Startups betting on the dometic forex market worth $18 billion to scale up business, writes Vishal Krishna With Makemytrip, the travel ticketing portal, acquiring a 28 per cent stake in Bangalore-based holiday planning company, HolidayIQ for Rs 93 crore, the travel portal industry is fast heading towards raising large funds. The market size for the travel booking industry is $120 billion in India and the organised players have only 2 per cent market share. According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, the forex earned from the domestic travel industry can be as high as $18 billion. This opportunity had already started a customer acquisition war like the one that we are witnessing in the etail business and all the money raised will be spent on hiring large sales teams. They will build market share in acquiring properties to be listed on their portals and create a bidding war of consumers. Surely television channels, Google and Facebook will benefit from all this. But what about the business itself? The funding will create many startups, to set shop, and ultimately drive them towards consolidation or make them shut down. For now the system is all geared up for a massive launch. With rumours floating around that Oyo Rooms is raising Rs 630 crore from Softbank, the industry could trickle down more money. The deal would make startups like iTraveller, Stayzilla, TripHobo, Tripoto, Travel Triangle and ZipRooms to raise more money with existing investors or look for funding. Today a startup, which has raised Rs 10 crore or more, spends Rs 1 lakh per day on Facebook and Google advertising. This would mean that Rs 3.6 crore is spent per year by a small startup to increase customer traction. “We look at bettering customer experience and manage customer repeats that book on the site when they are traveling to smaller towns,” says Yogendra Vasupal, founder of Chennai-based Stayzilla. He adds that increasing traffic volumes on to the site and app is not the end game. Stayzilla raised $20 million from Nexus Ventures and Matrix Partners recently. By not focusing on customer service, the travel industry can distance consumers. Today, like every etail business, there have been customer complaints about the less than average experience after booking from several travel sites. No doubt the money will make them improve processes. But this industry too will become a victim to heavy discounting to increase consumer traffic. In the off season too prices may drop to a point where the consumer benefits with a holiday package. iTraveller’s founder Shiju Radhakrishnan says that there is a need to organise the travel industry and that the discounting model is not the right way to go about it. “You need good data about regions and the properties. So you need to organise the suppliers who provide you this data in India,” says Shiju Radhakrishnan, founder of iTraveller. He adds that India will primarily remain a customer acquisition market, through heavy rotation of television ads, because of the nascent nature of the startup industry. “Consolidation is on the cards. But the opportunity to be independent, as a startup, is large because technology is going to disrupt the travel industry by getting rid of middlemen,” says Radhakrishnan. iTraveller recently closed a round of $1 million from LetsVenture. Ticketing is dominated by Goibibo and Makemytrip and these large portals do not have holiday planning tools that are customised for individuals. These new startups provide discovery, booking, planning and experience tools that become obvious acquisition targets. Let us hope that at least this industry is deep rooted in common sense and that it does not get lost in the story of valuations and wealth creation only for fund houses.
