For those who deserve commendations, American Express Co. leads the page! One of the biggest credit companies in the world, American Express has been serving its customers with absolutely free offers and services for ages now.
The company has come a long way ahead of its competitors. American Express gathers its revenue through the transactions made by merchants’ partners along with annual membership fees and interest income.
In the market, there isn’t any potential company that can offer such services and a great formation of cash rewards, hotel upgrades, theme park admission, gift cards, and rental cars. Customers can get these facilities very easily, just by purchasing the essential goods.
American Express is considered remarkable when it comes to customer service and profit revenue. It holds two major sources of revenue, that is merchant partners and cardholders.
Although the merchant fees are quite high with such great rewards programs, no one put its service down. Its rewards program is incredible and brings out tremendous results and a customer base. In this article, we will be discussing the incredible business model and revenue sources of the very prominent credit card company, American Express. Let’s begin!
American Express, also referred to as Amex, is one of the biggest multinational financial services companies in the world. The company is headquartered in New York City, United States.
American Express was founded in 1850 and holds the weight of one component among the count 30 of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Stephen J. Squeri works as the chairman and CEO of American Express, alongside Jeffrey C. Campbell holds the post of Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer.
Forbes mentioned American Express as the most valuable brand in the world with the 23rd position, based on the net valuation of the company worth $24.5 billion in 2017.
By the time of late 2019, American Express carried over 114.4 million cards active among which, 54.7 million active cards were in the United States with average annual spending of $19,972 each.
Later in 2020, American Express was ranked 9th on the list of Top 100 Companies to Work for 2020 by Fortune Magazine. This ranking was based on the survey for employee satisfaction.
American Express actively functions in around 175 countries with a total of 2,300 offices in the world. American Express initiated three major companies, The American Express Bank Ltd. (AEBL), American Express Travel Related Services (TRS), and American Express Financial Advisors.
Key Products and Services of American Express
When it comes to American Express services, the company is very promising. It offers financial, travel, and insurance services to its customers.
Its key products are as follows:
Charge Cards
Traveler’s cheques
Credit cards
Corporate banking
Target audience of American Express
American Express has a huge customer base. The company mostly has affluent customers. American Express targets the customer group that considers business as their biggest opportunity to convert. It targets its audience with great services and reward programs.
Business Model of American Express
There is quite a broad range of customer groups in American Express. The company categorizes its customers into multiple sections including large corporations, small businesses, consumers, and mid-sized companies.
Basically, its business model is a two-sided market that activates the interaction between the cardholders and merchants partners. For its consumers and small businesses group, American Express provides a diverse variety of credit card products and charges, stores value, travel-related, and co-brand cards.
Credit cards: It exemplifies the company’s wide range of payment terms, rate & fee structure, and grace periods.
Charge cards: Cards with no pre-set spending limits. These are primarily designed for payment methods, not for financing purchasing.
Prepaid cards: Payment cards that are pre-loaded with money for later purposes.
Travel services: Offers premium vacation travel along with real-time services provided by the company’s proprietary network.
American Express generates the largest fraction of money through discount revenue streams that exemplify the transactional earnings from merchant partners. Alongside, the company has many other revenue sources including cardholders who are charged with little amounts of fees through annual membership fees, conversion fees, and interests on notable balances.
American Express follows the spend-centric model which aims to increase the total transactions number on its card through specific offers and fewer fees. The major revenue sources of American Express are as follows:
Discount revenues: Generates the largest fraction of money for the company. In this, the company charges little fees from the merchants when a cardholder pays for a purchased item from the merchant’s shop, through their card.
Travel commission and fees: The transaction fees and management fees that are charged by the customers as well as suppliers.
Net card fees: The annual card subscription fees from the cardholders.
Loan interests: Certain interests are earned from cards with notable balances.
Other commissions and fees: Charged on foreign exchange conversions, loyalty coalition-related fees, card fees, and other service fees.
Conclusion
American Express follows a very distinct business model and strategy. The company holds a very strong position in the global market with an immense customer base. American Express sells its products and services through numerous channels such as direct mail, third-party sales, online applications, and others. The company is working towards its global expansion more vibrantly and increasing its consumer base.
FAQs
Who is the founder of American Express?
American Express was founded by William Fargo, Henry Wells, and John Butterfield in 1850.
Who is the CEO of American Express?
Stephen Squeri is the current CEO of American Express.
How does American Express make money?
American Express makes money from interest income, annual card fees, and payment processing fees.
redBus is India’s first organized bus ticket booking service and the biggest aggregator of bus tickets. It has been received very promptly by the Indians. India being the 5th largest contributor to the world’s GDP, aims to take the travel and tourism industry to $250 billion by 2030 and $1 trillion by 2047.
Companies like redBus put their immense contribution towards making the journey of travellers very convenient and safe. redBus’ contribution has taken the travel and tourism industry to great extent. Let’s look at the business model of redBus and understand its complete operations.
redBus is India’s largest online bus ticketing platform headquartered in Bangalore and owned by Goibibo. It provides a ticket booking facility through its website, iOS, and Android mobile apps and connects bus travellers with a network of over 2500 bus operators.
For better guidance, the company joined the TiE Entrepreneurship acceleration program where they got the guidance of great mentors.
redBus was the first of its kind and no doubt, it came out radiantly. Today, it sells more than 18,000-20,000 tickets per day. The company has two subsidiaries YourBus and Empresa Digital Peruana S.A.C.
Where Does redBus Operate?
Till now, redBus has served more than 18 million people across the world. Outside India, redBus also has a strong foothold in many countries :
Countries where redBus operates:
Colombia
India
Indonesia
Malaysia
Peru
Singapore
Key Services of redBus
redBus offers a secure and manageable experience for booking tickets online. Moreover, it offers complete choices to the customers such as choosing their destination with their preferred seating options. redBus not only works in the roadways domain but recently enters into the railway domain under the name of redRail.
List of services provided by redBus:
Bus Hire
Bus Tickets
rPool (Bikepool & Carpool)
rYde
redRail
Target Audience of redBus
redBus generally target audiences who want to book a bus ticket without going to the physical place to buy a ticket. This concept of redBus is made to acquire its consumers by providing customer support, discounts, and other perks which are impossible to get at the physical bus counter.
Business Model of redBus
The business model of redBus is very strong along with its digital marketing strategies. redBus’ business model is straightforward, as it charges a commission on every bus ticket booking. It also charges a commission from the bus operator on every ticket booked through its platform. The commission is approximately 10-20% based on the value of the ticket being sold.
redBus also provides hotel services along with ticket booking. It offers great deals on various occasions and also offers special discounts as well. But, the most advantageous factor that comes with RedBus is that it provides an opportunity for the customer to choose the most favourable route to their destination with the best seat in the best bus.
What Is Unique About The Business Model Of redBus?
Its business model is entirely based on its quality service to the customers. Its social media strategies are designed so well that it always finds great proposals for its audiences. It mostly keeps on promotion but that too, on customers’ demands and favours.
Some of the features that make it unique are:
Customers can track their buses.
Customers can book buses according to the ratings.
There are reserved seats for women.
Customers can give feedback on the services provided and their experiences after the trip.
How Does redBus Make Money?
redBus makes its money by charging some fee as commission from the bus operators on each booked ticket on redBus. The commission comes as 10-20% of the total ticket value.
In 2019, redBus received great success, it had annual revenue of $85 million. The company has a valuation of $710 million in 2020. Now, it has over 36 million users from all over the world with 3500 bus operators according to the data given on its website. And known as the largest online bus ticket company.
Conclusion
redBus has gone through lots of success and failure since its launch in 2006. There are tons of bus services available 24×7 to meet all the needs of travellers. Its business model is quite simple and strong but most importantly, redBus is widely famous and welcomed among the common people.
redBus eases the major issue of finding the correct bus for any destination. It’s one step closer to fulfilling every need of a traveller along with destination travel requirements. redBus is one of its kind and it’s a true inspiration for developing services for the betterment of common people.
FAQs
What is redBus?
redBus is an online bus ticket booking platform from Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju, and Sudhakar Pasupunuri in 2006.
What are the subsidiaries of redBus?
redBus has two subsidiaries YourBus and Empresa Digital Peruana S.A.C.
How much commission does redBus take?
redBus charges a 10% to 20% commission on the value of the ticket.
Which company owns redBus?
The parent company of redBus is Goibibo.
Who is the founder of redBus?
Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju, and Sudhakar Pasupunuri founded redBus in August 2006.
Did Ibibo Group acquire redBus?
Yes, redBus was sold to Ibibo Group for $138 million.
Due to this pandemic, teachers were forced to teach online. Many teachers found it very different to shift their offline classes online.
How will you take classes online? How to conduct attendance and tests? How to provide the student’s reports to their parents? All these questions popped up in the minds of teachers.
The solution to all these problems was Classplus. This company has simplified everything and has helped 1 lakh educators to go digital. Classplus operates in 1,100 cities and is used by 70,00,000 students for learning.
Classplus is a SaaS-based platform that helps teachers make their own apps and take their coaching business online. The company was founded in 2015.
