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  • AttainU – Bridging the Skill Gap in Software Engineering Sector

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

    The education sector is the most significant sector for any country, especially for a developing country like India. In India, however, there has been a growing gap between the industry needs and the skills of the students. A study by employability assessment company ‘Aspiring Minds’, carried out in 2017, shockingly revealed that 95% engineers in India are not fit for software development jobs.

    Addressing such gaps, AttainU has molded its courses to make students skilled enough to do justice to their jobs. AttainU provides a high-quality, scalable, professional skill training platform enabling India’s young population to step up and meet the global talent shortage. Currently, AttainU is offering online, live software engineering courses.

    Get trained, get hired, pay once you get a job

    AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course. A Full stack web developer is a master in many coding languages for the front end design and development of a website along with a backend coding language besides knowing how to manage and maintain a server.

    Read About AttainU Company Profile, Funding, Competitors, Revenue, Business Model, Growth, Logo, Fees and Challenges.

    AttainU – Company Highlights

    Startup Name AttainU
    Headquarter Bangalore
    Sector Ed-Tech
    Co-founders Divyam Goel, Vaibhav Bajpai
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization Leetu Education Pvt. Ltd.
    Website attainu.com

    About AttainU and How it Works
    AttainU – Target Market
    AttainU – Founders and Team
    How was AttainU Started
    AttainU – Product Development and Startup Launch
    AttainU – USP and Innovation
    AttainU – Fees
    AttainU – Placements
    AttainU – Enrollment Process
    AttainU – Name and Logo
    AttainU – Business Model and Revenue Model
    AttainU – Startup Challenges
    AttainU – Competitors
    AttainU – Funding and Investors
    AttainU – Growth
    AttainU – FAQs

    Best Education Business Ideas to Build an Empire
    Education [https://startuptalky.com/tag/education/] is one of the importantthings for people living in this world. As one important area, we can utilizeeducation in many fields of operation and in our day to day life. This is perfect for those who have a high educational background or those who…
    StartupTalkyAshwini

    About AttainU and How it Works

    AttainU uses a centralized online college simulation approach facilitating immersive interactions between aspirational learners and domain experts while delivering consistent learning outcomes at scale.

    AttainU works with a vision to provide a high-quality college alternative to deserving students, who are either not employed satisfactorily with their existing qualifications or are looking to upskill for better employment opportunities in the field of technology.

    In the process, they aim to systematically solve education-related problems in an individual-aligned (interest and ability), market-aligned (outcome-focused), and scalable (accessible, affordable) way while ensuring high-quality outcomes at all steps.

    AttainU has built a vertically integrated solution covering-

    1. Enrollment – Here, AttainU helps the students to figure out their fit for the course, which is based on their aptitude, inclination, and, most importantly, the ability to put in the required effort.
    2. Skill Building – This is the main central piece which allows the startup to deliver high-quality learning outcomes at scale. The crux here is maintaining high student engagement during the course. This is achieved through facilitating highly immersive interactions with instructors, mentors, and peers focused around a centrally defined course path built-in line with industry partners and delivered by industry expert faculty. Delivery and measurement of granular learning outcomes are built in to make sure each student is on the expected learning trajectory.
    3. Placements – The core of the higher education system. Through placement mechanism, AttainU prepares the students for placements, does the matchmaking, and facilitates the interactions between its industry partners and students.
    4. Income Share Agreement – This is a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment. It ensures that aspirational students can afford this high- quality education irrespective of their financial background.

    There are 24 million students enrolled in colleges across India. Even after spending a significant amount of time and money, more than 80% don’t get a job or a satisfactory job. The team at AttainU believes that a significant number of these students, if provided the right platform can do much better in their careers.

    AttainU bridges the gap between unemployable college graduates and global talent shortage. This is one of the persistent problems India currently faces, and it’s essential to address this issue to exploit the demographic dividend; to evolve into a high-quality human resources capital of the world.

    AttainU – Target Market

    The education sector in India is estimated to stand at $91.7 billion in FY18 and is expected to reach $101.1 billion in FY20. There are around 9 Million people coming out of colleges/year (CAGR 11%+), but 75% of them don’t make it to the White Collar Workforce.

    College enrollments will increase 3x over the next seven years. 80% of students after graduation lack the basic subject matter expertise and life skills. Given the global talent shortage and working-age human resource surplus in India, India has the potential to become the HR Capital of the World.

    Byju’s – Read the interesting story behind starting up Byju’s
    Imagine you are sitting in a packed class, and the teacher is explaining animportant concept. While it’s seeming that everyone else is understanding theconcept and nodding their head in unison, you are feeling a bit off beat, asevery word being explained is simply getting bounced off your head. D…
    StartupTalkyRishabh Rathi

    AttainU – Founders and Team

    Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai are the founders of AttainU

    Divyam Goel is the CEO & Co-founder of AttainU. He looks after building a strong team aligned towards the company’s goals for the next phase of growth. He is also responsible for meeting the right set of investors who are looking at investing in the Ed-tech industry.

    He comes from a deep tech background and believes education is one of the most important challenges that need to be solved in India. After graduating from IIT Bombay, he moved to Bay Area after a short stint with Microsoft in India. Divyam was part of the team which set up growth engineering at Uber. Eventually, he moved to India with the Next Billion Users (Google Pay) team at Google. Divyam wanted to work on an impact first problem and use his skill set to solve for scale, and that is how AttainU was founded in 2018.

    Vaibhav Bajpai is Co-founder and COO at AttainU. He looks after student outreach and student enrollment.

    Vaibhav Bajpai, Divyam Goel are Founders of AttainU
    Vaibhav Bajpai, Divyam Goel | Founders, AttainU

    Divyam Goel and Vaibhav have known each other since 2006. They both grew up in the same hometown, Lucknow. Soon after graduation, Vaibhav joined GeeksForGeeks as their third full-time member, in December 2015. GeeksforGeeks went on to become the largest computer science interview preparation platform globally. After GeeksforGeeks, Vaibhav wanted to work on the deeper education quality problem at the college level, which led him to co-found AttainU with Divyam.

    AttainU Team
    AttainU Team

    Currently, AttainU has a dedicated team of 15 members with high efficiency, where every individual holds multiple responsibilities. Their hiring strategy is to scientifically and unambiguously assess for culture, role, and stage fit.

    How was AttainU Started

    Working in the Bay Area with startups and top tech companies like Uber and Google is always the highest aspiration for any software engineering graduate in India. After graduating from IIT Bombay Computer Science Engineering in 2012, Divyam Goel pursued the same path.

    Over the years, the internal quest for the purpose of life led him to believe that giving back to society is important. Six years, one startup and two big company experiences later, the impact of his work started taking precedence over financial returns. Having identified Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure as the top three problems in India, Divyam moved back to India in late 2017 to create an impact in these sectors.

    Divyam Goel has spent around eight months studying the education sector, collecting information, and identifying the first principle facts in the education domain in India. Divyam spoke to over 150 people at length, covering the entire vertical, kindergarten to professional skilling as well as the entire horizontal vertical from the work NGOs were doing in the extreme rural areas to the premium IB schools of the country.

    Thorough research led the AttainU founders to come up with two observations –

    1. To be able to solve a problem at scale in a free-market approach, a for-profit model is the most efficient way.
    2. It makes the most business sense to start with the problem where customer motivations are most aligned to benefit from the solution.

    With the above two realizations, the team has zeroed upon higher education space. AttainU selected recent college graduates as the company’s target audience. Once the target audience has been selected, the team started working on the go-to-market solution. For the same, they have taken insights from the past and present education industry.

    Also, they observed that there were some companies, trying out online live college simulation models in different domains, in different parts of the world and that there is a very high level of student engagement in the same.

    AttainU team in their extensive research has engaged with a wide number of stakeholders, and got to understand their views-

    • Industry Leaders, including CTOs –
      a) Are of the view that there is a definite, strong need for industry-aligned skilling.
      b) Believe that finding the right talent for the right role, especially at the fresher level, has become extremely time and money intensive.
      c) Thinks that college graduates lack the basic fundamental subject knowledge as well as the professionally required life skills.
    • College Educators –
      a) Are not interested in the undergraduate teaching outcomes and don’t have any incentive to be.
      b) Having no industry experience, they don’t understand the industry requirements.
      c) They need to follow AICTE norms, restricting them to follow a particular curriculum.
    • Views of Existing and Previous Education Companies –
      a) Recorded, self-paced material based learning does not have the desired impact as a simulated course.
      b) Majority of the companies were measuring metrics which are not at all related to learning outcomes, including the number of views, number of packages sold, etc.
    • Students –
      a) During College, being the first generation from their families, students feel that the college degree will get them a job and hence don’t have the motivation to learn from any other source.
      b) After College, however, the students’ views are much different.

    AttainU team found that-

    • After college, the students get disillusioned by the system, and gets motivated to learn the right skills to get into the right careers to the highest.
    • Also, the team found that many students regret taking the wrong branch at the wrong College, from a career perspective, due to either lack of exposure or lack of finances makes it unfeasible for them to pay for a coaching institute which would increase their chances of getting into a Tier 1 college by 5x.

    AttainU – Product Development and Startup Launch

    AttainU has followed the below steps in the same sequence –

    • Curriculum and pedagogy preparation – The team, interacted with potential industry partners and professors from IIT Bombay and IIM Bangalore to include both the hard skills and professionally required life skills in the curriculum as well as the best practices and pedagogy to put in place to ensure high student engagement from the beginning.
    • Enrollment preparation – AttainU identified what qualities matter in the students who would be able to benefit from these courses and how can they best assess these qualities.
    • Getting the right team in place – Identifying the skill gap that exists between Divyam and Vaibhav, they have put in efforts to get the right team that fills in the gap.
    • The first batch – Through digital marketing and network, the team was able to identify the first 19 students for the first batch, 17 of whom are still with them 6+ months later.

    Having followed an extensive pre-launch preparation, the AttainU team used techniques like digital marketing, community network, and word of mouth to popularize their services among the target audience.

    “We are a mission-driven, impact the first startup, and our customers love our value proposition. Word of mouth has been immensely helpful, as at this point, we are getting 20,000+ student applications every month”, said Divyam Goel.

    Furthermore, they have used a combination of referral programs, digital marketing, network community, and multiple business partnerships to reach out to potential students.

    AttainU – USP and Innovation

    AttainU’s USPs are-

    1. High completion rate, 90%+ in an online medium – Removing the location obstacle from learning.
    2. Placement related payment model (Income Share Agreement) – Removing the money obstacle from learning.
    3. Zero to One course i.e., from no coding background to high-quality entry-level software engineering – Making it possible for anyone willing to put in the effort to learn.

    AttainU – Fees

    AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course. Get trained, get hired, pay once you get a job.

    Fee Payment Options:

    Option 1 – Rs. 2,25,000 (Pay after Placement)

    Option 2 – Rs. 1,00,000 (Upfront Fee Payment)

    AttainU Fee Structure

    AttainU – Placements

    AttainU helps you to attain your dreams, by giving opportunity to get placed in companies with intense preparation before hand. It has base of 170+ Hiring Partners.

    • Exhaustive 6 Step Interview Preparation
    • Interview scheduling upon Course Completion
    • Each Graduate can sit for Multiple Interviews
    • Each Graduate can get Multiple Offers

    “Degrees are not the best way to filter out or judge a person’s ability. AttainU is filling the much needed gap in the industry” says Kapil Bharati , CTO, Delhivery

    “Most Companies are going towards skill based hiring. Coming through AttainU, you’ll definitely have an upper hand against normal candidates” says Devang Mundhra, CTO, KredX

    AttainU – Enrollment Process

    The enrollment process is designed in such a way that will help a person to figure out, if the course is actually their interest of study and will it be useful for them. With 1-on-1 personalised counselling session, the mindset of the applier is known.

    further the process helps a person to develop a coding mindset, In case he/she is from Non-Coding Background

    AttainU Enrollement/Application Process

    AttainU stands for ‘Attain Your Dream.’  

    AttainU Logo

    AttainU – Business Model and Revenue Model

    AttainU is one of the very few companies working on a deferred payment model for students to enroll in its courses. The business model is popular as an Income Share Agreement (ISA) where students pay the company money after course completion, only when they get a job within eight months, paying more than 5 Lakhs INR. The amount to be paid is 3L INR, spread over 36 months in easy EMIs.

    AttainU – Startup Challenges

    AttainU team has faced two major challenges along their startup journey. These are-

    • Building the right team – Early on, the founding team of AttainU has spent a lot of time internalizing the right kind of workforce who would be a strength to their company. Moving ahead, they have scientifically formulated the company culture document.
    • Ensuring learning outcome quality as the team intended – Data-driven iteration along with setting up simple to follow yet effective processes ensuring proper accountability, escalation, and visibility.

    Besides, as the company started off, they continued experiments to perfect their business plan-

    • They experimented with a few different course formats
    • Tested and perfected their enrollment and counselling model ensuring higher value for customers and more accurate selection for the startup
    • Evaluating many scalable processes to arrive at a solution that ensures timely high-quality, consistent learning outcomes
    • Assessing various models to identifying the most efficient processes around company-student interactions leading to a win-win situation for all

    Appriffy Success Story – Hire Developers On-Hourly and On-Demand Basis
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    AttainU – Competitors

    In the past few years, several startups have gravitated towards this gap and there’s been plenty of innovation too. HRtech startups such as HackerRank, HackerEarth, Codlity as well as edtech startups such as Udemy, Unacademy, upGrad are some of the notable names moving to upskill India’s engineers and entry-level workers. These are some of the competitors for AttainU.

    AttainU – Funding and Investors

    AttainU has raised a total of $150K in funding over 2 rounds. Leetu Education Pvt. Ltd, which operates the software engineering focused education technology startup AttainU, has raised angel funding in September 2019 from a clutch of high-profile investors.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    February 1, 2019 Seed $150K –
    September 16, 2019 Angel Undisclosed Shailesh Rao, Nikhil Rungta, Letsventure, Anil Gelra, Manish Kumar

    The investors included former Google India head Shailesh Rao and former Intuit India head Nikhil Rungta. Anil Gelra, the founder of financial technology firm SnapMint; and Manish Kumar, the founder of invoice discounting startup KredX as well as angel investing platform LetsVenture also took part in the funding round.

    AttainU – Growth

    AttainU approached profitability in October 2019. Currently, AttainU has 300+ students enrolled in its courses. In September 2019, AttainU has received 20,000+ student applications.

    “Some of our students from the first batch, which is graduating at the end of October, have already received pre-placement offers” – Divyam says.

    Over the next one year, AttainU aims to cater to 8000+ students

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    AttainU – FAQs

    Who are the founders of AttainU?

    Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai are the founders of AttainU

    How much Funding is raised by AttainU?

    AttainU has raised a total of $150K in funding over 2 rounds. Its recent round being on September 2019, raised angel funding from a clutch of high-profile investors.

    What is AttainU?

    AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course.  A Full stack web developer is a master in many coding languages for the front end design and development of a website along with a backend coding language besides knowing how to manage and maintain a server.

