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Tag: machine learning

  • WizKlub Success Story of Empowering K-8 Students to Develop Cognitive Skills!

    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 WizKlub.

    Technological advancements today have changed the way we communicate, educate, carry out financial transactions, the way we shop, and numerous other horizons of our lifestyle. To create the kind of technology that can solve both access and quality problems associated with the education sector across the world Amit Bansal launched WizKlub in 2018.

    Hailed as an innovation platform for kids, WizKlub offers a wide range of ways to nurture complex and critical thinking in the minds of children between 6 and 14 years of age in a simplified way.

    Here’s the success story of WizKlub that includes everything about WizKlub, its Founders and Team, Startup Story, Business Model, and Revenue Model, Challenges, Funding and Investors, Growth, and more.  

    WizKlub – Company HighLights

    Startup Name WizKlub
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector ET Tech
    Founders Amit Bansal
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization WizKlub Learning Pvt Ltd
    Website wizclub.com

    WizKlub – About and How it works
    WizKlub – USP and Innovation
    WizKlub – Target Market Size
    WizKlub – Founders and Team
    WizKlub – Startup Story | How did it start?
    WizKlub – Mission
    WizKlub – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    WizKlub – Business Model and Revenue Model
    WizKlub – Funding and Investors
    WizKlub – Growth
    WizKlub – Startup Challenges
    WizKlub – Competitors
    WizKlub – Future Plans

    WizKlub – About and How it works

    WizKlub is a research-based education company that has combined technology with research in cognitive learning to empower K-8 students with smart reading and problem-solving programs and skills required to succeed in the coming decade. WizKlub’s HOTS and SmartTech programs develop cognitive skills in children aged 5-15 years through an AI-powered tech platform that delivers a personalized learning path for every child.

    WizKlub’s vision is to provide high-quality education to school children through advances in science and technology and impart skills needed to succeed in the future along with creating a million thinking minds who are lifelong learners, adept problem solvers, and would build technology for a better future.

    WizKlub offers a wide array of products including:

    • HOTS – Higher Order Thinking Skills across Comprehension, Critical Thinking, Logical Reasoning, and Problem Solving. The WizKlub HOTS Program develops higher-order thinking skills to ensure that every child is a smart reader and a smart problem solver.
    • YPDP – The Young Product Designers Program offered by WizKlub is designed to help children build and code tech products.
    • Connected Learning (STEAM Learning) – The Connected Learning for Kids, as offered by WizKlub, helps children between 6-14 years learn an integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math, which is designed to nurture co-curricular activities in them.
    • Alexa Skill Development for Kids – This wing that helps kids learn programming, empowers them with Blockly-based WizKlub’s Voice Developer Tool, which will help them build their own Conversational AI – Alexa Skill.
    • Machine Learning for Kids – This program of WizKlub extends adequate knowledge to the children to help them build their own Machine Learning engine.
    • Wiz Web Design for Kids – The Web Designing program of WizKlub helps the children to learn the basics of web development with HTML and CSS.

    WizKlub has also launched a SmartTech programme, which caters to children, even those who are aged 6 years, and helps them develop lifelong skills and confidence by empowering them to create tech products by applying cutting-edge technologies of coding, robotics, smart devices, and AI. WizKlub also boasts of its programmable smart device, ‘WizGear’, which helps a child get a new product module that they can use for coding and building every month.

    In the coming future, it is expected that 7 out of 10 school-going students would be working on roles that don’t even exist today. The implication is that these students would be required to solve NEW problems. Further, this generation needs to be lifelong learners as technology is changing every industry making the roles obsolete every 3-4 years. However, more than 90% of the students in the Indian school system learn and solve problems using “Rote Memorization” which means that they would be a misfit for the workforce in the coming decade or may end-up doing extremely low-end tasks.

    WizKlub products solve this problem by raising the core aptitude of every child and making them smart learners and adept problem solvers. The students of the WizKlub system are trained to become Creators of Technology than just being passive consumers of technology.

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    WizKlub – USP and Innovation

    The USP of the WizKlub products are as follows:

    • Product designed with research in Cognitive Learning.
    • Personalized learning path for every learner based on existing levels.
    • Hybrid learning cutting across facilitator, app, and conversations through Artificial Intelligence.
    • Hybrid learning environment cutting across facilitator, app, and conversations through Artificial Intelligence.

    WizKlub – Target Market Size

    WizKlub is targeting k-8 school students. The k-12 supplementary education sector in India itself is $15 billion (Rs 100,000 crores). Several k-12 students are 350m and half of them are in the k-6 segment itself. According to a report by KPMG in India and Google, the online Education market is expected to cross $2bn by 2022 and $4bn by 2025.

    WizKlub – Founders and Team

    The founder and CEO of WizKlub is Mr. Amit Bansal. Other team includes Manohar Kashyap, Jaspal Singh, Swarup Vijh, and Pramod.

    Amit Bansal

    Amit Bansal WizKlub
    Amit Bansal – Founder & CEO WizKlub

    Amit Bansal is the Founder and CEO of WizKlub. Amit has a Master’s degree in Marketing from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Before founding WizKlub, he was an Advisor at IndiQube. Also, this is not his first startup, before WizKlub, he has also co-founded startups like Xcelerator and PurpleLeap.

    Swarup Vijh is the Senior Vice President. He has a Master’s degree from the University of Pune. Swarup was working with iStar as a National Operations Head before collaborating with WizKlub. Vijh held some other key leadership positions in several organizations including Pearson Education, ICFAI, HED-X, GMMCO, and more.

    The startup onboarded Pankaj Bande (Jain) as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) on May 4, 2021. Some other notable employees of WizKlub are Manohar Kashyap, Jaspal Singh and Pramod N.

    Team WizKlub

    WizKlub – Startup Story | How did it start?

    This EdTech company for School Children is the third EdTech venture of this team. The earlier two ventures were in the higher education space where the team worked with over 50,000 engineering students across India. “We realized that at that stage we could create the maximum impact by skilling students on specific tools. However, at that age, the basic aptitude of a student is pretty much cast in stone and cannot be changed significantly. So, if a student does not have programming aptitude, one cannot be trained to become a good programmer.” Said Amit Bansal.

    More research established that the core aptitude of a person that defines one’s suitability for different career roles is pretty much defined in the first 12-13 years of their life. And unfortunately, the Indian schooling system is still focused on curriculum, instead of focusing on core aptitude that makes one smart learner and adept problem solver. Hence the team decided to address this issue by providing a scientific program to build these skills when the age is right. They worked on the product for 6 months including prototyping and pilots to establish product efficacy. The product has an 83% efficacy rate which is quite remarkable for a learning product.

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    WizKlub – Mission

    “WizKlub is on a mission to create a million thinking minds,” says the mission statement of the company.

    The logo of WizKlub is essentially centered around a tick mark which denotes students making the right choice. WizKlub is a club of Wizards. Essentially, the creators of tomorrow are the wizards of the future. They are going to look like they have magic powers compared to everybody else.

    WizKlub Logo

    WizKlub – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The business model of WizKlub is subscription-based and the investment ranges from 10k to 25k per year depending on the program.

    WizKlub – Funding and Investors

    The funding amount of WizKlub stands at $1.96 mn (Rs 15 crore), which was raised via an Angel round followed by a Seed round that poured in Rs 2 crore and Rs 7 crore respectively, after which, WizKlub raised another Rs 6 crore via a Pre-Series A round of funding.

    WizKlub has last raised a Pre-Series A funding round led by Incubate Fund India. Before this it raised a seed round of funding of Rs 7 crore, which was led by Incubate Fund India with participation from Insitor Impact Asia Fund. The company planned to use the fresh capital for product and market expansion.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    February 16, 2021 Pre-Series A INR 6 crore Incubate Fund India
    January 2020 Seed INR 7 crore Incubate Fund India and Insitor Impact Asia Fund
    January 2019 Angel INR 2 crore Saurabh Chandra, Hardeep Singh, Pankaj Goel, and Pradeep Singh

    WizKlub – Growth

    WizKlub’s distribution model is centered around neighborhood facilitators who impart the program to the students in the apartment or community areas. The team launched the program through events in these apartments and found the early adopters. The customer experience and product efficacy have been extremely important to the team ever since its inception, and the growth has been through positive word-of-mouth from our existing users. “We have moved the core aptitude (IQ) of more than 3000 students!” says Amit Bansal.

    The startup has 150+ centers in Bengaluru and has progressed 3000+ children through its programs. The company also offers HOTS and SmartTech programs on a subscription model and is on track to on-board 10,000+ children over the next few months.

    The subscription-based online programmes offered by WizKlub are empowering students globally. With the help of these programs, WizKlub boasts of having delivered 100,000+ hours of personalised learning to young students across the world.

    WizKlub – Startup Challenges

    One major challenge that WizKlub faced initially was that the product was delivering results in terms of improved learning and problem-solving aptitude but ONLY those parents who were involved with their kid’s learning journey were able to witness the results. The involved parents could see that the child has become an active reader, can read between the lines, is asking intelligent questions, is more inquisitive, is not scared of unseen problems, which was not the case before joining the program. However, the other set of parents were not able to appreciate the difference as they were expecting results in terms of visible output. The team solved this problem by demonstrating the improvement of the world’s most popular IQ test for children, WISC ( Weschler’s Intelligence Scale for Children). They were able to demonstrate similar efficacy of 85% improvement on the third-party assessment WISC as well.

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    WizKlub – Competitors

    WizKlub competitors include edtech startups like:

    • Byju’s
    • WhiteHat Jr.
    • Classplus
    • Unacademy
    • Curious Jr.

    WizKlub – Future Plans

    WizKlub is planning to grow further in the boom of the edtech startups that we are witnessing in India. The startup is also planning to hire 150 more tutors to enhance its learning programs.  

    FAQs

    What is WizKlub?

    WizKlub is an Edtech company that caters to the K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) segment focusing on developing skills in children that will help them succeed in competitive exams and beyond.

    Who is the founder of the Wizklub?

    Amit Bansal is the founder of WizKlub.

    What is HOTS Olympiad?

    HOTS Olympiad is the World’s First Olympiad series that focuses on the Core Aptitude and IQ of a student. HOTS Olympiad is designed by Practitioners working in the area of Cognitive Excellence for children in classes 1 to 8.

    What are the competitors of WizKlub?

    Some of the most notable competitors of WizKlub are:

    • WhiteHat Jr.
    • Curious Jr.
    • BYJU’s
    • Unacademy
    • Classplus

  • CommerceIQ – Enabling Merchants To Expand Profitably

    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 CommerceIQ.

    When most of the world’s shopping went online as a result of the pandemic, entrepreneurs providing technology and other solutions to help with the transition began to attract venture capitalists’ attention. CommerceIQ is the latest company to gain late-stage funding, as we’ve seen firms throughout the e-commerce infrastructure and enabling ecosystem to raise larger and larger amounts.

    Enterprise Business Platforms are a collection of interconnected application software and/or systems that may be used to develop Enterprise Business Solutions or Apps by combining their capabilities and shared data.
    Order processing,  customer information management,  procurement, energy management, production scheduling, and accounting are among the company operations that enterprise businesses handle. It is usually housed on servers and offers several users simultaneous services across a computer network.

    CommerceIQ is a business platform that enables merchants to expand profitably by making data-driven marketing decisions. By combining the fields of machine learning and data science to e-commerce, the firm’s solution automates operations across marketing, sales, and operations, allowing retailers to increase their efficiency through automation and generate sustainability.

    CommerceIQ – Company Highlights

    Startup Name CommerceIQ
    Legal Name Boomerang Commerce Inc
    Headquarters Palo Alto, California, United States
    Industry Analytics, Consumer Goods, E-Commerce, Machine Learning, Sales, Software
    Founders Guru Hariharan
    Founded 2012
    Areas Served Worldwide
    Current CEO Guru Hariharan
    Website www.commerceiq.ai

    About CommerceIQ and How it Works?
    CommerceIQ – Industry
    CommerceIQ – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    CommerceIQ – Founders
    CommerceIQ – Startup Story
    CommerceIQ – Vision, and Mission
    CommerceIQ – Business Model
    CommerceIQ – Growth
    CommerceIQ – Employees
    Commerce – Funding, and Investments
    CommerceIQ – Competitors
    CommerceIQ – Future Plans

    About CommerceIQ and How it Works?

