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  • TNQ InGage- Curating top-notch technology advancements to create a better world!

    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.

    While the world was still stuck to the smartphone revolution, there was this founder who had the vision to revolutionize the way people and businesses train, learn and perform with superior technologies like AR, VR, etc to significantly enhance knowledge and improve the quality of life. We’re talking about none other than Vijay Karunakaran who launched InGage technologies in 2012.

    Startup Name TNQ InGage Technologies LLP
    Headquarter Chennai
    Sector Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES)
    Founders Vijay Karunakaran
    Founded 2012
    Parent Organization TNQ InGage Technologies LLP
    Website tnqingage.com

    About TNQ Ingage and How it Works
    Founders of TNQ Ingage
    What problem does TNQ Ingage solve?
    TNQ Ingage – USP & Innovation
    TNQ Ingage – Target Market Size
    TNQ Ingage – Acquisitions & Mergers
    How was TNQ Ingage Started
    TNQ Ingage – Startup Launch
    TNQ Ingage – Business Model and Revenue Model
    TNQ Ingage – Startup Challenges
    TNQ Ingage – Funding and Investors
    TNQ Ingage – Growth

    About TNQ Ingage and How it Works

    TNQ InGage offers construction-based services to overcome workforce training challenges, to improve performances, creating a safe work culture, and closing the experience gap – all while reducing cost and risk. The TNQ InGage services are meant for all core sectors such as Buildings & Factories, Oil & Gas, Transmission & Distribution, Heavy Civil, and Highway Engineering. The modules it provides include Site Equipment Erection Techniques & Inspection, Fire & Excavation Safety, Heavy Vehicle Management, Power Tools Training & Operation, and a whole host of others. The Augmented Reality Field services here include the provision of digital manuals – which helps the field crew to assess real-time task-based information, and Inspection & Design Reviews – where it uses HoloLens to deliver remote inspections and design review by enabling 3D views over a building.

    In the manufacturing sector, TNQ InGage training helps reduce risk and accelerate implementation during the laying of complex automated facilities, and benefits configuration, safety, and workplace ergonomics. Performance training is provided in terms of product training, disassembly and maintenance training, etc. The AR Field Services in the manufacturing sector caters to Repair & Maintenance – where technicians are allowed to work hands-free and faster, with each step in a troubleshooting or repair process displayed in their field of view; Expert assistance – through AR solutions that provide remote experts with virtual views, with which they can monitor and provide instant feedback; and Quality Control – through solutions that guide operators to perform inspection tasks and identify parts that are missing or incorrectly assembled.

    In the healthcare sector, custom immersive solutions are capable of enhancing the proficiency of the trainees. TNQ InGage builds realistic training simulators integrated with force-feedback technology and motion tracking so that professionals could train with real medical procedures before facing the patient. It’s customized modules here include Medical & Healthcare Training, Patient Experience, Physician Empathy, Vision Care Assessment, Rehabilitation, and more.

    And its Digital Experience Centres, as already observed, is a place that encourages collaboration and has proven to be a valuable resource for company-wide workshops and employee onboarding.

    Also Read: 16 Must-Watch Bollywood Movies For Entrepreneurs

    Founders of TNQ Ingage and team

    TNQ Technologies is a 21-year-old company that focuses on content technologies and products, with a strength of 2,500 employees in its ranks. “They’ve joined hands with us on the firm belief that the future of content consumption lies in leveraging AR and VR environments and have made this investment with TNQ InGage as a part of their long-term strategy.” Said Vijay. Its extensive work over the last seven years and the strong relationships with prestigious customers and partners furthered the company’s interest in forming this Joint Venture.

    On the other side, Ingage is looking at TNQ Technologies as a long-term strategic partner that would help them with growth and scalability. As stated earlier, they are investing in R&D to improve human interaction with virtual objects, with the object of developing projects and services that will have a socially meaningful impact on how people train, work and live. They are also looking to penetrate the global market, which includes the world of book-publishing by leveraging TNQ’s existing capabilities and competencies.

    TNQ Ingage Team
    TNQ Ingage Team

    TNQ Technologies would be involved in the following roles as a part of this Joint Venture:

    • Supporting growth and scalability by introducing process, best practices, and bandwidth.
    • Providing essential HR and Software support for sustaining rapid and significant growth.
    • Providing financial support to make investments in people, technology, and products.
    • Providing strategic investments with a long-term strategy.
    • Promoting AR to book publishing by leveraging our contacts and capabilities.
    • Leveraging its reach in the Indian market to support sales.
    • Leveraging the existing global marketing capabilities through sales personnel across Europe.

    InGage’s role in this partnership is to provide meaningful technical solutions with a human touch. In this new and most exciting phase, they emphasize their commitment to providing customers with a more enriching and productive experience through our Immersive Technology portfolios. The Ingage team believes that this partnership will help us in our pursuit of developing their range of AR/VR products by embedding HCI (Human-Computer Interface), through which the objects in our environment can interact with each other, as well as with humans. And they are also looking to penetrate the global market, which includes the world of book-publishing by leveraging TNQ’s existing capabilities and competencies.

    The entire team of TNQ InGage live, breathe, talk, walk immersive Computing. The team of storyboard artists, 3D engineers, animators, and lighting artists bring the creative half to the table, while the unity and unreal developers, algorithm developers, hardware specialists, Android and IOS developers, and program managers get their heads down and build solid experiences for clients. This venture hires people who are ceaselessly driven towards the pursuit of excellence and they are currently a team of 50 plus people.

    TNQ InGage – What problems does TNQ InGage solve?

    Its services involve empathy, which makes this venture build life-like experiences in a virtual world. VR taps into the power of tech and creative storytelling to make learning immersive, retainable, explorable, and seamless. It is a truly immersive and tactile medium that engages all senses to imprint training sessions on memory, which results in higher retention and absorption rates. Its main USP lies in upskilling, as 50% of global business leaders identify skill shortage as a key workforce challenge.

    The training mode significantly reduces the time, cost, and risk spent on traditional training sessions; statistics suggest that VR Based Training improves learning quality and retention rates by 76%.

    The virtual environment empowers people to practice experiences that would mean a lot of risk in a physical setting. It is a platform for technicians and engineers to explore, investigate, and learn to navigate scenarios that would be a part of their working lives. The TNQ InGage team’s expertise, which has helped complete more than 500 projects with many Fortune 500 Companies, is continuously working towards creating compelling experiences. Also, their design-centric VR development flow drives experiences across all Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs). The feedback mechanism would track the performance of people so that they can rectify their portions of error.

    The AR Based Services allow engineers in the construction and manufacturing industry to use AR glass or a smartphone to get virtual step-by-step live instructions while performing machine repair and other maintenance tasks. The integration with IoT leads to faster performance of machines, embedding sensors and intelligence that can monitor and generate data so that timely action can be taken to prevent any instances of downtime. AR Healthcare Solutions enable surgeons to perform complicated procedures better, by rendering 3D reconstructions of the body part. TNQ InGage converges IoT and AR to transform industrial maintenance and field services by real-time capturing of data and conversion of the same into recommendations. This leads to faster and efficient identification of errors, with scope for speedy remedial.

    Ideally, TNQ InGage conceptualizes, designs, and delivers Digital Experience Centers that provide a hands-on, experiential space for customers, employees, and trainees to collaborate with technologies such as AR, VR, MR, AI, IoT, Robotics, and other techniques. It is specifically designed for performing thoughtful, transformative digital initiatives in a space that encourages innovation and engagement. These Centres have proven to be a valuable resource for company-wide workshops and employee onboarding.

    Also Read: Top 10 Youngest Entrepreneurs of India

    TNQ InGage – USP and Innovation

    TNQ InGage’s technology-based solutions are specifically meant for enterprises because it believes that to make the world better, one needs to make it smarter. “We don’t believe in tech for tech’s sake, but in tech for humanity’s sake. Since our inception, we have been continuously observing, developing, and testing production techniques and optimized hardware solutions. Our passion for this technology means that we will continue to learn from any future advancements as the technology is moving towards mainstream adoption. Our higher level of consumer focus helps us deliver projects with compelling content.” Says the founder

    TNQ InGage also has creative technologists who blend creativity and technology to create compelling experiences. Its Bespoke range of solutions serves the purpose of analyzing requirements and caters to other purposes like Architecture and Interior Design, procurement and deployment of the appropriate hardware, as well as the development and deployment of content. Apart from this, the team works with strong expertise that has helped them complete more than 500 projects in a short span of years, a cross-platform technology that can be deployed across all AR & VR devices, and an intelligent feedback mechanism. Last but not least, TNQ InGage solutions are cost-effective.

    TNQ Ingage – Target Market Size

    Industrial investments of AR/VR are exceeding the expectations. It is envisaged to triple its size in the years to come. To say that we are in a digital age is an understatement, post-digital may be an appropriate term. This is because the technology of today is getting more and more intuitive that it would change the way we learn and conduct our endeavors.

    The global market of AR/VR was estimated at USD 18.4 billion in 2018, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 76% and hit the 180 billion mark by 2022. The Indian AR/VR market is expected to grow to $ 6.5 billion by the same time. We have a lot of significant players, both minor and major, in the areas of Technology and Platform Development, App Development, and System Integration, who could tap into the promising global Immersive Media Market. We can look forward to a time when India emerges as a large supplier of the global AR/VR demand, while also catering to the domestic segment.

    How was TNQ Ingage Started?

    It all started much before the company was founded. Vijay’s journey with this technology began in the year 2002 while at Intel, building the first generation bulky VR systems for healthcare industries. As a Director at Intel, he was part of the team that drove the 1st two waves of computing – desktop & mobile. He was fully aware that a third wave of “immersive computing” is around the corner where technology can sense, predict with the possibility of virtual presence anytime, anywhere using virtual and augmented reality.

    And so he launched InGage Technologies in the year 2012, sensing the next wave of immersive computing that would make people change the way they create and consume content from observation to immersion.

    Vijay has been in this industry for around 15 years and witnessed closely the seeds of transformation that we are experiencing now. His first-hand experience in this sphere and the knowledge of potential implications made him believe in immersive computing, which comes with a lot of scopes, thanks to its brilliance and transformative capabilities.

    “We began our endeavors by coming up with India’s first-ever 4D Augmented Reality application in 2013 for Rajinikanth starrer Kochadaiiyaan Film. We had tied up with Karbonn smartphones & Kochadaiiyaan for the project.” Says Vijay.

    The application, which allows Rajinikanth fans to see him perform stunts and actions right at their home, was then shown to the Superstar, who was quite delighted with the experience and approved the project immediately. The AR application received very positive feedback and won accolades across the world for its quality.

    TNQ Ingage – Startup Launch

    The belief in immersive computing, 18 years of international experience and the financial stability that Vijay achieved by then helped in launching the company with no user. Digital marketing, attending events, references through our good work and age-old networking helped in the acquisition of initial customers.

    TNQ Ingage – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The current focus is service business through customized AR VR short-term and long-term projects across the manufacturing, construction and healthcare industries. TNQ InGage just launched VR As A Service (VAAS) model that would give us a recurring subscription revenue. The team is also working towards launching products next year.

    TNQ Ingage – Startup Challenges

    Team building was a challenge since there was no AR VR development talent pool then. As a result, the top management had to train the hires within the company through a rigorous process to overcome that. At the time one of the AR platforms/App called Jaadu that lets people scan objects, images and find the cheapest deal available across on-line & nearby stores didn’t work out since it was too early for consumers to download the App and change their buying behavior. This posed a threat back then.

