Startups begin with a brilliant idea by highly motivated people, who hire a couple of extremely motivated people to turn it into a reality, says Aditya RajgarhiaLeft, right, straight ahead or trackback 10 steps - if you’re somebody looking for a challenging yet promising career, you’re probably stumbling across opportunities at fast-growing startups hunting for the brightest talent.Startups have a magnetic aura around them and working for one is nothing short of the perfect north pole-south pole attraction. Be it for the culture - fun and casual, or the room for rapid growth - professionally and financially, startups are surely in the limelight today for offering the ‘best’ job opportunities to freshers and experienced professionals.Looking at the fancy websites to videos boasting of a culture that balances work, life and enjoyment, there isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t imagine themselves sitting on a bean bag with a mac in hand, working with like minded people while applying for these positions.There is no doubt about the fact that working for a startup can be exciting and at the same time, teach you a lot about the field you want to build a career in (or not). Because once you’re out there, all the rules you have learnt at your corporate job no longer apply.So how do you know the startup you’re planning to join is the right career move? A hit and trial is fine, but what if the grass isn’t as green as you thought it would be?6 things you need to keep in mind before signing up with a startup1. You’ll have to be ready for changeUnlike corporate biggies who have set offices across different cities, allocated spaces for various departments, defined work for a group of people and job titles to go along with the work, startups are forever changing. Be it the office location, job title, job role or for that matter, your seat!At some startups, even picking out your favourite chair and labelling it doesn’t work.The constantly changing environment definitely breaks your workflow once in a while; but life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better with change. After all, startups aim at hiring highly motivated and enthusiastic, change embracing people!2. You’re either all in or simply outIf you’re accustomed to working alone, startups aren’t for you. You’re expected to be a team player, who rolls up his sleeves and dives right in at the hour of need - whether or not your job profile qualifies you for it.There is no such thing as, “This isn’t what I was hired for.”Your everyday activity could fluctuate from being exactly what your job description states to something that you had never even imagined yourself doing; including picking up donuts for your colleagues occasionally. The good part of it all? You learn how to do just about everything - tech, non-tech and so many other things!3. The flat hierarchy doesn’t stayStartups begin with a brilliant idea by highly motivated people, who hire a couple of extremely motivated people to turn it into a reality. Even though initially the pitch of a flat hierarchy sounds exactly what you are looking for, things are bound to change once the company tastes success.Don’t like someone standing on your head? Sad.The motivated early employees are often put under experienced managers who decide what needs to be done when - of course, in the best way possible. Even though a manager is a manager who might bug you on a daily basis, he or she is the one person you can learn from. After all, they know how to keep a storm in control.4. It's hard work, rewarding workWhen you join a startup, you're not just performing your individual role - you're building a company. Long hours and pressure to work on multiple things are the norm in the early years of a startup. It can be mentally draining, but a great experience at the same time. Not to mention the enormous satisfaction of building something great from scratch.Be ready to deal with pressure!Although the work is hard, fast-growing startups who have raised large amounts of capital are usually able to compensate their employees very well, even better than most large companies. It's definitely a "work hard, play hard" environment.5. You work at your own riskEverything is hunky dory while investors are coming in, deadlines are being met and there isn’t already a similar concept so big that it is hard to compete with. But when you make the choice of working at a startup, the risk you take in your career path is entirely on your shoulders.Enter at your own risk!A lot of startups don’t survive beyond a year or two of crazy working. Even when they make all the news for getting acquired, the real story may not be quite as rosy. Often, startups get acquired for a price at which even the founders don’t make anything out of the sale.But the best part of it all?6. You’ll get to innovate and start your own One of the most rewarding things about working for startups is the environment you get to bring forward fresh ideas and innovate with the best of people in the field. Since each one in the team is a motivated individual, they are always open to new ideas.Age no bar, your ideas are always credited!Working in an entrepreneurial environment is a great way to learn how to innovate. A startup experience pays you back in opportunities and knowledge to help you get started with your own venture.Whether you’re applying for an internship or a full time position, remember one thing: there is no such thing as a constant in the startup world. For as long as you’re working in a setup, make sure you make the most out of it and learn as much as you can. Having a startup experience on your profile can work wonders.The author, Aditya Rajgarhia, is CEO and Founder of Instahyre.com