    CommerceIQ is a frontrunner in assisting companies in winning through retail e-commerce platforms like Walmart.com, Instacart, and Amazon, which account for 85 percent of all e-commerce. To help organizations discover the key to winning a share of the market profitably, the company’s unified platform integrates machine learning and automation across the supply chain, marketing, and sales processes.

    To maximize e-commerce performance, CommerceIQ connects people, processes, and technology platforms. People can now make more decisions, better decisions, and make them faster. An online firm that remains on the top implies more sales volumes, more considerable revenues, and a larger market share.

    CommerceIQ – Industry

    Enterprise Business Platforms, and Solutions, are utilised to carry out cross-functional organisational duties by combining capabilities that are often provided by several enterprise systems. The following terms are more precise when it comes to defining this industry: Enterprise Business Platforms are a collection of interconnected software applications and/or systems that may be used to develop Enterprise Business Solutions or Apps by combining their capabilities and shared data.

    Due to the increased prevalence of cloud applications in diverse modern enterprises and the rising use of customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning in over 70% of companies, the global enterprise platform market is predicted to develop significantly.

    Many small and medium-sized firms’ increased investments in cloud software due to increased scalability, robustness, and return on investments have fueled market development, fueled demand for applications and software such as ERP and CRM across multiple organizations.

    Increased automation in various end-use sectors is also critical for market expansion. Cloud-based corporate apps like Panama are gaining much traction in the market, indicating that consumers are becoming more interested in automated business procedures.

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    CommerceIQ – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    CommerceIQ tagline says, “Unlock profitable e-commerce growth”

    Company Logo of CommerceIQ
    Company Logo of CommerceIQ

    CommerceIQ – Founders

    Guru Hariharan founded CommerceIQ in 2012.

    Guru Hariharan

    Founder and CEO of CommerceIQ - Guru Hariharan
    Founder and CEO of CommerceIQ – Guru Hariharan

    Guru is an experienced IT and marketing executive with over fifteen years of e-commerce expertise. Guru spent more than five years with Amazon developing out automatic procurement and supply chain before starting the firm in 2012. He also became a 3P seller’s AI-based selling coach.

    CommerceIQ – Startup Story

    The company’s founder, Hariharan, has a history in machine learning and e-commerce, and while at Amazon, he stated that the objective was to eliminate humans from the retailing equation, thus his team created software called Amazon Selling Coach to teach people how to connect with businesses.

    Hariharan wanted to establish a firm that would power where all of that money was going as individuals began to migrate their purchases, from equipment to toothbrushes, to Amazon and other platforms.

    He left Amazon to establish his own firm, focusing on the sale side of the equation for brands to sell and the purchase side’s interaction with retailers. CommerceIQ’s retail e-commerce management tools automate and consolidate areas such as retail media management, category analytics, operations, and sales for companies underneath one umbrella. According to Hariharan, customers should expect an average sales increase of 18 per cent.

    More than 2,200 companies, including Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, and Kellogg’s are now collaborating with this Bay Area-based startup to manage incremental sales, unit profitability, and category market share through online retailers such as Amazon, Target, Instacart, and Walmart,

    CommerceIQ – Vision, and Mission

    CommerceIQ’s mission statement says, “to empower brands to move from analogue to algorithms.”

    CommerceIQ – Business Model

    Essentially, the company sells tools that allow retailers to take action on e-commerce platforms before an item runs out of supply. It also aids firms in streamlining their supply chains and taking the necessary procedures in the event that a product is not displayed on the e-commerce platform’s homepage.

    There are four main product categories for this SaaS company. Offerings for firms to be more visible on e-commerce search sites, as well as tools to manage advertisements and optimise promotions with the least amount of human intervention, are among them. Large firms may also use CommerceIQ to simplify their supply chains by forecasting their needs and requirements and allocating resources accordingly.

    In addition, the company provides a professional services model. The company provides advisory services to ‘clients that are trailing behind in the e-commerce market and want to catch up.’

    The business is built on an annual subscription model with valuation-based charging.

    CommerceIQ – Growth

    In 2021, CommerceIQ, an algorithmic platform for e-commerce channels, had a 267 percent growth in revenue and a 77 percent increase in personnel year over year.

    CommerceIQ, which uses machine learning, analytics, and automation systems to enhance e-commerce channels across distribution chain, advertising, and sales operations, is strengthening its tech governance in India with new hires in application, design and development, data science and analytics, support, and product operations.

    “From a business growth standpoint, it’s been phenomenal,” said Guru Hariharan, CEO, CommerceIQ. “It was blistering growth in the US. E-commerce penetration of retail was about 16% when we went into the pandemic. When we got out of the pandemic, it was 20% in the US. And it was similar across the world. There was a massive jump in e-commerce penetration of total retail.”

    According to Hariharan, the firm has had a 267 per cent increase in revenue yet, with a 300 per cent increase in 202. He went on to say that although CommerceIQ has dominated IQ in the US, it has won with EQ in India, particularly during the second wave of the pandemic, when a lot of their professionals in India were affected.

    CommerceIQ – Employees

    • COO – Piyush Lumba
    • CEO & Founder – Guru Hariharan
    • VP Sales – Tim Wilson
    • VP Finance – Adrian Seet
    • Sr. Product Manager – Rajath Raman
    • Senior Account Executive – Cory Lund

    Commerce – Funding, and Investments

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Mar 21, 2022 Series D $115M SoftBank Vision Fund
    Jun 22, 2021 Series C $60M Insight Partners
    Jan 14, 2016 Series B $12M Shasta Ventures
    Jul 16, 2014 Series A $8.5M Madrona Venture Group, Trinity Ventures

    CommerceIQ – Competitors

    CommerceIQ’s top competitors include A2X, Webgility, Helium10, Jungle Scout, Perpetua, ChannelAdvisor. Wholesale Suite, and DataHawk.

    CommerceIQ – Future Plans

    CommerceIQ, a retail e-commerce management software, has received $115 million in Series D financing from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. With this, the SaaS startup’s overall valuation has risen to more than $1 billion, putting it in the coveted unicorn category.

    Existing institutional investors such as Insight Partners, Trinity Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group also participated in the round.

    CommerceIQ will utilise the resources to finance its global operations and expedite the development of its ‘unified Retail Ecommerce Management Platform.’ It also intends to grow its services in India, and as a result, its algorithmic components have been adjusted to adapt to buyers’ behaviour not only on Amazon but also on local e-tailers like Flipkart.

    The Bengaluru office now employs over 150 workers, with ambitions to roughly treble that number by CY22. The money will also be used to hire more people in a variety of areas, including data science, software development, customer service, analytics, and product operations.

    Hariharan said that the company had a strong presence in the United States and Canada and that it was planning to expand to Europe shortly. Furthermore, the firm intends to use the funds to accelerate its organic expansion and form new collaborations along the road.

    CommerceIQ – FAQs

    What does CommerceIQ do?

    CommerceIQ is a business platform that enables merchants to expand profitably by making data-driven marketing decisions.

    Who founded CommerceIQ?

    Guru Hariharan founded CommerceIQ in 2012.

    How does CommerceIQ make money?

    The company provides a professional services model. The business is built on an annual subscription model with valuation-based charging.

    Which companies do CommerceIQ compete with?

    CommerceIQ’s top competitors include A2X, Webgility, Helium10, Jungle Scout, Perpetua, ChannelAdvisor. Wholesale Suite, and DataHawk.

  • How Technology Can Revolutionize Blue-collar Workforce Management?

    The article is Contributed by Shalin Maheshwari – Co-founder of Meraqui.

    Automation, digital platforms, numerous innovations, and technological advancements are all transforming the fundamental essence of employment in the corporate sector. Although these digital transformations were designed with white-collar labor in mind, they are also being developed for the blue-collar workforce.

    Undoubtedly, the internet, wireless networks, e-commerce, and social media have drastically altered how we interact, live, and work today, especially since the outbreak of the pandemic. Software and algorithms have advanced to the point that they can execute complicated, cognitive, and repetitive functions across numerous commercial applications. The automation provided by technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning promises enhanced productivity, efficiency, safety, and, most importantly, convenience. However, concerns evaluating the impact of machines on work and people have existed since the very invention of machines.

    Thus, let’s take a closer look at how technology can revolutionize blue-collar workforce management:

    Technology Will Not Take Up Employment
    How Can Firms Upskill Blue-Collar Workers?

    Technology Will Not Take Up Employment

    According to a recent PwC global survey, 37 per cent of workers are anxious about the possibility of losing their employment due to automation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), for example, are making enormous gains toward developing cutting-edge products that can directly replace blue-collar labor. This is because these positions typically require labor-intensive tasks that intelligent machines can easily complete. Self-driving cars, automated cleaning gadgets, and food delivery drones are just a few instances of how technology can replace employees in their current professions. But this does not automatically imply that blue-collar employees will lose their jobs.

    According to a World Economic Forum report, automation would certainly provide millions of new job possibilities in the future. However, even in blue-collar jobs, professionals will be required to have a working grasp of novel technology such as AI, ML, and data analytics. Professionals will need to undertake major and ongoing upskilling as the nature of occupations changes and become more tech-driven.

    The growing influence of automation, technologies, as well as the accelerated pace of change in employee responsibilities and competencies, make a major shift in the workplace imperative. Many companies have recognized the need to upskill their workers and have already begun training personnel at higher levels of the business. But there are still a few.

    More companies should strive to match staff at all levels with future technology, changing customer needs, and market movements. Companies can make all of their employees capable of adapting to tech-driven disruption within the firm and across the industry by doing so. It also assists blue-collar workers in gaining the knowledge and skills they need to face disruption head-on.

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    How Can Firms Upskill Blue-Collar Workers?

    Companies must explain continuous changes to their workers in order to promote efficient learning and provide a smooth transition for the workforce. Leaders may see training blue-collar workers as a greater problem because they may not be familiar with or even aware of many of the cutting-edge technologies. However, if executives keep the following in mind, they can still carve out an enhanced workforce:

    Map the Skills Gap

    To find out where their blue-collar talent stands in terms of industry-specific skill sets and what competencies are necessary for the market for a successful transition, firms must construct a map of skill gaps. The data and advanced insights about skill gaps will essentially establish the groundwork for building a future road map for establishing development programs and mitigating the effects of the skill gap.

    Engaging Modules

    Organizations must provide compelling learning modules that are easy to understand for employees, especially in the form of videos and audio. They can also be translated into local languages to engage personnel in different parts of the world and make the content easier to understand. The course should introduce employees to the fundamentals and then build on that knowledge to expand their understanding of additional industry-specific principles.

    Customized Learning

    Customization of learning can help accomplish the objective of making modules more understandable for workers in a number of different ways. It’s crucial to remember that every employee is unique in terms of their skills, educational background, and even learning style. Since leaders and managers know their team’s problems and strengths better than anyone else, they can be involved in the formulation of training programs. Companies can use the buddy shadowing approach to get the best outcomes and foster an agile culture by encouraging peer-to-peer learning. They can use gratitude and recognition to empower employees while also guaranteeing nobody is left behind.

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    Conclusion

    It’s simple – technological advancements don’t have to frighten the blue-collar workforce; instead, they should encourage them to master essential skills that will keep them equipped for the future.

  • How AI Can Bring About Next-Level Enterprise Innovation?

    This article is contributed by Mr. Anirudh Kala, Co-founder, Celebal Technologies.

    When we talk about modern technology, one of the biggest inventions has to be Artificial Intelligence (AI). With its undeniable effect, AI is actually taking over the world. In an unbelievable way, it has become a part of our daily lives and is continuously on a mission to change our future. A decade ago, the Sci-fi movies that we used to watch are now unfolding in front of our eyes and are turning into a reality.

    Just like the whole world, India is also experiencing the same reality, in fact, such as the impact that, the 2021 Deloitte State of AI report found that Indian enterprises intend to increase their investments in Artificial Intelligence, based on the returns they have seen on their existing AI investments. Any kind of business can benefit from using AI and innovation in their organization. Becoming data-driven will level the playing field for such enterprises, therefore, allowing everyone to leverage all their data to build better user experiences and increase business agility.
    Artificial Intelligence is not just in the realm of buzzwords and hyped-up technologies anymore. It has gone from a good-to-have to a must-have part of every organization – big and small alike. The pandemic spurred on rapid digital transformations, leading every enterprise to establish a culture of continuous innovation to become more resilient. These digitalization journeys have led to a boost in AI adoption with many enterprises setting up data and analytics infrastructure as the foundation to build AI projects.