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Manish Kumar Pathak reports on the value that the start-ups are adding to travel segmentThe travel industry is undergoing a sea-change. The new age start-ups have popped up and are re-defining the concept of planning a travel, and in many ways the travel industry. The role of these travel start-ups, and their focus on specific areas like women-only travel sites or a student-focused hostel kind of hotel chains is very interesting, and the bearing they will have on this sector was the focal point of discussion during a session that took place at the E-tailing and Travel Commerce Conference 2015. The session was moderated by Anshul Srivastava, Head Sales & Marketing, Arzoo.com, and he observed that travelling is experiential process, and that unlike previously where travelling was a more a family oriented event, people are now very keen to travel in small groups and in many cases solo. Also, what value these start-ups are adding to this segment? Piya Bose, who is the founder of Girls on the Go Club, which is women-centric group, said that when she had started her journey she was very sceptical of the idea, but in these eight years the tremendous response that she has received has changed her perception completely. She said, “These 7-8 years have been a complete revelation, and now women are themselves coming out and challenging me to give them opportunities to travel. They have the means, and travelling is not just a voyage for them but they see it is as means of empowerment. The very feeling of having organised their own tickets or dealing in foreign exchange seems to thrill them, and they want to challenge their own limits. The trend is huge, and it is only on the increase.” Speaking on the issue of bag-packers, and how the trends are changing in India, where earlier travelling was a more planned affair, Akhil Malik, Co-Founder, Zostel observed that when he started experimenting with this concept, they were not entirely sure of the results. However, the response that they received was tremendous and that financially also the model was a viable one. Malik opined, “Earlier majority of our customers (bag-packers), were foreigners (90 per cent), but in the last two-years, there has been a shift of around 65 per cent foreigners and 35 per cent Indians. So, there is a change, and youngsters who are young corporates, or just outgoing youngsters, whose idea of travelling is not staying in a hotel, but to go out and witness the landscapes, taste the cuisines, talk to other travellers and just enjoy their stay in a very different way.” On the issue of value-addition provided to the travellers, Gautam Shewakramani, Founder & CEO, AudioCompass said that they come in when there is a need to replicate the presence of a physical guidance. “We virtually hold your hands and show you around. The problem that people face from our area, is that once you leave the hotel, you do not know which place to go, what to see. Here we step in, as we provide high quality content to the people and safe information about places. Since, many people travel because of site-seeing, we come in and give them this information.” Ish Jindal, Co-founder, Padhaaro, said that his company provides assistance during the period when people actually travel. “People want to visit local places, taste local-cuisines etc., and we then step in. We allocate personal local guides who provide assistance to them.” Chitra Gurnani, Co-founder, Thrillophilia Adventure Tours, says that often when people arrive at a destination they seldom have any plans on what to do next, and this because they are not aware of the things they can do at that place. “We are that bridging gap, and we believe travelling is no more just site-seeing, but more activity based. Hence we have introduced an app called near & far which will empower the people to acquire information about the interesting things to do at a particular place.” Speaking on the role of typical travel agents, Akhil Malik observed that they have to innovate to stay relevant. Piya Bose claimed that the future is bright only when travel agents become more of an ally rather than a middleman.
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GrownOut’s software combs through candidates to compile a list of those best suited to a particular organisation, reports Simar SinghHuman Resource professionals are always on the lookout for novel ways to simplify and expedite hiring processes, while ensuring that they rope in the right person for the job. GrownOut is an integrated solution providing software as a service company which seeks to assist companies through an analysis of behaviour, using various parameters based on pre-existing commonalities to provide clients right pool of potential employees that best suit their profile. “Job boards and career sites only cater to active candidates, a segment which forms a mere 15% of the total working professionals. Moreover, this 15% may not be the right talent for a particular job profile”, says Sumit Gupta who co-founded the Gurgaon based start-up in January last year and serves as its CEO. To tackle this problem and provide hiring solutions to HR managers, the cloud based tech-company, operating on a B2B model, focuses on the recognition of a relevant talent pool, and facilitating trustworthy warm introductions and communication through a system of social referrals.“All the information needed for sourcing is today available but it is important to know, who will be suitable to your organisation and also how to contact them to make sure the talent is motivated to join your organisation,” says Gupta. GrownOut’s software combs through candidates to compile a list of those best suited to a particular organisation. This process is based on selecting people from the same college that existing employees are form, those who have worked with existing employees in their previous workplaces or those who have attended events like conferences and seminars with them. These parameters, according to Gupta, are what help create an exhaustive talent pool, from which the best match can be hired. Integral to GrownOut’s hiring solution are warm introductions through social referrals. “Cold calls in the form of calls or mails from consultants and HR personnel have all lead to spamming and a general lack of faith in communication. The best way to contact a prospective employee is if a friend asks him to join the company”, says Gupta. GrownOut uses cloud technology to gather and analyse data related to the behaviour of both the job seeker and the recruiter and ultimately simplifies the hiring procedure. According to Gupta, this helps in establishing job switching behaviour to recognise which candidate is ready to switch, ensuring that the candidate is equipped with the right skills and will culturally fit into an organization, helping HR departments to map out a clear and distinct job profiles. The company received funding from Outbox Ventures and Matrix Partners in a Series A round of funding last October, currently has 20 employees and estimates that the numbers will swell to 50 by the end of this year. Currently around 125 companies are signed up for its freemium service. This includes the likes of Ola, Quikr, Appiterate, Stayzilla and Winshuttle. And, According to Gupta, clients are quickly moving on to the premium version. “In last one year the company’s only focus was to create the right product to fit the market and we have managed to do that- creating a next-gen referral hiring solution, a concept that is globally unique. All our funds have been dedicated towards this end and we are now concentrating on client acquisition”, says the company which is currently aggressively pursuing clients in the Delhi-NCR market and soon plans to expand to other metros.
