Coursera says that it plans to use the funds to source new content and expand its global reach. Simar Singh reportsIn the first closing of its Series C funding, online open learning giant, Coursera, has raised $49.5 million and expects the figure to swell to $60 million by the second closing. The round was lead by venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the company’s original investors. Joining in among other investors was Bennett and Coleman’s (BCCL) subsidiary, Times Internet, as a first time investor. Apart from the investment angle, Times Internet and Coursera announced a strategic partnership in which the former will provide marketing, advertising, and strategic support to create awareness about the platform in India. Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet, said, "Coursera is the gold standard for the emerging wave of education technology companies. We are excited to bring Times Internet's growth capabilities behind such a strong product, and bring high quality, affordable digital education to millions of Indians." Coursera says that it plans to use the funds to source new content and expand its global reach. The company currently has ambitious plans for international expansion, with a focus on emerging economic regions like India, China and Latin America, where there is a demand for accessible, high quality learning.
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Ashish Dhawan, founder and CEO, Central Square Foundation, feels the centre can play a pivotal role in solving India's primary education problems. Arshad Khan reportsThe Indian education system has not changed much since the time of Independence. However, since the Union Government wants to bring about reformations in the sector by launching flagship schemes like Skill India, entrepreneurs in the education sector feel that time is ripe to promote privatisation in the sector and that government should assume a more monitoring role. Ashish Dhawan, founder and CEO, Central Square Foundation says, “The need of the hour is to re-asses the role of the government. The primary role of the government should be more about setting standards and not implementing policies. The central government should assess whether states are following the blueprint and it has to incentivise states to follow the best practices.” Dhawan also believes that the centre can play a pivotal role in solving India's primary education problems, even though it is a state subject. He adds that states should be encouraged and that particular states should be identified; those that lag in adhering to the set pattern. Dhawan is currently working on creating a country-wide database for India on 'Know My School' portal which will be aimed at providing information on all primary schools in the country. This will be based on 200 parameters including board examination results which he feels will help regulatory bodies implement policies decisively. Opining on a regulatory body for private institutes, he said, “The reason why private schools flourished in India is mainly because governments could not deliver. Currently, around 43 per cent children are enrolled in private schools and it is estimated to breach the 60 per cent mark by 2025. As the private sector has grown manifold, there is an urgent need for a regulatory body which will monitor both the private and public educational institutions.” Although private colleges extract an exorbitant amount as the tuition fees, the return on investment (ROI) is actually not very promising. Dhawan observed, “Colleges need to publish ROI on the expenditure made by the customers (parents) which will be made on the basis of their placement data.”
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Technology companies are great acquisition targets provided they scale up their customer base, Vishal Krishna reports Legacy talent platforms have always had tons of CVs uploaded on them. These platforms were neither intelligent nor productive for organisations that used them. Organisations spent upwards of $2,000 per hire to close the right candidate in mid-level positions. This is an expensive proposition. All that is going to be history now. There are several startups that have cropped up to help organisations with intelligence-based lateral hiring. With the growth of small businesses, especially those that have raised money and are trying to scale up operations, the need to employ experienced individuals has also increased. Myparichay, Hiree, ZenRadius and Talview are some of these new talent hiring platforms that are making hiring intelligent and measurable. They also intend to help HR departments to reduce the time, cost and effort in finding the right person for the available roles. At any given point of time there are a million people scouting for new jobs. About 50 per cent of them are dormant seekers and the rest are active. Hiree, founded by Manjunath Talwar and Abhijith Khasnis, former Yahoo employees, has built a platform that can recognise the needs of the employer and potential employee. Its back-end engine matches the job profiles with the right connects. For example a developer who knows five computer languages would want to work in a company that is investing in its digital strategy. The process is quick and simple on the Hiree app. The engine of Hiree also scouts the entire social profile of the employing company and the employee to match both their needs. IDG Ventures has put in $3 million. The company has scaled up to close to 200,000 users and there are several startups already hiring through their platform. Business Model The business model is based on paying an annual license fee for the data base. The company does not take a cut on the salary at which the employer offers to the candidate. "We are a technology platform that solves hiring and this can scale up faster than other legacy hiring models because they do not match skills," says Talwar. Similarly MyParichay too is using technology to connect with potential hires. This platform links to social networks and uses the connections of an individual to find people of similar profiles. The company has raised $1 million and has been funded by HT Media. Talview, another Bangalore-based startup, is using video technology to help employers, is scouting for funds. Their proposition is to get lateral hires on to a video platform with the employer. Tests and interviews are conducted on a device. Talview offers a login to the employee and they get on to a video platform with the employer at an instant. Talview was founded by Sanjoe Jose, Subramanian K, Jobin Jose and Tom Jose. "We charge for the technology used and it is a license model. They can interview as many employees as they like," says Jose. The central part of all three hiring startups is that they are using technology to disrupt hiring. But they are also building data analytics engines to sieve through the portfolio of registered hires and engage them on a long term basis. There will be 300 million Indians seeking jobs in 2030, even if these startups can cater to 50 million job seekers then these are potential $500 million businesses. Does that mean these companies are early to the party? Like in all such internet businesses, ones with the deepest pocket will survive. "Technology is the differentiator today and that is the theme of all investments today," says Venkatesh Peddi, Vice President at IDG Ventures. He adds that it is the only way to connect to the growing middle class and their changing methods of consumption with smart phones. However, this industry has seen its ups and downs. A Helion Ventures funded startup called Talentpad shut shop because it was not able to scale up in acquiring employees. Such is the nature of the business. Although there are 6 million graduates passing out in the country only 700,000 or 15 per cent are employable. This is also the core audience on the smart phone. According to Kronos, the human capital management product company, there are only 20 million white collar workers. It is large enough. The bet for these hiring platforms will be to raise more money and become the leaders in their industry to survive. Unless a large pool of workers in India start to actively use smartphones and enter the white-collar market, these hiring platforms will not become standalone companies. They will become acquisition targets, for their technology and team, to platforms with deeper pockets.
