Product – Dutch Uncles

Jigarthanda, the Drink from Madurai

Aakash Sharma — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 05:35:09 +0000

Food, culture, and legacy – this is the most time-tested and overwhelmingly powerful trio that has historically contributed to the making of regimes, civilisations and more recently, brands. India is one of the most diverse countries in the world. And this diversity has impacted the long-standing traditions and cultures of this land for centuries.

Taking from this vast and diversified culture, the ‘Food’ in India is also one of the best to be found anywhere worldwide. From Kashmir’s famous Dumaaloo and Rogan Josh, Bihar’s Litti Chokha, and Sikkim’s Gundruk and Sinki, to Rajasthan’s Gatte ki Sabzi, Karnataka’s Dosa, and Tamil Nadu’s Idli, the ‘great Indian food’ is a jewel of pride on every Indian’s head. This pride is felt unanimously by people across religious, social, economic and political lines.

This story is about one such revolutionary, universally loved ‘famous’ beverage that has come to be known as the de facto beverage of Madurai, enticing tourists from faraway lands of all walks of life and quenching the thirst of locals with excellent taste – the Famous Jigarthanda company.

Madurai’s Jigarthanda – A Meeting of Taste and Cultures

Jigarthanda (ஜிகர்தண்டா in Tamil) is a cold beverage that is famous in the South Indian city of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, India. It literally translates to “cool heart” in English (Jigar means heart, Thanda means cold in Hindustani). This beverage is generally prepared and served at roadside stalls as a refreshment during the Indian summer. It is effectively a cold drink made of milk, almond Pisin (gum derived from the bark of the sweet almond tree), khoya, sarsaparilla root syrup (nannari sherbet syrup) with alternatives of basundi and milk ice cream as toppings.

A drink seemingly born in the local markets of Madurai is now largely regarded as the city’s own drink, with many restaurants and bakeries now selling ‘Madurai’s’ jigarthanda counters. However, anyone familiar with Tamil can spot that the name ‘jigarthanda’ is not Tamil enough to be born in Madurai.

So, where did jigarthanda come from?

Differing Roots of this Now Truly Madurai drink

Jigarthanda is synonymous with Madurai, even though it may not have been born there. Some experts say that the influence of this cold beverage came from the North. They say that the concept for jigarthanda and the widely famous North Indian falooda are essentially the same. Just that in falooda, chefs use almond pisin, semiya, sabja seeds and rooh afza, while for jigarthanda, they use milk ice cream, milk, nannari sharbat, basundi and almond pisin.

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The drink's nomenclature, which has etymological roots in the North Indian language of Urdu, is further cited as a source for the drink's connection to the North. 'Jigar' means heart, and 'thanda' means cool, and thus jigarthanda translates to 'cool heart'.

But the one thing that is certain regarding jigarthanda is the role of a legacy brand that started from a tiny pushcart in the 1970s and today has expanded to over 200 outlets of this ‘famous’ beverage, the iconic ‘Famous Jigarthanda’ of Madurai.

The iconic ‘Famous Jigarthanda’ of Madurai

Today, Famous Jigarthanda is a household name in the city of Madurai. Started by P.S. Sheik Meeran at the Kaalavasal junction in Madurai in 1977, the business has gone full circle, from Sheik Meeran initially selling ice creams made of milk, sugar and vanilla essence on a pushcart to selling thousands of glasses of jigarthanda during the season’s peak.

When Sheik Meeran began selling the jigarthanda on his pushcart, it immediately became his most sought-after product, and people bought it overwhelmingly. Though this drink is available everywhere, Famous Jigarthanda’s became quite different from the others over the years due to the mixing of ‘basundi’ for adding more taste to the drink.

In simple terms, Jigarthanda is a cold beverage like falooda, but the taste of the two drinks is entirely different. What separates the Jigarthanda from its northern cousin is pisin. While the latter uses vermicelli and is scooped up and eaten, the Jigarthanda is stirred and drunk.

Sheik Meeran’s farming ancestors hailed from Yangon, Myanmar. Tales of the Meeran family say that Sheik Meeran’s grandfather was the one who first made up a drink comprising basundi (condensed milk), milk and edible almond gum. He coincidentally came up with a version of Jigarthanda that was hot as it lacked the ice cream.

Situated on the famous East Marret and South Masi Street intersection, the Famous Jigarthanda shop attracts hundreds of customers every day and peaks further during summer. Their customers gave them the name ‘famous’ to identify their shop – it has stayed so ever since, and Meeran’s sons have made the proper use of it.

With five simple components, P. S. Sheikh Meeran and Sons have made the jigarthanda synonymous with the town’s name. There is no recorded history of this beverage; legends situate its origins in Mughal emperor Jehangir’s reign, all with too much contestation. Yet nobody knows jigarthanda better than perhaps the locals of Madurai.

People of Madurai have adopted this drink and made it their own popular-staple drink. The city is full of jigarthanda vendors, and there are minute differences in the variants available. But the name that stands out as the best is ‘Famous Jigarthanda – Since 1977’.

Famous Jigarthanda – From Tiny Pushcart to 200 Outlets

Today, P.S. Sheikh Meeran’s four sons have expanded the business into a chain of nine shops in Madurai and 35 regions across Tamil Nadu. S. Peer Mohammed, Sheikh Meeran’s eldest son, takes care of the Anna Nagar branch, while his next son, S. Zinda Madhar, is in charge of the shop on East Marret Street. The third in line – S. Shahul Hameed – takes care of the company godown. The youngest son Amanullah takes the shop’s name and fame beyond the city limits. He is in charge of the out-station orders.

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Ten people manage the leading shop that sells not less than 1,000 glasses of jigarthanda in a day between 10.30 am and 10.30 pm, with only one holiday — on Diwali — every year.

They regularly supply for weddings and other functions in Erode, Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Chennai and Bangalore. Famous Jigarthanda has its head office in East Marret Street Madurai. It operates branch offices in Madurai, Chennai, Coimbatore, Tirupur, Ramanathapuram, Sivagangai, Tuticorin, Virudhanagar, Hosur, Dindugal, Vellore, Theni, Sivakasi, Tiruchy, Pudhukottai, Erode, Perambalur, Idukki, Namakkal, Thirumangalam and Bangalore. This legacy brand runs around 200 outlets.

Famous Jigarthanda sells two types of jigarthanda: the Ordinary and Special. The main ingredients that go into jigarthanda are milk, almond pisin, basundi, ice cubes and sherbet. The unique variety has more khoya than the ordinary one. The legacy brand makers prepare their own sherbet.

The drink that Famous Jigarthanda serves to its customers has condensed and chilled cow’s milk, nannari sherbet syrup, almond pisin, sugar syrup, cream, milk ice cream and basundi. This varies as per the customers’ orders. It is generally served in glass tumblers and is a body coolant, true to its name. It is perhaps this cooling nature of the drink that made Madurai embrace it as its own.

In 1988, Meeran diversified his products and began selling Jigarthanda at night. He saw the drink was broadly available in the area, so, at Rs 3, he kept the price per glass lower than other vendors. He also infused more basundi for a better taste in the drink. This simple yet innovative idea worked, and Meeran set up his first shop on the busy street of East Marret in 1993.

Fast forward to 2021, and the brand today has 200 franchises across Tamil Nadu with a daily footfall of around 300-500 customers per shop. At its main store in Madurai, 1,000 glasses of Jigarthanda are served every day. The current prices of the brand’s titular products are incredibly affordable, explaining the brand’s mass appeal and widespread success.

Starting with the Jigarthanda Ice Cream Small from Rs.15/- and Jigarthanda Cone Ice at Rs.20/-, the company prices its Jigarthanda Basundi at Rs.80/- and Jigarthanda Basundi Parsal at Rs.85/-. The Famous Jigarthanda Special is priced at Rs.60/-.

The sales of thousands of these products rope in profits for the brand. More importantly, it keeps the legacy of Sheik Meeran’s indigenously created beverage alive by serving it chilled to customers from all walks of life.

What makes Famous Jigarthanda so popular?

Jigarthanda is to food enthusiasts what the city’s famous Meenakshi temple is to devotees. Tourists from across the world, including celebrities and movie stars, have come to taste this chilled drink.

In the Famous Jigarthanda factory, chefs boil 100 litres of cow’s milk in multiple batches till it reduces to 40 litres and refrigerate it to make khoya. While most jigarthanda makers use kadal paasi, also known as china grass (or agar agar), this family run business (brand) use what the father-founder Sheik Meeran started to make the products stand out from the competition- the self-made khoya.

They soak the natural body-coolant badam pisin (almond resin) overnight, grind it and add it to the main drink in a particular measure. Home-made vanilla ice cream is another essential ingredient. The sweet nannari (sarsaparilla) syrup is made by boiling the roots and mixing it with sugar and basundi (sweetened thickened milk). All these are combined to make the thick shake that spells magic in the mouth.

Coming of Age with New Era Technology and Online Shift

As the company has turned itself into a legacy brand with deep roots in the South Indian region, it has not failed to realise the new era of technology driven changes and new models to expand its business. With a well-maintained website serving as its easy to access portfolio and information hub for lakhs of potential customers, it also gives online ordering services to its customers.

From letting people order desserts online to promising fast delivery of these sweets at their doorstep, the company has tapped into the large market of individual customers and the bulk ordering and large-scale event segment. It regularly supplies for weddings and other functions all over Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. The door delivery service offered by Famous Jigarthanda is also available for events and bulk orders, with the threshold order quantity set at 100 plus items for local delivery and 300 plus for out-state delivery.

Famous Jigarthanda has become a renowned franchisor with years in the making, and it now has franchises all over Tamil Nadu, Bangalore and Kerala. The brand’s conduct in the market made its franchise expansion possible. As a franchisor, it provides the undertaking parties with a clear picture of the competition and helps them differentiate as entrepreneurs in the market.

This legacy brand’s entrepreneurial feels, greater confidence and a constant demand for its product have boosted its stature in the market and food ecosystem of South Indian circles. More recently, the company has been involved in exporting its food and beverage items. It now undertakes export orders of Jigarthanda to countries like Malaysia, Dubai and Singapore.

Though the next generation of Sheik Meeran’s family has moved out of the business and has gone into academics, the family hopes they will lend their professional knowledge to expand the business further. Undoubtedly, the famous Jigarthanda is the signature drink of Madurai, and the Famous Jigarthanda shop is a not-to-be-missed destination for visiting tourists. In its making of the legacy brand, this once local beverage company has set new highs for other small businesses and local entrepreneurs to strive for more and succeed even in the age of the tech-based business ecosystem.

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Postman – Hitting the API Growth Pedestal with a Strong Product

Franzil Dias — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:35:08 +0000

In 2012, two humble coding interns at Yahoo kept running into the same issues over and over again. Working out of their Bengaluru-based office, Ankit Sobti and Abhinav Asthana had one key job – to take Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and convert them into a shareable format that developers could use in their projects. Doesn’t sound very simple, does it?

Well, amidst this complicated procedure, the duo found a solution to many coders problems, and thus began the inception of Postman, the collaboration platform for API development.

The Birth of Postman

To begin with, let us understand what an API is. Application Programming Interface – API – is a software intermediary that, in simple words, allows two applications to talk to each other. When you open an application on your phone, any type of process or service from that app requires an API to function. It works as a messenger between the app from your phone to the server’s mainframe wherever it is.

