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 Zimyo.
Zimyo is a one-stop solution to all HR needs that helps organizations build a 2X more productive, engaged, and satisfied workforce. It provides cloud-based HR solutions to businesses of all sizes. It offers comprehensive smart HR solutions – Payroll and Expense Management, Performance Management System, Employee Engagement, Employee Benefits, Time and Attendance, and Onboarding and Recruitment solutions.
In just 3 years since its inception in 2018, Zimyo is serving more than 500 organizations with 100,000+ active users! StartupTalky interviewed the Co-founder of Zimyo, Mr, Ajay Kadyan to know the startup story of Zimyo. In this article, you’ll get an insight into how Zimyo was started, its business model, founders’ profile, and more.
Incepted in 2018, Zimyo is one of the fastest-growing unified HCM platforms in the HR tech space that automates tedious HR processes, eliminates payroll errors, and enhances employee experiences. It is a one-stop solution to all HR needs that helps organizations build a 2X more productive, engaged, and satisfied workforce. Furthermore, its intuitive HR solutions help employer organizations to drive improved data-driven decision-making and get better business outcomes.
Zimyo is a one-of-a-kind platform that uses smart technology to provide smarter experiences. The company’s philosophy is purely inclined towards a human-centric design that leverages the power of Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning to build highly efficient products. The platform boasts a voice-user interface to simplify complex tasks using speech to enhance user experience.
Zimyo Logo
The platform features a broad spectrum of modules (over 40+) to offer flexibility to its users. Around 95 percent of Zimyo’s partners find it the easiest platform to switch and set up their complex processes in no time. Further, the platform processes the entire payroll in less than 2 minutes for over 1000 employees in just 3 easy clicks. Its robust analytics-driven employee intelligence system increases team retention by 3X and enables leaders proactively with the power of on-demand data and insights to make quick and informed decisions.
Zimyo’s embedded finance solution enables employee-centric organizations to offer a one-of-a-kind employee engagement experience with benefits like advance salary, employee loans, insurance, and investments. With this solution, Zimyo intends to make financial services more accessible for employees across SMBs. This can help companies attract and retain customers while providing hassle-free financial services.
The Backstory of Zimyo – How it Started?
Kumar Mayank, CEO of Zimyo, has a background in microfinance. It is during his stint with the industry that he realized the absence of “formal credit” for employees. These employees who worked all their lives in factories with a PF account and investments to show had no bank willing to lend them credit when they needed it. Kumar analyzed this gap and decided to create a way to make credit easily accessible to these employees.
There was a need for identifying the mechanism of establishing if there was actual salary transferred, which brought the HR and Payroll of an organization into the picture. That’s how the journey began as Zimyo started an innovation drive that merged FinTech with HRTech from an employee-first perspective.
Along with co-founder Ajay Kadan, who has extensive experience of over 10 years in product development, system architecture, and data analytics, Zimyo plans to bridge the gap between the credit market and SMB employees with their innovative solutions.
Ajay Kadyan and Kumar Mayank (CEO) are the founders of Zimyo.
Ajay Kadyan | Co-founder, Zimyo
Ajay Kadyan – Zimyo Co-founder
Ajay has extensive experience of over 10 years in product development, system architecture, and data analytics. He has helped several organizations in the HR Tech, EdTech, and E-commerce space to build robust products. With his strategic leadership skills and critical thinking, Ajay has successfully built a highly efficient and collaborative team.
Presently, Ajay works as the Co-Founder of Zimyo and spearheads the business with his deep comprehensive industry knowledge. He is currently focused on positioning Zimyo as one of the most preferred brands in the HR tech space. Besides, he works closely with the marketing team to improve Zimyo’s brand visibility and outreach. In addition to this, Zimyo has also joined forces with the sales team to increase client acquisition and improve conversion rate, while working closely with the product team to strengthen the product portfolio.
