In the matter of a few years, India is seeing tremendous growth of startups and unicorns. If we talk about the growth of startups, it is not something that has happened overnight. Due to the lack of proper funding and investor network, the startup culture in India took its own sweet time to grow.
Although, the concept began over four decades ago. Through those years, there have been significant numbers of many industries, which have restored the Indian economy. It is now that the idea of a startup has garnered a lot of attention. The world of startups and unicorns is not just in the USA anymore.
Today, India is number three in terms of having the highest number of startups. In 2020, when the world came to a standstill because of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, indeed there were tensions around but in reality, it has accelerated the growth of startups not only in India but around the world.
Recently, Google announced that they have launched a platform called ‘Google Startup School India” to help around 10,000 startups in India, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Before we dig into what is Google Startup school, let’s first understand what a startup actually is.
A startup is a company that is in its beginning and development stage. It is started in order to provide unique solutions to problems that have never been solved before or to provide much better solutions to recreate in a more efficient manner for the already existing problems.
Earlier, the idea of startup was linked to Silicon Valley in the U.S as we all saw the peak of many startups like Facebook, Microsoft, and many others. As a result of globalisation, and privatisation, the dynamics have changed in India, when the government encouraged people to set up their own businesses. This day, Bangalore in India is the startup hub.
What Is Google Startup School?
In 2011, Google launched a program called Google for Startups. The idea behind this initiative is to partner up with local startup communities to help them by providing tools and workshops for the local startup companies. They also have Google Campus, which is a co-working space for young tech entrepreneurs.
Google for Startups Website
On July 6, 2022, Google made an announcement of its new program called Startup School India (SSI) as a part of the Google for Startups initiative intending to build a systematic curriculum to help 10,000 startups in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in the country.
This initiative by Google Startup School is a nine-week virtual platform where investors, successful entrepreneurs, and programmers from across the startup ecosystem will join together for discussions and sharing of ideas.
Google’s main focus is to reach out to the huge network of startups in India through this ambition. Google saw the potential of Indian startups as the country homes nearly 70,000 startups. Not in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, or Mumbai, there are fast-growing companies in cities like Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Indore too.
According to survey experts, 90% of startups fail in their first five years all because of a lack of knowledge, unorganised cash flow, lack of leadership, and insufficient funding.
Response of Indian Entrepreneurs to Google Startup School
Some Indian entrepreneurs think that this initiative will be a good start for many Indian startups. Hear their thoughts about this:
Rahul Garg, Founder of Moglix says,
“Startup enterprises in India have been known to be innovative and nimble-footed in responding to business challenges. This is testified by the fact that Indian startup enterprises have filed 6000 patent applications in the United States, thus representing 60% of the total patent applications in the country. The combination of intellectual power, original thinking, creative application, and technology, as well as a fertile economic ground to experiment in a market full of problems and opportunities, has resulted in considerable growth of these businesses, with many of them turning into Unicorns. The Google Startup School will provide an avenue to entrepreneurs to come out of their closet and look for opportunities.”
Varun Alagh, Co-founder of Mamaearth says,
“Google has always believed in giving back to the startup ecosystem and this initiative lives the spirit. After working with thousands of startups they truly understand the need gaps which their Startup School initiative aims to bridge.”
The said programme will feature various instructional modules on how to shape an effective strategy, road mapping to building apps for users in India, and such. Besides these modules, the agenda will also provide opportunities for founders to have an understanding from discussions given in the platform as to what makes an effective founder and creator and much more.
The Agenda of the Google Startup School Initiative: Why Is It Happening Now?
India is booming with young entrepreneurs, which is why Google is here to offer these entrepreneurs the technical skills to build a startup. They aim to train 10,000 startups in small cities.
With the help of this programme, the participants can develop their entrepreneurial skills and professional skills, and boost their confidence which will ultimately allow them to perform the role of a manager in a better way and increase their earning potential as well.
The course will provide hands-on training and projects for startup founders. They will be equipped with tools and workshops that are needed for them to succeed in creating a tech startup. The programme will be led by many Google experts, founders, and VCs, who will share their knowledge and experience through live classes.
How Can You Be a Part of the Google Startup School?
If you are a budding entrepreneur from tier 2 and tier 3 city, who is looking for knowledge on how to start a tech company, then this course is for you.
You can simply register on their website by signing up with your Gmail account. You can sign up for any specific event of your choice. After successful registration, you will receive an email confirmation with all the details about the event.