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It is turning an idea into a successful commercial story that captures the imagination of the NextGen today. Gone are the days of young people pursuing stodgy jobs; this is the age of following your passion and starting your own enterprise. BW | Businessworld applauds this spirit; and to capture it, is organising the Young Entrepreneurship Conference and Awards to felicitate the enterprise in today’s youth. The event is on 23rd July 2015 at The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon, Delhi NCR. BW | Businessworld did a special issue on startups, issue dated June 2015, and it is with this event we are felicitating the young winners who can be the potential future leaders of corporate India On the sidelines of the awards ceremony, BW Businessworld is organising a half-day conference. This is an attempt to bring the best minds together in the startup ecosystem and discuss the key attributes for entrepreneurial success. The event will kickstart by a welcome note from V Vaidyanathan, CMD of Capital First, who has been responsible for India's largest management buyout of a listed company. As part of this MBO, private equity player Warburg Pincus acquired a majority stake (70.57 per cent) in Capital First. Our first panel discussion is on how these business leaders built fastest growing companies out of India. Some of the founders that the startups can learn from are Rahul Sharma, co-founder and CEO, Micromax; Mohit Tandon, CSO, Delhivery; and Yatin Shah, founder, IIFL Wealth. Business owners have to take several decisions, big and small, every minute in their entrepreneurial journey. This can be quite overwhelming, personally and professionally. Our next discussion is on how these founders – Rahul Yadav, former CEO of Housing.com, Vikas Malpani, co-founder of Commonfloor, Neeru Sharma, co-founder of Infibeam went against the tide and stood by what they believe is right. India needs to do much more to improve the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs is a given. It ranks a low 70 out of 77 countries in the Female Entrepreneurship Index 2015 (formerly known as the Gender GEDI). It is to talk about these issues we have five women leaders — Anshulika Dubey, COO, Wishberry; Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder, Elephant Design + Strategy; Sairee Chahal, founder, SHEROES.in; Neha Juneja, co-founder and CEO, Greenway Grameen Infra; and Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik — to share their experience of building companies and suggest policy changes to get more women to join the fray. When to raise funds? How to raise money? These questions can be mind boggling for any first time entrepreneur. To unravel the funding game for these entrepreneurs we have Natarajan R, MD and CFO, Helion Ventures; Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital; Karan Mohla, executive director, IDG Ventures; and Dev Khare, MD, Lightspeed Ventures India on the panel to share their gyan.
