Tag: 📄Company Profiles

  • OpenAI – The Creator of Revolutionary ChatGPT

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

    Today, artificial intelligence is being incorporated into practically every device and application, from self-driving automobiles to vital life-saving medical equipment. The approaching digital era will undoubtedly include key breakthrough elements, including artificial intelligence (AI).

    Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, International Business Machines Corporation, and Microsoft are just a few of the IT behemoths making significant investments in AI advancement and research. These businesses are attempting to increase the usability of AI for business applications. Additionally, many businesses use artificial intelligence to enhance client service.

    A startup called OpenAI offers services for AI development and implementation. It creates artificial general intelligence (AGI), which enables autonomous systems to perform better at important tasks than humans.

    OpenAI: Company Highlights

    Company Name OpenAI
    Headquarters San Francisco, CA
    Industry Artificial Intelligence
    Founders Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, John Schulman
    Founded On December 11, 2015
    Website www.openai.com

    OpenAI- About
    OpenAI – Industry
    OpenAI – Founders and Team
    OpenAI – Startup Story
    OpenAI – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    OpenAI – Mission, and Vision
    OpenAI – Business Model
    OpenAI – Revenue Model
    OpenAI – Funding and Investors
    OpenAI – Investment
    OpenAI – Product And Service
    OpenAI – Partnership
    OpenAI – Acquisition
    OpenAI – Competitors
    OpenAI – Future Plans

    OpenAI- About

    OpenAI was started as a non-profit (now for-profit) artificial general intelligence research company. To make sure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humankind, OpenAI is a provider of an artificial intelligence-based development and research framework.

    Clients may quickly acquire skills and develop expertise in AI technologies thanks to the company’s platform, which directly contributes to the development of secure and effective general AI and offers an open-source environment that is easily accessible to people.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) models for general-purpose activities including writing, reading, programming, and image processing are developed, maintained, and trained by OpenAI. The firm was founded with the intention of studying all-purpose AI technology that may be used for routine jobs. It seeks to provide new, transparent, and safe solutions to enhance human existence.

    OpenAI has created AI that has been programmed to compete with itself in a game of hide and seek. Apart from the fact that the hiders are expected to stay out of the line of sight of the seekers and the seekers are meant to keep the hiders in their vision, the AI was given training without any explicit planned objectives.

    As the seekers began to discover new tactics to complete their objectives, the hiders finally mastered the ability to locate items and employ them to obstruct the seekers. Auto-curriculum produced an emergence in strategies. According to the business, these multi-agent dynamics may produce sophisticated behavior that is comparable to human behavior.

    Additionally, OpenAI has an algorithm that converts spoken words into code. It is capable of executing complicated instructions involving layered activities and is adept in a number of computer languages. You may construct any sort of software application with Codex, developed by OpenAI.

    OpenAI Codex Live Demo

    The organization is concentrating on long-term research, tackling issues that call for fundamental improvements in AI capabilities. OpenAI seeks to affect the circumstances surrounding the development of artificial general intelligence by leading the industry.

    The foundation of OpenAI was the conviction that the first AGIs would have an influence that would be much beyond that of earlier AI technologies.

    OpenAI – Industry

    The global artificial intelligence market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 36.2% in order to reach 407.0 billion USD by 2027. The major growth drivers during the forecast period fall under the categories of data-based AI, advancements in deep learning, and the need to achieve robotic autonomy in order to stay competitive in the global market.

    The primary restraint on market growth is the limited number of AI technology experts available. Other challenges include topics like data privacy and the unreliability of AI algorithms. With the adoption of AI, customer service can be improved to a great extent. Its benefit can also be seen in the operational efficiency of the manufacturing industry.

    The rise in demand for an intelligent system to enhance efficiency and productivity is propelling the growth of the global artificial intelligence market. Technological advancements in the AI industry, such as faster speech and natural language processing, are positively impacting the growth of the AI market.

    The above graph shows an estimated amount global artificial intelligence market from 2021-2030 in billion US dollars
    The above graph shows an estimated amount global artificial intelligence market from 2021-2030 in billion US dollars

    OpenAI – Founders and Team

    In 2015, OpenAI was established by the efforts of Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba in San Francisco, California.

    Elon Musk

    Elon Musk
    Elon Musk

    Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk is renowned for being the founder of high-tech businesses that are inspired by science fiction. He founded PayPal, invested in Tesla, Inc. in its early stages, and served as its CEO. He also served as SpaceX’s founder, CEO, and chief engineer. He is also the CEO of Twitter.

    After establishing four billion-dollar businesses (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City), Elon Musk is frequently regarded as one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

    However, many believe that at his heart, Musk was always an engineer, innovator, and developer before becoming an entrepreneur. He has received praise for his ability to identify design inadequacies, defects, and missteps in some of the technologies on which society depends.

    Musk co-founded and co-chaired the charity OpenAI in 2015, with the organization’s declared goal being the advancement of artificial intelligence for the betterment of humanity.

    The research firm has made it a priority to keep artificial intelligence open and accessible and to make sure it doesn’t wind up in the hands of a privileged few businesses. In 2018, Musk resigned from the OpenAI board to prevent any conflicts with his position as Tesla’s CEO. Tesla has now entered the AI space with its Autopilot product.

    Ilya Sutskever

    Ilya Sutskever
    Ilya Sutskever

    Ilya Sutskever, who was born on January 1st, 1986, is a computer scientist working in machine learning and currently serving as co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI. In the area of deep learning, he has made a number of important advances.

    Greg Brockman

    Greg Brockman
    Greg Brockman

    OpenAI’s co-founder and chairman, Greg Brockman, previously served as CTO of Stripe, a well-known Silicon Valley firm.

    Sam Altman

    Sam Altman
    Sam Altman

    Sam Altman is an American businessman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, former co-founder and CEO of Loopt, and co-founder of Hydrazine Capital. Previously, Sam Altman was also the president of Y Combinator. Sam Altman was let go from the company on November 17, 2023. Mira Murati took over as CEO, but she was later replaced by Emmett Shear, who was the CEO of the company. Sam Altman has again joined the company as CEO on November 24, 2023.

    Wojciech Zaremba

    Wojciech Zaremba
    Wojciech Zaremba

    Wojciech Zaremba is a Polish mathematician and computer scientist who co-founded OpenAI in 2016 and now oversees the Codex research and language teams. The teams are currently developing GPT-3 successors and building AI that creates computer code, respectively.

    OpenAI – Startup Story

    Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other investors announced the creation of OpenAI in December 2015 and committed over US$1 billion to the project. The company declared that by publishing its patents and research, it would “freely interact” with other organizations and researchers.

    The public beta of “OpenAI Gym,” a platform for reinforcing research areas from OpenAI, was made available on April 27, 2016. On December 5, 2016, OpenAI announced “Universe,” which is a platform for developing and testing artificial intelligence and general intelligence throughout the world’s supply of websites, games, and other applications.

    OpenAI changed its status from non-profit to “capped” for-profit in 2019, with a 100X profit limitation across all investments. In addition to partnering with Microsoft Corporation, which announced a US$1 billion investment package in the firm, the company awarded shares to its employees.

    Then, OpenAI stated that Microsoft would be its preferred partner in a commercial licensing agreement for its technologies. OpenAI is a research organization that has 60 engineers and researchers committed to advancing and enhancing the organization’s goals and objectives.

    They concentrate on thorough study, tackling issues that call for fundamental improvements in AI technologies. OpenAI seeks to affect the circumstances surrounding the development of AGI by leading the field.

    The greatest method to forecast the future, according to Alan Kay, is to create it. The group intends to gradually spend the $1 billion in supported commitments since it is concerned with how AGI is developed.

    OpenAI – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    OpenAI logo
    OpenAI logo

    As stated above, OpenAI directly contributes to the development of secure and effective general AI and offers an “open-source” environment that is easily accessible to people, showing how its name is derived.

    OpenAI – Mission, and Vision

    OpenAI mission
    OpenAI mission

    OpenAI’s mission statement says, “The company aims to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

    The goal of OpenAI is to create a safe and secure AGI and make sure that its advantages are shared as broadly and equally as possible. With the conviction that the first AGIs would have an influence far greater than that of earlier AI breakthroughs, OpenAI was formed.

    OpenAI – Business Model

    OpenAI operates on a freemium basis. Users are first given free tokens on their accounts, which have a three-month expiration date and may be used to access the OpenAI API. However, in order to continue utilizing the API once users exhaust those tokens or go beyond the free review time, a premium subscription must be obtained.

    OpenAI encourages participation by first granting users quick access to the majority of the API functionality. Developers are urged to use its API for their projects, and its dashboard gives them access to essential management tools.

    Due to the inadequacy of its first non-profit strategy for expansion, OpenAI became a limited-profit corporation named OpenAI LP. However, current OpenAI users and open-source contributors began to have second thoughts about this shift toward a commercialized framework.

    Because OpenAI requires such high levels of processing, the firm frequently uses infrastructure from third parties. The company’s current income sources could not be sufficient to build a cloud computing network of the size necessary to meet its long-term objectives. Therefore, OpenAI currently depends on venture capital financing.


    What is a Business Model? | Types of Business Models | StartupTalky
    Ever wonder how businesses work? What goes on behind-the-scenes? How Google makes money? Every business follows a certain style of business model. Read on.


    OpenAI – Revenue Model

    OpenAI Website
    OpenAI Website

    There are two distinct revenue sources for OpenAI. These are the token and API costs.

    API Fees

    Users who register on the OpenAI website and create an account receive free tokens worth $18 that are good for up to three months. The tokens must be replaced whenever they run out or expire. OpenAI currently uses a pay-as-you-go model.

    Access to OpenAI’s models is subject to a range of fees. Ada has a $0.0004 training cost and a $0.0016 use cost. These rates are determined using a base unit of 1,000 tokens, or around 750 words.

    A quota is given to each user. Once a user writes an application and submits it for evaluation, usage quotas are modified. Users can also ask for a higher quota.

    Token Fees

    Users require tokens in order to utilize OpenAI’s DALL.E text-to-image converter. In the first month, users receive 50 credits, and in each subsequent month, they receive an additional 15 credits for free. Four photos can be produced from one question using one credit.

    Additional credits are expensive. For $15, OpenAI offers 115 credits that may be used to create 460 pictures. Professionals and enthusiasts use more tokens since they frequently alter the system’s default outcomes by reentering them.

    OpenAI – Funding and Investors

    OpenAI has raised $11.3 billion in funds in a total of 8 rounds, which are listed below.

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Aug 14, 2023 Secondary Market
    Apr 28, 2023 Secondary Market $300M
    Jan 23, 2023 Corporate Round $10B Microsoft
    Jan 1, 2022 Secondary Market
    Jan 1, 2021 Venture Round
    Jul 23, 2019 Corporate Round $1B Microsoft
    Mar 11, 2019 Venture Round Khosla Ventures, Reid Hoffman Foundation
    Aug 22, 2016 Pre-Seed Round $120K

    OpenAI – Investment

    OpenAI has made eight overall investments, with the most recent one being calculated on September 16, 2023. The list of investments made by OpenAI is shared below.

    Date Organization Name Round Amount
    Sep 16, 2023 KudoAI Grant – KudoAI $98K
    Jul 18, 2023 American Journalism Project Grant – American Journalism Project $5M
    May 1, 2023 Oikeus.AI Non Equity Assistance
    May 1, 2023 Ava Seed Round $4.6M
    Feb 24, 2023 Acroo Labs Pre Seed Round £2.4M
    Nov 7, 2022 EdgeDB Series A $15M
    Oct 27, 2022 Descript Series C $50M

    OpenAI – Product And Service

    The business is renowned for being open to working with other institutions and academics and for keeping its patents and discoveries available to the public.

    Muse Net: Muse Net is a deep neural network that can create four-minute musical compositions with up to ten different instruments and any genre.

    The program was not created with any knowledge of music in mind; instead, it was learned by repeatedly guessing the following note in a MIDI file. The company used data from ClassicalArchives and BitMidi to train the models.

    GPT-3: Launched on May 29, 2020, by OpenAI, GPT-3 is an auto-regressive language model with 175 billion attributes. The model expands upon the 1.5 billion-parameter GPT-2 transformer-based language model that was previously created by OpenAI.

    By embracing and scaling GPT-2 features, including modified initialization, pre-normalization, and reversible tokenization, GPT-3 outperforms GPT-2. By outperforming the GPT-2 model in task-agnostic and few-shot performance, GPT-3 training can enhance upgrading language models.

    ChatGPT

    OpenAI ChatGPT
    OpenAI ChatGPT

    OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-based chatbot that can construct contracts between producers and artists and write intricate code.

    ChatGPT has gained a lot of attention from the public for its human-like, thorough responses to inquiries, and it has the potential to completely change how people use search engines by doing more than just providing links for users to sort through.

    GPT-4 Turbo

    On November 7, 2023, OpenAI launched GPT-4 Turbo, expanding the capabilities of AI through context handling and opening the door to more profound, significant user interactions.

    Assistants

    On November 6, 2023, OpenAI unveiled the Assistants API, a new API that it describes as a step toward assisting developers in creating “agent-like experiences” within their apps.

    DALL-E 3 API

    OpenAI launched text-to-image model, DALL-E 3, was initially available on ChatGPT and Bing Chat. It is currently accessible via an API with the launch of the API. With pricing starting at $0.04 per generated image, the DALL-E 3 API offers many format and quality options with resolutions ranging from 1024×1024 to 1792×1024.

    OpenAI – Partnership

    Microsoft

    The greatest AI infrastructure, models, and toolchains with Azure will be available to businesses of all sizes through a partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, enabling them to develop and test their apps.

    Snap

    In an innovative move, OpenAl and Snap, the creative parent company of Snapchat, partnered in November 2023 to bring in a new era of augmented reality (AR) experiences.

    BCG

    In order to assist customers in fully utilizing OpenAI technology and ethically applying generative AI to address even the most difficult problems, BCG has partnered with OpenAI.

    OpenAI – Acquisition

    Open AI has acquired one company to date (August 16, 2023)

    • OpenAI acquired Global Illumination on August 16, 2023, for an amount of $100 million.

    OpenAI – Competitors

    OpenAI’s competitors include DeepMind, huggingface.co, wandb.ai, deepai.org, deepdreamgenerator.com, doc.ai, Neo Cybernetica, and Sobolt.

    OpenAI – Future Plans

    OpenAI has already revolutionized the industry with its AI power to a great extent. As for the future plans of the firm, it is looking forward to increasing its collaboration with other research organizations and companies in order to extend AI-powered services.

