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Tag: 📄Company Profiles

  • Aiosell Technologies – Taking the Hospitality Industry to the Next Level!

    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 the organization it is based on.

    Just when we thought the hospitality industry couldn’t get any better and automized, Siddharth Goenka launched Aiosell Technologies in 2019. This venture is all about automated pricing & revenue management for hotels, combined with an all-in-one integrated hotel marketing platform.

    The hotel industry is still using archaic systems with static prices and independent systems that do not integrate well with each other and leaves money on the table. Aiosell aims to solve the vision of maximizing revenues for the hotel industry, using automation, AI, and integrated technology systems. The owners of the Aiosell are hotel owners themselves, and hence this company was born out of a need in their own business. When they realized, there wasn’t a suitable alternative available in the market solving these issues, they decided to build a technology solution.

    Aiosell Technologies – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Aiosell Technologies
    Headquarters Bangalore
    Sector IT
    Founders Siddharth Goenka
    Founded 2019
    Parent Organization Aiosell Technologies Private Limited
    Website aiosell.com

    About Aiosell Technologies and how it works
    Aiosell Technologies – Target Market Size
    Aiosell Technologies – Founders and Team
    Aiosell Technologies – How did it start?
    Aiosell Technologies – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Aiosell Technologies – Startup Launch
    Aiosell Technologies – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Aiosell Technologies – Startup Challenges
    Aiosell Technologies – Funding and Investors
    Aiosell Technologies – Growth

    About Aiosell Technologies and how it works

    The product of Aiosell uses several automation and AI algorithms to change prices in real-time to ensure the hotel gets the maximum business. When the demand is high, the price increases and vice versa. The system uses many other unique parameters to adjust these prices, including occupancy, demand, seasons, weekday, booking window, dates, etc.  

    The USP of the product is to use all these products in a very simple, easy to use method to automate dynamic pricing and simplify revenue management. The product also integrates all aspects of hotel marketing together to give a one-stop-shop marketing product for hotels.

    The product started off using a simple pricing automation tool. Today, it includes all technology components of the hotel industry including Rate Shopper, Reviews Manager, Website & Booking Engine, Analytics & Reports, Travel Agent portal, etc. This pivot was made because the team realized that many hotels could not only use one aspect of hotel marketing, it needed to integrate all these aspects to give the best results.

    Success Story of Observe.AI – Voice AI for Customer Care
    With all the buzz about the modern technology with AI and VR that seem to betaking the world by surprise one after another, it has become imperative forcompanies to keep up with these trends and make the most of it. To sufficientlyprovide a solution to this, Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava Narayana,…
    StartupTalkyVidhi Punamiya

    Aiosell Technologies – Target Market Size

    Aiosell’s target market consists of independent and chain hotels of all sizes (5 stars, 3 stars, 1 star) and home-stays & apartments that use online channels to get bookings for the hospitality industry.  

    There are about 6 million hotels only in the organized segment. Adding the unorganized segment and home-stays, this number can go above 10 million. Over the years, this number will only grow with more alternate accommodation being added to the supply.  

    “Since this is a highly fragmented market, our market share targets will be less than 1% of the market, which is a sizable opportunity for a B2B business,” said Siddharth Goenka, founder of Aiosell.  

    Aiosell Technologies – Founders and Team

    Siddharth Goenka is the Founder & CEO of Aiosell Technologies.

    Owner Aiosell Technologies
    Siddharth Goenka – Founder, Aiosell Technologies

    He is a Software Engineer from Purdue University and an MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He has previously worked in Microsoft as Software Developer and in Accenture as Management Consultant. Then, he went to join his family business and conceived Octave Hotels, a business hotel chain that grew to 7 hotels in 3 years. Siddharth brings a mix of software development, hotel owner, and marketing professional experience which is key to Aiosell.

    Team of Aiosell Technologies
    Team of Aiosell Technologies

    The co-founder of Aiosell Technologies is Smriti Singh, whom Siddharth met because her husband was Siddharth’s boarding school friend. She is IHM, Bangalore graduate and was ex Revenue Manager at ITC hotels.  

    Siddharth looks after the overall product development, vision, and overall growth of the business. Smriti looks after client satisfaction and success. The team comprises 15 members, the average age of the team is 23 years. The culture at Aiosell is very young, energetic, flexible, and innovation-driven.

    Hiring funda at this company is based on two pillars – attitude/potential, and honesty/ethics. Competence is given some weight but not very weightage, as that can be developed in other two qualities are present.

    Silversparro Technologies Company Profile | Sparrosense, AI Powered Supervisor For Companies
    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified and updated information on different organisation. The content in this article has been approved by the organization itself. It will not be wrong to say that technology is ruling our lives. From homes tooffices, to factories, …
    StartupTalkyChayanika Goswami

    Aiosell Technologies – How did it start?

    “Since we were in the hospitality industry, this was a need that was glaringly visible in the industry. The industry was rapidly changing with an increase in internet bookings/smartphone usage and changing customer behavior.” Added Siddharth Goenka, owner of Aiosell Technologies.

    They were first trying this idea out manually using excel sheets, and when they succeeded, the team decided to make an automated product around it. For one year, they ran the concept manually with a service-led model, and when they were confident of the benefits involved, they changed it to a product-based approach.

    The initial people they spoke to were friends and family in the hotel industry, who were new to the online business and had not wrapped their heads around increasing their hotel revenues digitally.

    AIOSELL – AIO means all in one, and also a pun on artificial intelligence ‘o’ttomation. The name and logo for this B2B company were formed based on some initial research and brand name availability.

    Aiosell Logo

    Aiosell Technologies – Startup Launch

    At Aiosell, product first – marketing second is the approach, rather than the other way. Make the product so unique and desirable, that it starts selling itself. Aiosell has several partnerships with other technology companies and revenue management companies, who provide complimentary services or products to its offering.

    The company has formed revenue-sharing arrangements with these companies to grow. The team has now also started attracting leads through traditional product marketing channels like Google, Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube.

    FindMyHealth Company Profile – Startup that Combines AI and Ayurveda for Health Monitoring
    Artificial Intelligence is now penetrating almost every existing domain.Finance, healthcare, education, transportation and many sectors are witnessingactive use of AI. The idea of this startup was born when Gaurav Bhalotiarealised there is a lot to health beyond medicine, and that our bodies need…
    StartupTalkyRishabh Rathi

    Aiosell Technologies – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The business model of Aiosell is SaaS/subscription-based. The listings at Aiosell are priced anywhere between $5 to $10 per room per month. Like in any Saas model, margins are more than 30%, and currently, it has got the business organically without burning a lot of cash.

    Aiosell Technologies – Startup Challenges

    One major challenge that Aiosell faced was to convince a large chain of hotels to try and use the product. This was accomplished by offering them free trials and personal attention by the founder, Siddhart Goenka. It was also followed by ensuring all their requirements kept getting back into the product development cycle so that the customer was satisfied. Word of mouth references from happy customers is the most relevant marketing channel to grow the business.

    Aiosell Technologies – Funding and Investors

    In June 2019, Aisoell technologies raised an amount of INR 10,00,000 through an early stage self-funded round.

    Aiosell Technologies – Growth

    • 150+ hotels located in 10+ countries and 100+ cities
    • Revenue generation- $20,000 per month ($250,000 per year)
    • Profit margins are as high as 20%.
    • Customers across India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Russia, Kenya, Belarus, Greece, USA, and Canada.

    Aiosell Technologies – Future Plans

    “We want to grow to 500 hotels in 1 year and 5000 hotels in 3 years.” Concluded Siddharth Goenka while talking about his future plan.

  • Coursesity – Getting all the Online Courses Under One Umbrella

    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 the organization it is based on.

    All of us at different times have gone through the struggle of finding the right courses online. Either we get mixed results or the paid advertisements take over the real organic results and we end up in a mess. To create an effective solution to this problem, Mr. Keyul Shah launched Coursesity in 2017.

    Coursesity is a search engine to discover the best online courses and tutorials available on the internet. Coursesity aggregates online courses from different education providers and E – learning platforms and categorizes them. Coursesity makes it easy for learners to find and compare different courses for their next learning.

    Coursesity Highlights

    Startup Name Coursesity
    Headquarter Surat
    Founder Keyul Shah
    Sector Edtech
    Founded 2017
    Website coursesity.com

    About Coursesity and How it Works
    Coursesity – USP and Innovation
    Coursesity – Target Market
    Coursesity – Founder and team
    How was Coursesity Started
    Coursesity – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Coursesity – Startup Launch
    Coursesity – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Coursesity – Startup Challenges
    Coursesity – Competitors
    Coursesity – Funding and Investors
    Coursesity – Advisors and Mentors
    Coursesity – Growth

    Check it out – List of EdTech Startups in India | Emerging Education Startups

    About Coursesity and How it Works

    Coursesity as a platform makes it easy for the students to correctly locate the courses they want to study. This is how it works. Coursesity lists all the courses available on different online learning platforms and MOOCs in one place and categorizes them based on topic, price, ratings, and reviews.  For users, it is a one-stop solution where they can search and compare the courses on the various subjects they want to learn. This saves a lot of time for users. Users don’t need to waste time visiting each eLearning or MOOCs sites and then look for the course.

    Coursesity Website Image
    Coursesity Website Image

    Initially, it started as a search engine for only programming courses, but over time they made a little pivot and expanded to different categories including design courses, marketing courses, business courses and so on.

    Coursesity – USPs and Innovation

    Coursesity empowers students and learners to achieve their career goals by learning new skills.

    Some USPs of Catalyst Group are:

    • It lets the users discover free and the best online courses across 200 different subjects including programming, design, marketing, business, personal development and so on.
    • It records & tracks the progress of the courses they are taking online.
    • It connects the users with other learners at the same level to get help in learning.

    Also Read:  Internshala – Grab That Internship You Are Passionate About!

    Coursesity – Target Market

    E-learning is estimated to be a $325 billion market by 2025. So ideally the opportunity for a successful edtech startup is huge. Globally, $107 billion is spent on online education. In addition to this, the market size of coding boot camp is estimated to be $260 million. In India, with major players like Unacademy, Byju’s, Gradeup, Toppr, and Vedantu, the online education market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of over 20% during the forecast period.

    In recent years, the online education industry has already seen some large acquisitions like LinkedIn acquired Lynda for $1.5 billion, and General Assembly, the largest coding Bootcamp, was acquired for $412 million.

    Coursesity – Founder and team

    Coursesity is founded by Mr. Keyul Shah.

    Keyul is a serial maker and software engineer. Before launching Coursesity, he has launched many products including Bot Stash, Entry Level Jobs, an android app, messenger chatbot and so on. He has graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University, USA.

    How was Coursesity Started

    Three years back, Keyul was preparing for the software engineer interview. That time, he looked for online courses that could help him to revise the technical concepts and technologies.

    In this process, I realized that I had to spend more time looking for right courses on various e Learning platforms instead of spending time on actual learning – says Keyul.

    This experience resulted in him collecting all free programming courses from different e-learning sites and categorizing them based on the programming languages, frameworks, and tools. After collecting, he uploaded the list on GitHub and shared it on Reddit. It became an instant hit on Reddit. Different blogs & sites copied the list and posted it on their sites. Around 17,000 courses were visited in just four days from that list. And this validated the potential of the idea.

    Coursesity Website Image
    Coursesity Featured Courses

    Post validating, he started brainstorming the features that need to be on the first MVP. The site aimed to keep it simple and easy for users to find programming courses. It took six weeks to build the first working version of the site.

    Also Read: EdpowerU – Helping Students and Professionals Reach Their Career Highs

    The name “Coursesity” reflects the vision of the company. It’s simple! Course + University = Coursesity – A university of online learning.

    Coursesity Logo
    Coursesity Logo

    Coursesity – Startup Launch

    After creating the first MVP of the site, the next step was to launch the first version to the public. Keyul posted the site on Product Hunt. It became the “number 1” product of the day on ProductHunt. In three days, 10,000 people visited the site just through Product Hunt.