With his technical and functional knowledge, Ajay envisions empowering leaders and organizations across the world to offer true ‘employee experience’ to their employees, help them get the best out of their workforce, drive higher engagement, and build a differentiating human capital advantage.
Kumar Mayank | Co-founder & CEO, Zimyo
Kumar Myanak’s role as Zimyo’s Founder involves connecting with growth-focused organizations and helping them build a great organizational culture with the help of Zimyo’s product suite. He did his BA Hons in Economics from Delhi University and is an alum of IIM – Lucknow. Before starting Zimyo, Kumar Mayank was associated with well-known companies like Equitas Small Finance Bank, ING Vyasa Bank, and Janalakshmi Financial Services.
With an extensive background in Microfinance, Kumar realized the lack of “formal credit” for employees. These Employees who worked in factories for their entire lives with PF accounts and investments to show for their work could not get credit from banks when needed. Kumar studied this gap and devised a way to make credit easily accessible to these employees.
Zimyo – Business Model and Revenue Model
Zimyo provides cloud-based HR solutions to businesses of all sizes. It offers comprehensive smart HR solutions – Payroll and Expense Management, Performance Management System, Employee Engagement, Employee Benefits, Time and Attendance, and Onboarding and Recruitment solutions. The platform charges a monthly fee from employers based on their needs and the number of employees. The basic package starts from INR 5999/PM/100 employees that can be customized as per their employer’s needs.
From the HR tech space, Zimyo has also entered into the embedded finance segment. It has extended its services to offer employee benefits, tax-saving solutions, retirement plans, and financial assessments. Besides this, the platform has also integrated with other job portals to ensure an efficient hiring process.
In such a short span, the platform has onboarded prominent clients with Zimyo including Bajaj Capital, Hillson Shoes, 88 Pictures, iMocha, Yethi, M2P, TheData Team, Fleetx, Riskcovry, and many among others. Apart from this, Zimyo’s direct integration with other job portals makes the hiring processes more efficient by eliminating the need for manual data entry on multiple sites and removing the need to check back in on job posts.
Given the exacerbating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical & mental wellness, financial stability and job security have become top concerns for employees. To handle the crisis well, Zimyo is bringing employee wellness to the forefront. Being a people-centric company, Zimyo is emphasizing on “Employee First” culture by adopting policies such as group health insurance, reimbursement for COVID vaccinations, paid leave for vaccinations, paid medical leave for COVID positive employees, mental wellness & engagement sessions, and additional insurance cover for oxygen concentrators & medical emergency.
In addition to this, Zimyo also supports its partner organizations in building a positive and productive work culture. It has partnered with various integrators to provide Benefits such as Insurance, Tax Saving Investment Options, Wealth Management Solutions, Expense/Credit Cards, and much more.
Currently, Zimyo is serving more than 500 organizations with 100,000+ active users. Along with HRMS & other modules, Zimyo’s ‘Benefits’ module has also seen a high user adoption rate. A bunch of Zimyo’s existing partners have opted for Zimyo benefits and are very happy with the offerings under this newly launched module.
It has also designed a bilingual mobile app to further ensure a seamless employee experience. The platform has received avg. 4.2+ ratings from its users on various platforms. Recently, Zimyo has been also recognized by G2 as a “High Performer” in the HRMS, Payroll, and Time & Attendance Software categories – earning a total of 7 accolades.
In such a short span, the platform has onboarded prominent clients with Zimyo including Bajaj Capital, Hillson Shoes, 88 Pictures, iMocha, Yethi, M2P, TheData Team, Fleetx, Riskcovry, and many among others.
Zimyo is one of the fastest-growing unified HCM platforms in the HR tech space that automates tedious HR processes, eliminates payroll errors, and enhances employee experiences.
Who are the founders of Zimyo?
Ajay Kadyan and Kumar Mayank (CEO) are the founders of Zimyo.
How Zimyo makes money?
Zimyo provides cloud-based HR solutions to businesses of all sizes. The platform charges a monthly feefrom employers based on their needs and the number of employees. The basic package starts from INR 5999/PM/100 employees that can be customized as per their employer’s needs.