    OpenAI is also looking forward to trying its hand at the robotics and natural language processing fields with its services. As of the current scenario, OpenAI has already partnered with major tech firms like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft in order to provide its services for their use. Continuing them for a longer period of time can also be taken as a future plan of OpenAI.

    Conclusion

    Artificial intelligence is a common word in the tech field. Relying on the same words, a research startup named OpenAI was developed in 2015 with the goal of providing a friendly environment to build safe AI and to ensure the safe and even distribution of the AI’s benefits.

    The article discusses the business model, founders, startup story, and other essential details like funding and investment in an easy-to-follow pattern.

    FAQs

    Is OpenAI free to use?

    OpenAI works on a freemium business model. That means it is free to use with a limited time period or coupons. After the expiration of the free model, a premium plan has to be purchased from them for further use.

    When did Elon Musk leave OpenAI?

    In February 2018, Elon Musk left the board of OpenAI but still remained on the list of donors.

    What programming language does OpenAI use?

    The programming language used by OpenAI is Codex, which is compatible with a number of programming languages like JavaScript, PHP, TypeScript, etc.

    How long is the OpenAI free trial?

    In the beginning, OpenAI provides tokens to its users worth $18 as a free credit that expires in the next three months.

  • Instamojo – Aiding the Indian MSME’s with Effortless Payment Gateways

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

    All of this time and generation is about making things easier, be it shopping or payment. Now, when you ought to make things easier for the consumer, it becomes imperative to make it easier for the service providers as well.

    Following the same thought, Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani, and Aditya Sengupta co-founded Instamojo in September 2012. Instamojo is a payment gateway for MSMEs that allows them to accept all kinds of payments and transfers.

    Company Name Instamojo
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector Financial Services
    Founders Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani, Aditya Sengupta
    Founded 2012
    Parent Organization Instamojo Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
    Website instamojo.com

    Instamojo – About and How It Works?
    Instamojo – Shareholding
    Instamojo – Pricing
    Instamojo – Target Market Size
    Instamojo – Founders and Team
    Instamojo – How did it start?
    Instamojo – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Instamojo – Startup Launch
    Instamojo – Competitors
    Instamojo – Funding and Investors
    Instamojo – How to Set Up Insta Mojo Online Store?
    Instamojo – How to Add Products on Instamojo Online Store?
    Instamojo – Growth
    Instamojo – Product And Service
    Instamojo – Partnership
    Instamojo – Acquistion
    Instamojo – Campaign
    Instamojo – Future Plans

    Instamojo – About and How It Works?

    Back when it was incepted in 2012, Instamojo started as a solution provider of digital payments, which has now progressively grown into a robust online payment gateway for enterprises like micro, small, and medium. So that they start, manage, and grow their businesses online.

    All in all, like most fintech startups in the country, Instamojo has turned into a full-stack digital services platform over time with the sole vision of constructively bridging the gap between MSMEs business, who find it hard to leverage and optimally use the right technology and developers in reaching out to the relevant application users.

    Instamojo has two flagship products:

    MojoCapital

    This product from Instamojo helps disperse bite-sized short-term credit loans, which are worth around $2 million. MojoCapital caters primarily to its merchants on a monthly basis, and it has shown a projected growth of 25% on a monthly basis.

    MojoXpress

    MojoXpress is often regarded as the logistics arm of Instamojo and helps MSMEs deliver their products to their respective customers. Not very surprisingly, it is touching close to 1,000 shipments per month.

    Instamojo – Pricing

    In Instagram, you can also create your free online store, where you can make changes to add products and customize your store. The online store builder has an inbuilt payment gateway where merchants can sell and manage their online store.

    Instamojo – Free Online Shopping Store

    Pricing details for the Instamojo store

    Instamojo Store Pricing
    Instamojo Store Pricing

    Instamojo – Target Market Size

    “Today, the MSME sector in India contributes to 37 percent of the country’s GDP and employs over 117 million people. The scope of growth for this sector is enormous; however, the presence of several challenges, especially the lack of knowledge on several business-specific elements, prevents this.

    A major roadblock we identified was that several MSMEs did not know where to source information. Through the mojoVersity platform, we aim to democratize knowledge transfer by making available course content that will help small business owners learn and be more aware of the nuances required to run and sustain a business,” said Sampad Swain, the founder of Instamojo.

    Instamojo – Founders and Team

    The founders of Instamojo are Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani, and Aditya Sengupta.

    Instamojo Founders - Aditya Sengupta (Left), Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani (Right)
    Instamojo Founders – Aditya Sengupta (Left), Sampad Swain, Akash Gehani (Right)
    • Sampad Swain: Since graduating from IBS Hyderabad, Swain has had his hands on quite a few startups. Before Instamojo, he co-founded DealsandYou and WanaMo.com.
    • Aditya Sengupta: After graduating from IIT Bombay, Aditya went straight into co-founding Instamojo.
    • Akash Gehani: With a dazzling MBA in finance, before co-founding Instamojo, Akash was working as a product manager at ICICI Lombard.

    Instamojo – How did it start?

    All of it started when the owner of Instamojo, Sampad, started a private video newsletter as a part of his own blog, which was named InStartup.com. For this, he would travel to various cities to interview entrepreneurs about their journeys and startups there. Soon, Sampad realized that this was an extremely difficult job and that he wasn’t getting paid.

    Still, he was quite determined to set up a stellar payment system for his side project, followed by a harsh reality check. This was when he started speaking to other similar service providers in the industry. And that’s when he realized that accepting payments was much more than just accepting payments through a portal.

    It was followed by additional steps of setting up a website, then registering the company with the authorities, and then finally integrating with a payment gateway. “Doing so much for a side project didn’t make sense then,” said Sampad.

    This led him to abandon the project, which was followed by his moving into the founding team of DealsandYou, where he worked on the mobile advertising network for SMBs.

    It so happened that in 2012, this DealsandYou idea did not fly as the co-founders had envisioned that it would. This gave Sampad the opportunity to discuss the idea of his side project with the founders here, which actually came by accident.

    “My idea was to enable people to collect money from their friends and families by creating a short link and sharing it with them. It was simple and a lot of interesting things could be done on top of it,”  Sampad added.

    So right at this moment, a side project has blossomed into a full-fledged business. Hence, in September 2012, Sampad Swain, along with his co-founders, Akash Gehani and Aditya Sengupta, launched Instamojo.

    About Instamojo

    Instamojo - Logo
    Instamojo – Logo

    The word Instamojo ideally means “instant magic.” This was derived from Sampad’s first project, which was called Instartup.com. His supreme love for Harry Potter was the source of magic, or mojo here, which makes it Instamojo.

    Instamojo – Shareholding

    Instamojo Shareholding
    Instamojo Shareholding

    Founder 91.36%
    Angel 8.13%
    Other People 0.51%

    Instamojo – Startup Launch

    Now, after the massive launch of Instamojo, the real entrepreneurial journey has just begun for the co-founders. While an effortless and easily mechanized payment gateway is a fantastic product for startups, organizations and tech companies,

    India is, however, a land of small businesses that are not very technical and are also fairly resistant to new technological advancements. “Our eureka moment was when we realized that this could potentially be a game-changer for non-technical people who want to accept online payments without integration and website building,” said Sampad, one of the co-founders of Instamojo.

    Instamojo Website
    Instamojo Website

    However, through all these milestones, Instamojo, since its inception, has tried to build products and services that facilitate organizations with a strong and flawless payment mechanism. Additionally, Instamojo also enables MSMEs to build online stores so that they can keep up with the digital age and the upcoming digital marketing trends.

    Instamojo – Competitors

    One might say that the Indian organizations are not that technically upbeat, yet the competition is cutthroat in the market. Because digital advancements are knocking on the startup ecosystem one after another.

    The fintech startups have time and time again tried to revolutionize the payment mechanism and have always tried to take the level higher. Instamojo competes with portals and payment gateway startups like Razorpay, CC Avenue, PayU, and Amazon Pay, to name a few.

    Instamojo – Funding and Investors

    Instamojo has raised a total of $8.4 million in funding over 8 rounds.

    Date Round Amount Lead investor
    Jun 28, 2021 Corporate Round Mastercard
    Nov 13, 2020 Venture Round
    Mar 7, 2020 Venture Round Rs 6.99 crore Times Internet
    Jan 16, 2019 Series B $7M AnyPay
    Aug 18, 2017 Series A AnyPay
    Nov 13, 2014 Series A
    May 31, 2013 Seed Round $500K
    Jul 1, 2012 Angel Round

    Instamojo – How to Set Up Insta Mojo Online Store?

    To set up an online store in InstaMojo, the steps you need to follow are:

    • The first step is to sign in on InstaMojo and then check your dashboard.
    • You will find an Online Store section on the left side, and then you can create your store as per your wish.
    • By clicking on ‘Store Details’ in the dropdown, you can edit your profile, add your store’s logo, or link to your social media pages.

    Instamojo – How to Add Products on Instamojo Online Store?

    To add products to the Instamojo Online Store, one needs to follow some steps, and those steps are:

    • The first step is to click on ‘Add Product’.
    • Then choose what kind of product you want to add to the store from the section. The section is divided into physical products, digital products, event tickets, and others. Choose from them.
    • The next step is to add the title of your product.
    • Provide a brief description of your product.
    • Select the category for your product.
    • Add the variant of your product that you are providing your customer with.
    • In the advanced settings section, you have to add a redirection URL, which will help your customers make payments.
    • In the advanced setting, you can also check the SEO options. Using the SEO elements will help you in ranking your online store higher on search engines.

    Instamojo – Growth

    • Currently, Instamojo is providing payment gateway services to more than 3 lakh small and medium businesses.
    • Successfully developed a reputation for being fast and easy to use
    • Quite popular with the tech-savvy crowd.
    • To date, Instamojo has helped create more than 11,000 online stores.
    • Since COVID 19, Instamojo has witnessed 25–30 percent growth on its platform.
    • The platform is trusted by more than 20 lakh businesses in India

    Instamojo – Product And Service

    MojoXpress and Mojo Capital

    MojoXpress and MojoCapital, two new flagship products from Instamojo, were introduced in August 2018. The company will establish itself as a complete stack service provider for the MSME (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise) sector with the new solutions, which will cater to the loan and logistics needs of small enterprises.

    SAAS Solution

    With the acquisition of GetMeAShop, Instamojo has advanced its strategy to become a full-stack service provider for MSMEs on February 5, 2020.

    E-commerce Software Platform

    On June 8, 2021, a platform for e-commerce was introduced with the goal of assisting small to medium-sized consumer brands in establishing an online presence.

    Instamojo – Partnership

    Nova Registry

    Instamojo and one of the most creative registry operators in the world, Nova Registry, have partnered up on June 21, 2023, to establish.link as the industry standard for companies that need to share links that their clients can rely on.

    Instamojo – Acquistion

    Instamojo has two companies to date:

    • Showman was acquired by Instamojo on April 22, 2021, for an indisclosed amount.
    • Get Me A Shop was acquired by Instamojo on February 5, 2020, for an amount of $5 million.

    Instamojo – Campaign

    Mojo Stars

    “Mojo Stars” is the name of Instamojo’s debut digital marketing initiative. According to a statement, the brand hopes to tenfold expand its exposure with this campaign. The six-month campaign aims to introduce Instamojo to prospective entrepreneurs by running on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. The brand also wants to encourage aspiring business owners by spreading the idea that “If they can do it, so can you.”

    Instamojo – Future Plans

    The founders and the team fairly claim that they are unaffected by the competition. Furthermore, Instamojo is looking to build a platform to bring all its 700,000 registered MSMEs to a unified payment gateway platform. Instamojo has almost 3000 premium users, and they are looking forward to increasing the number to 30000 in a couple of years.

    FAQ

    What is the Instamojo store?

    Instamojo is a Bangalore-based company that is targeted at selling digital goods and collecting payments online.

    Is Instamojo Indian?

    Instamojo is an Indian on-demand payment and e-commerce platform for micro-entrepreneurs, startups, and MSMEs to start, manage, and grow their businesses online.

    Is Instamojo a payment gateway?

    Yes, Instamojo is a free payment gateway.

  • Sequretek : How it is Working Hard to Secure Your Startup!

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

    With the growing drive for digitalisation, though most of us organizations and the individuals working on behalf of them are witnessing a whole new era of seamless work and extending quality services without any major challenges, cybersecurity breaches and cyberattacks are inching towards a new level of potency each day. Such challenges, however, are being mitigated by various cybersecurity firms, one of which is Sequretek.

    The Mumbai-based cybersecurity firm founded by Pankit Desai and Anand Naik, is one of the popular cybersecurity firms of India. Here’s checking out the success story of Sequretek, along with all the information about its Co-founders, Team, Investors, Funding, Name, Logo, Business and Revenue Model, Growth and User Acquisition and more.        

    Sequretek – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Sequretek
    Headquarters Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
    Sector Cybersecurity, Security
    Founders Anand Naik and Pankit Desai
    Founded 2013
    Website sequretek.com

    Sequretek – About
    Sequretek – Industry
    Sequretek – Founders and Team
    Sequretek – Startup Story
    Sequretek – Vision and Mission
    Sequretek – Name, Tagline and logo
    Sequretek – Product and Services
    Sequretek – User Acquisition and Growth
    Sequretek – Business model
    Sequretek – Revenue model
    Sequretek – Major challenges faced
    Sequretek – Funding
    Sequretek – Competitors
    Sequretek – Partnerships
    Sequretek – Awards and Recognition
    Sequretek – Future Plans

    Sequretek – About

    Sequretek is a cybersecurity firm helping organisations focus on their main motive instead of worrying about cyber attacks. The company uses AI for the most part of its work, hence boosting their productivity and lowering down the expenses. There is a lot of hustle and inspiration in the startup story of Sequretek. Here is a few of them which are shared by the co-founder of Sequretek Pankit Desai, in his own words.

    Sequretek – Industry

    According to the latest report by Markets and Markets, the cyber security industry is expected to touch close to $300 billion by 2023 and is currently growing at over 10%. As per their forecasts from 2017 to 2023, in 2019, the market size is expected to be over $160 billion. The factors triggering this growth are strict data protection laws being implemented, rising cyber terrorism, and the growing need for SMEs to store data in the Cloud giving rise to cloud-based cybersecurity solutions.

    Sequretek – Founders and Team

    Sequretek is backed by 2 founders – Pankit Desai and Anand Naik.

    Pankit Desai

    Pankit Desai, Co-founder of Sequretek

    Pankit has worked in senior roles in companies like Rolta, NTT Data, Wipro, Cognizant, IBM, and CMC. He has worked in North America for a large part of his career selling tech products to tech companies to accelerate their design of work. In his free time, he likes to catch-up on reading especially global affairs, world events as well as watching some good content on Netflix.