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Pune-based AgroStar, a direct-to-farmer m-commerce firm launched in 2012, has raised close to $4 million from venture capital investors IDG Ventures India and existing investor Aavishkaar Venture Management. This is in its second round of funding for the startup that was founded by Sitanshu Sheth and Shardul Sheth in an attempt to transform the agri-business for farmers in rural India. It is understood that the firm has raised the current round of capital to enhance its technology and leadership teams and expand its operations across India. Headquartered in Pune, AgroStar currently operates in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. It is looking to foray into an additional 3-4 states over the next 12 months, as per a statement issued by Consultancy firm o3 Capital acted as the sole advisor to AgroStar on the transaction. AgroStar has developed a direct to farmer m-commerce platform where farmers can buy an entire range of agri inputs like seeds, crop nutrition, crop protection and hardware products by simply giving a missed call on the Company’s 1800 number. The Company is aiming to address the challenges of demand and supply mis-match, adulteration, poor quality products, unavailability of key products etc. Faced by Indian farmers while purchasing agri inputs. IDG Ventures India is a leading India-focused technology venture capital fund. The fund is part of IDG Ventures, a global network of technology venture funds which has more than $ 4 billion under management. Aavishkaar, on the other hand, is an early stage, India focused venture fund with over $155 million under management. It primarily invests in agriculture, dairy, education, energy, handicrafts, among others. The current investment signals a strong vote of confidence among investors in the new breed of India's entrepreneurs. In the first half of the current calendar year, as many as 363 venture capital deals were sealed, three times more than the number of private equity deals, which stood at 99, as per data available with Grant Thornton.
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In 2010, while he was in second year at IIT, Kedar Kulkarni, CEO and co-founder, HyperVerge, co-founded his first company, Lema Labs, which has become a leading robotics education company in South India. In IIT-Madras, he represented India at the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) in 2009 and 2010.In 2014, he teamed up with four other IITians (IIT-Madras) Vignesh Krishnakumar (CTO), Kishore Natarajan (User Growth), Saivenkatesh Ashokkumar (Engineering) and Praveen Kumar (Product) to develop artificial intelligence which deals with teaching computers to mimic the behaviour of the human brain. The Seed FundingHyperVerge, a deep-learning startup by IIT-Madras graduates, announced that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from several US venture capital firms, including NEA, Milliways Ventures and Naya Ventures.In 2014, HyperVerge went to US to do a Kickstarter campaign, where people made them realized the prominence of their product. "We didn't visit US for seed funding, our intention was to do a kickstarter campaign in the US. We were hoping to raise about $50,000 through crowd-funding. We thought it will be just enough to build a basic app. Through conversations with mentors from IIT Madras Alumni community, we realised that the technology developed by the team was a lot more valuable than we earlier thought. It also became very clear that HyperVerge will need backing of strong and supportive VCs for us to be a serious contender in the space of deep-learning". The AppSilver, the first smartphone application developed by the company helps users automatically organise their photos, eliminate poor quality photos and duplicates, and share their best photos. Optimized self-learning algorithms produce results that are real-time and highly accurate to ensure users find the photos(s) they are looking for within just a few seconds. Kittu Kolluri, General Partner at NEA, said, “They have strong ambitions and the potential to achieve them—the technology developed by the company can span out as useful applications for consumers, enterprises and developers. We are thrilled to partner with HyperVerge to bring innovative deep-learning solutions to users and prospective partners.” "Working with a budget of under six lakh, we were able to create classifiers for identification of people, scenes, events and unique patterns in images", said Kedar Kulkarni, CEO and co-founder of HyperVerge. "We believe that our image recognition technology can be the foundation for several breakthrough consumer applications in the near future".poonam@businessworld.in(Poonam Kumar)
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On the flight back from Ahmedabad to Hyderabad, in 2007, the environmental scientist Narayana Peesapaty looked at the food served to him in plastic crockery and wondered the plastic waste it generates every day all over the world. The thinking time that flights offer, he started brainstorming on the alternatives for plastic utensils. This idea transported him back to one of the hot afternoons on the farm where his team had used sorghum (jowar) roti as a spatula to eat daal. The jowar roti was so hard that they kept it dipped in the thick curry but it didn’t become soft as they finished their lunch. That day Narayana Peesapaty landed in Hyderabad with his big entrepreneurial idea – using flour to create disposable utensils. By the end of 2007, he left his job as a Senior Scientific Officer with International Crop Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad to focus full time on creating eco friendly utensils. Cutlery being the simpler, smaller of the utensils, he started focusing on developing that. He worked for three years from his home kitchen to develop the right recipe for cutlery. He could make spoons, sporks