When was Zimyo started?
Zimyo was launched in 2018.
How much funding has Zimyo raised?
Zimyo raised seed funding of $1.5 million led by BEENEXT in September 2020.
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 Scikey.ai
Akshay Sharma, Alok Kumar and Karunjit Kumar Dhir, the founders of SCIKEY had to go through the painful experience of dealing with multiple vendors and service providers for sourcing the required talent or even the right technology solutions & providers. Thereby leading them to start SCIKEY.
SCIKEY is a marketplace network for talent & technology solutions. On SCIKEY’s platform, the entire transaction – right from talent & technology sourcing to delivery happens online. The Asia HR Management industry is anticipated to be USD 40 Billion by 2027 growing @ CAGR of 11.7% (Grand View Research, Feb 2020).
StartupTalky interviewed Akshay Sharma (Co-founder of SCIKEY) to know about the Journey of SCIKEY, while also getting a glance on Scikey’s Business Model, Funding, Growth, Revenue Model, Products, How it started & more…
SCIKEY is a marketplace network for talent & technology solutions. It is essentially, how one may look up to it like the Amazon for talent & technology solutions with a touch of LinkedIn. SCIKEY is a digital platform for jobs, work & business solutions, supported by a Professional Network and an integrated Services Ecosystem. It aims to organize the talent & technology solutions marketplace online.
SCIKEY – Vision, Mission and Core Belief
SCIKEY’s Vision is to be the world’s most trusted company for providing customer-centric solutions by inspiring people, collaboration & performance.
SCIKEY’s Mission isto improve the lives of the people and enable businesses across the world by offering them best quality, value, insights & experience; through its marketplace network for talent & technology solutions. SCIKEY continues to invest in research & technology to fuel innovation and making people as well as businesses more productive, thereby becoming their trusted partner in this hyper-connected world.
Core belief: SCIKEY’s core values of Trust, Transparency & Excellence are the foundation of all the relationships, making those delightful and sustainable.
The global talent management software market size was valued at USD 6.26 billion in 2015 and is expected to witness a significant growth owing to its growing application scope in almost all the human capital-centric industries. The industry is undergoing a facelift with many new technologies disrupting the workforce management in organizations, of which cloud and data analytics are the most prominent ones.
A recent report published by McKinsey indicates that the digital talent marketplaces driving the so called “gig economy” could play a significant role in increasing global GDP by $2.7 Trillion by 2025.
Market Details:
Total addressable market: $100 bn +
Serviceable Available Market: $1 bn +
Serviceable Obtainable Market: $100 mn +
The geographical split of SCIKEY’s market is as follow:
India – 10%
North America – 30%
Europe – 20%
Asia (minus India) – 40%
HR Tech industry:
Asia HR Management industry is anticipated to be USD 40 Billion by 2027 growing @ CAGR – 11.7% (Grand View Research, Feb 2020)
Global HR Tech Marketplace – USD 400 Billion (Deloitte Reports)
HR Tech Market Size In Asia – USD 9 Billion (Grand View Research, Feb 2020)
Robotics / AI Based HR Tech Market – USD 6 Billion (People Matters)
Alok Kumar is the founder of SCIKEY. Akshay Sharma and Karunjit Kumar Dhir are the Co-founders of SCIKEY.
SCIKEY is the brain child of Alok Kumar. Shriram & Akshay had met & worked with Alok as a part of his team, before Alok moved out to build SCIKEY. Interestingly, Karunjit had first met Alok in 2007, when he was helping Alok as his customer to setup their offshore captive in India.
Since then, they built a great chemistry & mutual respect but Karun moved out of India in 2014 and so little did they know that they will again get to work some amazing stuff together until thatdinner invitation in 2018. Karun had moved out from his last corporate stint in Malaysia and was taking a short break to visit India to spend some time with his family. It was during this trip back home where Alok invited Karun for catchup over a dinner where he shared his vision of SCIKEY to Karun. Alok was inspired by some of Karun’s critical inputs & prior experience of building multiple technology businesses ground up in multiple global markets, thereby invited him to be a part of the Co-Founding team at SCIKEY; and the rest is history.
