Simar SinghLetsVenture, an online startup funding facilitator, announced that it had brought on Ratan Tata and Mohandas Pai as advisors. The two corporate heavyweights have also invested an undisclosed amount in the company’s Series A round of funding. Founded by Shanti Mohan and Sanjay Jha in 2013, LetsVenture provides a platform for entrepreneurs to meet investors, simplifying the fundraising side of things. CEO Shanti Mohan said that having Tata and Pai on was an endorsement go the company as a trusted platform for investors and entrepreneurs. Reportedly, LetsVenture has around 750 startups and 1,200 investors registered across 20 countries. Around 375 of these are India. To date, LetsVenture has raised around $17 million for 53 startups and should be able to close 35 funding deals by the end of the year. Since his retirement, Tata has been actively involved in the Indian startup scene as a venture capitalist. His portfolio includes taxi aggregator Ola, furnishings portal Urban Ladder, marketplace Paytm and Car Dekho, to name a few. LetsVenture’s Series A round which was conducted last week saw the participation of many high profile investors including Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Wipro’s director Rishad Premji and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
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Parcelled, an on-demand first mile logistics provider, has raised $5 million led by logistics company Delhivery with the participation of Tracxn labs. The company will divert these funds towards strengthening its core technology platform, expansion of its team, product portfolio and launch of multiple cities over the next six months.
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Even as the startup ecosystem is thriving in the country, former Infosys director T V Mohandas Pai believes that only 10 per cent of the new-age companies would be successful while a majority of these would fail. Still, startups are set emerge as a major job creator in the country if government evolves an enabling policy environment for these budding firms, say Pai. Typically about 10 per cent of the startups will do very well, about 25 per cent will stay afloat, and the rest will fail, Pai told PTI. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative takes wings, the startup ecosystem will thrive with over 1 lakh new-age firms in next 10 years, employing 3.5 million people and targeting a value of $500 billion, he said. "Digital India is the biggest experiment that will transform India if Modi gets it right," Pai told PTI. "For that, most Indians should be connected with wireless devices and children in class six and above should have a tab connecting them to the Internet with 3G. If his happens, it will transform the country in the next 15 years," he said. Currently India has 18,000 startups valued at $75 billion, employing 300,000 people. On the back of right policies, the startups could grow over five-fold in number in the next 10 years, and will target a value of over USD 500 billion, Pai said. Pai believes that about 10 per cent of the startups will do very well, about 25 per cent will stay afloat, and the rest will fail. "Once a startup fails it remains in limbo as the bankruptcy code is still underdeveloped. We can't kill companies. It takes a long time," he warned. He also urged the government to come up with a detailed startup policy. "We are working with various state governments, including Rajasthan, Karnataka and West Bengal, that are unveiling their own startup policies," he said. "I'm hoping for swift policy change like making listing requirements more favourable, and taxation issues should be be addressed," he added. Pai said he is optimistic about "startup value - not valuations". He pointed out that in the IT industry Indian firms were solving problems of the US and Europe, however startups can solve the problems the domestic industry. "Startups are solving India's problems. What India needs is 100s and thousands of problem solvers, who can add value," he said. "The country will be a $10 trillion economy by 2030, and the huge growth can be driven by entrepreneurship," Pai pointed out. A recent report by IT industry body Nasscom had said that India ranks third among global startup ecosystems with more than 4,200 new-age companies. The report said that Indian technology start-ups landscape has seen a "tremendous" growth in the emergence of innovative start-ups and creative entrepreneurs. "Three to four startups being born every day, and nearly $5 billion of funding coming in 2015," it said.(PTI )