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Indian designed chipsets power satellites and future of mobility; now over $100 million private equity money will find these startups to build connected civilizations, says Vishal KrishnaIndians have moved on from making potato chips to building chip sets for connected vehicles and smart cities. Analysts estimate that startups that have a combination of software, hardware and embedded systems experience can raise money. This industry has already raised close to $60 million now. Saankhya Labs, Ineda Systems and Si2 Microsystems are all betting big on the global industry. With words such as internet-of-things and smart cities floating around, these companies are out there to prove to the world that their technology is more than just a Make in India campaign.Tucked away in a corner of Whitefield, a sprawling industrial complex, in Bangalore, is a small chip manufacturer called Si2 Microsystems. Upon entering its futuristic lab one can see machines building chips on substrate. These robots use golden thread to make integrated circuits with such precisionbecause the operating chipset ultimately lands in to defence satellites.Si2M specialises in manufacturing System-in-Package (SIP) modules that give birth to the connected machines that we see in daily life. From a mobile phone to the car and later ending with the connected lights, at home, everything carries a SIP module. To illustrate this further, a SIP is nothing but a combination of the central processing unit and its allied systems, which have different applications, packaged or stacked into a unit. The popular architecture is System-On-Chip (SOC) where functionalities are in independent chips. The engineers would know this better than the lay reader. The lay reader has to think of all functionalities in a box (SIP) versus individual chips (SOC) having their own boxes.For this Rs 50-crore company, the year 2015 has become a turning point. After five years of hard work and becoming the preferred vendor for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and work with several automobile OEMs, when founders, brothers Dinanath and Sanjay Soni invested $2 million on this lab, there were naysayers who said that they could never compete with the Chinese companies. “We have to spend a lot more on marketing,” says Sanjay Soni, Director and co-founder of Si2M, chuffed about the kind of research that has gone in to building chipsets. The company hopes to raise the bar and increase their investment by $200,000 (Rs 1.3 crore) to spend on marketing activity. They are a manufacturing company and need not spend, on marketing, like a startup focused on consumers and, therefore, spending millions of dollars becomes necessary from imperative investors.“These are ideas that can generate jobs in research,” says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research. It also adds up to the whole make in India campaign, which even Chinese electronics companies, like Xiaomi, are waking up to.“Chinese companies have realised the potential of Indian software engineering and they are already setting up shop here to aid their growth in chip manufacturing,” says DinanathSoni. The brothers add that the buzz around IoT and growing defence spends has made many small and medium enterprises, globally, buy their SIP modules because they offer high value in performance. “We are a premium company. Our research allows a soldier to carry the least amount of payload because the hardware is miniaturised,” says Dinanath Soni.Why are they important? Rs 48,000 crore has been allocated to the building of smart cities, cars are going to have more electronics in them - 30 per cent of the cost of manufacturing is going to be on software- and there is this whole campaign around the Internet of Things and Everything (IOT&E). The number of wearables in the world that connect to larger smarter systems is also going to go up. IDC, the research firm, predicts that the worldwide wearables market will reach a total of 45.7 million units in 2015. From there, the market will reach a total of 126.1 million units in 2019, resulting in a five-year CAGR of 45.1 per cent. No wonder automobile software centres like Robert Bosch Engineering India (RBEI), Mercedes Benz Research and Development India along with chipset manufacturers like Freescale and Texas Instruments are playing a major role in investing in Indian R&D. Robert Bosch filed 179 patents in 2013 and 80 in 2014.“The use of deep research on chips for the global automotive industry for safety and semi-autonomous driving is happening out of India,” says Manoj Koul, Director-Product Development, Texas Instruments. Another startup that has taken this deep dive in to making a standard chip for the wearable industry is called Ineda Systems. This Hyderbad-based company has raised a total of $43.3 million and has been backed by the likes of Cisco Systems. “There will be several billion wearables in the market and the industry is in need of low cost and low power consuming processors,” says Balaji Kanigicherla, CTO and co-founder of Ineda Systems. The company’s first big launch with a smart phone chip manufacturer is to happen in another six months. Ineda’s processor is an SOC, unlike a SIP of Si2M. Saankya Labs is building a solution that brings different standards of digital and analog TV on to a single chip. The have raised $5 million from Intel Capital.These chip manufacturers have taken a giant leap of faith and their products will be defined in the era of the smart city or the smart car. It is also a time of make or break for these companies. However, it looks like the world wants to make these Indian companies leaders in building cost effective and powerful chips with quality software applications. No wonder the likes of Intel and Qualcomm are betting big on Indian talent. Perhaps there will be many more companies like these chip makers.