    In this article, we will find out how Artificial Intelligence can bring enterprise innovation. Let’s take a look.

    How AI Can Unlock Hidden Opportunities for Businesses?

    Artificial Intelligence has a wide range of applications in the business world. From process automation, and tailored customer services to conversational analytics and predictive analytics, the use cases for AI touch upon all the departments of HR, Finance, Operations, Manufacturing, Marketing, and others. Organizations can use AI to grow their business, increase revenues and business agility, and enhance operational efficiency.  

    • In the financial sector, machine learning algorithms are being designed to improve fraud detection, supplement the risk assessment process, deliver tailored customer recommendations and services.
    • Artificial Intelligence is also empowering the manufacturing sector with demand forecasting, inventory optimization, supply chain analytics, production planning, and many more diverse use cases.
    • With the ability to continuously learn and adapt itself, AI technologies can also help businesses make better decisions that will help predict market changes and help your business be competitive and resilient.
    • Personalized virtual assistants, recommendation engines, predictive analytics are also some of the ways enterprises are leveraging AI to craft lasting customer experiences and stem customer churn.
    • Infusing AI will not only fuel a culture of innovation but also cause immense benefits of reduced expenses, automated processes, faster insights, and improved business continuity.

    Need of AI-Powered Enterprise Chatbots and Cognitive AI

    Artificial Intelligence is showing its mettle in every form, down below some reasons are stated regarding the need for AI-Powered chatbots and Cognitive AI.

    AI-Powered Enterprise Chatbots

    AI-Powered Chatbots and Conversational Voice Bots are essential tools for all brands that want to deliver hyper-personalized experiences, they provide exceptional customer services. Engineering these experiences using conversational AI can boost customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and increase customer lifetime value.  
    AI-driven Chatbots bring flexibility and versatility to the conversation to understand and even learn from most client queries in multiple languages. AI-enabled Chatbots are important assets for organizations dealing with a massive number of daily customer support queries or having limited customer support staff. One can also leverage chatbots for improving employee collaboration within an enterprise, bringing together business processes and people on a single platform.

    Accelerating Automation with Cognitive AI

    Cognitive AI applications involve embedding AI into cognitive tasks that traditionally require huge amounts of manual effort like scanning invoices and documents, extracting information from an unstructured pool of data, or analysing thousands of images. Face detection, social media sentiment analysis, speech recognition and analytics, risk assessment, knowledge mining, fraud detection, vehicle damage detection are just some of the many ways that AI can assist in improving manual and routine tasks.

    Adding intelligent automation into an enterprise has the benefit of not just replacing manual processes but will help add a dimension of process intelligence. This would involve aiding decision-making with insights into maximizing your process efficiency and predicting organizational changes that could affect your business.

    Conclusion

    Going into 2022, many organizations are going to increasingly move towards AI and integrate it with their business functions. Numbers of enterprises irrespective of their size and expertise will use the power of AI for cost-savings and productivity boosts of their organization. Low code platforms are also making it easier for enterprises to tap into the potential of AI. A proper AI implementation strategy is a must for anyone who wants to partner up with this technology. Partnering with the right technology and software solutions provider will ensure that you remain in the right direction to achieve excellence and a competitive edge.

    FAQ

    How AI will Affect Business?

    AI will mainly save time, costs and will make all the tasks easier, which are quite hard in an enterprise.

    Is AI the Future of Business?

    Undoubtedly, AI will be the future, if it’s not already one. 86% of industries state that AI is becoming the ‘mainstream technology’.

    What will AI do in the Future?

    AI will create 58 million new artificial intelligence jobs by 2022.

  • Toch AI Startup Story: Revolutionizing Video Content with AI & ML

    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 Toch.

    We are witnessing a tsunami of video content that is growing every minute. As per the Global Video AI Market data, the growth is measured at supersonic speeds. Statistics show that the market for short-form video content is expected to be at $169.4bn by the year 2025. In the hypersonic world that we live in, the venerated IoT solutions are the only coping mechanism. Toch AI is a SaaS company with cloud-agnostic AI solutions. It offers professional services by taking noisy, large data sets and transforming them into engrossing and compelling hyper-global videos.

    Founded by Vinayak S, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil in 2016, the startup intends to disrupt video technology by automating workflow using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms, thereby reducing the go-to-market time and costs and increasing ROI for clients.

    StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Vinayak Shrivastav (Co-founder & CEO, Toch) to get insights on the startup story and roadmap ahead of the organization. In this article, you’ll discover how Toch was started, its revenue model, marketing strategies, and more.

    Toch – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Toch
    Founders Vinayak Shrivastav (CEO), Saket Dandotia (COO), Alok Patil (CTO)
    Headquarters Mumbai
    Founded 2016
    Industry Video Tech
    Funding $13.3mn (December 2021)
    Website toch.ai

    Toch – Latest News

    December 23, 2021 – Toch.ai partners with USA cricket with an aim to provide video highlights and clips for the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube channels for USA cricket.

    Toch – About and Vision
    Toch – Industry Details
    Toch – Idea & Inspiration
    Toch – Product and USP
    Toch – Founders and Team
    Toch – Name and Logo
    Toch – Business Model & Revenue Model
    Toch – Launch and Marketing Strategies
    Toch – Funding
    Toch – Partnerships
    Toch – Recognition & Achievements
    Toch – Current Growth and Future Plans
    Toch – FAQs

    Toch – About and Vision

    In the hypersonic world that we live in, the venerated IoT solutions are the only coping mechanism. Toch AI is a SaaS company with cloud-agnostic AI solutions. It offers professional services by taking noisy, large data sets and transforming them into engrossing and compelling hyper-global videos. Its modernistic technological solutions converge in ways that act as a huge revenue and time management tool. Toch AI creates a coherent video editing platform with engagement analytics and real-time production capabilities. With its futuristic deep AI technologies, the team renders new assets from the existing data with a deft auto- share option across 30+ social media platforms or any destination website/app.

    The startup’s vision is to build tech that empowers creators and enriches content in the dynamic video-centric world. It is at the tip of an undiscovered iceberg when it comes to what AI is capable of. Revolutionizing itself every day while creating cutting-edge technology is a tangible goal. The team doesn’t see themselves selling a general algorithm that fits all. With the expansion of business avenues, small and big enterprises alike, each patron expands and challenges their amenability to mold the technology to their needs. While they have marked themselves today in the field of entertainment, news, and sports, the team at Toch aspires to allocate their AI and ML technologies towards safety and security, healthcare, and education in the future.

    “Disrupt video technology by automating workflow using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms thereby reducing go-to-market time and costs and increasing ROI for clients” has been Toch’s mission, which is both possible and plausible with its team of innovators.

    The startup also sees itself building an immutable community that drives a profitable economy while creating newer standards for the tech environment.

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    Toch – Industry Details

    We are sitting on a tsunami of video content that is growing every minute. As per Global Video AI Market data, the growth is taking place at supersonic speed. Statistics show that the market for short-form video content is expected to be at $169.4bn by the year 2025, and $223.98bn by 2028 (Grand View Research, Inc) with an anticipated CAGR of 21% from 2021 to 2028. As flag bearers of the industry, Toch has the vantage to predict industry demands and possesses the evolutionary AI tools that can deliver groundbreaking and trendsetting solutions at the same time. Analytically in the coming years, the startup would be able to sell across 4 different continents with its repertoire and sizable market shares. Toch functions worldwide with a focus on India, North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

    Toch – Idea & Inspiration

    In the year 2016, the founders were sitting at the brink of an undiscovered potential industry that had seen a mighty rise in video content. With human attention span and patience shrinking, there was a dire need to address the video trajectory in respect to real-time. To bridge that gaping hole between unaddressed content and commerce, the potential was immense. It was almost like the ‘light bulb’ moment when Vinayak S, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil formed a SaaS company deploying  AI and ML technology that deliberated on an easy-to-use and accessible to all, a cloud-agnostic platform to deliver customized video content in real-time, thereby birthing TOCH AI.

    While the founders and other enthusiasts were gung-ho with the projected idea, the main challenge was to integrate a team that would help them to discover the iceberg. Their enthusiastic team helped in molding the idea into a product that disrupted the video content industry. The response was overwhelming and helped the founding team forge ahead, setting a benchmark in the market.

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    Toch – Product and USP

    Toch’s product is conceptualized to create epic content that leaves an impact using ingenuity and precision. Toch delivers well-crafted content through AI and ML algorithms in real-time. Creating personalized content has been a brainbox that has greatly appealed to the sport, entertainment, and news industry. Grafting content from raw footage into bite-sized videos in the form of key highlights that hyperbolize the pivotal moments across 30+ social platforms.

    Its video editing options, retool and optimize videos in real-time; saving time, labor, negating human error whilst increasing productivity. It is an easy-to-use technology with illimitable resizing of videos that have diverse displays, customizable with client logos, bumpers, and sponsors messages on the dashboard. It renders multiple video formatting, scheduling feeds, innumerable web storage options that offer API and platform models, and multiple publishing renditions.

    USP of Toch AI

    Toch’s USP is its premium video editing feature that facilitates the patrons with automatic dynamic engagements and insertions to create their own bespoke videos. The team at Toch AI understands one standard solution does not fit all, hence it is imperative to go beyond conventional. Thinking ahead of time and ascertaining a client’s needs, thereby amplifying it with a cutting-edge solution defines vertical innovation.

    Idea Pivot

    At the genesis of anything, challenges are but obvious. Toch was no different, the founders faced practical challenges that just helped them address and reinvent their own technology. Since they focussed on state-of-the-art technology, it was an intricate process of evolving while remaining grounded to the core product. In their case, “our asset was our team”, which helped them with the critical process.

    Toch’s final product was by itself a marketing and branding tool. When presented on different platforms, Toch was received as a welcome change. Employing cutting-edge technology such as Face and Image Recognition, Vision models, Optical Character Recognition, and Audio Detection, saved immense manual labor, erased the scope of error and time consumption phenomenally with a latency of only 10 seconds or less in real-time without altering the resolution of the feed.

    Change is essential for growth, so is adaptability. Every person is a potential patron and what may work for one may not satiate the other. Hence malleability and personalization to fit each line of business are vital.

    Toch – Founders and Team

    Vinayak S, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil are the founders of Toch.

    Toch Founders
    Toch Founding Team – Vinayak S, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil 

    Vinayak Shrivastav | Co-founder & CEO, Toch

    He has a background in engineering and an MBA from London Business School. Vinayak directs Toch towards unique identity, growth plans, strategies, and execution. With Toch.AI, he envisions revolutionizing sports viewership by leveraging AI and ML technology to create real-time personalized content. He firmly believes that “everyone has stories to tell’ – stories that will not only engage, inform, surprise, delight, and impact their audience, but will also deliver on measurable business goals. In his personal time, Vinayak is an avid sports fan and can often be found cheering and rooting for his favorite team.

    Alok Patil | Co-founder & CTO, Toch

    He is the ‘Torvalds’ of Toch. He is industrious and loves challenges. Accredited with an MCA, his vision is to resolve humongous problems faced by humanity through technology. To quote him, “the world needs more technology-enabled solutions focussed at modernizing human efforts”. He believes that there is never an end to learning and motivates the team to experiment with new ideas. Alok is a vehement advocate of short-form content and a web series buff.

    Saket Dandotia | Co-founder & COO, Toch

    He is the operational brain behind the technology. His data-first approach ensures Toch is at the top of the game. With skills he picked from the IIM Indore, Saket is the bridge between technology and the market. His grit is focused on harnessing AI-powered disruption in the media space. Exploring the scope of AI in the future is his favorite pastime. Mentoring in Hong Kong Technical University, IIT Indore, and IIM Indore, he seeks to inspire Gen Next.

    Toch Team

    Since its inception in 2016, Toch has been growing exponentially with a manpower of 60+ personnel across countries. Its team is task-oriented through liberal leadership. As cliche as it sounds, but the founders believe in team building and bonding. Empathy and motivation are synonymous with that idea. At Toch, people understand diversity at its best and use it as a force for synchronous output.

    The name was thought of from the point of view of “touching” as many lives by cutting through the clutter and personalizing content. This evolved into TOCH only due to the availability of domain names. The logo was created in unison with the brand name.

    Toch
    Toch Logo

    Toch – Business Model & Revenue Model

    Toch is a SaaS platform and offers different subscription options for its clients. Its business model includes API integration and easy-to-use dashboard services.