    The Product Hunt launch helped the Coursesity team to get the word out. When the word got out, a few technology press & blogs also wrote about the Coursesity launch. To diversify the audience base, they started a campaign that focused on a niche market. Reddit and Facebook groups are the best places to reach out to the niche audience. They have also started a publication on Medium for programmers.

    Coursesity – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Coursesity is currently working on two business models. These are the advertisement model and revenue sharing model.

    Coursesity – Startup Challenges

    As an entrepreneur, one always wants to ship the product with all the features but it takes so much time to build everything and there’s no definite way to know which features will the consumer use. So the idea of Coursesity was to focus on the features that solve the actual pain points of the audience. Build those essential features first and launch the product.

    Never wait for your product to be perfect. Always measure the usage of the various features and keep iterating the product over the period. Set one metric and focus on how to grow it. This is an important trick that we learned when we were part of 10 weeks YCombinator backed Startup School – says the founder of Coursesity.

    Coursesity – Competitors

    Coursesity is a search engine to look for courses on all subjects and categories. While other platforms like Educart, Simplilearn, Dexler Education, etc are just focused on one or two categories, Coursesity is well diversified into all the categories. Coursesity also empowers learners to do more things in their online learning.

    Coursesity – Funding and Investors

    Coursesity is bootstrapped from day one. But it’s looking forward to raising funds from the right investors to expand the platform.

    Coursesity – Advisors and Mentors

    Coursesity team is learning from Combinator’s startup school and the Launch podcast.

    Also Read: AttainU – Bridging the Skill Gap in Software Engineering Sector

    Coursesity – Growth

    Coursesity has more than 5,000 courses listed across 200 different subjects. And approximately 30,000 courses are viewed by users every month on the site.

  • TAD Courses – Upskill Your Career with Technical Courses

    Technical education is of utmost importance for developing the human resource of a country. Technical education produces manpower that has practical knowledge of modern and advanced technology which is much required for the development of any country. In modern times, the demand for technical education is increasing globally and India is also experiencing the same trend.

    Besides, technology is not something which can be learned once and for all, it is must to keep oneself abreast of the new developments. While it is not possible and convenient to go for formal offline education at all stages of one’s career, online technical education can do a lot to keep one up-to-date of new technologies, without giving up the current job or alongside another course.

    However, it is important to check the quality and credibility of the courses while opting for any online technical course. Techved Academy of Design (TAD), initiated by Techved, a Mumbai based design company is offering certified courses on many technological areas, that are just perfect to upskill and uplift your career.

    StartupTalky interviewed TADCourses co-founder Neha Modgil to know about the story behind this initiative.

    Startup Name TAD Courses
    Headquarter Mumbai
    Founders Neha Modgil & Mohar V
    Sector Online Education
    Founded 2018

    About TAD Courses
    TAD Courses Founders
    How was TAD Courses Started
    TAD Courses – Name, Tagline and Logo
    What is TAD Courses
    TAD Courses – Funding and Investors
    TAD Courses – Startup Challenges
    TAD Courses – Competitors
    TAD Courses – Future Plans

    About TAD Courses

    TAD stands for  Techved Academy of Design. TAD Courses is an initiative of Techved, a leading global user experience company based in Mumbai. To meet the shortage of skilled manpower in the field of User Experience (UI/UX), Techved started TAD Courses which initially offered just courses related to UI and UX. However today TAD courses is offering online courses in many other technological areas.

    The TAD team believes that everyone should have the opportunity to create progress through technology and develop the skills of tomorrow. TAD Courses offers assessments, learning paths and courses authored by industry experts. The platform helps businesses and individuals close skills gaps in critical areas, innovate faster and deliver on key objectives.

    With a mission to become the one-stop channel for Technology education, TAD has been providing quality training and education, aspiring masses in the realm of creativity. Combining the passion for technology and education, TAD set up the online learning platform with the sole vision of increasing accessibility in education, thereby elevating itself as a reliable and esteemed global education brand.

    “We desire to endow individuals with an intrinsic inclination and pursuit of technology and design,” Neha says emphasizing on the company’s vision.

    Relevant Read: Prepare for Competitive Exams with OnlineTyari

    TAD Courses Founders

    TAD Courses was co-founded by Neha Modgil & Mohar V.

    Neha Modgil | Co-founder and CEO of TAD Courses
    Neha Modgil | Co-founder and CEO of TAD Courses

    Neha Modgil, Co-Founder and COO of TAD Courses, is a thought leader with a fertile mind and woman with great passion towards the work. She has around 10+ years of experience into Designing and Innovation industry. Her passion lies in inventing new and powerful ways to make consumer’s digital experience better. She has an educational qualification in design and management.

    Mohar V | Business Evangelist of TAD Courses
    Mohar V | Business Evangelist of TAD Courses

    Mohar V, is an experienced Business Evangelist, Digital Strategist and a UX Design thinker. His 19+ years of experience into Technology innovation, UX/UI Design, Digital Strategy, Software Development, and Project management have helped him to sweep the tech world. His conscientious qualities and ideas have always touched the zenith of success. He has a stellar track record of business innovation, market presence, and creative mind into various business verticals. He is an MBA person with a tech background.

    How was TAD Courses Started

    TADcourses is a member of NASSCOM and was started under the leadership of TECHVED Consulting. Techved has over a decade of experience and an ardent passion in the field of UI/UX. The leaders of TECHVED – deemed as the top UX/UI Company by Silicon India – wanted to cultivate a talent pool of aspiring professionals in design and technology. Thus, TAD was founded as an oasis to quench the growing scarcity of UX professionals.

    “In a decade, we have conducted a lot of workshops and meet-ups for industry professionals. These experiences explicated the gaps in skilled individuals in the industry. Therefore, TAD courses have been launched for bridging these gaps” says Neha.

    Apart from UX/UI related courses, TAD Courses now offers several other technical courses too.

    “Initially, we have discussed with COO’s and CTO’s of Technology to know what challenges they face while recruiting the right candidate and that lead to the need of industry ready professionals. Today there are so many working professionals who lack contemporary skills, which results in great disappointment. Looking into the responses, TAD courses set up the online learning platform to build and enhance the critical professional skills required in today’s in-demand fields” Neha added.

    The name TAD stands for Techved Academy of Design.

    TAD Logo
    TAD Logo

    The Company’s Tagline is “Upskill your career”.

    Relevant Read: upGrad – Send Your Career Soaring With Online Courses from Reputed Institutes

    What is TAD Courses

    TAD courses are the short online courses in cutting-edge technology for both beginners and professionals to cultivate their talent.  

    The courses are divided into ‘Foundation’ and ‘Advanced’ based on the levels of knowledge and expertise. TAD courses offer specialized video tutorials for Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain Technology, User Experience, and Big Data Analytics in multiple languages. A graduate in any stream can apply for these courses.

    Major USPs of TAD Courses are:
    •    Mentors with hands-on industry experience.
    •    Premium content
    •    Industry Recognized Certificates
    •    Placement Assistance

    The company is trying to reach out to the Tier II and Tier III Cities by creating an extraordinary technology learning experience for them to make their future with these buzzing and dynamic technologies. Besides TAD Courses also boasts to be the first Indian online learning platform to teach the updated technologies In multiple languages.

    TAD Courses – Funding and Investors

    TAD Courses has not raised any funding until now. It is powered and invested by its sister company Techved Consulting. The company uses a major fraction of its funds in creating quality content videos with the right mentors.

    TAD Courses – Startup Challenges

    Getting the right mentors on board was a challenge for the TAD Team.

    “Our objective was to find industry experts to train our students to increase the employability in the tech industry. It was a very challenging task, to find the right product person who has the vision to run this. But we effectively pulled it off by bringing industry experts and subject matter experts to the board” says Neha.

    Relevant Read: A Startup that is Adding Fun To Learning with Augmented Reality

    TAD Courses – Competitors

    TAD team chooses to learn from the various players in its domain rather than seeing them as competition.

    As Neha says, “We have learned and reaped inspiration from many platforms; each one of them has their own presence in the market to stand out. We have willfully started this because we are already into tech Industry witnessing 100’s of newcomers in the market who are unable to stand firm due to lack of Ideas and concept. Therefore, we have learned the pros and cons of their platform, which has motivated us to build our platform into a unique platform.”

    TAD Courses is focusing on making its service better for the learners and make technology easy to learn

    “The moment we began to look at others as our competitors, we descended and categorized ourselves comparing another platform with some similarities. Thereafter, we decided not to consider anyone as our competitors, we take everyone as a learner because everyone is trying and practicing new things to be prominent out of which some people strike the right platform enlighten the people and some later”, added Neha.

    TAD Courses – Future Plans

    Having successfully created a high-quality user experience in its platform, the TAD team will keep on improvising the content and teaching methods by incorporating new ideas. As they are evolving with the current technologies, the industry will consistently evolve as well.

    Along with the evolving industry, TAD courses will further improvise teaching methods by introducing new ideas into the courses. However, their objective of providing a high-quality experience will remain the same. Their goal is to increase employability in the Tech Industry. Hence, they will continue to transform our students into a job-ready professional.

  • HiGrocer – Catering to the Needs of Your Neighbourhood Grocers

    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 the organization it is based on.

    HiGrocer India offers wide range of Comfort Food Products. HiGrocer enable every retailer to compete with organized giants and e-commerce, by their Last Minute SKU range of Quality Products Chained by Technology.

    HiGrocer has a mission to partner with millions of retailers (by becoming their Trusted Brand and Supply chain partner) making it the biggest and quickest go-to-market channel for products and services. They are focussing on solutions for the grocery online end-to-end management system.

    HiGrocer – Company Highlights

    Startup Name HiGrocer India
    Headquarter Mumbai, India
    Sector Consumer Product Company
    Founders Dharit Parikh & Aniket Sharma
    Founded 2019
    Parent Organization HiGrocer India LLP
    Website higrocer.com
    Contact Email info@higrocer.com

    HiGrocer – Target Market
    How was HiGrocer Started?
    HiGrocer – Product/Services
    Founders of HiGrocer and team
    HiGrocer – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    HiGrocer – Business Model and Revenue Model
    HiGrocer – Startup Launch
    HiGrocer – User Acquisition and Growth
    HiGrocer – Startup Challenges
    HiGrocer – Future Plans
    HiGrocer – Funding and Investors

    HiGrocer – Target Market

    In India, the rate of urbanization has increased to a considerable level since the 2009 census, as per the United Nations (UN) World Urbanization Prospects 2018 report. There has been a noteworthy change in the eating habit in Metropolitan Cities. Due to the fast-paced life in urban cities, about 79% of the urban people prefer to have ready-to-eat food in their regular meal.

    The reasons behind the increase in the use of comfort food in urban cities are the steep rise in income, the standard of living and convenience. Mostly, in a small family where both husband and wife are working, they prefer having ready-to-eat food for their children. It has become the most favorite and convenient part of their meal.

    The Indian middle class is growing and so is their buying capacity and demands. They love to try on new products that come in the market. They prefer premium products; explore comfort food in the ready-to-make mobile SKU and easy-to-eat category.

    Rural India provides a great opportunity for the comfort food and beverages industry. As almost 65% of the total Indian population lives in the rural region. They are attracted to food products of urban cities. The buying capacity of rural households has also increased in recent years due to benefits from investment in infrastructure and rising wages.

    How was HiGrocer Started?

    It was somewhere in mid 2018 when we brainstormed of creating our own Consumer Product Company. Once the calling was clear we left our respective erstwhile FMCG Leadership roles to commenced with our calling in the Business.

    We did dipstick understanding on the sub industry we would like to cater in FMCG with a criteria of continual offtake, counters with higher ticket and demand oriented category; Food which is ever evolving and innovating was an obvious choice of offering.

    Our Product Categorization is an outcome of this focused Customer Segmentation, Secondary being the Unorganized retailers which has become Last minute consumer Shopping Hub because of organised players amidst our Primary Audience which being the Urban consumers aged between 16 to 40 yrs their Fast changing urban lifestyle resulted into the growing demand of Comfort Foods.

    Our Agenda is going National, hence at planning stage itself we brainstormed the possible scale of Operations and Solution towards it. Thinking about the same we developed Integration of SaaS Technology in our business enables market access concept whereby a product can be directly delivered to the retailer’s shop from the manufacturer’s factory through our SalesMax & Delhi mechanisms without having to go through the multiple layers of marketing, thereby providing an efficient & effective Supply Chain system.