    How much is AttainU fees?

    Fee Payment Options:

    Option 1 – Rs. 2,25,000 (Pay after Placement)

    Option 2 – Rs. 1,00,000 (Upfront Fee Payment)

  • WhistleDrive – Making Employees’ Daily Office Commute a Breeze

    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.

    Unfortunately, the public transport system has never been up to the mark in India. In most cases, the buses, suburban trains and metro trains are all overcrowded. The number of passengers traveling in Mumbai suburban rails during peak hours is almost twice the maximum capacity of the trains. Besides, the means of public transport lacks maintenance and also safety. Thankfully, employers are considering the many inconveniences the employees are facing while commuting through public transport, and have introduced employee transport services in Hyderabad.

    While many service providers are coming up to meet this increasing demand for employee transportation, WhistleDrive, a Hyderabad based startup founded by Rakesh Munnanooru, is taking employee transportation services to the next level by introducing many hi-tech features that ensure fast and hassle-free transportation along with passengers’ safety.

    WhistleDrive – Company Highlights

    Startup Name WhistleDrive
    Headquarter Hyderabad
    Founder Rakesh Munnanooru
    Sector Technology & Transportation
    Founded 2016
    Parent Organization WhistleDrive Private Limited
    Website [WhistleDrive]

    About WhistleDrive and How it Works
    Founders of WhistleDrive and team
    WhistleDrive – USP and Innovation
    How was WhistleDrive Started
    WhistleDrive – Name, Tagline and Logo
    WhistleDrive – Startup Launch
    WhistleDrive – Business Model and Revenue Model
    WhistleDrive – Funding and Investors
    WhistleDrive – User Acquisition
    WhistleDrive – Startup Challenges
    WhistleDrive – Competitors
    WhistleDrive – Advisors and Mentors
    WhistleDrive – Awards
    WhistleDrive – Growth
    WhistleDrive – Future Plans

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    About WhistleDrive and How it Works

    WhistleDrive is a transportation technology company that offers an End to End AI-powered Employee Transportation Solution for corporates and On-Demand Drivers for car owners. The company started as a ‘driver On-demand’ service provider and later expanded to employee transportation as well.

    After operating for some time in providing ‘driver on-demand’, WhistleDrive’s team understood that their software can also solve the inefficiencies in Employee Transportation. Since the DNA of Driver On Demand and Employee Transportation is just the same but the scale of operating is different, they quickly onboarded a client and did a pilot with them. That was a huge hit and they then onboarded big-time clients like ADP, Invesco and a lot of others.

    The services currently being provided by WhistleDrive are–

    • WhistleFleet (4 and 7 Seaters)
    • WhistleShuttle (Wingers and mini-buses)
    • Whistle360° (And End to End solution from Fleet to software to On-ground logistic support)
    • It provides consultation for corporates who need expert suggestions in employee transportation, both for tech, fleet and more. All this is powered by WhistleTech, the technology which is enabling and channelizing the entire transportation process with ease in such a huge scale.
    • WhistleDrive also provides individual and corporate valet parking services.

    WhistleDrive – USP and Innovation

    Major USPs of WhistleDrive are–

    1. It provides Fleet+software+on-ground logistics support as an end to end solution. Thus, WhistleDrive is addressing the whole transportation on both ends.
    2. WhistleDrive’s software has been powered by AI and blockchain. Currently, all the reports in the company’s dashboard are deep, insightful, descriptive analytics. The company is also working on predictive analytics which can predict weather forecast, traffic forecast and more. And with the help of Blockchain, all the data will remain highly encrypted and manipulation of data is almost nullified.
    3. The company has an end-to-end automation system which ensures full-scale optimization of routes and cabs occupancy, as soon as the employee location data and schedule is fed into the system.
    4. Location tracking is enabled for all the cabs which ensure that which makes it possible to monitor the fleet across clients.
    5. All cabs included with the company are background verified and has GPS enabled mobile devices to take care of passenger safety.
    6. WhistleDrive’s AI-driven analytics enables it to predict future delays, cab volume and on-demand requests, which helps it to serve customers better.
    7. It has 24*7 customer support on the phone, e-mail and chats to resolve customer queries and grievances.
    8. It allows its clients to access its metrics dashboard so that the clients can view the operational and financial metrics which ensures transparency in terms of data and paperless billing.

    “Our advantage is that we are on both ends. Since we have the fleet and expert team managing the overall flow of fleet, we are also well equipped with the technology and we understand the challenges from the client-side as well since we handle the whole transportation for clients, that became easy for our team to connect the dots.”, said Rakesh Munnanooru, WhistleDrive founder and CEO.

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    Founders of WhistleDrive and team

    Rakesh Munnanooru is the founder and CEO of WhistleDrive.

    Rakesh Munnanooru, WhistleDriver founder and CEO
    Rakesh Munnanooru, WhistleDriver founder and CEO

    He is from Karimnagar, Telangana and is a CSE graduate from Shiv Nadar University Noida, class of 2015. While he was in college he founded BrandDunia which does the branding works for corporate companies and production houses. It was a massive success. They also worked for movie promotions. ‘Sahasam’ was one to name.

    After a while, he had to leave BrandDunia and later he started InstaBuy which is a tier-2, tier-3 city online shopping site. That was also a huge hit and since Amazon or any other big players doesn’t have strong footprints in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, it was a very happening business. Rakesh made huge business margins there but had to leave it to continue his graduation.

    After his college, he returned back to Karimnagar and did web-development freelancing for several businesses and online tutoring for a few months while he was simultaneously preparing for his GRE for Masters. He scored 112 in TOEFL just to prove to everybody that he can get admission anywhere but he was eagerly waiting to startup and his Entrepreneurship pursuit. Then WhistleDrive ideation happened in 2015.

    WhistleDrive Team
    WhistleDrive Team

    How was WhistleDrive Started

    It was 2015, and location-based services were taking over the market. Rakesh was quite fascinated by the technology. He wanted to be part of the wave and solve a critical problem with real-time location sharing technology. From personal experience and a bit of on-field research, he quickly realized that there is a considerable market for ‘driver on demand’ service for car owners. So, WhistleDrive was formed in 2016 as a driver on-demand service.

    The company did a dry run for about 8 months, and it took a while for the team to understand the market expectations and communicate with its partner drivers efficiently. The company soon adopted a process-driven approach which helped it grow by 5 times in 3 months. The team discovered that the technology it is using will hold good for employee transportation as well, which led to the expansion to employee transportation.

    “We piloted our employee transportation model with a B2B client and It was a massive success. We understood that the DNA of B2C and B2B business is the same but it’s just the scale that’s different and started approaching new clients. We scaled significantly and landed 4 huge volume clients by February.” Rakesh, WhistleDrive CEO, added.

    Currently, WhistleDrive is operating successfully providing both ‘driver on-demand’ and employee transportation services.

    “The market size that we are tapping is very huge. Any corporate company or a medium scale company that is looking for employee transportation, shuttle services or transportation technology or all of them, it’s our target market to reach. And the scope of it is not only in our country but also in several other countries since employee transportation remains the same and technology is easy and quick to adopt which is irrespective of the geographical reach. In fact, we’ve been hearing a lot of interest from transportation companies from the Middle East for our software solution.”, says Rakesh Munnanooru, WhistleDrive founder.

    Once Rakesh was watching a TV series called ‘Suits’, where the actor Harvey Specter calls out a cab with a whistle. He liked the act which made Rakesh add the word ‘Whistle’ to the company name. Since the company started as a driver on-demand and valet parking service, they added the word ‘Drive’ to ‘Whistle’.

    Logo – WhistleDrive

    The initial tagline was ‘Hire a driver, Anywhere’ but after evolving as an Employee Transportation, WhistleDrive’s tagline was changed to ‘Think. Whistle. Move.’

    As for the logo, Rakesh being very fascinated by location tracking, the company’s logo shows the location icon with steering in it as the logo.

    WhistleDrive – Startup Launch

    WhistleDrive began operating from a little space in an IT company in Hyderabad. Initially, as the company provided just the driver on-demand service, there were just 3 people handling everything from driver hiring to booking and marketing. The company was well received by the customers and soon it moved to a 6*6 office space.

    WhistleDrive gradually started increasing its customer reach by building its own website, booking portal & app. Alongside, the company also started social media chat and Messenger/Whatsapp bookings.

    WhistleDrive – Business Model and Revenue Model

    WhistleDrive provides an end to end service for employee transportation to corporates. The company provides software, fleet and also manpower for meeting the employee transportation needs of enterprises. These services are provided as a whole package or individually like only fleet or only software to the required prospects.

    WhistleDrive makes money by providing these services. It ensures better margins by excluding third-party vendors for vehicle needs. The company sources vehicles directly from the owners which give them more control and margin for all the stakeholders involved in the business.

    WhistleDrive has a Hybrid fleet model, where it owns 125+fleet and the rest of the fleet are partnered. Their software clubs partnered cabs and own cabs while routing the cabs and ensure cost cuttings for clients and improve efficiency by backing up the existing fleet.

    WhistleDrive – Funding and Investors

    WhistleDrive has raised a total of $10.8M in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised in Sep 2019 from a Series B round.

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    April 2016 Seed Round – –
    April 2018 Series A ₹5 Crore Colosseum Group (Chicago)
    September 2019 Series B ₹72 Crore Colosseum Group (Chicago)

    “It was the time when we signed up with a few clients in Employee Transportation and serving 5,000+ customers in B2C. We got the funding at the right time when we started working on the technology and operations to scale up.”, recalled Rakesh, WhistleDrive founder.

    WhistleDrive – User Acquisition

    WhistleDrive’s quality service has been instrumental in getting a lot of word of mouth publicity. The company is guided by the values to put customers first, to empathize with partners, to listen to understand, to speak with intent and deliver 10 times.

    Digital platforms have also helped a lot to tap a huge number of audiences in one go. The company put equal stress on offline modes of promotion too, as it used  to reach people through campaigns in communities, pubs and malls.

    Meanwhile, WhistleDrive  also found B2B2C clients like Zoom and Revv.

    “The true hack we believe in is Customer Obsession. We stand on it right from our values. We understood that there is a pain point either in Employee Transportation or Driver on Demand. We address them with our services with the help of technology.”, said Rakesh, WhistleDrive CEO.

    WhistleDrive – Startup Challenges

    Corporations are increasingly looking for automated data-driven solutions to ease the process of transportation and also bring a significant improvement in operational efficiency and overall cost minimization. The major challenge for WhistleDrive is to address inefficiencies in the current traditional model and help transition the industry to adopt a data-driven process.

    With the aid of its integrated cabs+software model, WhistleDrive helps clients adopt the transition with much ease. Cab partners love the ease of accessing all their past trip and payment data right on their mobile application. This also helps in building loyalty owing to transparency.

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    WhistleDrive – Competitors

    In terms of technology, some of the competitors of WhistleDrive are MoveInSync, Safetrax and Routematic.

    In terms of fleet, WhistleDrive’s competitors are SelectCabs, Mahindra Logistics and several other local vendors.

    WhistleDrive – Advisors and Mentors

    Shailu Tipparaju is the WhistleDrive team’s advisor and mentor.
    Shailu Tipparaju is an Investor and a Forbes Technology Council Member. He is also the founder of Colosseum Group and he heads several companies that are into AI, technology, health, business, transportation and other domains. He lives in Chicago.

    WhistleDrive – Awards

    WhistleDrive has received the following awards and recognition-

    1. Awarded among the ‘50 Emerging Startups to Watch in 2019’ by Business Connect Magazine.
    2. Awarded among the ‘10 best startups in Hyderabad’ in 2018 by Silicon India Magazine.
    3. Finalists in the HYSEA 2018 Annual awards & 2019 Annual Awards.
    4. First company to get selected into the first cohort of T- Hub’s Lab32 program (T- Hub: Asia’s biggest Startup Incubation Hub).

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    WhistleDrive – Growth

    WhistleDrive presently is operating in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. In the B2C segment, the company is serving more than 15,000 active customers in Hyderabad with 150+ rides every day. As of today, WhistleDrive has a fleet size of 700+ vehicles across 3 cities and transport 12,000+ employees every day through its cabs and bus shuttles.

    In November 2020, it announced its entry into the Urban Mobility Market backed by a 5,000+ strong truck fleet, with a portfolio of 20+ medium and large clients.

    In the B2B segment, WhsitleDrive is currently serving 28 clients from multiple domains like IT, Health, Infrastructure, Finance, Support, Hospitality and more. ADP, Invesco, ITC Hotels, Accenture, L&T, Rainbow Hospitals, Model N, Anza Medicode, M Modal and Strateology are a few clients of WhistleDrive.

    WhistleDrive – Future Plans

    In the long run, WhistleDrive is focused on building an ecosystem of transportation solutions. Having achieved a significant scale in fleet and shuttle services, the company is looking at using its experience in solving inefficiencies in intra-city logistics particularly in e-commerce & FMCG channels.

    The company is guided by the mission to transport a million people a day to work and places through technology-driven, efficient and safe transportation. It envisions to be India’s leader in the transportation industry and enable hassle-free private car ownership and employee transportation using technology.

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    FAQs

    When was WhistleDrive founded?

    2016

    How much funding does WhistleDrive have?

    $10.8M

    How many employees does WhistleDrive have?

    56

  • SugarBox Networks – Eliminating User Dependency On Mobile Data

    The content in this post has been approved by the organization SugarBox.

    While the data revolution has catalysed the emergence of Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms and e-commerce services in the last two-three years, there are still challenges existing in the ecosystem regarding data speed and patchy internet connectivity. SugarBox Networks is a platform that enables a user to use mobile apps and digital services seamlessly without requiring internet connectivity.

    Started in August 2016, the company was very similar to what offline content distribution companies do but it is slightly different. SugarBox is a homegrown, first of its kind hyperlocal CDN, which enables Digital access for the next coming billion users, something even Big Tech has struggled with. SugarBox helps businesses grow by setting up data-delivery infrastructures at various places, allowing their users to access mobile apps without the Internet!

    SugarBox- Company Highlights

    Company Name SugarBox
    Headquarters Mumbai
    Founder Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia
    Founded 2016
    Sector Telecom
    Website sugarboxnetworks.com

    SugarBox- About and How It Works
    SugarBox- Founder
    How Was SugarBox Founded
    Sugarbox- Name, Logo and Tagline
    SugarBox- Vision and Mission
    SugarBox- Target Market Size
    SugarBox- Products/ Services
    SugarBox- Business and Revenue Model
    SugarBox- Investments
    SugarBox- Startup Launch
    SugarBox- Customers/ Clients
    SugarBox- Challenges
    SugarBox- Funding
    SugarBox- Competitors
    SugarBox- Recognitions and Achievements
    SugarBox- Future Plans

    SugarBox- About and How It Works

    SugarBox is a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependency on mobile data. SugarBox is a homegrown, first of its kind hyperlocal CDN, which enables Digital access for the next coming billion users, something even Big Tech has struggled with. The value proposition at SugarBox is to solve one of the most important problems. A technology that is re-imagining the way data delivery on the internet works making internet services more available, dependable, and contextual.