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A june afternoon in New Delhi can’t be anything but sizzling hot. Yet, Sashwati has a fleece jacket handy in her office drawer. Reason: It gets so chilly indoors that she gets goose bumps. At around six in the evening, when it’s time to go home, Sashwati quickly puts her desktop in sleep mode and leaves, as do the 125 employees in her office.This scenario is replicated in millions of offices every day, resulting in a massive wastage of electricity from air conditioners and computers. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), commercial buildings waste up to 30 per cent of the energy they consume.Now, there is help available for such companies from Zenatix, a Gurgaon-based startup that helps commercial buildings save on the their energy bills, by understanding their power consumption patterns and providing insights.“The main reason for this wastage is that people are not able to measure their energy consumption,” says Rahul Bhalla, co-founder and CEO of Zenatix. “Unlike the mobile bill that lists the cost incurred from calls, messages, and use of other services, the electricity bill just mentions the units of electricity consumed. It doesn’t brief how much energy is consumed by ACs, or UPS. If one knows how much energy is being consumed by which appliance in real time, one can take corrective measures,” he adds.Zenatix installs energy monitoring equipments, smart meters and controllers on different appliances such as ACs, lighting, UPS, etc. to monitor the energy consumed by them through their cloud-based software. Then it analyses the data and sends information on energy-saving measures to customers via SMS or email.ZENATIXYEAR OF FOUNDING: December 2013 WHAT IT DOES: Enable commercial buildings become energy-efficient USP: Provides actionable insights driven by energy analyticsFUNDING: $1,61,000COMPETITION: Boston-based EnerNOCREVENUE (BOOKED): Over Rs 1 crore NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 12PATENTS: NoneThis energy-efficiency model was a part of the research done by Amarjeet Singh, co-founder and CTO, who was a faculty member at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in New Delhi. During his research (2010 to 2013), he deployed energy sensors on campus to collect over five million data points every day. Insights developed from the data collected over the years helped in reducing energy consumption by 15-20 per cent at the institute.In December 2013, he took entrepreneurial leave from IIIT Delhi to start Zenatix with his IIT Delhi batchmates Rahul Bhalla and Vishal Bansal. He launched this model commercially for large consumers of energy like office spaces, hospitals, schools, manufacturing units.As they were doing their market research, the partners came to know of several companies that were engaged in gathering data and informing building managers about their energy usage using graphs and trend charts. But then, the building managers did not have the know-how to interpret this data and take corrective action. “So, instead of providing the information on energy consumption, we decided to interpret the data and give recommendations to customers by email alerts and messages to trigger action in real time”, says Singh.This, according to Singh, is Zenatix’s biggest differentiating factor. “We have not seen any company in India that analyses the data and delivers solutions to customers to reduce their energy consumption and link all this to cost savings.”Globally, Boston-based EnerNOC is helping commercial buildings automate energy operations.The partners launched their first product in May 2014. But they are still working on building different algorithms and use case studies, so that this system can be deployed across a variety of customers with varying infrastructural support systems in various circumstances, such as factories, for instance, where the Internet connection might not be stable.The biggest challenge for them initially, says Singh, was sales. The customers wanted to know how much they would save in costs. This meant installing their system and getting the data. But clients were unwilling to pay a huge amount upfront for this product. It was a chicken and egg situation, says Singh. So, they refined the business model and transformed it into a SaaS model, where companies pay a monthly subscription fee proportional to the area over which the sensors are installed. And, there is also a guarantee: if the client doesn’t make cost savings, Zenatix would remove the software without any charge. This proved to be a game changer for them. Within one year, they had 32 clients with sensor installations at over 100 sites. Some of their large clients include Google, Mother Diary, NIIT, United Health Group, and IIT Delhi. In fact, they recently raised $1,61,000 from Google’s India chief Rajan Anandan, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal and Trifecta Capital’s Rahul Khanna, along with a bunch of other individuals.Gaurav Bhatnagar, National Head of Infrastructure & Facilities at NIIT says, “We commissioned the project in April 2015 and in just two months we have been able to make energy savings of 5 per cent with just the low hanging fruits. For instance, Zenatix suggested starting the chiller at 7 am instead of 6 am, so the building reaches the optimal temperature just before people arrive. The best thing is they don’t suggest any retrofits but give deep insights about performance of electrical equipments and how the building reacts to them.”The company is now focusing on getting more customers and also making its technology seamless and plug-and-play. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 27-07-2015)
