Realty portal Housing.Com's board has sacked its CEO and co-founder Rahul Yadav with immediate effect, saying that his behaviour towards investors and media was not "befitting" of a CEO. Yadav will not be an employee or part of the SoftBank backed portal in any manner, the company said. "Housing.Com has released its CEO Rahul Yadav, with immediate effect, after a regular board meeting, held earlier today," it said in a statement. "Yadav who is also the co-founder of the company, will no longer be an employee of Housing and be associated with the company in any manner, going forward," it added. The board, unanimously agreed to bring Yadav's tenure to a close, with reference to "his behaviour towards investors, ecosystem and the media". "The Board believed that his behaviour is not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company, known for its innovative approach to product development, market expansion and brand building," the statement said. Yadav has been in the thick of a controversy after he put in his papers questioning the intellectual capability of his company's board. Later, he apologised to the members. Last month, he hogged the limelight again when he gave away all his holding, worth about Rs 200 crore, in the company to the employees. In December, Housing.Com had raised USD 90 million through private equity infusion from SoftBank Group along with Falcon Edge and other existing investors. While the search for an interim CEO is underway, Housing.Com said, a transition plan has been put in place. "The current senior executives of Housing will continue to run the operations on a daily basis, and ensure its continued smooth functioning. The Board and the Operating Committee will remain closely involved with all key decisions," it said. The board, investors, management team and employees are keen to see Housing maximise its huge potential in India and beyond, as well as run in professional and world class manner, the company said. The Board thanked Yadav for his contributions and wished him well, for his future endeavours. Within two years of its founding, the company expanded from its original rent and resale proposition to include PGs and hostels, serviced apartments, land, plot projects, and new projects. Housing.Com has more than 2,551 employees in over 100 cities across India. (PTI)
Read More
CyberChef offers middle eastern, continental, south east Asian and even regional cuisine from all over India, cooked by home chefs Raghav who lives alone in Gurgaon has asked his cook to not come on evenings from Friday to Sundays. For, these are the times when he craves for that special ghar ka khana. It is not that his parents have started parcelling him the food from his hometown in Himachal but it is the new startup in Gurgaon, CyberChef that delivers homemade continental or Lebanese to his house. Neha Puri, co-founder of CyberChef, got the idea of starting this virtual marketplace for home cooked meals when she was doing her Masters in Marketing and Strategy from Warwick Business School, UK. There she saw how a lot of women of Indian origin would cook and sell Indian food to the students in the university. As a student, she absolutely loved it and it made her life so much easier. When she returned and saw the increasing cosmopolitan crowd in the metros, she put the two together to tap on the business opportunity and started the company along with her brother Anuj Puri in February 2015. From the very beginning she was sure she doesn’t want to hire professional chefs. “Home chefs offer the novelty of changing the menu every day which lets us offer more variety to our customers on a daily basis.” Another thing, she adds, is these women keep trying new recipes, and some are their family recipes passed on from generation to generation. “We would never get a chance to try such heirloom recipes if it wasn’t for these home cooks.” This is essentially why their business shouldn’t be compared with the Indian dabbawallas. For, they don’t offer dal, roti and sabzi but middle eastern, continental, south east Asian and even regional cuisine from all over India. She started with 25 home chefs, all housewives, in Gurgaon. In two months they have got 30 more chefs and expanded their base to Mumbai. They do more than 1,000 orders on a monthly basis, wherein the price range for a meal is between ₹150-275. The advantage of this business model is it doesn’t only offer affordable and home cooked food to the customers but also gives an opportunity to the housewives to become entrepreneurs, with whom they work on a revenue sharing agreement. Anjali Adya, a Gurgaon-based home chef, who has been with CyberChef since its beginning says, “This has been a great opportunity because they encourage me to try different recipes and master my skill. This has also helped me get market access and my kids are proud that their mother has now become a ‘professional’.” The responsibility of the home chefs is to cook the best meals and try innovative recipes, packaging, delivery, marketing and logistics is taken care by CyberChef. It is these women who act as brand ambassadors for CyberChef and spread the word in their social circles. “If they grow, we grow with them,” says Adya. One of the main concerns of being in this business, shares Puri, is the problem of time. People don’t want to wait for too long for their food. They should get it within 30-40 minutes of ordering. So, getting the right logistics can make or break this business. Moving on, Puri wants to focus on expanding their base to Pune, Bangalore and South Delhi and get 150-200 chefs at each location by end of this year.