    SugarBox is basically a hyperlocal CDN exposed over a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependence on mobile data and provides them seamless access to Apps, without any usage limits or soaring high mobile data charges. Simply put, if Netflix existed 3 decades back and users were streaming a movie at their office in Bombay, the file would be streamed to them from a server in the US.

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    Then a CDN was invented in the late 90s and today, that file magically gets stored (or cached) and streamed from a server in Bombay (and most often in a server located in the area where viewers are within Bombay). SugarBox makes the file available on a server (AKA SugarBox) installed in their office building so that it can be streamed using the Local Area Network in their own office! And the same can be applied to any user context – Residential building, Hotel, Mall, Aircraft, Train, Bus, etc. complexes, corporate parks, rural areas, educational institutes, retail shops, hotels, food & beverage outlets, and then, of course, expanding internationally, etc.

    SugarBox- Founder

    SugarBox Networks is founded by Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia.

    Sugarbox Founder | Rohit Pranajpe
    Sugarbox Founder | Rohit Pranajpe

    Rohit Paranjpe, First-generation serial entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of SugarBox. With first-of-its-kind ventures across the digital content and media ecosystem in India. 34-year old Rohit is now focused on disrupting the internet services space, making them available, affordable, reliable, and contextual for everyone. The leadership team at SugarBox comprises Ripunjay Bararia, Co-founder and CTO of SugarBox. A Tech evangelist with over two decades of experience and part many tech ‘firsts’ in India.

    Ripunjay Bararia, CTO and Co-founder of SugarBox Networks.
    Ripunjay Bararia, CTO and Co-founder of SugarBox Networks

    Other Member in the Leadership Team:

    • Ashish Kulshresth, Business Head – brings with him over 20 years of strategic experience in Strategic Alliances, Sales & Marketing across EdTech, E-commerce, Telecom & Media. Ashish is responsible for the P&L and oversee the Network expansion, as well as the Revenue functions.
    • Pritesh Malde, Product Head – He has a proven track record of Ideating, conceptualizing and scaling products from scratch in B2B and B2C domains
    • Ishan Choudhury, Heads Strategy & Growth – With 14 years of experience across diverse strategy roles, including co-founding a hyperlocal services venture, he brings a balance of start-up exposure and key insights from running micro-ventures in large enterprises.
    • Rupsa Sinha, Brand Head – With 12 years of experience across consumer brands and undertook the unique challenge of creating a category defining brand – all from scratch, prior to SugarBox. She is primarily responsible for building the SugarBox brand and creating awareness for the unique value proposition & disruption that the company creates.
    • Vishwanath Kulkarni, Head of Network Rollout – brings with him over 15 years of experience in the IT & Telecom domain, having been instrumental in the rollout of 2G, 3G and 4G networks for telcos. At SugarBox, he looks at the network rollout and network maintenance function enabling the company to scale operations rapidly.
    • Ayush Sinha SugarBox Head HR – HR leader with extensive experience in setting up start-ups and GICs, rapid scaling & de-scaling and building high growth teams.

    Rohit is grateful for the rich & diverse experience they all bring to the company. They are at a very interesting juncture in SugarBox’s journey, and their arrival brings fresh energy, expertise and perspective that will be pivotal in their rapid scale-up aspirations. The current team size is 115 and they are growing rapidly.

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    How Was SugarBox Founded

    SugarBox started at the back of Rohit Paranjpe’s experience running an OTT service and the problems that people faced with respect to data connectivity and affordability. They built a prototype very similar to what has used on-board a Jet Airways aircraft in 2016 and carried out a pilot project at Mumbai’s Goregaon railway station. The statistics were beyond imagination with people consuming 21 GB of data per week, and some users ran through all 200 movies on the platform within 15 days! This is when they knew that they were onto something exciting.

    The team tried to identify & network with people in the industry who understood technology enough to understand the concept that Rohit was trying to propose. He spoke to a friend, who was well versed with technology and he helped him understand the core components required, and the kind of expertise required to set-up the complete model and bridge the gap. He further introduced Rohit to Ripunjay, who went on to become the Co-founder and is the CTO at SugarBox.

    In the beginning, for the initial years, most of the members of the core team were focusing on technology & network partnerships. The founders were brought in-depth experience in both these domains that helped set the stage for many early successes for the company. They also got some talented associates to join the company early on.

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    Sugarbox- Name, Logo and Tagline

    SugarBox’s showcases the Wi-Fi bars in an unbreakable curve, and the CDN structure comes in a box. The box comes with something good and happy for everyone. The good news of reliable and affordable internet, adding sweetness to life. Hence, SugarBox!

    SugarBox | Logo
    SugarBox | Logo

    SugarBox- Vision and Mission

    In the start-up world, it’s said – “find a large enough, grave enough problem to solve and you’ve hit the spot.” But here’s the interesting part. Ask people if they’re happy with their internet connection and 99 / 100 times, the answer is a No! Everyone has been at this for the last 3 years.

    And Rohit would have asked this question too well over 1,000 people, across demographics and geographies. And the answer is the same! And yet, somehow, all of us seem to have given up on it – Everyone, somehow, has made their peace with the state of affairs; less privileged audiences have made peace with the system and people in lesser geographies/countries have made their peace with fate!

    The core aim is to decrease the data accessed over the internet, thereby freeing up bandwidth on the existing last-mile networks (Telecom and ISP) so that the internet starts working more reliably and efficiently for all. The key business focus is to partner with apps that consume the most amount of data/internet bandwidth.

    In the medium term, SugarBox will empower the Next Billion users worldwide to start using digital services without having to purchase a data pack or an internet connection. The long-term goal is to optimize the way data is transacted on the internet globally, making the internet over 30 times cheaper and 200 times faster.

    In the Long term, SugarBox will make internet access 200% faster and 50% cheaper!

    SugarBox- Target Market Size

    Being a first-of-its-kind platform, there was no precedence for what SugarBox was doing, which obviously led to a plethora of challenges. First, a chunk of use cases for which they were building their CDN had never been addressed before. Then, they struggled with ecosystem-level challenges including Android fragmentation and OS limitations. After that, they ran into hardware failures and peripheral hardware issues in production environments, and many more. It will sound like a cliché, but they overcame them by thinking out of the box, collaborating, and finally, just grit and determination. It also took a special group of individuals coming together to solve these complex problems.

    In the next 2 to 3 years, their Network partnerships would enable them to service over 400 million users spending over a staggering 2 billion hours every month streaming content on the go, and another 1 billion hours playing games!

    Plus, there’ll be over 6 billion monetizable ad slots for this unlocked consumption. Also, SugarBox will be able to service over 25 million unique shoppers every month, driving over 32 million E-commerce transactions, 10 million rides for Cabs & Bike taxis, and 10 million food orders.

    SugarBox- Products/ Services

    SugarBox is a one-of-a-kind hyperlocal CDN that can be integrated with an existing Local Area Network or exposed to a user over a local Wi-Fi network. By the virtue of being hyperlocal there are certain things that it does more than what the traditional CDN does, and because of the technology there more cases that can be served. This hyperlocal CDN is disrupting the economics of the internet infrastructure challenges by shifting a chunk of data consumption from expensive internet bandwidth to free local bandwidth.

    SugarBox is the only network in the world that lets its users access their favorite Apps seamlessly without them having to depend on their mobile data or ISP. It sets up a better data delivery & discovery network at key places of interest (POIs) that are frequented by consumers.

    CDN is a network of servers linked together with the goal of delivering content as quickly, cheaply, reliably, and securely as possible, allowing everyone to take the internet more scalable in addition to which it is known as the internet enabler.

    SugarBox offers various benefits to its stakeholders:

    • For consumers – Reliable access to apps without requiring internet connectivity or incurring data cost
    • For the POI – Enhanced in-premise experience and a better understanding of their consumers
    • For the App partner – Increase total available market, better user-adoption, consumption, stickiness, and monetization for the app

    In essence, SugarBox is truly unique in the ecosystem and are complementary, rather than competing to other stakeholders.

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    StartupTalkyArbaaz sayed

    SugarBox- Business and Revenue Model

    The SugarBox revenue model aims to change the way that enables internet infrastructure providers to start earning via user consumption without the user having to pay for it. The model that SugarBox operates in is very similar to that of any CDN. They invest in the Cloud and Edge infrastructure that SugarBox installs. In addition to this, they bear the operating expenses of this infrastructure, along with other associated charges like lease, utility, etc. at certain POIs.

    Once installed and live, SugarBox monetizes via the user consumption of all apps supported by the SugarBox CDN. Each SugarBox installation is modeled to be Unit Ex positive, not just for them as a company, but the entire ecosystem. The margins are substantially higher than the traditional CDN business.

    SugarBox is in the phase of partnering with various OTT, Gaming, E-commerce, FinTech, and EdTech platforms. This forms the bedrock of a win-win relationship between the user, app partners, and SugarBox. Their efficient infrastructure planning & patented technology that has enabled a hyperlocal data delivery ensures that we work on a positive unit economics model at every installation point.

    SugarBox- Investments

    With the current investment, SugarBox will commence commercial services and scale up the network across public transport, revolutionizing the digital experience for over 300 million monthly unique users over the next 2 to 3 years. The short-term objective is to unlock over 2.5 billion hours of digital consumption monthly for consumers in a near captive environment, where access is otherwise limited due to patchy connectivity.

    SugarBox- Startup Launch

    Across all their pilot projects to date, have catered to over 1 million users. In Feb 2020, the month prior to lockdown, SugarBox had 120,000 unique users accessing Zee5 content with an average of over 27,000 users consuming content daily. The initial feedback has been very encouraging with an average engagement of 14 out of 30 minutes in the case of Hyderabad Metro. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done and the key focus at the moment is to partner with Digital services across industries, which incrementally adds to the consumer value proposition.

    However, with the country in lockdown and public transport being shut to the general public and everyday use, SugarBox is working with partners across industries to help them through the current disruption and to make them ready for the post-COVID era.

    • SugarBox is working with public transport corporations for infrastructure upgrades that will enable them to automate and streamline operations, optimize expenses and potentially create new sources of revenue – all of which will be critical in a post-COVID world. The solutions encompass Digital access, Smart mobility, IoT, Security and Digital Out of Home, amongst others.
    • SugarBox is in the process of helping temporary and permanent COVID facilities with seamless digital access to enable patients in quarantine to stay connected and to bring a smile on their faces via delivering OTT services while they’re at the facility.

    Over the next 2 quarters, SugarBox will be looking at expanding our outreach to other sectors including hospitality, education & retail – all of which are severely disrupted because of COVID and will have to reimagine their operating models in the year/s to come

    SugarBox- Customers/ Clients

    SugarBox got an internal customer Zee5 to set up POC and attract more customers. They used that user-traction to sign large networks including Indian railways and other deployment partners. The two main associations they focus on are getting more customers to use SugarBox and app partnership. Both the segments go hand in hand as the more customers will get to use SugarBox, the more partners seeing the benefits will collaborate with SugarBox, and vice versa – the more apps they provide to the customers more the interest.

    SugarBox- Challenges

    Delivering content using a hyperlocal CDN server is simple. Making a Digital service work without internet connectivity is a whole other topic altogether. This meant addressing user registration, personalization, security, payments, and ads – all of which require sustained internet connectivity to function. It is going to sound like a cliché, but the only way SugarBox got past these hurdles was owing to perseverance, hard work, a lot of creativity & innovation, the technical prowess of the team, and patient support from both the Zee leadership and the Zee5 team.

    Well, for starters – It is a complex problem, not just from a tech point of view, but also from understanding the economics of all the stakeholders that need to work in conjunction to provide us the monster called the Internet. But it’s also probably one of the most important problems to solve in this century. This is why every Big Tech company including Google, FB, Amazon, SpaceX, etc. has been looking at finding faster, cheaper, and alternative ways to deliver internet bandwidth.

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    SugarBox- Funding

    SugarBox is a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL), in which it acquired an 80% equity stake for INR 75 crores in April 2017. In April 2020, ZEE committed to investing an additional INR 522 crores in SugarBox over the next 2 to 3 years. After the acquisition, their focus was to make Zee5 work using the platform, rather than creating a separate platform with a limited use case (Our network is limited only to certain places). So the SugarBox funding gets a boost from Zee Entertainment whenever necessary.

    SugarBox is fortunate that the senior management here recognized the potential of this opportunity early on.

    ZEE5 acquired equity stakes in Sugarbox
    ZEE5 acquired equity stakes in Sugarbox

    SugarBox- Competitors

    SugarBox is unique in the ecosystem and is complementary, rather than competing to other stakeholders. Nobody does what they do. In comparison to traditional CDNs, SugarBox is able to drive faster data delivery as their infrastructure is closer to the user. The Company is also able to provide an experience guarantee on the data delivery, which a traditional CDN can’t.

    Finally, SugarBox boasts of seamless access to Apps even in areas with no network or even for users without an active internet connection, both of which are outside the purview of a traditional CDN.

    SugarBox- Recognitions and Achievements

    Rohit Paranjpe successfully handled wide-ranging responsibilities in an illustrious career spanning over a decade. An innovator at heart, with a passion for building ecosystems that can potentially impact billions of users, also co-founded:

    • Digitainment (a company that revolutionized the retail distribution of content and ran the first B2B2C OTT service in India) and,
    • Mobile Infotainment (an interactive, connected in-transport infotainment and media platform, which was years ahead of its time).
    • SugarBox has been awarded as one of the Top 50 Tech Innovators by Intercon Dubai and was featured in the TechTors to watch out for in 2020 by BW Disrupt.

    SugarBox- Future Plans

    Today, SugarBox is present across pilot deployments in 9 cities and 250 Places of Interest (POIs). They are offering services to various POIs in cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai. The company is looking to spanning its network to Delhi, Kolkata, and other cities in the next 2 years. SugarBox aims to cover PAN India Urban & Rural by the end of 2025.

    There are 4 key growth pillars for SugarBox in the next 2 to 3 years:

    1. Scale up the Public transport outreach in India – This includes full-scale implementation in Indian Railways, along with deployment across other key Metro networks and bus networks in the country. This growth bucket also includes a foray into Avionics to disrupt the In-flight connectivity industry as a whole. The plan is to reach 30 mn users daily and 300 mn monthly unique users through this network segment.

    2. Scale up the Rural & Urban Public Wi-Fi outreach in India – This includes exponentially scaling up their rural and village level pilots in partnership with other Internet infrastructure and Internet service providers, along with paving the way for sustainable Public Wi-Fi deployments in Urban and semi-Urban. The plan is to deploy 100,000 POIs over the next 3 years and provide digital access to 100 mn Indians through this segment.

    3. SugarBox at Home, Office & other B2B POIs – This includes a B2B and a B2C foray to improve the state of the internet in India, making home and enterprise networks twice as fast and significantly improve the affordability and reliability of internet connections in the country. The plan is to power 20 mn households and enterprises through this segment over the next 3 to 4 years.