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By Vishal Krishna In 2010, Vijay Shekhar Sharma built PayTM at a time when no one wanted another payments solution. In 2013, he was told that his company could not raise the same level of money as the e-commerce giants. But today the Indian online payment platform and e-commerce firm is an established name. Sharma has invested in over 32 startups in the last five years. In 2014, he convinced Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, to take a bet on India's huge mobile market. For the last two years, Sharma has been investing in startups and is voicing the need for a stronger ecosystem for consumer-based startups. He tells BW Businessworld in an interview that India will be the largest mobile internet market in the world. But startups and policy makers should focus more on creating local language based consumption on smartphones. He adds that if the issues of data privacy and security are not solved then entrepreneurs will be able to succeed. Excerpts: How is your role as an investor shaping up?I actively invest in startups and invest anything between Rs 25 lakhs to Rs 60 lakhs in them. A decade ago I made the mistake of giving more than 40 per cent of my company for some seed money. I had a very bitter experience with the investor when I bought him out. I do not want startups to ever face that problem. I am also mentoring startups and I want to guide them about the right ways to build a sustainable business. A decade ago many companies were not privy to any guidance and people like me did not know what valuations meant. But things have changed now. Startups are living in very interesting times and with a lot of support coming from the ecosystem in the future we will see great companies being built out of India. What should startups focus on with so much being spoken about the size of the smartphone industry and the internet?I do not follow research reports when it comes to looking at consumption on the mobile internet. I look at what is happening to my target audience. I look at family, my old neighbourhood, in Aligarh, and wonder how they are consuming technology. The numbers will grow and reports just throw the potential. I only focus on my target consumers and check if they are using technology. Only then I know consumption is happening through smartphones. If they are not using it then I do know that it does not work. It is inevitable that people in India will go mobile. In my home town a lot of them have mobile internet. How does it matter if there are 125 million people or 150 million people using mobile internet today. It is a target. India will have 500 million consumers of mobile internet in five years. Can we build a much better product in that time period? The market is moving fast. It is a race against time when you are working in India, the mobile internet's growth is a once in a life time experience and we have to be the technology company that makes it happen. For Indian entrepreneurs it is like being in China, a decade ago. Look at how entrepreneurs built TenCent and Baidu. Or even the USA, a decade ago, with the growth of Facebook and Google. This is the dawn for India and there are several companies that are going to be large tech conglomerates. We need to see that consumption increases, logistics should improve, telecom infrastructure should grow faster, local language services should become imperative and payments solutions should get better. There are so many startups in India that have B2B businesses, why isn't risk being taken for consumer businesses?Look at payments solutions from the consumer side. This is something that needs a lot of innovation. We have only just begun. Internet existed in India in 1998. But no one built a great payments system in India and fifteen years have passed. The problem is that tech companies, in India, fear that the consumer business is going to be extremely difficult. Therefore India remained tech producers and not consumers of tech. It was the most popular B2B destination; we built a great enterprise services platform and we are now building great cloud services practice. However we have built very few consumer technology companies. Look at Ola and Flipkart, they have done such a great job in building consumer technology businesses for consumers. It is the age of such companies in India. When entrepreneurs solve for Indian consumers we need to understand their problems. If consumption has to grow it has to grow with local languages, it is the premise of India. With my experience I see 80 percent of Delhi would consume technology services in Hindi, provided the language was made available on all apps. It is not confusing, for me, that our company should or should not play the language game. All startups, in the consumer industry, must have local language services if they have to grow in India. Is the availability of robust telecom infrastructure hampering growth of consumer startups?Spectrum is an issue. But there are bigger issues. I want to raise an issue on the law of the land. The law thinks that startups that offer market places platforms have to promise the contract between merchant and consumer. Here I am really confused. I am totally victimised, by law, about what is the role of a tech platform versus a merchant and the consumer. Why do we need to have someone policing market places? Consumers put money in a wallet and when they pay a merchant the contract is between the merchant and the consumer. Unfortunately the enforcers of the law or the police think that we are not delivering the service when the merchant fails to make good on his contract. Obviously we guarantee that the consumer is protected. But we cannot guarantee the ability of the merchant. When companies like us and other startups are growing, there are legal issues which will stifle our growth. There are also cyber security issues. There is this belief that consumer data will be stolen and the consumer will be bombarded with spam. Startups have to build secure systems; this is something that all consumer technology companies should solve. The point is that, as an example, on a high traffic