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 Darwinbox.
The human resource department is present in every organisation. Its role is crucial for keeping an organisation balanced as they take care of its employee hiring process, performance appraisal, and payroll and determines what different policies and strategies should be applied in contributing to the success of an organisation.
To elaborate broadly, human resource management can have multiple responsibilities and functions to carry out. Over the years, human resource management (HRM) has evolved to adapt to the changing needs of employees in a company.
Today, top companies have special Human Resource Management Software to keep things in a systematic manner and efficiently aid in the data management of employees and various other HR processes. Moreover, it is the HR tech that the companies are embracing to bring a new change in the work culture.
Darwinbox is one of the leading cloud-based Human Resource Management Software (HRMS). The company has its headquarters in Hyderabad with various other offices located across India, and other countries like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, UAE, and the USA.
Read on further to know about Darwinbox’s industry details, founders, business and revenue model, funding and investors, and many more.
Darwinbox – Company Highlights
Startup Name
Darwinbox
Headquarters
Hyderabad, India
Sector
HRMS, IT services and IT Consulting
Founder
Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni
Founded in 2015, Darwinbox is a SaaS platform engaged in providing a better, simpler, and mobile-first HR Tech experience driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, and empowers workers across the full lifecycle (hire-to-retire).
At present times, the company serves over 650 enterprises including Adani, Kopi Kenangan, MatchMove, Mahindra, Bank BTPN, TVS, Shakey’s, JSW, Bank Danamon, Nivea, Swiggy, Tokopedia, JG Summit Group, NutriAsia, Indorama, and others, and have over 1.5 million workers in 90+ countries.
Darwinbox has a new-age platform designed to provide enterprises with automated day-to-day HR processes that simplify human interactions and deliver quality insights to help build better workplaces both for the organisation and employees.
Darwinbox – Industry
Darwinbox belongs to the IT services and IT consulting industry. All of us are aware that the IT industry is like the backbone of any company, without which no company can stand tall and strong. It is reported that the marketplace for technology and information technology consulting services in India is projected to be worth $48 billion, accounting for approximately 20% of the overall worldwide consulting industry.
According to the latest Emeregen Research, the global Human Capital Management market size was $18.04 billion in 2020 and it is expected to deliver a revenue CAGR of 7.9% till the year 2028.
Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti, and Rohit Chennamaneni are the founders of Darwinbox.
Chaitanya Peddi
Chaitanya Peddi – Co-founder and Product Head at Darwinbox
Chaitanya Peddi is one of the three founders of Darwinbox and is presently performing as its Product Head. Before starting the journey with Darwinbox, Chaitanya worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young in their Business Advisory Services division. His first company, where he worked as an Analyst in Product Development was Verizon Communications. Chaitanya has an MBA degree in Human Resources from XLRI, Jamshedpur.
Jayant Paleti
Jayant Paleti – Co-founder and Head of Sales at Darwinbox
Jayant Paleti co-founded Darwinbox in 2015. He presently is the Head of the Sales department at Darwinbox. Jayant got his B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Afterwards, he got an MBA degree in finance from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He has been associated with EY (Ernst & Young) for almost four years. Prior to this, he worked at Deloitte for one year. Jayant started by working as a Business Analyst at Modelytics.
Rohit Chennamaneni
Rohit Chennamaneni – Co-founder and Head of Operations at Darwinbox
Rohit Chennamaneni is the co-founder of Darwinbox and is also currently the head of its operations. Before co-founding Darwinbox, he worked with Google, and McKinsey & Company. He was also an intern at Procter and Gamble. Rohit graduated from the Vellore Institute of Technology and holds an MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He worked in areas such as sales, operations, human resources, and leadership development.
Darwinbox – Startup Story
While working in a corporate firm, Jayant Paleti realised that his company lacked systematic functioning to provide a one-stop solution for the HR department. Soon after, he got over a discussion with Chaitanya and Rohit only to find a common observation that how companies did not have a good HR system. This was an opportunity that spurred the three friends to meet up every day over many rounds of coffee and tea at a local restaurant in Hyderabad.
The three founders worked day and night to study the HR tech market in India to learn about the already available products so that they can come up with a new one. Through many challenges and competition, the Telugu trio experimented with many products intending to launch a product that is more than just a provider of HR solutions by including additional services like asset management, insurance, and digital education.
Darwinbox initially started with one of the most required HR functions by every organisation – attendance and payroll solutions. To add, the founders used their own savings when Darwinbox was established in 2015.
After months of hard work, the company finally raised seed funding in 2016. They raised around Rs 4 crores from investors like Endiya Partners, 3One4 Capital, and many others.
Today, Darwinbox is regarded as the 84th Indian business to join the billion-dollar club, which also includes freshly minted unicorns such as Analytics SaaS and Edtech venture LEAD School.
Darwinbox – Name, Logo, and Tagline
Darwinbox Logo
The Darwinbox logo can be defined as a basic but eye-catching logo. It comprises the box symbol, which is intended to be used as Darwinbox’s symbol, followed by the company name in its trademark blue and black colour combination.
Darwinbox – Mission and Vision
The vision of Darwinbox is, “Building A Leading Technology Brand From Asia For The World.”
Darwinbox – Business and Revenue Model
Darwinbox’s business operates on a SaaS model that offers solutions related to the HR needs of an enterprise across the employee life cycle, which includes the six HR modules – payroll, recruitment, employee engagement, talent management, people analytics, and core operations like attendance, leave, etc.
The company’s core business operations are to engage and empower employees while automating and streamlining all HR functions. Some of the products & solutions offered by Darwinbox are:
Employee Onboarding
Employee helpdesk
Time & Attendance
Payroll
HRMS Suite
Talent Management Suite
Performance Management
Travel & Expense
Compensation Suite
Remote Work Suite
Darwinbox has been involved in bringing some innovations to assign employees with much more convenience and allow them to find time to do other things. In short, the company’s business also involves providing the best possible user experience to its customers. To name a few, Darwinbox has launched the following creations:
Mobile HRMS – To help employees on the go with its Mobile-first HR technology.
A.I in HR – With the help of Artificial Intelligence, Darwinbox helps to deliver even more insightful decision-making skills.
Multi-language support – As a global company, Darwinbox’s platform is built in a way that supports multiple languages.
Darwinbox Studio – Provides 200+ seamless integrations to have a secure way of data management. Clients such as Swiggy, Emcure, Kotak Life Insurance, cult.fit, Tata Cliq among others uses Darwinbox Studio.
HRMS on WhatsApp – To help employees receive notifications for events, leave, attendance, rewards, and recognition through WhatsApp. Darwinbox is the first ever to come up with HRMS to integrate with WhatsApp for Business.
The revenue of Darwinbox stood at $30 million in 2022. The company has announced that its revenue has doubled in comparison to the previous year. Most of its revenue, about 75% is generated from its business in India and 25% from other countries in Asia and the Middle East. It is the only Indian unicorn whose revenue is mainly from India.
Darwinbox – Funding and Investors
Darwinbox has received a total of $107 million in investment over seven rounds. Their most recent funding came in the form of a Series D round on January 24, 2022. The company has received funding from 11 investors. The most recent investors are SCB 10X and Lightspeed India Partners.
The list of funding and investors of Darwinbox is given below:
The company is planning to expand its operations globally, starting in the USA. Along with its global expansion, Darwinbox further plans to accelerate its product development. It also expects to generate 35% of its total revenue from each of its Indian and Southeast Asia business operations in the future.
“We are looking to enter the US markets this year. It will be a super force multiplier, but could become a substantial contributor to revenue in the next three-four years,” said Jayant Paleti, co-founder and Head of Sales at Darwinbox.
“We will probably get there ($100 million annual revenue) in the next two or two-and-a-half years, and after that IPO is a possibility,” Jayant further said.
FAQs
What does Darwinbox company do?
Darwinbox is one of India’s leading cloud-based Human Resource Management Software. The company offers HR Tech experience driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning and empowers workers across the full lifecycle (hire-to-retire).
Who owns Darwinbox?
The owners of Darwinbox are Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni.
Is Darwinbox a unicorn?
Darwinbox turned into a unicorn startup after raising $72 million in a Series D funding round on 24th January 2022.
Who invested in Darwinbox?
Darwinbox has eleven investors out of which the most recent investors are SCB 10X, Lightspeed India Partners, and TCV.
How much funding has Darwinbox raised to date?
Darwinbox has raised a total of $107 million as of August 2022.
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 Ethika.
No matter how great an organisation may be, it is highly impossible to carve a growth path without a healthy ecosystem of happy employees. Employee compensation that used to be the benchmark for measurement of employee well being has truly been relegated to the back seat.
Employer concern for the overall well being of the employee trumps most other considerations today. A carefully curated employee benefit insurance program, not only ensures employees and their families are taken care of, but this sense of security fosters a culture of belonging which propels the Company towards its intended objective.
Ethika is a new-age insurance broking startup that focusses on curating such Employee Benefit programs intended toward keeping employees of their clients happy. Such programs provide innovative solutions to not just make Insurance (mediclaim) easily manageable but also provide several value-added services, that ensure holistic well being of an employee and make them feel valued by their company.
Read to know more about Ethika insurance broking, its founders, their USP, business model, marketing strategy, and the story of its starting up.
While providing Insurance Broking Solutions for Employee Benefit Insurance to Small and Mid Size Corporates is their core business model, they also add value to their clients by offering innovative solutions for creating happier workplaces.
Employee Benefit Insurance, their core offering, includes Group Health Insurance, Group Personal Accident Insurance, Group Term Life Insurance, Group Top up Health Insurance, and OutPatient Health Expenses Insurance.
At Ethika, they believe, an Insurance Brokers’ role should not be limited to helping clients receive financial assistance when their employees fall sick, but to prevent employee sickness in the first place. One of the pivotal parameters in preventing employees from falling sick, is to make employees happy. Moreover, they do not advocate this belief in some spiritual sense; science backs the fact that happier workplaces are more productive ones. Creating happier workplaces therefore not only results in lesser employee sickness (translated into lost man-hours) but also increased employee productivity.
They are infact so driven by their vision of creating a culture of happiness at work that they do not charge for it. Yes you read that right; they offer their service of creating happier workplaces as a free add-on to their Employee Benefit services.
Their journey as an Insurance Broker started in 2016. Today, about six years into business, while insurance remains the core of their business model, they have also diversified into servicing the Employee Value Proposition via the happiness route i.e. increasing employee engagement levels at the workplace by making the workplace happier.
Ethika – Industry
India is home to around 10 Lakh Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) – these enterprises form the coal to the engine that keeps India running, month on month, day after day. Unfortunately, when it comes to health insurance, these organizations are also the most neglected ones in the country.
Imagine the kind of impact they could create for this huge segment if they could use Group Health Insurance as one of the tools to create a happier workplace for them. Not only would the employees come to work without a thread of worry about how they would manage their expenses in case a calamity struck, but they would also be better equipped to concentrate at work, which in turn would act as feedback and they would go home happier.
Wouldn’t that be a wow experience, for the entire country? Their goal in the next two years is to reach 1 Lakh SMEs and spread this happiness.
Covid-19, has altered the human landscape completely. Before Covid, the basic necessities of life were Roti, Kapada, and Makan; after Covid, their necessities have one added element – Health Insurance. In the next five years, they believe every Indian will be covered under Health Insurance in some form.
They are looking at 2 lacs crores of Health Insurance premium within next five years.
They also feel the industry has reached the inflection point where it is finally ready to tango with technology.
Insurance would stop being a push product in the next five years. By 2027, they would have reached a point where people will be able to understand and appreciate risk; they would no longer need an incentive to insure themselves.
Ethika – Founders and Team
Susheel Agrawal – Founder of Ethika
Susheel Agrawal was not happy with his professional life, and after some deliberations decided to quit. Sarath and Sandeep, his colleagues then, decided to follow his footsteps and put in their papers as well. They trusted him even when he did not have a roadmap, but they did, and the rest has been history.
It is the element of trust that has gotten embedded in their DNA today. They work with clients who they trust – ofcourse the feelings are mutual in this case. They hire people they can trust, so on and so forth.
Sarath Reddy, who handles client relations, is a post graduate in business administration and has extensively worked in client servicing before Ethika.
Sandeep Mukka, who looks after operations, is a postgraduate in computer applications and has been associated with the insurance industry for about 13 years.
Sarath takes care of client relationships, Sandeep takes care of operations, leaving Susheel with handling people responsibilities.
Ethika – The Idea and Startup Story
At 33, Susheel Agrawal, the founder of Ethika was an average employee working in the highly competitive corporate world. While most of his material needs seemed to be satisfied, Susheel Agrawal wasn’t happy. Something seemed amiss; he kept feeling a void for far too long than was bearable.
After some introspection, he realized that the soulless corporate world was taking away his peace of mind. That was when he quit his corporate job.
Susheel was fortunate to have been exposed to the insurance industry in India. He started with what he knew best – selling Group Health Insurance to organizations.
He knew from experience that one of the main pain points in the health insurance ecosystem was the insured’s experience during claims and that became his first point of focus.
Sarath Reddy and Sandeep Mukka, his co-founders, shared the same vision from Beginning.
They started bridging the gap between employee, hospital, TPA, Insurer, and doctor by fine tuning the claim process. This in turn enhanced the experience of employees during the claims process and positive reviews started pouring in. The kicker used to come out of cases where they could indirectly intervene, and help employees when they needed it the most. One critical observation was that most of the health insurance claims could have been avoided, if they had intervened at the right time. This insight led them into innovating low-cost solutions which could be offered along with group health insurance to their clients to prevent work disruptions due to employee illness. A lot of tweaking and tinkering later, they built their inhouse software and an employee wellness team. This turned out to be their tipping point. The word of mouth referrals spread and business started pouring in. The foundation for self-belief however came out of client testimonials and referrals.