    4. International expansion – SugarBox is actively working on replicating the model globally, with a two-prong strategy. The company will be looking at entering a few critical markets directly by setting up international operations and forging partnerships with local players for faster penetration across other international geographies.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    What is SugarBox Networks?

    SugarBox Networks is a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependency on mobile data. SugarBox is basically a hyperlocal CDN exposed over a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependence on mobile data and provides them seamless access to Apps, without any usage limits or soaring high mobile data charges.

    Who is the Founder of SugarBox Networks?

    Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia are the Co-Founders of SugarBox Networks.

  • Von Wellx Germany – Designing Shoes Scientifically!

    Footwear has always been considered an object of fashion. But people do not realize that feet form the foundation of your body. The foot is the 2nd most complex organ of the body after the brain and shoe is the most important piece of clothing. It is believed that Healthy Footwear is one of the most important parts of your Healthy Lifestyle apart from exercise, healthy food, sleep, and stress management.

    Von Wellx Germany has been designed with the idea to create a footwear brand that focuses on fulfilling all the functions of the feet and footwear and still looked good.

    Ashish Jain, the Founder of Von Wellx Germany, brought German technology to India and founded Iatric Industries in 2016 to deliver comfortable and medically-fit footwear. In around 4 years, the company has spread its wings to Sri Lanka, Dubai, and Qatar markets and is growing at 50 percent year-on-year.

    Read this article to know about Von Wellx Germany, it’s products, how it was started, growth, startup challenges, Founder and future plans.

    Von Wellx Germany – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Von Wellx Germany
    Headquarter Germany
    Sector Footwear
    Founder Ashish Jain
    Parent Organization Casa Everz Gmbh
    Website vonwellx.com
    Contact help@vonwellx.com

    Von Wellx – About
    Von Wellx – Target Market Size
    Von Wellx – Founder
    Von Wellx – How was it started
    Von Wellx – How it Works
    Von Wellx – Products/Service
    Von Wellx – USP and Innovation
    Von Wellx – Name, Tagline, Logo
    Von Wellx – User Acquisition
    Von Wellx – Startup Launch
    Von Wellx – Startup Challenges
    Von Wellx – Future Plans
    Von Wellx – Recognition and Achievements
    Von Wellx – FAQs

    Von Wellx – About

    Von Wellx Germany is a footwear brand based on Internationally Patented German Technology – 5 Zones By Dr.Mauch across Men’s and Women’s Category. The company works with the vision to make people aware of the importance/functions of feet and healthy footwear and provide them the healthiest footwear without compromising on fashion.

    It helps to provide the people relief from heel, feet, knee, back, and posture issues. Healthy Shoes helps avoid future foot, knee, back, and posture problems for you and energizes your feet for all-day activity without any tiredness, relieving your current issues.

    “We have been seeing a very high number of people troubled with above problems since the early ’30s in their life. Technically bad footwear and not being able to stimulate your feet properly which earlier used to happen due to barefoot walking are major reasons for the same. It is extremely important to use footwear which helps your feet perform the original static, dynamic, and reflex functions of your feet so that you live a healthy life for a longer time. If you do not wake up now, you will suffer later.”, says Ashish Jain, CEO and Director of Von Wellx Germany – India.

    Von Wellx Germany has been designed so that you can fulfill your foot functions as part of your normal lifestyle only. Dr.Mauch aptly calls it “The Gym in your Shoe.”

    It shifting its entire shoe production of around 3 million pairs annually from China to India, with an initial investment of Rs. 110 crores. Thus, a new manufacturing unit will be set up in UP through a collaboration with Latric Industries Pvt Ltd.

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    Von Wellx – Target Market Size

    India is the second-largest footwear producer in the world, with footwear production accounting for approximately 9 per cent of the global annual production – 22 billion pairs as compared to China, which produces over 60 per cent of the global production.

    Footwear exports from India have grown at a CAGR of 20 per cent in Indian Rupee terms during the last five years. In absolute terms, footwear exports from India have risen from Rs. 71.5 billion in FY10 to Rs. 180.0 billion in FY15.

    • Industry – Premium Footwear (Leather and Non-Leather)
    • Target market size – Rs. 4,000 Crores
    • Target market share – 12%
    • Footwear Market Size – Rs. 40,000 crores
    • Next Five Years – CAGR of 11 %

    Also ,we need to understand that the Healthy Footwear Category (Closest to Comfort Category) is a novel category that is in a blue field stage right now.

    It is true that, the choice of footwear, both for men and women in India is always dominated by the fashion of the season. However recently, comfort has been the determining factor for the consumers in buying footwear. Going forward, comfort and health are going to be the first and most important criteria for consumer decision, especially beyond the age of 30 years.

    It has been noted that the consumers especially after the 1st pregnancy of women and after crossing 30 years in men encounter more foot and body related problems and look for comfort and health as the topmost criteria.

    The demography and changing buying behavior are triggering enhanced demand from the existing pie. Rising disposable incomes and new entrants into the workforce, especially women are pushing the domestic demand on the upside.

    Women’s footwear constitutes only a 30 per cent market share currently. But the growth rate of this segment is double than of the men’s segment. Where the men’s footwear market has registered a 10 per cent CAGR growth rate in the last fiscal, it is 20 percent for the women’s segment. Also, it has increased the per capita consumption from 1.6 to 2.4 in the last 5 years.

    So overall, there is a major transition to healthy and comfort category footwear in the coming years.

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    Von Wellx – Founder

    Ashish Jain is the Founder of Von Wellx Germany.

    He is an IIM Alum. Post his studies, Ashish joined his 4 decade old family business of footwear that exports products to around 48 countries. After entering the business, Ashish researched the footwear market in India and was intrigued to find out why people were reluctant to understand why they needed good footwear.

    “Healthy footwear adds to a healthy body” he says.

    “We started by manufacturing in China to meet the supply chain of the Asian and Middle East countries. However, to further leverage the supply chain and boost the manufacturing set up we made a way to India further corroborating the Prime Minister’s speech for Atmanirbhar Bharat,” Ashish tells  

    Von Wellx – How was it started

    The team made the following observations after their research into the area of footwear-

    1. Footwear has always been considered an object of Fashion. But people do not realize that feet form the foundation of your body. Thus care is not taken for your feet and in choosing your footwear. APMA study found that 77% of Americans say they have experienced foot pain. Women are more vulnerable to foot problems and typically experience four times as many problems as men.
    2. Secondly, people did not understand that the type of problems like heel, pain, knee, back and posture problems that they have today is dependent on your feet and footwear as the structure of the building is on the foundation.
    3. Thirdly, most of the footwear designed today do not take care of the natural functions (static, dynamic, and reflex) of the feet, shock absorption function (Like Shock Absorbers of Cars, etc), and technical specs required but only focus on looks and fashion.
    4. Fourthly, that people do not have the expertise to understand the technical correctness of the shoe.
    5. Lastly, people nowadays are paying great attention to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but do not understand that a healthy shoe is one of the most important cogs in the wheel of a healthy lifestyle.

    This led to the birth of the idea to create a footwear brand that focused on fulfilling all the functions of the feet and footwear and still looked good. They researched the best technologies available in this field and zeroed in on Dr. Walter Mauch’s 5 Zones based on the science of reflexology which took care of all the problems.

    5 Zones Technology is patented and sold in over 80 countries across the globe and has over 100 million happy customers. They tested these shoes on a study group of 1,000 people across various states of India and noticed their results over 3 months. The results of the study were phenomenal and corroborated with the international results of this brand over the last 30 years.

    The people who were under this study kept on coming back to ask for more 5 Zones shoes. From there on, it was a straight call to collaborate with this Brand and they decided to collaborate for India, Middle East, and some other Asian Countries. After rigorous multiple meetings with the German Company in Germany and Italy, Iatric Industries Pvt. Ltd. signed the exclusive contract for 20 years.

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    Von Wellx – How it Works

    In earlier times, we used to walk barefoot a lot (8000 steps or more) daily on soft surfaces like grass, etc. which naturally stimulated nerve endings in feet and kept feet, knees, and back healthy by performing the static, dynamic and reflex functions of the feet. But now in reality, we walk less than 3000 steps daily on hard surfaces with wrong footwear that provide no stimulation, have hard soles & do not support the feet well. This destroys the natural connection of the feet with the body.

    Dr. Med Walter Mauch, a very renowned German doctor for orthopedics, chirotherapy, sports medicine, and naturopathy developed this internationally patented 5 Zones based on the science of reflexology to solve these problems. The feet have nerve endings of all the organs of the body.

    The footwear provides health benefits to the body like-

    • Energizes feet for 12+ hours standing (No tiredness) by Soft Massage, Muscle Relaxation
    • Exercises foot (Like Barefoot walking on Grass) by Increasing blood circulation
    • Relieves heel, knee and back pain, flat foot by providing correct support
    • Protects joints and muscles by absorbing the pressure coming on them
    • Corrects foot position and body posture by balancing muscles tension

    Von Wellx – Products/Service

    The company has both men’s and women’s shoes for the office, casual, party, ethnic, and wedding purposes for all age groups. They have all your needs covered. Footwear starts at Rs. 1,999 and goes up to Rs. 5,999 but most of the sandals are under Rs. 3,000.

    Von Wellx footwear solve problems like-

    • Avoids Tired Feet after walking & standing,
    • Heel, Knee, and Back Pain.
    • Arthritis Feet pain, Diabetic Foot
    • Wear and tear of Knee and other joints due to shock/pressure
    Von Wellx Germany Shoes
    Von Wellx Germany footwear

    Also, the shoes are technically correct due to special features like,

    • Special German lasts for correct foot position,
    • Long counters to keep the heel bone in place,
    • Double density shock absorb outsole,
    • Positive heel height/balanced soles,
    • Air pump system,
    • Anti-microbial/Anti-fungal layer,
    • Imported Stretch Materials for Swollen Feet,
    • Full-grain leather upper, lining and socks
    Features of Von Wellx's Shoes
    Features of Von Wellx’s Shoes

    Also they have a special Diabetic Range for preventing people from developing diabetic foot. Over 65% of Diabetic people in the US develop problems in their feet. Every 20 seconds, foot amputation occurs in the world. To avoid the same, we need to take the utmost care of our feet and footwear. Von Wellx’s Diabetes Series increases blood circulation to 5 most critical diabetes organs such as the pancreas, spleen, liver, kidneys, intestine, and improves their functioning. It also has additional features like a wide toe box, minimal stitches to avoid wounds, anti-fungal/bacterial lining, and stretch materials.

    Dr. Umashankar Mohanty, President – Indian Association of Physiotherapists also said that gait and foot position is very important. If it is altered due to wrong shoe feet, knee, back pain, etc. will occur. Dr. Mohanty was very impressed with Von Wellx’s footwear and acknowledged that these shoes are scientifically developed and provide the necessary support and stimulation to avoid all these problems.

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    Von Wellx – USP and Innovation

    • 5 Zones Technology based on the science of Reflexology is internationally patented in over 80 countries. No copies can be made of the technology.
    • Invented by famous Dr. Walter Mauch after years of research.
    • More than 100 million happy customers are benefited by the same.
    • Uses Patented Material made in only 1 factory in Italy.
    • Research and Development for the product done in Germany to correct all technical problems in shoes but with special attention to Indian Fashion needs.
    • The first brand in India to make Healthy Shoes for a healthy lifestyle.

    The rationale behind the tagline was to make people realize that Healthy Shoes is one of the most important parts of your Healthy Lifestyle.

    Von Wellx – Logo

    The logo of the company is based on the inventor of 5 Zones – Dr.Mauch.

    Von Wellx – Startup Launch

    Von Wellx approached the biggest and most respected footwear retailer in the country Metro Shoes which has the best premium shoe retail network in the country. After seeing the revolutionary efficacy and effectiveness of the product, they straightforwardly decided to launch the product in their selected top stores. After seeing the results in 6 months, they decided to go ahead with a nationwide rollout in all their stores. The Year-of-Year(YoY) growth of the company is over 175%.

    Internationally, they launched in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka through the country’s top chains like Lulu Retail, DSI Samson, etc. and the brand is performing phenomenally with over 120% YoY growth. They also export the brand from their company to parent company in Germany for their other markets in Europe, the US, etc.

    The company’s top focus has been to make the first million customers try their shoes since their repeat buying customer ratio is extremely high. Once a customer wears it, it is very difficult for him/her to use another brand. The team has been employing innovative in-store branding to attract the customers along with digital marketing, traditional marketing channels, doctors conferences, exhibitions, and fitness expos.

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    Von Wellx – User Acquisition

    The company has one of the highest customer retention ratios in the market and the lowest complaints ratio. The benefits that the customers feel after wearing their shoes and the quality and life of the shoe makes them want to come back to the brand automatically.

    Von Wellx – Startup Challenges

    The major challenge for the team is to make the customer buy the shoe for the first time. Also, some people think that it is a medical shoe and they do not need it since they do not have any problem.

    These shoes are not medical shoes or just targeted at people with problems. These shoes promote good health of your feet, knees, and back so that you do not encounter the problems associated with them.

    The company has tried to drive home this message by concentrating on the major customer touch-points like special in-store branding to explain it, training the salesmen with the knowledge so that they can pass it on to the consumer. They have got good results with the same. The team also ran digital campaigns and traditional marketing campaigns to drive home the message.

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    Von Wellx – Future Plans

    After a successful launch, Von Wellx is been looking to increase more awareness in the customers with opening exclusive brand outlets. Also they are increasing their distribution by adding Central stores, traditional distributors, and retailers.

    The company is also bringing a special foot solution for kids in the next 6 months. They have a huge opportunity and responsibility ahead of them to create a new category of Healthy Footwear in the Indian Market. They are confident of achieving the same in the next 3 years and want all the people to lead an active and pain-free life without worrying about their feet.

    It also aims to strengthen online presence through key partnerships. It is soon to launch a new range of washable footwear for the Indian market to counter the effects of COVID-19.

    Von Wellx – Recognition and Achievements

    • The company’s biggest achievement has been the availability of the product across all prime locations at the top 100 Indian cities within a year of the launch.
    • They have a very high repeat customer rate and less than 0.1 % of returns/complaints which goes on to show that their customers are extremely satisfied and benefited by the product across ages, regions, etc.
    • Von Wellx has successfully introduced the concept of healthy footwear as a critical part of a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, they are happy to know that youngsters are loving the product as much as elders.

    One of the interesting stories was when one of their customers went to her doctor, Dr. Nikhil Latey for a routine checkup. Dr. Latey, who is an Olympic doctor for the Indian team and has worked with famous stars like Mary Kom etc. noticed Von Wellx’s product and was extremely impressed with it. He got in touch with the company and advised the footwear to his patients.

    Von Wellx – FAQs

    Who is the owner of Von Wellx?

    Casa Everz Gmbh is the owner/parent organisation of Germany-based footwear company, Von Wellx.

    Who is Ashish Jain?