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More than $100 million will flow into the industry through acquisitions and investments, writes Vishal KrishnaOver 6 lakh engineers pass out of colleges in India every year. Additionally, professional colleges churn out 5 million graduates every year as well. According to MeritTrac, a meagre 15 per cent of them are employable. To increase the number of employable people in the country, several certification courses have cropped up. NIIT and Aptech were the pioneers of certification courses for almost two decades. Of late, many entrepreneurs have taken a bet on training this generation on to a new set of skills. Simplilearn, Jigsaw Academy, Edutor and Edureka have been fighting it out to win students and universities, too. These companies combined can also raise more than $100 million in 18 months.For universities, the main challenge in training people is huge. These startups are aiding employability in the country. In fast-changing world, students have to be certified in technologies such as big data engineering, computer languages like Python, PHP and Hadoop distributed computing architecture. Some of these courses are heavy terms and can leave any graduate with an uneasy feeling about moving ahead in their career. These days the sartups play a vital role in shaping the future of the country. According to the National Skill Development Corporation, the firms are not only betting on the valuations, but also betting on 300 million young people who are actively seeking jobs by 2030. To boot LinkedIn acquired online skill development firm Lynda in the US for $1.5 billion. Now Lynda — in its LinkedIn avatar—will look at startups that have built efficiencies and scale in education.“Education and professional skilling is a big bet if these companies use technology to make learning easier,” says Sanjeev Agarwal, co-founder of Helion Ventures.Helion’s first bet was on Simplilearn where it jointly with Mayfield and Kalaari Capital invested $28 million. In the six years, Simplilearn has scaled up to 400,000 customers in 150 countries. It offers more than 250 courses with an option of either taking it in a classroom or online module.“India needs certification and vocational training courses. There is a big opportunity to expand these courses globally too,” says Krishna Kumar, founder of Simplilearn.Recently, Simplilearn acquired a marketing training company called Market Motive in the US for $10 million. This will give the company a firm foothold in the US.To add to the opportunities in India and the US, there is a shortage of 200,000 data scientists by 2015. Gartner — the research firm—predicts that there will be a ten fold growth for training data scientists in five years.Two profitable startups, Edureka (an annualized revenue of Rs.30 crore) and Jigsaw Academy (an annualized revenue of Rs 12 crore.) have hit big by training data scientists. Their students are sought after in analytics firms such as Fractal Analytics, MuSigma and TEG Analytics.Similarly, Wipro and Infosys, which have been adding analytics teams, are working with these two startups to train their employees. Edureka and Jigsaw are in advanced talks with investors to raise more than Rs 20 crore."Our scalable platform works with more than 1,000 curated teachers and over 1000 courses," says Lovleen Bhatia, co-founder of Edureka.The Bangalore-based Manipal Group of Institutions is known to swoop in on these profitable companies to scale up their data training courses."We have been training engineers to use data creatively and intelligently," says Gaurav Vohra, CEO of Jigsaw Academy. They have plans to hit revenues of $50 million in eighteen months.Jigsaw is founded by Sarita Digumarti and Gaurav Vohra, both data scientists in the US-based firm before founding the company in 2012 in Bangalore.There are some betting on schools, too. Edutor Technologies is betting on building interactive technologies that aid in education. They have raised Rs 2 crore from Hyderabad Angels and will raise more when their tablet based application is adopted by over 50000 schools in India. It currently has more than 40000 paying students. The company is betting on self learning through tablets.Other startups focused on building school based practice tests and learning are Embibe, Nayi Disha and Purple Stream have raised money to focus entirely on schools.BW | Businessworld predicts that global funds will focus on education technology and we can witness small acquisitions in 12 months. However, there has not been a big acquisition since 2011, in education tech. The last one was Pearson bought online tuition firm TutorVista for Rs 700 crore. Prepare for big monies coming into the sector to make many more Indians employable.