For the founders, learning how the APIs worked was a complex process. Testing and debugging APIs was also a pain for the production team. They had to start over every time an API was changed or updated.

The duo figured out that there were a lot of communication issues when it came to API testing. However, they failed to reach a consensus or a probable solution. The same issue erupted a few years later at Asthana’s first start-up TeliportMe, a social media platform.

The duo was then joined by Abhijit Kane, the third co-founder of Postman. This team of three was building a front-end architecture of their app, and that’s when they had to work with a complicated API and needed to exchange details in the process. However, they ran into the same communication issue and failed to find a solution.

This became the first building block for the trio’s venture. Collating all the previous and current issues, the founders had realised that the tools to support API development were missing. They started noting down the codes to solve the issue (making API testing easier) and posted it on the Chrome Webstore; things took off from there. Google reached out to the team and appreciated the Postman tool. Thereafter, they featured it on the homepage of the Chrome store, which gave the start-up a fantastic visibility and the needed kickstart.

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Postman is the leading API growth collaboration platform in India and is being rapidly adopted throughout the industry.

A Good Product Sells Itself

APIs have been around for four decades but Postman is probably the first start-up to realise the opportunity of private APIs. It is an online company that works into designing, developing and managing APIs for organisations and developers. As soon as the company was launched in 2015, the trio’s desk was flooded with feedback from developers besides enquiries from investors. Interestingly, the USP of the product is its scalability. Right from start-ups to big companies, the adoption, applicability and usage of tools is not limited. The start-up had nearly half a million users even before officially starting the business.

Postman is branded as an all-in-one toolkit for API developers. It is a versatile tool for rapidly, effectively and precisely creating linked applications using APIs. There are two components of the Postman API Network:

Postman Public API Network

It is accessible to the entire API world

Postman Private API Network

It is only accessible to particular groups.

As a user, you can make and store basic and complex HTTPs requests, as well as read their comments. Consequently, the work done is more productive and less stressful.

But the obvious underlying question here is what is so special about this product? Or, why is it so prominent in today’s market?

The answer lies in the product’s versatility in almost all aspects of the company to suit the customer. For example, there are three different types of plans for clients just to make the product more inclusive.

Free option
Postman Pro: For small teams and projects with expanded usage limitations
Postman Enterprise: Includes additional governance and account management for official corporate needs.

Apart from versatility, another reason why its demand in the market is high is because of its convenience. It has many in-built features which make the ability to design, mock, debug, generate automated tests, monitors, documentations and published collections easier. Besides, it is able to fix bugs at 4x faster on average, which helps in staying ahead of the curve.

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The sheer number of operational options on the platform not only make it a favoured platform but a versatile one too.

Turning Product into Business

The start-up received its first round of Series A funding in 2016 of $7 million from Nexus Venture Partners and opened offices in Bangalore, San Francisco and Austin. To date, the company has managed to raise $208 million from the existing investors besides others like CRV.

In June 2020, after receiving $150 million in a Series C round from Insight Partners, at a valuation of $2 billion, Postman became the quickest Software as a Service (SaaS) business to attain unicorn status. Postman is the API development tool of choice for nine of the top ten cloud computing providers, according to Asthana. Its API development platform is used by over 11 million developers around the world, across more than 5,00,000 companies globally, including Microsoft, Twitter, Best Buy, AMC Theaters, PayPal, Shopify, BigCommerce and DocuSign.

What is interesting, as stated by the founders in their blog, is the fact that Postman was started in India. Lots of technology products start in the Silicon Valley and getting global support right in the beginning was commendable for the start-up.

Twitter bought into the idea of Postman because of their feature of mock servers. Daniele Bernardi, a staff partner engineer at Twitter Inc. said in a media statement that they would be able to offer developers easy access as well as secure their production data due to the feature of mock servers.

Microsoft’s decision to become a client of the platform was because of the feature where Postman allowed them to create API integration tests for all of their endpoints, which meant that its API would verify whether the system was functional or not. Apart from this, they also used environment variables and test scripts offered by Postman to build their own flow control structures.

One of the reasons the Postman product is so successful is because of the founders obsession with customer feedback. The team, starting from initial days itself, began tracking every piece of feedback from users all over the world. They were obsessive about product reviews and user requests, and had in-depth conversations with developers as often as possible and continue to do so to date.

In his blog, Asthana writes that loads of feedback is great, but one has to be smart about acting on it. Many start-ups encounter problems when they try to take on too much at once, focusing on the big picture rather than the next feature needed. He says the company had decided early on that it would tackle only one or two problems at a time, get as much input as possible, and really get the solution right before moving on to the next problem.

Besides the initial setup of API Testing, Postman faced a series of challenges. They weren’t too concerned in the early days about things like business model and pricing and wanted to be (and still are) focussed on the product and its development. While other companies prior to Postman were building products, they were close to managers or decision-makers rather than the developer community. That’s where Postman earned the brownie points with the developers. They first started exclusively with developers and gradually moved into more of a true business-to-business offering where they solved organisation-wide problems that impact managers, senior leaders, and cross-functional teams. This was the most organic growth of the company. The product-market-fit was found and worked upon.

Postman ranks 5th in the top 10 API Companies around the world. Its management software is a popular technology and many people are looking for top-rated, well-known software that includes API testing, monitoring and app integration. It is also one of the only three Indian start-ups to appear in the Forbes Cloud 100 list of the most influential SaaS companies in the world

The Pioneer

Postman’s portfolio of products is based on making developer communication simpler. Its approach has been to provide free customer assistance, which is a function that many SaaS firms charge extra for. Given that the majority of developers utilise Postman’s platform, the only option for the company to continue to grow is to extend its use cases and build on the present product.

According to Gartner’s prediction, more than 65% of global infrastructure service providers’ revenue would be produced by API-enabled services by 2023 – that is up from 15% in 2018.

SaaS unicorn Postman will always be credited as the first in history to recognise the potential of API management. In the current era, no software engineer lives without the Postman platform if they ever work on APIs. Postman has become a default tool in API testing and development. APIs may have emerged as a critical part of the software ecosystem lately, but this product will always be credited to be the first one to recognise their potential.

For more inspiring stories like this, read our Inspire Section!

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CureFit: Redecorating the Idea of Fitness

Aishly Sadana — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 12:35:04 +0000

Ever since the pandemic forced them to stay in their homes, people from all walks of life have realised different things. While some say they would have spent more time with their friends and acquaintances had they known that they would not be able to do so for well over a year, others are re-looking at their lifestyle in the pre-pandemic world, realising that it was not anywhere near an adequately ‘fit’ one.

Now, the things that many people despised earlier, like exercising, meditating and eating healthy, have become necessary as life-saving activities amidst the chaos of the pandemic. But, the realisation of ‘self-care’ has come at an odd time for many as the traditional hubs for fitness – gyms, parks or dietary clinics – are out of reach and closed down under COVID-restrictions.

While there is not much that people can do at home to stay entertained (except perhaps for ‘Netflix and chill’), one thing that certainly can be done is adopting a healthy and fit lifestyle, a lifestyle to stay healthy – physically, mentally and spiritually. And this is where CureFit comes into play.

CureFit: The Genesis

When Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori decided to quit Flipkart, they did so with the aim of starting a ‘holistic healthcare company’. They wanted to start a company that would make health and fitness important parts of daily life. It was evident to them from the beginning that their healthcare start-up had to be an innovative, never-before-seen company that could revolutionise the healthcare stream in India.

But first, they had to see if such a theory had a possible audience or not; they began slowly yet passionately. They started with a small place in Bangalore’s Hosur-Sarjapur Layout, a famous hub for start-ups. Their journey began in 2016 by occupying Rishabh Telang and Deepak Poduval’s (co-founders of CultFit ) workout studio, with no equipment to test the minimal yet dedicated workout theory. They mastered the approach of group classes which was rare and unorganised back then.

Bansal and Nagori looked into three aspects of health – preventive, curative and diagnostic. The preventive aspect at CureFit included fitness via Cult.Fit, food via Eat.Fit and mental well being through Mind.Fit. Under the curative and diagnostic wing, they had Care.Fit, which provided personalised healthcare solutions.

Receiving a positive response from the audience, they started setting up centres or workout stations. After they successfully started three workout stations, they launched the website first, followed by the app, a massive gamechanger for the company. They began with just three workout stations in Bangalore in 2016, but after receiving a lot of positive feedback and with impressive marketing strategies, they have since expanded into over 200 Cult.Fit centres in areas like Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur and many more. CureFit aims to reach 100 million users in the next ten years.

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CureFit's aim is not just to exercise at home. It is oriented towards a holistic approach to overall mental, physical and spiritual health within one's home.

What is CureFit’s Aim?

Curefit is a health tech and fitness start-up founded by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori on July 1, 2016. It offers digital as well as offline lessons on health, nutrition, fitness and mental well-being. The idea behind launching this start-up was to provide all kinds of facilities to live a healthy life on a single platform. It is intelligently designed with innovative technology that gives a satisfying experience to the customers and handles the daily tasks of algorithmic programming with much ease.

As per the founders, CureFit is about fitness and more of an approach to building a healthcare ecosystem. Well-being does not only mean physical health, but it also consists of mental and spiritual health – a person is not fit if s/he is not growing in any of these aspects. They all hold their own importance, and none of them can be neglected.

CureFit has four wings under it, namely, Mind.Fit, Cult.Fit, Eat.Fit and Care.Fit.

CureFit, as a platform, aims to help take care of people’s well being in all these aspects from the comfort of their homes while providing a rounded experience at not even half the price that is gnarly charged by gyms and other traditional channels.

The Business Model: Four Pillars of CureFit

CureFit’s business model is based on the subscription model. Its four top verticals are listed below:

CureFit Philosophy

This aspect of the platform is about ‘fitness fun’ with the finest trainers and group workouts that can be done at the Cult.Fit centres as group classes and at home with Do-it-yourself (DIY) workout routines. The exercise focuses on fitness elements that improve the body’s strength, flexibility and endurance. This is to provide a workout with fun that helps to energise the body and remove all the mental problems simultaneously.

MindFit: Fitness Solution

MindFit includes yoga, therapy and mediation. The offerings are designed with a scientific approach that mixes traditional practices with modern advancements. It focuses on exercising the body-mind, improving sleep, focus and stress reduction. It offers a format as per individual user’s needs to help them stay mentally fit. MindFit sessions can be accessed in both online and offline formats.

EatFit: Super Healthy

This branch of the CureFit platform is restricted only towards nutritious and preservative-free meals. It offers various cuisines from a menu that keeps changing regularly. The dishes comprise quality ingredients packed with flavours. Each meal has its nutritional information jotted down for the consumer.

CareFit: Providing Doctor

Consultation
CareFit’s doctor consultation is essentially a personal doctor service where the best paediatricians, general physicians and lifestyle coaches provide all-inclusive care. With zero wait time, it gives customers access to health centres with an in-house pharmacy and diagnostic facility, with a wide range of services like health checkups, diagnostic screening packs, etc. It provides a one-stop fitness destination for those who want to take steps towards better health and pure nutrition.

Curefit: Carving out Space in the Market

CureFit, as a start-up, had a very exceptional journey in terms of investment. It was very well funded during both the early opening and the expansion stage, unlike many other start-ups in the country. With all their experiments to find an audience, CureFit founders had already created a market even before they officially launched the platform.

Of course, being a second-time entrepreneur after successfully launching Myntra had its own perks and benefits.