    Also Read: A List of Books You Must Read if You Are or Want to be an Entrepreneur

    TNQ Ingage – Funding and Investors

    In early 2019, Eyeing strong AR & VR business opportunities in India’s enterprise market, TNQ Technologies has formed a Joint Venture (JV) with InGage to launch TNQ InGage. This Joint Venture brings together InGage’s immersive technology expertise and IP, and TNQ’s initial investment of $2 million and management expertise. The funding will be used to scale up the delivery of immersive products and services and invest in product R&D.

    TNQ Ingage – Growth

    As mentioned, the current focus is service business through customized AR VR projects across manufacturing, construction and healthcare industries. TNQ InGage also just launched VR As A Service (VAAS) model that would give them a recurring subscription revenue. The team is also working towards launching products next year. The future is quite positive and exciting due to the penetration and adoption of the immersive technologies in the enterprise market and the success, expertise, and clientele the venture has achieved so far

  • VisionWagon- Buy affordable Fashion eyewear online

    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.

    Consumers who use eyewear know how expensive and high-maintenance these products can get. To provide a viable alternative to this and make the experience hassle-free and simple, Amman Kumar, Bhavik Kumar, Rohan Kumar, and Shrijay Sheth launched VisionWagon in 2019 to enable consumers to buy eyewear like eyeglasses and sunglasses online.

    VisionWagon is an online eyewear and sunglasses company, providing affordable fashion eyewear, with high standards of dispensing. The vision here is to build India’s most valued multi-modal Eyewear solutions company offering availability, accessibility and curative experience to its customers.

    Driven by the core belief to provide affordable yet fashionable eyewear for the evolving needs of the customer’s lifestyle, concerning their work and other requirements. VisionWagon is all set to become the number 1 online eyewear company.

    Startup Name VisionWagon
    Headquarter Ahmedabad
    Sector Ecommerce – Online eyewear store
    Founders Amman Kumar, Bhavik Kumar, Rohan Kumar & Shrijay Sheth
    Founded 2018-19
    Parent Organization SarvaGunAushdhi Pvt. Ltd.
    Website VisionWagon.com

    About VisionWagon and How it Works
    VisionWagon – Target Market Size
    How was VisionWagon Started
    VisionWagon – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    VisionWagon – Startup Launch
    VisionWagon – Business Model and Revenue Model
    VisionWagon – Competitors
    VisionWagon – Growth

    About VisionWagon and How it Works

    VisionWagon’s products provide the kind of protection that your eyes need, in an “always-on” world. No individual is not using a screen today – laptops, tablets, computers, phones etc. All these constitute a significant amount of screen time.

    For VisionWagon, each of these individuals is a customer whose eyes will require protection from excessive use of the screen. This goes beyond the scope of consumers having a prescription and continuous education of the customer for this requirement would open the market for a much wider audience.

    By using the code “STARTUPTY25” to buy anything on VisionWagon, you can get 25% off.

    VisionWagon – Target Market Size

    According to Business News Media Sources, the Indian eyewear market is quite complex. With independent opticians commanding 94.02% of the market, organized retail chains form 5% of the pie and Ecommerce accounting for the remaining 0.98%.

    In the next 5 years, a big surge of smart eyewear in the affordable range is anticipated. More in line with smart devices like mobile phones, watches & headphones.

    Also Read:  How Pepperfry Grew to Become the largest online furniture store in India

    VisionWagon – Founders & Team

    VisionWagon - Founders & Team
    VisionWagon – Founders & Team

    VisionWagon was founded by Amman Kumar, Bhavik Kumar, Rohan Kumar and Shrijay Sheth. Amman, Bhavik and Rohan were working in the same business. Shrijay’s success with his earlier Ecommerce ventures made him the natural choice as a partner for the venture – creating a hassle-free eyewear shopping experience online.

    How was VisionWagon Started

    Three of the co-founders were working in the same business. And Shrijay”s experience in building scalable Ecommerce ventures made him the natural choice as a partner for creating a hassle-free eyewear shopping experience online.

    The founders wanted to take their legacy of 60+ years online to reach out to a wider audience beyond the geographical scope of physical stores. The Ecommerce market in India is booming and the online eyewear market is very negligible, hence there is a lot of scope for players who focus on customer-centric eyewear solutions.

    Ideation and consultations with the supply-chain partners, end consumers, and business consultants gave them added insights. Ease of shopping online was amongst the core insights the founders derived from the research.

    VisionWagon Logo
    VisionWagon Logo

    The founders wanted VisionWagon to come across as a wholesome Vision solutions company that carries all relevant eyewear solutions currently available in the market. And also they were geared to embrace any new developments in this ever-changing scenario. Hence they wanted a logo that appealed to the youth.

    VisionWagon – Startup Launch

    The first few customers of VisionWagon came from friends & family, where the founders actively promoted the brand. Later, they incentivized them to bring their connections to visit the website.

    Apart from the organic push, they found social media, both organic and paid – to be an apt traffic source for their brand. Since eyewear is a product that has visual appeal, Instagram, in particular, is observed to be an apt platform for promotions.

    Their outreach through various marketing campaigns is backed by re-marketing channels like emails (for registrants) and re-marketing through social media and google are important to get initial traction.

    VisionWagon provides 15% discounts to 1st-time sign-up clients. Adding new collections, cash-back on each transaction through PayPal and attractive discounts during festive times. This has helped this venture reach out to more customers through the initial phase.

    Also Read: How to Find the Right CTO For Your Startup

    VisionWagon – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The revenue model looks simpler for VisionWagon. There are 3 simple price-points (inclusive of lens-prices). Any additional coatings or features that the client wishes to add over the existing lenses can be add-ons for a very nominal cost. VisionWagon is enabled with an online transactional model with secure payment gateways.

    VisionWagon – Competitors

    Though the online market for eyewear products is minor as compared to the offline market, there are still competitors playing in the minor online market. The major competitors include lenskart.com, eyedo.in, coolwinks.com, Lensbazaar, Titan Eyeplus, Vision Express to name a few.

    VisionWagon – Growth

    The company is growing steadily in revenue every month, orders per day are growing, repeat customers are assuring that VisionWagon is giving the right quality. With more social media influencers approaching the company to collaborate, the fashion quotient of the eyewear is increasing with every passing day.

    “We wish to constantly improve and upgrade the customer experience by embracing new trends & technologies.” Said the founders.

    FAQ

    Who are the Founders of VisionWagon?

    VisionWagon was founded by Amman Kumar, Bhavik Kumar, Rohan Kumar and Shrijay Sheth.

    Who are the competitors of VisionWagon?

    The major competitors of VisionWagon include lenskart.com, eyedo.in, coolwinks.com, Lensbazaar, Titan Eyeplus, and Vision Express.

    What is the Revenue model of VisionWagon?

    There are 3 simple price-points (inclusive of lens-prices). Any additional coatings or features that the client wishes to add over the existing lenses can be add-ons for a very nominal cost.

  • SimplyGuest – Find the Best Housing Solutions

    Today, with everything available on the touch of our fingertips, finding a house is yet a particularly difficult task. Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte, Mayank Pokharna thought of making it hassle-free and consistent experience. So in 2015, they came up with their startup SimplyGuest to make both the handover and handoff procedures of a rental transaction a conflict-free, pleasant experience.

    SimplyGuest Highlights

    Startup Name SimplyGuest
    Headuarter Bangalore
    Founders Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte, Mayank Pokharna
    Sector Home Rentals, Real Estate Tech
    Founded 2015
    Parent Organization SimplyGuest Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
    Website simplyguest.com

    About SimplyGuest and How it Works
    SimplyGuest – Target Market
    SimplyGuest – Founders and team
    How was SimplyGuest Started
    SimplyGuest – Name, Tagline and Logo
    SimplyGuest – User Acquisition
    SimplyGuest – Business Model and Revenue Model
    SimplyGuest – Competitors
    SimplyGuest – Growth
    SimplyGuest – Future Plans

    About SimplyGuest and How it Works

    SimplyGuest offers fully-furnished homes for working professionals close to their workplaces. These accommodations are completely managed & rent is inclusive of monthly bills: electricity, water, 30-100mbps WiFi, DTH, unlimited LPG, maid services, repairs, and maintenance. The flats are hassle-free, where SimplyGuest takes care of everything form paying utility bills, providing maid services, taking care of repairs, replacing LPG cylinder.

    SimplyGuest also takes care of finding qualified flatmates, their entry, and exits. Tenants can move to any house in our network when they change jobs at no extra cost. SimplyGuest also has hostels; these are professionally managed to pay guest (PG) facilities. Hostels are slightly cheaper, provide quality food, and also have lesser lock-in periods.

    Customers who are predominantly singles can choose from private flats ranging from studio rooms, 1BHKs, 2BHKs, 3BHKs, or live in a trendy co-living facility. These homes come with add-on services like meal delivery, bicycle rentals, car parking, furniture rentals, etc. SimplyGuest takes off keeping the homes clean and tidy on a day-to-day basis.

    The idea, in the long run, is to be a space management platform. Customers should be able to rent just about any kind of space: houses, garages, storage spaces, bungalows, stadiums, parking spaces, etc via SimplyGuest, hire additional services via the platform, pay rent, and walk out when the need stops.

    SimplyGuest – Target Market

    According to a recent PropTiger study, co-living in India has the potential to become a USD 93 billion market annually. Co-living is an umbrella term used to refer to student housing and PGs. Another report by JLL states that the real estate renting industry is majorly divided into working professionals and student accommodation:

    • Number of Singles, Professionals, Paying Guest Rentals = 15M
    • Number of Student Accommodation on Rentals in India = 10.4M
    • Nearly  31.56 million people rent homes in urban India (2011 census) = $22 billion

    Relevant Read: PAJASA Apartments – Specially Designed Serviced Apartments for the Corporates

    SimplyGuest – Founders and team

    Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte and Mayank Pokharna are the co-founders of SimplyGuest. Subbu and Ambareesha, the brothers started SimplyGuest in 2015. Mayank was an early customer of SimplyGuest but liked SimplyGuest concept so much that  he joined full time in 2017.

    Subbu Athikunte is a software engineer. He worked at Apigee (later acquired by Google) before quitting to start SimplyGuest. He has worked on distributed systems, analytics, big data, cloud computing, UI, develops and nearly everything else in the field of large-scale software projects. At SimplyGuest, Subbu takes care of tech and product development along with supply acquisition.

    Ambareesha used to work on civil and PWD projects before SimplyGuest. At Simplyguest, he takes care of all the ground operations from setting up new properties to maintaining and servicing the existing ones.

    Mayank Pokharna did his BE and MBA from Nirma before starting his job at Practo. In his previous role as chief of staff at Cuemath, he worked on streamlining multiple business processes to drive productivity and sales. At Practo, he was responsible for creating and managing end to end operations and business intelligence processes. He was a SimplyGuest customer before joining hands with Subbu and Ambarish. At SimplyGuest he takes care of sales and marketing functions and anything that lies in between.

    At SimplyGuest, they believe in value delivery. The core of the philosophy being every action should add incremental value to the overall business. They are a tiny team and let their software make up for the small team size. Currently, they are all working remotely and are on the field most of the time. And here, they treat everything as a software problem. This helps them find solutions that are more scalable and reduce points of conflict. The big vision for SimplyGuest is to become a platform for services that can be consumed by its tenants.

    How was SimplyGuest Started

    Simply Guest started as a listing website for certified rental homes. The listing had verified information about various aspects of the house, something similar to a used car in Maruti Suzuki TrueValue. People weren’t interested in it. House hunters don’t do things systematically. They trust they will get a good house. In reality that never happens. They’d rather stay in a suboptimal house.