    Around mid 2019 we entered One market with our first RTE Product – Idli dosa batter ‘Ayyappa’, since then we have been growing in terms of Product offering and Shelfing Counters.  

    Thereby, Our Go To Market Business Model brings Scalability, Flexibility, Empowers Retailers & Building Brands.

    HiGrocer – Product/Services

    Helping Unorganized Retailers in FMCG with Accessibility, Affordability and Assistance in more Earning Power.

    HiGrocer India as marketer offers wide ranges of Comfort Food Products. As our name suggests we are catering to neighbourhood grocers to answer consumers’ thirst for premium quality and Last Minute SKU Products, as the Urban Indians aged 16 to 40 years are part of fast changing urban lifestyle constitutes the major segment of this market. They spend over 40 percent of their income on food, are ready to experiment, and are willing to pay a premium for better quality, variety, and taste. We under the Name of HiGrocer India cater to these Indians, with our Last Minute Range of Products and its SKU.

    Currently we have 10 Products across 3 categories and 3 Brands, we pivoted with our Idli Dosa Batter ‘Ayyappa’ and gained momentum for other range of products across categories i.e Frozen Snacks and Staples.

    We commenced with Batter as it is a daily need product which gives us accessibility with retailers thereby build relation which makes shelfing of our other products easy and faster.

    Founders of HiGrocer and team

    Dharit Parikh & Aniket Sharma, both are qualified and respect each other domain experts of being an IIM graduate with 15 years of work-ex expert in Sales & Marking & other being CA with 9 years in work experience, managing Finance and Products, respectively. We have a team of 20+ and with each Delivery Centre Opening we will add 10 more in each. Even in Field staff we seek entrepreneurship skills, thereby the culture at HiGrocer is competitive, enabler and proactive.

    Our Business Model is a basket Approach hence Commanding Shelf at the Counters we are present especially at the Kirana Stores. Therefore, We wanted a name which Resonates Trust with Casual atmosphere, thereby ‘Hi’ build friendliness in the conversation and because we in the Consumer product Food business ‘Grocer’ stands for ‘Grocery’ which resonates Trust.

    Secondly, We are Consistent, Respects Boundaries, Show Gratitude and Don’t compromise in maintaining relations are the characteristics we would like to be known for.

    Hence, A friendly neighborhood Grocer is ‘HiGrocer’ as a name builds, under the affirmation of Quality Assurance and at Best Price, which makes out Tagline Quality Bhi, Daam Bhi.

    On our Logo thereby the word has cautiously been written in 2 different fonts and Red is the color of passion, strength, sensitivity, etc. also gets easily identified in the clutter.

    HiGrocer – Business Model and Revenue Model

    We are in the Consumer Product Business, building consumer Brands is what we endeavour for long run, the path to that is the journey we are crafting with our Business Operations

    We have our own plant for one of our category of products and for the rest we do Contract Manufacturing. As we are a firm believr of Basket Approach with a Concept of Shared resource in FMCG to create the most advanced Sales and Distribution model which gives maximum retail coverage which is Marketed by HiGrocer

    We do the Retail tie-ups and ensure product placement, our tie-ups with retailers are made with a committed shelf space or gondola space named “HiGrocer”, and we have a dedicated planogram for the shelf and Trade commission bundled in each every sales made.

    Our Partnered Products are warehoused in vicinity directly from the manufacturers factory and delivered to the retailer shop tethered by our Technology Platform of SalesMax & DelHi mechanism without having to go through the multiple layers of Marketing, thereby providing an efficient & effective Supply Chain system.

    HiGrocer – Startup Launch

    Around mid 2019 we entered One market with our first RTE Product – Idli dosa batter ‘Ayyappa’, we categorically chose this as an entry product as it gives us leverage of providing Regular service and build Relation with retailers being a new entry this was very important for us.

    Today, we are serving almost 2000 Retailers in a single market. We have 10 Products to offer across 2 Categories and 3 Brands (Idli Dosa Batter, Frozen Foods and Staples). Our Go To Market Business Model brings Scalability | Flexibility | Empowering Retailers | Building Brands.

    HiGrocer – User Acquisition and Growth

    As HiGrocer, We are providing Shelf of Hi Quality Premium products with On the GO SKU range, which enhances Customer Needs & Retailers Greed. Our tie-ups with retailers are made with a committed shelf space or gondola space named “HiGrocer – Quality Bhi, Dam Bhi”, and we have a dedicated planogram for the shelf. Idea is to build HiGrocer as a Trusted brand amidst Consumers as we will market all products as ‘Products from HiGrocer’, which Promises Quality and Price. We have and will always have a Basket Approach in building a dedicated HiGrocer Shelf at the Neighborhood Stores. All at the palm reach as we are chained with Technology, which will enable us to keep our operation cost at marginal and enhance off-takes.

    So By the end of Half a Decade existence as per our plans we will have a bank of more then 50 SKU’s across 6 Categories trailing each with a minimum existence of 3 years. We, at the end of 60 months would have our market penetration across 25 cities mix of Metros, Tier 1 and Semi Urban spread over 50k retailers.

    HiGrocer – Startup Challenges

    We are living in a Demand Centric world, which makes our Future with Opportunity; India is the world’s fifth- largest consumer economy by 2025, up from the current 12th position.

    Secondly we are Acing Products and Brand builder in an organized way catering via unorganized market, support to them will generate Push and our Media Marketing will generate SOV and Demand.

    Our Challenges are with the Competition and we have a plan for that, we have identified our competition below in 2 parts:

    Branded Consumer Products

    This is a Direct Competition. They do Contract Manufacturing of their Products and retail it across Shops, with traditional way of Distribution thereby offering minimum margin to retailers and shelving because of Advertising Demand. At HiGrocer, We have multiple advantages in our Trade We Work on Delivery Centre Model (from manufacturer to our warehouse directly), which gives miss to traditional channels of Distribution, and our Ready stock Delivery to retailers ensures regular Service and Product Shelving. Thereby, we offer almost 2- 3 times of the current market margins, with similar high quality Product, as we miss traditional distribution

    Non-branded Consumer Products

    This is a Indirect Competition. They Supply Retailers in loose form, which is either/or, repacked under retailers brand or sold as it is.  We work on Delivery Centre Model, which gives miss, to traditional channels of Distribution. Our Ready stock Delivery to retailers ensures regular Service and Product Shelving likewise to our non- branded product suppliers.

    Margin: We offer similar margins, with high quality Product bundled with Brand Assurance, which is lacking by non-branded suppliers.

    HiGrocer – Future Plans

    We are currently retailing in approx. 2000 stores with 10 Products, 3 Brands, 2 Categories, By the end of Half a Decade existence as per our plans we will have a bank of more then 80 SKU’s across 6 Categories trailing each with a minimum existence of 3 years. We, at the end of 60 months would have our market penetration across 15 cities mix of Metros, Tier1 and Semi Urban spread over 50k retailers.

    Also, by the Decade of existence apart from our respective Brands, HiGrocer would also be a Trusted brand name as all our products are marketed as Products From Higrocer. Which would unfold the potential of future Business integrations and Cross Selling’s.

    HiGrocer – Funding and Investors

    We are Bootstrapped company and have decent runway with us, though we are in talking terms with few VC’s who shown Faith and Interest in HiGrocer, we will come back to you on this space soon.

  • Big Biking Commune – An Umbrella for Motorcycling Community

    India is the largest market for two wheelers in the world and it is only natural that the roads are overwhelmed with a majority of the population using it for commuting within the city for work and mobility. But in this melee we find another large group of riders who are driven by their passion for motorcycling and use their bikes to journey long distances not just within their State but across the country and also are brave enough to cross borders on their motorcycles.

    You will find them as part of large motorcycling clubs or even solo riders or a group of friends going on long rides on their motorcycles and increasingly many large motorcycle brands have also moved into this space to organize formal and large rides for their customer base.

    Big Biking Commune has created one of the largest, strongest and the most trusted network of motorcycle riders from across regions in India bringing them together as part of one large community. Read this article to know more about Big Biking Commune, a Bangalore based startup founded by Arun Kumar.

    Big Biking Commune – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Big Biking Commune Pvt Ltd
    Headquarter Bangalore, India
    Sector Motorcycling / Touring / Cruising category
    Founder Arun Kumar
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization Big Biking Commune Pvt Ltd

    About Big Biking Commune and How it Works
    Big Biking Commune – Startup Launch
    Big Biking Commune – Target Market Size
    How was Big Biking Commune Started?
    Big Biking Commune – USP and Innovation
    Founders of Big Biking Commune and team
    Big Biking Commune – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Big Biking Commune – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Big Biking Commune – Growth
    Big Biking Commune – User Acquisition
    Big Biking Commune – Startup Challenges
    Big Biking Commune – Future Plans
    Big Biking Commune – Funding and Investors
    Big Biking Commune – Competitors

    About Big Biking Commune and How it Works

    Big Biking Commune is one of the largest aggregator platform for the motorcycling community in India and worldwide, catering to the Touring, Cruising, Off-roading and Adventure Motorsports. The Big Biking Commune is the ‘Go To Destination’ that brings together passionate bikers, motorcycle brands, riding clubs, Accessories, Custom and Vintage bikes, bike rentals, bike tour operators and all related products and services under a single roof.

    As a Commune the company is all about creating and curating new experiences for the motorcycling community, putting together events and entertainment to celebrate being a biker, networking and learning from experienced motorcyclists, checking out new motorcycles, discovering new biking trips and routes, meeting with new biking buddies and riding out together celebrating the essence of being a biker.

    Big Biking Commune – Startup Launch

    Big Biking Commune started out by hosting the first of its kind annual celebratory event for the motorcycling community in Mahabalipuram, India at a beach side private property in February 2019. The inaugural event attracted over 3500 bikers from over 150 biking clubs and had 25 of the top motorcycling influencers share their experience mixed with some excellent stunt shows and off-roading experience.

    The inaugural event witnessed big names like Maral Yazarloo (Queen of Motorcycling), K. P. Arvind, Rajini Krishnan, Bullet Bose and many more well known names in the motorcycling community talking part in this festival.

    The response to our inaugural event was overwhelming with motorcycle enthusiast cutting across clubs, brands and individuals, all finding a common bonding under our platform. This has encouraged us to think big and look beyond the horizon and go unconventional, says Arun Kumar, Founder of Big Biking Commune.

    Since then, the Big Biking Commune has curated a unique branded proposition. Today, it has become one of the largest aggregator platforms earning the trust and goodwill of the biking community. They have created one of the largest networks of bikers bringing together clubs, bike brands, individual riders, biking influencers as a binding force in the category.

    Our founding vision now is to create the biggest experiential motorcycling commune benchmarked amongst the best as a globally leading brand; today we have aspirations to take the brand offering beyond India and into the global markets – Arun Kumar.

    Relevant read: Goibibo – India’s number 1 online travel booking portal.

    Big Biking Commune – Target Market Size

    Big Biking Commune is operating in a informal and fractured market category (Clubs, solo riders, Brand clubs), there are no structured reported numbers, but working on guess estimates, they are working on putting some researched numbers and structuring the category in an organised manner. Having said that, they are working with the information available on motorcycle sales figures in their category.

    “For example we know that there are around 3.5 million Royal Enfield motorcycles on the road and they continue to sell over 7 lakhs motorcycles annually. Similarly we know that Bajaj has sold over 2.5 million motorcycles in our category (Pulsar, Dominar, Avenger) and continues to add over 1.5 million more annually to the market size, likewise TVS Motors sells over 5 lakhs Apaches every year. And if we add in the international brands in our category like Harley, Indian, Triumph, KTM, Kawasaki, Ducati, Benelli, Suzuki, Yamaha (in the 200 cc and above category), we know that we are sitting on a sizeable growing market” says the Founder.

    But on the other side they have built a database of motorcycle clubs. At present they have over 2,500 clubs on their database and given the average of around 25 members per club, that gives them a reach of around 62,500 bikers who are in their category.