    Anand Naik

    Anand Naik – Co-founder and CEO of Sequretek

    Anand is a cyber security specialist who has worked with market leaders in this segment for over 2 decades. He has worked with companies like Symantec, IBM, and Sun Microsystems. He is a voracious reader and likes to stay abreast of contemporary topics, besides being a complete family man.

    Sequretek Team

    Sequretek is a strong team of 201-500 employees. Along with the founders Anand Naik and Pankit Desai, many other people are the reason of the growth of the company. To name some of them, Arun rathi is the CFO, Perverz Goiporia is the CTO, Deepali Mistry is the head of marketing and Vandana Chimanpure handles the HR department.

    Besides having an open-door policy the company thinks it is important that the employees perceive an organization as a fair employer who cares about them. Fairness in all our dealings, transparency in our processes, and empathy in our interactions. They work on the overall employee development both professional and personal and stand by them in their hour of need and celebrate in their success.

    As a young company, they are always in search of people who are committed to tech. They hire from colleges, senior resources from the industry and also have created an environment where leaders should come from within the Company. Therefore, they look for candidates who value learning, love challenges, and are ready to go that extra mile. Moreover, they should be Flexible and adaptive to the fast-paced environment.

    Sequretek – Startup Story

    My co-founder Anand Naik and I were discussing to take the plunge for a few years. Both of us were working in senior leadership roles, running large teams, accountable for profitability for a big chunk of business. Our leadership role gave us a sneak peak into the world of running a sustainable business, prepared us for ups and downs and toughed us up. But still giving up a well-paying job especially when you have family responsibility is never an easy decision. Having a co-founder with whom you can build a common vision and then have a core team that joins you on the journey makes the decision a bit more manageable.

    Since both of them come from the tech industry, it was clear that they wanted to start a business in that domain. Cybersecurity emerged as a natural choice since Anand has been working in this segment for over two decades. Before launching Sequretek, he was in India, working as Saarc head for Symantec.

    Sequretek – Vision and Mission

    Sequretek was founded with a single vision to simplify security and bring down the cost of ownership. Cybersecurity has always been viewed as a cost centre where a certain number of products, regular patching, and updates are required to keep the system up and running. That was relevant at least two decades ago. With the changing digital landscape, evolution of cyber-attacks into more complex forms, companies are now worried and at the same time clueless about upping the ante of their cyber defence.

    Many of them are still following the old school thought where they are buying the most sophisticated products. They don’t even realise if they even need it, if it is compatible with other security products, how much bandwidth they consume of a system, and if they are slowing down the entire IT architecture.

    When they decided to start Sequretek in 2013, they didn’t want to follow the old narrative of pushing products down onto the customers. Plus, they wanted to build an agile system that can spot, analyse, react and protect a threat in near real-time because that is the differentiator in cybersecurity. Thus, their products are built on an AI platform, which are monitoring millions of incidents globally. At the same time, they are matching them in the Indian context to boil it down to a manageable handful of incidents per day. Therefore, helping organizations focus their energies on real problems and not go on a wild goose chase.

    With such an approach, they hope to achieve our vision of simplifying security and driving down the cost of ownership for the enterprises.


    About Sequretek

    A few years into their journey, they had reached a point where we were confident that they are on the right track. The whole point was to simplify security and tell enterprises to take control of their cyber destiny rather than attackers taking control of it. With this thought process, they decided to redesign their logo to give out this messaging. Their new logo was unveiled in Oct 2018 amid top cybersecurity honchos and Gulshan Rai, Cyber Security Chief, India.

    SEQURETEK Logo

    The Q in the logo is like a knob on any control, but on careful observation there’s no limit stopper at its base, mimicking the highest level /potential of a given machine. Going against the grain of traditional thinking in security that correlates security with restriction

    Secondly, it denotes a power button, signifying the connected world that we look to protect.

    The color orange cuts across the world as a color of culture and traditions, which is sacred and a serious matter to anyone using it. This is one color that moves nations and builds bonds of trust with undeniable assurance.

    Sequretek – Product and Services

    Sequretek offers its customers best-in-class products and services, which help them keep their guard up 24/7 to fight off any potential cyber attack. Their range of products include

    IGA: Sequretek’s IGA (Identity Governance and Administration) is an access governance product for enterprises. IGA is used for defining access as per various parameters of employees, their managerial seniority, job profile location-based access, etc. The primary challenge it looks to address is ensuring that for every individual (employee /contractor) that exists in the company access to any technology privilege such as applications, shared folders, printers, network, the internet is commensurate with the role, and any change in the role which should have an impact on the privilege would be addressed immediately.

    EDPR: This is a recent launch from Sequretek. EDPR is an endpoint detection, protection, and response product launched in Oct 2018 for enterprises. This product is built on an AI platform. When they started working on this product, in the endpoint security space, a single desktop needs 8 products to secure data loss. In an enterprise scenario where there are multiple endpoints, the complexity increases multifold. With the digital transformation wave and the choice of accessing the same info from multiple devices, we identified a market gap in the endpoint security space. EDPR comes with the features of 7 — 8 products rolled into one. Features like anti-virus, anti-phishing, app whitelisting backed by AI help the product learn and evolve to identify new kinds of threats too. This makes it possible for SMEs and even large enterprises to secure end nodes in a cost-effective and less complex manner at the same time have a product that responds to potential threats in near real-time

    MDR: Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is their most evolved offering which is fast becoming the need of the hour for companies across the globe. The ever-increasing threats either in form of corporate espionage, state-sponsored cyberattack, or just a bunch of hackers trying to steal info to sell in the black market, has awakened many companies to come up with a security strategy where a threat can be identified before it causes damage and also that its monitoring should be near real-time. For achieving both these goals, Machine Language and Deep learning backed products can be a potential solution. In their Company, they have created an in-house malware lab, where 50 odd data scientists monitor 20 — 25 crore incidents on a daily basis across the globe using ML and deep learning. They use it to match those incidents to see similar patterns emerging in our client’s environment to identify a potential threat. If they see a red flag, a technical advisory is sent to their clients and their people on-site to patch the leakage if any.

    Sequretek – User Acquisition and Growth

    We have been lucky to be blessed to call some of the most marquee names in the industry as our customers. Both Anand and I have worked with companies that have sold to large enterprises as part of careers prior to Sequretek. This gave us unparalleled access to the buyer community in these companies and also credibility based on our past interactions with them. It was this personal credibility and integrity of the individuals involved I believe, got us the initial wins. Our ability then to execute on this helped create a momentum that has got us today to the stage where we have been able to create a momentum for growth.

    Sequretek is growing at about 70%-80% year-on-year and growth has more than doubled from last year. For the next three years, it aims to continue to double its growth rate at 100%. they have already started international expansion with our office in the US to target the North American market and with plans to expand into other geographies viz. Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world, in the next few years.


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    Sequretek – Business model

    The Sequretek business model is in the B2B space and whilst security is industry agnostic, by the nature of the problem they address it is natural to find the most demand for what they do in the financial services sector.

    Sequretek – Revenue model

    In the recent past, they found the coverage needs coming from pharma, retail, logistics, manufacturing, and services segments as well. Their approach till recently has been that of direct customer acquisition both in India and North America, but with the scale-up they have started building out the indirect partner-led ecosystem as well.

    Additionally, the preferred Sequretek revenue model is subscription based, and today they track upwards of 80% retention rates in their subscription business.

    Sequretek – Major Challenges Faced

    Building a company from scratch always comes with its own set of challenges. No doubt they also faced certain challenges. Whether in terms of finding a voice for themselves in the crowded market dominated by biggies, or identifying the right talent who could become part of their product-centric journey or raising capital at the right moments to meet their growth aspiration.

    A common denominator for all of the challenges above is to create trust with the constituents who you are dealing with. The founders bring certain credibility in the industry that formed the nucleus around which a strategy for addressing each of the challenges was formed. As far as people are concerned, most of our management team comprises of individuals with whom we have some common connection. This allowed us to ensure that the ethos of founders is widely shared, they in turn ensured that the larger team gets built with the same ethos.

    Sequretek – Funding

    Sequretek raised $8 million on November 6, 2023, with a Series A funding round, for a total funding of $13 million till date.

    Below are the funding details:

    Date of Fundraise Funding Round Amount Raised Lead Investors
    November 6, 2023 Series A $8M mn Omidyar Network India
    January 12, 2022 Venture Round
    June 30, 2020 Seed Round The FIS FinTech Accelerator in Partnership with The Venture Center
    September 24, 2018 Convertible Note $3.7 mn Unicorn India Ventures
    May 9, 2017 Seed Round $1 mn GVFL

    Sequretek – Competitors

    Cybersecurity is a big market where different players differentiate themselves on the basis of their core offerings. In this context, their core offering is simplifying security and driving down the cost of ownership. They believe their positioning and tech innovation being worked in the house has helped them stay ahead of many of their peers. In all their offerings there are legacy players who have been around for a long time and have been solving the problem in a very set way. They are being challenged by newbies who have become disruptors.

    Sequretek – Partnerships

    Sequretek has seen some partnerships. One of the major partnerships that the company has seen is the collaboration with the Maharashtra State Co-operative Banks’ Association (MSCBA), which came in on 26th July 2019. As a part of this collaboration, they will launch a comprehensive enterprise cyber security program for co-operative banks in Maharashtra. Such an initiative will offer the option to all the 400-member co-operative banks of MSCBA to avail state of the art 24×7 cyber security operations, compliant as per RBI guidelines.

    This initiative was inaugurated by Honorable Shri Ravindra Chavan, Minister of State for Information Technology, Ports, Medical Education, Consumer Protection, Food and Civil Supplies and Shri Satish Soni, Commissioner for Co-operation and Registrar of Co-operative Societies, in presence of board members of MSCBA and leaders of over 100 co-operative banks.

    This partnership will certainly make the co-operative banks more secure. Through this initiative Sequretek will remotely monitor and respond to security threats that could potentially disrupt the co-operative banks IT infrastructure and in the process not only impact their brand reputation but also lead to financial loss. Sequretek and MSCBA will work jointly to train over 1,000 bank professionals in cyber security to manage threats on sites within the member banks, as well as build a cyber aware community.

    Arkansas Center

    At its Little Rock, Arkansas, headquarters, Sequretek has partnered up with the Arkansas Center for Data Sciences on February, 7, 2023 to assist the India-based business in filling approximately fifty roles.

    Sequretek – Awards and Recognition

    Stanford SEED program: Selected from 500+ companies from across India to create a transformation plan that can help the company scale up

    Next Big Idea 2017 Winner: from 400+ companies across India, award by Canadian Government and Zone Startups

    Top 100 Startups: By Centre of Research and Excellence, an initiative by Top CIOs of India

    Top 50 Innovators: By world innovation council, 2018

    Top 10 Fintech Startups: Fintegrate 2017


    Sequretek- Latest Startup News and Updates
    MSCBA and Sequretek join hands to announce comprehensive cyber security programfor co-operative banks in the State Mumbai, 26th July 2019The Maharashtra State Co-operative Banks’ Association (MSCBA) has joined handswith Mumbai-based cyber security company Sequretek[https://startuptalky.com/sequretek-story-founder-funding/…


    Sequretek – Future Plans

    They are currently in the midst of foraying into the North American markets. The goal is to set up operations in the American market, which is the world’s biggest cybersecurity playground. This will be followed by expansion to other geographies.

    Sequretek – FAQs

    What is Sequretek?

    Sequretek is a cybersecurity startup based in India that offers its customers best-in-class products and services that help them keep their guard up 24/7 to fight off any potential cyber attack.

    Who are the founders of Sequretek?

    The Sequretek founders are Pankit Desai and Anand Naik.

    What are the Sequretek products?

    Their range of products include:

    IGA: Sequretek’s IGA (Identity Governance and Administration) is an access governance product for enterprises. IGA is used for defining access as per various parameters of employees, their managerial seniority, job profile location-based access, etc.

    EDPR:  EDPR is an endpoint detection, protection, and response product built on an AI platform.  EDPR comes with the features of 7 — 8 products rolled into one. Features like anti-virus, anti-phishing, app whitelisting backed by AI help the product learn and evolve to identify new kinds of threats too.

    MDR: Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is their most evolved offering which is fast becoming the need of the hour for companies across the globe. The ever-increasing threats either in form of corporate espionage, state-sponsored cyberattack or just a bunch of hackers trying to steal info to sell in the black market, has awakened many companies to come up with a security strategy where a threat can be identified before it causes damage and also that its monitoring should be near real-time.

  • Khatabook- How it is Reducing the Burden of Accounting?

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

    In our haphazard daily life, we tend to get busy with several things and forget about payments and maintaining a log of all the financial transactions. This, sometimes, becomes extremely hectic and might even affect businesses adversely in a whole host of ways. However, with the emergence of numerous business management software, businesses and individuals can manage their businesses effortlessly. Khatabook is one of such reliable software solutions that makes managing business and personal ledgers a breeze!

    Founded in 2018 in Bangalore, Khatabook is hailed as India’s fastest-growing SaaS company. Khatabook reminds you through WhatsApp or SMS when the money is due to be paid or collected. forgetting the due dates of payments to be made. Besides, handling multiple businesses will no more be a deal with Khatabook!  

    The micro, small and medium businesses of the country simply has a new name, Khatabook, which brings safe and secure business and financial solutions to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

    Here’s diving into Khatabook’s journey in this StartupTalky article, where we will find out more about Khatabook Founders and Team, Funding and Investors, Startup Story, Tagline and Logo, Growth, Business and Revenue Model, Challenges, Competitors, Future Plans and more.  

    Khatabook empowering MSMEs to go digital.
    Khatabook empowering MSMEs to go digital.

    Khatabook – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Khatabook
    Headquarters Bangalore, Karnataka, India
    Founders Ashish Sonone, Dhanesh Kumar, Vaibhav Kalpe, Jaideep
    Sector Fintech
    Founded January 2019
    CEO Ravish Naresh
    Area Served India
    Valuation $600 Mn+
    Website www.khatabook.com
    Parent Company Kyte Technologies

    Khatabook – Latest News
    Khatabook – About and How it Works?
    Khatabook – Founders and Team
    Khatabook – Startup Story
    Khatabook – Mission and Vision
    Khatabook – Tagline and Logo
    Khatabook – Business Model
    Khatabook – Revenue Model
    Khatabook – Growth
    Khatabook – Acquisitions
    Khatabook – Awards and Achievements
    Khatabook – Partnerships
    Khatabook – Challenges Faced
    Khatabook – Funding and Investors
    Khatabook – Competitors
    Khatabook – LayOff
    Khatabook – Future Plans
    Khatabook – FAQs

    The latest campaign of Khatabook #DhandeKaDoctor featuring MS Dhoni, urging small businesses to use Khatabook to maintain their account.

