Silicon Valley venture capitalist to focus on financial services, energy and farm sectors, reports K Chandra Mohan Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya is all set to invest $1 billion in Indian start-ups over the next 10 years. Recently, he invested $20 million into Indian mobile payments start-up Ezetap through his venture capital fund, The Social+Capital Partnership, the four-year-old VC firm that has backed companies like Box, Palantir and Slack. Later, Palihapitiya became chairman of the Ezetap board, the first for him in a portfolio company outside the US."We don't do board meetings Ezetap, because it can be done through mails. As a chairman, I prefer to review products, and build the right product and strategise the product road map, most importantly give them the benefit of my learning at Facebook," he said. Palihapitiya is looking to invest in businesses with products and solutions that target a billion plus people in the field of financial services, energy, power and agriculture. To understand the degree of the Indian market which is totally new to him, has partnered with Bengaluru based, seed-stage VC fund Prime Venture Partners (previously known as Angel Prime). Outside of Silicon Valley startups, Palihapitiya is more interested in investing in India. In India, the Social+Capital is introduced through Prime Venture Capital to Ezetap. The California based, The Social+Capital partnership has raised $ 1.2 billion in three rounds to date, and has already invested in 50 companies. Palihapitiya was instrumental in bringing Facebook's user base from 18 million to 1 billion. The Social+Capital VC hatch and spends in disruptive start-ups in the areas of healthcare, education, finance, mobile and enterprise software.
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Ezetap Mobile Solutions, the Bangalore-based pioneer in mobile payments for emerging markets, announced on that is has raised Rs 150 crore in fresh funding. Ezetap’s current investors; Social+Capital, Helion Advisors, and Berggruen Holdings are joined by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm for Li Ka-Shing, and the Capricorn Investment Group in this round. Social+Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya will become Chairman of Board - the first time the former Facebook executive has taken on this role with a portfolio company outside the United States. Started in 2011 and launched in 2013, Ezetap has grown much faster than the rest of the industry, deploying over 60,000 new points of sale across India in under 30 months. Ezetap processes transactions worth over $1 million per day and has a customer base ranging from the most well known enterprises to tens of thousands of small retail businesses. While many enterprises, including some of the leading eCommerce, Insurance and mobile companies, have standardized on Ezetap and deployed its integrated solution, the company also sees huge potential in the smaller and medium business sector. Ezetap is already activating over 500 new small retail merchants a week and will use some of its funds to increase that by 5X in the next few months.Ezetap has partnerships with leading banks including Citibank, HDFC Bank, and American Express, who is also an investor in the company. Most recently, State Bank of India chose Ezetap to be its mPOS partner in order to help scale electronic payments and banking services to every corner of the country.
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Funds to help Practo accelerate its march towards becoming a leading global digital healthcare platform Asia’s leading healthcare platform, Practo, on Thursday (6 August) announced that it has closed $90 million in Series C funding. This round was led by Tencent, with participation from marquee institutional investors including Sofina, Sequoia India, Google Capital, Altimeter Capital, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Yuri Milner. This comes a few months after closing a $30 million Series B round from Sequoia India and Matrix Partners, bringing Practo’s total funds raised to $125 million - one of the largest in the world of Digital Health. Over the past six months, Practo has grown over 6 times to become one of the fastest growing healthcare platforms in the world with nearly 200,000 healthcare practitioners on it and over 10 million monthly searches by consumers looking to make the right healthcare choices. Over the next three to six months Practo will expand product lines and continue to look for potential acquisition of companies to encompass key healthcare segments and provide a seamless experience across medicine, wellness and fitness, globally. Practo will continue to add top notch talent to its world class team of 1,500 Practeons to continue to build the best products that will transform healthcare for consumers around the world. The footprint will expand from the current 35 Indian cities and three countries to over 100 Indian cities and 10 countries across South east Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Eastern Europe. “We are hard at work building a single health app that helps people live healthier by making better healthcare decisions for themselves and their loved ones. We are excited to partner with some of the best investors on the planet. Our global partners will give us the edge to continue building global healthcare products that our users love. Millions of users trust our platform every month and with our international expansion we aim to take Practo to billions of people globally” – Shashank ND, Founder & CEO, Practo. “We are very excited to partner with Practo as one of our first few investments in India. We look for ambitious, visionary Internet companies that are improving people’s lives at a global scale. Practo is a digital healthcare leader and one of the fastest growing healthcare companies in India. We look forward to working with the Practo team as the company transforms healthcare in India and international markets,” said Hongwei Chen, Senior Director of Investment and M&A at Tencent. "Sofina is proud to join Practo on its journey to transform the way stakeholders interact in the healthcare space, consistent with our strategy to be a long-term partner of world-class entrepreneurs and investors in growth markets." - Maxence Tombeur, Head of Asia at Sofina.