    How was Big Biking Commune Started?

    The promoter and founding partner of the Big Biking Commune, Arun Kumar comes with over 20 plus years in the event and activation industry. Having worked for brands like Hero Motors, Honda Motors, TVS Motors handling their commuter side of the business, he wanted to create, own and run his own brand IP and leave behind a legacy that people will remember him by.

    The inspiration to do something in this category came from observing that every weekend all the highways out of Bangalore had bikers zipping in and out for rides in large numbers. That is when he woke up to this opportunity and started looking at this rage more keenly.

    Some more research showed that events like India Bike Week and Riders Mania had over 5000 bikers assemble for a 3 day celebration and festivities. And brands were trying to streamline a club format activity for their customers like the HOG, Dominar, Apache, KTM etc. Their first inaugural festival (under the Big Biking Commune) was held at Mahabalipuram in a 40 acre resort. They got over 3500 bikers attending the fest and revelling in the biking brotherhood.

    Big Biking Commune – USP and Innovation

    Big Biking Commune is coming up with a technology based app that will become a single point of convergence for the biking community. It will bind all stakeholders and ecosystem partners on one side and bring in all the bikers onto the platform, building on a strong and robust networking model for the commune.

    The uniqueness of the app is that it will be a neutral face for everyone (irrespective of the bike or brand or rider) to find common ground to engage with each other across different products, services and solutions. They understands the existing pain points in the community and also the offerings from mobile apps which fall short on important biding points which they will be addressing.

    Apart from the app, they have created and curated unique brand properties like the ‘MotoYoga Day‘ which combines Motorcycle Day and Yoga day together (June 21st) and highlights the importance of a strong body while going out on long rides. India Tourism took interest in this proposition and supported the Yoga camp for motorcyclists in Chennai and Bangalore.

    Similarly, the WOW rides (World on Wheels) got Tourism Malaysia interested in typing up with them to promote tourism destination on motorcycles in their country.

    Emboldened by the positive response from the tourism sector, their Motorcycle Tourism Summit will be the first such initiative in the world that will open up a new category in the tourism sector and make people take notice of the opportunity motorcycling can offer to the growth of the tourism market.  

    Also read: Deep Kalra: Travel Booking Made Easy Through MakeMyTrip

    Founders of Big Biking Commune and team

    The Big Biking Commune has been initially funded in-house under parent company Axiom Gen Nxt Pvt Ltd who have infused the initial funds to get off the ground. The firm is owned by Arun Kumar who himself is the leading role model and ideator of the Big Biking Commune and inspiration for the core team.

    They trademarked the brand name and formed a private limited company under the same name Big Biking Commune Pvt Ltd looking at the opportunity and recognizing the need to create a separate legal entity to build and grow this market.

    Arun Kumar is Founder and Convenor Big Biking Commune
    Arun Kumar, Founder and Convenor Big Biking Commune

    Arun Kumar, the Founder Director is a self made businessman having started Below the Line activations and events way back in the late 1990’s. He has worked long and hard to build one of the largest activation companies in India with branches in 5 cities and a staff strength of around 30 people. Today Big Biking Commune has become his most passionate work and he devotes maximum time to shape and structure the brand and realize its potential.

    (L to R) The team - R Ramasubramaniyan (Co-Founder and Brand Architect), Arun Kumar (Founder and Convenor), Krishnan Iyer (Co-Founder), Madhu Narayan (CEO), Samuel Thomas (Co-Founder)
    (L to R) The team – R Ramasubramaniyan (Co-Founder and Brand Architect), Arun Kumar (Founder and Convenor), Krishnan Iyer (Co-Founder), Madhu Narayan (CEO), Samuel Thomas (Co-Founder)

    He is joined by the other Co-founder R. Ramasubramaniyan who comes with over 30 years of experience in the Marcom domain. As the Brand & Tech Architect, he is tasked with shaping the brand direction and creating values in several sub-brands and is also driving the technology architecture to give Big Biking Commune the edge it needs to bring in some path breaking initiatives in the motorcycling community.

    The name Big Biking Commune came up after they were toying around the idea of what name to keep for their event and after running through many names the thoughts kept coming back to the original name Big Biking Commune.

    Firstly, we wanted a name that would work across geographies. So we avoided anything regional or local. Also, we were clear that while addressing the biking community, we wanted the bigness of the idea of bringing them all under a single umbrella, hence BIG and also we wanted to avoid a limited club format, hence the broader name Commune fitted in well and thirdly anybody who does biking becomes part of the commune making it Big. So all these thought process took us to the same destination – Founder, Big Biking Commune.

    As for the logo look and feel, they looked at a few international events like the Sturgis, Daytona, Phuket bike week etc and knew that they wanted a rugged, sturdy and macho kind of brand design.

    Big Biking Commune Logo
    Big Biking Commune Logo

    The retro handle bar and headlight design with the BIG taking more space, the side wings meaning riders can aspire to more and the Commune as an integral part of the logo unit. Keeping it to simple black and white with a dash of red at the bottom gave the logo its final look and feel they wanted. Today it has grabbed attention very fast amongst the biker community and is one of the fastest brand setting new benchmarks for biker experience in such a short time.

    Big Biking Commune – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The business model or revenue model is simple –

    1. Events and experiences – Their flagship event and other interim events will attract sponsor money.
    2. Technology & App – This is a long term game plan, where initially they will onboard bikers into the app and integrate rides and activities through the app. They are also creating multiple revenue models around the app like ticket sales, merchandise sale, sponsored rides, in-app adverts etc which will grow as the base grows.
    3. Network platform – As one of the largest aggregator, once we have all sides of the game on the table, the upside revenue stream from multiple platform and network effect will fully open up the revenue potential with e-commerce, market place models, referral streams and many such innovative initiatives on the plate.

    Big Biking Commune – Growth

    They launched their flagship biker festival and the inaugural event saw over 3500 bikers take part in it. And today Big Biking Commune have access to over 2,500 biking clubs. Not being complacent, they also reached out to over 100 biking community influencers.

    They also got the support from sponsors like the Tamil Nadu Tourism, Apollo tyres, TVS Motors and many other biking brands and accessories who placed their faith and trust in the concept and took part in a first of its kind event in Mahabalipuram.

    “The journey has been brutal and tough and we weathered many a storm to come so far, the journey ahead also is not easy but we have now gathered a large base that looks at us to glue them together into a single commune and we are receiving more support each passing day from the biking fraternity. We have had more success from directly reaching out to bikers over a call and speaking to them, of late social media is getting a larger response from bikers who want to be part of our platform”, says Arun Kumar, the founder of Big Biking Commune.

    Also read: ScoutMyTrip: Helping You Plan Those Memorable Road Trips!

    Big Biking Commune – User Acquisition

    Nothing fanciful than directly speaking to the bikers has worked well for the company, till date they have not spend a single rupee to advertise on social media, all page fans are bikers (they have about 3000 page likes and growing), they believe in organic and genuine likes and they are going to stick to that method.

    What has also worked for Big Biking Commune is the innovation they are bringing to this community in curating experiences. They are the only ones to first introduce Yoga to Motorcyclists and created a MotoYoga day for them. They also branded thematic rides called the WOW Rides (World on wheels) which saw some internationally acclaimed bikers on the ride.

    They curated weekend ride called the Filter Kaapi ride for South Indian bikers. Like this the company is working on innovating in the category which is making them popular and bikers are reaching out to take part in these activities.

    Big Biking Commune – Startup Challenges

    The company did not see any major challenges so far, everything they did was organic and every biker they reached out to has never said no and in fact they also managed to pull in the 1960’s Sholavaram bikers (all septuagenarians) who shared their crazy days with the youngsters at the event. Big Biking Commune experimented with serious discussion, fun beach side activity, off-roading, stunt shows and exhilarating evening musicals which gave the ambience a festive tone.

    Big Biking Commune – Future Plans

    All these items are WIP (Work-In Progress), the team is still working with back of the envelope calculations and taking inputs from some mentors and advisors on the business side of the commune. However their plan stays firm with the focus on the annual Flagship event and they have bigger plans to take them global in the next couple of years. The app will be a tipping point which is what they are working on today.

    “Our vision for the next five years leans heavily on taking our brand global, starting out with South East Asia by early next year (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and Indonesia are big markets for our category).”

    They have already made some initial outreach into these markets in the last 6 months in building a strong network with biking clubs and are in touch with over 250 clubs and top bikers in these countries.

    We will then push on to Europe and USA (two of the biggest markets with large motorcycle communities). And in terms of growing the commune, we are looking at tapping corporate and college communities as they offer good potential for this format. More than anything else, we are keen to pursue the Tourism industry which is slowly waking up to the potential of leverage this new category to drive growth and promote tourism through motorcycling”, quotes Arun Kumar.

    Must read: Taxidio Taking Care of Your Travel Planning Woes

    Big Biking Commune – Funding and Investors

    The initial funding (seed and angel) has been in-house with the parent company holding the ship together. They are now working on the range and need for funds and calibrating their business plans to pitch to raise funds.

    On a ballpark estimate they are looking to raise money in the 10 to 30 million USD range initially. But this also might get revised, all their plans are currently fluid and are being assessed in multiple formats across multiple business streams.

    Big Biking Commune – Competitors

    In terms of competition, Big Biking Commune do not have any. There are annual biker festivals like the India Bike Week and Rider Mania. Biking clubs do their own small get together and ride outs; no one has consolidated this space into a common commune platform, which is what they have done.

  • STEPapp – Startup Which Gamifies School Education

    Education is one of the important things for people living in this world. As one important area, we can utilize education in many fields of operation and in our day to day life. Edtech startups in India are changing the scene of education in India. They are making it interesting to learn new things. It ultimately help the nation because we know that children are the future of our country.

    India suffers from skewed pupil-to-teacher ratio, which is rising and it compromises a complete learning experience for students in schools. And hence, these technology-driven learning apps are using gaming elements to help boost the learning process for students and sharpen their basics in various subjects. One such company is EduIsFun providing the product STEPapp. Read this article to know more about STEPapp.

    STEPapp – Company Highlights

    Startup Name EduIsFun
    Headquarter Mumbai
    Sector Education Technology (EdTech)
    Founder Praveen Tyagi
    Founded 2015
    Parent Organization Eduisfun Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
    Website stepapp.ai
    Contact support@stepapp.ai

    Stepapp – Vision and Mission
    Stepapp – Target Market
    How was Stepapp Started?
    Stepapp – Product/Services
    Founders of Stepapp and team
    Stepapp – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Stepapp – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Stepapp – Startup Launch
    Stepapp – User Acquisition and Growth
    Stepapp – Startup Challenges
    Stepapp – Future Plans
    Stepapp – Funding and Investors
    Stepapp – Advisors and Mentors
    Stepapp – Recognitions and Achievements

    You can also have a look at the top Edtech startups in India for some inspiration.

    Stepapp – Vision and Mission

    STEPapp believe in primarily providing a level playing field in education. The idea is to bolster four key parameters that make education effective and complete. These key parameters are AQEA: Accessibility, Quality, Enjoyability, and Affordability.

    They aim to provide universal access to quality education for every child using technology and gamification. The company’s mission is to create a bank of meritorious children who will be transformed into national assets.

    Stepapp – Target Market

    Stepapp is from the Ed-tech industry. Their target group is school going students and the total market size (as per MHRD statistics) is 255 million students currently. And there will be significant growth in this industry due to two reasons.

    Firstly, India has the youngest population in the world and it will continue to be so at least until 2030 (as per UNESCO). By 2022 the number of school going students will be 300 million. Secondly, the current crisis has strongly underlined the urgent need for education to go digital and technology-enabled.

    How was Stepapp Started?

    After 22+ years of teaching, grooming, guiding, and mentoring some of the finest minds of this country through PACE IIT & Medical, there was already an established niche for them. They know Building a technology solution in education is a new ball game altogether. They are trying to solve the two major issues that prevail in our country:

    1. Educational Inequalities in India
    2. Low Technology Adoption in India

    Both of these issues individually create a divide between the latent potential existing in our country, especially in the villages and towns, and the culmination and representation of that talent on a global scale.

