Tag: mumbai startups

Dr. Vaidya’s – Genuine Ayurvedic Products from Experts

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations.

Ayurveda means ‘Knowledge of Life. It has its roots in the ‘Vedas’, the holy texts that originated in ancient India. The Ayurvedic system of medicine has, for ages, helped people live healthy lives. In today’s world, though medical science has evolved a lot, Ayurveda is still popular not only in India but also in other parts of the world.

However, looking at the other side of the coin, many fraudulent practices are going on in the name of Ayurveda. Ayurvedic medicine is still largely unorganized, and many self-declared doctors come up with fake medications in the name of Ayurveda. So, it is important to buy only genuine Ayurvedic products to reap the full benefit.

To meet the growing demand for genuine ayurvedic medicines, Dr. Vaidya’s, a Mumbai-based startup, was formed in 2016. Dr. Vaidya’s company is backed by over 150 years of expertise and experience in the field of Ayurveda and ensures that you get only the best of Ayurvedic products. Dr. Vaidya’s was acquired by RP Sanjiv Goenka Group on March 9, 2021.

Did you know Dr. Vaidya’s packaging was designed by a jewelry designer and an architect?

StartupTalky interviewed Dr.Vaidya’s founder, Mr. Arun Vaidya, who has disclosed several important facts and details about the company, its founders and team, valuation, acquisitions, and more. Find them all in this article ahead!

Dr. Vaidya: Company Highlights

Startup Name	Dr. Vaidya’s
Headquarters	Mumbai
Founders	Arjun Vaidya and Trisha Rajani
Sector	Ayurvedic Products/Consumer Packaged Goods
Founded	2016
Parent Organization	Herbolab India Pvt. Ltd.

About Dr. Vaidya’s

Dr. Vaidya’s new-age Ayurveda products have become popular because of the company’s 150 years of family legacy and 5,000-year-old science for modern consumers. Since the company’s expertise spans 150 years of Ayurvedic heritage, formulations and knowledge have been passed down from generation to generation through the dedicated practice of treating thousands of patients and by perfecting unique blends through careful expertise.

Dr. Vaidya’s company uses new-age packaging, branding, product formats, and communication. The brand aims to re-establish a connection between Ayurveda and modern consumers.

The brand owns more than 100 FDA-approved proprietary formulations and has launched a very unique and innovative products list which includes Chakaash (Goodness of Chyawanprash in a Toffee), LIVitup (Ayurvedic Hangover Shield), etc. Over the year, Dr. Vaidya’s product reviews proved the power of Ayurveda. If you want to buy the company’s products, you can simply search for “Dr. Vaidyas near me.” You will find many options.

The company was acquired by RPSG Ventures. The acquisition happened in March 2021, when the company acquired an additional stake in Herbolab India Pvt. Ltd. for full ownership of the ayurvedic company. On March 9th, 2021, RPSG Ventures acquired the remaining 35.37% stakes in Dr. Vaidya’s for INR 50.8 crore ($6.9 million). The same company earlier purchased over 64.34% stakes in Herbolab, the parent company of Dr. Vaidyas. With this acquisition, the valuation of the company rose from Rs 50 crore in 2019 to Rs 144 crore at present.

Arjun Vaidya

Ayurvedic Product’s Market in India

The ayurvedic market in India is valued at $3 billion and is expected to grow rapidly to 16% P.A., according to a CII study in 2016. More than $500 million in ayurvedic products are sold outside India, according to a Statistics MRC study, and this too is expected to grow at 16.2% P.A.

These numbers have seen a huge jump in the last five years owing to a consumer shift towards natural alternatives as well as government focus and support, i.e. creation of the Ministry of Ayurveda, schemes like the International Co-Operation Scheme for Ayurveda companies and researchers, etc. Dr. Vaidya’s Ayurveda products have played a main role in medicine alive in the country and around the world.

Ayurveda has undergone a “renaissance”. Having said this, there is tremendous further scope for the expansion of Ayurveda. The science can become a globally accepted form of alternative medicine and also serve as one more of India’s way to take our culture to the world.

Dr. Vaidya’s Founders and Team

The founders of Dr. Vaidya are Arjun Vaidya and his wife, Trisha Rajani Vaidya, who started the company in 2016.

Arjun Vaidya

Arjun Vaidya (the former owner and CEO of Dr. Vaidya’s) graduated from Brown University in 2013. Arjun has vast experience in the fields of marketing, business development, and investment management. The 6th generation Vaidya and Dr. Vaidya’s former CEO had previously worked with companies like Condé Nast India, Hublot Genève, The De Beers Group of Companies, and L Capital Asia prior to starting the ayurvedic company. The former Vaidya’s company chief is currently working as the Ventures Lead for India at Verlinvest.

Trisha Rajani

Trisha Rajani is a graduate of the University of Warwick. Dr. Vaidya’s founder and ex-COO had earlier worked with companies like ASA Philippines, Goldman Sachs, Nykaa.com, Intellecap, and RepIndia before joining Dr. Vaidya’s. Rajani, after Dr. Vaidya’s was acquired, became the advisor of GlobalBees and is presently working at GobalBees and as an advisor at Rukam Capital Mentor. Besides, she is also a mentor and angel investor in various startups.

The story is very interesting because the ‘co-founder’ and current COO of this business is my wife, Trisha. One year into running the business, I realized that my head was in too many places and I wasn’t able to give any department or aspect of the business 100%. I needed help and I had no shame in going out and asking for it. We needed someone who would have as much commitment to the cause as I did and thus, family made sense. Against much advice from friends and family, the moment we got engaged, Trisha joined the business. And, I must say the journey has been amazing. There is a clear allocation of responsibility and so far it has added huge value to the business.

Currently, Dr. Vaidya’s had 51-200 members in its team. This included the factory team in Silvassa, and Dr. Vaidya’s head office team is based in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

Our company culture is all about ‘getting things done’ and adding the most value to our customers. Even at 10 PM, there is no shame in the CEO of the company answering the phone and talking to a customer. The team itself is a great blend of experience (with team members from my grandfather’s time) as well as youthful exuberance, added Arjun Vaidya (Dr Vaidya owner and CEO)

Dr Vaidya’s – Startup Story | How was Dr. Vaidya’s Started?

Ayurveda has been a part of Arjun’s family for many generations. His grandfather, great-grandfather, and two generations before that were ayurvedic doctors. Arjun grew up with Ayurveda all his life.

“My grandfather even cured me of chronic asthma. By the late 80s, my grandfather had become Mumbai’s most successful ayurvedic doctor – seeing 300+ patients a day and getting 12,000+ patients writing to him via post on a monthly basis. He was a legend in the industry but never cared for sales, distribution marketing or strategy. Thus, he sold his products only through his clinic and never outside” recalls Arjun Vaidya Dr. Vaidya owner.

Arjun was pursuing his studies and career in the USA. It was around 2013 when Arjun returned to India. Arjun eventually started working for a private equity firm and was enjoying his role as an investor. Unfortunately, his grandfather passed away three months after Arjun came back to India. He left behind thousands of loyal patients and some very effective formulations.

Due to the loyal patients they had, Arjun’s family kept running his grandfather’s clinic as a dispensary. The intention behind starting Dr. Vaidya’s was also to save many successful ayurvedic formulations that his grandfather made, and that’s when the Dr. Vaidya story started.

“The moment is still vivid in my mind. It was my father’s 50th birthday and his team had a large celebration for him at the office. I gave a speech talking about his role in inspiring me. After the speech, my grandfather’s nurse of 25 years came up to me and said that while my father has done some great work, it was a shame we were letting my grandfather’s legacy die. This was the ‘aha’ moment for me – when everything changed”.

Dr. Vaidya’s business was taken up by Arjun Vaidya in the middle of 2016, after he left his job at L Catterton when he chose to further his family’s legacy.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Name and Logo

Dr. Vaidya’s company name was taken after Arjun’s grandfather’s name.

“My grandfather is my inspiration. He was also a legendary doctor. Thus, the name was easy – it had to be named after him”

Dr. Vaidya’s Logo

Dr. Vaidya’s logo is the company name written in green with three green leaves, symbolizing ayurvedic medicine. The Dr. Vaidyas tagline is “New Age Ayurveda” and stands for what the company offers.

Another interesting story is the name for one of Dr. Vaidya’s products, ‘LIVitup’, a hangover product. The team was doing a brainstorming session and came up with this name, which was instantly loved. But the team soon realized that the trademark was already taken. Thus, the team tried to come up with another name, but nothing worked like this one. Eventually, even before starting the company, Dr. Vaidya’s went ahead and bought this trademark from its owner.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Business Model and How it works

Currently, Dr. Vaidya’s business model is online-focused. The company has its factory in Silvassa and sells its products through its own site and also other well-known e-commerce sites.

We realized that with limited resources, we had to be the best at what we do. Thus, contrary to popular belief we went the digital first way instead of focusing on offline. We also needed to add genuine value to the customers and so, took what my great grandfather had instituted to the 21st century.

Dr. Vaidya’s business model is guided by the belief that no patient should be charged for a consultation, i.e., to speak to an Ayurvedic doctor. Besides Dr. Vaidya’s products, the Dr. Vaidya website also has a provision for consumers to reach out to ayurvedic doctors via phone, video call, WhatsApp, text message, Facebook, Instagram, or email. Today, more than 1,000 customers reach out to Doctor Vaidya’s for knowledge, issues, and feedback on Ayurveda.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Funding and Investors

Dr. Vaidya’s funding history is not long, as Arjun Vaidya started the company with bootstrapped capital. In June 2019, Dr. Vaidya’s partnered with RP Sanjiv Goenka Group and raised a round of $5 million, which eventually owned a majority stake in the company.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Growth

Dr. Vaidya’s has been one of India’s largest ayurvedic product brands online and has taken pride in completing more than 750 orders a day across its own website as well as e-marketplaces like Amazon, Nykaa, Seniority, Snapdeal, Netmeds, 1mg, Medlife, etc.

The former founder of the company, Arjun Vaidya, recalled the idea of LIVitup, which is an age-old liver protector that helps prevent hangovers, and repackaged it. Vaidya then started sampling the product at every party he went to. At one of such parties, he met Rohan Rathod, his school friend, who was an architect by training and recommended the product to him. As intrigued as he was, Rohan promptly asked Vaidya about the packaging and who was doing that.

This made Arjun reveal to his father, Biren Vaidya, how interested Rohan was in doing the packaging of the products. With this, Arjun’s father was really enthusiastic and instantly suggested that he and Rohan must sit together and do the packaging of the Vaidya’s products. Arjun’s father is a jewelry designer, while Rohan was then an architect by training, and this was how Dr. Vaidya’s logo and packaging came into being.

In November 2020, Dr. Vaidya’s forayed into the international market with the launch of 11 products in the immunity, hangover, digestion, and sexual wellness categories in the US via Amazon.com.

Some of the growth highlights are:

It has reached 3,000+ cities.
The company has made 2 million+ Deliveries
As per the company’s website, it has 1 million+ happy customers.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Product And Service

Dr. Vaidya’s website offers ayurvedic products to treat illness and maintain wellness. The Dr. Vaidyas product list includes one-of-a-kind products like Dr. Vaidyas Herbopile, Chakaash (Goodness of Chyawanprash in a Toffee), LIVitup (Ayurvedic Hangover Shield), Sung Ho (Ayurvedic Inhalant), Dr. Vaidyas Weight Gain Pack, etc. that truly understand and simplify the needs of modern consumers.

At Dr. Vaidya’s Ayurveda products, we want to change people’s vision towards ayurvedic products and not perceive them as boring, old-school, and poorly packaged. These products do not have much of a connection with modern consumers. Thus, their aim is to pass on 150 years of family legacy and 5,000 years of science to 21st-century consumers.

The Dr. Vaidyas review says that their products are extremely effective as they have easy-to-understand packaging, a unique brand, and unique product formats designed to make Ayurveda appealing and accessible.

Dr.Vaidya’s offers three major popular categories of products:

Cold and Cough

A wide range of Ayurvedic medications for colds, coughs, seasonal allergies, and other respiratory conditions are available at Dr. Vaidya’s. With a variety of natural Ayurvedic treatments for coughs and colds, these include churnas, syrups, inhalers, and more.

Immunity Booster

Providing comprehensive solutions to enhance overall well-being and vitality, Dr. Vaidya’s offers a broad assortment of immunity boosters, such as the Fitness Pack, MyPrash for everyday health, and Ashwagandha tablets.

Pain Relief

Dr. Vaidya’s offers a variety of natural painkillers that can help with muscle and body pain from overexercising and injuries, as well as joint pain from aging and arthritic disorders. Dr. Vaidya uses only the best herbs in her Ayurvedic pain management formulas, which are safe and effective and free of synthetic or artificial additives.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Revenue/Turnover

Dr. Vaidya’s turnover in 2018–19 was INR 1.94 crore, while Dr. Vaidya’s revenue was estimated to be INR 13.6 crore the same year.

Dr. Vaidya’s – User Acquisition

Backed by the legacy of 100 years, Dr. Vaidya’s acquired a large base of loyal customers even before the company was started. The patients who were being treated by Arjun’s grandfather came to be the initial customers for Dr. Vaidya’s products.

“I actually sent out a letter (not email) to each of his old patients talking about how we are reinvigorating his legacy and continuing his good work. The response was phenomenal (also a testament to my grandfather’s goodwill) and served as the launching pad for our business” Said Arjun, Co-Founder of Dr. Vaidya’s.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Advisors and Mentors

Biren Vaidya is the chairman of the advisory board. Other than him, Dr. Vaidya’s also got a bunch of advisors from different fields.

Grey hair and experience to me are critical since I am a 27-year-old founder who hasn’t seen as much of the world as experienced folks may have.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Partnership

Dr. Vaidya’s has partnered with many companies, including:

Some of the partnerships are listed below:

Amazon.com
Snapdeal
Flipkart
WMall
GOQii
Simsim
Smytten

Dr. Vaidya’s – Awards & Recognitions

Dr. Vaidya’s awards and recognitions include:

Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2019
Member, CII Core Committee on Ayurveda
Top 50 Most Impactful Leaders in Healthcare, 2018

Dr. Vaidya’s – Competitors

The main competitors of Dr. Vaidyas are Himalaya, but Arjun says that he is inspired by the achievements made by ‘Himalaya’.

Speaking about competition, Arjun said, “We see competition as inspiration. For me, I am inspired daily by the work Himalaya does. This brand has built huge consumer loyalty and trust over the last 20 years. Himalayan products are now available in 80+ countries, which is a huge achievement. At Dr. Vaidya’s, each one of our products bears the mark ‘Proudly Indian’ and one day (in the near future), we hope to see this on shelves and in hands across the globe.”

Dr. Vaidya’s – Startup Challenges

Building an FMCG business online was a challenge, as Arjun said. Also, understanding the customer’s needs and providing products in line with those needs is a challenge that Dr. Vaidya’s team has to face.

Spending time to understand our customer’s needs and what the market was lacking was critical. Vernacular content, ease of explanation, seamless experience of consumption, etc. all helped us to grow. Having said that, I cannot say that there was a moment of virality which caused hockey stick growth. For us, it was months of effort and thousands of customer interactions that have got us to where we are.

Dr. Vaidya’s – Future Plans

The brand earlier looked forward to creating a selective offline presence and venturing into export markets. Dr. Vaidya’s Ayurveda products bear the mark ‘Proudly Indian’, and it was the dream of Arjun Vaidya to let this mark make its presence in 50 countries around the world. All of these might still be achieved by the company, but under the ownership of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, because with its acquisition by the group, the Vaidya family has exited the company by selling their stakes in full.