During their early stages in 2016 and 2017, CureFit was backed by Accel and Kalaari Capital, with a $35 million funding. When the app was launched, it penetrated the market with a whole new kickstart and gained many new investors and profits.

In 2018 alone, they were provided with over $130 Million that helped them open the workout centres in different cities. The platform was valued at a whopping $10 Million in 2018 itself when they entered the series C funding round, which was a huge milestone.

By the end of 2019, they already entered the Series D funding round with the financing of over $120 Million, and their revenue grew around five times. CureFit raised $110 Million in its second Series D funding round, which Temasek Holdings led in 2020. The existing investors like Accel Partners invested $14.2 million, while Chiratae Ventures and Unilever Swiss Holdings invested $1.8 million and $2.8 million, respectively.

Its valuation is set to cross $800 million by the year-end. With all the hype and the support, they have set a very high aim to tenfold their annual revenue to $1 Billion by 2022. They also recently acquired the US-based fitness company Onyx as a part of their international expansion plans. Some other companies acquired by them previously are Fritternity, Rejoov, Tribe Fitness Club etc. Fair to say, in terms of competition, CureFit is crushing the market.

CureFit’s Approach to Success

One of the significant reasons CureFIt entered the market quickly was its previous offline presence and brilliant marketing strategy. Brand awareness shows the result of delivering messages to the right audience. CureFit makes use of a new fitness wave in the country that identifies its target audience among those working within millennials and corporates and provides unique workout formats made by fitness idols like Prowl (Tiger Shroff) and HRX (designed by Hritik Roshan). CureFit is also capitalising on social media to improve its reach, making it a truly modern and current platform.

Every class at Cult.Fit ends with a huddle where the trainer provides an inspirational speech, and all members shout out loud – WE ARE CULT! The noise of the roar of 25 odds is so intense that it inspires individuals throughout the day and motivates them to come strong the following days.

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CureFit as a concept has become a modern necessity with the pandemic raging on, which puts this brand on the path to success.

How CureFit Is Outshining the Competition

Ideas can not be stolen but can be taken reference from. Many start-ups and companies have come out with similar schemes like CireFit’s in the market, which forms competition. Some of these companies are HealthifyMe which also offers fitness training, daily diets and calls with dieticians. Myflixipass is another company that focuses more on the physical aspects like gym, yoga and dance, while other companies like Frowfit and Foodgasm trail more on healthy eating habits.

Despite such aggressive competition, CureFit maintains its uniqueness. It has different physical exercise choices like dance, yoga, cardio, etc., from which the audience can choose. The same goes for the Eat.Fit and Mind.Fit category. People can select various options from their taste which makes it more user friendly. They have a well-working customer service system and the changes are implemented according to customer reviews. The use of minimal requirements remains one of its best features due to which the customers are attracted towards it.

Despite similar strategies, brands have not been able to reach up to the mark that Cure.Fit has made for itself. For example, HealthifyMe crossed a revenue of $25 million in 2021, while Curefit has crossed $42 Million over time. The gains of Growfit remain at $1.13 million as of 2021. CureFit has the highest audience base with the most significant ownership of gyms and workout centres, while the others are yet to open their offline branches. Due to its unique and innovative strategies, CureFit remains one of India’s best health tech companies and with its ownership of Onyx, it might leave a mark in the US too.

Integrated Healthcare: CureFit’s Future

Today, the Indian healthcare industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country. Earlier, the health industry was only limited to the physical aspect; if a person can carry weight or work for longer hours, they were considered healthy. But with the times changing, the definition of health changed as well. It now includes mental and spiritual health aspects, which were new concepts just a few years ago.

Since we are keeping up with the trends of the time, we need to update ourselves with new healthcare ways. Instead of going to meditation classes for an hour followed by working out in the gym, many people prefer to be a part of an integrated program that keeps them healthy but takes care of their well-being as well. This is especially the case now that the world is ridden with a pandemic that has pushed health to the forefront of everyone’s minds.

So, for all the beginners out there and even the healthcare obsessives, this platform perfectly bridges the gap between fitness and healthcare in a holistic way. For the future, CureFit is shaping up to be a much-needed entity in modern India’s lifestyle segment.
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To read more of such inspiring stories, check out the Inspire section.

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Spacetech Start-up Pixxel is Making the World ‘See the Unseen’

Swagat Swaroop Barman — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 12:35:04 +0000

Pixxel, a spacetech start-up, was founded by two BITS Pilani graduates in February 2019 against all odds. The small-town duo of Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal pursued their dreams to build India’s very own equivalent SpaceX, one that would help keep vigilance on the planet Earth from space. With a tagline of ‘Seeing the Unseen,’ Pixxel’s primary goal is to build a health monitor for planet Earth with the help of a constellation of advanced hyperspectral satellites. Through Pixxel, the founders aim to give the world omnipresent eyes on the blue planet, thereby helping to churn out data needed for building a sustainable future.

Pixxel: From a Dream to a Reality

When we think about the Indian space tech start-ups, we generally tend to picture a bunch of scientists who are well past their youth as the driving forces behind the initiative. The young indulging in the space tech segment is still a relatively rare sight for many. However, in a dramatic turn of events, two 22-year-old space enthusiasts from BITS Pilani have made history by developing Pixxel to put constellation satellites of the highest imagery resolution in a sun-synchronous orbit. Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal have collectively pulled off an uphill task through their dint of sheer hard work and commitment.

Awais Ahmed optimistically predicted two years ago that through Pixxel, he and Kshitij were looking forward to building their first satellite by 2021, which would then continue to expand. What started as a mere dream back in May 2018 has manifested into reality today. Pixxel is also set to make a world record for making the highest resolution hyperspectral imaging satellites.

The Birth of Pixxel

Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal hail from the Indian suburbs. They were both driven by science and technology ever since their childhood. During their college days at BITS Pilani, the two became friends and became part of their college team called ‘Hyperloop India’. To his credit, Awais Ahmed, in fact, was one of the founding members of ‘Hyperloop India’.

Team Hyperloop India is a non-profit multi-stakeholder consortium of 60+ student volunteers and organisations interested in reinventing transportation in India. Students from several other BITS campuses then accumulated in no time for the cause and started communicating with SpaceX, the American private aerospace giant founded by Elon Musk.

This then led them to participate in the Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2017, organised by SpaceX. They presented a working Hyperloop pod prototype to Elon Musk at the SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles. Coincidently, Ahmed and Khandelwal happened to be the only two Indian finalists of the competition, with their team being one of the two Asian finalists.

This merit was the benchmark for even greater things to come in the lives of Ahmed and Khandelwal. The boost in morale that the duo got from the competition led them to ponder over participating in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition in February 2018. They began developing AI models that could capture satellite imagery and develop solutions for a sustainable future. It was at this time that the duo encountered a significant hurdle.

They found out that the satellite imagery that was captured was years old, and for them to come up with any amicable solutions and data, the images had to be up to date. Thus, Ahmed and Khandelwal dodged the second competition for the time being and instead focused on developing satellites capable of capturing earth’s real-time images. This marked the birth of Pixxel.

What is Pixxel All About?

To go by the definition, Pixxel is basically a space data company that has developed a constellation of hyperspectral earth imaging satellites. In addition to keeping vigilance through satellites, Pixxel also facilitates the analytical tools to examine insights from the extracted data. The fundamental objective of this start-up is to detect, monitor and predict global phenomena from the vantage point in space.

Earlier headquartered in both Chennai and Bangalore, Pixxel is now being shifted entirely to Bangalore. Pixxel’s hyperspectral constellation is installed in such a manner that it beams down ten times more information than any other satellite revolving in orbit today. In doing so, Pixxel serves itself as a medium of utter helpfulness when it comes to building a sustainable planet- ranging from the agricultural sector to the mining sector.

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Pixxel's hyperspectral constellation is installed in such a manner that it beams down ten times more information than any other satellite revolving in orbit today.

Shaping a Unique Start-up Model

The business model that Pixxel has been moulded into by and large follows the footprints of other private aerospace manufacturing companies of the US, such as the likes of SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed and so on. Essentially being made on a B2B model, Pixxel’s satellites are designed to provide global coverage every day once it becomes fully functional. The data will be used by organisations and businesses alike to detect, monitor and predict global phenomena in agriculture, oil and gas, climate change, forestry, and urban planning, to name a few sectors.

Pixxel also holds the record of raising the highest ever amount in seed funding. So far, it has raised a total of a staggering $7.3 million in funding, which speaks for the unmatched potential that this space tech company carries. This has also led established institutional venture capital firms like Lightspeed India and Blume Ventures to make their first-ever investment in this particular sector. Additionally, Pixxel has already signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) and letters of intent with leading agricultural and oil and gas firms from both the United States and India.

Utilising the Assets within

Having skimmed through the advantages of Pixxel, these advantages must be channelised into the right path to incur the best possible outcomes through the investment. Stakeholders can utilise this constellation of satellites for a sustainable future in multiple sectors, some of which are as follows:

AGRICULTURE:

Pixxel’s technology can be used to monitor the condition of crops, detect variations and improvise yield. This can be done by covering large areas daily, supplemented with up-to-date data. It can serve as an asset in distinguishing crop species from weeds. It can also identify nutrient deficiencies through advanced spectral signatures. Lastly, it can also be pivotal in forecasting pest infections on crops through its high-resolution images.

ENVIRONMENT:

Environmentally speaking, Pixxel can also be used to map and monitor forests. It can play an instrumental role in reversing deforestation. It can be used to calculate climate risks such as floods, famine and detect sinister materials to take timely measures to curtail them.

GOVERNMENT:

In context to the government aid, Pixxel can identify military resources and troop movement to aid them with relief measures. It can be used to keep vigilance on waterways, rail-road conditions at both regional and national levels. It can also detect unforeseen natural calamities for the government to take immediate relief measures.

MINING:

Pixxel can be a boon when it comes to mining. By providing quick and direct insights about the earth’s surface, it could help chart out accurate mineralogical information about inaccessible locations.

Examining Pixxel’s Reach and Influence

Pixxel’s influence so far has quite evidently reverberated throughout the nation and beyond. Since it aims to keep vigilance on the entire planet from space, it could be utilised for the greater good of any given country. It detects not only environmental and humane issues but also provides amicable solutions for them. Simply put, in comparison to any other satellite in orbit, Pixxel’s are more frequent, consistent and of higher quality. This is primarily due to the edge that Pixxel has over other satellites regarding targeted monitoring, localised problem detection and hyper optimised solutions.

In a 2019 interview at the ORF Kalpana Chawla Space Policy Dialogues, CEO and co-founder of Pixxel Awais Ahmed revealed that Pixxel had been working on the manufacturing of nanosatellites that would not exceed the size of a shoebox- a maximum of 16 kilograms. The lightweight quality of the Pixxel satellites is another massive advantage that the start-up has over its counterparts.

Reasons behind the Success

Awais Ahmed cited that there is no space policy as such in India, unlike that of the United States, which posed a significant hurdle for them. Secondly, he also expressed his concerns over a lack of investors in space tech start-ups in the Indian context instead of those of the UK, China, or the US. That being said, the BITS Pilani duo Ahmed and Khandelwal, despite coming across numerous obstacles, always kept their self-belief up by not letting doubts hover over their abilities.

The Pixxel crew has not held back even in the case of marketing and branding strategy. They have come up with an enticing website, to say the least, where even users alien to the subject of space technology can grasp an overall understanding with ease. On top of it, Pixxel has also deployed several media organisations to publish content regarding them- from the Times of India to the Economic Times, which helped them garner even greater heights of publicity. This has also led them to attract top notch investors.

