Tag: 📄Company Profiles

  • GlobalBees Success Story – How it is Scaling Brands with its Thrasio-Style Model

    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 GlobalBees.

    The modern industries of the world are transforming each day with the addition of new companies or startups and their disruptive ideas. Though the increasing competition is certainly bringing forth the best products at equally appreciable rates for the customers of now, it is excessively detrimental for the companies, especially startups to hold on to the fast-paced environment and cement their position in their respective spaces. Thus, many startups often lose control and end up being forgotten. Experience is what most of them lack most often and here’s why nowadays we find companies and veterans teaming up to upscale the startups.

    It was Thrasio Holdings, Inc., which had made this idea possible in the US, scaling over 150 brands to date. This Thrasio-style has become really popular indeed ever since Thrasio began to be a huge success. GlobalBees is one such company that believes in the upscaling of other companies in India and is making it possible in India.

    GlobalBees invests in a wide range of companies across domains like e-commerce, consumer technology, marketing and operations, and more, with a special focus on the sellers of the popular eCommerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart to improve their sales and help them grow. The company is a Thrasio venture-style arm of FirstCry is already a unicorn in less than 8 months of operation!

    If you want to know more about GlobalBees, its Business Model, Revenue Model, Funding and Investors, Startup Story, Acquisitions, Challenges, Competitors, and more, then read ahead.

    GlobalBees – Company Highlights

    Startup Name GlobalBees
    Legal name GlobalBees Brands Pvt. Ltd.
    Headquarters New Delhi, India
    Industry E-commerce, Retail
    Founders Deepak Khetan, Nitin Agarwal, and Supam Maheshwari
    Founded 2021
    Website www.globalbees.com

    About GlobalBees
    How GlobalBees Acquires Digital Brands?
    GlobalBees – Industry
    GlobalBees – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    GlobalBees – Founders and Team
    GlobalBees – Mission and Vision Statement
    GlobalBees – Brands
    GlobalBees – Business Model and Revenue Model
    GlobalBees – Funding and Investors
    GlobalBees – Investments
    GlobalBees – Acquisitions
    GlobalBees – Growth
    GlobalBees – Competitors
    GlobalBees – Future Plans

    About GlobalBees

    GlobalBees is a startup that focuses on identifying and scaling amazing products. Since it was founded in 2021, GlobalBees has created a varied portfolio of firms in sectors including beauty, home care, personal care, nutrition and wellness, fashion jewellery, and eyewear.

    Globalbees Brands Private Limited is a Non-Government Company that is listed in the company class. This company is registered with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) in Delhi with a paid-up capital of Rs. 7 lakh and authorized share capital of Rs. 7 lakh.

    The startup purchases up-and-coming companies across niches. It aims to upscale merchants from an array of sectors such as fashion, home and kitchen, electronics, cosmetics, personal care, sports, and others. Globalbees works with entrepreneurs that have developed an internet-based business. The company’s staff grows direct-to-consumer (D2C) enterprises in India and beyond. Companies that have produced goods based on unique customer intelligence are favoured by the company.

    GlobalBees assists businesses with scaling and revenue development once they have been acquired by the company. The New Delhi-based unicorn works with the merchants, especially with those who are on the e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon, the business uses smart marketing methods and other technologies to help these firms flourish. Not only that, but the corporation also starts the worldwide operations of these brands.

    GlobalBees founder Nitin Agarwal stated in an interview that the company has already cooperated with 12+ digital businesses. These companies are selling their goods and services in domestic and international markets.

    How GlobalBees Acquires Digital Brands?

    GlobalBees works in a step-by-step way to acquire or collaborate with the brands. The GlobalBees team begins by gathering knowledge about the digital brand that it will purchase. The startup does this by looking at the revenue numbers and the items that the brand sells. For long-term success, the firm also learns how to establish a brand relationship with customers.

    Following the completion of the first stage, the GlobalBees team prepares a contractual agreement with the founders, outlining all payout terms and circumstances.

    Next, GlobalBees brings in its expertise and cutting-edge tools and technologies to expand the acquired brands. GlobalBees has a team of professionals who work directly with digital companies to help them flourish.

    By acquiring more than 10 companies and becoming a unicorn in such a short span of time, GlobalBees has caused quite a stir in the Indian startup environment.

    GlobalBees – Industry

    The Thrasio model, pioneered by the US-based Thrasio Holdings has been insanely popular around the world and in India too following the brand’s success, which recently boasted of having a portfolio of over 100 brands and picking up a profit of $100 million on revenue of $500 million. The business model that replicates Thrasio was not quite explored before the Indian startups like Mensa Brands, 10Club, GOAT Brand Labs and GlobalBees started to foray into the same.

    It was Amazon, which alone revealed in 2020 that as many as 4,152 sellers on its Indian marketplace have managed to cross Rs 1 crore in sales, which increased by 29% from the figures revealed in the previous year. This indicates the untapped opportunity in this space. The Indian brands like Upscalio, Evenflow, Powerhouse91, and the ones mentioned above have already started to take the pace and have together raised over $300 million so far.

    GlobalBees – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    GlobalBees assists emerging businesses in scaling and selling to marketplaces and other outlets in India and beyond the South Asian market, hence the name “Global-Bees”.

    Company Logo of GlobalBees
    Company Logo of GlobalBees

    Zoomcar Success Story – Founders | Business model | Revenue | Market Share
    Zoomcar is a self-drive car rental startup founded by Greg Moran and David Back. Read about Zoomcar founders, market share, business model and more.


    GlobalBees – Founders and Team

    GlobalBees is founded by Deepak Khetan, Supam Maheshwari, and Nitin Agarwal in 2021.

    Deepak Khetan

    GlobalBees’ Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Head of Corporate Development, Deepak Khetan is an alumnus of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, who also attained the CFA Institute and GARP, USA. Deepak is an experienced financial executive with over 18 years of experience in advising, credit, strategy, and accounting activities, and backed strong academic qualifications.

    He has vast experience in mergers and acquisitions, strategic advising, capital raising, and restructuring transactions, as well as cross-border circumstances. Khetan has previously served as a Manager and Chief Manager at ICICI Bank; Group EVP – Investment Banking at YES Bank; Chief Strategy Officer at Smaaash Entertainment and as the CFO and SVP at Edelweiss Financial Services before co-founding GlobalBees.

    Deepak Khetan, GlobalBees Founder
    Deepak Khetan, GlobalBees Founder

    Supam Maheshwari

    The CEO and Co-founder of FirstCry, Supam Maheshwari is a Co-founder of GlobalBees. A Mechanical engineer from the Delhi College of Engineering and an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, Supam had earlier co-founded Firstcry and Brainvisa Technologies.

    Supam Maheshwari, GlobalBees Founder
    Supam Maheshwari, GlobalBees Founder

    Nitin Agarwal

    GlobalBees’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Nitin Agarwal. Nitin Agarwal obtained his Btech degree from IIT Delhi and has worked in a series of companies including Citibank, where he served as an Assistant Manager; Equirus Capital, where he served as the Director; Incred, where he was the Chief Operations Officer; Wecash, where he was the Chief Operating Officer and Edelweiss, where Agarwal served as the President and Group CIO, CTO and Chief Digital Officer. Nitin also co-founded Brainvisa, Bigshoebazaar India Pvt Ltd, and GlobalBees till now in his entrepreneurial career.

    Nitin Agarwal, GlobalBees Founder-CEO
    Nitin Agarwal, GlobalBees Founder-CEO

    GlobalBees has an employee strength of 100+ employees.


    Supam Maheshwari—CEO & Co-Founder | First Cry, Xpressbees
    Along with being the CEO of First Cry, Supam Maheshwari has also established some other ventures like, Brainvisa Technologies, BrainBees and Xpressbees. Read the full article to know more about Supam Maheshwari.


    GlobalBees – Mission and Vision Statement

    GlobalBees’ mission statement says, “Investing in and nurturing brands to provide joyful product experiences to the world.”

    According to the company, its growth drivers are:-

    • Innovation – The demands of customers are always changing. It seeks out novel solutions to meet the demands of customers and improve all parts of the customer experience.
    • Inspiration – The company is inspired by others. The team continually listens to our customers and is ever-changing to meet their needs. This enables them to develop amazing things even under the most difficult of circumstances.
    • Impact – Products can have a beneficial influence on people’s lives. The team collaborates with entrepreneurs to develop goods that serve both customers and society.

    10 Interesting Facts About Walmart | Walmart Fun Facts
    Walmart is an American retail corporation operating a chain of superstores. There are some interesting facts about Walmart to know. Let’s read.


    GlobalBees – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The Thrasio-style business model is a relatively new concept in India, but it has garnered positive feedback from the country’s startup community.

    GlobalBees acquires and works with innovative digital companies working in areas such as grooming, personal care, home care and kitchen, food and nutrition, and sports and leisure. The New Delhi-based startup then assists these businesses in scaling and selling to marketplaces (such as Amazon and Flipkart) as well as other channels in India and beyond. GlobalBees has already purchased or collaborated with nearly a dozen businesses that they are selling both in India and beyond.

    “We have created and engaged with brands in the past and realized that most of these brands reach a scale after which it becomes too difficult to scale them,” Agarwal said. “Supam and I have been talking about this for several years, trying to find ways to disrupt this market. We think there’s an opportunity to create a new house of brands that is digital-native.”

    GlobalBees, according to Agarwal, will try to construct a distribution and enterprise ecosystem in the internet realm in the same way that conventional enterprises have done so in the offline world. GlobalBees plans to invest in roughly 30-35 companies spanning from various D2C categories to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and more, following the strategy popularised by US-based Thrasio.

    “Not all brands GlobalBees engages with will get acquired on day one”, Agarwal said.

    GlobalBees isn’t the first company in India to use the Thrasio concept. Other well-known firms that have used the Thrasio strategy to acquire digital brands include Powerhouse91, Mensa Brands, 10club, and UpScale.

    GlobalBees – Funding and Investors

    GlobalBees has raised $301.8 million over five rounds of funding.

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Feb 6, 2024 Debt Financing $18M Avendus Capital
    Dec 28, 2021 Debt Financing $30M Trifecta Capital Advisors
    Dec 28, 2021 Series B $110M Premji Invest
    Jul 18, 2021 Series A $75.88M FirstCry
    Jul 18, 2021 Debt Financing $75.88M

    GlobalBees – Investments

    GlobalBees had invested in one company on April 23, 2022, which was its maiden investment worth April 23, 2022, until it invested again in 5 companies, as of June 13, 2022 reports. The FirstCry arm has invested recently in HealthVit and Top Gummy, nutrition brands. Furthermore, it also invested in personal care brands UrbanGabru and Urban Yog, followed by another investment in a lifestyle brand named Kuber Industries. Though the funding rounds and the investment amounts have not yet been confirmed, reports mentioned that the company has invested up to Rs 50 crore in each of the brands.

    Date Name of the Company Funding Round Deal Value Lead Investor
    June 13, 2022 Kuber Industries
    June 13, 2022 Urban Yog
    June 13, 2022 UrbanGabru
    June 13, 2022 Top Gummy
    June 13, 2022 HealthVit
    April 23, 2022 Candes Corporate Round $3.2 mn Yes

    GlobalBees – Acquisitions

    GlobalBees last acquired Reach on February 9, 2022, which is a sports equipment brand. Reach is the 2nd brand in the sports and fitness that the Thrasi-styled brand acquired.

    Among its other investments, GlobalBees had invested in had acquired a controlling share in Healthyhey (a dietary supplement company), Rey Naturals (a hair care product company), and Intellilens (an eyeglass company) in November 2021. It also invested in Yellow Chimes, a prominent fashion jewellery brand, and Absorbia, an innovative home care brand to possess majority stakes in them, which were added to GlobalBees’ portfolio in the same month.

    Prolixr, a local millennial skincare business, &ME, and The Better Home, a women’s health solutions firm are some other brands that have been earlier acquired by GlobalBees, all of which are covered in the “Acquisitions” section below.

    GlobalBees plans to invest in roughly 30-35 companies spanning from various D2C categories to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and more, following the strategy popularised by US-based Thrasio. The organization is excited about the prospect of purchasing and combining companies, as well as assisting them in scaling and transforming their digital presence. Within this financial year, GlobalBees plans to invest in over 20 brands.

    GlobalBees acquired 11 brands to date. Here’s a list of its acquisitions below:

    Date Acquiree Name About Acquiree Amount
    February 9, 2022 Reach Fitness equipment company from Gurgaon, which rents out equipment and promotes fitness
    Jan 11, 2021 The Butternut Company Healthy snack food brand
    Jan 11, 2021 Mush Premium brand that is aimed to design and develop high-quality bamboo textile products
    Jan 11, 2021 Strauss Premium quality gym and fitness equipment company
    Nov 23, 2021 Rey Naturals Therapeutic Grade essential oils.
    Nov 23, 2021 HealthyHey The company create nutritional and health products for overall fitness and well-being.
    Nov 2, 2021 Yellow Chimes Yellow Chimes is a fashion jewellery brand.
    Nov 2, 2021 Absorbia Absorbia is an innovative product that keeps your belongings damp-free.
    Oct 25, 2021 Prolixr Prolixr embodies the perfect balance of formula savvy and playfulness to inspire a love for skincare.
    Oct 4, 2021 &ME &Me is a lifestyle nutrition brand creating bioactive beverages for women.
    Aug 31, 2021 The Better Home The Better Home is a home care products company, as it builds its portfolio of digital-first brands and helps them scale.

    GlobalBees – Growth

    As the need for online D2C brands grows, GlobalBees is taking up the challenge pretty well. It has been the second Thrasio-style firm to become a unicorn in 2021, following Mensa Brands.

    In just seven months, GlobalBees built a wide portfolio of firms in sectors such as home care, beauty, and personal care, nutrition and wellness, fashion jewellery, and eyewear. Over the next three years, GlobalBees expects to invest in over 100 brands across sectors, including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), sports, home organization, and leisure.

    GlobalBees boasts of a presence across 600+ cities. The company has hit a monthly revenue of Rs 1 crore in October 2020, within just nine months after launch.

    The firm, which has offices in Delhi and Bangalore, has established assets and skills in marketing, technology, supply chain and logistics, product innovation, and other areas.

    GlobalBees – Competitors

    The market for Thrasio-style startups has grown rapidly and GlobalBees has also picked up numerous competitors like:

    • Mensa Brands
    • 10club
    • Powerhouse91
    • UpScalio
    • Evenflow
    • GOAT Brand Labs

    Myntra – A Well-known Brand in Indian Online Fashion Industry
    The article aims to give insider insight into how Myntra works, its founders, its business and revenue model, funding, growth, challenges & more.


    GlobalBees – Future Plans

    The funding that the company received will be used to expand the firm’s product range and accelerate the innovation process, customer experience, talent recruiting, and corporate growth, according to the founder of the company.

    Globalbees has grown to over 100 members. In addition, the firm is in advanced conversations with over 20 organizations to expand its digital-first brand portfolio.

    Speaking on the development, Nitin Agarwal, GlobalBees CEO said, “We have a deep purpose to build meaningful products across industries that address unique consumer needs. With this investment, we are well setup to become India’s largest brand platform. We are an august company of exceptional founders who have built great companies online. With this infusion of capital, we can work together to take these companies global.”

    The company aims to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2026 and turn into a profitable startup.

    FAQs

    What does GlobalBees do?

    GlobalBees invests in potential merchants on e-commerce platforms like Flipkart, Amazon, and Myntra, and works with their founders to improve their sales. These businesses can help businesses separate from the crowd of e-tailers by providing marketing skills.

    Who founded GlobalBees?

    GlobalBees is founded by Deepak Khetan, Supam Maheshwari, and Nitin Agarwal.

    When was GlobalBees founded?

    GlobalBees was founded in May 2021.

    Which companies do GlobalBees compete with?

    10.Club, Mensa Brands, GOAT Brand Labs, Upscalio, Recommend.my, Bellhops, Venn, Mensa, Peopletail, and Key Reception are some of GlobalBees’ major rivals.

    GlobalBees is often referred to as a Thrasio venture-style arm of FirstCry, which it is.