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Online higher education could be worth Rs 6000 crore domestically if startups can scale up their customer acquisition programmes, writes Vishal KrishnaAfter three years of setting up processes and courses to train executives in data analytics Jigsaw Academy, a tech-enabled education startup, has signed term sheets with a couple of investors to raise $3.5 million. If the deal comes through in 3 months then we will see other tech focused education companies, like Simplilearn, either raising more money or buying online voice and video education platforms.Jigsaw Academy was founded by data scientists Gaurav Vohra and Sarita Digumarti. The company has in three years hit a turnover of Rs 12 crore per year and employs over 70 people. It focuses on making executives use data more efficiently rather than just collating data. The company declined to comment on the fund raising. But mentioned that it's course work was becoming popular in the USA, India and South East Asia. "We are not a course aggregator. Our courses are built in house by a team of data scientists and focuses on subject understanding," says Gaurav Vohra, founder of Jigsaw Academy. According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, the online education industry can be worth $40 billion by 2017. This includes all forms of education. However, online higher education could be worth Rs 6000 crore domestically if startups can scale up their customer acquisition programmes. There is a need to skill 300 million Indians by 2015 and companies like Jigsaw fall in the middle of enabling this growth.
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The website allows users to navigate through a process of increasingly streamlined refinement, purely based on visuals. Simar Singh reportsThe struggle to find exactly what you want online is often very real. Looking to simplify this very problem, e-tailing giant Snapdeal, at a preview at their Okhla office introduced findmystyle.in, a fashion product discovery engine that works by allowing users to navigate through a process of increasingly streamlined refinement, purely based on visuals. The company’s Chief Product Officer, Anand Chandrasekaran, describing the engine as a “open technology playground” that could be used by in-house engineers and users alike, said, “The feature will further enhance customer experience and make online shopping faster, better and more informative. With the introduction of findmystyle.in, we are looking to create an experimental playground and set the base for our image modelling, product search and discovery technology.” The website which is now live, allows users to make an initial selection of the category they are looking to make a purchase in after which, all kinds of variations of styles pertaining to the selection are clustered together and presented, from this the narrowing down process starts. Once, the user likes a particular style, they have the option of viewing similar products and are eventually redirected to the product page on Snapdeal’s flagship e-store, where they can complete the purchase. “Different strokes for different folks”, says Chandrasekaran explaining the rationale behind the entire mechanism and its attempt to essentially visually assist where description on an indivitual level often fails. “I might like a dress at a party, so I know what I want but can’t really describe it,” he says adding that this was where visuals would help a user identify what they are looking for. Chandrasekaran hopes that findmystyle.in’s image based discovery model will help the company understand how offline behaviour finds itself online and how this can be recreated and accommodated in the overall shopping experience. There are no plans of integrating findmystyle.in with snapdeal.com as of now and Chandrasekaran hopes that the product will “find its own niche”. The company does have plans to prompt regular Snapdeal users to try findmystyle.in by featuring it on the flagship store, however, how this is to be enabled is still being worked out. The site has been developed at Snapdeal’s Multimedia Research Lab in Bangalore and is the brain child of research scientists Gaurav Aggarwal, Nikhil Rasiwasia and Deepthi Singh. The trio had earlier founded Fashiate, a tech start-up that was acquired by the Snapdeal in March this year. According to Chandrasekaran, this research lab will see an investment of $100 million in the next two to three years. Findmystyle.in will currently only be available on web, as this, according to Snapdeal, works best with their plans to use the platform as a playground where algorithms and use cases can be tested and quickly changed.