At one such new referral meet, a client said, “I’m surprised that you can run a company without having a website or visiting card.” Yes, they were so focussed in creating a positive impact for their clients that they didn’t have their own website in the first two years.
As a matter of fact, to this date, the ratio for the number of employees focused on generating business to the number of employees focused on support is the lowest and in inverse proportion to the standards in the Insurance Broking industry.
Now that they have stabilized their group health insurance offering, they have added a new element “Employee Happiness” to their portfolio, which is helping their clients create a happier workplace.
Their core vision however remains enabling facilitation of the push product (insurance) to a point where the first thought that comes to your mind, when you think of insurance, is a happy one.
Their areas of expertise include
Broking services across the Employee Benefits vertical which includes Group Health Insurance, Group Super Top up Health Insurance, Personal Health Insurance and other Lines of Businesses.
Employee Happiness Program.
Employee Assistance Program.
Employee Engagement Program.
Employee Wellness Program.
Group Insurance Software &
Red Carpet Claims Assist.
Numbers don’t drive them, happiness does; it remains one of their core beliefs. They go the extra mile in incorporating this belief in the way they do business. They keep evaluating themselves on how happy they are as a company; they advise their clients to follow the same methodology.
Earlier, when they had just started, there used to be genuine apprehensions in clients, especially with regards to objective measurement of translation of their Happiness Index into business. Their objective answer to that question has been – increase in toplines, client referrals, and appreciation.
Most of their clients have now warmed up to the idea and the results have followed.
Meanwhile, their understanding of human psyche has thrust them on the path to finding new ways to increase employee engagement that can benefit their clients to a greater degree.
When it comes to their vision, in the short term, they would want to establish themselves as someone whose name is the first thing that flashes in a Customers mind when they think of the words ethics, insurance, and broking in one breath. They wouldn’t mind being called the TATA’s of the insurance space.
Their long-term vision is to facilitate the achievement of insurance literacy in our country. All of their energies over the next decade would be focused towards trying to expand insurance penetration in the country.
Ethika – Core Belief
The core belief of Ethika stems from a root-cause analysis they did for one of their clients in the early days.
Employees form the foundation of every business; they spend about a third of their day at the workplace; a happier workplace translates into
the employee wanting to turn up for work, every single day
increased engagement levels at work &
increased productivity.
Keeping the workplace happy, therefore is the chief responsibility of the employer. They help them shoulder this responsibility.
On the technical front, they also want to help un-jargonize insurance.
It is a sad reality that despite being one of the oldest professions in the world, they are still married to wordings that should have been buried a long long time ago.
They also feel these wordings are one of the main reasons why people remain skeptical about insurance – it is difficult to convince someone of buying something they cannot understand.
Ethika – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Ethika Logo
An insurance policy can be likened to a currency note in the sense that an insurance policy is a promise that the insurer makes to the insured to fulfill a certain obligation. But that is where the similarity ends.
During their earlier days, they had a couple of stark realizations – a lot of things on paper rarely translated in practice. Utmost good faith, one of the foundational principles of insurance was at times being shorted by the Insurer and at other times by the Insured. The fine print of the contract i.e. the wordings on paper were being robotically followed especially at the time of claim settlement i.e. the spirit of the contract was being overlooked in many a cases.
They felt their job was that of an intermediary who could interpret the fine print in the policy and thereby help the client select the right insurer – someone who was equally good at honoring the spirit of the contract as they were at underwriting it. Ethics was always the foundation stone that their business was built on; since they could not use ethics as their brand name, Ethika was the next logical iteration.
They have been sticklers for ethics in business. You could say their larger purpose is to debunk the myth that business and ethics cannot go together.
All our lives, we have been programmed that if we need to succeed in business, we need to learn to wear our ethics on the sleeves; they would beg to differ.
Their tagline says ‘Insuring the risk of insuring’. It signifies their attempt at trying to reduce the risk for the Insured.
Ethika – Hiring Funda
Starting with humble beginnings of 3, they have today grown to about 50 people. That said, they are a lean setup – companies handling the same amount of business employ anywhere around 100 people.
They are a bunch of 50 passionate people. They are a young company who understands how pivotal culture is to an organization’s success. To that end, they have a fairly open and considerate work culture. While it might sound simplistic, they try to foster a culture where all of their employees look forward to coming to office on Mondays; this despite them having a work from home right since inception i.e. 2016.
Learning and relearning are also deeply ingrained in their culture. They get a kick out of teaching new things to colleagues and customers, these new things could be skills they pick up from platforms like Udemy or something new they learnt while transacting business.
They hire for attitude and train for skills. While they do need technical expertise to facilitate underwriting of the product, their topline growth has benefitted from a diverse team of passionate people.
Insurance is basically spreading the risk thin. You try to insure as many people as possible and hope that calamity strikes the minimum number of these people; you charge a premium to insure their risk. When calamity does strike, you pay for the genuine claims out of the premiums collected.
Group Health Insurance, one of the prime offerings, is therefore not insurance in the true sense.
The renewal premium for Group Health Insurance is dependent on last year’s claims i.e. if the claims for a company amounted to Rs. 10,00,000 in 2020, the renewal premium would normally be about Rs. 10,00,000 + administrative expense for the Insurer (in extremely price sensitive markets like Insurance, administrative expense can go as low as 0). Therefore the renewal premium for the year 2021 would normally be Rs. 10,00,000; if the claims in 2021 amount to Rs. 11,00,000, the renewal premium for 2022 would be Rs. 11,00,000, so on and so forth. This essentially means that the company is just about getting the benefit of reimbursement since the claim costs for a year are being borne by the insurer in that year and are being recuperated from the company in the subsequent year. Essentially leaving very little margin for the Insurer to operate on. The Insurer does try to bring down the claims quantum by negotiating better tariffs with hospitals, but a lot of the hospitals do not abide by the tariffs. Moreover, new Medical Treatments coupled with the occurrence of new diseases keep pushing medical claims inflation exponentially every year.
Moreover, all of Ethika’s other offerings enhance workplace wellness and are offered within the insurance premium that is paid for Group Health Insurance.
They are therefore not only helping clients with risk placement, but are also helping them avoid workplace sickness, increase employees productivity and happiness – they are therefore treating the disease and not the symptoms alone.
They had started their journey, trying to solve the problems in the health insurance claim settlement vertical. They then graduated to addressing problems with buying group health insurance and then to employee wellness; they are now trying to create a framework to address employee happiness. They want to ensure that all of their clients’ employees look forward to Mondays and not Fridays. They want to make Monday blues a thing of the past.
Their weekly workshop ‘From HR to CEO’, is a step toward that. The title for the workshop came about from the fact that when employees start working like the CEO, the CEOs job becomes that of an HR Manager.
Susheel Agrawal would like to take this opportunity to urge you to keep an eye out for their new products Learning Management System targeted towards learning – how they can learn better and Sustainable Living targeted toward Happiness – how to live happier by walking the path of sustainability.
They think insurance gives you peace of mind.
Imagine a meticulous and diligent factory owner; his factory is struck by an earthquake and it will take about 3 months to get the factory back in shape and another 2 to get the first product shipped after the earthquake.
Imagine the kind of mental toll such a peril could take on the owner; some of the considerations he has to keep in mind would include – How to convince the Customers of the delay, How to retain his workers during this period, How to pay them, What about the recurring operating expenses (like land lease, machine rent costs) that would need to be borne despite the factory being non-operational. While insurance will not guarantee how long it could take for the Insured to get back on his feet, or the mental trauma the owner might have to go through, it will certainly take care of the financial burden that would have otherwise compounded his problems.
When most of the Brokers concentrated on premium reduction – which is a win-lose proposition and not sustainable in the long run, they went beyond and included the following services in their arsenal, absolutely free of cost.
Employee Assistance – where they offered psychological, nutritional, and doctor counseling as and when employees needed it. They hit a roadblock when their enrollment numbers plateaued. They did some introspection and realized there was still a certain taboo associated with seeking help and therefore focused on Employee Engagement.
Employee Engagement – where they had experts talking to employees about day to day life issues and delivering meditation sessions.
Group Insurance Software – the software that they built in-house is a rage with their clients today. It helps them keep a tab on their health insurance requirements and frees up one of their most important resources – time.
Red Carpet claims assist was life coming a full circle for them. The vertical they had started their journey with, still had a lot of room for improvement and they thought it was about time someone addressed this elephant in the room. Red Carpet claims assist helps employees with their claims processing while keeping them as the focal point of attention.
Employee Happiness is their attempt to make workplaces happier. All of the Ethika team look forward to Mondays with as much excitement as they look forward to Fridays. They want to help clients incorporate the same energy at their workplaces.
They have kept innovating at every step along the way.
Their USP remains their ability to garner relationships. They are proud of the fact that 95% of their clients have been with them for the last five year. They love the Japanese way of doing business. They are extremely diligent before getting into relationships, but once they get into one, they don’t fight over truffles.
They are one of the frontrunners, when it comes to leveraging technology to increase awareness. Their presence across social media has ensured their reach to the appropriate segment. That said, they do understand that if insurance is to percolate to the needy, the offline channel is as important as the online one. Toward that vein, they have their eyes and ears on the ground, all the time. They recently concluded an event where Ethika insured the journalist fraternity in Hyderabad.
When they got into insurance, their focal point was Group Health Insurance. They felt the vertical had a lot of room for improvement and they could add value. But every business is the business of trust, more so in the case of insurance. As they started providing solutions for group health insurance, their clients started asking them for more products. And that is how they increased depth in other lines of businesses like Motor, Liability, Fire.
While they haven’t pivoted from their initial product, they have definitely evolved to a place where delivering happiness forms a significant part of what they do.
They are in Insurance for the long haul; that said, they have realized the problem they are trying to address is a spoke of a bigger wheel – Happiness. Insurance does try to ensure your risks do not rob you of the joy of the present moment.
But they look at it more from a perspective of backward integration than a pivot – something like what Reliance did in the petrochemical space and is trying to do in the agriculture retail space.
Ethika – Business Model and Revenue Model
Insurance is a highly regulated industry and the brokerage (commissions) which are paid by the Insurers’ are capped by the regulator IRDA. In the absence of differentiators in profits or pricing range, service quality becomes the prime driver of sales.
A Broker’s technical expertise helps them underwrite a risk to perfection. The Broker however also needs trained manpower who can handle managerial and supervisory responsibilities.
They help clients identify the right insurer who can offer them the right benefits at the right price.
Ethika goes a step further by helping clients mitigate future risks by adoption of good practices and thus reduce their risk quotient at the time of renewal.
Ethika – Customer Acquisition
Their starting experiences were extremely humbling. They did not want to invest on office setups and were therefore working out of home, they did not have visiting cards when visiting clients, neither did they have a website. But, this humility worked for them with most of their clients.
Their zeal to help clients with health insurance policies probably came across.
While it was difficult getting the first 10 clients, word of mouth has been their best marketing tool subsequently.
In the initial days, when they were new and people didn’t know them, they were pretty straight forward about it – they used cold calling and told clients that they were new and would want to work for them.
While some didn’t even let them complete their pitch, some of the clients heard them out and gave the opportunity.
There was this one particular client who, when he did meet them, wanted help with settlement of about 17 of his pending claims. He was, as a matter of fact, reluctant to switch insurers just because he thought doing so would antagonize the current insurer and his claims would not be settled. Susheel studied the cases and realized, most of them were closed not on technical grounds but administrative ones i.e. there were delays with document submissions and things like that. Susheel wrote to the insurer and after sensing some reluctance on his part, looped the ombudsman in the conversation. This was when the insurer got serious and settled the claims, and he got a client, who by the way has been with Susheel, since then.
They reached about 100 clients in the first 3 years; a lot of these hundred clients came to them as referrals from their existing clients.
Introspection led them to the belief that educating people would probably work as a good marketing tool; and they started organizing a workshop on employee happiness on a weekly basis. This workshop has created wonders for Ethika. Given the fact that the industry works on so many intangibles, a workshop helps put in some tangibility to the equation. They owe one third of their new clients to these weekly workshops.
It is only of late that they have started investing in PR and have started with about 0.5% of their topline from the last year.
Ethika – Challenges Faced
The founders faced one of the biggest challenges, right when they were about to set shop. Then IRDA guidelines required own capital of Rs. 50 Lakh to be deposited as a security, before they could commence business. While Susheel had managed about Rs. 25 Lakh out of his own resources, that still left him with a shortfall of about Rs. 25 lakh. The only assets Susheel Agrawal and his wife Possessed back then were their home and a car. Susheel decided to sell both of these. All of his family, parents, and in-laws seemed to be against the decision of starting up and requested him to give up on the idea. But he did not. He managed the additional Rs. 25 Lakh within the next month and registered with IRDA for a license.
Getting the license however does not guarantee a steady flow of clientele. Moreover, the industry is plagued by outward appearances – in the initial days, they lost out on some prospective clientele purely on aesthetic grounds. their simplicity was construed as a weakness. But they pushed through, working on what they knew best, and the rest has been history.
Susheel Agrawal took this opportunity to try and leave his footprint on the digital space. In the hour that they conversed he tried to un-jargonize health insurance concepts.
Sometime during their interactions with HR Managers, Ethika realized how difficult mediclaim policies made their lives. Managers ended up spending about 40% of their time servicing stakeholders on mediclaim – this was wasted time that could have been otherwise used doing their actual jobs.