    Also read: All about SaaS Revenue Model in detail

    Toch – Launch and Marketing Strategies

    Toch’s product has proved its mettle, it has been its own brand ambassador of viability and productivity. The numbers give a fair picture of its joyous sustenance (as of Oct’21) –

    • 12.9M+ videos scanned
    • 1.2B+ hours of video processing time saved
    • 72% increase in viewer time spent on videos
    • 8.3X increase in viewer engagement rate

    The startup’s marketing strategy is split into brand marketing and event focussed marketing. With a global b2b target market, social media and digital marketing play a crucial role. Its campaigns focus on thought leadership through podcasts, webinars, and fire-side chats along with event campaigns focussed on the actual benefits of AI technology in the media industry.

    Toch – Funding

    On October 13, 2021, Toch announced an $11.75 million Series A funding by Moneta Ventures, Baring Private Equity India, Binny Bansal, Ventureast, 9 Unicorns, Anthill Ventures, Cathexis Ventures, SOSV, Artesian, and Innoven Capital (backed by Temasek and United overseas bank).

    The funding will be used to scale up technology infrastructure and venture expansion into global markets with a specific focus on foreign markets.

    Arul Mehra, Partner at Baring Private Equity India, said, “We believe that AI can make a lot of difference to how content is generated and consumed. Toch.ai is equipped with top notch technology & team which is greatly contributing to the revolution seen in the video sector. Thus we see this as a huge opportunity to be a part of this change as we partner with Vinayak & the team as they chart out the journey towards becoming leaders in the video-tech space.”

    The company has raised around $13.3 mn in funding over 7 funding rounds.

    Date Name of the transaction Transaction amount Lead investors
    Oct 7, 2021 Series A $11.8 mn Moneta Ventures, Baring Private Equity India, Binny Bansal
    Jun 29, 2021 Seed round – 9Unicorns Accelerator Fund
    May 26, 2020 Seed round $1 mn –
    Apr 16, 2020 Seed round $400K Inflection Point Ventures
    Jun 8, 2019 Seed round – Hyderabad Angels, Mumbai Angels
    Jan 1, 2019 Seed round – JITO Angel Network
    Jun 7, 2016 Seed round $150K –

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    Toch – Partnerships

    • Toch.ai has announced a partnership with USA cricket on December 23, 2021. This partnership aims to bring all the action from the field so that the fans don’t regret missing out on the best moments from the Dafabet USA vs. Ireland Men’s International Series 2021 that began on December 22, 2021, in Florida
    • Toch has been the official partner of the Indian Premier League that was truncated due to the ongoing pandemic.

    The Mumbai-based interactive video shopping platform has also earlier been the official partner of the Australian Open. Furthermore, Toch.ai also frequently collaborates with numerous OTT platforms.    

    Toch – Recognition & Achievements

    • Recognized as Best AI startup 2021 by Franchise India and Entrepreneur Media.
    • Recognized as Nasscom AI Game Changers for the category ‘Computer Vision Award’ for accelerating India with innovation in 2021.
    • Co-founder and CEO, Vinayak Shrivastav recognized as 30 UNDER 30 Disruptor by BW Businessworld 2021
    • Co-founder and CEO, Vinayak Shrivastav was recognized as The Most Promising Entrepreneur by ‘The Economic Times Promising Entrepreneurs of India’ 2021.
    • Co-founder and COO, Saket Dandotia was recognized as the winner of Exchange4Media’s Digital 40 under 40 awards 2021 (public announcement pending).

    Toch – Current Growth and Future Plans

    Toch has grown from strength to strength over the past couple of years and added many of the big banner broadcasters and OTTs to its portfolio. Although success is relative, partnering for the Indian Premier League, Champions League, and Australian Open events with top OTT broadcasters has defined its learning and experience curve.

    Toch is levitating towards extensive engagements and making its mark with AI and ML-based technology in video editing. The applications for this technology can be used in the future for better healthcare services, safety, and security solutions, and education. Its future plans involve a deep dive into the entertainment and news industries and the application of AI-led technologies to create personalized content for its clients.

    Toch – FAQs

    What is Toch AI?

    Toch AI is a SaaS company with cloud-agnostic AI solutions. It offers professional services by taking noisy, large data sets and transforming them into engrossing and compelling hyper-global videos.

    Who are the founders of Toch?

    Vinayak S, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil founded Toch in 2016.

    Is Toch an Indian Company?

    Yes. Toch is an Indian company headquartered in Mumbai, India. However, Toch functions worldwide with a focus on India, North America, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

    How does Toch make money?

    Toch is a SaaS platform and offers different subscription options for its clients.

    What is Toch’s USP?

    The USP of Toch is its premium video editing feature that facilitates the patrons with automatic dynamic engagements and insertions to create their own bespoke videos.

  • Are AI Content Writing Tools Worth Using For Blogs?

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technology that is fascinating and interesting as well and which is constantly on its way to transforming the world. Gone are the days, where AI was just a part of a sci-fi movie, now has become a reality in which we live.

    People have started adopting Artificial Intelligence into their business, from hospitality to advertising to the healthcare industry, AI is ruling the market. Various businesses and organizations are taking a part in this industry to upgrade them and make their work easier.

    When we talk about artificial intelligence, it basically means a machine that has human-like intelligence, which can perform all those tasks that a human can do, maybe much more than that. Artificial Intelligence has also embarked on a journey where now it can use for writing as well.

    We are living in a world, that AI for writing doesn’t seem like something impossible. In this article, we will find out if AI writing tools are worth using for blogs or not. So let’s get started with the first and foremost thing.

    “AI as a technology is complex, of course, but the capabilities and benefits of AI aren’t hard to understand.”

    -Jensen Huang

    What do you mean By AI For Writing?
    How does AI Writing Tools Works?
    Advantages of AI Writing
    Disadvantages of AI Writing
    AI Writers for Blog Writing
    What are the Best AI Writers?
    FAQ

    What do you mean by AI For Writing?

    AI for writing is nothing but Artificial Intelligence technology that looks into big data sets to write in a natural language and in the desired format. This technology can generate texts and create content for you just like a human, not only that you get to have long content.

    Different algorithms are used to understand what the users want as its content and, it can also deal with SEO. AI is becoming smarter and it might replace professionals in the future.

    AI writing tools are used for:

    • Blogs
    • Essays
    • Articles

    How does AI Writing Tools Works?

    Two technologies that are deep learning and natural language processing are included in this process, deep learning tries to work like a brain of a human and the NLP tries to examine and use the language just like the way a human uses it.

    The technology understands and learns the meaning of the words so that they can structure sentences for the content when the users put all the data that are necessary for it, like the format of the content and its length.

    The steps how an AI writings work are:

    • The technology use algorithms to understand the meaning of the words.
    • After finding the meaning of the words, the data is transformed into texts.

    Advantages of AI Writing

    People are thinking about introducing AI for writing because it has an upper hand that is extremely intriguing and helpful, which are:

    • AI writers can write anything, one just needs to insert some data and the work will be done. It can even convey emotions by writing a poem. In 2011, an AI robot writer was created that wrote a poem.
    • AI writers can write ad campaigns for blogs and the best part is once you get an AI writer, there is no need to pay the other writers for their services and you also don’t need to spend any other expenses on them, as AI writers are going to the job.
    • Errors are almost non-existent as data once put into them; through algorithms, they can create the almost perfect content.
    • AI can create high-level and sophisticated content way faster than human writers.
    • AI can create logical content regarding any subject and has various worldwide ideas as they are versatile in nature.
    • AI copywriters can go beyond generating copy with AI copywriting tools. Nowadays, AI isn’t just used for copywriting, but also for analyzing copy. For example, AI copywriting platform Anyword can predict how each copy variation will perform even before a campaign starts. It also determines what kinds of ads appeal to which type of audience, defines the emotional tone of copy, and so much more.

    Disadvantages of AI Writing

    If something has its advantages, it is bound to have disadvantages as well. There are some limitations that AI writing has and those are:

    • AI writing may start creating content that is low quality which is not good for the image of an organization.
    • Fake contents are easier to provide through AI, once it started spreading, it can lead to a bigger mess, which will also tarnish the image of the organization.
    • One of the greatest fears related to AI is that it will start replacing humans in jobs, which will lead to a risk of unemployment.
    • Sometimes AI may create content that can have a lot of inaccuracies as it is derived from all the publications that can be found on the internet.

    AI Writers for Blog Writing

    Blog writing is a very time-consuming task, AI writers will help in creating high-quality blogs that will also work in attracting the attention of the audience through good content. It collects information from all over the internet and uses them, through that they can also create new ideas.

    AI writers for blogs have many pros and cons, some of the pros are that it creates engaging and relevant content in a very quick time for the audience. On the other hand, the cons included the loss of human touch in a blog and it may also lack originality. Definitely, it saves money and time, plus it is said to be a one-time investment.

    AI creates content that is not biased and is based on facts that can be found on the internet. AI Writer may not fully replace a content writer but will be better for any organization to have a versatile source that will be able to coexist with a human content writer.

    What are the Best AI Writers?

    Some of the best artificial intelligence content generators that can help you in writing blogs and articles are:

    • Rytr
    • Jarvis
    • GrowthBar
    • Article Forge
    • Copysmith
    • Anyword
    • WordAi
    • AI Writer
    • AdZis
    • Kafkai

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    Conclusion

    With artificial intelligence emerging and increasing its popularity in every sector, blogging will also be a great option where one can use AI writers for creating content. People have witnessed the technological advancement that is happening all over the world and it is just a matter of time when AI will make its presence known in every sector and including blogging as well.

    FAQ

    Can AI writing tools write Blog Posts?

    Yes, AI writing tools can write blog posts.

    Is AI Copywriting Worth it?

    Yes, it is definitely worth it as it is cheaper than hiring an actual copywriter.

    What are the best AI Writers?

    Article Forge, Jarvis, and Rytr are some of the best AI writers.

  • How Artificial Intelligence Has Revolutionized Marketing [Case Study]

    We have seen automation happening in manual habitats but AI has brought us a whole new world to figure out. Computers are slowly taking over manual tasks and this has triggered fear in a tech giant you might be familiar with. Using artificial intelligence in marketing has now become a norm as it has transformed the Marketing Industry.

    Yes, I’m talking about Elon Musk fearing that the advancements in AI might create human hunting robots and it would be us, mortals, against AI-powered geniuses. However, there has been an increase in companies using AI for marketing and ad campaigns.

    What is AI Marketing?
    Why Is AI A Good Approach For Marketing?
    How Companies Are Using AI For Marketing?
    Most Successful Marketing Campaigns Designed By AI
    How Small Businesses Are Using Ai Tools
    Conclusion
    FAQs

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    What is AI Marketing?

    Artificial intelligence plays a big role in marketing, as it helps companies to make decisions based on the data collected by a company. The use of artificial intelligence in marketing will help you get the data could be anything from the customer’s favourite hangout places to their birthdays.

    Any AI marketing strategy helps data to be collected from general behaviours of consumers from polls on social media, surveys, and their interests when surfing the internet. Marketing teams along with AI study consumer patterns and accordingly place and plan their AI marketing campaigns.

    AI has suspended a large area of the consumer field where everything can be predicted. The AI marketing research mainly consists of collecting and analyzing data, media buy-in, personalization, content creation, and much more. This case study on artificial intelligence shows you how most of the marketing tasks are highly dependent on AI these days.

    Why Is AI A Good Approach For Marketing?

    AI-based marketing has entirely changed the way people use social media. Before it sneaked into every device, social media was leisure, rather, luxury.

    Cut to today, every individual and even kids are owners of smartphones enabling them access to social media and shopping sites because of the artificial intelligence advertising campaigns. Your everyday social media behaviour is what fuels the study of AI-based marketing tools. With this being done, marketers can reach up to a larger demographic without spending a fortune on marketing campaigns.

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    How Companies Are Using AI For Marketing?

    Many AI marketing companies use core elements like Big Data, Machine Learning, and other powerful solutions that allow AI to get adopted quickly by a marketer. Big data is nothing but a prodigious amount of data aggregated by the marketer and segmented into various categories with a minimal amount of manual work.

    With the help of big data, marketers can personalize every message sent to their customers. Like mentioned earlier, several marketers keep an eye on repetitive actions which offer deeper insight into responses. It is a demanding task when we try to make sense out of the massive data collected. This is where machine learning and AI in marketing are used.

