Who would have thought that tech giants Microsoft, Adobe or Yahoo would have security bugs in their websites? It took two teenagers from India to point out bugs that could potentially have led to a hacking attack and caused financial loss to these behemoths. For their amazing intrusion detection abilities, Shikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna, then 19, received a cheque for $1000 from Yahoo, spurring them to burn the midnight oil and create a Intrusion Detection Software, Astra, while pursuing a 4-year residential program at NIIT University’s sprawling campus in the Aravali ranges, 90 kilometres from Delhi. The duo launched a start up Czar Securities (www.czarsecurities.com) to sell their product. Astra secures websites of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and e-commerce portals from attacks by sneaky hackers who have the devious ability to override standard security software on websites. What started as a hobby for Shikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna, who are both 21 now, was strengthened by technology grounding as part of their BTech Computer Science program at NIIT University (NU). Now in their final year of studies at NU, Shikhil and Ananda value the amazing support they got from their alma mater - a dedicated development area and mentoring by faculty and industry mentors. “NU’s committed and well-networked faculty and industry counsellor helped us create a product that is used by dozens of paying SME users. We’ll further enhance Astra by leveraging advanced intelligent algorithms, machine learning concepts and web intelligence,” says Shikhil. The crowning glory for Shikhil and Ananda was winning the Top Technology Innovation award at “6th All China University Software Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition, hosted at Wuxi, China” where students from over 300 universities from Asia demonstrated their Tech Innovations. “After several rounds of evaluation with diverse industry judges over three months we were confident of winning the award when the organisers decided to underwrite our entire trip to China to make a presentation to a packed auditorium of over 2000,” says Shikhil adding that a handsome cash award was an icing on the cake for their fledgling start-up, Czar Securities. Ananda Krishna’s scores at Delhi Public School RK Puram and continuing excellent academic performance at NU have earned him a scholarship for the entire duration of the program. When questioned if they considered themselves as geniuses, Shikhil and Ananda look embarrassed before Shikhil says that two of their batch-mates were selected to the prestigious ‘Google Summer of Code’, and five of them presented research papers in Singapore and China. A similar number went on to pick up Inter University Sports medals in Football, Snooker and Cricket. “Well, we are unique because we are the only ones to launch a start-up while studying at NU,” adds Ananda who is part of the 4th batch of the University that offers BTech programs in Computer Science & Engineering, Electronics & Communication Engineering, and Biotechnology. The duo acknowledges the insights they got from their mentor Dr Kamlesh Bajaj who served as CEO of Data Security Council of India supported by NASSCOM and NU’s academic leaders and founders. (BW Online Bureau)
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Paramita Chatterjee The contours of funding in India have changed over the past few years with the investor focus shifting largely to the startup community. The rise in innovative ideas and entrepreneurship in the country is not only garnering the attention of risk capital funds and domestic HNIs, but is also attracting eyeballs of overseas investors.