SCIKEY’s core team’s tasks –
Alok Kumar – Founder
Akshay Sharma– the owner of R&D & works closely with Alok & Karun on key business boosters like research, automation, growth hacking etc.,
Karunjit Kumar Dhir – owner for the branding, business development, revenue growth & global expansion, investors & fundraising, Finance
SCIKEY’s work culture is built around the core values of trust, transparency & excellence leading to mutual respect, happiness & sustainability.
SCIKEY’s hiring funda has an interesting framework, named ‘DISCO Framework’
D – Dependability (can I just talk to you once & be assured the job is done without any follow-ups or even better can you pro-actively get the job done?)
I – Integrity & Ethics (how much can I trust you & be assured that you will always do the right thing even when no one is watching you?)
S – Solution Mindset & an attitude of sharing (every business will have many problems to solve & so are you the one who will provide solutions or just restate the problems back to us? And, even when you solve problems, will you share the credit with your team or always fly solo?)
C – Curiosity (Can you challenge the Status Quo & imagine better? Are you good with ‘Why’ and ‘Why not’?)
O – Openness (Are you humble, open to feedback, correction, change, to Learn, Unlearn & Relearn?)
The Founders & Team section of the post already covered the part on how the Core team of SCIKEY was formed. Let’s see what else it took to start SCIKEY.
SCIKEY’s founding team have lead multiple companies in different roles (including CXO) as well as geographies and were mostly involved in building products, teams, delivery centers ground up etc., Therefore, quite often they found themselves in a situation where they had to go through the painful experience of dealing with multiple vendors and service providers for sourcing the required talent or even the right technology solutions & providers.
“It used to be a very time consuming & inefficient exercise with a direct negative impact on business and ROI” Says Akshay Sharma (Co-founder, SCIKEY)
Another big related parallel problem that they always encountered was the productivity issues of the teams or people who were sourced by their talent partners and the resulting losses for the company as an outcome of that. These prevalent issues motivated the team to seriously think of a solution that later took the shape of SCIKEY.
Even, other peers from the industry acknowledged the problem, but no one was trying to solve it with an effective workable solution. So most of the ideation happened internally. They collected feedback from the CXOs or top leaders in the industries who were directly responsible for building and running profitable companies of different shapes & sizes (right from funded start-ups to global fortune MNCs). This helped the SCIKEY team to learn the root-cause of the problem and by connecting the dots from personal experience + Inputs from leaders, they decided to build SCIKEY! Arobust platform and a business model that can be scaled to service the needs of a global audience.
The way this world moved from offline to online banking, offline retail to e-commerce, offline taxis to e-hailing and more. SCIKEY also started with taking the entire experience of sourcing talent & technology solutions online.
On SCIKEY’s platform, the entire transaction – right from talent & technology sourcing to delivery happens online. It aims to organize the talent & technology solutions marketplace online.
SCIKEY is primarily automating most of the mechanical things but going big on the human touch. It’s about helping the generally overloaded talent & technology sourcing teams, with a solution that eases their life and helps them add real value to the business by being a “business partner” in its true sense. It is about streamlining the process end-to-end (that is otherwise largely fragmented) not only to achieve exceptional business outcomes, but also offering a great user experience, that is missing generally.
And then came Covid19, which further disrupted & redefined the future of work and how the businesses look at getting their talent and technology solutions right. The Future of Work & Workforce is very different from what it has been all these years. We now live in a post-COVID world. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital, virtual as well as remote solutions but the large part of talent & technology solutions market is still serviced manually (via a handful of the tools that do not offer a complete end-to-end solution or assured outcomes).