Google Startup School India
Although the course is open to everyone, it is mainly focused on startup founders only with an exclusive space where they can interact and ask relevant questions.
Conclusion
India has many talented minds but the gap between them in reaching their goals is hindered because of a lack of meaningful guidance. Google’s initiative is going to fill the gap and act as a bridge for them by training them at an early stage so that they can be a better version of the entrepreneur they want, that our country is looking for and deserves to have.
FAQs
Does Google invest in startups?
Yes, Google has a venture capital investment arm, Google Ventures which has invested in 500 companies.
What does Google for startups do?
Google for startups helps entrepreneurs meet the right people and supports thriving startups to grow.
The whole millennial generation today is all about renting rather than owning! Right? Be it shared cabs, carpools, co-working spaces, or renting home accessories, millennials are up for it. And following that premise, IIT-Guwahati graduates – Manish S. Sugandhi, Shubham Jain and Aditya Sharma launched GrabOnRent in the year 2015. Read this article to know more about GrabOnRent founders, competitors, funding, growth, wiki, and future plans.
GrabOnRent attempts to promote optimal utilization of the products by offering flexible rental times. This means that you can rent the item either on an hourly, daily or monthly basis.
GrabOnRent is ideally a product rental marketplace that aggregates various vendors in the market who own brick-and-mortar shops for rentals to the buyers on the platform. The idea of the co-founders behind GrabOnRent is to provide accessibility of the home products like furniture and other categories to everybody irrespective of their capacity to buy it.
GrabOnRent helps its users in renting products online across 8 major categories namely furniture, appliances, eventsupplies which includes lights, sound systems, etc, bicycles, cameras, gaming consoles, party items like hukka, barbeque, etc, and adventure gear. Also, it essentially enables the renting of cool gadgets such as Pebble Smartwatch, Kindle e-book readers, and Hoverboards. GrabOnRent has a provision that allows the buyer to try the product before buying for a minimal amount.
GrabOnRent summer advertisement
GrabOnRent follows a clear methodological bucket system to address the concerns of a wide population like in India. These four buckets are as follows:
Discoverability – This bucket is all about creating awareness in the market and amongst the target market allowing them to browse the possible and available products on rent.
Quality Assurance in refurbished products – This bucket stands in the list to improve the ‘sticky-ness’ towards the service GrabOnRent is providing and also gain the loyalty of the suppliers who have recurring customers due to the consistently improved quality.
Convenience – This bucket includes online payment mechanisms (or COD) and effective logistics service, to and fro so that seamless experience can be provided to the consumers.
Trust – This bucket involves dealing with a much-specialized product rental firm against vendor forms the basic layer of trust apart from the combination of quality assured products and supreme customer service to the users of GrabOnRent.
GrabOnRent Logo
Things work pretty simply on GrabOnRent. All the users need to do is browse through the superiorly extensive array of products, then select the item they want to buy and go on to make the payment online towards the rent and security deposit. The item gets delivered to the user’s doorstep, without any further delay.
Each item at GrabOnRent passes through a very strict and stringent quality check before getting shipped to, therefore, ensure the best of services to the users. Post usage, the item gets picked up from the doorstep and the security deposit is returned online after verification and quality check of the used item.
GrabOnRent has essentially tapped into the market that is being brought by the constantly shifting millennials of the current generation. These millennials do not care that much about putting down roots as the generations before them.
Moreover, this saves them a lot of money as well so obviously, this seems like a better option to them. On GrabOnRent’s website, the users can rent products as per their convenience, be it for an hour or a day or even for months and years. The interesting part is that both refurbished and new products are listed on this website.
GrabOnRent – Founders and Team
The founders of GrabOnRent are Manish S. Sugandhi, Shubham Jain and Aditya Sharma.
GrabOnRent – Founders
Shubham Jain is the Co-founder and CEO at GrabOnRent. An IIT Guwahati graduate, Shubham has earlier co-founded Trip Engineers. Before GrabOnRent, he was working with Perdix Business Solutions as the Head of User Experience.
Aditya Sharma is the Co-founder and CTO at GrabOnRent. Again, graduated from IIT Guwahati, Aditya was a senior R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard before launching his current venture.
Manish S. Sugandhi, Co-founder of GrabOnRent – This venture is not Manish’s first. Before this one, he had co-founded Perdix Business Solutions and was a Business Analyst at Flipkart. And Manish is also an IIT- Guwahati graduate.
Everything around GrabOnRent started during one of the founders’ own crises moments. And that’s exactly when the idea for GrabOnRent struck them. So it happened so that they had to organize a barbecue for a party one evening, and they ended up having a tough time just to find out where to rent it from.