    Ashish Jain is the Founder of Von Wellx Germany, a footwear brand based on Internationally Patented German Technology – 5 Zones By Dr.Mauch across Men’s and Women’s Category.

    What is Von Wellx?

    Von Wellx Germany is a footwear brand based on Internationally Patented German Technology – 5 Zones By Dr.Mauch across Men’s and Women’s Category. The company works with the vision to make people aware of the importance/functions of feet and healthy footwear and provide them the healthiest footwear without compromising on fashion.

  • Venture Catalysts – India’s Largest Integrated Incubator

    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 Venture Catalysts.

    Startups are built by dreams and hard work. However, they also need mentorships and capital to rise to the sky. Most of the early stage startups in India do not have access to knowledge and advice from experts. That is why many Indian startups fail. Venture Catalysts is a venture capital firm. They provide all the support that an entrepreneur needs to get his/her startup to where they wanted.

    We interviewed the Co- Founder of Venture Catalysts, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma to get all the information about their company. We covered everything about Venture Catalysts in this article. Read about their their vision and mission to their future plans and hiring strategy and much more:

    Venture Catalysts – Vision and mission
    Venture Catalysts – Industry details
    Venture Catalysts – Starting Up
    Venture Catalysts – The Service
    Venture Catalysts – Founders & Team
    Venture Catalysts – Name, Tagline, & Logo
    Venture Catalysts – Launch
    Venture Catalysts – Growth
    Venture Catalysts – Challenges
    Venture Catalysts – Marketing
    Venture Catalysts – Current Scenario
    Venture Catalysts – Funding
    Venture Catalysts – Advisors and Mentors
    Venture Catalysts – Acquisitions and Mergers
    Venture Catalysts – Competitors
    Venture Catalysts – Recognition and Achievements
    Venture Catalysts – Future plans

    Venture Catalysts – Vision and mission

    Venture Catalyst is India’s first and largest integrated incubator. The core idea behind Venture Catalysts is to invest – whether capital, effort or time – in people and their ideas. The company focuses on developing and mentoring promising early stage startup ideas into viable business propositions that create an impact on local, national, and global levels. Venture Catalysts provides capital investment, mentorship and business networking, exposure, corporate partnerships, etc. They do it by implementing an integrated approach to incubation, mentorship, and investment. For all these goals, they have three key initiatives: 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, and 9Syndicate.

    Their mission is to become the largest and most impactful startup incubator in the Asian market. In the US, the top-10 stocks listed on exchanges such as NASDAQ are heavily dominated by tech companies. They aim to replicate this in India and Asia at large.

    On the other hand, their vision is to implement their formula of success on a global level. They want to emerge as the world’s largest and most active early-stage integrated incubator.

    Venture Catalysts’ second target audience after startups, is investors. They keep networking with both existing angels and HNIs looking to support ventures with their capital and networks. They provide them with access to curated early-stage startups from multiple sectors to invest in, along with portfolio management services. After the investment, the team manages their portfolio and secures high-value exit opportunities delivering multifold returns for the investors.

    For the last 4 years, Venture Catalysts has been the largest and most active early-stage player in India. With their growing global footprint, they are also present in high-growth markets such as the UK, Singapore, the Middle-East, etc.

    Venture Catalysts – Industry details

    In 2019, the Indian startup sector raised funds worth $14.5 billion across 1,185 financing rounds. And $6.9 billion of it were secured by early stage startups only. Depending on the scenario, these investments are typically spread out over 350-500 deals worth $500,000 – $2 million each. As Venture Catalysts makes 55-70 investments annually, they capture 11% to 20% of those early stage startups.

    Venture Catalysts – Starting Up

    The founder, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, noticed a major gap in the startup industry. He saw that there is a lack of an integrated, growth-oriented approach to startup incubation. Early-stage ventures did not have any visibility over capital networks. They did not know how venture capital moves, which investors to pitch to, or how to pitch to them. There was also limited or no access to the right set of mentors. Mentors are important to help startups identify existing and emerging gaps, address business challenges, and plan growth trajectory.

    These were major challenges. Most of the entrepreneurs ended up diluting their startups’ equity by the time they reached the second or third round of funding. The reason was their lack of visibility over capital flows. It hurt their long-term valuation and growth prospects. In the absence of the relevant guidance, many startups also couldn’t strike the much-needed balance between the speed and sustainability; they either scaled too quickly by burning cash or failed to grow fast enough to stay ahead of their competitors.

    To address these challenges, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan came up with an approach that combined angel investments with gap-based mentorship and networking at the seed stage. His goal was to build an integrated incubator that not only provides investment and capital visibility to promising early-stage startups but also connecting them with founders of Unicorn/Soonicorn companies, top industry leaders, and corporate CXOs for key learning and growth opportunities.

    Dr. Apoorva doesn’t believe that geography limits the ideas. For him, it is just as likely that a valuable startup such as Beardo emerges from the city of Ahmedabad as it is that something like ConfirmTKT emerges from Bengaluru. So, he wanted to move beyond the conventional startup hubs of Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Hyderabad. He wanted to identify and nurture high-potential startup ideas in tier-2 and tier-3 markets.

    Further, his ideas was to capitalize on the growing interest in the startup landscape. He networked with HNIs and business class in these regions by bringing them on board as investors, advisors, and mentors.

    Venture Catalysts – The Service

    Venture Catalysts, also known as VCats, has three initiatives – 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, and 9Syndicate. These initiatives are reinventing the early-stage startup investment landscape in India. By incubating the startups, they fill up two main gaps for them: financing and mentorship. Both of them lead any startup to a great success.

    The USP of Venture Catalysts is their commitment to creating incremental entrepreneurial value through a high-impact combination of capital, mentoring, business networking, and corporate partnerships.

    9Unicorns nurtures innovative startups at extremely nascent stages by investing INR 75 lakh to INR 1 crore per company. This investment is made when most of these startups are little more than high-potential ideas on a drawing board, driven by a passionate team. Through Venture Catalysts, they facilitate investments of INR 3-15 crore for its incubates, while 9Syndicate provides growth capital to the tune of INR 15-50 crore to startups.

    Apart from investment, VCats provide invaluable learning, networking, and growth opportunities to the startups in their portfolio. To this end, they have brought on board veteran Unicorn and Soonicorn founders as mentors. They also provide entrepreneurs with access to senior business leaders and CXOs at top corporate organisations.

    Venture Catalysts – Founders & Team

    Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma – Cofounder & President of Venture Catalysts

    Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Cofounder of Venture Catalysts
    Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Cofounder of Venture Catalysts

    Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma graduated as an engineer from HBTI, Kanpur, and completed his MBA in marketing and finance from Asia Pacific Institute of Management. He also pursued his doctorate in management and role of business incubators in the economic growth of India from Amity Business School in Noida. Dr. Apoorva also holds a diploma in mentoring startups from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.

    He started his professional journey as a Project Manager at JSS Technology Incubator before joining as the General Manager of Amity Innovation Incubator, a position he held for 5 years. In May 2010, Dr. Apoorva joined as the Vice President of Indian Angel Network (IAN). Before launching Venture Catalysts, he was the Executive Vice President and Partner at VentureNursery for three and a half years between February 2012 and October 2015. He also became a charter member of TiE Global in November 2016 and have been serving as a member of its board since July 2018. At VCats, Dr. Apoorva is responsible for identifying valuable startups and managing the company’s investment strategies.

    Anuj Golecha – Cofounder of Venture Catalysts
    Anuj Golecha is a veteran Chartered Accountant certified by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, as well as a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Anuj is the owner of Chanvim Plastics and Dezire Jewels. He is a current Partner at Banshi Jain and Associates (BJAA) – a position he’s served with distinction since 2004. He is also the owner of Samyakth Group and has invested in startups such as CoutLoot, Siftr, Beardo, Fynd, Innov8, PeeSafe, Rapid Retail, BharatPe, and Koinex.

    Apart from being a part of the founding team at Venture Catalysts, Anuj has co-founded Samyakth Capital. It is India’s first hybrid growth fund that invests in and partners with companies that create lasting value for customers. At VCats, he spearheads the value addition to their network and also manages the pan-India expansion.

    Anil Jain – Cofounder of Venture Catalysts & 9Unicorns
    A seasoned businessperson and a finance industry veteran, Anil Jain is the co-founder of Wallfort Properties and has, since 2019, served as an advisor to PropCatalyst. He is also the co-founder of 9Unicorns, a unique idea-stage fund that is redefining early-stage investments and mentoring in India. In his role, Anil leverages his extensive industry experience and business contacts to add more credible people – investors, partners, and entrepreneurs – to the Venture Catalysts network.

    Gaurav Jain – Cofounder of Venture Catalysts
    Gaurav Jain is the think-tank of the company. He’s a technology expert who holds a Bachelor’s degree from IIT Roorkee. He also has a certification as a Chartered Financial Analyst from CFA Institute in the US. Gaurav also holds an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Over the course of his career, he has worked as an Investment Banking Analyst with Credit Suisse, as an Associate with GenNext Ventures (the venture capital arm of Reliance Industries Ltd.), as a Product Manager (Chief Technology & Architecture Office) at Cisco, and as a Director of Product at AirDev. At Venture Catalysts, he is responsible for managing the end-to-end technological framework, deploying tech-led interventions to optimise existing workflows, and identifying how technology can make the processes more efficient.

    The VCats Team
    Venture Catalysts has a team of more than 45 professionals working full-time across different functions at Venture Catalysts. They also have a strong pan-India presence through 80+ regional and venture partners.

    The structure at VCats, like most startups, is a horizontal hierarchy which promotes individual ownership and accountability. They are always open to new ideas from their team that can help them to do something new or bring efficiency to the existing process. Every year, the company provides a 15-day holiday around the Christmas-New Year period. This is in addition to the annual leave balance that all employees get.

    This is why, when hiring new people, they ensure that the candidates are a good fit for the culture. They prefer recruiting people who are passionate and unstoppable and have high integrity and a team-first attitude. These traits are essential for building trust, whether with in-house team members or external stakeholders, which is a non-negotiable requirement in the field of investment.

    Venture Catalysts Logo
    Venture Catalysts Logo

    The name, Venture Catalysts, reflects the vision behind the company, as does the tagline ‘India’s 1st Integrated Incubator’. A catalyst is something that accelerates the process and creates a new by-product without essentially changing itself. This is what the founders want to do for new-age ventures across India as an integrated incubator. They want to accelerate their growth and help them achieve scale and success at a much faster pace.

    The logo and the colour scheme are derived from a mix of diverse value systems. The succulent plant is a symbol of wealth and prosperity across multiple cultures, while the triangle represents growth. The logo encapsulates both these aspects to highlight how they constantly strive to create greater value and growth. The pink visual scheme symbolises kumkum, a symbol of prosperity and harmony, which strengthens these subliminal messages.

    Venture Catalysts – Launch

    When asked about the launch and the initial days of Venture Catalysts, Dr. Apoorva said:

    When launching Venture Catalysts, I knew that we could find several promising business ventures. The main bottleneck was to gain enough investors to invest a good amount of money in each startup. I relied on my social circles, including friends and family, to find the first 50 investors. As we went about strengthening the angel ecosystem, the market credibility of our founding team – including me and my co-founders – helped us attract the right investors during the early stage of our growth.

    Venture Catalysts – Growth

    The initial success of the company drew a lot of angel investors. They saw a significant interest amongst regional investor networks that wanted to collaborate with them to gain access to startups across India. This, in turn, has helped them to grow at an accelerated pace.

    I’ve always believed that delivering results and value is the best way of attracting meaningful relationships – and the only growth strategy that matters is collaboration.
    – Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma – Cofounder & President of Venture Catalysts

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    Venture Catalysts – Challenges

    The biggest challenge for the founder team was lack of knowledge about Angel investing. It is a vital factor whenever anything involves money, especially such huge sums. Angel investment, traditionally, has not been an easy game. When they started Venture Catalysts, the angel community in India was very small and extremely tightly-knit. There were also many HNIs and business people with surplus capital looking to make long-term investments in more sustainable asset classes, following the collapse of the sub-prime housing bubble and its impact on the global real estate market. Before they could get them on board as investors in startups, the team had to win their trust.

    We did this by teaching the science of angel investing to regional investors. We helped them understand the process of startup valuation, investment, and exits. Additionally, we empowered them with the knowledge needed to identify which ventures and founding teams had growth potential, and which didn’t. We gave them knowledge & practical insights to better manage their startup portfolio and how they, as angels, could help guide their investees onto an accelerated growth trajectory. So far, we have conducted over 150 such investor masterclasses around the world – and it’s worked wonders when it comes to building trust.
    – Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma

    Venture Catalysts – Marketing

    Venture Catalysts don’t invest in big marketing campaigns. A relationship-building approach delivers much better dividends  for them. Especially in tier-2 and tier-3 markets where they have been strengthening their footprint and foresee the maximum growth potential. More and more HNIs and businesspeople in smaller towns and cities are now interested in startups as an asset class, potential growth drivers, and future business partners. They want to be angel investors for these upcoming ventures and are looking for avenues to do so.

    These prospective angels trust the opinion of their peers. They value word-of-mouth recommendations. That is the reason, they saw exponential growth in tier-2 and tier-3 markets during the pandemic and brought on board more than 50 venture partners. Most of these new associations were driven by their relationship-building efforts in these regions. They came through references from their existing investors.

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    Venture Catalysts – Current Scenario

    Operating locations

    Venture Catalysts is headquartered in Mumbai and present in more than 36 cities across India through dedicated offices as well as regional and venture partners. They also have cutting-edge incubation centres in over 10 cities. Moreover, they are currently planning a capacity expansion to build more incubation centres across the country.

    In addition to that, they are also present in London and are in the process of establishing offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and the US.

    User base and notable partners

    At present, VCats have more than 4,500 investors associated with the VCats community and have invested in over 100 startups. They also have 80+ regional and venture partners on a pan-India level to provide them with deeper market penetration in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. They have also partnered with JPIA, one of the most reputed investment firms in London.

    Growth metrics

    VCats completed 16 deals in the first year of their operations, 33 in the second, 59 in the third, and 63 in the fourth. In 2020, despite the market being in upheaval following the COVID-19 outbreak, they remain on track to close 70 deals. Their incubates have secured around $150 million in syndication value so far.

    Even though the first and the second year were their investment phase, they still secured a lucrative exit opportunity in the second year. The third year of operations saw this number jump to seven. Last year, they secured around 25 exits. All of these exit opportunities delivered multifold returns on the original investments.

    Venture Catalysts – Funding

    The Venture Catalyst funding is not disclosed. The company raised an undisclosed amount of funding to expand its geographical reach throughout India and other countries. They are still using those funds to acquire better people and make a network of investors and startups.

    Venture Catalysts – Advisors and Mentors

    Ritesh Agarwal (Founder & CEO – OYO Rooms) has recently joined their board of advisors and will be investing in and mentoring emerging startups in the VCats’ portfolio. Some other prominent mentor names are Vishal Maheshwari (Country Head – Vuclip India Pvt. Ltd.), Ankush Tiwari (CTO – Mobilia), Daud Ali (Managing Partner – Peacock Industries), Samir Shah (Managing Principal – Sattva Investment), Anand Ladsariya, and Abhishek Bhagat (Managing Partner – Chryseum Advisors) on their advisory board.