road, with a crossing, there needs to be a flyover. This is what the internet is about; we need to solve consumer problems. Language, security and data privacy are issues that we all need to solve on a constant basis. Otherwise the 500 million consumers will not consume on smartphones. This may stifle entrepreneurship immediately. How would you advice a startup raising money, are funds controlling the fate of startups in India?It is no doubt that funds have smart people who have seen the world and they will tell startups to follow a particular vision. The funds have put India on the map. The inevitability is that they will control some decisions. But who is stopping an entrepreneur in disagreeing with investors. The entrepreneur is supposed to be confident to run the operations of his company because he knows what works and does not work. The fund is a guide and brings inputs. It is like, in life, you listen to so many people and in the end you have to make a decision on what is right for you. Opinions should be treated as opinions; you cannot go by opinions to run a business. You take the best from the investors and execute the business. Remember an entrepreneur must keep an eye open to perspective, which I think is very important. I, personally, will first listen to my investors and then understand that their thoughts are guidelines to executing a strategy. I make sure everyone is in the loop and I try to execute their ideas and bring in my reasoning too to implement a particular strategy. I am very frank and friendly. It is the same when you hire big names suggested by funds. Those who say "I have been there, done that" are not going to have the same fire in them to build your startup. We have burned our hands so many times that I have frank chats with the investors and the board. I do make it a point to tell them that these names were suggested by them and that the strategy was not executed well. I am very lucky because my investors were patient and I found an incredible balance. Today the investors and I work on building hypothesis together. I would credit Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners for working with me to build this company. Investors, one must remember, are less risk takers, it is the entrepreneur who is taking the risk and investors have bet on the idea and will not be able to guide the entrepreneur. They will douse the fire once they sense the entrepreneur is not in control. This happens in most cases. Is fundraising more about a comfort factor with investors?You should raise money from people you are comfortable with. It is like a marriage. How do you know that, in a relationship, you are not really being dominated? It is as a matter of chance and you never know. You have to get good references and feedback about the investor before you sign a term sheet. Also look at the recent investments that the investors have been making and how they have been with those entrepreneurs. In the end, the fund's personality and the personality of the investor will come into your company. A fund may have a libertarian view and a conservative view, but if the fund manager has a contrarian view to your beliefs then the company is not going to grow. Take me through how you built PayTM?When we entered payments six years ago, while we were still a content marketing company, people said we could not do a consumer business. I needed to build a resolve and say "people either follow me or not". I had investors who advised me not launch a consumer business. They said I could not make it. I continued to fight this and it took me four years before we hit big. If the stakeholder of your company is critical you cannot make it. This guy can veto you and throw you out. The entrepreneur needs to have incredible amounts of communication and make them understand the context of what you want. I spent hours with my team, I would speak in forums back then about why we need to build a strong payments system for India. We made a deal that the parent company, One97 Communications, will be taken care of on one side, and those who wanted to build this new payments platform can build this with me. In between I had a resource crunch in 2011 and I did not know where to go. I had to build a platform to a level and raise money or else I would have fallen flat on my face. I have learnt that the mind is the only barrier and I have never been lazy when it comes to making my business succeed. There was $25 million dollars in 2011 and that money came down to $10 million by 2012. We were bleeding and there was a board meeting. Some of the shareholders quit and the others stayed because I convinced them that payments were the way forward. The pain has to be the fuel of the journey. That is when I met Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. A two-minute meeting lasted for a couple of hours and the money came through for PayTM. They were interested in the opportunity that we were grabbing on to in India rather than knowing what we had done so far.
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Startups are the buzzword in the Indian economy and are the epicentre of economic activity. However, India is not a tax-friendly haven for startup investments and there are over 100 startups that have registered abroad. Most of the Indian startups register themselves in Singapore, the US or Hong Kong to raise capital.
