Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Zee Media.
What is life without media and entertainment? Our lives would become so mundane if we didn’t have a pinch of entertainment and news to ponder over what is happening around the world.
The media and entertainment industry is sure booming and with all the right sense to the given latest technological advances and trends. It is not something that the industry would change so much but, it is up to the people and the way they watch these media channels.
In this article, we are going to read all about Zee Media, which is India’s leading entertainment and news network. A part of the multibillion-dollar Essel Group, Zee Media.
To know more about the company, let’s explore their startup story and growth, founders and team, investors, the challenges faced by them, business and revenue model, competitors, and their plans.
Zee Media Corporation Limited (ZMCL) formerly known as Zee News Limited is the news broadcasting company of the Essel Group. It is one of the leading media and entertainment companies that has a very strong presence in the news and regional entertainment channels. The majority of the content that the company airs on satellite television channels uplinked from India is news, current affairs, and regional entertainment shows.
The company has a wide variety of news channels under the brand name Zee which includes the English news channel WION. Zee Media also operates the ZEE5 distribution platform.
Zee Media – Industry
Zee Media belongs to the Entertainment and media industry. As per authentic reports, India Media and Entertainment industry is estimated to reach $30.9 bn by 2024.
Zee Media – Startup story and Growth
The company was initially incorporated as Zee Sports Ltd, founded by the Essel Group (also known as Zee Group) in 1999. The Group was originally founded as the Messrs Ramgopal Indraprasad in 1926 by Jagannath Goenka. His grandson Subhash Chandra later expanded the company and renamed it Essel Group.
Zee Sports Ltd was reincorporated as Zee News Ltd. on 27th May 2004. Later after nine years, the name was changed to Zee Media Corporation Limited.
Zee Media had partnered with Dainik Bhasker Group to publish its newspaper known as the Daily News & Analysis, but to insufficient profit, the publication of the newspaper was stopped. Additionally, the company operates the Zee Institute of Media Arts (ZIMA), which is owned by Zee Learn, the Essel Group’s educational division.
Formerly known as Zee News Limited, the Zee Media Corporation was a division of Zee Telefilms Ltd, later renamed Zee Entertainment Enterprises. In 2006, it was separated from the Essel Group as a standalone business.
It was in 1992 when the Essel Group started taking a lot of stake in the entertainment industry, also the year when it incorporated Zee Telefilms Ltd.
Fast forward to 2006, Zee Telefilms Ltd was divided into three entities by Essel: Zee News Ltd, the group’s news broadcasting division; Wire & Wireless India Ltd (later called Siti Networks), the cable division; and Zee Telefilms Ltd, the direct consumer broadcasting division. Zee Telefilms Ltd was renamed Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd less than a year after it was founded.
Zee Media – Key People
Zee Media was founded by the Essel Group. The group was founded by Subhash Chandra Goel
Subhash Chandra Goel
Subhash Chandra- Chairman of the Essel Group
Subhash Chandra, the grandson of Jagannath Goenka is the person who started the Essel Group. He is the Chairman of the Essel Group, and also the Chairman of Zee media but resigned in 2016. He is a member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
Subhash was born in Haryana. He never got to complete his schooling because of a lack of money. He started his career by joining the family business of commission agents and supplying rice to the Food Corporation of India.
Subhash has won awards like International Emmy Directorate Award (2011), and Canada India Foundation, Chanchlani Global Indian Award (2016).
Jawahar Goel
Jawahar Goel-Chairman of Essel Group
Jawahar Goel is the younger brother of Subash Chandra Goel, the chairman of the Essel Group. Jawahar is the editor-in-chief of the Zee Media network. He is also the Chairman of the media network’s ‘Editorial Governing Council’. Besides this, Goel played as the Managing Director of Dish TV but has recently stepped down from the role. He has worked with companies like the London Stock Exchange Group, Systematix Shares & Stocks, and more.
Zee Media – Mission and Vision
The company’s mission is to become the world’s global media company. Its vision is mainly about Customer Focus, Excellence, Integrity, Creativity, and Growth Driven.
Zee Media – Name, Tagline, and Logo
The name of Zee Media as mentioned early was known as Zee News Limited. It was in 2013, that the company was renamed.
Zee Media – Business Model
Zee Media operates its business through various channels some of them in regional-based languages to reach every Indian.
Zee Kannada News – 2022 (Kannada) Available only on digital platform
Zee Malayalam News – 2022 (Malayalam) Available only on digital platform
Zee Tamil News – 2022 (Tamil) Available only on digital platform
Zee Telugu News – 2022 (Telugu) Available only on digital platform
Zee Odisha News – 2022 (Odia) Available only on digital platform
The Zee Media Corporation Limited also has its presence on digital platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The company also has its websites for particular business activities:
Zee Media Corporation
Zee News Website
Zee5 Website
WION Website
India.com
Zee Media – Revenue Model
Recently the Zee company under its flagship company Zee Studios, its movie business was the production house for the movie “The Kashmir Files”. The company earned a lot of profit from the success of the movie. The success of the movie alone has about the company a revenue of about Rs 2,000- 2,500 crore.
This fiscal year, Zee studios itself has been a bigger contributor to the company’s revenue growth.
Although Zee Media generated its revenue from Zee Studios this year, most of its earnings are from Zee News.
Zee News is one of the oldest channels owned by the Essel Group. It has a wide variety of regional news channels. One of the biggest sources of income it gets is from its own YouTube channel. A channel is monetised on YouTube only when it has a minimum of 1000 subscribers. YouTube pays a channel if the channel crosses over 4000 watch hours. In this case, the Zee News YouTube channel has 21.2 million subscribers with 169.89 million views each month. The total net worth of Zee News Channel itself is estimated to be around $40.77 million.
Zee Media – Challenges and Controversy
Zee Media Corporation Limited goes through many challenges as the company runs news channels, which attracts controversies and challenges. The company was involved in spreading wrong and fake news through its Hindi medium channels called Zee News, which landed the company in many controversies and arguments.
In 2020, Nepal Government banned Zee News for charges of defaming the Nepal government.
Zee Media – Mergers and Acquisition
Zee Media and Sony Merger
In December 2021, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) merged with Sony Pictures Networks India. The revenue of both companies is around Rs 14,000 crore, which makes the country’s second-largest media firm.
Punit Goenka, who is the CEO and managing director of ZEEL, will lead the merged company.
Zee Media – Online and Social Media Presence
Zee Media is very active and has a strong social media presence through platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Its social media pages of the network have around 77 million followers.
Zee Media – Social Media Campaigns
In 2022, Zee Media Corporation Limited (ZMCL) launched one of the biggest elections campaigns on its opinion poll exercise. This campaign was aimed to create awareness and have an interactive session with its audience to increase engagement. Due to this campaign, the Zee News Channel on YouTube saw a 68% increase in viewership.
The marketing head of Zee Media, Anindya Khare says,
“News viewers had stopped believing in the numerous opinion polls conducted around elections simply because it wasnât representational enough. Our extensive activity and research helped us with this insight, and at ZEE Media we used our resources to create the biggest opinion poll of the election season, with the largest sample size ever. We have created a comprehensive, genuine, and transparent opinion poll in the history of elections and regained the trust of the viewers.â
Zee Media – Competitors
The company competes with other news channels, such as:
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Airtel.
Airtel is a name that unites large numbers of people in India with billions of people all over the world. This telecom giant is currently one of the most reputable brands in the industry. Nothing short of remarkable can be said about the company’s journey from being a modest regional operator restricted to the city of Delhi to sclaing to become the second biggest mobile provider in the Asia Pacific region.
The second-largest service provider in India, Airtel, said that the organisation has emerged “quite firmly” from the five-year tornado and is now highly solid, adding that it is under tremendous circumstances that an organization’s real institutions and character are tested.
According to Sunil Mittal, Airtel’s chairman, telecom is among the most “professionalised” businesses in the nation and its solid organisational framework has helped the company weather wave after wave of adversity. He said that best-in-class personnel handle Airtel, which makes Airtel what it is today.
An international provider of telecom services with headquarters in New Delhi is Bharti Airtel Limited, popularly known as Airtel.
Know more about Airtel, its company history, the founder of Airtel, its business model, investments, etc., by reading this article further.
Bharti Airtel Ltd. does business in the provision of direct-to-home solutions, communications systems and services, and passive infrastructure services, The following business segments make up how the firm conducts its operations:
Mobile services for Africa, India, and South Asia, as well as for Airtel Business, Tower Infrastructure Services, and Digital TV Services. The segment for mobile services in India and South Asia includes voice and data telecom services delivered through wireless technologies in those regions. The distribution of data and voice telecommunication solutions to customers in the African continent is covered under the Mobile Services Africa section.
The voice and data communications based on fixed-network and broadband technologies are covered by the Telemedia Services category.
The sector for digital broadcasting services offered over the direct-to-home network is called “Digital TV Services.” By acting as a single point of contact for all communications requirements spanning data and voice, network integration, and managed services, the Airtel Business sector encompasses end-to-end telecom solutions being delivered to big Indian and international organisations.
Installing, running, and maintaining wireless communication towers in India are all included in the category called Tower Infrastructure Services.
Mobile commerce services are included in the other’s section, along with administrative and support services.
Information may be transmitted using a variety of methods through the wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. This is known as telecommunication. As a result, slower systems (like postal mail) are not included in the field. It has its roots in humans’ need for communication at a distance greater than what is possible with the human voice, but with a similar level of expediency.
The volume of the worldwide telecom services industry, which was estimated at USD 1,657.7 billion in 2021, is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 5.4% from 2022 to 2028. One of the main drivers propelling this business is the increase in expenditure on the installation of 5G infrastructures as a result of the shift in consumer preference toward smartphone devices and next-generation technology.
Other possible drivers of market expansion include an increase in mobile subscribers, skyrocketing high-speed data connectivity demand, and increased demand for value-added managed services.
Unquestionably, one of the main areas for ongoing technical developments over the past few decades has been the worldwide communication network.
Airtel – Name, Logo, and Tagline
Company Logo of Airtel
Airtel’s full name is Bharti Airtel.
Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, the original name of Bharti Airtel Ltd, was formed in 1995. Bharti Telecom Ltd., an Indian firm that was formed, pushed the business.
The company claims that its distinctive symbol is an interpretation of the letter “a” from its name Airtel. It is warm and inviting, almost like a living thing, thanks to its curved shape and the soft accents on the red colour. It stands for an unstoppable dynamic force of energy that strengthens our relationship with our clients.
Bharti Enterprises, which includes holdings in telecom, retail, real estate, financial services, agri-products, and renewable energy, was founded and is led by Sunil Bharti Mittal. With more than 300 million users in South Asia and Africa, Bharti Airtel, the group’s core business, ranks third among all telecom providers globally.
Presently, Sunil serves as the International Chamber of Commerce’s First Vice-Chairman (ICC). He also sits on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom Board, the Broadband Commission, the Prime Minister of Singapore’s Research, Innovation, and Enterprise Council, the Prime Minister of India’s Council on Trade and Industry, and the Chairman of the Telecom Steering Committee of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
He is a member of the India-US, India-UK, and India-Japan CEO Forums and serves as co-chair of the India-Africa Business Council and the India-Sri Lanka CEO Forum. He formerly held the position of President of India’s leading business association, the Confederation of Indian Industry.
One of India’s highest civilian honours, the Padma Bhushan, was given to Sunil. Sunil, a graduate of Harvard Business School, serves on the Governing Board of the Indian School of Business, the Board of Dean’s Advisors of Harvard Business School, and the Global Advisory Council of Harvard University. He is on the board of directors of the Qatar Foundation Endowment and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, respectively.
Airtel – Startup Story
Bharti Telecom Limited, which had its humble origins in the Indian telecom sector in 1986, is where Airtel got its start. When most of India was still using rotary phones in 1986, Sunil Bharti Mittal’s firm was the first to sell push-button phones in that nation. In their first joint venture, Siemens AG of Germany, they switched from importing push-button landlines from Taiwan to manufacturing them in India.
To replace the outdated, clumsy telephones that were in use at the time, Sunil Mittal began making push-button phones in India in 1984. Previously, he had imported them from a Singaporean business, Singtel.
To produce electronic push-button phones, Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was established and a technological partnership with Siemens AG of Germany was established. Bharti began producing fax machines, cordless phones, and other telecom equipment in the early 1990s. He gave the name “Mitbrau” to his first push-button phone.
He acquired one of the four licences for mobile phone networks that were available for auction in India in 1992. With the French telecom company Vivendi, Mittal successfully closed a transaction. He was one of the first business people in India to see the mobile telecom industry as a key growth sector.
When Bharti Cellular Limited was established to provide cellular services under the brand name Airtel, his plans were ultimately authorised by the government in 1994, and he debuted services in Delhi in 1995.
Bharti was the first telecom provider to surpass the 2 million mobile subscriber threshold in a short period. Under the brand name “India one,” Bharti has reduced the STD cellular charges in India.
Later, with innovation at its core, the business introduced several telecom technologies to the Indian market. Bharti Telecom Limited established the foundation for the business’ mobile activities in 1992 by acquiring a licence to construct a cellular network in Delhi.
As Bharti Tele-Ventures, it started operating in Delhi in 1995. Through different collaborations and acquisitions, the service was expanded to several additional states.
Airtel’s vision statement says, “Our vision is to enrich the lives of our customers. Our obsession is to win customers for life through an exceptional experience. “
Airtel’s mission statement says, “Hunger to win customers for life.”
Airtel – Business Model
The two primary areas of concentration for Airtel are company growth or expansion and client acquisition and servicing (retention). Their mission and vision clearly express that their ultimate objective is to become a telecom service that is appreciated across the world, with a primary focus on customer pleasure and the provision of cutting-edge services that are frequently more affordable than traditional offerings.
Technology, network administration, backend programs, and other services are among the numerous tasks that are outsourced. Airtel was the first to use this business model, and it serves as an example for many new players.
Apart from their advertising, marketing, and substantial funding, Airtel believes in contracting everything else and follows the “minutes factory” strategy of low price and high quantity.
As the innovator of such a strategy, Airtel is well known for motivating tens of thousands of other businesses and entrepreneurs. In addition to Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Networks providing and maintaining Airtel’s equipment, Amdocs, a US-based company, offers Airtel the IT help the company needs.
In addition to a B2B model registered under Airtel Business that supports entrepreneurs and SMEs, it also employs a B2C strategy to generate revenue from its clients. Airtel differentiates itself apart because of its distinctive business strategy, which tries to offer clients the greatest services at reasonable pricing.
It is important to keep in mind that Airtel is not one of the businesses that have seen rapid expansion, but rather one that has established itself as the industry leader by innovating and deserving of that position.
Further easing its path was the fact that it is one of the few telecom service providers to have understood the significance of value-added services (VAS) from the beginning.
Airtel – Growth
Airtel is not a startup that is unknown to growth. Being one of the market leaders, commanding the telecommunications industry of India, Airtel has seen a world of growth since it was founded back in 1995.
Some of the major growth highlights of Airtel at a glance are:
Airtel is recognised as the 2nd largest mobile network operator in India and the 2nd largest in the world as well.
Airtel operates in 18+ countries across South Asia and Africa, and in the Channel Islands.
The company was chosen as the 2nd most valuable brand from India in the first-ever Brandz ranking
Airtel pioneered outsourcing all of its business operations as a business strategy. Yes, it outsources all of the operations except marketing, sales and finance
Airtel is credited for building the ‘minutes factory’ model of low cost and high volumes
Airtel 5G Services
Airtel has declared that it will be launching its 5G services later this month, as per reports dated August 10, 2022. The company CEO and MD, Gopal Vittal stated that the company will “extend to a pan-India rollout very soon” after starting the 5G services. These services will be further extended to 5000+ Indian towns and the key rural areas of the country by 2024. This will make it the biggest rollout in history. Â Â
Airtel – Joint Ventures
Airtel-Vodafone
Following the signing of a contract with Vodafone, Jersey Airtel, and Guernsey Airtel, two wholly-owned companies of the Bharti Group, announced on May 1 that they will begin offering mobile services in the British Crown Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey under the name Airtel-Vodafone. In Jersey and Guernsey, a 3G network is run by Airtel-Vodafone.
Airtel-Ericsson
Airtel’s mobile networks throughout Africa were managed and optimised by Ericsson under a five-year contract that Bharti and Ericsson inked in July 2011. With the most recent technologies, including its multi-standard RBS 6000 base station, Ericsson modernised and improved Airtel’s mobile networks throughout Africa.
Ericsson also offered technology consultancy, network planning & design, and network implementation as part of the modernisation. In Asian operations, Ericsson has served as the managed services and network technology partner.
Airtel – Sponsorships
Airtel and Manchester United struck a significant agreement on May 9, 2009. As a consequence of the agreement, Airtel was granted the right to broadcast the team’s games to its subscribers.
The Champions League Twenty20 cricket competition will now be sponsored by Bharti Airtel thanks to a five-year agreement they made with ESPN Star Sports.
Additionally, Airtel agreed to serve as the Indian Grand Prix’s headline sponsor.
The FIA GT World Cup for 2018â21 is sponsored by Airtel.
To serve as the I-title League’s sponsor for the 2013â14 season, Airtel inked a contract.
Since 2006, Airtel has been the primary sponsor of the Vijay TV shows Airtel Super Singer and Airtel Super Singer Junior.
Airtel – Funding, and Investors
Airtel has raised over $4.4 bn in over 7 funding rounds that the company has seen to date. The last funding round was led by Google, a part of which was completed on July 1, 2022, and allotment of shares part of the deal was completed on July 14, 2022. It was earmarked that Google would be picking up a minority stake of 1.28% then, from the telecom service provider. This deal was made after 5 months since it was proposed. It was on July 14th, 2022, that the telecom giant approved the allotment of more than 71.17 crore shares to the tech behemoth, Google, at an issue price of Rs 734 per equity share, which includes a premium of Rs 729.