    Venture Catalysts – Acquisitions and Mergers

    VCats acquired Incubate Hub, a corporate venturing platform, earlier in 2020. Aimed at plugging the white space between the corporate innovation market and startups, IncubateHub provides corporate players with access to curated solutions and services by new-age ventures.

    On the one hand, this helps corporate entities bolster their innovation trajectory while, on the other, it allows the incubates to develop, pilot, and validate their ideas. Doing so significantly shortens the process of generating proof of concepts as well as the time to market while accelerating product development and capacity building.

    Venture Catalysts – Competitors

    I feel that, for a player as differentiated as Venture Catalysts, there are no competitors – only future collaborators.
    – Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma

    VCats avoid competing with other funds, accelerators, or incubators. Instead, they choose to focus on identifying and building on mutual synergies towards a common end-goal – driving entrepreneurial growth and realising the untapped startup potential in both emerging and developed economies.

    Venture Catalysts – Recognition and Achievements

    VCats was recently named as the world’s seventh-largest integrated incubator, as well as one of the most active early-stage investors and incubators globally, by Crunchbase. Moreover, The Economic Times has named Venture Catalysts as the No.1 early-stage investor and incubator in India.

    For its contribution to the startup ecosystem, Venture Catalysts was recently felicitated as the most active early-stage player by distinguished industry doyens such as Mr. Ratan Tata and Mr. Narayan Murthy.

    Venture Catalysts – Future plans

    In terms of business expansion, the company is looking at increasing its global footprint. They will continue to penetrate deeper into emerging tier-2/tier-3 markets across India. Internationally, VCats is targeting three key geographies: Southeast Asia, Europe (through London), and the Middle-East (through Dubai and Saudi Arabia). The startup ecosystem in these areas is growing at a rapid pace. By 2023, VCats want to complete 500 early-stage deals every year. Going by their current growth rate, they will reach their target.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    What is Venture Catalyst?

    Venture Catalyst is India’s first and largest integrated incubator. The core idea behind Venture Catalysts is to invest – whether capital, effort or time – in people and their ideas. The company focuses on developing and mentoring promising early stage startup ideas into viable business propositions.

    What does venture capitalist mean?

    A venture capitalist (VC) is a private equity investor that provides capital to companies exhibiting high growth potential in exchange for an equity stake. This could be funding startup ventures or supporting small companies that wish to expand but do not have access to equities markets.

    What are the three initiatives from Venture Catalysts?

    Venture Catalysts has three initiatives – 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, and 9Syndicate.

    Who is the owner of Venture Catalysts?

    The Venture Catalysts founders are Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain.

  • Kuants- Algorithmic Trading Made Easy for Retail Traders

    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.

    Algorithmic trading is quite a buzz word among the stock traders community. People are excited about how a computer program can replace a manual trader in a disciplined, scalable, and automated manner to place trades in the stock markets. Being a technology-heavy method of trading, terms like, arbitrage, NSE server racks, etc., often meet the eye of retail traders. SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) allowed algorithmic trading in India in 2009 and since then it has captured over 50% of the trading volumes in India. A major contribution to this is the HNIs and big brokerage and investment management firms who have access to the technology required to perform algorithmic trading.

    Retail traders are not able to exploit the advantages of algorithmic trading due to the costs of technology involved, that can amount from anywhere between INR 1 to 5 lacs per year. But thankfully, there are startups, that are allowing retail traders also to reap the benefit of algorithmic trading.

    Kuants, a Fintech based in Gurugram, is making algorithmic trading easy for those who cannot code themselves and those who are not comfortable in using the readymade algorithms available in the platform.

    StartupTalky interviewed Kuants co-founder Ayush Gangwar to get an insight into the startup.

    Kuants – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Kuants
    Headquarter Gurugram
    Founders Ayush Gangwar & Mohit Bansal
    Sector Fintech
    Founded 2017
    Parent Organization Meanbox Technologies Private Limited

    About Kuants and How it works
    Kuants Founders/CEO
    Kuants – Name, Tagline and Logo
    How was Kuants Started
    Kuants – Startup Launch
    Kuants – Revenue Model
    Kuants – Funding and Investors
    Kuants – User Acquisition
    Kuants – Startup Challenges
    Kuants – Competitors
    Kuants – Awards & Recognitions
    Kuants – Growth and Revenue

    About Kuants and How it works

    Kuants is a startup that is enabling retail traders to do algorithmic trading in the Indian stock markets in a cost-effective manner through its AlgoLab. Founded in Dec 2017, by Ayush Gangwar and Mohit Bansal, the vision of the startup is to ensure that technology never acts as a constraint ever to a stock trader in exploring the domain of algorithmic trading.

    People can write their own algorithms through the web-based AlgoLab, test it on years of historical data and live trade automatically through a single click from the lab itself. For those who are not tech-savvy, Kuants takes care of the trading on behalf of the users so that the users can gain the most out of their investments.

    The product is a web application that people can simply log in via Google at algolab.kuants.in. Just after login, they are presented with their dashboard from which they can navigate to different sections like the Backtest page, the help center, a SMART marketplace and their previous strategies.

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    Kuants lets users do algorithmic trading in two ways–  

    1. Algorithmic lab: Here users can create their own trading algorithms,  and Backtest on Equity, Futures, Commodities and Forex without any code.  Algorithm lab comes with an In-Built Live Execution system with top brokers across the globe. Besides it also offers the users a chance to earn by sharing the algorithm.
    2. Smart Algorithms lets the users Live trade on verified Algorithms developed by peers. Users are given the flexibility to change the algorithm anytime without any locking period.

    Some attractive features offered by Kuants are–  

    • Simple Process of starting Algorithmic trading: Users can backtest anytime and from anywhere simply by logging in to the account  
    • Easy Result Analysis: Thorough Quantitative coverage is done for every algorithm tested  
    • Professional Tools are provided which facilitates optimization, stress testing, paper trading and large scale backtesting within minutes.  
    • Ready to Trade: each time a backtest is complete, the algorithms are automatically converted to trade ready format.  

    Differing from the conventional backtesting system, Kuants has integrated all the individual components like data feed, backtesting code, result metrics in a prebuilt format.

    Kuants – How it works

    The Key USP is that people can write trading algorithms without having to learn any programming language like C, Python Java, etc.

    Emphasizing on uniqueness of the Platform Ayush says, “We have developed an expression based format that automatically converts simple English language based format into a code. This enables traders and quant researchers don’t need to focus on getting the programming right and they can just focus on the code algorithm development and testing”.

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    Kuants Founders/ CEO

    Kuants is co-founded by two IIT Kharagpur graduates Ayush Gangwar and Mohit Bansal.

    Founders Kuants
    Ayush Gangwar (CEO) and Mohit Bansal (CTO)

    Ayush Gangwar is the CEO of Kuants. He holds a Bachelors and Masters degree from IIT Kharagpur. Prior to founding Kuants, he used to work as a part-time Research Consultant at WorldQuant LLC, successfully developing trading algorithms for the US stock markets for a period of 3 years.

    Mohit Bansal is the CTO of Kuants. Prior to joining Kuants, Mohit worked as a data scientist.

    The name “Kuants” is a derivative of quantitative researches and IIT Kharagpur. Ayush credits a lot of his work to his alma mater and the idea of attaching the initials with what the company software does looked convincing enough and also acted as a small gesture to IIT Kharagpur from the founder.

    The tagline, being ‘Where Trading meets Technology’, represents the vision and approach of the company. The logo has been designed with the concept of two different vertices being combined together at the single platform that is Kuants.

    How was Kuants Started

    Kuants was instituted with a view to solving the hassles that the founders themselves faced while doing algorithmic trading.

    “Algorithmic trading needed a lot of programming, and utmost accuracy needed to be maintained in the entire process from start to end and. The maintenance of the code also was a task in itself which took away the focus from trading to developing the technology behind trading. From this experience, it was decided to create a common platform that trades and quantitative researchers can use focusing only on the trading part rather than technology infrastructure” says Ayush.  

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    Kuants – Startup Launch

    Kuants launched the first version of Algolab, then simply known as backtesting system through a press release in June 2018.

    “Algolab’s launch garnered a lot of attention and was instrumental in getting the awareness of our product to the correct target audience. After months of hard work put in by the tech team of developing the backend architecture, it was good to see the amount of traffic we were able to handle that day” Ayush recounts.

    Again, for the first 3 months, the company offered all services on a free-trial basis, which helped it acquire customers and customer feedback.

    Kuants – Revenue Model

    Kuants has taken a freemium approach to its Algolab, with basic features free and premium features of a monthly charge of INR 1999. In the premium version, people can do extensive backtesting as well as live trading on their algorithms in the stock markets, by opening a DEMAT account.

    Kuants has tie-ups with Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd (MOSL) as a sub-broker, so the users need to open the  DEMAT account with MOSL for trading through Kuants. Besides earning revenue from the users, Kuants also earns revenue through Brokerage sharing model with MOSL and by trading its own captive money.

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    Kuants – Funding and Investors

    Kuants raised two round of seed funding till date.

    Funding Date Funding Stage Funding Amount Investor
    November 2017 Seed Undisclosed India Accelerator
    Jaunary 2018 Seed 50 Lacs Mr. Pankaj Chpra & Mr. Ankush Gupta

    Kuants – User Acquisition

    For Kuants, organic marketing techniques have worked really wonders to attract customers while interesting email campaigns are created to retain these customers.

    As Ayush says – “The money we have spent till date is only for the email campaigns and that’s because our user base grew exponentially that our email services provider refused to handle that many volumes of email ids and content for free. We would say it’s a problem we loved to have”

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    Kuants – Startup Challenges

    A major challenge was to keep the pricing of the Algolab well within the reach of a retail trader. Transforming a technology that costs around INR 1,00,000 to something that will cost around INR 16000 per year, that is an 84% drop, needs innovative technology methods and implementations that provide a better experience. After numerous sessions of brainstorming, the Kuants team was able to develop the product which is affordable for retail traders.

    Kuants – Competitors

    Streak, Quantopian, Quantconnect, Amibroker are a few competitors of Kuants.

    Having a competitor is always a blessing as it always enables a startup to do something bigger and better, that repeats as a positive and growth-oriented vicious circle for the industry. – Ayush

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    Kuants – Awards & Recognitions

    Kuants was selected by Morgan Stanley, the global financial technology giant for its CTO Summit, held in Oct 2018. The company was selected from among over 120 startups across Asia working in the fintech domain. The team presented its products and offering to the reveiw committee and was well lauded for its efforts and technological innovation.

    Kuants – Growth and Revenue

    Kuants launched the first version of the backtesting system in July 2018 and has seen an impressive month on month organic growth of 17% in users. Over 20,000 algorithms have been back tested till date(2019) on over 45000 years of data and have generated a trading turnover of INR 30 crore till date through its platform.

    Kuants aims to achieve monthly recurring revenue of Rs 67 lakhs and Rs 3.7 crore in the financial year 2019 and 2020 respectively.

  • Guiddoo World – Your Personal Tour Guide

    Note: This Startup has been shut

    Have you ever been to a new travel destination, and felt clueless about what to do? Even though most of us today do research online before visiting any destination, there is a possibility that we may miss out on things. Booking tickets to your favourite tourist spot, reserving seats for that river cruise or spa massage, or hiring guides to guide you through the historical monuments, lots of planning is required to make the holiday experience perfect and Guiddoo is here to help you.

    With features such as an Audio-visual guide, information related to history and trivia and free concierge services, Guiddoo solves all your in-destination travel needs. With its growing popularity among Globetrotters.

    This article will give you an insight into The Company Profile of Guiddoo, Its Business Model, Revenue, Founders, Funding, Story, Growth, Competitors etc.,

    Guiddoo World – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Guiddoo World
    Headquarter Mumbai
    Founder Vineet Budki, Nidhi Varma, Prashant Choudhary, Biswajeet Karmakar
    Sector Travel
    Founded 2014
    Registered Entity Name Guiddoo World Travels Pvt. Ltd.

    Guiddoo World – About
    Guiddoo World – Industry Details
    Guiddoo World – Founders
    Guiddoo World – The Idea and starting up
    Guiddoo World – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Guiddoo World – Services
    Guiddoo World – Revenue Model
    Guiddoo World – Customer Acquisition
    Guiddoo World – Funding
    Guiddoo World – Challenges
    Guiddoo World – Competitors
    Guiddoo World – Awards & Recognitions
    Guiddoo World – Advisors and Mentors
    Guiddoo World – Future Plans

    Guiddoo World – About

    Guiddoo aims to be a One-Stop Platform for travelers to discover and book great travel experiences during their international trip.

    It provides unique and customized travel packages. The platform uses intelligent data points from over 4000+ travel agents as well as analyses 1Mn+ Trend Points on the Internet and Social media to build smart itineraries.

    Guiddoo World – Industry Details

    Travel apps rank 7th among the most downloaded category of apps. According to Criteo, currently, more bookings are being made through apps as compared to desktop or mobile web. Also, travelers make 80% of last-minute booking on the app. As such, Guiddoo being an app with many features like a step-by-step tour, key sights, timeline, history & trivia, images gallery, tourist information and booking facilities is fast gaining popularity among travelers.

    Again, the Market Size for in-destination tours and activities will reach approximately $200 billion by 2020, as projected by PhocusWright. Guiddoo focuses on Indian and China outbound travelers to 15 destinations, the market value of which is approximately $20 billion annually.  

    Guiddoo World – Founders

    Vineet Budki, Nidhi Varma, Prashant Choudhary and Biswajeet Karmakar are the founders of Guiddoo.

    Founder Guiddoo
    Vineet Budki and Nidhi Varma

    Vineet Budki is the CEO & Founder of Guiddoo World, Guiddoo World Travels Pvt Ltd & Guiddoo World FZ LLC. He founded Guiddoo  – initially as an audio guide that later pivoted to a Marketplace for Tours and Activities in 2013. Vineet has a rich experience of  15 years in the Technology, Travel and Airline industry and has worked with companies like Rocket Internet, Emirates Airlines, Paytronic Networks and Tata Consultancy Services in the past. He started his first company Butel in the year 2009  – an online comparator for DTH Services, which later became the online arm of Videocon d2h.

    Nidhi Varma is a graduate of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. Prior to Guiddoo, she worked with Emirates Airlines.

    Prashant Choudhary is a graduate from IIT Kharagpur and worked with Erricson as a software developer and mobile team head prior to joining Guiddoo. Currently, he is the Chief Technical Officer at Guiddoo.

    Biswajeet Karmakar is a graduate from Mumbai University, and prior to Guiddoo, he worked with organizations like E-cell, Unitech Marketing Services and Computer Society of India, KJSIEIT. Biswajeet is the director of sales at Guiddoo.