Ethika had its eureka moment and came up with the handbook for group health insurance, which has been a huge hit in the community. The handbook is available https://www.ethika.co.in/ebook-download-page/.
Despite being aware of his biases, Susheel thinks it is by far one of the most comprehensive handbooks on the ins and outs of group health insurance. So much so that it could make Ethika’s job harder.
While they are not looking for funds, they are always open to ideas for expansion. If someone can help them increase their happiness footprint, and reach a larger audience, they are always game.
They are a lean setup and the administrative tools they use are basic in nature. That said, they are a tech-savvy company and their clients use their inhouse software to manage their group insurance policies exclusively.
Ethika – Future Plans
Ethika has future plans to create NGO, happy living, keep employees happy and healthier, and add more value to sustainable living.
The pace at which technology changes is incremental in nature. The technology we used in 2000 was obsolete by 2010, but the technology that was in use in 2015 is obsolete today.
They are at the inflection point where insurance, as an industry, is going to keep leveraging technology, to the point where they could witness a Singularity event, borrowing from Ray Kurzweil, by the end of this decade i.e. to say, that by the end of 2030, technology would be inseparable from insurance. They would have seamless data exchange between gymnasiums, health providers, and insurers and this would translate in renewal premiums. The possibilities seem endless.
In the short term they would concentrate on equipping themselves with the right technical expertise, both on the insurance and the technology front, to help them become enablers for this technological transformation.
They also want to make employees of their clients live happier and healthier – this resonates with their idea of creating a happier India.
FAQs
What is Ethika insurance?
Ethika is a Hyderabad-based Leading Insurance Broker Company in India.
When was Ethika founded?
Ethika was founded in 2016 in Hyderabad.
Who is the founder of Ethika?
Susheel Agrawal, Sarath Reddy, and Sandeep Mukka are the co-founders of Ethika.
Hyderabad is a major center for the technology industry. It is home to many upscale restaurants and shops. Hyderabad is historically referred to as a pearl and diamond trading center. Hence, it is known as the “City of Pearls”. We have also seen a sudden rise in emerging startups in Hyderabad. Here we present the list of startup companies in Hyderabad (2021).
Hyderabad is the startup hub that empowers the startup ecosystem of India. Here is the list of startups in Hyderabad.
SFarmsIndia is an online web application with two core functions; listing and fraction trading. These two functions work together creating a great synergy. On the listing platform, buyers can find/search agricultural lands and sellers can list/post the agricultural lands for sale/lease. This enables farmers and agri-realty developers to buy and sells agri lands.
SFarmsIndia’s main USP is Fraction Trading. It makes an agreement with the seller (agri-realty developer) to issue fractions by digital land contract against their lands.
The sellers/Agri reality developers can liquidate their big land parcels utilizing these fractions. Each agri land is assigned with a digital contract and divided into 2000 fractions per acre, thereby enabling medium to small income groups to acquire lands easily.
SFarmsIndia is one of the successful startups in Hyderabad that was founded by Kamesh Mupparaju in 2018 with his cofounder Linus Lindgren. Kamesh is the CEO of the company whereas Linus is the advisor.
2. eKincare
Founder: Kiran Kalakuntla
Industry: Healthcare Tech
Year Founded: 2014
Funding Received: $20.7 million
ekincare Website
eKincare monitors medical information and gathers medical results from various providers. It updates profiles and gives a single repository for users and stores their medical records in the system.
With eKincare, companies can take care of their employees’ health and create personalised health benefits. It is an AI-driven platform which analyses the data of your employees and makes the reports accordingly.
Kiran Kalakuntla, founder and CEO of eKincare, did his engineering from Duke University. eKincare was founded by Kiran Kalakuntla and Srikanth Samudrala in 2014. Their investors include Ventureast, Bitkemy, Eight Roads and Endiya.
3. My Dream Store
Founder: Karthik Venkat
Industry: Online Clothing
Year Founded: 2014
Funding Received: $320k
Nobero Website
My Dream Store makes and sells T-shirts. Many people who want to make a particular kind of shirt, but can’t find it in the market or online, can create that shirt on mydreamstore.com and buy it.
In fact, people create clothes and sell them on the same platform. Hence, in another way, it is a clothing marketplace where people can buy and sell personalised products.
Karthik Venkat, the founder of My Dream Store, completed his engineering at Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology. Later, he worked as a Financial Analyst. In 2014, he founded My Dream Store. The company has now rebranded to Nobero.
4. MastiTickets
Founder: Ravi Narla
Industry: Ticket Booking
Year Founded: 2014
Funding Received: –
Launched in 2014, MastiTickets has partnered with over 120 cinemas in AP and Telangana. It enabled users to book tickets for movies through its website and mobile app. The startup was booming in those areas around 2016. Hence, in 2017, BookMyShow acquired MastiTickets in an all-cash deal. The amount of acquisition is still undisclosed.
Ravi Narla founded MastiTickets. Ravi is an Andhra University graduate and also completed his master’s from the same university. He worked as a Project Manager in many different companies till 2013, when he decided to start MastiTickets.
5. REVOS
Founders: Mohit Ranjan and Jyotiranjan Harichandran
Industry: Tech Startup
Year Founded: 2017
Funding Received: $4 million
Bolt Website
REVOS, which stands for Revolutionary OS, is an AI & ML-enabled, IoT Platform for the next generation’s vehicles. It powers 2 & 3-wheelers with intelligent hardware & software.
REVOS makes on-the-go vehicle data analysis, diagnostics, smart control and protection, and visualization. This Hyderabad-based startup has already partnered with companies like Mirakles, Udaan, etc.
REVOS was founded by Mohit Ranjan and Jyotiranjan Harichandran in 2017. After graduating in Engineering from BITS, Mohit worked with Oracle for one year and then Adobe for four years. The company is now Bolt.
Founders: Raji Harish, Rajesh Kumar, and Girish Patinharepatt
Industry: Health Tech
Year Founded – 2017
Funding Received: NA
Psynapce is a healthcare tech startup. It provides backend services to clinics and hospitals. Its includes services like analytics, inventory management, hospital information system, EMR system, etc.
Along with these B2B services, the startup has also launched an app called Savika. Savika app is for pregnant ladies and guides them through every phase of those nine months.
Psynapce was founded by Raji Harish, Rajesh Kumar, and Girish Patinharepatt. Raji is now the CEO of the company whereas Rajesh and Girish are Managing Director and COO respectively.
7. Darwinbox
Founders: Rohit Chennamaneni, Chaitanya Peddi, and Jayant Paleti
Industry: HR Tech
Year Founded: 2015
Funding Received: $107 million
Darwinbox Website
Darwinbox is a tool for recruiters to find and train employees. It enables the managers to track and analyse the performance of their employees on the go. Features like employee engagement, Payroll management, and HR workflow make it useful, and its application and voice bot makes it easy to use.
Rohit Chennamaneni, Chaitanya Peddi, and Jayant Paleti together founded Darwinbox. They were able to get 40 clients in just one year. The company has raised a total of $107 million in funding.
8. Popicorn
Founder: Prashanth Gowriraju
Industry: Food
Year Founded: 2016
Funding Received: $3.4 million
Although, Popicorn is a food startup, that started in a garage. Popicorn provides delicious popcorn with low calories but is full of fibers. You can get their popcorn in many different flavours. However, Popicorn’s products can be bought from particular online platforms or offline stores only.
Founded in 2016, Popicorn is a subsidiary of Timla Foods which was founded by Prashanth Gowriraju.
9. Zippr
Founder: Aditya Vuchi
Industry: Tech Startup
Year Founded: 2013
Funding Received: $8.6 million
Zippr Website
Zippr is a very innovative startup. It provides personalised addresses to everyone. If you have a Zippr code, you don’t have to enter long addresses while ordering something. You can give the Zippr code to anyone like a delivery man, cabs, etc.
With the Zippr code, they can easily track your house. Zippr code is a combination of 4 random alphabets and 4 random numbers. Currently, the service of this startup is limited to Hyderabad only.
Aditya Vuchi, the founder of Zippr, has done his engineering at Osmania University and later studied at West Virginia University. In 2013, he found Zippr which is funded by Amazon and Indian Angel Network. It has raised a total of $8.6M in funding 4 rounds.
NowFloats is a business management company headquartered in Hyderabad. It gives local businesses a platform to promote their products and help them get patents for their technology creation. Their main product is “Boost”.
Boost provides a website management app and also automates its SEO. Businesses simply need to update their websites and Boost takes care of everything related to it.
Ronak Kumar Samantray, Neeraj Sabharwal, Nitin Jain and Jasminder Gulati are the founders of NowFloats. Gulati has done him under graduation from the University of Mumbai. Nitin completed his MBA in Marketing and Finance from the Indian School of Business. Samantray has done his engineering at the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar.
Health Sutra is a food startup. They provide tasty food products but with healthier ingredients. The startup is working towards redefining tradition with taste. They use traditional grains like Jowar, Bajra, Ragi, etc. to make ready-to-eat foods.
The startup was founded by Sai Krishna Popuri. Sai is a graduate of Delhi and has experience working with different startups in different positions.
12. TinMen
Founder: Mukesh Manda
Industry: Food Delivery
Year Founded: 2015
Funding Received: 406.3k
Tinmen is a food delivery app which offers homemade food. People can order food on their website or on the app. They have a pretty good range of food variety. It also offers a chance for the people to join their community and provide food service through their app and earn some money.
The startup was founded by Mukesh Manda in 2015. Mukesh is an IIT Kharagpur graduate and has experience working with companies like Oracle and Amazon. The company had to shut down its operations in 2019.
Founded in 1996, Bharat Biotech is a multidimensional biotechnology company. They are specialised in product-oriented research, development and manufacturing of vaccines and biotherapeutics. Their investors include ICICI Ventures and International Finance Corporation (IFC).
14. Cyient
Founder: B. V. R. Mohan Reddy
Industry: Computer Software
Year Founded: 1991
Funding Received: $15 million
Cyient Website
Cyient is a software company based in Hyderabad. Cyient is a global engineering and technology solutions company. Infotech Enterprises was re-branded Cyient in 2014 and featured among the top 30 outsourcing companies in the world as of 2018.
Cyient’s industry focus includes aerospace and defence, healthcare, telecommunications, rail transportation, semiconductor, geospatial, industrial, and energy.
15. GrabOn
Founders: Ashok Reddy and Bhanu P Raju
Industry: Coupons and deals
Year Founded: 2013
Funding Received: $250k
GrabOn Website
GrabOn stands as a famous Indian coupons and deals marketplace, which onboards subscribers and merchants to offer the best deals and coupons online to its users. Founded back in 2013 under the parent company, Inspirelabs Solutions Pvt Ltd. GrabOn is one of the leading startups in Hyderabad that initially bootstrapped its way and turned profitable in 15 months.
GrabOn boasts of 4,000+ merchants and over 6.5 million users per month. Apart from coupons, deals, and offers, GrabOn has further diversified into the gift cards industry with BestPriceOn and GrabOn Gift Cards. GrabOn is listed in the 266th position by the Financial Times as a high-growth company in Asia-Pacific.
16. Neeman’s
Founders: Amar Preet Singh and Taran Chhabra
Industry: Footwear
Year Founded: 2018
Funding Received: $9.8 million
Neeman’s Website
Founded as a footwear startup in 2018, Neeman’s is ideated to empower the usage of renewable, organic, and sustainable materials to design an attractive range of footwear for the young and old. These shoes manufactured by Neeman’s are stylish, and comfortable along with being eco-friendly.
17. Hug Innovations
Founders: Raj Neravati
Industry: Service industry, software
Year Founded: 2014
Funding Received: $5 million
Hug Innovations brings a range of wearable products that constantly aim to bridge the gap between people and technology. Hug Innovations believe that the world is in growing need of technology that is user-friendly and convenient. This is why they strive to develop cutting-edge wearables that are easy to use.
Titan Company Ltd acquired Hyderabad-based Hug Innovations on February 11, 2020.
18. SkinKraft
Founders: Chaitanya Nallan, Veerendra Shivhare, and Sangram Simha
Industry: Skincare, Tech, Beauty
Year Founded: 2017
Funding Received: NA
SkinKraft Website
SkinKraft Laboratories, founded in 2017 manufactures beauty products for the cosmetic industry users. The beauty products manufactured by SkinKraft are not only produced to cure chronic diseases but are also customized as per the users’ requirements.
Along with skincare, SkinCraft is also distinguished for its effective hair and immunity-boosting products and solutions.
19. Flatpebble
Founders: Pranav Mehta, Venkatesan Seshadri
Industry: Photography, wedding
Year Founded: 2012
Funding Received: $1 million
TechClove Technologies Private Limited formed as Flatpebble is a wedding photography services company that helps offer wedding photographers and wedding photography services online.
The customers can simply place their requirements/requests via forms to receive detailed quotes and the relevant portfolios of wedding photographers so that they can make their own decisions comfortably sitting in their homes.
Flatpebble.com is also a remarkable platform for both professional photographers and those who are in the making to approach a wide user base and cater to their varied requirements.
Flatpebble currently boasts over 500 portfolios and is established across 80+ cities and 5+ countries, as of October 2, 2021.
20. Paynear Solutions
Founders: Krishna Kishore V
Industry: Fintech
Year Founded: 2013
Funding Received:
A Fintech startup based in Hyderabad, Paynear Solutions strives to revolutionize the payment industry with its innovative solutions. Paynear Solutions extends state-of-the-art payment transaction solutions to small, medium, and large enterprises and other businesses in India to help them manage their payment activities. The company helps create payment transaction solutions to simplify the businesses of the present and those that are to come in the future.