  • Chanel – Growth Journey of The Centenarian Luxury Fashion Brand

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

    The growing appetite for the fashion industry has never settled since the late 1800s. Reports claim that it was the time when the seeds for fashion shows and other fashion events were sowed. Despite all the hardships that unfolded during the early and mid-1900s, the fashion industry continued its uphill path. The industry today is valued at $3 trillion and accounts for 2% of global GDP.

    Chanel is one such luxury fashion company that was established over 100 years ago. Started as a small millinery shop by a fashion designer in 1909, Chanel today has expanded its operation worldwide and has over 20,000 employees. This article covers the success story of Chanel, its founders, competitors and every aspect of this establishment.

    Chanel – Company Highlights

    Company Name Chanel
    Headquarters London, United Kingdom
    Industry Fashion
    Founder Coco Chanel
    Founded 1910
    CEO Leena Nair (Global)
    Website chanel.com

    Chanel – About
    Chanel – Founders and Team
    Chanel – Startup Story
    Chanel – Mission and Vision
    Chanel – Name and Logo
    Chanel – Challenges Faced
    Chanel – Acquisitions & Investments
    Chanel – Growth
    Chanel – Competitors
    Chanel – Future Plans

    Chanel Success Story

    Chanel – About

    Chanel is a luxury fashion brand that was founded by Coco Chanel in 1910. The company was based in France, whereinafter 110 years, the board has decided to shift their global headquarters to London. Chanel deals with luxury clothes, jewelry, perfumes and other fashion goods. This luxury brand mostly focuses on women’s outfits and accessories.

    Chanel serves as a trend-setter in the fashion industry. Coco Chanel, as a fashion designer and a businesswoman, made sure that the elegance of her brand never fades despite world wars and geographical and environmental barriers. Besides the outfits, Chanel is known for its wine, watches, perfumes and skincare products too. The company today operates over 310 boutiques worldwide that are located in opulent communities like airports, extravagant stores, high streets, etc.

    Chanel – Founders and Team

    Founder of Chanel – Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel

    Chanel remains a privately held company owned by the grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer, who was a business partner with Coco Chanel. Here are the founder and other key people associated with Chanel:

    Gabrielle Chanel (Coco Chanel)

    Gabrielle Chanel was the founder of the luxury brand ‘Chanel’. ‘Coco’ was a nickname given to her during her time as a songstress. She was orphaned at a young age. Facing the world on her own since childhood gave her confidence and strength. Coco Chanel’s qualifications as a fashion designer and daring nature aspired her as a successful businesswoman.

    Pierre Wertheimer

    In 1924, Pierre Wertheimer joined hands with Coco Chanel as a business partner for 70% shares in the company. The agreement was that Wertheimer should finance the production and distribution of Chanel’s perfumes. Another person named Theophile Bader was given 20% shares for marketing the same in his departmental stores. Later, Coco Chanel had some disagreements with them and happened to file a lawsuit against Wertheimer. She lost complete control of the company to Wertheimers in 1954.

    Alain Wertheimer and Gerard Wertheimer

    Alain and Gerard are currently the co-owners of Chanel. Alain serves as the chairman of Chanel and Gerard heads the division of Watch. They are the grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer.

    Leena Nair

    Leena Nair is the Global CEO of the brand Chanel. She was appointed to this new role in January 2022. Leena Nair has earlier been a part of Unilever as its Chief Human Resource Officer. She is an Indian and was born and brought up in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.


    Top 6 Popular Female-founded Fashion Brands in the World
    Many female entrepreneurs are leading the fashion industry with their startups. So, here are top Female-founded Fashion Brands in the World.


    Chanel – Startup Story

    The story of Chanel began in 1910 when its founder Coco Chanel opened a hat store named ‘Chanel Modes’ in a flat in Paris. Etienne Balsan, who was a friend of Coco, helped her with his bachelor’s apartment. Arthur “Boy” Capel, the lover of Coco Chanel, funded her early business. He helped Coco to set up her own stores in Paris. This also helped her to expand the business from only hats to sportswear and other outfits for women. As the business started to grow Coco Chanel kept increasing the outlets and widened her focus on other products like perfumes and jewelry. Her love affairs and loyal friendships helped her succeed in her early stages of Chanel.

    Chanel – Mission and Vision

    Chanel has a mission “To be the Ultimate House of Luxury, defining style and creating desire, now and forever”. The company stood to its mission right from its inception. It created new styles and never compromised with its grandeur and opulence.

    The vision of Chanel is to give worldly experience to the customers through its products that remain timeless. The wearer should enjoy a quality product with utmost comfort is the primary vision of the company.

    Chanel logo
    Chanel logo

    The name of the elegant brand ‘Chanel’ is derived from the founder’s name Coco Chanel. The logo of the company consists of two ‘C’s interlocking each other. This logo was designed by Coco Chanel herself in 1925. There are a couple of reasons being circulated for those two Cs. One reason unfolds is that the Cs stand for the name of its creator Coco Chanel. Another claims that one C represents Coco Chanel and the other stands for Capel (Arthur “Boy” Capel).

    Chanel – Challenges Faced

    As a century-old company, Chanel has faced numerous challenges throughout its journey. Within just four years of seeding the company and one year since it started sprouting, the First World War started. WW1 caused a huge difference in fashion, demand for clothes and scarcity of fabrics and employees. Even the manufacturing units were struck in warzones. This was the major setback faced initially by the company.

    The next challenge arose during the Second World War. Chanel happened to close the doors of its outlets in 1939 following the war outbreak. The doors of Chanel remained closed for years. When she came back into the business in 1954, Coco Chanel and the company had lost their reputation due to her rumoured involvement in the war with Nazis. Also, it was challenging to cope with new generation designers which she eventually did in her 70s.

    The death of Karl Lagerfeld, who was the creative director at Chanel since 1983, created a huge gap in the company’s creative department. His contribution to Chanel was priceless.

    The Covid outbreak stumbled Chanel’s business to a great extent in 2020. The CFO of the company said that the Covid impact on the luxury fashion sector could last up to 2 years and the recovery might take some time.

    Chanel – Acquisitions & Investments

    Chanel has made several investments and acquisitions over the years. Here is the list of those companies that Chanel has invested in:

    Company Name Date of Acquisition/Investment Investment Round Amount
    Arcaea Oct 27, 2021 Series A $78 Million
    P2 Science Jan 29, 202 Series C $12 Million
    Sulapac Dec 11, 2019 Venture Round €15 Million
    Evolved By Nature Jun 12, 2019 Corporate Round
    Sulapac Dec 7, 2018 Funding Round
    Samanta Jul 11, 2019 Acquisition
    Orlebar Brown Sep 30, 2018 Acquisition
    Colomer Leather Group Aug 31, 2018 Acquisition

    Other than the above companies Chanel has acquired a 40% stake in Renato Corti and Mabi. Mabi is a high-end handbag manufacturer and Renato Corti is involved in the leather business. A 34% stake was procured in the lingerie and swimwear manufacturer Grandis. The overall investment had cost $169 Million for Chanel. The company also took over the majority stake in the Italian knitwear company Paima for an undisclosed amount.

    Chanel – Growth

    The growth of Chanel has been consistent and extraordinary. Despite all the hardships, like World Wars, the loss of its founder, the death of the creative director and many more, Chanel kept marching forward by enhancing its existing division and introducing new ones.

    Starting an outlet in an apartment with the help of a friend in 1910, Coco Chanel opened an independent store in 1913. The hat business was extended to sportswear. The number of stores increased along with their product varieties. In 1920, Chanel started the stylish haute couture style of dressmaking. The year 1924 saw the introduction of Chanel’s costume jewelry and signature cardigan jackets followed by the popular Little Black Dress in 1926.

    After a setback during WW2, Chanel came back strong with the introduction of gemstone jewelry and iconic handbags in 1954 and 1955 respectively. After Coco Chanel died in 1971, the company lacked a potential creator and designer. But in 1983, with the addition of Karl Lagerfeld, the Godfather of Fashion, Chanel’s innovation and growth were on an uphill phase. By 1990, Chanel became a popular global luxury fashion brand and still continues to be.


    List of Brands Endorsed by Emma Watson
    Emma Watson is an English actress famous for her role as Hermione in Harry Potter. Here are brands endorsed by Emma Watson.


    Chanel – Competitors

    The following are some of the competitors of Chanel:

    Gucci

    Gucci is an Italian luxury fashion brand founded by Guccio Gucci in 1921. It is one of the top competitors of Chanel. Gucci’s products and services have excellent quality and finish that has a great reception among customers. Though Gucci is 11 years younger than Chanel, they both almost stand beside each other in the competition.

    Louis Vuitton

    Louis Vuitton, popularly known as LVMH, is another French luxury brand similar to Chanel. It was established in 1854 and is one of the leading fashion brands in the world. Louis Vuitton manufactures products for both men and women. The company has set benchmarks for the design and quality in the industry.

    Prada

    Prada was established in 1913 and is known for its leather products and travel and fashion accessories. The company markets its products through its 618 outlets spread across the world and also online. Prada is known for its quality, color and fabrics.

    L’Oreal

    L’Oreal is just a year older than Chanel and was incorporated in France. It is one of the largest cosmetics companies in the world. L’Oreal competes with Chanel through its perfumes and skincare products.

    Chanel – Future Plans

    Chanel is working towards giving its share of contribution against climate change. The chairman of the company. Alain Wertheimer said that the company is shifting plans to go green and use 100% renewable resources in their production by 2025. They have a strategy planned for this and named it Mission 1.5°.

    Chanel has launched a program named ‘Chanel Culture Fund’ to encourage and support creators and artists across the world. This fund is supposed to help organizations and partnerships to conduct programs that promote culture and society. Chanel believes that this program will help them develop international partnerships, which in turn benefits their business.

    FAQs

    Who is the founder of Chanel?

    Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is the founder of Chanel.

    What business is Chanel involved in?

    Chanel is a luxury fashion company that produces and sells ready-to-wear women’s clothes, perfumes, watches and skincare products.

    Who is the CEO of Chanel?

    Leena Nair has been appointed as the global CEO of Chanel in January 2022.

    Who are the competitors of Chanel?

    Some of the top competitors of Chanel are:

    • Gucci
    • L’Oreal
    • Louis Vuitton
    • Prada
  • Enthu.ai Success Story – How is it Providing Actionable Insights from Customer Interactions?

    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 Enthu.ai.

    Conversational analytics is the concept of extracting useful data from human speech and making analysis/interpretations using AI/ML. As technology is advancing exponentially, so are the great minds of entrepreneurs. Tushar Jain realized that there is still less scope outside in automating the manual process of sales people.

    He got his Eureka moment, and established an amazing product named ‘Enthu’. Enthu (as a product) was conceptualized and built by the entrepreneurial and technical minds of Tushar Jain and Vishal Verma.

    Conversation analytics is a costly technology, thus limited to only a few. Enthu’s vision is to make conversation analytics/speech analytics platform affordable to businesses at a reasonable rate with important feature. Enthu is a SaaS based conversation intelligence platform that turns customer calls into actionable insights.

    StartupTalky interviewed Tushar Jain (Founder of Enthu.ai) to understand the Conversation analytics industry and know about Enthu.ai Startup Story.

    So, let’s walk through the Startup Story of Enthu.ai and delve into everything about Enthu’s founder, business model, startup idea, products, revenue model, and more.

    Enthu.ai – Company Highlights

    Company Name Enthu.AI
    Headquarter Chandigarh, India
    Founders Tushar Jain, Vishal Verma (Technical co-founder)
    Sector Conversation Intelligence, Speech Analytics, AI
    Founding Year 2020
    Total Funding $15 mn
    Registered Entity Name OnPage Infotek LLP
    Contact Email hello@enthu.ai

    Enthu.ai – About
    Enthu.ai – Market/Industry Details
    Enthu.ai – Founders and Team
    Enthu.ai – Startup Story
    Enthu.ai – Name and Logo
    Enthu.ai – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Enthu.ai – Funding and Investors
    Enthu.ai – Customer Acquisition
    Enthu.ai – Advisors and Mentors
    Enthu.ai – Startup Challenges
    Enthu.ai – Future Plans

    Enthu.ai – About

    Enthu is a SaaS-based conversation intelligence platform that turns customer calls into actionable insights. It automates the ability to listen to every customer interaction and drive agents’ performance by identifying the behaviors that impact outcomes.

    Enthu is aimed at improving contact center performance by delivering highly effective, scalable, and usable conversation analytics. The core of the platform is analytics, where each call is analyzed for call moments and reports can be pulled out for QA analysis. Enthu can completely analyse the call interactions, extract actionable sentiment and interaction insights, and in this way, it helps to streamline the workflows.

    It is a horizontal play, which means Enthu can be easily deployed across business functions, be it the revenue side (like sales, customer success etc.) or the margin side (like customer support, call quality monitoring, rep training & coaching, recruitment operations etc.).

    Enthu Speech analytics platform
    Create customized call moments with Enthu

    Products of Enthu.ai and how does Enthu.ai work?

    The product (Enthu) integrates with the VoIP platform which calling teams use. The call feeds are automatically picked by Enthu and analyzed.

    One of the important aspect here is that the product is 100% customizable i.e. the user can replicate their calling scripts/themes in the system, create teams/agents and assign custom feedback forms. ‌‌The core of the platform is the analytics where each call is analyzed for call moments and reports can be pulled out for QA analysis.

    Enthu Conversational Analytics Platform
    Enthu Call Analysis

    Enthu.ai aims to help the managers gain a complete awareness of their customer service operations, which will let them run coaching for their agents.

    Suppose a company would want to run a Christmas campaign where they would offer their products at a discount. Here, they need to make relevant calls that the agents would dial. In such situations, the call centre managers were rendered helpless at the end of the day earlier. However, now they can now evaluate the calls and check whether the pitching was right and all the points of improvements that they bring to the process. Enthu.ai would help them define the manual script where they would not have to listen to random calls anymore. The Enthu software would instead help them process all the calls and provide detailed reports or conversation analyses.

    Enthu.ai – Market/Industry Details

    Conversation Analytics Platform & Speech Analytics is the domain of Enthu.ai.

    As per a report by Mordor Intelligence, the speech analytics market worldwide was valued at $1.34 billion in 2019, and is expected to reach a value of $4.38 billion by 2025. That’s a CAGR of 21.6% over the 5-year period between 2020 and 2025.

    While North America is still the largest market, Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing market, probably because of the high concentration of call centers in the region.


    Quixy: No-Code App Development | Company Profile, Founders & Challenges
    Quixy is a cloud-based user-friendly business application platform that empowers
    business users with no coding skills to automate workflows & processes, and
    build enterprise-grade applications, using simple drag and drop design, ten
    times faster compared to the traditional approach. Quixy provides …


    Enthu.ai – Founders and Team

    Tushar Jain is the Founder of Enthu.ai. Vishal Verma is the Technical Co-founder of Enthu.ai

    Founder/Owner of Enthu.ai
    Tushar Jain, Founder, Enthu.ai

    Tushar Jain (Founder, Enthu.ai)

    Tushar Jain is an Engineer, who has completed an MBA from NMIMS. He has over 9 years of corporate experience working in brands like McKinsey & Company and HCL Tech. He has also worked in startups like Jugnoo Technologies, where he worked as Head of Marketing. Tushar was also the Head of Marketing at Kays Harbor. After that, he founded OnPage Champ. He led the entrepreneurial journey since January 2019, when he started working on his 1st product – OnPage Champ. He then founded Enthu.ai in July 2020.

    Vishal Verma (Head of Technology, Enthu.ai)

    Vishal joined us as an employee of Enthu.ai in March 2020 (for OnPage Champ). He has a very rich experience in servers and algorithms. He displayed exemplary leadership, and problem-solving capabilities and was instrumental in building the crawling engine of OnPage Champ.

    As they decided to start working on Enthu, Vishal shared his vision about building Enthu.ai and offered to join as a technical cofounder for Enthu. That’s how Vishal boarded with Tushar.

    Vishal’s role in building Enthu.ai was exemplary. He guided the team and ensured that they launched the MVP for Enthu in just 20 days, and by the end of the first month, they were together pitching Enthu to real customers.‌‌ Vishal left the company in December 2021 and then began to work as an IT Consultant.

    Gaurav Mittal is another Co-founder of Enthu.ai, who is serving the position at Enthu.ai since May 2021.