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Before proving it to your customers you have to prove the value of your product to your employees, partners and vendors, writes Rahul Joshi After working in a corporate job for close to 12 years I decided to chase the entrepreneur dream hoping to build on the ideas that I and my partners had in mind. It’s been around four years since then and I have been part of a few ventures spread across multiple domains. To briefly sum it up, it is by no means a walk in the park running your own business. You would be hard pressed to find an entrepreneur who says it was easy. For first timers who get into it after being in a job the very first thing that you realize is that there is no such thing as a regular monthly paycheck. However you do worry about ensuring your employees get theirs. A specific role and set of responsibilities become thing of the past. Meeting a customer to try and close a deal, help manage the operations at the office and sit with a developer to discuss a technical issue, all in a single work day is a norm. Finding time on the specific thing you love doing – be it coding, designing, strategizing, marketing or anything else, does not come easily. The pressure of shipping the product or completing the project is driven by how much it costs irrespective of whether you are self-funded or backed by investors. If you cannot afford the tools and resources for the technology you want to build on, one has to look for alternatives while ensuring it still comes out as a viable product. It’s a constant endeavor to maintain a balance between the three key pillars of your business, people, product and process. At the end of the day if you are not able to sell whatever it is you are producing and make up a case as to why they should choose you, one has reached a dead end. As a founder you have to believe in the potential of your product. Before proving it to your customers you have to prove it to your employees, partners and vendors. One of the things that make it tricky is dealing with external factors that are beyond your control. As they say timing is the most important factor that decides the success of your business. The need for your product can be market driven or introduced that you believe helps solve a problem. Although willingness to adapt your product and the availability of the supporting technology required for your product to work should be at its peak. Alternatively one also falls into a trap of assumptions. We came up with a mobile based service few years ago targeted for a specific group of professionals. It was obvious in our mind that the service would make it easier for them to get to the information they need. Turns out for a set of them the existing round about approach was not a big deal while for others they were not comfortable accessing this information in a digital form as they were used to the paper format. In this case the need was for us to identify and fill the trust deficit first before offering the technology based solution. Pricing your product be it software, a service or a retail item is another challenge that you have to deal with. I always thought how hard it could be? Determine how much it costs to build the product, add margin to it as your profit and you have the number. Just considering the cost part is an exercise in itself. Consider Fixed costs, recurring cost, indirect cost, travel and logistics, operations cost to start with a few. How much you value the customer’s business, potential to up sell, support and services desired by customer, volume involved, expected delivery timeline, resource availability on your end, available cash flow to invest up front are few of the other things to account for. Based on the domain you will have more but not less. Then there is competition, current economic environment, and your ability to sustain and scale that further influence your pricing. However not all is gloomy. Had it not been for getting into starting on your own I may have not started my own blog, may have not spoken at a few gatherings, got to travel, get to learn entirely new domains and dare to write, however imperfect it may be. Of course nothing prevented me from doing all this in past jobs as well but now these opportunities came to be more obvious to take up. Sometimes your vision of what is possible becomes limited by what you are exposed to. These ventures forced me to learn aspects like branding or accounting which were way out of my league. I have a new found respect and understanding for disciplines that I had not thought about before and how significant they are in contributing towards the success of any business. I always envied the freedom entrepreneurs enjoyed with their time. Although you can choose your own work hours taking the time out though is hard to come by. There is a certain threshold the business has to cross to free yourselves from the everyday operation and maybe afford a vacation. Until that happens you may have to see your friends post pictures from their outings while you are hunkered down to ensure you meet the basic need of food and paying your kids school fees. But that’s what you signed up for in the first place, didn’t you?The author, Rahul Joshi, is a start-up entrepreneur and founder of nectarfarm.com
