Digital healthcare startup Practo, on Thursday (24 September) announced the acquisition of rival firm Qikwell, a leader in appointment scheduling at hospitals for an unrevealed amount. The company said that with the acquisition, Practo becomes the world’s largest appointment booking platform with nearly 40 million appointments managed every year. Shashank ND, Founder & CEO, Practo said, “This is our 4th acquisition in the last 5 months. We continue our mission to help simplify and digitize healthcare globally and make Practo your health app. I am very pleased to welcome Krishna, Ragavendra and the Qikwell team to Practo. Practo has been the pioneer in digital health and with this acquisition Practo now becomes the world’s leading appointment management platform.” He further added, “Over the coming months, we will continue our aggressive expansion and as build the world’s leading healthcare technology platform.” Practo started its aggressive strategy in April when it acquired digital fitness solution provider Fitho, followed by Genii in July and Insta Health earlier this month. The Bengaluru-based company raised $ 90 million from a group of investors like Tencent, Google Capital and Sequoia India, taking its total rose funding to $ 125 million. Qikwell started in 2011, by Krishna Prasad Chitrapura and Raghavendra Prasad TS at present has over 100 employees and offers appointment in 250 Hospitals in 19 cities. It also has over 6000+ top doctors across in leading hospitals like Apollo, Fortis and Narayana Hrudalaya. The company will continue to be led by its founders, added the statement. “Qikwell is thrilled to join Practo in our quest to enable digital healthcare worldwide. We share the same passion, vision and commitment to customers in offering great products. We chose Practo over some other options because together we can offer superior, comprehensive and integrated solutions.” - said Chitrapura.(BW Online Bureau)
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Before every trip there is a feeling 'have I forgotten to pack something?' The list of things to be carried on a trip is long – a travel pillow, headphones, eye mask, pen knife. And, then these things get lost in the big black hole of the back pack. What if you could have a separate pocket for all travel needs in your hoodie? This is the idea behind the new line of functional wear launched by online campus merchandise brand CampusSutra.
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This will be a huge industry in five years and will add 300 million new customers, say Vishal Krishna and K Chandra MohanThere have been several payment, money transfer and wallet solutions that have been cropping up over the last six months. Snapdeal along with Freecharge has launched a wallet service. Novopay, funded by Vinod Khosla, launched its wallet service recently. Private banks such as HDFC and ICICI have launched their own wallet services. What is interesting is that Flipkart has stayed away from this business, instead, it has chosen the advertising business to bring in additional revenues. Why does finance make sense to technology companies like Snapdeal and PayTM? It's because the government has granted permissions to these companies to apply for payment bank licences. PayTM was one of the first companies to apply and get a license. But the licences are just one part of the game. Today 160 million smart phones have been sold in India and the number is expected to hit 600 million by 2018. The bet is on the new customers that will be added on the payments bank platform. Acquiring these new customers will increase the valuation of each of these businesses 50 fold. The financial payments industry is expected to hit $1 trillion by 2020. So the money raised for payments banks will be far higher than the money spent on etailing. Today, these six odd technology companies that are vying for payment banks licences are focused on a market that is not more than 40-million-strong. Their wallet businesses, where phone bills and cable bills can be paid, along with their etail platforms are suffering from low margins. They are burning money and customer acquisition cost is high and the margins are less than one per cent per transaction. This will take these businesses more than a decade to break even and meanwhile they will have to survive on the money raised. But being a bank could increase their transaction customer base to a population the size of the USA, which is 300 million, in less than 18 months. The payment banks will be a combination of the best of banking services (where there will be high margins) along with etailing services. Finally there could be a business model that could take these companies to profitability. Today none of them have sketched out a market strategy for being payment banks. They have to get people to download their apps on smartphones. They need to work on local language technologies and sync in even text message based money transfers. They also have to tie up with local folk, certified to collect money, to on board people. A payment bank carries money on the app and it becomes a deposit account. People can remit upto Rs 1 lakh in to this smart phone based app. The companies can issue debit and credit cards. They can also pay interest on deposits. What they cannot do is to disburse loans. The government expects at least 150 millions new accounts to be opened on these platforms. These six startups together have raised $1 billion just to build wallet solutions. Experts that Businessworld spoke to say there will be an additional $1 billion raised to make payments banks work. The answer, to the question about technology being disruptive to add new customers on to the mobile, in smaller towns, will be found when smart phones truly replace the business correspondents that banks deployed to win new account holders in rural towns. Perhaps cash will be burnt here by these tech companies. This will also answer a teething question; what is the real size of smart phone transactions in India. Perhaps funds have to commission a study based on the hypothesis that payment banks transactions could be their answer to big valuations.
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GenNext Innovation Hub, an accelerator programme by Reliance Industries (RIL) and Microsoft Ventures on Friday (11 September) began its second ‘Fall 2015’ batch by announcing the names of ten startups.
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In first two days of the rally, the company has got more than 1,600 registrations on their job portal.
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The Right to Education (RTE) Act may have been passed but more than 95 per cent schools are still not compliant with the infrastructure standard prescribed in the RTE Act, says a 2012 civil society survey.