FAQs

Who is the owner of Dr. Vaidya’s company?

The co-founders of Dr. Vaidya’s were Arjun Vaidya and his wife, Trisha Rajani, who eventually exited the company after the acquisition.

Which company acquired Dr. Vaidya’s?

Dr. Vaidya’s acquisition was led by RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group after it bought a majority stake in the ayurvedic company.

What are some of Dr. Vaidya’s products?

Dr. Vaidya’s offers ayurvedic products to treat illness and maintain wellness. The company has launched one-of-a-kind products like Chakaash (the goodness of Chyawanprash in a toffee), LIVitup (the Ayurvedic hangover shield), Sung Ho (the Ayurvedic inhalant), etc. that genuinely understand and simplify the needs of modern consumers.

Who is Arjun Vaidya?

Arjun Vaidya was Dr. Vaidya’s owner and co-founder and the sixth-generation Vaidya, who has inherited the family’s 100 India FDA-approved medical formulations and 50 trademarks accumulated over 150 years.

Who is Arjun Vaidya’s wife?

Arjun Vaidyas wife is Trisha Rajani Vaidya, who was the former co-founder and COO of Dr. Vaidyas.

Is Dr. Vaidya’s sold?

Dr. Vaidya’s now stands sold to RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which acquired all of the stakes in the company on March 9, 2021.

November 20, 2023

Expertrons Success Story: Redifining Careers Through AI Videobot Technology

There are over thirty million youngsters in India, graduating with their career vision, dreams, and plans. The majority of them lack proper guidance and career hacks to get their dream jobs. With required mentoring from experts in their field of interest, their profession is assured. To address the issue two IIT Bombay grads Vivek Gupta and Jatin Solanki came up with a brilliant idea – Expertrons.

Headquartered in Mumbai, Expertrons is the world’s first AI videobot platform, founded in February 2019, to heighten career opportunities for students and professionals. Experts from top companies and universities guide students to meet their career destination.

In this article, learn about Expertrons, its founders, business and revenue model, funding, acquisitions, growth, and more.

Expertrons – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Expertrons
Headquarters	Mumbai, India
Sector	E-learning
Founders	Vivek Gupta, Jatin Solanki
Founded	February 2019
Parent Organization	Expertrons Technologies Private Limited
Website	www.expertrons.com

About Expertrons
Expertrons – Founders & Team
Expertrons – Mission & Vision
Expertrons – Name and Logo
Expertrons – Business Model & Revenue Model
Expertrons – Growth
Expertrons – Partnerships
Expertrons – Funding & Investors
Expertrons – Acquistions
Expertrons – Competitors
Expertrons – Future Plans

About Expertrons

Expertrons is an interactive AI-built videobot platform. The platform contains videobots of experts who have cracked interviews at leading companies or esteemed universities. It is the world’s first and largest AI videobot platform to help students and professionals to get their dream job through tips and tricks from experts. Besides interacting with an expert’s videobot, users can also connect to an expert on request and interact with her one-on-one. Expertrons provide students the opportunity to get trained, get referred to top companies, and get placed. The platform also offers Capstone courses related to various in-demand skills that help students get hired.

In line with its goal of helping students land their dream career, Expertrons also provide placement and hiring services to businesses and educational institutions. Educational Institutions can sign up for Expertrons’ Career Acceleration Program, wherein the students of the institution get a one-on-one consultation with experts from their industry and training from top professionals in the industry.

As for businesses, Expertrons provide them with the option to hire trained candidates from different fields at zero cost.

Expertrons also build videobots for businesses, that help businesses automate their customer communication to a great extent and thereby cut down on costs related to it. Besides the website, Expertrons is also available in the form of mobile and web apps.

Expertrons – Founders & Team

Vivek Gupta

Vivek Gupta is an alum of IIT Bombay. Other than Expertrons, Vivek also Co-founded Plancess EduSolution Private Limited, which is one of India’s leading platforms for online preparation of NEET & JEE.

Vivek worked as Advisor at gamified learning platform ‘Eduisfun’. He also co-created ‘PrepLane’, an online self-assessment platform that helps students prepare for NEET & JEE.

Jatin Solanki

An IIT Bombay graduate, Jatin also founded innovative ed-tech startups like Schoodle and Eduisfun, a gamified learning platform. Jatin has been a part of many early startups, building upon amazing ideas. He is a TEDx speaker, a swimmer, and also the winner of the Nashville International Film Competition’11.

Expertrons – Mission & Vision

Expertrons’ mission is to be at the forefront of career guidance and management to enable the right direction for youngsters. The company’s vision is to facilitate the youth and professionals with their AI videobot technology for their career enhancement.

“Expertrons is essentially a Netflix for career hacks. We founded it with the vision to reimagine career decisions for the 1.87 billion professionals globally who change their careers 5 to 7 times in their lifetime,” said Vivek Gupta, co-founder of Expertrons.

Expertrons – Name and Logo

Expertrons Logo

The name ‘Expertrons’ reveals the company’s motto of augmenting the advancements of careers through their experts’ advice.

Expertrons’ logo has the saying, “Inspire Success”.

Expertrons – Business Model & Revenue Model

Expertrons offer both B2B and B2C services. Its B2C services include courses, training, and one-on-one consultation with experts for its individual users. For B2B, Expertrons ties up with colleges and educational institutions and offers training and expert guidance to the students of these institutes. Expertrons also sells its VideoBot Technology to businesses. Businesses can also hire talent from Expertrons’s database of students that too at zero cost! Expertrons also offer franchises.

Expertrons has multiple sources of revenue:

Users pay for a one-on-one consultation with experts
Paid plans for students i.e Expertrons Pro & Expertrons Plus
Revenue earned by offering courses on various in-demand skills
Revenue earned by offering ‘Expertrons Carrer Acceleration Program‘ to colleges
Revenue earned by offering Franchise.
Revenue from the sale of videobot technology to business

Expertrons – Growth

Expertrons is built around a unique concept and the startup is receiving a good response from its target audience. Presently Expertrons have over 6000 domain-specific experts on board. The platform has experts from top companies such as Google, Mastercard, Reliance, TATA, ITC, and a lot more.

Over 5000 companies are associated with the platform as hiring partners. The company has provided its videobots technology to many businesses and has successfully enrolled many franchise partners.

Expertrons was ranked among the Top 3 Startups across the globe to get selected for the TecLabs Accelerator, in Mexico. The startup is partnered with Mexico’s university – Tec De Monterrey, to help them enhance their placements and admissions.

Expertrons impacted over 3.5 lakh aspirants to date.

Expertrons – Partnerships

Some of the hiring partners of Expertrons are:

Expertrons – Funding & Investors

Expertrons recently raised a funding round on August 7, 2023, from Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd. (HMVL), the parent firm of Shine.com. The new funding will be used for expansion, SEO efforts, and general development, which will allow the firm to reach more professionals globally.

Date	Round	Amount	Lead Investors
August 7, 2023	Seed Round	–	Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd
July 30, 2023	Seed Round	–	Peaceful Progress
September 21, 2021	Seed Round		Kunal Shah, Anant Maheswari
August 16, 2021	Pre Series A	$2.3 million	Venture Catalyst, Lets Venture, ah!Ventures
November 2, 2020	Venture Round	–	Ivycap ventures, Iceland Venture Studio,Sarcha Advisors
September 20, 2020	Seed Round	–	The Batchery
April 29, 2020	Seed Round	$700K	LetsVenture,Rohit Chanana, Nikhil Vora

Expertrons – Acquistions

Expertrons acquired Foxmula in August 2023. Foxmula is an education tech company, and the mission of this company is to engage with businesses and supply them with an effective workforce in order to help students develop in a way that addresses the issues of unemployment in India.

Expertrons – Competitors

Though Expertrons is a unique concept, there are several platforms built around similar ideas. Expertrons’ top competitors include Interviewing, Phenom, Ocelot, and Gloat. The company sustains its leading position with its AI videobot platform and experts from almost every field.

interviewing.io

interviewing.io lets aspirants appear for mock technical interviews with engineers from top companies like Google and Facebook.

Phenom

This HR Technology company helps aspirants discover their potential and find the right job.

Ocelot

Ocelot combines the power of chatbots, live chat, and video libraries to help students find the answers they need.

Gloat

Gloat is an internal talent marketplace that allows businesses to shuffle talent among projects, teams, locations, and more.

Expertrons – Future Plans

Expertrons’ future plans include expanding their associations with various colleges, universities, and brands across the world. It also aims to influence the lives of over 1.87 billion professionals globally and help them redefine their career decisions.

“A key area of focus right now for us would be to tap into the job-seeking market of professionals looking to land their dream job opportunities or seeking a career change, and Expertrons aims to be the one-stop platform to empower them for the same,” said the Expertrons founders after the company’s funding round raised in September 2021.

Following the acquisition of Foxmula in August 2023 and the completion of their most recent round of funding, Expertrons’ founder Vivek Gupta stated that they will have a large target audience and expertise in tech-based certification, penetrating through online and offline channel partners across India and providing more comprehensive support to aspiring professionals.

Expertrons – FAQs

What does Expertrons do?

Expertrons is the World’s first AI VideoBot platform that helps students and job aspirants get career guidance from Industry experts through VideoBots and face to face. Expertrons also offers placement services to educational institutes, and VideoBots technology to businesses. Businesses can also hire from Expertrons.

Is Expertrons Career Free?

Expertrons Careers is a completely free product, while Expertrons Admissions and Expertrons Communications are paid products.

Who is the founder of Expertrons?

Two IIT Bombay graduates Vivek Gupta and Jatin Solanki founded Expertrons in 2019.

August 21, 2023

CredAble Startup Story: An en-Abler of Working Capital

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 CredAble.

CredAble provides working capital and related liquidity programs for enterprise supply chains, leveraging its trade finance expertise, partnerships with capital providers, and its world-class technology platform. Founded by Nirav Choksi, Rajiv Ramnarayan and Ram Kewalramani, the goal of this fintech startup is to make ‘CredAble’ synonymous with ‘Working Capital’ and hence the mission statement is Think Working capital… Think CredAble.

Since its inception in 2017, CredAble has enabled in excess of INR 6,000 crores and more than 11,000 borrowers covering over 100,000 transactions with 0% NPAs. This has culminated as an outcome of the team’s single-minded focus on execution. CredAble aims to disburse in excess of USD 1 billion per month going to USD 2 billion per month.

StartupTalky interviewed the co-founders, Nirav Choksi & Ram Kewalramani to get insights on the Success Story and Growth Hacks of CredAble. Know all about CredAble funding, founders, business and revenue model, how it started, marketing strategies, and more.

CredAble – Company Highlights

Startup Name	CredAble
Founders	Nirav Choksi (CEO), Ram Kewalramani (MD) and Rajiv Ramnarayan (Founding Partner and Board Advisor)
Headquarters	Mumbai
Founded	2017
Industry	Fintech
Funding	$58.59 mn (August 2022)
Current Team Size	112+ (as of August 2022)
Website	credable.in

About CredAble – Mission & Vision
CredAble – Products/Services Offered
CredAble – Industry Details
CredAble – Founders & Team
CredAble History – How it Started?
Launch of CredAble
CredAble – Name, Tagline and Logo
CredAble – Business Model & Revenue Model
CredAble – Marketing Strategies
CredAble – Funding and Investors
CredAble – Growth and Revenue
CredAble – Challenges Faced
CredAble – Competitors
CredAble – Recognition and Achievements
CredAble – Future Plans

About CredAble – Mission & Vision

The goal is to make ‘CredAble’ synonymous with ‘Working Capital’ and hence the mission statement is think Working capital… think CredAble.

CredAble’s vision is to create holistic financial inclusion that would triple the availability of working capital, wherein the ripple effect has a significant growth in India’s GDP.

The co-founders of CreAble highlight the Culture Statement of the company – “There are 6 Core Culture statements that we at CredAble completely align to and this is how we stay on our Mission”, said they:

We are Audaciously breaking boundaries

Proposing ‘out of the box’ solutions to customers
Solving big problems that matter

2. We are humbled

By the partnership and support of our shareholders
By the opportunity to make a difference in this world

3. We are Generous

We give ourselves fully
We share our knowledge and insights freely with all

4. We are enablers of Context to Content

We are aware of ‘Why’ of ‘What’ we do every day
Create a Powerful contextual relationship

5. We set the measure

Set the benchmark of excellence in everything we do
Highest standard of customer and employee satisfaction

6. We are responsible

For fulfilling our purpose
For transformation of our society and environment

Tools used by CredAble to run CredAble

Analytics: Metabase, Knowage
Customer Engagement/Marketing: Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Appsflyer, Verloop
Engineering: Elastic logstash Kibana, New relic
Product Management: JIRA, Confluence, Sketch, Zepplin, Slack

CredAble – Products/Services Offered

CredAble’s focus is to expand financial inclusion for the MSME base through its solutions like:

Post-Invoice Early Payment Program enables all suppliers, irrespective of size and stature, to get working capital against their invoices in exchange for a discount. These discounts are derived using CredAble’s proprietary credit assessment model that takes into consideration multiple data points, thereby, enabling the vendor to get access to working capital at their respective bankable rates. The program is designed for vendors to avail working capital on tap without collateral and recourse.
Just in Time (JIT) Financing is a pre-invoice financing program designed to bridge the gap between payment obligations and receivables from Corporate. It is based on the occurrence of ‘billable events’ and funding milestones like Purchase Order, Proof of Delivery, Goods Received Note, Goods Acceptance Note, or client-approved MIS. CredAble’s platform automates financing and real-time tracking of such transactions.
Financial inclusion through tokenization enables access to working capital for multi-layer supply chains encompassing vendors and sub-vendors. Each series of tokens issued through the CredAble platform represents an underlying invoice value and has a finite expiration period. Tokens can be encashed at any point by vendors and sub-vendors up to expiration at their specified cost of finance. This is enabled through CredAble’s proprietary platform which digitizes the entire process right from issuance to settlement. A first in the Indian industry.

Lendingkart – Meeting the Working Capital Needs of MSMEs

An ex-ISRO scientist and a CA came forward to build a startup that is helping MSMEs acquire working capital. Read the full story of Lendingkart here

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CredAble – Industry Details

CredAble is focused on enabling working capital for India Inc. Currently, there is a USD 75 billion working capital gap in India. Furthermore, there are approx. 75 million MSMEs, of which, only 16% have access to formal credit, thereby, creating a USD 350 billion credit gap.

The Covid 19 pandemic only exasperated the MSME sector, as major financial institutions such as banks started to reduce their MSME credit lines and diverted the same to large corporates, which further fueled the need to create financial inclusion for the MSME segment. With India’s current quarter-on-quarter GDP growth rate at 1.6% for FY 2021-22, of which the MSME contribution is approximately 30% will further fuel the requirement of working capital for India Inc.

Fintechs such as CredAble will become the backbone for working capital availability for India Inc going forward.

CredAble – Founders & Team

Nirav Choksi, Ram Kewalramani and Rajiv Ramnarayan are the founders of CredAble.

CredAble Team — CredAble Founders and Team

Nirav Choksi | Co-Founder & CEO, CredAble

He has been an entrepreneur for almost 25+ years and has incubated and scaled businesses raised debt and equity financing, and built multi-disciplinary global teams in the areas of technology, private equity, and international commodities. Nirav heads the Sales, FI Coverage, Tech & Human Capital functions at CredAble.

