All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Solethreads, a youth-centric open footwear brand, has announced the completion of its 13 Crore Series A round of funding. The round saw participation from leading VCs DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital. Solethreads is an innovative, digital-first brand that is known for its super comfortable yet stylish flip-flops.

The founders aim to build the go-to brand for leisure footwear in India. Solethreads is the brainchild of founders Sumant Kakaria and Gaurav Chopra, who bring with them over 13 years of collective experience in the footwear and retail industry. They were joined by co-founders Vikram Iyer and Aprajit Kathuria in early 2020.

Flip flops have forever been associated with indoors, tropical weather and the beaches. However, changes in fashion trends have led to their adoption for everyday use, both indoors and outdoors by fashion-conscious, younger consumers.

As flip-flops increasingly become the footwear of choice across occasions, the Solethreads team believes that the purchase of open footwear is an increasingly high-involvement decision for the consumer. An innovative product with a strong value proposition will beat out the competition.

Founder Sumant Kakaria said

While there are multiple footwear brands that are driving this change in lifestyle on the global stage, the need was largely unrecognized in India. The brand landscape in open footwear had been quite dull.

Existing players are by and large not willing to invest the necessary time and resources to understand consumer motivations and therefore unable to innovate according to market needs. It is a very clear opportunity for new age brands like us to occupy a large share in the open footwear category.

Solethreads takes pride in being the harbinger of innovation & technology in footwear design. Their products are developed through a rigorous process that involves testing multiple concepts with consumers and rapid product prototyping.

Ash Lilani, Managing Partner of Saama Capital, said

The team has a very strong understanding of the product category as well as the digital landscape, which makes them the best guys to drive this segment. Their biggest advantage is their passion for the product, and a huge innovation pipeline which should keep them ahead of the curve.

The open footwear category in India is over 1.5bn dollars growing at a CAGR of 15 percent and it is ripe for disruption.

Hariharan Premkumar, Executive Director at DSG Consumer Partners said

We were impressed with how they managed to achieve significant early traction in a sustainable manner within a year of launch. With the perfect product and positioning, the brand is well positioned to be the insurgent brand within the category that has the potential of changing the footwear landscape in India.

Solethreads has adopted an omni-channel go-to-market strategy. Online, the company sells its products through the Solethreads website and all leading ecommerce platforms including Amazon, Myntra, and Flipkart. They are also in the process of bolstering their offline presence and have recently partnered with premium footwear retailer Metro Shoes.

Solethreads was advised by Mumbai-based firm Moxie Capital.  The brand plans to invest the new resources in creating a truly delightful customer experience, fostering a sense of community among its users and strengthening its digital capabilities.

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

SaaS based Physical security and Smart buildings start-up Spintly, has raised Rs. 4.6 Crore in an extended seed round of funding. This round of investment was led by Silicon Valley based Riso Capital, along with SucSEED Indovation Fund from Hyderabad, Chicago based Nikhand Investments LLC, and Keiretsu Forum angel network.

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Spintly provides SaaS based physical security solutions which enable frictionless smartphone-based door access, eliminating the need for key cards and elaborate wiring for access control and is one of the few start-ups in the country operating in this space. Brigade REAP, the first Proptech accelerator in the country and one of the top accelerators in the world has played a vital role in the growth of Spintly, having mentored the company.

Speaking on this development, Rohin Parkar, Co-Founder and CEO, Spintly, stated

We are extremely bullish about the future and are determined to transform the entire physical security and smart building ecosystem. We will utilise these funds to boost sales, marketing and research activities in order to enhance our position as pioneers in the wireless cloud-based access control technology space.

We offer the world’s first fully wireless mesh technology for access control which can also be used for smart building applications. We are humbled at raising a round of funding during COVID-19 and since then have been witnessing a steady growth in demand for contactless door access solutions. This is certainly an indication of trust from our customers and investors.

Commenting on the investment, Sri Purisai, Founder and Partner, Riso Capital said

RiSo Capital is excited to be part of Spintly’s journey as they continue to scale and deploy a flexible SaaS model to access control and building automation markets. Spintly brings an enterprise grade Access Control as a Service [ACaaS] stack offering to a growing building automation market.

The stack is versatile to run on various hardware topologies including Bluetooth mesh and other native IP protocols. We support the team’s vision and are confident in their ability to execute and deliver.