Read More
InstaShop believes in direct connect between seller and buyer, writes Mayank GargBrick and mortar shops in the locality markets are still the backbone of the retail industry of India, accounting for more than 90% of the total retail market of more than $ 600 billion. India has the highest density of these local stores, and these stores backed by a very thick network of distributors, are best suited to serve the customers in the most sustainable way.The e-commerce models copied from the western countries have seen a significant growth in the last few years in the India, but their sustainability is still to be tested. InstaShop, a Noida-based startup founded by three IIT Delhi alumni, wants to become the technology enabler for the existing supply chain to provide a better and sustainable alternative to the current e commerce model. The company believes that the existing supply chain fronted by the brick and mortar stores is the most sustainable retail commerce model in India, and will remain as relevant in future as it is today, provided that it is supported by technology to meet the changing buying behavior of customers.InstaShop is creating a hyper local mobile marketplace, where buyers and sellers in a locality can connect directly and transact effortlessly, assisted by InstaChat. The possibility of connecting directly with the seller and chat with them for any clarification, customisation and bargains is quite unique. “The local commerce in India works exhaustively on a trust coupled by the personal touch extended by the retailers. In all existing local commerce marketplace this element is missing, InstaShop helps to retain the very same shopping experience as shopping by physically visiting the store .Another unique feature of InstaShop is that the customer can request quotes from multiple shops in one go, which is replication of the same behavior of customer for best price discovery when shopping from the local market.Buyer can search for any product, category or their favourite store. They can browse through the catalogue and place order, through the catalogue itself or by just taking picture of the buying list, prescription, or the product of their interest. Buyer can also add any of the store as their favorite store from which they want to shop on regular basis, and remain updated on the deals and offers from these stores. Also the customer loyalty programmes offered by sellers can easily be managed through InstaShop.There is always a possibility of finding the product of your interest in your locality at a better price in comparison to the major e-commerce platform, which can be delivered instantly. But because this information about local stores and their prices is not readily available to customer, the local merchants are losing out business. With InstaShop we want to organize this information and make it available to customer on his smartphone.Merchant registration process on InstaShop is very simple. Merchants can get mobile presence of their business in just few minutes, and start organising and expanding their business with the merchant application, InstaSell. InstaShop does not charge any subscription fees from merchants to register with InstaShop, nor does any commission is charged on the sale of any good or service.InstaShop believes in direct connect between seller and buyer, and allowing seller to sell good at their own price directly to the buyer, this provides a very strong feeling of ownership for InstaShop by the merchants, and they help in promoting InstaShop even with their existing customers to provide them hassle free shopping experience.The seller directly processes any order placed on InstaShop, InstaShop is not into the operations of fulfillment of order directly, but manages it with tight service level agreement with the sellers, rating and ranking of seller and the incentives on number and timely delivery of orders. “While most of the startups focus on creating delivery networks for hyper local needs, we believe that in India, the distributed existing infrastructure by the local merchants is the most cost effective and manageable solution to make the delivery of the hyper local needs. Creating own delivery workforce to make short time and distance deliveries will face challenge in scaling and covering a wider reach.The company has opend its shops in Ghaizabad and Noida, and aims to cover entire NCR by end of July. As the company do not need any operations setup in the new localities where they are expanding, and further they do not charge anything from the merchants, InstaShop is aiming a very aggressive growth and plans to have hundred cities under their coverage within one year.(Mayank Garg, founder of InstaShop has extensive experience in strategy, business development and corporate planning, and has previously served as group head, Strategy and Corporate Planning at Tata Power. Gaurav and Rachit, co-founders have more than a decade of experience in founding technology companies and scaling them.)