    SimplyGuest pivoted to listing PGs and faced different challenges there. PG owners weren’t open to upgrading their facilities with technology. However, during the research for this project, they visited numerous PGs and realized that they were nothing short of cattle-houses. Even if tenants were willing to pay a higher monthly rent, they couldn’t find a decent PG.

    That’s when they decided to create an alternative to paying guest accommodation. Around May 2015, they rented a flat in an upscale apartment society, furnished it with everything a family would require, got a very good WiFi connection, DTH, LPG, made the kitchen functional and hired domestic help; it was everything one could possibly ask for in a house. People could rent rooms in a good apartment without worrying about finding other flatmates. Very soon, the flat was fully occupied and that was the starting point for these brilliant minds. This setup provided the best of both worlds. Comfort and privacy of living in a furnished flat and services as you get in a PG without any unnecessary restrictions.

    Once they had the idea in place, they started noting down all the names that could describe it. Made a list of 20 names in a couple of months, out of which shortlisted 5 and sent a survey to all their friends and colleagues. SimplyGuest was the second most popular and got selected because they couldn’t get a .com domain for the most popular name.

    The SimplyGuest team then went on and created a gig on Fiverr to create a logo for SimplyGuest. But they didn’t like the logo that was received. So they created something on their own with limited Photoshop skills. After some dedicated conviction, they got the logo right and it’s the same that they are using till now.

    SimplyGuest Logo
    SimplyGuest Logo

    Relevant Read: Grexter Living – Comfortable Coliving Spaces in Bangalore

    SimplyGuest – User Acquisition

    The easiest parts were done first; building the website. They didn’t have any houses to rent, so they took photos of the house where one of the founders was living in and listed it and marked it sold. But they still had to find a house to let out and also needed to find homeowners. Hence they started going around nearby areas looking for ‘To Let’ boards in front of the houses, call them up and explain SimplyGuest. After 10 unsuccessful attempts, they finally found an empty house. The owner was residing in a different city and they managed to convince him to let his property via SimplyGuest.

    Finding the first customer was the toughest part. The founders would stand in front of the big corporates on Bannerghatta Road and distribute flyers with house details in it. It was awkwardly embarrassing at first, but they didn’t know any other way. Few people agreed to hear them out of pity.

    few people agreed to hear me out out of pity. Only one boy was interested, but our first house was meant for girls. I made a list of offices nearby, started visiting them one by one; we’d try to meet their admin or HR teams, but nobody seemed to care. Had I built something nobody wanted? – SimplyGuest co-founder Subbu recounts.

    It had been one and a half month and they were paying for an empty house. None of the marketing channels had worked. They had a few inquiries but nothing potential yet. They were losing hope and they were starting to think that they probably won’t be able to find customers. And Subbu was anyway not able to sell it and had a lot of free time. They thought, why not find a house for the boy who was interested earlier. They went looking around and found one flat close by; it was turned into a PG. Subbu was walking around the building checking the house, some guys staying in it mentioned they weren’t happy staying there; the PG owner had promised them something and hadn’t delivered; maintenance was bad and it didn’t feel good staying there. He explained to them what he was doing and they found it interesting and wanted to check out even though the only house SimplyGuest had then was for girls. They visited the house and loved the concept. Subbu asked them if they would rent it from him if he found them a good home, they said yes. And finally, they were excited.

    Subbu came back home and started searching for a house for the potential customers he had met. Bhanu found a house close by; it was within walking distance of their offices. Two of them worked at VMW while the last one worked at Honeywell. They liked the flat and asked them how much it would cost. Subbu hadn’t worked out the details yet he promised them to keep the prices low and get back to them. Only part of the problem was solved but he still had to meet the house owner and convince them about bachelors staying in the house. Subbu met the owner and figured she didn’t mind letting it to bachelors. He went back to the guys, told them about the rent, after they agreed upon the price, he told them they will have to pay an advance as a token of confirmation. They were happy because they were getting a private room with an attached bathroom at a low price – almost for the price of a double-sharing room. They gave him a cheque for 5000 rupees. And Subbu had sold a house that he didn’t have!

    The same week someone called him after seeing one of the sun packs – a small 2×1 feet display ad they had set up near the house. The caller was from Lucknow and was in Bangalore searching for a house for his younger sister – she was a postgraduate student in a dental college near Meenakshi Mall. They visited the flat and liked it. The girl wanted to move in next day itself; they were staying in a hotel near-by. In two days, two more girls made bookings.

    And then they started listing properties in existing classified/listings websites. This started giving some leads. And in those days,  even one lead was a life-saver.

    SimplyGuest – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Simply Guest lets house owners rent their flats via their platform. They can rent unfurnished, furnished, and spare rooms via SimplyGuest. They find tenants for these houses, help them move-in and take care of household needs. They take a cut in the revenue generated every month for the services they provide.

    They have 4 renting models:

    • Rent houses on a fixed rent
    • Rent houses on a revenue-sharing model where they take care of finding customers, managing them and the owner takes care of providing services
    • A car parking marketplace
    • Co-living projects.

    SimplyGuest – Competitors

    Major market players have come and played this field. NestAway is one of them. GetSetHome, VivaReal, PGstay, RentMyStay are some of the entities having a great market standing.

    SimplyGuest – Growth

    Somehow, the SimplyGuest team feels they had gotten lucky to find the first 16 customers. Things happened too quickly from a hopeless state of 45 days without a single customer to 100% occupancy in the next 30 days, numbers in the spreadsheet were overflowing. This could be a beginner’s luck, and they didn’t want to get fooled by it. Even if they weren’t lucky, and achieved all this by hard work, they had to find ways to replicate this.

    They also started trying out SimplyGuest advertisements on the traffic police warning signs. The majority of the calls originating from this were for BTM Layout, specifically Stage II. It became apparent that they needed some houses in BTM Stage II. Hence they started looking around for to-let boards in BTM Layout and onboarded a full building.

    They installed sun boards, a small 1×2 feet semi-plastic board that you find in malls, in front of the house, and around BTM Stage II, these are different from sun packs. Since they had signed these houses and realized BTM is a hub for young people. Every second house had been turned into a PG; they thought they’ll be able to sell their new houses very quickly.

    People started visiting the flat after seeing the to-let board in front of the house; they were having 8-10 visits a day. They had a free listing on OLX and Quikr and these channels also started giving some leads.

    They then went on to open up a referral program; every successful referral would get Rs 2000. They also messaged existing customers about it and created a WhatsApp group for every house. A customer from House #4 referred to three of her friends; these guys were college-mates and wanted to stay together at BTM. (One of them was Mayank; he later became a core part of SimplyGuest)

    The marketing channels they tried to find customers were helping them in other ways. A lady called them one day and wanted SimplyGuest to rent 4 flats in Vijaya Bank Layout!  Subbu was surprised to know that she had taken his phone number from the sun packs they were using for finding guests. The flats were in the final stage of construction and they had already started looking out for customers. She and her husband showed us the flats, these flats were close to SimplyGuest’s previous properties, and they ended up taking the property.

    Relevant Read: Find Your Preferred Room and Roommate with RentRoomi

    SimplyGuest – Future Plans

    Domestic house help in general, and cleaning dishes specifically, has been the surprise element that makes customers stick to a house. If they can provide this consistently, they can retain almost all customers. Houses need regular maintenance for long-term use, initial customers don’t stay put if the house becomes unlivable. Plus, if the commuting time to the workplace is manageable, people stick around the house. Scaling this business is not as easy as adding servers and staff; operations are the key. Scaling physical operations takes time and sustained the effort.

    Spending on advertising will get new customers, but it doesn’t help to retain existing customers. New customers are a finite set, whereas existing customers pay recurring rent. That’s what they are currently focusing on.

    Providing consistently good services year-long matters more than discounts. If the bed goes vacant for a day, the revenue is lost permanently. House owners may not want to absorb this cost. Simply Guest calls this angel-stays.

    They operate in about 15 locations in South Bangalore. Unlike their competitors, SimplyGuest operates shared houses, co-living properties, and also hostels (PGS). This covers the entire breadth of home options.

  • Bajar- Shopping Online with the Local Retailers is now a Reality!

    With the advent of online shopping and e-commerce portals, the local shopkeepers have taken a hit. We know this for a fact that the brick and mortar stores are bearing loses in today’s digitized world. To combat this problem, Mr. Yashraj Bhatia came up with the idea of shopping online but with local retailers.

    Think about it. When we are shopping online, how often do we come across a local seller from the nearby spaces? Rarely! Hence with Yashraj’s brilliant idea and his startup Bajar, which is a mobile application, he has strived to create a platform for retailers in the offline markets, giving them the ability to showcase their products to the online markets.

    Bajar Highlights

    Startup Name Bajar
    Headquarter Delhi NCR
    Founder Yashraj Bhatia
    Sector e-commerce
    Founded 2019
    Parent Organization KLM Digital Pvt. Ltd.
    Website thebajarapp.com

    About Bajar and How it Works
    Bajar – USP
    Bajar – Founder and team
    How was Bajar Started
    Bajar – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Bajar – User Acquisition
    Bajar – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Bajar – Startup Challenges
    Bajar – Competitors
    Bajar – Growth
    Bajar – Future Plans

    About Bajar and How it Works

    Founded in 2019, Bajar is a platform for retailers in the offline markets giving them the required platform to showcase their products to the online markets. The sole motive behind this application is to create a platform where the customer is purchasing online, with all its benefits and comforts. But instead of purchasing from an e-commerce website, the consumers buy from their nearest local retailer. The application is a purely retailer-centric platform.

    The application doles out to be a ‘Virtual Store’ for retailers who are given the ability and space to display their products online as they do in their stores physically. The idea is to create a platform where the consumers get to purchase online with all its comfort and convenience, but instead of an e-commerce portal, they buy from their nearest local retailer. Bajar wants to create a retailer-centric market rather than a product-centric environment which is the case in usual market places.

    Bajar – USP

    This startup rides on the vision to support local businesses and customers. The creative idea of this startup is to create a selling platform that would give power to the retailers and each locality would have its market catering to the residents. The unique selling proposition of Bajar is in being the vendor concerned platform rather than a platform that is flooded with a plethora of products.

    Relevant Read: Save on Everything with Latest Deals, Offers and Coupons from GrabOn

    Bajar – Founder and team

    Yashraj Bhatia is the founder and CEO of this innovative startup, Bajar. He graduated from Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, University of Delhi and is also an alumnus of Springdales School.

    How was Bajar Started

    The idea that gave birth to Bajar came to Yashraj during a mall visit.  He was there to do some light shopping but he felt ill-equipped to know what the shops are selling. This got him thinking about how the markets and retailers are so unorganized. There is no go-to app that lets the buyers know which shops are selling what.

    If one stands in the market today, he is bound to run after references and struggle for information regarding a reliable vendor for simple needs. Consumers keep asking questions like  “Hey, where can I buy furniture?” “Do you know someone who sells Laptops?”, “Is this retailer any good?” to their friends and family.

    So Yashraj felt like doing something about this situation. He was more inclined to create a platform for retailers, rather than becoming an e-commerce platform. For him, an expansion into a selling platform would give power to the retailers and each locality would have its market catering to the residents. He realized that the current eCommerce websites concentrate more on the products rather than the vendors. He aspired to change the situation by identifying a feasible solution.  And this is how Bajar was conceived.

    This was back in January 2019,  when he sketched out the whole app and the screens on his iPad and began scouting for developers to turn this into a fruitful reality. His interest in technology and development guided him to shape his ideas to a fully functional application.  He was fascinated by the advancements in the sectors and yearned to utilize it for the upliftment of the community. He identified the right resources to develop a user-friendly and reliable mobile application. The application went live on 1st August 2019, and since then it has listed 4000+ retailers from major markets of Delhi.