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Sanjay Swamy is a start-up veteran. His friends say that his out-of-box thinking has led him to scale up operations of several businesses. In 2006, when he was the CEO of mCheck, Swamy worked with telecom and banking regulators to help build regulations for mobile commerce. Perhaps, he was perhaps the first to scale up this industry. In 2015, Twitter acquired Bengaluru-based mobile marketing and analytics company ZipDial. And the deal enabled Swamy to entirely focus on start-ups. His investment arm called Angel Prime is a $10 million fund which incubates technology companies and youngsters with ideas that can benefit the mobile Indian. They have invested in 8 companies so far. Speaking to BW | Businessworld's Vishal Krishna, Swamy says the company will close at least six deals per year. Excerpts from the interview:Finally, Sebi has come out with listing norms. At least, it would be easier for entrepreneurs to list in their own country?It is a welcome move. Having a friendly vehicle is very important for investors. There are solid start-ups in India and now with the norms being put out, it's only going to increase investment in India. The numbers are here to stay, just take a look at the smartphone penetration and the number of opportunities that it has presented to build technology that can change lives. China was like this in 2007 and they have seen a massive ramp up of start-ups since. But it is still early days because we need to look at the nuts and bolts of the listing norms. What interests you in ideas today?Today people learn from the past mistakes. There are young entrepreneurs who are willing to fail and are ready to work with new ideas. It is interesting to note that Indian companies are now started by boys and girls who are between 21 and 29 years of age. There are older people who are also becoming start-up founders. The last five years has seen Indian entrepreneurs become bolder because of the penetration of smart phones and the sheer population size presents several business opportunities. I have noticed older people join start-ups because they want to back the idea and cash in on the growth upon an ideas success. Where do we come in? We come in at a very early stage as a fund and provide value whenever needed. What we will not do is to make decisions on behalf of entrepreneurs. But one must remember that we spend months evaluating ideas and we are not a fund that invests in a company because we want to be everywhere. We are focused on technology. By that I mean financial technology, payments, security, education technology and internet of things. The ideas we back we hand hold them.How do you evaluate an entrepreneur?First he should know why he wants money. Then he should know who he is taking money from. We are disappointed at times because we close only 1 in 10 engagements that we make. Some deals do not close because the founders have not evaluated the market that they want to serve. It is sometimes compelling to back the opportunity alone. Before raising a fund an entrepreneur should also validate the idea. The idea should have gone through certain iterations. This makes it easier for a fund to invest in. We have a lot of success with start-ups serving business to business companies. Is there a particular reason for the same?Yes the consumer game requires velocity which is why we notice that companies that succeed have such high valuations. In the B2B industry we have seen successful start-ups because there are clients adopting a technology. It may also be because this business does not require scale. It needs paying customers. But the BBC business requires a large understanding of the customers and consumption behaviour. A start-up in either case must understand their target market.We want to back ideas that will not be copied easily. Today capital is no longer a differentiator. Four or five years ago you could raise money and people would talk about you. Today all funds are looking at fundamentals and unit economics is the key. Also in a start-up more things go wrong than good. The competition today is in acquiring teams that can ramp up an idea. I would say that there are challenges to find a company that can disrupt the market with the least capital. That said I get 1000s of ideas in my mail box. It would be interesting to see what business models will succeed. But we are looking at technology and how it can be scaled for enterprises to win more consumers to clients.
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The Pune-based Hinjewadi Industries Association along with Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation set up a shuttle bus service called MetroZip “Daily 2,50,000 employees come to Hinjewadi to work and this number increases every year by 10-12 per cent,” says Anil Patwardhan, president of the Hinjewadi Industries Association, an industrial association for companies based out of Hinjewadi area of Pune. He adds that there has been no major infrastructural development, road or flyover, in the last five or six years. “There is only one three km long road that leads to the industrial park and it gets highly congested during office hours. Being stuck on that road for two hours every day has become a normal routine,” Patwardhan adds. In September last year, HIA along with Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) proposed a private transport system to ease the traffic woes of Hinjewadi and the area around it. They got facility management company Supreme Facility Management (SFM) on board to be their transport vendor and did a pilot study last year. They realised that 30 per cent of the employees were using four-wheelers, 35 per cent would use two-wheelers and the rest used company provided buses or other means. The idea was to discourage one-car-one-user practice and get these 65 per cent people using independent transport to start using shuttle service. So, in September 2014 they launched a shuttle bus service called MetroZip. They started with four popular routes in Pune with 13 buses. In the first week of the project 70 people registered on the online portal to use its service, shares Prashant Mohite, Chief Operating Officer of SFM. The popularity of this project grew by leaps and bounds and by December 2014, 700 started using its service daily, he informs. Along with that, SFM kept doing more surveys and realised the need for buses at several more routes. Due to the growing demand in February 2015 they started with 24 more routes with 38 buses. In fact, companies like Tata Technologies have shifted all their 650 employees to use MetroZip, shares Mohite. SFM is also trying to get WiFi and other facilities in the buses to make the commute more attractive and get more and more people to use this service. Presently, they have 48 routes all over the city of Pune with 74 buses and are catering to 3000 people per day. “From these 2,300 are those that have ditched their private vehicles for the bus,” shares Patwardhan, president of the HIA. “Due to MetroZip, more and more companies are applying to become the member of Hinjewadi Industries Association,” he quips.