Prior to CredAble, Nirav co-founded and led Equentia Natural Resources Pte Ltd., a multi-commodity trading and structured finance company with offices in Singapore, Jakarta, Dubai, and Mumbai. ENR is amongst the top 5 importers of Indonesian Thermal Coal for the private sector in India with revenues in excess of $500 Million a year and trading volumes of over 10 Million MT. ENR also has a significant structured trade finance and debt arbitrage operation. Prior to that Nirav has founded several companies in the internet and technology space and has had 3 successful exits. He is an active early-stage investor in tech-enabled consumer-led ventures and has invested in over 25 opportunities. Nirav studied computer science and economics at the University of Michigan.

Ram Kewalramani | Co-Founder & Managing Director, CredAble

He has had a career spanning over 18 + years working in leadership positions. Ram has gained invaluable insight and expertise in the domains of Investment Banking, Marketing, Finance, and Operations. As an acknowledged veteran of the Employee Transportation industry, he brings valuable industry insights, experience, and connections to further the establishment of the vision behind CredAble. Ram heads the Fincon, Credit Risk & Risk Operations functions at CredAble.

Prior to founding CredAble, Ram spent 14 + years in investment banking and P&L leadership capacities. Previously, he was a shareholder and CEO of People Premier Logistics, a successful employee transportation business. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Ram was an investment banker with Centrum Capital and Grant Thornton.

Rajiv Ramnarayan | Founding Member and Board Advisor, CredAble

Rajiv Ramnarayan acts as a Founding Member and Board Advisor of CredAble. Ramnarayan has completed a BEng. (Hons.) in Electronic Engineering from Sheffield Hallam University. Starting as an Industrial Trainee with IBM, Ramnarayan has served as a Business Development Associate at Laing O’Rourke, a Partner at Doehle Danautic Logistics, and is still serving as a Co-Founder and CEO at Equentia Natural Resources Pte Ltd.

Current Company Size, Work Culture & Hiring Funda –

CredAble values employees like the way it values its clients and strongly follows the below-mentioned culture statements:

We are Audaciously breaking boundaries
We are humbled
We are Generous
We are enablers of Context to Content
We set the measure
We are responsible

At CredAble, the hiring process is efficiently streamlined to ensure to hire the right talent for the right job. They have detailed BEI interviews both at the Functional & HR interview evaluation stages. The CredAble team currently consists of a 51-200 member workforce.

CredAble History – How it Started?

The founders in their previous avatar, have had a great deal of exposure to the working capital gap in India. Nirav, who comes with over 25 years of work experience across IT Services, Commodity trading, Trade Finance, was dealing with banks to create structured trade finance flows for his trading business. Ram, who comes with over 18 years of work experience, was the CEO of a large logistics business which required him to constantly focus on raising working capital, but always found it difficult given the traditional approach used by banks and NBFCs. This amalgamation of experience made both the founders believe that they were the most pertinent people to co-create programs that would enable working capital for India inc.

CredAble started its journey to enable working capital within the logistics sector. The product was split into two categories namely JIT financing and post invoice financing. This permutation & combination of the product reduced the cash-to-cash cycle of the logistics borrowers from an average of 110 days to under 24 hours! All of this was enabled through technology without any human intervention. Once this model was proven, these offerings were expanded to multiple sectors.

Their initial conversations were with CFOs/procurement heads of large corporates who were extensively outsourcing their logistics requirements and were facing multiple challenges from their vendors, who were unable to cope with the clients’ requirements due to the shortfall of working capital. With the validation from the success of these programs, CredAble’s model expanded to include all types of vendors and not only logistics vendors.

Launch of CredAble

The team’s strategy has always been to enable working capital using the Anchor down approach wherein they were looking to tie up with large corporates to enable working capital for their entire supply chain ecosystem.

While it was a new concept in India, the founders were extremely confident of the programs and value add that they were creating for all the stakeholders. The initial approach was to reach out to all connections and showcase CredAble’s value proposition. While the response was positive the preliminary movement was slow. As they demonstrated the impact, there were higher levels of acknowledgment & acceptance which catapulted CredAble’s outreach. Word of mouth quickly enabled CredAble to onboard multiple large and multi-national clients.

“While we have a large coverage team as well as partnerships, our largest clients have been converted through existing referrals and word of mouth” Co-founders of CredAble added.

Since its inception, CredAble has enabled in excess of INR 6,000 crores and more than 11,000 borrowers covering over 100,000 transactions with 0% NPAs. This has culminated as an outcome of the team’s single-minded focus on execution.

CredAble – Name, Tagline and Logo

Given the focus of the business was to “enable credit” the name CredAble was apt.

The tag line – We Must because…. We Can, symbolizes the company’s approach – “Nothing is impossible as long as we believe we can!!!” In order to change the existing traditional mindsets, the first step is to believe we can.

CredAble Logo

While they were designing the logo it was important that all stakeholders understand who they are and what they do. The emphasis of ‘A’ in CredAble is to showcase it as –

An en-Abler of working capital, and
To depict upward growth “↑”. This in turn would create an impact not only for India Inc but the GDP as a whole.

CredAble – Business Model & Revenue Model

CredAble is a B2B supply chain finance company that develops partnerships with corporate entities to “extend a scalable supplier and dealer/distributor financing platform.”

The CredAble revenue model is a fee-based model. Here, we should understand that CredAble doesn’t levy any fixed, upfront or registration costs for either the corporate or their suppliers and distributors. Besides, the company’s own NBFC also participates in some of its supply chain financing programmes, which helps create a yield-based income.

CredAble – Marketing Strategies

CredAble’s Marketing campaigns have been holistic in approach with key properties introduced to cater to each business need.

Some of its well-received marketing properties include –

Insights by CredAble – It takes interesting popular concepts in today’s day and age, and tries to come up with its working capital assessment for people to understand its importance and potential. CredAble’s recent coverage on IPL working capital was well-received (One can get more information on CredAble Case studies here – credable.in/credable-case-studies/)

CredAble Marketing — An excerpt of **CredAble’s recent coverage on IPL working capital**

Candid by CredAble – In this interesting talk show, CredAble’s CEO and host Nirav Choksi talks to industry leaders within enterprise ecosystems to get into their thought process, it’s fun and engaging content filled with interesting anecdotes. This has gained traction and the company has already rolled out 3 episodes.

Working Capital 101 – The company deems it to be its responsibility to share knowledge around new concepts around working capital which can be very helpful for businesses. Hence, as a step – it launched working capital 101 under business insights which churn out content weekly around helpful concepts around working capital and financing.

Extensive organic marketing initiatives on professional social media platforms like LinkedIn for both Talent & the organization success stories.
Product Explainer videos to educate CFOs, Vendors, Banks, Financial Institutes on how CredAble programs have been enabling working capital.

“The success of our marketing lies in growing organically and giving tangible results to our clientele” as said by the founders of CredAble.

CredAble – Funding and Investors

CredAble last raised $9 mn from a Corporate Round on August 2nd, 2022, led by Axis Bank and OAKS Asset Management. CredAble last raised around $30 mn in its Series B funding round led by Plutus Wealth Management and the existing investor, OAKS Assets Management (formerly known as Alpha Capital).

The company has raised $58.59 mn so far, which includes its bridge round worth $4.42 mn (Rs 33.18 cr) in October 2020, its Series A round of $12.59 mn (Rs 100 cr), and its primary seed round of $2.5 mn.

Date	Name of the Funding Round	Deal Value	Lead Investors
August 2, 2022	Corporate Round	$9 mn	Axis Bank and OAKS Asset Management
October 19, 2021	Series B	OAKS Asset Management and Plutus Wealth Management

October 29, 2020	Series A	–
June 12, 2018	Series A	Alpha Capital
March 17, 2017	Seed Round	–

CredAble – Growth and Revenue

Starting with 3 employees, initially, when it was launched in March 2017, CredAble now has somewhere between 51-200 employees, which indicates that it has grown strong year-on-year. CredAble’s employee count rose to 12 by March 2018, and with the passage of another year, this went up to become 70 employees.

CredAble went live in October 2018, and since then, it has processed Rs 300 crore+ worth of transactions on a monthly basis. Furthermore, CredAble boasts of boarding more than 100 corporate customers, 300K+ small business borrowers, and 30+ financial institutions as well as banks on its platform. CredAble has witnessed 500% YoY growth, as per the platform’s statements.

CredAble’s total income has been reported to be registered at Rs 8.35 crore in FY22, which earlier stood at 2.46 crore in FY21 and Rs 27.64 crore in FY20.

CredAble – Challenges Faced

“It was a new concept and hence took time to be understood and accepted. The solutioning aptitude versus selling a product worked well for us to showcase the value we created to make working capital accessible to all” Co-founders of CredAble added.

CredAble, as an early-stage business, has had its own challenges along the way. Fostering a widespread acceptance of the non-traditional supply chain finance programmes, long sales cycles, long turnaround time in technology integration and others of CredAble, was tough indeed.

“However, customer acquisition follows a domino effect on our business. After securing our first few clients, which took a bit of time, the rest have started to follow at a much faster pace,’ added the Co-founder of CredAble.

CredAble – Competitors

Competitors of CredAble are:

CreditFair
ZestMoney
Aye Finance
KredX
Taulia
Demica

CredAble – Recognition and Achievements

The Fintech and Deep Tech categories at NASSCOM Emerge 50 Awards 2020
The Best Supply Chain Finance Solution of the Year 2019 at the Inflection 2019, a leading supply chain summit.
The Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator Program 2018
SAP Startup Studio Cohort 2020
The Best FinTech Startup 2018 at by the Maharashtra Government

CredAble – Future Plans

The future plan is to cover all aspects of Working Capital by the means of enabling true financial inclusion for millions of MSMEs. “We are already covering all metro cities within India and have set up business teams to increase our outreach. The goal is to disburse in excess of USD 1 billion per month going to USD 2 billion per month” the Co-founders of CredAble mentioned.

FAQs

What is CredAble?

Where is the headquarters of CredAble?

The CredAble headquarters are located in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Who are the founders of CredAble?

Nirav Choksi, Ram Kewalramani, and Rajiv Ramnarayan are the founders of CredAble.

What is CredAble’s tagline?

CredAble’s tagline – We Must because…. We Can, symbolizes the company’s approach – “Nothing is impossible as long as we believe we can!!!” In order to change the existing traditional mindsets, the first step is to believe we can.

How does CredAble make money?

Early – Fees percentage over the savings generated for the Anchor.
Lending – Net Interest Margin and upfront processing fees on the Asset Under Management (AUM)

Who is the CEO of CredAble?

Nirav Choksi is the Co-founder & CEO of CredAble.

How much funding has CredAble raised?

CredAble raised $58.59 mn in funding to date, as of August 2022.

August 6, 2022

AAIBA Design – Creative Solutions for Businesses to Build Their Brand

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 AAIBA Design.

Design industry is the most emerging industry in the world in the digital world. Creative design and arts play a crucial role in advertising industry, public relation, and marketing companies. Creative designs and visuals help in creating great impact on the audience and thereby helps in brand communication. Creative visuals, beautiful designs have an excellent ability to translate your brand to public. AAIBA Design Private Limited is a brand design agency that provides advertising services and helps your brand to communicate creatively to the public.

Read the startup story of AAIBA Design, its founder, offered services, and more about it.

AAIBA Design – Company Highlights

Startup Name	AAIBA Design
Headquarters	Mumbai
Industry	Brand Design and Brand Consultancy Agency
Founder	Saurabh Chandekar and Rasika Chandekar
Founded	2013
Instagram Page	aaibadesign

AAIBA Design – About
AAIBA Design – Founder and Team
AAIBA Design – The Idea and Startup Story
AAIBA Design – Name and Logo
AAIBA Design – Services
AAIBA Design – Business Model
AAIBA Design – Revenue Model
AAIBA Design – Customer Acquisition
AAIBA Design – Achievements
AAIBA Design – Work Culture
AAIBA Design – Competitors
AAIBA Design – Tools Used in the Company
AAIBA Design – Advisors and Mentors
AAIBA Design – Awards and Recognitions
AAIBA Design – Future Plans

AAIBA Design – About

As the name ‘AAIBA’ suggests, they give their client’s communication the right voice it needs. They are very passionate about what they do and the kind of communication they build around it. They help guide their clients through the advertising world offering expert insights on the market, quality, the estimated budget, etc. They ensure that the client benefits from the association and solutions they provide.

AAIBA Design – Founder and Team

Saurabh Chandekar – Co-Founder of AAIBA Design

Saurabh Chandekar and Rasika Chandekar are the co-founders of AAIBA Design. The shares of the company are distributed 50-50 between the co-founders.

Saurabh Chandekar is the Creative Director/ Aaiba Design private limited. He has completed his graduation from Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay, Pune. He was born into an art driven family. His father, Late Mr. Sadanand Chandekar was a famous stand-up comedian of his time. It is only right to say that art has always been in his DNA and has always been something that excited him right from the very beginning. His love for art made me choose advertising as a career.

They are a team of 20 people and the majority of the team consists of women which further makes the workplace more empowering.

AAIBA Design – The Idea and Startup Story

Saurabh started his career working at advertising agencies. Working with corporate helped him hone his advertising skills for which he also won a lot of accolades. This helped him gain the confidence to start his own agency. It was easier to win the trust of the clients with the credentials he had with his previous work experience and he knew, he could do much more with his own brand. Hence, AAIBA was born in 2015 and he was able to put his passion and skills to best use and serve its clients with the best advertising and creative solutions.

AAIBA Design – Name and Logo

AAIBA Design Logo

They haven’t illustrated too much into the making of the logo, it is simply an ode to the founder’s Aai and Baba, his inspirations and pillars of strength. Hence the name, AAIBA.

AAIBA Design – Services

They offer a variety of services in their advertising agency. Research and Analysis are our strong points. They make sure that every solution offered to each client is customized according to their brand’s needs. They offer deep-rooted insights, psychological aspects are taken into consideration and then they walk their clients through the process offering consultations that could help their brand further.

AAIBA Design – Business Model

AAIBA Design provides all kinds of design services to its clients right from the crafting of their company name to designing their first logo to positioning the brand in the market, they explore all kinds of value additions in terms of manufacturing, vendor management, etc. They are a design consultancy company that provides the best solutions for all our clients.

AAIBA Design – Revenue Model

They are not a manufacturing unit selling a tangible product, they are a service company with a revenue model fluctuating and changing all the time. The cost of IPs ( Intellectual Properties) run the whole show. There is no fixed cost involved because there is no specific rate card for the services they offer since services differ according to the project. They are a bootstrapped business. Bootstrapping is the best business model one can opt for because it is easier to drive a company without the involvement of investors. It is easier to have things play out the way you want and thus do justice to your visions and goals.

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AAIBA Design – Customer Acquisition

One of the highlights of AAIBA design is that they never had to hire a marketing manager or business developer to promote their business. They believe that credibility plays an important role in acquiring customers. The more real you are the better. They ensure that they put their best foot forward and deliver the best services. It is important to be genuine and consistent with clients throughout the time together. Perseverance and sincerity is the key to success.

When AAIBA Design first started they had only 3 accounts and fast forward to today they cater to 35 clients. It is not an easy task to start an agency, especially a creative one which has immeasurable parameters to consider. It is a vague process but it is not rocket science. Getting the confidence of your clients and being genuine in what you do is what keeps the business running and growing. Basically, you are selling your soul but in a good way.