    Enthu’s work culture is more of a decentralized organisation. At Enthu, individuals are motivated to take decisions irrespective of the outcome.

    Its hiring criteria is simple –

    “We are fast movers and we chose people who are independent thinkers and take ownership of their work” Says Tushar Jain, Founder, Enthu.ai

    Enthu.ai – Startup Story

    The idea for Enthu germinated while Tushar was trying to scale his other product OnPage Champ (the product is still active and has a user base of 2000+).

    During the COVID lockdown, Tushar was trying to scale up the outreach team at OnPage Champ. The idea was – the team makes calls and converts the inbound leads that were generated on the website. His sales reps were working remote and there was no way he could quickly analyze what was happening on the calls, except going through the meeting notes or listening to the calls. Both these activities required a significant amount of time investment, something which he couldn’t afford.

    In a way, he felt a lack of control over the feedback, coaching and training, that he should offer to the salespeople, basis the conversations they are making day in and day out.

    At that moment, Tushar started looking for conversation analytics solutions in the market. There were a couple of great options, but all were heavily priced and targeted towards enterprises. Moreover, a majority of them wanted a prior commitment, either in terms of number of agents or annual contracts, something which he wasn’t ready to make. This was his eureka moment: to build a speech analytics platform that can cater to a wider audience (especially SMEs), irrespective of any restrictions.

    There are a number of contact centers in Chandigarh and he started talking to founders and operation managers. The idea was not to pitch the solution but to understand the following-

    • How do they manage the call quality?
    • What are their pain points?
    • How frequent are the pain points and what they are doing to solve it?

    I strongly recommend you to read “The Mom Test” if you want to learn how to take customer interviews – Says, Tushar

    ‌‌Based on these interactions with people, Tushar realized that monitoring call quality is still a manual process across majority of the contact centers, and that there’s a lot of scope of automating this labor-intensive process. ‌‌That’s when Tushar along with Vishal, started working on the MVP for Enthu.


    Clumio Company Profiles: SaaS Platform For Enterprise Backup
    This article is a part Company Profile, an initiative by StartupTalky to publish
    verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in
    this post has been approved by the organization it is based on. Traditional approaches to backup and recovery, even those claiming to be SaaS…


    Tushar (founder of Enthu) was looking for an adjective that has a close association with people who sell on calls. Being enthusiastic about one’s product/service is the first step to success when it comes to sales.‌‌ That’s how the slang ‘ENTHU’ was determined.

    Enthu.ai

    Enthu.ai – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Enthu works on per agent per month model, with no annual or minimum rep commitments. It offers a 14-day free trial during which it runs a pilot for the customers to showcase the value of speech analytics and conversational AI.

    ‌‌The base plan for Enthu starts with $25 per agent, and that includes fixed number of transcription hours. It also offers custom plans depending on calling needs and volume.


    Haptik | AI-Company | Company Profile |
    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information
    on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been
    approved by the organization it is based on. There are more than 3 billion people in the world who use messaging or digital
    voice interfaces on…


    Enthu.ai – Funding and Investors

    Enthu.ai was initially bootstrapped before it raised a $15 mn Pre-Seed round of funding led by Ankit Dudhwewala, and Appit Simple Infotek. Suhasini Dudhwewala is another investor of Enthu.ai

    Date Funding Round Deal Value Lead Investors
    May 11, 2021 Pre-Seed Round $15 mn Ankit Dudhwewala, Appit Simple Infotek

    Enthu.ai – Customer Acquisition

    Via cold outreach and referrals, Enthu acquired a couple of customers since its inception. The customers are majorly contact centers and SaaS companies. It has already established the RoI of the product for its initial few customers.

    LinkedIn works best for us to acquire customers.”- Says Tushar

    Enthu.ai – Advisors and Mentors

    CallHippo, a leading VoIP provider is Enthu’s partner. CallHippo helped them to get lot of industry insights and mentorship.

    Enthu.ai – Startup Challenges

    Tushar felt that technology was one of the main challenging aspects, as the system had to be made accurate with an Indian English Accent. However, at the end, they were able to solve it and create an amazing speech analytics platform – Enthu.ai.

    Enthu.ai – Future Plans

    Enthu’s goal for the next 1 year is to work closely with its customers and identify more use cases for the application of voice analytics at contact centers and accordingly invest in the product.

    FAQs

    What is Enthu.ai?

    Enthu.ai is a Chandigarh-headquartered conversational AI startup that was founded in 2020 by Tushar Jain and Vishal Verma, which is helping monitor and analyse the calls and extract valuable information to enhance call quality.

    Who were the founders of Enthu.ai?

    The founders of Enthu.ai are Tushar Jain and Vishal Verma.

    When was Enthu.ai was founded?

    Enthu.ai was founded in 2020.

  • Cisco – Why Is It Such a Big Name in the Networking Industry?

    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 Cisco.

    Cisco is a networking equipment corporation, that designs, manufactures, and sells its products. Cisco might not be the only corporation that has developed network nodes. So, what accounts for its victory?

    The name “Cisco” is an acronym for San Francisco, where the company was founded in 1984 by Stanford computer scientists Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack. Cisco Systems Inc. is a networking multinational corporation based in the United States.

    Cisco was the very first company to provide routers that could handle several internet protocols. Their early devices were also distinguished by their traditional CPU architecture. Their technology was cutting-edge, and hardware was rarely an issue.

    Cisco isn’t a household brand, but it is well-known. They are one of the world’s largest networking firms, with a market capitalization of over $200B, ranking them at number 64 on the Fortune 500 list.

    Here’s learning all about Cisco, its Founders and Team, Funding and Investors, Business and Revenue Model, Growth, Challenges Faces, Name, Tagline, Logo and more.

    Cisco – Company Highlights‌

    Startup Name Cisco
    Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
    Industry Networking hardware, Networking software
    Founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner
    Founded December 10, 1984
    Areas Served Worldwide
    Revenue US$49.81 billion (2021)
    Current CEO Chuck Robbins (CEO & Chairman)
    Website www.cisco.com

    Cisco – Latest News
    About Cisco
    Cisco – Logo and Meaning
    Cisco – About Founders and Team
    Cisco – Startup Story
    Cisco – Employees
    Cisco – Business Model
    Cisco – Revenue
    Cisco – Funding and Investors
    Cisco – Investments
    Cisco – Acquisitions
    Cisco – Growth
    Cisco – Competitors
    Cisco – Mistakes and Downfall
    Cisco – Future Plans

    Cisco – Latest News

    As of January 26th, 2022, Cisco released its Data Privacy Benchmark Study for 2022, a yearly worldwide examination of security business practices that emphasizes the influence of privacy on enterprises and their perspectives on data protection.

    Privacy is mission-critical, according to the 2022 research, with 90 per cent of respondents considering it a business requirement. According to the poll, privacy expenditure continues to climb, and businesses see a strong return on investment from privacy spending.

    As of January 20th, 2022, Cisco has announced an extension of the Cisco Catalyst 9000 range, which is built on the powerful Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASIC silicon, to provide additional enterprise-grade switching capabilities to the industrial edge for industries like utilities, oil and gas, highways, and rail.

    As companies strive to increase economies, employee safety, and business agility and promote hybrid work, functional connectivity in industrial areas is rising at an exponential rate. As operational technology (OT) devices are integrated onto corporate networks, IT knowledge is necessary to expand and protect the network as the operational world advances.

    About Cisco

    Cisco Systems is a multinational technology corporation headquartered in the United States that specialises in computer networking.

    Cisco networking services link computing devices, and communication networks with people, enabling individuals to access and transmit data regardless of computer system type, location, or time.

    As a company that sold its products mostly to other businesses, Cisco did not become a household name, but in the second decade of the 21st century, it was one of the largest corporations in the United States. Cisco was founded in 1984 and has its headquarters in San Jose, California.‌

    Cisco is the only company that can assert a ‘legacy’ in a market as youthful as networking systems. Cisco’s networks not only carry 85% of all Online traffic; the corporation actively utilizes the Internet to operate its businesses, from purchases made online and stock management to employee evaluations and travelling expenditures.

    Cisco – Logo and Meaning

    The two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, are shown in Cisco’s company logo.

    Cisco Logo
    Cisco Logo

    ‌The company’s engineers were insistent upon using lower case “cisco” in its early years since the term “Cisco” was taken from the city name San Francisco.‌

    Cisco – About Founders and Team

    Cisco was founded by Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack.

    Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, founders of cisco
    Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, founders of cisco

    ‌Cisco was created by Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, (then) a married couple who met as students at Stanford University. They continued working at the institution after graduating in 1981, supervising the computer facilities of two distinct departments.

    They were strongly influenced by Standford’s technology from the early 1980s. Bosack used technologies developed by other Stanford employees in the 1970s to connect their individual computer networks.

    He and Lerner realised that router technology, as it was known at the time, could be extremely inexpensively adapted for large-scale usage outside of the institution. Cisco (originally called “Cisco Systems”) was created in December 1984 by the two, who named the business after the city of San Francisco. Cisco eventually bought Stanford’s proprietary technology.

    Cisco’s initial product, a network interface card for Digital Equipment Corporation computers, was introduced in 1985. The next year, it had its first major success with a router that supported numerous network protocols. Lerner was fired from Cisco in 1990, shortly after the firm sold its first stock to the public, and Bosack also quit.

    Chuck Robbins became the CEO of Cisco replacing John Chambers.‌

    Chuck Robbins, CEO of cisco with John Chambers, ex-CEO of cisco
    Chuck Robbins, CEO of cisco with John Chambers, ex-CEO of cisco

    ‌This revitalized the company. Chuck Robbins brought an outside perspective as he had been at that company for the past 17 years and this did help the company as they shifted their focus to cloud-based networking and this picked up the company from the fall.

    They sold to consumer companies like Technicolor for 600 million dollars and invested in newer startups like Velocloud. And in February of 2017, they launched their cloud-based secured internet gateway called Cisco Umbrella. And just 2 years ago, they bought an AI-driven business intelligent company called accompany for 270 million dollars and today they are doing better than ever before.‌


    8 Interesting Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Sony
    This article brings you the hidden facts about SONY. The facts and information that is still unknown to the masses about this Business Giant.


    Cisco – Startup Story

    Cisco was off to a pretty rough start due to inner conflicts among members, but their small team made things happen.

    In 1985 they sold their very first product which is a network interface card which they sold to Digital Equipment Corporation. But the following year was the one when they came out with their first blade successful product. This was simply a router. What made it special was that it served multiple network protocols. This router was so successful that it required more cash to expand and as the result, it turned to investment.

    In late 1987, the venture capitalist from Sequoia Capital took control of the company. This might have appeared to them as the right thing to do, but it later came back to bite them. Just a couple of months after they came, they changed to the president and CEO of Cisco. The new CEO didn’t get along well with the founders of the company.

    Despite this, the company continued to grow and on February 16, 1990, the company went public on NASDAQ with a market cap of 224 million dollars. But unfortunately soon after, in August 1990, Sandy Lerner and Bosack both left the company. They walked away with 170 million dollars. As for Cisco systems, they were still doing good, but they completely transitioned from a family-owned business to a very corporate business.

    In the early 1990s, they used their savings and put it towards a few part companies like grand junction and similar other companies that formed the capital business unit.‌

    Cisco – Employees

    • Chuck Robbins – Chairman & CEO
    • Eric Wenger – Senior Director, Technology Policy, Global Government Affairs
    • Matt Swartz – Principal Engineer
    • Bill Gerhardt – Managing Director – Strategy and Business Development
    • Tal Schierau – Sr. Director, Customer Experience
    • Caroline Baker – Executive Producer, Unhackable with Mike Storm, a Security Podcast Series
    • Jon Koplin – Managing Director EMEAR, Cisco Investments and Corporate Development
    • Kelly Crothers – Director of Employee Experience

    ‌‌Cisco – Business Model

    Cisco earns money through selling networking and communications hardware and software, which represents the Internet’s backbone.

    • Applications: The selling of software-oriented services that sit on top of Infrastructure Platforms, such as collaboration (Cisco TelePresence, for example), analytics software, and, the internet of things (IoT) generates revenue.
    • Infrastructure Platforms: The selling of fundamental networking technologies such as routing, switching, data centre devices, and wireless yields revenue.
    • Services: The provision of support services and technical consulting generates revenue.
    • Security and Other products: Revenues are derived from the sale of threat detection, management and security products and cloud and system management tools. This segment also used to house the company’s Service Provider Video Software and Solutions business, which was hived off in 2018.

    “The networks that we build we’re going to have to think about fundamentally differently, there is no room for technology religion,” Mr. Robbins said.

    Over more than three decades, Cisco Systems became a Silicon Valley giant partly because of one facet of its business: technological complexity.

    Managing Cisco’s many varieties of networking equipment, which help computers exchange data, became such a convoluted process over time that customers who learned to do so became loath to try competing products. But that pattern can’t go on, according to Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chief executive, who took over the company in 2015. At Cisco’s annual technology conference, he declared that technical shifts were affecting how all companies used the internet, forcing Cisco to rewrite its product playbook.‌


    Infosys Success Story | Founders | Business Model | Revenue Model
    Infosys is an information technology consulting company making digital dreams come true. Know more about Infosys’s funding, business, revenue models etc.


    Cisco – Revenue

    Year Amount Percentage Increase/Decrease from last year
    2021 $49.818B +1.05%
    2020 $49.301B -5.02%
    2019 $51.904B +5.22%

    Cisco – Funding and Investors

    Cisco has raised a total of $2.5M in funding over 1 round. This was a Series A round raised on Jan 1, 1987.‌

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    Jan 1, 1987 Series A $2.5M Sequoia Capital

    Cisco – Investments

    Cisco has made 210 investments. Their most recent investment was on Oct 7, 2020, when Illusive Networks raised $24M.‌

    Date Stage Amount Organization Name
    Oct 7, 2020 Series B $24M Illusive Networks
    Aug 5, 2020 Grant $25k Respira Labs
    Apr 2, 2020 Series C $230M Illusive Networks
    Jan 29, 2020 Venture Round $8.6M Illusive Networks
    Oct 30, 2019 Venture Round $7.6M Illusive Networks
    Mar 20, 2019 Series C $27M Illusive Networks
    Mar 12, 2019 Venture Round $50M Illusive Networks
    Jan 2, 2019 Series G $10M Illusive Networks
    Dec 1, 2018 Grant $300k Illusive Networks
    Oct 3, 2018 Series D $30M Illusive Networks

    Cisco – Acquisitions

    A total of 237 businesses have been acquired by Cisco. A few of them are as follows:

    Acquiree Name About Acquiree Date Amount
    Replex Replex provides software solutions. Oct 25, 2021
    Epsagon Epsagon is a privately held, modern observability company with offices in New York and Tel Aviv. Aug 13, 2021 $500M
    Kenna Security Kenna is a SaaS risk and vulnerability intelligence platform that accurately measures risk and prioritizes remediation efforts. May 14, 2021
    Socio Powering in-person, virtual, and hybrid event success. May 12, 2021
    Sedona Systems Sedona Systems is a creator of an IP/optical converged control platform May 11, 2021 $100M
    Dashbase Dashbase empowers you to deliver high quality VoIP services. Dec 22, 2020
    Slido Slido is an audience interaction platform for meetings and events. Dec 7, 2020
    IMImobile IMImobile is a cloud communication software that helps users manage customer interactions at scale. Dec 7, 2020 ÂŁ543M
    Banzai Cloud Bringing Cloud Native to the Enterprise Nov 16, 2020
    Portshift Kubernetes-native security solution, single pane of glass for containers and Kubernetes security. Oct 1, 2020

    Cisco – Growth

    Cisco Systems Inc. has been on a goal for the past few years: to conquer the data networking business, just like IBM did with mainframe computers and Microsoft and Intel did with pcs.

    Cisco, situated in San Jose, Calif., has gone on a significant acquisition binge to achieve this lofty aim, purchasing 14 firms since late 1993. Cisco evolved and adapted to its ever-changing surroundings. During the mid to late 1990s, Cisco adapted to the internet protocol as the internet age progressed.

    They introduced devices such as the ASA 5200 and GSR (Gigabit Switch Router) routers, but the dot-com bubble, like that of any other technological business at the time, had a significant impact on their growth. But, more than any other technological business, Cisco was able to reap the rewards of the dot-com bubble.