It was at a meeting of the âSpecial Committee of Directors for Preferential Allotmentâ that this decision of the allotment of shares was taken. After this, now the stakes of Google in Airtel stand at 1.20% of the total post-equity shares or 1.17% of the telecom company on a fully-diluted basis.
Date
Round
Amount
lead Investors
July 14, 2022
Post-IPO Equity
$700M
Google
Jan 28, 2022
Corporate Round
$300M
Google
Feb 25, 2021
Post-IPO Debt
$1.3B
–
Oct 9, 2019
Post-IPO Debt
$750M
–
Feb 5, 2018
Post-IPO Equity
âš26.5B
Singtel
Dec 13, 2017
Post-IPO Equity
$350M
Warburg Pincus
Aug 22, 2016
Post-IPO Equity
$659M
–
Airtel – Investments
Airtel has made 15 investments to date. The last Airtel investment was in Avaada Energy, where the company invested close to $1 mn on March 10, 2022. Here are the details of the recent Airtel investments:
Date
Organization Name
Round
Amount
Mar 10, 2022
Avaada Energy
Corporate Round
$986.20K
Feb 25, 2022
Indus Towers
Post-IPO Secondary
$299.09 mn
Jan 31, 2022
Lavelle Networks
Corporate Round
–
Dec 18, 2021
Vahan
Corporate Round
–
Sep 15, 2021
Vahan
Series A
$7.38 mn
Nov 21, 2020
Avaada MHBuldhana
Private Equity Round
$569.34K
Sep 23, 2020
Waybeo
Corporate Round
–
Jun 17, 2020
Lattu kids
Corporate Round
–
Jun 9, 2020
Robi Axiata
Corporate Round
–
Oct 25, 2019
Vahan
Seed Round
–
Airtel – Acquisitions
Quikmile was the last acquisition of Airtel that happened on November 26, 2019. There are a total of 7 acquisitions made by Airtel to date.
Acquiree Name
About Acquiree
Date
Amount
Quikmile
Integrated SaaS product for logistics.
Nov 26, 2019
–
AuthMe Id Services
AuthMe Id Services develops and offers artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to resolve customer complaints and queries.
Oct 3, 2018
–
Telenor India
Telenor, an Indian mobile network operator.
Aug 3, 2017
–
Tikona- 4G
Tikona 4G Home Broadband is faster than fast, one can stream a video.
Mar 24, 2017
âš1.6B
Telenor (India) Communications Pvt. Ltd.
Telenor (India) Communications Pvt. Ltd. is a mobile network operator company.
Feb 23, 2017
–
MENA Submarine Cable Systems
MENA Submarine Cable Systems is a carrier neutral cable operator.
Dec 22, 2016
$100M
Augere
Augere is a wireless broadband business founded in 2007.
Dec 31, 2015
–
Airtel – Competitors
Top competitors in the competitive list of Airtel are:
Vodafone (Europe, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand)
Verizon Wireless (USA)
AT&T Mobility
Dialog Axiata Mobile Services
Tigo
TELUS Mobility
TIM
Grameenphone
Airtel – Challenges Faced
A code employed by the business was allegedly responsible for violating users’ privacy in June 2015.
Even though India’s global telecom sector is one of the fastest-growing in the world, the Indian telecom market is overheated with 14 contenders and overcapacity.
Additionally, the metro and other major cities have at least a 100% penetration rate, while rural India, which accounts for more than 60% of new subscribers, only has a 20% penetration rate.
Rural super-stockists and Rural Distributors were included in the two-tiered structure that Airtel planned to construct. Young business owners assigned regions around a few cell towers, and the rural distributors were in charge of bringing in new clients.
Consumers had a dread of technology, which added to the difficulties presented by distance in terms of service expectations. They refused to work with call centres. In rural India, Airtel established 25,000 Service Centers.
In order to address service requests in addition to selling new connections and recharges, a specialised retailer in the village was trained. The retailer got more trust, which improved walk-in business, while Airtel offered in-person support contacts. Each circle has a hotline or call centre that offered this real-time backup support.
Received concerns from consumers that their accounts were being established without their authorization, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) suspended Bharti Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank Limited’s licence for eKYC of Aadhar on December 16, 2017. In certain cases, LPG subsidies were even deposited into Airtel Payments Bank accounts.
Airtel – Future Plans
In order to meet the demands of India’s rapidly expanding digital economy, Bharti Airtel Limited (“Airtel”) launched a redesigned brand identity for its data centre business under the name “Nxtra by Airtel” and detailed investment plans. The largest network of data centres in India belongs to Nxtra by Airtel.
Currently, it administers crucial submarine landing sites and runs 10 big and 120 edge data centres spread strategically across India. It provides a safe and scalable integrated solution to global hyperscalers, major Indian corporations, startups, SMEs, and governments when combined with Airtel’s global network.
With the advent of 5G, a rapidly expanding digital economy, businesses moving to the cloud, and regional data storage laws, India is seeing a significant need for dependable data centre solutions. By 2023, the installed capacity of the Indian data centre market is anticipated to more than double, rising from around 450 MW to 1074 MW.
In order to further expand its network of hyperscale and edge data centres, which is already the best in the business, Nxtra by Airtel expects to invest Rs 5,000 crores by 2025. New data centre parks will be added in significant metro areas. To address the soaring demand and solidify its network leadership, the investment would increase Nxtra by Airtel’s installed capacity to over 400 MW.
Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business said âAirtel has built the largest data centre network in India and we are now doubling down on this business to scale up our network that will be at the core of 5G and Digital India. Our experience of operating secure data centres, deep brand trust in the enterprise segment and the ability to deliver end-to-end digital transformation solutions positions us well to serve the emerging requirements of Indiaâs connected economy. The new brand identity embodies this vision and ambition.â
Given the enormous energy demands of data centres, sustainability will continue to be a top priority. As part of Airtel’s overall GHG emission reduction ambitions, Nxtra by Airtel is already aggressively increasing the usage of green energy for its data centres and seeks to source 50% of the power requirements of these centres from renewable sources.
Additionally, captive solar power plants owned by Nxtra by Airtel were recently put online in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, with more on the way.
As India’s top ICT service provider, Airtel Business, the B2B division of Airtel, offers a wide range of products and services in a variety of fields, including voice, data, collaboration, work-from-home solutions, cloud, data centres, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, network integration, managed services, enterprise mobility, and digital media.
Airtel Payments Bank is a digital banking initiative from Airtel, which led the reputed telecommunications service provider to roll out a digital bank on January 12, 2017. The Airtel Payments Bank is currently billed as India’s first true digital bank and the largest bank for the underbanked. Â
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Amazon.
Online shopping has become a part of daily life for most of us today. A recent survey in 2022 reveals that over 2.14 billion people worldwide shops online, which makes 27.6% of the people out of 7.74 billion people in the world. Thus, it can be concluded that more than one out of four people shops online now. Â
While the number of e-commerce companies worldwide is growing fast, there are a few pioneer companies that have established themselves as the market leader in the sector, and one of them is Amazon.
Starting in the year 1994 from the founder Jeff Bezos’ garage, Amazon is one of the few companies that joined the 1 trillion valuation club.
Let’s have a look into the startup story of the e-commerce giant, Amazon along with it, discover Amazon’s Revenue, Funding, History, Growth, Competitors and more.
Amazon.com, Inc was launched in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in the United States. Later, it stepped into other countries to increase its market. Amazon India was started in June 2013, and sooner it became one of the biggest eCommerce platforms in India. Initially, the company started by selling books and it expanded to sell electronics, households, software, food, jewellery, and a lot more.
Amazon India Website
Currently, other than being an e-commerce company, Amazon has diversified into a number of domains including cloud computing, Publishing, on-demand music, video streaming, AI, consumer electronics, etc and the company is constantly on the lookout to enter new segments.
Amazon Studios, Amazon Publishing, Amazon Music, and Amazon Web Services are some of its other subsidiaries. In its bid to grow, Amazon has acquired over 100 companies to date.Apart from being the biggest E-Commerce platform, Amazon also offers some pretty exciting and good services and they are:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is the web services platform of Amazon, which offers IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services, which is commonly referred to as cloud computing. AWS was launched in 2006, and on March 2, 2021, it was selected by PGA TOUR as its official cloud provider.
Amazon Go
Amazon Go Logo
Amazon Go is a chain of convenience stores that is run under Amazon which was started in the year 2018. The stores are mainly present in the United States and the United Kingdom, the main concept of these stores is that there are no cashiers in the store with whom customers have to deal. Everything is automated there and they have self-checkout stations where customers can pay for their supplies after picking them up from the store. As of now, there are 42+ Amazon Go stores.
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime Logo
This is the OTT video streaming platform offered by Amazon, it is a subscription-based platform where movies, television series, web series, and other video content are provided for the audience to watch. Amazon Prime was launched worldwide in 2016, however, some countries were excluded then, like North Korea, Mainland China, Syria, Cuba, and Iran. Amazon Prime Video made history as the first streaming service to secure an Exclusive National Broadcast Package from the NFL on March 18, 2021.
“We recognize the need for in-game content by mobile gamers to enhance their playing experience and are delighted to provide access to this content free to Prime members. We will continue to add new in-game content for other popular games, with frequent content refreshes.” –Akshay Sahi, Director and Head of Prime, Amazon India
Amazon Pay
Amazon Pay Logo
This is the online payment processing service provided by Amazon. It was launched in the year 2007. Through this payment service, one can pay from their Amazon account, for goods and services. The payment service is supported by fraud protection technology through which you can complete any transaction securely. Amazon Pay launched Smart Stores on June 26, 2020. The Smart Stores of Amazon Pay is an India-specific programme that would enable the physical stores to serve the customers with a wide range of products that they can easily avail of and pay for just by scanning the QR codes.
“Amazon Pay is already accepted at millions of local shops, we are trying to make customers buying experience at local shops more convenient and safe through Smart Stores.” -Mahendra Nerukar, Amazon Pay CEO
Smart Stores is also coming up with a feature in which a digital store will be available for the customers in which customers can go through the products that the shop is having, can read and update the reviews of the product, and avail many offers which can provide them benefits, and a new type of shopping experience. Many shops have signed up for Amazon Pay Smart Stores and came forward as they have found a new hope to bring their business back on track. Big brands such as Big Bazaar and MedPlus have come forward and have taken a part in this new initiative.
Smart Commerce Initiative
Amazon has announced its Smart Commerce initiative in India, as far as May 18, 2022 reports go. With this initiative, Amazon India has plans to transform the local stores into “Digital Dukaans“. Amazon announced during the 3rd edition of Amazon Smbhav that the company will be fuelling its plans to digitise 1 crore small businesses by 2025 via the launch of its Smart Commerce. Â
Amazon – Founder & Team
Jeff Bezos (Founder & Former CEO, Amazon)
Jeff Bezos
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos (Jeffrey Preston Bezos) in 1994. He is an American entrepreneur and industrialist. After graduating from Princeton University with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1986, Bezos worked for ‘Fitel’ ( a fintech telecommunication startup), where he was working on building a network for international trade. Later Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service at ‘Fitel’.
Jeff Bezos- Amazon Founder
Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon and will be the executive chairman of Amazon. Andy Jassy -The Cloud Computing Chief has been appointed as the new CEO of Amazon.
Andy Jassy (Cloud Computing Chief & CEO of Amazon)
Andy Jassy
Jassy joined Amazon in 1997. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School. It was Andy Jassy who founded Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud platform with millions of users. Andy Jassy’s promotion from being a Cloud Computing Chief to the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Amazon is remarkable and highlights the importance of web services to Amazon’s future. Andy Jassy has taken over the position of Amazon CEO.
Andy Jassy- Amazon CEO
Amazon – Startup Story
Jeff Bezos jokingly describes founding Amazon as a ‘Regret Minimization Framework’. Jeff did not want to regret not taking advantage of the internet boom that had then started to slowly take the world by storm. Hence in 1994, Jeff left his job as vice president of D.E Shaw & Co. to start his own venture.
Jeff Bezos wrote his company’s first business plan on a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle. Initially, Amazon was registered as Cadabra, Inc. However, when Jeff found out that people misheard the name Cadabra as ‘cadaver’ (cadaver means corpse), he decided to change the name and bought the domain name relentless.com. But that too was changed as his friends did not quite like the name and finally named his company ‘Amazon’.
Jeff listed 20 products that can be sold online, out of which he decided to start with selling books. The first to invest in Amazon was Jeff Bezos’ parents, who invested $250,000 in the venture. By 1997, Amazon had 2.5 million titles.
In 1998, Amazon acquired Junglee Corporation ( provider of database technology to help consumers find products on the Internet) and ‘Planet All’ a social networking, calendaring, and address book site, and with it, the company also started expanding its offerings beyond books.
In 2005 Amazon also entered the crowd-sourcing business with ‘Amazon Mechanical Turk’.
In 2006, Amazon entered the cloud computing sector with ‘Amazon Web Services (AWS) realizing the great scope that the sector holds. In 2006, Amazon entered the video-on-demand sector with ‘Amazon Unbox’.
In November 2007, Amazon released Kindle, its first e-reader, which became quite popular among users. In 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Music.
Another Amazon product that has gained popularity is ‘Alexa’, which is a virtual assistant AI technology developed by Amazon.
Amazon – Name & Logo
Amazon being the largest river in the world, the company was named ‘Amazon’ as Jeff Bezos envisioned his company to be the largest.
Amazon Logo
Amazon’s current logo which the company has been using since the year 2000, has an arrow leading from A to Z, which reflects the company’s goal to provide every product a customer needs. The arrow forms a smile, which represents customer satisfaction.
Amazon – Growth & Revenue
What started as a small online book store has become the world’s largest online marketplace today. Ever since Amazon was launched, it simply grew from strength to strength. The company diversified and explored many horizons, and most importantly, it cemented its position regardless of where it went. Â Â
Amazon India marketplace, which is run by Amazon Seller Services, has posted a 49% rise in its revenue from operations that have been recorded at Rs 16,200 crore during FY21 and was last recorded at Rs 10,847.6 crore. The eCommerce giant in India also witnessed a decrease in its losses, which declined from Rs 5849 crore to Rs 4748 crore. However, another unit of Amazon called Amazon Wholesale (India), has scaled down during FY21, posting a 7% drop in its revenue from operations, which decreased from Rs 3384 crore (FY20) to Rs 3131 crore (FY21). Â Â
Looking at the sales, Amazon’s sales also skyrocketed at an unimaginable pace, which has significantly contributed to the growth of the business. One another thing is the diversification of its products and the realization of the future of the online shopping and eCommerce businesses at an early stage, which helped Amazon scale leaps and bounds.
Let’s take a detailed look at the Amazon’s funding history. The company has received a total funding amount of $108 million over two rounds. Amazon went public in 1997. Amazon is funded by 2 investors, AOL and Kleiner Perkins.
Investors
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
July 2001
Funding Round
$100M
–
June 1996
Series A
$8M
Kleiner Perkins
Amazon – Investments
Amazon invested in numerous organisations, keeping a track of which is really difficult if not impossible. The Bezos-founded company has over 118 investments to date.
The Andy Jassy-led company is looking to buy majority stakes in Ecom Express for $500-600 mn. Amazon doesn’t own an in-house logistics and delivery system unlike its rival Flipkart, and to match the Walmart-backed company, Amazon is planning to own an ecommerce logistics and delivery unit. Though both Amazon and Ecom Express are in the preliminary stages of talks, the ecommerce behemoth will likely pick up 51% stakes in the latter, thereby leading Warburg Pincus to quit. Â Â Â Â Â Â
Here we have managed to present to you some of the recent investments of Amazon. Check them out below:
Date of Investment
Name of the Company
Funding Round
Lead Investor
April 22, 2022
Agility Robotics
Series B
–
April 21, 2022
Modjoul
Venture Round
Yes
April 21, 2022
BionicHive
Venture Round
Yes
April 21, 2022
Mantis Robotics
Seed Round
Yes
April 21, 2022
VIMAAN
Venture Round
Yes
January 6, 2022
LeedPay
Pre-Seed Round
–
December 14, 2021
Amogy
Series A
–
December 3, 2021
Dibbs
Corporate Round
Yes
November 9, 2021
MyGlamm
Series D
–
October 19, 2021
Pismo
Series B
Yes
Amazon – Acquisitions
Amazon has had a list of acquisitions since 1994 when it started. The tech giant boasts of 94+ acquisitions and counting. Here’s a list of some of the prominent acquisitions that Amazon made recently:
Date
Name of the Company
Deal Value
April 22, 2022
GlowRoad
–
March 7, 2022
Veeqo
–
December 22, 2021
Prione
–
May 26, 2021
MGM Studios
$8.5 bn
March 30, 2021
Perpule
$14.36 mn
February 16, 2021
Selz
–
June 26, 2020
Zoox
$1.2 bn
October 24, 2019
Health Navigator
–
September 25, 2019
INLT
–
July 31, 2019
E8 Storage
–
Amazon – Business & Revenue Model
Amazon primarily runs an E-commerce business, which runs on an E-commerce business model. The company also has other wings, which run on an array of business models. Besides, Amazon also manufactures numerous products that are sold online and via retail stores across the world. Â
Amazon Customer Segment
Amazon customers can be divided into:
Sellers – They sell their products to a wide audience using the Amazon platform.
Buyers – They buy from a wide selection of Amazon products and services.
Developers – There are numerous communities involved with the Amazon Web Services (AWS), which include both Amazon customers, partners, businesses, and individuals. Â Â Â Â
Amazon Value Proposition
The business model of the company, as per the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, depends on 3 value propositions:
Low price
Fast delivery
Wide selection of products
Amazon Channels
The most important channel of Amazon is the Amazon website itself. Some other notable channels of Amazon include Amazon Prime, the Amazon app, and more.