    Khatabook – Latest News

    9th November 2021 – Khatabook has decided to shut down MyStore, the eCommerce enablement of the company, which has been a core product of the company, effective from 15th November onwards.

    24th August 2021 – Khatabook concluded its Series C round of funding with a fundraise of $100 million led by Tribe Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Alkeon Capital, B Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, and more.

    3rd February 2021 – Khatabook released its 2020 statistics. In 2020, Khatabook activated merchants in >95% Indian districts, recording over $100Bn+ in transactions with over 150Mn+ customers.

    13th January 2021 – Out of the 7 Indian startups in Y Combinator‘s latest top companies’ list, Khatabook is one among them. India has emerged as an important market for Y Combinator.

    Khatabook – About and How it Works?

    Founded in January 2019, Khatabook is the fastest growing Saas company in India and one of the fastest-growing SaaS company in the world. It has become India’s leading business management app for MSMEs with 20M+ downloads in a remarkably short period of time. It operates the Android-based Khatabook app that enables companies to keep a digital log of their financial transactions and accept payments online.

    Khatabook enables micro, small and medium merchants to track business transactions safely and securely. The app is available in over 12 vernacular languages, catering to a diverse audience in the country.

    It helps businesses and individuals manage the business and personal ledgers on their phones and computer devices along with helping them recall the due dates with the help of effective SMS and WhatsApp reminders about the same. This Bangalore-based mobile app service shares WhatsApp and SMS reminders to users when the money is due to be paid or collected.

    The Khatabook app has a free ‘Payment Reminders’ feature. With this feature, an automatic SMS is sent to your customers every time a transaction is recorded. Khatabook lets its users keep all details of credits and debits for any number of customers across multiple businesses ready and handy on their phones. Furthermore, Khatabook also helps its customers sync their transactions automatically, download, share and maintain reports of all the transactions, reap all the benefits of the effective QR code-based payments with 0% fees on transactions and more. In short, this app lets merchants do stress-free business.

    Khatabook – Industry Details

    Khatabook’s founder Ravish Naresh revealed on Twitter that Khatabook activated merchants in >95% Indian districts with 150Mn+ Customers. Based on the Indian MSME Data, Khatabook conducted research and analysis on the credit behavior of people across the country and also the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses.


    Here are some of the major findings:

    • Business volumes on credit are 45% higher for South Indian states vs the national average.
    • Credit given out by Khatabook merchants dropped by 40% in the initial Covid months. It has continued to recover to 80% of pre-pandemic levels by December.
    • Average days to recover debts increased by 25% during COVID for Khatabook Merchants.
    • Sectors like travel, construction, apparel were more impacted during 2020.

    Khatabook – Founders and Team

    Vaibhav Kalpe originally built Khatabook, which was later acquired by Kyte Technologies in 2018. Kalpe later joined the owning team of Kyte before he left the organization. The founding team of Khatabook currently has Ravish Naresh leading the company as the Co-founder and CEO along with other co-founders – Ashish Sonone, Dhanesh Kumar, and Jaideep Poonia.

    Khatabook - Founders & Team
    Khatabook – Founders & Team

    Ashish Sonone

    The Co-founder of Khatabook, Ashish Sonone is a IIT Bombay Btech graduate in Computer Science. JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd and Qiosk – News for Professionals were the companies where Sonone worked as a Software Engineer and Consultant respectively before co-founding Frodo and Kyte, in both of which he also served as a Backend Engineer. Khatabook is the third company that Sonone has co-founded.

    Dhanesh Kumar

    Another Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay, Dhanesh Kumar started with Amazon as a Software Developer, who then realized his entrepreneurial and decided to co-found Knit Messaging, Kyte and now Khatabook, where he is still serving as a Co-founder.

    Jaideep Poonia

    Jaideep is an IIT Bombay alumnus from where he completed his Btech in Civil Engineering before completing S18 from Y-Combinator. Poonia has also been the co-founder of Knit Messaging, Kyte, and Khatabook as Dhanesh Kumar.  

    Ravish Naresh

    Co-founder and CEO of Khatabook, Ravish Naresh completed his Btech from IIT Bombay, much like the other co-founders of the company, after which he co-founded Housing.com, where he also served as a COO. It was after leaving Housing.com, Ravish co-founded Khatabook, where he is still working as a CEO.

    Khatabook currently works with around 300 employees.    

    Khatabook – Startup Story

    The story goes back to 2016, when Ravish Naresh along with his team of college friends, started a digital spend manager app, Kyte.ai. The app helped users understand their expense patterns using their SMS alerts. Kyte initially had good traction but did not reach the expected growth scale. Also, the team realized all their users were based out of metropolitan cities.

    On researching, they found that first-time online users did not deal with digital transactions, and they still rely on traditional khata or ledger books. As per Ravish, they wanted to build something that people want and then try to build a business around it.

    That is when the idea for Khatabook developed, and they started to work on a simple cash management app, which they named Khatabook. The parent company of Khatabook is Kyte Technologies.

    Khatabook – Mission and Vision

    The mission statement of Khatabook says, “Empowering Udhari Khata (Book-Keeping)”.

    “Started with a vision of transforming India’s small shops, today we are the biggest player in the small business segment digitizing a sector that forms the backbone of our economy. We are looking to work closely with the government and financial institutions to strengthen our market leadership and help MSMEs increase their income while making them more efficient and competitive,” said Ravish Naresh, CEO of Khatabook.

    The tagline of Khatabook is Business Hua Easy! The app lets every business go digital instead of following the same traditional method of book-keeping and making it easy to grow their business.

    Khatabook’s logo itself signifies what the company is all about. It maintains a digital record of all the transactions we make, something which our actual ‘Khatabook’ (the diary in which we maintain our financial record) does.

    Khatabook Logo
    Khatabook Logo

    Khatabook – Business Model

    Khatabook is a mobile app that helps small merchants to digitize their accounting and credit balance recording. It helps to reduce the burden of bookkeeping and accounting. It is just like having a khata in your pocket. The business model of Khatabook is making “Bharat” / India come online.

    It is 100% free to use and secure for all types of businesses with which shop owners can record credit (Jama) and debit (Udhaar) of customers. But Khatabook has no revenue source at present.

    Ravish Naresh, CEO of Khatabook, said they’re now developing the app to provide a complete financial solution for small businesses. The startup has plans to bring a host of new features onto the platform and UPI payment is next on the line.

    Khatabook has seen some growth in the past two and a half years, where it has emerged as an integral part of the MSME community in almost every district in India. A majority of the merchant users on the Khatabook platform have embraced the digital practices dumping their offline business practices.

    Furthermore, Khatabook has also introduced 3 other solutions apart from the Flagship Khatabook for the benefit of the MSMEs:

    • Biz Analyst – This is a leading SaaS business management solution from Khatabook designed to offer premium value-added on-demand services like sales and purchase reports, livestock updates, and other MIS reports. Biz Analyst can be integrated with Tally ERP9 and allows an overall view of the business operations.
    • Pagarkhata – This is a staff management platform for businesses by Khatabook which aims to help merchants to turn the staff attendance, payroll/wages, attendance updates, leaves, payments, and other processes digital.
    • Cashbook – Cashbook is another platform by Khatabook built as a cash handling and tracking solution. Furthermore, it also helps with cash sales and expense management.

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    Khatabook – Revenue Model

    In 2020, Khatabook has active merchants in 95% of Indian districts, recording over $100 Billion in transactions with over 150 million customers.

    Khatabook has recorded total revenue of Rs 17 crore during FY21, thereby registering a 25.3% decline from Rs 24.4 crore. The startup’s revenue from operations, currently recorded at Rs 16.9 crore, witnessed a dip of around 30.7% from Rs 24.4 crore that it posted in FY20. On the other hand, the other income of the startup rose from Rs 12.7 crore in FY20 to Rs 21 crore in FY21.

    Diving into the profit-loss segment, it has been discovered that Khatabook has managed to reduce its loss by 63%, which has been brought down from Rs 89.5 crore to Rs 33 crore. This is primarily due to the selling of its intellectual property, some of which it sold to its holding company, Kyte Technologies Inc. for around Rs 57 crore.

    In FY22, the company experienced significant growth in its operating revenue, surging from Rs 17 crore in 2021 to an impressive Rs 71 crore. However, this growth was accompanied by a corresponding increase in total expenses, which escalated from Rs 109 crore in FY21 to Rs 189 crore in FY22. Consequently, the company’s losses also saw a substantial rise, soaring from Rs 33 crore in FY21 to Rs 111 crore in FY22 during this period.

    Here’s a look at the financials of Khatabook:

    Khatabook Financials
    Khatabook Financials

    Operating revenue for the Khatabook increased by 14% in FY23 to Rs 81 crore. Conversely, there was a marginal rise in losses of 4% to Rs 125 crore.
    Due to increased employee benefit costs (wages, salaries, PPF, etc.), which amounted to over Rs 142 crore, the company’s total expenses stayed steady at Rs 223 crore, a slight increase from Rs 189 crore in the year FY22.

    Khatabook – Growth

    Khatabook has registered around 10 Million monthly active users and the numbers are growing.

    Growth had an excellent trajectory, which did take a hit during the lockdown in line with other external factors. With the relaxation of the lockdown, the company started reviving the business at a steady pace. The revival has been faster with users in tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India.

    As a very relevant offering for merchants in the pandemic, the company also launched the MyStore app to enable them to take their stores online in 15 seconds and continue doing business through their preferred communication channels.

    Within a month after the launch, more than 2.5 million merchants across India have installed MyStore. Khatabook also initiated work from home active, 24/7 call center support for merchants. Currently, the revenue model of Khatabook depends on its funding.

    Some key growth highlights would include:

    • 5 crore+ registered businesses
    • A spread over 4000+ cities of India
    • Powered by popular investors like Sequoia Capital, DST Global Partners, Y Combinator, Tencent, B Capital Group and more

    Khatabook – Acquisitions

    Khatabook has acquired Biz Analyst on March 25, 2021, which remains the company’s maiden acquisition.

    Khatabook – Awards and Achievements

    Some of the popular awards and achievements that Khatabook has seen so far are:

    • It was declared as the Winner of Nasscom League of 10 in the Emerge50 Awards 2020
    • The company’s app won the Best Innovative Mobile App award at IAMAI 2020
    • mCube announced Khatabook the winner of the Best Content in a Mobile Marketing Campaign in its awards ceremony in 2020

    Khatabook – Partnerships

    Khatabook currently partners with the former skipper of the India cricket team, M.S. Dhoni, who is an investor as well as the brand ambassador of the company. The strategic partnership was announced on March 17, 2020.

    Khatabook – Challenges Faced

    Khatabook also faced a shortage of money during its initial days just like other new startups. Ravish, the CEO of Khatabook realized that they need to look into serious funding options.

    In the series A phase, they were struggling a bit with the funding. The growth hit them fast, so the seed round took place in 5 bridges. It was the highest in the history of funding for Sequoia.

    “Well, the struggles were mainly money-related. We knew we were working on something important and kept going with it. Often it was difficult to imagine the future of our initiatives with no funding, but perseverance is what got us where we are today,” said Ravish Naresh.

    He also said that the adoption of their product was not only dependent on the app’s visibility and convenience but also on educating users, not just for the app but also for using digital technology in general. The biggest hurdle was to persuade offline shopkeepers to come online and train them for digital transactions.

    Switching away from the convention is understandably tricky and daunting for merchants who mainly have offline workflows. Persuading traditional enterprises to embrace the digital still remains a crucial challenge for them.

    “It is important to build something that people want and then try to build a business around it, and that is exactly what the team did.” said Ravish.

    Khatabook announced the shutdown of MyStore on November 10, 2021. The eCommerce enablement product was one of the core products of the company, which also contributed to the expansion of the company by raising funds along with helping the company with its bookkeeping requirements.

    “Thank you for being a part of the MyStore journey. We are planning on discontinuing the MyStore App. Your MyStore App won’t work from 15 November 2021,” goes a blog post from the company.

    The company has further asked its users to download their invoices by sharing order invoices before doing away with the app.

    Khatabook had previously been dragged into a legal fight with its rival, Dukaan over the plagiarism of the name when MyStore was named ‘Dukaan by Khatabook’, in August 2020. Khatabook later decided to change it to ‘MyStore by Khatabook after a legal battle of around four months. The tagline of the app, however, remains the same, ”Create Your Online Dukaan in 15 Seconds” to date on Play Store.

    Khatabook – Funding and Investors

    Khatabook has raised a total of $186.5M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on 24th August 2021, from a Series C round. Khatabook is funded by 34 investors in total. Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures are the most recent investors. The valuation of Khatabook was estimated to be around $600 Million in August 2021.

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Aug 24, 2021 Series C $100M Tribe Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures
    May 20, 2020 Series B $60M B Capital Group
    Oct 1, 2019 Series A $25M
    Apr 19, 2019 Seed Round $1.5M Surge

    Khatabook – Competitors

    The top competitors of Khatabook are:

    Khatabook – LayOff

    In a strategic move aimed at optimizing costs and prolonging the company’s financial runway, the organization recently made the difficult decision to implement workforce reductions, resulting in the departure of over 40 employees from various departments. These actions were undertaken as part of a broader effort to navigate the challenges faced by growth-stage companies.

    While undoubtedly a tough choice, the company’s leadership recognized the importance of preserving its financial stability and ensuring a sustainable future. This move reflects a commitment to adaptability and resilience in an ever-evolving business landscape, with the hope that these measures will ultimately position the company for long-term success.

    “Khatabook has laid off 42 employees across sales, marketing and analytics, and technology verticals,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “People who lost their jobs in the exercise have been given standard severance packages including 3 months salary among others.”

    Khatabook – Future Plans

    Khatabook plans to expand and achieve two to three times business growth by simplifying the traditional way of doing business. Remaining committed to India’s MSME segment, Khatabook will be adding services to streamline and simplify business processes for the merchants.

    “Committing to a goal is essential for business directions and decisions. One thing that pandemic has taught us is that we need to think through the most unlikely scenario and make sure we are relevant in all possible scenarios or are agile enough to change our direction as per the need of the hour,” says Ravish.