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India is evolving and so are the ambitions of Indians. It has become a start-up hotspot and has attracted investors from across the world. Despite the open and free culture in start-up offices work can get competitive and demanding from employees. To stay ahead from competition some organizations tend to have long and stressful working hours, and at times employees tend to take the stress back home. Add to that the Indian scenario where family is a big part of life, not spending enough time with them adds to the strain that employees feel. Family members start to feel excluded and the friction at home has a tendency to increase.Employees with young kids at home start feeling the guilt leading to lack of focus and concentration at work. The support of family gives significant leverage in terms of reducing work tensions and can make all the difference. Companies have starting involving families in functions and other occasions to make them feel more involved in their organizations. Initiatives that engage with family members of the employees can go a long way in keeping the work force happy and satisfied.Involvement and satisfaction of family members plays an important role in retention of talent. Some initiatives that companies can take to build a relationship with family members are:Thank you letters while hiring - Small gestures like sending welcome letters to the employee's family makes them feel like a part of the extended family of the organization. Small tokens like flowers and cakes to their home address helps the family feel more connected to the company.Celebrating work anniversaries - Celebrating every employee's work anniversary by inviting the spouse & kids or parents and bringing them to office where they meet up with MD and the team members help the members of the family more connected to the job that their spouse does. Small office tours and special dinners makes the employees and the family feel special and warm towards the organization. Gifting small personalized items to the kids will delight the kids and everyone else as well. Employee events that involves families- Involve family members in certain events that are held at work. Having a special bring your family to work day or inclusion in celebrations like annual days go a long way with families. Participation in organizing the event and spending some time with the employees to ensure its success helps families feel like a part of the company. Such gestures initiate trust and respect amongst the family and its employees.Family involvement is extremely important in the professional success of an employee. Small initiatives can help reduce family stress due to work and make family members feel attached to the organization. Understanding of the work and the environment that the spouse works in helps kins feel comfortable and relaxed. Regards and respect for companies is higher by families if they feel like a part of the organization. This interaction also helps in building credibility for the organization by the family and the employees.The author, Pradeep Malhotra, is VP & Managing Director of Blue Jeans India
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Technology companies are great acquisition targets provided they scale up their customer base, Vishal Krishna reports Legacy talent platforms have always had tons of CVs uploaded on them. These platforms were neither intelligent nor productive for organisations that used them. Organisations spent upwards of $2,000 per hire to close the right candidate in mid-level positions. This is an expensive proposition. All that is going to be history now. There are several startups that have cropped up to help organisations with intelligence-based lateral hiring. With the growth of small businesses, especially those that have raised money and are trying to scale up operations, the need to employ experienced individuals has also increased. Myparichay, Hiree, ZenRadius and Talview are some of these new talent hiring platforms that are making hiring intelligent and measurable. They also intend to help HR departments to reduce the time, cost and effort in finding the right person for the available roles. At any given point of time there are a million people scouting for new jobs. About 50 per cent of them are dormant seekers and the rest are active. Hiree, founded by Manjunath Talwar and Abhijith Khasnis, former Yahoo employees, has built a platform that can recognise the needs of the employer and potential employee. Its back-end engine matches the job profiles with the right connects. For example a developer who knows five computer languages would want to work in a company that is investing in its digital strategy. The process is quick and simple on the Hiree app. The engine of Hiree also scouts the entire social profile of the employing company and the employee to match both their needs. IDG Ventures has put in $3 million. The company has scaled up to close to 200,000 users and there are several startups already hiring through their platform. Business Model The business model is based on paying an annual license fee for the data base. The company does not take a cut on the salary at which the employer offers to the candidate. "We are a technology platform that solves hiring and this can scale up faster than other legacy hiring models because they do not match skills," says Talwar. Similarly MyParichay too is using technology to connect with potential hires. This platform links to social networks and uses the connections of an individual to find people of similar profiles. The company has raised $1 million and has been funded by HT Media. Talview, another Bangalore-based startup, is using video technology to help employers, is scouting for funds. Their proposition is to get lateral hires on to a video platform with the employer. Tests and interviews are conducted on a device. Talview offers a login to the employee and they get on to a video platform with the employer at an instant. Talview was founded by Sanjoe Jose, Subramanian K, Jobin Jose and Tom Jose. "We charge for the technology used and it is a license model. They can interview as many employees as they like," says Jose. The central part of all three hiring startups is that they are using technology to disrupt hiring. But they are also building data analytics engines to sieve through the portfolio of registered hires and engage them on a long term basis. There will be 300 million Indians seeking jobs in 2030, even if these startups can cater to 50 million job seekers then these are potential $500 million businesses. Does that mean these companies are early to the party? Like in all such internet businesses, ones with the deepest pocket will survive. "Technology is the differentiator today and that is the theme of all investments today," says Venkatesh Peddi, Vice President at IDG Ventures. He adds that it is the only way to connect to the growing middle class and their changing methods of consumption with smart phones. However, this industry has seen its ups and downs. A Helion Ventures funded startup called Talentpad shut shop because it was not able to scale up in acquiring employees. Such is the nature of the business. Although there are 6 million graduates passing out in the country only 700,000 or 15 per cent are employable. This is also the core audience on the smart phone. According to Kronos, the human capital management product company, there are only 20 million white collar workers. It is large enough. The bet for these hiring platforms will be to raise more money and become the leaders in their industry to survive. Unless a large pool of workers in India start to actively use smartphones and enter the white-collar market, these hiring platforms will not become standalone companies. They will become acquisition targets, for their technology and team, to platforms with deeper pockets.
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