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Ajay Batra's advice for startups os before you declare yourself to be one – have some honest conversations with self and other co-foundersAlok and Reeba have known each other from their school days. Their families have also come to know each other well. Alok is an engineer from IIT-Delhi, and Reeba has a Masters in Education from Jamia. Both are exceptionally bright and hard-working. But, that’s not all that’s in common between them – they are also co-founders of a startup called “iLearn360”-that is hoping to revolutionize school education in India. Given the lack of capable teachers, and focus on rote learning – iLearn360 has developed technology enabled teacher-training curriculum for B.Ed. students that specializes in learning assessments, and are planning to equip teachers in schools across the country with a cell phone app that takes the drudgery from CCE (Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation). Their dream is to make learning productive and fun for all.They have been working on their idea for six months; developing it, getting inputs from schools, making it multi-lingual and running it by experts in education. At this point they are quite clear on what their first product will offer, and they are excited about it. It’s time to take their startup from idea to implementation. Fortunately, their families have been supporting them all through – and the project has actually been funded by them.While discussing market positioning, they have identified two clean segments – CBSE schools in urban areas and State-run government schools in rural India. Currently, Alok and Reeba are discussing their revenue models and pricing framework for these schools. The technology has been given free to about 50 B.Ed. institutions – where it is being used fairly regularly, and to good results. Alok is convinced that an annual per-child fee of Rs. 500 and Rs. 300 will work for the two segment of schools. Reeba is not convinced about the latter.She has been watching the app being used in B.Ed. colleges (as a freebie) and feels that the socio-economic profile of students in government-run schools does not merit a charge – she want to give it free – as that’s the only the solution will be affordable.In fact, Reeba is increasingly becoming sceptical of the revenue and profitability of their venture. Her social leaning gives her unique perspective of the ground realities; whereas Alok’s business-sense prevails all analysis.Their differences are starting to grow – Reeba has been talking to the country’s biggest NGO’s to see if they would like to adopt their technology for free; while Alok has been busy tinkering their 5-year revenue/sales projections to show healthy profits to possible investors. Last week, in their meeting with the Chairman of a prominent private school chain – Reeba looked indifferent and distant.When Alok confronted her, Reeba admitted that her social leanings are way too strong for her to seek profit in a tool that enables learning in children. She sees their endeavour more as a nation-building exercise than as a commercial enterprise. This was a total “no-go” for Alok; he was angry and frustrated with Reeba; but had the composure to honestly ask for a dissolution of their startup. They still have to decide about the ownership of the IP that they had both created together.The above is a true story – with some facts changed. So often, we have witnessed passionate co-founders come together to create magic. Equally frequently, unfortunately, we have seen enterprises flounder because the co-founders’ ideas or value-systems don’t match.So, our advice to Startups is that before you declare yourself to be one – have some honest conversations with self and other co-founders around three areas:1. What excites me in life? What am I really passionate about?These questions are to be pondered by each co-founder individually. Don’t just be analytical about it; feel your emotions as well. These could result in vast range of possibilities, e.g. I am really passionate about: reading and writing fiction / improving the quality of education / mobile technology / helping others / taking care of animals / travelling the world.2. What are my life’s goals?This is also an exercise to be done personally by each co-founder. Some answers we hear are: building a hugely admired company / create something unique and innovative as my legacy / do social work for the under-privilegedLet’s not forget, that given how broad this question is, the above answers are often supported by some examples like: be happy / make lots of money / compassionate / caring3. How aligned are we as co-founders?With the first two questioned answered in their privacy, it’s time for some honest and open conversations between the co-founders. Care must be taken to ensure that the exchange does not go down the path of their shared passion, i.e. business of launching the startup. Instead, the dialogue is about fundamental values, emotions and dreams that each founder cherishes. The co-founders share, discuss – but don’t question – each other’s answers to the first two questions. The real impact of these discussions happens when they ask themselves the fourth, “Does our proposed startup align with our collective passions and goals?”This is not only a difficult question to answer, but the answers to this question can result in awkward situations. If all goes well, the team comes out with a clearer understanding of each other, and their overall purpose. If not, it’s better to surface these differences sooner than later.Wish Alok and Reeba had these conversations six months ago. The author, Ajay Batra, is the founder og Lutyens Startups