    Khatabook has already managed to build a widely accepted tech ecosystem for the MSMEs across the country and will now concentrate on the disbursement of financial services through its tech platforms. These financial services will further enable smooth lending, payment, and deposits in the MSME space.

    Khatabook is eyeing the right partnership opportunities to seamlessly roll out the solutions that would benefit the economic aspirations of countless small businesses.

    Khatabook has announced a buyback scheme of ESOPs worth USD 10 Million in order to acknowledge the contributions of its employees, the ex-employees and the early investors who stayed by the company and helped it grow. The employees who are eligible for the ESOP scheme would be able to sell up to 30% of their vested options. Meanwhile, Khatabook has also expanded its ESOP pool to $50 Mn.

    Furthermore, Khatabook is also looking to strengthen its talent base by hiring employees for the engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science departments.

    Khatabook – FAQs

    What is Khatabook?

    Khatabook is the world’s fastest-growing SaaS company. It is India’s leading business management app for MSMEs that enables companies to keep a digital log of their financial transactions and accept payments online. It’s like having a khata in your pocket.

    Is Khatabook an Indian app?

    Yes, Khatabook is an Indian app founded in 2019 with an aim to reduce the burden of bookkeeping and accounting.

    Which company owns Khatabook?

    Kyte Technologies is the Parent Company of Khatabook.

    Who is the CEO of Khatabook?

    Ravish Naresh is the CEO and Co-founder of Khatabook.

    Who are the founders of Khatabook?

    Khatabook was founded by Ashish Sonone, Dhanesh Kumar, Vaibhav Kalpe (Ex-Khatabook), Jaideep Poonia and Ravish Naresh in 2019.

    How does Khatabook make money?

    The Khatabook revenue model is non-existent at the moment. Naresh says their focus is now on developing the app to provide a complete financial solution to small businesses.

    What is the use of Khatabook?

    Khatabook app enables MSMEs to keep a digital log of their financial transactions and accept payments online.

    What is the valuation of Khatabook?

    The valuation of Khatabook was estimated to be around $600 Million.

  • Stripe – Transferring Money and Happiness

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

    We all love using credit and debit cards to pay both online and offline. Life is easier now because we don’t need to carry cash anymore. It was quite difficult earlier to pay through websites as it involved a few expenses. However, nowadays we find that everything has changed!

    Stripe is a leading processor in online payments. It is an American software as a service and financial services company. The company offers application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications and it is a payment processing software. Read the Stripe success story below.

    Stripe – Company Highlights

    Company Name Stripe
    Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
    Sector SaaS, Internet
    Founders Patrick Collison, John Collison
    Founded 2010
    Website stripe.com

    Stripe – About
    Stripe – Startup Story
    Stripe – Founders and Team
    Stripe – Business Model
    Stripe – Revenue Model
    Stripe – Funding and Investors
    Stripe – Growth
    Stripe – Product And Service
    Stripe – Partnership
    Stripe – Acquistion
    Stripe – Investment
    Stripe – Competitors
    Stripe – Future Plans

    Stripe – About

    Stripe is a company that builds economic infrastructure for the Internet. Companies like Facebook use the company’s software to approve online fees and operate complex global strategies. It is very useful for small businesses and new startups. The company aims to help more companies to get started and grow the GDP of the internet.

    Stripe – Startup Story

    Stripe Story

    The two Collison brothers started working on Stripe together in 2010. During that period, Patrick was working on various side projects and they argued that why was it so difficult to accept fees on the web. The brothers thought of solving the problem and finding a solution to make it simple. The next six months Collison brothers dealt with it, showed it to the friends and noticed how people were interacting with it all along. Within two weeks of building the application, the brothers had their first transaction with a company named as 280 North. The founder of the company was the first customer and he joined Stripe. He was the first employee of Stripe.

    Stripe – Founders and Team

    The founders of Stripe are the two brothers – Patrick Collison and John Collison.

    • Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur and billionaire. He is the co-founder and the CEO of Stripe. Patrick is the elder brother and at the age of sixteen, he won the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005.
    • John Collison is also an Irish entrepreneur and billionaire. He is the co-founder of Stripe. John is the younger brother and Cofounder of Stripe.
    Patrick Collison and John Collison (left to right), Founders, Stripe

    Stripe – Business Model

    The company boasts of the product business model it has. It offers secure, fast and simple online transactions for businesses. Stripe is a payment processor that can be incorporated into mobile applications and websites. Furthermore, it does not charge a monthly fee and it is only available for the businesses. Stripe provides fraud prevention and banking infrastructure to facilitate payments over the web. It does not allow consumers’ payment information to pass through the merchant’s server. The information is only accessible to Stripe. This proves that the application is safe and it reduces the amount of risk.

    Stripe has some other products through which it makes money. Some of them are listed below:

    Billing

    It helps customers to invoice their clients, analyze subscription revenues, and curate schedules on when to charge the customer.

    Radar

    It is an application based on machine learning that helps customers to fish out fraudulent transactions. They flag any suspicious transactions from further making the payment. Since the app is integrated with Stripe, Radar has a vast repository of data from which it can make a decision.

    Sigma

    By paying a nominal infrastructure fee, customers can use Sigma to access transaction data through SQL queries. Sigma is the data warehousing tool of Stripe.

    Terminal

    It is a card reader that allows card payment across the globe. Since the terminal is also directly integrated with Stripe, it can compare payments.

    Premium Support

    It is an initiative by Stripe to provide 24*7 technical and operational support to its customers from all ranges. Depending on the company’s size, the cost of the service varies. Their services are accessible via phone, mail, and chat.

    Stripe Capital

    Through Stripe Capital, customers can borrow money directly from Stripe. Stripe generates revenue through the interest that they derive from these loans.

    Strategic Disinvestment

    With a large amount of data to analyze and infer various investments, Stripe can easily understand the future of any kind of investment that they have made. Stripe sells the shares that it bought from other startups for more money than what it had invested in it.

    Stripe – Revenue Model

    The revenue model is very simple here. It earns from the fees it charges to its customers. The fees always vary based on the value of the payments. The revenue model has been constant since day one. The company has got different packages on the selected products and for every transaction, the company charges a 2.9 or a 0.30% fee. This is a fixed fee which is applied to every successful transaction done through their site. For international transactions, the company charges 1% more, which becomes 3.9%.


    Stripe Vs PayPal – Can You Difference Between Them?
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    Stripe – Funding and Investors

    Stripe has raised around $8.7 billion over the 20 rounds of funding that it received till date. The last funding round that the company saw came on 25th April 2023. Here’s a look at the major rounds of funding that Stripe witnessed throughout the years –

    Date Transaction Name Money Raised Lead Investors
    April 25, 2023 Grant €10.1M
    March 15, 2023 Series I $6.5B Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, Thrive Capital
    July 14, 2021 Secondary Market
    March 14, 2021 Series H $600 million Allianz X, AXA Group Fidelity Management
    May 28, 2020 Secondary Market
    April 16, 2020 Series G $600 million
    September 19, 2019 Series G $250 million General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz
    January 29, 2019 Series E $100 million Tiger Global Management
    September 27, 2018 Series E $245 million Tiger Global Management
    November 25, 2016 Series D $150 million General Catalyst and CapitalG
    July 31, 2015 Series C $100 million
    December 2, 2014 Series C $70 million Thrive Capital
    May 15, 2014 Series B $3.2 million
    January 22, 2014 Series C $80 million Founders Fund
    July 9, 2012 Series B $20 million General Catalyst
    February 9, 2012 Series A $18 million Sequoia Capital
    March 28, 2011 Seed Round $2 million
    August 2, 2010 Seed Round Y Combinator

    The company is funded by 57 investors, where there are 15 lead investors.

    Stripe – Growth

    The mission of the company is to increase the GDP of the internet. The company is growing through the relationships it has made with its customers. During the pandemic, the company generated $1 billion in revenue. Three months later the revenue was $9 billion.

    Stripe – Product And Service

    Checkout Suite

    The US-based payments processor Stripe has improved its checkout suite with new capabilities to boost users’ income through more efficient payment procedures on September 19, 2023.

    Charge Card

    According to TechCrunch, the Fintech behemoth Stripe has revealed intentions to launch a new charge card for its business card issuance service as per news report of June, 2, 2023. Prior to this, only pre-funded accounts could be used to make purchases with cards that Stripe supplied. With the recent expansion of debit cards, businesses will be able to provide their clients with virtual or real debit cards, allowing them to use credit cards for purchases instead of simply their account cash.

    Stripe announced the Stripe US Fiat On-Ramps called Link in conjunction with MetaMask: a partnership. With just one click, Stripe’s fiat on-ramp tool Link transforms fiat dollars into cryptocurrency, streamlining the purchasing process. Integrating Stripe’s Link into decentralized apps and platforms takes care of compliance requirements, including fraud, KYC, and verification

    Stripe – Partnership

    MatchMove

    In order to give retailers the resources they need to thrive in the modern digital economy, MatchMove, a provider of embedded finance solutions, announced a partnership with Stripe on July 18, 2023, a global financial infrastructure platform for businesses.

    LG Electronics

    In an effort to enhance the overall checkout process and payment options for Singaporean consumers, LG Electronics has established a partnership with Stripe on November 3, 2023.

    ZenBusiness

    ZenBusiness and Stripe, a payment processor, have combined to improve the way SMEs handle their finances on November 9, 2023. With this recently announced integration, Stripe’s safe and intuitive payment processing will be integrated with ZenBusiness Money Pro, a small business owner tool that tracks all spending, income streams, mileage, and tax deductions in real time.

    Stripe – Acquistion

    Stripe has acquired 14 companies and has exited from one:

    Company Name Date Price
    Okay May 31, 2023
    OpenChannel Dec 6, 2021
    Recko Oct 20, 2021
    Bouncer May 14, 2021
    TaxJar Apr 27, 2021
    Paystack Oct 15, 2020 $200M
    Touchtech Payments Apr 17, 2019
    Index Mar 8, 2018
    Payable Jul 26, 2017
    Indie Hackers Apr 11, 2017

    Exited

    Company Name Date Price
    Paystack

    Stripe – Investment

    Stripe has invested in 64 companies to date, some of the companies are listed below:

    Company Name Date Funding Round Price
    Ramp Aug 23, 2023 Series D $300M
    Archive Jun 12, 2023 Seed Round $4M
    Upollo Nov 30, 2022 Seed Round A$4.2M
    Complete Aug 22, 2022 Seed Round $4M
    WorqHat Aug 11, 2022 Seed Round $500K
    Pulley Jul 13, 2022 Series B $40M

    Stripe – Competitors

    The top competitors of Stripe are PayPal, Square and Adyen.

    • PayPal is the top competitor of Stripe. It is headquartered at San Jose, California and was founded in 1998. It is a Public company, which operates in the Fintech field.
    • Square is also one of the competitors of Stripe. It is headquartered at San Francisco, California, USA. Founded in 2009, Square also works in the Fintech space.
    • Adyen is one among the top rivals of Stripe. It is headquartered at Amsterdam, Noord-Holland. The company operates in the Fintech sector and was founded in 2006.

    Stripe – Future Plans

    Stripe slowly plans to extend its business to involve cryptocurrency services. They recently announced that a special team for crypto has been set up. Stripe is also working towards web3 – which refers to a new, decentralized version of the internet. They also plan on expanding their reach to the gulf region.


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    FAQs

    What is Stripe?

    Stripe Payments is a payment processing platform. It allows you to transfer money from a customer’s bank account into your business’s account by way of a credit or debit card transaction.

    Is stripe safe for payment?

    Yes

    How does Stripe work technically?

    Stripe is a PSP (Payment Service Provider) that lets business owners collect payments, including recurring payments, and transfer them directly to their own account instantly. It processes the payment, checks for fraud, and takes a fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents.

    What Is the Biggest Difference Between Stripe vs PayPal?

    One of the biggest differences is the type of user they’re designed for. For example, Stripe was built with developers in mind and is ideal if you want a payment processor that offers a lot of customization and developer tools. PayPal is a better option if you’re looking for a simple, straightforward solution for accepting payments through your website.

    Can You Use Both Stripe and PayPal for Your Website?

    If you don’t want to choose between which payment processor you use, using both to accept payments is an option. The benefit of this is that you’re able to let your customers select their preferred method of payment at checkout. On the other hand, managing your business finances on multiple platforms can be challenging and may lead to unnecessary costs.


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  • Shein – How the Company Brings Trendsetting Fashion that Stands Out?

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

    Fashion is something that we simply cannot unlove. With the growing age of digital, fashion has come down to our mobile phones, computers, and tablets, which earlier were only available at retail shops and shopping malls.

    Shopping for our favourite shirts, t-shirts, jeans, trousers, shoes, and more is now possible online via easy-to-use eCommerce websites and applications, which bring in a host of products across diverse categories and guarantee delivery at our doorstep with minimum charges. Shein is one such international B2C fast fashion brand that extends the best fashion wear including women’s wear, men’s wear, children’s clothes and apparel, trendy accessories, and other fashionable products and accessories.

    Slowly rising Chinese fast fashion brand, Shein has ultimately risen to a crescendo when the company emerged as the most popular shopping app in the USA for iOS and Android users, as per the reports of May 18, 2021.

    Know about Shein Success Story, its founders, business model, revenue model, growth, competitors, Funding and more.

    Shein – Company Highlights

    Company Name Shein
    Headquarters Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
    Industry E-commerce
    Founder Chris Xu
    Founded October 2008
    Website shein.in

    Shein – About
    Shein – Industry
    Shein – Founder And Team
    Shein – Startup Story And History
    Shein – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Shein – Mission and Vision
    Shein – Business Model
    Shein – Revenue Model
    Shein – Funding And Investors
    Shein – Growth
    Shein – Product And Service
    Shein – IPO
    Shein – Acquisitions
    Shein – Investment
    Shein – Competitors
    Shein – Future Goals And Ban In India

    How Shein is beating Top brands?

    Shein – About

    Shein is a B2C fast fashion company owned by Nanjing Lingtian Information Technology Co. founded in 2008. The company was created by Chris Xu and is headquartered in China. It focuses on both men’s and women’s wear. Clothes for children, accessories, bags, and shoes are some other categories of apparel that Shein houses.

    The company primarily targets the shoppers in America, Europe, and Middle Eastern countries along with the consumer markets in other nations. Be it boho dresses, graphic tees, chic swimwear, or patterned blouses, Shein has something for everyone.

    Shein is widely popular with people of all ages, especially with Gen Z who likes everything trendy. Almost every fashion vlogger/blogger has made a post or video on Shein at some point in time. Why? It is simply because of the trendy and affordable clothing that Shein offers its global users without letting them compromise in terms of quality.