    You may have been familiar with pop-up messages or push notifications from the apps you install from time to time. These messages are powered by AI-programmed systems and automated to deliver context in a specified manner. There are several other AI marketing strategies that marketers have adopted to keep you hooked and engaged. Let us have a look at what they are.

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    PPC Ads

    Pay-per-click (PPC) is an online advertising model used to drive viewer traffic to the website. Nowadays AI-based marketing is used in every blog, website, and video. When you visit a certain page and click on the link containing an advertisement, it directs you to the said website.

    This is an AI marketing analytics used by the advertiser where they pay the publisher every time a user clicks on the link. Some of the tops AI marketing companies like Facebook ads, Instagram, Twitter Ads, Google Ads make PPC Ads.

    Pay-per-click Ads
    Pay-per-click Ads

    Personalization

    If you have your mailbox overflowing with promotional emails, worry not, you’re not alone. Personalization has become a crucial contributor to every company where they want you to feel like the most sought-after customers.

    Personalized messaging has a direct influence over your mind giving you the impression that this auto-generated message was especially typed for you because it has your name on it. Artificial intelligence marketing helps organizations to place bids on relevant ad spaces in real-time. With critical analytics and results from big data, artificial intelligence, and marketing you can send personalized messages to individuals.

    The AI tools for marketing are not limited to just emails. Have you noticed how Netflix uses your previously watched movies and gives recommendations based on past experience? Or how it shows you different imageries for the same movie every time you open it? Their blog, Netflix tech blog, talks about how creating different imageries for the same movie or show has got viewers hooked to Netflix all day long.

    Netflix using Different imageries for the same show
    Netflix using Different imageries for the same show

    A movie title may not be that intriguing. But a picture is worth a thousand words. It may contain a familiar face, your favourite actor, something that draws you in and keeps you engaged.

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    Predictive Analytics

    Predictive analytics is based on processing the historical data of a demographic to understand or carve a pattern or predict future behaviour. Predictive analytics is an AI marketing strategy that compares the trends and patterns of different data sets and pulls out a new analysis using a mathematical ‘model which helps companies prepare for what’s coming.

    It could be identifying a customer likely to ditch a service or product, or a customer who is likely to stick around and send them marketing campaigns. AI marketing companies use predictive analysis to improve current services and make organizational changes accordingly.

    Deep learning

    Deep learning is a class of machine learning algorithms used to extract higher-level data from raw input and is considered to be the future of AI in digital marketing. Machine learning and AI in marketing are important because they help in creating voice-controlled chatbots, image recognition (in the case of Facebook), and predicting customer interests.

    Many brick-and-mortar stores are turning to AI systems enabled by deep learning such as cashier-less counters, contactless payment options, and virtual baskets. One of the popular AI in marketing examples is Amazon GO stores that have adopted auto checkouts where AI-enabled cameras detect the movements of customers and add items to a virtual basket. Customers can check themselves out after making payments online.

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    Most Successful Marketing Campaigns Designed By AI

    Chase+Persado

    Chase, a New York-based consumer bank upgraded its copywriting by collaborating with Persado, is one of the tops AI marketing companies that use AI in its creative processes. Chase bank wanted a humanitarian perspective to their AI marketing campaigns and after a successful pilot, the bank saw a 450% surge in the click-through ads created by Persado and both the companies have ties hands for a five-year contract.

    Starbucks

    Starbucks is one of the other companies using AI for marketing. The company uses predictive analytics by making use of its loyalty cards and mobile app to collect and analyze customer data. The coffee giant has also used AI marketing research to optimize the user experience to an extent where it records details of purchases, including what time and what buy. It is concentrating on a model “AI for Humanity” where they believe will create better connections with humans surrounding them.

    In a busy world, as is ours, Starbucks makes unique use of artificial intelligence in marketing, as it aims to recreate human interaction which is seemingly blurred since everyone is literally into their devices. This artificial intelligence marketing initiative may be invisible to the customers as it focuses on inventory management, processing orders, staffing requirements, and much more so that there are more interactions between customers and partners at Starbucks. You would leave the café with much more than coffee for sure.

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    Alibaba

    Alibaba is known to use many AI tools for marketing, it has now opened its first AI fashion store in Hong Kong. This store has deployed AI in streamlining fashion retail. The store has introduced Intelligent garment tags with radio-frequency identification, gyro-sensors, and low-energy Bluetooth chips. This can enable the garment to carry information such as colour and size.

    Smart mirrors
    Smart mirrors

    The gyro-sensors will recognize patterns when an item is touched, moved, or picked up. Another intriguing feature is its smart mirrors located on sales floors and changing rooms that help customers find related items along with the ones picked up and also add them to a virtual basket. Alibaba uses different types of AI in marketing in order to provide a one of the kind experience to its customers.

    Nike

    Nike launched the “Nike Makers’ experience” campaign in 2017 that allowed customers to design their own Nike pair. Using AI marketing analytics, the shoe brand can encourage their customers to choose their designs and graphics using projections and augmented reality on blank Nike X Presto sneakers.

    Nike Makers’ experience
    Nike Makers’ experience

    This is the future of AI in digital marketing, as customers then chose their designs and they were delivered the shoes in 90 minutes. Not only their sales soared but Nike used this opportunity to collect customer preferences using machine learning and design future products.

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    Sephora

    Sephora is one of the few companies using ai for marketing and is also an early adaptor of AI-based marketing. The AI marketing strategy that the company uses is responsible for three bots that interact with customers on a personal level to understand their needs and wants. It is really daunting to order a foundation or lipstick that may or may not be your perfect match.

    Sephora’s Kik bot
    Sephora’s Kik bot

    Sephora’s Kik bot helps you with an interactive quiz, make-up tips, how-to videos, and reviews. Using AI in marketing will help your customers can even scan images of celebrities to find matching make-up products.

    How Small Businesses Are Using Ai Tools

    The use of artificial intelligence in marketing has proven to be quite a revolution in the industry. Recent studies and case studies on artificial intelligence, predict that almost 70% of marketing jobs will be replaced by automation. The vital role of artificial intelligence in digital marketing has made many AI marketing companies successful, while the small businesses are no longer shying away from

    Here’s a list of AI tools you could check out while you chalk out your next marketing plan.

    Concured

    Concured is an AI content strategy platform that gauges what your audience is looking for. This AI tool for marketing offers three exclusive tools for content- research, creation, and personalization. It has other beneficial tools which include live audits, automation of content and removing of content waste by 90%, planning tool for detailed content brief, performance tracking, and analysis for better ROI and user engagement.

    Import.io

    Import.io is a data extraction tool that helps you with everything from extracting data from the sea that is the internet, even hidden pages, with anomaly detection, and validation rules. These AI-based marketing tools allow you to optimize your campaigns with access to competitor price search and analyze all your customer reviews.

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    Grammarly

    Grammarly is a popular AI tool for marketing and is considered a savior for all the content creators out there. Writers, please take note. Grammarly not only eases the spell checks but suggests you rephrase your sentences in case they appear to be blurry or unclear. Ultimately, it makes you a better writer over the period.

    Cortex

    Cortex helps you build AI-based marketing strategies based on visual analytics, that is what images or video ideas are trending on social platforms. These AI marketing strategy helps you gain insights on what will work better and what’s suited better for your company. After you have analyzed your competitors’ social media efforts, it pushes you and your team to do better by refining your marketing and content strategies.

    Phrasee

    If you break a sweat every time copywriting challenges come up, then Phrasee is here to ease that out. With AI-powered language optimization, you can create professional and compelling copies for your audience. These AI-based marketing tools help you create email subject lines, push notifications, social media posts, and much more with, what they call a “Magic” button.

    Sentinent Ascend

    Sentient Ascend is a testing tool for marketers that helps enhance conversion rate optimization (CRO). AI for marketing has proven to be 100 times better than the current A/B testing multivariate solutions and gives marketers a free hand in trying several copies, images, designs, and interaction changes that speed up revenues and conversions.

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    Drift

    Drift helps in AI marketing research as it connects you to potential clients in real-time. It is a marketing and sales chatbot that helps you connect with business leads. It personalizes every experience of your website visitors by interacting with them while turning conversations into conversions.

    FindTheRipple

    FindTheRipple is an AI-driven platform that enables you to create content with impact, find untapped trends, and alert you with emerging engagement peaks to target your audience. It also recommends you match digital assets to optimize your content creation.

    Lucy

    Lucy is an AI-powered knowledge management assistant that helps you leverage business insights across your company. You ask her a question, and she answers you with the best possible solutions for your challenges. Lucy’s integrations allow it to quickly enter your systems and access information hence helping you the right answers to your business needs.

    Nudge.ai

    Nudge.ai is a relationship management tool that helps you connect better within and outside your organization. Its powerful AI leverages big data and data mining brings better connectivity to your business and helps you make meaningful relationships.

    One of the AI tools for marketing helps develop relationships that are organic and natural and shows you how to reach out with a perspective thereby creating a genuine sense of urgency which is vital during closing a deal.

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    Cogito

    Cogito is a real-time conversational and analysis system that identifies human signals on calls and predicts the emotional intelligence of the caller. It incorporates AI and machine learning to voice calls and assists call centres to be more empathetic while conversing.

    It monitors speed, volume, and pauses in the conversation between agents and customers records the transcripts of the call and detects keywords used by the customers, and helps executives with apt responses.

    Optimail

    Processing emails manually can be extremely time-consuming and expensive. A manual process is always prone to human error. Hence, Optimail enables marketers to continuously and automatically optimize their email and AI marketing campaigns. It not only promotes campaigns but adjusts the timings, content, and personalization. It builds better engagement and also reduces spam.

    Aizimov

    Aizimov is an AI social selling platform that writes ultra-personal messages for each of your target audiences. It’s basically like having a personal secretary. It optimizes the time spent on sales leads and improvises with every feedback and response. The smart AI also analyses the psychological profile of a prospect and crafts its message carefully. It takes a step further and chooses the best channel to reach the potential client.

    Pathmatics

    Pathmatics offers solutions to what, when, where, who, and how-to questions in marketing. You can see ads served, impressions, and digital strategies of brands and publishers across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Marketers can take a jiffy from aggregating data and use digital insights to pitch new ideas and create more effective campaigns.

    Emarsys

    Emarsys is an omnichannel customer engagement platform that helps you accelerate your business outcomes. These AI-based marketing tools include industry-specific analytics and use-cases that cater to every business. By one’s own bootstraps, Emarsys powers all your marketing needs with 1:1 personalization across all channels and devices.

    Conclusion

    AI has become indispensable in many areas of our life. The importance of artificial intelligence in marketing is that it leads to Driverless cars, Automation Marketing, conversational bots like Siri and Alexa are the new highs of AI technology. We’re yet to comprehend what AI can accomplish.

    Could they completely replace human interference and take over our world like Elon Musk fears? We don’t know. But it surely has prodigious potential to make things happen which we never imagined were possible. Hopefully, this artificial intelligence case study would have helped you understand the importance of artificial intelligence in marketing.

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    FAQs

    How is AI used in marketing?

    AI tools are used in marketing to learn how to best communicate with customers, then serve them tailored messages at the right time.

    What are the 3 stages of AI?

    The three stages of AI are artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), artificial general intelligence (AGI), and artificial superintelligence (ASI).

    How AI is used in mobile marketing?

    AI used to craft more targeted and personalized marketing messages such as special offers and ads by spotting consumers’ behavioural trends and patterns.

    Ho does AI work in digital marketing?

    Artificial intelligence is transforming customer-facing services for digital marketers by increasing efficiency and optimizing user experience.

    Is AI the future of marketing?

    AI is changing the future of digital marketing, that is certain. It’s not so much about what new developments are happening, but also what new trends are likely to emerge over the next few years.

    How is AI used in Marketing?

    One common example of AI across the web is the use of chatbots to provide customer services to users.

    What is AI marketing?

    Artificial intelligence plays a big role in marketing, as it helps companies to make decisions based on the data collected by a company.

  • Amazon Agritech | How Amazon Enters Agritech to Help Farmers?

    Amazon has set high standards in e-commerce as well as in many other fields. But the Agritech sector is a new sector on which Amazon is focussing right now due to many different reasons. And also, when it comes to agriculture, you cannot ignore India. Amazon also has big plans for the Indian Agri sector. The Indian agriculture sector is currently experiencing a lot of influence from private players. Amazon is trying to Invest in the Agritech space in India to make some modern changes. This may secure the farm produce in the Indian agricultural sector. Let’s jump into the topic to know more about it.