The founders of Classplus are Mukul Rustagi, Vatsal Rustagi, Bikash Dash, Nikhil Goel and Bhaswat Agarwal. The headquarters of Classplus is in Noida.
Using this app teachers can sell their courses and study material to students. Teachers can track attendance, conduct tests, take multiple live classes, create assignments, keep records of all the fee receipts and get reports of students’ performance.
Classplus website
Business Model of Classplus
The main goal of the company is to provide all the tools needed by the teachers to teach efficiently online.
Classplus will help all the teachers make their own app that can handle attendance, tests, payments and reports. The app will also help them to conduct live classes, sell their courses and much more.
Using Classplus teachers don’t have to spend time on management. Instead, they have to focus only on teaching.
You can log in as a teacher, student or parent. Joining the platform is very easy and it takes less than 30 minutes.
Signing as a teacher helps you to add students, make your own batches, share notifications and assignments, and conduct online tests.
The best part here is that the student’s performance report will be directly given to the parents. Teachers get unlimited cloud storage and data security features.
The company claims that every hour they help 50+ educators take their coaching business online. You can contact the team of Classplus to book a free demo.
The revenue model of Classplus is based on simple subscription fees. The subscription fees of this platform start from Rs 15,000 and can go up to Rs 50,000. The fees depend upon the services required by the teachers.
In 2022, Classplus made a revenue of $95.2M. The company has raised $70 million in its latest round of funding co-led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global.
According to the company, 75% of its educator base comes from Tier 2 Indian cities and beyond
Classplus advertises aggressively using social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. The company has also posted various videos on YouTube explaining how its platform has helped many teachers to go online. The brand ambassador of Classplus is Sourav Ganguly.
In January 2021, Classplus launched a two-part series ad campaign with Saurav Ganguly where he tells the struggles faced by the teachers teaching offline. In the ad, Saurav Ganguly tells the advantages of Classplus and how online teaching is the future. This was one of the most successful campaigns launched by the company.
Last year on the occasion of women’s day Classplus launched a video campaign shedding light on challenges faced by women in the education industry. This campaign showed that still, women have to face gender norms.
As society still encourages women to work, the journey of women in education has not been easy compared to men. Classplus has helped these female educators by offering them the same technology that they have provided to the men. This campaign was also very successful.
Classplus also has an affiliate program which has helped the company to boost its sales. Apart from advertising many educators are happy with the services provided by Classplus. Word of mouth marketing has helped the company increase its reach.
Conclusion
Due to this pandemic, many educators have understood the potential of online teaching. Nowadays, you can get any degree by learning online from the comfort of your home. The e-learning market is expected to reach $1.96 billion by the end of 2021.
Online learning is more affordable than offline learning. Students can learn at their own pace. This helps students to grasp all the concepts and learn without any stress.
There are a lot of complications when you want to teach online and Classplus is a great solution for it. The company has said that they will add more features and take the online teaching to a next level.
FAQ
Who is the founder of Classplus?
The Founders of Classplus are Mukul Rustagi, Vatsal Rustagi, Bikash Dash, Nikhil Goel and Bhaswat Agarwal.
What is the Revenue Model of Classplus?
The revenue model of Classplus is based on simple subscription fees. The subscription fees of this platform start from Rs 15,000 and can go up to Rs 50,000.
How does Classplus work?
Classplus helps teachers make their own app. Using this app teachers can sell their courses and study material to students, track attendance, conduct tests, take multiple live classes, create assignments, keep a record of all the fee receipts and get students’ performance reports.
Is there any free demo available for Classplus?
Yes, you can contact the team of Classplus and get a free demo. You can see how Classplus will help you take your coaching business online.
How does Classplus advertise?
Classplus uses social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to advertise and interact with people. They also launch various campaigns on YouTube to boost their sales.
What is Classplus lite?
Classplus lite is a free app that helps solo teachers teach online. Using this app teachers can add students’ batches, and study material, upload videos and assign tests.
Launched in 2013, Pepperfry has more than 60 lakh registered users and 1 million+ home products. Pepperfry has changed the way of buying furniture. Indians loved the idea of buying furniture from the comfort of their homes and that is why the company has 7 million+ visits on the website.
Today, if I ask you to buy furniture online, Pepperfry would automatically pop up in your mind. The company have grown rapidly over these years. The company delivers its products in more than 500 cities in India. But, how did the company become so successful? To answer this we need to understand their business model.
Pepperfry is an online marketplace headquartered in Mumbai that deals in furniture and home décor like furnishings, lighting, beds, tables, chairs, cabinets, kitchen appliances, bathing equipment, mattress, and so on.
The founders of Pepperfry are Ambreesh Murthy and Ashish Shah. The tagline of Pepperfry is ‘Happy Furniture to You’.
The company has launched 100+ studios across 57 cities in India In these studios, a wide range of furniture is displayed so people can come and physically see all the furniture. In 2018 Pepperfry tied up with Quikr for a furniture exchange program.
Pepperfry also launched a furniture rental service in September 2018. People can rent furniture and can use it for a period of 6, 9, or 12 months.
Target Audience of Pepperfry
The target audience of Pepperfry is people between the age group of 35-45. The company is also targeting people who are in their mid-20s to early 30s.
Pepperfry follows the omnichannel strategy where they allow their customers to order products anytime, anywhere from any device. The company employs the managed marketplace business model.
They have connected with small and medium-sized business merchants and artisans. These merchants can sell their products through Pepperfry.
The category team meets the sellers to check the quality of products and once approved they take some products from them. These products are sent to the studios for photoshoots.
The photos of the products are then placed on their website. When a product is ordered from the website, it is brought from the sellers and delivered to Pepperfry’s warehouse.
What is Unique about Pepperfry’s Business Model
1) Pepperfry Studios and Franchise Model:
Pepperfry Studios
In India, people have a habit of checking products and services physically. To gain the trust of the people the company launched Pepperfry studios where people can explore all the types of furniture in offline mode. People cannot buy furniture from these studios. Although these stores help consumers make big purchases online.
The interior design professionals that are working in these studios provide free consultations to customers for their home interior needs. About 25% of the business is generated from these studios.
The company has also started a franchise program where small entrepreneurs can own a franchise with Pepperfry and run a profitable business.
The franchise-owned studios work on a 100% price parity and do not require the partner to hold product inventory.
“Omnichannel has always been an integral part of our growth strategy and our existing franchise program has helped us expand our offline footprint by creating several touchpoints across major metros and Tier 2 cities.” added Ashish Shah.
2) Powerful Marketing:
Pepperfry has collaborated with many Influencers and YouTubers. As we all know YouTubers and Influencers have many followers. This helped in brand awareness and people started to buy products from Pepperfry.
During the initial days of Pepperfry, their ad campaigns were focused on getting the audience’s trust. Later on, their ad campaigns shifted to providing specific benefits like looks and design of products.
High-quality images are placed on the website to attract people. The company found out that 65% of the customers are women.
So, to attract them Pepperfry’s team created powerful campaigns that resonated with their target audience. They also provided various discounts which led to an increase in sales.
The revenue model of Pepperfry is straightforward. They earn money by selling products. About 80-85% of Pepperfry’s Revenue is generated by selling furniture in the solid wood furniture category. They have a revenue of Rs 500 crore per annum.
The main reason for high revenue according to Ambreesh Murthy is that the gross margin is as high as 45% while the contribution margin is only 25%. Also, after deducting various costs such as direct cost, logistics, and discounts Pepperfry claims that they earn a contribution margin of 25% – about Rs 2,025.
”Also, the cost of customer acquisition is very low. In fact, we have a high rate of repeat purchases. This has been possible as we sell a range of ancillary products including mattresses, bedsheets, pillows, etc. While a customer may buy a bed once in three years, she does return to the website to purchase related products at least three times a year,” Ambreesh Murthy explained.
Conclusion:
Pepperfry is an inspiration for many startups. Their business and revenue model are simple yet effective. They understood what Indians wanted and designed their business model accordingly. Customer satisfaction is the most important aspect of their success.
FAQ
Is Pepperfry an Indian Company?
Yes, Pepperfry is an Indian Company started by Ambreesh Murthy and Ashish Shah in 2013.
What is Pepperfry Studios?
In these studios, people can come and see all the furniture. The furniture is not for sale but people can check the product quality and design. Once they are satisfied they can order the furniture online.
What is Pepperfry?
Pepperfry is an online marketplace headquartered in Mumbai that deals in furniture and home décor.
What is the revenue model of Pepperfry?
The revenue model of Pepperfry is straightforward. They earn money by selling furniture products. About 80-85% of Pepperfry’s revenue is generated by selling furniture in the solid wood furniture category.
How many products does Pepperfry have?
Pepperfry has 1 million+ home products ranging from beds, tables, chairs, cabinets, kitchen appliances, bathing equipment, mattress, furnishings, lighting, and so on.