Vikrant Varshney, Managing Partner of SucSEED Indovation Fund, said

Security and RegTech is one of the six focus areas of SucSEED Indovation Fund and we found Spintly’s tech solution quite fitting to the growing segment of Smart buildings and Smart living. Collaboration with supporting ecosystem could be key in their growth strategy, which we feel we can help them with.

Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP, commented

At Brigade REAP, our focus has always been to choose and mentor start-ups that can make a difference to real-world issues. We strongly believe that Spintly has immense potential and given the huge opportunity that lies ahead of them, are sure to grow even more.

We are proud to have been associated with them as mentors. Today Spintly is very well positioned to capitalize on this growth trend with their cloud-based SaaS platform.

Srikanth Rajan from Keiretsu forum Chennai said

Touchless authentication and access control is a big need of the post-Covid world. Spintly’s technology has applicability across all geographic markets, and in several verticals with additional potential from a future data play.

We are co-investing in Spintly along with RiSo Capital because we believe that between RiSo’s footprint in the US and ours in India, we can help Spintly rapidly grow its success in global markets.

Spintly was founded by two experienced founders Rohin Parkar and Malcolm Dsouza in late 2017. Both founders worked in the US in the wireless technology space before returning to India in 2017. They started Spintly with a goal of building technology-based products in India. The world is moving towards a keyless future where one will no longer carry a key around to unlock doors.

It will be done using one of our personal devices such as a smartphone or a smartwatch as a Key. The Spintly platform is built to accelerate the transition to this keyless future. Spintly believes that their Access Control as a Service [ACaaS] platform has a huge potential to enable use cases in smart buildings, as smart buildings move towards wireless infrastructure.

Spintly represents a breed of Indian start-ups which focus on deep-tech and have a potential to disrupt global ecosystems. The Access Control market is currently a $70B market expected to reach $84B by 2023. Out of the $70B market $42B is the SaaS component of the market which is a huge shift in this hardware centric world of physical security. As per a report from IPVM SaaS based Physical security start-ups raised a total of $300M in 2020.

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the industry including the Spintly business. After an initial slowdown during the lockdown phase the demand for Spintly products has increased steadily due to the need for contactless solutions which can be managed and operated remotely. Spintly has been quick to cease this opportunity and has expanded rapidly.

The future looks really promising for Spintly as the focus of the world has shifted away from China and towards India to deliver strong products for the global markets.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

If you are like most people, you probably use the terms ETFs And Mutual Funds interchangeably. It’s not your fault – as a concept, they are essentially the same. However, there are places where they differ, albeit slightly. Mutual funds and Exchange traded funds (ETF) are broad concepts, but let us have a comparison of specifically index funds and index ETFs.

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Firstly, they are both passive investing instruments. Conceptually, they are the same.

However there are structural differences between the two that you need to know:

  • An index fund is similar to any other mutual fund investment. But it differs from an active fund, because it does not create alpha but only reduces and minimizes tracking error. In case of index ETFs too, the focus is on minimizing the tracking error and reducing the cost of the funds.
  • Since index funds are open-ended, they are open to purchase and redemption at any time. On the other hand, Index ETFs don’t do any sale or purchase- these transactions are between buyers and sellers in the market.
  • When it comes to the number of units and AUM of the index funds and mutual funds, they keep changing. However, the number of units and AUM of the index ETFs do not change because they are close ended. And once the NFO is closed, other than the value accretion there is no further addition to the corpus.
  • Mutual funds issue units which are valued after adjusting the TER or total expense ratio. Meanwhile ETFs trade in the fractional shares of the underlying commodity or index.
  • When we talk about operational process flow- buying index fund units from an AMC increases the AUM of the fund, which reduces when you redeem it. Whereas in case of index ETFs, you can buy or sell only if there is liquidity in the market.
  • An index fund purchase or redemption is executed at the end-of-day NAV. NAV stands for Net Asset Value which is based on the market value of all stocks adjusted for the TER or total expense ratio on a daily basis. On the other hand, in case of index ETFs, prices fluctuate and vary in real time.
  • Index ETFs in India cost much lower than index funds. While index funds have an expense ratio of about 1%, index ETFs have an expense ratio of 0.35%. Even with factors like brokerage and statutory charges, index ETFs are more affordable.
  • Another difference is that Systematic Investment Plans [SIPs] can be structured in an index fund. SIPs provide rupee-cost averaging that lowers the average cost of owning the units. Index ETFs do not support SIPs because they are close ended.
  • Another ETF vs Mutual fund point is that ETFs also provide another benefit, that they can be leveraged as short or long leveraged products. This isn’t possible when it comes to mutual funds, and definitely not available in the Indian market.