    How will Amazon help farmers?
    How is Amazon Entering Agritech?
    Benefits of Amazon Agritech
    Government Plans For The Agritech Sector
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    How will Amazon help farmers?

    Amazon retail is trying to help farmers in India by launching its agronomy services which will notify the farmers about important crop-related data. These early notifications and information will help the farmers to make the necessary decisions for their crops. Now, this whole process takes place through an application through which necessary information is conveyed to the farmers related to crops, and it’s production. Amazon has entered the Agritech sector to secure farm produce. This farm produce yields two-thirds of the country’s $1 trillion retail spendings. Also, in India, many crops are not grown throughout the year. The government aims to bring in the private players to improve the farm work by yielding good results from suitable technology available. Amazon is a private giant which can invest a nice amount of money in reforming the agricultural sector.

    Reactive and proactive plant programs supported by Amazon will provide cutting-edge technology to farmers and other crop growers. The dedicated mobile application will provide farmers with real-time advice and information on crop data and insights. As a Private company, Amazon tends to stretch its boundaries in different sectors, and the Agritech sector is perhaps one of the most developing sectors in the current time. Also, crop data needs critical analysis to be processed, and farmers will proceed accordingly, which will improve the crop produce. Private players could fulfill these factors in a better way if they cooperate with the government.

    How is Amazon Entering Agritech?

    Agronomy services launched by Amazon retail is a new footprint by a private company in the Agritech field of Indian agriculture. This system will provide early guidance and advice to farmers on crop production and other insights. Also, Amazon focuses on machine learning to improve productivity and build a more convenient supply infrastructure. According to Amazon’s Indian senior officials, this technology will improve the quality of crop production and will yield good results.

    Also, with this launch, the Amazon Agritech solutions have created an ecosystem through agronomist-powered field interventions. Also, tools were added to track down these field interventions. But every step requires huge support from the farmers on the field. Amazon needs to deliver good quality services with an agreement to supply vegetables and fruits of desired quality. Supply chain is a big challenge for Amazon. Old supply chains may damage the product, which will result in loss of trust and money. As a private giant, it’s not that difficult for the company to invest a big amount in the modernization of the supply chain.

    Benefits of Amazon Agritech

    Amazon Agritech
    Amazon Agritech

    This system makes sure that farmers make accurate decisions about their crops on time. The instructions and timely advice help the farmers to get early data on how to manage crop production and increase farm produce. Also, the supply chains can be processed properly now with the interface as well as farmers will get informed about rotten or damaged fruits and vegetables. This will improve the quality of fruits and vegetables, which will reach millions of customers. The government is also aiming to harness profit through suitable technology available. India is a developing nation, so the agricultural sector must get proper reforms.

    Also, farmers are showing interest in tech-led innovation in the field of farming. Smart farming methods will make it more profitable for the farmers to grow proper quality crops without much wastage. This technology will improve the results of the farming process and will deliver better. Amazon retail has also planned a proper temperature-controlled supply chain. This will ensure proper and safe transportation of the produce from the farm to the processing centers. After this, the packing process will take place with proper monitoring and will be dispatched to Amazon stores near customers. The Advancement in technology will help in upgrading the older ways of supplies and gathering farming data.

    Government Plans For The Agritech Sector

    The government of India is seeking a partnership of private giants to revolutionize the Indian agricultural sector. The technology provided by Companies such as Amazon will help to increase the farm yields. As a developing nation, India may see huge reforms in the agricultural sector in the next decade from a more modern perspective. The introduction to machine learning and artificial intelligence with modern supply chains and better advice on crop production are some of the examples. Some of these have already arrived in India,  as the Amazon Agritech.

    The aim is to increase profit revenue by increasing the farm produce. Also, time delays in supply chains can now be corrected, saving valuable time and capital. Farmers will get early warnings and important updates about the crops, which will help them to work more efficiently in the fields.

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    Conclusion

    The government and private entities will work together to bring suitable reforms to the sector that employs half of India’s population. Also, the agricultural sector contributes highly to India’s GDP, which is why it needs a good amount of investment too. Private companies have huge capital reserves to invest in technologies which can be helpful for the government to bring reforms. But the end decision must stay with the farmers who will work day and night in the crop fields to feed the entire nation.

    FAQs

    What is Amazon Kisan store?

    Amazon India’s Kisan Store help farmers with agriculture inputs like seeds, farm tools & accessories, plant protection, and many other agricultural products at competitive prices.

    What is amazon agronomy service?

    Amazon’s agronomy services empower farmers. It helps in following ways:

    • It gives them timely advice on farming.
    • It enables them to make proper decisions on actions needed for their crops.
    • It introduces machine learning technology for better production.
    • It helps in building a robust supply chain infrastructure.

  • Story of Locobuzz: Unified Digital Customer Experience Management Platform

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Locobuzz.

    Locobuzz leverages technology to help brands strengthen their relationships with consumers and increase the lifetime value of a customer!

    It is a unified customer experience platform that uses various technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Analytics to enable brands to effectively engage with their customers and in turn form strong and long-lasting relationships. Founded in 2016, the startup aims to democratize access to technology and envisions empowering companies to foster lasting relations with their consumers.

    StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Vishal Agarwal (Co-founder & CEO, Locobuzz) to get insights into the startup story and roadmap of the organization. In this artcile, you’ll discover how Locobuzz was started, its funding details, services offered, competitors, future plans and more.

    Locobuzz – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Locobuzz
    Founders Vishal Agarwal (CEO)
    Headquarters Mumbai
    Founded 2016
    Industry Consumer Experience, SaaS
    Website locobuzz.com

    Locobuzz – About and Vision
    Locobuzz – Industry Details
    Locobuzz – Startup Idea and Inspiration
    Locobuzz – Product/Service and USP
    Locobuzz – Founders and Team
    Locobuzz – Launch and Marketing Strategies
    Locobuzz – Challenges Faced
    Locobuzz – Growth
    Locobuzz – Funding and Investors
    Locobuzz – Competitors
    Locobuzz – Future Plans
    Locobuzz – FAQs

    Locobuzz – About and Vision

    Locobuzz is a unified customer experience platform that uses various technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Analytics to enable brands to effectively engage with their customers and in turn form strong and long-lasting relationships. The startup likes to think of itself as a technology bridge connecting brands with its consumers.

    Its mission statement is: “By democratizing access to technology, we envision empowering companies to foster lasting relations with their consumers.” ‘Empowering’ is a plethora of things – insights, analytics, engagement, and automation.

    In the near future, the team wants to ensure that Locobuzz has all the bells and whistles needed along with important data sources to be the perfect consumer experience platform and in the long term, the startup also wants to venture into enabling brands to reach out and identify new customers and manage their marketing campaigns via its platform.

    Locobuzz – Industry Details

    In 2019, the entire total CX management market is sized at around 16 billion dollars but post the pandemic, data reveals that by 2023, it is expected to grow to about 25 billion dollars by 2023. It is evident that the pandemic has been a catalyst for the increased growth rate in demand and supply of digital customer experience management. Businesses have moved online and become digital, users are becoming more attuned to the concept of “self-serve” and are becoming digitally-centric when it comes to their interactions with brands while setting new expectations about customer engagement standards.

    If you look at it, the CX market is vastly broken into three major services – web analytics, content management, and text analytics – this is where the majority of the market share goes and these are the areas Locobuzz operates in. With the events surrounding the pandemic in the past two years, it believes that the market will grow upwards to a CAGR of 20%. Locobuzz has always witnessed significant growth in its monthly revenues and a 100% growth in its monthly recurring revenue – which to the team, is both a sign of positivity and a remarkable opportunity to add value with their work and more.

    Locobuzz – Startup Idea and Inspiration

    Locobuzz was founded in Mumbai in 2015. The founders had a strong belief that unstructured social media data if analyzed and understood right and combined with the right use of technology is a powerful tool. Hence the idea of combining powerful analytics, driven by data from various social media channels gave rise to the creation of “Locobuzz – Location-based buzz”.

    The founding members carried out simple but effective data analytics on unstructured data focusing on processing large volumes of real-time data and further augmenting it with sentiment analysis, location, priority, influencer, viral, etc. As the team engaged with customers soon they realized that analytics is great but communication/engagement is equally important if not more. Brands needed tools to bring their CX game to social media. Looking at this, the team realized the need to have a platform for smart team workflows, tickets management, intelligent routing, and even AI-led auto-responses and other features around customer engagement to have a better product-market fit.

    Thus, Locobuzz evolved into a fully integrated, unified Customer Experience Platform. Locobuzz builds software to smartly connect brands and customers to each other!

    • Listen, Analyze and Engage with their customers
    • Automated customer interactions using AI
    • Realtime Data Analytics Hub, Research and Insights
    • Marketing and Advertising intelligence

    Locobuzz currently works with close to 150 reputed clients across geographies.

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    Locobuzz – Product/Service and USP

    Customer satisfaction can be optimally achieved with two critical factors: The use of powerful AI-led technologies that aid omnichannel digital presence, and secondly, deep customer and market insights drawn from social listening and big data analytics that propel brand growth. The most essential differentiator between good technologies and great technologies is their ability to process large volumes of data intelligently, and in real-time to propel brand growth. Locobuzz does exactly that. Without a doubt, social listening, big data analytics, and well-developed AI automation are the need of the hour for brands across sectors, with no exceptions.

    In addition to which response management as a key function helps brands bridge the gaps between themselves and customers through smart workflows, rich insights, and engagement at scale. Through the right technological advancements, Locobuzz ensures brands have the capacity to serve their customers and cut past their competitors through future-ready innovation and the ability to adapt to changing demands of the market. A platform like Locobuzz works to ensure that a brand’s digital health is strong, that they remain well informed, and their digital engagement approach is effective and strategic. Mostly, Locobuzz ensures that a brand knows who their customers are, and exactly how to retain them. All efforts eventually help ensure that the brand’s outreach efforts stand out to their customers impactfully.

    Therefore, to summarize what Locobuzz does is: It leverages technology to help brands strengthen their relationships with consumers and increase the lifetime value of a customer!

    Locobuzz
    Locobuzz – Products/Services

    USP

    At Locobuzz, the team focuses on building technology that facilitates brand growth through social intelligence and AI-led automation. Locobuzz uses NLP and NLU capabilities which are developed in-house which enrich customers’ data to include a variety of customer data attributes such as age, gender, opinion, location, and 18 other such attributes with 90% or more accuracy and F1-Score. Using this Locobuzz automatically recommends what response should be sent out to the customer as well.

    For enterprises, data security and data isolation are some of the biggest challenges when dealing with 3rd party platforms. Locobuzz follows a multi-tenant architecture that enables it to keep each client’s data separate from other clients. Locobuzz undergoes a vulnerability assessment and penetration tests every 6 months through a leading 3rd party security firm in India to harden the security and proactively plug any vulnerabilities if found.

    Locobuzz’s scalable architecture automatically caters to higher data volume and adjusts/self-corrects in case of any anomalies. The Locobuzz dashboards present data in real-time without any unnecessary overheads and reduce server costs. Its command center leverages this technology and presents insightful data for brands to act upon.

    Locobuzz recognizes the role of machine learning and is investing heavily in it. In its product roadmap, many features such as, content recommendation engines, virality alerts, productivity, and workforce optimizations, etc are based on machine learning which is currently non-existent in this domain. It also has VOIP integrations to deliver a complete omnichannel experience.

    “As we evolve in our capabilities, we always ensure that the simplicity of our software is maintained and never compromised” – Says Vishal Agarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Locobuzz.

    Locobuzz – Founders and Team

    Vishal Agarwal, Nitin Agarwal, and Shubhi Agarwal are the founders of Locobuzz.

    Shubhi Agarwal | Co-founder & COO, Locobuzz

    In her current role, Shubhi oversees product development and envisioning long-term productivity of incremental changes, upgrades, and innovations. Shubhi is responsible for creating visibility of the product and curating beneficial associations between businesses and opportunities in Artificial intelligence and digital customer experience.

    Prior to co-founding Locobuzz, Shubhi has worked with Tata Motors, Integriti planners, YEN Management consultants, UTV Software Communications Ltd, Bigflix, Hungama, BoxTV- Times Internet, and Spatial Ideas. She has a degree in BE in Electronics and Telecommunications from Amravati University, Shubhi is an MBA graduate in Finance from California State University, USA.  