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Third party logistics is a Rs 48,000-crore business. But how does one organise a rent seeking and unorganised business where technology is not the panacea? Hyper-local is suddenly the favourite word for investors. It has almost become a cliché with everyone seemingly having an opinion about the potential of such a business. Investors say it is the next big boom and is supposed to wipe out middlemen in the logistics trade. Recently Opinio Raised $7 million From Delhivery And Accel Partners. RoadRunnr too raised $11 million recently from Sequoia, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. But who has got the metal to take on this industry by looking at the problems of logistics and delivery from the ground up, the history of the system, rather than throwing technology at it?
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Arshad KhanWhile e-commerce and tech companies appear to be in favour when it comes to start-ups, Mayank Dhanuka of Origo India has zeroed in on post harvesting management solution to capture the big commodity market in India. Since starting operations in 2010, Origo India has witnessed a tremendous growth in providing warehousing and allied services. Dhanuka, Co-founder and Director of Origo India, explains that in order to set equilibrium in the operation and bring convergence in the business, Origo will concentrate more on expanding their procurement business. “Procurement service which we have started two years ago has started emerging as one of core focus area. We are sure that in a year or two, it will outrun other services provided by us,” says Dhanuka. In the current fiscal 2015-16, the company aims to generate revenue of Rs 200 crore. The company at present operates 50 plus warehouses across 15 states in the country. It provides warehousing services to giants like ITC and to government agencies. Origo has been managing the foodgrain stock of FCI through its nodal agency PUNGRAIN, in Punjab, for capacity of over 27 lakh MT, which represents almost 5 per cent of total MSP procurement of food grains (Wheat and Rice) by FCI across the country. The company has grown manifolds by providing financial services to Indian farmers. “Origo provides certificates of guarantee to banks for loans to farmers in lieu of the crops stored in their warehouses. These bags of crops act as collateral for the lending banks,” says Dhanuka. On the prevailing condition of Indian warehouses, he said India lags developed nations by more than 50 years when it comes to sensible storing of food in warehouses. The concept of zero wasting is not followed in India. He believes Indian warehouses are affected by unfriendly monsoon and labour problems. Origo currently manages 35 lakh tonne of agricultural produce across 15 states in 500 warehouses with total assets under management worth Rs 8,500 crore.
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By Sonal Khetarpal YouWeCan Ventures, backed by cricketer Yuvraj Singh, has invested an undisclosed amount in a Gurgaon-based biometric technology startup Vuzelaa. Sahil Arora, the 17-year-old entrepreneur who founded Vuzelaa, has developed a software that lets you log in to online payment gateways from your laptop or mobile by scanning the retina to authenticate your identity. Normally, users enter their login details and then wait for the one-time password to arrive on their mobile to complete their transaction. A startup advisor and consultant told BW Businessworld that YouWeCan has invested $10 million in Vuzelaa, but YouWeCan co-founder Nishant Singhal declined to comment on the deal. Arora says his technology reduces the time of online payments to less than a minute. "It is 100 per cent accurate and secure. And, it is not hackable. What is important about this technology is that it works across all devices -- desktop, laptop or mobile -- which have a standard front camera," he says. Vuzelaa was initially developed as a social media platform that used eye verification for logging in. But things changed when YouWeCan came on board, says Arora. "They saw its wider applicability and changed the business model," he says. "YouWeCan co-founder, Nishant Singhal, suggested its relevance for online transactions. It took me three months to come up with a final proof-of-concept." The company got Nandan Nilekani on its advisory board. His vision is to unify all online payment gateways using this technology, says Arora. He is in the process of finalising an exclusive deal for his software. He says he has got offers from online payment companies such as FreeCharge, Citrus Payment Solutions, PayUMoney and PayTM. For now, he says, he will sign an exclusive deal with just one of these clients for three months. Since Arora is a minor, Vuzelaa is registered in his parents' name. Yuvraj Singh started his venture fund in April this year to invest in sectors such as sports, health, beauty and fashion. His investments include sports programme startup SportyBeans, health-care marketplace Healthians, and beauty and wellness app Vyomo.
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