Customers now expect a great Experience (Personalized), Convenience (Anywhere & Real-time access), Value (Ongoing), Choices (Faster Fulfilment) & Insights (that impact Business Outcomes). And this is where SCIKEY helps!
SCIKEY offers a digital, connected & intuitive experience over a secure cloud-based platform for best outcomes & productivity, leveraging technology, Crowdsourcing (Onsite, Offshore, Remote), Community & Automation to deliver best of the solution and insights that impact business outcomes.
Research & IP Focus – Patent filed for the SCIKEY MindMatch algorithm & research presented at the United Nations(Geneva) twice. Unique “Managed Marketplace” business model that leverages advanced tech enabled crowd-sourcing of talent & technology solutions in a single online platform making it highly elastic, scalable & cost-efficient.
Solid founding team with decades of proven industry leadership experience selling large solutions & building high-growth business in multiple global markets from scratch; and prior experience of working together.
Deep domain as well as technical expertise.
Astute focus on unit economics and hence a cash-positive business already.
SCIKEY emerged from the combination of two important words that form the generis of the team’s approach behind building this platform –
Scientific (backed by research & data) + Key (of crucial importance) = SCIKEY
“We have always seen SCIKEY as a solution to some of the ‘key’ problems of our potential customers and we genuinely believe in the power of scientific input(data) in this hyper-connected world that we live in. and, that is how we decided to go with Sci + Key = SCIKEY” Says the team.
SCIKEY LOGO
It’s not only the SCIKEY name that has deep meaning and relevance but the colors represented in the SCIKEY logo also has notions behind it.
Colors convey emotions & evoke thoughts. The 6 colors in the SCIKEY’s logo convey the emotions of the brand. It represents the possibility of looking at a problem in 6 different ways to evaluate multiple potential solutions as well as personalities coming together to solve the problem.
Blue – A color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.
Green – Resembling nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark greenis also commonly associated with money.
Yellow – The most luminous of all the colorsof the spectrum. It’s the colorof happiness, and optimism, of enlightenment and creativity, sunshine and spring.
Orange – It combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
Red – A color of passion and adventure.
Grey – In colorpsychology, grey represents neutrality and balance.
SCIKEY – Business Model and Revenue Model
SCIKEY operates mainly on a SaaS model. SCIKEY’s revenue model is based on –
Transaction Fee – 15-30% of the sale value from the marketplace network
Micro-payments – $10 – $200 for various features, add-ons, reports, assessments monetized from its network
Subscription – for some of the ‘ABC-as-a-Service’ components & certain Premium Features for buyers as well as sellers on the platform
Managed Services & Consulting – especially for the Offshore & Remote Work solutions plus other premium offerings
Since beginning, SCIKEY was a research focused company. The team was already working with various professionals, businesses, institutions as well as universities/colleges on multiple research projects as well as pilots for some of the components of the platform. At start, it was not the same full-fledged platform like what one can see today, it was more of independent pieces or modules; largely to gather research data as well as user feedback.
For acquiring the first 100 customers , the team relied heavily upon customer referrals and LinkedIn. SCIKEY hasn’t been spending huge money on growth hacking as yet.
“We are a team that firmly believes in achieving an organic growth (even if it is slower initially) fueled by the thought leadership & brand authority as against burning big bucks to get quick hype. A quick hype is directly proportional to the burn-rate and tapers down as soon as the money fades away” added Akshay.
SCIKEY majorly focused on customer retention and repeat users. All they did was –
Listening to customers feedback, to incorporate it back in improving the product
Keeping its paid user acquisition burn to a minimum or zero
Continuously working towards improving the quality of experience & outcomes the customers/ users get from SCIKEY; as that makes us cash positive as well as sustainable.
SCIKEY founders are a big fan of frugal innovation & Zero cost marketing.