So this is how Mutual funds differ from ETFs. Now that you know the difference, you can choose to invest in mutual funds or go for ETFs and make an informed choice.

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Onelife Nutriscience, which owns the consumer healthcare brand Onelife has raised funding from Wipro Consumer Care – Ventures, the venture capital arm of Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting.

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Onelife has a diverse set of offerings focusing on wellness, immunity, and overall nutraceutical segment. The company will use the funds for its next level of growth. The Company was founded in 2019 by Gaurav Aggarwal, who has over 20 years of experience in the Nutrition Industry. Hailing from a family who are one of the leading producers of Vitamin B3 in the world, this is a natural progression for Gaurav to leverage his extensive experience and depth of knowledge to develop a promising B2C Healthcare Brand.

Commenting on the capital raised, Gaurav Aggarwal, Founder, Onelife said

We are delighted to have Wipro Consumer Care – Ventures as investors, and I welcome them to the Onelife family. We could not have hoped for a better choice of investor who understands the consumer so well and from whom we can get a lot of value.

We look forward to working closely with Wipro over the coming years as we build Onelife into a formidable player in the Nutrition and wellness space. Their backing is a great value addition to our growth plans in India as well as globally. The Nutraceuticals Industry is looking at growing exponentially, and we are excited to increase our market presence through innovative products.

Sumit Keshan, Managing Partner, Wipro Consumer Care – Ventures, said

We are excited at becoming part of Onelife in its growth journey. They have robust R&D capability, strong product knowledge, and a mature & passionate team. Health and immunity are on top of every consumer’s mind today.

They are increasingly getting conscious of the benefits of preventive health too. These offer immense growth potential for the company, and Onelife intends to address all these requirements of consumers in a holistic way.

About Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting

Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, an over $1 Billion USD business, is among the fastest growing FMCG businesses. Wipro Consumer Care’s businesses include personal wash products, toiletries, personal care products, wellness products, electrical wire devices, domestic and commercial lighting and modular office furniture.

It has a strong brand presence with significant market share across segments in India, South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It has 16 manufacturing units in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam and has state of the art R & D facilities in five countries.

|In: Books|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

There are very few self-help books that take the reader through an introspective journey. Rarely, do we come across books that make you intensely involved in its journey [or story]! I had an opportunity to read the novel ‘Jasmine Builds On Shifting Sands‘ which walks you through Jasmine’s journey of success, augmented with a one-of-a-kind, e-micro learning experience.

As mentioned on the book’s cover, the story revolves around Jasmine Arya – the main protagonist, who has a dream of making it big as a successful model in the cut-throat world of fashion. The story of Jasmine is narrated by the spiritual Guru Ma Krishnanandgiri – the spiritual guru of the book’s author – Sanjay Desai.

About the Author

Sanjay Desai is a multi-faceted personality. He is an entrepreneur, an ex-banker, and an alumnus of IIM (Bangalore). He is also a Chartered Accountant. Through this book, Sanjay wants to enrich the readers by sharing a story that seamlessly traverses through the material and spiritual world. You can find more about Sanjay Desai from his LinkedIn profile.

Detailed Review

The central character of the story is Jasmine – a college topper and super-confident girl who joins the beauty industry by sheer luck. She has her share of ups & downs as she tries to set foot in an industry which is relatively new to her. The story is about how she overcomes her fears, agonies, negativities, etc. to make a mark in the industry.

Jasmine is a quick learner who keeps learning from her mistakes. At the end of the day, life is a journey where each one of us have to strive hard to achieve our goals. Did Jasmine climb the ladder of success all by herself? Definitely not! Jasmine had the fortune to learn from her mentors who were always by her side. They played a huge role in ensuring that she develops the mental strength to stay away from external influences so that she does not shy away from her dreams.

The struggles of Jasmine are very much similar to Priyanka Chopra’s struggle in the movie Fashion. Even with the similarities, you will still be intrigued to figure out what’s next in-store for Jasmine. After reaching the peak of popularity, Jasmine’s journey starts taking a U-turn and we start to see her spiral into a downfall. Does Jasmine bounce back? If so, how does she execute the turn-around?