21. Nukkad Shops Technologies
Founders: Vivek Shukla, and Ravi Korukonda
Industry: Payments app, POS
Year Founded: 2015
Funding Received: $1.4 million
Nukkad Shops Website
Nukkad Shops Technologies stands as a commerce platform that serves small and medium-sized grocers and companies. With the help of the advanced apps that Nukkad Shops provides, the retailers can get their billing done without any hassles. Furthermore, they can also manage their inventory, move their dead inventory with up-sell, cross-sell, enable a loyalty program, and more.
22. Zifi
Founders: Anurag Singh Rathore
Industry: Healthcare, Medical
Year Founded: 2002
Funding Received: NA
Zifi is famous as the registered trademark of FDC Limited, which helps in bringing smiles among clinicians across the country. Zifi is recognized as a trusted partner of the clinicians that has effectively treated 300 million+ patients from the day of its inception.
The state-of-the-art Novel drug delivery system and the exceptional experience of clinical success by the medical fraternity have truly made Zifi India’s no. 1 prescribed anti-infective.
Founded back in 2002, Zifi has grabbed the growing need of the clinicians and helped in treating a wide variety of infections with highly effective and affordable anti-infective therapy, newer anti-infective combinations were launched as extensions.
23. Froogal
Founders: Jeevan Chowdary Mandadapu
Industry: Software
Year Founded: 2016
Funding Received: $1 million
Froogal Website
Froogal is a startup company that provides its users with rewards for their shopping habits. It helps in engaging customers with the help of digital strategy. The main aim of Frrogal is to establish customer loyalty and retain them.
It works as a tool and takes care of the business marketing needs. Froogal offers rewards and provides emotional experiences to retail customers and their loyalty.
Conclusion
This was our list of startup companies in Hyderabad. If you know any other startups in Hyderabad, please contact us. We will connect to feature the story in this list of startups in Hyderabad.
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 Next Education.
Technology is the core of the present economic world. Every domain of study ranging from the health to the service sector is evolving with the regularly updated technology. Similarly, educational sectors have gone through a major transformation in recent times due to technology. Once the rigid 2D notions of learning in classrooms equipped with a Blackboard are now replaced with digital 3D projections to enable a better understanding of the concepts among the students.
Next Education is one of the startup companies that pioneered the ed-tech sector way back in 2007, founded by Beas Dev Ralhan and Raveendranath Kamath. It is a K-12-focused technology-based education solution provider. Know about the Company Profile of Next Education, Founders, Funding, Revenue, Competitors, Business Model, Growth, Acquisitions, How it started, etc., in the article ahead.
Let’s go through the Journey of Next Education along with knowing Next Education Founder, Funding, Business Model, Competitors, Revenue & more…
Founded in 2007, Next Education is an optimal education solutions provider, based out of Hyderabad. Touching the lives of 12,000,000+ students and 240,000+ teachers across 12,000+ schools, their solutions serve multiple purposes of both academic and administrative domains.
Ranging from academic solutions such as TeachNext – a digital classroom solution and NextBooks – a complete textbook series to administrative solutions such as NextERP – a cloud-based school management system, Next Education is an end-to-end education solutions provider for the K–12 sector.
Next Education’s products aim to meet all the academic needs of a learner and make quality education affordable and accessible for every child. While doing so, their belief lies in partnerships with their employees, customers, vendors, governing bodies, and other stakeholders to strengthen the ecosystem over an extended period.
Every step Next Education takes ensures to bring quality education within the grasp of every learner so that younger generation mainly become life-ready.
“Entrepreneurship in the education sector was never about money-making. Keeping an organic approach towards academics to make learners future-ready and not just well equipped for competitive exams, was what we aimed for, which later became the core USP of Next Education.”, says Raveendranath Kamath, co-founder of Next Education.
Next Education rightfully understands that education is all about the holistic development of children pertaining to creativity, adaptability, and critical reasoning. It is about instilling the joy of learning and a hunger for knowledge in every young mind. This is the reason their academic solutions are well equipped with visually intriguing content and tools such as claymations, craftmations, and AR cards.
Next Education – Target Market
India’s education sector offers a great opportunity with approximately 29% of India’s population being between the age group of 0-14 years; is estimated at USD 91.7 billion in FY18 and is expected to reach USD 101.1 billion in FY20. India’s higher education segment is is expected to increase to USD 35.03 billion by 2025.
Seamless integration of content for effective learning and instruction, and smart administrative solutions for improved planning and reporting, has made the company one of the finest end-to-end education solutions providers in the country.
Beas Dev Ralhan and Raveendranath Kamath are the founders of Next Education.
Tech aficionados and brothers working towards the same goal of creating a social impact with technology, co-founded Next Education in 2007
Raveendranath Kamath and Beas Dev Ralhan – Founders, Next Education
Beas Dev Ralhan
Beas Dev Ralhan is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Next Education. Ralhan received his formal education from IIT Bombay and London Business School. As the CEO of Next Education, he brings energy, inspiration, and direction to the company’s vision.
Raveendranath Kamath
Raveendranath Kamath, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Next Education plays an integral part in financial planning, product engineering, and supply chain management of the organisation. An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Kamath has over two decades of experience in finance and operations.
Next Education has a team of around 1,000+ qualified and dedicated professionals with diverse skill sets, which have helped it establish itself as a known name amongst the academic stakeholders.
Next Education – Startup Story | How was Next Education Started?
His days at IIT Bombay made Ralhan realise that to make an impact on modern society, one has to build companies supported by the latest technologies and utilize the power of the Internet. Raveendranath Kamath, Ralhan’s friend and colleague at PartyGaming, had the same vision. Both of them desired to employ technology to make a social impact in India.
In 2007, a focused market study helped them realize that the Indian education sector was least impacted by technology. With technology as their ally, they wanted to devise innovative methods to make education accessible and affordable for all. Thus Next Education was born with a vision to transform education to suit the requirements of today’s learners.
“More than a decade ago, we had envisaged a not-too-distant future when quality education would be within the reach of every child. We had always dreamt of the day when quality education would no longer be the privilege of a few and our ardent desire to nurture and fulfill this aspiration keeps us motivated.”, recalled Raveendranath and Beas, founders of Next Education.
Next Education – Startup Launch
In 2009, Next Education launched their first product, LearnNext – a self-learning home-based solution for children. The response received for the product was overwhelming and there was no looking back for the team at Next Education thereafter. Next Education’s ecosystem has been steadily enriched with numerous solutions catering to different stakeholders belonging to the academic sector.
NextCurriculum, NextLabs, TeachNext, and NLP are the four vital parts of the Next Education ecosystem, which enhance the significance of learning by incorporating hands-on learning activities and a learner-centric approach.
Next Education’s flagship product, TeachNext, launched in 2010, has been a milestone in terms of digitization of classrooms nationwide. Recently, they have launched NLP, i.e. Next Learning Platform, which is a cloud-based solution equipped with NextERP, LMS, and adaptive learning, meeting all the requirements of academic and administrative stakeholders. The company also offers a teacher training solution for schools called NextDeeksha.
Next Education – Mission and Vision
Next Education aims to “put into practice the best teaching–learning methodologies that will help shape the lives of the torchbearers of tomorrow,” which the company underlines as its mission.
The vision of Next Education is “to bring quality education within the reach of every learner, so that they are prepared for the challenges in life.”
The company started in 2007 as Helix Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, which was later renamed as Next Education aligning with the spirit of the brand and its products.
Next Education Logo
The name ‘Next Education’ stands for an edTech solutions provider for the next generation, capable of transforming education.
Next Education – Business Model and Revenue Model
Next Education India Pvt Ltd is an end-to-end edTech solutions provider that follows B2B and B2C business models. At Next Education, consistent effort is put to create solutions that meet all the requirements of academic stakeholders pertaining to school set-up, digitalisation of classrooms, implementation of activity-oriented education, administrative guidance and tools etc.
Next Education – Funding and Investors
Next Education raised the initial funding from Anurag Dikshit, co-founder of PartyGaming, who was ranked among the 40 richest Indians, according to ‘Forbes’ Magazine.
Next Education – Startup Challenges
Transforming education is not an easy task. A vast part of our country still follows the conventional methods of teaching and learning, which lays emphasis on teacher centered education. The slow device penetration rate, skepticism about embracing ed-tech products over traditional home tuition and lack of awareness among people regarding integrated education, were initial challenges faced by Next Education.
Hence, introducing innovative products and restoring the faith of people in the transformation formed the central approach towards meeting the challenges, and today, TeachNext is the top-selling digital classroom solution in India with a market share of 65% .
Next Education – Competitors
Next Education directly competes with companies such as BYJU’s, Extramarks, Educomp, Pearson, etc.
“At Next, we believe in healthy competition, as all of us are trying to harness the potential of the present generation of learners for a better tomorrow.”, said Beas, co-founder and CEO of Next Education.
Next Education – Advisors and Mentors
For Beas Dev Ralhan, his father is his best mentor, whose ideas, thoughts and values have inspired Ralhan to begin a startup – Next Education and work tirelessly with hope, motivation, perseverance and patience.
My father has been the most inspirational mentor throughout my life. His entrepreneurial endeavours and never-say-die attitude motivated me to start my venture and shape and nurture Next Education.
He taught me that patience is the key to run a business successfully, which I strongly believe and follow. When you are impatient, you tend to miss critical details and opportunities, which may lead to irrevocable mistakes.
Due to the fast-paced nature of today’s world, we value dynamic actions and quick solutions, but if this attitude morphs into impatience, it will cloud your judgement, ruin relationships and destroy your credibility in the market.
Next Education – Awards
Next Education received following awards and recognition:
Innovation in Teaching Pedagogy award at World Education Summit 2012
Best Multimedia Content for K–12 Education at World Education Summit 2013
Excellent Human Resource Management in Education Industry by National HRD Network
Best Digital K–12 Multimedia Content for Maharashtra State Board in English and Marathi by Wisitex World Education
Best School Books Solution Award at Global Learn Tech Conference and Awards
Best Emerging School ERP award at Digital Edge ICT Conclave on Education
Innovation in Teaching Pedagogy award at World Education Summit 2015
Innovation Excellence Award in Education by ASSOCHAM
Pre-school Pedagogy award at the World Education Summit 2016
“We, Nextians, are learners who embrace achievements with innate happiness and take failures as steps towards learning.” said the founders of Next Education.
Next Education has acquired 2 organizations. Their most recent acquisition was Xolvr on Dec 2, 2016.
Date
Acquired
About
Dec 2, 2016
Xolvr
Xolvr is a convenient & affordable community driven ‘after school study’ platform
Feb 11, 2016
InOpen
InOpen designs and develops educational content and solutions for academic institutions
Next Education – Growth
Next Education presently has an all-India presence and is headquartered in Hyderabad. Apart from Hyderabad, they have offices in Pune, Noida, Kochi, and Chennai. After establishing in the Indian education spectrum, Next Education is off to make its mark at the global level. Since 2016, they have been expanding their business in the Middle East. In early 2019, Next Education has opened a branch in Dubai.
Currently, Next Education is the largest player in the highly concentrated Indian Private K-12 digital classroom sector. The company has reached out to 60,000+ classrooms since the year of inception and has a turnover of 276 crores in FY 19.
“Our main motive is to create solutions for schools that positively impact the education system and help the next generation have a better tomorrow.”, said Raveendranath and Beas.
One of the oldest and the most successful education solutions provider, Next Education has launched Kindernext on October 16, 2019, on the completion of the twelfth year of its operations. This new initiative is launched with an aim to stand as a smart preschool and activity center for 21st-century learners, which will extend fun and interactive space to the young students, thereby advancing their development and honing their desire to be lifelong learners.
Here’s a glimpse at the highlights of the popular features of KinderNext by Next Education:
It is a smart preschool and activity center that is tailor-made with vibrant textbooks, an award-winning digital classroom, detailed mentor manuals, and smart resource kits.
It follows a research-based integrated approach towards learning, laying equal emphasis on developing the five key areas: linguistic, cognitive, physical, social, and emotional.
The curriculum of KinderNext is centred on NCF guidelines for early childhood education.
KinderNext is designed to provide young learners with the right care and attention to foster curiosity and confidence in them. Its distinct features like multimodal learning, explore-and-play technique, and age-appropriate learning approach can help students gain a rich learning experience and ensure continuous progress towards their desired goals.
Speaking on the launch of KinderNext, Next Education Co-founder and CEO, Beas Dev Ralhan said thatKinderNext, with impactful technology, best faculty, and new-age curriculum coming together, is favorable for all its stakeholders – the young students, parents, and schools.
Next Education – Future Plans
Next Education has achieved quite a growth since it started in 2007. The startup believes continuous innovation and becoming a one-stop solution are the way forward.
Next Education – FAQs
What is Next Education?
Next Education is an edtech startup launched in 2007 by Beas Ralhan, Raveendranath Kamath in Noida, UP, which believes in embracing technology to revolutionise the education system of India. All of the products and services that Next Education offers are learner-centric and classroom-friendly.
Who is the founder of Next learning platform?
Beas Ralhan and Raveendranath Kamath are the founders of Next learning or what we commonly refer to as Next Education.
How is Next Education transforming education?
Next Education is fueled by the latest technological advancements, expert teachers, and over 10,000 impactful learning modules, which greatly help the company to transform education.
A nascent stage startup is no different from a toddler—it needs to be nurtured with utmost care and conditioned for tackling the challenges that lie ahead. To provide this grooming, several cities in India are preparing themselves for incubating and bolstering entrepreneurial ventures.
The global buzz surrounding the startup mentality has made it more important than ever to create a breeding ground for innovation and creativity, and it’s great to see that India is also taking this seriously. This has given rise to a number of startup hubs across the country, with the quantity increasing continuously.