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Quirk. Kitsch. Pazaaz. These are the three words which define a fragment of the sensibilities and the personality of Indian's urban youth - a group who, while being immensely aspirational and ambitious, know how to not take themselves too seriously. BW Businessworld's Simar Singh explores some lifestyle brands in the country that cater to this segment: Mad(e) in IndiaThe wordplay on the term 'Made in India' perfectly captures the very essence of this brand. Mad(e) in India was launched in January 2013 by Pankaj Acharya, who describes the lifestyle brand as one that "celebrates the quirks, colours, spirit and mysticism of India and its people". Inherently vivid, while creating the products, storytelling takes centerstage. According to Acharya, since their launch, the company has seen a 100 per cent growth rate. Last year the company raked in Rs 2.65 crores and is targeting Rs 5.25 crore this year. The entire venture has been self-funded till date with a total of Rs 3.25 crore being put in. The brand works on a hybrid model that combines e-tailing with a brick and mortar presence. Mad(e) in India currently has three stores and 19 multi-brand outlets. Acharya adds, "Going forward we will be adopting the franchising route to expand our offline footprint." The products are designed by a six-member in-house design team and manufactured by contract vendors under the brand. "We have also forayed into the Singapore Market, where we have an in-store presence at India Heritage Centre and our products are available in almost all the major international airports through various outlets," says Acharya. "We have recently forayed into corporate gifting segment too and that's a fast growing vertical for us. The dream is to make it a 100 crore brand in next 3 years." When asked about what differentiates the brand, Acharya says, "We are not only kitschy and quirky. Each of our designs is unique and we have a structured approach to design towards story telling. Our designs and products are strategically approached to appeal to a wider section of society, from age group 15 to 60 years." What's next? The brand adds new categories to its offerings every quarter and will be adding the t-shirts, vases, personal accessories, and wall arts in coming quarter and targets to open around 20 more outlets and one flagship store within the next three years. Happily UnmarriedOne of the older kids on the block, Happily Unmarried was started in 2003 by Rajat Tuli and Rahul Anand, who then fresh out of B-school had trouble finding accommodation and things to do up their home. Frustrated, the duo settled on the name "Happily Unmarried" and decided to start a service that would help people in similar situations. "That time we were not very clear about what all would we do. So a name had to be such that it would let us do anything. Happily Unmarried worked beautifully, we started by providing accommodation and furniture on hire but that failed miserably. Simultaneously we also started designing products which had a desi cool vibe. No one was doing anything like that, so the response was good", says Tuli. Fun, puns and many head-turning products later, the brand today has has 85 employees, an in-house design team of 12 people and a presence in all major cities in the country. Of course it doesn't end here. "We keep coming out with new products all the time. We have a online presence which is growing at a really fast pace, so the immediate focus is to make that better. We have recently set up a fully-fledged tech team to take care of that", Tuli says, elaborating on what the company has on its plate at the moment. The two-pronged growth strategy is to be seen through increasing its online presence via its website and physical presence through franchising and multi-brand outlets. When asked about the brand's marketing strategy, he simply replied that it was making their customers happy. What's next? The company is launching a range of grooming products for men, something that, Tuli admits, they are very excited about. "One needs to keep innovating and coming out with new things to keep the customers excited. That is our strategy", he adds. PropShop24Over a session of Suits on a Sunday afternoon in March 2012, three friends, tired of the drudgery of their daily routines started brainstorming for possible business ideas and two days later, the idea PropShop24 was born, a one stop shop for a selection of curated gifting products from around the world. And in December that year the idea became a reality. Sourcing products from the USA, Thailand, Hong Kong and Israel which cover categories spanning