A major portion of Amazon’s revenue comes from its E-commerce business. Besides, Amazon also has 526+ brick and mortar retail outlets, which forms a good source of revenue.
It also makes a huge revenue through Kindle, an electronic device to read books, subscription fee of âAmazon Primeâ, third-party seller services, advertising revenues, and revenue from Amazon Web Services.
Here are the prominent revenue channels of Amazon:
Sales for one-time
Sales commissions
Advertising
Subscriptions like that of Amazon Prime and the app itself
Web Services (AWS)
Licenses
Patents
Pay-Per-Use and Support Subscription
Amazon – Competitors
Amazon has a lot of competitors in segments such as merchandise, web services, electronics, and media. some of the main competitors of Amazon in its different fields.
Amazon is planning to venture into the health-tech and food delivery business soon. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has revealed plans to introduce ‘Amazon Prime Air Drone Delivery Service’, whereby lighter packages will be delivered to customers through drones. The company is also making efforts to make its delivery system more eco-friendly, by including electric vehicles in its delivery services.
Regarding Amazon’s plan in India, the company is planning to create 1 million new jobs in India by 2025. In January 2020, Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon will invest $1 billion in India to help 10 million traders and MSMEs businesses in India to go online. The company is envisioning to enable exports worth $10 billion via Amazon by 2025.
Amazon has announced to facilitate $20 billion worth of exports of Indian goods in the next 3 years, as per Amazon Exports Digest 2022. On average, it makes the company exported Indian goods would have to be $2 billion a year since 2015. Â Â
FAQs
What is Amazon’s Funding History?
Amazon received a total funding of $108 million over two rounds. Amazon went public in 1997.
When was Amazon Founded in India?
Amazon launched its operations in India in June 2013. Amazon was founded in July 1994.
Who is Amazon’s CEO?
Andy Jassy is theCEO of Amazon. Jeff Bezos was the former CEO of Amazon.
How much is Amazon’s Revenue?
Amazon India marketplace posted Rs 16,200 crore as its revenue from operations in FY21, which was a 49% increase from Rs 10,847.6, which it saw in FY20. On the other hand, the Amazon Wholesale business of India has witnessed a 7% drop in its operational revenue, which was recorded at Rs 3384 crore in FY20 and became Rs 3131 crore during FY21. Â
What are Amazon’s keys to success?
A huge number of SKUs, Table of Contents, Free Shipping and Returns, Overnight Delivery, Incredible Customer Service, and Talented Management is the Amazon’s keys to success.
How long did it take Amazon to make a profit?
It took Amazon more than 14 yearsâ58 quarters after its initial public offering to make, as much profit as it produced in the latest quarter.
What is Amazon’s launch year?
Amazon was launched in 1994.
Who is the founder of Amazon?
The founder of Amazon is Jeff Bezos, who is also known as the creator of Amazon.
Ola is a Bengaluru-based ride-sharing company that only a few people are ignorant of. Ever since Ola cabs became operational in all the major cities throughout India, it has become our go-to option. Along with the US-based Uber, Ola is one of the most dominating ride-sharing companies that offers the users a wide range of vehicles and renting options to choose from!
Indiaâs leading mobility platform, Ola has been operating since 2010, when it was founded and has already streamlined its ride-booking and car renting service and its different modes throughout these years with a focus on its users to add to its growth.
Now, Ola has also chosen to empower sustainable development and therefore, came up with its unique concept of âe-scootersâ or what we term as âelectric scootersâ. With Ankit Jain, Anand Shah, Bhavish Aggarwal, and Ankit Bhati as Co-founders, Ola Electric was founded in 2017 and is set to conquer the world with its unique electric vehicles. However, except for Bhavish Aggarwal, everyone else has stepped down from being Co-founders and has also exited the firm eventually. The Founder and CEO of Ola, is also the CEO of Ola Electric, along with being its Founder.
If you have already heard about them and are curious to learn everything about electric scooters, then you can keep this article handy because here we bring you all that you would like to know about these vehicles, including Ola electric scooter booking, Ola E-vehicle price, Ola Electric scooter price Bangalore, Ola Electric scooter range, Ola Electric scooter specifications, Ola charging scooter, Ola Electric scooter helmet and more.
Why Ola Electric Scooter is much like a âRevolution on two wheelsâ?
Yes, coming up with Ola electric scooters will certainly help people lose track of the rising costs of fossil fuels and all the morbid thoughts about the exhaustion of our fossil fuel reserves and their likes.
Ola electric is certainly a revolutionary idea and even its tagline says so. The tagline for Ola electric scooter says, âReady or not, a revolution is comingâ along with a motivating hashtag #JoinTheRevolution.
Here are the 3 key features that the Ola Electric scooter boasts of:
Big on Acceleration – The Ola electric scooters would be furnished with acceleration to envy and will allow the users to stay ahead on the road.
High on handling – Along with providing a remarkable acceleration, these bikes are also slick and promise exceptional handling on any surface.
Larger boot space – Ola Electric vehicles also come with a large boot space that is capable of storing two helmets and more important things you would need along the ride.
Ola Electric – Birth of the Entity
Ola has announced that its electricity-powered scooter manufacturing company would be different from its ride-sharing wing. They are two different lines of businesses under ANI Technologies where the former will continue to be a ride-hailing business whereas the latter would be associated with the manufacturing and selling of electric scooters.
Ola Electric Scooters – Built, Colour Variants, Specifications, and Charging
Ola has disclosed that their electric scooters will be made available in 2 versions â the Ola Series S – Ola S1, and the top-of-the-line Ola S1 Pro. The company has already launched S1 and S1 Pro scooters with prices starting from Rs 99,999 and Rs 1,29,999, respectively.
Ola electric acquired Etergo BV back in 2020 and announced that the Ola electric scooter is based on the Etergo Appscooter. The company has already adopted the platform of Etergo to be used in India in order to deliver better performance.
Etergo Appscooter
Looking at the Ola Electric scooter specifications, it is great to announce that the Ola electric scooters paces on 12-inch black alloy wheels. Talking about the design of the vehicles, they are clean and sleek in appearance and devoid of any other redundancies. The Ola e-scooters also feature a twin-pod LED headlamp that has an LED strip running around it.
Ola electric scooter
Furthermore, these also have single-sided telescopic front suspensions and their rear shock absorbers are mounted horizontally, with the disc brakes slotted front and in the rear. The pillion footpegs of the scooter fold flush into the bodywork of the vehicles, and at the back, there are chunky pillion grab handles, ending in clear-lens tail-lights.
These scooters are also claimed to be launched with the largest boot space ever, which are capable of accommodating two half-face helmets and still have space for packing in more.
Ola Electric Scooter boot space
As per the batteries, Ola bikes’ batteries are not swappable types. It will rather run on a standard charging system. The Ola S1 Pro charging time, when charged at home is 6 hours and 30 minutes, while the Ola S1 will be fully charged at home in about 4 hours and 48 minutes.
Ola electric scooterâs riding range for the S1 model is 121 km and for its S1 Pro model, it is around 181 km per charge. The latter also includes the Hyper Mode, which is not present in the former model. However, as per the reports in December 2021, the Ola S1 Pro will have a range of 135 km at full charge, which is the true range of these scooters. The earlier mentioned range by the mobility giant was clarified as the range of the E-scooters only on test conditions.
Ola’s electric scooters are reportedly equipped with a 7.0-inch TFT colour display that will feature in-built navigation, onboard diagnostics, and other infotainment functions, and will be powered by an Android operating system.
Matte black, matte pink, and matte sky blue were some of the colour options that were disclosed by Ola initially. However, currently, the S1 Pro model comes in 10 different colours, which are:
Midnight Blue
Matt Black
Millenial Pink
Liquid Silver
Anthracite Grey
Porcelain White
Neo Mint
Marshmallow
Jet Black
Coral Glam,
On the other hand, the S1 model of Ola Electric scooters comes in 5 colours – Porcelain White, Midnight Blue, Coral Glam, Jet Black, and Marshmallow.
The owners of Ola Electric vehicles will be able to charge their scooters using a standard 5A socket by using the portable 750 W charger that comes with the Ola Electric scooter. Furthermore, you can also charge it at one of its âHyperchargerâ charging stations. The company has already announced that it will make the stations live for charging scooters in over 100 cities initially, which will eventually cover over 400 cities.
The first Ola Electric Hypercharger was launched on October 25, 2021, ahead of the planned test drives of the Ola electric vehicles scheduled for November 10, 2021. The S1 test rides of the vehicles have already started, and have received an encouraging response from all across the country, as per the reports of November 20, 2021. Furthermore, after witnessing the overwhelming response that Ola S1 scooters have received, Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Ola, has decided to extend the test rides to over 1000 cities by December 15, 2021.
Amazed and proud to see the strong response to our S1 test rides! Thousands of you have tried & loved it! Weâre now expanding test rides to 1000+ cities across India by Dec 15. This is the largest direct to consumer outreach in Indian automotive history! #JoinTheRevolutionpic.twitter.com/ErxXkflQzO
Ola Electric has invested in StoreDot and thereby partnered with the Israel-based company that works on batteries to develop them for drones and electric vehicles and replace the lithium-ion component in the batteries. With this partnership, Ola Electric plans to equip its EVs with extremely fast-charging batteries that will be charged from 0-100% in just 5 minutes. The EV giant also happens to eye towards foraying into the battery-making space in India soon. Here goes the latest tweet from Ola Chief on March 21, 2022, when he spoke on the same:
Weâre investing big into future cell tech. Excited to announce a strategic partnership with StoreDot of Israel. Will be working together to soon bring to market and manufacture its pioneering extreme fast charging cell tech, capable of charging 0-100% in 5 mins in India. (1/2)
The electric vehicles of Ola are currently manufactured in its electric scooter factory in Tamil Nadu, which has a capacity of producing 2 million vehicles annually and the numbers will rise to 10 million by the end of 2022.
Yes, Ola Electric is in process of building its factory, OLA FutureFactory in Tamil Nadu, which will cover an area of around 500 acres. Having 100 acres of forest cover, 2 acres of forest inside, and with negative carbon footprint, Ola FutureFactory is hailed as the world’s most sustainable two-wheeler factory.
The Ola factory boasts a production capacity of 10 million units per year and will operate with the help of over 3000+ AI-powered robots that will have precision robot welding, an advanced automotive paint shop, 100% in-house battery manufacturing, and more. The FutureFactory of Ola will assemble 25000+ motors per day, which will make it the world’s most advanced two-wheeler factory.
The Ola FutureFactory that is set up at Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu, is believed to be the worldâs largest 2-wheeler factory that is planned with the facilities to roll out 1 vehicle every 2 seconds. Phase 1 of the plant is nearly complete. The FutureFactory of Ola celebrated 1 year of its production facility on February 10, 2022.
Exactly a year ago we bought the Futurefactory land and did bhumi pujan. Yesterday we celebrated the foundation day with 2000 women.
Saluting the Girl power at the Futurefactory who showed what it takes to start a revolution. Inspired by their energy and enthusiasm! pic.twitter.com/o9CtkiP4ew
One of the most unique aspects of this FutureFactory is that the Ola factory’s workforce only consists of women, which is the first of such initiatives in the history of Indian automobiles. When it celebrated its 1 year of existence, the Ola FutureFactory had 2000+ women employed, which has a capacity of employing 10,000+ women. This initiative of Ola furthers the possibilities for women leading industries by a step.
Ola might install a solar rooftop to power its factory and cut down on the electricity bills.
What is the price of Ola Electric Scooters?
The website of the Indian multinational ride-sharing company initially declared that the Ola e-scooters would be competitively priced. According to sources close to Ola, these scooters were expected to be priced around Rs 1 lakh mark.
The prices, as unveiled, later on, are tagged at Rs 99,999 and 1,29,999 for S1 and S1 Pro models respectively. At this price segment, these vehicles will compete with the likes of the Bajaj e-Chetak, Ather 450X, and TVS iQube.
Here’s looking at the current prices as per the Ola Electric website:
Ex Showroom Prices in India
Ola S1
Ola S1 Pro
Gujarat
INR 79,999
INR 1,09,999
Delhi
INR 85, 099
INR 1,10,149
Rajasthan
INR 89,968
INR 1,19,138
Maharashtra
INR 94,999
INR 1,24,999
Other Indian States
INR 99,999
INR 1,29,999
Now, as we see, the Ola E vehicle price varies from state to state where Gujarat is apparently having them at the least available ex-showroom prices. Apart from the mentioned states, all other states like Karnataka, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and more will have their Ola vehicles with starting prices of INR 99,999. Now, if you are looking for Ola electric scooter price in Bangalore, then it would also be starting from INR 99,999.
If you are eager to learn about OLA Electric bike booking and purchase one of such vehicles, then you donât have to worry anymore because here are some easy steps that will help you with the Ola scooter booking without any hassles. Here’s answering “how to book an OLA scooter online?” with some easy-to-follow steps:
First, you need to visit the official website of Ola electric: www.olaelectric.com and then click/tap on the âReserve for Rs 499â button, which appears at the top-right corner of your screen.
Now, you need to enter your mobile number, click on the captcha verification box to verify the same, and then click/tap on the Next option.
You will then receive an OTP on your mobile number, which you will need to type in and then click/tap on the Next option.
Then you will get a dialogue box that says âTotal Payable â Rs 499â and will offer 3 payment options â Debit/Credit card, UPI, and Netbanking.
After that, you need to choose your preferred payment option, after which you will be redirected to the payment gateway.
After making the payment you will see the final screen, which will confirm your Ola booking by saying âCongrats, you are now part of the revolution.”
As soon as you have completed making the payment, you will receive the order ID and other details via SMS or email to the mobile number and the email address provided.
Ola Electric – Founders and Team
Ola Electric had earlier listed Ankit Jain, Anand Shah, Bhavish Aggarwal, and Ankit Bhati as Founders, but later on, everyone else left the company, making Bhavish Aggarwal, the sole Founder of the company, as of May 12, 2022. Anand Shah was the first founder to leave the company, Ola Electric in 2019. This resignation was followed by Ankit Jain, one of the closest confidantes of Bhavish. Jain left the company in August 2020. Ankit Bhati also left the company in 2020.
Bhavish Aggarwal
Bhavish Aggarwal – Founder and CEO of Ola Electric
Bhavish Aggarwal is the brain behind Ola Electric and Ola, who founded Ola Electric with the other founders. The Co-founder and CEO of Ola and Ola Electric is a B.Tech engineer from IIT Bombay and has been a Research Intern and an Assistant Researcher at Microsoft before he founded Ola.
Ola has already roped in Wayne Burgess, a Jaguar design veteran who also served as the Design Director of Jaguar Production and SVO Vehicles, and plans to make their vehicles big on design, bringing in the global appeal to the vehicles.
Wayne Burgess
Besides, Ola is also planning to launch an indigenously built car in order to foray into the electric four-wheeler industry, which will also get a major boost in its design with Burgess leading their team as the VP of Design. The Ola electric cars are expected to be launched in the next 2-3 years and would be produced in a new Ola 4W factory, which will be a new factory that is yet to be built. The Ola Electric Futurefactory would only stay for 2-wheelers. According to the latest update by Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal, the Ola electric 4-wheeler would be the sportiest car ever built in India. The 4W factory of Ola would need an additional 1,000 acres of land for its 4-wheeler factory and its proposed gigafactory, which will manufacture cells for both its 2-wheelers and 4-wheeler vehicles.
Funding received by Ola Electric Mobility
Ola Electric Mobility, the subsidiary of Ola responsible for manufacturing Ola Electric scooters, has raised a total funding of $1.5 billion to date over 12 funding rounds and is powered by 21 investors in total. The last Ola Electric funding round was raised on October, 26, 2023 when the company raised $240 million.
The lead investors of Ola Electric Mobility include big names like Softbank, Tata Sons Private Limited, Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global Management, Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, and more.
Here’s a glimpse into all the prominent funding rounds that OLA Electric has seen so far:
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
October 26, 2023
Debt Financing
$240 million
State Bank of India
September 7, 2023
Venture Round
$140 miilion
Temasek Holdings
May 22, 2023
Private equity Round
$300 million
–
January 24, 2022
Venture Round
$200 mn
Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss, and others
December 8, 2021
Series C
$53 mn
Temasek Holdings
September 30, 2021
Series C
$200 mn
Alpha Wave Global, Softbank
July 12, 2021
Debt Financing
$100 mn
Bank of Baroda
March 12, 2020
Series B
$1 mn
Pawan Munjal Family Trust
September 16, 2019
Corporate Round
–
Kia Motors, Hyundai Motor Company
July 2, 2019
Series B
$250 mn
Softbank
May 6, 2019
Series A
–
Tata Sons
March 1, 2019
Series A
$53.58 mn
Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global Management
Ola ELectric – Growth
Ola Electric, which started taking bookings in July 2021, has already begun achieving some memorable milestones. Some of them can be summed up as:
Ola Electric has clocked sales worth Rs 1100 crore in just 2 days
It was hailed as the best-selling electric 2-wheeler after Hero Electric in March 2022, when it clocked the sale of 9000+ units.
With over 12689 units of Ola Electric scooters sold in April 2022, Ola Electric was recognised as the highest-selling electric two-wheeler company in India.
Ola has sold 41,024 units in 2022, as reported on June 25, 2022.
Ola Electric New Product
Ola Electric is up for a new product launch on the Independence Day of 2022. There are speculations that this new product is an Ola Electric car. It is on the 15th of August 2021 that the EV manufacturers launched the S1-series of electric scooters. So, we need to keep an eye on that for sure!
Here’s what the Ola chief tweeted with regards to the same:
Super excited to announce a new product this 15th August!