There has been a paradigm shift when it comes to the importance of 9 to 5 day jobs. Although many Indians still prefer such jobs over conceiving new ventures, some studies report that the number of startups in India has grown over 7 times in the recent decade. Are Indian’s ditching the traditional conception of employment? Quite likely a yes.
According to the reports, the number of Indian startups in 2008 lingered at around 7000. A 2018 study estimated approximately 50,000 startups in existence across India. The startup culture in India has seen tremendous growth. According to a 2021 Global Startup Ecosystem Index by Startup Blink, three cities in India, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai ranked among the top 20 cities globally.
If one was to single out a specific brand or entity that paved way for entrepreneurship in India, it would be Zoho. Then known as AdventNet.inc, Zoho offers productive tools (Document processing, etc.). It began in 1996 and amplified the “startup” trend in India.
Here is a list of some of the best cities for startups in India that are providing startups and initiatives to the pedestal to grow and make name for themselves. With the penetration of more international tech giants, most of these cities are changing into the IT hubs of India.
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Bengaluru, once known as the startup capital of India before it was dethroned by Delhi which added 5000 startups against 4,514 in Bengaluru from 2019 to 2021.
Bengaluru has been the womb to big shots like Ola and Flipkart. The city houses various technical and analytical firms, an enticement for budding and established entrepreneurs.
Rightly christened as the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore is the perfect amalgamation of the corporate lifestyle and vibrant social life. Home to the country’s top technical and managerial institutions (IIM, Bangalore and IISC) and a strong industry connection, there’s no shortage of opportunities in this city. It is known as the best city for startups in India.
Even freelancers across the country have an inclination towards working out of Bangalore; such is the lure of the city. Other countries are becoming cognizant of the strategic significance of this south Indian city—large organizations are adamant about having at least one of their offices in Bangalore. This creates an extensive network highly beneficial to ventures and initiatives seeking support and guidance.
On the other hand, startups based out of Bangalore are expanding their operations and services beyond India. With the city in dire need of renovation and re-modelling (lack of space and water issues being some reasons for worry), the inevitable transformation of Bengaluru will open up new avenues for entrepreneurs. The city is also among the top IT startups in India.
Delhi
Delhi City
Delhi, the startup capital of India is the center of India that commands the respect of its own, Delhi is the seat of political power and this lends a greater hand to the startup ecosystem flourishing there. Having a stronghold in telecommunication and media, Delhi has been a destination for various entrepreneurship-related meetups and conferences, with the Government of India promoting and publicizing a majority of these events.
The close vicinity to Delhi has enabled both Noida and Gurugram to establish themselves as startup hubs. A trade and commerce place historically, Delhi has seen the rise of tech startups such as Hike and Paytm, food tech startups like Zomato, and Shopclues belonging to the e-commerce segment.
With booming infrastructure and ease of business, Delhi is counted among the top cities for startups in India where foreign behemoths like Samsung are exploiting Noida and Gurugram to the fallest; Samsung recently opened the “world’s largest mobile factory” in Noida. These regions entail a huge potential for growth along with a thriving network of investors and entrepreneurs. The presence of centres of excellence like IIT, DU and IIFT (to name a few) means there’s no shortage of expertise.
Hyderabad
Hyderabad City
Traditionally known as the city of pearls, this city in Southern India is witnessing a rise in foreign investments and the number of successful startups blossoming on its land. Hyderabad can be called the second IT hub of India after Bangalore.
With many international giants like Microsoft, Google, and Uber setting up their offices in Hyderabad, the city is slowly yet steadily catching up with Bengaluru as a startup hub. Top institutes like ISB, IIIT, and BITS being located in Hyderabad is icing on the cake—alumni from these places are directly incubating their ventures in Hyderabad.
The support from the State Government has encouraged entrepreneurs to make the best out of unrealized opportunities Hyderabad has on offer. The State Government is vesting time and money in organizing and setting up conferences, hackathons, state initiatives, and development centres—everything geared towards making Hyderabad synonymous with entrepreneurship. It is even slackening on policies and procedures to showcase the city as a favourable incubator!
Mumbai
Mumbai City
The city of dreams, also the home to some of the world’s wealthiest businessmen, has only recently been dethroned by Bangalore when it comes to India’s favourite startup destination. Mumbai is still the first choice for anyone who is into non-technical startups as it is India’s financial capital.
One of India’s most recognized institutions, IIT Bombay has been instrumental in cultivating the startup ecosystem across the nation, being the birthplace of many wildly successful startups. Moreover, alumni from this esteemed college have gone on to make name for themselves across countries through their initiatives. It’s a proud feeling to say that many globally recognized brands are the outcomes of the toil put in by IIT Bombay grads and post-grads. It is among the best cities for startups in India.
BookMyShow, JustDial, and Cleartrip are only scratch the surface of the plethora of startups to have emanated from this sea-facing city. With conglomerates like L&T and Tata group setting up their offices in Mumbai, the financial hub has seen a steep growth in the economy, employment, and business. But the rising cost of living and real estate in Mumbai has caused a few unicorn enterprises such as Ola to shift base. In spite of such issues, Mumbai will continue to dominate the entrepreneurship segment, come hell or high water.
Emerging Startup Cities in India
With big cities gradually losing their shine and attraction, many emerging startups are focusing on tier 2 cities for growth and sustenance. Some cities have seen a surge in entrepreneurial activities and have made it big in the last 3-4 years. Some of the emerging startup cities in India are:
Ahmedabad
Gurugram
Pune
Chennai
Kolkata
Nagpur
Chandigarh
Indore
Goa
Bhubaneswar
Lucknow
Surat
The Government setting up a tech park called GIFT City in Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, Pune becoming a smart city, and Chennai emerging as a host to entrepreneurial discussions and events—smaller cities are gaining traction. Cheap land rates, low cost of living, remarkable talent yet to be utilized, and lucrative government policies have made these cities the future of the Indian startup ecosystem.
FAQ
Which city has the most startups in India?
Delhi has dethroned Bengaluru and now ranks in the first position for the most number of startups in India.
Which city is known as the startup capital of india?
Delhi is known as the startup capital of India.
Which is the best city for startups in India?
Some best cities for startups in India are Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Noida, and Pune.
What is the best city to start a business in India?
Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru are some of the best cities to start a business in India.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Practically.
The lockdown induced by the Covid-19 pandemic has produced a paradigm shift in learners’ behavior leading to an exponential increase in the demand for EdTech products in India. The global education market is worth $6 Trillion out of which $10 Bn is the size of what the Indian education market will be by 2025. There are 100 Million learners in Practically’s target segment India, which is largely the private school student population.
Practically is an intelligent, interactive and immersive learning app for students of classes 6-12 with a focus on STEM learning. Being the only such product in the world, Practically combines gamification techniques, immersive learning assets, test-prep and AI-assisted study buddy in one compact cross-platform app. 3,30,000+ students have already benefited from the engaging content on Practically platform, which has the largest content library of world-class 3000+ 3D videos, 1000+ AR experiences & simulations, all created in-house.
StartupTalky interviewed Charu Noheria (Co-founder and COO of Practically) to get an insight on Practically’s Startup Story. In this post you will find all about Practically’s business model, revenue model how it started, its growth prospects, funding and more.
Practically is an intelligent, interactive, and immersive learning app for students of classes 6-12 with a focus on STEM learning. It is the only experiential learning app that brings learning alive through immersive videos, interactive augmented reality and 3D simulations.
It offers an edge over other learning apps by enhancing conceptual understanding and improving retention of concepts with features like –
Life-like video content
Hands-on learning,
experiential learning,
24×7 seek help with access to subject experts for doubt resolution,
Live classes
Coding++ and Proton – a very sophisticated virtual AI assistant that can answer most doubts learners may have.
3,30,000+ students have already benefited from the engaging content on Practically platform, which has the largest content library of world-class 3000+ 3D videos, 1000+ AR experiences & simulations, all created in-house.
Practically AI Buddy – PROTON
Practically offers a unique solution for schools. The new-age classroom experience for teachers and students, through the Practically School Solution, focuses on futuristic content, gamification, and distraction-free classes. The platform is currently free for all teachers and schools. Practically has come up with a unique tool, which gives teachers the AI-based insights and real-time data analytics of student attentiveness in the virtual classroom, and helps them to come up with alternative teaching solutions such as a pop-quiz or playing a subject related, simulation videos, thereby making learning fun, interactive and distraction-free. Apart from this, teachers have complete access to world-class video and simulations that uses real-life applications, 200K questions, various learning models that enables flipped or blended learning models, easily shareable reference material, test-prep with five-level question bank, detailed reporting and analytics, and most importantly, they can teach students anywhere and anytime on any devices.
Over 200 schools and 18,000 teachers across India are already using Practically to enable online classes during the pandemic. Practically is constantly innovating ways to improve the rate of retention for students to more than 90% by using new-age learning methodology and experiential content.
Practically is a young, insurgent brand from a team of energetic people who passionately believe in reshaping the way the world learns. It believes that there is a hidden explorer embedded within us, which is often stifled by the rigid notions of conventional education. Practically aims to nurture that explorer within every learner and unleash their true potential for limitless learning. Practically uses cutting-edge technologies to render experiential learning to the students. Its primary objective is to improve the rate of retention for students to more than 90% by using a new-age learning methodology and experiential content.
Practically’s aim is to be the ‘Most trusted and preferred’ EdTech brand globally. It will be looking at expanding pan India, one more international market followed by other markets with a collective reach of 20M users by 2025.
Although the near-term plan is to expand into other English-speaking countries globally, It is also exploring with partners in countries where there is a need for content in other languages as Practically’s immersive animated video content can be easily localized.
In the next couple of years, Practically expects to hire thousands of employees across its teams. By 2023, the company would have comfortably surpassed a unicorn status and will be well on its path to becoming a decacorn.
Practically’s product lineup will also see a number of additions to keep up with its growth plans. Starting with the K-5 segment this year, it plans to enter segments such as engineering and medical labs, patient education in healthcare, etc. which is in line with the company’s growth strategy.
Practically – Indian Edtech Market Details
The global education market is worth $6 Trillion out of which $10 Bn is the size of what the Indian education market will be by 2025 (Source: Inc42). There are 100 Million learners in Practically’s target segment India, which is largely the private school student population.
Growth of Indian Edtech Ecosystem in 5 years
The Indian EdTech ecosystem has raised nearly $2.2 billion in 2020 alone, whereas it attracted only $4 billion over the last five years. Over the last three years, this segment has received total funding of $31 million.
“Clearly there is interest from investors in the promise of EdTech companies and for good reason a joint report by Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA), and PGA Labs, the market intelligence business of Praxis Global Alliance (PGA), revealed,” says Charu Noheria (Co-founder & COO, Practically)
The education sector in India is expected to be a $117 billion market with currently around 360 million learners, out of which around $49 billion is spent on school education. Traditionally, this sector has seen low investor interest however thanks to COVID, several startups have mushroomed and may have been funded as well. This is a watershed moment for EdTech as the next decade is the decade for e-learning companies.
The lockdown induced by the Covid-19 pandemic has produced a paradigm shift in learners’ behavior leading to an exponential increase in the demand for EdTech products in India. As consumers are more aware of the offerings and accessibility, the urge to learn beyond the syllabus will help in bringing in innovations in learning. With the implementation of the New Education Policy, online learning in higher education will experience accelerated adoption as people focus more on upskilling and reskilling.
The EdTech sector is witnessing unprecedented growth owing to the increasing adoption of technology during the pandemic. The team at Practically believe that technology adoption in the education sector is yet to see its peak and the growth trajectory is likely to continue beyond the pandemic years. The lockdown induced by the pandemic has brought an ever-increasing demand for EdTech products in India. Consumers are becoming more aware of the offerings and accessibility thus leading to new innovations in learning. With steep competition, players need to modify their offerings to engage consumers constantly.
The sector poses some challenges in terms of infrastructure such as access to devices like laptops, smartphones, availability of internet access for the learners in rural areas. Also, the lack of exposure to high-end technologies is creating disparity amongst the students. Usage of shared devices between children and parents is also making the engagement process challenging.
“We along with Government need to devise a strategy addressing these concerns as mentioned above, on an immediate basis ensuring seamless access to education across geographies” Charu Noheria (Co-founder and COO, Practically) added.
Subba has more than 20+ years of industry experience in technology, operations, and management. He was the CTO of Lumeris prior to starting Practically. A product guy at heart, he is a visionary with tremendous zeal and passion for problem-solving using technology.
Charu Noheria – Co-founder & COO, Practically
Charu Noheria is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Practically. In 2018, she co-founded Practically, an experiential learning app for STEM, and has been working to revolutionize the education landscape for the last seven years. Charu has a bachelor’s degree in engineering (Computer Science) from R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, and an MBA from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. She has over 12 years of corporate experience in operations, technology, strategy, and managing global teams. Noheria began her career as a software engineer at Samsung where she developed mobile applications. Later, she joined Lumeris Inc. – one of the largest value-based healthcare IT firms in the United States, as a Strategic Leadership Development Associate and quickly moved up the ranks to become Director-Technology Partnerships.
Ilango is a hardcore techie and was VP, Enterprise Architecture at Lumeris prior to starting Practically. He loves to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty with code. He has worked with some big names in the industry such as eBay, Quikr, etc. Ilango leads product development and technology at Practically.
Currently, 300+ employees are associated with Practically. While its focus so far has been on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states in India, Practically is working aggressively on expanding pan-India in 2021 and adding over 2000 employees by December 2021.
Practically History – How it Started?