AAIBA Design – Achievements

AAIBA Design FOOD FESTIVAL

Some recognition attained by AAIBA Design are:

They are working on one of TOP 3 clients in the world – Capapie Sports, they are a sports equipment brand for shooters participating in various world games.
They also executed notable campaigns for D’lecta Foods – FETA Cheese range. The consumer communication carried out was aiming to introduce the audience to a new category of cheese i.e the FETA cheese or the healthier cheese. A cheese specific to salads, the campaign ‘ The Perfect Salad Cheese’ promoted the range through various retail store promotions, print promotions, social media, etc. For social media, the AAIBA team came up with original healthy recipes for the audience. The team leaned towards highlighting the nutritional facts of the products as opposed to typical ‘delicious cheese’ appeal that is used.
One of the highlights of my career was conducting this art exhibition in Mumbai, earlier this year, which was inaugurated by Aaditya Thackeray – #MumbaiInFrames. It was so well received by the audience and definitely something I am very proud of.
In 2020, AAIBA was felicitated with the Grand Jury Award at NYX Marcom Awards. We designed a campaign for the Isuzu X Food Festival bringing local hidden flavours and rare delicacies from different regions under one roof, taking guests on one of a kind food adventure. As a visual language, the illustrated versions of food were derived so as to create interest around the food. The colours and style of the illustrations were designed to take the audience closer to the regional culture. The entire illustrated campaign was conceived as a mood setter for the festival.

AAIBA Design FOOD FESTIVAL – STUDIO NYX AWARD-08

AAIBA Design – Work Culture

AAIBA is a family with no hierarchy in the company. They do not encourage toxicity at the workplace and Saurabh Chandekar himself makes it a point to stay connected with employees at the family level. They have always promoted a friendly atmosphere in the company.

They are always looking to empower the workplace by hiring more and more talented individuals and making the workplace more comfortable which is why there is no hierarchy present in the organization. This gives individuals room to grow and bring in their best creative selves.

AAIBA Design – Competitors

Many colleagues and friends of founder are working in the same industry but he have never seen them as competitions nor has he ever been threatened by their work. It is imperative to have so much faith in yourself that you shouldn’t be distracted by others’ success and that’s what AAIBA Design abide by.

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AAIBA Design – Tools Used in the Company

Some tools AAIBA Design uses are:

Illustrator
Photoshop

AAIBA Design – Advisors and Mentors

Saurabh Chandekar considers his Aai and baba as the primary mentors, personally and professionally. In the Advertising world, he have always looked up to Ex Ogilvy NCD, Nipun Salvi and sir, Piyush Pandey, Ogilvy.

AAIBA Design – Awards and Recognitions

In the year 2013, AAIBA Design won the prestigious ‘Cannes 2013’ for the Lifebuoy Roti Campaigns.

Awards won by AAIBA Design are:

AFAQS Foxglove 2019 – Best social media campaign
AFAQS Foxglove 2017 – Best print campaign – Silver
INDI POOL Magazine Nominated amongst India’s top 3 Best Graphic Design Studios
IDA Design – Los Angeles – International award for poster design category – Bronze Metal
AFAQS Foxglove 2018 – Best print campaign – Silver Meta
AFAQS Foxglove 2018 – Best non traditional media campaign – Gold Metal
Design Thinking Conclave 2018 – Best design thinking organisation.

AAIBA Design – Future Plans

In the next 5 years, they plan to take ‘AAIBA’ overseas and expand globally. Going global and offering their services to international clients has been our mission for the longest time and fulfilling that would certainly be a dream come true for me just like any other entrepreneur.

FAQs

When was AAIBA Design founded?

AAIBA Design was founded in 2013 in Mumbai.

Who is the founder of AAIBA Design?

Saurabh Chandekar and Rasika Chandekar are the founders of AAIBA Design.

What does AAIBA Design do?

AAIBA Design is a Mumbai based design studio that provides solutions for advertising and brand communication strategy & design.

June 30, 2022

Reliance Jio – The Success Story of the 1st Network to Provide 4G VoLTE Services in India!

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

When do you think a revolution came in the telecommunication industry? Well, the most common answer is after the launch of Mukesh Ambani’s Jio. This company made an incredible entry into the Indian mobile telecom sector with the most exclusive cost leadership strategy that revolutionized the whole market of telecommunication. But how do you think did that happen?

Was it the investments in the company or the business model or Mukesh Ambani’s strategic plans?

To know more about How Jio Started, information about Jio company, the Success Story of Reliance Jio, and how Jio changed India, you go through this StartupTalky article.

Reliance Jio – Company Highlights

Company Name	Jio (Joint Implementation Opportunities)
Headquarter	Mumbai, India
Sector	Telecommunications
Founder	Mukesh Ambani
Founded	15th February 2007
Revenue	Rs 18,952 crore (FY21,Q1)
Profit	Rs 3,651 crore (FY21, Q1)
Average Revenue per user (ARPU)	INR 138.4 (FY21, Q1)
Reliance Jio Slogan	‘Digital Life’
Reliance Jio Tagline	‘Jio jee bharke’ (Live life to the fullest)
Parent Organization	Reliance Industries
Website	jio.com

About Jio
Founders of Jio and team
Jio – Startup Story | How was Jio Started?
Jio – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Jio – Business Model and How it Works?
Jio – Growth
Jio – Competitors
Jio – Future Plans

Reliance Jio — Who Dominates Mobile Subscriptions?

About Jio

When Anil Ambani and Mukesh Ambani had a split in the year 2005, it was one of the biggest de-merger in the industry. The dream project of Mukesh Ambani that was Reliance Infocom, became a part of the Anil Ambani Group. Furthermore, Mukesh Ambani went on to acquire the company Infotel Broadband Services Limited, which was the only successful bidder across India for the 4G network.

This is when Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Limited started working on establishing a base for a high-speed optical fiber 4G network which is much more capable than 4G. The company was named Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd popularly known as Jio today. Jio was the first network to provide 4G LTE services and VoLTE services.

Jio launched these services on 5th September 2016 for all the users and also launched its smartphone series with the name LYF. Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd (RJIL) focused on high-speed data instead of voice and SMS. On its launch, the company announced data plans with 1GB 4G data per day in the market where mostly all popular telecom providers offered 1GB data per month.

This was a game-changer by RJIL in the price-sensitive market of India as the prices before that revolved around Rs 250-300 for 1 GB 4G data, which went down to Rs 5 per GB during the initial days. Along with these amazing plans, Jio also started offering free voice calling and free 100 SMS per day for all its Prime members.

JioPhone Next

The all-new ‘JioPhone Next’, is being jointly developed by Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance and tech giant, Google was scheduled for a Ganesh Chaturthi release, on September 10, 2021. However, Reliance Telecommunication’s revolutionary product hit a roadblock due to an acute global shortage of semiconductors and had been postponed till Diwali at least, as per the reports dated September 10, 2021. The company then remarked that it had already started testing the device among a limited set of users to identify further scopes of refinement and make them easily available foolproof in November, during the festive season of Diwali. With this, Reliance Jio had also bought some more time to figure out efficient ways to mitigate the global shortage of semiconductors. This Reliance JioPhone Next was finally launched on November 4, 2021. These phones now comes at Rs 6,499, and is powered with the Android-powered Pragati OS, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon QM215 processor. The JioPhone Next can also be bought by paying Rs 1,999 only by the users who lack the options of paying for the phone upfront. However, they also need to pay the company for the full price of the phone later on by monthly installments.

The JioPhone Next can be summed up as a good option if you are looking for an entry-level budget phone, and if you don’t have Rs 6000-7000 or more to buy new phones. However, these phones also have numerous drawbacks like:

JioPhone Next is sluggish being deficient of adequate RAM
You need to only use a Jio sim as the primary SIM to use it
The phone can also be turned of by the financer if it is not properly paid for
It comes in with an Android OS, but has its own JIO customisations

Founders of Jio and team

Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is one of the richest men in the world. He is the Founder of Jio.

Mukesh Ambani - Founder of Jio — Mukesh Ambani – Founder of Jio

Mukesh is reportedly the richest man in India and his family is popularly known as the richest family in Asia, according to Forbes. Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani was the Chief Managing Director (CMD) of Reliance Industries Ltd, which is one of the biggest conglomerates in India.

Mukesh was born in Aden but he grew up in Mumbai. Being one of the most influential and powerful personalities of the country he has provided his business acumens to the whole world. Mukesh Ambani is the owner of the world’s largest refinery. He has achieved tons of notable accomplishments and is a part of many renowned institutes as well. Ambani was the Director and Chairman of Reliance JIO Infocomm Ltd. too before he stepped down with effect from June 27, 2022, and his son, Akash Ambani, who was a Non-Executive Director, has been appointed as the Chairman of the company, as per reports dated June 29, 2022. The Jio board has also revealed the appointments of Raminder Singh Gujral and K.V. Chowdary as additional directors of the company, who will serve as independent directors for the next 5 years, commencing from June 27, 2022. Furthermore, Pankaj Mohan Pawar has been appointed as the Managing Director of the Jio business also for 5 years.

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Jio – Startup Story | How was Jio Started?

Some time back, Mukesh Ambani the founder of Jio was asked about how he thought of coming up with such an amazing idea to which he said that this idea was seeded by his daughter Isha Ambani. In 2011, Isha Ambani was a student at Yale in the US and was home for the holidays.

She told her dad how bad the internet connectivity was at their house because she couldn’t submit her coursework. At that time, Mukesh Ambani realized that how India is suffering from bad and poor connectivity of the internet.

The data was severely scarce and overpriced, which was unaffordable to a majority of Indians. Since then, Mukesh Ambani started working on Jio to make the data services abundant and affordable in every part of the country, which gave birth to Reliance Telecommunication’s Jio business line.

Jio – Name, Tagline, and Logo

JIO stands for Joint Implementation Opportunities and the full name of the company is Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd.

The logo of Reliance Jio has a hidden meaning. When we flip the logo and look at its mirror image it is read as ‘oil’ which represents the past and future of Reliance. The company Reliance appeared as a business giant in the 20th century because of its Oil business and in the 21st century probably the flipped version, Jio has successfully ushered in another revolution.

The slogan of Reliance Jio is ‘Digital Life’ while a popular tagline of Jio has been ‘Jio jee bharke’ which means live life to the fullest.

Jio – Business Model and How it Works?

Reliance Jio had really smart strategies and most of them belonged to the founder Mukesh Ambani. For its initial year, Jio gave unlimited data services and high-quality Volte calling services at surprisingly low charges. The complete change in the market made other telecom operators change their business models.

These offers created a lot of radical and unexpected changes in the consumer’s behavior as well. Also, it led to many mergers and acquisitions in Indian mobile network providers. Jio, in turn, made people use more and more services so that they spend more.

Jio eventually started charging 6 paise per minute on its calling services. The company has now launched numerous value packs consisting of both internet and calling benefits along with other on-demand subscriptions at competitive rates, which are even lower for Jio phone users.

Well, in the initial phase Reliance took a big risk to enter into the telecom industry but it has proved to be one of the best companies in the current market.

Jio – Growth

Jio has already proven to be a rising force being a revolutionary company and the torchbearer of the Indian 4G VoLTE services. The Mukesh Ambani-led company is currently the leading telecommunication service provider in India. The Jio company is now working to empower the Indian users with the 5G and 6G services as well. Jio is the 3rd largest mobile network operator in the world with over 179.93 million users.

Jio has added 1.6 mn+ wireless subscribers to its network in April 2022. In the broadband segment, Jio leads the path, which currently boasts of 52.15% of the total Indian userbase, followed by Bharti Airtel, which now enjoys 31.61% of the market share. Reliance Industries’ shares reportedly closed 1.5% higher at Rs 2,529 on the BSE on June 28, 2022.

Jio launched the fiber to the home service in 2019, which now offers home broadband, telephone, and television services. When the coronavirus made things scary for businesses and professionals, Mukesh Ambani made his company Reliance Jio net debt-free 9 months before the deadline. The conglomerate has raised Rs 53,124.0 crore by offering shares to its existing shareholders and another Rs 118,318.45 crore by selling stakes in the Jio platform through 12 deals.

Reliance Jio has become the country’s largest-ever right issue and series of stake sales deals in its arm Jio Platforms, delivering on a promise given to its shareholders in last year’s August.

“I have fulfilled my promise to the shareholders by making Reliance net debt-free much before our original schedule of 31st March 2021,” Mukesh Ambani said in a statement released early on Friday.

Reliance Industries is in its ‘Golden Decade’ and Mr. Mukesh Ambani has assured his shareholders that in this decade RIL will set even more ambitious growth goals and achieve them. Back in 2017, Mr. Ambani said that the energy-to-telecom conglomerate was on the verge of a golden decade where it would yield the returns of its largest-ever capacity expansion in its petrochemical business and its investment in Jio. With these investments, the company’s net debt was Rs 161,035 crore, as of March 31, 2020, and the funds raised in the last 8 weeks exceeded it. Along with the stake sale to BP in the petro-retail joint venture, the total fundraising is in excess of Rs 1.75 lakh crore.

In twelve weeks thirteen different companies have invested in Jio platform, from leading Global investors which included Facebook, Silver Lake(Twice), Vista Equity Partner, General Atlantic, KKR. & Co.Inc., Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, TPG Capital, L Catterton, Saudi Arabia PIF, and Qualcomm.

Companies Investing In Jio In A Nutshell

Name of the Company	Stakes	Total Investments
Facebook	9.99%	INR 43,574 cr
Vista Equity Partner	2.32%	INR 11, 367 cr
Silver Lake Partner	1.15%	INR 5,655.75 cr
General Atlantic	1.34%	INR 6,598.38 cr
KKR & Co. Inc.	2.32%	INR 11,367 cr
Mubadala Investment Company	1.85%	INR 9,093.60 cr
Silver Lake Partner	0.93%	INR 4,546.80 cr
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority	1.16%	INR 5,683.5 cr
TPG Capital	0.93%	INR 4.546.80 cr
L Catterton	0.39%	INR 1,894.50 cr
Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund PIF	2.32%	INR 11,367 cr
Qualcomm	0.15%	INR 730 cr

Jio Platforms has diluted 25.24% of its equity. That’s the maximum they have in view to dilute to financial investors, which includes Mark Zukerberg’s Facebook. Any new investors coming on board in the future will have to be “strategic investors, a tech giant, for instance,” said a source who was part of the deal-making process. The RIL-FB partnership could emerge as the core platform for India’s digital economy and as more consumers and small businesses shift online, it could unlock a digital market worth $2 trillion.

The secret behind Jio’s success is that it is customer-centric and has a webscale mentality. Reliance Jio made it look easy when it successfully swooped into the jam-packed and super competitive mobile market with free 4G voice and data service. So, in a nutshell, Reliance Jio, aims at harnessing the full potential of the internet to create a digital revolution through their technologies. Innovative services and long-term planning will radically bring the world at one’s fingertips much faster and also transform the way Indians think, work, live, and are entertained.

Reliance Jio announced plans for integrated fibre connectivity and digital solutions to transform over 50 Million small and medium businesses in India on March 9, 2021. A statement released by Reliance Jio said – “Under this plan, Indian MSMEs will get Jio connectivity at one-tenth (1/10th) of the existing price in the market. They will also be able to collaborate with Jio partners to get easy-to-use solutions”

Reliance Jio also announced to launch of its new product JioBook, as per the reports dated March 8, 2021. After years of speculation, it is believed that the product is in the Engineering Validation test stage. JioBook is a laptop, that is said to be affordable and would attract a lot of customers. As per the speculations, the price of the laptop would start from INR 10,000 onwards.

Reliance Jio emerged as the top bidder in India’s $11 billion airwaves auction, said the reports on March 2, 2021. Reliance Jio bought airwaves worth Rs 571.23 billion ($7.8 billion) of the total Rs 778.2 billion raised in the latest spectrum auction. Jio’s competitors – Bharti Airtel Ltd., spent $2.6 billion and Vodafone Plc’s India unit bought spectrum worth Rs 19.9 billion.