    “The name was something I did a lot of thinking about.” says this young entrepreneur.  Yashraj wanted it to be relatable yet unique, at the same time, he wanted the name to be something that is easy to share. He also felt that the brand name should also be able to conveniently express what the application does. “Bajar” felt like something relatable.

    Bajar Logo
    Bajar Logo

    He leaned for a Hindi name particularly because it gives the vibe of the country. After finalizing the name, it was just a matter of time before the logo was ready that took the brand name forward with the bag behind it which easily signified shopping.

    Bajar App Logo
    Bajar App Logo

    Bajar – User Acquisition

    The initial bunch of customers for Bajar were Yashraj’s family and friends. As the application started to list retailers, they became the initial batch of users for the application. As Bajar moved forward, the initial traction they received was from simple social media posts. And it was simply amazing. As they explained what the application does on their social handles, the number of users kept multiplying.

    Relevant Read: Rent Furniture Affordably and Easily With CityFurnish

    Bajar – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Bajar extracts its primary revenue from retailers for “On-boarding”. This is just a fancy term used for defining a retailer who is using the ‘Retailer’ app to manage their profile. Once on-board, the retailer is entitled to add products and offers and reply to ratings and reviews, with a simple, easy-to-use app, designed especially for them. Other revenue sources include advertisement sales and featuring offers and retailers on the application.

    Once sale/purchase is conducted on the platform, they charge a minor convenience fee depending upon the size of the transaction.

    Bajar – Startup Challenges

    The biggest hurdle for Bajar was to explain this new and advanced concept of shopping to retailers as well as end-users. People, in general, take a lot of effort and persistence to adopt something new and move out of their comfort zone. Even if the new and updated things bring more convenience and comfort, the big cloud of being in the comfort zone always hangs above everyone’s mind.

    Bajar – Competitors

    Bajar as such has no direct competition as of now. In the listing sphere, there are many shops listed on Google and Justdial, but none of them cover all of the markets like Bajar does or allow the retailers to list their products.

    Relevant Read: Shop Now and Pay Later with ePayLater

    Bajar – Growth

    Retailer Markets are so widespread and in such huge quantities that there is massive scope to grow not just in NCR but pan-India. Also, the consumers have well received his idea for a retailer-oriented application.  Hence this increases the chances of successfully penetrating in the Indian market.

    Bajar – Future Plans

    The future plan for Bajar is to expand the application to pan India. The founder’s vision is to target the small retail market among metropolitan cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.

    Bajar, as a mobile application is not about being a regular shopping experience. It’s solving a bigger problem in the economy. We in this age of digitization need to take everyone up the ladder with us. Hence this idea of empowering the local retailers with digitization is remarkable.

  • Quantum Green – One Stop Solution for Effective Waste Management

    With all the buzz about waste management in the country, it has become imperative for us as citizens to abide by it. Vinayaka Kashyap  &  Vinod Jaganathan in 2014 took up one such initiative. In a nutshell, they do the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction for large scale biogas plants. They also offer solutions to passionate householders who want to take care of their waste on a daily level too.

    Their philosophy behind the venture is really interesting. They are capitalizing on the word Quantum which means the behavior of subatomic particles. They aim to garner the support of all subatomic entities on the planet who will help them realize their mission to make Mother Earth a greener one for the generations to come. Hence the name Quantum Green and the  idea is “a quantum leap into a greener revolution.”

    Quantum Green Highlights

    Startup Name Quantum Green
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Founders Vinayaka Kashyap & Vinod Jaganathan
    Sector Waste to Energy / Renewable Energy
    Founded 2014
    Website quantumgreen.in

    About Quantum Green and How it Works
    Developments in Waste-to-energy Sector in India
    Quantum Green – Founders and team
    How was Quantum Green Started
    Quantum Green – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Quantum Green – User Acquisition
    Quantum Green – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Quantum Green – Funding and Investors
    Quantum Green – Awards & Recognitions
    Quantum Green – Growth

    About Quantum Green and How it Works

    Established in 2014 and based at the garden city of Bengaluru, QG envisions to provide unparalleled services in the fields of waste to Energy and Solid & Liquid Waste Management (SLWM). To endeavor this, QG is backed up by a team with rich experience in waste to energy projects. Quantum Green builds biogas plants for a variety of its clients by offering its Engineering, Procurement, and Construction services thereby ensuring a turnkey solution to its customers. The company’s expertise not only includes conceptualizing Waste to Energy projects but also backing it up with scientific waste processing, and reliable and efficient energy distribution. As an integrated technology company, Quantum Green has expertise in Design, Supply and Installation of Biogas plants for varying applications ranging from small scale Household Cooking to mega-scale Industrial Cogeneration purposes viz., Thermal heating, Power Generation and Bio-CNG Bottling plants.

    Their projects are smarter as they leverage upon the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) to remotely administer, monitor, operate and maintain the plant. By doing this, they ensure optimal plant availability and longevity as the information they gather from the plant’s smartness will ensure that it operates seamlessly and any outage/breakdown small or big is either predicted before or attended to immediately. This acts as a gateway for building smart infrastructure which is self-sufficient and run with minimum human intervention.

    Their clientele includes Individual households, Hotels, Canteens, and Industries such as large Food Processing companies. This indicates that their product range and solutions address a vast target community/sector. Applications of these biogas plants vary from basic cooking to thermal heating, bio-electricity, and bio-CNG. The largest plant is a 50 Tons Per Day (50 TPD) unit for a food processing industry and the smallest is a 2 Kg per day unit for a simple household.

    Also Read: All You Need to Know About Drip Marketing

    Developments in Waste-to-energy Sector in India

    The scenario for Waste to Energy in India is picking up steam. Quantum Green is in this business from the past five years and the team is seeing a surge in the number of inquiries they get year on year.  They see a lot of bulk waste generators showing genuine interest in either composting or building biogas projects. The earlier notion of waste as just a waste and the need to get rid of it crudely is a thing of the past. Waste disposal costs and landfilling is getting unviable for them. Pollution control boards are doing their part in ensuring that compliances are in place to dispose of waste in an environmentally friendlier manner.  Now clients look at waste as a healthy source of energy and show interest for these plants. They understand that by putting a biogas plant, they need not depend on fossil fuels such as diesel and furnace oil anymore. In some cases where electricity is scarce, the client is more than happy to convert their waste to valuable power. As you see, waste to energy project helps the client to take care of their businesses more effectively and efficiently.  Also, the government’s initiatives such as “Swatch Bharath”, “Make In India”, “Smart Cities” etc. are good for this sector. No wonder why so many plants are getting commissioned like never before.

    Quantum Green – Founders and team

    Mr. Vinayaka Kashyap: BE, M Tech with 15 plus years of Sales and Marketing experience in the Capital Goods industry catering to the Power Plant Sector (Thermal, Gas, Renewable and the Captive sectors). Worked at Triveni Steam Turbines, CICB Chemtron, GE Gas Engines before starting QG

    Mr. Vinod J: BE, Elec with 18 plus years of Sales and Marketing experience in the Capital Goods industry catering to the Power Plant Sector (Thermal, Gas, Renewable and the Captive sectors). Worked at Triveni Steam Turbines and Thermax before starting QG

    While Vinayaka takes care of Sales & Business Development, Vinod is into Finance, Admin and HR. They are a lean team of about 8 including the founders.

    How was Quantum Green Started

    The founder’s decision to take up entrepreneurship and starting this business was sudden. That happened in June 2014 when Vinod’s erstwhile friend and old colleague from Triveni Steam Turbines, Steam Turbine manufacturing company based at Bangalore, Mr. Vinayaka Kashyap met him. Vinayak was then working on many Waste to Energy projects, typically Biogas plants. He elucidated Vinod on how waste had become such a menace and how it was affecting the common man and posed a huge danger to the future generations. Being a father of two, Vinod was concerned the world that we leave behind for our children can be so hazardous. After knowing more about the subject technically, he decided in his heart that as a responsible human being, he should join Vinayaka and strive for a greener revolution.

    Also Read: How Referral Marketing Can Boost Your Sales

    The word Quantum means the behavior of Subatomic particles. They aim to garner the support of all subatomic entities on the planet who will help them realize our mission to make Mother Earth a greener one for the generations to come. Hence the name Quantum Green and the vision is “a quantum leap into a greener revolution” which is the tagline.

    Quantum Green Logo
    Quantum Green Logo

    Quantum Green – User Acquisition

    Quantum Green’s website is efficiently and professionally managed by the internal team and they do have channel partners who promote the business.

    Being salesmen for most of their lives, they know for sure that a genuine relationship with a client, will yield business and repeat orders. This means that they will have to stick up, stand tall and present themselves to the clients’ end whenever there is a need. Clients do appreciate such an attitude. Their previous experience in turnkey businesses gives them an additional advantage on how to conceptualize, interface and commission plants. Clients are very keen on prior experiences as they do not want errors from inexperienced contractors which could damage their reputation as well as cause a business loss.

    Quantum Green – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Quantum Green’s business model is to provide end to end turnkey solutions to bulk waste producers. In a nutshell, they do the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction for large scale biogas plants. And they also offer solutions to passionate householders who want to take care of their waste on a daily level too.

    Quantum Green – Funding and Investors

    They were actively looking to raise funds during the initial days to expand the operations. However, since the biogas concept had not gained much momentum in the country at that time, investors were skeptical to put money in the business. Luckily, one of their best friends showed interest and eventually did one round of seed funding for them. Post that round of funding, they did not scout for any other funds. They believe they will raise funds at the right time to support their business growth.

    Quantum Green – Awards & Recognitions

    Quantum Green has been awarded with “Brightest startup award by TERI” in 2017

    Also Read: Is Mukesh Ambani Set to Acheive Yet Another Milestone with JioMart?

    Quantum Green – Growth

    From starting in 2014, in five years, little did they expect that they would have orders converted into repeat orders (key accounts). They started with consultancy orders first but slowly ramped up to taking turnkey orders from the same customers. Indian Navy, Mother Dairy Fruits and Vegetables, ISRO, AL Jaleel, Gun Shell factory and EUROPEM are a few prestigious clients that they have onboard now. From operating a 50 Tonne per day plant (Mother Dairy) to building containers which house equipment of the biogas plant to one of the largest kitchens in India (EUROPEM), their journey has been great, if not dreamlike. To summarize the following have been our professional achievements:

    • Building a very good clientele.
    • Building a very good and reliable vendor pool.
    • Building a strong in-house engineering team
    • Building a dedicated, diligent Commissioning team

    Business-wise, they want to have key accounts, and now they have 4 reputed ones. Financially, they are growing at 30% YoY. Since this is a startup, they have consciously kept the human resource lean for easy collaboration and business operations. They also have hired immaculate professionals in different verticals. For now, they are concentrating on the South market and will eventually expand our operations to the North in upcoming years

    Once again, the policy here is to gel well as a team. Know each other well, both professionally as well as emotionally, know one another’s strengths and weaknesses and together as one cohesive unit work towards the common goal which is to take our planet to a Greener Revolution.

  • Lemonop – Your Early Career Jobs are now Sorted

    More and more Indian youth today are looking for freelance jobs. As per data, India ranks as the 2nd largest freelance workforce after the US. A major factor that has facilitated the growth in number of freelancer is the emergence of the online freelancing platforms. Also professional networking sites like LinkedIn has made lives easier for those who want to find a part-time or full-time job. Yet another new innovation in this direction is Lemonop. Founded by Sateesh Havannavar, Ramkiran Bhat, and Swaroop Chand, Lemonop is a single platform that acts both as a freelancing platform and professional network. The startup is on a mission to make “Work Finds People” happen.