    The startup’s main idea was to bridge this gap between rural and urban educational opportunities and provide a level playing field for students of all classes. Secondly, as the world is moving fast in terms of technology, they wanted to provide students with the latest educational technologies for them to stand stronger and smarter.

    Also read: How Byju’s is Making Millions of Students Fall in Love With Learning

    Stepapp – Product/Services

    STEPapp is a gamified, personalized, interactive and adaptive learning app that makes learning Math & Science fun and interesting for school students. STEPapp offers the students of grades 1st to 12th a great opportunity, to experience a virtual gamified learn from home solution that enables the students to learn and play at the same time. This gives the students a conceptual clarity while making the studies interesting too.

    STEPapp is an innovative way to learn concepts while ensuring that all the stakeholders (parents, principals, teachers, and students) are aware of the learning outcomes at all times.

    Following are some of the features of STEPapp:

    • Gamified Format: The gamified format of STEPapp helps the students learn the topics in an interesting way thus keeping them engaged.
    • The syllabus is broken down into small conceptual quanta: STEPapp makes learning seamless by replacing long lectures into small conceptual quanta.
    • Simplified testing methodology and measurable learning outcomes: STEPapp allows the students to measure their learning outcomes in a simplified manner. The outcomes are measured on the basis of speed, accuracy, and the number of attempts.
    • Self-paced learning: Students can control their learning pace by revising the concepts and relearning the topics.
    • Content created by 400+ IITians and Doctors: For better learning outcomes, the syllabus of STEPapp is designed and curated by the expertise of 400+ IITians and doctors, simplified in gamified format.
    • Rewards and recognition: Students get motivated to learn and study when they are rewarded and recognized.

    Founder of Stepapp and team

    Praveen Tyagi is the founder and CEO of STEPapp. Sandeep Singhal is Chief Business Officer and a Physics Mentor and Gaurav Goyal is the Chief Technology Officer at STEPapp.

    Praveen Tyagi is founder and CEO of Stepapp.
    Praveen Tyagi

    STEPapp is created with a team of 400+ IITians and Doctors with over 5 years of extensive research. The concepts and content are generated and created by the extensive research of these 400+ IITians and Doctors, who have combined their knowledge and intelligence for creating such content that is easily understood by the children without any hindrances.

    Apart from these, they have other teams that are constantly aiming to provide a level playing field for students and help the company in fulfilling its mission and vision.

    STEPapp or Student Talent Enhancement Program is a gamified app that enables the students to have a learning experience through a level playing field. The gamified approach helps the students to learn their concepts in an interesting way.

    STEPapp Logo
    STEPapp Logo

    When the student clears a chapter in the app, the virtual character in the app goes a ‘step up’ to the next level. This up-gradation of a student from one chapter to another or stepping up to the next level ideated them to give the name STEPapp and also represented in the logo.

    Relevant read: List of EdTech Startups in India | Emerging Education Startups

    Stepapp – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The startup have two products in STEPapp:

    • STEPapp Concepts:
      The unique, gamified content is mapped to the school curriculum and it has been broken down into small nuggets of information so students can grasp the concepts easily. The content has been created by 400+ IITians and Doctors to give students conceptual clarity in math and science. The product is priced at ₹ 5000. This is currently available for 6th – 10th for CBSE and ICSE boards.
    • STEPapp Scholarships:
      Top 10,000 performers from each grade (6th – 12th) win prizes ranging from ₹ 5000 to ₹ 1 crore from a total pool of ₹ 50 crores. The Enrollment fee is priced at an affordable rate of ₹ 500, to ensure that nobody misses out on the opportunity. The rewards encourages the students to perform better. Winners are mentored and guided by the expert team for their future endeavours.
    • Grades 1st to 5th app:
      They are soon rolling out a new product for grades 1st to 5th in the next few days. The aim is to make learning fun and enjoyable for all school students.

    Stepapp – Startup Launch

    The company started its journey by implementing STEPapp in various government and private school chains. They received an extraordinary response and great reviews from students when they played the game while learning the concepts in the app. This is what encouraged them to start implementing STEPapp in more schools and this is how they got their first 100 users.

    We had approximately 1 million downloads within the first month of our launch.  We are focused on improving and innovating more products and services to enhance the students learning experience and that is the only marketing technique we are focusing on – Praveen Tyagi, Founder and CEO of STEPapp.

    Stepapp – User Acquisition and Growth

    This product is not a push product but a pull product. Since the mission of the product is to impart knowledge and provide it to the children, they have always aimed to strategize their activities to fulfill this mission. They aim to provide the students to get the conceptual clarity by the content created by 400+ IITians and Doctors.

    Also, they give the stakeholders, i.e. the parents, the teachers and the policymakers, in-depth data on learning outcomes to make informed decisions about the child’s career through the interactive STEPapp Dashboard.

    Must read: Coursesity- Getting all the Online Courses Under One Umbrella

    Stepapp – Startup Challenges

    One of the biggest challenges that came before STEPapp’s team was to reach out and build connectivity in remote areas and provide them with the e-learning experience. There was also an issue of improper infrastructure to provide school education in many areas in the country.

    After extensive research and development of STEPapp, they successfully implemented the offline feature in their app to provide a platform to educate children in the underprivileged areas. With STEPapp, students can now learn and revise the topics thoroughly without any disruption at the ease of their homes.

    Stepapp – Future Plans

    STEPapp see itself as a global product that has huge potential, not just in the Indian market but in global markets as well. The company is soon rolling out their product for Grades 1st to 5th app. They are also working towards making STEPapp a multilingual product. There are some new features in the product which are currently into BETA testing which will be announced soon.

    Stepapp – Funding and Investors

    Eduisfun has raised a total of $28M in funding over 1 round. This was a Venture round raised on Dec 24, 2019.

    | Date | Stage | Amount | Lead Investors |
    |— |— |— |— |— |—
    | Dec 24, 2019 | Venture Round | $28M | Amitabh Bachhan, Piyush Pandey |

    They are raising funds that will be utilized in strengthening their technological backbone, product enhancement, innovation and distribution on a global level. The startup will be using the funds in innovating more apps that are personalized, gamified, and packed with data analytics features and AI software.

    Stepapp – Advisors and Mentors

    STEPapp have a team of 400+ IITians and doctors with 21 years of experience in teaching and they are the advisors and mentors.

    Stepapp – Recognitions and Achievements

    The company have implemented STEPapp in hundreds of private and public schools, where, after playing on the app, students’ performance has improved remarkably. They have recently signed a deal with the Tamil Nadu government to implement STEPapp in their schools which will benefit over 10 lakh students.

    They have also implemented STEPapp as a learn from home solution in the reputed Podar Group of Schools. Also, they will have approximately 1 million downloads within a month.

  • EdpowerU – How this Startup is Helping Students and Professionals Reach Their Career Highs

    One’s workplace behavior has a lot  to do with one’s performance and progress at workplace. How you deal with your colleagues and team, how you handle stress, your decision making power or your creative skills and innovative thinking, everything plays a crucial role in your career. While traditionally the focus was only on technical skills required for a job, of late the intangible skills required in the workplace is being given importance. Considering this requirement for development of non-technical, intangible and soft skills for career development, EdpowerU, a startup based in Mumbai is offering various programs for students, executives, managers and corporate leaders, to help them give and achieve their best at workplace.

    EdpowerU Highlights

    StartupName EdpowerU
    HeadQuarter (city) Mumbai
    Founder/s Name Shubika Bilkha
    Sector Education, Training and Leadership Development
    Founding Year 2019
    Registered Company Name ImpactU Edu Solutions LLP

    About EdpowerU and How it Works
    EdpowerU – Market and Industry
    Founders of EdpowerU and Team
    How was EdpowerU Started
    EdpowerU – Startup Launch
    EdpowerU – Name, Logo and Tagline
    EdpowerU – Business Model & Revenue Model
    EdpowerU – Startup Challenges
    EdpowerU – Competitors
    EdpowerU – Advisors & Mentors
    EdpowerU – Growth

    About EdpowerU and How it Works

    EdpowerU is a first of its kind initiative in India focused exclusively on workplace behavior and personal leadership development relating to the millennial and GenZ audience through specialized “Campus to Corporate”, “Career Enhancement” “Executive” and “Leadership Development”programs.

    Their unique Workplace Behavior Assessment (WBA) developed by global experts in organizational behavior, works with universities, graduate programs and corporates with a view to assess candidates on the key intangible future ready workplace skills needed in their roles.

    As specialists in workplace behavior through detailed insights and research on the development of the younger (millennial and GenZ) workforce, EdpowerU focuses on building intangible workplace skills, enhanced self-awareness and management, building emotional intelligence, and addressing the challenges of individuals towards career development and acceleration, and corporates towards improved performance, productivity and retention.

    Their specialized Millennial Management Program is designed to work with leaders/managers as they navigate the changing dynamics of a young workforce to become partners of their millennial employees.

    EdpowerU’s 5 point coaching framework of Discovery, Identification, Challenge, Accountability and Transformation, based on the Co-Active model, is an intensive process of self-awareness with a view to enhancing personal effectiveness, finding balance, streamlining objectives, increasing personal accountability and driving individual development through a commitment to change.

    Powered by experts from across industry and guided by the philosophy of ‘Educate to Empower’, Edpower-U is committed to raising the Career Quotient (CQ) and improving the personal leadership development capabilities of 1 million millennials by 2025.

    Services Offered by EdpowerU
    Services Offered by EdpowerU

    EdpowerU – Market and Industry

    At EdpowerU, the focus is on inculcating key workplace behavior skills and leadership development capabilities to drive individual growth, enhance performance, improve productivity and take individuals to the next stage in their professional journeys. Their work with executives, managers, leaders, entrepreneurs and graduates across industries to enable them to manage themselves, their teams, their workplaces and their careers in the 4.0 workplace. They focus primarily on millennials and the GenZ that today constitutes almost ~50% of the workforce slated to increase to 70% by 2025.

    “In the age of the Fourth Revolution or the 4.0 world, we have found that as global connectivity increases, the on-demand culture emanates, machines get smarter, new media comes to the forefront, and mindsets, approaches and behaviors see a shift, an area of significant change is coming in the way we work, what defines work and the skills needed for the evolving workplace.” quotes EdpowerU founder Shubika Bilkha

    The World Economic Forum (WEF) identifies the Top 10 skills for 2020 as cognitive flexibility, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, complex problem solving, creativity, people management, collaboration, judgment and decision making, service orientation and negotiation. Forbes in their August 2018 report added some skills such as awareness and sensitivity, reading intelligently, communication, analytical, leveraging technology and learning how to learn in their recommended future ready skills.

    Whether its feedback received from think thanks, or leaders such as Mukesh Ambani to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the future ready skills for the 2020 world are all largely non-technical or intangible in nature. It has been estimated that 60% of workplace success comes from those intangible skill sets.

    In India, this is a significant shift away from our traditional educational ecosystem that has operated with a keen focus on building technical capabilities rather than individual workplace skills.

    At EdpowerU through the extensive work with millennials and GenZs in the workplace, they have defined these key intangible skills that are slated to contribute to 60-70% of workplace success as follows:

    Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

    • Self- Awareness
    • Self- Management
    • Self- Motivation
    • Communication/Social Skills
    • Empathy
    • Resilience

    Behavioral Skills

    • Business Etiquette
    • Teamwork and Collaboration
    • Negotiation Skills
    • Time Management
    • Navigating Difficult Situations
    • Relationship Building
    • Confidence
    • Commercial Awareness
    • Decision Making

    Other Key Skills

    • Critical Thinking
    • Problem-Solving
    • Cognitive Flexibility
    • Creativity/Innovation

    Relevant Read: The Emerging Edtech Startups of India

    Founders of EdpowerU and Team

    Shubika Bilkha, Amit Bose and Lina Bilkha are the Founding Partners of Edpower-U.  