    Cisco had become the most valuable firm in the world by late March 2000, after surpassing Apple in the game. When the dot-com market collapsed, Cisco Systems, like Oracle and Dell, suffered a huge drop. However, because none of the firms had achieved the same heights as Cisco Systems, they were not as badly affected.

    Cisco Systems intends to dominate its industry and has already made 237 acquisitions since its inception. While many acquisitions are stressful, Cisco’s revenues and net profits have more than quadrupled since 1996. The key is to look for organisational synergies before making a purchase.‌


    Dell | American multinational company | Company Profile |
    Founded by Michael Dell, Dell develops, sells and repairs computer related products. Know more about it’s business model, future plans, success story etc.


    Cisco – Competitors

    The circumstances in the early 2000s provided an ideal opportunity for Cisco’s competitors to enter the market. Juniper Networks, the largest rival, was adamant about passing the IP and MPL package. They published their first part a few years before in 1999, but this is when they started to take off.

    Cisco’s market share was eroding, and they now own 30% of the market. Cisco swiftly countered by introducing more powerful processing cards and GSR routers. A6 are application-specific integrated circuits, which they created as well.

    They were particularly popular with Bitcoin and theory mining, and in 2004, they began migrating to CSR-1, a new high-level platform. They also received IOS-XR, a new software architecture. Cisco was able to recover from the dot-com bubble thanks to these reforms, and it began to thrive again.

    Cisco – Mistakes and Downfall

    Cisco made the mistake of attempting to become a household name in 2006. They began by renaming themselves Cisco rather than Cisco Systems. They’ve also spent a lot of time and money advertising links to these items, as well as their prospective consumer costs.

    They were also attempting to focus on their conventional business at the same time. They were also seeking to expand globally and enter new markets while all of this was going on. For example, they attempted to develop a foothold in India by investing $1 billion in a global centre of ease in Bangalore.

    They were also attempting to acquire their way into new markets on top of all of this. But here’s the thing: one person can only do so many things at once and be effective at all of them. And Cisco’s attempt to achieve all of these things at the same time was doomed to fail. Despite their efforts, their opponents were rapidly gaining momentum.

    They faced domestic rivalry from Juniper Networks, as well as international competition from Huawei, which has recently gained a lot of attention. Cisco’s revenues were so low as a result of all of this that they chose to slash their spending by $1 billion each year in 2011. What precisely did they do to achieve this?

    Mostly by laying off workers. They fired 3000 people right away, and hundreds more were granted early retirement packages and other benefits. After everything was said and done, 10,000 jobs were lost, accounting for 14% of their workforce. Cisco was clearly in a poor situation.

    Cisco sold eastbound lines to Belkin International in 2013, and this interchanged from the consumer to the network side. Years of mistakes, however, continued to have disastrous repercussions. They had to reduce 4000 and 6000 positions in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

    Cisco – Future Plans

    Over the previous two decades, Cisco has reaped the benefits of the internet’s growth and increased traffic. Cisco predicts that worldwide network traffic would expand by 26% annually until 2022, thanks to the expansion of online services such as video streaming and gaming.

    “Innovation requires focused investment, the right team and a culture that values imagination,” said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco. “We are dedicated to transforming the industry to build a new internet for the 5G era. Our latest solutions in silicon, optics and software represent the continued innovation we’re driving that helps our customers stay ahead of the curve and create new, ground-breaking experiences for their customers and end users for decades to come.”

    Cisco intends to bring its 75,000 employees back into the office once the epidemic has passed, while still allowing for remote work. After converting its entire worldwide staff to remote work, the IT giant is taking efforts to ensure that employees can continue to work from home, such as strengthening networks to allow for more remote access to corporate databases.

    “How can we improve the robustness and resilience of our networks and connectivity?” “How do we scale up much more effectively,” Cisco’s chief operating officer, Irving Tan, explained. “There’s a lot to learn, and it’s still early in the game.” By equipping individuals and businesses with problem-solving skills and revolutionary technology through Cisco Networking Academy, they want to offer the advantages of digitalization to one billion people by 2025.

    Cisco – FAQs

    What does Cisco do?

    Cisco Systems is a multinational technology corporation based in the United States that specialises in communication networks.

    When was Cisco founded?

    Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner founded cisco on December 10, 1984.

    How does cisco make money?

    Cisco earns money through selling networks and telecommunications software and hardware, which represents the Internet’s backbone.

  • Trainercentral – Revolutionizing the Online Training Industry

    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 TrainerCentral.

    In the last decade, edtech’s growth has been exponential and has transformed the way in which people teach and learn. People have become more welcoming to remote learning, thanks to the easy accessibility of the internet.

    The conventional concept of requiring the physical presence of a teacher to teach a trade has become dormant. More and more people are moving towards online course platforms to share their knowledge with the global audience. The ability to share knowledge with learners across countries and create a streamlined business around their passion has significantly contributed to the growth of online course platforms.

    There are always questions about why should a person use an online training platform when they can host live classes on Zoom and post videos on YouTube? The reason is simple, these single-purpose tools are not scalable and will create operational chaos as the business grows. Also, the autonomy of establishing your own training brand is missing here. So, online course platforms are the best tool of choice for course creators to streamline and manage different functions of the business.

    TrainerCentral has been launched by Zoho to empower online training businesses and help learners. Read the startup story of TrainerCentral, the services offered, business model, marketing, and more.

    TrainerCentral – Company Highlights

    Startup Name TrainerCentral
    Headquarters Chennai, TamilNadu
    Industry Online Training
    Chief Brand Evangelist Aarthi Elizabeth
    Founded 2021
    Parent Organization Zoho
    Website trainercentral.com

    TrainerCentral – About
    TrainerCentral – Vision and Mission
    TrainerCentral – Industry
    TrainerCentral – Founders and Team
    TrainerCentral – The Idea and Startup Story
    TrainerCentral – Products and Service
    TrainerCentral – USP and Innovation
    TrainerCentral – Business Model and Revenue Model
    TrainerCentral – Customer Acquisition
    TrainerCentral – Challenges Faced
    TrainerCentral – Growth
    TrainerCentral – Future Plans
    TrainerCentral – Competitors
    TrainerCentral – Tools Used in the Company

    TrainerCentral – About

    TrainerCentral is a division of Zoho. TrainerCentral was conceptualized and developed by a boutique team of engineers with a mission to provide a truly all-in-one online training platform. The product was beta launched on August 2021 for select users and was made available for public on November 2021.

    TrainerCentral is an all-in-one online training platform transforming the way trainers teach online. The platform offers a comprehensive tool kit for online trainers to create websites, draft course curricula, host live workshops, encourage community learning and generate revenue around their expertise.

    TrainerCentral – Vision and Mission

    TrainerCentral’s mission is to make knowledge sharing easy and accessible to all with the help of robust technology. They empower trainers with a unified platform to create, run and scale their online training business without the need to integrate multiple tools together.

    TrainerCentral – Industry

    TC caters to trainers, freelancers or individuals and basically anyone who wants to transform their talent into a successful profession- for instance a home-based teacher, yoga guru, a 12-year old teaching online gaming strategies, or a company upskilling their internal team. The platform is so intuitive that it fits any type of teaching requirement.

    According to MRFR’s survey, the online teaching business is set to grow at a rate of 30% CAGR from 2022 to 2026.

    TrainerCentral – Founders and Team

    Aarthi Elizabeth – Chief Brand Evangelist of TrainerCentral

    TrainerCentral team is a bunch of handpicked proven experts in development, marketing and sales. The team is growing rapidly to accommodate the product’s growth and goals. Aarthi is the Chief Brand Evangelist of TrainerCentral. She has experience in growing SaaS products that have won the market in competitive landscapes and is quite confident about TrainerCentral making a huge impact.

    “With Trainer Central, they have addressed this digital gap in the e-learning market, by offering all essential tools on a single, easy-to-use platform so that creators can quickly establish their knowledge brand and nurture a dedicated community of learners, all while turning their passion into profit. As their learner community grows, the trainers can continue to scale their business on Trainer Central.” – Aarthi Elizabeth, Chief Brand Evangelist, Trainer Central.

    TrainerCentral – The Idea and Startup Story

    TrainerCentral Logo
    TrainerCentral Logo

    The team did comprehensive research into the gaps in the existing technology and pain points of the online training community. Deep diving into their research they found that the current players had serious setbacks in not offering important tools and integrations that contributed to inefficiencies in online training businesses.

    Upon thorough research, they started developing tools to provide a standout product that is deeply integrated, user-friendly and easily scalable. The product was reviewed by well-known trainers from different regions and the feedback was receptive and appreciating.

    TrainerCentral – Products and Service

    TrainerCentral - Online Training Platform
    TrainerCentral – Online Training Platform

    TrainerCentral is a cloud-based platform that incorporates various tool kits that enable seamless functioning of online training businesses. The product focuses on providing truly end-to-end solutions that enable trainers to manage various aspects of the business in one platform.

    Trainers can create an exclusive website using the no-code drag-and-drop style website builder tools, upload course content, create learning methodologies, automate learner communications, host engaging live workshops, link bank accounts and receive payments and much more.

    Trainers can also white label the platform by using customized domains for their website and email communications, thereby maintaining consistent branding and ownership.

    TrainerCentral – USP and Innovation

    TrainerCentral - Online Training and Learning Platform
    TrainerCentral – Online Training and Learning Platform

    USP of TrainerCentral products are:

    • No-code website builder
      To help create an online presence for trainers, they provide a no-code drag-and-drop styled website builder tool to build dedicated website for their business. The tool provides a library of pre-defined templates using the trainers can launch a website in a matter of minutes.
    • In-built live classrooms
      Live workshop is the most sought out feature by trainers in an online training platform. Trainers can now host live virtual classrooms without having to integrate their Zoom or Google Meet accounts. This feature cuts down the burden on trainers of subscribing and integrating different tools.
    • Breakout rooms feature in live workshops
      Breakout rooms are a feature to split live class attendees into small groups and create focused discussions and engagements. Trainers can also be assigned to different breakout rooms.
    • Intuitiveness and flexibility
      TrainerCentral is known for its intuitiveness and adaptability. The tool was developed from a trainer’s POV, so the platform is sequential and simplified. Anyone with basic computer knowledge can set up and launch an online course without any technical assistance.
    • White labeling
      The platform is white label friendly. Trainers can use customized domain for their website to maintain consistent branding. In addition to website domains, email communication domains can also be customized.
    • Payment gateway integrations
      TrainerCentral supports payment gateways such as Razorpay, Stripe, Paytm, Forte, Authorize.net, PayPal Payment Pro, and PayPal Payflow Pro.
    • Top-notch security
      TrainerCentral is GDPR compliant and follows robust security methodologies to ensure data privacy and security.

    Top 17 Emerging Edtech Startups in India 2022
    The edtech industry in India is one of the most profitable and successful industries. Take a look at emerging edtech startups in the industry.


    TrainerCentral – Business Model and Revenue Model

    TrainerCentral is offered in three different pricing models.

    Free Plan: $0 USD

    • Unlimited learners
    • Up to 3 free courses

    Starter Plan: $16.67 USD/month when billed annually or $20 USD/month

    • Unlimited learners
    • Unlimited courses
    • Live virtual classroom (Up to 50 live participants)

    Professional plan: $41.67 USD/month when billed annually or $50 USD/month

    • All the benefits of the Starter plan
    • Live virtual classroom (Up to 100 live participants)
    • Custom domain (full rebranding)
    • Coupons and discounts
    • Multi-currency support

    TrainerCentral – Customer Acquisition

    During the beta launch period, they signed up trainers from different industries and markets to understand the product fit and adaptability. This helped them to refine the product much better and create a wholesome experience for trainers irrespective of their industry.

    They were able to convert 60% of their beta users to paying customers. Post public launch, the product started getting organic traction as people started starting their feedback on online forums.

    TrainerCentral is focused on organic marketing and product-led growth. Their idea is to add more product value in a cost effective manner and this made them stand out in the market. TrainerCentral subscription charges are 50% lesser than any other providers in the market.

    They are focused on content creation to scale the business further. As a team, they believe in long term focused marketing activities, thus spend 90% of their efforts on content.

    TrainerCentral – Challenges Faced

    The main challenge was to communicate the product’s unique value proposition and gain brand awareness during the initial phase. They focused on product positioning and streamlined communications, to resonate and empathize with potential customers and industry.


    Edtech Startups Marketing Guide – Know from Industry Expert
    StartupTalky interviewed Mahadev Srivatsa, VP of Marketing & Brand Strategy, Practically, to Know about Marketing in Edtech Industry. Know his insights


    TrainerCentral – Growth

    TrainerCentral user base is growing on an average of 25% MOM with promising signs to double in the next quarter. Currently, the user base is majorly from India and the US, and have plans to expand to Europe and Eastern countries.

    TrainerCentral – Future Plans

    TrainerCentral’s product map for the next 1-2 years is to develop the existing features more comprehensively and populate the integration library.

    TrainerCentral – Competitors

    Few of their competitors are:

    • Teachable
    • Kajabi
    • Thinkific

    FAQs

    What is TrainerCentral?

    TrainerCentral is a cloud-based training platform for trainers and learners.

    When was TrainerCentral founded?

    TrainerCentral was founded in 2021 in Chennai.

    Is TrainerCentral a part of Zoho?

    TrainerCentral is a division of Zoho to empower trainers.

    What is TrainerCentral pricing?

    TrainerCentral Pricing:

    • Free Plan: $0 USD
    • Starter Plan: $16.67 USD/month when billed annually or $20 USD/month
    • Professional Plan: $41.67 USD/month when billed annually or $50 USD/month

    Who are the competitors of TrainerCentral?

    Top competitors of TrainerCentral are:

    • Teachable
    • Kajabi
    • Thinkific
  • Neeman’s Success Story – How is it Changing the Norm of the Footwear Industry?

    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 Neeman’s.

    Industrialization has changed human life drastically. It has brought with it an increase in production, job opportunities, and urbanization. But, industrialization has a set of drawbacks too. It has contaminated the air, water, and soil. Dust, smoke, fumes, toxic gas emissions, use of plastic, etc has caused irreversible degradation to our environment. However, the good news is that now people are becoming more aware of the importance to conserve the environment. In India, many startups are coming up with amazing Eco-friendly product ideas. Neeman’s, is one such Hyderabad-based startup that is revolutionizing the footwear industry with shoes that are made of natural, renewable, and sustainable materials.  

    Neeman’s Highlights

    Startup Name Neeman’s
    Headquarter Hyderabad
    Founders Taranjeet Singh Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh
    Sector Footwear
    Founded 2017
    Total Funding $9.8 Mn (June 2022)
    Revenue $899K (FY21)
    Parent Organization Neeman’s Pvt. Ltd.

    About Neeman’s
    Neeman’s – Industry
    Neeman’s – Founders and Team
    Neeman’s – Startup Story | How was Neeman’s Started?
    Neeman’s – Name, Logo and Tagline
    Neeman’s – Business Model and How it works
    Neeman’s – Funding and Investors
    Neeman’s – Advisors and Mentors
    Neeman’s – Growth
    Neeman’s – Startup Challenges
    Neeman’s – Awards

    About Neeman’s

    Neeman’s is India’s first shoe brand to use natural, renewable and sustainable fibres, including merino wool. Founded in 2017, in Hyderabad, Neeman’s envisages manufacturing shoes that are stylish, comfortable, and eco-friendly. Neeman’s is the first company in India to use Australian merino wool for its shoes.

    “Neeman’s is focused on making truly comfortable footwear that looks good, feels good and is good for the planet–all day, every day” – quotes Neeman’s founder duo Taranjeet Singh Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh.

    Conceptualized in America, Neeman’s shoes are leading a culture of sustainability and comfort in the footwear space in India. Working in collaboration with the world’s leading manufacturing units and suppliers, Neeman’s brings perfectly-crafted, natural fibre shoes to India.

    Working on the lines of US-famed Allbirds, which is famous for the sustainable shoes and clothing it produces and sells, Neeman’s manufactures comfortable shoes that are crafted with merino wool, organic cotton, recycled PET bottles, and wood, fruit pulp, tyres, bamboo, and more.