    StartupTalky interviewed Lemonop CEO Swaroop Chand to understand the platform better.

    Lemonop Highlights

    Startup Name Lemonop
    Headquarter Bengaluru
    Founders Sateesh Havannavar, Ramkiran Bhat & Swaroop Chand
    Sector HR Tech + professional network
    Founded 2017
    Parent Organization Makepath Technologies Private Limited
    Website lemonop.com

    Lemonop – About
    Lemonop – Industry Details
    Lemonop – Founders and Team
    How was Lemonop Started
    Lemonop- Name, Tagline and Logo
    Lemonop- User Acquisition
    Lemonop- Business Model and Revenue Model
    Lemonop- Startup Challenges
    Lemonop- Competitors
    Lemonop – Growth
    Lemonop – Future Plans

    Lemonop – About

    Lemonop is a combination of a freelancing platform (Lemonop Gig Engine) and a professional network (Lemonop Twyne). So it is somewhat like a lean Upwork + LinkedIn for people who are in their early career. From the young generation’s point of view, it’s a single Android mobile app and a mobile website for iOS users. From the companies point of view, Lemonop is a technology platform which simplifies their ability to build on-demand, short term workforce quickly, tap into the energy & skills of digital native GenZ and to spot their future talent early. Companies can also gain from GenZ as consumers because co-creating with this generation is a powerful way to understand, engage and win GenZ.

    Lemonop App Screenshots
    Lemonop App Screenshots

    Taking their innovative vision forward, Lemonop is launching a ‘first job’ feature based on users’ gig and Twyne activities on the platform. Real-world activities or projects done on their initiative is a great way to spot strong talent. This feature will not just add immense value for youngsters by helping in finding their first job, but will also help companies scale their early career hiring beyond the set of colleges they visit.

    We not only believe in the efficiency of gig economy for early career training, we also believe the earliest professional network is incredibly valuable – Swaroop quotes

    The core belief of this initiative is that the industry & the young generation, who are the future innovators & workforce, will need to come together & collaborate to solve large problems such as employment generation, skill-building, skill gap reduction, etc.

    Also Read: 8 Steps of Effective Planning for Every Business

    Lemonop – Industry Details

    According to the NASSCOM, FICCI, EY report of 2017, 17 million new entrants join the workforce each year and 5.5 million new jobs are created in the same period. This is just the Indian scenario and given that worldwide the numbers are much bigger, Lemonop has a huge scope of growth, as its products are relevant globally.

    The industry will see a lot of impact due to exponential technologies, #HumanMachine and due to disruption in education models (e.g. Lambda school). During such times of uncertainties going forward, the Lemonop team see Lemonop & their model as a stabilizing agent to the users (both companies and the young generation).

    We also strongly believe that gig work can be the economy’s largest training ground for students and new grads, at the same time enabling them to add immense economic value – Swaroop says explaining the importance of gig work

    Lemonop – Founders and Team

    Lemonop co-founder & CTO Sateesh Havannavar, – Graduated from B.V.  Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering. Sateesh has co-founded Talentspear, a HRTech startup in the year 2015, which he exited in 2018. Sateesh held different technical roles with different organizations before starting up his own venture. Sateesh worked as a Senior Java Consultant at SAS, Technical Lead at FICO, Senior Developer at Oracle and a Software Engineer at igate Global Solutions typically where he started off his career.He also worked as a Senior Integration Analyst at UBS for a year.

    Swaroop Chand, co-founder & CEO- Graduated from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. Swaroop has 18 years of experience in software product engineering, product strategy, software services. He has also been a former Director at Oracle Financial Services Software Ltd.

    Ramkiran Bhat, prior to Lemonop worked at SpaceMatrix. He is also working as Associate Director of UF Architects, a Architecture & Planning startup

    In addition to their roles, Sateesh and Swaroop focus on sales to the demand side (companies) & Ram focuses on community building on the supply side (students & freshers)

    How was Lemonop Started

    The first spark of inspiration to the founders came from noticing that the college goers of India are keen to do some part-time work, not just the internships mandated by universities but in non-academic areas as well. The youngsters were willing to follow their hearts into unique career paths as well, which does not have much to do with their academic specialization.

    Initial  the thoughts were discussed among five people, three of which are now co-founders of Lemonop.

    We initially saw an opportunity for tech to help not just to simplify and scale this space, but also add many more values such as giving youngsters the ability to test different industries, hunt for opportunities in an interest / hobby area, build a portfolio of work experiences to improve chances of finding a job soon after college etc – Swaroop speaks on the Lemonop idea

    As they researched the space more, they realized that there’s so much more that can be done. They could play a significant role in the entire early career ecosystem and help the young generation of India irrespective of their goals being company jobs, solopreneurship or entrepreneurship. As a result, the economy can also benefit from better skill building & employability.

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

    The name Lemonop was inspired by the lemonade stand — a culture in the western countries where parents help their children prepare lemonade and sell it during summer. The idea is to teach young people about entrepreneurship, customer service, money management, basics of finance, teamwork, etc at an early age. The founders believe that they are peers to collegians, where the lemonade stands as experience for school children.

    Lemonop is also a tribute to “LMNOP”, the way we sing the alphabet song.

    Lemonop Logo
    Lemonop Logo

    Lemonop- User Acquisition

    Lemonop got its early users by recruiting them manually. They started with the demand side (companies) and went to their own network first. Next, they made walk-in visits to companies of all sizes in a few select areas of Bangalore. That is how they got their first 25-30 companies. They then focused on winning top gigs that they were sure would delight the young users and are truly incredible opportunities. They had gigs like model making, food photography, etc in place.  Once they had such gigs,  they went on to visiting colleges to address the young generation users and when they saw how great the gigs were, Lemonop got its first 500 supply-side users.

    After the initial hustle of recruiting early users, they started delighting their users with valuable product features. For example, for the supply side, they added features like a weekly bulletin called Byte to learn cool stuff in 1 min, a series called Rocktalk to help youngsters learn from people who have excelled in unique careers, a finance education series called #LearnMoney to only name a few. These features not only delighted the users but also triggered a bit of word of mouth to generate more than 35K registered users for Lemonop.

    Lemonop- Business Model and Revenue Model

    For Lemonop, revenue comes from the companies in the form of per-post charges, annual subscriptions or a percentage on top of the total amount disbursed using Lemonop. They do not charge students/freshers anything. Also, they don’t take any take rate (percentage cut from their earnings) either.

    Lemonop- Startup Challenges

    Like all marketplaces, Lemonop too had to face the chicken-and-egg challenge initially -who comes first and why? However, unlike other marketplaces, they couldn’t go after their supply-side first. They decided to go after the demand side (companies) first and although there weren’t any supply-side users initially. They told the companies that they’ll manually go to campuses and tell about their gigs and recruit applicants for their gigs. So basically, they offered their services as a sweetener to the early clients. Their quality of gigs has always been outstanding and when they showed them to students & freshers, a good number signed up to apply. They continued to grow both sides of the marketplace using a mix of hustling with the above model, focusing on extremely high-quality gigs, recruiting users on both sides manually.

    Also Read: Start a Cool Merchandise Business at Zero Investment with My Dream Store

    Lemonop- Competitors

    1010 data, 10 times, 11 online are some of the companies running the same race in the spectrum as Lemonop. Though the market standing might not be that high but these companies have been in the industry for quite a while now.

    Lemonop – Growth

    Lemonop currently has 35000+ students / freshers and 450+ companies registered with it. Companies have posted gigs for 10+ different cities in the Lemonop platform. As regards clients, Zomato, Whacked Out Media, Dunzo, MTV UP!, Flipkart, Caratlane etc are some big names in Lemonop’s client list. It has also partnered with 91Springboard, Innov8 (now OYO Workspaces), Brand Capital and a few more

    Lemonop – Future Plans

    The short term plan is to grow to over 2 lakh registered users this financial year. The future plan is to expand to multiple cities including select tier 2 and tier 3 cities and introduce work from home / work remote gigs to enable young gen from these cities to do gigs. The insight behind this goal is the fact that great talent can come from any city and any college.

  • MeraEvents: Redefining Event Ticketing And Management

    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.

    A lot of work goes behind organizing a successful event. Ideation of the event, putting up a solid organizing team, creating a budget and resorting to it, and deciding the venue are just some of the pain-points. Even after all these efforts, the success of the event comes down to the number of attendees. Promoting an event and enticing people to attend it is a crucial task. If you’re not sure on how to promote your upcoming event or an attendee on the lookout for some interesting program, leverage the power of MeraEvents!

    Launched in 2009, MeraEvents connects organizers, delegates and service providers across the country. It offers event organizers with numerous options like listing, promotions, online ticketing etc. The platform adds over 1000-1500 events per month across various categories. Headquartered in Hyderabad, MeraEvents today is one of the best online ticketing platforms in India.

    MeraEvents in a nutshell

    Startup Name MeraEvents
    Headquarters Hyderabad
    Founder Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni
    Sector Online Ticketing/Event Promotion
    Founded 2009
    Website meraevents.com
    Parent Organization Versant Online Solutions Pvt Ltd

    MeraEvents – About
    MeraEvents – Founder And Team
    MeraEvents – Market Details
    MeraEvents – History And Ideation
    MeraEvents – Business Model
    MeraEvents – Revenue Model
    MeraEvents – Funding And Investors
    MeraEvents – Startup Challenges
    MeraEvents – Competitors
    MeraEvents – Partnership And Tie-Ups
    MeraEvents – Growth
    MeraEvents – Future Plans
    MeraEvents – Founder’s Advice

    MeraEvents – About

    MeraEvents provides value addition to events being organized as it offers benefits such as listing, promotions, online ticketing etc. to the event organizers. MeraEvents’ USP is that organizers can list their events for free. Moreover, they can choose from different paid promotional packages, and benefit from the lowest payment gateway solution for selling tickets, etc. In short, MeraEvents offers end-to-end event technology solutions to its customers.

    MeraEvents Logo

    MeraEvents is a one-stop platform for all kinds of events. It has events and functions listed across various categories and happening in different parts of India. Professional, entertainment, sports, training, spiritual, campus, and trade shows are just the tip of the iceberg when one considers the categories on the MeraEvents portal. This helps people fine tune their search and narrow down to their desired results. An average of 1000-1500 events are added on MeraEvents every month.

    MeraEvents also offer services related to ticketing (both online and offline), registration counter management, and digital marketing.

    MeraEvents offers the following solutions at present:

    • EasyTag: A cloud based check-in and badge printing solution.
    • Digibroc: An online platform for exhibiting and distributing brochures and catalogs. This platform helps exhibitors retrieve details of visitors who showed interest in the digital brochures and thereby follow up with them.  
    • MoozUp: It is a white labeling solution that lets event attendees and organizers connect and engage with each other—before, during, and after the event.

    Read more: Check what are the products and services of Nestaway

    MeraEvents – Founders And Team

    MeraEvents Founder Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni

    Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni is the founder & CEO of MeraEvents. After his engineering from JNTU-Ananthapur, Mr. Naidu moved to the United States and started his entrepreneurial journey in 2000. After returning to India in 2007, the challenges he faced in scouting for events propelled him to start MeraEvents as a the answer to these problems. Through Chennapa’s dedication and clarity of thought, MeraEvents quickly emerged as the one-stop-solution for the event industry.

    Over the last few years, MeraEvents has grown its staff from 6 to more than 60, expecting to enlarge its team by more than 100 people by the end of this financial year.