Some of the popular Jio Apps that the customers can now find are:

Jio Pages – A Jio launched web browser for Android mobiles
Jio Chat – JioChat is an instant messaging and video calling app for Jio users.
Jio Cinema – An online HD video library by Jio, designed to provide the users with movies, tv shows, and music videos online
Jio Cloud – A safe and secure cloud storage service from Jio
Jio Health – A health services app from Jio
JioNews – A news app or e-reader for news by Jio
JioMeet – A video-conferencing platform from Jio
JioMoney – A mobile wallet for the Jio customers
JioSaavn – Provides online and offline music streaming in English and Indian languages
JioSecurity – A mobile security and antivirus app
JioTV – A streaming service brought by Jio
JioCall (Jio4GVoice) – A videocalling feature for the fixed-line number customers
MyJio – A Jio account using which the Jio users can manage their Jio account and digital services

Jio also has a list of other products and services. Here are some important ones to know about:

Mobile broadband service
JioFiber
JioBusiness
JioNet Wi-fi
JioPhone Next

Jio – Competitors

There are many telecommunication brands that have thrived for long years in the telecommunication space of India. Popular brands like Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, etc. had achieved the customer’s trust for years and are still among the Reliance Jio competitors. However, with the disruptive entry of Jio, they had to hurry things up and make significant changes in their business models, strategies, and workings to match up with Jio’s radical approach.

Small network operators like Aircel, Tata Teleservices, and Telenor had to shut down their functions in India because of the revolution brought by Jio into the market. The profits of other Telecom operators have also drastically decreased since Jio’s inception. Idea also had to merge with Vodafone eventually to make the company Vodafone Idea or Vi.

Jio – Future Plans

Mukesh Ambani, recently in an interview, stated that Reliance Jio is now focusing on growing the teledensity in the rural and remote areas. The company is continuing to grow in demand for telecom services and provides digital services with greater services.

Reliance Jio planned to build a data center in UP with approximately $950 million as an investment on February 23, 2021. This center will be powered by its own renewable energy plant.

The company may also expand from being a digital telecom service provider to a digital services player which also offers services related to agriculture, healthcare, and education. Jio also aims to be an influencer and initiator in bringing and developing 5G services in India. The future Reliance Jio projects also include the launching of the 5G and 6G services, and the launch of the JioPhone Next, which was done in November 2021.

FAQs

What is Reliance Jio Tagline/Slogan?

The slogan of Reliance Jio is ‘Digital Life’ while a popular tagline of Jio has been ‘Jio jee bharke’, which means live life to the fullest.

Who is Reliance Jio Founder?

Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is the founder of Reliance Jio.

How much is Reliance Jio Revenue?

In the second quarter of FY2021, it reported a revenue of INR 17,481 Cr with a profit of INR 2,844 Cr. In Q1, the company reported INR 16,557 Cr in revenue. Reliance Jio’s average revenue per user (ARPU) has gone up to INR 140, during Q1 of FY2021.

Who are Reliance Jio’s top competitors?

Airtel, and Vi are the prominent competitors of Reliance Jio.

How much is Mukesh Ambani’s net worth?

Mukesh Ambani’s net worth is $90.7 bn, as of April 2022.

Does Reliance Jio have any subsidiaries?

Yes. Reliance Jio’s subsidiaries are LYF and Reliance Jio Infocomm Pte. Ltd.

How much is Reliance Jio’s customer base?

As of April 2022, Reliance Jio recorded 179.93 million users.

June 29, 2022

Moha by Geetanjali – Designer Silver Jewelry Brand Keeping up the Traditional Aesthetics
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 MOHA.

Silver is renowned for its spiritual properties. The scientific facts also prove that there are incredible health benefits of wearing silver jewelry. Silver metal is quite malleable, lustrous, and soft. Its properties of being high lustrous and reflective make it perfect for jewelry. It can be molded into beautiful designs and are can be carried with elegance. Silver Jewelry is no less than a style quotient. It can be seen in the statistics for the demand for silver jewelry. The demand for silver amounted to 1.8 thousand metric tons in 2021.

MOHA is a designer silver jewelry brand founded by Geetanjali Gondhale. Read the startup story of MOHA by Geetanjali, its vision, business model, and more.

MOHA – Company Highlights

Startup Name MOHA

Headquarters Thane, Mumbai

Industry Fashion Jewelry

Founder Geetanjali Gondhale

Founded 2014

Website mohabygeetanjali.com

MOHA – About
MOHA – Vision and Mission
MOHA – Industry
MOHA – Founder and Team
MOHA – The Idea and Startup Story
MOHA – Name and Logo
MOHA – Products
MOHA – Business Model
MOHA – Customer Acquisition
MOHA – Promotions
MOHA – Challenges Faced
MOHA – Achievements
MOHA – Work Culture
MOHA – Competitors
MOHA – Future Plans

MOHA – About

Moha is an 8-year-old designer silver jewelry brand with the vision of making ethical jewelry using natural materials. At Moha, they sync with the ever-changing market demands and abreast with every woman’s changing lifestyles along with modern sensibilities and traditional aesthetics. We blend tradition with research and innovation with a promise to create and deliver unique designs.

Moha is a trendsetters in its journey. We have revived a few product segments like Silver Bugadis, Ear Cuffs, and Trendy Nath’s for everyday use. These were instant hit which was then followed by a lot of other brands.

At Moha, they believe in telling stories with our designs. They choose topics and motifs which tell stories and stir nostalgia. Their constant effort to reach their ideal consumer has led to a lot of modification and adaptation in jewelry forms.

There are some practical aspects to the silver jewelry market. The market is mostly under a very unorganized sector with very few trusted brands that can be hand-counted. Moreover, very few designer brands sell customized unique silver jewelry against the readymade traditional pieces available in the market.

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MOHA – Vision and Mission

Moha’s vision is to enable women to be confident and beautiful and connect emotionally. They aim to craft environmentally sustainable luxury designer jewelry.

MOHA – Industry

Silver jewelry consumption in India has increased to INR 5 billion and is expected to grow over INR 6.1 billion by 2021. Silver in India comes next to gold in the jewelry buying preferences of Indians. With the current downward spiral of the gold jewelry market due to high prices, silver is the newfound love of Indians. The shiny metal has been able to hold its price and even seen appreciation at a time when gold has been continuously losing shine for the past 2-3 years.

Silver jewelry exports have witnessed a sharp increase in the last few years due to rising overseas demand. This has helped the Indian industry to cater to bulk export orders from overseas markets. With an uptick in the jewelry designing skills in the country, orders have been flowing in from overseas buyers. These were earlier going to manufacturers in Italy and other countries. The Indian market is also very competitive as the manufacturing cost is 40% lower here.

MOHA – Founder and Team

Geetanjali Gondhale is the founder of MOHA. She is the Chief Designer and CEO of the Silver jewelry startup.

She has completed her BCom. She has attended IIMB Goldman Sachs 10K fellow, ISB 10k Ambassador program. She is a passionate designer. She has earlier worked for Tata Communications and Newtons Apple.

For the first 2 years, she was doing it all alone but now there is a team of around 13 people in and out of the office and 6 people who are a part of the workshops they hold. Moha team consists of people who are well dedicated and help to bring the startup vision into the real world.

MOHA – The Idea and Startup Story

The brand Moha was conceptualized and initiated in Goa. Whenever Geetanjali wanted to buy silver jewelry, she would tirelessly roam around to find that perfect piece and then think about how she would have made a more beautiful design out of it. She was always passionate about craft and wanted to do something like that. Thus, the idea of crafting designer silver jewelry took shape. However, she wasn’t aware of what exactly needed to be done in this direction. At that point, she had no answers to even simple questions such as how to make the jewelry, procure raw materials or find buyers. It took 2 years of research and hard work to learn the nitty-gritty. Her determination and perseverance led her to several people who helped her answer her queries and achieve design and manufacturing consistency in Moha.

MOHA – Name and Logo

She wanted the name and logo to stand out and have a story behind them. “Moha” comes from the name of the tree mostly worshipped by various tribes in India like the Kalpavriksh. It caught her attention because of its aesthetic. The jewelry they possess is also unique from what we wear. It speaks about their tradition and ethnicity. The word Moha means desire and who wouldn’t want to look desirable or indulge in some Moha-Maya?

MOHA – Products

Moha Silver Jewelry

MOHA is a brand that creates silver jewelry and design various ornaments right from scratch. The process is simple but definitely nerve-racking. Initially, they pick up on a theme that could be based on inspiration or motives. This includes a lot of research and studying various intricacies. They draw up designs and once finalized, these are rendered and made into master files. Once that is done, a step-by-step routine of molding and amending is followed. This is the process they follow to make a variety of jewelry.

Moha is different from its competitors due to various factors. First, they love designing patterns and drawing up sketches for jewelry. Second, no one feels complete without jewelry since it’s an essential accessory. What makes Moha products unlike any other is that you blend with its uniqueness.

MOHA – Business Model

It’s a very basic and to-the-point business model. They make aesthetic and beautiful jewelry and sell it directly to the customers and make sure they love it!

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MOHA – Customer Acquisition

Getting the first 50 customers for your startup is a bliss! The hacks we used to acquire their first user and then customers were mostly from Facebook. Social media really helps your business to take off. The first 50 customers were mostly friends and well-wishers who were happy to support what the founder was doing. During the initial month, Geetanjali got the opportunity to participate in the Saturday night market in Goa where her designs were appreciated by many people. It gave her confidence and made her realize that people like what she is doing and so, why not continue with what makes her happy!

MOHA – Promotions

MOHA started participating in Group Exhibitions in different cities, but the crowd was too distracted by other brands. Their attention span towards Moha was diluted. Then they decided to do solo exhibitions and promote it through Facebook and local newspapers which helped us to create curiosity around the brand and its recognition. They always wanted people to take the brand seriously, so they put in all their efforts on that. Right from professional shoots to maintaining the quality of each piece coming out of the furnace, everything was thought through and serious efforts were taken to execute it.

MOHA – Challenges Faced

Learning the process of making jewelry was a difficult task since the founder doesn’t come from this background. It was a bit of a struggle to understand the basics. Another hurdle that she faced was getting the designs from paper to metal, it took a lot of effort to learn the process and find the right people to do it. It was difficult but not impossible. Mistakes were made; problems took place but that’s how you grow. In her Moha startup journey, she came across a few nice people who liked her ideas and designs and shared their knowledge of “How to”. This is how she was able to learn the process from start to finish.

MOHA – Achievements

They do a lot of theme-based design collections. They started with a collection; a series dedicated to the love of Goa. The designs were based on the pre-Portuguese aesthetics of Goa. People loved it and this gave them the confidence to do more including designs inspired by Harappa, Gunjan, Kosh, Ashtamangal, Maheshwar, Sanchi, etc. More concepts are currently in the pipeline.

MOHA is a bootstrapped company and would like to remain so. The growth of startup is an achievement as well. She started this jewelry business alone and have a good team now. They love designing as much as she does. Above anything, the most important achievement is that we are making beautiful, appealing, and decorative jewelry.

MOHA – Work Culture

Since it’s a small company, they have focused on creating a very homely environment. The work culture is such that nobody takes it as a tedious job. They have the passion and the thrill to design jewelry and understand exactly what is being looking for. Majority of the workforce is women, which gives a sense of empowerment. They share a common love for many things such as food. To build motivation for the team, they arrange outdoor activities and the amount of fun therein truly makes it feel that the team is the perfect fit for Moha.

MOHA – Competitors

Competition is always healthy since it keeps us on our toes and pushes us to come up with original ideas. There are a few players that have helped MOHA to go beyond limits such as CaratLane, Amrapali, and Quirksmith who create and design beautiful silver jewelry. Their competitors motivate them to bring the A-game.

MOHA – Future Plans

As of now, they expect the team and the business to gradually grow. The future plan is to see the sales and inventory on an upward trajectory. They are learning as they grow.

FAQs

Who is the founder of MOHA?

Geetanjali Gondhale is the founder of MOHA.

What are the popular products in MOHA silver jewelry?

Some of the Popular MOHA silver jewelry are:
- Earings
- Necklace
- Nose Pin
- Toe Ring
Who are the competitors of MOHA?

Some of the top competitors of MOHA are:
- CaratLane
- Amrapali
- Quirksmith
When was MOHA founded?

MOHA was founded in 2014 in Thane, Mumbai.
June 28, 2022

Startup Name	MOHA
Headquarters	Thane, Mumbai
Industry	Fashion Jewelry
Founder	Geetanjali Gondhale
Founded	2014
Website	mohabygeetanjali.com

PAJASA Apartments Success Story of Facilitating Serviced Apartments for the Corporates!

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 PAJASA Apartments.

Business tourism is booming in India. The corporate sector is expanding and many need to travel to different places for meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and more.

India has been the 5th fastest growing business travel destination from 2010-2019. With this increasing number of business tourists, demand for quality accommodation is also increasing. This is giving rise to an increased demand of service apartments, the segment of which is growing at a rate of over 8% per annum and is declared as one of the fastest-growing wings of the hospitality industry.

To cater to this rising demand, PAJASA Apartments is offering beautiful and comfortable serviced apartments in top locations of the country.

StartupTalky interviewed PAJASA Apartments co-founder Arpit Awasthi to know more about the offerings and operations of the company.

Startup Name	PAJASA Apartments
Headquarter	Mumbai
Sector	Hospitality
Co-founders	Paras Sangwan, Arpit Awasthi
Founded	2014
Parent Organization	PAJASA Stay Solution Pvt. Ltd.
Website	pajasaapartments.com

About PAJASA Apartments and How it Works
PAJASA Apartments – Founders & Team
How was PAJASA Apartments Started?
PAJASA Apartments – Mission
PAJASA Apartments – Name, Tagline and Logo
PAJASA Apartments – Business Model and Revenue Model
PAJASA Apartments – Growth
PAJASA Apartments – Startup Challenges
PAJASA Apartments – Awards & Recognitions
PAJASA Apartments – Competitors
PAJASA Apartments – Future Plans

About PAJASA Apartments and How it Works

PAJASA Apartments is a Mumbai-based startup that provides world-class serviced apartments (with working kitchens) on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to corporates. The service apartments are offered on a pay as per usage basis, which costs 40-50% less than hotels. Besides, the apartments are located near to the work location across all metro cities in India (max 5 Km distance) to assure the corporate employees complete their projects within their time limit with no traffic/time hassles.

PAJASA envisions to be alternatives to guest houses that the companies take on a monthly rental basis, which invariably increases their fixed costs. PAJASA works to reduce companies’ fixed costs to variable cost by providing the pay-as-per-usage facility. By facilitating such a shift, it helps in cutting down the hotel cost by around 40% to firms/organizations.

PAJASA follows a step-by-step process to ensure smooth functioning and a hassle-free experience for its clients. First, the PAJASA team surveys a property at a given location and signs a contract with the owner. The pictures of the property along with the details are then put on their application and website. Once, the company administration requests a booking for their guests through mail or the application, the team checks the best accommodation available near the work location (a maximum of 5 km in metros); and checks availability. The system, then, generates a booking. A confirmation voucher is sent to the guests and the company administration as well. The guests can check all the details and the location through software and apps like Google Maps. Pajasa also has a 24×7 support number, which is available for any escalations.

PAJASA Apartments are currently available in Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Gurugram, and Noida.

PAJASA Apartments – Founders and Team

Paras Sangwan and Arpit Awasthi co-founded PAJASA Apartments in 2014.