MapmyIndia is known to be one of India’s most comprehensive GPS navigation and tracking solutions providers, which engages the users on multiple platforms. The New Delhi-based company first started its venture online as C.E Infosystems back in 1995 and eventually migrated into consumer navigation devices, fleet-tracking solutions for taxi and trucking companies, and mobile apps. Today, the company offers an entire API stack, IOT devices, and a map app and is also a strong competitor to the global giant Google’s mapping app.
The company has so far mapped over 10.54 million unique destinations, expanded its coverage to over 6.29 million kilometers of the road network, 7068+ cities at street level along with address level for 80+ cities. It also covers 600K+ villages and 3D and 2D landmarks in 86+ different cities. It has so far recorded 18+ million places. Not only that the company has also divulged into offering a variety of different services. It offers services like navigation functionality, tracking and telematics, and location-based analytics.
MapmyIndia has its own API stack through which the company aids developers who are looking to build interesting and unique apps powered by a geo-locational element such as OLX, Flipkart, and smart parking systems. The company now has 5,000 enterprise customers. It also claims to have captured an 80% market share in revenue in the location intelligence space.
It has more than 2,000 customers on its SaaS platforms, which are used for fleet management, location analytics, etc. among other things, made possible because of the successful business model that MaymyIndia brandishes. Other smaller players that compete with MaymyIndia in the IoT-powered GPS devices segment include Asset Tracker, TrakNTell, and CaRPM.
Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma, The founders of MapmyIndia
MapmyIndia is an Indian technology company that builds digital map data, telematics services, location-based SAAS, and GIS AI services. The company has its headquarters in New Delhi, regional offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and an international office in the San Francisco Bay Area. MapmyIndia was founded in the year 1992 by Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma. The company had its humble beginning when the couple launched a startup called C E Info Systems Pvt. Ltd. in New Delhi.
The company initially started working upon developing a web mapping technology and providing products and services required for enhancing marketing and logistics efficiency in the existing organizations in the country. MapmyIndia launched the first Indian interactive digital mapping portal in 2004, which provided free, customized, location-based services.
In 2010, MapmyIndia launched a GPS navigation service called Road Pilot, preloaded with Indian cities, villages and destinations and destinations. As of 2018, it has 5000 plus enterprises customers and over 250 million consumers benefit directly and indirectly from its services. MapmyIndia has also expanded to countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal and soon plans to release maps for the different parts of the world.
During the trying times of the pandemic, the company launched a Covid19 dashboard that mapped containment zones and Covid19 testing and treatment centers across India in real-time and made it available for millions of users free of cost. This immediate move benefitted many users needing this information, whereas Google was slow to respond and released it many months later. It also won the Government of India’s Atmanirbhar App Challenge for its consumer app.
In December 2021, MapmyIndia parent company, the valuation or the market capitalization of the company currently stood at over $1.03 Bn.
MapmyIndia – Products and Services the Company Offers
MapmyIndia is well known for its services like Navigation, Tracking, IoT, Analytics, and web mapping service for desktop and mobile devices.The company also offers advanced GPS tracking devices, car in-dash infotainment, and plug and play on-board diagnostics, car trackers. The navigation service features street-view, public transit information, and turn-by-turn navigation with spoken instructions for vehicles. The main services that the company offers are:
Professionally curated and continuously updated detailed maps that offer unmatched coverage – These maps enable web and mobile applications, with the most granular house-level building data, live traffic, location-based demographics, and socio-economic data.
Real-time data visualization and big data analytics to make more informed decisions – Maps provide a visual context that helps customers to increase productivity, involving location like site selection & resource allocation that helps with efficient business growth.
Smart mobility platform for sale, convenient and efficient mobility – The company is focused on building technology platforms for connected vehicles and travelers paving the road for autonomous multi-modal and safe mobility.
Connected Vehicle IoT ensures the safety and security of vehicles, people, and assets – The company also believes in providing a secure, intelligent, and modular location-based IoT platform, providing accurate and reliable maps with live traffic, road conditions, safety alerts, driving patterns, and other travel services.
MapmyIndia Launched Panoramic Street View Experience
MapmyIndia announced the launch of a panoramic, street view feature, which will be similar to the panoramic, three-dimensional experience of Google Street View. This technology, which is refered to as Mappls RealView, will help the users explore the cities of India almost as Google offers. Currently, Mappls RealView covers metropolitan areas and cities including Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Greater Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Jaipur. Besides, it also covers nearly 100,000 kms of highways, which links these cities and towns. The repository of Mappls RealView currently consists of 40+ Cr geo-tagged panoramas, videos, and panoramas, as of July 28, 2022.
A metaverse-like experience has also been launched by MapmyIndia, via Mappls. This now features numerous tourists, commercial and residential landmarks and more, across India. In order to create a 3D experience, the listed startup has revealed that it uses satellite imagery data from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
MapmyIndia – eLoc: Electronic location as a key to Digital Address
MapmyIndia has presented eLoc (electronic Location) as the country’s key to digital addresses. eLoc by MapmyIndia helps in finding the electronic location of any place, be it a building, flat, office, business, city, village, locality, road, and so on, is a short, 6 character code (for e.g. 8GDTYX, or MMI000). This is easy to remember, share, type, and provide. eLoc claims to provide a comprehensive, accurate, and precise door-step level, 3D digital map database, and turn by turn navigation solution.
eLoc is essential when a person, business, or official searches for a place by entering the code. They can see the precise map location of the place beside its location, such as reviews, photos other information provided by the place’s owner, businesses, and government. MapmyIndia updates its digital database every quarter and takes into account the feedback of the enterprise’s customers, individual users, on-ground staff, and its own surveyors as well.
When Rakesh and Rashmi Verma first started out to build their own startup they were determined to do something for the country and thus, decided to make it their life’s goal to build the country’s first digital map based on a database of India. This was a difficult task in the beginning because India is known to be vast and with varied geographical and topographical diversities. This is why they decided to make their own database, “Top Down and Bottoms Up”.
The Top Down system included that the company digitally traced whatever paper maps were available using tablets and other IT and electronics devices. On the other hand, the Bottom Up was meant to survey different parts of the country. The team of MapmyIndia played an important role in surveys as they had to practically walk down the streets and by-lanes of the country and also conduct field surveys.
The company has a customer-funded business model and has had popular companies like Coca-Cola, Marico, Hindustan Unilever, and the Indian defense service as their enterprise customers. All of these were possible due to its team of more than 400 surveyors, post-physical and satellite surveys, and most importantly, its 25 years of research. The company now has a repository of more than 2 Cr data points, including 3D data visualizations, telematics, and navigation systems under its belt.
Map Data collection work
The company not only sends more than 400 surveys in the field but also collects hundreds of attributes like footprints, doorsteps, floor numbers, flat numbers, and photographs of every location. It is because of this information that the company has created a digital map of the country of inter-connected information with all those geographical markers and coordinates. MapmyIndia has also entered into more than 100 strategic partnerships with tech and marketing companies, to facilitate the process of data collation faster.
Four Key Markets of MapmyIndia
In terms of the verticals, MapmyIndia addresses four key markets:
Direct consumers (through free and paid app/maps)
Automotive (40% of revenue)
Mobile Internet (20%) and
Enterprises and government (40% of revenue).
MapmyIndia – Revenue and Financials
MapmyIndia QoQ Financials
The operating revenue in Q1 FY23 of MapmyIndia, grew by 50.2% to stand at Rs 65 crore when compared to the revenue it received in the corresponding quarter in FY22.
The expenses of the company also increased by 37.5% in Q1 FY23, when compared with the Rs 27.4 crore expenses it registered in Q1 FY22. The expenses of MapmyIndia in Q1 FY23 are registered at Rs 37.7 crore.
The PAT of MapmyIndia rose 17.5% YoY in the first quarter of FY23, to become Rs 24.2 crore.
MapmyIndia YoY Financials
MapmyIndia’s revenue from operations was close to Rs 200 crore in FY22. The company earlier registered Rs 153 crore in operational revenue, which grew by 31%. The revenue from operations of MapmyIndia was previously noted to be Rs 135.2 crore and Rs 149 crore in FY19 and FY20 respectively.
The expenses of MapmyIndia rose only slightly, by 11%, up from Rs 113 crore in FY21 to become Rs 125 crore in FY22. MapmyIndia expenses were earlier registered at Rs 120.16 crore in FY19 and Rs 131.78 crore in FY20.
MapmyIndia profits after tax (PAT) stood at Rs 87 crore in FY22, which witnessed a 45% rise from Rs 59.4 crore worth in profits in FY21. The profits were earlier Rs 33.6 crore in FY19 and Rs 23.2 crore in FY20.
MapmyIndia – Market Share and Funding of MapmyIndia
MapmyIndia cloud mapping services are used by many well-known tech companies such as Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon, Alexa voice, Flipkart, Uber, Ola, Grofers (now Blinkit), for various things like planning, operations, and customer experience. The company also offers advanced navigation and location services to the vehicle manufacturer and has a 95% market share in GPS navigation in India. It also claims to have 5,000+ enterprise customers with an 80% market share in the location intelligent space.