CEO and co-founder of Pixxel, Awais Ahmed, revealed that Pixxel had been working upon the manufacturing of nanosatellites that would not exceed the size of a shoebox- a maximum of 16 kilograms.

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There are already plenty of other satellites revolving around the orbit. However, one aspect where the Pixxel satellites outshine their counterparts is providing in-depth insights about the blue planet.

How Pixxel’s Products Stand Out in the Spacetech Community

You might be wondering what makes Pixxel so unique despite there being several other private space tech companies in India. Pixxel is a space tech start-up that is the brainchild of two final year college students – that in itself is an inspiration for all the budding entrepreneurs out there. While providing hyperspectral images of the highest resolution available in the market speaks of their unmatched intelligence.

Although some might argue that there are already several private space tech companies in the country, indicating no need for other space tech start-ups, Pixxel possesses some outstanding features that make it stand out from the competition. Compared to other satellites, Pixxel’s satellites provide real-time sensing data at an unprecedented level of detail. With a 5M spatial resolution that personifies their class and over 300 brands of information richness, its devices also have a jaw dropping revisit frequency of 24 hours.

THE WAY FORWARD IN PIXXEL’S JOURNEY

It can undoubtedly be concluded that Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal have set an example for thousands of others to aspire to. As things stood in late 2020, Pixxel was on its way to launch its first-ever constellation of satellites named ‘Anand’ in 2021on the PSLV-C51 rocket.

However, it was announced just a week before its launch that Pixxel would not go ahead with it due to inevitable glitches in technicality noticed during testing. As per a top company official, it now plans to launch a constellation of 30 small earth observation satellites by 2022.

Besides their expertise in the space tech aspect, it was Ahmed and Khandelwal’s self-belief and ‘never say never’ attitude that paved the way for their success that is visible today to the entire world. With Pixxel, these two entrepreneurs have indeed marked their name in history books and will most likely continue to blaze a path of innovation in future.

–For more inspiring stories, read our Inspire section!

The post Spacetech Start-up Pixxel is Making the World ‘See the Unseen’ appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How Fintech Startup MoneyTap made Personal Loan Available on a ‘Tap’

Koyna Mitra — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 10:35:05 +0000

Holding on to your salary till the end of the month is tough. Taking a personal loan from the bank to pay for your monthly Netflix subscription or some dinner takeouts, seems too far-fetched, right? Not to forget the never-ending paperwork that accompanies a personal loan. Therefore, a paperless, hassle-free, access to free-flowing credit, available at the tap of your fingers would feel like a godsend. That’s exactly what MoneyTap did; it made personal loans available as easily as a few taps on the smartphone.

What is MoneyTap and How Did it Come about?

Founded by IIT and ISB alumni Anuj Kacker, Bala Parthasarathy and Kunal Varma, MoneyTap caters to the credit needs of the middle class. Personal loans and credit cards are not very popular among the salaried and middle class of India because of the incessant hassles of paperwork and the high-interest rates on credit card loans. Therefore, founding a company that provides a credit line up to 5 lakhs to its consumers was an ambitious feat.

In 2014, Bala Parthasarathy, Sanjay Swamy and Shripati Acharya, started a Seed stage investment firm called Prime Ventures Partners which invested in startups like HackerEarth, Nimble Wireless, Ezetap and Happay.

After two years with Prime Ventures, Bala was once again allured by the idea of entrepreneurship and this time it was the enticing world of fintech. TapStart founders Kunal Verma and Anuj Kacker followed Bala into founding this fintech startup. The duo sold off their stakes in TapStart in 2015, to venture into MoneyTap.

The founders noticed that the monetary needs of the middle class can be easily solved with a small credit line. So, in 2015, they launched an app, in partnership with RBL Bank and several NBFCs, which became India’s first app-based personal line of credit financing. Going with the ‘cashless India’ culture, MoneyTap brings a flow of personal credit lines to your fingertips.

The app leads a 100 per cent paperless process. Anyone, between the age of 23 to 55 with a minimum salary of 15,000, a smartphone and a PAN can check for their eligible credit limit in less than 15 minutes through the app. The credit limit approved can go up to 5 lakhs but the consumer only has to pay the interest on the amount that they choose to borrow. Once the credit line is approved and set up, the customer can transfer money to their bank account or even spend it directly with the credit card that comes with the MoneyTap account. One can also check their spendings, repayments and credit limits on the app.

Personal loans and credit cards are a rare thing in India owing to the fact that the interest rates are very high. Staying true to their word of providing affordable and easy access to credit, MoneyTap offers loans at an interest rate as low as 1.08 per cent per month, and 13 per cent to 18 per cent per annum, and flexible loan tenures of 2 to 36 months. The loan can be repaid in monthly installments within the duration of 36 months and once all the EMIs are paid back, the credit limit gets replenished making it viable for borrowing again.

One of the initial challenges that the company faced was the conservative nature of banks. It has been very difficult to raise money and also comply with the rules and regulations of the banks and NBFC. Another challenge has been the difficulty in catering to demanding customers. With the banks being conservative, consumers expect flexibility and good customer service from the app. The two rounds of funding has seemed to bring a balance and has bridged the gap between the conservative banks and demanding customers.

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The app owes its quick success to the tech-savvy millennial of the country who despise tedium, and what screams ‘tedium’ more than the long application process for a personal loan at the bank.

MoneyTap’s Sure-Footed Business and Revenue Model

The business of money lending is a very risky one and is prone to fraud. The increasing number of fraudulent cases is the reason that the banks increased the interest rates on credit cards. Therefore, MoneyTap is very conservative about who it gives credit to. When signing up for the service, the customer goes through a chatbot interface that connects to the banking system and the credit bureau to investigate the customer’s credit history. The approval depends on this. The app happens to reject about 60-70 per cent of the application.

Every credit line comes with an initial processing fee of Rs.500, which is another way to ensure the genuineness of the customers. Despite its high rejection rate, the company was successful in making a customer base of 300,000 registered users from 14 cities in India, within eight months of its inception. In 5 years, the company has expanded to 60 Indian cities, and the plan is to expand to 200 soon. The app has been downloaded over 10 million times and disburses more than Rs. 2500 crore annually.

Being the first of its kind, MoneyTap has made a strong customer base with 90 percent of active customers, drawing credit multiple times from the app. The initial processing fee and the interest on the borrowed amount of credit line bring about a strong revenue for the company. The app owes its quick success to the tech-savvy millennials of the country who despise tedium, and what screams ‘tedium’ more than the long application process for a personal loan at the bank.

With two rounds of funding, MoneyTap has raised an amount of $82.3 Million. The latest round of funding took place in January 2020 and raised a funding of $70 Million. Its prime investors are Sequoia Capital India and Bala Parthasarathy’s own firm Prime Venture Partners. The second round of funding brought in new investors such as RTP Global, Aquiline Technology Growth & MegaDelta Capital.

MoneyTap: A Forerunner for Major Credit Lending Businesses

Since the inception of MoneyTap, a number of credit line financing startups have cropped up. Startups like PaySense and ZestMoney are MoneyTap’s biggest competitors, having been founded in the same year and offering similar services. MoneyTap not only has the upper hand in the competition being the first of its kind but it also offers lower interest rates.

In 2019, MoneyTap was awarded a Non-Banking Finance Company licence by the RBI. Their aim was to use the licence to enter into co-lending with their lending partners and offer better interest rates to their customers. The NBFC licence bolstered their market position. Shortly after getting the licence, MoneyTap raised its second round of funding of $70 Million. The acquisition of these fundings affirmed MoneyTap’s leading position in the fintech sector. The funding would be used to scale their business as they plan to 200 Indian cities in 2021. It will also be used to innovate their data backed lending models. MoneyTap’s surefooted steps have helped it create a loan book of Rs. 1000 Crore. The company has been on a 4 fold growth trajectory since 2019 and with the NBFC licence plans and the fundings raised, plans to accelerate it further.

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Their plan was to grow slowly and ensure the reliability of their customer base before expanding into new horizons.

Keeping the Competition at Bay

Finomena was one of MoneyTap’s biggest competitors till its untimely fall in 2017. It was a fintech company that helped students and young professionals in buying electronic devices and appliances by providing them small-ticket loans. The concept was quite like MoneyTap, except that it was focused on a particular segment of the community and very specific on how the loan is used.

The odd specifics of the customer base put it at a disadvantage in the market where it was competing with major fintech lending startups like MoneyTap and ZestMoney. In two years’ time, the reserves dried up due to high cash burn. What caused the reserves to dry up? Again, the oddly specific demographic. As mentioned earlier, the money lending business needs a keen eye. What MoneyTap does when signing up a customer for their service, is check if they have a regular source of income and its reliability. A customer base of students and young professionals is hardly expected to have a regular source of income.

What MoneyTap did differently was to keep the rejection rates high. Their plan was to grow slowly and ensure the reliability of their customer base before expanding into new horizons. While offering an easy and affordable credit line to their customers, MoneyTap ensures increasing their revenue through low-cost and tech-friendly solutions.

The Post-Pandemic Cashless Culture

Since the onset of the pandemic last year, there has been a rise in fintech companies. Paytm and UPI have restored trust in the fintech businesses and the pandemic has made people wary of stepping out and doing their transactions through cash. Therefore, the cashless culture will see a new trend in the post-pandemic scenario, a trend that will work in the favor of MoneyTap.

Bala Parthasarthy, Anuj Kacker, and Kunal Verma started this company with the vision to provide the middle class of India with easy and affordable access to credit lines without the hassle of several bank visits and tons of paperwork. The company expanded to 14 cities in the first eight months of its inception. In a matter of five years, it grew up to 60 with the majority of its users coming from the top metros like Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru Mumbai, and Chennai.

What the Future Holds

The founders plan to expand to 200 Indian cities in 2021. The post-pandemic cashless scenario might help them push forward with the plan as people from smaller cities of India take advantage of the app. The app has grown more user-friendly over the years. New features have been added that support Indian languages. It has attracted customers from Tier I and Tier II cities.

The app caters to the credit needs of the middle class. There is a dense concentration of the middle class in Tier I and Tier II cities. The app has seen a trend during the pandemic. Now that digital transactions are being favored, people are using their credit line for essentials, and Health and Education loans have seen an uprise.

The overly simplified process of the app attracts the tech-savvy millennials with the average age of the customer base of the app being 28-30. Judging by today’s scenario, the app might be successful in catering to an even older demographic. The company currently targets customers with average incomes of Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000 per month, but it is planning to delve into the prospect of reaching out to groups having income as low as Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 15,000.

In September 2020, Renaud Laplanche who is considered the Godfather of Fintech joined the advisory board of MoneyTap. This means that MoneyTap is ready to test global waters. For now, they are looking to expand into Tier I and Tier II cities and the global expansion would start with SouthEast Asia and Middle East markets.

MoneyTap launched MoneyTap Labs at the beginning of this year with the vision to educate people on how to use financial products. They have been actively hiring engineers since last year. MoneyTap Labs have launched the SuperSplit app which would help users to track shared expenses and settle payments. More new products are in the pipeline.

The story of MoneyTap is the story of authenticity in innovation. It was found with the thought of catering a product to the middle class, despite knowing that the middle class seldom uses it. It nevertheless succeeds by keeping authenticity, reliability, and a sharp eye for detail at the core of its platform, making it a truly innovative product.