Paras Sangwan

Paras Sangwan is currently the CEO of PAJASA Apartments. He looks after the Business (sales) division of the company. Paras did his Post Graduate Diploma in Foreign Trade from Savitribai Phule, Pune University after completing his Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from IIeBM College. Paras Sangwan, who also heads PAJASA Agro, as the CEO, previously served as the Business Development Manager at PAJASA Apartments. Prior to founding this firm, Sangwan was a Business Development Executive at Advent Infosoft and then a Marketing Manager at Lake Bloom Residency.

Passionate about starting his own business, Paras participated in an inter-college B-Plan competition and secured 2nd position there. He came to Mumbai to find an idea to fulfill his dream. Before starting his own venture, Paras worked in a serviced apartment company, where he got to learn a lot about the functioning of the sector and the gaps exiting in the sector.

Arpit Awasthi

Arpit Awasthi was the Founder-CTO at PAJASA Apartments and used to handle the technology domain of the startup before leaving the company in August 2020. Awasthi was a BSc Mathematics student at PPN Degree College, Kanpur, but he dropped out of his college education. Arpit eventually obtained a BTech in Electronics and Communications Engineering. After serving as a freelance Video Production Specialist, Awasthi served Accenture, before moving on to the entrepreneurial way where he founded Edge N Roots, where he remained the Founder for over 12 years. He joined Pajasa Apartments in the meanwhile in February 2017 and was known as the Co-founder and CTO at PAJASA Apartments. He is currently serving as a Technical Analyst at Coforge.

Paras met Arpit in a PG in Mumbai; then, Arpit was working in Accenture and have been working on web technologies. Arpit already created a company at his engineering days, keen to do something new. Paras shared his idea to him and asked him to be the co-founder of PAJASA Apartments as CTO. Paras, after that, left his job in March 2014 and opened a small three sitting office at Powai Plaza. As Arpit was working in a company, they had only weekends to work to develop the technology.

Currently, PAJASA Apartments has a dedicated team of 8+ members, including a core developer, digital expert, accounting professional, content writer, sales manager, and photographer.

How was PAJASA Apartments Started?

As a General Manager in the hospitality sector, Paras realized that most of the clients looked for service apartments instead of hotels for long stays as these were cost-effective. However, in the absence of a one-point contact for service apartment owners and corporate clients, company administrations either had to book apartments through several vendors or ended up booking hotels.

This left Paras thinking about ways of decreasing hotel costs for companies and removing their fixed cost by eliminating the guest house concept.

Most service apartment owners generally have properties in one or two areas. So for every location, the administration of a company has to find many service apartment vendors, which is a tedious task

Paras shared the concept with Arpit, his flatmate, who worked with Accenture as a team leader and had a good knowledge of web technologies. With an investment of 5 lakh and two employees, they founded PAJASA Apartments (PAJAS in Sanskrit means growth) in 2014.

The day we deployed our first cloud application, we had breakfast (Idli) at 4:30 am Monday morning near IIT Powai (Maddu Mess) – says Arpit recalling the early days of the startup.

PAJASA Apartments – Mission

PAJASA Apartments’ mission statement is “YOUR SECOND HOME IN EVERY CITY”.

PAJASA Apartments – Name, Tagline and Logo

PAJASA came from the Sanskrit word “PAJAS”, which refers to the goddess Laxmi, and resembles growth.

PAJASA Apartments Logo

PAJASA Apartments – Business Model and Revenue Model

PAJASA Apartments is the only serviced apartment aggregator company in India, working exclusively with corporates to maintain a high-class standard of corporate stay. None of the OTAs (Online Travel Agency) have created filters for the apartment category like 1 BHK/2 BHK to date on their website.

PAJASA Apartments has a B2B business model, which is simple yet effective. It works on a margin basis from apartment owners to corporate. It fixes tariffs with apartment owners as well as corporate for the contracted period in the beginning. This tariff remains the same throughout the contracted period and does not vary with season or stay duration, unlike other stay formats. Once a contract is signed with PAJASA Apartments, a company sends PAJASA a booking request for their guest with details either from mail or PAJASAs’ application. PAJASA technology eventually creates a ticket for the request and checks apartment availability. There is a manual check system in place, and the same ensures the best apartment is provided to the guest. Then, the system creates a booking and sends the relevant voucher and SMS to the guests and the admins.

PAJASA Apartments has a mechanism in place that shows monthly invoices, and similarly, they provide their clients with one invoice for a month that creates value addition to the clients.

PAJASA Apartments – Growth

PAJASA Apartments has seen some growth. Operating exclusively in the hospitality industry that truly focuses on the serviced apartments section focusing on the businesses and their operations in India, it has surely got the early bird advantage for the same. Billed as “Your Second Home”, PAJASA Apartments now offers serviced apartments in 8 top Indian cities, and the top locations within them, which includes, Worli (Mumbai), Powai (Mumbai), Cyber City (Gurgaon), Viman Nagar (Pune), T Nagar (Chennai) and more.

PAJASA Apartments also includes some premium companies as their clients, which includes Google, Tata, Nokia, Amazon, Accenture, L&T, HDFC Bank, Samsung, Domino’s, Muthoot Finance, and more. The company also boasts of being covered by some of the leading media companies like The Hindu, TechStory, YourStory, KnowStartup, Inventiva, and more.

PAJASA Apartments has worked on SEO and their first 300+ clients came through SEO itself. As of now, PAJASA Apartments has achieved an RMV (Room Booking Value) of INR 7 Cr till Nov 2019. Here’s a brief section pointing the growth highlights of PAJAS Apartments:

Total room night boked till date is 25,000+
Yearly growth has last been estimated to be over 200%
Corporate Client added is 300+
200+ locations added in the top 10 cities in India for the company
5000 room keys listed on the website

PAJASA Apartments – Startup Challenges

Serviced Apartment is a very new concept in India, and each city has its own rule for serviced apartments. While in Mumbai, all serviced apartments add electricity bills to their regular tariff, in Delhi, the apartment owners are charged extra for the electricity consumed. To manage these hassles, the company created its own set of rules, and based on it, it signs contracts with serviced apartment owners across India.

Generally, serviced apartments are considered between BnB and Hotels in stay classification, so most cities have their own format. The PAJASA team is trying to achieve a balanced standard for its corporate clients to enjoy their stay with all world-class amenities in their budget. PAJASA Apartments team ensures that all amenities and services are made available irrespective of location.

Another challenge for PAJASA was to organize apartments starting from stay inquiry of the corporates and businesses, to bookings, guest stay, billings, and feedback flow to enable apartment owners to manage their apartment without any hassle. To overcome such a challenge, they have created a full online web application that will help the whole process, from onboarding a corporate or a serviced apartment inventory to creating bookings/Invoices/Reports, easy and fully automatic. They strive to make booking management easy for corporate as well as apartment owners.

Serviced apartments are very different than hotels, so it is not possible to seek any inspiration from any hotel application to manage bookings. PAJASA has, therefore, created its own web application from scratch and regularly updates it on a scenario basis and new use cases, which are very different from the Hotel Industry.

PAJASA Apartments – Awards & Recognitions

Some of the recognitions received by the company are:

It was appointed as a panelist in the “Food and Hospitality Trade Show”
It won the “Innovative Software Platform for Service Apartment” award in the Technology category, at the India International Hospitality Expo.

PAJASA Apartments – Competitors

PAJASA Apartments do not have any direct competitor. Though there are many indirect competitors working in this area, no one is working specifically on serviced apartments for corporates. As said by Paras, even none of the OTAs (Online Travel Agency) have created filters for apartment categories like 1 BHK/2 BHK to date on their website.

PAJASA Apartments – Future Plans

PAJASA is currently looking to increase the total list of rooms that are there listed on their website, and also expand their clients. There is also a plan to increase the team size, and make the booking process fully automated. However, as said by Arpit, the company prefers organic growth and is not looking for investors just yet. Though the company is currently working exclusively with corporates, in the future the team wants to establish PAJASA Apartments as a pre-eminent global service apartment company – the first choice of guests, team members, and corporates.

As short-term corporate projects/assignments are increasing day by day and company resources need a homely stay for their short duration to stay with family, the services provided by PAJASA Apartments have immense potential to grow and accrue profits.

FAQs

What is PAJASA Apartments?

PAJASA Apartments is a Mumbai-based startup operating in the serviced apartment segment, which enables companies and professionals to book fully furnished, quality rooms for their short/long or extended stays.

Where is the PAJASA Apartments headquarters?

The PAJASA Apartments headquarters is in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Who is the Founder of PAJASA Apartments?

PAJASA Apartments has been founded by Paras Sangwan and Arpit Awasthi, where Arpit has left his role while Paras is still serving as the Founder and CEO of the company.

What is the PAJASA Apartments’ mission?

PAJASA Apartments operates with a mission statement that says “YOUR SECOND HOME IN EVERY CITY”.

June 27, 2022

Near.Store: How it is Connecting Customers to Nearby Stores?

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 Near.Store.

The e-commerce sphere is widely changing these days. With Kirana stores entering the online space, the hyperlocal e-commerce sector is getting more dynamic than ever. In the same sector, Ashish Kumar, Ramakrishnan A, and Diwakar Mitr founded Near.Store in 2018.

Let’s walk through the Journey of Near.Store along with getting a glance of the Near.Store founders, Business model, Funding, Revenue model, how it started & more.

Near.Store – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Near.Store
Headquarters	Mumbai, India
Industry	E-commerce
Founders	Ashish Kumar, Ramakrishnan A, Diwakar Mitr
Founded	2018
Total funding	$300,000 (Seed Round)
Parent Organization	Ekasta Tech Private Limited
Website	near.store
Contact Email	hello@ekasta.com

Near.Store – About and How it Works
Near.Store – Founders and Team
Near.Store – Startup Story
Near.Store – Name, Tagline and Logo
Near.Store – Startup Launch
Near.Store – Business Model and Revenue Model
Near.Store – Target Market Size
Near.Store – Startup Challenges
Near.Store – Funding and Investors
Near.Store – Advisors and Mentors
Near.Store – Growth
Near.Store – Future Plans

Near.Store – About and How it Works

Near.Store is an instant plug and play solution to create a digital presence for any shop. Near.Store devices need to be plugged into an existing billing system of any establishment. Once active, it creates a unique online presence on the Near.Store platform for the shop. This enables a mom-n-pop shop to be discovered online, generate online sales, attract new customers and build loyalty with the existing consumer base.

Near.Store aims to provide a plug and play e-commerce platform format for all offline retailers by making the products visible on any local search results. For example, if a person living proximity of any Near.Store enabled shop, is looking for a specific brand of shampoo, the search results will show the local shop as an option to purchase. Till now, any such result would take a customer only to eCommerce sites such as Amazon or BigBasket.

To be a part of the Near.Store platform, a shop owner simply needs to plug in the Near.Store devices to their billing system. The device does not require any additional internet connection or a lengthy implementation process.

Once connected, the device then automatically uploads a shop’s products to create a web storefront. Now, every time a shop owner scans a product and generates a bill, each SKU scanned becomes a part of the backend database for each store.

Near.store – Nearby Store

Near.Store – Founders and Team

Ashish Kumar, Ramakrishnan A, and Diwakar Mitr are the founders of Near.Store in 2018. They have worked together on another startup before Near.Store and hence this venture was an extension of their existing partnership.

The founders have known each other since 2005. Ramakrishnan and Ashish went to business school together (ISB, Class of 2006) while Diwakar and Ashish were colleges at BDA Partners – a leading boutique M&A Advisory. The founders have an average of 15 years of work experience across various sectors.

Ashish Kumar

Co-Founder Near.Store — Ashish Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of Near.Store

Ashish Kumar is known as the Co-founder and CEO of Near.Store. Kumar is an MBA degree holder from the Indian School of Business in Finance/Marketing. Before founding Near.Store, Ashish served in more than one companies as Associate and Manager. The list includes Deloitte, DTZ, Jones Lang LaSalle, Shapoorji Pallonji, and has finally served IndiaBulls as the VP of Fund Management. Kumar has also been a Co-foudner of another firm earlier named Spiral9 Interactive, in which he also served as a Partner.

Ramakrishnan A

Ramakrishnan A is another Co-founder of Real.Store, who is also the CTO of the company. Before founding Real.Store, Ramakrishnan has also founded BeaconsTalk Technologies and Pinprox Technologies. He also served many other companies in crucial positions, which includes the role of Associate Director at Mindtree. Infosys, iRunway, Ikanos Communications, and Sasken, are some other companies where he worked as the Senior Software Engineer and as a Consultant. The CTO of Real-Store holds a BE degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering along with a PG program in Operations and IT Management and Strategic Marketing.

Diwakar Mitr

Diwakar Mitr is a alumnus of Dartmouth College, where he studied AB, Economics, Computer Science. Before founding Near.Store, Mitr was associated with BDA Partners and later founded BeaconsTalk Technologies with one of the founders of the company.

Ramki is the CTO and has over 16 years of hardware and software development experience. Ashish looks after business development and fundraising, Diwakar handles the overseas operations and finance while Ramakrishnan heads technology and engineering at Near.Store.

Shripad Nadkarni, a former marketing head of Coca Cola India has also joined the company as a senior advisor.

Near.Store – Startup Story

Before starting Near.Store, Ashish Kumar, Ramakrishnan A, and Diwakar Mitr were working together on another tech-led startup that helped shop owners make real-time coupon offers to its customers in a hyper-local presence. This gave them a detailed understanding of how a shop interacted with its customers. They also realized that while most shop-owners wanted to counter the competition from the online stores like BigBasket and Amazon, they lacked the technical know-how.

Most of them found the process of creating an online catalog and linking to online payment mechanisms difficult to manage. Hence this trio started to pilot with some of the shop owners that they already had established a relationship with. Based on the positive response and feedback, this trio team slowly developed a product and offerings and did a pilot launch in January 2020.

Near.Store – Name, Tagline and Logo

The co-founders wanted the name to be simple to use and easy to understand.

“It signifies the fact that we are bringing the store closer to the customer. However, from a shop owner’s perspective, since it is about being discovered by local area customers, it represents a shop which is Near and reachable.” said Ashish Kumar, Cofounder of Near.Store.

Hence they finalized on “Near.Store”.

Near.Store – Business Model and Revenue Model

Near.Store charges a flat fee to the customers when they order through the platform. As the venture grows in volume, it hopes to generate business through advertising and promotional banners on its online platform.

Near.Store – Target Market Size

According to industry reports, there are 17 million offline shops in India. There has been a latent desire amongst the shop owners to go online and counter the increasing competition from online stores like BigBasket. However, most shop owners, who are not yet comfortable with technology, find it difficult to create a website and the shop catalog and dealing with online payment systems.

E-commerce and online purchases are slowly becoming more common and frequent. To maintain customer loyalty and expand their existing businesses, the offline shops will need to create an online presence and hence the market for services like Near.Store is likely to expand.

Near.Store – Startup Challenges

Major milestones that this Offline to Online or O2O portal had to face were:

Developing a product that makes it simple and robotic for a shop to go online. This company wanted the process to be equivalent to a self-driving car. Experimenting with lots of hardware/software and cloud-based options before arriving at the perfect combination of the product posed the challenge of optimum utilization of resources.
The biggest challenge for Near.Store was to create a comprehensive database of products available in the Indian market with standard bar codes. The team had to source the data from over 100+ different sources and then create a high-quality image bank of all the products.

Near.Store – Funding and Investors

In February 2020, Near.Store raised its seed capital round for $300,000 from Sauce Venture Capital.

Date	Stage	Amount	Lead Investors
February 2020	Seed Round	$300K	Sauce.vc

Near.Store – Advisors and Mentors

Sripad Nadkarni is the mentor and advisor for this firm. He is the ex-marketing head of Coca Cola and Johnson & Johnson and the founder of Maverix Food Platforms and co-creator of the Paperboat and Epigamia Brands.