and chopsticks from a mixture of different kinds of flour. He used a certain proportion of millet, jowar (sorghum), rice and wheat which he kneaded with water. The higher proportion of jowar flour is deliberate. Peesapaty shares,“During my research, I learnt that one of the main reason for groundwater depletion is the reduction in cultivation of dryland crops like jowar. One of the ways I want to help is by creating its demand through my products and increasing its consumption.” He added some spices too, cumin and rock salt so they can be consumed after use. If not consumed, they can be discarded by throwing in mud or in potted plans to decompose, which usually takes between three to seven days. This edible cutlery has absolutely no vegetable and animal fat or any form of preservatives or emulsifiers. It is then baked at over 200 degrees to reduce the water content to 1.75 per cent. This gives the spoons and sporks the shelf life of three years, says Peesapaty. With the prototype ready, in 2010, he took a loan from the bank of Rs 4.5 crore to purchase the machinery to manufacture it at a commercial scale. Currently, he uses the technology used in biscuit factories but, Peesapaty says, he is working to develop a fully customised integrated system to develop his edible cutlery. They started selling the product in November last year from their website, organic stores and organic bazaars. In less than a year, Peesapaty claims, they have reached monthly sales of Rs 2 lakh and most of the demand is from households . But, his plan is to get caterers for parties and marriages onboard since it is at large-scale gathering the consumption of plastic utensils is huge. He is now working to develop a knife but hasn’t been able to crack its recipe yet. “Plates, bowls will also be introduced but it will take a while before I develop the workable, practical model,” says Peesapaty. So, before we gorge on the plates, we will be content with eating the spoons and sporks that he sells at Rs 4 per piece. The company is looking to raise funding to start manufacturing units across the globe.
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Sumit Sharma Venture capital sector in India is awash with capital yet there are issues that need to be sorted out first, Jayant Sinha, minister of state for finance said in Mumbai on Tuesday (18 August). "About 90-95 per cent of the capital comes from outside India,’’ said Sinha after finance minister Arun Jaitley inaugurated two new funds by SIDBI. ``All that money is welcome. At the same time we need a domestic VC industry in India that is funding our innovators and entrepreneurs.’’ India needs several successive waves of innovation and entrepreneurship that will lift productivity of the economy which will result in new products and services, and make India an exporting powerhouse. We have to put in place the infrastructure for entrepreneurship and innovation now if we have to provide sustainability and fuel for economic growth over the next five or ten or 15 years, he said. As in the case of China, India too needs to have a balanced domestic VC industry, said Sinha. If we have a VC industry based here in India then we will overcome the problem we are facing in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. Today most of the money coming from outside is going to a few select areas like e-commerce. If we solve India’s problems related to solar technology, affordable irrigation, electric scooters, medical devices, healthcare delivery then those products and services will be exported out of India to the rest of the world whether it is Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam, Bolivia or other countries.
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After successfully concluding the first batch of Accelerate|Entrepreneur, BW Accelerate powered by BW Businessworld, is inviting applications for the second batch for Delhi NCR based startups. The three-month business acceleration programme is slated to commence in September 2015. With a vision to create a comprehensive offering for early stage start-ups, BW Accelerate is an ecosystem initiative built on knowledge and intelligence acquired over the years. Its foundation is entrenched in fostering innovation, speeding business growth and accelerating entrepreneurial aspiration in the country.It offers an exceptionally well-planned programme with experienced hand holding, business intelligence and market access. The visibility, reach and intensity of the program drive startups to graduate with a world-class offering. "It has been an incredible first batch with phenomenal mentor engagement, connections with large enterprises and business leaders. We picked some of the toughest businesses across sectors. Over 70 per cent of these have either already raised funds or are in advanced conversations of doing so," said Ashu Agrawal, Director, BW Accelerate. Inviting applications for the new batch, he stated, "We continue to look for unique distribution focused platform play and products, and startups that are working to systematize, unorganized consumption." The key attributes that we will focus on are platforms and/or businesses that can create strong engagement applications with high frequency of consumption. The deadline for submitting applications is August 31, 2015. The program is open to startups and the online application can be done use the link www.f6s.com/bwaccelerate.The first list of shortlisted applicants will be announced after a face-to-face session with an expert panel in the first week of September. The final list of startups, which will make it to the second batch of BW Accelerate, will begin the three-month acceleration process from the third week of September 2015. This will culminate into a Demo Day in December when the startups will showcase their ideas to key industry influential, top angel investors and VCs.
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