Finding start-ups that are changing the lives of people is a hard step to take. There are some that go extra mile to tell the world that there is merit in creating businesses that change lives. The Unitus Seed Fund, which is a $23 million fund, has made finding social entrepreneurs easy. However, the fund managers are humble enough to say that India can produce many more ideas that are relevant in a mobile first world to solve social problems. With more than 300 million smartphones hitting the Indian market by 2018, USF can create great businesses. Its three year track record has already set things rolling with investments in sectors like education, mobile commerce and retail. Dave Richards, the managing partner of the fund, spoke with BW | Businessworld's Vishal Krishna about their endless quest to create social impact. Q: A decade ago your equity fund took risks in microfinance and created a change in India, you showed everyone that microfinance can make money. Does the same philosophy follow this fund with the proliferation of mobile technology? A: Yes we want to set a similar trend. We want to back entrepreneurs that can change the other India, a sizeable population that is yet to experience the internet. A decade ago we saw our investee companies build technology that could capture payments on remote devices and send information back from the village to the central operations centre. Now with mobile phones, and growing network infrastructure, we can build new businesses for challenges that were never addressed better. For example, in healthcare, we have invested in a company called Welcare Health Systems. They create affordable eye screening solutions. All the data captured on diabetic retinopathy, a disease which can lead to blindness is captured real time and sent to doctors on a real time basis. The company can easily integrate a mobile solutions play. Similarly we have invested a market place for health services which can bring transparency in connecting hospitals to patients. This can have a mobile device play too. However in healthcare there are underlying challenges, in the Indian system, because of the unaccounted for cash transactions in the ecosystem. This is still difficult to break. That said there is a chance for technology to create transparency. Q: What about education and other retail services?A: Hippocampus is a company that has changed the way we look at rural education. They are a rural kindergarten learning centre. The data suggests that 60 per cent of rural children do not finish school. This company has already created more than 100 learning centres and is targeting the rural masses who can pay Rs 250 a month. Think about the solutions and technology intervention here in the long run. This company is making a serious impact and will eventually send more kids in to schools in rural areas. The fund’s interest is also to look at agriculture. Supply chain is a key part of India’s growth in the future. One of our portfolio companies makes organic agri-input. They help farmers improve the soil and make it ready for organic farming. Then we have a retail company that connects rural artisans to customers. This is a Rs 16,000 crore opportunity. We have invested in 16 companies and we have several business plans sent to us. Q: What about mobile first businesses? A: Mobile internet is a key here. A majority of India will access internet on phones and this will change the way information is consumed and services will be very important here. We have three portfolio companies that use mobile to deliver low cost services in the city. They are mGaadi, JiffStore and Blowhorn. All these companies address the local commuter to connect with his rickshaws, the second company provides a mobile solution for small stores and the last one connects businesses to move product across the city and deliver to customers. These businesses will build more services on top of the mobile. We believe this will be the fastest growing segment in the country. Q: Tell me a bit about the fund and the support you have had?A: It has been great. We have nine start-up scouts across the country and they are the ones who bring the maximum number of ideas to the table. We have several top senior fund advisors from across the world. As you know we have big names as fund investors; to name a few for the global fund are investors like the Lemelson Foundation and the Deshpande Foundation. Then we have local investors for the seed fund and they include names like Mohan Das Pai and RanjanPai among many others. Today investors across the world are looking at India because of the sheer opportunity and challenges it presents. I must tell you that, since you had asked me about skilling, it is very important to create employable people in this country. We have already invested in a company that can help people in soft skills, especially for commerce students, to be able to land a job. The fund will look at profitable businesses ideas in the rural and urban poor areas. (BW Bureau)
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India's biggest online cab-hailing service Ola has raised about $314 million in a fresh funding round from investors led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global, a company filing showed. Private equity investors including Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Steadview Capital also invested in ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, the owner of Ola, in the latest funding round, the filing dated April 2 to the Registrar of Companies showed. In October, Ola had raised $210 million from Japan's SoftBank Corp, which did not participate in this round. Last month, Ola bought rival TaxiForSure for $200 million in one of India's biggest e-commerce deals as it looks to see off fast-growing United States-based rival Uber. Ola is investing in technology, better safety features as well as new offerings as it expands its network. Besides letting customers hail taxis as well autorickshaws, the cheaper three-wheeled taxis that ply on India's roads, Ola's mobile app also allows customers to order food in some localities.