Read More
Housing.com co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav's resignation news on Thursday (25 June) sparked a buzz on the social media platforms. Economictimes.com quoting two people directly aware of the development said this time his resignation will be accepted by the board of the real estate portal, .However, both Housing.com and economictimes.com later denied that Yadav has resigned. Yadav, 26, who has been involved in a string of controversies, will be asked to stay on at the company and oversee product development. In May this year, Yadav resigned as the CEO of Housing.com, capping several weeks of drama at one of India's most watched startups. Yadav wrote a scornful resignation letter on April 30 to board members and investors denigrating their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition". The portal shot to fame as one of India's startup success stories after Japan's SoftBank led an investment of $90 million ( Rs 550 crore) in December, valuing it at Rs 1,500 crore. Since then, Yadav has been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons — he became embroiled in a social media dust-up with Sequoia Capital Managing Director Shailendra Singh. Housing was founded in 2012 by a dozen college-mates from IIT-Mumbai, of whom three have left the company.
Read More
The newly proposed institutional trading platform for start-ups is going to put Indian regulation on the global map of being investor friendly, says Vishal KrishnaThere have been several start-ups that had the potential to list on the Indian bourses if such an opportunity had existed in the past. The entrepreneurs of popular start-ups such as RedBus, Myntra and BookPad exited, selling off to large companies (Naspers, Flipkart and Yahoo), because the only card they could play was to either to sell or merge their companies. The Indian entrepreneurial community registered their parent companies in Singapore or New York or Hong Kong because of easier listing norms. They also went to those cities because of the tax norms and easy exit offered to private capital. Sensing a loss in value for Indian entrepreneurs the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has finally agreed to create an Institutional Trading Platform exclusively for startups, which will be part of the BSE-SME platform. Thanks to the experts, such as Rajeev Khaitan, of Khaitan and Company, Sudhir Sethi, of IDG Ventures and Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education Services, Sebi, is in the process of releasing a blue print for listing startups. However, for now the entire details have not emerged in full because the regulator has laid out some procedures of how a startup could list in India (See guidelines to listing table). What it means now is that the likes of Flipkart and Snapdeal have a chance to go public without showing profits and the intrinsic long term nature of the ecommerce business is validated. These firms can now survive in the long run with institutional capital and not be dependent on short term capital. “The move allows investors to exit in India and it allows entrepreneurs to build long term businesses,” says R Natarajan, CFO of Helion Ventures. He adds that this discussion was in the making for the last three years and has finally come to fruition. The trading platform will allow companies to list in the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex at the company’s discretion on the basis of their growth. “India has several startups solving problems related to the country and offer global solutions. For founders, it is a great way to raise capital,” says Sanjay Swamy, founder of Angel Prime Partners. He adds that this platform would be investor friendly and promise exits. Reports add that $1.5 billion, worth of private capital, flowed in to India in the first half of the year. Most of these are Venture Capital investments that come in for five years. An exit within the country and that through an IPO will make India a startup friendly nation. May be global investors are smiling now and Indian entrepreneurs have a reason to cheer up. Here is what Sebi has proposedThe Guidelines• The platform shall now be called as Institutional Trading Platform (ITP) and shall facilitate capital raising as well. • The said platform will be made accessible to: a. companies which are intensive in their use of technology, information technology, intellectual property, data analytics, bio-technology, nano-technology to provide products, services or business platforms with substantial value addition and with at least 25% of the pre-issue capital being held by QIBs (as defined in SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009), or b. any other company in which at least 50% of the pre-issue capital is held by QIBs. • No person (individually or collectively with persons acting in concert) in such a company shall hold 25% or more of the post-issue share capital. • Considering the nature of business of companies which may list on the said platform, disclosure may contain only broad objects of the issue and there shall be no cap on amount raised for General Corporate Purposes. Further, the lock in of the entire pre-issue capital shall be for a period of 6 months from the date of allotment uniformly for all shareholders. • As the standard valuation parameters such as P/E, EPS, etc. may not be relevant in case of many of such companies, the basis of issue price may include other disclosures, except projections, as deemed fit by the issuers. • Companies intending to list on the proposed ITP, shall be required to file draft offer document with SEBI for observations, as provided in SEBI (ICDR) Regulations, 2009. • Only two categories of investors, i.e. (i) Institutional Investors (QIB as defined in SEBI (ICDR) Regulations, 2009 along with family trusts, systematically important NBFCs registered with RBI and the intermediaries registered with SEBI, all with net-worth of more than Rs. 500 crore) and (ii) Non-Institutional Investors (NIIs) other than retail page: 2 [ www.sebi.gov.in ] individual investors can access the proposed ITP. • In case of public offer, allotment to institutional investors may be on a discretionary basis whereas to NIIs it shall be on proportionate basis. Allocation between the said two categories shall be in the ratio of 75% and 25%, respectively. • In case of discretionary allotment to institutional investors, no institutional investor shall be allotted more than 10% of the issue size. All shares allotted on discretionary basis shall be locked-in in line with requirements for lockin by Anchor Investors i.e. 30 days at present. • The minimum application size in case of such issues shall be Rs. 10 lakh and the minimum trading lot shall be of Rs. 10 lakh. • The number of allottees in case of a public offer shall be 200 or more. • The company will have the option to migrate to main board after 3 years subject to compliance with eligibility requirements of the stock exchanges. • For Category I and II AIFs, which are required under the SEBI (Alternative Investment Funds) Regulations, 2012 to invest a certain minimum amount in unlisted securities, investment in shares of companies listed on this platform may be treated as investment in 'unlisted securities' for the purpose of calculation of the investment limits. Grandfathering of existing companies listed on SME-ITP. • The existing companies listed on SME-ITP may continue to be guided by the existing regulatory framework for them including applicable relaxations from compliance with corporate governance requirements. Rationalisation of disclosures for proposed ITP as well as main board. • Further, in order to rationalize the disclosures requirements for all issuers whether intending to list on the main board or the proposed ITP, it has been decided that the disclosures in offer document with respect to group companies, litigations and creditors shall be in accordance with policy on materiality as defined by the issuer. However, all relevant disclosures shall be available on the website of the issuer. Also, the product advertisements of an issuer will not be required to give details of public/rights issue.
Read More
If you play in the share market and have the capacity to invest Rs 10 lakh in an IPO, very soon you might be buying the shares of an India start-up. But be cautious, as the relaxing of norms for the start-ups by the Securities and Exchange Board of India may make a lot of investors lose their money. “Start-ups by their very nature are risky investments. Thus Sebi has done well to keep the retail investors out of the start-up market. The retail investors, given their limited access to research and data, are ill-placed to take exposures in companies with fewer disclosures. However, institutional investors should also remain wary since rules such as these doing away with standard valuation parameters such as P/E,EPS (which of course may not be relevant for start-ups) may have a tendency to create a bubble in the start-up market which may bust later on,” said Deep N Mukherjee, Senior Director, Corporate Ratings, India Ratings & Research. The decision has been taken despite historical data indicating that a majority of IPOs start trading below their listing price within one year of their launch. According to data provided by Prime Database, in 2008, 81 per cent of the listed IPOs were giving negative returns within one year of their listing. In 2009 and 2010, the percentage was 50 per cent and and 82 per cent respectively. The situation was a little better in 2014 because of the stricter disclosure norms that Sebi had brought in for traditional companies. However, the relaxation for start-up in the disclosure norms is likely to spurt the percentage of negative returns once again. Mukherjee further adds “if there are not enough disclosure by such companies, investors may lose money because start-ups often have unique business models or products which may only give an illusion of easy understandability." According to the Sebi statement, the standard valuation parameters such as price to earnings, earnings per share and so on may not be relevant in case of many such (Start-ups) companies and the basis of issue price may include other disclosures, except projections, as deemed fit by the issuers. By doing away with disclosures like price to earnings, earning per share of the company, Sebi is allowing the companies to not disclose the profitability of the businesses. Instead of these norms, the companies will be disclosing information like ‘traffic on the website, conversion of visit into customers etc. “A lot of tech companies have not made money in many years. There would be many such companies which will look attractive as per revenue but take decades ,if ever to generate free cash flows,” adds Mukherjee. For example, Jabong, an online fashion retailer, incurred a loss of Rs 293 crore on revenues of Rs 438 crore in 2013-14. This means the company loses Rs 33 on revenue of Rs 100. Even Flipkart, the largest online retailer by revenue, has not made profit yet. The company is valued at $11 billion but investors like Rakesh Jhunjhunwala have questioned the business models of the company openly. While Sebi is under pressure to stop the flight of Indian start-ups to the foreign markets to raise money, but it also needs to ensure that the Indian investors do not lose money by investing in these companies. Sebi is treading a risky path by allowing start-ups to list without letting investors understand their business models. A question from Jhunjunwala in a TV interview explains the risk of investing in start-ups, “the real companies who have given returns to investors had been built by the cash flows of those businesses, not by investors”. We know that most of the Indian start-ups have been burning investors’ money to show revenues on their books. Should one invest in such start-ups without knowing enough about their profitability?