The Independence day launch of Ola Electric would be another Ola Electric scooter, at least as per the trailer that Bhavish launched on Twitter on August 7, 2022. The trailer had a scooter just like Ola S1 Pro, carved out as a silhouette, where he mentioned the “greenest scooter just got greener”.
On 15th August, weâll be revealing the greenest EV weâve made! Any guesses? đŽđł đ pic.twitter.com/aMFxToOSTo
Though there are only subtle mentions of the new launch, the Ola product might be an updated version of the S1 Pro model, or it might be an updated colour of the same. Besides, it might also be an affordable version of the Ola scooters. The launch event of the company will be livestreamed by Ola on the Independence Day.
Ola Electric Scooter Sales
After witnessing a noticeable decline in the number of registrations of EV companies MoM, in April and May, the registrations for EVs rose slightly in June 2022, which increased by 6.8% MoM. The situations or growth stories for big companies like Pure EV, Okinawa, and Ola Electric are a little different though. Ola Electric witnessed a 27.3% decline in May, and then again witnessed a 36.5% decline in June, the registration of which counted to 5874 units. This also resulted in Ola losing out its last month’s second position to Hero Electric, whose registration figures, after witnessing a decline over the last 2 months, sprung back again in June, rising by over 128% MoM. Entities like Ather, Ampere, and Revolt, all witnessed a rise in their vehicle registrations in June 2022 unlike Ola, as of July 2, 2022.
Ola, which peaked in its registrations by registering 12,705 units in April 2022, witnessed a prominent downfall, where the Ola Electric sales fell over one-third, to register 3856 units in July 2022.
Manufacturing Batteries
Ola Electric declared that it would be manufacturing batteries for its scooters, which is why it is in talks with numerous global suppliers to build a battery cell manufacturing plant in India. The battery manufacturing plant will have a capacity of up to 50 gigawatts (GwH) hours, as per reports dated June 8, 2022. The manufacturing expenses of such a plant will be around $1 bn. The capacity of the battery manufacturing plant might initially be 1 Gwh, which would eventually be further upgraded. Suppliers from Korea, Japan, Germany, and other countries might serve as the suppliers of Ola Electric. As per calculations, Ola Electric would be needing 40 GWh of battery capacity to successfully power 10 mn. The company has received incentives along with a few other companies, under the Production Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme, where the Indian government announced the investment of around $2.4 bn worth of funds. This government of India scheme aims to boost the local manufacturing of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) batteries.
The EV manufacturers revealed the first indigenously manufactured Li-ion cell, NMC 2170 on July 13, 2022. This cell is completely manufactured in-house, the mass-production of which is expected to begin in 2023 at its upcoming Gigafactory.
Ola developed the country’s first indigenously developed Li-ion cell, NMC 2170
Ola Electric announced on July 18, 2022, that it will invest $500 mn in its Battery Innovation Centre (BIC), which will be set up in Bengaluru. The BIC will serve as an R&D facility for electric vehicle battery cells. However, the electric vehicle manufacturing company hasn’t disclosed the funding round, and whether it will pour money by itself or depend on external funds.
The MoveOS 3 Firmware Update for Ola S1 and S1 Pro Revealed
The Ola S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters would be receiving the Move OS3 software. It is still being put together, as revealed by the automaker company on July 16, 2022, and would likely be released on October 24, 2022, during Diwali. This new firmware update would equip the scooters with advanced features like Hill hold, proximity unlock, moods, regen v2, hyper charging, calling, key sharing, and more.
Pre-Sale Bookings and Sales Records for the Ola Electric Scooters
Ola opened the option for pre-booking their customers on July 15, 2021. Therefore, everyone who was eager to buy the much-awaited e-scooters, and wanted to stay ahead of their peers could pay a refundable deposit amount of Rs 499.
Ola electric vehicles have witnessed pre-bookings of more than 1 lakh vehicles, as reported on July 17, 2021, the numbers of which increased each second.
The purchase for Ola electric bikes was geared to start from September 8, 2021, and the brand was set to kick start the delivery of the products from October 2021, as of the website status on August 2021. The brand also mentioned then that the purchase of the S1 Pro vehicles will be starting from September 8, 2021, and the Ola scooter delivery will tentatively begin from October 2021 onwards. The booking for Ola S1 and S1 Pro had already started back then and you can also find it live on their website as well as the Ola app even today.
However, Ola S1 scooters couldn’t be bought on the mentioned date due to technical glitches in the developer’s end of the website that failed to make it up and running. The website that would be a one-stop solution for digital purchases, which would also guide the customers with a fully digital loan process without any paperwork, wasn’t live on September 8, 2021. Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal apologized on Twitter for the frustrating experience the customers had to go through and postponed the purchase date to September 15, 8 am. He further reassured that the reservation of the customers in the purchase queue will remain unchanged.
The purchase of the Ola e-scooters went live on the mentioned date, September 15, 2021, at the end of which it was declared by Bhavish Aggarwal that Ola Electric sold 4 scooters/second, which resulted in the sale of scooters worth Rs 600 crores+ in a single day. The total sale of Day 2 was even better as goes the Twitter post of the Co-founder of Ola Cabs, Bhavish Aggarwal:
Day 2 of EV era was even better than Day 1! Crossed âš1100Cr in sales in 2 days! Purchase window will reopen on Nov 1 so reserve now if you haven’t already.
Ola is also looking to transport their electric scooters to the US by early 2022 as part of its international trade. The CEO of the company, Bhavish Aggarwal has mentioned,
“Yes soon! We will be shipping to the US by early next year,”
in a reply to Vivek Wadhwa, a US-based entrepreneur on Twitter, who earlier referred to the Ola Electric scooters as “the Tesla of Scooters,” further adding, “would love to get one here in Silicon Valley.“
Ola, however, had to postpone the deliveries of the e-vehicles from the month of October to November 2021 due to a global semiconductor shortage. However, the delay has further extended, as per the reports dated November 22, 2021, where the company has decided to defer the first batch of deliveries of its e-scooters to December 15 – 30, 2021, which was earlier expected to happen between October 25 – November 25, 2021.
Ola Electric – IPO
In order to be ready for its Initial Public Offering (IPO), Ola Electric has changed its status to that of a publicly traded corporation. Ola Electric Mobility Private Limited was the company’s previous name and now Ola Electric Mobility Limited before it underwent a corporate restructure in order to reach this noteworthy milestone.
Ola Electric – Partnership
Reliance General Insurance, a private general insurance business, announced a partnership with OLA Electric to offer an Extended Warranty Product in September, 2023.
Ola Electric – Acquisitions
Ola Electric has acquired 1 company to date that goes by the name Etergo.
Name of the Company Acquired
Date of Acquisition
Deal Value
Etergo
May 27, 2020
–
Ola Electric – Investments
Ola Electric has invested in StoreDot, a Tel Aviv-based battery innovating and developing startup that aims to replace the lithium-ion component on the batteries.
Name of the Company
Date of Investment
Funding Round
Lead Investor
StoreDot
March 21, 2022
Corporate Round
Yes
Ola Electric – Challenges
Aiming to transform the types of vehicles and the fuel that fuels them is itself a huge challenge that Ola has embraced with its e-scooters. Ola Electric has also faced many other challenges in its path of making EVs popular, and one of the major challenges is the fire incidents that the vehicle manufacturing company has seen in March 2022. Here are some of the prominent challenges faced by the EV giant so far:
Ola Electric Production Suspended in Tamil Nadu Futurefactory
Ola Electric has paused its production at Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri plant, as of July 30, 2022, for nearly a week. It has piled up 4000+ units at the same factory. Though an ET news previously reported that the company has decided to shut down the factory, an OLA Electric spokesperson refuted the reports, and stated that like all factories need annual maintenance, the Ola Futurefactory did too!
Ola’s Change of Payment Model Reduces Sales
Ola Electric initially used to set multiple payment windows for the customers, which opened on 4 specific dates and helped them pay in 4 instalments. However, on May 28, 2022, the Electric vehicle manufacturer changed that payment model to a one-time full payment model, where the customers will have to pay for their vehicles in full on a single occasion. This change has been impacting Ola Electric sales ever since. In the past 2 weeks, Ola has sold only 130-200 units, as per news dated June 25, 2022. Though this model is allowing the company to offer INR 10,000 discounts to its employees, the total vehicle sales were down by 27.3% MoM in May to 9230 units. The total vehicle sale of Ola stood at 41,024 units on June 25, 2022, so far in 2022.
Fire Incident in Pune
An Ola Electric vehicle set itself on fire in Pune in March 2022. This caused widespread fear and anxiety among all and has also led the company to recall 1441 bikes in order to diagnose them and check their overall health including their batteries, thermal, and safety systems.
Guwahati Accident
Amid the fire incident woes, Ola Electric has faced another criticism involving the son of Balwant Singh, a Twitter user, who alleged that he bought an Ola S1 Pro for his son, which met with an accident on March 26, 2022. This accident, he alleged, was due to a fault in the regenerative braking system. However, Ola Electric, in response to this, posted the telemetry data to prove that there were no issues with their scooter and that the accident was purely due to overspeeding and panic-braking. It also revealed the telemetry data in the form of an official statement on its Twitter handle.
As soon as Ola Electric posted the detailed telemetry report along with relevant graphs, proving that the son of Balwant Singh was overspeeding, and met with an accident, Ola Electric started facing huge backlashes for tracking customer data and publicising the same without the consent of the customers. This led Balwant Singh immediately mail Ola Electric and its authority to take down the personal telemetry data of Balwant’s son that was shared. Any further action taken by Ola was not known, but the fact whether the telemetry data can be considered as a customer’s own private data is debatable truly.
Balwant Singh’s son’s case was shot into the spotlight once again on May 12, 2022, when, as per the reports, Ola Electric responded to Singh, asking him to delete the negative reviews on social media within 24 hours or else, he would be facing legal action. The company’s response was backed by its earlier claim that it hasn’t breached data privacy.
Ola Electric Resignations
Ola witnessed another top-profile resignation on May 8, 2022. After Arun Sirdeshmukh, the CEO of Ola Cars, Dinesh Radhakrishnan is the next person to follow. Radhakrishnan was the CTO of Ola Electric who handled critical engineering functions of the company.
Ola Electric – Marketing, Brand Ambassadors and More
Ola Electric has already been a grand pre-booking success and is innovating its marketing strategies to attract the present generation of customers. The company is targeting all the available forms of media including traditional media, print media, and online media to empower the Ola scooter marketing strategy. The company has already roped in Bhuvan Bam, singer, songwriter, actor, and one of the most popular YouTubers of India, famous for his Youtube “BB ki Vines,” as its brand ambassador to hook in the young generation of buyers.
Bhuvan Bam was hired on August 27, 2021, on a contractual basis, the agreement of which declares that the popular Youtube personality would collaborate with the electric scooter manufacturers to create entertaining and eccentric content revolving around the new-age Ola Electric scooters.
Bhuvan Bam seemed thrilled to be an Ola Electric brand ambassador and said,
âI am really happy that Ola Electric considered me as one of their ambassadors. Itâs truly exciting to be a part of this green revolution, something Iâve always wished for. The scooters are sleek, attractive, and are designed as per the Indian electric vehicle market. I have joined the green revolution already and I canât wait for everyone to get their hands on it.â
Ola Electric – Future Plans
Ola Electric has plans to launch its electric car in 2024. Ola Electric is currently looking to establish its battery manufacturing plant in India that will have a capacity of 50-gigawatt hours. Furthermore, along with that, the electric two-wheeler manufacturing company will also be investing in advanced cell and battery manufacturing.
FAQs
How much does Ola electric scooter cost?
The Ola electric scooter has 2 models –
Ola S1 is priced at Rs 99,999.
Ola S1 Pro is priced at Rs 1,29,999.
The Ola e-vehicle prices, as mentioned above, are for all other states excluding Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, where people will find the Ola Electric bikes even cheaper.
What is the Ola S1 Pro boot space?
Talking about the Ola S1 Pro boot space, it is safe to conclude that Ola promises to bring you the largest boot space currently available in the market, which will have the capacity of accommodating two half-face helmets, with space for packing in more.
How is the Ola Electric bike booking process?
The Ola Electric scooter booking in India or the Ola Electric bike booking is an easy process where the users would just have to go to the Ola Electric official website and book them online.
What is the range of Ola electric scooter?
The ranges of Ola Electric scooters on a single charge are-
Ola S1 – 121 km
Ola S1 Pro – 181 km
Though Ola has advertised that the Ola Electric scooters would have a range of around 181 km, the true range of Ola bikes is 135 km, as disclosed later on.
What is the top speed of Ola Electric scooter?
The top speed of Ola Electric S1 is 90km/hr whereas for the S1 Pro model the top speed is 115 km/hr.
What are the Ola S1 Pro and S1 charging times?
The Ola s1 pro charging time is around 6 hours 30 minutes, while the S1 variant of the Ola e-scooter will be fully charged in around 4 hours and 48 minutes when charged at home.
How to charge OLA electric scooters?
The Ola Electric scooters can be charged using a 750 W charger that comes with the Ola Electric scooter that needs to be plugged into a standard 5A socket. Besides, the users can also charge their scooters at the nearest Hypercharging stations.
Who is the Ola brand ambassador?
The Ola brand ambassador is none other than the founder of “BB ki vines” Bhuvan Bam.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ITC.
What comes to your mind when you read conglomerate company? To put it in simple sentences, a conglomerate is a grouping of various companies operating in distinct industries under one corporate umbrella; typically consists of a parent firm and numerous subsidiaries. They often have a big global presence.
The concept of conglomerate companies is not something from a recent era but began some 200 years ago. You will be surprised to know that it was during the First World War when it actually started.
Weimar, a city in Germany, experienced a temporary economic crisis as a result of the First World War, which allowed business owners to purchase companies for dirt cheap. Hugo Stinnes, founded Stinnes Enterprises, the most significant private economic conglomerate in 1920s Europe, which included businesses in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, mining, shipbuilding, hotels, and newspapers.
India is no less when it comes to conglomerate companies it has formed. One such company is known to be one of the biggest conglomerate companies in India. ITC Limited, the name nobody is unfamiliar with, was founded in 1910 as a British-owned company registered in Kolkata.
Today, ITC is India’s leading FMCG marketer. Not only FMCG, but ITC has diverse businesses in sectors such as Hotels, Paperboards and Packaging, Agri Business, and Information Technology.
In this article, we have curated all the important information regarding ITC’s startup growth, it’s business and revenue model, challenges, key products and services, shareholders, and future plans.
The Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited, under W.D. & H.O. Wills, which is a British-based Tobacco manufacturer was founded in 1910. The company later changed its name to India Tobacco Company Limited in 1970, and then to I.T.C. Limited in 1974. The business is now known as ITC Limited, with “ITC” no longer serving as an abbreviation.
ITC is present in a variety of industries, including FMCG, hotels, packaging, paperboards & specialty papers, and agribusiness.
ITC is the only corporation in the world of its size and diversity to be carbon, water, and solid waste recycling positive, demonstrating its desire to be an example of sustainability practices.
Furthermore, over 5.5 million individuals, the bulk of whom are among the poorest in rural India, have sustainable means of subsistence thanks to ITC’s enterprises and value chains.
As of today, ITC has a market capitalization of US$35 billion and had an annual turnover of US$10.74 billion during 2019-20. Â It has more than 60 facilities across India and 36,500 employees.
ITC – Industry
According to a survey, the industrial sector, which consists of businesses in manufacturing, power, gas, and water, established more than 47,800 new businesses in FY22.
The conglomerate industry in India is picking up fast and changing the economics of the country.
ITC – Key People
ITC Limited is headed by Sanjiv Puri, who is the Chairman and MD of the company.
Sanjiv Puri
Sanjiv Puri is the Chairman and Managing Director of ITC Limited. With effect from December 6, 2015, he was appointed as a Wholetime Director on the ITC Board. He later assumed the positions of Chief Executive Officer in February 2017 and Managing Director again in May 2018. He was chosen to serve as Chairman, and that date is May 13, 2019.
Sanjiv Puri holds degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and the Wharton School of Business in the United States. Most recently, the XIM University in Bhubaneshwar awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Sanjiv Puri has held the position of Chairman of the Expert Group established by the Fifteenth Finance Commission of the Government of India to promote agri-exports, and he has also participated in the NITI Aayog’s Farm to a Table discussion group on technology.
He received the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur’s “Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Year 2018” for his achievements. Another honour bestowed upon him was the “IMPACT Person of the Year, 2020” Award from exchange4media, a prestigious online news source.
ITC – Mission and Vision
ITC Limited vision is to maintain its ranking as one of India’s most valuable companies by performing at an international level and generating growth for the Indian economy and the company’s stakeholders.
ITC’s mission is, “To enhance the wealth generating capability of the enterprise in a globalising environment, delivering superior and sustainable stakeholder value”
ITC – Name, Logo, and Tagline
ITC Logo
ITC’s name has been changed a few times. The company was originally known as ‘Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited’ when it was under British ownership. Later, the company ventured into partnerships and was renamed the Indian Tobacco Development Company Limited.
After Independence, the company was changed to I.T.C Limited. In present times, the company is popularly known as ITC, not as a short-form of anything.
ITC goes by the tagline, “Enduring Values”
ITC – Startup Story
ITC traces back to 1910 as a British-owned company located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The company used to call Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited. Soon after a year, to source leaf tobacco, the company entered into partnerships with farmers from the southern region of India.
The “Indian Leaf Tobacco Development Company Limited” was established under the company’s aegis in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh in 1912. The company had its first cigarette factory in Bangalore in 1913.
The company had its headquarters in the ‘Virginia House’ at Calcutta. After years of development and strategies, ITC decided to expand its footprint and purchased the Kidderpore factory of Carreras Tobacco Company in 1935. To drastically lower import prices, ITC assisted in the establishment of an indigenous industry to produce cigarette tissue paper in 1946.