And they finally decided to buy a new one because there seemed to be no way they could avail it on rent. This particular experience drew the founders closer to the tremendous amount of hassles people face while renting objects, and this triggered a new idea.
GrabOnRent – Startup Launch
“As the idea for GrabOnRent started taking shape and we were drawing out a plan of action, we had some reservations – what should be our target group, should we launch a fully functional product or a hacky one, which categories to start with, should we introduce an app-only model or an app-website model, etc”, says Shubham Jain, co-founder of GrabOnRent.
The founders then finally decided to keep the ever-increasing questions aside and they moved forward to launching their venture. Hence, GrabOnRent was launched with two preliminary categories in Bangalore. And to reach out to the target audience, the team started distributing pamphlets and as a result of which they also got the first few clients in the first week itself. All of this was followed by the fairly good inflow of orders, positive customer feedback, and guidance from industry leaders, GrabOnRent paved its way forward to the successful journey of building a startup.
Grab On Rent competes with other startups in the space like Rentomojo, Rentwala, Rentongo, Rentmasti, RentSher, etc. However, GrabOnRent is perceived to have only two of these startups as its real competitors. They are Furlenco and Rentomojo. Grab On Rent considers these two as competition for the simple reason that these startups have huge amounts under their kitties. Amongst these, Furlenco is into the opulent furniture segment and Rentomojo is dealing with furniture and appliances and both of these hold inventory whereas GrabOnRent doesn’t.
GrabOnRent – Funding and Investors
The funding amount of GrabOnRent stands at $3 million.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
June 2016
Seed Round
$1 Million
IvyCap Ventures, Unicorn India Ventures
June 2017
Venture Round
–
IvyCap Ventures, Unicorn India Ventures
April 2018
Venture Round
$2 Million
IvyCap Ventures, Unicorn India Ventures
GrabOnRent is funded by 2 investors – Unicorn India Ventures and IvyCap Ventures.
GrabOnRent – Growth
Serves more than 35,000 customers
The average ticket size of INR 1800
The average rental duration is about 12 months
Team size of 103 across four cities
Currently active in four cities- Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Gurugram.
Sells more than 500 unique products across 8 different categories
“Moving ahead, some of our plans are – We are strongly focused on expansion, and have immediate plans to launch our services in Pune, NCR region and Chennai. We wish to increase awareness about our platform and have more and more people use our services for renting purposes. Our target is to have around 2 million customers by the end of 2020″, concluded Shubham Jain, co-founder of GrabOnRent.
However, sadly GrabOnRent Shut down their operations in September of 2020. It might have been due to their inability to raise more funds, being ahead of their time or them losing the trademark infringement case by GrabOn It could be a culmination of all three.
GrabOnRent – FAQs
What is GrabOnRent?
GrabOnRent helps its users in renting products online across 8 major categories namely furniture, appliances, eventsupplies which includes lights, sound systems, etc, bicycles, cameras, gaming consoles, party items like hukka, barbeque, etc, and adventure gear.
Does GrabOnRent own the products?
GrabOnRent doesn’t own any of the items. It is a marketplace, wherein based on the customers’ choice it collects the product from the vendor and delivers it. After the completion of rental tenure it returns the product back.
Who is the founder of GrabOnRent?
The founders of GrabOnRentare Manish S, Sugandhi, Shubham Jain and Aditya Sharma.
What is Rent-to-Own?
Rent-to-Own is a specially designed program. Wherein You can try the products by using them on rent and if you love them so much that you can’t live without them, purchase them from GrabOnRent at special discounted prices that are pre-defined.
Is it better to buy or rent furniture?
Buying your own furniture is an expensive process, requiring a high amount of money that requires to be paid up front. Whereas the key benefit of renting furniture is the fact that only a negligible amount is paid up front, with a reasonable rent to be paid monthly.
Has GrabOnRent Shut down?
Yes, unfortuntely, GrabOnRent has to shutdown operation in September of 2020.
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 Finin.
Suman Gandham was fascinated by the Neobanking wave in Europe. A neobank is a type of digital bank without any branches. Neobanking is completely online, rather than having physical presence at a location.
Founded in February 2019, Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country. Since the launch in December 2020, Finin has seen about 4000 account opens and is looking forward to many in the coming days. One can open Finin Savings account in under 2 minutes with minimum KYC. Finin is a hyper-personalized neobanking platform, made with the purpose to bridge gaps using technology and help people develop a better relationship with money by simplifying antiquated banking services.