Read More
The Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI) signed a three year partnership with Microsoft India to set up ISDI Creative Accelerator, a programme that offers design and innovation for successful start-ups. With this collaboration, Microsoft will provide access to software and technology. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the two in Mumbai on Wednesday. “We are creating solution to translate young dreams into reality through integrated entrepreneurial environment and continue to be the focus for students, design innovators and corporate.” said Radha Kapoor, founder and executive director of ISDI, “Design in technology must be human centered to spark new innovation, it must be user friendly and create value without disrupting technology.” she added. Creative Accelerator programme has been designed in way that it will bring universities, students, young entrepreneurs, investors and corporate under a common platform. Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman of Microsoft India (BW Photo by Umesh Goswami)“Design is core and integral aspect of many industries. We are happy to work together with ISDI to develop a design accelerator for start-ups. We will bring the best technology and industry expertise to fuel the growth of this entrepreneurship and India, ” said Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman of Microsoft India. India is the third largest base for young business with 3000 technological start-ups after US and United Kingdom. It will touch around twelve thousand mark by 2020. This initiative will begin from Mumbai by providing six month program in design, technology and business innovation. Participating start-ups will have access to business mentors, technological support and designing experts to gain valuable market analysis and global scenario. This will be launched on a pan India basis after its launch in Mumbai in August.
Read More
A lot of investor money is stuck in companies at this point in time and there is pressure mounting on entrepreneurs to give them an exit option, says Paramita ChatterjeePrivate equity (PE) or venture capital (VC) firms, which invest in start-ups are breathing a sigh of relief with Sebi easing rules for listing on domestic exchanges for start-ups, saying it will provide them the much needed access to exits, which so far has been a cause of concern in the industry. A lot of investor money is stuck in companies at this point in time and there is pressure mounting on entrepreneurs to give an exit option to investors. So far this calendar year, in the January- June period, as many as 264 deals were sealed worth $6.6 billion, while the number of exits stood at 90 with PE firms encashing $4.5 mn, as per data available with Venture Intelligence. “Private equity works in tandem with the capital market and Sebi’s decision to ease listing norms for start ups is definitely a move in the right direction that will also facilitate investor exits besides giving promoters fund raising options,” said Bala Deshpande, Senior Managing Director at New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm with over $13 billion in committed capital. “Private equity firms are always on the lookout for startups that will grow very big so with with Sebi’s new listing norms, start-ups are definitely going to evince more investor interest,” said Vikram Hosangady, Partner and Head, Deal Advisory at KPMGUnder the new norms approved by the market watchdog on Tuesday (23 June), stock exchanges would have a separate institutional trading platform for start-ups to list on the bourses, while the minimum investment requirement would be Rs 10 lakh. Further, the regulator has also brought down the mandatory lock-in period for the promoters and other pre-listing investors to six months from three years to make it easy for those wanting to hit the bourses. Currently, there are over 3,100 start ups operating in the country. A single PE investment cycle usually lasts 3-5 years after which PE firms normally exit by way of trade sale, public listing, recapitalisation and secondary sale. Trade sale is the most common exit for private equity investments as trade buyers in the same industry are often more likely to realise synergies with the business and are therefore, the most natural buyers of the business. Typically, public listing takes place during positive market conditions as prevailing at present.