At this point, she is fortunate to meet Bala – a photographer, who helps her stay grounded. He introduces Jasmine to spirituality, which eventually becomes an integral part of Jasmine’s lifestyle. The book has an excellent mix of Fashion and Spirituality, as the author has successfully managed to align the age-old spiritual practices [e.g. Yoga, Meditation, Introspection, etc.] with modern-day goal setting.

The book goes on to prove the importance of being humble even when your have tasted the sweet smell of success. Spirituality is the only gateway to remain calm and stay focussed in a world where we experience distractions from all possible mediums.

The language used in ‘Jasmine Builds On Shifting Sands’ is simple & easy to understand. The core focus is showcasing the importance of mentors, spirituality, and sheer focus to keep negativities at bay so that you can achieve your goals!

Closing Thoughts

‘Jasmine Builds On Shifting Sands‘ by Sanjay Desai is a breezy read that provides a lot of practical learnings, something that is rare to find in many self-help books. We loved the way micro-learning resources are created using QR-Code for chapters – How to manage Social Media distractions for success, Learn to decode failure with Jasmine, and How to manifest your dreams.

Once you scan the QR Code, you are directed to relevant sections on ConsciousLeap where you can take relevant courses to avoid the mistakes made by Jasmine. On the whole, I liked every part of the novel and the author’s unique strategy to engage readers through unique & free courses on ConsciousLeap takes the learnings to a whole new level!

You can purchase Jasmine Builds On Shifting Sands by Sanjay Desai by clicking on the link below:

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

While COVID-19 continues to play out an unprecedented upheaval across the globe, businesses will need to tune up technology to bring some semblance of order to uncertainty, complexity and to rethink and reboot their digital strategies.

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Padmanabhan Iyer, Managing Director and Global CEO, 3i Infotech, pens some major tech predictions that will help steer through 2021:

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence [AI] is undoubtedly one of the biggest tech trends at the moment and during 2021, it will become an even more valuable tool to help us interpret and understand the world around us. Customer patterns have changed drastically given the COVID-19 period and will continue well into 2021.

This means that machine learning algorithms will become better informed with more data as well as increasingly sophisticated in the solutions they uncover for us. 

Digital Integration: Bridging the Physical and Digital

As the digitalization trend continues to accelerate, the potential for optimizing processes, making data-driven decisions in real time, and creating new products, services, and business models will be the key that guides an organization’s efforts. Realizing the full promise of digital may require integrating systems and data across entire ecosystems. The more data one feeds into a digital ecosystem, the more detailed, dynamic, and valuable the digital initiative becomes. 

In the digitization space, from a vertical perspective, payments & remittances will continue to have accelerated growth. Digital on-boarding has picked up pace in 2020 considering the social distancing required in view of the pandemic. This trend will continue as well. Micro, small and medium enterprises will be the focus area from digitization perspective. 

Automation

The urgency and need for automation technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, and machine learning, are stronger now than ever before. And the COVID-19 pandemic has made such automation solutions undeniably urgent. Democratization of automation would make these solutions easily accessible to all and when this concept becomes a reality, organizations will certainly see massive business transformation.

Automation often requires extensive human participation and support. Thus, democratization will give companies sufficient access to automating mundane tasks and empower non-tech users. However, every new approach comes with a set of challenges, and the democratization of automation is no different. By developing and following a systematic framework, businesses can address such complexities with ease. 

XaaS [Everything-as-a-Service]

As-a-Service [aaS] has already become the standard to turn into a truly digital-native enterprise. The new pattern in the aaS model is Everything-as-a-Service [XaaS] where services delivered will totally dwell on the cloud with virtual access to nearly everything.

Tools, for example, the Internet of Things [IoT] and Artificial Intelligence [AI] will play a critical part in building those services or expanding existing services to go beyond the digital-native status quo. 

Open Banking

Open banking is reported to have generated $7.29 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $43.15 billion by 2026. Open banking will become the norm with even emerging markets rolling out regulations. This will fuel innovation in the fintech space addressing the New to Credit segment.

Fintech as a service platform will emerge enabling banking as a service. This trend will be seen across the BFSI segment with multiple use cases that are evolving on a day-to-day basis. 