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Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, helps a rural youth to develop his idea of creating a phone-based voting app. K Chandra Mohan reports This is the story of Lavanya Kumar, an engineering graduate from Mogili village, in Andhra Pradesh and his dreams of developing a voting app and how Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, helped him achieve his dream. Starting life in a village, Kumar had to work in sericulture farms and save up for his University education. With sheer tenacity he finished his software engineering, at NIT-Suratkal, and landed a job in Hyderabad. However, he had plans of becoming an entrepreneur and came to Bangalore with an idea. His idea was simple, why shouldn’t the power of smartphones be used to allow citizens to vote from the comfort of their homes. There are 200 million senior citizens and more than 60 million Indians work abroad. “I have been thinking of the concept of ‘One India One Vote’ since my college days and I have created a platform where voters can cast their vote from smartphones,” says Lavanya Kumar. He adds that he has created an SMS based system for lower end phones as well. His cloud-based platform captures information of every registered voter and securely allows a citizen to cast the vote with a click of a button. His algorithm verifies the user and does not allow them to re-vote, thereby protecting the system from graft. If this product takes off then rigging can be curbed and costs of re-polling can be avoided. In a national election or re-polling, the nation spends more than Rs 400 crore. Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for start-ups, took note of his idea and latched on to it. The team began mentoring the Kumar and gave him six months to make the product ready and will also eventually help him to present the plan to the Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ initiative, where one can vote with an SMS too. The usage of smartphones is rapidly growing in India. It is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. According to Gartner, the rise in smartphone users in India since 2015 is 260 per cent and is expected to reach 200 million users by 2018. However, there are 400 million rural youth who cannot connect to India’s fast growing technology and some of them have ideas that can use technology to solve rural problems. The Unitus Seed Fund has earmarked $24 million for rural funding and to invest in companies that can make a social impact. While this fund focuses on some business plans and potential companies, there is an entire mentoring part that is missing. This is where Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, takes over. “This product, once ready, is a great product for angel investors and other large investors to back,” says Rajeev Baduni, founder of Growth Enabler. The story of Growth Enabler dates back to the year 2013, when three highly passionate and committed individuals decided to wave good-bye to their flourishing corporate careers and began life as entrepreneurs. “Our journey has been a real mix of many events, emotions, experiences and moments – most of which have been revealing lessons of how we can become great human beings’ says Aftab Malhotra, one of the founders of Growth Enabler. Rajeev Banduni, Lars Lin Villebaek and Aftab Malhotra were on a mission to make a difference to the world of entrepreneurship. They realised early on that to grow and scale a business requires not only experience and a winning mind-set, but many other ‘never talked about’ assets. These assets have a ‘multiplier effect’ on a startup’s ability to grow, and often make the difference between success and failure. These assets are accessible only to a select few; Growth Enabler calls them ‘the other 5 per cent’ or the city based businesses. These are people with connections, great academic background and plenty of access to money. So, what about the other 95 per cent of the assets? This is what Growth Enabler wants to tap.Growth Enabler’s first goal is to ensure that they reach as many people as possible and therefore decided to create a business model and an online platform that is democratic and scalable. The intention is to provide access to the following:• Any person wanting to start a business and has an idea (Growth Enabler calls them Wantrepreneurs)• Those who have recently started a business (Startups)• Those who have already established business and eager to grow (SMB’s)• To support startups by connecting them to elite investors. • Growth Enabler will also provide free mentoring and help these“wantrepreneurs” to find out the right funding.