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E-retailer Snapdeal.com said on Wednesday (8 April) it bought online mobile recharge firm Freecharge for an undisclosed amount in a bid to boost its reach in the fast-growing mobile transactions business. Snapdeal, backed by SoftBank Corp, competes with Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc's India unit in the country's online shopping market, which is expected to be worth $102 billion by 2020, according to Morgan Stanley. Easy availability of smartphones and cheap data plans have resulted in most of those transactions to be made via apps, where consumers use their mobile phones for everything from buying clothes to booking movie tickets. Freecharge allows users to top up amounts on their mobile phone or internet connections and get coupons as reward for using its service. Snapdeal Chief Executive Kunal Bahl said 1 million mobile transactions would take place daily once the companies are combined. About 75 percent of all Snapdeal transactions now are through mobile users, he said. Freecharge would remain an independent platform even after the deal, which is expected to close within the next 6 months, Bahl said, without specifying how much much it paid to buy the mobile recharge firm. With the acquisition, Snapdeal would become "the largest mobile commerce company in India," the company said in a statement.(Agencies)
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Small businesses with good time management are more likely to see growth and are perfect breeding grounds for new technologies. Enterprises, small and medium-sized, which are tech-savvy, tend to create jobs and drive more revenue as compared to their lesser tech-savvy counterparts. This fact has already been established in a research commissioned by Microsoft Corporation and another survey independently conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) which is a global management consulting firm and leading advisor on business strategy. The findings of both the surveys depict that if more SMEs in India adopted the latest IT tools, there is potential for SME revenue to grow by $56 billion and create 1.1 million new jobs.Event ticketing industry, which is estimated at $1 billion in India alone, excluding tickets sold for buses, trains, airplanes, movies, museums, art galleries, etc, has commenced leveraging the technology about a year ago. Technology has been deployed not only to list events, but to categorize tickets and enable their online sale by powering them with payment gateways. The e-commerce-enabled technology platforms are now moving to the next notch by becoming partners with large-format event organisers.The Indian economy today, to a large extent, is driven by the SME sector and there is a tremendous opportunity for economic growth. Technology has played a pivotal role in helping these SMEs expand their businesses. The organizations adopting technology have witnessed enhanced efficiencies that have brought visibility to key performance parameters. It also gives better control over operations, reach newer markets and grow their businesses. For instance, event technologies have evolved to encompass multiple segments. Their horizons have widened from not just selling tickets online, but the other products like attendee check-in, attendee networking, and enlisting of venues have all been brought onto technology platforms, making small and medium enterprises entrench themselves in this business.As per the survey, IT-enabled SMEs, which are denoted as technology leaders, grew in revenues faster by 15 per cent and were also able to create twice as many jobs as SMEs that use less technology. Such companies also reported greatly improved employee mobility, scalability and agility. The report also showed that the latest wave of technological advancement, such as cloud services, brings potential for the most far-reaching innovation and business growth ever. It also creates opportunities for more SMEs to achieve the growth rates of technology leaders by leveraging technology to fuel productivity and growth. It was also found that high performing SMEs were always ahead of the mainstream IT adoption and constantly integrated and upgraded the latest technology in their systems. This not only improved their productivity, but also helped them connect with new customers and markets, particularly outside their own region or country and compete with larger players. These companies employ the full range of available tools - from productivity software to Internet connectivity and cloud-based services.Small enterprises with less than a million dollar annual gross merchandise volumes are able to visualize a manifold business growth to the tune of almost $25 million annually, just because they are able to tap the technology resources and align them with the business.In the past few years, SMEs have played a vital role in developing the Indian economy and beyond. It has also been the primary driver of job growth. It, however, remains a large and informal economy in India, which mostly does not get reflected in the statistics. It is indeed true that these SMEs provide a large opportunity to increase output and employment substantially. They would also lead to a more vibrant economy by outperforming innovation. In spite of this, it has been revealed that the adoption of IT services by SMEs is absolutely