Near.Store – Growth

After launching the product, the founders started approaching the shop owners that they already had a relationship with. In January 2020, they hired a few marketing professionals and have been thrilled with the positive response so far.

After the lockdown due to Covid-19, they had to pause onboarding stores. They tied up with Brands and offer aggregated delivery to large housing societies. Large brands such as Cadbury, Oreos, Epigamia, P&G, Organic India and The Bakers Dozen are available on Near.store within a month of commercial launch. They are currently delivering to 55 housing societies in Mumbai, giving them access to more than 22,000 people across Mumbai.

“We have over 126 customers and we have added reputed brands to our store .We are helping the kiranas by ensuring supplies reach them even during the lockdown.” Added Ashish Kumar, founder of Near.Store.

Operating Locations – Mumbai, Bangalore, NCR (phase 2)
To date, Near.Store has 126+ shops as partners.

Near.Store – Future Plans

Going forward, they intend to take a channel sales approach to scale rapidly, given the simplicity of the products for both understanding and installation. Therefore, it is easy for any distribution company to quickly sell the product using their existing networks and resources. Near.Store is in the process of tying up with organizations such as

Trade Associations and Retailers Associations such as CAIT
FMCG Distributors
FMCG Brands
Distributors and Manufacturers of POS machines and Barcode Scanners

The future Scale-Up Plan for Near.Store is to reach 25,000 stores by 2021.

FAQs

What is Near.Store?

Near.Store is an instant plug and plays solution to create a digital presence for any shop. Near.Store devices need to be plugged into an existing billing system of any establishment. Once active, it creates a unique online presence on the Near.Store platform for the shop.

Who is Near.Store founder?

Ashish Kumar, Ramakrishnan A, and Diwakar Mitr are the founders of Near.Store.

How much is Near.Store funding?

In February 2020, Near.Store raised its seed capital round for $300,000 from Sauce Venture Capital.

How does Near.Store make money?

Near.Store charges a flat fee to the customers when they order through the platform

What is Near.Store tagline?

‘Nearest, Fastest’ is the tagline of Near.Store

April 16, 2022

Excess2Sell Success Story – How it is Easing the Selling of the Excess Inventory?

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 Excess2Sell.

Verticals and domains dealing with the supply chain—where manufacturers, vendors, distributors, wholesalers, dealers, and resellers are involved— tend to have some unsold, overstock, and aging inventories left over. As per industry estimates, at least 20-30% of goods worth $500 billion – $600 billion in the Indian retail segment, end up as overstock. Excess2Sell is making the most out of this unsold inventory valued at approximately $30 billion.

Excess2sell.com is an e-commerce platform where vendors, manufacturers, dealers, and wholesalers alike can put up their excess inventory for sale. The catalog of offerings includes, but is not restricted to, electronics, computers, industrial Goods, LED electrical, and home appliances, among others.

Excess2Sell has grown at 150% CAGR since 2016. It has liquidated excess inventory of over Rs 2.23 billion (over $29 million) across India. With a revenue target of Rs 2000 crore ($267 Million) by 2023, Excess2sell is rapidly redefining the concept of selling excess inventory in India.

StartupTalky interviewed Excess2Sell CEO Rajan Sharma to know the Success Story of Excess2Sell and also get a glance at the Excess2Sell Business Model, Funding, Revenue, How it started, competitors & more…

Excess2Sell – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Excess2Sell
Headquarters	Mumbai
Founders	Rajan Sharma, Anant Chaturvedi, Navinder Chauhan
Sector	E-commerce
Founded	2016
Total Funding	~ $1 Million (Angel Funding on March 2020)
Revenue / Turnover	INR 100 crore (Third quarter of FY 2019-20)
Website	excess2sell.com
Parent Organization	Checkers Technology India Pvt. Ltd.

About Excess2Sell
Excess2Sell – Founders And Team
Excess2Sell – Startup Story | How It Began?
Excess2Sell – Vision And Mission
Excess2Sell – Name And Logo
Excess2Sell – Business Model And Revenue Model
Excess2Sell – Funding And Investors
Excess2Sell – Startup Challenges
Excess2Sell – Competitors
Excess2Sell – User Acquisition
Excess2Sell – Growth and Revenue
Excess2Sell – Future Plans

About Excess2Sell

Excess2sell.com is a comprehensive B2B platform marketplace for excess inventory management across verticals such as computer hardware and software, telecom, security, home appliances, apparels, lighting, kitchen items, etc.

The platform acts as a bridge between the seller who is stuck with unsold inventory and the buyer who may be keen to stock or has a high demand for a given product in their domain. It provides sellers the opportunity to liquidate anywhere in India and helps them transact in a confidential, anonymous, and neutral manner.

Excess2Sell – Founders And Team

Rajan Sharma, Anant Chaturvedi and Navinder Chauhan are the founders of Excess2Sell. While Rajan Sharma is the CEO of the startup, Anant Chaturvedi, and Navinder Chauhan are the Directors of Excess2Sell.

Anant and Rajan have been working together since 2003. They were at D-LINK (India) and then at its subsidiary GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY till 2011. Post this, they were a part of Smartlink Networks wherein Navinder joined them.

Rajan Sharma

Founder/Owner excess2sell — **Rajan Sharma – Founder and CEO of Excess2Sell**.

Rajan Sharma has been the Founder-CEO of Excess2Sell. He was previously associated with Priya Ltd. / PEAC SINGAPORE, in which Rajan closely worked with Intel, LG, WDD. It was a time when the PC market was in its nascent stage. D-LINK and GIGABYTE were two other companies in which Rajan spent a major part of his professional tenure.

Anant Chaturvedi

Anant Chaturvedi is a Director of Excess2Sell. Chaturvedi has previously served more than one company and has taken up key leadership positions in them. He served as the Asst Manager Channels at Intex Technologies; Regional Manager – Channel Sales at DLink India; Sales and Distribution Head of India at Gigabyte. He also worked with Smartlink Network Systems and iRevo Multimedia as DGM – Sales & Distribution and Sales Head respectively.

Navinder Chauhan

Navinder Chauhan is another Founder-Director of Excess2Sell. Chauhan has a Bachelor’s degree in Science with a majors in Botany and Chemistry from Bundelkhand University. and then obtained an MBA in Marketing from the same university. Chauhan also has a work experience at DLink and iRevo, where he served as the Marketing Head and the Vice President of Marketing. Apart from that, Chauhan also worked with many other companies like Aditya Infotech, Rashi Peripherals, Panduit International Corp., Smartlink Network Systems, and Cisco Systems, where he held several managerial positions in Marketing. CyberMedia was the company Chauhan started his career with, where he served as a Senior Marketing Executive.

Amit Kundra, who heads Excess2Sell’s tech division, has been supporting the trio in reviewing the company’s progress. His experience in a hyperlocal vertical at a Sequoia-backed start-up was immensely helpful. He formally joined Excess2Sell in 2018 and lent hand in designing and developing the mobile app. It is Rajan, Amit, and Anant’s cumulative cross-functional experience in product management, business management, brand building, and marketing, that has been pivotal to the success Excess2Sell is enjoying today.

Excess2Sell – Startup Story | How It Began?

The idea behind Excess2Sell was conceived sometime at the end of 2015. It was to find a way and means to deal with inventory that remained unsold. Prior to founding the company, Rajan Sharma faced a force majeure situation in his last professional stint. It had to do with the product inventory at distribution points which in turn affected an entire location. The ageing inventory of stockists led to blocked capital and a slow turnaround time for sales. This was a problem faced by almost every stockist and wholesaler in the country and it was an opportunity that called for remediation.

Excess2Sell was then conceived as a solution to overcome this situation. It was launched four years ago to tackle the issue that plagued the large Indian B2B segment: unsold and unwanted inventory.

Post ideation and finalizing the business model, Rajan Sharma took almost 6 months to develop the back-end and front-end before the first transaction took place at the end of August, 2016. The team had been clear from day one about the need to build up its business through an organic approach. Excess2Sell focused on digital marketing and electronic marketing to reach out to its B2B database. This helped the venture kick start and scale up its transactions.

Excess2Sell – Vision And Mission

Excess2Sell wants to assist retailers and wholesalers across trade networks and channels in optimizing costs through excess inventory management using its portal, and provide an extensive store for buyers across India.

The venture’s long-term vision is to provide a proven universal solution to businesses for liquidating unsold inventories and become a leader in the segment with its current business model.

The core belief and ethos, which drives us is hard work, honesty and ethics.

Excess2Sell – Name And Logo

The team wanted a name that would instantly signify its service and Excess2Sell seemed just right for accomplishing the objective. It firmly believed that this concept would be an enabler for the current ecosystem of vendors, distributors and dealers to re-distribute inventories from locations where they would languish, to locations where there would flourish; hence the tagline, ‘excess inventory marketplace’.

excess2sell logo

Excess2Sell – Business Model And Revenue Model

The Excess2Sell platform follows a ‘zero’ inventory model where sellers upload the details of their liquidation inventory online. The portal comprises registered buyers and sellers. Once the buyer confirms the off-take and makes the payment, the inventory procurement and dispatch are done. The platform generates revenue from the sales activity of goods. Every category has a pre-determined percentage of fees that is deducted as a procurement price from sellers. The average transaction is in the range of INR 5 to 8 lacs.

The revenue stream is being explored further with the launch of a E2S Premium Membership in 2o18 where a dedicated buyer-seller ecosystem is being built on a subscription model.

Excess2Sell – Funding And Investors

Excess2Sell has raised more than $1 Million in funding to date. Below are Excess2Sell funding details –

Date	Stage	Amount	Investors
May 2018	Angel	undisclosed	Aashish Pitale & Harinder Singh
March 2020	Angel	$1 Million	Private Equity investor Gautham Madhavan

Excess2Sell – Startup Challenges

In the initial phase, the most challenging aspect was to ensure that buyers paid in advance for their orders. It took immense goodwill in addition to the credibility of the founders and the team to gain their trust and confidence. Today, word-of-mouth publicity is the biggest factor behind Excess2Sell consistently scaling up its operations. With over INR 150 crore worth of liquidations, Excess2Sell has proved the sustainability of its business model.

Excess2Sell – Competitors

Of late, many B2B companies have begun building their own platforms to tap into this relatively less explored market of excess inventory liquidation which is expected to reach $700 billion by 2020. However, Excess2Sell has taken the lead as India’s largest pure B2B online marketplace for liquidating ageing and unsold assets.

Excess2Sell has distinguished itself by creating the only tech-enabled enterprise that connects the B2B overstock market across India. It has the largest network of dealers and distributors on its online platform which are referred to as buyers and sellers.

When Excess2Sell was conceived, the market was fragmented and largely catered to the unorganized segment. At that time, deals occurred one-on-one between sellers and buyers. As of today, there is no other universal platform-specific to ‘excess inventory liquidation’ like Excess2Sell. As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest advantages Excess2Sell offers to both sellers and buyers is confidentiality, anonymity, and neutrality in transactions.

Excess2Sell – User Acquisition

The fact that buyers and sellers transact Confidentially, Anonymously and Neutrally (CAN) has helped the platform grow from strength to strength. It is extremely critical in the company’s LoB( Line of Business) that the seller gets to offload their products anonymously and without disclosing the reason for their liquidating them. Liquidating products in the B2B space is often misconstrued as something being wrong with the product or with the demand for it, which is not at all true. It is mostly that the market, which may be in a specific geographic location and has not warmed up to it which is leading to blocking up the vendor’s operating capital. Excess2sell recognizes this pain point of the seller and hence CAN is a big plus for the user base. Excess2sell’s repeat buyer – seller rate is close to 70 per cent.

Excess2Sell – Growth and Revenue

In the last three years, excess2sell.com has liquidated over INR 150 crore worth of inventory. In 2018 alone, the company mobilized excess inventory valued at over INR 85 crores.

The platform has a business reach of more than 200,000 B2B partners across India and the registered partner base is around 30,000 today. An average of 3+ transactions occur every day with 3,600 active buyers and sellers. Excess2Sell currently operates from Navi Mumbai and is present in New Delhi and Pune as well.

India’s B2B business base is 50 million strong and while it is a direct supplier of goods to the country’s 14 million retailer base, its reach remains stunted. E-tailing in India grew rapidly to become a $525 billion industry because it enjoys the advantage of being in the B2C marketplace. But the B2B e-commerce market is yet to realize its full potential and what it needs right now is a solutions based tech intervention. By offering a solution to address the pain points of the otherwise tech reclusive sector, Excess2Sell has given players in the B2B segment a reason and an incentive to come aboard.

Excess2Sell has already achieved a turnover of Rs 100 crore in the three quarters ending December 31^st, 2019. Starting from a revenue base of Rs 41.58 lakhs in 2016-17, it jumped an astonishing 3000% in 2017-18 to Rs 12.9 crores. The revenue for 2018-19 clocked at Rs.70 crores, which was again over 500% jump from the previous year.

Speaking on the achievement made by the startup, which is just 3 years old, excess2sell founder and CEO Rajan Sharma said, “We have touched the magic figure of Rs.100 crore in our third year of operations, with one quarter still to go. Also with the 24×7 NEFT transaction facility made available from December 12^th last year, we expect the next quarter growth to be significantly higher than the previous three quarters. We are increasingly upbeat about our performance this year, with the economy seeing signs of a revival from the slowdown. Though its early days to talk on the impact of NEFT transactions being made available 24×7, from whatever little data we have post-December 12^th, it seems to have made a small positive impact on our sales figures. This has to be studied over the next quarter to actually assess the impact of the move on the industry.”

Excess2Sell is still working towards achieving even greater revenues in the upcoming years and has a revenue target set at Rs 2,000 crore ($267 million) by 2023.

Excess2Sell – Future Plans

The majority of buyers and sellers are reputed manufacturers, vendors, wholesalers, and dealers. Vendors of companies like Dell, HP, D-LINK, Intel, Acer, Apple, Motorola, and Samsung are among the authorized sellers on the Excess2Sell platform.

Excess2Sell successfully closed FY19 with liquidation deals worth INR 70 crores and is looking to close FY20 at INR 200 crores with projected successful transactions worth INR 900 crores for FY21. Excess2Sell is also looking forward to increasing the number of its registered partners by 100% to reach 50,000.

Our estimate of the branded packaged goods market size is $500 billion in the $2.8 trillion Indian economy. Even if we address only around half of this market and considering that we take 20 per cent of this as slow moving, that still is a $50 billion opportunity and the numbers are expected to double in six years from now.

FAQs

What is Excess2Sell?

Who are the founders of Excess2Sell?

Rajan Sharma, Anant Chaturvedi, and Navinder Chauhan are the founders of Excess2Sell.

How much is Excess2Sell revenue?

Excess2Sell posted revenue of Rs 100 crore in the 3rd quarter of FY 2019-20. It has a target of achieving Rs 2,000 crore ($267 million) in revenues by 2023.

April 14, 2022

ScoutMyTrip: Helping You Plan Those Memorable Road Trips!
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 ScoutMyTrip.

Road trips have a different charm altogether. Stopping by to click photos, trying local food on the way, and those endless chit-chats—what could be more endearing? The experience gets even better and hassle-free when there is proper guidance for making the most of one’s trip: what to see on the way, where to refuel, where the nearest viewpoint is, etc.

ScoutMyTrip, a Mumbai-based startup, is doing exactly this. The startup plans the nitty-gritty details of your road trip to make it a cherishable experience. Here’s all you need to know about ScoutMyTrip, its founders and team, startup story, business and revenue model, funding and investors, name, logo,, competitors, advisors, challenges, future plans, and more.