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In the science fiction blockbuster, StarWars, the Dark Star is a loathed spacecraft that has the power to destroy planets. Its conquest of space is halted by a band of rebels who believe that the universe has to be freed from the wrath of dictatorship. Such is the scene that one witnesses, in the consumer internet world, that it is a battle royale for the mobile universe and advertising 'space'. The adversaries are Google and Facebook, on one side, versus a "federation" of smaller adtechnology companies. These wars often go unnoticed and need to be looked at from the context of opportuntiy. Publicis, the advertising giant, says that mobile ad spends will grow to $45 billion in 2016 from a mere $13.5 billion in 2013.Giant KillersThese adtech companies or startups represent the little guys, millions of app developers and media houses, who cannot afford to advertise on Google or Facebook. There is new hope seeding in the industry. It has taken root in the form of mobile app advertising; a 3.0 version powered by InMobi. Its platform called Miip is going to make publishers not just access advertising, but it also enables advertisers to get personal with their target audience, by engaging them with creative pop-ups, and will ultimately make them buy services. The platform is breath of fresh air to the already struggling adtech ecosystem.However, one must be aware that Google and Facebook have begun offering micro stores, of retailers, within their apps. The only problem is that neither Google nor Facebook have invested in tracking consumer habits and have no way of telling what happens when consumers move from one app to the other, which is InMobi's big bet on taking on these internet giants. The two years of hard work has taken shape in the form of the Death Star destroyer. The timing, of this platform, is a perfect media run for InMobi.It also believes that Miip can bring 1 billion consumers worldwide which will create a substantial business for InMobi, which is a direct $300 million business that can go in to its top line in 2 years. The company does not confirm this number, it obviously has a billion dollar business in its mind. But just when some of us wrote off adtechnology, as a business, it seems that there is a force out there, after all, that can stop the oligopoly of the mobile app economy.Unfortunately, for these startups, today Google and Facebook have, along with Twitter and LinkedIn, captured 80 percent of the mobile ad-space. There are a clutch of Indian startups like Adnear, InMobi, VServ and Vizury that believe personal and engaging advertisements are the future of the mobile app economy. Like all small companies they have made their fair share of mistakes and are now becoming data-led companies.Advertisers first wanted something that could measure consumer intent and there began the creation of adtechnology 2.0, which offered data analytics on user habits in apps. These platforms helped app developers understand their users and in the process offered personal banner ads to consumers. There was an intrinsic problem in this model for adtech companies. While there was a revelation that a data oriented approach could be the next best thing, it was not inducing customers to close transactions. Companies were placing ads on real time bidding platforms with intelligence and advertisers began forcing their hand and doubting the merits of the 2.0 technology.But what is the use of measuring when there is no incentive provided to transact. There was speculation that the adtechnology industry would eventually collapse or merge into one or two entities. This is precisely why InMobi's Miip is going to be a game changer for publishers and advertisers. The platform itself promises to create multiple business models beyond just impression-based payments. For retailers it will allow them to target users even when they move from one app to the other. Say a customer is browsing between a grocery shopping app and a movie app, the platform can help advertisers, in this case the movie and the grocery app, to make an offer to the customer for product gratification. This will change mobile app advertising forever, which means the Miip platform is open to anyone with an intention of capturing and converting an audience. People have called this phenomenon of tracking customers between apps deep linking. Flipkart and Snapdeal are working on a similar model to target consumers. Who knows they may make a splash with InMobi in the months to come.The question is will this 3.0 version of adtech companies work? BW Businessworld observes that this platform can be used by the likes of Walmart, Ford, General Motors, Fox News and the like. These are companies that have missed the consumer mobile internet revolution and are in serious need of engaging their consumers on the mobile. By the way Miip also reminds us of the "road runner" cartoon, courtesy Warner Brothers, where the bird, which outwits the wily Coyote every time he plans to trap it, announces its arrival and getaway with the famous call "meep-meep". But are these adtech companies fast enough to catch the Dark Star? Over the next 18 months we will either see adtechnology companies collapse or they will rise as the new Republic of the ad-space with several private equity and venture capital funds backing them to battle Google or a Facebook.