    Shubika Bilkha is a business advisor, entrepreneur, author, media spokesperson and leadership coach. An alumnus of Mount Holyoke College(USA) and Columbia Business School (USA), Shubika is an Associate Member of the Chartered Securities Institute (CSI) in the UK; and has completed the “Building Excellence in Higher Educational Institutions” program at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. Shubika has rich experience of working with large companies such as Deloitte, and managing two early-stage start-ups in the technology and education sector. She has also experience of working in various positions in financial, e-commerce and real estate sectors in India and internationally. Shubika is also a published author.

    Amit Bose, a mathematics graduate from Mumbai University, and an IIM- Ahmedabad alumnus, Amit has 40 years of rich and diverse experience in Senior Corporate Leadership roles and as an entrepreneur. Amit specializes in Strategy, Marketing and Consumer Technologies and has worked extensively in India and across Asia

    Amit worked as President(Tata Teleservices), President (Reliance Infocom), CEO (Mattel India), Vice President (Pepsico, Asia Pacific) and Head of Marketing Foods (Hindustan Lever) to name a few. He also worked with Bakrie Telecom, and own and investee Startups in E-Commerce, Social Commerce, Mobile Platforms and Enterprise Messaging

    Lina Bilkha, a graduate in German language and Psychology and post graduate in Linguistics, from Bombay University, Lina specializes in Inter-cultural Consulting, Executive and Life Coaching, Leadership and Talent Development, High Performance Team Building and Gender Diversity Consulting. Lina has over 25 years of experience of working with blue chip Companies in Financial Services, Technology, Telecom, Pharmaceuticals, Consulting, and Government Organisations. Lina has international certifications in Executive Coaching and Gestalt Training from the AoEC UK.

    Lina’s latest accreditation is of MEWS – A Managerial and Executive Wellbeing Survey from Eek. Lina is also Director India of Talking Talent ( a Global firm specialising in Parental Transition Coaching, Progression Coaching and Inclusion and Diversity Coaching)  and Cross Cultural  Consulting ( India and UK). Lina is also a member of the International Coaching Federation, the Mumbai Coaching Association and several Business Associations including IBG, CII and BBG.

    Swati Patel Vasan is the Head of Business Development and Training at EdpowerU.  Swati Patel Vasan joined EdPowerU’s network with nearly 14 years of experience with the U.S. Federal Government, 11 of which were as an U.S. Diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.  While Swati was inducted as a Public Relations Officer, she has worked in several portfolios to enhance bilateral or multilateral relations between the U.S. and the countries in which she was assigned.  

    In her last posting with the US Consulate, she oversaw all educational and professional exchange and cultural programs for the USG for all of Western India.  Once settled in India permanently, Swati worked with an educational company as Director of Outreach.

    Swati’s passion is people.  She taps into her experience in public speaking, negotiations, liaison work, mentoring, strategy, soft skills training, leadership and management programs, policy, marketing, etc. to enhance EdPowerU’s work focused on the millennial workforce.  

    Making an impact and actively working on providing opportunities as they develop individuals to maximize their potential is the key motivational factor for all of the core team members.

    How was EdpowerU Started

    There have been a number of factors and influences that have contributed to the creation of EdpowerU.

    The founding partners have been actively involved in the educational landscape in India having established key vocational training institutes that prepare both graduates to improve their employability, as well as executives and leaders to enhance their potential. It is through this insight and experience with key stakeholders across industry, corporates, educational institutions and the government that the gap in terms of honing these key intangible skill-sets was first identified.  

    EdpowerU – Startup Launch

    Before the launch, EdpowerU actively approached corporate and industry leaders, deans of educational institutes, presidents of industry bodies and the investor community across their extensive network for their feedback on the EdpowerU proposition. The team received an encouraging response from all stakeholders, as well as some very helpful insights on how they could build the business.

    The market need for their offering has been so robust that they had customers and business opportunities on Day of the launch of the business. Their repeat customer rate has been extremely high and EdpowerU is growing steadily in this domain to establish themselves as specialists.

    Relevant Read: How You can Use ‘Medium’ to Boost Your Business

    EdpowerU Logo
    EdpowerU Logo

    EdpowerU’s tagline “Educate. Empower. EdPowerU” is driven by the fundamental belief that it is through an increased understanding and insight of oneself and one’s environments, as well as by taking an evolved or educated perspective, everyone can be equally empowered to achieve their fullest potential.

    EdpowerU – Business Model and Revenue Model

    EdpowerU’s revenue model is fee and license based.

    EdpowerU – Startup Challenges

    As a unique proposition that focuses on building workplace skills and developing individuals, EdpowerU envisioned some challenge when explaining their proposition to the customers. However, given the proven initial track record, the teams’ domain expertise, the excellent client feedback that the company received, as well as the overall market need, the EdpowerU team has been able to overcome this proposed challenges.

    EdpowerU – Competitors

    There are a number of players both Indian and International who provide corporate training services and career focused programs. However, the landscape is extremely fragmented with global brands, business schools, as well as independent providers.

    The formula of driving individual growth and development through self-assessment and awareness as a first step is what differentiates EdpowerU’s offering. Their delivery methodology and interactive but practical learning formats make their programs relevant and engaging. Their extensive research on the characteristics of the generation they focus on has enabled them to develop the content in  a manner that resonates with the multi-generational audience.

    Whether in group programs, individual sessions or web formats, it is EdpowerU’s focus on the individual and addressing those personal challenges that has most worked in their favor.

    EdpowerU – Advisors & Mentors

    The EdpowerU team is being mentored by Industry experts like Siddharth Bhansali, Dr. Ann Means and Tina Trikha

    Siddharth Bhansali an alum of the University of Southern California (USC), USA founded Noesis.tech, a technology solutions and services company that focuses on enabling digital transformation for the enterprise. Siddharth has  experience of working extensively across the domains of Banking and Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Education as well as Retail and FMCG.

    Siddharth also serves as a technology advisor and consultant CTO for leading Indian start ups such as StyleCracker, MissMalini and FoxyMoron. Siddharth believes that while India can generate technologists at at a very large scale, these technologists enter the job market with skills that limit their ability to deliver value.

    Dr. Ann Means is MsC and PhD in Organisational Behaviour from Birbeck College, London and a BA in Modern Languages from Birmingham University (UK). Ann has 30+ years of experience in corporate consulting with research, training and government service. She specializes in developing the skills and knowledge essential for success in international business, in particular intercultural, team and leadership capabilities. Ann has experience of training and coaching individuals and groups across industries and locations worldwide.

    Tina Trikha is currently head of communications and talent development for SeaLink Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Mumbai.  She has close to two decades of experience working with companies in the United States, India, and South-East Asia. Prior to SeaLink Capital Partners, Tina was Vice President of corporate planning and strategy at Godrej Industries Limited.  She also worked with Scholastic, a children’s book publisher and distributor in New York, and financial companies like McKinsey & Company (New York) and Credit Suisse (New York and Hong Kong)

    Relevant Read: Excess2Sell – Helping You Profitably Sell Your Excess Business Inventory

    EdpowerU – Growth

    EdpowerU have had an encouraging start since their inception earlier this year and have been growing steadily month on month. Their programs and offerings are increasing on a quarter on quarter basis, and they are seeing very encouraging traction across large conglomerates, fast growing SMEs, funded startups, industry associations and educational institutions.

    Additionally, EdpowerU has a number of key affiliate organizations who are specialists both in India and globally in the realm of leadership development and training. These organizations work extensively with large companies across the world in sectors such the financial services, pharmaceuticals, professional services, technology, among others.

    The focus for the startup is on industries that have a high component of millennials and GenZ leaders and EdpowerU are gradually building their expertise across the digital, technology/IT, financial services, FinTech sectors, to name a few.

    Our biggest achievement today has been the wonderful feedback and support that we have received from all our Clients and participants – Shubika Bilkha

  • Skillate- Solving the Complications of Recruitment Flawlessly

    Recruitment is a tough process and it’s not just today but it always has been. Intending to make recruitment Easy, Fast and Transparent, Bipul Vaibhav, Anand Baranwal, and Kumar Sambhav launched Skillate in 2016. The whole idea behind this venture is to shift the focus of recruitment teams “from the ‘how’ to the ‘who’, i.e. process automation to candidate recommendation.”

    Skilliate HighLights

    Startup Name Skilliate
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector HR Tech
    Founders Bipul Vaibhav, Anand Baranwal, Kumar Sambhav
    Founded 2016
    Website skillate.com

    Skilliate Details

    Skillate – About and How it works
    Skillate- USP and Innovation
    Skillate – Target Market Size
    Skillate – Founders and Team
    Skillate – How did skilliate start?
    Skillate – Startup Launch
    Skillate – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Skillate – Startup Challenges
    Skillate – Funding and Investors
    Skillate – Advisors and Mentors
    Skillate – Growth
    Skillate – Future Plans

    Skillate – About and How it works

    Skillate is an advanced decision-making engine to make hiring easy, fast, and transparent. The AI-based platform helps in optimizing the entire value chain of recruitment, beginning from creating the job requisition, to resume matching, to candidate engagement. Skillate can work as both –

    1. A standalone Application Tracking Software (ATS) that takes care of the end-to-end recruitment needs of your organizations, or
    2. As an intelligent system that integrates with your existing ATS to make your recruitment easy, fast, and transparent.

    Skillate solutions are solving the following problems:

    • Candidate sourcing: Skillate’s new-age sourcing methodology continuously expands your central database through a connected network of resources: job boards, emails, ATS, consultancies, referrals, career pages, etc. Skillate solutions help you utilize your central database better.
    • Candidate screening: Skillate Chatbot and AI-powered matching, thinks like a recruiter and provides AI-backed scores for candidates based on education, experience, and skill levels. The intelligent platform provides ‘much beyond a keyword match’, and understands patterns and context to ensure that you never miss out on a quality candidate.
    • Candidate experience: The Conversational AI of our chatbot automates communication and creates personalized candidate experiences at scale. It captures information beyond resumes (for ex.- shift and relocation readiness) and keeps the information repository fresh. Our JD assistant, on the other hand, gives real-time feedback to recruiters on their JD and helps them in writing detailed job descriptions to attract the best candidates.

    Also Read: Top 6 Ways ChatBot For Business Can Help You

    Skillate- USP and Innovation

    Skillate has trained its system with over 20 million diverse profiles and has 15+ paying clients. Working with it, the clients have achieved the following benefits:

    • Reducing hiring time by 65%
    • Cost per hire by more than 30%
    • 40% Lesser Interviews
    • 2.2x conversions

    Some other prominent USP’s are:

    • The AI-based solutions are ‘self-learning’ and provide improved results over time
    • Skillate is secured and is working with some of the biggest enterprises across sectors
    • Skillate integrates with existing ATSs like Success Factor and Taleo to help organizations with a smooth transition
    • Skillate works efficiently at scale. The platform processes 5 Lakh resumes screening in 4 seconds
    • Skillate is the official partner of SAP

    Skillate – Target Market Size

    The Recruitment Industry in India is growing at 21% per year and is approximately worth Rs. 35,000 crores as per Executive Recruiters Association and Ernst & Young. The global recruitment software market size was valued at US$ 1,753.2 Mn in 2017 and is projected to reach US$ 3,095.8 Mn by the end of 2025, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.4%, according to Fortune Business Insights.

    The technology landscape is dynamic. Currently, traditional products like Workday, SuccessFactors, etc. are used by enterprises. Even though these solutions promise end-to-end management of the recruiting process, there are gaping holes that need to be filled. Solutions that use cutting edge technology along with the power of AI to integrate with these existing platforms can solve some real pain points of the industry. New players like Skillate, Talview, HackerEarth, Leena AI, KPISoft, Xoxoday, etc. are centering themselves around a mother platform to make the entire recruitment experience seamless.

    “People Analytics” and “Offer to Joining Ratio” are two new problems of this decade. Diversity and Inclusion is one of the core agendas for all the large enterprises today, and it is a global mandate to implement this at scale. The industry has started talking about the Quality of Hire and Reduced TAT by leveraging technology. The world is expecting to see some great innovation happening in these areas. So, in general, there are exciting times ahead. In the next 5 years, the industry will talk about analytics in the HR function by leveraging tools like Tableau or Power BI the way we do it in Sales, Marketing, or Operations.