MapmyIndia Funding
MapmyIndia has so far raised $34 million in venture capital financing in the three rounds since 2007 from Lightbox Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and Zenrin. In 2015, Flipkart announced that it has acquired 34% stake in the company for Rs 1,600 crore and provided a successful exit to MapmyIndia’s early investors.Over the years, the firm’s value has more than tripled due to the increase in the adoption of its technologies.
Date
Name of the Funding Round
Deal Value
Lead Investors
May 1, 2014
Venture Round
–
Lightbox
February 15, 2009
Series C
$9 mn
Qualcomm Ventures
August 10, 2007
Series B
$25 mn
–
April 19, 2007
Series A
–
–
MapmyIndia IPO
The company filed its draft offer documents with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on August 31, 2021. In its IPO, MapmyIndia was initially expected to go with an offer-for-sale of up to 7,547,959 equity shares by shareholders at a face value of Rs 2 each. This amounted to around 19% of post-offer paid-up equity share capital.
C.E Info Systems, MapmyIndia’s parent company, has increased its total IPO offering to 9,589,478 equity shares, as per the reports dated October 20, 2021. MapmyIndia parent has received SEBI’s approval for its IPO that will consist only of an offer for sale (OFS) from the promoters and the existing shareholders and would offload up to 9,589,478 equity shares, as per the reports dated October 30, 2021. C.E Info Systems had gone live with its IPO on December 9, 2021, where it has seen a strong response from retail investors. The IPO was subscribed around 0.53 times or 53%, as per the reports on 11 am on the same day.
The IPO of MapmyIndia parent witnessed a subscription of over 154 times, as reported on December 13, 2021. The upper limit of the IPO price band was at Rs 1,033, where the offer attracted bids close to Rs 1.12 lakh crore, as disclosed on the same date. The MapmyIndia shares were listed at Rs 1581, which is a 54% premium to its IPO price of Rs 1033 per share.
Shein has gained immense popularity among the youth. If you are a fashionista then you must have bought some trendy clothes from Shein at a very low price. The company has been very successful in the ultra-fast fashion market. Shein ships in 220 countries and provides clothes for men, women, and children.
According to research, it was found that in 2021 Shein’s mobile app had over 7 million users in the US alone. The hashtag #Shein has generated over 6.2 billion views on TikTok. The estimated revenue of this company is $10 billion every year. Let’s see the Business Model of Shein in great detail.
Shein is a Chinese international B2C fast-fashion online platform headquartered in China. The company was founded by Chris Xu in 2008. The company sells clothes, bags, shoes, accessories, and other fashion items. Shein’s target countries are Europe, America, and the Middle East. The brand is very popular among Gen Z.
Shein mainly works by targeting the audience who prefers western clothes. As for the target market, Shein mainly works for young people who want to be unique and socially acceptable.
Before we have a deeper look at the business model let’s first understand how the fashion industry works. This will help us better understand the Business Model.
Evolution of the Fashion Industry
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Zara and H&M introduced the world of fast fashion. Buying trendy clothes from the stores at a very low price was something new to the people.
Zara introduced this phenomenon to the people and made a lot of money. The key components that helped Zara become successful were shorter manufacturing cycles, following the fast-moving trends, just-in-time logistics, and big investments in flagship stores located in most city centers.
This enabled the stores to provide a wide variety of trendy inexpensive clothes that changed every week. Variety, speed, and convenience were the main factors of the fast fashion model.
Until the 2010s this business model worked pretty well. Since then, e-commerce has penetrated the market which led to the growth of mobile commerce. Due to this, the fast fashion industry changed completely.
Ultra-Fast Fashion
Over time many people started using mobile and mobile commerce grew rapidly. Due to the internet, people were able to get information instantly. Everything shifted online. Using social media and other online platforms people were able to understand fashion trends instantly in a very short time.
Fast Fashion evolved to ultra-fast fashion where only a few designs were created to test the likes of people. If the people demanded the clothes they were made in large numbers. The ultra fast-fashion retailer invested all its capital in capturing fashion trends even faster.
Clothes and other fashion accessories were manufactured at a very high speed. Massive money was invested in logistics to deliver products to millions of customers without operating physical stores. Now, as you have understood how the ultra-fast fashion industry works and how the fashion industry has evolved let’s have a look at the business model.
To understand the business model of Shein let’s first see how a fast food delivery company works. There are thousands of ghost kitchens everywhere. When you order food online the food delivery services take the food from these ghost kitchens and deliver it to your doorstep.
Your preferences and the number of orders you place dictate the opening and closing of these ghost kitchens. Shein’s business model also behaves similarly. Shein does a partnership with these ghost factories and promises demand. They install their order system in these factories which helps them to track and deliver the orders efficiently.
Shein teaches them how to manufacture things efficiently. In this way, Shein produces fashion items at a much faster rate. The company understands what things are booming in the fashion industry, produces product pages, checks the engagement behaviour, and then tells the factories to produce the products.
Shein has a strong online presence. After reading about the evolution of the fashion industry and ultra-fast fashion you must have understood that a strong online presence and understanding the fashion trends quickly are necessary to be successful in this industry.
Shein advertises aggressively on TikTok and other social media handles. After working for so long in this industry Shein is able to understand the fashion trends much faster than other companies. The company has further shortened the manufacturing cycles.
The company’s marketing is majorly focused on social media. Shein has understood that social media has a great influence on youth. The company is the #1 brand for TikTok teens.
Shein has an army of fashion bloggers that constantly post content on TikTok using the hashtag Shein. In return, Influencers get free merchandise. On YouTube, people share their experiences with Shein. Since the company provides a large variety of products many YouTubers are interested in reviewing their products.
Affiliate Programs
Shein’s affiliate program has helped the company to increase its conversions. In this program, people can earn a commission by recommending Shein products to others. If they place the order you get a small commission. Due to these affiliate programs, many teens have promoted their products on social media. This has increased the company’s reach.
What’s Unique About Shein?
Shein is the most preferred fashion brand by the young generation. There are multiple things in Shein’s business model that makes it different from other:
Model
To have the upper hand over its competitors the company uses the digital-first model. The digital-first model enables the customers to make a purchase by the means of a digital platform and get it delivered at their preferred locations.
Marketing Strategy
Shein uses a micro-influencer marketing strategy. There are several micro-influencers in coordination with Shein and the company provides them with gifts at the end of each month. This give-and-take relation makes a better marketing strategy for the platform.
An Indian Actress Advertising Shein Sale on her Social Media Account
Use of Social Media
Social Media users have noticed Shein on their screens while scrolling through social media platforms like YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. The media influencers contribute majorly to the selling of Shein products at such mediums. This strategy enables Shein to directly showcase its product in the market.
How Does Shein Make Money?
Shein’s revenue model is simple. The company earns money by selling products online. They sell a cheap version of trendy clothes and fashion items via their mobile app. The company uses the vertical integration strategy.
Shein earns its revenue in multiple ways. The most preferred method is by selling clothes. Shein purchases clothes in bulk quantity for a cheaper price and then sells them at a higher percentage.
Apart from this, Shein also replicates the high-end dresses to sell them at relatively lower prices. This practice also increases the sales of Shein and hence making an additional column in the money chart.
Apart from all the above money-making options, Shein also provides in-app advertisements on its platform and generates some revenue through it too.
Shein Revenue for 2020-2022 in US Billion Dollars
Conclusion
Shein understood fast fashion better than other companies. As the company provides a large variety of products at a very low price many people love shopping through Shein. The company has a lot of Influencers on various social media platforms which helps them to increase its popularity.
In the west, many people prefer Shein over Amazon. This shows how much the company has grown over these years. To stay in this race for a longer period the company needs to identify the fashion trends quickly and provide those clothes to the people before it gets out of fashion.
FAQs
Who is the CEO of the Shein?
The current CEO of Shein is Chris Xu.
Who owns the company, Shein?
Shein is owned by a parent organization named Nanjing Lingtian Information Technology with four major shareholders named JAFCO Asia, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China, and Tiger Global Management.
Why is Shein so successful?
There are numerous reasons for Shein to be counted as a successful firm. Some of the factors responsible for making Shein successful are its effective marketing strategy, customer value, and brand model. Shein values customer satisfaction over profit and is in a give-and-take relationship with its influencers to advertise.
Is Shein a profitable company?
Shein does not provide many insights into its financial details. However, with the available information, one can easily estimate that Shein is a profitable company.
The days when all the essential pieces of information from across the globe were shared by only the means of newspaper or the television screen are now the past of the present world.
Today, the news can be shared and accepted by just using a smartphone. There are several applications made across the globe that enable the sharing of news easily and fast. One such app is named Dailyhunt.
Dailyhunt is not something similar to other available platforms. Dailyhunt is one of the major platforms used for the sharing of news across the nation with many Indian languages accepted.
Introduced in the year 2010, Dailyhunt is a mobile-based news application and news aggregator platform giving a common point to all Indians. It is recorded to gain high popularity day by day mainly because of the multiple local languages supported by the platform. To know more about Dailyhunt’s business model, continue to read below.