    Read more: Check who are the top 50 richest people of India

    MeraEvents – Market Details

    According to reports, the global online event ticketing market size is expected to reach USD 67.99 billion by 2025. Again, a ReedSeer report published in 2018 stated that online ticketing market in India recorded a $28 million quarterly revenue.

    “The market size for events ticketing in India is $1 billion, but only 10% of the players are using online ticketing platforms”, says MeraEvents owner Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni. There is a lot of scope for businesses to grow if event organizers can realize the benefits of using an online platform.

    Read more: Check out the greatest marketing campaign by Mercedes

    MeraEvents – History And Ideation

    It was the year 2000 when Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni was working in the US with an IT company. Unfortunately, he lost his job during the dotcom bust of 2000. Naidu was searching for jobs but could not find any, compelling him to try his hands on entrepreneurship and create jobs rather than seeking one. Naidu set up Versant Technologies in the United States in the same year.

    Versant Technologies was an end-to-end system integration company that specialized in Oracle Retail and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Implementations. Today, Versant Technologies has a strong presence in North America and India. It was more of a B2B services company and Naidu wanted to do something in the B2C segment. He then started attending a lot of events and seminars to know and learn about the B2C industry.

    It’s well-said “What you seek is seeking you”. Naidu found it difficult to attend these events since there wasn’t much information available about them beforehand. Ticketing, badge printing, and meeting other attendees were other challenges. He then started doing research on these events, asking attendees how they got to know about the same. It turned out that attendees had limited means of finding out about an event beforehand—either through word of mouth or through scattered information on the net. There was a lack of a proper channel where anything and everything about organized events and programs could be known.

    Having identified the gap, he started a portal in 2009 – an event listing, promotion and ticketing platform to connects organizers, delegates, and service providers in different places. The portal was tactically named ‘MeraEvent’ in order to foster the feeling of association with the event of one’s choice. In 2013, Versant Technologies was taken over by Aspire Systems and Naidu shifted his focus full-time to MeraEvents.

    Read more: Read the success story of Moneyfront

    MeraEvents – Business Model

    MeraEvent’s business model is built on commission received from event deals.

    MeraEvents started out as a pure event ticketing platform and charged commissions only on the tickets sold. Over the years, it emerged as an event ticketing technology solution provider managing ticket desks in addition to becoming an end-to-end event marketing company.

    Read more: What is the business model of Bookmyshow

    MeraEvents – Revenue Model

    Event organizers can list their events on the platform for free and create a unique URL for the event. However, they need to pay 1.99% to payment gateways, and a 2% service charge on every ticket. They also have the option to sell directly from MeraEvents wherein the service charge goes up to 8%.

    MeraEvents – Funding And Investors

    MeraEvents has raised over $ 3.2 million in funding over 4 rounds.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    March 2012 Seed $1 Million Undisclosed
    June 2014 Venture round $1 Million OMICS International
    June 2014 Angel $1.2 Million Undisclosed
    May 2015 Angel Undisclosed Undisclosed

    MeraEvents – Startup Challenges

    A year before Naidu actually rolled out the portal, he was marketing it actively. He even spoke about it at the events he attended. People appreciated his idea, giving positive response. This activity affirmed that the path he was going on was a viable one. Initial sales remained tepid on account of an immature market. Event organizers weren’t averse to publishing their events on the portal; they weren’t fully inclined to own the process. Most of the times, they would fail to intimate MeraEvents about event changes which created problems in smooth execution. Many of the event organizers weren’t very tech savvy, and the MeraEvents team would publish the events for them in the beginning. Thus, the onus on the team was high in the initial days.

    On top of that, there were troubles with the payment gateways and their limited numbers. Transaction failure rates through gateways were high. Initially, the portal used the EBS payment gateway and one other. Today, multiple payment gateways like PayUMoney and Citrus, and wallets such as Freecharge, Oxigen, etc. are being used by MeraEvents. In short, initial market penetration was time and effort consuming.

    MeraEvents – Competitors

    MeraEvents.com is currently one of India’s leading 360-degree event technology solutions provider. It competes with Explara and BookMyShow.

    Read more: Who are the competitors of Little app?

    MeraEvents – Partnership And Tie-Ups

    In 2015, MeraEvents announced its partnership with Percept Live Pvt. Ltd, a media and communications firm. The deal size is approximately $10 million worth of transactions on the company’s platform.

    According to the partnership, MeraEvents will offer end-to-end event technology solutions, for managing the online and offline ticketing. Along with it, they will provide ground management of entry of attendees at upcoming events of Percept Live across India.

    Read more: Success story of Jugnoo

    MeraEvents – Growth

    MeraEvents has grown to 60 people working from Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Gurgaon. About 80% of its revenues comes from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune, and the NCR. It sells around 1000-15000 tickets in a day on an average, translating to ticket sales of around INR 3-4 lakhs a day. MeraEvents is selling close to INR 1 Cr worth of tickets per month at the moment and expects this to grow in the coming years.

    MeraEvents is witnessing more than 200% growth YOY with the addition of 1000+ new events every month. The company powered 10,000+ events during 2013-14.

    MeraEvents – Future Plans

    The company will use its funding to expanding its reach to other cities, accelerate product growth and innovation, and invest in additional sales and marketing resources.

    MeraEvents – Founder’s Advice

    “Have a holistic plan and talk to someone who can give blatant opinions before you start implementing it. Be open and flexible and take a look at market demands while running the business”, says Chennapa.

  • Zilli’s – Zero Preservative Dehydrated Vegetable Powders

    India is the world’s largest producer of fruits and vegetables, with barely 10% penetration into the food processing industry. Thus, resulting in a lot of wastage of the fresh produce every single year. Besides, the farmers also struggle to get reasonable prices for their produce. Many times, due to lack of visibility and access to the right market, they either have to sell their produce at throwaway prices or simply just let it rot in the open. Hence, there is need for more and more startups venturing into the food processing sector.

    Hyderabad based Zilli’s (formerly Kitchen D’lite)  is a startup that has made a move in this direction. The startup is manufacturing dehydrated vegetable powders, thus not only reducing waste of vegetables by increasing its shelf life, but also making cooking easy and dishes interesting.

    Startup Name Zilli’s(formerly Kitchen D’lite)
    Headquarter Hyderabad
    Sector FMCG
    Founders Anubhav Bhatnagar
    Founded May 2018
    Parent Organization M/S BNB Foods

    About Kitchen D’lite and How it Works
    Dehydrated Vegetables Market
    Founders of Kitchen D’lite and team
    How was Kitchen D’lite Started
    Kitchen D’lite – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Kitchen D’lite – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Kitchen D’lite – User Acquisition
    Kitchen D’lite – Startup Challenges
    Kitchen D’lite – Funding and Investors
    Kitchen D’lite – Future Plans

    About Kitchen D’lite and How it Works

    Zilli’s (formerly Kitchen D’lite)  is a Hyderabad based startup that is into the food processing sector. The company deals in dehydrated vegetable powders and blends. Their products are made using fresh vegetables while ensuring that all the goodness of fresh vegetables remains intact. These products can be used in everyday cooking as a direct replacement for fresh vegetables.

    Onion and garlic are staple ingredients in almost every recipe. But, peeling and chopping of onion and garlic could be a tiresome and time-consuming process. Lest, the onion tears, and the smelly hands. Similar is the case for all other vegetables. In addition, with the change in lifestyle and the busy schedules, there is a dire need for solutions that make cooking faster while also taking care of the health requirements. Zilli’s dehydrated powders attempt to make cooking easier and faster for the Indian homes. These products are especially very useful when making curries, gravies, soups, dips, frying batters, in baking, smoothies, and juices.

    Zilli’s has collaborated with manufacturers who get their supply of raw materials directly from the farmers, thus eliminating the middlemen in the supply chain. This in turn empowers the farmers to get access to the end market and demand competitive prices for their produce.

    Zilli’s vegetable powders can be used in varied ways–

    • Bake into loaves of bread and vegetables
    • Blend into sauces, green juices and smoothies
    • Shake them into vegetable juices, and salad dressings
    • Sprinkle onto salads, eggs, roasted vegetables, pasta etc
    • Stir into dips, soups, sauces, curries, gravies, casseroles, and stews

    The products Zilli’s Offers are-

    • Garlic Powder
    • Red onion Powder
    • Tomato Powder
    • Ginger Powder
    • Green Chilly Powder
    • Tamarind Powder

    Zilli’s also has two blends in its product catalog –

    1. Kolkata Jhal Muri (Murmura/Puffed Rice) Masala– Jhal Muri is a staple snack in the eastern part of the country, specifically in West Bengal. It’s murmura/puffed rice with chopped onions, green chilies, coriander leaves, coconut, peanuts mixed in a very small quantity of mustard oil, and blended with the goodness of spices which makes it a very tasty and healthy snack.

    2. Lemon Tea Masala– This Blend was launched with the idea to give that instant energy boost and freshness to ones’ body and mind. All you have to do is add a teaspoon of this masala to your freshly brewed tea (sugar/honey optional), and the tangy, salty lemon tea is ready to give that instant dose of energy.

    The USPs of Zilli’s are:

    • 100% Natural
    • 100% Pure
    • Vegan
    • No Preservatives
    • No added flavors
    • Gluten-Free
    • Shelf life of 12 to 18 months
    • Premium Export Quality
    • Ready-to-use

    We have never compromised on the quality of our products and our packaging, and that showed in the positive feedback that we were receiving from our customers.

    Relevant Read: Spoonshot – Leveraging Artificial Intelligence To Predict Food Trends

    Dehydrated Vegetables Market

    The global market for dehydrated vegetables registered the revenue worth US$ 54,241.9M in 2017, which is likely to exceed US$ 90,636.0M by the end of 2028.

    Future Market Insights expects the dehydrated vegetable market to observe stable growth at a promising CAGR of 4.8% over the 10-year assessment period, 2018-2028. While dehydrated vegetables within developed regions such as North America and Europe have been consistently registering significant consumption volumes, those within the emerging economies have moderate growth. However, the forecast period is expected to experience attractive growth rates in the case of developing countries due to growing awareness among consumers and increasing demand for dehydrated vegetables from households.

    There has been a drastic change in lifestyle, and people are becoming busier than ever. They are consistently looking for options that save their time and makes their life easier while not compromising on their health. In a scenario like this, there is immense potential for Zilli’s products. We want to tap on this opportunity and make our brand a household name – says Anubhav

    Founders of Kitchen D’lite and team

    Anubhav Bhatnagar is the Founder of Kitchen D’lite. He is an XLRI alumnus and a first-generation entrepreneur with 6+ years of experience in Business Development. Like every other freshly graduated IT engineer, he started his career as a Software Engineer with Virtusa Consultancy Services Pvt Ltd. But that never gave him any satisfaction; hence, he started selling Lassi part-time. With learnings from his lassi shop, he started his new venture Sweetfrost.in with his friend that dealt in online delivery of cakes and gifts in Hyderabad and in 6 months of time, expanded his venture to cities of Bhopal, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, and Indore.

    Realizing that scalability and profitability was an issue and both the partners being involved only part-time, he moved out of this to start something full-time. Being the experimental entrepreneur that he was, he ventured into SMSGrid.com that provided Bulk SMS and Digital Marketing services to customers. The start-up was growing aggressively, but the fall-out between the partners caused his exit. With little savings that he was left with, he started Kitchen D’lite in the summer of May 2018, and there has been no looking back ever since.

    How was Kitchen D’lite Started

    The idea for Kitchen D’lite got initiated right from Anubhav’s kitchen. While Anubhav loved cooking,  he found the process of chopping onions and peeling garlic quite boring and time consuming.