Within three years, a printing and packaging facility was established by ITC in Madras. The company also purchased the manufacturing operations of Tobacco Manufacturers (India) Limited as well as Printers (India) Limited’s related lithographic printing operations in 1953.
Right after the purchase of Printers (India) Limited, ITC was converted into a Public Limited Company. With 6% of the company’s Indian shareholders, the first step toward Indianization was made in the same year. During this period, ITC also entered the consumer research market for the first time in India.
In order to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of cigarettes, technology was more heavily focused on throughout the 1960s when establishing cigarette machines and filter-rod manufacturing facilities. In a few years, the Indian shareholding grew further to 40%.
ITC started to enter the hospitality industry in 1975 and bought and renamed the ITC Welcomgroup Hotel Chola in Madras. The company selected the hospitality industry due to its potential to produce significant amounts of foreign exchange, develop tourism infrastructure, and produce a significant amount of direct and indirect employment.
As the shareholders kept growing, the company started to create more hotels in the following years. It was in 1979, the company entered the paperboards business by promoting ITC Bhadrachalam Paperboards Limited.
As the company kept growing, two more ventures were established by ITC – the ITC Classic Finance Limited and ITC Agro Tech Limited under its umbrella during the 1986s.
The Wills Sport line of casual clothing was introduced by ITC in the 2000s, and the company also entered the stationery and gifting industries by producing the Expressions line of greeting cards and Classmate notebooks.
ITC – Business Model
ITC business is a multi-industry company, and as a multinational company, it has different products and different target markets accordingly. The business model of ITC is to create products that benefit its target audience by giving them a vast range of products.
ITC sets its benchmark in various other sectors like FMCG, Agri-Business, Hotels, Paperboards and Specialty Boards, Packaging, and Information Technology.
Here let’s take the look at the key products that covers in the business model of ITC
FMCG
ITC houses around 25 brands under its FMCG market, thus making them one of India’s leading marketers in Fast Moving Consumer Goods Business(FMCG). It could be seen that the company’s strategic goal is to ensure long-term success by combining and using the varied set of competencies present across all of its businesses to take advantage of new opportunities in the FMCG industry.
Some of the brands that help us with our bare necessities in today’s age, are majorly by ITC, these are:
ITC Foods Brands  – To name a few:
Sunfeast
Aashirvaad
Bingo
Yippee
B natural
Sunfeast Milkshake
Mint-o
Candyman
Sunbean
ITC Personal Care Brands;
Salvon
Vivel
Engage
Fiama
Nim Wash
EDW ESSENZA
Charmis
ITC Stationery Brands;
Classmates
Paperkraft
ITC Incense Brands;
Mangaldeep
ITC Safety Matches Brands;
Homelites
Aim
ITC Cigarettes Brands;
Insignia
India Kings
Classic
Gold Flake
American Club
Wills Navy Cut
Players
Scissors
Capstan
Berkeley
Bristol
Flake
Silk Cut
Duke & Royal.
Hotels
ITC business is also expanded in the hotel sector. The company launched its first hotel in 1975 by building on the assets of its excellent sustainability standards and pioneered the idea of “Responsible Luxury” in the hospitality industry. Presently, the company owns around 100+ hotels in various locations.
Some of the luxury and distinguished hotel brands by ITC are:
ITC Hotels
Mementos by ITC Hotels
Welcome Hotel
Storii by ITC Hotels
Fortune Hotels
WelcomHeritage Hotels
Paperboards and Packaging materials
The company is proud in meeting the needs of a broad range of industries, including those for FMCG cartons, electrical insulation papers, bio-based barrier coated boards, decorative laminate bases, writing and printing papers, and much more. ITC’s paperboard products range in Virgin Boards, Recyclable Barriers Boards, Recycled Boards, Barrier Boards, and Graphic Boards.
ITC has also been a prominent contributor to paperboard packaging in South Asia. Some of the packaging services provided by ITC are cartons packaging, flexible packaging, tobacco packaging, innovation, and new product development.
Agribusiness
Due to its involvement in reforming and reinventing the rural agricultural area, ITC, which also operates in the agriculture sector, has solidified its place as a prominent corporate in the agricultural industry in India. ITC also started a farmer empowerment plan known as the e-Choupal to help farmers build a strong community.
Today, e-Choupal is the world’s largest rural digital infrastructure. Some of the agri-products, that the company focuses on export and domestic trading are; Feed ingredients, Coffee, Marine Products, Food Grains, and Processed Fruits.
IT services
ITC Info Tech by ITC provides services in business and technology consulting. It offers its IT solutions to sectors like Banking & Financial, Services, Â Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Healthcare Travel, and Hospitality.
Apparel business
ITC has diversified its business in apparel and fashion as well. Fashion brands that are owned by ITC are John Players and Wills Lifestyle. However, the company had been shutting the stores of Wills Lifestyle due to losses.
Marketing and Media Centres
To build its brand and advertise its companies, goods, and services, ITC engages in a variety of marketing and promotional initiatives. The brand uses a variety of promotional techniques, including print, digital, and electronic media, in its advertising campaigns. It has launched several advertising campaigns that are broadcasted across various media, including radio, television, billboards, etc.
ITC has roped in many celebrities to endorse their brands like Shah Rukh Khan for its food brand ‘Sunfeast’, Alia Bhatt for its ‘Sunfeast Dark Fantasy’ biscuits, famous cricket player like Yuvraj Singh, and Bollywood actress, Soha Ali Khan for ‘Classmate’, Kiara Advani for ‘Charmis’, and Tara Sutaria for ‘Savlon’.
R&D Activities
ITC has its own research and development centres. The R&D centre come under the brand name ITC Life Sciences and Technology Centre (LSTC). The centre is situated in Bengaluru, where it is involved in creating many innovative products and technology solutions to offer to its Indian customers.
CSR Activities
ITC has its own CSR policy where it aims to contribute as much as possible to building economic, social, and environmental capital towards the betterment of society in general. Women empowerment, Afforestation programme, Sustainable agriculture, Livestock Development, Watershed Development programme, Primary Education, Skilling & Vocational Training, Health & Sanitation, and Solid Waste Management are some of the CSR initiatives by ITC Limited.
ITC – Revenue Model
ITC mostly generates its revenue from the cigarette industry. Despite, the third wave of Covid, the cigarette sector’s revenue is up 10.2%.
For FY2021-22, the company’s overall Gross Revenue at Rs. 59101.09 crores increased by 22.7%, while EBITDA increased by 22.0% to Rs. 18933.66 crores.Profit Before Tax at Rs. 19829.53 crores grew by 15.5% over the previous year and Profit After Tax stood at Rs. 15057.83 crores (previous year Rs. 13031.68 crores). Total Comprehensive Income for the year stood at Rs. 15631.68 crores (previous year Rs. 13277.93 crores). Earnings Per Share for the year stood at Rs. 12.22 (the previous year Rs. 10.59).
ITC – Investments
ITC has made four investments till now. Their most recent investment was on 20 April 2022, when Mylo raised âš1.3B. Other companies in which ITC has invested are Mother Sparsh Baby Care and Azgo.
ITC has invested around $1 million at Azgo in 2019 in corporate round funding.
ITC – Mergers and Acquisitions
ITC has bought two businesses. Sunrise Foods was their most recent acquisition as of May 25, 2020. They paid $21.5 billion to buy Sunrise Foods.
Century Textiles – Nainital paper unit is another company they acquired on 16 June 2011 at an undisclosed amount.
ITC – Shareholders
The equity shares of ITC are traded on the Calcutta Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India, and the Bombay Stock Exchange (CSE). Â Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) issued by the corporation are traded on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. ITC is a component of the BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50 of the NSE, two of the most important stock market indices in India.
ITC – Challenges Faced
In 2021, ITC was facing issues in operating outlets because of lockdowns imposed during the second wave of Covid-19. The company thinks that because of the second wave lockdown, it had severe economic and social disruptions. The limited time hours given during the lockdowns posed a big challenge for the company as there was no material supply and limited customers at its various stores.
ITC Hotels suffered a lot during the second wave as there were restrictions imposed by the Government to curb the spread of the pandemic.
ITC – Online and Social Media Presence
Since ITC plays a key role in marketing and promotional activities, it knows how to keep its audience engaged and keep them updated through its various brand awareness strategies and methods, it surely has a very strong social media presence. The LinkedIn page of ITC has 2,438,418 followers, Instagram has 12.3K followers, and the Twitter page has 40.2K followers.
ITC – Awards and Achievements
As one of the leading Multinational Companies in India, ITC has received many awards and achievements. Take a look at the below list of some major awards won by ITC:
Pulp & Paper International (PPI) Awards by Fastmarkets RISI
First Prize At National Water Awards, 2022
EFI CII National Award for Excellence in Employee Relations, 2021
ICSI CSR Excellence Award, 2021
ITC’s Savlon wins big at Cannes 2017
Excellence in Corporate Governance and Integration’ – Porter Prize, 2017
World Business Development Award 2012, RIO
ITC – Advertisements and Social Media Campaigns
ITC knows its game when it comes to marketing itself. In 2020, ITC launched a social media campaign to voice out the different products it makes and reflects the essence of the ‘Made In India’ initiative.
With the #ProudlyIndian Campaign, ITC wanted to grasp the Indian audience for being an important contributor to the nation with its myriad options of products, which are manufactured on Indian soil with cutting-edge technology centres and Indian farmers.
In 2021, ITC Vivel launched a campaign on Women’s Equality day to salute all the homemaker women. With ‘Ab Samjhauta Nahin’ philosophy, the campaign highlights the gap between working professionals’ and homemakers’ expectations.
With its #RespectWorkForHome campaign, the brand celebrates the dedicated, persistent, and selfless work of housewives. The brand demonstrates the long-standing problem of discrimination based not only on a person’s gender but also on the sort of labour performed.
ITC – Competitors
ITC competes with the following companies:
In the FMCG sector
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)
P&G
Coca-Cola
Dabur
Danone
L’Oreal
Colgate
Nestle
Godrej Consumer Products
In Cigarettes Sector
Raghunath
Godfrey Phillips India
Vazir Sultan Tobacco
Golden Tobacco
Philip Morris International
In Hotels Sector,
Taj Group of Hotels
Oberoi
Leela Hotels
FAQs
Is ITC private or government?
ITC is a private sector company that has its presence in Cigarettes, Hotels, Paperboards & Specialty Papers Packaging, Agri-Business, Packaged Foods, Branded Apparel, Personal Care, Stationery, Safety Matches and much more.
Who is the biggest shareholder of ITC?
Tobacco Manufacturers India Ltd is the biggest shareholder of ITC.
Is ITC an Indian company?
Yes ITC is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Kolkata.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by CredAble.
CredAble provides working capital and related liquidity programs for enterprise supply chains, leveraging its trade finance expertise, partnerships with capital providers, and its world-class technology platform. Founded by Nirav Choksi, Rajiv Ramnarayan and Ram Kewalramani, the goal of this fintech startup is to make âCredAbleâ synonymous with âWorking Capitalâ and hence the mission statement is Think Working capital… Think CredAble.
Since its inception in 2017, CredAble has enabled in excess of INR 6,000 crores and more than 11,000 borrowers covering over 100,000 transactions with 0% NPAs. This has culminated as an outcome of the team’s single-minded focus on execution. CredAble aims to disburse in excess of USD 1 billion per month going to USD 2 billion per month.
StartupTalky interviewed the co-founders, Nirav Choksi & Ram Kewalramani to get insights on the Success Story and Growth Hacks of CredAble. Know all about CredAble funding, founders, business and revenue model, how it started, marketing strategies, and more.
CredAble – Company Highlights
Startup Name
CredAble
Founders
Nirav Choksi (CEO), Ram Kewalramani (MD) and Rajiv Ramnarayan (Founding Partner and Board Advisor)
CredAble provides working capital and related liquidity programs for enterprise supply chains, leveraging its trade finance expertise, partnerships with capital providers, and its world-class technology platform.
The goal is to make âCredAbleâ synonymous with âWorking Capitalâ and hence the mission statement is think Working capital… think CredAble.
CredAbleâs vision is to create holistic financial inclusion that would triple the availability of working capital, wherein the ripple effect has a significant growth in Indiaâs GDP.
The co-founders of CreAble highlight the Culture Statement of the company – “There are 6 Core Culture statements that we at CredAble completely align to and this is how we stay on our Mission”, said they:
We are Audaciously breaking boundaries
Proposing âout of the boxâ solutions to customers
Solving big problems that matter
2. We are humbled
By the partnership and support of our shareholders
By the opportunity to make a difference in this world
3. We are Generous
We give ourselves fully
We share our knowledge and insights freely with all
4. We are enablers of Context to Content
We are aware of âWhyâ of âWhatâ we do every day
Create a Powerful contextual relationship
5. We set the measure
Set the benchmark of excellence in everything we do
CredAbleâs focus is to expand financial inclusion for the MSME base through its solutions like:
Post-Invoice Early Payment Program enables all suppliers, irrespective of size and stature, to get working capital against their invoices in exchange for a discount. These discounts are derived using CredAbleâs proprietary credit assessment model that takes into consideration multiple data points, thereby, enabling the vendor to get access to working capital at their respective bankable rates. The program is designed for vendors to avail working capital on tap without collateral and recourse.
Just in Time (JIT) Financing is a pre-invoice financing program designed to bridge the gap between payment obligations and receivables from Corporate. It is based on the occurrence of âbillable eventsâ and funding milestones like Purchase Order, Proof of Delivery, Goods Received Note, Goods Acceptance Note, or client-approved MIS. CredAbleâs platform automates financing and real-time tracking of such transactions.
Financial inclusion through tokenization enables access to working capital for multi-layer supply chains encompassing vendors and sub-vendors. Each series of tokens issued through the CredAble platform represents an underlying invoice value and has a finite expiration period. Tokens can be encashed at any point by vendors and sub-vendors up to expiration at their specified cost of finance. This is enabled through CredAbleâs proprietary platform which digitizes the entire process right from issuance to settlement. A first in the Indian industry.
CredAble is focused on enabling working capital for India Inc. Currently, there is a USD 75 billion working capital gap in India. Furthermore, there are approx. 75 million MSMEs, of which, only 16% have access to formal credit, thereby, creating a USD 350 billion credit gap.
The Covid 19 pandemic only exasperated the MSME sector, as major financial institutions such as banks started to reduce their MSME credit lines and diverted the same to large corporates, which further fueled the need to create financial inclusion for the MSME segment. With Indiaâs current quarter-on-quarter GDP growth rate at 1.6% for FY 2021-22, of which the MSME contribution is approximately 30% will further fuel the requirement of working capital for India Inc.
Fintechs such as CredAble will become the backbone for working capital availability for India Inc going forward.
CredAble – Founders & Team
Nirav Choksi, Ram Kewalramani and Rajiv Ramnarayan are the founders of CredAble.
CredAble Founders and Team
Nirav Choksi | Co-Founder & CEO, CredAble
He has been an entrepreneur for almost 25+ years and has incubated and scaled businesses raised debt and equity financing, and built multi-disciplinary global teams in the areas of technology, private equity, and international commodities. Nirav heads the Sales, FI Coverage, Tech & Human Capital functions at CredAble.
Prior to CredAble, Nirav co-founded and led Equentia Natural Resources Pte Ltd., a multi-commodity trading and structured finance company with offices in Singapore, Jakarta, Dubai, and Mumbai. ENR is amongst the top 5 importers of Indonesian Thermal Coal for the private sector in India with revenues in excess of $500 Million a year and trading volumes of over 10 Million MT. ENR also has a significant structured trade finance and debt arbitrage operation. Prior to that Nirav has founded several companies in the internet and technology space and has had 3 successful exits. He is an active early-stage investor in tech-enabled consumer-led ventures and has invested in over 25 opportunities. Nirav studied computer science and economics at the University of Michigan.
He has had a career spanning over 18 + years working in leadership positions. Ram has gained invaluable insight and expertise in the domains of Investment Banking, Marketing, Finance, and Operations. As an acknowledged veteran of the Employee Transportation industry, he brings valuable industry insights, experience, and connections to further the establishment of the vision behind CredAble. Ram heads the Fincon, Credit Risk & Risk Operations functions at CredAble.
Prior to founding CredAble, Ram spent 14 + years in investment banking and P&L leadership capacities. Previously, he was a shareholder and CEO of People Premier Logistics, a successful employee transportation business. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Ram was an investment banker with Centrum Capital and Grant Thornton.
Rajiv Ramnarayan | Founding Member and Board Advisor, CredAble
Rajiv Ramnarayan acts as a Founding Member and Board Advisor of CredAble. Ramnarayan has completed a BEng. (Hons.) in Electronic Engineering from Sheffield Hallam University. Starting as an Industrial Trainee with IBM, Ramnarayan has served as a Business Development Associate at Laing O’Rourke, a Partner at Doehle Danautic Logistics, and is still serving as a Co-Founder and CEO at Equentia Natural Resources Pte Ltd.
Current Company Size, Work Culture & Hiring Funda –
CredAble values employees like the way it values its clients and strongly follows the below-mentioned culture statements:
We are Audaciously breaking boundaries
We are humbled
We are Generous
We are enablers of Context to Content
We set the measure
We are responsible
At CredAble, the hiring process is efficiently streamlined to ensure to hire the right talent for the right job. They have detailed BEI interviews both at the Functional & HR interview evaluation stages. The CredAble team currently consists of a 51-200 member workforce.