    Shein – Industry

    This is the age of fast fashion, where people prefer to go for affordable ranges of clothing and accessories instead of hunting for expensive brands. Thus, the industry of Fast Fashion is growing without bounds.

    The market for fast fashion was earlier valued at $1000.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4% between 2021-2028, thereby reaching $1,412.5 billion by 2028. All of these are reasons enough for the startups and other big names in eCommerce to tap into the fast fashion industry.

    Shein – Founder And Team

    Chris Xu is the founder and CEO of Shein company.

    Chris Xu, Founder and CEO of Shein
    Chris Xu, Founder and CEO of Shein

    Chris Xu

    Chris Xu was born in Shandong, China in 1984. Xu is currently known as the founder and the CEO of Shein. He completed his graduation from the Qingdao University of Science and Technology in 2007 and then started working with Nanjing Aodao Information Technology Co, where he worked as an SEO specialist. However, on learning the value of Chinese products on the international markets, he devoted his time and efforts and found a new company called SheInside (Shein).

    Quist Huang

    Quist Huang is the present ‘Director of Employee Experience Platform’ at Shein. Before joining Shein, Quist Huang was the senior HR manager of Baoneng Motor R&D, GZ China. She also had a stint with Zung Fu, China as an HR manager. It doesn’t end here because Huang also worked at Kelly Services as an outsourcing account manager and was an assistant manager for the TWO Group (RIB AG).

    Quist Huang began her career as a Recruiting Specialist. With a profound experience in her bag, which she garnered from a bunch of companies that she served, Quist brings significant expertise to the table.

    The Shein team is currently more than 10,000 members strong.

    Shein – Startup Story And History

    The background of Shein is quite interesting, the idea of the company first popped into the mind of Chris Xu when he learned of the commercial value of Chinese products on the international markets. Xu was then working with Nanjing Aodao Information Technology Co., but he soon left the company with the aim to establish an online retail store for cheap fashion wear.

    On exploring further he found out that the wedding dresses of women are some of the most sought-after clothes in the whole world. Besides, he also discovered that the only thing that came in between the international consumers and Chinese products was the difference in their currencies and all the hassles associated with it. He then started selling wedding dresses after founding ZZKKO.

    The company eventually forayed into the women’s section of garments and changed its name to “SheInside”. The company further started selling cosmetics, jewellery, shoes, purses, and other accessories in the early 2010s.

    Sheinside had around 100 employees by 2013. It further revamped its marketing strategies and soon it became a fully integrated retailer. The company again changed its name to “Shein” in 2015 to make the name easier to remember for everyone. The Shein team became 800 strong in 2016.

    Shein Journey
    Shein Journey

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    Shein Logo
    Shein Logo

    Shein’s tagline is “Shine In, Shine Out”. The company held a worldwide slogan competition. After half a month of voting and selecting, the winning slogan emerged. “Shine In, Shine Out” is in tandem with Shein’s goal to be the best shopping platform for all clothing-related needs.

    “SheIn” is a portmanteau word containing “She Inside”. There is also lettering in “SheIn”.

    Shein – Mission and Vision

    SHEIN focuses on providing the customers with value. This is why the company brings quality products at affordable, which don’t break their banks.

    “SHEIN aims to provide the highest value trendy pieces while also being dedicated to quality, value, and service”, as per the vision statement of the company.

    Shein – Business Model

    Shein’s business is modelled on internet-based sales for desktop and mobile users. The company has been proactive in developing a vibrant community. It has a community of like-minded shoppers across various channels. Shein’s desktop and mobile shops include reviews to help customers decide on the quality of the outfits. The shops also come with a style gallery through which shoppers can share their outfits and tagged products.

    Shein – Revenue Model

    ZoeTop Business Co. Ltd. operates Shein.com. It is an internationally-focused online store. It generates e-commerce sales from a range of countries including France, Russia, Germany, the United States, Italy, Australia, the Middle East, and more. When it comes to the product range, shein.com receives a major chunk of its e-commerce net sales from the “Fashion” category. Next comes the “Furniture & Appliances” category, which helps Shein gain the most.

    Shein boasts of its largest market in the United States. The company gains a profit margin from each sale that it drives. Delivery fees also comprise its revenues. Furthermore, Shein also earns some of its revenues by partnering with brands and featuring them on its app. In-app advertisements also help Shein gain some revenue.

    The Global net sales for the year 2020 were reported at US$2,764.8 million. Though the revenues of Shein are not publicly disclosed, it has been privately estimated to be $8 billion annually. It did suffer a loss in revenue due to the pandemic in 2020 and when the app was banned in countries like India.


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    Shein – Funding And Investors

    4 investors have funded and invested in Shein so far. JAFCO Asia funded Shein in the Series A round. In the Series B funding round, IDG Capital invested an undisclosed amount in the company. Greenwood’s Asset Management also invested an undisclosed amount in Shein during the Series B round. . The total funding raised by Shein is $4.1 billion.

    Date Round Money Raised Lead Investor
    May 17, 2023 Private Equity Round $2 billion General Atlantic, Mubadala, Sequoia Capital China
    Apr 4, 2022 Series F $1.5 billion
    Aug 1, 2020 Series E
    Jan 1, 2019 Series D $500 million Sequoia Capital China, Tiger Global Management
    Jan 1, 2018 Series C Sequoia Capital China
    Jan 1, 2015 Series B CN¥300 million IDG Capital
    Jan 1, 2013 Series A $5 million JAFCO Asia

    Shein – Growth

    Shein’s portal has got from 500,000 to 4 million monthly visitors in 6 months. The company’s traction with Generation Z has been particularly pronounced. The company is tripling its business day by day. It now caters to over 1 million daily active users and handles over 10,000 orders every day.

    The platform initially sold wedding dresses, then expanded to womenswear, and has eventually branched into several other categories involving menswear, childrenswear, and other fashion accessories. Today it clocks an average order value of INR 1000 to INR 1500.

    Shein grew from a company that was valued at $15 billion to one that is valued at $30 billion, as per the reports in November 2021. The company made a whopping $10 billion during the coronavirus pandemic onslaught that nearly drowned a majority of the businesses. Shein has recorded 100% growth in its sales for 7 successive years in 2020. Shein was hailed as the largest online-only fashion firm in the world in 2020.

    Shein – Product And Service

    EvoluShein

    Global e-retailer SHEIN, which specializes in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products, has announced that it will collaborate with pop sensation Anitta to launch evoluSHEIN x Anitta on June 17, 2023. This will be the first product collaboration under SHEIN’s evoluSHEIN by Design initiative, which has accelerated the use of more sustainable materials.

    Accelera Shein

    AcceleraSHEIN, a brand-new worldwide seller empowerment initiative, has been unveiled by the company on June, 22, 2023. Accelera SHEIN offers a holistic system of assistance to all marketplace sellers throughout their journey on SHEIN Marketplace, including training and upskilling, seller benefits and incentives to help them accomplish their business goals.

    Shein – IPO

    Despite the China-founded company’s recent valuation falling to $50 billion in secondary market trading due to market fears, Shein is aiming for up to $90 billion in its impending US IPO as per news report of November, 8, 2023. Shein’s eagerly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) is still a ways off because of the company’s copyright issues and forced labor difficulties.

    Shein – Acquisitions

    Shein has acquired two companies to date.

    Below are the details:

    Company Name Date Price
    Missguided Oct 30, 2023 $24M
    Make Me Chic Jan 1, 2015

    Shein – Investment

    Company Name Date Funding Round Price
    SPARC Group Aug 24, 2023 Corporate Round $24M

    Shein – Partnership

    Reliance Retail

    Industry insiders stated that Shein, a Chinese online fast fashion brand, is making a comeback into India in collaboration with Reliance Retail as per news report of May, 20, 2023, the top retailer in the nation. In June 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned Shein, one of the apps, following an increase in tension with China along the Himalayan borders.

    Forever 21

    Online fashion and lifestyle retailer has created a co-branded Forever 21 brand collectionon October 30, 2023 in partnership with shein and global brand development and marketing platform Authentic Brands Group.

    Shein – Competitors

    Shein’s prominent competitors are Amazon, Romwe, Zaful, Zalando, and Namshi.

    • Being one of the most popular eCommerce brands around the world, Amazon directly competes with Shein.
    • Romwe is a shopping platform that caters to both men and women. Tops, bottoms, swimwear, denim, shoes, etc. are available on Romwe at affordable prices.
    • Zaful is a clothing store for both men and women. New-season styles, and hot sale collections are Zaful’s USP. Students can avail special offers from Zaful.
    • Zalando is a European e-commerce company headquartered in Berlin, Germany. It offers fashion and lifestyle products.
    • Namshi is an online shopping store for kids, men, and women. Free shipping, 14-day exchange, and cash-on-delivery are some sought-after features offered by Namshi.

    Shein – Future Goals

    Shein is upgrading its systems for better consumer experiences. It is in the process of introducing new trends and exciting offers. Shein also plans to expand its business. The company has already started collaborating with Indian designers to create fusion and Indo-western outfits for the Indian audience.

    Shein discovered the importance of cementing its position in India. The people living in tier 3 and tier 4 Indian towns want to get their hands on affordable fashion and here’s Shein comes to play. However, due to India’s rising tensions with China, Shein had to shut down operations in India in 2020. The decision affected millions of Indian shoppers who enjoyed purchasing from Shein.

    Three years after its prohibition in India, Shein is returning to the nation in collaboration with Reliance Retail. The Indian government granted the business permission to collaborate with Reliance Industries as per news report of June, 22, 2023.

    FAQs

    When was Shein founded?

    Shein company was founded in 2008 by Chris Xu.

    Who is the owner of Shein?

    Nanjing Lingtian Information Technology Co. Ltd. is the parent company and the owner of Shein.

    Who is the founder of Shein?

    Chris Xu is the founder of the popular fast-fashion Chinese brand.

    Where was Shein founded?

    Shein is a fast-fashion company based in China.

    What makes Shein so successful?

    The success behind Shein is its cheap prices trendy clothes, and fast delivery.

    Who are the top competitors of Shein?

    Top Competitors of Shein Company are:

    • Amazon
    • Romwe
    • Zaful
    • Zalando
    • Namshi
  • FreshMenu – Delivers Fresh and Delicious Food At Your Doorstep!

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

    The cloud kitchens in India have overcome the conventional food services and are most welcomed by everyone. The lack of time, patience, and knowledge of foods and cooking has largely been observed in this generation, which is fuelling more cloud kitchens and driving sales for many food delivery businesses.

    Besides, this culture of cloud kitchens or food coming from a separate kitchen outside has been largely preferred on many occasions during the season of the pandemic. All of these have led to a providing a renewed boost to the cloud kitchens and the businesses that revolve around them.

    FreshMenu is one such company that was founded by Rashmi Daga in 2014. This cloud kitchen has been the favourite of locals since its launch and the company has grown up to providing 13,000+ orders per day across the nation as of 2022. Here is the journey and endeavours of the FreshMenu company, where we will learn about the Freshmenu company, discover the Freshmenu founder, its funding and investors, business model, revenue model, campaigns, competitors, growth and revenue, future plans, and more.

    FreshMenu – Company Highlights

    Startup Name FreshMenu
    Headquarters Bengaluru
    Sector Food Processing
    Founder Rashmi Daga
    Founded 2014
    Parent Organization FoodVista India Private Limited
    Website www.freshmenu.com

    FreshMenu – About
    FreshMenu – Founders and Team
    FreshMenu – Vision and Mission
    FreshMenu – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Freshmenu – Shareholding
    FreshMenu – Growth and Revenue
    Freshmenu – Product And Service
    FreshMenu – Funding and Investors
    FreshMenu – Business and Revenue Model
    Freshmenu – Partnership
    FreshMenu – ESOP
    FreshMenu – Campaigns
    FreshMenu – Competitors
    FreshMenu – Future Plans


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    FreshMenu – About

    Rashmi Daga – Founder of FreshMenu

    FreshMenu is a food-tech startup that delivers food to the cities of Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and other nearing places. The speciality of the startup lies in its variety of cuisines with highly experienced chefs and a fresh food menu expanding every day. The startup keeps up its name with the early delivery of fresh food.

    The FreshMenu head office is in Bangalore, but the demanding everyday menu is the major reason for the growth of the company to 27+ kitchens in three years as of 2021, with 500+ staff members escalating to 700+ delivery personnel. Chefs at the kitchen experiment with new dishes with fascinating ingredients such as ancient grains, fresh-to-home meat products, and exotic vegetables added in good quantities at reasonable prices. While the fresh menu reviews are mostly positive as their customers love their products.

    The company looks after its delivery costs without relying on third-party logistics and saves its rentals and other high operating costs. A lot of people also ask questions like “Is freshmenu safe?” and “Is fresh menu halal? The company does source halal-certified meats and is extremely safe as it follows all the rules and regulations especially during the Covid 19 pandemic times. The FreshMenu Parent company is FoodVista India Pvt Ltd.

    FreshMenu – Founders and Team

    Rashmi Daga

    Rashmi Daga – Founder of FreshMenu

    Rashmi Daga is not only the FreshMenu founder but is also the current FreshMenu CEO. Before launching FreshMenu, she worked as a Sales Head at Ola Cabs and she was also the founder of Afday.com. She is a graduate of IIM Ahmedabad and completed her bachelor’s from Delhi College of Engineering.

    This Fresh menu owner is recognized with many prestigious awards such as ET Prime Women Entrepreneurship Award, ET Facebook Women Ahead Award, and a lot more. The company now operates with around 501-1000 employees. Rashmi Daga net worth is not known yet but she is responsible for the exponential growth of the company.


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    FreshMenu – Vision and Mission

    The food delivery platform’s mission is to make the food experience a greater one with simpler delivery options through FreshMenu’s fresh and delicious food.

    The FreshMenu name depicts the service of the company i.e., to deliver fresh food. While the FreshMenu logo has a small spoon and fork within a yellow circle. The Freshmenu tagline is “When you order FreshMenu, you order Local”, this tagline for cloud kitchen like FreshMenu represents what it stands for.

    The FreshMenu logo
    The FreshMenu logo

    Freshmenu – Shareholding

    Freshmenu Shareholding
    Freshmenu Shareholding
    • Founder 49.87%
    • Fund 14.19%
    • Enterprise 25.19%
    • Other People 5.49%
    • ESOP 5.28%

    FreshMenu – Business and Revenue Model

    The FreshMenu business model is designed in a way that it makes use of its wide range of cuisines like Mexican, South Asian, Italian, and a lot more to garner revenue. According to FreshMenu reviews, the promptness in delivery and daily changing menus paired with the freshness of the food are the special worth of FreshMenu. The FreshMenu business model offers end-to-end services within a radius of 4-5 km from its cloud kitchens and operates on a Full Stack Business Model.