    Guiddoo World – The Idea and Starting Up

    It was 2013 when Vineet and Nidhi were on a trip to Paris. It was a much-awaited trip and they did not want to miss even a bit of it. But unfortunately, things did not go as per plan.

    The idea came to Nidhi and me while on a trip to the Eiffel Tower in Paris where we faced a lot of issues due to the language barrier and outdated information.  

    While it was Nidhi’s dream to visit the Eiffel Tower with her life partner, when they went to visit, they found that it was closed. They waited for the next day only to find that there was a huge line and they had to wait for hours to take the lift to the top of the tower. As the couple had time constraints, they could not visit the Louvre Museum. It was during this time that the couple felt the need for a mobile app, which could guide the travelers through the monuments and landmarks aided by audio and video.

    After coming back from Paris, the couple started doing research around key Indian Tourist places frequented by travelers and started working towards building a smartphone-friendly audio-visual travel guide platform. Finally, the couple launched Guiddoo in 2014. The startup was incubated at the Government of Dubai’s In5 incubator for Hi-Tech Startups.

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    The name for our startup came from the word “Guide” and the tagline was developed once we shifted to the Tours and Activities Module.  

    Guiddoo’s tagline is “Your Personal Tour Guide”  

    Guiddoo World – Services

    Guiddoo is a platform to discover and book in-destination experiences. Initially, It was developed just as an audio guide, which later pivoted to tours and activities booking platform.

    Currently, Guiddoo is helping its customers discover and book in-destination activities and experiences across 15 countries.

    It provides a platform for travel agents working on Indian travelers, traveling internationally to find and book great experiences. The USP of the platform is that it provides concierge services free of cost to the customers. The app evolves over time based on ratings of travelers using the platform to curate meaningful experiences like tours, activities, dining, shopping and entertainment options for other users.

    It has made tie-ups with big brands like MakeMyTrip, Amadeus India, Mekong Tourism and World Free Zones Organization.    

    The app is available both on android and iOS platforms. Besides the company has dedicated B2B and B2C platforms. It is very convenient to use during traveling as it does not require a live internet connection, once downloaded. Guiddoo has a dedicated app for every city it covers.

    Guiddoo also has standalone apps for some famous landmarks which include, Taj Mahal, The Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum in Rome, Angkor Wat and also newly developed tourist attraction like Burj Khalifa towers in Dubai.  

    At present, It offers guides on 21 monuments in the English language.  

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    Guiddoo World – Revenue Model

    Guiddoo’s revenue source can be divided into 3 segments – Tour & Activity sales, Audio-Video guide and B2B Subscription Model.  

    Guiddoo revenue model

    Guiddoo World – Customer Acquisition

    Almost 1 year of its inception, Guiddoo has been downloaded by over 1,00,000 users. Besides, over 2,00,000 visitors visited the company’s website just within 2 months of the launch of their website. According to Vineet, personal reach out and information exchange via social media platforms were the keys channel used for informing everyone about Guiddoo.

    Guiddoo has focused a lot on building the experience part of a customer’s travel while they are on the ground which includes offering superior products with great service levels by developing technology around them. We believe this has contributed a lot to our brand and helped us in garnering more users and their loyalty.  

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    Guiddoo World- Funding

    In March 2019, Guiddoo raised an undisclosed amount of funding from  SOSV & Artesian. It plans to use the Series B funding to expand its operations in China. The company is also planning to add new destinations of the Middle- East and Africa into its package to attract the Chinese market.

    Guiddoo has raised  funding worth $1.1 million in 4 rounds.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    February 2015 Seed $400K Angel Investors
    June 2017 Pre-Series A $300 k Pawan Borle, Nirmal Singh, Manish Prasad, Vineet Varma & Abhai S. Rao
    July 2018 Series A $800 k Rennie Ratadia (Singapore), Stephen Dmello (Dubai) & Angshuman Sarkar (India)
    March 2019 Series B Undisclosed SOSV & Artesian

    Guiddoo World – Challenges

    Some of the major challenges faced by Guiddoo are-

    • Securing Funds.
    • Making meaningful partnerships
    • Designing an accurate revenue model

    A strong team, good business networking and a well-tailored product helped the company deal with these challenges.

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    Guiddoo World – Competitors

    Guiddoo’s major competitors are – Misement, Viator GetYourGuide, AudioCompass and Thrillophilia. As said by Vineet, most of their competitors are in the west as the segment is still evolving in India

    Guiddoo World – Achievements

    Some major achievements of Guiddoo are-

    • 1,00,000 users downloaded Guiddoo just within around 1 year of its inception.
    • It has been able to attract 2.00,000 web visitors just within 2 months of launching its website.
    • It has been able to attract and secure funding from international investors.
    • Secured tie-ups with big brands like MakeMyTrip, Amadeus India, Mekong Tourism and World Free Zones Organization.  
    • It has a partnership with over 4500 travel agents.
    • It has served over 30,000 customers with over 65,000 activities.

    Guiddoo World – Awards & Recognitions

    • Best Outbound Operator for 2018  by Mr. KJ Alphons Tourism Minister of India at SATTE Awards 2018
    • Travel Innovation Summit, Florida – Runners Up
    • Red herring 100  
    • Top 100 Startups to Watch 2019 – SutraHR

    Guiddoo World – Advisors and Mentors

    • Pawan Borle – SVP, Fly Dubai    
    • Victor Sunyer – Partner, Delta Partners
    • Gaurav Chiripal – CEO – Quadlabs

    Guiddoo World – Future Plans

    The company has great plans for the future. Some of its major future plans include-

    • Covering 100+ monuments and tourist attractions around the world.
    • Making the audio guide available in 9 languages including Spanish (Spain & South American), French, Italian, Hindi, Chinese (Cantonese & Mandarin), Korean, Japanese, Arabic and Russian.
    • Starting Operations in China by 2019.          
    • Building a pan India distribution network for its tours, activities and holiday products.

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    FAQs

    Who is Guiddoo World’s CEO?

    Vineet Budki

    How much revenue does Guiddoo World generate?

    $5.9M in revenue

    When was Guiddoo World founded?

    2013

  • Now&Me – Taking The Nation Towards Better Mental Health!

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

    With all the awareness initiatives and the movements taking place in the field of mental health, we see people talking about it but we actually don’t see people understanding what in reality goes behind being mentally unhealthy. For those who’ve felt like, “so many people have told me to open up, but nobody really understands what’s going on”, Bani Singh and Drishti Gupta launched nowandme.com in 2018.

    Nowandme.com is an online safe space that’s bridging the gap between people, their problems and someone who wants to hear them and lend a helping hand. This venture believes in the power of human experiences and the community. The aim of this company is to develop a community where people can share their experiences and emotions without the fear of being judged. Also, this portal publishes blogs and videos on the website to generate awareness about pressing issues like mental health.

    Now&Me – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Now&Me
    Headquarter Gurgaon
    Sector Healthcare
    Founders Bani Singh and Drishti Gupta
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization NowAndMe
    Website www.nowandme.com

    About Now&Me and How it Works
    Now&Me – Target Market Size
    Founders of Now&Me and team
    How was Now&Me Started?
    Now&Me – Name and Logo
    Now&Me – Startup Launch
    Now&Me – Startup Challenges
    Now&Me – Funding and Investors
    Now&Me – Revenue Model
    Now&Me – Growth
    Now&Me – Future Plans

    About Now&Me and How it Works

    It’s as simple as logging onto nowandme.com and pouring your heart out!

    Now&Me has shared and displayed more than 4000 personal and heartfelt experiences. Meaningful, wholesome and sensitive interactions take place among the community every day. One can choose to post/respond anonymously as well. nowandme.com is a pace where you can truly be who you are. It is basically a form of kinder internet, where you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not.

    nowandme.com lets you connect with strangers on a deeper level and allows you to heal, learn and grow through mixed experiences of individuals. It acts as a platform for people going through a rough phase in life and wanting someone to talk to. Even those who want to share their achievements and success stories can be found. It is a community that is growing with each passing day.

    Now&Me is a glocal brand, which started in Delhi-NCR. It conducts various offline events and workshops regularly. The most recent one being on ‘Stress Relief’ at IIT-Delhi. Another event on ‘Social Media’ was conducted by the team at LSR. ‘Create Don’t Hate’ was organized at SelectCity CityWalk Mall in association with JustDelhiing. The team has also created offline no-judgment zones, talking circles, network therapy, and safe spaces to encourage catharsis and been an active part of activities like Drum Circle – Music Therapy and Art Therapy as well.

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    Now&Me – Target Market Size

    According to the WHO, “There is growing evidence of the global impact of mental illness. Mental health problems are among the most important contributors to the burden of disease and disability worldwide. 5 of the 10 leading causes of disability worldwide are mental health problems. They are as relevant in low-income countries as they are in rich ones, cutting across age, gender, and social strata. Furthermore, all predictions indicate that the future will see a dramatic increase in mental health problems.”

    Founders of Now&Me and team

    Bani & Drishti, Cofounders of NowAndMe
    Bani & Drishti, Cofounders of Now&Me

    Now&Me co-founders Bani Singh and Drishti Gupta are college friends. Both of them graduated from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University in May 2019 with a degree in statistics. They officially started working together in February 2019, while in the last year of college. Bani mainly handles the creatives (content+curation) while Drishti looks into the technology, communications, and outreach. Usually, it is a bit of everything that the two of them need to pay attention to.

    The Now&Me team also includes tech support staff and constant help from interns. They only recruit individuals who are passionate about the cause and can grasp the complexities and commitment required to run the organization. The team mainly hires in the field of web development, content creation and communications.

    How was Now&Me Started?

    The idea and inspiration for the company came to the co-founders after seeing the people around who were going through some or the other issues or problems in life, but were not able to find an outlet to let out their troubles. Drishti and Bani tested the idea amongst the peers in college, and their response was taken into consideration.

    NowAndMe logo
    Now&Me logo

    Other than the obvious choice of domain availability, the name- “Now and Me” signifies being in the present with one’s feelings.

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    Now&Me – Startup Launch

    Now&Me was launched through word of mouth and social media while the co-founders were in college. Support from friends and families helped Drishti and Bani in giving the initial push to the brand. Regular offline events helped as well in building the brand identity. Everybody is going through something in life and everybody needs a shoulder to lean on. NowAndMe is that shoulder.

    “To spread awareness among people regarding our product, we constantly share content on our social media pages and also upload informative blogs every week on the website, most of which are written by mental health experts. This has attracted more people and motivated them to share their feelings with us.” says Bani, co-founder of nowandme.

    Now&Me – Startup Challenges

    The biggest challenge for Now&Me is the long-standing stigma around mental health, that stops people from seeking help even when they know that it’s the right thing to do. Conducting safe, small talking circles in an attempt to encourage people to open up and own their feelings has proved to be extremely novel and successful in getting people’s attention.

    Now&Me – Funding and Investors

    NowAndMe has been bootstrapped and has not raised any funds yet.

    Now&Me – Revenue Model

    NowAndMe is a free platform and records no revenue.

    Now&Me – Growth

    • nowandme.com gets over 10,000 unique visits every week, and has about 1000 registered users.
    • nowandme.com ranks amongst the best 10k websites in India (via Alexa Rankings)
    • Mr. Ankur Warikoo, former CEO, nearbuy.com is an esteemed supporter.
    • NowAndMe has conducted events on ‘Stress Management and Mindfulness’ in esteemed institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD)

    The co-founders say that while they want to keep the platform free, they also want to provide users with access to the right kind of knowledge and professionals. For this, they will be compiling different means of recourse available, such as online and offline therapy, 24/7 helplines and tele-counselling services, and workshops.

    Now&Me – Future Plans

    “Along with the sharing platform, we also aim to become the Yellow Pages for Mental Health in India.” Now&Me founder Bani Singh said emphasizing on the company’s future plans.

    The long-term agenda is to integrate good professional help in the Now&Me platform along with its existing endeavors towards mental health and its affordability, availability and accessibility.

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  • CoHo: Best Co-living Space In Delhi and Bangalore for Millenials

    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 CoHo.

    Migration has considerably increased both within the country and abroad. The reasons for the same are many but the most prominent being, in search of employment options and education. Moving to a new place breaks the monotony and unravels a whole new world. However, finding the right place to live in a new city, is a difficult task indeed. Nevertheless, CoHo has got that covered.

    CoHo is a Gurugram based startup that provides the best Co-living option specially designed to accommodate the Millenials’ needs and aspirations.

    CoHo – Company Highlights

    Startup Name CoHo
    Headquarter Gurugram, India
    Sector Co-Living
    Founders Uday Lakkar
    Founded 2015
    Funding $3 Million
    Parent Organization ZR Management Pvt. Ltd.
    Website www.coho.in

    About CoHo and How it Works
    Co-living Industry Details
    Founders of CoHo and Team
    How was CoHo Started
    CoHo – Business Model & Revenue Model
    CoHo – Funding & Investors
    CoHo – User Acquisition
    CoHo – Startup Challenge
    CoHo – Competitors
    CoHo – Growth

    About CoHo and How it Works

    CoHo is a tech-enabled platform pioneering the concept of co-living spaces in India with its managed apartments and villas for a hassle-free living experience for millennials. The company provides ready-to-move-in shared accommodations on a rental basis for young professionals and students in India. CoHo is currently operational in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore.

    CoHo co-living spaces come with all services for hassle-free living like housekeeping, WiFi, DTH Cable, repairs & maintenance, etc. Besides these, there are provisions for self-help amenities like Smart Locks, fully-automatic washing machines for laundry, ironing facilities, microwave and induction oven, fridge, tea/coffee machine, etc. The online concierge in the resident app makes sure everyone has a smooth stay at CoHo.

    Coho Logo

    CoHo has these 3Cs as its DNA –

    • Comfort – ready to use premium accommodations for a comfortable stay.
    • Convenience – forget about repair, maintenance, housekeeping, internet or power woes. CoHo will take care of it.
    • Community – You no longer need to feel lonely in a new city. Enjoy recreational lounges, fun filled events and sessions with like minded residents and be a part of the CoHo community.

    The core belief of the team is to transform the way millennials are living today in tier 1 & 2 cities across India. The USPs that CoHo boasts of are its young and vibrant community and the technology it uses to make the residents stay in CoHo delightful.

    CoHo community engagements are something which every resident looks forward to during their stay at CoHo. CoHo organizes various events, sessions and meet-ups for the residents, so that there’s no dull moment after work, holidays or on weekends. Community events act as another platform for young professionals & students living in the CoHo ecosystem to interact and engage with each other.

    CoHo believes in heavily leveraging technology to ensure a smooth stay for its residents. CoHo Resident App acts as a one stop solution for all day-to-day engagement like customer on-boarding, fee payment, complaint redressal, privileged offers, community engagement, rating experience etc. Besides, technology forms the strong backbone of all back-end processes for efficient rapid scale-up. Both technology and community engagement in each CoHo space has been key to growing CoHo’s community both emotionally and culturally.