For more inspiring stories check out our Inspire section!

The post How Fintech Startup MoneyTap made Personal Loan Available on a ‘Tap’ appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Public App, On the Path to Becoming the Mecca of Hyper-Local Classifieds

Harshini Srivastava — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 14:27:19 +0000

It goes without saying that social media has become an inherent part of our lives, be it entertainment, information or business. Plethora of social media networking apps have popped up in the market, with only a handful, mostly big tech, ruling the roost. Everyone wants to grab a piece of the ever-growing internet-user base pie, especially India which is the world’s second-largest internet market.

However, as the market gets crowded with entry of new players, existing companies need to come up with new propositions while the ones contemplating to enter this market must put something exciting on the table to differentiate themselves.

One start-up in the latter category just prefixed ‘social networking app’ with a simple word – Local, rather Hyperlocal, and changed the ball game, grabbing a good chunk of that pie for a starter.

This brings us to the inception of homegrown location-based social network app – Public App – which allows users to share videos/content of scenarios taking place around them besides providing them real-time local updates, including events, classifieds etc.

This two-year-old start-up, which was launched by news aggregator and curator Inshorts, has amassed over 50 million users with more than a million videos created on a platform on a monthly basis. Some of the famous personalities, big brands, and politicians are on the app’s active users.

The Ideation

The three IIT dropouts Azhar Iqubal, Deepit Purkayastha and Anunay Arunav already had a glorious feather in their hats with the success of their first venture, Inshorts, and wanted to up the game digital game further.

Even with their first venture, the founders paid attention to the growing demand for short and simple content as the majority, especially youth, lost interest in reading newspapers and anything that requires time.

Once the idea of ‘60 word-news update’ got hit, the founders got thinking over connecting local communities with the same, and maybe more. This led to the inception of Public App in 2019.

The social networking platform connects people with its communities and authorities in their local languages. The aim is to, again, move away from bulky content and make simple news and information accessible to everyone in real-time in minimum time.

Within seven months, the app was able to garner 10 million downloads and capture Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities.

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The social networking platform connects people with its communities and authorities in their local languages.

The Vicinity Connect

The social networking app is multifunctional in nature. It allows users to share content, both entertainment and informative, in the form of videos and posts on varied topics.

The app builds an affiliation between people as they discuss common topics, raise questions, share concerns. This works extremely well for local authorities, which are able to connect with the users, as users themselves, and spread important information besides collecting feedback. Sounds like a ‘digital chaupal’.

This also brings us to citizen journalism, which is promoted by the platform which lets users, self-proclaimed citizen journalists – record and upload short clippings of newsworthy moments happening in their neighborhood and build a loyal following.

Hence, the app becomes a medium to bring things to notice and get the action rolling. Majority of the videos on the app are connected to local news related to crime, politics, protests, sanitation work, among others.

This takes the app beyond entertainment. With communities coming together, the app has become a platform for updates on local happenings, events, job opportunities. This turned the app into a famous hub of hyper local classifieds.

The user interface of Public is kept very simple and people find it extremely convenient to use. It is able to attract high quality audiences because of the non-intrusive advertisements, which leads to a good engagement on the platform. Also, the younger generation gets more captivated with updates in visual form in comparison to written content, and this is one of the primary aspects that was definitely working in Public’s favour.

Vernacular content is the next big thing and some of the major players are already cashing on the wave. This is another big USP of the app, which is available in several major Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Odia, Marathi etc. The app removes the single language (English) barrier and hence has managed to tap on the hyperlocal network.

Pushing ‘Vocal for Local’

The main theme of the app is hyperlocal connection. This could apply to anyone in the area, any business, any information and so on. One such opportunity is bringing together shopkeepers and customers. It is not new to do business on/via social media platforms, the app however focuses on local. Shopkeepers who have small or large businesses build a rapport with the consumers and connect with them through the app. It even helps the shopkeepers to hire local talent, close deals, fulfil other requirements and take business forward through the platform.

The traction of the connection with locals is so much that even big brands are coming forward to tap that ever-growing local user base. Companies are looking for mediums to keep in regular touch with locals as a part of product survey, sale and marketing. Their association with the app serves the purpose and provides them with valuable insights and so on. In his company blog, Iqubal writes that the start-up builds customised ad solutions for such brands to better engage with the audiences while keeping the user experience intact. Currently, advertisement is the biggest source of revenue for the start-up.

The popularity and credibility of the brand is reflected in its associations with companies like Amazon, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), HDFC etc.

Building Credibility

With the right purpose and time, the app has been able to build credibility among users. Besides big brands, political leaders, journalists, police officers and government officials have signed up to connect with communities around them in the most efficient manner possible. This aspect is highlighted significantly during the lockdowns.

Officials were seen interacting with users regarding policies, restrictions while authorities remained in constant touch to extend help and provide info related to groceries stores, hospitals, quarantine arrangements in the surroundings.

This builds on the credibility of the app every day which in turn gives the users an assurance that the information they are getting from this platform is legitimate.

Innovate, Improve and Retain

Public currently has 50 million users with an average daily time spent of 20 to 30 minutes.

In March 2021, the start-up raised $41 million from A91 Partners, shooting its valuation to $250 million. This funding came mere six months after it secured $35 million led by Lee Fixel’s new investment firm Addition, along with SIG and Tanglin Venture Partners. The funds have been deployed towards scaling up of tech infrastructure, content offerings and employee base to speed up the growth and continue improving on retention and engagement, says Iqubal, who also mentions the need to focus on sustainable growth and target to obtain right users instead of mass users.

Public App stands in completion with other homegrown brands like MX Taka Tak, Moj (ShareChat), ZINGR, Josh (Dailyhunt) etc in the hyperlocal social media space, keeping the big tech like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook aside.

However, the aspect of connecting locals with authorities besides the amalgamation of entertainment, news, classifieds, information and everything that spells ‘community’ makes the app appealing in comparison. The other platforms are either focused on pure entertainment or trying to balance both in an unorganised way. In a way, the product offering of all stands different.

For instance, Sharechat also allows users to upload and share videos, images, and GIFs on the platform to create a social following and has a gamut of content categories such as humor, self-help, religion, among others. On the other hand, MX Taka Tak loses out on news, information and updates aspect and is solely focused on entertainment.

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The main theme of the app is hyperlocal connection. This could apply to anyone in the area, any business, any information and so on.

One Man’s Loss is Another Man’s Gain!

The ban of Chinese app Tik Tok in June 2020 changed the fate of a lot of Indian apps, one of them being Public. A monumental growth was observed in these apps as users shifted base following the ban. Public App saw a huge surge in users and crashed on the shifting waves.

The founder believes that the ban wasn’t the sole reason behind its success since they were confident that they would have had a successful run irrespective of the ban of TikTok. This confidence is backed up by the growing demand for vernacular content or media apps in the country. As per a report by Google India, 9 out of 10 new internet users in the country are consuming online content in Indian languages. Big brands to smaller businesses, everyone has begun incorporating vernacular aspects into their digital solutions to tap into regional communities, expand customer base and explore opportunities that arise from it. New user base would mean removal of barriers for product/service adoption which could be done by adopting local language strategy.

Iqubal believes that even if the ban of TikTok is lifted, it won’t cause any harm to the growth of the platform. The users seem to be satisfied with the services they are being provided with. The increase in the number of users will continue because of the sense of proximity it provides to them and the users who are willing to enjoy the services will be a part of the platform regardless of any factor, he writes in his blog.

International ‘Public’

The next big target is to connect people from certain communities of India and then eventually take over the global space.

Besides, since the platform is largely known for the quality of personalization that it possesses, the founders are working on customised advertisement solutions for brands for them to build stronger connections with the audience.

The app also plans to bring an in-built video creation tool which would make it easier for its users to create videos with the help of their mobile phones. The new live streaming feature will also be one of the highlights of this platform.

It is intriguing to witness that the platform has been constructed in a manner that certain sections of users turned out to be influencers by providing relevant information related to general knowledge, local news, etc. It would be interesting to see how the founders replicate the business model in other countries as what might work at a particular land, might fail in another. Having said that, vernacular and community is omnipresent and unexplored.

The post Public App, On the Path to Becoming the Mecca of Hyper-Local Classifieds appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

MX Player: Rationalising Streaming for Indian Audiences

Pratik Jain — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:35:04 +0000

Our 21st-century society has seen the spiraling impact of western binge-watching culture, marking OTT platforms as an inevitable daily dose of entertainment from viewing acclaimed films, to settling a charge out of flinch content, but are these paid entertainment zones suiting the financial reality and backgrounds of middle-class Indians?

When the streaming service providers were treading in a hyper-competitive relay, at that point, entered MX Player, a company having the disadvantage of rivaling with the tribe tardy but still dared to break customary norms and ran a marathon in the opposite direction, fitting in the aspirations, limitations and requirements of every average Indian.

How did MX Player fuel from a mere multimedia playback application to a leading video streaming platform on smartphones with a gigantic global install base of over 500 million?

A Chronicle of Prevalence

With its current headquarters based in Singapore, MX Player was originally founded and launched in July 2011 by a South Korean IT firm J2Interactive as a multimedia video player.

MX Player, since its release, became a Mecca concretely for android users in India and abroad as it facilitated popular features that could instantly run the otherwise not supported HD videos, SD card media transfers, and varied MP audio formats by android.

MX Player with its South Korean roots remained a cross-platform media player until Times Internet acquired the application from Zenjoy, a Chinese smartphone gaming firm, by officially investing in a majority of its undisclosed stakes in 2018.

Why Times Internet Acquired MX Player for a Whopping 1000 Crore?

When Times Internet acquired MX Player in 2018, for a hefty amount of Rs. 1000 crore, the sanction inked headlines and alongside rattled unsettling questions as to why was a focal video player valued in crores?

The answer to that lies in India’s 2016 revolutionary digital advent and internet surge, manifesting MX Player as a contemporary Avant-grand. India’s digital space was rebooted in 2016 with the launch of Jio, trending nominal data tariffs and averagely availing internet that accounted for a hyke in daily active Indian internet users by 150 million.

Times Internet mapped the incipiently paved need of Indians to binge on online content, hence, not only in 2018 did it acquire MX Player but also clinched the pre-existing brand name and loyalty of 175 MAUs (monthly active users).

It was relaunched in 2019 as a multimedia player and OTT platform with ‘MAX’ entertainment to offer. Tencent Games from China in a Series A funding round invested $111 million in MX Player marking its total valuation to $500 million.

MX Player: Reimagining and Bridging the Entertainment Cranny

MX Player after the launch of its 2.0 avatar, is topically an advertisement-led integrated playback device and OTT platform. With a thoughtfully designed user-friendly interface, MX Player caters to the local multimedia player but the major crux lies in its streaming section which is equated with explicit entertainment genres.

The video section offers 2,00,000 watch library hours for Indian content, displaying shows and movies in regional languages namely Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Telugu, and English. The application is an endless scrolling path to Live TV channel content, MX originals, music, Korean drama, dubbed international movies, award shows, national and sports news.

After close analytical consumer study, the casual gaming section of MX Player was integrated as a shrewd business strategy, a month before lockdown in February 2020, during the boom of online gaming that transformed the MX gaming zone into a gold mine while considering the user retention rates.

MX Player recorded the most noteworthy user metrics in 2020, lacking solely behind video streaming giant Youtube in terms of total hours spent per consumer.