Read More
Whether you are building or buying, there are some guidelines to follow, says Karan KuraniIn a startup, there are always has 100 different things that need to be done at any given point of time. There are umpteen ways you can accomplish those tasks. Many of them can be solved by using tools that other companies provide. Some of them clearly require something to be custom built internally in your organisation. And then there are some, often pesky, things that are in the middle. You can solve the problem by using some third party tool/software, or you can also build a replica of that tool internally with a few tweaks here and there that would be nice to have. It’s these situations which cause a lot of sunk time in wasteful projects that could have easily been solved by just using some existing solution out there. But how do you decide when it’s good to build something in-house vs just buying your way out of the problem? I would like to walk you through two situations where the build vs buy question typically pops up. The first one is the problem of “Big data” (or even little data for that matter). The world is awash in data, but data is not the same as information. Data is just a fact, or an observation. It is information which empowers your organisation to make decisions. There are entire companies built to help you convert your data into actionable information. Whether it is to help you track your funnel for sales conversions, keep track of how many times in a user returns to use your product per day/week/month, at what points are your users getting frustrated and dropping off, and a million other things. Karan KuraniBuilding and maintaining such systems in-house is an expensive, time consuming affair. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that the people who are well versed in this field are rare, and are super hard to recruit. Therefore, there are a lot of companies out there who promise to provide you the same kind of insight into your data at a fraction of the cost and time of building in-house systems. Many of the products currently on the market are pretty good at their specific use cases. New Relic, for example, is an excellent way to monitor your infrastructure and the raw performance of your application. Google Analytics is another great free solution to measure the basic metrics of your website / mobile app. But, it’s not as well defined when it comes to business metrics - especially if you are a startup. A startup by definition is something new and its business model is undefined early in its life. This means that nobody - including the founders themselves - know what the best way to measure the business is. This means there is no one stop shop which will have all the things that your startup needs to measure its health. DoctorC’s dashboard was customisedAs an example, at my current company - DoctorC, we needed a dashboard which measured all our critical metrics for the current day at a glance. We wanted to know how well each of the city was doing and what was contributing to its progress as well as how far or close we were to our daily goal overall. It should also update in near real-time so we know what’s happening now as opposed to 60 minutes later. There is simply no solution out there which would provide such functionality out of the box or that can be modified like this without significant tech development. And since it is so critical to our business we built the dashboard from scratch. Each bar would turn green if the goal of each acquisition channel is hit. The circle for the city would also turn green once its goal passed. The bar on top would similarly green once our overall daily goal was hit. The more green we saw the better our business was doing - we can process everything in a very visual manner. It also acts as motivational tool where the entire company would try together to get as many greens as possible every day.This investment has paid off immensely. This is exactly what is right for our organization specifically, not for anyone else. It has helped us move fast in decisions since we have the right data at our fingertips. It was an explicit, conscious choice we made to strengthen our business.What we did not do - we did not build our own infrastructure monitoring tool - we use New Relic, we did not build our a/b testing/optimization tool - we use Optimizely, we did not build our own servers - we use Amazon Web Services, we did not build our web analytics software - we use Google Analytics and Heap Analytics. We use off the shelf software as long as they are saving us time and money and are very well defined in nature. Anything that is specific for our business and which we absolutely must have our way - without any compromises - is built in-house. Learning from the NYTimesThe second example of an in house tool that is core to a large business is New York Times’ internal Content Management System (CMS) called “Scoop”. It powers all their workflows for publishing articles on the web, mobile and print. Apart from that, it allows them to render images that are automatically cropped and aspect ratios adjusted so that the writers and editors don’t have to worry about managing how images are displayed. There are several other features which are very specific to NY Times such as “Story Budgeting and Planning”, a tool used to coordinate the publication of articles across multiple news desks across the world in different time