    Skillate – Founders and Team

    The founders Skillate are Bipul Vaibhav, Anand Baranwal, and Kumar Sambhav. Sambhav and Bipul are friends from their college days. Sambahv was more into technology, and Bipul always had a great sense of business. When they decided to start their venture, Anand, who was living with them as their flatmate, decided to join in. Anand was working in Tracxn then as an analyst and had developed a deep understanding of the startup ecosystem during his research.

    Bipul Vaibhav, Co-founder, and CEO, Skillate- At Skillate, Bipul is responsible for AI, Investment, and overall business growth of Skillate. Before founding Skillate, Bipul worked as a Data Scientist at DataWeave Software Pvt Ltd, where he developed a machine learning model to classify the product categories of e-commerce products. He also worked as an advanced software engineer with Burning Glass Technologies for a little less than a year. Bipul holds a B. Tech degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT Guwahati. He has co-authored a paper on an autonomous river cleaning robot and a model for video classification using semantic keywords. He holds research publications in the field of Artificial Intelligence at International Forums like SPIE and IEEE. Bipul is passionate about Cricket, Reading books, and Building software products.

    Bipul Vaibhav, Co-founder, and CEO, Skillate

    Anand Baranwal, Co-founder, Skillate – As one of the co-founders of Skillate, Anand’s primary role/responsibility is to drive business and growth at Skillate. He is responsible for Business Development, Marketing, and Hiring the right talent for his company. Before co-founding Skillate, Anand has had extensive experience as an analyst with Tracxn where he engaged with the FinTech industry in the Southeast Asia region. He has also managed projects for JSW Steel Ltd. Anand graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Production and Industrial Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. Anand’s specialization skills lie in the areas of Business Development and Operations activities. Anand’s passion is to find and meet like-minded people to learn and grow in all aspects of life.

    Kumar Sambhav, Co-founder, Skillate – Sambhav is the Co-founder at Skillate and he is responsible for strategy, roadmap, and feature definition of the product to deliver unique value to our clients. Before Skillate, Kumar was involved in software development at Capillary Technologies. He was working in the product that handles the campaign management and subscription management for the client. Sambhav holds a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT Guwahati. He specializes in software design and system architecture which varies from the backend to the front part of the application. He is passionate about music and plays guitar in his spare time. He has a sports bug and plays Tennis and Table Tennis.

    Currently, the Skillate team is made up of 25+ dynamic individuals with expertise in different domains. Skillate management is flexible with working hours and doesn’t believe in micromanagement. There is just one criterion to join the Skillate team- behave like an entrepreneur while respecting the team dynamics.

    Also Read: How to Hire CTO for Your Startup

    Skillate – How did it start?

    In January 2015, Bipul was working for an analytics software company in Chennai. Unhappy with his role, Bipul contacted various organizations with openings, but to no avail. The frustrating part was not that he was getting rejected, but that often, he would simply not receive any response from the recruiters. He had no clarity on what stage his applications were getting rejected, or even if they were noticed at all!

    This got Bipul thinking about the lack of transparency prevalent in the recruitment process. He realized that even though candidates desperately want a response from the company on the stature of their candidature, large corporations often don’t have the time and bandwidth to respond to every candidate at each stage of the hiring process. With corporate firms receiving millions of applications every year, the unstructured hiring process not only keeps the candidates in the dark but also deprives organizations of the best talents.

    This led Bipul with his co-founders – Sambhav and Anand to form Skillate, an AI-based platform that makes recruitment Easy, Fast, and Transparent with its cutting edge technology.

    Skillate – Startup Launch

    In the beginning, when the co-founders had only tested the platform on LinkedIn profiles, they connected to an HR manager through a mutual connection and collected about 1600 resumes. “We tested our algorithms on these resumes and failed miserably! We were shocked. It was one of the days when we doubted if we should go ahead with our product or not.” Says Bipul Vaibhav.

    However, rather than giving up, the team went back to the drawing board and revisited the basics of the technology they had created. They understood that to truly make AI work in a complex industry like recruitment, they will need to consider the human element of resume making.

    For example, they can’t just feed the machine with names and expect that it will understand the context. Let’s say a candidate has written his address as “next to Lakshmi road”. The machine needs to understand that here ‘Lakshmi’ is the name of the street and not a person as it normally would be.

    Similarly, as they tested more and more resumes, they understood some of the different patterns of resumes. Simple elements, like mail id and contact information, are placed at different places by different candidates. And then they trained the algorithms to identify elements like that.

    After this, the first person they spoke to was Tanuj Choudhry from HomeLane and Anuj Agarwal from zyoin. They had a deep understanding of the recruitment industry and came from a rich technical background. Then the founders started with finalizing a set of target organizations and sent highly personalized emails to the decision-makers so that they can trust the product as well as them. In the early stage, founders must make themselves as credible as they want their product to be. Apart from the personalized emails, in-depth market research helped them in understanding the pain points of our customers. Word of mouth and reference from existing clients also played a crucial role in acquiring new clients since they were highly satisfied with the product.

    Skillate – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Skillate charges on a yearly subscription model, depending on the size of the company.

    Skillate – Startup Challenges

    Recruitment as an industry still plays by the old rules. Convincing the team that heads technology can make their work easier and more efficient was a challenge. Even after Skillate’s solutions convinced them, adoption in the company remained an issue. Also, it’s dashboard’s highly intuitive design, along with our committed customer success team, ensured that adopting the Skillate platform was a smooth process with little training to the recruitment team.

    Skillate – Funding and Investors

    In October 2019, Skillate raised its pre-Series A funding of $1 Million from investors like Mynavi Corporation, Incubate Fund, and Whatfix Founders, among others.

    Also Read: Top Funded Startups India

    Skillate – Advisors and Mentors

    The advisors and mentors of Skillate are:

    • Shraddhanjali Rao – Head HR – SAP, India, Partner to the business
    • Abhijit Bhaduri – ex-Chief learning Officer – Wipro.

    Skillate – Growth

    Skillate is working with some of the biggest enterprises of the country, including the likes of Yes Bank, OYO, Saint-Gobain, L&T Financial Services, Software AG, RBL Bank, Liberty Insurance, Bigbasket, etc.

    Skillate – Future Plans

    “International expansion is one of our key focus areas, especially in the US. As we expand, we are making our product multi-lingual and more scalable so that it can handle even more volume.” Concluded Bipul Vaibhav.

  • LogYcode – Digitizing and automating the Logistics and Supply Chain

    Logistics and supply chain management are the most important attributes for manufacturing and servicing industries. For any business in the ecosystem, an optimized logistical chain is a must. With the vision to create a platform or a marketplace and a central grid which will facilitate the trade stakeholders’ single window digital solutions expediting seamless supply chain movement, Dr. Ambrish Kumar launched LogYcode in 2018.

    LogYcode aims to digitize and automate the logistics and supply chain industry.

    LogYcode Highlights

    Startup Name LogYcode
    Headquarter Delhi NCR
    Sector Logistics and Supply Chain
    Founders Dr Ambrish Kumar
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization LogYcode Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd
    Website logycode.com

    LogYcode Details

    LogYcode – About and How it works
    LogYcode – Target Market Size
    LogYcode – Founders and Team
    LogYcode – How did it start?
    LogYcode – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    LogYcode – Startup Launch
    LogYcode – Business Model and Revenue Model
    LogYcode – Startup Challenges
    LogYcode – Advisors and Mentors
    LogYcode – Growth
    LogYcode – Awards and Recognition
    LogYcode – Future Plans

    LogYcode – About and How it works

    The web and mobile application ‘LogYcode’ is an e-cloud based platform that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime and using any device that is connected to the internet. The portal facilitates and encompasses almost all prerequisites and mandates of the freight forwarding cycle. It provides the most cost-effective match between freight forwarders, exporters, importers on one hand and air freight carriers on the other. It enables precisely instant and spot price comparison between the preferred carriers for any origin-destination pair based on the customers’ query input and consequently places booking with the opted carrier.

    LogYcode provides an outright digital and integrated experience of the whole freight forwarding process as an alternative to the scattered transaction gateways that a freight forwarder usually goes through. The wide experience states that cost efficiency is directly proportional to the digital integration of processes, which leads to lesser head costs, visibility of the most competitive pricing options, disentangled paperless documentation, archiving of data in e-clouds, reduction in turnaround time, and so on. By syncing all real-time air cargo data into one cloud platform, the customers ought to get what they want: speedy and reliable deliveries, exceptional transparency, and an overall hassle-free logistics experience.

    Furthermore, LogYcode is an online software with multiple user access and does not require any installation or troubleshoot hassles. The customers are given the convenience of both web and Mobile App versions which are synced and equipped with all features. LogYcode offers the only Mobile App service in India offering unique features like real-time Air Freight live rate comparisons, booking of cargo through App, preparation and management of Airway Bills which is a one of a kind experience that freight forwarding professional could not have imagined even till a few months back.

    The customer is given the convenience of preparing Master and House Airway Bills, Manifests within the portal. E-transmission of FWB and FHL data is capacitated which permits end to end real-time tracking of shipments. Finally, the invoices can be retrieved from the portal after the execution of the shipment. The customer can refer to air freight published tariffs and surcharges of all carriers from pan-India locations. With the use of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and the latest technologies, bring about utmost transparency and visibility to the customer and the parties involved in the supply chain thereby embracing blockchain technology.

    LogYcode’s business model can be stated as an amalgamation of technology with logistics, using state-of-the-art technology to develop a logistics e-marketplace wherein a freight forwarder, shipper, exporter, importer can shop and ship their cargo and avail supply chain services like transportation, warehousing, customs brokerage and so on, experiencing seamless transactions with utmost transparency and visibility. In a nutshell, LogYcode provides cost-effective, efficient and quick means to improve the quality of work.

    Also Read: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: How can it change India?

    LogYcode – Target Market Size

    The Logistics industry is dynamically evolving as the fastest growing industry globally. The Indian logistics sector is currently at a worth of $160 billion which is expected to reach $250 billion in the next 5 years at a CAGR of 10.5%. The global market size of the logistics industry is $ 4730 billion.

    The coming decade is ought to be a revolution for logistics and supply chain in terms of technological advancement. Technological innovations like Robotics augmented reality, vision picking has already been implemented in warehousing, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and shipment tracking systems help in virtually trailing the shipments,

    Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence leading to predictive and prescriptive analysis beneficial for identifying and targeting prospective and highly profitable business opportunities, production optimization and improving operational coherence. As customers are now addicted and obsessive about pocket services, mobile apps and single dashboards are making way to replace elongated manual procedures. This is the era when consumers cannot wait and so trade cannot wait, so we also witness drones, airships, and hyperloop coming into existence.

    Also Read: List of Top Logistics Startups in India

    LogYcode – Founders and Team

    Dr. Ambrish Kumar is the founder and CEO of LogYcode Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd. He holds the acumen of 12 years of experience in stalwart diverse combinations in the domains of Logistics, Freight Forwarding, CFS, Operation, Supply Chain Management, Warehousing & Evaluating New Project Movements. He has held senior management pedestals of different reputed organizations like APM Terminals India Pvt. Ltd., Eastern Cargo Carriers India Pvt. Ltd and his penultimate tenure were with S.A. Consultants and Forwarders Pvt Ltd, one of the largest logistics company of North India, in the capacity of COO before venturing into establishing LogYcode.

    He has an affluent academic background, having obtained PHD. in Economics, with his thesis on ‘Industrial Policy and Industrial Growth’. Also, his qualifications include M. A. in Economics and an MBA in International Trade. Furthermore, he is a motivational speaker, trainer and an active orator in various educational institutions.

    Mr. Vikas Kharbanda, the co-founder of the company has also been highly instrumental in taking the concept and implementation promptly. He is a professional with over 19 years of experience in various functional areas including Sales, Customer Support, Operations, Marketing and Business Unit leadership roles in various organizations like APM Terminals, Hind Terminals, INTTRA and Kuehne Nagel.