uneven. Apart from this, many SMEs and their customers do not have access to modern broadband networks and many lack the skills to get the most out of it. These SMEs are also still using large amounts of old and less efficient hardware and software. The reason behind this is the highly priced new devices due to high import duties. SMEs are also concerned about online security and privacy. Despite these obstructions, the growth prospects described in the study are too important for governments and the IT industry to ignore.At this point, the event industry, which is on the forefront of leveraging the IT to the hilt, are now embedding live streaming as an added offering to the event organisers and also such offerings are seen as revenue grossers.One of the major drawbacks of the Indian economy is that almost 90 per cent of SMEs in India have no access to the internet as compared to only 22 per cent of SMEs in China and 5 per cent of SMEs in the US. As the government looks at making the most of the economic growth, it is important for the policy makers and the IT industry to implement strategies to remove barriers to IT adoption by addressing the top concerns of small businesses about using more technology. The author is Founder & CEO, MeraEvents.com
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The information highway, or the network, has been for many the hope of humanity in sharing knowledge. Yet the digital world, like the real world, is prone to focused attacks because some groups believe that information, when in the hands of large corporations, is not democratic. There are large gates or forts in the IT world that differentiate between those civilized and those that are not. Today large IT security companies like Symantec, RSA, McAfee and Norton are building these forts for Fortune 2000 enterprises and they secure data centres and networks for these corporations. But with the world of devices and applications converging on small enterprises, there needs to be an overhaul in the way IT security is looked at, both in terms of cost and its reach. Enter AppKnox, a quirky startup from Bangalore, whose business model is as unique as the individuals who run it. Incubated at Microsoft Ventures, their motto is to ready enterprises for the next wave of IT security, which is about being agile and proactive during the deployment of mobile applications. Three engineers, or the musketeers, Prateek Panda, Subho Halder and Harshit Agarwal have got together to tell the world that they need not build standard fences; instead they ask them to take the fight to the hackers by understanding security at the code's scripting level. "Security is the last piece which software developers think about, it is a procedure for them and therefore several applications out there, on all mobile operating systems, are vulnerable," says Subho Halder, co-founder at AppKnox. Early DaysThey met at a college in Orissa, seven years ago, and were looking at software programming through a different lens. For them every program could be broken into and reprogrammed to fit their commands. Their search for breaking code took them deeper into the dark world of the black hats, these were the wizards and sorceresses of the computer world or just plain people, who break into computing programs to steal information or to help organisations secure their applications. It’s a good thing that these guys have seen the dark side and are now out there to "serve and protect" the world. However, their learnings were not treated with fondness. Like all things unconventional, they were shunned by many. Once employed, after college, the curiosity to tell their organisations that their applications could be broken into led them to trouble. Their organisation put the brakes on them and the boys were pulled up for pointing out mistakes. They were hitting at the sanctity of the organisation, or more so the chief technology officer's ego. In fact, an IT services company, where Subho worked, threatened to sack him and warned him not to ever dabble with such things. "It's sad that a good intention is always hushed up because the company does not have good IT security policies and wants to cover it up," Halder says. Nevertheless, these experiences made them stronger since the business or market numbers proved that they could become entrepreneurs. Organisations spend $71 billion on enterprise information security. By 2020 the number could go up to $100 billion. Gartner predicts that this year alone enterprises would spend $6 billion for cloud based applications. With Gartner predicting that the world will have 50 billion devices being connected, protecting the information highway is going to be like the American movie Tron. For those who have not seen the movie, human beings enter the computer world to fight corrupt computer programs trying to extend their dominance in the physical world. Why AppKnox?The genesis of AppKnox in 2014 began with an intention to help software developers focus on security before they release their app. All that the user has to do is to send the binary of the app on AppKnox's website. Voila! The AppKnox "engine" will tell you about the flaws in the scripting code, the source code and the machine code. Their business model is based on software-as-a-service and will also consult with companies in making their IT security stronger for their mobile play. Their service will