The founders in their previous avatar, have had a great deal of exposure to the working capital gap in India. Nirav, who comes with over 25 years of work experience across IT Services, Commodity trading, Trade Finance, was dealing with banks to create structured trade finance flows for his trading business. Ram, who comes with over 18 years of work experience, was the CEO of a large logistics business which required him to constantly focus on raising working capital, but always found it difficult given the traditional approach used by banks and NBFCs. This amalgamation of experience made both the founders believe that they were the most pertinent people to co-create programs that would enable working capital for India inc.
CredAble started its journey to enable working capital within the logistics sector. The product was split into two categories namely JIT financing and post invoice financing. This permutation & combination of the product reduced the cash-to-cash cycle of the logistics borrowers from an average of 110 days to under 24 hours! All of this was enabled through technology without any human intervention. Once this model was proven, these offerings were expanded to multiple sectors.
Their initial conversations were with CFOs/procurement heads of large corporates who were extensively outsourcing their logistics requirements and were facing multiple challenges from their vendors, who were unable to cope with the clientsâ requirements due to the shortfall of working capital. With the validation from the success of these programs, CredAbleâs model expanded to include all types of vendors and not only logistics vendors.
The team’s strategy has always been to enable working capital using the Anchor down approach wherein they were looking to tie up with large corporates to enable working capital for their entire supply chain ecosystem.
While it was a new concept in India, the founders were extremely confident of the programs and value add that they were creating for all the stakeholders. The initial approach was to reach out to all connections and showcase CredAbleâs value proposition. While the response was positive the preliminary movement was slow. As they demonstrated the impact, there were higher levels of acknowledgment & acceptance which catapulted CredAble’s outreach. Word of mouth quickly enabled CredAble to onboard multiple large and multi-national clients.
“While we have a large coverage team as well as partnerships, our largest clients have been converted through existing referrals and word of mouth” Â Co-founders of CredAble added.
Since its inception, CredAble has enabled in excess of INR 6,000 crores and more than 11,000 borrowers covering over 100,000 transactions with 0% NPAs. This has culminated as an outcome of the team’s single-minded focus on execution.
CredAble – Name, Tagline and Logo
Given the focus of the business was to âenable creditâ the name CredAble was apt.
The tag line – We Must becauseâŚ. We Can, symbolizes the company’s approach â “Nothing is impossible as long as we believe we can!!!” In order to change the existing traditional mindsets, the first step is to believe we can.
CredAble Logo
While they were designing the logo it was important that all stakeholders understand who they are and what they do. The emphasis of âAâ in CredAble is to showcase it as –
An en-Abler of working capital, and
To depict upward growth âââ. This in turn would create an impact not only for India Inc but the GDP as a whole.
CredAble – Business Model & Revenue Model
CredAble is a B2B supply chain finance company that develops partnerships with corporate entities to “extend a scalable supplier and dealer/distributor financing platform.”
The CredAble revenue model is a fee-based model. Here, we should understand that CredAble doesn’t levy any fixed, upfront or registration costs for either the corporate or their suppliers and distributors. Besides, the company’s own NBFC also participates in some of its supply chain financing programmes, which helps create a yield-based income.
CredAble’s Marketing campaigns have been holistic in approach with key properties introduced to cater to each business need.
Some of its well-received marketing properties include â
Insights by CredAble â It takes interesting popular concepts in todayâs day and age, and tries to come up with its working capital assessment for people to understand its importance and potential. CredAble’s recent coverage on IPL working capital was well-received (One can get more information on CredAble Case studies here – Â credable.in/credable-case-studies/) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
An excerpt of CredAble’s recent coverage on IPL working capital
Candid by CredAble â In this interesting talk show, CredAble’s CEO and host Nirav Choksi talks to industry leaders within enterprise ecosystems to get into their thought process, itâs fun and engaging content filled with interesting anecdotes. This has gained traction and the company has already rolled out 3 episodes.
Working Capital 101 â The company deems it to be its responsibility to share knowledge around new concepts around working capital which can be very helpful for businesses. Hence, as a step â it launched working capital 101 under business insights which churn out content weekly around helpful concepts around working capital and financing.
Product Explainer videos to educate CFOs, Vendors, Banks, Financial Institutes on how CredAble programs have been enabling working capital.
“The success of our marketing lies in growing organically and giving tangible results to our clientele” as said by the founders of CredAble.
CredAble – Funding and Investors
CredAble last raised $9 mn from a Corporate Round on August 2nd, 2022, led by Axis Bank and OAKS Asset Management. CredAble last raised around $30 mn in its Series B funding round led by Plutus Wealth Management and the existing investor, OAKS Assets Management (formerly known as Alpha Capital).
The company has raised $58.59 mn so far, which includes its bridge round worth $4.42 mn (Rs 33.18 cr) in October 2020, its Series A round of $12.59 mn (Rs 100 cr), and its primary seed round of $2.5 mn.
Date
Name of the Funding Round
Deal Value
Lead Investors
August 2, 2022
Corporate Round
$9 mn
Axis Bank and OAKS Asset Management
October 19, 2021
Series B
OAKS Asset Management and Plutus Wealth Management
Starting with 3 employees, initially, when it was launched in March 2017, CredAble now has somewhere between 51-200 employees, which indicates that it has grown strong year-on-year. CredAble’s employee count rose to 12 by March 2018, and with the passage of another year, this went up to become 70 employees. Â
CredAble went live in October 2018, and since then, it has processed Rs 300 crore+ worth of transactions on a monthly basis. Furthermore, CredAble boasts of boarding more than 100 corporate customers, 300K+ small business borrowers, and 30+ financial institutions as well as banks on its platform. CredAble has witnessed 500% YoY growth, as per the platform’s statements. Â
CredAble’s total income has been reported to be registered at Rs 8.35 crore in FY22, which earlier stood at 2.46 crore in FY21 and Rs 27.64 crore in FY20.
CredAble – Challenges Faced
“It was a new concept and hence took time to be understood and accepted. The solutioning aptitude versus selling a product worked well for us to showcase the value we created to make working capital accessible to all” Co-founders of CredAble added.
CredAble, as an early-stage business, has had its own challenges along the way. Fostering a widespread acceptance of the non-traditional supply chain finance programmes, long sales cycles, long turnaround time in technology integration and others of CredAble, was tough indeed.
“However, customer acquisition follows a domino effect on our business. After securing our first few clients, which took a bit of time, the rest have started to follow at a much faster pace,â added the Co-founder of CredAble.
The Fintech and Deep Tech categories at NASSCOM Emerge 50 Awards 2020
The Best Supply Chain Finance Solution of the Year 2019 at the Inflection 2019, a leading supply chain summit.
The Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator Program 2018
SAP Startup Studio Cohort 2020
The Best FinTech Startup 2018 at by the Maharashtra Government
CredAble – Future Plans
The future plan is to cover all aspects of Working Capital by the means of enabling true financial inclusion for millions of MSMEs. “We are already covering all metro cities within India and have set up business teams to increase our outreach. The goal is to disburse in excess of USD 1 billion per month going to USD 2 billion per month” the Co-founders of CredAble mentioned.
FAQs
What is CredAble?
CredAble provides working capital and related liquidity programs for enterprise supply chains, leveraging its trade finance expertise, partnerships with capital providers, and its world-class technology platform.
Nirav Choksi, Ram Kewalramani, and Rajiv Ramnarayan are the founders of CredAble.
What is CredAble’s tagline?
CredAble’s tagline – We Must becauseâŚ. We Can, symbolizes the company’s approach â “Nothing is impossible as long as we believe we can!!!” In order to change the existing traditional mindsets, the first step is to believe we can.
How does CredAble make money?
Early – Fees percentage over the savings generated for the Anchor.
Lending – Net Interest Margin and upfront processing fees on the Asset Under Management (AUM)
Who is the CEO of CredAble?
Nirav Choksi is the Co-founder & CEO of CredAble.
How much funding has CredAble raised?
CredAble raised $58.59 mn in funding to date, as of August 2022.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved byForMen.
The pandemic era made everyone much more focused on their health and made everyone realize the importance of better health. To promote the same, many new and old platforms were emerging in the market all revolving around the health factor.
Few of them were targeted for mental health whereas few were targeted for specific conditions. One of the exceptions amongst the emerging platforms was the ForMen health startup highly directed toward the health and wellness of men.
ForMen is highly dedicated to men’s health and wellness improving products such as supplements and different formulations. ForMen was introduced in the year 2015 with the mission of promoting wellness in men.
Continue below to learn more about ForMen company such as its startup story, business and revenue model, awards and achievements, growth, etc.
ForMen is a health and wellness-promoting brand for men. It is started and led by health professionals named Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy. The brand is dedicated to improving men’s health with effective yet safe formulations.
The ForMen brand is highly acknowledged for its different range of products falling in the category of fertility, wellness, vitamins, minerals, lifestyle, etc. The brand works with the principle of providing premium quality products made with herbs and few minerals. All the product under their brand needs to pass out their quality check before stepping into the market.
Along with health and well products, ForMen is known to provide expert consultation service to its customers on their demand. ForMen is highly appreciated by its customers and is a proud brand with more than 45000 customers in its name.
ForMen – Industry
The Menâs Health & Wellness industry has gained prominence over the past few years. The Menâs wellness market has more than doubled in India in the last 3-4 years and is all set to grow at 16-17% annually. Most of the growth has happened in the grooming sector.
There is a significant growth in the supplements sector too in the coming 5 years. The increased willingness of the millennial generation to discuss non-critical health issues, combined with increased awareness and purchasing power will push the nutraceutical category to higher growth rates in the coming years.
Health & Wellness industry is one of the most stable & time-tested industries. With the present-day lifestyles, increased incidence of lifestyle diseases, newly evolving infections, increased burden of stress and obesity, etc the need for wellness, fitness, and health will only keep growing.
Awareness and interest of people in wellness will surely rise, and so will the adoption of good practices. Â The wellness industry is growing steadily but surely in the years to come. The focus of the company is on natural, safe and effective products as compared to chemicals.
ForMen aims to carve a niche in this category with its unique, natural, safe, and effective products that are formulated by doctors & pharma experts. They look at the entire country as their market. Children, adults, and the geriatric population, everyone from Day 0 to Day 100 will do better with supplements. A just-born baby needs Vit D supplementation so will a 100-old centenarian.
Bringing awareness is the key. The company not only had a look at the market research statistics etc but also knew from their Pan-India colleaguesâ experience as well as from surveys and scientific articles, the extent of lifestyle disease burden in India and projected numbers in the next 10 years. This combined data was enough to convince ForMen about the huge need for genuine and effective supplements.
ForMen – Founders and Team
Dr. Lalitha Reddy – Founder of ForMen
Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy are the founders of ForMen. They share almost the same vision and passion and are highly committed to quality.
Sreeram is a serial entrepreneur with vast and successful experience. He is a graduate of Purdue University, a very passionate and motivated person, who loves to build and nurture companies.
Dr. Lalitha Reddy is a medical specialist with over 25 years of experience and an alumnus of prestigious institutions like JIPMER, NIMS, Osmania General Hospital, and ISB. She is the former Vice President of Yashoda Group of Hospitals and presently is Vice President of Telemedicine Society of India â Telangana Chapter.
She is a very accomplished academic and scientific trailblazer with many awards and gold medals to her credit. She has many scientific research articles published in various national and international journals, delivered hundreds of lectures both in India and abroad, and is the author of two books.
Her vast experience along with a deep understanding of patient problems and psychology has led her to pave the path for ForMen & ForKids along with her colleagues.
ForMen – Startup Story
Having worked in hospitals for the last almost 30 years, they have seen that a huge proportion of sickness could be prevented if only people focused on preventive health and wellness.
In the early days of the pandemic, the company had first-hand experience of seeing peoplesâ panic, different degrees of severity of illness based on age and immune status of a patient, and of course the sudden appearance of many âso-called Immune boostersâ in the market, mostly of poor quality and inadequate / overdosages.
The consequences of the un-informed, unaware & Â gullible people falling prey to various kinds of misinformation also did not escape their notice. So, a team of ForMen decided to embark on a journey of Preventive Health & Wellness, where they focused on supplementing nutrients to help improve the quality of life of people.
They initially focused on men because men are usually hesitant to approach a doctor or get professional advice for wellness issues. They do not prefer to discuss their performance, sleep, stress, weight, or other issues. Also, there has been a significant increase in menâs health issues over the last 1-2 decades.
Ex- Testosterone levels in men have reduced over the past 2 decades. Sperm counts in men have declined and infertility issues have also risen significantly in men. So has the incidence of stress and related mental health problems.
So ForMen, as doctors and experts felt that they should contribute significantly by creating a non-judgmental and discrete platform for men which offers genuine, effective & safe formulations in the right combinations and dosages.
They already were aware of the issues that they wanted to help solve, and also had the knowledge of formulations, so all they had to do was to partner with ingredient suppliers and manufacturers who had similar convictions towards quality & safety that we had.
They traveled extensively for factory visits and interacted with various manufacturers/suppliers before we chose the best, who aligned with our vision and mission. After that came the website development, branding, warehousing, last-mile delivery partners, etc. The entire journey was humongous learning for them.
ForMen is an online holistic online Health & Wellness platform for men. It provides wellness products & online doctor consultations.
Vision â To be the most trusted health & wellness partner, offering high-quality wellness products that are a part of the wellness journey of all Indian men.
Mission- To promote wellness, and preventive health and encourage discussions on health issues in men.
ForMen – Name, Tagline, and Logo
ForMen Logo
ForMen wanted the logo and Taglines to be very simple, direct & reflect what the brand offers. Since they wanted to start with Menâs wellness products â The name ForMen was quite literal and fortunately available.
Tagline â For all things menâ simply followed the logo. Â Since their kid’s products were exclusive for kids, the logo ForKids was also designed on similar lines. The tagline â ForKids with smart moms â was also very apt and simple.
ForMen – Business and Revenue Model
ForMen platforms offer products as well as consultations. The consultations are provided discreetly and free of charge. The products are also very reasonably priced, to bring them within the reach of most Indians.
Since they wanted the products to be affordable, their margins are significantly less as compared to similar brands. They have no commission models at resent and are not very keen to walk that path. The company is aiming to grow as a D2C brand, whose products sell based on their effectiveness, quality & safety.
ForMen – Challenges Faced
The challenges were there for the company but were not major. Since the core knowledge about wellness, remedies, and formulations was with them, the challenge only lay in associating with partners.
They did face challenges initially in associating with talent, that understood their core principles and also respected timelines. Due to the pandemic the website designing, raw material procurement & creative agencies were all not able to meet deadlines due to lockdowns, staff falling sick, etc. This was a very frustrating aspect, which drove them to optimize the operations better and strengthen in-house skill sets.
One of the important lessons they learned was to increase in-house talent and reduce dependency on external agencies. This is more cost-effective more flexible and amenable to quick decision-making and course changing, when necessary.
ForMen – Funding and Investors
Hustle Partners has been doing the initial funding and they may go for further funding in the coming 6 months when the company feels the need.
ForMen – Growth
ForMen launched the brand one fine day and started advertising on social media. Orders slowly started picking up, mostly by word of mouth and then they consciously kept their marketing budgets low and avoided the marketing blitzkrieg as they were very sure of the slow and steady pace of growth based on âword of mouthâ. They believe that a satisfied consumer is the best form of marketing.
ForMen – Awards and Achievements
We have been featured in various magazines and have received the award â Icon of the Year â Emerging Startup Company for the year 2021â from the Times Group.
ForMen – Future Plans
The company is headquartered in Hyderabad. The suppliers & manufacturers are spread across the country. They have a central warehouse also located in Hyderabad. The company is doing well presently with 8-10% month-on-month growth. The company is also planning to expand its product portfolio, the future surely looks bright & shining. The GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) of ForMen is around Rs 600 on average at present. Feedback from consumers has been very positive & encouraging.
With the health issues going across the globe, the new world and a new method to tackle it is been introduced by many different platforms. There are many emerging applications and platforms all based on the health sector. One of them is the ForMen health platform.
It mainly deals with the health and wellness of men. The basic information about ForMen such as the startup story, Funding, investments, mission, vision, etc has been shared above.
FAQs
Who is the founder of ForMen?
Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy are the founders of ForMen.
What is ForMen?
ForMen is a Health & Wellness brand that sells men’s wellness products.
Has ForMen received any funding?
Hustle Partners has been providing the initial funding to ForMen.
What is the mission of ForMen?
The mission declared by ForMen is to promote wellness and preventive health along with encouraging discussions on men’s health.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by India Shoppe.
Digitization and E-Commerce have transformed the traditional way of business. Online shoppers Online shopping sales across India amounted to around $67 billion in 2021. Online shoppers are increasing year by year. There were 189 million online shoppers in 2021 which is expected to reach 220 million in 2025. The shopping behavior of customers has played a crucial role in the development of ECommerce retail. India Shoppe is one such E-Commerce retail platform that provides all the products for household needs. Staying bootstrapped, India Shoppe’s revenue growth has reached INR 1300 Crores.
Read to know about India Shoppe, its founders, products and brands under it, its business model, and the story of its growth.
India Shoppe is an Omni-channel retailing company, started in Augâ13 to provide Wellness & Nutrition, Personal Health-care, Skin-care, Oral-care, Hair-care and Home-care after identifying & understanding their customers. They design & produce the products for which enough demand is created through various social media & other channels of Marketing. Recently, they have added fresh Agro-care solutions to their bouquet of products.
India Shoppe – Founders and Team
Rajesh Chandan is the founder of India Shoppe. Mitesh Bhandari and Viresh Mehta are the Co-Founders of India Shoppe.