    Neeman’s Products

    Currently, Neeman’s has 3 types of shoes

    • Wool Classic  Sneakers
    • Wool Joggers
    • Wool Loafers  

    Neeman’s Brand USP

    Listing the USPs of Neeman’s would include

    • Neeman’s shoes are designed for Style and Comfort.
    • Neeman’s shoes are manufactured using Natural and Renewable Merino Wool, Castor bean oil, Recycled rubber, and other earth-friendly materials.
    • The Merino Wool shoes made by Neeman’s can be worn in all months in India. They can be carried well in both extreme summers & extreme winters.  
    • Neeman’s shoes are flexible and lightweight, conforming to the foot for comfort that truly lasts all day.
    • Neeman’s timeless designs go from work to play, day to night, casual to dressy.
    • Neeman’s shoes are sock-free and odor resistant, but also machine-washable if the need arises.
    • The company works with the best design companies, manufacturing units and spinning mills to create its ultra-soft Merino Wool fabric used in its exclusive shoes.  

    Neeman’s – Industry

    India is the second-largest footwear producer in the world, 9% of the global annual production is done in India. In terms of consumption, India is the third-largest (around 2.1 Billion). India’s per capita consumption in terms of footwear is only 1.7 pairs per annum and is increasing rapidly and moving towards the Global Per capita of 3 pairs.

    According to Assocham study, the premium footwear market in India is close to 8 to 10% of the overall footwear market of $7-8 Billion

    With increasing affluent population and interest for more comfortable and designer shoes, Neeman’s plans to carve a unique position by building a Culture of Comfort and Sustainability in India.  The target Market size for Neeman’s is around $600 – $650M.


    TISHARTH by Shivani: Fashionable Wardrobe Is Now Affordable
    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified informationon different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on. Whoever quoted first impression is often the last impression couldn’t havestated the truth bette…


    Neeman’s – Founders and Team

    Neeman’s was founded by Taranjeet Singh Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh in the year 2017.

    Taran Chhabra & Amarpreet Singh
    Neeman’s Founders

    Taranjeet Singh Chhabra

    Taran Chhabra is the CEO of Neeman’s. He handles the complete operations of the company along with the finance department, sales department and the marketing strategy. He also manages Neeman’s collaboration with the world’s leading design companies, manufacturing units, and spinning mills to bring true nature-friendly shoes to the Indian men.  

    Taranjeet is a Business Analytics Leader with great experience and leadership qualities based out of New Jersey, the USA. He has helped countable pharma and life sciences giants in America pivot their current operational strategy and move towards the path of growth. He also has quality experience in Technology, Operations, and Media that enables him to establish new ventures at the epitome of industry and acquire a greater market share. Chhabra has completed his Post-Graduation in computer science in the USA. He is an expert IT leader and an avid traveller.  

    Amar Preet Singh

    Amar Preet Singh is the Director of Operations at Neeman’s. He is a veteran in operations and leading companies with over 15 years of experience in running various start-ups. He is currently leading and overseeing a consulting firm in Hyderabad along with it.  

    Currently, Neeman’s has a 17-member team with great expertise in Customer Service, Digital Marketing, Logistics and Branding.

    Neeman’s – Startup Story | How was Neeman’s Started?

    It all started with a struggle and frustration. Taranjeet Singh was travelling to Spain and missed a train due to over-packing. He was travelling with five pairs of shoes a running shoe, a casual shoe, a lounging shoe and an extra pair just in case. And it was quite cumbersome to travel with so much luggage.  

    This inconvenience made Taran think about a shoe that can be used for all purposes and for all day. However, he did not find anything suitable, which led to the birth of Neeman’s.  

    With very little background in footwear and design, Taran travelled to different shoe manufacturing hubs around the world to learn how shoes were made. He saw that most of the shoes were made with synthetic and chemical-heavy fibres that are bad for the environment.  

    “The question in my mind was, We look for better, nutritional and organic food, why don’t we look for similar qualities in our shoes?” says Neeman’s owner Taran Chhabra.  

    Taran thought of using natural sources to make shoes. Merino wool from Australia was at the top of the list because of its amazing qualities. Merino wool is very soft compared to traditional wool and can be worn all year round. Besides, this fibre was natural and renewable as sheep produce a new fleece every year.  

    After two years of hard work, in October 2016, Neeman’s is born, which brings classic yet stylish shoes made with natural Merino wool, and other eco-friendly materials.  

    We believe you should feel good about what you wear. And at Neeman’s, we’re passionate about making sure your shoes make you feel good, look good and do good for our planet.  

    The name Neeman’s is a combination of Taran’s mother’s name, Neelam and his father’s name, Manjeet. The tagline of Neeman’s is #ChangeTheNorm.

    Neeman’s Logo

    Tsara – Destination jewellery for Every occasion
    Tsara HighlightsStartup NameTsaraHeadquarterMumbai [https://startuptalky.com/mumbai-startups/]FoundersTarun Jagwani and Natasha JagwaniSectorGems & JewelleryFounded2012Tsara- IntroductionTsara – Industry DetailsTsara – Founders Tsara – The Idea and starting upTsara – ProductTsara – Business …


    Neeman’s – Business Model and How it works

    Neeman’s launched directly to the consumer via its website to improve the buying process and make it super easy for consumers across India to shop its shoes. Neeman’s shoes are now also available on Amazon and Flipkart, thereby making them more discoverable. It also began to focus on offline markets and has already begun introducing its products in Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle.

    The pricing for all its styles ranges within the range of INR 5,500 – 5,850. They have a 7 Day Risk-Free trial wherein the customers can experience the comfort at their doorstep and if they run into any issues Neeman’s delivers a new shoe within a few days.

    Neeman’s – Funding and Investors

    Neeman’s raised funding worth $9.8 Million to date. The footwear brand last raised nearly $5.15 mn on June 3, 2022, in a Series B round led by Sixth Sense Ventures. The previous round was valued at around $901K, which came in on December 2, 2021, and was led by Stride Ventures.

    Neeman’s investors include Anicut Angel Fund, AngelList, and a group of serial entrepreneurs.

    Date Stage Amount Lead Investors
    June 2, 2022 Series B $5.15 mn Sixth Sense Ventures
    December 2, 2021 Debt Financing $901K Stride Ventures
    August 3, 2021 Series A $2.57 mn Sixth Sense Ventures
    March 2, 2020 Pre-series A $1 mn Anicut Angel Fund & AngelList

    Neeman’s Shareholders

    The largest shares of Neeman’s are currently held by Sixth Sense Ventures, which holds around 42.94% of Neeman’s stakes. On the other hand, the Neeman’s founders, Taranjeet Singh Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh diluted their shareholding, which currently stands at 19.84% and 9.84% respectively.

    Neeman’s – Advisors and Mentors

    Sramana Mitra from Silicon Valley and Tushar Singh are among his mentors/advisors of Neeman’s. Sramana Mitra is the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), which is hailed as the world’s first and only global virtual incubator/accelerator. On the other hand, Tushar Singh is among the investors of Neeman’s, who is also a member of the Neeman’s board.

    Neeman’s – Growth

    Neeman’s is hailed as the first sustainable footwear brand in India. Over the last two years, Neeman’s has also launched products like sustainable flips flops, slides and recycled cotton sneakers that are being sold now by the startup.

    Neeman’s was beta launched in Oct 2018. At launch, it had few sizes and colours with a focus to promote the difference that the company brings to the footwear space and educate the consumers on why its products are better and revolutionary. Neeman’s used mediums like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Email Marketing during this phase.

    The beta launch was successful and Neeman’s got a great response from the early backers and customers. Leveraging upon the initial traction, Neeman’s started using other mediums to reach out to customers and drive awareness of the benefits of its shoes, merino wool and how Neeman’s shoes blend in with their daily life and so on. The company used targeted campaigns to different age groups to ensure the creatives and copy blend in with their location and age group.  

    Some of the growth highlights of Neeman’s are:

    • It has achieved a 661.42% growth rate
    • It currently serves 275K users

    Neeman’s has grown by 15X in 2021 when it comes to revenue and customer base. It dived into the new retail selling initiative by opening a store in Hyderabad.

    Neeman’s has great reviews from thousands of early backers across the country. Neeman’s has a reorder rate of over 25% and a growth of over 30% month over month.

    The company is working on starting a few flagship offline locations for the customers to walk in and experience the comfort crafted at Neeman’s. Besides, Neeman’s is also working towards adding more colour and variants to its shoes.

    Neeman’s Financials

    Neeman’s registered Rs 6.98 crore ($899.21K) in revenue in FY21, and has also posted a loss of Rs 3.32 crore ($427.63K) in the same fiscal.

    Neeman’s – Startup Challenges

    According to Taranjeet, the major challenge for Neeman’s was to design and develop the core set of merino wool fabrics which would create a shoe that is lightweight, durable, abrasion-resistant and holds up well with the Indian weather conditions.  

    During our research, our focus was to ensure our shoes hold up well with Indian Weather Conditions. As our country is so diverse and the weather is different in Bangalore and Mumbai, we have worked to choose the right composition to ensure it holds up well in all situations and conditions.

    Neeman’s collaborated with Woolmark Company, a non-profit funded by Australian wool farmers for developing merino wool fabric.  

    Neeman’s – Awards

    Neeman’s was awarded as a Gamechanger and Emerging Brand of 2018-19 in Consumer Space by Nexbrand in association with Times Now.  

    Vanity Wagon Platform to buy Natural and Organic Beauty Products
    Vanity Wagon Startup Success StoryStartup NameVanity WagonHeadquarterGurgaon[https://startuptalky.com/gurgaon-startups/], HaryanaFounderNaina Ruhail,Prateek Ruhail & Sahil ShresthaSectorNatural Beauty & Personal CareFounded2018About Vanity WagonOrganic / Online Beauty Industry in India Founder…

    FAQs

    What does Neeman’s do?

    Neeman’s is India’s first shoe brand to use a natural, renewable and sustainable fiber in its shoes–merino wool. This Hyderabad-based startup founded in 2017 envisages manufacturing shoes that are stylish, comfortable, and eco-friendly.

    Who is the founder of Neeman’s Shoes?

    Mr. Taranjeet Singh Chhabra and Mr. Amar Preet Singh founded Neeman’s in 2017.

    How much is Neeman’s Funding till date?

    Neeman’s total funding is reported to be $9.8 Million in June 2022. Neeman’s investors include Anicut Angel Fund, AngelList and a group of serial entrepreneurs.

    Who is Sramana Mitra?

    Sramana Mitra from Silicon Valley, and Tushar Singh, who is one of the investors of the brand, are the mentors/advisors of Neeman’s.

    Does Neeman’s bring organic shoes in India?

    Yes, if you are looking for organic shoes in India, then Neeman’s is one of the best choices you can find.

  • Microsoft – Perhaps The First College Dropout Success Story

    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 Microsoft.

    Perhaps the very 1st college dropout success tale is Microsoft, which was established by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft, a US-based multinational tech giant, was ranked No. 21 in the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest US companies by total revenue in 2020. It was the largest global technology corporation by revenue, as of 2016. Along with Google, Apple,  Amazon, and Facebook, it is considered one of the Big Five corporations in the United States software industry.

    In 2018, Microsoft was declared the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company. In April 2019, Microsoft has become the 3rd U.S. public company to be worth over $1 trillion, behind Amazon and Apple. As of 2020, Microsoft has the third-highest brand value in the world.

    Here’s more about this software behemoth and how it came to be known as “Microsoft.”

    Microsoft – Company Highlight

    Startup Name Microsoft
    Formerly Called Microsoft Consumer Products (1980–1982)
    Headquarters One Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington, U.S.
    Industry Software development, Computer hardware, Consumer electronics, Social networking service, Cloud computing, Video games, Corporate venture capital
    Founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen
    Founded April 4, 1975
    Subsidiaries LinkedIn, Skype Technologies, and GitHub
    Areas Served Worldwide
    Current CEO Satya Nadela
    Website www.microsoft.com

    About Microsoft
    Microsoft – Latest News
    Microsoft – Industry
    Microsoft – Name, Logo, And Tagline
    Microsoft – Founders
    Microsoft – Startup Story
    Microsoft – Mission and Vision
    Microsoft – Products
    Microsoft – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Microsoft – Funding and Investors
    Microsoft – Investments
    Microsoft – Acquisitions
    Microsoft – Growth
    Microsoft – Competitors
    Microsoft – Challenges Faced
    Microsoft – Future Plans

    About Microsoft

    Microsoft Corporation, located in Redmond, Washington, is a leading multinational tech company that produces computers, computer software, electronics, and related services.

    Microsoft’s best-known software products are the Microsoft Office suite, Windows operating system, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. The company’s main hardware solutions are the Microsoft Surface line of touchscreen personal computers and Xbox video game consoles.

    The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes (legacy Microsoft Office, Skype, cloud-based Office 365, Dynamics, Exchange, SharePoint,  LinkedIn), intelligence cloud (infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service offerings Azure, SQL Server, Windows Server OS), and more personal computing (Windows Client, display advertising, Bing search, Xbox, and Surface laptops, tablets, and desktops).

    Microsoft – Latest News

    “Digital technology is a deflationary force in an inflationary economy. Businesses – small and large – can improve productivity and the affordability of their products and services by building tech intensity,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. “The Microsoft Cloud delivers the end-to-end platforms and tools organizations need to navigate this time of transition and change.”

    As of October 26, 2021, in comparison to the same period previous fiscal year, Microsoft Corporation released the following results for the quarter ending September 30, 2021:

    • Revenues climbed by 22% to $45.3 billion.
    • Operating income climbed by 27% to $20.2 billion.
    • Net income grew 48 percent and 24 percent, respectively, to $20.5 billion GAAP and $17.2 billion non-GAAP.
    • GAAP diluted profits per share were $2.71, while non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $2.27, representing a 49 percent and 25 percent rise, respectively.
    • GAAP results include a $3.3 billion net income tax benefit.

    “We had a good start to the fiscal year,” Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft, said. “Our Microsoft Cloud generated $20.7 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 36 per cent year over year.”

    Microsoft – Industry

    The information technology (IT) industry includes firms that produce software, hardware, or semiconductor equipment, as well as companies that provide internet or related services. The three main industry categories in the IT sector are technology hardware, software and services, equipment, and semiconductors and semiconductor tools.

    The software solutions industry category includes organisations that provide internet/online and software services as well as IT services. Online services are companies that provide interactive services or online databases, such as social networks or search engines.

    IT services are companies that provide data processing services or IT consulting to other companies. Eventually, the software includes all sorts of commercial and consumer software, such as video games as well as business and systems software.

    The three industries that make up technology hardware and equipment are Technology hardware, communications equipment, storage and peripherals, and electronic equipment, instruments, and components. Communication equipment includes telephones, routers, and switchboards.

    Technology hardware, peripherals, and storage include computers, cell phones, and printers. Electronic equipment, gadgets, and accessories include companies that make barcode scanners, security systems and transformers, as well as distributors and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). An OEM is a company that develops types of equipment that are used in other businesses’ finished products. Many Dell laptops, for example, have Intel processors and Windows pre-installed; Intel and Microsoft may be called Dell’s OEMs.

    Semiconductors are materials that can transmit electricity in some situations but not in others, making them excellent for managing currents. Silicon is a very common semiconductor material. This industrial category comprises both semiconductor manufacturers and semiconductor peripheral equipment manufacturers.

    Microsoft – Name, Logo, And Tagline

    Microsoft is a combination of the words “micro-processors” and “software”.

    Microsoft Logo
    Microsoft Logo

    The Microsoft logo represents technological innovation that, with his Windows operating system, introduced the computer to the average person. Their logo serves as a constant emblem of quality in an operating system named “Windows,” which gives individuals access to the world of technology.

    The new tagline for Microsoft, the world leader in operating systems for more than a decade, is “Be what’s next.”

    Microsoft – Founders

    On April 4, 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen established the company, Microsoft.

    Founders of Microsoft - Paul Allen and Bill Gates
    Founders of Microsoft – Paul Allen and Bill Gates 

    Bill Gates

    William Henry Gates III is a successful American businessman, investor, author,  software developer, and philanthropist. Along with his late childhood mate Paul Allen, he co-founded Microsoft. Gates was the business’s largest individual stakeholder until May 2014, and he acted like the CEO, chairman, president, and principal software architect throughout his time there.