Dailyhunt is a news aggregator and Indian content application that has its headquarters located in Bangalore, India. The company was formerly known as Newshunt and was launched in the year 2010. Dailyhunt provides news articles in local languages i.e., around 14 languages from different content providers.
Dailyhunt was previously named Newshunt
The mission of the company is “the Indic platform empowering a billion Indians to discover, consume and socialize with content that informs, enriches and entertains”.
The mobile application was produced by two ex-employees of Nokia and was then acquired by the founder of Verse Innovations. Later on, the mobile-based news-sharing service was renamed Dailyhunt during the peak of its popularity.
Dailyhunt is one of its kind of platforms that allows its users to share information in their own desired language rather than depending on any one language.
From the time of its introduction to now, Dailyhunt has seen great popularity in its name. Currently, Dailyhunt enjoys more than 350 million users monthly with its revenue around $127 million in 2022.
Currently, the platform is managed by Virendra Gupta who serves as the CEO of the firm, and Umang Bedi as the President of the platform.
Dailyhunt – Startup Story
Virendra Gupta – Founder and CEO of Dailyhunt
The most favoured local news platform Dailyhunt was started by two ex-Nokia employees in the year 2009. Soon, it was taken over by Virendra Gupta, the founder of Verse. The Verse Innovation was a value-added company. Verse innovation currently is a local language technology company and is counted as the parent organization of Dailyhunt.
The founder of Verse Innovation started his firm in the year 2007. But even after the success of the newly launched technology, something was missing in his innovation.
He believed that his product will not maintain its shine in the market for a longer period. At such moment, previously known as Newshunt came to his notice. Virendra Gupta purchased the Newshunt in 2011 and it was renamed Dailyhunt in 2015.
The vision seen by Virendra Gupta on Dailyhunt was to create a platform that provides content in vernacular languages. He believed that 70% of India consists of non-English speakers and that was the target audience for Dailyhunt. Hence, after taking over the Newshunt and with the introduction of better facilities, Dailyhunt kept on becoming a larger platform and giving tough competition to non-Indian platforms.
Dailyhunt – Business Model
Dailyhunt Group has different types of offerings which are mainly divided into 3 broad categories. One of the key features of this application is that they provide content in regional languages.
The company acts as a news aggregator through Dailyhunt, they also have another entity called Greynium Technologies that house news and various other platforms that provide content such as CareerIndia, OneIndia, Boldsky.com, Gizbot, etc. The company has also launched a platform named Josh which is similar to TikTok as a short video-sharing platform.
As mentioned earlier the important feature of all the application are it provides content in local languages. Dailyhunt provides content in 14 different languages, whereas Josh provides content in 12 different languages and the other content platforms provide content in 9 different languages.
The Dailyhunt group has a huge base of content providers which include 100K content partners, news content published in 14 different languages by content creators producing 250K news every day.
What Is Unique About the Business Model of Dailyhunt?
Dailyhunt’s business model is very unique compared to other content providers as mentioned earlier all the platforms of Dailyhunt provide various content in local languages. The English content providers will have to directly compete with already well-established global creators such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Whereas Dailyhunt concentrates on the Indian market by providing content in local languages. The application has also been able to secure a well-established position in the market.
Dailyhunt – Target Audience
Dailyhunt focuses mainly on the millennial group in the country where the age varies from 25-34 years. However, the company focuses on providing content in regional local languages through which it targets all the major populations in India including the people from rural areas as well.
Global Ranking Chart of Dailyhunt
Dailyhunt – Competitors
Even though Dailyhunt had stepped foot into the market at an early stage, they have many competitors in the news industry. With the growth of digital content, a lot of applications are racing to reach the number one position in the news aggregator Industry.
The competitors of Dailyhunt are Feedly, Google News, Flipboard, Inshorts, etc
There is no direct competition for Dailyhunt as they have content in various languages. One of the major competitors as a news aggregator for Dailyhunt is Google News.
Other than Google News some of the other competitors of Dailyhunt include Flipboard, Inshorts, Briefing, Feedly, etc.
Dailyhunt’s major source of revenue is through advertisements however, in the year FY19-20 the company was able to increase its revenue up by 100% year on year despite the pandemic. Other than this the application concentrated on raising funds and has had multiple funding rounds.
Recently in the year 2020, Dailyhunt had become a Unicorn Startup in India. The company has received a total funding of around USD 540 million and the most recent funding was USD 207 million which was through Series H funding.
The company also receives revenue through e-books as well as magazines. Anyone can read the news provided by Dailyhunt for free of cost but for downloading the books or magazines one will have to make a payment for it.
Conclusion
Dailyhunt was one of the unique platforms that gain popularity quickly despite the risks present in the market. From the time of its start to now Dailyhunt has seen significant growth in the news aggregator market and through its unique approach to providing content in different languages, the company was able to stand out from its competitors. The above text provides basic information about Dailyhunt and its business model.
FAQs
How does Dailyhunt make money?
There are multiple ways through which Dailyhunt creates revenue. One of the major sources of income for Dailyhunt is by the means of advertising. Dailyhunt earns money by selling out advertisements for different startups and services on its application.
Who is Virendra Gupta?
Virendra Gupta is the founder and Present CEO of the company, Dailyhunt.
Is Dailyhunt a product-based company?
No, Dailyhunt is not a product-based company. Instead, it can be considered a service-based company mostly used for sharing information.
Who are the investors of Dailyhunt?
Dailyhunt has more than one investor attached to it. Some of them are Kotak Investment Advisors, Luxor Capital Group, Baillie Gifford, Sumeru Ventures, and many others.
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 Freshworks.
Let’s be honest about the fact that a majority of the employees despise the software application they use at work. Business software has always been noted as cumbersome, costly, difficult to implement, and challenging to use.
Days are usually spent attempting to tailor a difficult software to use for a specific purpose as decided by the company. Sometimes it becomes so difficult that the companies need to recruit full-time staff to oversee the application, which is simply another hit to their finances. All of these can now be avoided with the emergence of Freshworks, which is a one-stop cloud-based software solution for businesses.
Freshworks was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy, and Vijay Shankar in Chennai. Freshworks agrees that every company needs better technology that is ready to use, easy to scale, affordable, and leaves a little room for configuration. All of the company’s products deliver on this pledge and are backed by world-class customer service. The best thing is that getting them to work is not very expensive.
Know more about Freshworks success story, its Founders, Business Model, Team, Logo, Startup story, Challenges, Competitors, Mission and Vision, Funding, Future Plans and more in this article.
Freshworks is a global Saas-based software solutions provider that helps enable businesses to get the best out of their software. Originally headquartered in Chennai, India, Freshworks is currently listed on Nasdaq with its headquarters in San Mateo, California, United States.
Founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010 in Chennai, the company brings in a range of product suites, including sales CRM software, recruitment tools, and customer-support helpdesk software to exceed customer and employee expectations.
With a focus on enabling all kinds of big and small companies and their increasing requirements, Freshworks builds and distributes easy-to-use SaaS software, and helps all of its customers drive clear business results. Freshdesk, Freshworks, Freshservice, Freshteam, Freshchat, Freshcaller, and other products are among the company’s offerings.
The company already boasts of enabling over 50,000 big and small companies across the globe.
Freshworks, now a California-based company, is a part of the Business Intelligence Software Industry. The company has 4000+ employees working on all of its sites and it has already witnessed an annual recurring revenue of more than $300 million in the month of February 2021.
Freshworks – Target Market Audience
Freshworks brings in cutting-edge SaaS customer engagement solutions for startups and other business professionals. It targets businesses of all sizes and all kinds and makes it easy for the operating teams to acquire customers and keep them engaged for life. The company currently operates in India and the US.
Freshworks will continue to acquire new customers and catalyze global brand awareness using a variety of Google resources. Freshworks expects to use Google Translation Services to expand globally as its product range grows.
Freshworks – Startup Story
The founder of the company was an employee of Zoho Corporation. While Girish was reading an article on Hacker News, he found Zendesk raising their prices from 60% to 300% and how the Zendesk users were unhappy about it. He found a comment, where it was written that there’s a big opening in the market for someone to come inand take all of Zendesk’s and eSupport’s customers. It was a slap on his face.
Girish knew that the opportunity was sitting right in front of him and also that he had knowledge about the transition taking place. He then thought that he should do something in the customer support market delivered as SaaS.
The next few weeks turned out to be stressful. He was very excited about this new idea but didn’t expose the fact. Mathrubootham spoke to his friend Shan Krishnasamy about the matter and they immediately agreed. They both resigned from Zoho and coupled with Vijay Shankar to bring Freshworks into existence with a team of six people as Freshdesk.
The founder trio soon set up a 700 sqft warehouse in Chennai to launch their IT helpdesk company in 2010. This new startup not only started to change the ways the customers interacted with the companies using social media but also helped the companies to address the customer complaints across diverse channels.
It was around eight years of hardwork, which led the company to scale its revenue to touch the $100 million mark. Soon after, Freshdesk was rebranded to Freshworks, the success of which followed and helped it set up its headquarters in the US, thereby bringing the company closer to a majority of its userbase.