    CoHo Residents can also avail a host of offers from their brand partners like Zomato, Beer Cafe, Max Healthcare, Fitso, Shuttl, VLCC etc.

    “There’s TV and DTH connection, high speed Wi-Fi, a pool table, a foosball table, mini golf, PS3 and regular housekeeping and maintenance, so I’d say the decor and amenities clearly set CoHo apart from hostels or PGs. The look and feel of the space is young, vibrant and energetic. Patterns in the wall paint, theme-based posters, wall arts and quirky cushion covers everywhere.”

    One has to opt for a meal plan that includes daily dinner and lunch only on weekends, as most of CoHo’s residents are young professionals who are rarely in for lunch. They have over 30 meals and the food is prepared by a professional chef provided by a third-party vendor. The CoHo team sets the basic menu, but it’s altered according to the preference of the residents. Regularly, the CoHo team reaches out to residents through the app seeking for their inputs and preferences. Based on the feedback, the menu is altered frequently to ensure the residents’ palate stays happy.

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    Co- Living Industry Details

    The 150 million urban residents that it is poised to add over the next 15 years will make India the “trailblazer” of co-living in Asia-Pacific.

    “Younger generations, fast evolving consumer trends, and the potential scalability of the (Indian) market is a real drawcard for startups and developers looking to enter the (co-living) market,” a JLL report added.

    There are 45+ Million millennials (Age group of 18 to 32) who are living in cities with high inward migration. The market size is currently pegged at approx. $93 Billion. The industry has recently picked up pace and will thrive in the coming 5 years with more players and capital coming to this industry.

    Founders of CoHo and team

    Uday Lakkar and Amber Sajid are the Founders of CoHo.

    Founders of CoHo
    Uday Lakkar and Amber Sajid

    Uday Lakkar is the founder & CEO of CoHo. He is an An IIM-Ahmedabad alumni, who worked as an investment professional, consultant and financial analyst across organizations like McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Ireo, Capital18 and EXL Service. His first venture, Zocalo.in, that went on to become one of the most successful broker-free listing platforms for PGs, hostels, shared apartments has equipped him the right knowledge that allowed him to drive CoHo towards leading position in the co-living space.

    Amber Sajid is the Co-founder of CoHo. He has 20+ experience in Real Estate with Ireo, DLF and Barista before taking up Business Development at CoHo.

    Currently CoHo has a team of 100+ people across functions of Technology, Sales, Marketing, Design, Operations & Facility Management.

    How was CoHo Started

    Uday launched Zocalo.in in 2014, which was a marketplace model for finding rental accommodations broker-free. While running Zocalo, Uday saw the actual and substandard quality of the spaces which are available for millenials. Uday realized that there is huge room for improvement in this segment which led to the pivot towards CoHo.

    CoHo was launched in 2015-end. Uday shares several instances like that of his friends from IIM-A struggling to find an accommodation in India’s largest metro city for more than a couple of months simply because of discrimination based on community background; another instance that he recollects was when he was shunned from entering so many residential societies in Gurgaon simply because he wanted to stay with his other bachelor friends from McKinsey.

    Even now we see notice boards saying “Bachelors and Dogs are not allowed here“. We feel that the overall quality of youth accommodations (for students and working professionals) in India is in an abysmal state with inconsistent services, poor infrastructure and no technology whatsoever.

    There is a crying need for a trusted brand with promise of consistent services at affordable price points in long stay accommodations segment and the team at CoHo is trying to create exactly that, and the response from the market they have received till now has been a testimony to the same.

    CoHo – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The CoHo business model runs on an asset light model. The company takes assets for long lease, then add its signature furniture, design, décor and rent it out to individual millennials for long stay. Residents pay a monthly fee which includes all the furniture, appliances, recreational amenities, housekeeping services, WiFi, repairs & maintenance etc. Typical double sharing room in CoHo ranges from INR 10,000 to 16,000 across different locations.

    CoHo – Funding & Investors

    The CoHo funding has raised more than $3 Million in two rounds till date.

    Date Stage Amount Investor
    January 2019 Venture Round – AdvantEdge Founders
    April 2016 Angel Round – Calcutta Angels

    CoHo – User Acquisition

    Coho relied upon their previous company Zocalo as a starting point to acquire the first few customers and it helped them immensely to have a smooth take off. In their process of user acquisition, referrals played a huge role on Day 1 and even today.

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    CoHo – Startup Challenges

    Major challenges faced are in terms of spreading awareness of the concept and trust building given that this industry suffers from deficit of trust over time and unprofessional approach from the brokers and service-providers alike. The problem is a bit more pronounced in markets like Delhi NCR in particular, which are huge in size yet quite an unprofessional market overall, leading to dissonance among young customers. CoHo is trying to exactly address this trust deficit issue by creating a trusted brand that promises and delivers high quality services & experience to its residents consistently given that this is typically a high-touch experience product and not an impulsive purchase for the user.

    CoHo – Competitors

    NestAway, StayAbode, Zolo and Colive are some major competitors of CoHo. Again, a huge segment of the market is still dominated by the traditional hostels or PGs, or youngsters taking apartments together in the absence of a systematic co-living space brand in India.

    CoHo – Growth

    At present, CoHo has expanded from Delhi NCR to Bengaluru. Along with this, CoHo caters to institutes like IIT Delhi, Pearl Academy, Indian School of Hospitality, Max Hospital directly as B2B partners.

    Coho has been covered extensively by leading news agencies like CNBC, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The times of India, The Telegraph, Fortune, Business Standard, India Today, The Hindu and others.

    It has also established B2B partnership with leading brands like Pizza Hut, Beer Café, Foodpanda, LensKart, Shuttl, InnerChef, Sutra pub, VanityCube etc.

    Over the recent year and a half, CoHo has witnessed a 5x growth to 3,000+ beds with INR 24 Cr annualized revenue run-rate across Delhi NCR & Bangalore. They are now looking to rapidly scale to a pan-India level with 25,000+ beds in the next 12-15 months by building on the waitlist for consumers and deep data driven understanding of the millennial lifestyle.

    The CoHo company also intends to expand to Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other Tier I cities of India soon.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    Who is the Founders of CoHo?

    The CoHo Founders are Uday Lakkar and Amber Sajid.

    How expensive is CoHo?

    Typical double sharing room in CoHo ranges from INR 10,000 to 16,000 across different locations.

    Where is CoHo operational?

    At present, CoHo is operational in Delhi NCR and Bengaluru but intends to expand to Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other Tier I cities of India soon.

  • Wellnessmonk – Online Platform for Health & Wellness Products

    E-commerce sector is growing exponentially – from daily used FMCG products to electronics, from clothes to valuables like gold or diamond – everything is available online. And now, all thanks to the e-pharmacy platforms, even medicine is available online easily. While over the counter medicine can be ordered without any prescription, other prescribed medication can be obtained by just uploading the prescription online.

    Owing to the e-pharmacy platforms, world-class medicine and health care products have now become easily available across the country. With this very aim of delivering quality healthcare products to every possible nook and corner of the country, Wellnessmonk was founded in the year 2017. The company was earlier known as ‘Pharmacyonnet’, but the name was changed to ‘Wellnessmonk’ in 2019. Now Wellnessmonk sells a wide range of products for healthcare, wellness, personal care, mother and baby care and even household products like groceries, beverages and snacks.

    Wellnessmonk – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Wellnessmonk
    Headquarter Kanpur
    Founder Gyaan Dixit
    Sector E-Pharmacy/Health
    Founded 2017
    Funding Bootstrapped
    Parent organization Dreamz Nutrition & Pharmaceutical Private Limited

    Discover more about Wellnessmonk Company Profile:

    Wellnessmonk – About and Products
    Wellnessmonk – Industry Details
    Wellnessmonk – Founder
    Wellnessmonk – The Idea and Starting Up
    Wellnessmonk – Name and Logo
    Wellnessmonk – Customer Acquisition
    Wellnessmonk – Funding
    Wellnessmonk – Revenue Model
    Wellnessmonk – Challenges
    Wellnessmonk – Competitors
    Wellnessmonk – Achievements
    Wellnessmonk – Technology Used
    Wellnessmonk – Work Culture
    Wellnessmonk – Future Plans
    Wellnessmonk – Founder’s Advice

    Wellnessmonk – About and Products

    Wellnessmonk is an online healthcare store where a wide range of health-related products are available.

    The site delivers over 10,000 products including organic grocery, imported & gourmet food items, household items, mother & baby range, personal care products for men & women, wellness items related to sports & fitness, health supplements, anti-aging products and variety of herbal & organic products.

    The delivery is available pan India and it is working towards reaching the remotest areas of the country. So why queue up outside shops when you can avail all your medications & health products, with just a click of a mouse, sitting at home and with added benefits of exciting offers & amazing discounts.

    Wellnessmonk – Industry Details

    With mobile and internet services being available across the country even in many remote places, the Government of India is taking many e-health initiatives like online medical consultation and facility for exchange of patient information pan-India. Owing to such initiatives, growing health awareness and people becoming more and more accustomed to online shopping, the e-pharmacy segment is growing fast.

    India currently has over 850,000 independent pharmacy retail stores that are able to meet only 60% of the total domestic therapeutic demand. These traditional Brick and Mortar retail pharmacies are currently responsible for 99% of the pharmaceutical sales annually with online pharmacy contributing to only 1% of the total therapeutic sales.

    The e-pharmacy segment is expected to see a growth of 20% CAGR and cross the $3 billion mark by 2024.

    Wellnessmonk – Founder

    Gyaan Dixit is the founder of Wellnessmonk.

    wellnessmonk founder/owner
    Gyaan Dixit – founder of Wellnessmonk

    Gyaan Dixit completed MBA from Pune and started working at a reputed pharmaceutical company. In 2014, he quit his job and started Dreamz Nutrition & Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd (DNPL) along with his elder brother who had a good experience in pharmaceuticals & Nutrition. Today the DNPL turnover is around INR 12 Million (2019) and manufactures 22 products among which AgeDeifier is the hot selling cake.

    Wondering how I could provide the best of products to everyone living in India & what can I do to make healthcare retailing more advance and approachable, my quest led the way to wellnessmonk.com in the year 2017,” asserts Gyaan

    Wellnessmonk – The Idea and Starting Up

    The idea struck Gyaan, while he was working on his own venture Dreamz Nutrition and Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd. with his brother Gaurav Dixit. It was his vision to provide healthcare products to the remotest areas of the country. He wanted to provide the facility where one can provide for the healthcare needs of his loved ones even when he is not near them.  

    The idea behind wellnessmonk.com is to bridge this gap by providing you a hassle-free solution to look after your family & friends and give you a sigh of relief even when you are far from them.

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    Being a one stop platform for all wellness related products, the company is named Wellnessmonk.

    Wellnessmonk Logo

    However, earlier the company was known as Pharmacyonnet. It was renamed Wellnessmonk in 2019.

    Wellnessmonk – Customer Acquisition

    As an e-platform, Wellnessmonk acquires customers online.

    As we deal in Health & Wellness, our target audience is everyone. From a newborn to the senior person we deal in each and every segment of health.

    Wellnessmonk – Funding

    The Wellnessmonk funding is non-existant currently as it is bootstrapped. However, it is planning to start its marketing cell to handle funding and association related matters, as it requires more funds for executing future plans and for promotions and endorsements.

    Wellnessmonk – Revenue Model

    Wellnessmonk generates revenue by applying a marketplace fee to every order.    

    Wellnessmonk – Challenges

    ‘Never Quit’ is the mantra that Gyaan follows while taking up challenges. According to Gyaan, doing business in India is still a hard nut to crack. Being an honest and loyal business is even tougher. It is depressing to see the wrong business getting more benefits than the deserving one. But still fighting against all odds and finding the way towards the destination is always what the Wellnessmonk team is working towards. Forming a team having adequate skills was one of the major challenges faced by the company.

    My inspiration is the people & family associated with us & when we see so much responsibility on us we always try to fight much harder with all the positive approach.

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    Wellnessmonk – Competitors

    Some competitors of Wellnessmonk are Netmeds, 1 mg, Practo, BookMeds, Yodawy, SmartMedics, WeChemist, BrownPacket, PharmEasy, Myra Medicines, HeyCare and MedPlusMart

    As said by Gyaan, there are many online platforms that are selling everything and trying to attract consumers with impractical discounts and offers. But his aim is to build Wellnessmonk as a specialized brand for healthcare products.

    The company is working towards incorporating imported and revolutionary healthcare products into the portal, which will surely give it an edge over the competitors.

    Now we are like a supermarket or say Super pharmacy where you can buy everything related to health. If we find something which is good for health then we definitely go for that.

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    Wellnessmonk – Achievements

    Wellnessmonk is currently dealing in over 10,000+ verified & trusted health products and has created a customer base of more than 80,000 customers in a short period of time. It also has over 200 vendors pan India to supply products.

    The company is registered with national & international standards. Besides, the company has acquired licenses from bodies such as Food & drug authorities, FSSAI and ISO. The startup is also recognised by Start-Up India, Food safety & standardization authority, Import export council & International Standardization.

    Wellnessmonk – Technology Used

    Wellnessmonk is a 100% technology-driven startup, having its virtual private servers. For security and performance, the company works with CDN around the globe. For online marketing, it uses email marketing, surveys & Analytics. The company has its own designed 100% customized information system and in-house uses Trello. Besides at the end to end chain, it uses Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, Bluehost, Cloudflare, Survey Monkey, Mail Chimp, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.    

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    Wellnessmonk – Work Culture

    According to Gyaan, well-disciplined & focused work culture is the most crucial factor for healthy working. At Wellnessmonk, utmost care is taken to have a positive environment with good lighting & seating arrangements and proper desks & personal space for the employees.  

    Besides this, it conducts regular group discussions & debates to bring the best out of employees. To keep the employees motivated the company also organizes surprises and socializing on every small achievement. Awards & applaud are given to employees on every breakthrough performance.  

    Perseverance, skills & loyalty are major parameters on which we judge any candidate, but it is also a fact that you can’t get 100% desirable candidates. It’s important to give an opportunity to the most appealing candidate than wait for the right one.

    Wellnessmonk- Future Plans

    Wellnessmonk’s future plans include –

    • Opening storefronts for the offline market by mid 2020.
    • Start manufacturing generic, branded & herbal medicines.
    • Starting prescription medicine service based on pin codes.
    • Starting a free of cost service where the customers can find their nearby doctor based on pin codes.

    Our strategy is to sync the existing health segment & became the biggest platform for selling health products online in India.

    Wellnessmonk- Founder’s Advice

    Invest time in making not just the product but a brand. A brand is what helps you earn a winning difference in the heart of customers. For efficient brand positioning, you need to give what is never given before i.e. the best ever quality.

    Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

    Who is the owner of Wellnessmonk?

    Wellnessmonk Founder is Gyaan Dixit.

    What is Wellnessmonk?

    Wellnessmonk is an online healthcare store where a wide range of health-related products are available.

    Is Pharmacyonnet and Wellnessmonk same?

    Yes, Pharmacyonnet was renamed to Wellnessmonk in 2019.