benefit a whole host of small companies that cannot afford proprietary security software. They have raised pre-seed money of $19700 from a Singapore-based incubator called JFDI Asia and are well on their way to raising angel money. But why do these market or industry numbers make sense? For that we need to go back to 1985 when the world's first virus was created, by two Pakistani software entrepreneurs, on a floppy disk. They created the software to corrupt information stored in computers. But the virus had to physically move from Pakistan to the USA through a 5 inch floppy disc to corrupt computers. From there on it brought down several university computers. It made those Pakistani engineers, Basit and Amjad Farooqi, world famous. Today information is sent over the network and the highway is open to information bandits. There are millions of viruses that sit in the network to destroy or steal information everyday. Therefore, the need to have more folks patrolling on the "civilized" side. The business for AppKnox will depend on its ability to sign up more customers. For this, it needs money, but finding it can prove hard for an IT security startup. There is a reason for that because the Indian market is still not concerned about network or mobile security. Earlier an innovative Bangalore-based startup called RedForce Labs, which pioneered protection - from hackers - of online money transfers, could not succeed because banks were not convinced of the hardware-oriented business model. The banks cited that the startup included, in their business model, payment for an external USB device that would infuse protection during money transfers. However, the idea was pure genius because any software can be broken into and the startup made an effort to protect information through a security code infusion from a plugged in external device. AppKnox seems to be the next extension. And their best bet is to scale up to survive.
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Many go to hospital only to find that their insurance cover is not enough to meet the expenses of the medical procedures. So they have to take a loan to pay for hospital expenses. The National Sample Survey Organisation of India says that 32 per cent of rural India and 22 per cent of urban India were in constant debt. About 20 per cent of long-term household debt involves paying off hospital operation expenses and medical bills. Enter "DocTree", a platform that puts power right back in the hands of the patient. This startup allows patients to upload their ailments (scans and images), on their website and connect them to the hospital ecosystem, which tries to treat the patient at the cheapest possible rate. The patient selects the hospital that offers the best price for care with a reputed doctor. "The power is in numbers. We are creating a database of patients, whom the hospitals cannot ignore," says Srinivasan Narayana, CEO and founder of DocTree. He says that it brings down the cost of care because doctors bid for the patient and offer to treat the patient at the lowest cost in the many hospitals that they consult. Therefore, it is in the interest of the hospitals, to engage and retain their doctors in providing care at lower prices, rather than losing the patient to a competitor. Today hospitals want higher revenues by increasing the number of procedures. The platform provides scale for hospitals and increases the reach of care in the country," says Narayana. The platform is open to different hospitals and doctors to subscribe to. This 18-month-old startup has currently added more than 40,000 patients and over 30 hospitals in Bangalore alone. It has got angel funds of $8,00,000 from a high net worth individual. Narayana conceived the idea when he was a doctor in a large hospital chain in India. His premise is that patients do not know what they pay for in the hospital and sometimes end up paying a lot for no reason. He cites this problem with an example of an operation in the gynaecology department. "Once I saw a doctor bring in 18 students to watch a c - section operation. The eighteen students had gloves on; all of which got billed to the patient," says Narayana. He adds that the DocTree platform would give the exact pricing of the care, including room rates, to the patient after the hospital was chosen on the platform. "There is an increase in startup activity addressing various citizen needs such as health and education. These businesses need to scale quickly," says Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO of Mindtree, the $500 million IT services company and also a mentor of several startups. Lybrate, Practo, Portea and Healthifyme are several startups that can offer value add services with the DocTree. These startups offer nutrition services, post and pre-care services with doctors. Each of them focuses on a niche grey area and are addressing them. Lybrate raises $1.23 million from Nexus, meanwhile Practo raised $30 million in series B funding from Sequoia and Matrix Partners. Portea has also raised $8 million from Accel Partners and Qualcomm Partners. If the money keeps rolling in then health care startups are in for a $500 million valuation in a couple of years. The most important thing is that it solves the purpose of delivering health care services, at a lower cost, over mobile phones. At least that is the quest for several of these entrepreneurs.