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We are a country where three to four startups are being born every day. The question is - what keeps this bull flying? To put some perspective in place, India is the third largest start-up ecosystem. With more than 4,200 start-ups under its shining belt, the capital inflow is close to $100 million a week. The track looks promising and the funding is expected to grow to a whopping $6.5 billion. That’s almost 0.3 per cent of India’s GDP for the year 2014-15. Trade pundits claim that the Indian startup bull is earmarked to top the list of Global Startup ecosystems. As of now, US stands at the top with around 48,000 startups, UK with over 4,500 startups followed by Israel and China. As a result, they contribute significantly to the economy by bringing some balance to the employment rate also. Indian startups today employ 85,000 or more people. Further down the pipeline, as many as 2.5 lakh future jobs will be out in technology startups over the next five years. Today, the thriving Indian startup ecosystem has reconstructed and modernized every possible rung of the Indian economy ladder. From food to governance to facilitating better infrastructural and access for general public. A major contributing factor has been the innovative “everyday-problem-solving” approach of the startup businesses. This also helps create significant growth opportunities for every stakeholder in turn. According to reports -there is 100 per cent growth in number of private equity, venture capitalists & angel investors. Add to that a 125 per cent growth in funding over the last year, and the Indian startup bull has risen to the occasion and stood up to the global expectations quite well. The recent positive interventions by the government have made “starting up” easy in India. Recommendations from actuator bodies like NASSCOM, have seen positive attitude and significant changes. The rules and regulations for business registrations and funding are quite easier now. There have been further simplifications in the compliance procedures by minimizing licenses/permits/approvals/tax for startups. If we look at the investment landscape, just the responsiveness and nimbleness - both on the executive’s and legislation’s side - has brought about phenomenal transformations. Where is the Bull Heading? One cannot discount the fact that for its nascent stage, Indian startup sector has developed an affinity for service sector. This impacts the field of product innovation and adds fuel to the widely spread concern of investors. Many amongst the titular trade gurus agree that a very few startups are focussing on product development. Pointing out the fact that it is important to look beyond service oriented or aggregation services. The real need of the hour isto innovate the business model altogether. Thankfully with all the critique,speculations and watch the Indian startup bull is taking every hit and blow in its stride. And it's making its way into the much-admired list of global economies. Economies which claim to be on the threshold of cutting edge technological revolution. What's Red Bull for this Bull? India is the world's youngest start-up nation with 72% founders less than 35 years. But apart from young ideas, what else keeps this vigorous bull running (read almost flying..)? 1. Rise of the actuators and facilitators: Nearly 110 Incubators and accelerators have come up in India. That is a record growth of 40 per cent since 2014. 2. Exponentially growing VC investments and sentiments: Total investments flowing into the Indian startups this year amounts to approximately $5 billion. An exceptional growth of around 125 per cent from last year. Further there are now 156 PE and VC firms placing bets on the bull. These numbers are growing at an astonishing rate of 100 per cent, over the last year. 3. Effective Labor: The young and aspiring workforce, working round the clock, behind this grand stage has an average age of 28 years. Not afraid of taking risks and are absolutely not shy of disrupting any aspect of consumer’s life. They are there with you from the moment you wake up till the time you are back to bed. No Bulls*** In closing, going back to our question, it looks like the startup bull is flying with all the power there is. The new entrepreneur era is redefining business and world as we know it. Either you are riding this bull or you are not - the choice is yours. But just remember, it’s never too late to be what you could have been! The author, Rajat Tandon, is vice president, Nasscom 10 K startup programme
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Lalit BhagiaMyrefers is a referral based marketplace for jobs powered by social media intelligence and big data. This was funded (Pre-Series A) by Bedrock Ventures and touched a break even few months earlier. Speaking to BW Businessworld's Manish Kumar Pathak, Lalit Bhagia, Founder and CEO, Myrefers, discusses the uniqueness of this model and how useful this set-up is for the marketplace. The introduction of the company (www.myrefers.com), says data intelligence. What exactly is data intelligence and how is it used?Data Intelligence is the core of www.myrefers.com, one of India's leading referral based marketplaces for jobs. Our unique big data engine lets our referrer networks identify the best fit for a particular job available on the platform, ranks applications based on skill and culture match, leading to formation of a trust circle that further combines with user intelligence. The data intelligence is also not just limited to the data on myrefers platform but also gathers data from the open web, from all other online social mediums an individual is connected with. That is what makes the platform so unique.The resume is what you want others or rather hirers to perceive about you, but all online information about you blends with what you really are, hence the ability to rank and match people to jobs becomes much trustworthy than any other platforms in the world and this means quality data for recruiters. What convinced you that this model will be successful?There are explicit business reasons to believe this model is already doing well elsewhere in the world. In India, you may find more players joining the bandwagon. Today 70 per cent of all company hiring takes place through employee referrals and HR Consultants. These are not only two of the biggest sources of hire, but also the sources of hire that gives best quality i.e. less number of resumes further leading to large number of closures. We realized two very important opportunities: A) To extend referrals to external world as we use them in everyday life B) The ability to organize