    I love cooking and often cook at home. One such day I was making lunch for my wife and me, I was preparing a curry which required a good quantity of onions and garlic. Now while onions and garlic add a lot of flavor to the curries and like a lot of homes, these are the two staple ingredients in my kitchen; but the process of chopping onions and peeling garlic is not a very pleasant experience.

    Anubhav  got curious to understand if such an experience is unique to his own self or if its an everyone’s problem. Initially, Anubhav spoke to people immediately next to him- his wife, mother, mother-in-law, and a couple of his friends to understand their experiences in the kitchen. As he realized that all of them had a similar experience, Anubhav started researching over the internet on possible solutions. One of the alternatives available in the market is garlic and onion paste by numerous brands. However, there is extensive use of preservatives in these products to increase their shelf life. This adulteration makes these products an unsustainable idea in the increasingly health-conscious society.

    Anubhav further delved into the research, and finally, he came across food processing that keeps the natural essence of the products intact with no use of preservatives. With further studies, he acquainted himself with the concept of dehydration of food products and its innumerable benefits.

    Anubhav to better understand the concept of dehydration of food, started experimenting at home using a microwave oven. Though he had multiple failed attempts, finally, he was able to successfully dehydrate garlic and onion and powder them. On trying them on his home cooked curries, Anubhav found that the results were amazing and the curries tasted even better with the powdered garlic and onion.

    The first persons to validate the product were Anubhav’s own family members. Anubhav sent home-made samples to his parents, in-laws, and friends, and the feedback was positive! This made Anubhav to formally initiate the journey of Kitchen D’lite. The initial products offered by Kitchen D’lite were red onion powder and garlic powder.

    Relevant Read: Lo! Foods – An Option to Be Healthy While Eating Your Favorite Food

    The company has kept the name simple and easy to remember. As Anubhav narrates,

    With our product category of dehydrated vegetable powders being relatively new in the market, we were sure that we did not want any fancy name or tagline for our brand. We wanted a simple name and tagline that would be easy to read and spell would immediately connect with the customers and would talk about the usability of our products.

    Kitchen D'lite Logo
    Kitchen D’lite Logo

    Zilli’s(formerly Kitchen D’lite) tagline is ‘Makes Cooking Easier’

    Having such a simple name and tagline has helped Kitchen D’lite immensely as the customers could immediately connect the brand name with their own lives.

    Kitchen D’lite – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Zilli’s follows a simple B2C model of business. Initially, when Kitchen D’lite launched its products in the month of August 2018 on Amazon India with a minimal investment of Rs. 30,000, they sold barely 20 units in the first month of launch. But they scaled up gradually and steadily to selling 1500 units within six months of launch. Kitchen D’lite’s products have been ranked as Best Sellers in their category ever since. In addition to Amazon India, its products are also sold on Flipkart.com, Qtrove.com, and Kitchendlite.com

    Currently, 70 percent of Kitchen D’lite revenue comes from selling its products on the e-commerce platforms. Twenty-five percent of the revenue comes from export, where they provide services like bulk export and private labeling. The remaining 5 percent comes from bulk purchases in national B2B like food startups, hotels, and restaurants. Moreover, the startup also displays its products in B2C exhibitions across India, which gives them a platform to interact and sell its products directly to the customers.

    Kitchen D’lite – User Acquisition

    As Kitchen D’lite is a startup venturing into a relatively new market of dehydrated vegetable powders, it was essential for the company to educate the customers of the benefits of using such products; besides popularizing its product in the market.

    For intense and influential marketing Kitchen D’lite has used platforms like Facebook and Instagram Ads, Digital Marketing and Google Adwords. Influential marketing worked best for Kitchen D’lite. The company has associated with food bloggers and home chefs who would try various recipes using its products and provide feedback to their followers. This route provided the required credibility to Kitchen D’lite products in the market and increased its reach among the customers.

    Prior to launching the services on Amazon India, Kitchen D’lite started by selling its products on its Facebook page, WhatsApp, and its website. The company has got its first order through their Facebook page. Once the company moved onto e-commerce websites like Amazon India, there has been looking back ever since. Kitchen D’lite acquired its initial customers within two months of launch. The company is operating on a lean model and its focus is to acquire customers organically.

    Since we started our venture on a lean model, we were more focused on growing our customer base organically. We started receiving some 10 percent of our orders organically. We spend around Rs. 10,000 – Rs. 12,000 to acquire the first 100 customers as we were targeting low cost but effective marketing tools. It gives me immense pride to mention that today, almost 30 percent of our orders come from repeat customers. – quoted Anubhav

    Kitchen D’lite – Startup Challenges

    As Kitchen D’lite is venturing into a relatively new concept of dehydrated vegetable powders, the major challenge was to educate the prospective customers about the benefits of its products. Quite often company came across customers queries like, “Why would I go for these powders when I can buy fresh vegetables from the market,” “I prefer using fresh rather than these powders,” “My cook will not be interested in using such products.” Most of them would not understand how to use these products; some would find it difficult to believe that in spite of not having any preservatives, it has a long shelf life of 12 to 18 months.

    However, influencer marketing helped the startup overcome this challenge to a large extent.

    We did not want any paid feedback. We were looking for food bloggers and home chefs who would try our products in their everyday recipes and give us genuine feedback, whether good or bad. We wanted to take that risk, also because we were confident about the quality of our products and we use them in our kitchen. A lot of research went in picking the right influencers. We were not looking for the number of followers they had, rather we were more focused on the quality of their content and that they would be willing to do this without any commercials involved.

    Kitchen D’lite – Funding and Investors

    The company is currently bootstrapped.

    Relevant Read: Why and How PaperBoat was Started

    Kitchen D’lite – Future Plans

    Shortly, Kitchen D’lite aims to introduce an entire range of dehydrated vegetable and fruit powders so that its customers get a more extensive range of catalog to choose from. Moreover, they are also consistently working towards introducing many more exciting blends that will promote a much healthier lifestyle. Over the long term, Kitchen D’lite aims to make a household name not just in India but also globally.

    We are extremely inspired by the success story of the brand ID, that started with the simple idea of selling idli and dosa batter so that they could save the women from the trouble of making the batter at home. This simple idea of theirs brought convenience and change in the life of millions of women. This was their innovation! We believe that it’s not always the big things that count, we can bring innovation in very small and simple things as well. It’s about solving the problems nearer to home and bringing a change. Success will automatically fall in place.

    Zilli’s(formerly Kitchen D’lite) is a step towards making cooking easy and saving your time. We bring to you onion and garlic powder for your daily kitchen recipes. It is 100% natural with no preservatives. We work very closely with our partners and manufacturers to ensure that every product is genuinely natural ans is of highest quality, with no loss of major nutrients.

  • UENI: Building Online Presence For Businesses

    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.

    The number of internet users is witnessing a rapid growth. According to Global Digital 2019 reports, internet users are growing by an average of more than 1 million new users every day since January, 2018. As per the report, there are currently 4.39 billion internet users. People now resort to the internet for availing goods and services. This calls for every business to have an online presence to thrive.

    According to GoDaddy, 6 out of 10 small businesses do not have an online presence. Many small businesses either have constraints (time or monetary) or lack of know-how which hampers them from creating online presence. This leads to a loss of revenue as these small businesses fail to attract a huge chunk of potential customers that look for their services and products online.

    To solve this problem, UENI, a London based startup has come up with the plan of making websites affordable for businesses. UENI was founded in 2014 by Christine Telyan and Anh Pham Vu. UENI is one of its kind free website builder. The venture is now offering its services in India as well.

    We interviewed UENI co-founder Christine Telyan to understand how UENI helps small and medium sized organizations get their business online.

    Startup Name UENI
    Headquarter London
    Founders Christine Telyan And Anh Pham Vu
    Sector Business Services
    Founded 2014
    Parent Organization UENI Limited

    UENI – About
    UENI – Industry Details
    UENI – Founders
    UENI – The Idea And Starting Up
    UENI – Launch
    UENI – Name And Logo
    UENI – Business And Revenue Model
    UENI – Funding
    UENI – Customer Acquisition
    UENI – Challenges
    UENI – Competitors
    UENI – Awards And Achievements

    UENI – About

    UENI is a website builder service that provides low-cost, ready-made web presence specifically designed for micro and small businesses. It enables them to get discovered, exude professionalism, seek new customers, and grow their business. The customer only needs to spend a few minutes to signup and launch their website for no cost whatsoever. UENI also takes care of the hosting requirements by providing free website hosting.

    UENI differs from both ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) website builders and digital agencies offering bespoke solutions. The DIY solutions require the business owner to spare some time for deciding on the information to be displayed, the text to be written, the visuals and graphics to be included, and the overall design. UENI recognizes that not everyone has the time or skills needed to design and populate a rich, high-performing website and then manage it. Moreover, business owners typically struggle to publish their up-to-date websites on key channels that matter for getting discovered online such as Google My Business and Google Maps. UENI does this for every business that signs up.

    Unlike bespoke agencies, UENI offers the basic website free and from there, it offers additional services at a minimal cost.

    With UENI, customers receive a website which contains information pertaining to what customers search for when looking for local businesses online. UENI boosts the organization’s impact online through affordable online marketing, keeping the business’s information listings updated on 20+ high-traffic platforms, maps, and social media sites.  

    We saw that the biggest pain points for small business owners were that they don’t have much time to build their online presence, they don’t have much money to spend on digital advertising, and they don’t want to deal with the complexity of getting online today. So we built something specifically for small business owners – Christine

    UENI – Industry Details

    According to the latest World Trade Report by the World Trade Organization, micro firms—businesses with less than 10 employees—constitute the majority of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME’s) in almost every country. Moreover, 85% of the micro firms operate in the services sector. These businesses rely heavily on word-of-mouth to advertise and reaching out to new customers is often slow and difficult to scale using this method. UENI focuses on MSMEs that need help getting extra exposure by going online and appearing in local search engine results.

    It is impossible to establish the total market size due to the fact that unregistered businesses (self-employed and independent workers) are several times more than the registered ones. For example, in India in 2007, there were fewer than 1.6 million registered MSMEs and 26 million unregistered MSMEs; that is about 17 unregistered MSMEs for every registered one according to an IFC report.

    Historically these business owners had only two options. The first is do-it-yourself website builders, which require the business to invest both time and money to create a website with very little or no external help, yielding unsatisfactory results.

    The second option is digital agencies which are able to accommodate any sort of requirement but have a prohibitive cost for a micro or small business in most cases.

    However, with UENI, small businesses have a third and much better option of getting a ready-made website at no cost.

    UENI – Founders

    Christine Telyan and Anh Pham Vu are the founders of UENI.

    UENI co-founder Christine Telyan is a graduate from the London School of Economics and the Harvard Business School. She previously worked as an oil trader and established new trading flows in the European and Asian markets.  

    Anh Pham Vu is an MBA from Harvard and speaks 12 languages! He was a senior director at a major European Private Equity Fund and prior to that, a management consultant. His experience includes investing in tech companies, building business plans, leading operational and IT carve-out teams, and serving as a board member of portfolio companies.  

    UENI has an international team of 45 people based out of the UK, Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

    UENI Team

    UENI – The Idea And Starting Up

    It all started with an agonizing toothache. Anh was in Paris and suddenly, a terrible toothache bothered him. He did not know any local dentist and had no idea where to find one. This experience, though horrible, was a blessing in disguise. Anh and his wife Christine realized how having online presence was beneficial for both small businesses and customers. A lot of consumers were present online but not the vendors/service providers.