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Rahul Yadav, the ex-CEO, of Housing.com, announced on Facebook that he will be back with his new venture in a month. Sources said the new venture could be in the real estate sector. While it is still too early to know who are his investors this time, the innate brilliance of Yadav cannot be undermined but this time around, investors are sure to want to know how he would scale it, build his team, and do more due-diligence around it. In 2012, Yadav, along with his batchmates from IIT, co-founded Housing.com. Investors had bet big on it and pumped in $121 million in four rounds.Meanwhile Yadav posted on his FB profile these words:"If the path is smooth, dig your own holes. If no challenges, create them on your own.'Just for the sake of practice. Just to push yourself to the extreme. Just to become stronger. Just to make things interesting. Just to make things fun.I'll be back...this time with 100x.... [10x of last formula (10x)]30 days to go.Is the world ready?" Yadav was sacked by the Housing.com board on July 1 for his behaviour with investors and media. “The board believes his behaviour is not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company, known for its innovative approach to product development, market expansion and brand building,” the company had said.Last week, Housing.com appointed Rishabh Gupta as the interim CEO of the realty portal. Search for an interim chief executive is underway.
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Mumbai-based crowdfunding platform for social, personal and creative projects, Ketto has raised $700,000 in funding led by Pradyumna Dalmia, deal champion of Calcutta Angels and Sudhir Rao, deal champion of The Chennai Angels & co-founder of IndusAge Partners.The other investors in the round includes - Singapore angel network, Anupam Mittal, Indian Internet Fund, Letsventure, Chennai Angels, Calcutta Angels, Intellecap Impact Investment Network (I3N), Ah Ventures, & Project Guerrilla. With the infused funds, the startup plans to double its technology and business development team with an aim to reach $100m in volumes via crowdfunding. Ketto also plans to expand operations in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other South-East Asian countries.Varun Sheth, Co-founder & CEO, Ketto said, “The fresh round of funds will be used to build a world class platform which will facilitate users to raise funds across multiple categories for any project of their choice.”With global crowdfunding market estimated to reach $96 billion by 2025 and Asia being the key growth driver, Ketto is uniquely positioned to amass maximum support for any projects – be it disaster, social, technology, creative or personal.Sudhir Rao, the Chennai Angels and co-founder of IndusAge Partners said, “It is creating a platform where everyone has an equal chance to raise funds for any project: be it social or commercial.”Founded in October, 2012 by Varun Sheth, Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor and Zaheer Adenwala, Ketto is Asia’s largest crowdfunding platform for social, personal and creative projects in Asia according to crowdsurfer.com. The company has witnessed a growth of 3000% year-on-year basis in terms of volumes, and in the past few months, has been crowdfunding close to a crore monthlyIn the last 12 months, multiple celebrities & corporates have backed various projects by raising funds on Ketto, The list includes names like - Hritik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Anuskha Sharma, Myntra, StarSports, among others. Recently, Ketto has created first-of-its-kind partnership with Lakme Fashion Week - to provide a platform to the seven Gen Next designers to garner funds to launch their label at the upcoming showcase in August, 2015 in Mumbai.(BW Online Bureau)
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