home, office, personal, gadgets, bar and party, and fashion accessories.According to one of the co-founders, Amtosh Singh, the focus remains on design and quality, placing test orders before getting into distribution agreements and getting bulk shipments. "In 2014, we also launched our in-house design brand. Our brand now includes all kinds of stationery such as notebooks, planners, folders as well as other fashion and lifestyle products such as sunglasses, laptop sleeves, coffee mugs, make up pouches etc", says Singh. The company has been growing fast since its launch and Singh says that the growth can be solely attributed to the multiplication of their initial capital investment. While professing their love for the online space the company realises the need to cater to the consumer who is more comfortable physically examining a product before purchasing it. "Our new office is going to be unique, combining retail space with workspace. We have a showroom being built within the office space. Customers can walk in, have a cup of coffee with us, buy a few products and walk out. This give us the chance to interact with our customers on a face to face level as well as hopefully build loyalty and trust for the brand PropShop24 in the long run", says Singh. "Our tagline is 'curators of cool' and we try to stay as true to it as possible and we intend to continue to do that even as we expand", adds Singh. What's Next? The creation of the company's office-cum-retail space. PlayClanWith the simple idea of "making mundane magical", Himanshu Dogra started PlayClan in 2008, a brand inspired by "everyday observations and local culture". "Our designs are a fusion of graphics and craft, narrating stories through artistry in fashion, home, accessories and gifts", says Dogra. None of the items sold are sourced and all the designs are created in-house, produced in their own facilities for quality control and all of their eight the stores are self run. "Since the objective is to enjoy and have fun with the creative process, we called it Play and all the hands that the design passes thought is the Clan. Once we find a theme or a story that we would like to play with, we research and detail out mood-boards that are then the starting point of our artworks. They go through printing, hand embroidery, construction and weaving before they are finally sold from our stores", says Dogra, explaining the brand's ethos. The interesting thing is that the brand does not use any images or pictures in their designs at all. There is an attempt to reinterpret every theme which is then redrawn in a unique style that best complements the craft technique that is chosen. "We also supply our collection to museum stores and galleries internationally and have we have been doing exclusive collaborations with various brands and corporates to offer a customised design solution," says Dogra, naming Luxor, Mehrangarh Museum and Gwalior Museum as a few of their clients. What's next? The brand will be launching it's exclusive store in Kolkata this month.
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HomeLane.com had earlier raised $4.5 million as part of its Series A from Sequoia Capital and Aarin Capital. Vishal Krishna reportsThe online custom interior designing company HomeLane.com is scouting for $10 million, as part of its Series-B round, to expand operations across seven more cities in India. Currently it operates out of Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Hyderabad and Hyderabad. The money will be used in tying up with furniture factories across the country and creating a market for local interior designers. It's current run rate, in terms of revenues, for the financial year 2015-16 is expected to hit Rs 72 crore. It has already tied up with over 350 interior designers. There are 100,000 interior designers in India. "We are using technology such as virtual reality that creates immersive experiences through our product Kaleido lens to help interior designers win customers," says Srikanth Iyer, founder of HomeLane. He adds that the "real world" solution was to control the delivery ecosystem, which was the carpenters and electricians. "Designing is easy, we finish the projects within 45 days and it is our guarantee. The unorganised segment takes 3 months or more to deliver the interiors," says Srikanth. The furniture market is Rs 50,000 crore in size and only 2 per cent is organised. HomeLane.com had earlier raised $4.5 million as part of its Series A from Sequoia Capital and Aarin Capital. It was seed funded by K Ganesh, the serial entrepreneur who has also seed funded companies Bluestone.com and bigbasket.com.
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