Whoever SCIKEY reached out to said this – “Hey, you guys have built such a great product. What progressive thinking, but how come we never heard of SCIKEY before? do you have any customer references? “
The major challenged faced by the team was that nobody knew SCIKEY in the market. It took a lot of effort and time to get even a demo booked (As per the sales team)
SCIKEY does not have a significant marketing budget & hence there is not much one can do. (As per all the Marketing Managers, Digital Marketing folks who applied for a role with SCIKEY but never joined)
This was one of our biggest challenges in the early days – Everyone we meet likes us (Team & product both) but as they have never heard of the brand before, they did not have much confidence to take the plunge & come on board as a paid customer – Said Akshay (Co-founder, SCIKEY)
This is what inspired SCIKEY’s team to get a lot more active on LinkedIn to create awareness and build engagement around the brand SCIKEY. Therefore, after 100s of posts, garnering 1,000s of cumulative views with an average of 2K+ and the highest of 10K+ views with many trending posts in multiple hashtags, a series of blogs and authored articles published; finally making it to the deal table and signing paid customers is what makes SCIKEY proud.
SCIKEY – Marketing Campaign/Strategies Adopted
SCIKEY’s 2 trending Marketing campaign –
Women’s day Campaign – #SheTakesTheLead
The idea was to promote women hiring for executive positions and challenge the status quo. Globally only 1 in 5 C -level Executives is a woman. This is because of displaced cultural norms. SCIKEY, with this campaign wanted to promote, from this women’s day that a woman will take the lead and the ecosystem should come together to support them.
To promote this idea. SCIKEY did a short ad film.
SCIKEY also acknowledged women leaders who broke the metaphorical glass ceiling, the society odds and has taken the lead in their own way. SCIKEY interviewed various women leaders to share their personal stories, how they overcame the gender challenges & despite of so many odds, how they succeeded to become what they are today.
SCIKEY Leader Speak Series
Under this initiative, SCIKEY interviewed Thought Leaders from the Business and HR space where they shared their perspective about the future of workforce, future of work, best strategies to lead the change & business. SCIKEY promoted these interviews on all of their social media channels, website & newsletters. Each leader further shared the interview in their own network. This has given SCIKEY a greater organic reach, trust, and credibility in decision makers fraternity.
SCIKEY was awarded the “Top 20 Most promising HR-Tech startups – 2020” by the CIOReview
AI powered platform with Research & IP focus – patent filed for the SCIKEY MindMatch algorithm that was presented at the United Nations(Geneva) also twice
Deloitte Technology fast 50 winner for 2020
SCIKEY – Competitors
Remote.com, Upwork and LinkedIn are the top competitors of SCIKEY.
Remote.com
Remote helps companies of all sizes hire top talent all over the world, in full compliance with local laws. It is a global platform for distributed teams. Remote makes it easy to onboard, pay, and delight remote employees and contractors.
Upwork
Upwork connects businesses of all sizes to freelancers, independent professionals, and agencies for all their hiring needs.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn platform is mainly used for professional networking, and allows job seekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs.
Over the next 1-2 years, SCIKEY aims to grow the customer base by at least a 5x and the revenue by 2-3x. While growing its partners by 5x and member users to at least a few million. SCIKEY is also planning to venture into new markets like Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Australia.
SCIKEY – FAQs
What is SCIKEY.ai?
SCIKEY is a marketplace network for talent & technology solutions
What does the word ‘SCIKEY’ mean?
SCIKEY has emerged from the combination of two important words that form the generis of the team’s approach behind building this platform – Scientific (backed by research & data) + Key (of crucial importance) = SCIKEY
Who are the founders of SCIKEY?
Alok Kumar is the founder of SCIKEY. Akshay Sharma and Karunjit Kumar Dhir are the Co-founders of SCIKEY.
How much funding has SCIKEY raised?
SCIKEY had funding of USD 3.5 Million in 2016.
Who are the competitors of SCIKEY?
Remote.com, Upwork and LinkedIn are the top competitors of SCIKEY.
When was SCIKEY founded?
SCIKEY was founded in the year 2016 by Alok Kumar.
In the unprecedented time, where everyone is talking about the economic slowdown and financial difficulties, there have been a few startups sectors that have managed grow exponentially well.