ScoutMyTrip – Company Highlights

Startup Name ScoutMyTrip

Headquarters Mumbai

Founders Deepak Ananth and Vineet Rajan

Sector Travel and Tourism

Founded 2016

Parent Organization ScoutMyTrip Private Limited

ScoutMyTrip – About
ScoutMyTrip – Industry Details
ScoutMyTrip – Founders And Team
ScoutMyTrip – Startup Story | How It Began?
ScoutMyTrip – Name And Logo
ScoutMyTrip – Business Model and Services
ScoutMyTrip – Revenue Model
ScoutMyTrip – Funding And Investors
ScoutMyTrip – User Acquisition
ScoutMyTrip – Startup Challenges
ScoutMyTrip – Competitors
ScoutMyTrip – Advisors And Mentors
ScoutMyTrip – Awards
ScoutMyTrip – Future Plans

ScoutMyTrip – About

It is a road trip planner which conflates human intelligence with artificial intelligence to help plan the perfect road trip for individuals. ScoutMyTrip works for all sorts of outings, from short weekend travels to long excursions.

With artificial intelligence, customers can create an itinerary containing the information necessary for their road trip—gas stations, toilets, restaurants, hotels to stay in, and points of interest. The human intelligence aspect brings in the ability to personalize the information as per one’s needs.

ScoutMyTrip envisions making road trips the preferred means of vacation.

An industry first product has been introduced where a Scout (travel expert for the specific region) is virtually assisting the customer throughout the journey (before and during the trip). The Scouts give you the regional flavor and make one’s holiday joyous. We call this ‘Mark and Embark’! Our team is hard at work in building great tech and striving for customer delight each time.

ScoutMyTrip – Industry Details

As far as the market is concerned, the road-tripping industry is a subset of a much larger travel domain.

“Our total addressable market is pegged at $6.6B with 33 million leisure road trips in one calendar year. This is growing at a very fast rate and we expect it to double in 3 years time. Globally, this market stands at $100B which is really what we are after; but we want to establish ourselves well in the subcontinent which is why we have started operations in Nepal and Bhutan as well” says Vineet.

ScoutMyTrip – Founders And Team

Deepak Ananth and Vineet Rajan are the founders of ScoutMyTrip.

Deepak Ananth & Vineet Rajan, ScoutMyTrip Founders

Deepak Ananth

Deepak Ananth is the CEO and Co-founder of ScoutMyTrip. He is an Electronics graduate and had been in the corporate space for a really long time, his last assignment being with Verifone as a Director for South-East Asia. Ananth is also known as a storyteller, who loves to travel and sip on fine scotch and old monk. Ananth has a Royal Enfield 500cc bike, and his favorite trip is from Mumbai to Shillong and back.

Vineet Rajan

Vineet Rajan was the Co-founder and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of ScoutMyTrip. Vineet is a Computer Science graduate and has an MBA. Vineet has been involved with various startups throughout his career, and currently works as a Marketing Leader at SAP. After leaving ScoutMyTrip in April 2021 as an Advisor, Rajan joined Shop101 as the Head of Marketing Communications & Organic Growth. Vineet left the Co-founder position of the company in June 2020 and then remained an Advisor for the company before stepping down from that too.

Deepak and Vineet met each other during a road trip organized by a bikers’ club they were part of. They also held official positions in one of the most sought-after Royal Enfield groups. This gave them a chance to collaborate in non-professional capacities. Their thoughts resonated since both wanted to do something unique in the domain of road trips, thus deliberating over possible ideas in 2015.

In terms of workload, Deepak has been responsible for the overall strategy and public relations while Vineet looked into the marketing and sales segment. Soumen Bhowmick serves as the Head of Business Development.

Neeraj Sinha was the CTO and used to manage everything to do with tech. Neeraj Sinha worked at a prestigious company, with excellent remuneration and an experience worth mentioning, but he left all of it just because of his love for travelling, which was fulfilled when he joined ScoutMyTrip after working for around 14 years with the same organisation. Though his father was in the Railways, he had seen the real struggle, as per several interviews, where he stated that his father was left with hardly any money in the middle of the month. This was what drove him away from the government sector jobs, thereby placing him in the private sector. Neeraj started with some odd jobs like that of the EDP Operator but he eventually pursued an MCA degree from IGNOU, and then he never looked back. Sinha soon joined Sopra Steria, then known as Xansa, as a Software Engineer in 2002.

In 2015, we had started talking about putting our collective experience of road tripping so many kilometers into a tech product which can help other travelers. So a ‘road trip’ called ScoutMyTrip began! Building a work drives us – and that is the common area of interest for us. Our team sticks with us; because of the independence we give them in their working style. We measure results; and not the means.

ScoutMyTrip – Startup Story | How It Began?

Both Deepak and Vineet happen to be road trip aficionados. It was this love which inspired them to conceive ScoutMyTrip with a view to guide road-trippers on making the most out of leisurely travels.

We picked this idea because both of us love road trips. Having road tripped on the iconic Royal Enfield bikes in India with over 600,000 kilometers between us; we decided to build a solution that will help people road trip better. Because not everyone will have the knowledge of roads as we would do.

While maps have been the traditional go-to for navigational requirements, ScoutMyTrip is building a new category in road trip planning. The ideation process for ScoutMyTrip started back in late 2015.

ScoutMyTrip has been designed after taking suggestions from men and women consumed by wanderlust (not limited to bikers) and scouts to make the product more customer-centric. The product’s features are the results of the feedback from more than 500 fellow travelers and Scouts. The ScoutMyTrip team carried out a survey involving over 1000 people (including individuals not too inclined towards travelling) to cover every possible scenario. This is imperative given the dynamics of the decision-making process when it comes to travelling. The team also reached out to members of various travel clubs in India. The intimate discussions with these travel communities have been pivotal in onboarding travel experts for helping others.

Some of the first people we spoke to about ScoutMyTrip were all kicked. From investors, the biking community, travel forums and everyone around. We did, however, get a sense that we would have to establish ourselves very quickly; and hence we started seed funded the company in 2016.

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ScoutMyTrip – Name And Logo

Since the startup emphasized having seasoned travelers help plan trips, it wanted to have the essence of a ‘guide’ in its name. After much consideration, the name ScoutMyTrip was finalized for it captured this essence through ‘Scout’.

ScoutMyTrip Logo

The Logo shows an inverted magnifying glass and signifies a bird pecking when seen straight (birds usually symbolize freedom). The road in the center is symbolic of travelling. The three colors represent the brand’s values—community, safety and fun.

A lot of thought has gone into the logo. A good friend Kirtee understood our requirements and came up with that effective logo. We still sometimes joke about how much we troubled her for the logo but wherever we go, we get great feedback on the logo and that is always music to the ears of any founder.

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ScoutMyTrip – Business Model and Services

ScoutMyTrip is a freemium product. Customer can sign up for free on the website and can plan their road trips using the planner for a lifetime. The planner allows the user to add 25-way points (Google allows you just 10) on their route. It suggests places to stay and eat, gas stations, and things to do—all under one platform.

Customers can choose to pay a premium in case they would like assistance with their planning. They are then assigned Scouts who help not just in building itineraries but also by providing virtual assistance throughout the trip.

ScoutMyTrip from the beginning has followed a very community-centric approach. Be it a community of travelers or that of Scouts. It’s always about the people with technology which revolves around it. Scouts are the key differentiator for us. We’re a marketplace of travel experts who curate the best on the road experiences.

ScoutMyTrip has partnered with travel experts and individuals from different parts of India. These skilled individuals know the local haunts, have adequate knowledge about different places to visit and are the best people to reach out to for a well-planned road trip. ScoutMyTrip has a reach all over India and also services Indian travelers visiting Nepal and Bhutan.

The company has scaled quite a few times – from being just another travel agency to doing marketing campaigns for travel brands and now fully focusing on helping people plan awesome road trips.

Itinerary Created by ScoutMyTrip

ScoutMyTrip – Revenue Model

ScoutMyTrip has a well-planned revenue model and earns revenue from the following sources:
- Hiring a Scout: When a traveler contacts an expert (Scout), ScoutMyTrip earns a percentage of the planning fee. The rates vary from Rs. 2000 to Rs. 9000 and can go up to Rs. 50,000 for custom trips and itineraries.
- Platform integrations: The planner can be integrated with other travel websites for a wholesome user experience.
- Corporate tie-ups and group tours: ScoutMyTrip has been successfully doing this for more than a year now and has organized over 500 group road trips for individuals and corporate houses.
- Road trip packages: Once the trips are planned, the ScoutMyTrip Experience team bundles the following as part of the package:
– Hotel bookings

– Self-drive cars and taxis

– Guides

– Roadside assistance/insurance

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ScoutMyTrip – Funding And Investors

ScoutMyTrip raised seed funding from Z Nation Lab in April 2017.

Funding Date Funding Stage Funding Amount Investors

April 2017 Angel Round Undisclosed Z Nation Lab

ScoutMyTrip – User Acquisition

ScoutMyTrip was launched for insider access or closed beta in October 2016. It got its first 5000 signups in one month and there has been no looking back ever since. ScoutMyTrip had incidentally launched its blog much before the website came into existence. This allowed the company to build communication with its target customers. Through its blogs, the team was able to expound the vision for its product to an eagerly awaiting consumer base.

Content marketing has been a driver for ScoutMyTrip. The company has approximately 90 % of its users coming through social media platforms powered by influencers already a part of the ScoutMyTrip community. Word of mouth publicity also has been a good contributor for ScoutMyTrip with around 10% of user acquisition from this stream.

The majority of spending by ScoutMyTrip in the marketing space are on Facebook and Instagram advertising. A lot more time is vested on SEO and building great content which markets itself.

ScoutMyTrip takes pride in being a content-driven brand and has taken ownership of three intellectual properties to keep in touch with its focus group—the travel enthusiasts.
- The Great Indian Food Trip: The Great Indian Food Trip is an exploratory drive-by ScoutMyTrip through the hinterlands of India for rediscovering some of the most iconic and largely lost gems of Indian cuisine.
- The Highest Blogger Meet: The idea here is to take influential bloggers from different walks of life to the highest motorable roads in the world. On those roads, ScoutMyTrip hosts a blogger meet, setting a record in terms of altitude each time. The last successful attempt was at Khardung La in partnership with OYO Rooms.
- #AageSeRight: A viral sensation on Instagram that is common amongst road trippers. AageSeRight is a Hindi phrase used as a response when asking for directions; ScoutMyTrip was able to create a medium of brand recall through this hashtag.
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ScoutMyTrip – Startup Challenges

Deepak and Vineet had the most modest upbringing, belonging to middle-class Indian families. Deepak had been working in corporate roles (at senior positions in reputed companies) for over 20 years before ScoutMyTrip. Vineet had an entrepreneurial mindset throughout his career but his only brush was by being a member of an established startup. As a result, launching a startup was no less than a challenge due to lack of prior experience as told by Vineet.

Whether such a platform would find a place and apprehensions about them treading the right path plagued the founders in the initial phase.

Our families were very supportive. Parents who heard us out asked the right questions and then wholeheartedly supported us, spouses who stood by us, ready to fight the same battles along with us, helped to make our minds up, much easier.

ScoutMyTrip – Competitors

As Vineet says, the biggest competitors are the airlines and railways, which make up for over 80% of all travel spends in India. Google Maps is a formidable opponent given its reach and popularity when it comes to navigation.

Globally, ScoutMyTrip faces resistance from Road Trippers and Furkot, which are slowly building their presence in India. Desi competitors include Easy Roads and Highway Delite. However, the highly experienced Scouts associated with ScoutMyTrip are its USP and the major differentiator from its competitors.

We are different in terms of us being a very community driven space where our Scouts are the USP to ScoutMyTrip. We encourage road trips for everyone and plan it keeping in mind the likes of our customers.

ScoutMyTrip – Advisors And Mentors

ScoutMyTrip’s investor, Z Nation Labs, is also its primary mentor.

We get great support, industry connects and advice from the leadership team of Z Nation labs which includes Amit Jain, Anup Mehta and Neha Jain.

After being incubated by NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups initiative and the Maharashtra State Innovation Society, ScoutMyTrip is getting regular support from its team as well.

ScoutMyTrip – Awards

ScoutMyTrip has had its fair share of recognition including the recent incubation by NASSCOM’s 10,000 startups initiative. The honors bestowed on ScoutMyTrip in 2019 are:
- April 2019 – Selected as one of the Top Startups by NASSCOM as part of the 10,000 Startups Program.
- March 2019 – Recognized by Startup India / DIPP.
- February 2019 –Winners of the Maharashtra Startup Week by the Govt. of Maharashtra.
- January 2019 – Entrepreneur India listed ScoutMyTrip as the top 50 startups to watch out for in 2019.
- July 2019 – ScoutMyTrip won the Conquest 2019 startup challenge by BITS Pilani which opened new doors in terms of partnerships and investor connections.
- August 2019 – ScoutMyTrip was invited by DIGITARAYA x tiket.com accelerator programme for expansion into SE Asia.
ScoutMyTrip Founders Receiving Award at Maharashtra Startup Week

Earlier Awards include being chosen as one of the top 20 travel tech startups by FICCI in 2017, Top 10 startups in India (Silicon India), and many more.

ScoutMyTrip – Future Plans

ScoutMyTrip has received a positive response from the traveler community; it has partnered with reputed brands to maintain the flow. Over the last two years, ScoutMyTrip has been aggressively improving its Scout and agent network to service the ever-increasing customer requirements. The company’s business partners include Treebo Hotels, OYO, Agoda, Booking.com, MyChoize self-drive cars, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Honda Cars India to name a few.

Over the next 1-2 years, ScoutMytrip is looking at consolidating the Indian market where there is a churn in the making as observed by its team.

For its long-term vision, ScoutMyTrip aspires to be present in every aspect of a road trip. The ScoutMyTrip team has christened this plan as ‘Dashboard to Dhabha’, where the idea is to integrate ScoutMyTrip into cars to make it easier for car owners to conceive a journey. This comprises showing recommendations of other roadtrippers, real and live assistance from Scouts all over the country, detours to explore the countryside, and other provisions. This shall enable ScoutMyTrip to create an extensive database which would then be used to provide up to date, real-time information in assisting holidaymakers.

After spending a week in Indonesia understanding the travel and tourism industry, the co-founders are considering expansion into a new market next year. They are in discussions with partners to venture into the SE Asian markets and provide a full suite of services not limited to hotels, flights, and last mile connectivity for trips.

It is hard to navigate through the maze and there is a long way before we as a country make it simpler for startups. And advice is not easy to come by, we had to learn a lot of it ourselves- Vineet Raja

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FAQs

Who are the Founders of ScoutMyTrip?

Deepak Ananth and Vineet Rajan were the founders of ScoutMyTrip. Rajan left the company in 2021.

What is ScoutMyTrip?

It is an Indias trip planner, which conflates human intelligence with artificial intelligence to help plan the perfect road trip for individuals. ScoutMyTrip works for all sorts of outings, from short weekend travels to long excursions.

What is ScoutMyTrip Business Model?

ScoutMyTrip is a freemium product. Here, the customers can sign up for free on the website and can plan their road trips using the planner for a lifetime. The planner allows the user to add 25-way points (Google allows you just 10) on their route. It suggests places to stay and eat, gas stations, and things to do—all under one platform.

Who are the competitors of ScoutMyTrip?

The ScoutMyTrip competitors include:
- Google Maps
- Road Trippers
- Furkot
- Easy Roads
- Highway Delite
April 13, 2022