The founders of Freshworks are Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar. It was founded in 2010, in Chennai.
Girish Mathrubootham
Starting his career as a Member of Technical Staff at HCL Cisco ODC, Mathrubootham served as a Senior Software Engineer at eForce and then went on to become a Lead Engineer and a Product Manager AdventNet Inc.
After staying with the company for over 4 years, Girish landed a job at Zoho Corporation, where he joined as a Director and was later promoted to the position of Vice President – Product Management. Girish Mathrubootham worked with Zoho for over 5 years before founding Freshworks in 2010.
Girish Mathrubootham (Left) and Shan Krishnasamy
Freshworks CEO and Founder Girish Mathrubootham has been given $233.41 million in stock awards, which will be vested over the next 7 years, which will make it one of the biggest compensation packages received by an Indian business leader in recent years. Girish Mathrubootham received a salary of $611,980 in 2021, and the additional stock award that he will receive is exclusive of his salary.
Shan Krishnasamy
Shan Krishnasamy is also the Co-Founder of Freshworks. He too used to work at Zoho Corporation as a Technical Architect, where he worked for over 9 years before co-founding Freshworks. Shan pursued his Bachelor’s degree from TPGIT and is currently serving as a Co-Founder and CTO at Freshworks.
Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar is the Co-founder and Director of Solutions Engineering at Freshworks. He is the principal solutions consultant of the company. Vijay had worked for the company right from the initial stages and is experienced in building multiple high-performance support teams from scratch.
Vijay started his career as a Tech Support Engineer at HCL, who then went on to work for Zoho Corporation as a Pre Sales Technical Consultant. Then, he went for Millicent Technologies and finally founded Freshworks along with the other 2 founders.
Freshdesk is currently 4K+ employees strong.
Freshworks – Name, Logo and Tagline
Freshworks Logo
Freshworks, as the name suggests refers to a “Fresh” helpdesk that creates a customer service management platform to help businesses improve the market experience by ‘refreshing business software’, which is the company’s tagline.
Freshdesk got rebranded as ‘Freshworks’ in June 2017 meanwhile evolving its products as well.
Freshworks – Vision and Mission
Freshworks’ mission statement says, “To help companies better engage and communicate with their customers and employees with refreshing business software that is easy-to-use, feature-packed, and accessible to businesses of all sizes.”
The vision of Freshworks is to become “One of the most loved companies in the world.“
Freshworks – Business Model
The Freshworks business model depends on upmarket sales and its products. The company has got a unique global inside sales model. Business software is expensive and hard to use. People waste hours to get things done. In the end, corporations hire employees to take care of the software.
To tap into this market, Freshworks decided to provide quality and ready-to-go software, which is easier to use. This is why the customers trust the Freshworks products and are also backed by impressive support.
Freshworks’ emphasis in 2010 was on creating and selling goods to small and medium-sized businesses. Due to the effective and easy solutions that the company came up with, it began to gain prominence within larger corporations throughout the years.
Freshworks started the transformation and evolution of its services by expressing its broader vision of helping companies win lifetime loyalty. The unique Indian democratic design principles of Freshworks help the company create software that is simple, scalable, inexpensive and encapsulates true craftsmanship, all the while enabling businesses to be self-reliant.
Freshworks has a wide range of products for small and medium-scale businesses, entrepreneurs, and business professionals. Freshmarketer, Freshsales, and Freshdesk are some of its core products, which have been bundled together in the form of a unified product suite for startups launched by the company on November 11, 2021. This is a part of the company’s startup initiative that was launched in 2019 and has successfully onboarded 2,500 startups so far, out of which 500 of them are paying customers of the company. Freshworks claims that its products are used by 150+ unicorns or around 20% of the unicorns globally.
Here’s a look at the products list of Freshworks:
Freshteam
Freshteam Homepage
This Freshworks product is a smart HR software that aims to provide businesses with an opportunity to modernize their HR department.
Freshservice
Freshservice Homepage
Freshservice from Freshworks helps the companies to modernize their ITSM (IT Service Management)
Freshmarketer
Freshmarketer Homepage
This product from Freshworks is designed as a marketing automation software that will let businesses personalize their messages
Freshsales
Freshsales Homepage
Freshsales from Freshworks is built to aid the companies in accelerating their revenues via content-driven sales
Freshdesk
Freshdesk Homepage
Freshdesk from Freshworks brings effortless customer service solutions that turns the service agents into customer champions.
Freshchat
Freshchat
Freshchat is a smart chatbot service from Freshworks that helps the customer-support employees expedite calls and more. Through Freshchat the customer service executives can focus on more challenging support queries and solve them while the integrated bots answer the common questions. Freshchat further freshens up its smart chat service for enterprises by re-architecting the application to include a unified customer record, as per the reports dated July 23, 2022..
Freshworks extends Freshdesk as an omnichannel service provider.
Freshwork’s remarkable growth curve is a reflection of how companies are searching for new and creative ways to engage with their customers, as well as the company’s creativity and tenacity.
In mid-February 2021, the company announced it surpassed the $300 million mark in its annual recurring revenues, thereby growing by around 40% year-over-year even in the challenging, pandemic-strick times.
By opening offices in Paris, the Netherlands, France, and Utrecht, the company expanded its corporate network. This followed the expansion of the current London office. It also hosted Refresh19 London, which was the city’s first meeting, and was attended by about 400 people.
Furthermore, the company also expanded its presence in APAC outside of Europe by collaborating with OrangeOne Corporation, a leading tech company in Japan. Freshworks currently has offices in Hyderabad, Melbourne, and many other cities across the globe. All of these show how the business is expanding on a wider scale.
Some other prominent growth highlights of the company are:
Freshworks has enabled over 50,000 small and big companies across the globe to exceed customer and employee expectations.
Freshworks’ products are used by the people and businesses of over 120 countries around the world.
Freshworks claims to be the first Indian Saas company to have been listed in Nasdaq, US.
Freshworks claims to be the first Indian Saas company to reach a billion-dollar valuation.
Freshworks CEO and Co-Founder, Girish Mathrubootham, post its IPO listing on September 22, 2021, announced that around 500 employees having shares in the company have turned into crorepatis almost overnight, following the listing.
Furthermore, around 70 of them are aged under 30 years, “People who have graduated college a few years ago and they fully deserve it for believing in us over the past ten years”, as reported by the Freshworks CEO. The company currently boasts of having around 4,300 employees globally.
Freshworks Financials
Freshworks has reported around 46% growth in its revenues, which stood at $96.6 million during the third quarter between July-September 2021 for the company. The company reported an increase in its total revenue, which was recorded at $114.6 mn, thereby exhibiting a 42% YoY growth in the first quarter (Q1) of FY2022. With this, the US-listed Indian company has successfully recorded more than $100 mn in revenue for the second consecutive occasion.
The consolidated losses of the company increased to $107.4 million, including the July-September 2021 quarter, which came on the back of a huge rise in expenses at 305% to $214.63 million. Freshworks losses were recorded at $49.1 million during the January-March 2022 quarter, which was quite an increase from the net losses of $2.4 million reported in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
Freshworks – Funding And Investors
Freshworks has raised a total of $484 million in funding over 9 rounds. The company is funded by 6 investors, Steadview Capital and Accel are the most recent investors.
Date
Transaction Name
Money Raised
Lead Investors
January 1, 2020
Secondary Market
$85 million
Steadview Capital
November 4, 2019
Series H
$150 million
Accel, CapitalG, Sequoia Capital
July 31, 2018
Series G
$100 million
Accel, Sequoia Capital India
November 1, 2016
Series F
$55 million
Sequoia Capital India
April 20, 2015
Series E
$50 million
Tiger Global Management
June 12, 2014
Series D
$31 million
Tiger Global Management
November 21, 2013
Series C
$7 million
Accel
April 26, 2012
Series B
$5 million
Tiger Global Management
December 2, 2011
Series A
$1 million
Accel
Freshworks – IPO
Freshworks was looking forward to raising up to $912 million through its IPO round, as per the regulatory filings of the company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission dated September 13, 2021.
The company then decided to sell 28.5 million of its Class A common stock between $28 and $32 per share. It was also announced that if the shares of the company would successfully be sold at the higher range, then it would raise around $912 million, thus increasing the valuation of the company to around $9 billion.
Freshworks further confirmed that it would be going public and had already filed the initial public offering in the United States, where the company is presently headquartered. According to the company’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Freshworks was then looking to raise around $100 million, in an IPO round led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase. However, that was just a placeholder amount.
The company finally went public on September 22, 2021, and successfully raised over $1.03 billion in its IPO round. Soon after its IPO listing, Freshworks also listed itself on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The price of the shares surged to $36 per share from $32-34 per share or $28-32 per share, which it announced a week ago. The last share price of Freshworks was recorded at $19.25 in Feb 2022.