Reminiscing the inspiration to start Practically, Charu Noheria says – “Being part of the competitive rat race for IITs in India back in the day, all I remembered from that experience was stress in learning. I dropped a year, switched five engineering streams, and changed 3 colleges during the 18 months I struggled to get my footing right. Unconsciously this left a lasting mark on me and I was always attracted towards unconventional ways of learning which are away from rote learning. This inspired me to develop a model which will make education easy as well as a fun activity”
Practically’s Journey of Ideation, Designing & Prototyping
Practically is an outcome of deep-rooted insights based on several man-years of study around children’s learning & retention modes leading to the innovative use of new-age tech tools such as AR to provide an immersive learning experience for children.
With the first beta version of the Practically app that was launched in January 2020, it did a pilot study with two groups. Group I was given only reading material and group II was given access to immersive videos and simulations on the app. After two weeks, the team gave both groups a series of questions for testing the retention of concepts studied as part of this study. The results demonstrated that Group II was able to recollect 50% more concepts than Group I, and Group II students on average spent three times less time learning than Group I students. This further encouraged the team’s efforts at Practically in making learning more experiential and sticky. Since then, Practically has added many more features to the app considering the impact it can make on the journey of a learner.
The beta app was rolled out in Jan 2020 and it received an overwhelming response with more than 13k downloads of the app across two major educational institutions in AP/TS which encouraged the team and validated its initial product.
Charu Noheria (Co-founder & COO, Practically) added – “The three of us- Subba, Ilango and myself were colleagues at Lumeris Inc., in the USA and in the hallways of our workplace is where those very first conversations of Practically began. When my co-founders and I were bouncing off ideas to pursue, it became apparent that we all shared the excitement for tech-based, non-traditional methods of teaching and learning. We all wanted to make some of those very dry subjects more interesting, engaging and fun for learners around the world”
STEM learning for school students has become rote and educators have no means to increase students’ engagement and interaction with concepts to boost the rate of retention. Students have access to mostly passive and rote learning sources and methods when learning foundational concepts leading to a less than a 30% rate of retention. This disengagement leads to a lack of interest in key subjects.
It also aims to make everything that a learner needs available on a single app helping the parent pay for a single product containing content, simulations/AR, test prep, analytics/feedback, gamification, doubt resolution, live classes, coding, summer programs.
Practically is an Immersive & Experiential ONE STOP SOLUTION for students, parents, teachers, and schools. Practically is the only such product in the world that combines gamification techniques, immersive learning assets, test-prep, and AI-assisted study buddy in one compact cross-platform app. Through its patent-pending technology, thousands of exhilarating, life-like simulations, and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences are combined with learning pathways to bring learning alive and increase the rate of retention of concepts. Practically also offers live classes, Coding++, and a 24×7 Seek Help feature for doubt resolution, where students can reach out to subject experts on the platform.
Bringing back joy into learning and using tech to create life-like experiences, Practically uses AI to empower teachers. Practically helps teachers with intelligent insights into their student population, helps them auto-generate question papers, correct answers, giving them 2 hours of operational time back and impacting their experience in teaching overall, making classes engaging and effective.
Practically Platform
Practically is built on Edgar Dale’s ‘Cone of Learning’; we retain 10% of what we read, 50% of what we see and hear, and increasingly more to 90% when we learn by doing. The more dramatic the experience, the more lasting the recall, and most concepts that are dry can be taught with experiential learning.
Practically’s vision is to reshape the way the world learns. It aims to bring modern methods to the everyday teaching process and empower teachers to use the power of visualization and experiential content to transform dry subject areas into jaw-dropping experiences. Its objective is to enable classrooms with a ‘learning by doing’ approach and increase the rate of retention of students to more than 90% for key subjects like math and science and to make learning more fun and engaging.
The team wanted to name the product in line with its vision. As the founders believe in a practical approach towards learning, they liked Practically for the name of the product. Simple yet powerful as the need of the hour is to revolutionize education with immersive and experiential content and encourage practical learning.
Brand Logo
The team chose the colors yellow and red as it signifies passion, warmth, and learning all of which are deep-seated in Practically’s DNA. “We are a passionate group of people who are dedicated to the cause of reshaping the way the world learns!” says Charu Noheria.
Practically Logo
Brand Proposition
Charu Noheria adds – “Learning Alive was a core message that we had arrived basis a brand workshop which also tied into our core feature of immersive and experiential learning that brings learning to life. We made it purposeful and more action-oriented and arrived at our brand proposition – Bring Learning Alive”
Practically primarily has two channels for customer acquisition
Business to Customer (B2C): Any learner can download the app and register on it. A learner may get to know about the product via a marketing campaign, TV or print ad, customer reference, actively searching for learning apps, etc.
B2B2C through school acquisition: Practically School Solution is FREE for all schools and teachers. Teacher app is used by thousands of teachers to make their classes engaging and interactive. Every teacher in turn onboards learners to the student app for free.
These free customers, both from B2C and B2B2C, then act as a top of the funnel for downstream monetization efforts through its on-ground and virtual sales agents who directly engage parents and students for paid subscriptions on the app. Practically’s demo to paid conversion rate is more than 30% which is substantially higher than any other product out there. Paid subscriptions can be monthly, annually, or multi-year with an ARPU of > $400.
Practically’s Launch and Initial User Acquisition
Practically launched its beta app in Jan 2020 across two large clients in AP/TS for testing the waters. It received a phenomenal response with over 13k students downloading the app over a 30 day period. This cohort became its first user base and learnings from this pilot were instrumental to get to a commercial launch in April 2020.
Practically’s B2B2C strategy of going through schools by providing them FREE Practically School Solution worked great for the initial mass acquisition of users. It had schools from various nooks and corners of India using the platform and onboarding thousands of students for free onto the product.
Practically’s Key Strategies and Marketing Campaign
The product uniqueness is its biggest selling point with users. An experiential product with this quality and grade has never been seen by an Indian consumer. Practically makes sure to be a part of the learning journey of a child and have multiple touchpoints with the student and the parent. It offers doubt resolution services, mentorship programs, and summer workshops which further fuel retention. Practically recently started spending on marketing and growth hacking efforts. It will be more aggressive towards the marketing efforts in 2021.
Practically’s Most Successful Marketing Campaign
Practically’s first-ever brand campaign around the theme – ‘Bring Learning Alive’ in December 2020 helped garner 3x growth and the app has successfully crossed 330,000 downloads to date. The TVCs have garnered over 32 million+ views combined on YouTube and seen above average and consistent view rates, even after two months of launch, indicating relevance and popularity of the campaign amongst the target audience. This has been one of the highest by an EdTech company in India, without celebrity endorsement, so far.
The campaign was released across all mediums – print and television targeting Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and, social and digital media with a pan-India focus. The digital campaign ran in the top 40 cities across the country with a greater emphasis on Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai. Predominantly, the metros and Tier-1 cities attracted larger traction. The campaign saw healthy participation among parents in the age group of 35 to 55 years and students in the age group of 11 to 17. Interest was also evinced among people of the age group of 18 to 24 years who visited the website for programs related to Coding++, Test Preparation, etc. Practically also featured amongst the top brands in pure search volumes among the EdTech players in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana during the campaign, clearly emerging as a strong challenger brand for the incumbents and indicating resonance with the target audience.
Challenges are a big part of the start-up journey and almost always the team at Practically were able to keep their heads above water. They embrace challenges with open arms and if not for them, the journey would be far less fulfilling.
COVID: The lockdown was a blessing in disguise for EdTech giving it the right push for education to go online. Due to the current situation, the focus is on following a medium that allows for safe, continued, and effective teaching. This meant the team needed to be agile and quickly start offering what was the need of the hour: an experiential and immersive learning experience to K-12 schools like in a physical classroom environment using augmented reality (AR), 3D videos, and simulations. Practically launched in India amidst the lockdown in April 2020.
Model: The challenges began when Practically wanted to grow the product to become a one-stop solution rather than a point application so that learners won’t have to pay for multiple apps and they get everything they need on Practically.
Capital:Practically required substantial capital upfront to build unique life-like immersive and experiential content. It put in all profits from the existing product sale into this and also went in for its Series-A fundraise which helped the team achieve that. The team faced numerous challenges when it started scaling the business to all parts of the twin states of AP/TS as this needed a larger team and growth capital. Practically was lucky that it was able to raise pre-Series B round just in time to help it scale and grow in this region and further set it up for a pan-India launch this year. In addition, it has been able to build a great team passionate about its singular vision of shaping the way the world learns.
New/Late entrant: Practically has been widely accepted with 330,000 downloads in a short span of time despite the brand being a relatively new entrant in this category launched in April 2020 amid the lockdown. While competition with deep pockets has been around for a decade, It kickstarted its first-ever brand campaign around the theme – ‘Bring Learning Alive’ which includes TV, Digital, Print, and Social Media Marketing with a regional focus on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana markets in December 2020 and the TVCs received a stupendous response with close to 32 million views combined on YouTube since its launch.
Just like most technology companies, Practically uses tools to enhance productivity and products that give it operational excellence. It also recently launched its Sales CRM which is a fully customized solution for Practically’s rapidly growing sales team.
Practically was recently been awarded the title of ‘Most Innovative Stem Solution’ at World Education Summit – School Education 2021 organized by Elets Digital Learning.
The efforts of the team also received accolades at Startup Awards 2021, where Practically was bestowed with ‘Best EdTech Startup of the Year’ by Franchise India and Entrepreneur India magazine.
Global School Leaders’ Consortium -INSPIRE Education Awards 2020- The Best Learning App of the Year
Practically’s Co-founder & COO Charu Noheria has been chosen to be a part of Entrepreneur India’s 35 under 35 class of 2021. She was featured in the coveted ORF-GP report on Women in Technology, 2020
Practically – Growth and Future Plans
Currently, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are Practically’s key markets. It just entered the South and West regions with a small team. It is working on expanding pan-India in 2021 and adding over 2000 employees by December 2021. 2021 will also see Practically entering the K-5 segment while currently, it does grades 6-12.
“We believe that technology adoption in the education sector is yet to see its peak and what started as a mad rush to adopt technology during the pandemic is likely to continue and sustain well beyond the pandemic years making products such as Practically a household name among students and teachers alike” saysCharu Noheria, Co-founder & COO, Practically
With the latest round of funding, the team expects to take Practically to the rest of the country by the end of 2021. As mentioned earlier, outside India, the Middle East is its focus market as it received very positive responses to its product. Practically will be partnering with many more schools there in 2021. It is also looking to move to another international market by the end of the year.
The Practically School Solution is absolutely free of cost to schools. The experiential solution has been a mega-hit with teachers. In addition to the above, Practically’s immersive animated video content can be easily localized into any language. Although the near-term plan is to expand into other English-speaking countries globally, the team is also exploring with partners in countries where there is a need for content in another language.
Practically – FAQs
Who are the founders of Practically?
Subbarao Siddabattula (CEO), Ilangovel Thulasimani (CTO), and Charu Noheria (COO) are the founders of Practically.
How much funding has Practically raised?
Practically has raised total funding of $14 Million to date in Series A and Pre-Series B and Series B rounds.
What is Practically’s marketing campaign?
Practically’s first-ever brand campaign was around the theme – ‘Bring Learning Alive’
How does Practically make money?
Via Paid Subscriptions. Practically’s demo to paid conversion rate is more than 30%. Paid subscriptions can be monthly, annually, or multi-year with ARPU of > $400.
What is the USP of Practically?
Practically is an Immersive & Experiential ONE STOP SOLUTION for students, parents, teachers, and schools. Practically is the only such product in the world that combines gamification techniques, immersive learning assets, test-prep, and AI-assisted study buddy in one compact cross-platform app.
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 GrabOn.
The number of online shoppers in India is on a rise. As per a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, there were 90 million online shoppers in India in 2017, and the numbers are increasing. The convenience of shopping from the comfort of one’s home, availability of a wide range of choices, and incurring lesser cost when compared to offline shopping are some of the major reasons why many prefer to shop online. Besides, the emergence of affiliate marketing companies offering attractive coupons and discounts on online shopping has made online shopping even more preferable. GrabOn is a startup that is helping more and more Indians fall in love with online shopping with all the irresistible offers and deals that it brings for various sites and brands.
GrabOn is helping Indians save big on online shopping. GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more. They have now ventured into the e-Gift Cards space, providing discounted Gift Cards from top merchants like Amazon, Myntra, BookMyShow, Shoppers Stop, MakeMyTrip, PVR and more.
The end product delivery model is via digital dissemination of information, for e.g., providing information onscreen upon clicking, to access the same on website and mobile web, through emails, & SMS; and via physical dissemination of the same in a few use cases, e.g., paper coupons and gift cards directly to consumers.
GrabOn’s user-focused interface and non-intrusive coupon browsing experience combined with innovative and rich tech stack are designed based on customer feedback and consumer insights that they gather carefully.
Every time a shopper purchases a product/service online, orders food, or hails a cab, they look for savings. With GrabOn’s coupons, people can access deals with ease and security. Besides, with GrabOn’s Gift Cards platform, users are enabled to save on online gifting by availing various ongoing offers and exclusive deals. GrabOn offers its users the best and the latest coupon/promo codes, deals, offers, and gift cards. These coupons are genuine and are validated frequently by their team of in-house experts. GrabOn has been able to provide consistent, authentic services even on Gift Cards, owing to their position as industry leaders and due to its strategic alliances & relations with top clients. These coupons/deals can be redeemed, and Gift Cards can be purchased by visiting the website or directly through the mobile app.