    FreshMenu earns a significant portion of its revenue from the food it prepares, which helps the startup earn its shares. This is unlike the other food-related or delivery startups that earn commissions from the delivery of food items.  


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    FreshMenu – Growth and Revenue

    FreshMenu has started to witness a good growth initially, fuelled by the early bird advantage. In 2019, it was seen that 45% of the orders came from its food delivery app and the other 55% of the orders came from Swiggy and Zomato. It was also discovered around that time that the FreshMenu revenue model received around 13K orders every day with the average price of each order being $5. However, all of it came tumbling down after the COVID-19 onslaught. The disruptions due to the pandemic outbreak has reportedly eaten down 52% of the Freshmenu scale.  

    FreshMenu’s revenue from operations lowered from Rs 104.57 crore that it saw in FY20 to Rs 50.17 crore during FY21. This shrinkage of scale also reduced the losses of the company, which declined from Rs 11 crore to Rs 7.34 crore during FY21. FreshMenu revenue faced a net loss of Rs 11 crore in FY20, which marks a 63% decrease from Rs 30 crore from the previous fiscal, regulatory filings show. The current FreshMenu valuation is estimated to be over $30 million.

    “FreshMenu aims at being the solution: great delivery and great food, for anyone whenever they are hungry. Our business model was always designed to be full-stack and hence bring the best quality of food to customers” says, Rashmi Daga, Founder of FreshMenu.

    With its FY21 financials, FreshMenu’s total valuation has been estimated at $27.42 mn, which has been cut steep from $52.88 mn.

    Freshmenu – Product And Service

    Food Magazine

    Freshmenu made a foray into content marketing in July 2017 when it launched its own publication, “Food For Thought.” Curated by DontBeContent, the magazine will highlight intriguing international culinary trends.

    FreshClub

    FreshMenu has declared the opening of its brand-new “FreshClub” membership program, which will get members early access to special dishes, free shipping, and reduced costs on the majority of merchandise. Additionally, customers can try FreshClub for free for 15 days. After that, they can maintain their membership for Rs 99 for three months, the firm announced in a release on December, 27, 2017.

    FreshMenu – Funding and Investors

    FreshMenu has raised a total of $32.4M in funding in over 9 different rounds that it saw of funding. The last round that FreshMenu witnessed was the Series C round worth $6.53 mn that was led by Florintree Advisors.

    In January 2021, Fresh menu funding got a funding of $467.67K or (Rs 3.5 crore) in its Series B1 round from existing FreshMenu investors like Lightspeed India, Zodius Technology fund, and Vistra India.

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    April 24, 2022 Series C $6.53M Florintree Advisors
    January 2021 Series B1 $456.67K Lightspeed India Partners
    May 13, 2020 Venture Round $391.4K
    August 2019 Venture Round $500K Lightspeed India Partners
    January 2019 Series B $2.9M Lightspeed Venture Partners
    July 2018 Venture Round InnoVen Capital
    October 2017 Series B Brand Capital
    January 2016 Series B $17M Zodius Capital
    February 2015 Series A $5M Lightspeed Venture Partners


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    Freshmenu – Partnership

    Mumbai FC

    The Mumbai Football Club has announced that FreshMenu.com will be its official food partner for the 2017 Indian Super League (ISL). The meal has been carefully chosen by FreshMenu to satisfy the players’ high nutrient needs. Football fans will be able to purchase the same meals in beautifully crafted boxes during the games.

    Sunfeast Dark Fantasy

    In partnership with Fresh Menu in Decemeber, 2019, ITC’s Sunfeast Dark Fantasy is poised to dazzle diners with an array of delectable dessert options.

    FreshMenu – ESOP

    From 1,25,000 options, Freshmenu’s pool of employee stock options (ESOPs) climbed by 149.2% to 3,11,623 options as per news report of April, 25, 2022. The new ESOP pool is expected to make up 5.28%, based on predictions from Fintrackr.

    FreshMenu – Campaigns

    “Vocal For Local” is a campaign organized by FreshMenu to promote the usage of ingredients collected from local farms for food preparation. This campaign was fostered on social media and other platforms. The company states that they have been following this approach since their launch, as they serve local customers. They also posit this through their FreshMenu tagline, “When you order FreshMenu, you order Local”. FreshMenu also has partnerships with various farms and ensures high-quality and hygiene in the food.

    Another prominent FreshMenu campaign is the “Earn your Lava” campaign when FreshMenu launched the Sugar Free Lava Cake in a Jar, where the company came up with the #30PushUpChallenge and claimed to give out 50 jars of the same product to those who take up the same.

    The next was the two-film ad campaign that brought out the joy of having different kinds of foods together in one table.

    Freshmenu Campaign

    FreshMenu – Competitors

    The top competitors of FreshMenu are:

    FreshMenu sustains its supremacy with its Innovation kitchens, dynamic menu, and well-trained chefs. FreshMenu differs from other food startups by operating as both a takeaway restaurant and a cloud kitchen.

    FreshMenu – Future Plans

    The future plans of the company are to make a profit by adding more sub-brands and reducing the inventory level costs. FreshMenu is also planning to introduce a new pizza brand to serve its different sets of customers. FreshMenu had also launched its new membership program called as FreshClub. Also, the FreshMenu franchise is planning to expand its services in at least 10 cities in two years, adding to the existing 200 delivering cities in India. It also plans to increase its marketing spending to 8-10% of revenue post fundraise.


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    FAQs

    What is FreshMenu?

    Freshmenu is the go-to neighbourhood food home delivery option you can turn to when you’re famished.

    Who owns FreshMenu?

    Rashmi Daga is the Fresh menu owner.

    How does FreshMenu work?

    The process of ordering is very easy.
    1. Choose your favourite food and add it to the cart from App.
    2. Once done, click on “check out”, when you’re about to order.
    3. There are multiple payment options, such as e-wallets and COD.

    How big is FreshMenu?

    In a span of three years till 2019, the FreshMenu company has grown to 27 kitchens: 18 in Bengaluru, 5 in Mumbai and 4 in Delhi/NCR. Its staff of 550 members and 700 delivery personnel (hired through an agency) together fulfil about 12,000 orders every day.

    Does FreshMenu serve halal?

    What kind of meats and ingredients does FreshMenu use? … Our food is the freshest as we source halal-certified meats, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, directly from the local supplier.

    How did Freshmenu start?

    Freshmenu was started by Rashmi Daga in 2014 in Bangalore. The idea behind the Freshmenu is to deliver food from the new menu every day.

  • Roposo – A Platform to Express and Explore your Passion for Fashion!

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

    Studies show that millennials today engage most in the video content. Be it their social handles or video blogs essentially called vlogs these days. But the most interesting part is that this trend was anticipated by this bunch of entrepreneurs back in 2012 when they came together and launched this application called Roposo. Get an insight on the Roposo Company Profile, Funding, Parent Company, Owner, Revenue, Business Model, Logo etc., in the article ahead.

    The entrepreneurs we are talking about are these three IIT alumni – Mr. Mayank Bhangadia, Mr. Avinash Saxena, and Mr. Kaushal Shubhank. Roposo – TV by the People is a unique social media platform where people express visually with homemade videos and photos.

    Let’s go through the Journey of Roposo & know about Roposo Owner, USPs, founders, business model, revenue, wiki, funding, growth, and future plans.

    Roposo – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Roposo
    Headquarter Gurugram, India
    Sector Social Network
    Founders Avinash Saxena, Kaushal Shubhank, Mayank Bhangadia
    Founded June 2012
    Parent Organization/Owner Glance Digital Experience Private Limited – InMobi Group
    Website roposo.com

    About Roposo and How it Works
    Roposo – Parent Company
    Roposo – USP and Innovation
    Roposo – Target Market Size
    Roposo – Founders and team
    How was Roposo Started?
    Roposo – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Roposo – Partnerships
    Roposo – Funding and Investors
    Roposo – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Roposo – Revenue
    Roposo – Growth
    Roposo – Future Plans

    About Roposo and How it Works

    Roposo, also very commonly known as ‘TV by the People’ is an extremely innovative platform where the users are allowed to express visually with their own homemade videos and photos. This application offers an effortless browsing experience in integration with the user-generated channels.

    The app users can easily watch what is relevant to them and also simultaneously connect with a wide audience from around the world. That’s not just it. The most interesting part starts here. With its creative and contemporary post creation and editing tools, the users can share their life, portray their unrevealed talents, and express their opinion on things that matter to them.

    One of Roposo’s key advantages is its focus on multiple Indian languages (it offers content in 10 so far), which gives it an edge in smaller Indian cities and towns. Mayank says it also differentiates by creating a TV-like viewing experience and offering editing tools that make it easy for people to start broadcasting (about 30 percent of Roposo’s users have created content).

    Video creators can also make money based on how much user engagement their content generates. The app offers a seamless, new-age TV-like browsing experience with a full-screen view and 25+ interest-based channels.


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    Roposo – Parent Company/Owner

    Glance Digital Experience Private Limited – InMobi Group is the Parent Company of Roposo. Bangalore-based Advertising tech Unicorn InMobi Group acquired Roposo in November 2019 with a deal value being around $ 20 million.

    InMobi Group was Founded in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Piyush Shah, Abhay Singhal, Mohit Saxena, and Amit Gupta. The company has three subsidiaries: InMobi UMC, TruFactor and Glance. This acquisition will InMobi Group to expand its content platform Glance in vernacular content.

    “This acquisition will enable Glance to bring to the fore content created by Roposo’s large vernacular influencer community” Said Naveen Tiwari (Founder & CEO, InMobi Group)

    Glance will get access to Roposo’s extensive network of professional, vernacular content creators and users. The acquisition also gives Glance ownership of Roposo’s video technology, platform and brand.

    “Glance is a disruptive platform and we are very excited to be a part of it. We hope to bring our experience and expertise in the area of short-form video platform to deliver engaging video experiences and make Glance the dominant vernacular video platform in India and the world” Said by Mayank Bhangadia (Founder, Roposo)

    Roposo – USP and Innovation

    The main unique selling proposition of the company is that it is essentially not an e-commerce player. In turn, Roposo is India’s first-ever fashion focused social networking platform for women. Being the only network in India that provides a 360-degree view of fashion to its users, the startup allows its users to post stories to establish interactions with the fashionistas and follow their fashion and style icons and review the products amongst an enormous range of other features on the application.

    Along with all these features, Roposo facilitates its users with an excellent shopping experience from a large number of web stores and brands. As time goes by, to assist its women users, this app gets more and more personalized with the stories and other features according to the tastes and preferences of the user.


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    Roposo – Target Market Size

    Roposo’s main target audience lies in the female section of society. With smartphones being so handy and the internet revolution, we see a huge rise in the target market for apps like this. The app users commonly have this one passion – fashion. Its target audience mainly includes celebrities, designers, stylists, bloggers, and of course, the girl next door.

    Roposo – Founders and team

    Roposo is founded by Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena, and Kaushal Shubhank.

    Founders of Roposo
    Founders of Roposo

    Mayank Bhangadia (Co-founder, Roposo)

    Mayank is an IIT Delhi Alumnus, with a double master in Finance Management from ESCP Europe and in Petroleum Economics and management from the Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP School). He honoured his effective skills for almost three years as the Senior Management Consultant at Schlumberger Business Consulting. Before co-founding Roposo with his fellow co-founders, he had also co-founded Giveter.com in 2012.

    Avinash Saxena (Co-founder, Roposo)

    Avinash comes from Dhanbad and also has graduated from IIT Delhi. He started his professional life with Evalueserve as a Senior Research Associate, then took the great mantle as the CEO and Co-Founder at HTechHandsTalk Technologies. Here, he developed the Gesture recognition technology which followed by joining Zomato as its CTO. He co-founded Giveter.com in July 2012 with Mayank and Kaushal and now heads Roposo with them.

    Kaushal Shubhank (Co-founder, Roposo)

    Born and brought up in Jamshedpur, he is currently heading the technology department at Roposo.com. Also an alumnus of IIT Delhi, this brilliant mind first worked at D.E. Shaw India Software Private Limited for over 3 years as a Senior IT Member which was then followed by joining Mayank and Avinash at their first venture Giveter.com.

    Roposo initially started with 20 employees, and today has a team of 141 employees.

    How was Roposo Started?

    Roposo team always intended to offer e-solutions that are relevant to people. Therefore under the company name, Relevant e-solutions, they commenced Giveter.com. It became a means for them to get an insight into the requirements and preferences of fashionable women. They were buying gifts and products for themselves.

    Roposo team realized that to search for fashion products, women had to surf through several websites and then also did not find the product as specific as to their needs. They explored this opportunity and started Roposo, which focuses on fashion for women. It is a democratic platform for women, brands and fashion lovers to express their ideas, like, curate, discover, and inspire others.


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    Roposo – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Roposo mainly generates revenue through two modules namely Advertisements and Lead Generation. The crux of the matter here is that though Roposo has more avenues of monetization to explore, this venture is already way too profitable with zero expenses in marketing or logistics, and a large chunk of investment in technology and products.

    “We suggest interesting places near the user’s location. Brands can interact with users too”, says Kaushal, co-founder of Roposo.

    Roposo – Partnerships

    Roposo has partnered with Shopify on July, 10, 2023 to pave the way for a transformative era in Indian digital entrepreneurship. Their collaboration aims to empower more than 10,000 digital entrepreneurs by offering comprehensive support throughout their business journey, encompassing services like establishing online stores, sourcing products, managing order fulfilment, and facilitating payments.

    In collaboration with chef and entrepreneur Saransh Goila, Roposo has introduced a new cookware brand named Delishaas to the market.

    Roposo and Ekta Kapoor have joined forces to launch a fresh line of apparel under their co-created brand, EK. This collection will showcase contemporary ethnic wear, offering a unique blend of style and tradition.

    Roposo – Funding and Investors

    Roposo has raised a total of $37.7M in funding over 6 rounds. Below are the funding rounds:

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    July 2014 Seed Round $1 million
    March 2015 Series A $5 million Tiger Global Management
    August 2015 Series B $15 million Tiger Global Management
    November 2018 Series C $5 million Bertelsmann India Investments
    December 2018 Series C $10 million Tiger Global Management
    May 2019 Series D $5 million Tiger Global Management

    Roposo secured $5 million in its latest funding round in July 2014, with Tiger Global Management as the lead investor.