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“Indian crowd seeks a homogenized media super app that users can visit from all economic and cultural substrata, based on time and entertainment predilection.”

MX Player’s Conversing Business Model

A true OTT venture isn’t measured by the size of its subscription revenue base, but by the strength of its user retention capabilities. MX Player umbrellas a premium AVOD (advertisement-based video on demand) model providing users subscription-free viewing to premium originals and syndicated content amid subscription-based and Hybrid OTT-business competitors Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix, SonyLiv, Zee5, YouTube, and Amazon Prime to name a few.

The advertisement and in-app purchases led revenue demographic retained consumers who purely have to bear a few advertisements partially outshined by the “free to consume” service and majorly attracted 50 news brands to advertise in a pandemic-infested year. Well aware of the ROI (return on investment), investors instill slots in sponsored shows and real-time streaming content.

The app claims to have quadrupled its income rate since 2020, thanks to a slew of new brand engagements and offerings oriented on the continuance of ad-supported streaming, which pulls millions of potential users and distinguishes them from other OTT invaders.

The gaming section of MX Player is a big-time entertainment hooker and monthly revenue generator evinced as the best platform to advertise.

The advertisement duration varying from 15 to 30 seconds is not interrupting for audiences in the casual gaming section, but in turn, shares a cordial viewing relation with users as countless demand supplementary advertisements in the gaming zone, enhancing the gaming experience with additional points and progressive benefits.

MX Player appears to be positive towards the future standpoint of its commercial mix-driven business reach and advocates that the model is churning significant foreign dollars to not just MX Player but compensating the market in general.

A Guerrilla Marketing-Mix Stringing Small Cities

MX player has outsourced audience prospects with an aggressive marketing approach aiming to emerge as a profitable super-app piling “entertainment” under one roof. With lockdown leveraging digital engagement tremendously a guerilla marketing tactic was applied to many MX originals, at times investing zero funds on the actual show campaign but to the contrary, generating attention and profit from millions organically.

It focused on restoring value proposition leapfrogging from subsisting 175 MAUs to 220 million in 2020 and nearing digitally to 280 million up to the minute.

Sharply focusing on the substantially uncatered and ignored Tier-2 and Tier-3 Indian city users via personalized push notification and A/B testing, cementing an underrated audience which constitutes a vast part of MX Player’s topical user base who binge MX library in mid-range 4G smartphones.

The onset and continuation of the global pandemic has parallelly generated lasting engagement to the application. MX Player’s typical and target users reside from top metros to small cities and now even distant towns ranging from 18-24 years and 25-34 years for whom specific regional and social scenario-related content is positioned.

MX Player as of late bagged the 7th position among the top 10 monthly user engaging applications in India.

MX Player: Pushing Boundaries On Regional Content

MX Player imbibes impeccably to Indian behaviorism and rolls a hungry appetite to binge on, an experimental blend of rural as well as urban content unlike other global video streaming applications, such as Netflix and Amazon, who have a pure international influence on their content collection.

About 30 per cent of MX Player’s content is multilingual as out of its 500 million active installation base, 350 million installers drum from India.

MX Player undoubtedly reads the very veins of Indian entertainment seekers putting in relatable content from ‘I’mMature’ to ‘Flames’ that grapples the attention of teenagers and college students to producing regional shows such as “Queen” dashing a universally emotional appeal.

With diverse offerings for every section of the Indian society from popular linguistic daily soaps to lining crime thrillers with a rural protagonist and flawed godmen character in shows as ‘Bhaukal’, ‘Aashram’ whose more than 263 million and 1.3 billion views perforate one deep into MX player’s digital market disruption extent.

The app has over the years perfectly formulated to deliver content proportional to social scenarios as ‘High’, released in 2020, surrounding Bollywood drug trials.

The content mix of MX Player was updated with 40 shows in FY2020 and nearing the first half of 2021, 11 contemporary MX originals have been officially streamed.

It stakes upwards in the user retention and addition market with 200 million users luring in from regional content streams.

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“Digital adoption advent in India is anticipating Indian OTT market to emerge globally dominant in terms of market size.”

Dwarfing Local and Global OTT Players

MX Player fits in the budget of average Indians proving to be “the situational face of affordable entertainment” with a language personalisation interface that generates regional and foreign-language shows as per user preference.

OTTs as Netflix indirectly mandate a strong Wi-Fi connection to seamlessly stream while Amazon consumes up to 1 GB of data in 1.5 hours, acting plainly exorbitant to fit in middle-class Indian pockets who save money to fulfill family aspirations, and less about bandwidth expenditure for entertainment.

MX Player empowers streaming in the lowest of resolutions from 144p to 1080p with an ultra-data-preserving feature that truncates internet consumption by 50 per cent.

MX Player sidelined OTT sharks in terms of hours spent monthly with an average user fixating 8 hours on MX Player contrasted to 4/5/7 hours on Amazon Prime, Hotstar, and Netflix respectively.

While Amazon Prime and Netflix focused on a niche 5 percent Indian audience, MX Player partnered with television broadcasters attaching shows with lethal fan bases to the content library.

The entertainment genres of MX Player omnibuses, live streaming from syndicated partners namely Voot, Shemaroo, Humagma, Sony entertainment, SunTV Network, Paramount pictures, Goldmine Telefilms, and Gaana.

It established its global footprint by publicising the OTT service exclusively in the United States, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Pakistan, Bhutan, UAE, Canada, Australia, Bangladesh, and Nepal. MX Players international library includes Hollywood, Korean, Spanish, and Turkish movies dubbed in local languages while for other nations MX Player remains the topmost priority as a multimedia player.

Are OTT Platforms the Surfacing Future of Mainstream Media?

Venturing on a different path altogether MX Player has teamed with electronic manufacturers such as OnePlus, Compaq, TLC, to deliver smart TVs preloaded with the MX Player application.

MX Player is in discussion to adapt an SVOD (subscription-based video on demand) model this year, however, official timelines remain undisclosed.

In India, there are to date 607 million 4G linked smartphones and with the global pandemic boosting digital acceleration, MX Player predicts smart TVs to emerge as the future face of mainstream media.

In the next five years, India may perhaps have 800 million broadband-connected TV, laptop, and smartphone displays, and MX Player pursues to stream on a fairly large proportion of those screens.

The gaming section has manifested as MX Player’s cash-cow which would be positively evolved to attribute a high-end gaming experience and enkindle valuable profits.

Will MX PLayer re-define its very own vision of “Everytainment” if the topical predictions and business ventures blossom growth in the near future?

For more inspiring stories check out our Inspire section!

The post MX Player: Rationalising Streaming for Indian Audiences appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

PharmEasy: A Digital Roadmap to All Your Hyperlocal Pharmaceutical Needs

Shreyansh Mangla — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 02:35:04 +0000

In 2015, two youngsters from Mumbai had a dream. They had a dream of connecting patients to local pharmacies and diagnostic centers through a mobile app. Their vision was not just limited to providing healthcare facilities to all at their doorsteps and making them affordable through mighty discounts. This was the beginning of the PharmEasy journey.

The Purpose behind PharmEasy’s Birth

Dharmil Sheth, an MBA from IMT Ghaziabad along with Dr Dhawal Shah, an MBBS and an MBA holder from XLRI Jamshedpur, together founded PharmEasy in 2015 that aimed at providing services such as doorstep delivery of medicines, sample collection for diagnostic tests (at home), teleconsultation and subscription-based healthcare services.

The medical service sector in India went through a transformational change as the COVID-19 pandemic enveloped the world in the 2020-21. On one hand, people were in immediate need of covid-related health infrastructure, while on the other, the need for medicines for common ailments declined. Consumers across India chose to shop online for almost all of their necessities from groceries and common household items to medicines, as the threat of the infection kept most of them locked inside their homes.

While it can be said that covid global epidemic has given a thrust to online-pharmacy businesses in India, there were other factors already in play before the advent of this industry:

Major steps were taken by the government: The pharmaceutical market growth was enlarged by the government programs such as Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojna (PMBJP). The program aims to provide quality and affordable medicines across the country.

Internet penetration across India: The number of internet users is expected to increase at a rate of 8.78 per cent in the 2020-25 period. The e-commerce industry is expected to be boosted directly by the rise of internet penetration in India.

Changing consumer preferences: The pandemic has inflamed an unprecedented adoption of e-commerce services in India. The e-commerce transactions in India had increased by more than 70 per cent between April and September 2020 period. Within the same period, it was observed that tier III markets recorded a 53 per cent year-on-year growth in e-commerce adoption.

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Online pharmacies are one of the few sectors in the country to have shown growth during the second wave of the pandemic.

Investments, Acquisitions and More

In May 2021, PharmEasy announced the acquisition of its smaller rival Medlife. As Reliance, Amazon and TATA strive to make a place for themselves in the online pharmacy sector, the Mumbai-based unicorn already consolidated the deal, boosting its growth even further. PharmEasy is now the largest healthcare delivery platform in the country, serving more than 2-million households every single month!

It can be said that PharmEasy was aiming way ahead of its competitors. As of August 2020, PharmEasy had already proposed to the Competition Commission of India its intentions to acquire Medlife. But the story doesn’t end here. The unicorn that digitizes and organizes supply chains for its pharmacy partners has raised $323 Million led by Prosus Ventures (formerly called Naspers Ventures) and TPG Growth, with participation from Temasek, CDPQ,LGT, Light rocks, Eight Roads and Think Investments.

While Reliance acquired Netmeds for rupees 640 crores in 2020, TATA group acquired a heavy 65 per cent stake in 1Mg (a New-Delhi based startup). Amazon too started door-to-door delivery services in Bengaluru through its partner (and seller), Cloudtail.

Online pharmacies are one of the few sectors in the country to have shown growth during the second wave of the pandemic. Shipments of pharmaceuticals grew by 18 per cent in April 2021, compared to the previous month. Throughout 2020, the order volumes more than doubled and the number of users who used online pharmacies tripled!

According to Market tracker RedSeer, more than 9 million families had started using online pharmacies in 2020.

PharmEasy-A Business Model Which Propels It to the Top

PharmEasy delivers medicines and medical accessories to the different corners of various Indian towns and cities. It is just like an online supermarket but just for the buyers of medicines. PharmEasy delivers medicines all over India to more than 1000 cities and towns, covering more than 22000 pin codes! It identifies pharmacies that are closest to its customers. Customers can then access PharmEasy’s website or app to order their items. The packages are delivered swiftly at the doorsteps of the customers with discounts up to 20 per cent.

PharmEasy was born with a vision to deliver genuine medicines at affordable prices by optimizing supply chains and logistics. In its initial phase, the founders discovered that Indians abstained from buying medicines from e-pharmacies. This is because people were not sure where the medicines were supplied from. PharmEasy with its unique business model entered the e-pharmacy sector to dispel the notion for good.

To understand the business model of PharmEasy, we have to know what the Marketplace-based model of e-commerce is. This model essentially provides an information-technology platform on a digital and electronic network, which can act as a facilitator between the buyer and the seller. PharmEasy has provided its customers with a user-friendly app with an easy-to-use interface. Through the app, the customers can set medicines reminders, store digital prescription records, set e-consultation appointments, opt for a sample collection from home for lab tests, and return their product through an easy return policy. PharmEasy has collaborated with various laboratories across the country to avail the above services, some of which are Apple Diagnostics, SRL Diagnostics, iGenetic Diagnostics, Suburban Diagnostics, Dr Avinash Phadke Labs and Oncquest Diagnostics.