The Covid 19 pandemic has shaken the world and has brought many business to a halt, although startups have lost their momentum they are already on the path to recover while the newly created trends are expected to see a long term success.
Nasscom said that 40% off Indian tech startups were forced to halt operation, however the investments and startups have shown resilience and recovered as India saw a rapid shift to digital services and payments. Data from industry tracker Tracxn showed that, investors have put in about $9.3 billion into startups in 2020 despite the Covid 19 pandemic upending many sectors of the economy.
One of the simple explanation for the growth of some section of the startups is the emergence of the “Covid economy” which demands or medical supplies and coronavirus related goods which naturally grew during the pandemic, creating lots of opportunities for new companies to step in and take their share of a rapidly developing market. These companies realize that post Covid 19, this new normal will be accepted as the norm for the remaining in the competitive business.
For some of these sectors, the new normal would bring in newfound opportunities. A whole new market that was untouched before is now up for grabs. As we are talking of all this, some startups are already working upon the aforesaid scenario. Let’s take a closer look at the startup sectors that are most likely to flourish after the end of COVID-19.
Lets look at the Sectors that Bloomed During Lockdown
Ed –Tech
One sector that continues to grow rapidly is online education. With Covid 19 locking down Indian citizen since the end of March, online education and e-learning platform have become the need of the hour and so has seen an astounding adoption and exponential growth.
The online education sector is observing a sudden surge and people from all walks of life, all the Covid 19 affected nations are looking up to alternatives of conventional teaching and learning.
That’s not surprising, considering that a whopping 1.5 billion students were grounded almost overnight as cities locked down and schools closed. A report by BARC India and Nielsen reveals that there has been a 30% increase in the time spent on education apps on smartphones since the lockdown.
People are afraid to send their children to places where social distancing is not practiced and hence the ed tech sector is tapping on every possible entity they can.
Well known EdTech startups of India
Ed tech are coming up with solutions that find their usage in various places from universities and schools, to remote employee onboarding, and upskilling to learn new skills and hobbies. Byju’s India earliest Ed tech startup saw 7.5 million new users on its platform since it started offering free access to content. The time spent on its app increased from 70 minutes pre-lockdown to 91 minutes during the lockdown.
The story is the same for other edtech players in the arena. Unacademy recorded 1.4 billion watch minutes while Toppr saw 100 percent growth in free user engagement in March. While Edtech startups Great Learning said its annual revenue rose 150 percent to Rs 325 crore. The Vedantu platform has also grown exponentially to 6.5 lakh additional learners across K-12 and competitive exams such as JEE and NEET.
During the pandemic the demand for contactless solutions has accelerated the employment of fintech services. This growth of the fintech sector helped the users to check for much more personalized, multi optional financial experience and new trends in areas like banking payments, insurtech, etc. Out of 900 plus deals and $11.5 billion total funding raised in 2020, fintech topped the chart with $2.1 billion in funding and 131 in deal counts.
In such times fintech startups play a pivotal role as they are a perfect option to the stringent and conventional banking systems which sometimes fall short on policies. For small scale enterprise or unemployed individuals who require funds on short notices, these financial entities are the only ray of hope. The pandemic has acted as a booster for the country’s fintech sector giving it the much needed energy and growth trajectory to expand its footprint across the nation.
According to Inc42 Plus, funding in fintech is expected to grow to $2.7 Bn in 2021. This is why of the 11 Indian startups Unacademy, Pine Labs, FirstCry, Zenoti, Nykaa, Postman, Zerodha, Razorpay, Cars24, Dailyhunt and Glance that became unicorns in 2020, three belonged to the fintech segment. The growth volume stood at 70% from 1.30 billion transactions in December 2019 to 2.2 billion in 2020, while the value of UPI transactions increased 105% from Rs 2.02 lakh crore in December 2019 to Rs 4.16 lakh crore in December 2020.