Rajesh Chandan – Founder of India Shoppe
Mr Rajesh Chandan is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and a first-generation entrepreneur from Chennai and a technology enthusiast, with over two decades of hardcore exposure in various business verticals. He upgraded himself to the latest trends in business & technology, by attending various programs at ISB (Hyderabad) & IIM, (Ahmedabad). Rajesh Chandan actively conducts leadership workshops for Start-Ups, mentoring them to upscale their business. He held the position of VICE CHAIRMAN at JITO INTERNATIONAL W ING and continues as an active member of the JAIN INTERNATIONAL TRADE ORGANISATION with more than 15000+ influential (Jains as) members. Rajesh is an avid social worker associated with various organizations & rehabilitation centres. His family has donated a day-care hospital in Ayanavaram (Chennai) which is run by RYA Cosmo Foundation.
India Shoppe Team
Mitesh Bhandari is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of India Shoppe.
Mitesh Bhandari is a young & dynamic commerce graduate from LOYOLA (Chennai) & MBA from NMIMS (Mumbai). He is a certified Chartered Financial Analyst with a decade of experience in several lines of business & off- late prominently in the Fin. Tech landscape. Mitesh Bhandari is an active investor on many alternative investment platforms, including Venture-Debt. He has more than 2 decades of experience in the business of Ferrous & Non-ferrous metals. Mitesh Bhandari also has a well-curated portfolio of leasing, and real estate assets.
He serves as the Charter President of RCC Magnum, an organization of 100+ youth members & has been an active member of Round-Table (India), a philanthropic organization.
Viresh Mehta is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of India Shoppe.
Viresh Mehta is an enthusiastic leader who heads Business-Development. He is a marketing & sales specialist who focuses on the smooth functioning of an organizational supply chain and related value addition processes for the company. He has an outstanding experience of 17 years in merchandising & sourcing various consumer goods. He developed various distribution channels across India, for different FMCG Products, ensuring business growth. His strong decision-making abilities have played a critical role in handling and strategic planning of the product launches of several esteemed brands like Coorg Filter Coffee in Tamil Nadu, Detergents like Shudh, Rakshak and Samundar crystal salt from the house of industrial-giant, Tata. Understanding and engaging in public relations is a primary reason for his success. Crisis and Disaster Management at various business houses is his forte.
Once Viresh Mehta organized a Dandiya Mela or a traditional folk-dance festival with over ten thousand participants from all ages & ethnicities, for raising student scholarships for the underprivileged.
India Shoppe – The Idea and Startup Story
Rajesh Chandan always wanted to start a brand, which would be more than just a business-house or a commercial- entity. He wanted it to be a part of peopleâs lives. That âwantâ remained a distant dream until 2013, when he identified a dearth in a specific segment of the market & eventually, the spark grew into a flame.
After a series of brainstorming with his peers in business, about how the global giants were becoming market leaders, online & native brands were ruling on-ground with their branches & franchises, the market in Omni-channel retailing remained unexplored. Soon, the idea started taking shape.
India Shoppe was designed to be a lifestyle brand with a sincere focus on Tier II, and Tier III cities & towns targeting the âmiddleâ & âupper-middleâ income groups or the âactiveâ segment of society that is always aspiring for a better lifestyle.
Rajesh went to the original âShark-Tankâ to bounce his idea: My friends! Not for lack of options but this wasnât just about, Validation of his idea but also the Sustenance of a promise!
India Shoppe – Vision
India Shoppe Logo
India Shoppe has a vision to:
Be a large customer value creator in the market, focusing on customer service, understanding the customers, their way-of-life & identifying their requirements to improve their lifestyle.
Customize & develop products after market research & ensure theyâre organic, healthy & easy to use.
Invest in new product lines & implement the latest technology to ensure they are delivered on time.
India Shoppe – Products
India Shoppe Products
India Shoppe offers various daily-use products for individuals and the entire family. They are committed to building effective brand identity by aligning the consumersâ perception and expectations with the development of their products, with the highest standards in quality.
India Shoppe has developed its private labels, under the brand names of:
âAAHARâ Food & Gourmet
“ELEMENTS WELLNESS” Health-Care
âNEUSTARâ Personal-Care
“ON & ON” Wellness & Nutritional-Care
âMi HOME CAREâ Adding a sparkle to your world
âINDIAGROâ Reflecting their commitment to farmers, they have scientifically researched and developed, plant & soil-care products that: help in maximizing the yield (for farmers) & are packed with nutrition (for consumers) while ensuring the quality of soil is retained.
Their products do not contain (any) chemicals that are harmful to the body and are made of natural ingredients. They use raw materials which conform to API and in-house standards.
Their proprietary health & wellness products are made of various nutritional ingredients & herbs, after extensive study and research. India Shoppe has experts who remain in close proximity with scientific researchers & market analysts to stay updated on developing new products or enhancing existing ones. Beginning from the sourcing of ingredients to the final Eco-conscious packaging, they ensure that their products are of premium quality.
India Shoppe takes Conscious-Care for:
The People: Propose and promote a healthy lifestyle for consumers, with their products.
The Products: Prohibit the use of any ingredients which arenât organic in their processes.
The Planet: From Products to Packaging, it is all vegetarian and eco-friendly.
India Shoppe creates a demand for its products, through active social-media campaigns and its chain of small-format retail stores & websites. Additionally, to reach a wider market, weâve designed Pick-up Centers (P.U.Câs), in several remote locations that are mapped to their nearest store. Such P.U.C.s only purchase merchandise from the stores, theyâre mapped to. It can also be explained as â H.O.: Parent, Store: Child, Store: Parent, PUC: Child.
Their stores maintain an online account of the respective PUCs mapped to them, based on the volumes of transactions or redemption of Pre-orders.
To ensure easy flow of the stocks, they are replenished from multiple warehouses, online & offline.
Their M.O.P is mostly through pre-orders having several types and denominations (Non-Transferable).
Customers carrying such Pre-orders get the merchandise at a discounted price while other customers purchase at M.R.P.
Customers can redeem/ purchase with dual-validation (Code & OTP) at the Store, PUC and Web-portal.
Their product range is further classified under different sub-categories.
Strengths:
They have well-established network of 16 Warehouses, 51 Stores & 649 P.U.Câs, spread across the country,
They have tested & proven systems and ready-to-go processes for generating assured Sales growth.
They undertake periodic market research with corresponding Product-innovations.
They collaborate with scientific developers, manufacturers, designers, marketers & suppliers to ensure they come up with rich Ayurvedic products.
They build on brand re-call & consumer loyalty through Digital Marketing posts and campaigns by regularly posting engaging content on various social media platforms.
Their customers have been their biggest strength, as their testimonials are the hallmark of certification.
India Shoppe – Challenges Faced
Being an enterprise with most products based on Ayurveda, subscribing to their solutions would mean a shift into a better/healthier lifestyle. But this is the very reason most people today, resist choosing Ayurvedic medicine, which is more of preventive care, in contrast to the instant relief of western-medicine (Allopathy).
However, the Covid Pandemic has rightfully pointed out that, instead of choosing the (so-called) ready remedies and instant reliefs, it is advisable to have a healthy lifestyle. And, going Ayurvedic, not only aids to eliminate the chances of infection but also has them equipped to battle other infections/ microbes, known & unknown.
India Shoppe – Revenue Growth
India Shoppe operates PAN-India. Starting in 2013-â14 from less than INR 100 CRS. to almost INR 1300 CRS. in 2021-â22. With a CAGR of 22%, their growth has continued during the Covid pandemic, even. So far, they are a bootstrapped company, running & managing with their capital & operating revenues.
Their team of developers, designers, researchers, product managers and engineers of various disciplines, work together in building a user-friendly design & well-tested interface with every aspect of the organization.
They have been using state-of-the-art ERP software for Finance and custom E-commerce.
The capacity of supply chain and logistics operations can be scaled anytime with their automated stock replenishment during peak periods (festivals/ holidays) for consistency in their deliveries.
With their in-house cloud-based mechanism and automation, Traffic is gracefully throttled if & when it goes beyond the given conditions.
Having high-performance integrations, connecting to third-party applications like the State GST portal, Supply chain Vendors and up to Last-mile deliveries.
India Shoppe – Achievements & Recognitions
India Shoppe has achieved recognition from the Government of India and others.
In the personal-care category, âElements Wellnessâ was prestigiously awarded: BEST HEALTHCARE Brand by The Economic Times in 2019-â20 & 2022-â23!
7 & 14 State Governments in the country, have recognized India Shoppe as a prompt Tax-payer for 2020-2021 & 2021-2022 respectively.
At the peak of the Covid pandemic, when the health ministry of India advised everyone to take a spoon of Chavanprash (an Ayurvedic goo-ey preparation loaded with anti-oxidants & immunity boosters) a day, it hiked the consumption of their equivalent, On & On âKavach Prashâ.
India Shoppe – Future Plans
As a growing large-scale Value-Creator, they are eyeing expansion in the scale of operations, setting up more Distribution centres for easy reach & faster delivery, planning more stores & investing in new product lines & technology.
After finding a firm footing in the local market, India Shoppe team have been exploring the possibility of expansion, especially in our neighbouring countries.
FAQs
When was India Shoppe founded?
India Shoppe was founded in 2013 in Chennai.
Who is the founder of India Shoppe?
Rajesh Chandan is the founder of India Shoppe. Mitesh Bhandari and Viresh Mehta are the Co-Founders of India Shoppe.
What are the products of India Shoppe?
India Shoppe products list includes various daily household products:
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Lepasa.
The global metaverse market size is projected to be worth 1 trillion by 2030. The next wave of digital disruption is clear. The days are not far when people will spend most of their time roaming in virtual reality. The metaverse encompasses different technologies, including virtual reality platforms, gaming, machine learning, blockchain, digital currencies, and more.
Lepasa is a Jaipur-based startup that is building digital asset-based ecosystem for business and customers. Read to know about Lepasa, its founders, the startup story and its growth
Lepasa metaverse envisions an autonomous, cohesive & opulent digital economy in sync with the real-world use cases.
Lepasa is laying the foundation for the immensely potential digital asset-based ecosystem for content creators, businesses & consumers by developing a decentralised virtual world with numerous revenue generation opportunities.
Lepasa – Industry
The elements of a new digital age are converging at scale. The metaverse is the driving force bringing these elements together in a unified immersive experience. Users should increasingly be able to access a host of use cases, including commerce, art, media, advertising, healthcare, and social collaboration. A device-agnostic Metaverse would be accessible via personal computers, game consoles, and smartphones, resulting in a large ecosystem. Using this broad definition, the total addressable market for the Metaverse could be between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, with total Metaverse users numbering around five billion.
Lepasa – Founders
Ashish Agarwal – Co-Founder, Lepasa Metaverse
Ashish has been in Blockchain for almost a decade, He started his Blockchain journey with a handful of visionariesâ way back in 2013. Before venturing into blockchain, Ashish has been an entrepreneur for a long-term selling its enabled services. Before Starting Lepasa, he has been an integral part of the Blockchain development in India. He has developed multiple Blockchain-focused solutions ranging from digital custody to full-fledged exchange.
Alok Joshi – Co-Founder, Lepasa Metaverse
Alok has been in the IT consulting business for more than 2 decades. Ha has vast experience in consulting corporates like banks and large-scale government projects.
Lepasa – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Lepasa Logo
Lepasa is inspired by the Spanish term âQue Pasa ”? They named their immersive, realistic, sustainable project with real-world use cases âLe+Pasaâ to make the audience believes that It happens.
Lepasa – The Idea and Startup Story
2021 has been crazy or we may say the craziest year for the Crypto community. DeFi & NFTs have stolen the show from top cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. It is such strong evidence that NFTs are bringing a massive number of âNew Crypto Ownersâ to the industry. A scenario where a new user buying any crypto for the first time to buy NFT is too common nowadays.
They had started working on the âNFTâ concept back in late 2020 when Cryptopunks were everywhere & the entire industry was in awe of the pixel arts. On that very day they had decided that if they are going to NFTs, it has to be something else, not just one another project in the crowd.
Being in Blockchain Tech for almost a decade, their seasoned & dedicated team suggested having an equal proportion of Tech & Art go ahead. Oh WOW! That was one strong statement that laid the founding stone for this world-class Fine Art 3D Game Ready NFT project.
They onboarded world-renowned Traditional Fine Art Artists, and CGI Artists and formed a strong bond with the Tech team. Even though NFTs have been one of the largest real-world use cases of blockchain and smart contracts to date, their adoption has been unidimensional. NFTs have been restricted to GIFs and JPEGs in popular culture, failing to incorporate the vastness the technology is capable of.
Virtual lands are envisioned as spaces where anyone can go and hang out with their friends via a monitor or through their virtual reality headset. Eventually, enthusiasts expect metaverse real estate properties to support virtual structures, where users can build whatever theyâd like. But contrary to the fact most of the existing options are either low poly, cartoonish, or tokenised games. It is difficult to think of a real, immersive experience in the current scenario.
Web 3.0 will lay the foundation for the phenomenal evolution of the Internet. Thatâs the reason the millennials are flocking into this, their expectations from metaverse could be immense in the context of enhanced experiences, gamification, and financial gains. True to the belief of web 3.0, they are adding a 3D layer to the existing model of the tokenised, low poly/2D version of the constrained metaverses. They are building an enthralling, immersive 3D visual experience. A planned Metaverse will provide immense opportunities to participants.
Lepasa – Customer Acquisition
They had worked day and night almost a year before launching their project, and they had worked a lot on launching it when there is a lot of demand and curiosity for the project, they had 200+ customers on the day of launch.
They have been working hard to sustain their early customers and at the same time gain more new customers. Their customer base is constantly growing in the last six months they have organically grown multiple X.
Lepasa – Challenges Faced
The most challenging part in such futuristic, comparatively newer concepts is mostly around finding the right resources/talent. They have been lucky on this part as they have been in this space for a long. Still, they too have to struggle while growing their team.
Their Launch event was one of the most exciting and successful events so far, as mentioned above they had 200+ customers on day 1. They have been working constantly and their user base is growing constantly since.
The integration of blockchain technology with the real-estate could bring a revolution in the industry & will result in a lot of benefits including increased trust, enhanced loyalty, proficient data management, and access to real-time information. They have added a layer of state-of-the-art conceptualization & planning to bridge the gap between virtual & real. To create a Virtually-Real experience, it needs to perceive, conceptualize & planned as a real-world project.
Lepasa Metaverse is planned exactly like any state-of-the-art real estate project shall be planned and developed. Right from the ideation phase to town planning, they have followed real-world objectives & principles. At the ideation stage, they were driven by the idea of âIkigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy lifeâ based on a study of the Blue Zones – the geographic regions where people live longer and have fewer diseases than anywhere else in the world.
Lepasa – Advisors
They have been fortunate to have the industryâs leading name in their core team & advisory. Their technical advisory associations include Polygon, FalconX, EPNS, etc.
Looking at the vast use cases and humongous possibilities with metaverse, they have been very careful and futuristic in their vision to develop such a solution that is relevant not just in the current scenario but also capable of serving the future phases of the business use cases.
FAQs
What is Lepasa Metaverse?
Lepasa Metaverse is a startup focussed on the developmnent of decentralised virtual world.
When was Lepasa founded?
Lepasa was founded in 2021 in Jaipur.
Who is the founder of Lepasa?
Ashish Agarwal and Alok Joshi are the founders of Lepasa.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Ethika.
No matter how great an organisation may be, it is highly impossible to carve a growth path without a healthy ecosystem of happy employees. Employee compensation that used to be the benchmark for measurement of employee well being has truly been relegated to the back seat.
Employer concern for the overall well being of the employee trumps most other considerations today. A carefully curated employee benefit insurance program, not only ensures employees and their families are taken care of, but this sense of security fosters a culture of belonging which propels the Company towards its intended objective.
Ethika is a new-age insurance broking startup that focusses on curating such Employee Benefit programs intended toward keeping employees of their clients happy. Such programs provide innovative solutions to not just make Insurance (mediclaim) easily manageable but also provide several value-added services, that ensure holistic well being of an employee and make them feel valued by their company.
Read to know more about Ethika insurance broking, its founders, their USP, business model, marketing strategy, and the story of its starting up.
While providing Insurance Broking Solutions for Employee Benefit Insurance to Small and Mid Size Corporates is their core business model, they also add value to their clients by offering innovative solutions for creating happier workplaces.
Employee Benefit Insurance, their core offering, includes Group Health Insurance, Group Personal Accident Insurance, Group Term Life Insurance, Group Top up Health Insurance, and OutPatient Health Expenses Insurance.
At Ethika, they believe, an Insurance Brokers’ role should not be limited to helping clients receive financial assistance when their employees fall sick, but to prevent employee sickness in the first place. One of the pivotal parameters in preventing employees from falling sick, is to make employees happy. Moreover, they do not advocate this belief in some spiritual sense; science backs the fact that happier workplaces are more productive ones. Creating happier workplaces therefore not only results in lesser employee sickness (translated into lost man-hours) but also increased employee productivity.
They are infact so driven by their vision of creating a culture of happiness at work that they do not charge for it. Yes you read that right; they offer their service of creating happier workplaces as a free add-on to their Employee Benefit services.
Their journey as an Insurance Broker started in 2016. Today, about six years into business, while insurance remains the core of their business model, they have also diversified into servicing the Employee Value Proposition via the happiness route i.e. increasing employee engagement levels at the workplace by making the workplace happier.
Ethika – Industry
India is home to around 10 Lakh Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) – these enterprises form the coal to the engine that keeps India running, month on month, day after day. Unfortunately, when it comes to health insurance, these organizations are also the most neglected ones in the country.
Imagine the kind of impact they could create for this huge segment if they could use Group Health Insurance as one of the tools to create a happier workplace for them. Not only would the employees come to work without a thread of worry about how they would manage their expenses in case a calamity struck, but they would also be better equipped to concentrate at work, which in turn would act as feedback and they would go home happier.
Wouldnât that be a wow experience, for the entire country? Their goal in the next two years is to reach 1 Lakh SMEs and spread this happiness.