    Mr. Ashish Asaf, the founding member of LogYcode, has remained the Vice-Chairman of S. A. Consultants and Forwarders Pvt Ltd which is one of the largest neutral wholesale freight forwarding companies of India. The logistics fraternity harbors an inevitable relationship with him and sees him as a youth icon because of his supreme success. Ashish Asaf also holds the fame of the ‘Face of the Future’ title and award honored by India Cargo Awards, the most esteemed and renowned award in the Indian Freight Forwarding camaraderie. He is also consulted by various Government trade bodies for advice on the contemporary logistics ecosystem.

    LogYcode – How did it start?

    Along with a perceptive inclination towards technology, artificial intelligence, and human development, the impetus to establish LogYcode is attributed to three major factors. Primarily, the increasing logistics and supply chain cost compels for integration and digitalization of the processes offering single-window solutions. Another major aspect is attributed to improving Government policies and initiatives to bolster the logistics industry and multiply global trade opportunities and investments. The e-commerce industry is overhauling the conventional logistics industry. It offers absolute customer experience like effortless booking of consignments, smooth transaction gateways, transparent tracking, accurate delivery predictions.

    The enormous logistics industry is yet to adapt to the technological advancement and the need of the hour. The initial people are the veterans of the industry and the Vikas, perceived coining of the idea and its execution as a revolution in the logistics market and straightaway planned to join hands to make it a success. The development started for an ERP system for M/s S.A. Consultants and Forwarders Pvt Ltd which is one of the largest neutral freight forwarding companies of India.

    Soon after, the development of a prototype model portal for the customers of SA Group was carried out which was highly innovative addressing the ground realities and pain points of the customers/ clients of the company digitally. The then MD of the SA Group also found the LogYcode portal working successfully for his customers and also increasing revenue for his company with phenomenal turnaround times.

    Tagline of LogYcode is – “Logically coding your future”

    LogYcode, the first half of the name refers to Logistics and logic. The whole idea and the venture is to decode the entangled logistics processes into a simple 5 steps/ clicks process. The code also symbolizes digitization. Hence digitization of the logistics sector logically, thereby leading to a bright future for the customers and the industry.

    LogYcode – Startup Launch

    LogYcode is comparatively a very new startup in the Logistics arena. The idea of LogYcode was conceptualized in November 2017 and the company was incorporated in March 2018. The portal was started serving the B2B model for the freight forwarders of the air freight forwarding sector. The air freight forwarding sector is still working on an orthodox model with multiple windows, time-consuming workflows, scattered gateways, unorganized entities, and low-margin profitability due to sheer competition.

    LogYcode’s initial target consumers happened to be the direct customers of its client M/s SA Group whom the portal was provided without charging any premium. The clients found the portal easy to use, with a seamless user interface and a one-stop solution for most of their work process. The clients started accepting the portal as it was complimentary and served a great deal of their routine work thereby saving time, increasing work efficiency and highly cost-effective. Since then, the journey has been a very enthralling affair. Within just a short span of 8 months, LogYcode recorded approximately 964 users across India.

    LogYcode – Business Model and Revenue Model

    LogYcode has planned customized models based on customer requirements. LogYcode has both customer and vendor portals. There are multiple subscription options and pricing structures based on criteria like Volume of business, Per transaction, per user, and so on. Also, LogYcode software works in the SaaS model as well as per the working requirements of the client.

    Also Read: 5 Types of Business Models Fruitful for High-Income

    LogYcode – Startup Challenges

    The Logistics industry still inadequately strives on an orthodox approach of working, whereas the closest counterparts, the passenger air travel industry, is now majorly based on e-booking platforms and smooth paperless transactions. The customers are accustomed to using emails and phone calls for inquiries and paper-based transactions that spur an initial reluctance to a technological transformation or any kind of change.

    LogYcode – Advisors and Mentors

    The founder Dr. Ambrish Kumar is a mentor and leader of LogYcode and a great visionary who has a clear vision of the future of not just the industry and its stakeholders but how to integrate the various stakeholders of other industries as well.

    LogYcode – Growth

    The recognition and acceptance of LogYcode as a unique revolutionary innovation by the customers just within a span of 8-10 months itself is the biggest achievement. As per March 2020, it has close to 1600 users/ consumers on-board across India and globally. While its control tower happens to be in Delhi NCR, though it has other counterparts across India. As the LogYcode platform creates an e-marketplace where the logistics service seeker from any part of the world can access it anytime from any device connected to the internet.

    LogYcode has received overwhelming penetration and recognition amongst the customers after the implementation endeavors. It has largely carried out training and demonstrations to its customers on a pan-India basis. The customers understand the dire need for automation of processes, accuracy, transparency, visibility thereby reducing turnaround time and following best practices. The sheer conception of saving time, cost and manpower and rather using these elements for more productive endeavors is accepted by the customers phenomenally.

    LogYcode – Awards and Recognition

    • In July 2019, LogYcode became a certified member of IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India).
    • Again in July 2019, LogYcode Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd was recognized as a startup by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, aligning with the #startupindia initiative.
    • In August 2019, LogYcode was recognized and awarded as the “E-Commerce Startup of the Year 2019” at the 10th All India Maritime and Logistics Awards 2019 (MALA 2019).
    • In Nov 2019, LogYcode became a certified member of NASSCOM and NAP (neutral AIR PARTNER) Association.
    • LogYcode was awarded Certificate of excellence in the category “Vibrant Startup of the Year 2019” by Startup City Magazine
    • The startup also happened to be recommended among the contenders in the pipeline for the digital logistics services for Indian Ports Association (IPA).

    LogYcode – Future Plans

    LogYcode plans to expand outside India on a large scale in a coming couple of years as the team understands that there is a sheer requirement of digitization of the logistics sector globally which is still not at par with the other industries. Hence they plan to create a huge network in the supply chain integrating all stakeholders for smooth movement of trade.

    Also, the team is working to use advanced technologies like Machine learning, AI, IoT to ensure stark visibility and transparency in the movement of goods much needed for achieving high standards of service levels with minimal risk involved.

  • Therapy1on1- Curing Mental Health Problems one by one

    Earlier in the last decade, we came across the concept of mental health and emotional intelligence and over the decade its importance was established correctly. All the attention emotional and mental well being is getting today is legit, given the mindset of this generation. Therefore to create an ecosystem of technological tools that help the individuals understand mental Health and eliminate the taboo associated with it, Simar Preet Kaur launched Therapy1on1 in 2018.

    Therapy1on1 Highlights

    Startup Name Therapy1on1
    Headquarter New Delhi
    Sector Health, Psycology
    Founders Simar Preet Kaur
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization Therapy1on1
    Website therapy1on1.com

    Therapy1on1 – About and how it works
    Therapy1on1 – Target Market Size
    Therapy1on1 – Founders and Team
    Therapy1on1 – How did it start?
    Therapy1on1 – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Therapy1on1 – Startup Launch
    Therapy1on1 – Startup Challenges
    Therapy1on1 – Advisors and Mentors
    Therapy1on1 – Growth
    Therapy1on1 – Awards and Recognition

    Therapy1on1 – About and how it works

    Therapy1on1 is the first 24*7 Online emotional wellness platform that provides instant help. If the person has something stuck on his/ her mind they don’t need to wait for tomorrow and can directly approach Therapy1on1 online for professional help and this is what makes it different. provides instant, anonymous and confidential support through its online emotional wellness platform which is available 24*7.

    Therapy1on1 is an online emotional wellness platform where anyone can come up anytime and discuss their issues with professional psychologists via calls, video calls, and chats. This is convenient, secure and much more effective than traditional therapy as anyone can get instant support. If anyone feels overwhelmed with personal and professional issues or has been suffering emotionally can definitely reach out to the Therapy1on1 team without any second thought. The user can also choose to stay anonymous and all details are kept confidential.

    Therapy1on1 – Target Market Size

    Sources say that one in four suffers from mental health issues in India. With the increase in the issues and stress levels amongst people, there is a shortage of mental health professionals too. By providing the services online, Therapy1on1 is all set to ease the pain people are going through.

    Also Read: List of the Best Healthcare Startups in India

    Therapy1on1 – Founders and Team

    “I met my co-founder (Karamjeet Singh) in college itself and since then we have been planning to start something. We had way too many plans in our head and this one specifically gave us a kick to work on.” Says Simar Preet Kaur. Both of the co-founders Simar and Karamjeet don’t come from a psychology background so it has been a little difficult to understand the key challenges being faced by the venture. There is a huge diversity of needs and subjectivity of issues and this is not something that comes down to a list and this platform needs to justify the same. Surveying various psychologists and communicating with various people in the health sector has helped the founders a lot and this has evolved over time.

    • Simar Preet Kaur – Simar has a degree in B.Tech (IT) from Indraprastha University, Delhi
    • Karamjeet Singh- Singh has a B.Tech (IT) from Indraprastha University, Delhi and an M.B.A in Marketing from Balaji Institute of Modern Management.

    “We are well versed with technology and have a strong desire to help people cope up with the struggles and create a positive aura all around.” Added Simar Preet Kaur. She has been managing everything from scratch and then eventually decided to align dedicated people for specific tasks. Now, Therapy1on1 has a dedicated team of developers, designers, testers and account management people. “I keep an eye on everything and make sure everything works well and clients can have a quality talk with the psychologist and have a smooth experience and also understand that anyone can come up anytime to discuss anything whatever’s bothering them because Big or Small, your problem matters.” Added Simar. Karamjeet Singh looks into Marketing and branding. They have also approached a lot of firms that are now associated with the firm and conduct offline introductory sessions for creating awareness too.

    Therapy1on1 – How did it start?

    Simar started Therapy1on1 in September 2018 with a vision to eliminate the mental stigma and help anyone who feels overwhelmed with personal and professional issues and help individuals. The thinking had initially begun when her life goals became anxiety spells until one of her colleagues advised her to visit a therapist and Simar was quite hesitant about it. “This helped me change my outlook towards a lot of things and I soon realized that this applies to a larger population.” Says Simar.

    For the name “Therapy1on1” the founders had something else in mind but again domain availability matters so they just went with Therapy 1on1. It means personal attention ( 1 on 1) and Therapy is for everyone.

    For the tagline, the founders had this very particular thing in mind that common people suffering from any issues, life changes or anything can come up and seek guidance at the platform.

    That is why the tagline: Big or Small, your problem matters!

    Therapy1on1 – Startup Launch

    The founders had a lot going on in their minds about this idea. So they went ahead and checked about the legal aspects online and if any other firms were working on this or not. Simar couldn’t really get this out of her head which kept her insanely working on this. Initially, she discussed this with her family and one of her friends ( who is now the co-founder too) and then they together started working on it. In another couple of months, Simar was ready with the masterplan.“We went ahead and approached colleges, attended seminars and promotional events and got a lot of clients. This helped us in giving an initial push.” Said Simar Preet Kaur.

    Therapy1on1 – Startup Challenges

    As mentioned above, the founders don’t come from a psychology background so it has been a little difficult for them to understand the key challenges being faced by the people in general. There is a huge diversity of needs and subjectivity of issues and this is not something that comes down to a list and the platform needs to justify the same. Surveying various psychologists and communicating with various people in the health sector has helped them a lot in establishing a strong footing in the industry.

    Therapy1on1 – Advisors and Mentors

    The advisors and mentors of Therapy1on1 are:

    • Dr. Kamaljit Ananad
    • Ph.D. IIM Ahmedabad, Founder KiE Square Inc. ( Data Science)
    • Angel Inv, Transport ( Merchandise Tagging)
    • Advisor, Rupee Circle ( P2P Lending Platform)
    • Harpreet Sareen
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Research Scientist ( Display Technologies, Interaction Techniques )

    Also Read: HealthifyMe – Story, Founder, Business Model, Funding, Career, News

    Therapy1on1 – Growth

    The company is still in the growing phase but the future looks bright. The dramatic increase in mental health issues and the inability to open up because of the stigma associated with it. Sources say that nearly 20% of the population is going to suffer from mental health issues and lack of expertise available might deteriorate the issue as well. Just like people take care of their physical health as mainstream, Therapy1on1 just wants to bring mental health at par with it.

    Therapy1on1 – Awards and Recognition

    “Making a change every day is I would say our biggest achievement. Whenever people come up giving feedback like we saved their lives and they feel like they have a safe space to vent out. This keeps us going.” Concluded Simar. Â