The IPO has increased the market cap of Freshworks to over $10 billion, which was $9 billion earlier. With a market valuation of $10 billion, Freshworks was leading the band of Indian Saas startups, even ahead of Postman valued at $5.6 billion, and Browserstack valued at $4 billion. Besides, Freshworks also became the first software startup of Indian origin to be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Freshworks was even valued at $13.56 billion on November 2, 2021, when the intraday high peaked at $53.35 per share, where the Girish Mathrubootham-led company also overtook Zendesk, which was valued at $12.1 billion then. The Freshworks market cap is $4.57 billion, as of May 2022.
The company had earlier mentioned that it has a large addressable market of around $120 billion ahead, in its regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier in September. It has also estimated the annual potential market opportunity for its products to be $77 billion.
It might use a portion of the proceeds for acquiring complementary businesses, products, services, and technologies, said Freshworks while it was filing its IPO with SEC.
Freshworks Shareholding
Freshworks listed its shareholders in its IPO papers filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC), where the company has recorded Tiger Global as the majority stakeholder with 26% shares in Freshworks. The others that follow are Accel, Sequoia Capital, Capital G, Girish Mathrubootham, and Others.
Freshworks Shareholding Pattern
Freshworks – ESOPs
Freshworks on November 9, 2021, announced the initiation of a share sale worth $500+ mn from its board of directors, top management, current, and former employees, third-party consultants, contractors, and more. This cashout is certainly counted among the largest cashouts in recent years.
Freshworks has acquired 13 organizations to date, and the acquisition of Flint on Jul 9, 2020, is its most recent acquisition. Here’s a glimpse of the Freshworks acquisitions:
Acquiree Name
Date
Amount
About Acquiree
Flint
Jul 9, 2020
–
Flint is the most advanced and innovative open standards-based automation platform.
AnswerIQ
Feb 26, 2020
–
AnswerIQ is an artificial intelligence service in the customer support space.
CanvasFlip
Sep 17, 2019
–
CanvasFlip is a cloud-based design collaboration and testing platform.
Natero
May 21, 2019
–
Natero harnesses your data to predict, analyze and drive customer behavior.
Zarget
Aug 29, 2017
–
Zarget is a SaaS-based conversion rate optimization company that provides comprehensive solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses.
JoeHukum
Jul 20, 2017
–
JoeHukum Is Your Virtual Personal Assistant. From Flight Booking To Food Delivery
Pipemonk (Formerly ZapStitch)
Jan 4, 2017
–
Pipemonk is a data integration platform that allows companies to synchronize and move data amongst multiple cloud apps quickly and easily
Chatimity
Oct 18, 2016
–
Chatimity is a social chat application helping people discover others based on locality and interests.
Airwoot
Apr 13, 2016
–
Airwoot is a real-time customer support provider enabling brands to provide customer support on social media.
Framebench
Feb 22, 2016
–
Changing how people interact with files on the web & mobile
Freshworks – Awards and Recognition
The most recent awards and recognition of Freshworks are:-
Year
Recognition Name
2019
Supreme Software Award for 2019
2019
Expert’s Choice for 2019
2019
Great User Experience for 2019
2020
Summer Leader 2020
2020
Spring Leader 2020
2020
Top 10 Fastest Growing Software in Q1 2020
2020
Top 10 Most Searched Software in Q1 2020
2020
Best call center software for 2020
2020
VoIP phone services for 2020
Freshworks – Competitors
The top Freshworks competitors are :
Zendesk
Salesforce
Zoho
ServiceNow
Microsoft
Cherwell
Oracle
Coheris
Freshworks – Challenges Faced
Freshworks, being a fast-growing Business-to-Business, Software-as-a-service company with thousands of B2B and B2C clients, including legacy corporations, which are fast-growing billion-dollar businesses, must ensure that its services have minimal downtime, outages, or latency.
“To do this, we need to have visibility into the infrastructure, how it is behaving at any given point of time and how our customers are using our products from an infrastructure standpoint,” says Pradeep Thangavel, Engineering Manager, at Freshworks, “Because Freshworks is integrated on to the customer’s platform, any traffic that comes to the customer’s platform is as good as traffic to the Freshworks platform.”
Further, Pradeep explains how this challenge is difficult because no other Indian B2B SaaS company functions on the same level as Freshworks’, which means the company lacks simple access to industry benchmarks or learnings in terms of aligning their infrastructure optimally for daily services.
Freshworks – Future Plans
Freshworks presently assists businesses by providing intelligent customer engagement software which improves their IT operational efficiency.
Employees at Freshworks were able to see the magic in action, which added to the excitement of the trip. All of this entails pursuing bigger deals meanwhile still expanding our existing customers.
The company has grown from a small startup producing tools for small businesses to a mid-sized business that caters to larger businesses, pushing them to rethink their marketing and sales strategy.
In 2020, a freshworks spokesperson told, “We are actively focusing on building the business, driving growth in new markets, and strengthening our position in existing markets. We will aim for an IPO if and when a public offering proves opportune for the business.”
Freshworks’ expansion has been aided by solid financials, an acquisition-led growth strategy, and the bundling of a suite of services with individual goods.
FAQs
What does Freshworks do?
Freshworks is a cloud-based company that creates sales & support solutions that help businesses improve the market experience. The company’s services facilitate connectivity and enable teams to interact and engage customers and subordinates in order to tackle technological concerns.
Is Freshworks an Indian company?
Yes, Freshworks is an Indian company founded by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar in Chennai, in 2010.
What is the valuation of Freshworks?
Freshworks is currently valued at $4.57 billion, as of May 2022.
When was Freshworks founded?
Freshworks was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar.
Who is the founder of Freshworks?
Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy and Vijay Shankar are the founders of Freshworks.
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 Innovaccer.
We have been seeing technology and digitisation take a place in almost all industries, be it education, manufacturing, or corporate, and now the healthcare sector is not behind. It can be safe to say that the world has been seeing outstanding health IT transformation.
We see almost every hospital and private clinic today has taken over digital transformation over traditional methods. They are truly putting in a lot of effort to change the way they deliver healthcare through new and innovative techniques.
Innovaccer is one of the leading digital healthcare IT platforms that offer effective healthcare solutions to improve clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.
In this article, let’s look at Innovaccer’s startup story, what they are about, founders and team, business structure and revenue model, challenges faced, competitors, and more.
Launched in 2014, Innovaccer is a cloud-based platform to improve the overall healthcare systems. Their platform provides physician practices, hospitals, health systems, and other healthcare providers with various innovative digital products. Innovaccer helps to collect, analyse, and provide insights on patient health.
It is an AI-powered patient and physician engagement and features many customisable tools that help in delivering desired outcomes. It has options such as care management, referral management, and patient engagement.
Innovaccer – Industry
Innovaccer belongs to the digital healthcare IT service provider. This industry is growing exponentially over the past years. As per reports, the digital health sector has exceeded $141.8 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to grow by over 17.4% by the end of 2027.
Innovaccer – Founders and Team
Sandeep Gupta, Abhinav Shashank, and Kanav Hasija – Founders of Innovaccer
Sandeep Gupta
Sandeep Gupta is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Innovaccer. Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Sandeep started his career as a Software Engineer at TCS, then he worked at Microsoft and Ingersoll Rand. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Abhinav Shashank
An alumnus of IIT, Kharagpur, Abhinav Shashank is one of the founding members and CEO of Innovaccer. Other than this, Abhinav is a talented and renowned author and has published over 300 articles for various international media outlets. He has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2017: Enterprise Tech and also in “Top 60 Rising leaders in U.S healthcare under 40′ in 2019.
Kanav Hasija
He serves as the CCO and is the co-founder of Innovaccer. He is an IIT, Kharagpur graduate in B.Tech and a Patent Law degree from the University of New Hampshire, School of Law, formerly Franklin Pierce Law Center.
He has worked as an intern at General Electric and was a Principal Consultant at Kharagpur Consulting Group (KCG). Kanav has a rich experience in the field of Big Data, medical analytics, and research. He is a recipient of the Honorable mention for excellence in technology’ from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Innovaccer – Name, Tagline and Logo
Innovaccer goes by the tagline, “Accelerate Your Digital Transformation with the Innovaccer Health Cloud”.
Their work rightly shows there in the tagline as they are helping many healthcare companies with various digital solutions.
Innovaccer – Startup Story
Founded by Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija, and Sandeep Gupta, Innovaccer serves to be one of the most effective digital healthcare sectors today.
Abhinav came up with the idea of Innovaccer while working on a project at Harvard. Along with his partners, they want to create a bridge and fill the gap between digital health and health care.
By working a lot day and night, they wanted to come up with an ecosystem for companies to help them build applications through their platform.
The company started receiving praises from investors and last year Innovaccer announced its $150 million Series-E round at a $3.2 billion valuation.
Innovaccer – Mission and Vision
The company’s mission is to accelerate the growth of healthcare in a digital world by pulling off innovative and technique methods.
Innovaccer’s mission reads, “Connect and Curate the World’s Healthcare Data and Make It Accessible and Useful.”