    He was the richest person in the world every year from 1995 to 2017, except for 2010 and 2013. He is the founder and chairman of BEN, Cascade Investment, bgC3, and TerraPower, among others. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest private foundation, he has provided huge sums of money to many humanitarian organizations and scientific research initiatives.

    Paul Allen

    Paul Allen was an American businessman, researcher, investor, programmer and philanthropist. He is primarily remembered for co-founding Microsoft in 1975 with childhood buddy Bill Gates. Forbes listed Allen as the 44th richest person on the planet in 2018. Apex Learning and Stratolaunch Systems, as well as the Allen Institutes for Brain Science, Cell Science, and Artificial Intelligence, were all established by Allen.

    He donated more than $2 billion to a variety of organizations, including education, animal and environmental protection, the arts, healthcare, and community services. With SpaceShipOne, he sponsored the first crewed commercial spaceplane in 2004.

    He has earned several awards and distinctions in a variety of fields, and in 2007 and 2008, he was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

    Microsoft – Startup Story

    Before co-founding Microsoft, Paul Allen and Bill Gates were ardent computer nerds in an era when computers were scarce. Even in high school, Gates and Allen skipped classes for spending all of their days in the school’s computer room. They were finally caught hacking into the school’s computer, but rather than being deported, they were granted unlimited computer time in exchange for assisting in improving the performance of a computer system.

    While still in high school, Gates and Allen founded Traf-O-Data, a modest firm with the support of Paul Gilbert, and sold a computer to the city of Seattle for traffic counts.

    In 1973, Gates left Seattle to attend Harvard University as a pre-law student. However, Gates’ first love, programming, never departed him, as he devoted much of his time in Harvard’s computer room polishing his skills. Allen moved to Boston shortly after, functioning as a coder and encouraging Gates to forgo Harvard so that they could work a full-time job on their concepts together.

    In January 1975, Allen brought Gates an article on the Altair 8800 microprocessor from Popular Electronics magazine. MITS, the Altair’s maker, was approached by Gates, who offered his and Allen’s services to develop an Altair version of the new Coding language.

    MITS decided to sell and commercialize the software under the name Altair BASIC when Allen and Gates presented their program to them after eight weeks. Gates and Allen were so enthused by the sale that they decided to start their software firm. As a result, on April 4, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico—the origin of MITS—Microsoft was created, with Bill Gates as its first CEO.

    The business opened its first international office less than a year later, in August 1977. ASCII Microsoft was the name of the Japanese branch. In 1979, the firm relocated to Bellevue, Washington, and two years later, Microsoft Inc. was formed. Allen was executive vice president while Bill was chairman and president of the board of directors.

    Microsoft – Mission and Vision

    Microsoft’s mission statement says, “Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

    Microsoft’s vision statement is “to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.” The notion stated in this vision statement is how the organization goes above and beyond to help its clients make good changes.

    Microsoft – Products

    Microsoft’s products are quite numerous, and a significant portion of them are aimed at businesses and business customers. Until a few years ago, Microsoft’s products were largely desktop apps. Things have changed drastically over the years, with Microsoft creating a slew of discrete online and mobile apps for individual users.

    A few of the products are:

    • Microsoft Windows
    • Bing
    • MS DOS
    • Skype
    • LinkedIn
    • Windows Phone
    • Microsoft Solitaire
    • Visual Studio
    • X Box 360
    • Microsoft Office
    • Internet Explorer
    • Microsoft Azure

    Microsoft – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Microsoft’s primary revenue and profits come from developing, manufacturing, licensing, supporting, and selling a wide range of hardware and software products, cloud-based services, and services that integrate with them, as well as producing appropriate digital advertising that reaches a worldwide audience, conserving and expand its field of view and foundation.

    The following are the three primary segments of Microsoft Revenue Generation:

    • Business Processes and Productivity – It comprises income from the sale and licensing of the company’s various software products and cloud services for various devices and platforms. Office 365 Suite, Outlook.com, Exchange Email Platforms, OneDrive and SharePoint Content Management Tools, Skype Call Services, and others are examples of such goods and services.
    • Intelligent Cloud – Revenues from Microsoft’s server products and cloud storage services are included. Sales and licencing of Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, System Center, Microsoft Azure, and Windows Service, among other products, support Microsoft’s commercial strategy.
    • Personal Computing – It comprised revenue from Microsoft services and products that give developers, professionals, and end-users cross-platform functionality. Microsoft makes money from licensing Windows OS, Windows Phones, and Microsoft patents, as well as selling mobile phones and PC peripherals.

    It also makes money from selling and licensing Microsoft Xbox gaming systems, as well as Xbox live subscriptions, transactions, advertising, and royalties from third-party video games. Search advertising on the Bing Search Engine and proceeds from display advertising on the MSN portal is also included in this category.

    Microsoft – Funding and Investors

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Sep 1, 1981 Venture Round $1M Technology Venture Investors

    Microsoft – Investments

    Date Organization Name Round Amount
    Sep 29, 2021 Truveta Corporate Round
    Aug 17, 2021 Rubrik Corporate Round
    Jul 29, 2021 OYO Series F $5M
    Jun 4, 2021 Intelight Seed Round CA$1.5M
    Jun 3, 2021 Sibucayi Pre-Seed Round $1K
    Jun 1, 2021 One Store Venture Round ₩17B
    May 25, 2021 Siemens Healthineers Grant $2.5M
    Apr 14, 2021 Bukalapak Venture Round $234M
    Mar 1, 2021 Loggi Series F $212M
    Feb 1, 2021 Databricks Series G $1B

    Microsoft – Acquisitions

    Acquiree Name About Acquiree Date Amount
    Clear Software Clear Software is an Intelligent Automation platform that protects and extends technology investments. Oct 22, 2021
    Ally.io Ally.io is a strategic goal-planning and execution management software. Oct 7, 2021 $76M
    TakeLessons TakeLessons is an ed-tech company with a robust, engaging learning platform and community for lifelong learning. Sep 10, 2021
    Clipchamp Clipchamp is the video editing platform that empowers anyone to tell stories worth sharing. Sep 7, 2021
    Peer5 Peer5 operates the world’s largest peer-to-peer (p2p) content delivery network. Aug 10, 2021
    Suplari Suplari focuses on leveraging machine learning to help enterprises change the way they manage their suppliers and costs. Jul 28, 2021
    CloudKnox Security CloudKnox develops a multi-cloud permissions management platform that protects critical cloud infrastructure resources and identities. Jul 21, 2021
    RiskIQ RiskIQ is a security company that provides digital threat management solutions for software vendors. Jul 11, 2021 $500M
    ReFirm Labs ReFirm Labs is a group of IoT security experts that develops a new method for vetting and validating firmware. Jun 2, 2021
    Kinvolk Kinvolk is a software development company with commercial support for Linux, Kubernetes, and consulting across the cloud-native stack. Apr 29, 2021

    Microsoft – Growth

    As of July 2021, Microsoft reported $46.2 billion in revenue, $16.5 billion in net income, and $2.17 in profits per share for the quarter. The company’s revenues increased by 21% year over year, but its net income increased by a more robust 47 percent.

    First and foremost, Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, saw a 51 percent increase in revenue in the quarter compared to the same quarter a year earlier, a number that would drop to 45 percent if currency changes were taken into account, according to the firm. According to preliminary research, the 51 percent rate is the company’s highest Azure growth since the fiscal Q3 2020 period or the first calendar quarter of last year.

    Taking a look at the rest of the company’s performance, we may rank the revenue growth outcomes of its three main divisions as follows:

    • Intelligent Cloud has grown by 30%, thanks in part to Azure’s expansion.
    • Productivity and Business Processes: 21% increase, with LinkedIn (46%) and the Dynamics 365 CRM solution leading the way (49 percent growth).
    • More Personal computing is growing at a rate of 9%, with search leading the way (53 per cent, excluding traffic acquisition costs).

    Microsoft – Competitors

    The top competitors of Microsoft are Apple, Sony, Samsung, Mozilla, Logitech International, Google, IBM, Cisco, VM Ware, SAP, Salesforce, Red Hat, AWS, Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.


    8 Interesting Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Sony
    This article brings you the hidden facts about SONY. The facts and information that is still unknown to the masses about this Business Giant.


    Microsoft – Challenges Faced

    Mobile – The fact that Microsoft has yet to figure out how to break into the mobile market is, of course, its largest and most obvious weakness. The mobile market share of Microsoft is now at 3.5%. This is a pitiful figure when compared to Apple’s 14.8 percent and Google/Android’s 80.2 percent.

    Furthermore, Microsoft’s Surface tablet has only managed to capture less than 3% of the tablet market. As a result, Windows is the only major operating system without a functional mobile component.

    Ecosystem – Additional problem for Microsoft would be that their platform isn’t up to par. Of course, there is one exception: Office 365. However, its Windows Store is about a fifth the size of the App Store and Google Play, Microsoft only recently released a free online version of its Office suite, Bing remains a distant second to Google Search, and Google’s Chrome browser surpassed Internet Explorer in total market share for the first time this month, and it doesn’t have a viable iTunes competitor.

    Microsoft – Future Plans

    For years, Microsoft has preached about the promise of rapid IoT growth via sensors and simple devices, all while creating a cloud empire and covertly acquiring startups that will help it manage these billions of cloud-connected devices.

    According to some estimates, there are now 22 billion linked gadgets, with that number expected to rise to 50 billion this year, by 2025, or 2030, depending on whose study you trust. Although there is some debate over how many devices will be linked to the internet and when they will do so, Nadella has rebuilt Windows and Azure to prepare for it.

    Microsoft also faces stiff competition from companies wishing to handle the billions of internet-connected gadgets. ARM, Qualcomm, Amazon, Huawei, Qualcomm, IBM, Intel, Dell, Google, Cisco, HP, Samsung, Oracle, and others are vying for a slice of this growing market, however, there is no definite victor yet. If the software titan is to succeed, it will have to persuade competitors and form partnerships with a large number of them. And this was why in current history, Microsoft has partnered with Cortana and Amazon on Sony on the future of cloud gaming, Alexa integration, Walmart on grocery store innovation, Samsung on Android apps, and many others.

    Nadella made it absolutely clear that the company is devoting a considerable amount of resources to see what the next big thing is. Simultaneously, they aren’t asserting that this is their way of implying that this one item will consume all of  Android, Windows, and iOS. People have generally grasped that Windows has a billion users worldwide, Android has 2 billion, and iOS has a billion. And it’s not like either of them was responsible for the death of another.

    Microsoft – FAQs

    What does Microsoft do?

    Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company based in Redmond, Washington, that makes computer software and hardware, consumer devices, computers, and associated services.

    Who founded Microsoft?

    On April 4, 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen launched Microsoft.

    How does Microsoft make money?

    Microsoft’s primary revenue and profits come from developing, manufacturing, licensing, supporting, and selling a wide range of hardware and software products, cloud-based services, and services that integrate with them, as well as producing appropriate digital advertising that reaches a worldwide audience, conserving and expand its field of view and foundation.

    Who is the current CEO of Microsoft?

    Satya Nadella is the current CEO of Microsoft.

    Which companies do Microsoft compete with?

    The top competitors of Microsoft are  Apple, Sony, Samsung, Mozilla, Logitech International, Google, IBM, Cisco, VM Ware, SAP, Salesforce, Red Hat, AWS, Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.

  • WhatsApp – Replacement of SMS, MMS, and Other Outdated Communication Methods

    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 WhatsApp.

    “No advertisements! “No tricks! No games! ” — A basic premise that enabled a simple messaging service to defeat behemoths like Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WeChat, Snapchat, Kik Messenger, Line, etc., and others despite having only 50 employees.

    Whatsapp’s journey is unlike any other renowned startup tale, in which the founders generated the idea, formed a team, dropped out of college, and received pre-seed capital from a behemoth like Facebook or Google. WhatsApp was created by folks in their thirties who had decent full-time jobs with reputable brand names.

    This internet messaging app was created to meet a legitimate need (empowering mobile-based conversations), and it was able to leverage practically every increasing trend, such as push alerts, as well as a necessity, such as encryption.

    Today, more than a decade has passed since the company was founded, and still the firm makes millions of dollars while adhering to its no ads, no games, and no tricks principles. Know more about Whatsapp’s success story, its business model, founders, revenue model, funding and more.

    WhatsApp – Company Highlights

    Startup Name WhatsApp
    Parent Company Meta
    Also Known As WhatsApp Ireland Limited
    Legal Name WhatsApp Inc.
    Industry Instant Messaging, Subscription Service
    Headquarter San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, West Coast
    Founders Brian Acton, and Jan Koum
    Founded January 2009
    CEO Will Cathcart
    Areas Served Worldwide
    Website www.whatsapp.com

    About WhatsApp and How it Works?
    Whatsapp – Industry
    WhatsApp – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    WhatsApp – Founders
    WhatsApp – Startup Story
    WhatsApp – Vision, and Mission
    WhatsApp – WhatsApp Business
    WhatsApp – Business Model
    WhatsApp – Funding, and Investors
    WhatsApp – Competitors
    WhatsApp – Future Plans

    About WhatsApp and How it Works?

    WhatsApp Messenger, or just WhatsApp, is a Meta-owned free, cross-platform centralised instant messaging and voice-over-IP service which is available worldwide. Users may exchange text and voice messages, initiate audio and video chats, and exchange photographs, user locations (even live locations), document files, and any other stuff using the app. WhatsApp’s client application is available on both mobile devices and desktop PCs. To use the service, you must have a cellular phone number to sign up for the service.

    WhatsApp’s key differentiator is that the application makes it feasible to send and receive messages and calls with the prerequisite of just an active internet connection, making it essentially free to use and great for phone calls, and even international calling. We don’t have to worry about data plan limits or go through any sign-up costs for using WhatsApp.

    While there are several messaging applications which can be compared to WhatsApp, it has a few distinct characteristics, the most essential of which is WhatsApp’s cross-platform capabilities.

    At once, WhatsApp may appear to be nothing more than a text messaging service, but it is capable of so much more. And here is an overview of WhatsApp’s most significant characteristics:

    • End-to-end encryption, a secure communication technology in which only the parties who are chatting may receive the messages, is used by WhatsApp.
    • You may record and send voice messages to one person or group conversations using voice messaging.
    • WhatsApp enables video calls in addition to voice conversations, including a group mode that allows up to eight people to be on the same call.
    • Rather than using email or other document-sharing applications, WhatsApp allows you to share various types of documents, including spreadsheets, PDFs, and slideshows.
    • You can share photos, videos, stickers, and GIFs without stressing about them being distorted or not being downloaded, as may happen when sending SMS messages across various mobile systems and cellular providers.
    • WhatsApp has a desktop version available for both Mac and PC.
    • WhatsApp’s specialized business account lets businesses to promote their products and services, and communicate with consumers on a handy and user-friendly platform.

    You’ll need to download the app on your Android phone or iPhone and register an account before you can use WhatsApp. You’ll see that you’ll require your phone number to set up an account after installing the application.

    WhatsApp, unlike several other services, does not employ unique usernames. Rather, WhatsApp uses a number to identify users. This means that everyone who uses WhatsApp will be included in your list of contacts immediately, making setting up very simple.

    Once you’re fully operational, familiarise yourself with WhatsApp’s capabilities, which range from making international calls to sending audio messages to many many services as written above.


    WhatsApp Interesting Facts and Secret Features
    WhatsApp, the most widely used messaging app has some secret facts to know about. Here are some interesting facts & features of WhatsApp.


    Whatsapp – Industry

    Instant messaging is a sort of internet chat that allows users to send texts in real-time online or using another computer network. Messages are usually sent across 2 or more parties when each user enters text and sends it to the recipient(s), who are all connected to the same network.

    Instant messaging varies from email in that interactions take place in real-time or instantly. Most current instant messaging apps employ push technology and include additional features such as emojis, file sharing, bots, Voice over IP, or video chat.

    One of the primary reasons businesses are gravitating towards mobile texting is that it saves a lot of time while maintaining a high level of customer service. The explanation for this is straightforward. Customer service over the telephone or in-person are both synchronized activities that need both sides to participate at the same time. You’re working with one individual once they’re ready to end the engagement, and there’s nothing you can do but assist them. Email is asynchronous, meaning it is sent by one individual and read and responded to by another. You can help a lot of people in a short amount of time, but your response may come long after the desire to read has passed.

