables customers to purchase pre-paid credits which can be used flexibly across campaigns, channels and ads.
The company care for their customers and given the current situation, they are going the extra mile in helping the small and medium businesses tide over the crisis with flexible plans.
Factoreal is funded by Comviva Technologies (part of the Mahindra group)
Factoreal – User Acquisition and Growth
While the team don’t disclose their customer base, they have been lucky enough to on-board a handful of paying customers within a couple of months of bringing their MVP to the market. But the journey is long and it has just begun.
Competitors of Factoreal are Klaviyo, Adobe, Hubspot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Autopilot hq to name the few.
Factoreal – Advisors and Mentors
Manoranjan Mohapatra (CEO of Comviva technologies), and Dan Knowlton (Ranked among the top 100 digital marketing influencers) are advising the team of Factoreal.
Factoreal – Future Plans
It has future plans of scaling the business, growing the team, and launching new capabilities that help their customers achieve their goals faster. They are focused on delivering high customer satisfaction.
“Find a real customer problem to solve. You can definitely build a good business provided you’re constantly innovating on product, value and GTM. Any startup will go through it’s ups and downs – it’s important to try for the best but prepare for the worst. Be prudent in spends, save for a rainy day. Take care of your employees. And more importantly, hustle, hustle, hustle. There are no guarantees in life, but these will give you your best chance at success.” – Aditya Dhruva, founder and CEO of Factoreal.
Factoreal – FAQs
What is Factoreal?
Factoreal is a Bengaluru based startup offering an omni-channel engagement automation platform to help marketers execute their job effortlessly.
Who is the Founder of Factoreal?
Aditya Dhruva is the Founder & CEO of Factoreal.
Who are the Top Competitors of Factoreal?
Competitors of Factoreal are Klaviyo, Adobe, Hubspot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Autopilot hq.
What is the Factoreal Revenue Model?
Factoreal’s revenue is subscription based and they have a Pay-As-You-Grow model allowing customers to increase their spend based on their business growth. The startup’s unique credit store concept (called FactCoins) enables customers to purchase pre-paid credits which can be used flexibly across campaigns, channels and ads.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
Resting and taking a break from work or taking a short getaway to break the monotony of daily life makes you feel refreshed, rejuvenated and more productive at work.
There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook none – said inspirational author Alan Cohen.
Many studies and researches are proving the fantastic effects that even a short time out can have on one’s mind and productivity. Reports say that, “Vacations have the potential to break into the stress cycle”. However due to time or money constraints, we are not able to take adequate vacations. But thankfully now we have a solution to it.
StartupTalky interviewed Kipstay co founder Arjun Raghunandan, to know better about this startup dedicated to helping stressed-out and overworked people find relaxation, rejuvenation and overall health benefits by reconnecting with nature.
Kipstay operates a collection of homestays within a two – five-hour drive from major urban cities and outfits them with comforts of home, and rents them by night. Kipstay is designed to redefine short vacations. The experience, the location and design of the Kipstay homestays are created in a way that helps guests unplug and detox from the stress of daily life and rejuvenate.
Kipstay converts existing/abandoned housing stock short drive from the city into something more usable for this generation, that’s more responsible for the environment.
Kipstay helps you disconnect and recharge from the daily grind — to be an “off switch” in an “on world.” Technology and work have infiltrated every hour of every day and we need to find a new way to find balance
The getaways can be booked via Kipstay’s website or mobile app. Unlike vacations which can be expensive and far away, Kipstay is affordable (starting at INR 1500/night), far enough to feel disconnected but near enough, so you don’t spend all your time getting there.
Kipstay – USPs
Urban millennials are overworked and stressed out as technology, jobs and social media fill every waking moment of our lives. 8 out of 10 people want to go on vacations to relax, destress and reconnect with family and friends. But planning vacations take 4 to 7 days per trip, they are expensive (avg. INR 1 to 2 lakhs) and frequency is limited to once a year due to busy lifestyle. The major USP of Kipstay is that it allows one to take that much-needed break without spending a lot and being near cities one can plan short trips frequently.
Also, in India, booking homestays as an alternative to hotels is frustrating on many levels – the experience is unpredictable, no transparency in pricing, inaccurate listing information and photos and trust issues. Kipstay is a solution to these problems.
To enlist, Kipstay has the following USPs –
For Travellers-
Experience – Significantly better and predictable experience for travelers. (Like an Airbnb Plus Home).
Affordable – INR 1,500 per night. Kipstay controls the pricing and inventory unlike other marketplaces and OTAs.
Accessible – All homes would be in scenic locations 2-5 hrs from urban cities, perfect for short getaways. Unlike Kipstay, many companies do not reveal the exact location unless a booking is made, which is frustrating for a traveler while planning.
Differentiated branding with a chic design.
Travelers need not choose between an authentic experience or dependable customer service and basic amenities.
For Homeowners-
Ease of converting a regular home to a branded Kipstay Home via the company’s easy to execute playbook.
Product features – Kipstay provides branded amenities, marketing and distribution, pricing and inventory management via. a tech backend.
Higher occupancy rates (higher than 50%) due to Kipstay brand which directly increases earnings.
Kipstay offers a DIFM (Do-It-For-Me) model instead of the DIY model which is time-consuming and expensive.
Crossover of Uber (technology back-end, marketing & distribution, operations) and Airbnb (unique inventory with authentic travel experiences).
Achintya Dayal and Arjun Raghunandan are the founders of Kipstay. Achintya and Arjun were friends since their school days,and started their first startup Pyxis Networks- an event management company, while they were in the last year of college. After Achintya graduated from Manipal University and Arjun from Ramaiah Institute of Technology they co-founded Kipstay.