Among the leading deals in the fintech sector last year, Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal-owned Navi Technologies led the chart with $398 Mn infusion by Bansal, Gaja Capital, and World Bank’s investment arm IFC, followed by Pine Labs at $300 Mn and PaySense’s acquisition by PayU at $185 Million.
The pandemic has pushed health and wellness services online and has resulted in a boom of online health and wellness services such as telehealth tech, remote diagnostics, and monitoring, remote mental healthcare, online fitness, healthy diets, motivational contents, and more. According to a report by Practo, online doctor consultations have increased 500% since March 2020, as five crore Indians are now accessing healthcare online amidst the Covid 19 pandemic.
Companies like Practo and DocPrime, mFine, CallHealth and Lybrate are some of the leading telemedicine startups, while other small startups are looking to make it in the industry that is currently on the rise. The telemedicine market in India is expected to reach $5.4 Billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 31%. Innovative technologies are allowing health organizations to enhance the access and reduce the burden on hospitals through real time consultation with doctors through smartphones tablets, laptops or PCs.
Telemedicine will reduce the time of consultations and improve the quality of healthcare services in rural areas, removing many of infrastructural challenges. Telemedicine can also help in reducing the burden on the tertiary hospitals by providing diagnosis and treatment to patients in their own geographical location and reducing chances of patient’s exposure due to hospital visits. While India is already one of the top 10 countries in the telemedicine marketing the world, adoption of a regulatory framework will help the segment grow rapidly.
Well known telemedicine startups of India
HR tech: Cloud and SaaS
The rise of HR SaaS and remote working platforms in times of Covid 19 is not surprising. SaaS and remote working tools fall right in the path of success in such times. Businesses are also now understanding the value and operational simplicity that cloud adoption can bring to their IT environments, and various reports forecast a further increase in the use of SaaS solutions in 2021 and beyond. These applications would serve the founding stones for the majority of business operations in the future and a haven for existing ones.
The covid 19 pandemic has been unable to dampen the interest of investors in Indian startups which offer software as a services (SaaS). According to a report by Brain and company the SaaS firms could capture 7%-9% of the market by 2022, and SaaS companies founded by Indians can reach upto $20 billion in revenue.
The global SaaS market is estimated to grow to $230 billion in 2022 from $145 billion in 2019. Startups such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis, and Freshworks which breached the $100-million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, adding that there is a healthy pipeline of companies.
OTT platform have proven to be time and cost effective, provide a more personalized version of the same experience and one can experience these at the comfort of their homes. OTT platforms in India are growing exponentially in the terms of subscribership because of various reasons. Digital India plays a major role in promoting the use of OTT platforms to stream diverse content from all over the world. One of the reason the availability of cheaper smartphones and internet has enabled a large chunk of the population to gain access to online platforms.
Platforms like Voot, Sony Liv and Zee 5 are OTT platforms developed by existing broadcast channels to remain relevant and to cater to the shift in audience from TV viewership to OTT platforms. However, most of their content on these platforms are the same as the ones broadcasted on TV. With the entry of global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, users are offered a plethora of original content. Hotstar is currently the most popular OTT platform in India according to data from a mobile advertising and Internet service provider.
Online Gaming
In India, Covid 19 has taken this sector to the next level as there have been new gaming startups and platform have been reporting increased revenues mainly because of the pandemic. Furthermore, there is an emergence of new industry trends such as e- gaming, fantasy gaming and cloud-based gaming. Additionally, gaming is not only about playing anymore, but it is also about watching. the Indian online gaming Industry is growing at an exponential rate upon year and is expected to be worth $1.1 billion by 2021.
Winzo games reported three times more user engagement and 30% higher traffic in online mobile gaming. Similarly Paytm First games also reported 200% increase, with 75,000 new users only during the pandemic. Three in every five serious gamers are now playing for around four hours more than before the lockdown. The online gaming industry is still quite an unexplored area in India but the companies that have taken the leap are flourishing and are now expected to grow by 41% in 2021.
Sweta