and help facilitate the highly unorganised HR consulting market Myrefers is a force multiplier, the above is already taking place, and we are enabling structuring and collaboration integrating it with elements of social big data intelligence. The results are qualitative candidatures, passive reach through a faster seamless process. They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. One of our clients Umang Kumar, President, Cardekho shared his feedback that our platform (www.myrefers.com) is helping them for product and tech hires as the referral model is ensuring the referrers are disincentivized to send them junk profiles. This evidently saves his team good amount of time spent in scanning irrelevant profiles. The curated marketplace model also allows the platform to rapidly scale hiring capacity for Cardekho as and when they need. Cardekho closed nearly 40 per cent of their tech hires last quarter through Myrefers. What is the technique of Myrefers?Myrefers works just like any other marketplace, a commodity is replaced with a candidate, companies seeking hires form the buyers and they get to pay Myrefers on closures only. Then there the vast pool of sellers or resellers typical in a marketplace, at Myrefers sellers comes from the entire referral network available on the platform. It is made up of individuals referring friends via their social connections, email connections and phonebook, HR consultants referring candidates from their databases and freelancing recruiters referring people from their personal connections that form the sellers network. We are trying to incentivize quality leads or referrals through two kind of rewards posted against each job on the platform: an intro reward and a refer reward. Every time a relevant reference takes place, the referee is rewarded and every time a refer gets hired referees make a bigger reward. We share a large part of the rewards companies put on the platform with our referral network and keep a small commission as platform fee. Are there any competitions around, if yes then how do you plan to evolve?At one end every business in the recruitment space is a competition, but honestly no-one is similar to us in our approach. Our unique approach of curating jobs and profiles blending it with social big data intelligence allows us a distinctive position and is a big game changer. How is a network built, considering that many people seeking jobs share common interests?We are not really building new networks. We are focusing on existing networks of people on our platform which may or may not be online. Current online network is what we call as the primary network and the current offline network is the secondary network. Because only when a refer X happens from a user Y's current networks whether offline or online, the inbuilt myrefers algorithms and inevitably the recruiter comes to know of X too. For instance, our platform encourages and prompts every user to bring in their email and LinkedIn networks when they enter or register on the platform, this where they bring their primary network. We further help them make referrals from even a secondary network that our sophisticated algorithms backed by data sciences bring forth. The secondary network is a comprehensive and may sometimes be overlapping connections that come from people belonging to same campus / alumnus or workplaces, hereby helping tap into a much wider web of secondary known network. How are you different from job portals available out there?www.myrefers.com is a curated marketplace while the job boards are classifieds businesses. The big difference is that we deliver a very select and highly organized list of 8-10 profiles instead of 100s of junk, uninterested and irrelevant profiles that job boards usually do. People referrals and our big data algorithms are making this possible; our growing client list is also an authentic indication of the success the concept has delivered. Along with providing high quality matches, we also facilitate our client companies to access a wide target of passive candidates who are connected with the referees or users on our platform. (78 per cent of jobseekers are passive) .The job boards only give recruiters active profiles (not more than 5-6 per cent of job seekers). This also is a reflection on the revenue size of this industry where job boards are making only 8-10 per cent of the overall recruiting industry revenues, while the consultants get the remaining 90 per cent of the pie. With our model we are taking away a large pie of all of these current sources very openly i.e. bringing in transparency and accountability. Are you mentoring startups on best way to hire? What can you say about startups hiring, is it different from hiring for established or well run companies.Yes, startup hiring is very different. There is no doubt that startup recruiting is hard. And time and time again, the #1 challenge that most startup founders speak about is recruiting right set of people. It's not raising money, closing deals, doing sales, finding partners. It's hiring people. I bet if you polled a bunch of startup founders the data would be very conclusive. Their business needs grow fast. Best suited people hiring is the most important aspect in helping them scale their businesses quickly. They look for trustworthy source of hiring that provides faster results. MyRefers therefore works really well for them. One can only imagine the enormity and abundance of the networks open for exploration. Referrals are backed by trust, hence for a startup it is all the more important that they get trustworthy employees while they hit the ground running. However this also means startup CEOS need to be very clear about what they expect and wish to offer to potential employees. Given that we work with so many startups, we talk to the CEOs and founding teams very often, continuously storing their feedbacks and putting them into action to improve various aspects of the recruiting method. We tell them when is the ideal time to hire for their startup, when a need to invest a significant amount of time on it. I'm speaking directly to founders and not delegating the task. It is super critical We are also helping them create strong employer brands through our proprietary on- ground employee outreach program 'startup mashups' (hiring in office campuses via coding challenges where we create a large amount of buzz for startups working with us), giving them detailed inputs on hiring process, persuading them to writing blogs to attract talent, doing HR workshops, ways to interview, refining offer letter process, forming an employee friendly culture and so on. We are in it together, I tell my startup clients.