Innovaccer – Funding and Investors
Date
Funding Round
Funding Amount
Investors
14 May 2015
Seed
$2.5M
Start Smart Labs, 500 Startups, Rajan Anandan
11 Aug 2016
Series A
$15.6M
WestBridge Capital
10 May 2018
Series B
$25M
Lightspeed Ventures Partners, WestBridge Capital
20 Jan 2019
Series B
$10M
M12
14 Feb 2020
Series C
$70M
Steadview Capital, WestBridge Capital, M12
24 Feb 2021
Series D
$105M
Tiger Global Management, Steadview Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group
15 Dec 2021
Series E
$150M
Mubadala Capital, B Capital Group, M12
Innovaccer – Business Model
The company mainly operates its customers by creating a patient-centric platform. It offers digital products in the areas of population health management and Pay-for-performance.
Their business is majority about the cloud platform – Innovaccer Health Cloud that provides a robust solution to solve the problems and challenges faced by hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies to help them store data and bring in higher efficiencies for them.
The health cloud platform key functionality is:
Data Activation platform
Application Suite
Innovation Toolkit
Accelerators
Key customers of Innovaccer
UpStream
Chess Health
Banner Health
MercyOne
Hartford Healthcare
CHI health partners
Innovaccer – Revenue Model
The company raised almost a value of $150 million in its last funding round. The company believes that this is the era of digital healthcare and more importantly after the pandemic.
The company earns its revenue through the health cloud platform by helping other sectors with cost savings. Their platform has about 39 million patients and 96,000+ providers across 1,600+ locations.
Innovaccer is India’s first healthcare unicorn. They believe that the company has been providing innovative solutions and is confident about its future
Innovaccer – Challenges Faced
Although the company is succeeding and growing at a rapid rate, the risks associated with data are a crucial factor. It is up to Innovaccer to properly leverage the digital framework and keep storing the data with constant monitoring and making necessary and regulatory changes as and when needed to their risk analytics.
The company is always under pressure to maintain compliance to ensure data accuracy.
Innovaccer – Competitors
Digital healthcare is undoubtedly expanding, with many companies in the market offering their IT services in healthcare and promoting their brands.
Some of the biggest competitors of Innovaccer are:
Accolade
Castlight
Artemis Health
Carrum Health
Zoom for healthcare
Doxy
Nexthealth Technologies
Reveleer
VSee
Innovaccer – Awards and Achievements
Some awards won by Innovaccer are:
Best in KLAS Data & Analytics Platforms – 2022
Black Book – 2022
Certified NCQA HEDIS MEASURES – MY2020 Health Plan and Allowable Adjustments Measures
AHIP Affiliate Organisation Member 2021
Innovaccer – Future Plans
The company plans to keep delivering the best and most high-quality digital products in order to improve the healthcare sector in the world.
Sandeep Gupta says, “We want to be the ubiquitous platform that is powering all those innovators across the healthcare ecosystem, and at the center of it is the patient who is getting better care and better-coordinated care because of everything that we are able to do around them”
FAQs
Who is the founder of Innovaccer?
Sandeep Gupta, Abhinav Shashank, and Kanav Hasija are the founders of Innovacer.
Is Innovaccer an Indian company?
No, Innovacer is a Silicon Valley-based digital healthcare company.
What is the revenue of Innovacer?
Innovacer generated revenue of $100 million in ARR as of 2021.
Indians never fail to amuse themselves with their traditional attire, especially in ethnic wear on occasions or events. On the other hand, wearing such clothes costs like anything in this world, even if you are wearing them for one day or keeping them permanently.
That’s why Flyrobe has made a favourable store by conferring rental dresses at affordable prices. Besides that, customers can buy the products by paying the full settlement.
Flyrobe is an online rental clothing company for men and women. Instead of owning a one lakh dress for a one-day occasion, renting it at an affordable rate would do wonders. Flyrobe sells handmade ethnic wear of the RIB brand and charges fare only on the rental dresses but they ask you to pay extra if you exceed the specified due date.
On the other note, there are no delivery fees or transportation charges and also the company grants one more expedient to the customers where the required product delivers within 3 hours.
Notably, Flyrobe is an online clothing portal that sells as well as rents western attire, ethnic, accessories, designers, and men’s and women’s collections which was launched in 2015 by Pranay Surana, Tushar Saxena, and Shreya Mishra.
Currently, the business is planning to open 30 branches in different cities to dilate their services in the country. The company is operating in 10 major cities in India and has two offline stores in Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Delhi.
Flyrobe – Products and Services
Flyrobe is known for its Ethnic attire, which is made by its handcrafted RIB brand. Subsidiarily, The company sells branded clothes such as Zara, Armani, GLITZ, Sabyasachi, DIOR, etc. to the customers.
Flyrobe also sells designer collections, and accessories like sunglasses, bracelets, rings, and chains. Furthermore, Flyrobe offers party dresses, lehengas, sherwani, tuxedos, and other branded collections.
Flyrobe Website
Flyrobe comes up amazingly with its new arrivals of handcrafted dresses which are given as rentals at a reasonable price. In case you are buying such dresses from Flyrobe, it is said that it costs an arm and a leg.
The store also touts celebrities’ look outfits and renowned designer’s outfits, whereas Alia Bhatt, Sonakshi Singha, Parineeti Chopra, and others have played a part in the growth of Flyrobe.
Flyrobe – Target Audience
Every woman admires herself when it comes to traditional wear, so it is highly recommended for the age group 20 to 40 years, who love to wear ethnic attire to any occasion to amuse others with their classy look. So Flyrobe targets women majorly by selling or renting women’s collections at a pragmatic price.
Flyrobe – Business Model
Unlike other clothing companies, Flyrobe renders their clothes in rental to the customers at a cheaper rate. They rent the on-demand product for a four to eight days period and charge no delivery fees. But if the specified rental period became due, then the customers are asked to send an email to the company in requisition for the dilatory.
It is saddening when one buys an expensive dress for 50 thousand rupees but wears it only for a one-day event. That’s why Flyrobe sounds good when expensive clothes are available for rent at an affordable rate to the customers for 4 to 8 days without delivery charges.
What Is Unique About Flyrobe’s Business Model?
Being on top of its game, Flyrobe uses unique ideas that make them stand apart from its competitors. Some of the ideas used by Flyrobe are:
No delivery charges
Flyrobe provides an excellent service to its customers by way of free pick up and delivery to the address provided by the customer. This is one of the few reasons why Flyrobe is popular among its competitors and customers likewise. The delivery of western clothing within 3 hours with no pickup and delivery charges was coveted by the customers of Flyrobe.
Services offered in 16 major cities
Flyrobe offers its service in 16 major Indian cities: Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune, Indore, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Agra.
Rented outfits at a cheap price
The very reason why Flyrobe is favored is because of renting good quality ethnic and western wear at a cheap price affordable to people. This allows people who would want a lehenga for a 3-day function to not spend a fortune on buying a lehenga but also wear one that makes a statement.
Offers a wide range of clothing from top designers
Who wouldn’t love wearing a lehenga from the maker of Anushka Sharma’s wedding lehenga and not having to sell their kidney in the process? Flyrobe offers ethnic and western clothing from top designers like Sabyasachi, Zara, Armani GLITZ, Dior, etc. to its customers and has multiple partnerships with several agencies and designers.
Online and In-store presence
Flyrobe’s online reputation across 16 Indian cities at a reasonable rate of rent for a minimum of four days has customers crowding their site. Customers who want to make alterations to the dress can visit their stores and get a fitting done for no cost.
How Does Flyrobe Make Money?
Flyrobe is gaining much recognition with different types of audiences favouring its concept. Flyrobe makes money in more than one pattern. The majority of the revenue collected by Flyrobe comes from its online sales. As per its founders, 65% of revenue is collected from its online sales.
Apart from that, Flyrobe charges a commission from its sellers on each successful renting and purchase. There is also the option of a subscription plan available for its users which provides additional benefits to the user.
On the other hand, Flyrobe charges a fixed amount from then in return for the subscription model. Flyrobe also earns its revenue from the advertisements provided on its platform.
Flyrobe’s unique idea created an industry that is thriving and profitable. It is well received among those people who would love to wear high-end fashionable ethnic wear to marriages and functions as these are celebrated as grand festivities in India but can’t afford to purchase them for a one-time affair.
And the ability to wear International branded western wear for rent is an option that is positively tempting to those who love fashion. The largest rental platform’s presence in 16 major cities in India and the offline stores only help in increasing the reach of Flyrobe among masses of people who are planning a budget wedding dress.
FAQs
What is Flyrobe?
Flyrobe is a startup focused on fashion-based products which allow them to be rented and purchased. Majorly, it is an apparel-based renting platform.
Who started Flyrobe?
Flyrobe was started by Shreya Mishra, Tushar Saxena, and Pranay Surana in 2015.
Can I rent my clothes on Flyrobe?
Yes, Flyrobe allows easy renting of individuals’ clothes on its platform. One can easily rent their clothes on Flyrobe until and unless the dress meets all the eligibility criteria of the startup.
Is Flyrobe Profitable?
Flyrobe is a profitable business as its revenue collection has been noted to have significant growth over the years.
Bharath
Anamika Mahapatra