Ashok Reddy is responsible for organizing, coordinating, and overseeing the company strategy in terms of business decisions, partnerships, and more. He is an alumnus (M.B.A., PGPMAX) of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and pursued executive MBA from Harvard Business School. Before founding GrabOn, he served as the president & co-founder of Sellers Commerce and Landmark IT Solutions. He served as the Chief Technology Officer position at SmartTouch Interactive and as the Vice President, Information Technology at IncentOne. Prior to that, he worked as a project manager at Infosys Technologies Ltd.
GrabOn Team
GrabOn’s current employee strength is 50. GrabOn boasts of a cool office space designed to bring out the best in its employees.
The team at GrabOn believes that a person can give his or her best when they are in a relaxed state of mind. And their cool office space bears testimony to this fact. Their workspace is the very definition of ”style means substance”. Elegant yet practical, GrabOn’s floor is divided into various zones which serve different purposes. There is an ‘Ideal Zone” where one can relax and engage in conversation with one’s own mind to produce exemplary and creative ideas – says Ashok
As the leader, Ashok believes in investing time in building and nurturing the company culture by engaging with the employees and helping them grow professionally while contributing to the overall growth of the organization.
GrabOn’s hiring structure is designed in a way that it selects not only the best talent but the right fit of candidates who share and believe in the company’s vision of helping India save on everything.
Grabon Coupons
GrabOn – How was it started?
While Ashok reddy was in the US working at the managerial position across several MNCs and Fortune 500 companies, he came across the multi-billion-dollar coupons industry. Such an encounter fascinated him and simultaneously realized the potential of the same industry in India. He, therefore, returned with the motive of setting up a coupons & deals company that will make online shopping affordable and comfortable. While most of the existing coupon websites would roll with a cookie-cutter version of a website, GrabOn dared to go with a platform that emphasized more on user experience and less on coupon listing. Within months of launch, the company registered huge footfall with visitors actively using GrabOn to redeem coupons and activate deals.
I have been blessed with a team of hardworking and passionate individuals who gathered actionable insights and data points based on months of extensive market evaluation, competitive research, and assessment of risks and growth possibilities – Ashok says speaking of GrabOn’s product validation stage
Once they gathered all the required information, the GrabOn team started working on designing the service, perfecting their business model, and simultaneously prepared their pitch deck and started networking with the right individuals and organizations. They started small and bootstrapped their way to the top of the industry.
The initial people who were a part of the discussion process during the early days of GrabOn were merchants mostly from the SME background, who supported a user-focused approach adopted by GrabOn.
The company’s growth has been possible because of our user-first approach, whether it is our offerings or the technology that we implement. The people with whom we initially discussed about GrabOn realized the potential of what we had and kept on pushing us till we had a huge traffic footfall and returning visitors, which in turn helped us become the #1 player in the industry
After a lot of deliberation, the GrabOn team finally zeroed in on GrabOn- signifying grabbing onto the right deal/coupon. The brand caters not only to the coupon users but also deal-seekers. However, unlike many of its competitors, the brand name does not include the word ‘coupon’.
GrabOn Logo
GrabOn’s tagline ‘Save on Everything’, is representative of the things the company wants to do i.e., help users save on anything and everything by availing the best deals, offers, and discounts.
GrabOn’s USP is its customer-centric approach, which translates into offering only up-to-date and verified coupons & deals helping its customers make a decisive choice. This, along with their completely ad-free, non-intrusive UI/UX and strategic alliances with top players from different verticals, is what makes it India’s most trusted savings destination.
GrabOn – Target Market
The industry that GrabOn operates in broadly includes coupons and deals, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and online shopping. Their primary target market is basically the e-commerce segment in India, with a market cap of about USD 40 billion with a 30% Year-Over-Year growth. While the e-commerce market continues to grow, the competition between major brands will increase as they fight over gaining consumer share. With internet penetration happening across tier-3 and tier-4 cities, new consumer sectors will open up, providing an opportunity to smaller, niche brands to grow their local audience further through e-commerce. Affiliate Marketing has been one of the sectors providing the highest ROI to the e-commerce sector. In future, the collaboration between e-commerce companies and the affiliate marketing industry is only to grow further.
GrabOn – Business Model and Revenue Model
GrabOn operates on the B2C model. Their Business and Revenue model are based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
It generally works on Strategic business model by listing all the Top online brands/business in its platform. With a network of over 2000 Clients, some of the top clients of the company are:
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The Grabon revenue is speculated to be around 4 million, $4.88 million to be precise, as recorded on December 31, 2019. GrabOn’s market share in India’s deal and coupons industry is 70-80%. The brand boasts of having 40 million subscribers, as of April 2020 and receives around 25 million page views.
Revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
GrabOn – User Acquisition
GrabOn launched its services with an awareness that there is an existing gap in the industry concerning the coupon service provider. Hence, through individual referrals about the authentic deals available on GrabOn, its customers had naturally increased. The excellent user interface and state of the art coupon browsing experience have further promoted customer satisfaction and customer base expansion.
Post-launch GrabOn rolled out the Buzz Notification feature, which alerts users with the latest coupons, hottest offers, ongoing sale events, and limited-time exclusive deals. They were the first in the country to partner with Uber’s hot air balloon initiative during Diwali 2015. GrabOn’s partnership with ACT Fibernet has allowed them to expand their services across India by leveraging ACT Fibernet’s country-wide network. Their subsequent tie-ups with Paytm and Mobikwik have also proved fruitful.
Grabon coupons user
GrabOn – Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges faced was providing a seamless coupon browsing experience to the user.
While most of the existing companies ran their website on a cookie-cutter script, we started designing our website from scratch with a customer-first mindset. Our non-intrusive design and lack of irritating pop-ups were rewarded by the customers.
GrabOn team strives to keep the platform updated, keeping in tune with user requirements. GrabOn launched the industry-first Buzz Notification feature, which was one of the experiments that worked out really well in company’s favor. After that, they kept on experimenting, and the latest one is in-app Coupon and Cab Finder, which helps the user find coupons for food, entertainment, recharge, and cab-hailing directly from our GrabOn app without switching between apps.
GrabOn – Awards and Achievements
Recognized as a trailblazing startup within months of launch, by CNBC, YourStory, Business Standard, Inc42 and more.
GrabOn’s efforts were recognized by IBM during the Startup Star award in 2016.
GrabOn’s website won the ‘Best Design’ award at the HYSEA Annual Awards 2016.
Winner of Future Group’s Retail Startup Awards, 2017
Winner of the Entrepreneur of the year (IT, Internet & Telecommunication) Industry Award from Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards in 2018.
Ranked 266th among 1000 High-Growth Companies in the Asia Pacific region, 2018 in a survey conducted by the Financial Times in association with Statista.
Winner of Tech Companies to watch out for at BW Business world #TechTors, 2018.
Winner of the High Growth Startup Award, at TiE-ISB Connect 2017.
Some of GrabOn’s biggest achievements so far include –
It introduced industry’s first Buzz Notification feature which alerted the users about the latest coupons, hottest deals, ongoing sales, etc.
GrabOn Savings App launched with innovative features such as Coupon and Cab Finder
Collaborations with successful movies viz. Bareilly Ki Barfi, Half Girlfriend, Naam Shabana, and more.
Onboarded top players across several verticals like Truecaller, PhonePe, PayPal, NPCI, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank, SpiceJet, TruJet.
Launched GrabOn Gift Cards and sold over a million e-Gift Cards since the operation started.
GarbOn has helped over 3000+ brands in the past 6 years. It has become the #1 player in the coupons and deals industry and retained the position organically. Their strength lies in understanding the user behavior and presenting the most refined shopping deals, right when they need it. Every aspect of its business is centered around the audience. The trust of its merchant partners follows automatically as they have been able to provide them with the highest ROI year on year. Its Loyalty Engagement Partners are Vodafone, ACT Fibernet, Spiceject, Idea, Jio, Saavn, trujet, ICICI bank, IndusInd Bank, DBS, Apollo, Truecaller, MI and others. GrabOn also boasts of a robust client base, with clients like, Paytm, Amazon, Uber, Mobikwik, Foodpanda, OYO, Ola, GoDaddy, BigBasket, Flipkart, Dominos, PhonePe.
The company currently has plans to introduce a 1-2 year subscription-based loyalty program. GrabOn’s vision is to grow from coupons and deals market leaders to one of the top 10 digital transactions companies in India by 2020. With over 25 million page views per month and more than 40 million subscribers, GrabOn is right up there with the e-Commerce giants. The foray into Gift Cards space has already started to bring in some significant traction with more than million e-Gift Cards already sold and counting.
GrabOn – FAQs
What is GrabOn?
GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more
How much is the Revenue of GrabOn?
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The company’s revenue is around $4.8 million (FY19). With a userbase of 40 million subscribers, GrabOn’s market share in India’s deal and coupons industry is 70-80%.
Who is the Founder of GrabOn?
Ashok Reddy is the Founder and CEO of GrabOn.
How does GrabOn make money?
GrabOn’s revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
Do you have that hidden talent to design beautiful merchandise and apparel? But then how do you showcase your creativity? This post discusses “My Dream Store“, a platform that helps you showcase and monetize your creative abilities.
My Dream Store lets you design awesome products and sell them online while it takes care of everything else—from manufacturing the product to packaging, delivery, and even customer service!
Based out of Hyderabad, My Dream Store allows people to create and sell products such as T-shirts, hoodies, vests, mobile cases, coffee mugs, and more online with zero inventory and zilch cost. Its platform also provides free design support. My Dream Store has partnered with other vendors to handle demand surges and the manufacture of special products.
My Dream Store is predominantly a crowd-funded merchandising platform. This means that the seller can easily upload his or her designs, create products like T-shirts and hoodies, set the desired pricing and the quantity of items to be printed, and then go on to promote them. When the seller campaign reaches its goal, the platform prints, packs, and delivers the item to the buyers on time and hands over the profits to the seller.
My Dream Store provides the following features:
Create and Sell – This is for young designers and entrepreneurs who want to step in and solve problems but face barriers of varying degrees while starting an apparel brand. To minimize the overhead expenses on inventory creation, My Dream Store offers such individuals zero inventory and warehousing costs. With added facilities like distribution and packaging, the platform is an aid to the startup ecosystem.
Create and Buy – This feature is mainly for students who may need T-shirts and other apparel for annual college meets, occasion, groups, and hobby clubs. My Dream Store is a convenient option to solve the tedious process of ordering tees from the traditional vendors.
My Dream Store was founded by Karthik Venkat and Bala Satish in 2014.
My Dream Store Founders
Both Karthik and Bala are NIT Allahabad graduates who left their corporate jobs in 2011 to start a custom merchandise platform called eSparsha; it manufactured customized T-shirts for corporate sessions, college events, etc. The founder duo later jumped into the e-commerce segment to start My Dream Store.
Karthik Venkat, the CEO of My Dream Store, is an experienced founder with a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry. He is quite skilled in sales, strategic planning, building and running teams. He also is an expert Facebook advertiser!
Co-founder Bala Satish, the COO of My Dream Store, is motivated to build the best sales accelerator platform to help creators and micro-brands sell their products. He wants to foster an awesome team to assist these creators and brands.
How was My Dream Store Started
Although E-Sparsha (which Karthik and Balalaunched after quitting their jobs) had established itself as a reliable service provider for custom merchandising, the idea to explore the e-commerce market caught the attention of the duo which led to the launch of My Dream Store in 2014.
Regarding the initial phase, Karthik quoted, “The initial phase was relatively easy as we had already built a strong vendor network from E-Sparsha. However, getting into the online space and running an E-commerce portal was a different ball game altogether.”
My Dream Store Logo
While dealing with online marketing, entrepreneurs have to consider several intricacies to strengthen the strategic pillars and optimize their business operations. The Beta version of My Dream Store was built in September 2014. Since then, the company is working on a way to minimize the risk of over-burdening the inventory by giving sellers access to upbeat scalable technology, efficient and risk-free inventory management, optimized operations, well-defined product, and a seamless marketing strategy.
My Dream Store – Startup Challenges
My Dream Store is based on a ‘bring-your-customer’ model where sellers have to promote their products to the right target audience. However, sellers aren’t too aware of modern online advertising tools such as Facebook advertising, Google advertising, etc. To counter this problem, the startup created learning programs on its platform (targeted towards educating the sellers) through an online course-ware called the ‘My Dream Store University’. This initiative by the company helped the sellers improve the success rates of their campaigns.
In addition to the My Dream Store University, My Dream Store has put in efforts to enhance community engagement and overcome various other challenges startups commonly face:
Campaigner Connect – This is a closed group meant to build a network where buyers and sellers can easily communicate with community managers and solve any hurdles that arise on the way.
Google Hangout – The creative store has regular hangout sessions where every member of the community reaches out to both existing and potential buyers and sellers for meaningful conversations.
Open door policy – My Dream Store invites young designers and aspiring entrepreneurs to its office on a regular basis . The My Dream Store team interacts with the visitors and motivates them to join the platform.
The revenue model of My Dream Store seems quite simple. It charges a standard fee per unit which is based on the type of the product and printing requirements. This fee includes everything ranging from manufacturing cost and packaging to delivery, handling charges, and profit margins.
My Dream Store – Funding and Investors
In 2015, the company received an angel investment of $320K.
My Dream Store – Growth
More than 820,000 visitors.
More than 9,000 registered sellers.
Delivers products to more than 150,000 customers across India.
A 100% margin on sales on an average.
A team of 45 employees that continues to grow.
Extension of its services to Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata.
Conducts 30,000 transactions per month on an average.
Moving further, My Dream Store plans to venture into other product categories like posters, tote bags, stickers, etc., thereby opening up new opportunities for itself and its partners.