Augmented & Virtual Reality [AR & VR]

AR & VR will evolve with use cases in businesses beyond the entertainment industry. The fact that they can create large simulation environments and the collaboration further with Artificial Intelligence will stimulate innovation.

5G technology will accentuate the use of AR/VR with better user experiences with shorter latencies. 

Regulatory Aspects

The enormous growth in the digital space puts equal focus on the regulatory aspects. Firstly, RegTech is gaining importance to ensure compliance is made simple with required analytics in place. This also helps the entities to focus on growing business where RegTech will enable required support for regulatory aspects. 

Secondly, there is a growing concern on ‘Security & Privacy concerns’ that needs to be addressed comprehensively with cybercrime increasing day by day. According to Gartner, by 2023, 65 percent of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under some kind of modern privacy regulations.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Mutual funds or stocks? You must have often find yourself wandering between these two diverse investment products. Experts believe that it is hard to declare a conclusive winner as both investment products are highly dependent on the performance of the economy, individual companies, and sectors.

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Mutual funds offer diversification opportunities to investors that is quite useful when the markets are volatile. What’s more, an investor can benefit from the price movements of the stocks by investing in mutual funds via a Systematic Investment Plan [SIP]. It also frees them from the urge to time the markets.

Stocks on the other hand offers investors with greater flexibility to invest in companies they know of and put their trust in. Stocks have a high risk-reward ratio.

Mutual Funds vs Stocks

The following table summarizes the differences between mutual funds and stocks

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic that struck the entire world, followed by what seemed like a never-ending lockdown, investors interest in both the investment products – stocks and mutual fund SIPs has gone up in 2020.

What’s more, people started investing more in mutual funds via SIP during the lockdown, especially during the times the markets were very volatile. This portrays that there is a high awareness about the benefits of SIPs among user base as being the best investment tool during volatile markets. This is due to the concept of rupee cost averaging offered by SIP investments.

Mutual funds or stocks – Who will win the battle in 2021?

Whether you choose to invest in mutual funds or stocks must entirely depend on your investment portfolio. Stocks are suitable for investors who have a high risk appetite and are fine with the volatility in their investments to earn higher returns.

On the other hand, mutual fund investments are ideal for those investors who have a relatively lower risk profile and are looking to diversify their portfolio with different securities such as stocks, bonds, money market instrument, etc.

If you are still confused about the right investment product for your portfolio, you might consider taking the services of a mutual fund expert or advisor. Happy investing!

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Hemp Horizons is a GMP certified hemp seed processing company. It was founded by Rohit Shah, Kartikey Dadoo, and Kanishk Yadav in April 2017. Company contract manufactures hemp products and owns a brand called Health Horizons. Under its USFDA approved brand ‘Health Horizons’, the company sells top of the line hemp products.

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They manufactured their first machine which helps in making hemp products in India after eight months of extensive research. The company launched three products including the Sativa Hemp Nubs [Hemp Hearts], Sativa Hemp Powder, and Sativa Hemp Oil. Quickly its product range grew to ten, all made from hemp and in the personal care range.

The company is launching – Two new hemp seed based products in 45 days. The company will use funds towards launching and marketing of Cannabis extracts, second gen hemp seed products.

Rohit Shah, CEO of Hemp Horizon, said

A plant that can feed us, cloth us, provide us medicine and give us shelter on top of being carbon negative. What other miracles are we seeking!! We are happy to see more and more individuals understanding the benefits of this plant and investment funds looking at companies like ours as a potential game changer in the health and wellness space.

Cannabis/Hemp can be a category in itself. In the next 5 years no industry will be left untouched by Cannabis/Hemp and its derivatives. 2021 is an exciting year for Cannabis/Hemp in India and the world.

Nandini Mansinghka, Co-promoter & CEO, Mumbai Angels Network commented

We believe Hemp Horizons to bring change in the way people see Hemp and its uses. We are excited to welcome Hemp Horizons to our portfolio and look forward to seeing them amaze everyone with their new products specially in the health and wellness space.

About Mumbai Angels Network

Started in 2006, Mumbai Angels Network is India’s premier platform focused on new venture investing. The network is today 500+ members strong, across 9 chapters [Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Goa, Pune, Jaipur, Chennai] and 25+ cities across the globe. The network today has one of the strongest portfolios in the country with 150+ companies, 70+ exits plus next round investments.