PharmEasy’s Revenue Model: An Income Churning Machine!

PharmEasy earns by displaying sponsored ads of various pharmaceutical brands. Advertising is the major source of revenue for this clever e-pharmacy and it capitalizes on it to the hilt. The ads that are displayed on PharmEasy’s platforms (website and the app) are picked from the homepages of various brands it is going to display. On top of that, PharmEasy also offers some value-added services such as medicines reminders, reminders for refilling and providing helpline contacts.

Some of the smart moves in marketing

In addition to offering discounts on its website, PharmEasy has also tied up with various mobile wallets to provide discounts on medicines and various over-the-counter products.
PharmEasy has used various forms of media such as AC Bus Wraps Ads, billboards, hoardings, Metro Trains Wrap Ads, and even bus panels. In addition to media, the company also used below-the-line activation campaigns such as residential welfare campaigns like health camps to promote its brand.

Print and broadcast media campaigns were also used to explain the ease of using an online pharmacy. Moreover, Twitter was extensively used as the brand’s official social media channel.

What gaps is PharmEasy trying to fill?

PharmEasy founder Dharmil Sheth stated in one of the interviews that they started the e-pharmacy platform to make healthcare services affordable and accessible to all. Earlier, no platform could connect patients or a customer to authentic healthcare services. This is where the founders saw a huge gap in the healthcare industry. Though people could buy cosmetics, stationary and even purchase retail properties online, no platform could deliver medicines to the customers. There was a need for someone to deliver the medicines at the doorsteps of the patients so that they did not have to walk down the road to look for medicines or healthcare products. Patients are usually dependent on their families for their well-being and support. This is where PharmEasy tried to make space for itself. The founders thought of intuitive ways to help the patients in as many ways as possible. They wanted their product to be more than just a delivery service. Now, the platform has started to suggest its users undergo different lifestyle changes and perform certain activities so that they can avoid certain diseases and ailments. The idea was to make the platform act like a “family member” and take care of its patients. Furthermore, the platform pushed to make the relationship between the patient and the chemist intimate instead of transactional by using an efficient system that identified pharmacies that were closest to their customers.

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PharmEasy’s model depends entirely on its state of the art technological infrastructure., which allows them to negotiate effectively with their retail partners, as they can offer lucrative discounts that can be passed on to the customers.

How does PharmEasy Stand out in the Industry?

When a thorough comparative analysis is conducted, it is found that PharmEasy is far ahead of its competitors in terms of service delivery. Medicines are the need of the hour and sometimes they are needed on the same day or right away at the moment. PharmEasy’s concept of service is based on a hyper-local model, they have built an intricate network of vendors across the country, as the result of which they can ensure that the delivery takes place in the shortest period possible. Secondly, the platform differs in terms of the discount it offers. PharmEasy ensures affordability by offering a flat 20 per cent discount on medicines and a 40 per cent discount on diagnostics!

The platform also offers a special discount on medicines and other essential supplies for the category of Cancer and AIDs patients, which are usually heavy on the pocket. PharmEasy’s model depends entirely on its state of the art technological infrastructure., which allows them to negotiate effectively with their retail partners, as they can offer lucrative discounts that can be passed on to the customers.

People’s response, in turn, has been quite enthusiastic. Most of the users who have registered on the platform have never witnessed services like that of PharmEasy anywhere else before! Moreover, they are quite satisfied with the discounts. The senior citizens who are suffering from hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes etc, are enjoying the app’s experience. For the first time in their lives, an online platform had solved their problems of mobility easily. With time, the
E-pharmacy has added more services to its basket, such as e-consultations and setting e-appointments with the doctors. Indian customers are glad that such a concept has entered the market that only delivers quality services, but is also very convenient for them too!

Operating an Online Pharmacy in the Indian Market: A Key Challenge

The first and the foremost hurdle that PharmEasy faced was the supply chain. There had been no use of technology in the entire medical supply chain when they started. In the pharmaceutical sector, more than 80 per cent of the retailers had never used a computerised billing system before. This posed a great challenge to the founders who struggled to find a way to keep a track record of the patients to whom medicines were dispensed. Also, it was difficult to track the movement of the shipped products. Earlier, when retailers made a sale to the customers, they would have no record of the sale to the customers afterwards.

PharmEasy addressed this challenge by ensuring that every retailer they worked with had a completely “digitised store”. The PharmEasy team assisted them in installing the necessary inventory management tools, as well as maintaining the record of every patient they sold their medicines to. The team provided them with the know-how of digital invoicing, maintaining the patient name, batch number, manufacturing details of the order, delivery address of the customer in a record.

Above all, a digital model was needed to be introduced in the pharmaceutical sector to track the movement of the products, ensure record management and create databases to abide by the regulatory laws and prevent the leakage of spurious products in the market. The way PharmEasy operates ensures end-to-end monitoring at every level. First, the order is received from the customer in a digitised format and an image of the prescription is also shared. Then, the company sends an authorised agent from the customer’s end to pick up the order and deliver it to the exact address along with the prescription.

Still, some elements in the regulatory authorities question the importance of this emerging innovative model of business, only time will tell how things pan out for this promising operation.

The post PharmEasy: A Digital Roadmap to All Your Hyperlocal Pharmaceutical Needs appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How CarDekho Moved From a Lead Generation to Full-Fledged Booking Platform

Arunima Sharma — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 10:35:05 +0000

Ever since cars went from luxury to necessity, people have been hit by a conundrum of all the ‘which’ questions. Which car to buy, which feature to prioritise, which company to go for, which dealer to choose from and so on. The situation becomes even more challenging when it is coupled with the term ‘pre-owned’, both for buying and selling. Overall, it’s a tough ride.

In 2008, a brother duo – Anurag and Amit Jain – decided to bridge this gap with the inception of CarDekho – a web portal that deals with anything and everything related to automobiles, including buying, selling, reviewing and financing. However, it wasn’t a cakewalk for the two IIT graduates, who placed their passion over the shared aversion of getting into the family business of jewellery.

After a few ‘speed bumps’ and a lot of hard work, they managed to turn CarDekho into one of the biggest brand names in the automotive e-commerce business, with a valuation of over $643 Million.

Failure, Inspiration and Investment

The journey of entrepreneurship for the Jain brothers had commenced in 2006 after they left their respective jobs at TCL and Trilogy as they learned about their father’s illness. The idea was to join the family’s jewellery business, however, they decided to choose a different path and start something of their own. Varied ideas, starting from taking the jewellery business online to an astrology portal, were curated, brainstormed and quashed. After a series of thoughts, the duo stumbled upon the idea of doing what they were best at – software services/IT – and launched GirnarSoft, an IT outsourcing company.

Soon the bedroom was turned into the office and the brothers commenced operations with big hopes. After thousands of emails and calls, the duo realised that the results were not worth the efforts as they were unable to touch base with big clients and get the expected results.

They decided to start small. Their first project fetched them Rs 50,000, which was much less than what they had hoped for. However, as challenging as it can be to be patient, it is one of the most important traits for any start-up. Besides, hard work never goes in vain. Having said that, do not misinterpret between patience and rest. Don’t take rest and fool yourself by saying that I am patient. This is exactly what the brothers did.

Amidst the frustration of not reaping expected results, a chain of references had started to build up for the start-up, bringing in new projects and clients. Within a year, the company had 40 employees and enough capital to be reinvested.

However, instead of putting their entire money back into the business, the duo decided to place their bet on a new idea, which came in from the duo’s shared interest and a visit to an international expo.

Digitisation was the key. The aim was to make buying and selling of an automobile a hassle free process besides streamlining the unscathed market.

While thinking about the new venture, what convinced the brother duo was their visit to the International Auto Expo. The sheer experience of reviewing, comparing or just having a look at the options available at one place hit them up with the idea of having the same online.

The money made out of the IT business was reinvested in launching Cardekho in 2008, with GirnarSoft as the parent company.

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“Cardekho has quickly moved up as one of the premier platforms for automotive e-commerce in India thanks to the company utilising digitisation so well.”

Going beyond a Web Portal

A few years later, CarDekho found itself surrounded by competition. It was being challenged by companies like CarTrade, Droom Technology, CarWale and many more. However, to remain at the top of its game, since the very beginning, the company had made innovation in its bible.

CarDekho aspires to give its user an immersive car experience before it visits the dealer showroom. It has launched a variety of features, including the ‘Feel The Car’ tool that gives 360-degree interior/exterior views with sounds of the car and explanations of features with videos; search and comparison by make, model, price, features; and live offers and promotions in all cities. Besides the consumer product features, the portal provides a rich array of tech-enabled tools to OE manufacturers and car dealers. These include apps for dealers, sales executives to manage leads, cloud services for tracking sales performance, call tracker solutions, digital marketing support, a virtual online showroom, and outsourced lead management operational process for taking consumers from inquiry to sale.

The company acquired ibibo group-owned Gaadi.com in 2014 and gradually launched BikeDekho, PriceDekho, MobileDekho, and many other platforms that combined get more than 55 million unique visitors monthly. According to a BCG study, over 85% of customers who intend to purchase a car in India, visit one of CarDekho’s platforms before making the decision.

Following the acquisition of Gaadi.com, CarDekho became the undisputed market leader in the automobile industry with a collective volume of 15 million visitors monthly. Apart from this, the deal helped the company evolve in the pre-owned car market which otherwise would have taken years had they done it by themselves.

Strategic acquisitions were done to enhance the user interface of the website and apps by using big data and AR/VR technologies besides other offerings.

While CarDekho took over Times Internet-owned Zigwheels, CarTrade acquired Carwale. Continuing its acquisition spree, CarDekho later folded up six companies including Volob, SaaS startup Connecto and roadside assistance Help On Wheels.

By 2016, CarDekho had realised that it was lagging behind in the used car segment and began doubling down on it. However, by the time the decision was made, its competitors like Cars24 had already made inroads in the segment.

The strategy of monetising the user base was pivoted a bit by introduction of finance and insurance verticals (value added services). This was the evolution of CarDekho from an autotech to auto fintech. The company got into the lending segment, an huge untapped opportunity, especially in the used car segment. Loan discovery and processing became an integral part of CarDekho’s used car ecosystem and a huge revenue making vertical. Besides bringing down the loan processing time, the company tied up with BankBazaar.com and Berkshire Insurance to enhance the offering.

Very few players in the market have been able to match CarDekho’s in-depth knowledge and expertise with regards to used car loan underwriting. This works as a huge advantage for the company which has already captured a significant user base in this vertical.

Taking into account the company’s revenue models it has three mediums; the first and the most talked about has been their revenue through AdSense, the second and the most important source is through sponsored ads, and last but not the least is the commission from the manufacturers and dealers.

The company has been grabbing the right opportunities for growth and expansion to expand its revenue. The zeal to constantly grow is the key reason for the company’s success and also the reason behind being able to survive in an ocean full of competition. By developing capabilities in finance and insurance of used vehicles, it has managed to build a unique value proposition.

An Early Entrant

CarDekho was indeed one of the early entrants in the autotech space. This gave the company the required space to grow and experiment. However, it also came with the disadvantage as the start-up had to shoulder the entire responsibility of setting the base for the market, especially convincing the clients/customers. This set the start-up up for a slow start, but a steady one as they began gaining recognition.