Achintya Dayal and Arjun Raghunandan – Co-founders, Kipstay
The founders emphasize on building the right team from the beginning and brought on board great talent to join Kipstay’s core team. Kipstay work culture is centered around people over process.
We push our team to achieve excellence by empowering them with freedom and responsibility. Our goal is to inspire people and trust them to do what they think is best for Kipstay by giving them freedom, power, the information in support of their decisions.
Kipstay – How It All Started?
While all their friends were busy preparing for CAT, GRE and GMAT, Achintya and Arjun decided to travel and attend as many music festivals as we could.
We knew after graduation we would be facing the grind anyway, why not enjoy until then – says Arjun.
During one such festival, it struck them that they could sell some merchandise and make some money as a side hustle, to enhance the festival experience for music festival-goers.
The duo mailed Sunburn ( Asia’s largest music festival held in Pune, Maharashtra, every year) regarding their plan to sell merchandise at the event, and soon they were meeting hundreds of vendors – sourcing, finalizing and shipping merchandise to these festivals and all these was quite interesting!
Honestly, we did not know this was entrepreneurship. The feeling of having earned money even before graduating got us excited about the business.
And this love for entrepreneurship, stayed with Arjun and Achintya. After graduation, Arjun wrote his GRE and was on the final waitlist of acceptance to the University of Maryland, but instead of waiting he took a hard decision of staying back and pursue business.
Arjun started discussing ideas with Achintya, and saw a huge opportunity in the travel industry as he belonged to a family of travel experts. This lead to the launch of Kipstay in 2015.
The name Kipstay comes from the words ‘Kip’ and ‘Homestay’
Kipstay Logo
‘Kip’ is an urban slang word which means to sleepover at someone else’s house. Again, Homestay is a private house offering accommodation to paying guests for short periods.
The Indian travel market is projected to grow at 11-11.5% to the tune of $48 Bn by 2020 and Hotels will grow at 13% to $13 Bn by 2020. Alternate stays, including short term rentals and other lodgings is expected to grow up to $3 Bn by 2020.
Kipstay banks on the following recent trends in the Indian Travel Industry:
Increase in Frequency of short duration (2- 4 nights) trips to at least 4 to 6 times per year
Increase in Alternate Accommodation supply in India is growing at 40%
80% of Indian travelers said they are seeking authentic experiences.
Kipstay – Business & Revenue Model
Kipstay was initially launched as a marketplace to discover and book homestays and additionally, they provided tools (Kiplist) to help owners manage their homes. Later the company pivoted to a network of branded getaway homes model to offer a better customer experience.
In a marketplace model, it was hard for us to handle operations of the homes – like speaking to guests, making sure the amenities are well stocked, no control on pricing and inventory, etc. Hence to deliver a significantly better experience we iterated our model
Kipstay runs on a simple revenue model. It helps homeowners manage their branding, operations such as guest communications and marketing and distribution via their website and app and other third-party channels. For all these services, Kipstay charges a percentage of the total booking it generates.
Kipstay was initially launched as a marketplace to discover and book homestays and additionally, they built tools (Kiplist) to help owners manage their homes. The aim was to be the backend engine that would drive business to these properties. However, this model did not turn out to be successful.
Kipstay had 300+ homestays across 30 locations, but the bookings were very low. On speaking to customers and through direct feedback the Kipstay team understood that the users were not looking for cookie-cutter experiences when they booked with them. Travelers were looking for getaways that offered an authentic experience (like an Airbnb offering) and dependable customer service and basic amenities (like a hotel offering). Keeping up with customer expectations, Kipstay – A branded network of homestays was launched.
Kipstay launched its first property in Chikmagalur and it received great response from the customers. In the first week of the launch – they sold 3 months of weekends, winter bookings being made in 4 months in advance.
Kipstay – Startup Challenges
The most challenging situation that the Kipstay team faced was convincing the homeowners to rebrand their property and letting Kipstay take care of technology and operations while they take care of the hospitality. However, given the profitability that Kipstay offers to the house owners, many house owners soon came forward to join hands with Kipstay.
Kipstay – Funding & Investors
Kipstay raised 1 round of angel funding in 2018.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investor
2018
Angel
Undisclosed
IIM Ahmedabad Alumni & Group of HNI’s
Kipstay – Competitors
Airbnb, HomeAway, Sykes Cottages, AvantStay, misterb&b etc., are some of the similar companies in this sector.
Kipstay – Awards & Recognitions
Amrita TBI pitchfest top 30 startups
Y Combinator Startup School 2018 (Graduate)
Kipstay – Growth
Kipstay has served over 10000+ travelers since inception and is averaging occupancy rates of 70% . The company is planning to launch in 10 new locations in 6 months.
Kipstay is designed to redefine short vacations. The experience, the location, and the design of the Kipstay homestays are created in a way that helps guests unplug and detox from the stress of daily life and rejuvenate.
Who is the Founder of Kipstay?
Achintya Dayal and Arjun Raghunandan are the founders of Kipstay.
Which was the first property of Kipstay?
Kipstay launched its first property in Chikmagalur and it received a great response from the customers. In the first week of the launch – they sold 3 months of weekends, winter bookings being made in 4 months in advance.
Does Hotel Kipstay offer any business services?
No, it does not offer any business services.
What are some of the basic amenities at Kipstay?
Some of the more popular amenities offered include free wifi, free breakfast, and free parking.
Is Kipstay popular with families?
Yes, Kipstay is popular with guests booking family stays.
Kipstay – Conclusion
Kipstay, a Bangalore based startup is bringing to you peaceful and affordable getaway homes just within 2-3 hours drive from the city, so that you can catch up that much needed respite from the stress and tedium of daily life, without spending much time and money.
Chayanika Goswami