    So, UENI began with a mission to help individuals who lack choice when looking for web designing and hosting services online today.

    We realized that it was important to get more businesses online (first across Europe and then globally) so that they could be discovered. This would benefit the independent business owners, who are central to local communities, and the consumers searching for the cheapest, nearest, or best rated local business.  

    UENI – Launch

    UENI had a humble launch.

    UENI was launched from the living room of our house in early 2015. Everyone was using our coffee machine and dining room table –

    In 2015, UENI app was launched to allow end users find, compare, and book the cheapest, nearest or best-rated local business provider. UENI partnered with communities (like fitness centers) to help propagate its ‘local search engine’. Today, UENI is a B2B solution to get small businesses online with services like creation of a basic website free of cost with free hosting facilities. The company relies on a range of marketing channels: referrals, social media, and paid search.  

    Even as UENI’s approach shifted, the company’s mission constant—to digitize small businesses and make them discoverable. In the coming year, UENI plans to return to their original approach and launch a B2C platform to address the core customer problem that Anh and Christine identified way back in 2014: help customers discover small businesses online.    

    The name UENI is the amalgamation of ‘You and I’.

    The name UENI remains a point of interest because it is often mispronounced. You say it you – en – eye, like You & I. The name is meaningful because our business is about connecting businesses and customers, connecting you and I. Of course, we stumbled into the name unintentionally: when we first got started, it was the shortest pronounceable domain name that we could afford.

    UENI Logo

    UENI – Business And Revenue Model

    UENI operates on a freemium business model. It provides a basic service for free and prompts the user to upgrade at key moments of their business growth.  

    While the starter plan is free, UENI’s current pricing is $ 9.99 per month for the ‘basic plan’ and $ 19.99 per month for the UENI’s ‘Plus plan’. One is eligible for discount if he takes annual plans.

    UENI – Funding

    UENI has raised a total funding of ÂŁ16.6 million over 3 rounds from angel investors.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    October 2015 Seed €1.9M Angel Investors
    September 2016 Angel €9M Angel Investors
    December 2017 Angel €5.7M Angel Investors

    UENI – Customer Acquisition

    In July 2018, UENI launched a massive campaign offering a free website for every business; the customer response was immense and overwhelming!

    Together with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, we flooded the city with a bold offer: a free website for every business. During the month we ran this campaign, you could find UENI on billboards, Radio, TV, media, promotional letters and postcards and, of course, all over the internet.

    UENI is currently signing up over 600 new businesses every day worldwide and expects to reach 300,000+ users in 2019. UENI decided to scale-up the success of the campaign by expanding it to all of UK. UENI then extended its services to India and the USA in 2019.

    UENI marketing campaign

    UENI – Challenges

    Since Anh and Christine were from a non-technical background, building a technical team was a challenge for them.

    The key was really to find a few champions: people with the tenacity we had as founders, to create clear technical priorities and to drive activities in the company on the tech side to deliver what the business needs. This created the right focus and has attracted the right kind of people for a growth company.

    UENI now has developers in the UK, Czech Republic, and Ukraine.  

    Another challenge faced by the company was balancing growth by setting up the right infrastructure and managing that growth responsibly. Anh and Christine along with the tech team have to plan and work constantly to meet the growing customer demand. The UENI founders say that the traction of their product in the market has given the team energy to build the systems required to continue to grow at a remarkable speed.  

    UENI also faced challenges while pivoting from a B2C search platform to a B2B solution. The company also shifted from a direct sales model to 100% digital acquisition of customers. These transitions had to be handled tactfully as these pivots meant product, marketing, and operations requiring changes.

    The pivots were sound and the learning make what we do today a lot richer. In fact, a lot of the work done previously is the foundation for improved strategies today, but when you make these shifts it’s difficult for the company, and as founders, we needed to keep the team focused and committed to our mission which has not changed.

    UENI – Competitors

    No other product in the market offers the same service as UENI. There are automated website builders such as Wix, Weebly, oand GoDaddy that produce generic content—often not relevant for a given business—and there are web agencies that produce a highly customized albeit costly web presence. So, businesses are stuck in the middle of a time-wasting webpage and a very costly web presence not in sync with the business needs. UENI stands as the alternative: a low-cost, custom-made, quick solution that completely understands the needs of a micro/small business owner.

    UENI – Awards And Achievements

    UENI’s free websites have received positive reviews from many small business owners. UENI has been shortlisted for the 2019 Customer Service Excellence Awards in the category ‘Best Customer Engagement’.

  • Visualr: Simplifying Data Visualization

    Data is the new oil but it’s worth only when you can squeeze useful information from it. While every other person talks about data, very few know how to analyse and use it. No organization can exist without data; a company needs to make data-driven decisions to be successful. There are hundreds of business intelligence tools and dashboards in the market to help companies segregate and analyze the data received from various sources. Unfortunately, only a small number of them are easy to comprehend and utilize, especially from a layman point of view.

    Visualr Software began with the vision of making data visualization easy for all, big or small, so that no business is robbed of the plethora of insights hidden under huge datasets. StartupTalky interviewed Visualr Software founder Mr. Kunal Chaturvedi to learn more about the idea behind the company, its existing challenges, growth trajectory, future plans, and more.

    Startup Name Visualr Software
    Headquarter Gurugram
    Founder Name Kunal Chaturvedi
    Sector Enterprise Software
    Founded 2014
    Parent Organisation StepOut Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

    Visualr Software – About
    Visualr Software – Industry Details
    Visualr Software – Founder
    Visualr Software – The Idea And Launch
    Visualr Software – Name And Logo
    Visualr Software – Customer Acquisition
    Visualr Software – Challenges
    Visualr Software – Funding
    Visualr Software – Advisors And Mentors
    Visualr Software – Awards
    Visualr Software – Founder’s Productivity Hacks
    Visualr Software – Founder’s Advice
    Visualr Software – Future Plans

    Visualr is a data visualization solution that makes data more meaningful and comprehensible for businesses. Visualr enables businesses to connect with multiple data sources. With Visualr, businesses can connect with MS Excel, My SQL, MS SQL, Oracle, and even flat file databases easily and quickly—generating useful business intelligence and stats. Visualr can also fetch data from Twitter and Google Analytics through exposed APIs. By using Visualr, data can be presented creatively through graphics and can be seamlessly shared with others.

    Our eyes are more responsive to lines, graphs, and colors when compared to tabular data. Visualr dashboard takes advantage of this and is designed such way that users understand trends and patterns in seconds, allowing them to take rational decisions quickly and derive conclusions. The user-friendly data analytics platform is available in two versions: on-cloud and on-premise.

    Visualr comes with the following benefits:

    • It is a self-service data analytics platform bundled with built-in SQL and NO-SQL database connectors.
    • Time for installation and setting up Visualr is less than two minutes.
    • Visualr doesn’t have a “data engine”, rendering hardware requirements to minimum. It is a browser-based tool independent of the type of machine used to access it.
    • Visualr is easy to use. An hour’s training suffices for a newbie.
    • It has a subscription based model permitting organization to adopt it with no large upfront cost.

    Currently, Visualr is being incubated by Huddle, a sector-agnostic incubator and co-working space based in Gurugram.

    Every resource in an organisation should have access to data for better and quick decision making – Kunal

    Visualr Software – Industry Details

    The self-service Business Intelligence (BI) and data visualization market was valued at USD 4.51 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach USD 7.76 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 9.47% over the forecast period 2018-2023. North America is the largest market for business intelligence in the world. The United States is the major shareholder in the North American region. In Canada, which was relatively stable during the recessionary period, the gains are more visible.

    Visualr Software – Founder

    Visualr Software founder Kunal Chaturvedi is a passionate entrepreneur who quit his plush 9-5 job to follow his dreams and explore avenues. Coming from humble beginnings in Agra, Kunal Chaturvedi is an electrical engineer by qualification.

    He earned accolades and awards for his short stint in the automobile Industry where he worked on various projects for companies like Nissan UK, Tata Motors India, and Mahindra & Mahindra India to name a few. With a knack for taking challenges head-on, he has contributed in milestone projects like Tata Nano and Mahindra Xylo (both are firsts in their respective segment) in the past. Kunal is a voracious reader and likes to read books on philosophy and autobiographies of his inspirations.

    Read More: Indian Startup Founder Inspiring Quotes

    Visualr Software – The Idea And Launch

    Organizations generate data with each passing second and considering the complexity and economics involved in existing BI solutions, these institutions aren’t able to leverage their data to the fullest. Visualr was the bridge to this gap.

    Kunal understood from the market that people needed to see trends and patterns from their own data, let alone third party data. Suggestions and other insights expected from a BI solution are secondary in nature. They decided to serve the topmost requirement of a business when it comes to data—an appealing and comprehensible Dashboard.

    The feedback received from the first few users of Visualr prototype motivated the team to go ahead with the idea and convert it into a full fledged BI Solution.

    Visualr is an abbreviation of Visualizer. The company’s elevator pitch reads as: ‘Revealing Business Potential by Making Data Visualization Easy‘.

    Visualr Logo

    Visualr Software – Customer Acquisition

    The Visualr team worked hard to convince initial clients to use their product and gradually gained traction through word of mouth publicity from these users. Through an edifice of these success stories, the company was able to penetrate deeper into the market.

    The Visualr team is bullish about its mission of creating a solid consumer base resting on positive customer experiences, evident by its existing clientele.

    Visualr sees itself  more as a customer problem-centric organization than a technology-centric entity. The company strives to solve business problems by all means, be it technology or through simple hacks.

    In terms of competition, we are always keen to learn new development in the Data world so we study a lot of data analytics startup as well as big giants – Says Kunal

    Read More: 8 Ways to Toggle SaaS Customer Retention

    Visualr Software – Challenges

    The most challenging thing is keeping the entire team motivated during the low phase, when you need maximum support to keep yourself motivated for a new day. Keep on fighting for one more time. Also, it was tough to get rejection every other day from the prospects. There were doubts and down times but Kept sailing. – Kunal said

    Read More: Propstory – Data-Driven Platform for Real Estate Buyers and Investors

    Visualr Software – Funding

    The company is bootstrapped and looking to raise funds soon.

    Visualr Software – Advisors And Mentors

    Mr. Subinder Khurrana is serving as advisor as well as mentor to Visualr. Subinder has more than twenty years of startup experience and founded the NASSCOM DeepTech Club. He also sits on the Board of Members of TiE Delhi.

    Visualr Software – Awards

    • Visualr was recognized by Finance Online for best User Experience Award, and received the Rising Star Award in Data Analytics domain.
    • Top 50 Startup by MSME.
    • Top 200 Startup by RISE Conference in 2017.  

    Visualr Software – Founder’s Productivity Hacks

    Kunal emphasizes on the importance of discipline.

    Discipline is the only way you can manage things. Discipline should be your lifestyle. Your daily routine, your work ethics and your interaction with the outer world.

    Kunal also believes in the power of follow up. According to him, follow up is the biggest tool one can use effectively to complete tasks. Introspection is not to be forgotten!  

    Visualr Software – Founder’s Advice

    Focus on the business problem. Learn business first. Technology is just a tool to solve a business problem effectively.

    Visualr Software – Future Plans

    The company spent the last 15-18 months in understanding BI adoption behavior in the market. The primary focus now is on revenue and profitability.  In 2019, the company has decided on a customer acquisition target for the first time. It is focusing on a million dollar ARR before the end of 2022.  Strategic Markets are India (home), North America, and SEA.

    The Visualr team envisages Visualr as a global company bridging the gaps in the industry, solving specific business problems through data analytics with minimal dependency on IT skills.