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Off the 5000 odd startups in India only 500 will survive and only 50 will become large companies generating a loss in jobs for many in the short run, write Vishal Krishna and Paramita Chatterjee
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By Simar SinghE-grocery start-up Satyacart has raised Rs 12 crore in its second round of angel funding from a group of high net worth individuals. The Gurgaon-based grocery delivery start-up. which deploys a system of data analytics to differentiate itself in a booming hyperlocal delivery space, says that it plans to use these funds over the next 12 months to concretise their technological backend and expand their management team. The company has also set itself on the path of raising a Series A Round of funding and has already initiated talks with several Private Equity firms and Venture Capitalists. Aiming to raise $10 million (around Rs 66 crore), Satyacart plans on syphoning these funds to expand into more locations and make individual geographies profitable. Speaking about the same, Satyacart’s founder and CEO, Rahul Hari, said, “The fund raised in quick successions highlights the confidence that investors have posed in our business model. We plan to use this Angel funding for strengthening our technology backbone and expanding our management team. Whereas, the Series A funding, to be raised shortly, will be used for geographical expansion. We are on track with our business mantra - Controlled expansion with an eye on profitability through operational excellence resulting in high customer satisfaction." The company which currently operates only in Gurgaon boasts of more than a 200 per cent growth in order volumes in the last two quarters. It soon plans to expand its presence to the rest of Delhi-NCR.
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"A friend had committed suicide in IIT Guhawati hostel. The reason was anxiety. She anticipated she’ll not get a good job during the on-campus placement," says Richa Singh, co-founder of Bangalore-based mental wellness startup YourDOST.
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Forefront Capital has raised over $100 million from domestic and global investors within 15 months of acquisition by Edelweiss Group.Forefront is the fastest growing player in the listed alternatives space in India, a category which has gained significant interest since SEBI issued the Alternative Investment Fund Regulations in 2013. Forefront Capital is the Multi-Strategy Funds business of Edelweiss’s Global Asset Management, a $ 4.5 Bn asset management business.Forefront Capital’s flagship fund, Forefront Alternative Equity Scheme has completed a year of performance and is a market leader in the Category III AIF space. The main differentiating factor about this fund has been its risk adjusted performance. It has delivered positive returns during volatile market conditions as the Nifty has fallen from 9000 to 7700 in the last six months.Radhika Gupta, Business Head, Forefront Capital, said, “Our risk adjusted performance has been extremely strong and this alternative approach to equities has been much appreciated by clients. We have continued to take our offerings to domestic private banks and are now expanding our reach to global private banks. In the next 2 years we look forward to becoming India’s most dominant player in the listed alternatives space with a continued focus on superior risk adjusted returns, catering towards both domestic and global investors.”(BW Online Bureau)
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