    Video entertainment app Roposo has the tagline ‘TV By The People’.

    Roposo Logo

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    Roposo – Growth

    The venture has established itself as a niche player in the Indian digital space. The platform has more than 2.5 million active users and overall user-base of 4 million. The company is exceptiouser basewing at a rate of 100% every month with 7-8 lakh unique users joining the platform every month.

    On an average, a user spends 2 hours per month on this application and the app has over 2 million screen views per day. Also, more than 2.5 lakh videos are created daily on Roposo and more than 4,00,000 posts a month.

    The company has partnered with more than 300 websites and collaborated with more than 500 brands. Their app is available in 10 languages and recently they launched men’s section too.

    Roposo has declared its arrival in Indonesia. The platform is currently planning to expand its reach into additional markets, such as the US. Over 30 million Indonesians use the platform, which is run by Glance as as per news report of November 1, 2023.

    Roposo – Future Plans

    Kaushal says “Building product and technology is our concern, not profit. We want to build a community by reaching out to the customers and engaging them.”

    The Roposo co-founders believe that their team is their biggest asset. In the journey forward, they are quite hoping to acquire efficient teams that build modern consumer-facing products, probably in fields like artificial intelligence and machine learning.

    In the upcoming quarters, the platform will also increase its footprint in more markets, such as the US, Brazil, and Japan as per the news report of November, 1, 2023.

    Roposo – FAQs

    Who are the Founders of Roposo?

    Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena, and Kaushal Shubhank founded Roposo in 2012.

    Who is Roposo owner?

    Glance Digital Experience Private Limited ( A subsidiary of InMobi Group). InMobi Group was Founded in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Piyush Shah, Abhay Singhal, Mohit Saxena, and Amit Gupta.

    What is the Roposo Revenue Model?

    Roposo mainly generates revenue through two modules namely Advertisements and Lead Generation.

    What is meant by Roposo?

    It is an India-based- Video sharing social platform. The app offers a TV-like browsing experience with its channel containing user-generated content.

    Is Roposo Indian App?

    Yes, it is an Indian-origin App that offers a social media-like platform to share content and videos. Roposo is headquartered in Gurugram, India.

  • Cashify – How Old and New Mobile Phones Can Get You Instant Cash?

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

    Watch out! iPhone has launched a new model! It is an iPhone 11!

    Such launches of the latest gadgets that are blazing-fast and involve the most desirable of features always replace all the other previous models and come out imposingly strong!

    The above example of the launch of the latest iPhone 11 will certainly make the iPhone lovers run here and there from shop to shop just to buy the latest model. They won’t ever think about what to do with the iPhone X that is lying back in their homes. It might be any other model or gadgets as well, of any other companies. Here, Cashify can rightly be the solution.

    Cashify is a platform that helps you to sell your electronic gadgets like phones, tablets and laptops. The price will depend on the present condition of the gadget. With Cashify, the customers will definitely have wonderful experiences.

    Read the Cashify success story below to know more interesting facts. The Cashify company profile will help you know about the Cashify company, its Founders, Funding and Investors, Tagline and Logo, Growth, Cashify Competitors, Campaigns, Cashify Brand Ambassador, Cashify Business and Revenue Model, Revenues and more.

    Cashify – Company Highlights

    Company Name Cashify
    Headquarters Gurgaon, Haryana, India
    Sector Ecommerce, Recommerce
    Founders Amit Sethi, Mandeep Manocha and Nakul Kumar
    Founded 2013
    Parent Organization Manak Waste Management Pvt. Ltd.
    Website cashify.in

    Cashify – About
    Cashify – Startup Story
    Cashify – Founders And Team
    Cashify – Business Model
    Cashify – Revenue Model
    Cashify – Tagline, Slogan And Logo
    Cashify – Funding And Investors
    Cashify – Growth and Revenue
    Cashify – Product and Services
    Cashify – ESOP
    Cashify – Campaigns
    Cashify – Competitors
    Cashify – Partnership
    Cashify – Future Plans

    Cashify – About

    Cashify is a trademark of Manak Waste Management Pvt Ltd. It enables the customers to sell, buy and repair their gadgets. It’s an online marketplace for electronic gadgets like mobiles, laptops, tablets, TV sets, gaming consoles, etc. It’s an Indian online re-commerce platform. The company believes in offering a complete solution to its customers by helping them with selling, repairing, recycling and managing their phones and laptops in a hassle-free manner.

    Cashify Services

    Cashify Services

    Cashify – Startup Story

    The idea for the Cashify business originated when one of a group of 3 friends wanted to buy the latest iPhone and at the same time, sell off his Samsung phone in return for raising some funds. However, he didn’t manage to find it easy to do that.

    Cashify was known as ReGlobe. The company dealt with e-waste management. It then forayed into the re-commerce sphere.


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    Cashify – Founders And Team

    Mandeep Manocha (CEO), Amit Sethi (CTO) and Nakul Kumar (COO) are the founders of the company Cashify.

    Cashify Founders
    Mandeep Manocha (CEO), Amit Sethi (CTO) and Nakul Kumar (COO)

    Mandeep Manocha

    Mandeep Manocha is the co-founder and present CEO of Cashify. He is working in Cashify right from the beginning. He was previously the co-founder and Head at Business Relations in ZazzyBox. He was also the co-founder and the director at Manak Waste Management Pvt Ltd. He started his career as an intern in the Investment Banking Division at Lehman Brothers.

    Mandeep completed his schooling from Delhi Public School, Faridabad, India. He pursued his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Panjab University, and then went to the National Institute of Industrial Engineering.

    Amit Sethi

    He is the co-founder and CTO at Cashify. Amit Sethi is an alumnus of IIT Delhi, who has served numerous organisations like Zven Technologies, where Sethi was the Engineering VP. After this, Amit started his entrepreneurial streak, where he founded 4 companies till date, which includes Addmint, Addictab, 10Strings Technology and Cashify. He started his career as a Software Engineer in Indus Valley Partners.

    Nakul Kumar

    He is the co-founder and the CMO at Cashify. Nakul has a BE in Electronics and Communication from Panjab University, after which he followed it with a Masters’ in European Business and International Management, and a PGDM in International Management. He was previously a Consultant at Tecnova before becoming a Founder-Director at Reglobe. He was previously the co-founder and COO and is now a CMO at Cashify.  

    Cashify is a team of 501 p – 1,000 assionate folks, as described on the company’s website, who are dedicated to help the users to keep their smartphones, which is the most important thing in their lives today, healthy and up-to-date always.

    Cashify – Business Model

    Cashify has a C2B business model. Its objective-based approach helps the company to determine the value of the device. Buying the latest gadgets is a bit difficult for many people. And this is where the selling of old gadgets might help to buy new ones.

    Selling a second-hand gadget is never easy in India. The sector here is unorganized. Finding a buyer who is ready to pay a fair price is a very daunting task in India. This is why the business model is unique and profitable, too.

    Cashify – Revenue Model

    The company has got a very simple revenue model. Cashify buys old phones, adds value to the products, and sells second-hand electronic products at a margin. According to the company, around 100,000 transactions take place a month.

    Sellers have to fill up the details online. Then, Cashify dispatches a representative who comes to the seller’s house. He/she checks the device and pays cash for the device that day. The major portion of Cashify’s revenues come from the smartphones category, while it gains the remaining portion of its revenues from laptops.

    Two different types of taglines are present here. One is India’s #1 App to Sell Phones. The other one is #SellingSimplified.

    Cashify Logo
    Cashify Logo

    Cashify – Funding And Investors

    Cashify has raised close to $130 million over the 6 funding rounds it has witnessed to date. The company recently completed its $90 mn Series E funding round led by Prosus Ventures, NewQuest Capital, Paramark, Bessemer, and more, which came in on June 22, 2022. The earlier tranche of the same round was received by Cashify on June 8, 2022. This round made Cashify valuation soar to $290 mn.

    Date Transaction Name Money Raised Lead Investor
    June 23, 2022 Series E $30M Prosus, NewQuest Capital, Bessemer and more
    June 8, 2022 Series E $50M Prosus, NewQuest Capital, Bessemer and more
    March 4, 2021 Series D $15M Olympus Capital Holdings Asia
    June 28, 2018 Series C $12M CDH Investments, Morningside Group
    February 12, 2018 Debt Financing Trifecta Capital Advisors
    July 6, 2017 Series A
    April 29, 2015 Seed Round $1M

    Cashify has seen 13 investors to date, including Bessemer Venture Partners, CDH Investments, Aihuishou, Morningside Group, Shunwei Capital, Trifecta Capital Advisors, M&S Partners, Prosus, Blume Ventures and more.

    Cashify – Growth and Revenue

    Cashify claims to handle 100,000 smartphones a month, and the plan is to grow this to 200,000 by the end of the year 2022. The company estimates that the used smartphone market in India will be witnessing 90 million phones sold in a year, and the mark will touch 120 million by the year 2022.

    Cashify has grown from a startup that allowed the people to sell their mobile devices to one such company that helps everyone to buy, recycle, accessorise, and repair their smartphones so that everytime the users visit Cashify, they get what they need.

    Some of the major growth highlights of Cashify can be summed up as:

    • It has 1.4+ cr customers
    • Cashify has bought 50+ lakh devices
    • It sold 40+ lakh devices
    • It has offered more than 2500+ crore cash to the customers
    • Cashify app has been downloaded 10+ mn times
    • Cashify has 15000+ serviceable locations
    • Cashify boasts of having 1000+ partners

    Cashify boasts of having 120+ stores across 45 cities, which it plans to grow to 250 stores across 100 cities by mid-2023.

    Cashify Financials

    Cashify Financials
    Cashify Financials

    Cashify Financials FY23 FY22
    Operating Revenue Rs 816 crore Rs 498 crore
    Total Expenses Rs 973 crore Rs 603 crore
    Profit/Loss Loss of Rs 148 crore Loss of Rs 99 crore

    Expenses

    Cashify total expenses rise from Rs 603 crore in FY22 to Rs 973 crore in FY23.

    EBITDA

    The company’s financial performance in FY23 was marginally better than that of FY22. The EBITDA Margin improved from -18% in FY22 to -17% in FY23, a minor decrease. In a similar vein, more effective cost control is shown by the fact that the expense per Rs of operating revenue dropped from Rs 1.21 in FY22 to Rs 1.19 in FY23. While still negative at -41% in FY23, the Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) showed improvement from a significantly higher -181% in FY22. Between the two fiscal years, these figures show a slight but encouraging change in the company’s financial picture.

    EBITDA FY22-FY23 FY22 FY23
    EBITDA Margin -18% -17%
    Expense/Rs of Op Revenue Rs 1.21 Rs 1.19
    ROCE -181% -41%

    Cashify – Product and Services

    E-Store for refurbished gadgets

    Cashify launched an online store on August 27, 2019, to sell reconditioned computers, cellphones, and mobile accessories in India.

    Buyback and upgrade offers

    Cashify has launched buyback and upgrade offers on May, 18, 2019. The platform for trading in and buying back smartphones Referred to as the “upgrade bonus,” Cashify will purchase back the old phone and accept it for a higher amount than they otherwise would have. Additionally, the buyback is guaranteed.

    Cashify – Campaigns

    Cashify has roped in Rajkummar Rao, who has signed a multi-year contract with the brand as per the updates on August 10, 2021. The celebrated actor, as per the deal, would be involved in the promotion of Cashify products and services on a range of different digital platforms. Furthermore, he will also be joining in with the campaigns of the other startups and help in the growth of the customer base of Cashify.

    Rajkummar Rao is the first brand ambassador of the company. The main reason for signing in Rajkummar, according to Cashify, is that his personality matches the philosophy of the company. Furthermore, this collaboration will also help to establish the brand ethos, which is reliability, responsiveness, approachability, and dynamic personality.

    On this collaboration, Mandeep Manocha, CEO and Cofounder of Cashify remarked, “His story is an inspiration to the ‘aam admin (common man) of India and resonates with the spirit of our brand…”

    Cahify Campaign

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    Cashify – ESOP

    Cashify announced a $1 million ESOP sale program plan on August 21, 2022. Employees will be able to liquidate up to 35% of their ESOPs within the organization under the terms of the plan.

    Cashify – Competitors

    The top competitors of Cashify in India are Gazelle, usell.com, Greendust, InstaCash, and Yaantra.

    • Gazelle is a platform for buying and selling electronics gadgets.
    • uSell.com is a place where the selling of old phones, and electronic gadgets is done online.
    • InstaCash is also a platform where instant cash is achieved within 60 seconds. This happens when old phones are sold.
    • Greendust is a premier online shopping site in India for computers and electronics products.
    • Yaantra is a place. It offers affordable mobile phone repairing services. For both customers as well as the retailers. All brands are repaired here. Yaantra currently stands acquired by Flipkart, which acquired it in January 2022 via a $40 mn deal.

    Cashify – Partnership

    Xiaomi

    Xiaomi has partnershiped with Cashify and with this partnership Mi Exchange a trade in program has been launched on November, 22, 2017.

    Vivo India Partners

    Vivo India has unveiled the “Vivo Xchange” program, a brand-new trade-in opportunity that allows customers to trade in their outdated smartphones for a new Vivo model at shop.vivo.com/in, the company’s online store on January, 17, 2019 . The upgrade program is intended for both current Vivo users and those who are considering purchasing a new Vivo smartphone. To ensure a smooth trade-in process, the company has teamed with the top online re-commerce brand, Cashify.in.

    Cashify – Future Plans

    The company is aiming toward recycling mobiles. The project of recycling mobiles has already started. The goal was to allow the phone users to responsibly dispose of the old phone devices. Smartphones are among the most-used devices in today’s world, and it surely generate too much waste. The company paid a lot of attention to the e-waste problem, and it’s still doing so with every new mobile phone sold and shipped. Cashify now has 120 stores in 45 cities and aims to expand in reach, to have over 250 stores in 100+ cities in the upcoming year.

    FAQs

    Is Cashify profitable?

    As per the founder of Cashify, the company’s phone sales are growing at a rate of 7-8% month-on-month and the company will become profitable soon.

    How does Cashify make money?

    The company has got a very simple revenue model. Cashify buys old phones, adds value to the products, and sells second-hand electronic products at a margin.

    How much has Cashify raised funding to date?

    Cashify has raised a total of $130 Million over the 6 funding rounds to date.

    Who are the competitors of Cashify?

    The top competitors of the company are Gazelle, usell.com, InstaCash, and Yaantra.

    How much is Cashify operating revenue?

    Cashify’s operating revenues stood at Rs 816 crore in FY23, which increased  from Rs 498 crore in FY22.