    For most parts of the world, mobile texting is limited to Facebook and WhatsApp. Over 2.5 billion individuals use one of these two platforms, and in some areas, the two applications account for over 90% of the market. Because of Facebook’s (Now Meta) popularity, rival messaging groups have sprung up that appear to be the polar opposite of Facebook. Both Telegram and Signal were formed on strong pro-encryption principles, and they constantly criticise Facebook for commercialising communications.

    WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app in the world, with over 150 million users. Both Viber and Telegram have gained popularity in particular nations and areas, including the Middle East, Africa, and South America. In 2021, WhatsApp had the most downloads, however, its overall downloads were down in the year, 2020.

    The domination of Facebook and WhatsApp is even more obvious in India, where these two applications account for 92 per cent of all engagements. Telegram and Signal penetration have not made much of a difference in total sessions, despite skyrocketing usage after WhatsApp’s privacy change.

    WhatsApp – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    The name WhatsApp is a pun on ‘What’s Up’.

    WhatsApp tagline says, “Simple. Secure. Reliable messaging.”

    WhatsApp – Founders

    In 2009, former Yahoo employees, Jan Koum and Brian Acton launched WhatsApp.

    Founders of WhatsApp - Jan Koum, Brian Acton
    Founders of WhatsApp – Jan Koum, Brian Acton

    Jan Koum

    Jan Koum, WhatsApp’s co-founder and former CEO, is in charge of setting WhatsApp’s general direction and strategy. Jan is also responsible for designing and interface of WhatsApp’s platform, as well as the development of its underlying technology and infrastructure, with his co-founder Brian Acton. Jan moved to California in 1992, from his hometown in Ukraine. Here, in California, he attended San Jose State University but eventually dropped out from there.

    Brian Acton

    Brian Acton, Signal Technology Foundation’s Founder and Executive Chairman, is also the co-founder of WhatsApp. Brian serves as a software developer. He’s also a Silicon Valley expert, experienced working at Adobe, Apple, and Yahoo before joining WhatsApp. Brian co-founded WhatsApp in 2009 and helped it grow to over a billion users globally. Brian is a Central Florida native with a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.

    WhatsApp – Startup Story

    Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp, bought an iPhone in January 2009 and immediately recognised the opportunities and prospects of the app market on the App Store, which was just a few months old at the time. He wanted to make an app that showed users’ current state besides their names.

    They went to Alex Fishman for more information after discussing the proposal with Acton. However, without the assistance of an iOS developer, this concept could not be realised. As a result, Alex recommended them to Igor Solomennikov, a Russian developer whom he discovered on RentACoder.com.

    The road to success was not easy at first, but they persevered, as have many other great businesses. On February 24, 2009, Koum successfully developed the iOS application and established ‘WhatsApp Inc.’ in California.

    He chose the name ‘WhatsApp’ because it sounded very much like what’s up, which corresponded to the concept of statuses.

    He showed the app to some friends, including Fisherman, but none of them liked it. Additionally, difficulties such as app crashing, battery draining, and other issues left Koum so unhappy that he lost all faith and began looking for new employment.

    Apple released the push notifications upgrade in June 2009. This update was created to notify users even when they’re not operating an installed application. Jan took advantage of this shift and tweaked Whatsapp so that it sends push alerts to contacts anytime a user modified his status on the service.

    Fishman’s Russian pals found it amusing and began using it to keep track of their own whereabouts and contact each other with updates like “I woke late” or “Can’t chat, I’m at the office.”

    This function quickly became a conduit for instant text messaging, and users began communicating with one another through status updates, such as someone posting “What’s up Jack?” and Jack responding by altering her status.

    “Being able to reach somebody halfway across the world instantly, on a device that is always with you, was powerful,” – Jan Koum

    WhatsApp 2.0 was released in beta shortly after recognizing the need for an instant messaging service. People were enchanted by the possibility of registering and signing in with merely a phone number and they were able to send messages to friends through the internet rather than through operators’ SMS plans, all of it for no extra cost.


    Signal Business Model | How does Signal Makes Money
    Signal gained a lot of popularity as WhatsApp announced its privacy changes. Lets understand how does this free private messaging platform makes money.


    WhatsApp – Vision, and Mission

    WhatsApp’s mission statement says, “Behind every product, the decision is our desire to let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers.”

    The vision of Whatsapp set by mark Zuckerberg is “WhatsApp on a path to connecting more than a billion people.”

    WhatsApp’s mission statement explains why the company was founded and what has kept it going since its inception.

    WhatsApp – WhatsApp Business

    WhatsApp verified claims that they were developing and evaluating 2 additional business tools in September 2017. The applications were released in January 2018, with different target audiences:

    • Small businesses may use WhatsApp Business.
    • An Enterprise Solution enabling larger enterprises with international client bases, such as e-commerce shops, airlines, and banks, to provide customer care and conversational commerce (e-commerce) over WhatsApp chat utilising live agents or chatbots.

    In October 2020, Facebook announced the introduction of per-message price levels for services delivered through the WhatsApp Business API.

    WhatsApp – Business Model

    WhatsApp generates revenue by charging large and medium businesses for use of its Business Application programming interface. But, before we go any further, have a glance at the company’s prior monetization initiatives.

    Previously, WhatsApp used to monetize its users through subscriptions. Users have to pay $1 each year to use the app. Given WhatsApp’s 2 billion users, that would yield a $2 billion income rate of economic growth.

    Facebook dropped the $1 charge two years after the purchase, in 2016. The underlying aim was to keep focused on user growth and assist WhatsApp in becoming the undisputed messaging leader.

    That means scrapping any plans to include advertisements in the product. While Facebook’s Messenger app has in-app advertising, the company’s management has chosen to engage with companies to monetise WhatsApp.

    WhatsApp introduced its Business API in 2018, marking the company’s first sustained effort to commercialise the programme after its purchase.

    Small businesses can utilise the B2B service for free. Larger firms, on the other hand, must pay every time they send a response 24 hours after the first message was delivered. Everything after the 24-hour mark will cost between $0.05 and $0.90 for each message responded.

    WhatsApp also collaborates with other companies to supply its API, such as the cloud communication platform Twilio.

    WhatsApp – Funding, and Investors

    Date Round Amount Lead Investors
    Jul 1, 2013 Series B $52M Sequoia Capital
    Apr 8, 2011 Series A $8M Sequoia Capital
    Oct 1, 2009 Seed Round $250K

    WhatsApp – Competitors

    WhatsApp’s competitors are iMessage (1.3 billion active users), Telegram (500 million active users), Viber (260 million active users), WeChat (1.2 billion active users), Signal (over 50 million active users), and LINE (217 million active users). During WhatsApp disruptions and scandals, both Telegram and Signal have experienced signup increases.


    Best Privacy-Focused Secure Messaging Apps To Use In 2021
    There are numerous Messaging app but security is the main concern while choosing among them. Here is a list of safe and secure messaging apps.


    WhatsApp – Future Plans

    WhatsApp is developing additional capabilities for its smartphone and desktop users. This time, the Facebook-backed messaging app is putting a new version of message responses through its paces in preparation for a future WhatsApp beta update for Android handsets. New upgrades and features for iOS and Desktop users are also being tested.

    In a recent update, WhatsApp introduced a new plus icon to the reply bar: after touching it, the user will be able to give a reaction to the message by selecting a different emoji.

    WhatsApp plans to release a few additional features in the near future. They are providing an option in their versions up to 2.22.3.5 where users will be able to sketch using pens and pencils. The business intends to introduce a variety of pencils that will allow you to sketch on your photos and videos.

    Another potential is a function that allows users to blur their photos. This blur photos feature was previously only accessible on WhatsApp for iOS, but now it is being rumoured that it may be accessible for WhatsApp Beta testing on Android phones as well.

    The new “Profile Picture” under the message notice is another improvement that we’ve heard is coming shortly. In prior versions, when someone got a new text message, they could simply see the sender’s name. However, they will now be able to see their profile picture next to their name, which is nice since you will know who has contacted you.

    WhatsApp is now used by over 1.5 billion individuals in 180 countries. The software has already replaced SMS, MMS, and other outdated communication methods that its target market previously employed. And now, with Facebook’s ambition of bringing companies on board, cell carriers’ features may become utterly obsolete.

    The business has also released a desktop version of the software (WhatsApp Web) to make it more convenient to use on a PC or Mac. Mark Zuckerberg is going all out to push WhatsApp to new heights in the corporate world. With several upgrades flowing out and people being blown away by its capabilities, the company will retain its position in the market.

    WhatsApp – FAQs

    What does WhatsApp do?

    WhatsApp Messenger, or just WhatsApp, is a Meta-owned free, cross-platform centralised instant messaging and voice-over-IP service which is available worldwide.

    Who founded WhatsApp?

    In 2009, former Yahoo employees, Jan Koum and Brian Acton launched WhatsApp.

    Which companies do WhatsApp compete with?

    WhatsApp’s competitors are iMessage, Telegram, Viber, WeChat, Signal, and LINE.

    When was WhatsApp launched?

    In 2009, former Yahoo employees, Jan Koum and Brian Acton launched WhatsApp.

  • AVOW – A Global App Growth Startup Helping in Advertising Across App Stores

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

    The global market of mobile app development is growing at a CAGR of 11% and is expected to reach over $365 billion. As the app development market is growing rigorously, so is the need to market these apps. OEM (Original Equipment Manufactures) has a high influence in marketing mobile apps. Gaining the trust of the mobile app developers so that they can choose them as the primary platform for app distributors is the main goal of OEMs. AVOW is a startup that is a specialist in Mobile OEM on-device user acquisition and advertising across alternative app stores.

    Read the startup story of AVOW, founders and Team, Growth, partnerships, and more about it.

    AVOW – Company Highlights

    Startup Name AVOW
    Headquarters Berlin
    Industry Technology
    Founder Robert Wildner, Ashwin Shekhar, Orietta Mendez and Caio Balbino
    Founded 2018
    Website avow.tech

    AVOW – About
    AVOW – Vision
    AVOW – Core Belief
    AVOW – Founders and Team
    AVOW – The Idea and Startup Story
    AVOW – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    AVOW – Growth
    AVOW – Marketing Strategy
    AVOW – Customer Acquisition
    AVOW – Customer Retention Strategy
    AVOW – Challenges Faced
    AVOW – Partnership
    AVOW – Client Communication
    AVOW – Recognition and Achievements

    AVOW – About

    AVOW is a global app growth company, specializing in alternative app store inventory. They provide brands with a unique opportunity to access untapped mobile advertising inventory via Mobile OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers- Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Samsung, Realme) at scale and invest their advertising spend across alternative channels for incremental user growth and engagement.

    AVOW – Vision

    Their goal is to make as many app developers aware of the great opportunity that lies in working with Mobile OEMs and their untapped user inventory. To achieve their goals, they plan to continue educating mobile marketers and app developers about the benefits of Mobile OEMs being integrated into their mobile marketing mix. In terms of business and hiring plans, they have recently opened an office in Brazil (in Q2) and continue to launch their services in new regions and broaden their teams of experts to cater to the high demand for their services. For their continuous growth, it is imperative that they keep strengthening their relationship with media partners.

    Acquiring high-value users for mobile apps is a primary goal for app developers in 2022 regardless of vertical or region, but the app market is developing at a rapid pace with more competition than ever before: An average of 1,153 new apps are released every day on the Apple Store and 3,119 new apps each day on the Google Play Store. Fortunately, there are alternatives to those platforms mobile marketers can use to help achieve their company goals and increase ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend).

    While mobile marketers may find it difficult to successfully manoeuvre through the different specifications and requirements for each of the alternative app stores such as HUAWEI, Xiaomi, Oppo Vivo, OnePlus, and Samsung when setting up, this gives marketers access to numerous benefits:

    • Achieve your growth goals: Mobile OEMs enable marketers to grow on a global scale by reaching new audiences and accessing new markets.
    • Reach your acquisition targets: Mobile OEMs offer higher user acquisition whilst paying lower CPI (cost-per-install).
    • Enter a fraud-proof ecosystem: Marketers gain access to a fully fraud-free user-acquisition ecosystem. This is because there are no additional layers between the budget holder and the Mobile OEM, and reach advertising placement is fully controlled by the Smartphone OEM.
    • Build trust with your audience: Users who are brand-loyal to the Mobile OEM will view adverts as more trustworthy.
    • Diverse advertisement (ad) formats: Access a diverse range of ad formats across all Mobile OEMs from full-screen interstitials to video ads.
    • Appographic targeting: Appographic Targeting helps marketers to find the perfect user for their app based on their unique interests and promote the app to users who are most likely to install it.
    • Access dynamic preloads options: Marketers can gain a competitive edge by accessing premium, dynamic preloads options. Their app will be pre-installed on the mobile device when it is first shipped and set up by the new device holder.
    • Transparency: They operate with complete transparency of each Mobile OEM and ensure their bidding methods give advertisers a greater understanding of how each Smartphone OEM is performing overall and compared to other channels.

    AVOW partners with Mobile OEMs across the globe and are expert in OEM mobile inventory. They help their clients with a consultative approach through the whole campaign cycle, from getting their app listed on the respective stores, distribution, and tracking to performance and optimization. Mobile marketers can expand their reach and unlock new revenue streams with AVOW’s Mobile OEM partnerships – which cover 42% of the global Android market. These untapped audiences cannot be accessed via social, search, or SDK networks.

    AVOW – Core Belief

    Beyond the tech and tools, their company is powered by people, and in that lies their philosophy of people-powered technology. As a people-first-company, they extend this value to their clients, their partners, and, just as importantly, to one another. They believe in transforming app marketing through their one-stop solution for Mobile OEM aggregation, enabling app discovery across alternative app stores, and becoming the #1 partner to unlock new markets while ensuring a higher return on advertising spend.

    Their core values that help to drive AVOW forward together are:

    • To be humble always
    • Fostering a positive team and family spirit
    • Pivoting mistakes into learnings
    • Building trust through transparency
    • Embracing a proactive mindset

    AVOW – Founders and Team

    Robert Wildner - Founder and CEO of AVOW
    Robert Wildner – Founder and CEO of AVOW

    Robert Wildner is the founder and CEO of AVOW, the global app growth company. He leads the company’s growth and product innovation strategies. As a mobile marketing pioneer, Robert constantly strives to discover new advertising formats and inventory sources, ensuring that app marketers can meet their targets. In his 15 years of working in the digital and mobile marketing space, he has built a great network spanning from the USA and LATAM, to SEA and China, and therefore has a deep understanding of local markets and their specific market needs. Robert has worked with global brands – from Fortune 500 companies to Mobile Champions including some major brands such as Tokopedia, Letgo, Scopely, Shopee, Uber and Hasbro and has formed partnerships with global Mobile OEMs such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, realme and Samsung. Robert holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance and has lived and worked in both the UK and Germany.

    Ashwin Shekhar - Co-Founder and CRO at AVOW
    Ashwin Shekhar – Co-Founder and CRO at AVOW

    Ashwin Shekhar is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at AVOW. Currently, he is at the helm of affairs to expand AVOW’s presence across geographies by building global business teams in the ad tech and marketing tech arena. Ashwin also consults  Mobile App-focused Startups on GTM Strategies, Growth, Retention and Monetization.

    Using his deep knowledge and exposure in the digital and mobile advertising space, Ashwin has been at the forefront of building international businesses in Europe, APAC and India markets for prestigious organizations namely Glispa Global Group, InMobi and Infosys prior to establishing AVOW. With more than 10 years of experience in the industry, he supported leading mobile champions such as Twitter, Uber, Miniclip, Indian giants like Flipkart, BYJU’S, Paytm, & SEA Advertisers like Kumu, Ajaib and Shopee who are looking for hypergrowth.

    Ashwin holds an MBA as well as an Engineering degree in Computer Science.

    Orietta Mendez - Managing Partner and COO at AVOW
    Orietta Mendez – Managing Partner and COO at AVOW

    Orietta Mendez is the Managing Partner and COO at AVOW. Orietta in her current role as the COO of the company is responsible for people and operations and plays a vital role in establishing strategic partnerships at AVOW. Her expertise in Performance Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Adtech, StartUp Industry and Internationalization are highly valuable to drive the company’s operations in different geographies namely- Germany, India, US, Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia.