zones in a painless way. It’s tightly integrated into their workflow in a way that is not found in a generic CMS. For NY Times, the entire experience of writing, copy editing, publishing and post publication editing is handled seamlessly with minimal friction with Scoop. They are currently changing “Scoop” so that they became a digital first organization. They have this flexibility because they have built Scoop from the ground up for themselves. It is beholden to no other organization than NY Times itself. The results speak for themselves, nytimes.com and its mobile site are industry leading media websites in the world that improves constantly day after day after day. Anything that you find unsatisfactory in the market and doesn’t serve your business needs is up for grabs. After that, it’s all a question of prioritizing what you want to build. Another point to note is that the “in-house tool” does not need to be fancy or use heavy technology. It can be as simple as a simple spreadsheet which is filled manually every day - we still do that for some of our internal projects. In the end, there are 2 simple things that you must ask yourself -1. Is the thing you want to do critical (and I mean really absolutely “Oh my god, my business will die without this!” critical)?2. Are there zero off the shelf tools that will allow you to do exactly that critical thing?If the answer to both is yes, you should seriously consider building it in-house, even if you just started your startup yesterday. This philosophy is, rightly so, independent of the size of the organization. Karan Kurani, is co-founder of DoctorC, a startup clustering diagnostic centres and consumers with technology
Read More
In may 2015, Sushanto Mitra, founder and CEO of Lead Angels Network, an angel investment firm, decided to bet on the business prospects of MyCuteOffice, a Mumbai-based online portal that connects users to shared office spaces in six cities across the country. Mitra’s company invested an undisclosed sum in the marketplace for co-working spaces for one specific reason, its asset-light model, which he says provides opportunities to grow and scale the business much faster.Though Mitra’s investment was in the digital platform, MyCuteOffice derives its core value from the brick and mortar business of the fast-growing co-working space. The cities — Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai — which the portal covers are all startup hubs, where there is an ever-increasing demand for cost-effective office space for budding entrepreneurs.MyCuteOffice is adding one new city to its portfolio every two months, a clear indication of the growing presence and demand for shared office spaces all over the country including in tier-two and tier-three pockets such as in Barauni, Bihar and Nagpur.Roaming WorkersWorld over, the concept of co-working places, where different companies or individuals share working space, gained steam with the increase in the number of individual workers and freelancers. According to a survey done by online co-working magazine Deskmag in February 2013, there was an increase of 83 per cent in co-working spaces in just one year serving a total of 117 per cent more members.Unlike globally, there is no concrete data on co-working spaces in India, perhaps because it is still in its nascence. A broad indication though, comes from the number of people who are opting to freelance. The Global Online Work Report 2014, published by California-based online staffing platform Elance-oDesk, says there are 1.9 million Indian freelancers (or potential co-working space hunters) registered on the site and this number has been increasing at 62 per cent for the past three years. The report lists India among the top 10 freelancer-earning countries globally with a growth rate in these earnings of 22 per cent year on year.Success FormulaOne of the main benefits of co-working spaces is that they provide the infrastructure which otherwise would have been prohibitively expensive. Aakriti Bhargava, co-founder of startup marketing firm Boring Brands says: “I used to work out of Gurgaon-based co-working space 91Springboard for a year. What helped is the easy access to facilities such as a meeting room and the fully-equipped, 24/7 corporate canteen which is difficult to afford in a rented office. Also, there is absolutely no hassle of handling the administrative work and one can focus on getting the work done. The place also helps to attract good talent as they expect a certain quality of workplace hygiene in addition to a decent pay and benefits.”The presence of like-minded people under one roof also helps with opportunities to exchange ideas, barter services or boost each others’ morale, which comes in handy especially in the startup culture that is otherwise replete with ups and downs, say people who have used co-working spaces in their entrepreneurial journey.Bang For The Buck: (Left): Sharin Bhatti (sitting)and Sudeip Nair (standing) of Mumbai-based The Hive convert their co-working space into an events venue in the evening for additional revenue (below): an event at The Hive. (Photographs by Umesh Goswami)While customers find co-working spaces convenient, providers of these services are yet to find a sure-shot formula for success. Says Pranav Bhatia of Stirring Minds, an 8,000 sq. ft co-working space in central Delhi, “We keep the margins low to ensure full occupancy of the space and sometimes give the