Covid-19, has altered the human landscape completely. Before Covid, the basic necessities of life were Roti, Kapada, and Makan; after Covid, their necessities have one added element – Health Insurance. In the next five years, they believe every Indian will be covered under Health Insurance in some form.
They are looking at 2 lacs crores of Health Insurance premium within next five years.
They also feel the industry has reached the inflection point where it is finally ready to tango with technology.
Insurance would stop being a push product in the next five years. By 2027, they would have reached a point where people will be able to understand and appreciate risk; they would no longer need an incentive to insure themselves.
Ethika – Founders and Team
Susheel Agrawal – Founder of Ethika
Susheel Agrawal was not happy with his professional life, and after some deliberations decided to quit. Sarath and Sandeep, his colleagues then, decided to follow his footsteps and put in their papers as well. They trusted him even when he did not have a roadmap, but they did, and the rest has been history.
It is the element of trust that has gotten embedded in their DNA today. They work with clients who they trust – ofcourse the feelings are mutual in this case. They hire people they can trust, so on and so forth.
Sarath Reddy, who handles client relations, is a post graduate in business administration and has extensively worked in client servicing before Ethika.
Sandeep Mukka, who looks after operations, is a postgraduate in computer applications and has been associated with the insurance industry for about 13 years.
Sarath takes care of client relationships, Sandeep takes care of operations, leaving Susheel with handling people responsibilities.
Ethika – The Idea and Startup Story
At 33, Susheel Agrawal, the founder of Ethika was an average employee working in the highly competitive corporate world. While most of his material needs seemed to be satisfied, Susheel Agrawal wasn’t happy. Something seemed amiss; he kept feeling a void for far too long than was bearable.
After some introspection, he realized that the soulless corporate world was taking away his peace of mind. That was when he quit his corporate job.
Susheel was fortunate to have been exposed to the insurance industry in India. He started with what he knew best – selling Group Health Insurance to organizations.
He knew from experience that one of the main pain points in the health insurance ecosystem was the insured’s experience during claims and that became his first point of focus.
Sarath Reddy and Sandeep Mukka, his co-founders, shared the same vision from Beginning.
They started bridging the gap between employee, hospital, TPA, Insurer, and doctor by fine tuning the claim process. This in turn enhanced the experience of employees during the claims process and positive reviews started pouring in. The kicker used to come out of cases where they could indirectly intervene, and help employees when they needed it the most. One critical observation was that most of the health insurance claims could have been avoided, if they had intervened at the right time. This insight led them into innovating low-cost solutions which could be offered along with group health insurance to their clients to prevent work disruptions due to employee illness. A lot of tweaking and tinkering later, they built their inhouse software and an employee wellness team. This turned out to be their tipping point. The word of mouth referrals spread and business started pouring in. The foundation for self-belief however came out of client testimonials and referrals.
At one such new referral meet, a client said, “I’m surprised that you can run a company without having a website or visiting card.” Yes, they were so focussed in creating a positive impact for their clients that they didn’t have their own website in the first two years.
As a matter of fact, to this date, the ratio for the number of employees focused on generating business to the number of employees focused on support is the lowest and in inverse proportion to the standards in the Insurance Broking industry.
Now that they have stabilized their group health insurance offering, they have added a new element âEmployee Happinessâ to their portfolio, which is helping their clients create a happier workplace.
Their core vision however remains enabling facilitation of the push product (insurance) to a point where the first thought that comes to your mind, when you think of insurance, is a happy one.
Their areas of expertise include
Broking services across the Employee Benefits vertical which includes Group Health Insurance, Group Super Top up Health Insurance, Personal Health Insurance and other Lines of Businesses.
Employee Happiness Program.
Employee Assistance Program.
Employee Engagement Program.
Employee Wellness Program.
Group Insurance Software &
Red Carpet Claims Assist.
Numbers don’t drive them, happiness does; it remains one of their core beliefs. They go the extra mile in incorporating this belief in the way they do business. They keep evaluating themselves on how happy they are as a company; they advise their clients to follow the same methodology.
Earlier, when they had just started, there used to be genuine apprehensions in clients, especially with regards to objective measurement of translation of their Happiness Index into business. Their objective answer to that question has been – increase in toplines, client referrals, and appreciation.
Most of their clients have now warmed up to the idea and the results have followed.
Meanwhile, their understanding of human psyche has thrust them on the path to finding new ways to increase employee engagement that can benefit their clients to a greater degree.
When it comes to their vision, in the short term, they would want to establish themselves as someone whose name is the first thing that flashes in a Customers mind when they think of the words ethics, insurance, and broking in one breath. They wouldnât mind being called the TATAâs of the insurance space.
Their long-term vision is to facilitate the achievement of insurance literacy in our country. All of their energies over the next decade would be focused towards trying to expand insurance penetration in the country.
Ethika – Core Belief
The core belief of Ethika stems from a root-cause analysis they did for one of their clients in the early days.
Employees form the foundation of every business; they spend about a third of their day at the workplace; a happier workplace translates into
the employee wanting to turn up for work, every single day
increased engagement levels at work &
increased productivity.
Keeping the workplace happy, therefore is the chief responsibility of the employer. They help them shoulder this responsibility.
On the technical front, they also want to help un-jargonize insurance.
It is a sad reality that despite being one of the oldest professions in the world, they are still married to wordings that should have been buried a long long time ago.
They also feel these wordings are one of the main reasons why people remain skeptical about insurance – it is difficult to convince someone of buying something they cannot understand.
Ethika – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Ethika Logo
An insurance policy can be likened to a currency note in the sense that an insurance policy is a promise that the insurer makes to the insured to fulfill a certain obligation. But that is where the similarity ends.
During their earlier days, they had a couple of stark realizations – a lot of things on paper rarely translated in practice. Utmost good faith, one of the foundational principles of insurance was at times being shorted by the Insurer and at other times by the Insured. The fine print of the contract i.e. the wordings on paper were being robotically followed especially at the time of claim settlement i.e. the spirit of the contract was being overlooked in many a cases.
They felt their job was that of an intermediary who could interpret the fine print in the policy and thereby help the client select the right insurer – someone who was equally good at honoring the spirit of the contract as they were at underwriting it. Ethics was always the foundation stone that their business was built on; since they could not use ethics as their brand name, Ethika was the next logical iteration.
They have been sticklers for ethics in business. You could say their larger purpose is to debunk the myth that business and ethics cannot go together.
All our lives, we have been programmed that if we need to succeed in business, we need to learn to wear our ethics on the sleeves; they would beg to differ.
Their tagline says ‘Insuring the risk of insuring’. It signifies their attempt at trying to reduce the risk for the Insured.
Ethika – Hiring Funda
Starting with humble beginnings of 3, they have today grown to about 50 people. That said, they are a lean setup – companies handling the same amount of business employ anywhere around 100 people.
They are a bunch of 50 passionate people. They are a young company who understands how pivotal culture is to an organization’s success. To that end, they have a fairly open and considerate work culture. While it might sound simplistic, they try to foster a culture where all of their employees look forward to coming to office on Mondays; this despite them having a work from home right since inception i.e. 2016.
Learning and relearning are also deeply ingrained in their culture. They get a kick out of teaching new things to colleagues and customers, these new things could be skills they pick up from platforms like Udemy or something new they learnt while transacting business.
They hire for attitude and train for skills. While they do need technical expertise to facilitate underwriting of the product, their topline growth has benefitted from a diverse team of passionate people.
Insurance is basically spreading the risk thin. You try to insure as many people as possible and hope that calamity strikes the minimum number of these people; you charge a premium to insure their risk. When calamity does strike, you pay for the genuine claims out of the premiums collected.
Group Health Insurance, one of the prime offerings, is therefore not insurance in the true sense.
The renewal premium for Group Health Insurance is dependent on last year’s claims i.e. if the claims for a company amounted to Rs. 10,00,000 in 2020, the renewal premium would normally be about Rs. 10,00,000 + administrative expense for the Insurer (in extremely price sensitive markets like Insurance, administrative expense can go as low as 0). Therefore the renewal premium for the year 2021 would normally be Rs. 10,00,000; if the claims in 2021 amount to Rs. 11,00,000, the renewal premium for 2022 would be Rs. 11,00,000, so on and so forth. This essentially means that the company is just about getting the benefit of reimbursement since the claim costs for a year are being borne by the insurer in that year and are being recuperated from the company in the subsequent year. Essentially leaving very little margin for the Insurer to operate on. The Insurer does try to bring down the claims quantum by negotiating better tariffs with hospitals, but a lot of the hospitals do not abide by the tariffs. Moreover, new Medical Treatments coupled with the occurrence of new diseases keep pushing medical claims inflation exponentially every year.
Moreover, all of Ethikaâs other offerings enhance workplace wellness and are offered within the insurance premium that is paid for Group Health Insurance.
They are therefore not only helping clients with risk placement, but are also helping them avoid workplace sickness, increase employees productivity and happiness – they are therefore treating the disease and not the symptoms alone.
They had started their journey, trying to solve the problems in the health insurance claim settlement vertical. They then graduated to addressing problems with buying group health insurance and then to employee wellness; they are now trying to create a framework to address employee happiness. They want to ensure that all of their clients’ employees look forward to Mondays and not Fridays. They want to make Monday blues a thing of the past.
Their weekly workshop ‘From HR to CEO’, is a step toward that. The title for the workshop came about from the fact that when employees start working like the CEO, the CEOs job becomes that of an HR Manager.
Susheel Agrawal would like to take this opportunity to urge you to keep an eye out for their new products Learning Management System targeted towards learning – how they can learn better and Sustainable Living targeted toward Happiness – how to live happier by walking the path of sustainability.
They think insurance gives you peace of mind.
Imagine a meticulous and diligent factory owner; his factory is struck by an earthquake and it will take about 3 months to get the factory back in shape and another 2 to get the first product shipped after the earthquake.
Imagine the kind of mental toll such a peril could take on the owner; some of the considerations he has to keep in mind would include – How to convince the Customers of the delay, How to retain his workers during this period, How to pay them, What about the recurring operating expenses (like land lease, machine rent costs) that would need to be borne despite the factory being non-operational. While insurance will not guarantee how long it could take for the Insured to get back on his feet, or the mental trauma the owner might have to go through, it will certainly take care of the financial burden that would have otherwise compounded his problems.
When most of the Brokers concentrated on premium reduction – which is a win-lose proposition and not sustainable in the long run, they went beyond and included the following services in their arsenal, absolutely free of cost.
Employee Assistance – where they offered psychological, nutritional, and doctor counseling as and when employees needed it. They hit a roadblock when their enrollment numbers plateaued. They did some introspection and realized there was still a certain taboo associated with seeking help and therefore focused on Employee Engagement.
Employee Engagement – where they had experts talking to employees about day to day life issues and delivering meditation sessions.
Group Insurance Software – the software that they built in-house is a rage with their clients today. It helps them keep a tab on their health insurance requirements and frees up one of their most important resources – time.
Red Carpet claims assist was life coming a full circle for them. The vertical they had started their journey with, still had a lot of room for improvement and they thought it was about time someone addressed this elephant in the room. Red Carpet claims assist helps employees with their claims processing while keeping them as the focal point of attention.
Employee Happiness is their attempt to make workplaces happier. All of the Ethika team look forward to Mondays with as much excitement as they look forward to Fridays. They want to help clients incorporate the same energy at their workplaces.
They have kept innovating at every step along the way.
Their USP remains their ability to garner relationships. They are proud of the fact that 95% of their clients have been with them for the last five year. They love the Japanese way of doing business. They are extremely diligent before getting into relationships, but once they get into one, they don’t fight over truffles.
They are one of the frontrunners, when it comes to leveraging technology to increase awareness. Their presence across social media has ensured their reach to the appropriate segment. That said, they do understand that if insurance is to percolate to the needy, the offline channel is as important as the online one. Toward that vein, they have their eyes and ears on the ground, all the time. They recently concluded an event where Ethika insured the journalist fraternity in Hyderabad.
When they got into insurance, their focal point was Group Health Insurance. They felt the vertical had a lot of room for improvement and they could add value. But every business is the business of trust, more so in the case of insurance. As they started providing solutions for group health insurance, their clients started asking them for more products. And that is how they increased depth in other lines of businesses like Motor, Liability, Fire.
While they havenât pivoted from their initial product, they have definitely evolved to a place where delivering happiness forms a significant part of what they do.
They are in Insurance for the long haul; that said, they have realized the problem they are trying to address is a spoke of a bigger wheel – Happiness. Insurance does try to ensure your risks do not rob you of the joy of the present moment.
But they look at it more from a perspective of backward integration than a pivot – something like what Reliance did in the petrochemical space and is trying to do in the agriculture retail space.
Ethika – Business Model and Revenue Model
Insurance is a highly regulated industry and the brokerage (commissions) which are paid by the Insurersâ are capped by the regulator IRDA. In the absence of differentiators in profits or pricing range, service quality becomes the prime driver of sales.
A Broker’s technical expertise helps them underwrite a risk to perfection. The Broker however also needs trained manpower who can handle managerial and supervisory responsibilities.
They help clients identify the right insurer who can offer them the right benefits at the right price.
Ethika goes a step further by helping clients mitigate future risks by adoption of good practices and thus reduce their risk quotient at the time of renewal.
Ethika – Customer Acquisition
Their starting experiences were extremely humbling. They did not want to invest on office setups and were therefore working out of home, they did not have visiting cards when visiting clients, neither did they have a website. But, this humility worked for them with most of their clients.
Their zeal to help clients with health insurance policies probably came across.
While it was difficult getting the first 10 clients, word of mouth has been their best marketing tool subsequently.
In the initial days, when they were new and people didnât know them, they were pretty straight forward about it – they used cold calling and told clients that they were new and would want to work for them.
While some didnât even let them complete their pitch, some of the clients heard them out and gave the opportunity.
There was this one particular client who, when he did meet them, wanted help with settlement of about 17 of his pending claims. He was, as a matter of fact, reluctant to switch insurers just because he thought doing so would antagonize the current insurer and his claims would not be settled. Susheel studied the cases and realized, most of them were closed not on technical grounds but administrative ones i.e. there were delays with document submissions and things like that. Susheel wrote to the insurer and after sensing some reluctance on his part, looped the ombudsman in the conversation. This was when the insurer got serious and settled the claims, and he got a client, who by the way has been with Susheel, since then.
They reached about 100 clients in the first 3 years; a lot of these hundred clients came to them as referrals from their existing clients.
Introspection led them to the belief that educating people would probably work as a good marketing tool; and they started organizing a workshop on employee happiness on a weekly basis. This workshop has created wonders for Ethika. Given the fact that the industry works on so many intangibles, a workshop helps put in some tangibility to the equation. They owe one third of their new clients to these weekly workshops.
It is only of late that they have started investing in PR and have started with about 0.5% of their topline from the last year.
Ethika – Challenges Faced
The founders faced one of the biggest challenges, right when they were about to set shop. Then IRDA guidelines required own capital of Rs. 50 Lakh to be deposited as a security, before they could commence business. While Susheel had managed about Rs. 25 Lakh out of his own resources, that still left him with a shortfall of about Rs. 25 lakh. The only assets Susheel Agrawal and his wife Possessed back then were their home and a car. Susheel decided to sell both of these. All of his family, parents, and in-laws seemed to be against the decision of starting up and requested him to give up on the idea. But he did not. He managed the additional Rs. 25 Lakh within the next month and registered with IRDA for a license.
Getting the license however does not guarantee a steady flow of clientele. Moreover, the industry is plagued by outward appearances – in the initial days, they lost out on some prospective clientele purely on aesthetic grounds. their simplicity was construed as a weakness. But they pushed through, working on what they knew best, and the rest has been history.
Susheel Agrawal took this opportunity to try and leave his footprint on the digital space. In the hour that they conversed he tried to un-jargonize health insurance concepts.
Sometime during their interactions with HR Managers, Ethika realized how difficult mediclaim policies made their lives. Managers ended up spending about 40% of their time servicing stakeholders on mediclaim – this was wasted time that could have been otherwise used doing their actual jobs.
Ethika had its eureka moment and came up with the handbook for group health insurance, which has been a huge hit in the community. The handbook is available https://www.ethika.co.in/ebook-download-page/.
Despite being aware of his biases, Susheel thinks it is by far one of the most comprehensive handbooks on the ins and outs of group health insurance. So much so that it could make Ethikaâs job harder.
While they are not looking for funds, they are always open to ideas for expansion. If someone can help them increase their happiness footprint, and reach a larger audience, they are always game.
They are a lean setup and the administrative tools they use are basic in nature. That said, they are a tech-savvy company and their clients use their inhouse software to manage their group insurance policies exclusively.
Ethika – Future Plans
Ethika has future plans to create NGO, happy living, keep employees happy and healthier, and add more value to sustainable living.
The pace at which technology changes is incremental in nature. The technology we used in 2000 was obsolete by 2010, but the technology that was in use in 2015 is obsolete today.
They are at the inflection point where insurance, as an industry, is going to keep leveraging technology, to the point where they could witness a Singularity event, borrowing from Ray Kurzweil, by the end of this decade i.e. to say, that by the end of 2030, technology would be inseparable from insurance. They would have seamless data exchange between gymnasiums, health providers, and insurers and this would translate in renewal premiums. The possibilities seem endless.
In the short term they would concentrate on equipping themselves with the right technical expertise, both on the insurance and the technology front, to help them become enablers for this technological transformation.
They also want to make employees of their clients live happier and healthier – this resonates with their idea of creating a happier India.
FAQs
What is Ethika insurance?
Ethika is a Hyderabad-based Leading Insurance Broker Company in India.
When was Ethika founded?
Ethika was founded in 2016 in Hyderabad.
Who is the founder of Ethika?
Susheel Agrawal, Sarath Reddy, and Sandeep Mukka are the co-founders of Ethika.