    She was previously the Vice President of Global Operations & Partnerships at Glispa Global Group. She has also served as COO of Crobo, a company specializing in digital marketing for games (funded by venture builder Covus Group) where she was responsible for structuring and monitoring the various business units, including Product and HR. Orietta holds an MBA in SME promotion and Training as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Business Engineering.

    Caio Balbino - CCSO and Co-founder of AVOW
    Caio Balbino – CCSO and Co-founder of AVOW

    Caio Balbino is the Chief Customer Success Officer (CCSO) & Co-founder of AVOW. With 10+ years of experience in digital and mobile marketing both as an advertiser/agency, with a focus on performance and user acquisition for apps, Caio is currently charged with the important responsibility of managing all the accounts and customer service functions globally. Prior to co-founding AVOW, he spent over six years at Glispa Global Group where he last held the senior leadership role of VP, Global Client Services.

    The current company size is 30+ employees.

    AVOW – The Idea and Startup Story

    The company was first established in March 2018 but the founding team has known and worked with each other for the last 12 years in various companies before launching AVOW. With the mobile industry’s ever-changing nature, they knew there were opportunities to improve the mobile ecosystem and its marketing and advertising. They wanted to efficiently help app developers and brands reach their goals and move markets. It is always important to understand your value proposition and readjust this while you are growing.

    Initially, they started the company with the idea of streamlining the process of identifying and blocking mobile advertising fraud more efficiently, to help clients to save marketing budgets.

    Over time they have realized that fraud detection and prevention became a commodity and did not allow them to stick out of the crowd. They were looking for something disruptive that they expected to be the next big thing. During that time Google clashed with Huawei as well as Fortnight with Google and Apple and they knew which direction they are going to take – alternative app stores.

    They have figured that alternative app stores are becoming reality and the time for Google Play and Apple Store as monopolies would come to an end sooner or later.  – Alternative App stores are, as the name suggests, an alternative to the biggest App stores available in the market allowing advertisers to have an alternative channel promoting advertisements within the main Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) globally such as HUAWEI, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Samsung.

    Keeping in mind that those Mobile OEMs alone cover 42% of the global Android market and the untapped audiences you find on those cannot be accessed via social, search, or SDK networks – which not only makes it unique and a must-have in any marketer’s mobile marketing mix, but also more effective and budget-friendly and yet – it comes with all the benefits that you get at Google and Apple.

    Since they have been in the mobile industry for more than a decade they tested their offering with some of the closest allies and apps in the market. As the results were phenomenal, the testers were more than happy to continue growing their apps via those new marketing channels and untapped audiences. They also continued to grow its vision along those of their customers such as Byju’s, Amazon Prime, Moneytap, Navi, Upgrad and WazirX and matched them with the opportunities of Mobile OEMs.

    Over the past years, they have also established very close relationships and exclusive partnerships with global mobile OEMs to offer the best possible options for their client’s marketing efforts. Recently, they were awarded by Huawei for the ‘Premium Specialized Mobile OEM agency’ for the year 2022.

    AVOW Logo
    AVOW Logo

    They chose the name AVOW because it symbolizes their commitment to their clients and the service they provide. By definition, AVOW means “to affirm or commit to something openly and bluntly”. This is at the heart of the company philosophy, a value that is represented by the fully transparent and dedicated way their team operates.

    AVOW – Growth

    Their greater and better access to the untapped user audience coupled with their unparalleled customer service has contributed to the steady and faster growth. Due to their official partnerships with Mobile OEM advertising platforms such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, Vivo, Realme, and Samsung, they offer direct access to over 1.5 billion daily active users. AVOW is expanding the mobile marketing mix for global mobile advertisers by empowering app developers, marketers, and brands to leverage Mobile OEM advertisement placements (outside of Google, Facebook, or 3rd party advertising networks) to reach previously untapped user audiences and all of that brand save, ad fraud-free and at the same time for a much better price. AVOW is tuned towards performance and helps advertisers focus on scaling on performance bypassing the learning curve which comes with individual mobile OEMs.

    Moreover, they offer their clients Dynamic preloads opportunities with some of the biggest Mobile OEMs such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo which gives their customers the exclusive possibility to be featured on phones right from the get-go when new users activate the mobile device for the first time and are presented with the opportunity to download the app while the mobile setup happens.

    So their competitive advantage is a combination of excellent people, strong mobile OEM relationships and gained trust over the last years and the drive to always develop and solve advertiser’s growth needs.

    AVOW – Marketing Strategy

    The marketing strategy that worked for Avow are:

    • WOM – in the beginning, word of mouth mainly. Pretty old school – but yes, they contacted their network one by one and only via their Sales team.
    • Only after a certain period of time, they have established a marketing team that supported them with building out their website, CRM and Email marketing strategy, and of course their Social media channels.
    • They also have representatives in all its major markets – that is India, Indonesia, the USA, Vietnam, Brazil, and Germany.
    • They also partner with the major MMPs like Adjust and run educational webinars in different countries to ensure they spread the word about the benefits that Mobile OEMs can bring to the mobile marketing mix.
    • A lot of advertisers referred them to their colleagues in the industry because of their ability to tap into unique fraud-free inventory with great service levels.

    Top 5 Best Ad Tech Companies in India in 2022
    If you want to grow your business by advertising online? Take a look at these top leading adtech companies in India.


    AVOW – Customer Acquisition

    As already mentioned in one of the previous questions they (as individuals) have been around in the mobile phone industry for more than 10 years and hence have a vast global network of mobile marketers and app developers. They contacted a number of marketers when they first started to see if they could garner any interest and if they would be willing to run some test campaigns and budgets with them. Again, any marketer or app developer is always on the lookout to find and reach fresh new users and since Mobile OEMs have been under the radar for a long time – they discovered a great opportunity for mobile marketers to tap into a big pool of potential new users.

    Of course, one thing one should not neglect – over the past years they have built out very tied relationships with those OEMs so that they can offer this premium service and solutions to their customers.

    AVOW – Customer Retention Strategy

    Caio (CoFounder), who is in charge of Account Management and Customer Service is very proud that their NPS (Net-Promoter-Score) is always great, which also means they see a very low churn rate.

    They have 24/7 service due to the fact that they follow a straightforward glocal market strategy. Meaning that they have local people on the ground in all the major markets they globally operate in. It ensures that they are in the right time zone to support their customers as well as that they speak the language and they have a deep understanding of the local market – hence they can really help and empower their customers to get the most out of their services wherever they are based.

    AVOW – Challenges Faced

    As for many companies, the worldwide lockdown hit them quite hard, since they had a significant part of their business from the travel industry. They had the option of downsizing the team or focusing on new customers. They decided to put in some extra effort to find new customers in other verticals and succeeded.

    AVOW – Partnership

    In the past years AVOW partnered with 8 major Mobile OEMs.

    • Xiaomi
    • Oppo
    • Vivo
    • Samsung
    • Oneplus
    • Realme
    • Huawei
    • Transsion

    Their clients like Amazon Prime, Unacademy, Upgrad, Byju’s, Moneytap, Avail and WazirX amongst others get access to 1.5 billion daily active users which they provide. They currently have a presence in Germany, India, Indonesia, Brazil, USA, Vietnam, and Russia.

    They won HUAWEI’s prestigious “Strategic Partner Award, Europe” earlier in January 2022. AVOW was also ranked and recognized in three categories in the top 10 which included AppsFlyer’s dedicated Growth section: India, SEA and India, non-gaming finance and AF retention index finance in Power and volume: India and SEA  in AppsFlyer’s Performance Index XIII.


    Top 14 Free Digital Marketing Tools for Every Entrepreneur
    Digital marketing is now the key to the survival of any business. Check out the top digital marketing tools that are free to use.


    AVOW – Client Communication

    The landscape in which they operate is extremely dynamic in nature with trends and regulations changing at a time frame which are often unpredictable. Across the global presence, their clients are diligently supported by teams that understand their specific market- the best practices and thus offer the much-needed localized and domain-centric knowledge from a strategy and execution point of view. Their teams across all of the global offices ensure that its clients get round-the-clock support. They follow a consultative approach to handling challenges that advertisers face. They believe in being proactive and keeping their communication channels open with advertisers at all points of time.

    Communication for them is an opportunity and an important aspect to keep their stakeholders- partners as well as customers updated about the developments and movements happening in the venture. At AVOW, they have adopted the following strategies to keep them in the loop-

    • Regular news updates via email and tie it back to their Social Media campaigns. They use Hubspot as their go-to tool when it comes to anything related to marketing.
    • Posting a lot of educational pieces and features on its blog. They have plenty of subscribers learning about them and the services they provide there. Check it out 🙂
    • They also work with multiple PR agencies in the different regions who help them to communicate with the local news/media outlets
    • For any campaign related to their customers, they have an in-house proprietary tool that they use to launch, streamline, analyze, and optimize their customers’ campaigns.
    • And of course, they are getting back to conferences (MAU, dmexco etc.) and more face-to-face dedicated meetings.

    AVOW – Recognition and Achievements

    Some achievements of AVOW are:

    • AVOW has been ranked twice in AppsFlyer Performance Index in its 13th and 14th editions consecutively in the top 10.
    • AVOW is an official partner of Huawei
    • They have official partnerships with all major mobile OEMs Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Realme, OnePlus.
    • AVOW won the Huawei prize

    FAQs

    When was AVOW founded?

    AVOW was founded in 2018.

    Who is the founder of AVOW?

    Robert Wildner, Ashwin Shekhar, Orietta Mendez and Caio Balbino have founded AVOW.

    Who are the partners of AVOW?

    AVOW has partnered with 8 major Mobile OEMs.

    • Xiaomi
    • Oppo
    • Vivo
    • Samsung
    • Oneplus
    • Realme
    • Huawei
    • Transsion

    What service is offered by AVOW?

    AVOW specialises in Mobile OEM on-device user acquisition and advertising across alternative app stores.

  • Lucep – Plug It Into Your Marketing Campaign to Automate Lead Generation

    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 Lucep.

    Initiating customers’ interest in your product is the foremost thing to do in marketing. Businesses in any industry have to generate leads to initiate their business. Lucep is a SAAS product that can be integrated into Facebook, Instagram, or Google campaigns to automate lead qualification. It connects the leads to the sales team and helps the business grow.

    Read the startup story of Lucep, its founders, the industries it is serving, the marketing strategy, and more about it.

    Lucep – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Lucep
    Headquarters Bangalore
    Industry SAAS
    Founders Kaiesh Vohra and Zal Dastur
    Founded 2014
    Website lucep.com

    Lucep – About
    Lucep – Industry
    Lucep – Founders and Team
    Lucep – The Idea and Startup Story
    Lucep – The Product and Service
    Lucep – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Lucep – Customer Acquisition
    Lucep – Marketing Strategy
    Lucep – Challenges Faced
    Lucep – Tools Used in the Company

    Zal Dastur – Co-founder of Lucep

    Lucep – About

    Founded in 2014, Lucep is a SAAS Startup to helps businesses in getting direct digital leads efficiently. It is a lead distribution platform.

    The Lucep mobile app helps your business connect directly with your digital leads. Businesses can plug Lucep into their marketing campaign to automate lead generation.

    Lucep – Industry

    EdTech (global market): USD 85 Billion in 2021, it is expected to reach over 230 Billion U.S. dollars by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 15% during 2022-2028.

    Automotive (India): Rs. 16.16-18.18 trillion (US$ 251.4-282.8 billion) by 2026.

    Real Estate (India): Expected to reach US$ 1 trillion in market size by 2030, up from US$ 200 billion in 2021.

    Banking (global market): The global digital banking market size was valued at $803.8 Billion in 2018, and is anticipated to reach $1610 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period.

    SaaS startups (India): $8 billion in 2021, poised to touch as much as $100 billion in revenues by 2026.

    Lucep – Founders and Team

    Kaiesh Vohra is the Co-founder and CEO of Lucep and Zal Dastur is the Co-founder and COO of the startup.

    “We don’t carry our personal prejudices or preconceptions when we sit down on a table to make a decision. I know Kaiesh since we were 10 and the bond that we share is beyond that of colleagues in an organisation…“It all started one evening when I was out with some friends, drinking, and Kaiesh called. He told me that he wanted to start off and that he wanted me to move to Bangalore and join him. He gave me 1 hour to respond. I made the call an hour later, and here I am”. – Zal Dastur, Co-founder and COO, Lucep

    Lucep – The Idea and Startup Story

    We handled several enterprise clients when we started off as a tech company to make calling queue management software, but in the process realised its unseen potential for SMEs. That is when the idea was born and we took it up right away. But then we were turned down by 3 major investors. Lucep is still bootstrapped.

    Lucep – The Product and Service

    Lucep is an automated lead response, qualification and distribution system that integrates into your existing marketing and sales technology stacks. The API can be consumed as needed, with the overall goal of improving your customer experience.

    For example, form fills from Facebook Lead Ads or Google Adwords landing pages can be picked up by Lucep instantly through our integration with the forms, and pushed through into a CRM, responded to instantly using automated lead qualification sequences, and distributed to the right sales team member(s) as a callback request.

    Lucep is still bootstrapped, and we send millions of leads to thousands of SMB and startup clients worldwide. At the same time, we are grateful for innovation support from companies such as Daimler and Metlife that has helped us develop dedicated solutions for them and other enterprise clients in the automotive, financial services, real estate and education sectors.

    Lucep is still bootstrapped, but we are now working with the world’s largest companies in the verticals where we already have dedicated solutions. Lucep’s servers route millions of leads to sales and customer service teams all over the world.

    Lucep – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Lucep callback app for SMEs – Pricing based on a per-user model, starting from $10 per month per user. Free trial available.

    Lucep automated lead qualification platform – One-time setup charges for platform usage, plus per lead cost based on channels selected. Custom pricing based on lead volume. Use our pricing calculator to figure out the cost per lead – https://lucep.com/get-a-quote.

    Lucep – Customer Acquisition

    The strategy for the first 30-50 users was to go after our own personal connections. Friends, family, ex-colleagues, and anyone we could think of that might find the tool useful. Once we got an understanding of which types of businesses and personas matched with our product and business then we started actively targeting people on LinkedIn with a compelling reason for them to talk to us. We used a combination of outbound calls and emails along with inbound from blogs, social media advertising, and email campaigns.

    Lucep – Marketing Strategy

    Our focus is on content marketing for inbound and email marketing for outbound, complemented by social media and event participation for raising brand awareness. As mentioned above, we have also participated in acceleration programs by Metlife and Daimler, which helped us develop enterprise solutions and generated more visibility and leads from companies curious to learn what kind of innovation we could bring to their sales processes. Most importantly, we make use of our own martech and sales app to improve and automate lead generation, response and qualification from our website, social, email and other digital channels.

    Lucep – Challenges Faced

    Our integration for a client required us to pick up social media form fills in a particular region and use our smart lead distribution algorithm to pipe the leads through instantly in real-time to the right sales team member in the right location nearest the customer.

    The problem was that their social media in that region did not generate that many forms fill for it to be worth investing in, and it looked to be a waste. Then they decided to run a paid social campaign to generate leads and see if it made any difference. The results showed a 21% increase in qualified leads, as compared to their other regions running the exact same campaign. Since then, we work with clients who are already running paid advertising campaigns to generate leads. This shows the ROI from using Lucep (between 20-50% more leads qualified) very clearly when compared to their previous campaigns.

    Lucep – Tools Used in the Company

    A few tools which they use to run the startups are:

    • Slack and Asana for team collaboration
    • Google Meet for meetings
    • Missinglettr for social media management
    • Apollo.io for email marketing
    • Pipedrive as a CRM
    • Lucep for lead acquisition, lead response, lead qualification and lead distribution to our own sales team.

    FAQs

    When was Lucep founded?

    Lucep was founded in 2014.

    Who is the founder of Lucep?

    Lucep was founded by Kaiesh Vohra and Zal Dastur in Bangalore.

    What does Lucep do?

    Lucep is used for:

    • Lead acquisition
    • Lead response
    • Lead qualification
    • Lead distribution