    Vishal Agarwal | Co-Founder & CEO, Locobuzz

    As the Co-Founder and CEO of Locobuzz, he spearheads the strategic goals of the company and is instrumental in constructing the company’s future roadmap. Prior to laying the foundation of Locobuzz, Vishal has worked across the US, India, and the Middle East on GeoSpatial Analytics. Vishal also worked with Nitin on a tech startup before Locobuzz to ensure transparency and accountability in governance using technology. A graduate from Amravati University in BE – Electronics and Telecommunications, Vishal did his Masters in Electronic Engineering and Geography Information Systems from Penn State University, the USA in 2003.

    Nitin Agarwal | Co-Founder & CTO, Locobuzz

    Nitin, in his current role, is responsible for building winning teams and delivering innovative and secure technological solutions leveraging AI, Analytics, big data, and automation to streamline Digital Customer Experience. Nitin holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and has 14 years of experience in designing and developing B2B and enterprise applications. Nitin was one of the leading professionals in the industry to identify the early advantages of using artificial intelligence and machine learning in customer experience and analytics, thus placing Locobuzz at the forefront and leader of innovation in this domain. Nitin has been responsible for enabling the seamless integration of the platform with various business demands and processes. His innovation mantra is that technology should be reliable, stable, and easy to use.

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    Locobuzz – Launch and Marketing Strategies

    The journey of Locobuzz began a few years earlier to its launch in 2015 when the idea of utilizing big data analytics for customer insights and brand upliftment was something that the market was yet to truly discover. Upon deciding to create a product and an opportunity in a market like that, it had to really sell its value to its buyers.

    In a country like India, sales like these were preferred to be done in person, rather than online. The common consensus was that customers wanted to meet in person to understand the product. So, when Locobuzz had 0 customers, all it was equipped with was an idea and a product at its prototype stage. It had fitted the prototype with the public data of one potential customer and took the results with it when the team went to meet them. When Locobuzz showed them the value of their data, they loved it, and signed up immediately – gradually even increasing the scope of work over the years.

    The initial formation of Locobuzz’s product and its road map was very heavily governed by its client and close partners when it started out, but as Locobuzz grew to become a unified SaaS product, it was slowly able to transform from customized solutions for every challenge and embody a certain branded uniformity which could house the sector-agnostic challenges on a single dashboard.  

    Having said so, Locobuzz still caters to needs for the integration of diverse CRMs that are now handled easily in a plug-and-play model. After it  was successful in impressing a few clients with the work it had done for other businesses, it was able to build a lot of trust and confidence in the kind of work it was doing.

    The problem that Locobuzz is solving is very real – and people needed something like Locobuzz. So, initially, the startup had to put more effort into explaining the severity of the problem it was solving, however, today, the need for the world of customer experience management is much more well defined, thus the interactions Locobuzz has with people are more about pricing, timing and being there in a meeting more than anything else! Now that the need is more well-defined, what is interesting to see is that there is more uptake of products like Locobuzz in India and across the world.

    “We as a startup have been able to compete with some of the market leaders in our direct space and hold our ground really well. So, now when we reach out to customers it’s quite different – we focus a lot on making sure that our inbound engine is much stronger than our outbound engine” – Vishal added.

    What has worked consistently in keeping the faith of customers in its services is the support system Locobuzz offers them. The startup is more than efficient at identifying the critical needs of customers and delivering assistance whenever they need it. In terms of innovation and strategy, it has been vehemently ahead of its competitors and have never taken the short path to research and execution. They have done right by tech adoption and integration while maintaining the speed and consistency. Most importantly, Locobuzz continues to think ahead to discover and create opportunities to innovate and never forget to be there for its customers.

    The overall branding and marketing of Locobuzz is a collection of efforts. Currently, Locobuzz is focused on elevating its brand image to make sure it is always relevant in the minds of people whenever they think of “Unified Digital Customer Experience Management”. It has steadily expanded its presence on all major social media platforms and other digital mediums. Through blog posts and published articles, it constantly touches upon the many topics in its domain from a thought-leadership perspective ensuring the content reaches the right audience.

    Locobuzz’s marketing strategies are appropriately adjusted to reach out to the overseas market. For example, e-mail marketing is a crucial part of its overall strategy of touching base with potential customers in the US and India, on the other hand, its dedicated Pre-Sales team connects with those expressing interest in this space.

    For Locobuzz, participating in events – in both India and overseas – has proved to be lucrative. It has had the opportunity to share interesting learnings about its work with the clients while highlighting Locobuzz’s successes and the way in which Locobuzz can improve the overall Customer Experience of other brands as well.

    It has focused its marketing efforts on gaining a trustworthy and steady association with “Unified Digital Customer Experience Management” to drive innovation as thought-leaders from the space of CX.

    Locobuzz – Challenges Faced

    The biggest challenge that Locobuzz faces is that it will be compared to the global players in the same industry. In the initial phases of the firm’s establishment, the team were asked (all the time!) if such a small company would exist in a few years.  There were times where they had to disclose its financials to close some deals and prove that they were indeed a profit-making company.

    Eventually, as a matter of practice, Locobuzz focused on building its website and building the thought-leadership content, to ensure that it continues to remain in the mind space of people searching for products like Locobuzz. In that sense, the founders do believe that this mindset has changed because India is being recognized as a country that can build tech solutions for the world.

    “We think this challenge is still very prevalent” Vishal continues, “There are still people who prefer to pay for expensive services with foreign companies when the same can be leveraged here in India. We at Locobuzz overcome these challenges by building trust, providing continued support, sharing our VNL, or giving free trials for months at a stretch sometimes. In a way, we believe that the confidence in the product is what is reciprocated in the experience it provides consumers”

    Locobuzz – Growth

    The future looks promising as the company is doing well, the team at Locobuzz is constantly building new products, acquiring new customers, achieving targets as per the expectations of the monthly recurring revenue. Locobuzz has already registered 60% of the growth over last year in just 6 months, and it is on track to a great year and push for significant growth in revenues and presence in some new key markets.

    Locobuzz – Funding and Investors

    In April’21, Locobuzz raised pre-series A for INR 9 Crores from SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd.

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    Locobuzz – Competitors

    Locobuzz’s top competitors are – Konnect Insights, One Direct, Simplify 360, Meltwater, Salesforce, Sprinklr, Yellow Messenger, Talkwalker and Khoros.

    Locobuzz – Future Plans

    Locobuzz recently received its first round of funding. Through the funds raised, it is looking at expanding its technology teams, business development team, client services team with critical hires as well as focused marketing efforts. From a product perspective, the startup believes that analytics and automation for messaging channels are going to be a big deal, so the team is focusing on creating products to increase the value and adoption of these tech solutions, eventually garnering the future potential of revenue.

    Locobuzz is looking at expanding to newer geographies such as the US and southeast Asia. It has already begun to create brand visibility and engagement – Locobuzz was recently a part of a US-based Omnichannel CX event and participated as silver sponsors to the event.

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    Locobuzz – FAQs

    What is Locobuzz?

    Locobuzz is a unified customer experience platform that uses various technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Analytics to enable brands to effectively engage with their customers and in turn form strong and long-lasting relationships.

    Who founded Locobuzz?

    Vishal Agarwal, Nitin Agarwal, and Shubhi Agarwal are the founders of Locobuzz.

    Is Locobuzz an Indian company?

    Yes. Locobuzz is an Indian company headquartered in Mumbai.

    How much funding has Locobuzz raised?

    In April’21, Locobuzz raised pre-series A for INR 9 Crores from SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd.

  • ClassMonitor is on a mission to establish better home learning experiences for early learners

    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 ClassMonitor.

    ClassMonitor is a home learning platform, which blends traditional teaching with modern methods of learning. Its hybrid learning tool takes children to a learning space that combines real-life learning experiences with curated activities. The ClassMonitor Learning Kit blends traditional teaching with modern learning to ease a child’s transition from preschool to formal schooling.

    The startup focuses on the fundamental development of a child based on five core areas: linguistic skills, logical thinking, sensory and motor skills, cognitive skills, and creativity. Founded by Vijeet Pandey and Vikas Rishishwar in 2016, the ClassMonitor app currently has 85,000 registered users. Also, in the last 12-14 months, the startup has delivered and dispatched its kits to more than 5,000 PIN codes across India, and other 14 countries.

    StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Vijeet Pandey (Co-founder & CEO of ClassMonitor) to get insights into the startup journey and roadmap of the organization. In this article, you’ll discover how ClassMonitor was conceptualized & launched, its business model, marketing strategies, funding, founders, revenue, growth, future plans, and more.

    ClassMonitor – Company Highlights

    Startup Name ClassMonitor
    Founders Vijeet Pandey (CEO), Vikas Rishishwar
    Headquarters Indore
    Founded 2016
    Industry Edtech
    Website classmonitor.com

    ClassMonitor – About and Vision
    ClassMonitor – Industry Details
    ClassMonitor – Inspiration and Idea
    ClassMonitor – Product and USP
    ClassMonitor – Founders and Team
    ClassMonitor – Name and Logo
    ClassMonitor – Business Model & Revenue Model
    ClassMonitor – Startup Launch & Marketing Strategies
    ClassMonitor – Growth and Stats
    ClassMonitor – Funding and Investors
    ClassMonitor – Advisors/Mentors
    ClassMonitor – Tools used to run the startup
    ClassMonitor – Achievements/Recognition
    ClassMonitor – Future Plans
    ClassMonitor – FAQs

    ClassMonitor – About and Vision

    Vijeet and his childhood friend Vikas Rishishwar came up with the idea of ClassMonitor, an EdTech startup in the early childhood learning segment. They have created well-researched kits to provide holistic learning experiences for preschoolers and help parents keep their children away from screens. ClassMonitor is a home learning platform, which blends traditional teaching with modern methods of learning. Its hybrid learning tool takes children to a learning space that combines real-life learning experiences with curated activities. The platform offers integrated annual packs which are designed for comprehensive learning, logical thinking, and problem-solving. The products are affordably priced and designed to address the year-long learning needs of children up to 8 years.

    Aim and Vision: ClassMonitor’s journey has just started. The team aims to bridge the overwhelming gap in the modern education systems in India and abroad – that of the lack of parental involvement in their child’s learning. They are addressing this gap using a two-pronged solution, which involves combining traditional and digital learning. The startup’s vision is to create high-quality learning programs and establish itself as a leader in the early years’ education sector.

    ClassMonitor – Industry Details

    (Reference Source: BLinC_EdTech_Early_Childhood_Deepdive Report)

    In the report, Early Childhood EdTech has been divided into 4 major sectors – Aspiration, Engagement, Learning, and Ancillary Services focusing on the end-use/outcome of the product.

    ClassMonitor as part of the Engagement segment fulfills the basic requirement of keeping children constructively occupied. Its high engagement products comprise interactive elements and a strong subscription model which results in customer retention.

    Engagement Sector –

    • Target Market Size/ Customer Base – 40 Million ( All Urban and 10% of Rural Indians with smartphone access)
    • Total available market- $ 2,300 m
    • ClassMonitor aims to capture at least 10% of this market

    ClassMonitor – Inspiration and Idea

    Vijeet returned to India in early 2016 after completing his Master’s in Accounts and Finance in the UK and working in the retail business. He wanted to become an entrepreneur and do something in the field of education, which has always been something close to his heart. So, Vijeet along with his childhood friend Vikas Rishishwar, an expert in technology, set up ClassMonitor in March 2016.

    Version 1 of ClassMonitor

    The duo wanted to do something in the education sector where technology would be the backbone. They, therefore, decided to enter the EdTech segment to solve the parent-teacher communication problem that was a major challenge, back in 2016. Schools had been connecting parents and teachers through WhatsApp groups which were quite unprofessional and unsystematic. That’s how the ClassMonitor platform was born, as a means of communication for parents and teachers. They called it Version 1 of ClassMonitor.

    Idea Pivot

    While in the idea stage, they raised undisclosed angel funding from a Sweden-based investor, whom Vijeet had known during his time in the UK. ClassMonitor was growing as a platform gradually, but the founders wanted to solve the larger problems in the sector. Around early 2017, after interacting with their clients, mostly parents, as well as school principals and teachers, they saw that the major pain point was for parents of kids between the ages of 1-7 years — the early learners. They wanted to participate in their child’s progress but didn’t know how to do so. At the same time, they were looking for solutions that would keep their kids away from mobile phones, computers, and tablets. This gave them enough insight to innovate. In October 2018, the duo pivoted from a communication platform to a hybrid early learning tool that marries offline learning with digital cues and rewards.