After a first few scrappy years, the company finally exploded when it grabbed the attention of investors in 2013. This was the year when the company was engaging in a multimedia marketing campaign with the help of its 200 employees.

Impressed by the company’s marketing strategy Sequoia Capital invested $15 million in the initial round of funding. Not only this, through the help of its innovative marketing campaign CarDekho managed to get a place in the market and it soon became a household name.

Since 2013, the company has never stopped flying, it has been actively receiving new fundings and setting new benchmarks every year. According to the brothers, 2015 was most certainly a golden year for the company which raised $50 million in its Series B funding from Hillhouse and Sequoia Capital besides gaining Tata Group’s trust. This was also the year when the company claimed to have hit 10 million unique visitors and raised its valuation five times to a whopping $300 million. These investments in the next few years were repeated by companies like HDFC, Google Capital, etc.

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“The car platform has been so successful and received so much funding, that the company is looking to make a strong foothold for itself in the two-wheeler industry as well.”

At Top Of The Automotive E-Commerce Business

CarDekho has reported a valuation of $643 million in 2020. Irrespective of being hit by the pandemic, where the automobile industry has been the worst affected sector, CarDekho still managed to grow. Following a temporary blip in visitors, the platform witnessed a surge in unique users after July 2020. It went from 36 million in March to 18 Million in April and back to 51 million in November. As per CMO Gaurav Mehta, personal mobility has seen a boost amidst Covid with customers looking to buy their own vehicle due to virus risk. Despite seeing no sales for almost two months, the founders did not sit twiddling their thumbs. Rather, they worked on introducing home inspection besides providing health insurance.

With a spike in demand for motorcycles in Tier 2 and 3, the company recently launched online insurance portal InsuranceDekho.com offering service in motor and health insurance. The company is also in the process of opening around 56 offline stores across the country, few already in operation, as demand for the used car segment rises. CarDekho is looking at the franchise model for the same.

Through constant hard work and dedication the company today stands at the pinnacle, a story that started humbly in Jaipur has now come a long way and has become a tale of success.

As a global brand, CarDekho, which already has presence in Indonesia and the Philippines under brand names OTO and CARMUDI respectively, aims to strengthen its presence further by entering new markets.

In an interview, Amit mentioned that the start-up is looking to raise about $200 million in a pre-IPO round towards setting up an asset-heavy pre-owned car business.

Stories like that of CarDekho are a reminder that maybe several ideas later you will finally stumble upon something that will turn your story upside down, so never stop thinking and experimenting because one day you might replicate the story of CarDekho in your own way.

For more inspiring stories check out our Inspire section!

The post How CarDekho Moved From a Lead Generation to Full-Fledged Booking Platform appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

ShareChat: The Social Solution for a Multilingual Nation

Komal Mor — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 12:35:04 +0000

Facebook and Instagram, among other social media giants, have altered the way we interact. In India, which is largely a non-English speaking country, social media platforms such as Facebook may have a high active participation rate, but they have failed to connect with the significant majority of the people who are unable to communicate in English. ShareChat, a Bengaluru-based firm that was formed in 2015 as an independent social media platform, was one of the first to notice this setback.

ShareChat: Decoding Communication for the Regional India

The three IITians, Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva hit the sweet spot the 15th time when Ankush stumbled upon a Facebook post inviting people to drop their phone numbers if they wish to be part of a Sachin Tendulkar fan group on WhatsApp. What intrigued him was the fact that when Facebook was witnessing questions against its privacy policy, people were not hesitant to share their phone numbers. He created 10 WhatsApp groups with 100 participants each. An hour later, the groups were filled with notifications about Sachin Tendulkar, but the content was in their regional language. They concluded that WhatsApp helped them to share regional content, but there was no exclusive platform that organically provided content in their mother-tongue.

After some research, the trio discovered that out of 350 million smartphone users in India, 100-120 millions prefer their content in English; however, the remaining users preferred content in their vernacular language. This data was expected to reach 199 million for English users and 536 million for Indian language users in 2021. This knowledge made them realise the need of creating a platform which exclusively addressed and generated content for the regional audience in India. This regional audience mostly resided in the non-metro cities and the content they preferred was very different from the metro cities residents.

In 2014, they started working on an app, gathered data and conducted a user based research for almost 11 months, and finally ShareChat was launched. Given India’s rich linguistic diversity, ShareChat was the key to fill a void left by English centric social apps, through an app designed specifically to entertain the regional audience.

“Vocal for the local”

The first version of the app was launched in December 2014 under the parent company Mohalla Technologies Pvt Ltd. They wanted to analyse how the audience would respond to the app, so that they could work on the changes further. The trio noticed an unusual activity from the users. Almost 90 per cent of the users chose to operate in English, but their engagement rate was immensely low. On the other hand, the remaining 10 per cent chose to operate in a regional language but their engagement rate was much higher. They concluded that people chose English as a language due their aspirational value and not based on their comfort and hence due to minimal knowledge of this language, the engagement rate was quite low. Therefore, they decided to scrap English as one of their choices and relaunched the app in October 2015.

The app which was built thereafter, immensely focused on just feeding its customers with content in their chosen language since the main reason why the app was introduced was to provide content only. The app was supported in four languages excluding English. The content could range from memes to GIFs to videos and the list goes on. When this content was shared on WhatsApp, it would be delivered with a watermark saying “this content is shared by ShareChat” along with a link to download ShareChat. This algorithm helped the app grow organically and initiated installs when the app was just launched.

In no time, the app had almost one lakh downloads within the next two months as the app leveraged traction through WhatsApp. The average engagement time on the app skyrocketed and the demand for new and better versions of the app were also soaring.

How ShareChat Brought about Much-Needed Customisation

ShareChat, when launched, was a chatbot based app to facilitate content as per users’ request. The app later came in many versions to personalise its content with a motive of increasing the engagement rate and moreover cater to the wider needs of its audience. The app now has 15 different languages, excluding English, and has evolved from a content sharing to a content generating app. The purpose of ShareChat was not just limited to “share and chat” but went far beyond for its users. Due to customers demand, in 2016, the app allowed customers not just to share content but to create it as well, when it launched a User Generated Content (UGC) in its system to boost its reach.

But there was a big hurdle that the company had to overcome – Internet connectivity. The target audience for this app were simply the internet consumers of tier II, III and IV cities. Back in 2015, Internet connections were not as advanced as they are now and the users lacked the range they needed to access content in no time. Therefore, the founders decided to build a similar bi-directional architecture which allowed customers to send messages and built the app in such a way that people even in the low-connectivity areas could use their app.

One of the driving points for ShareChat to become a success within the first few years of its launch, was the fact that Reliance Jio had slashed its prices and offered 4G services at dirt cheap prices as low as $3 a month for 1 GB data every day. This solved the problem of low connectivity in smaller regions in one go, paving the way for ShareChat’s success.

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ShareChat was started with a vision to make users comfortable in the digital space without worrying about English literacy.

Why Does ShareChat Stand out?

For starters, the app builds a platform to close a gap within regional communities. Regional and language diversity has been India’s one of the greatest strengths and weaknesses at the same time. It is a weakness because of a simple fact that language can prove to be a barrier in voicing out opinions. Social Media provides the greatest platforms to do so. However, the most famous social media apps are the US based tech giants who do not cater to the whole of India and neglect the regional languages. ShareChat tapped on this large market and provided a “non-English” social network platform to fill the vacuum created by the English based social networking apps.

As mentioned earlier, the app was first a content sharing and then became a content generating app. It has since evolved overtime to make it easier and user friendly for the first time social media users which reside in the tier II and III cities accounting for 80 per cent of the population of the country. The app keeps introducing new features with a motive of expanding its audience.

Let’s dive into the features which made the app user friendly for the first time users.

Shake- N- Chat

This is a very unique feature in the application which facilitates unknown users to connect on the app simply by shaking their phone. This feature will connect the user to another user who is either interested in similar content or has been creating content in a similar genre. This feature certainly strengthens the social experience of the users and can lead to fruitful conversations among the unknown users

Private Messaging

This is no different from other social media apps but this feature could help ShareChat enlarge its market. Users had to resort to other social platforms to chat with say their friends or family members. Upon conducting surveys in 6 different Indian states in 2017, 88 per cent of the users wished for a private messaging feature in the application. Against this insight, a private messaging feature was introduced in the application. This did not only help ShareChat expand its market but also the engagement time in the app increased.

Create your own stickers

Users may utilize this feature to make their own stickers by pressing the ‘stickers’ button in the top right corner of any ShareChat post. Users may also personalize the sticker by using the app’s distinctive frames. The sticker is then kept in the user’s sticker pack. And it doesn’t end here; these stickers can also be shared on Whatsapp from the ShareChat app.

Post search and Repost

Post search feature intends to make searching for postings on a user’s account easier and faster. Users may do this by typing a term into the ‘search’ icon at the bottom of the home screen, and the postings that match that phrase will follow. As the name implies, the functionality will assist the user in filtering the postings in their account, limiting the search criteria.

The repost feature allows the user to re-share a post on their ShareChat account by pressing the ‘repost’ icon at the bottom of any post. Re-shared posts will appear in the feed alongside other posts, but with the original user’s username and profile photo.

Tech Giants’ Obsession with This Home-Grown Rival to WhatsApp

India Quotient was one of the first companies to invest in ShareChat in 2014 with an amount of 50 lakh rupees ($67000) for a 10 per cent stake in the company. This decision was laughed off by many, questioning if just an idea on a paper could get thousands of dollars. However, India Quotient was confident enough to invest in the company based on its idea. Madhukar Sinha, the Co-founder of India quotient had worked closely with the three founders of ShareChat and knew the potential of the brand. Hence, this decision was a no-brainer and the company kicked off with its first investment funding round.

Till date ShareChat has raised an amount of $824.8 million across 10 funding rounds. Their last Series E funding round alone raised $502 million taking the valuation to $2.1 billion.

What doesn’t come as a surprise is the enthusiasm of tech giants for the Indian market. India has become the second fastest internet growing economy hosting 650 million users online which is predicted to cross 900 million by the year 2023. Hence, they do not leave any opportunity to invest in this growing market.

Twitter has been one of the leading investors in ShareChat. Other investors include Xiaomi, Lightspeed Venture partners, Tiger Global management, SAIF partners, Shunwei Capital and many more.

Since ShareChat helps newcomers to the internet, who have no knowledge of how discovery works, by bringing the content to them, Twitter tapped into this opportunity and utilised this approach to grow its reach in regions that would otherwise be inaccessible to them and monetise new users through advertising. ShareChat is the only Indian start-up which has been invested in by Twitter, that too twice. Infact, Twitter invested more than it planned to after TikTok was banned after a standoff between India and China. Soon after that, ShareChat launched ‘Moj’, another video sharing app which reached 10 million downloads just six days after its launch. Twitter plans to make Moj international and a global rival for TikTok and hence, invested a huge sum in ShareChat to deepen its technology.

What does the future hold for ShareChat?

Google and Snap (parent company of Snapchat) are in talks to invest in ShareChat. Twitter is offering to acquire ShareChat with an aim to build a global rival to TikTok. The results of these talks are yet to be seen.

Given the fact that 9 out of 10 people in India prefer to communicate in their native dialect, the future shines bright for ShareChat. But the challenge remains; there are 22 official languages, 122 major languages and more than 1600 dialects and currently, ShareChat has a long way to go to reach this ever-growing population and widen its accessibility for its vernacular-based users.

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