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Arshad Khan traces the investments made by the great Ratan Tata in startupsSince his retirement as the chairman of Tata & Sons, Ratan Tata, one of India's most respected businessmen, has donned the new avatar of a venture capitalist. With an estimated personal wealth of around Rs 6,000 crore, he is on an investment spree to help hot startups get established into successful enterprises. Over the last one year alone, he has bought stakes in 10 companies, mostly e-commerce firms. He also ventured in sectors like automobiles, retail, jewelry and telecom through his personal investment company, RNT Associates. He also has a stake in two new entrants in aviation sector, Air Asia and Vistara. Domestic startups are also excited about attaching their names with Tata to benefit from his experience of over five decades. Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl comments, “an investment by a legendary and respected figure like Mr Tata is an excellent validation of our focused strategy on building a long-term enterprise and marks the start of a very important phase for the company.” Tata bought stake in the e-comm giant last year. Not just domestic startups, even foreign majors are keen to associate themselves with the business tycoon. Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Ju said, "He (Tata) is one of the most well-respected business leaders in the world. An investment by him is an affirmation of the strategy we have undertaken in India so far." BW|Businessworld makes a list of famous startups where the business honcho has made investment in less than a year. Snapdeal: The e-commerce giant became the first destination of post retirement Tata investment. It is believed that tata holds 0.17 per cent stake in the e-tailer, his stake being worth around Rs 21 crore. Founded in 2010 by two IITians, Snapdeal became one of the fastest emerging e-commerce players. Tata’s attachment will prove to be strategic for the firm as it faces high competition from Flipkart and Amazon in the domestic market. Paytm: Another e-commerce firm which grabbed the business honcho’s attention, Tata has acquired an undisclosed stakes on March this year in One97 Communications, which owns and operates the Paytm. Initially an online recharge service provider, it rapidly grew into one of the major e-commerce player. Bluestone: It is a Bangalore-based online jewelry retailer. In September 2014, Tata made a strategic investment in the e-tailer. On Tata's investment, its co-founder Gaurav Singh Kushwaha said, “an investment by Ratan Tata who has been at the helm of India’s most successful and respected conglomerate is a validation of our approach in building an innovative brand that is disrupting the jewellery market.” CarDekho: In February 2105, Tata invested in Girnar Software, a parent company, which owes and operate the online automobiles classifieds website CarDekho.com founded in 2008, the website leads in its segment. Urban Ladder: founded in 2012 Urban Ladder is an online furniture retailer which sells wide range of products like bed, sofas, wardrobe etc. At present the website has its presence in 12 cities.It became an interest of Tata in November 2104. OlaCabs: the taxi-hailing app OlaCabs is the latest destination of the business tycoon’s personal venture. Founded in 2011 by twp IITians, Olacabs is one of India’s largest aggregator of rental cabs with operations in over 100 cities and 1.5 lakh vehicles registered on its platform is backed by Japan's SoftBank. What is worth noticing that Tata is not the only stalwart to show interest in the startups. The trend was probably started by Wipro’s chairman Azim Premji in 2006 with his investment firm PremjiInvest. Azim Premji has investments in Myntra and Snapdeal. Narayana Murthy, Infosys co-founder also has a joint venture with Amazon to help small and medium businesses enterprises to go online.
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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)
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