StartupTalky interviewed Suman Gandham (Founder of Finin) to get an idea on the Startup Story of Finin and to have a closer look on Finin Success Story, Funding, Business Model, Startup Idea, Founders, Growth & more…
Founded in 2019, Bengaluru based startup Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country.
Finin provides users with a savings account powered by SBM and issues a VISA debit card. Finin helps empower users with Goal driven solutions via converting them into highly savings-driven financial disciplinarians through smart & relevant notifications, hyper-personalized solutions and nudge theorem to guide them into the 50-30-20 rule seamlessly.
Finin – Industry and Target Market
Finin is relevant across industries and market sizes and essentially a relevant product for anybody who has a smartphone and uses PFM (Personal Financial Management) or banking apps.
There is market size of 0.76 Billion, Finin can tap into. Finin started by targeting Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Its main focus is white collar job holders with a salary range of 30k to 90k per month, freelancers, students and millennials.
Finin breaks its user base into 3 broad umbrellas – Spenders, Savers and Borrowers. The aim here is to convert Spenders and Borrowers into Savers and funnel them into the Invest category.
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram are the Co-founders of Finin
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram
When Suman Gandham, Founder of Finin, came back from Europe with the idea to start a neobank in India, he was already bouncing ideas off of Sudheer Maram, co-founder of Finin who is also from a Financial background.
They both share an entrepreneurial mindset and are childhood friends. They soon joined hands to start working on Finin in February 2019. Sudheer did a BE in Computer Science from Madras University. He has been heavily involved in the Financial space and worked as a senior analyst with Infosys. He heads Marketing & Operations in Finin while Suman handles the tech, product and business side of the company.
Finin founders and team
The company has 15 employees currently. The work culture is highly motivated, driven and at most times fun.
“We work and eat together like a family. We celebrate small victories and help each other across departments” – Says Suman Gandham (Founder, Finin)
The early core team was a well picked list of recommendations from friends and family and the singular motive was to identify those candidates who had a passion for the idea and the appetite to work in a competitive environment.
Luckily for Finin, the core team is aligned to the vision and mission of the company and are keen followers of the Fintech and product innovation space. Its core team members are from Fintech backgrounds. Most of them have worked in startups where they have helped products go from 0-1 and everybody has a shared affinity for the problem Finin is determined to solve.
Suman was a Fintech VC in Barcelona and was fascinated by the neobanking wave that gripped the continent. Having observed some of the most successful neobanks and their inner workings, Suman was clear that a concept like this in india was absolutely essential.
He was already in conversation with Sudheer Maram, his childhood friend, a fintech space enthusiast and a finance industry person to brainstorm and lay the foundation of the idea. Sudheer, jumped the bandwagon and soon in Feb 2019, the company was founded.
“A lot of people claim that India is underbanked, however the reality is that it is indeed overbanked. The only loose end is that the solutions offered by most banks are strikingly similar in a manner to say that they lack personalization, apt utilization of data or technological inclusions to make the customer journey seamless and intuitive. The banking infrastructure is indeed a cumbersome and tedious journey.A hyper-personalized neobanking platform like ours is made with the purpose to bridge gaps using technology and help people develop a better relationship with money by simplifying antiquated banking services” Says Suman Gandham, Founder of Finin
Finin is based out of Bangalore, India and was founded in February 2019. It went live on 2nd December 2019 as the first consumer neobank in India. Finin is an online-only consumer neobanking solution partnered with SBM Bank India. By creating an account, one essentially creates a Finin Savings account and is issued a Visa Signature powered debit card.
Finin – Product, Features and How it Works
Finin has created an easy-to-do onboarding sequence that lets a person create a Finin Savings account in under 2 minutes with minimum KYC. Once the SBM powered bank account is created, a VISA Finin debit card is automatically issued and delivered to the user. While the card arrives, the virtual card has a lot of functions which allows for online payments and transactions.
Further to this, a user has the opportunity to link their other bank accounts to the app to get a rounded view of all transactions and balance in one-app view. This in fact is a very sought after feature as per Finin users.
The Finin app also gives one the functionality to create monthly budgets, basis which nudge theorem, AI powered analytics and insights are used to send users the save-spend data, recommendations on the best practices, reminders on trial subscription cancellations, bill payments, tracking refunds and even highly personalized notifications such as whether a user must opt in for merchant embedded features like Zomato Gold or Swiggy Super.