    Latest Version of ClassMonitor

    Essentially, they built an O2O model in EdTech, and that’s when the hybrid learning model came into the picture, as a combination of online and offline tools. The technology aspect is meant completely for parents, educators, and mentors, and the learning kits are meant for the children. Through technology, the parent understands what, how, and when to do something, and the kits help children perform hands-on activities and learn in the process. The online live sessions are for parents to guide them on how to get their children to perform the activities in ClassMonitor’s learning kits. Instructors take these classes three days a week. People are purchasing the kit and the live classes feature together now. The startup has received excellent responses to its products.

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    ClassMonitor – Product and USP

    The ClassMonitor Learning Kit blends traditional teaching with modern learning to ease a child’s transition from preschool to formal schooling. ClassMonitor focuses on the fundamental development of a child based on five core areas: linguistic skills, logical thinking, sensory and motor skills, cognitive skills, and creativity.

    Every box contains 250 DIY activities, including flashcards, worksheets, rhymes, stories, games, fun activities, puzzles, and art supplies for kids to play based on a set of more than 14 themes like plants, animals, and more. It comes bundled with a subscription to the ClassMonitor app that has AR features and a QR code scanner. The learning kit comes in four different product variants for children aged 1 to 8 years and lets parents teach, play, and bond meaningfully with their children. All sheets and flashcards have QR codes that can be scanned on the app to get the cues needed to complete an activity. The product integrates online guidelines and offline activities to bring interactive learning content for kids. The activities progress in sequential order from easy to hard. As a parent one can use the app to learn how to help kids to perform these activities such as how to use the AR feature of the application. The app also provides details on the child’s learning outcomes after each activity —what your child’s learning progress is after he/she completes a single activity, etc.

    They’ve built EdTech for adults. Parents can personalize the pace of learning for their kids, choose activities they enjoy, and focus on areas that need development. This flexibility ensures that the child’s learning graph is individualized, and the parent can keep track of their child’s progress and attempt the embedded assessments based on the child’s learning readiness.

    ClassMonitor – Founders and Team

    Vijeet Pandey (CEO) and Vikas Rishishwar are the founders of ClassMonitor.

    After returning to India in early 2016,  post completing his Master’s in Accounts and Finance in the UK and working in the retail business, Vijeet wanted to become an entrepreneur and do something in the field of education. Vikas who is Vijeet’s childhood friend with expertise in technology-shared his dream and they launched ClassMonitor in 2016.

    During that time, they met Mrs. Shobha Wilfred an expert in early childhood education, with over 35 years of experience in content development, child psychology, and working with children of that age group. She joined them as Content Head. Mrs. Shaheen Shafi, an educationist with over 27 years of experience in curriculum development, training, and school leadership was their advisor. She recently joined ClassMonitor formally in May 2021 as Senior Curriculum Director.

    Vijeet is the CEO of the company and looks at Marketing, Operations, Strategy, and Business Scaling roles. Vikas as Product Head leads the Technology initiative, Shaheen and Shobha spearhead the education initiatives.

    ClassMonitor is currently a 150-member team. It has an open and supportive work culture. The startup seeks people who are driven, inspired, and passionate, who seek challenges, and are comfortable working in a dynamic and fast-paced workspace.  

    ClassMonitor initially entered the market as a parent-teacher communication platform. Therefore, at that time the brand name made sense. Eventually, they evolved the ClassMonitor Learning Kit and started selling. It was then that the team wondered if the brand name would work in the market. However, by that time they had already sold a lot of kits. The team, then, sought the advice of brand experts and they said that their excellent sales numbers demonstrated that the brand name was working well and changing it was not required. Therefore, they continued with the existing brand name- ClassMonitor.  Post that, the brand continues to garner large numbers and volumes thereby validating the decision.

    ClassMonitor Story
    ClassMonitor Logo

    ClassMonitor – Business Model & Revenue Model

    ClassMonitor works on three business models –

    1. B2C – Where it directly sells to its customers
    2. B2B- Where it sells to preschools
    3. B2B2C- This is a distribution network of 200+ mothers who are official distributors of the brand’s products across India.

    Price: The learning kit comes in four different models, each priced at Rs 3,499 per annum (including the app subscription). It has also created Skill Booster Kits priced at Rs 1,099 annually for kids aged 6 to 8, along with a Skill Master Hindi Edition Program as an extension to its ongoing programs, to introduce Hindi as a vernacular language to early learners in an engaging, active, and a Play-based approach.

    Distribution: ClassMonitor sells the kits on its own website and on Amazon.

    ClassMonitor – Startup Launch & Marketing Strategies

    The startup officially launched its ClassMonitor Kits in 2018 in an exhibition in Indore. It was indeed an exciting and eventful day, where the team sold 70 kits. Vijeet (C-founder & CEO, ClassMonitor) was personally at the stall from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.

    From that day onwards the team never looked back. ClassMonitor’s products speak for themselves and its biggest strength is word-of-mouth publicity.

    In the initial days, while the startup was still in the process of procuring its funding, the team worked on innovative marketing strategies. The B2B model was working well. In January 2019, ClassMonitor appointed its first parent distributor and launched the B2BC model. Currently, she heads the distribution network of 200+ mothers who are official distributors of the brand’s products across India. These MOM CEOs have enabled the reach too far from the corners of the country at negligible marketing costs.

    ClassMonitor has been able to leverage social media platforms like Instagram effectively. A lot of parents share Insta stories of how delighted they and their children are with the learning kits. They celebrate each learning milestone of their children with pride.

    One of the biggest successes of its kits is that it has inspired many kids to discover their inner genius. For example, many parents have shared that they have been able to enter their child’s names in India Book for Records for various achievements using the ClassMonitor Kit.

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    ClassMonitor – Growth and Stats

    Present scenario

    In the last 12-14 months, ClassMonitor has delivered and dispatched the kits to more than 5,000 PIN codes across India, and as well as 14 countries. In 2020, it saw a 5x growth and aims to take that figure up to 10x in this financial year. As a brand, ClassMonitor has grown, and the team managed to reach out to the smallest of cities in India. As of now, the company has a presence in around 600+ cities in India. Around 65 percent of the contribution comes from the top cities, but there is also a lot of demand from the small cities and towns as well.

    Revenue

    By raising around $1Mn ClassMonitor has already achieved just under 10 crores in revenue.

    In the next few years, the startup plans to grow the topline by 4X-5X through new products, wider distribution, and user growth. Its B2B revenue has also grown 100 percent in the last two months.

    Schools have charged session fees, but they are unable to conduct classes due to the pandemic. So, they are buying kits in bulk and distributing them to the parents. The direct consumer traffic has also increased 50 percent per month since the start of the lockdown. With parents stuck at home for long hours with their kids, DIY engagement activities have grown organically. Overall, COVID-19 has had a positive effect on all revenue streams.

    Growth

    Amidst the global pandemic where all industries have been severely hit, ClassMoitor has been consistently witnessing growth as it has tracked 20,000 customers in the last 3 months. It aims to clock another 40,000 in the next 3 months to garner a total of 1 lakh customers by 2021.

    “We are proud to say that we have a PAN India customer base of parents with children in the age group of 1-8 years with Tamil Nadu, Karnataka & Maharastra being the Top 3 states” Vijeet added.

    User Stats

    The ClassMonitor app currently has 85,000 registered users.

    Currently, ClassMonitor has 95% of the total users from India and 5% of the total users from abroad. In the next 6 months, it aims to increase that ratio to be 90% and 10% from India and abroad respectively. This growth trajectory is followed by its global expansion recently.

    Additionally, the team expects growth in the Philippines, Australia, and the Middle East markets and aims to continue deeper penetration in Tier 1-3 markets. They are also looking to strengthen their customer base in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan.  

    Sales Channels

    There are currently three sales channels in the company. The D2X space contributes most of the volume, while it also partners with several independent pre-schools.

    Also Read: Top 7 ways to create buzz around your startup  

    Partnership & Expansion

    The Indian pre-school market has two parts: branded and unbranded, but 85 percent of the Indian pre-school market is unbranded and ClassMonitor has partnered with them to improve their content and teaching methods. The third channel is a distribution network of 200+ mothers who are official distributors of the brand’s products across India.

    The brand is currently catering to the age group of 1-8 years and the majority of the volume is coming from the age bracket of 1-5 years. In the long run, ClassMonitor aims to expand its product range to cater to the age group of 0-12 years.

    ClassMonitor – Funding and Investors

    To date, ClassMonitor has raised INR 6 crore since its inception in 2016.

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    Angel Round INR 2.5 crore Piyush Jain (CFO, Al Hajri Group)
    May 19, 2021 Pre-series A INR 3.5 crore Construction firm Pasth India Ltd., UAE-based Calega family office investor group and Sarvann, a group of Oman-based investors

    • As part of the angel round, the startup is backed by Piyush Jain, Chief Financial Officer of Al Hajri group, an angel investor who has invested in over 25 start-ups across the globe
    • ClassMonitor has just started reaching out to venture capitalists for its Series A round of funding. It has spent time in the interim to ensure that the basic building blocks of the company are all in place –strong products, sound technical capability, and a solid business base
    • Post the Pre- Series funding, the startup has doubled its sales and onboarded a few senior resources who will help to take the company to the next level

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    ClassMonitor – Advisors/Mentors

    Mr. Nandkumar Venkatraman (Senior Advisor Content): A well-known academician, Mr. Nandkumar, in these 4 decades has donned various roles as CEO, Director, Member Board of Directors, Director Academics, Principal, etc. Key assignments have included Adarsh Group of Schools Chennai, TVS School Madurai, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, GIIS Singapore, Ecole Mondial World School Mumbai.

    Additionally, ClassMonitor has an education advisory panel comprising highly experienced and well-known educationists. The advisory panel meets twice a year to discuss the academic initiatives of the company.

    ClassMonitor – Tools used to run the startup

    1. Daytion is a platform created in-house. This has become the backbone of the upscaling from a team of 10 to 150 members and has helped streamline the ClassMonitor’s OKR based milestones thereby ensuring efficiency and greater productivity of the team.
    2. To engage and retarget the existing customers, the team has inbuilt an RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
    3. The startup uses G-suite for internal communication and collaboration. This was especially useful in coordinating work and staying connected across teams during the COVID lockdown.

    ClassMonitor – Achievements/Recognition

    ClassMonitor has received numerous awards and recognition for its high-quality products and dynamic and innovative leadership, for example, 2021 saw it winning the TIE Start-Up award in recognition of its exemplary work.

    ClassMonitor – Future Plans

    International expansion: In terms of expansion, ClassMonitor’s current focus is India but the company has recently started operations in the US and Dubai.

    “We are getting a lot of organic demand from these two countries, so we are now looking at a focused effort in growing there,” says Vijeet.

    The team is also exploring possibilities of participating in the government’s educational projects especially the Foundational Literacy & Numeracy initiatives.

    Future goals: Currently, the company is investing heavily in the content team to develop exciting high-quality content. For the age group of 0-6, the company is planning on continuing their pedagogy of keeping the kids away from mobile phones, and for the age group of 6-12 years, it is building AI/ML-enabled technology that can be directly used by children. The key focus areas are penetrating deeper into existing markets, building innovative content, and increasing marketing efforts.

    ClassMonitor – FAQs

    What is ClassMonitor?

    ClassMonitor is a home learning platform, which blends traditional teaching with modern methods of learning. Its hybrid learning tool takes children to a learning space that combines real-life learning experiences with curated activities.

    Who founded ClassMonitor?

    Vijeet Pandey (CEO) and Vikas Rishishwar are the founders of ClassMonitor.

    Is ClassMonitor an Indian company?

    Yes. ClassMonitor is an Indian company headquartered in Indore.

    What are ClassMonitor Learning Kits?

    The ClassMonitor Learning Kit blends traditional teaching with modern learning to ease a child’s transition from preschool to formal schooling. The kit comes in 4 different product variants for children aged 1 to 8 years. Every box contains 250 DIY activities, including flashcards, worksheets, rhymes, stories, games, fun activities, puzzles, and art supplies for kids to play based on a set of more than 14 themes like plants, animals, and more.

    How does ClassMonitor make money?

    ClassMonitor makes money by selling the learning kits on its own website and on Amazon. The learning kit comes in four different models, each priced at Rs 3,499 per annum (including the app subscription). It has also created Skill Booster Kits priced at Rs 1,099 annually for kids aged 6 to 8, along with a Skill Master Hindi Edition Program as an extension to its ongoing programs.