Fast forward to July 2021, My Dream Store has become NOBERO, an online shopping site for men and women.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verifiedinformation ondifferent startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Froogal.
In a time when rising customer expectations have forced businesses to think on their feet and expand their services beyond the traditional shopping experience, a platform that can drive loyalty programs for consumers is a must for every business. To exploit this idea into a successful startup, Jeevan Chowdary and Harshit Harchani launched Froogal in 2017.
Froogal mainly operates in SaaS, more specifically – Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Marketing automation, Customer Experience, CRM & Data Analytics, Automation, Marketing, Digital Transformation, Feedback Management, Business Intelligence tools.
StartupTalky interviewed Froogal CEO Jeevan Chowdary to get a better understanding of this Hyderabad based startup.
Froogal is a Omni-channel cloud based Customer Loyalty & Engagement Platform and has been a pioneer in delivering multiple consumer oriented Industries to build Customer Centricity by modernized and personalized interactions with Consumers to drive incremental Revenues.
Froogal.ai is a customer loyalty programmed management platform, which provides customers with aspirational rewards that are customized and goes beyond traditional cash rewards.
Froogal’s main range of products include:
Customer Loyalty & Management.
Customer Experience Management.
Customer Analytics with predictive and data-driven Insights.
Engagement Marketing with advanced automation techniques via SMS / Email / Push
Notification and Social Media etc.
Offer Engine with Mobile Marketing tools, Referral Marketing tools.
There are also a few more flagship products in the stream:
Froogal Seamless– It helps businesses adapt to omni channel marketing strategy i.e. Creating an ecosystem for business to enhance their sales channels across web, mobile, etc.
Froogal Consumer App– Froogal Consumer App is “World’s #1 Digital Loyalty Wallet”. It helps consumers digitize all their reward cards at one place, while it allows consumers to go cashless and with much other value
All in all, Froogal helps companies develop loyalty programs that can drive repeat business as well as build a community of loyal brand advocates by building the bridge between brands and customers at every stage of the customer lifecycle. It drives revenue for brick and mortar businesses by collecting critical customer data, then using it to deliver automated, personalized marketing campaigns that drive real ROI. Froogal acts as an intelligent tool for a CXO business, automating most of the marketing needs.
Froogal focuses on knowing, retaining every customer and ensuring customer loyalty. The company offers a SaaS-based product in different packages like (Starter, Growth, Professional, and Enterprise) targeting the different sizes of customers across SMEs and Large Enterprises both.
Froogal works with the aim to help businesses and customers build a relation for life because it is very important to understand the target audience in business and if a company does that right, it is on track for success. The basic idea is to address the pain points faced by millions of Brick-and-Mortar businesses across the globe and turn them successful. In other words, the motive is to help clients grow into an affluent firm with distinctive & considerable improvement in performance by retaining their customers.
Some major USP of Froogal are –
Most Loyalty Programs target only mom-and-pop stores, but Froogal targets successfully both Mom-and-Pop and big Chains.
Froogal has got More Advanced Loyalty Systems overcoming the traditional ways where the Strategy plays a key role in making it more contextual & emotional for the customer to retain and engage. It is one of its kind built with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Froogal took over the Omnichannel way at every module where Customers engage with Business and makes it seamless for customers to redeem rewards, complain and engage through any channel.
Deeper Analysis & More Intelligent in Personalized Marketing- Froogal Consumer App (App that Digitizes One’s Reward Cards at One Place).
Froogal offers cost-effective packages for various businesses and helps businesses achieve higher ROI.
Froogal- Founders and Team
Jeevan Chowdary and Harshit Harchani are the Founders of Froogal.
Jeevan Chowdary and Harshit Harchani | Founders, Froogal
Froogal founders Jeevan Chowdary and Harshit Harchani are alumni of IIIT Hyderabad, and the idea to start their own business was there in their minds while they were still in college.
“We were working on a project for a while and when we graduated we decided to kick off our own product. My co-founder has been very supportive and the belief we have in each other and the same morale we share and our product has got us here today.” Jeevan quotes.
As regards division of responsibilities between the founders, Jeevan Chowdary is currently operating as the CEO of Froogal and takes care of the entire business operations, sales, and marketing.
Froogal CTO, Harshit Harchani takes care of the entire Technical development of the product.
Froogal currently has 50+ employees.
Froogal Team
How was Froogal Started?
Customers are the inspiration here. While working on the very first project, during their college days, Jeevan and Harshit got a chance to work with a variety of stakeholders across many industries, especially small businesses. Both of them quickly realized that while different sectors of the market have different needs, no one, in particular, had focused on what would help small businesses flourish keeping in mind their limited operation management, lack of familiarity with technology, lack of access to expertise and marketing and most importantly budget. After talking to more than 500 such businesses they realized that they were not happy with the value of existing products and then at Froogal, they set upon this journey to provide the best value to businesses of various sizes, while working hand in hand with them at every point.
“From ideation to prototyping to customer endpoints we brainstormed solutions with our customers to enhance the value proposition, dig into real problems and develop a product which solved the real day to day problems they face with a minimal cost, along with which the rejection of dejection, and with perseverance, we showed in making it perfect and frugal for the business owners.” said Jeevan on the ideating stage of the venture.
Any businesses share the same end objective i.e., to generate greater revenues in a cost-effective way and delivering good customer experience and service. So is the name Froogal which is obtained from the word Frugal.
Froogal – Startup Launch
The first launch of the Froogal product happened with a customer. Once the team had the first Pilot deployment, they worked closely with them, wearing all hats to iron out all issues and proactively providing solutions to streamline the process. Since the revenue stream is generated through subscriptions and no other strategy, experience for the customers is paramount and the team leaves no efforts in that end. They realize that the product and the experience they provide speaks for itself and are happy to rely just on word of mouth for their promotions.
Froogal – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Froogal business model follows a SaaS business model. It works on a monthly subscription model, and its pricing ranges from 2500 per month – 15000 per month per location. Subscription charges varies based on the size and the business requirements along with other managed services for brick and mortar businesses, and also depending on the different models and segments.
Froogal – Startup Challenges
“Technology has been a passion for us. And necessity is the mother of Innovation.” Jeevan
While running their very first project, Jeevan and Harshit got a chance to meet a lot of different business owners from different industries especially in the SME segment. Every business certainly has problems in managing their operations or marketing due to lack of either technology, expertise or budgets. What intrigued this duo was that every business owner wants to excel in their own business at the low-cost model and they took that as a challenge and explored how technology can help drive revenues by simplifying and automating most of their needs at an affordable cost.
Froogal – Funding and Investors
Froogal has raised funding worth $ 1 million in pre-series A in December 2019. The information about the angel investors remains confidential.
Besides having offices in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai in India, Froogal also has an office in the USA.
Froogal is currently serving 350+ clients, including brands like ‘Cream stone’, ‘Thickshake Factory’, ‘BIG C’, ‘LOT’, ‘Over the moon’, ‘Pista house’ and ‘Biryanis and more’
Froogal – Conclusion
Froogal offers a one stop solution platform that provides end to end technology to understand, retain and engage your customers through omni channel digital strategy, leading to deeper and data driven relationship with your customers. They have an expertise team focusing strongly on unique mix of Strategic Consulting, Creative, Operations support services driving you with actionable intelligence that can help drive incremental revenues and optimum profitability.
Froogal – FAQs
What is Froogal?
Froogal is a customer loyalty programmed management platform, which provides customers with aspirational rewards that are customized and goes beyond traditional cash rewards.
Who are the Founders of Froogal?
Jeevan Chowdary and Harshit Harchani are the Founders of Froogal.
How does Froogal make money?
Froogal follows a SaaS business model- It works on a monthly based subscription model, and its pricing ranges from INR 2500 per month – INR 15000 per month per location.
How much Funding is raised by Froogal?
Froogal has raised funding worth $ 1 million in pre-series A in December 2019. The information about the angel investors remains confidential.
With all the portals online that provide effortless shopping experience online, it becomes difficult for the consumers to determine the best prices of their desired products. To make this task handy and simpler, Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray founded MySmartPrice in 2011.
Read this article to know more about MySmartPrice, how it works, founders, business model, revenue model, challenges, competitors, funding, wiki, and growth.
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison. Also for categories like footwear and fashion, MySmartPrice has a range of filters like best discounts that help the platform to come up with a consolidated bestseller list with the popular products and their specifications. So all in all, the idea is to provide the users with the best deals but also provide information about all the deals.
So basically, what MySmartPrice does is that it lists the prices of all the products across top eCommerce sites. Because of the dynamic pricing models of the e-commerce portals, these prices are periodically refreshed by MySmartPrice to improve the accuracy of the product pricing. In the cases of extremely popular products, the prices are refreshed every 15 minutes.
This portal makes sure that all possible discounts are informed to the user with embedded coupons so that the user can make wiser purchases. The co-founders had initially started the portal with books and then they gradually moved to mobile phones, comparing prices of various stores. Soon the mobiles category picked up, this portal attracted over 1 Million users a month. The co-founders in the long run also plan to list every single product that is sold in the Indian online space, on the MySmartPrice website.
“If it is sold online in India, it is available on MySmartPrice”, says Sulakshan.
MySmartPrice is all about letting the consumers make a smart and informed decision about their shopping aesthetics. Hence it’s USP is the portal that lets them compare the product prices across all the major platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, ShopClues to name a few.
MySmartPrice – How It Was Started?
MySmartPrice Logo
“We had been planning an entrepreneurial journey for almost eight years but could not muster enough courage. Finally, we felt it was now or never,” said Sitakanta Ray.
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray met in 1998 when they joined NIT Rourkela. After taking their degrees, both the co-founders joined Oracle in Hyderabad. From there they parted ways when Ray joined IIM Bangalore and Kumar joined Infosys.
“Odd as it may seem, I spent time studying management but handled engineering and marketing, while Sulakshan pursued engineering but is today involved in management,” added Sitakanta Ray.
What unites the co-founders is their zeal to take on their entrepreneurial journey. For both of them, their chance at the entrepreneurial journeys looked perfect with the price comparison/shopping research platform for the Indian market ideally because it involved the expertise of both product development and technology. And that’s how Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray decided to launch their venture – MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan Kumar & Sitakanta Ray | Co-Founders, MySmartPrice.
Sulakshan has a Bachelors’ in Mechanical engineering. He is an alumnus of NIT Rourkela, and also has worked with Sitakanta at Oracle. Before launching MySmartPrice, Sulakshan had also worked at Infosys.
Sitakanta is an alumnus of the prestigious IIM Bangalore, with around seven years of working experience with big names Oracle and ICICI Bank.
MySmartPrice – Business & Revenue Model
MySmartPrice as a website allows users to take a detailed look into the best products ranging from mobiles, electronics, computers, fashion and lifestyle, cameras, books, appliances, and personal care. As we know that the price comparison engine on the portal enables users to find the best price, deals, and offers from major e-commerce stores.
So directly or indirectly, it allows users to access over 10 million products from more than 100 online and offline stores. MySmartPrice also provides exciting things like coupons, offers, gifts without hiding information. MySmartPrice gets revenue as a service paid for each successful transaction done through the portal.
This portal has partnered with a lot many online and offline stores and there it charges a commission for lead generation. With conversion rates going up, revenues also rise. More than 80% of the revenue for MySmartPrice comes from the affiliate income i.e., a commission from promoting affiliate products on the site, and close to 18% of the revenue is generated from advertising and online directory services.
One of the major challenges MySmartPrice faced was when they started in 2010. This challenge was a limited budget. So to reach their target audience, it stuck to its core value of creating a robust product and focusing on Search Engine Optimization to get the first few customers onboard. This tactic really helped the company in developing a strong product range and retaining a large customer base.
There was one other challenge that the company faced in its initial days of inception. It was the very hurdle of attracting the right talent in the organization. However, MySmartPrice as a company never compromised on the kind of human resources it was looking for to build a team. To date, acquiring the right people continues to remain a big challenge, but the problem today is to choose the right talent rather than attracting more candidates.
MySmartPrice – Competitors
MySmartPrice has quite a few competitors in the market. For instance, Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice has received total funding of around $12 million till now.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
2012
Seed Round
$370K
Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
January 2014
Series A
$1 Million
Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors – Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
MySmartPrice – Growth
Initially, the company had ventured into just offline listing. Soon it went on to online and offline listings in cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi MySmartPrice claims to have offline partners generating business worth $2-3M every month. More than 4 million users across the country make use of the service every month.
MySmartPrice – FAQ’s
What is MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is an online engine that compares the prices of mobiles, books, electronics, cameras, and appliances thereby helping consumers make the best decisions.
Who is the founder of MySmartPrice?
Sulakshan Kumar and Sitakanta Ray are the founders of MySmartPrice.
What services does MySmartPrice provide?
MySmartPrice mainly helps users solve two basic problems: what to buy, and where to buy. So this platform facilitates the online shopping experience by providing product comparison.
Who are the investors of MySmartPrice?
MySmartPrice is funded by 2 investors – Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
Who are the competitors of MySmartPrice?
Smartprix is perceived to be one of the biggest rivals of the company. Other competitors include companies Buyt, PriceRaja, Junglee, PriceDekho, MagicPrix, to name a few.
MySmartPrice – Conclusion
MySmartPrice is a high-growth venture-backed startup that runs the largest comparison shopping site in India with over 20 Million user visits per month. They help people easily find ‘what to buy’ and ‘where to buy from’ and help them make better and wiser purchases. The company is present across multiple categories including Mobiles, Electronics, Computers, Books, Apparel and Shoes, Fashion accessories, Home décor etc. MySmartPrice aims to provide users with the best price of products both among online stores as well as the local retailers near them.
Yash Gupta