The nudge theorem employs the 50-30-20 rule to guide users effortlessly towards smart financial choices. One can create Goals on the app to practice discipline and allocate a weekly or monthly amount towards this goal. This goal comes with an added feature called Round off transactions feature which when opted for, an extra amount of the users preference is deducted and saved aside for the Goal. This is akin to finding money in your old jeans pocket.
The main idea of Finin is to convert spenders and borrowers into savers and eventually investors so that they move down the road to financial discipline and further still financial independence.
Right from a high utility neobanking app offering improved features such as easy transactions, easy card management which includes blocking or unblocking a card at the click of a button or enabling/ disabling contactless payments, international payments, ATM withdrawals and online transaction through the app easily and limitlessly, Finin also offers a suite of wealth management features such as budgeting and goal management. These features come gratis with nudge theorem powered insights and analytics that will not only give one a fullscape view of finances but also guide one into financial planning, discipline and independence.
Every new concept comes with its fair share of hurdles but nothing that has been difficult to overcome. We have fostered some very meaningful partnerships to align with our vision and offer the best version of the product we intended to create – Says Suman (Founder, Finin)
Finin is an acronym for Financial independence and that is how the team arrived at the name. The tagline, a new approach to banking was in fact exactly what the founders were sure to create. The logo is a tiered arrow pointing upwards indicating monetary stability, growth and independence.
Finin Logo
Finin – Business Model and Revenue Model
Finin is an app-based platform available in iOS and android devices. The founders intently looking at the user behavior and based on the findings, they we will be hashing out a revenue model at a later stage.
Finin – Startup Launch and Customer Retention
Finin team have been running a waitlist for a less than a year and nearly 10,000 people were already on the waitlist. So Finin’s beta and first set of customers came from here.
Finin noticed the largest influx from word of mouth marketing. The Finin team did things right by talking about Finin way before launch and onboarding a waitlist of exclusive early users. This also created noise among Fintech buffs and others in general. Customer retention is purely based on the features already implemented and the future roadmaps.
“We strive to offer impeccable and quick customer service which also aids with Customer retention” Says Finin Founder
The adoption of a new concept within the Indian population which is so hardwired to use tried and tested banking names, is probably the only challenge in paper. However, the Finin team have been able to navigate through this seamlessly by creating awareness, addressing the problem and solution together and even propagating financial literacy.
There is a general unawareness of finances and money management across India. Growing up, everybody is told to save but not quite told how. FDs and RDs ruled the roost but the general populace is unaware of smart financial decisions, the right financial terms and jargons and cannot, due to lack of awareness, pick the right options for themselves when it comes to selecting the best financial manager suite.
Banking institutions lack personalization due to their one-size-fits-all approach. It is also cumbersome to gain a 360 degree view of financial management and investments through such institutions. Having identified this problem, Finin aims to work as a go-to app for everyone’s money management.
Finin – Marketing Campaign
sincThe team at Finin noticed that quirky and relevant campaigns do extremely well. It ran a series called #NoWayHosay on its social media platforms. It also ran a #CashAgainstHumanity contest which really boosted Finin’s traction.
Since Finin’s launch in December 2019, it has seen about 4000 account opens and many more are coming on a day on day basis. The product adoption has been excellent as per customer feedback.
Finin raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures and are in the process of going for Series A round.
Finin’s funding details are as follows-
Date
Amount
Series
Investors
July 2020
Undisclosed
Pre Series A
Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital, Astir Ventures
Finin – Advisors and Mentors
Finin’s Investors are its mentors – Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
Finin – Recognition and Achievements
Finin has been featured across podcasts, media houses, publications and much more through the course of 2020. Some notable ones are Yourstory, Mint, Business Today, CNBC TV18, ET, etc
Finin – Future Plans
Finin has a lot of feature roll outs planned in the near future. Mutual funds, investments, lending and credit cards are a few of them.
Finin – FAQs
What is Finin?
Finin is India’s first, full-fledged consumer neobank to go live in the country. Finin provides users with a savings account powered by SBM and issues a VISA debit card.
Who are Finin Founders?
Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram are the Co-founders of Finin
What is Neobanking?
A neobank is a type of digital bank without any branches. Neobanking is completely online, rather than having physical presence at a location.
How much is Finin Funding?
In July 2020, Finin raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A from Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
Who are Finin investors?
Unicorn India Ventures, Point one capital and Astir Ventures
What is the USP of Finin?
Finin provides a high utility neobanking app offering improved and personalized features such as easy transactions, card management, wealth management features, budgeting and goal management and more.