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BW|Businessworld, one of India's most respected business media brands, has launched Businessworld|ACCELERATE, a multi-city startup acceleration initiative, focused on creating an innovation-driven ecosystem in the country. The objective of this initiative is to support and encourage entrepreneurial aspirations in the country and empower aspirants and entrepreneurs to succeed in their domains of business and achieve greater heights. BW|Accelerate will engage with startups across the spectrum, from idea to beyond minimum viable product (MVP), and fund early-stage companies across three verticals - Institutional, Entrepreneur, Customer and Business Connect programmes - and will empower large organizations to set up incubation initiatives through Accelerate|Organizational. The programme will also empower other ecosystem players to leverage from the infrastructure built around it and contribute to creating and fostering entrepreneurial aspirations and value creation in the country. "Accelerate is a programme built on knowledge and intelligence acquired over the years and has its foundation in a vision to create a platform for early stage startups focused towards speeding innovation, fostering business growth and enabling accelerated entrepreneurial aspirations in the country," said Anurag Batra, chairman of BW|Businessworld. Citing a recent impact assessment study, Ashu Agrawal, programme director for Businessworld|Accelerate, said 78 per cent of respondents expressed a critical need for deeper hands-on and on-ground participation and mentoring. The study conducted across six cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad - covered over 300 startups in various sectors. Sixty-four per cent respondents across stages of startup lifecycle identified market access as a key gap and 70 per cent respondents felt that having experienced people to participate and getting the right people on board is another critical challenge. "Emphasizing the significance of having a consistent initiative to address all these issues will enable more entrepreneurs, startups and result in an innovation-led consumption movement," Ashu said. He added: "The operating structure of Accelerate has been crafted carefully to address all the major lacunae, bridge gaps and facilitate experienced professional participation, which will enable startups to interact in a sharper way with customers and consumers." The programme is layered starting with Accelerate|Institutional, the first vertical, which is an education institution-partnered initiative focused towards nurturing entrepreneurial aspirations of the young, on-campus students, and providing them with the right skill-sets to translate such ideas into prototypes. The second vertical, Accelerate|Entrepreneur, is aimed at engaging with beyond MVP startups, across categories, with the objective to provide a knowledge base, and achieve customer traction. This vertical will also focus on facilitating involvement by experienced professionals as mentors and share their knowledge to help achieve sharpness, critical for growth. The third vertical, Accelerate|Customer & Business Connect, is a programme designed for backed startups and it will engage with such early stage companies through a tailor-made programme. The focus will be to assist such startups with market connect and customer acquisition and help them achieve the right scale, in line with investor expectations. And Accelerate|Organizational is designed to empower larger business entities and businesses to set up incubation projects within their fold, in line with strategic interests or as part of CSR initiatives. Through this relationship, the Accelerate team will continue to support such larger organisations and will make available relevant infrastructural support to expedite growth of incubated startups. "We are excited to create this platform with the support of various stake-holders, and their willingness to contribute," Ashu said. Applications for Accelerate|Entrepreneur will open soon and the launch of this programme and commencement of the first batch will happen in the first week of February 2015.
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While graduating from the College of Business Studies, Delhi University, in 1990, Dhirendra Kumar discovered he had free time after classes. An avid collector of newspapers and magazines for nearly five years, Kumar used that time to put the publicly available information and data he had accumulated into neat Excel tables. After all, in a world before the Internet, mobile telephony and cable TV became the norm, access to information and data was primarily from the printed word.
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