space at half price or even less to social enterprises.” Bhatia, in fact, started a co-working space in August 2013 because he wanted to create a ready pool of talent to outsource projects for his California-based tech startup Lemon Interactive Inc. But as he grew more involved with the co-working space startup, VCs and individual investors began contacting him for steady advice. Now he too has become an investor with equity in four startups.Most of these spaces charge per workstation and one can rent a place on a day-to-day, monthly or an yearly basis. Pranay Gupta, co-founder of 91Springboard says the payment model of co-working spaces can be compared with that of Amazon’s Web Services — pay only for what you use.The Side ViewIt isn’t just service providers who are experimenting with different models but developers who own the real estate as well. One basic model involves earning more cumulative rental income from different clients than what one would have got from just one customer. “As a developer if one can get better rent from the property by renting it as a co-working space then it’s a no brainer. Another way to rent out the property is through revenue sharing so the co-working space provider pays the property owner a certain amount as the base rent component and the remainder in revenue share. Co-working space providers prefer this method as it saves them from paying large rents upfront, especially when they are starting out the business,” says Ankush Johar, partner, Lloyd Venture, a multinational investment company that has recently invested in a 10,000 sq. ft co-working space in Gurgaon. Full House: Pranav Bhatia of Stirring Minds, a co-working space in Delhi, keeps the margins low to ensure full occupancy, sometimes even giving the space at half price to social enterprisesThe revenue share percentage depends on the negotiation between the two parties. Usually, there is a base rent to be paid and the revenue sharing can be in 50:50, 70:30 or 80:20 ratios. The terms of the negotiation are based on the risk appetite of the real estate owner and also on the trust and goodwill of the operator.Topping UpLloyd Ventures may have invested in the co-working spaces business, but the fact remains that building and managing space is capital-intensive and not many investors are willing to fund the developers. “The returns one can expect in this business aren’t as high as one can get from successful exits from a mobile business, where it can go as high as 100x. The returns usually vary 20-40 times depending on investment made in the co-working space,” explains Stirring Minds’ Bhatia.To meet the high cost of investment this business requires, these entrepreneurs have come out with alternative streams of revenue in addition to the fees they charge their users.One way is to collect a finder’s fee by connecting freelancers to companies who want to outsource projects or by helping the VCs identify potential startups for funding. Sobin Thomas, founder of Geek Out, a co-working space for techies, with two locations in Mumbai, says most of the revenue that they earn is from the finder fees alone. “In this industry, the finder’s fee varies from anywhere between 5 to 10 per cent depending on the project. There are companies who contact us on a weekly basis for outsourcing the projects. The average cost of these projects is around $4,000 which the developer gets. We charge 5 per cent of the total project’s cost,” he explains.What makes it easy for space providers is their ready access to the community of freelancers and startsup and also the insider’s information they have about their products and services, talent, etc., information that would interest the venture capitalists intensely. Being able to connect these dots is a win-win for all the entities — more revenue for the operator, the VCs and for the users who get greater exposure and recognition.Another source of revenue for co-working spaces is through events to provide mentorship, technical skills and networking opportunities to these young companies. The promoters of The Hive see their co-working space as a place that metamorphoses into an events arena in the evening for performance artists, stand-up comedians, or music groups. “What we are trying to do is build the business model focused on where the maximum returns are. So, we have divided this place into a co-working space during the day and for hosting events at night for full utilisation,” says Sharin Bhatti, co-promoter of The Hive. In fact they designed their three-storied bungalow into a co-working space, a workshop and a cafeteria so there is enough space for all kinds of events — founder-dating events, hackathons, bookkeeping or taxation workshops.Co-working spaces are trying every trick in the book to create a sustainable business for themselves and a self-sufficient ecosystem for startups. The investment Mitra’s Lead Angel Network made in MyCuteOffice could just be the beginning. If the new approaches enhance the business prospects for these co-working space providers, the target of future investments could well be these brick and mortar co-working space entities themselves instead of online portals. If WeWork, a New York based shared office space provider can raise its fourth round of funding of $355 million in December 2014, can Indian players be far behind? sonal@businessworld.in, @sonalkhetarpal7(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
Read More
