Healthifyme raises close to $1 mn, announces its partnership with Micromax Mobile, report K Chandra Mohan and Vishal KrishnaHealthifyme, a nutrition and wearable technology company, announced an undisclosed second round of funding at a startup conference held by Microsoft Ventures on Thursday (18 June). Sources added that this second round was close to $1 million led by Bala Parthasarthy of Angel Prime and Amit Gupta of InMobi. HealthifyMe had earlier raised $250000 from angel investors. This signals the interest of investors in investing in wearable health device companies that offer services. According to IDC, a research firm, vendors will ship a total of 45.7 million wearble units in 2015, up a strong 133.4 per cent from the 19.6 million units shipped in 2014. By 2019, total shipment volumes are forecast to reach 126.1 million units, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.1 per cent. Healthifyme also announced its partnership with Micromax Mobiles, one of the largest mobile device manufacturers, in the country to sell their UFit band. This device purchased by the first 1000 people will offer free nutrition services through the Healthifyme app downloaded from any app store. This move will give Healthifyme a market access of nearly 20 million smartphone customers. The company will now compete with the likes of GoQii and GetActive which offer wearble technology health services. GoQii has added over 500 nutritionists and is a leading startup in the wearble technology industry. Sources say it has invested over $5 million in the seed round itself. The next rounds of funding for both companies could be more than $50 million. Meanwhile Healthifyme plans to recruit 1,000 nutritionists, currently it employs 100, and fitness trainers in the coming days. It also plans several low cost plans to its customers and has managed to acquire 100,000 users. Thushar Vashist, CEO and Founder, Healthifyme says, "We are on a mission to HealthifyIndia. I am glad to have received support from investors who believe in our mission." He adds that with this fund raising round they are going to democratise healthy living - providing fitness and weight loss at a fraction of market value, while simultaneously providing employment to hundreds of nutritionists and trainers. HealthifyMe, built for the Indian customer, provides access to the world's first and largest food database, a sophisticated calorie counter for regional foods and a thorough exercise tracker for logging in physical activities. While GoQii tracks calorie count based on food intake and has a nutritionist assigned to each individual. HealthifyMe also works in partnership with leading giants, in healthcare, such as Apollo and Manipal, where the app has proved effective in treating and preventing clinical obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and other lifestyle diseases. The only problem is that regulation does not allow these companies to share data with insurance businesses. Therefore customised insurance plans cannot be sold to individuals. Regulators also fear that the data of consumers, stored in the cloud of these service providers, could be stolen by hackers for malign intent. If regulation comes through these businesses are in for $1 billion valuation with added services. "All wearable companies have to provide services to scale up. They have to define their business models," says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research. Currently, the wearable and health services makes sense if hospitals and insurance companies can use this data to track and reward users. The data is a gold mine. Since the hardware is already commoditised, the companies should make good with the data to increase revenues. GoQii is focusing it's plans entirely in the USA because the propensity to using data is higher in the USA. Healthifyme wants to focus on South Asian markets where the price points are lower and is a challenging market to conquer. "Today everyone wants to have a great lifestyle with good advice; its the service that makes us unique," says Vishal Gondal of GoQii. Meanwhile GetActive is focused on the Indian market and is offering fitness tracking at an affordable price of $80. They have raised an undisclosed round from angel investors. But it offers no advice on nutrition. India has 600 million people below the age of 40 and it surely is a large market for the nascent wearable health technology industry.
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In his four years of engineering, 28-year-old Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify, launched four startups. In the long summer breaks of Delhi College of Engineering, he didn’t allow himself the luxury of “chilling out”, as it is typical for students on holiday. Instead, he would hatch a new business idea, develop it, and even launch the product.
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It wouldn’t be wrong to say that amidst all the controversies between the different ideologies of faith, it is the religion of entrepreneurship that has engulfed and unified the country. Stable, highly-paid jobs at bluechip companies no longer seem as attractive. Young people today want to step out and start up on their own. They want to create value, make an impact and solve a pain point.
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An American business group will be in India next month to meet investors keen to take up projects that come with a promise of US residence permit. The Ashcroft Sullivan Economic Development Centers (ASEDC) and The Jha Group (TJG) have formed a partnership to bring investment and economic opportunities to India under the EB-5 program. Overseen by the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the US Immigrant Investor Program (EB-5) provides foreign nationals the opportunity to become residents in the US for a period of two years upon making an investment of $1 million, or $500,000 in a designated Targeted Employment Area, in a new commercial enterprise. The new joint venture, known as Ashcroft Sullivan Jha, will hold its initial launch in India. It will set up offices in the country and educate investors about the opportunities available to them through the EB program. The Jha Group is headed by its founders Vibhuti Jha and Satish Jha. They lead a group of professionals with experience in banking, finance, media, international business, technology and entrepreneurship. "We are thrilled to be partnering with the Jha Group to bring economic opportunities to India. Vibhuti and Satish are leaders in their field and have deep roots in this emerging economy," Mike Sullivan, principal at Ashcroft Sullivan Economic Development Center, said in a statement. "They have been at the forefront of driving Indo-US relations since they came to the United States and will be a valuable partner to us in their home country," Sullivan added. Sullivan along with partners Joe Fitzpatrick and Brett Griffith, accompanied by the Jha founders, will be in India in late June for meetings and presentations in Delhi, Mumbai and Dubai. "Over the past decades people of Indian origin have flourished and taken pride in contributing with their technical knowledge and entrepreneurial skills in the US ecosystem and TJG is proud to partner with ASEDC to contribute in achieving the laudable objective of EB5," said TJG chairman Satish Jha. Vibhuti Jha has been an integral part of Indo-US relations since the early 90s, the group said in its statement. In his role as a senior executive with American Express Bank International, Vibhuti pioneered the development of investment/deposit programs for expatriate Indians living in the US to invest in India through the bank. Satish Jha served as an adviser to Dr Manmohan Singh at The South Commission in Geneva. As federally designated regional centers, ASEDC aims to create new jobs in the Mid Atlantic and New England regions, expanding economic productivity and help foreign entrepreneurs obtain permanent residency for themselves and their families. The ASEDC is led by the former US attorney general John Ashcroft, former head of the Department of Justice David Ayers, and former deputy director of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms Michael Sullivan. (BW Online Bureau)
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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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