|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The Young Entrepreneurs Academy, Inc. [YEA!] with Incredible Ideas Ltd has announced the launch of its first two Academy centers that will launch this August in Mumbai and Delhi. The Young Entrepreneurs Academy celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of India’s youth by teaching students ages 11-18 how to launch their own, real companies.

The YEA! class will launch in Mumbai at the American School of Bombay and at the Shri Ram School in Delhi, 2 premier education institutes in India. Each YEA! class is designed for 30 students between the ages of 11 and 18 to participate in a 25-week after-school entrepreneurship program to generate business ideas, conduct market research, write business plans and pitch to a panel of investors for startup funding. By the end of class, students launch their own, real companies.

The Young Entrepreneurs Academy is proud to announce the launch of the Mumbai and Delhi centers as Prime Minster Narendra Modi announces ‘Start-Up Action Plan for India’ and ‘Start-up India’ an initiative that celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of India’s youth.

Namita Thapar, founder of Incredible Ideas Ltd and Chief Financial Officer & Executive Board member of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Ltd has partnered with YEA! to bring this program to India. Being a Chartered Accountant and MBA from Duke University, she is passionate about the field of education and hopes to scale this program Pan India in the coming years.

Students will get an opportunity to hear as well as get inspired by several celebrity guest speakers. The list comprises of entrepreneurs from some of the top industrial houses in India as well as some of the larger e-commerce start-ups. In addition, students will take behind the scenes, fun-filled trips to India’s most successful businesses. They will work with mentors from top consulting and venture capital funds in India.

Finally, they will participate in a ‘Shark Tank’ style Investor Panel, where they will present their business ideas to a panel of India’s most successful business leaders for the opportunity to secure real funding to launch their businesses.

One YEA! India student will be named the YEA! Saunders Scholars National Winner and qualify to speak at a national event in Washington, DC. Quikr, Luxor and Cello, 3 reputed companies founded by Indian entrepreneurs, are the national sponsors of this program. Incredible Ideas in India is the first overseas organization to license YEA!.

YEA! was founded in 2004 at the University of Rochester, New York with support from the Kauffman Foundation. YEA! classes are currently available in more than 103 centers across 39 states in the U.S.A. To date, more than 4,000 YEA! students have launched over 3,000 real businesses.

YEA! alumni include 15-year-old Rachel Zietz, CEO of Gladiator Lacrosse who was featured in The New York Times and Entrepreneur.com for her business success as the number one re-seller of lacrosse re-bounders on Amazon. Zietz is now a contender on season seven of ABC’s hit show, Shark Tank.

YEA! is sponsored by the United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Sam’s Club and supported by other companies including Toshiba, American Express, General Motors, Coca Cola, FedEx, Kodak and Microsoft.

To learn more about YEA! visit YEA USA and YEA india

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Bangalore based media-tech startup, ZAPR, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Flipkart, with participation from Saavn, Micromax and Mu Sigma co-founders – Dhiraj Rajaram and Ambiga Dhiraj. This round also saw participation from existing investors – Dinesh Agarwal, Samir Bangara, Sanjay Nath and Arihant Patni. Funds raised will be primarily used to expand on the company’s product portfolio for the media & advertising industry as well as to scale up the technology team.

With its proprietary technology platform, ZAPR has been making waves in the Indian media industry and is now working with leading media agencies, brands and broadcasters. It helps them better understand the media consumption preferences of millions of Indians, and to engage with their audiences seamlessly across TV as well as the mobile and social universe. Over the past year, ZAPR has scaled tremendously and its media consumption data repository is now over 100 times larger than any other in India.

Sandipan Mondal, CEO of  ZAPR said

We’re excited to have Flipkart, Saavn, Micromax as well as Dhiraj and Ambiga from Mu Sigma join our latest round of funding. These companies have redefined the concept of innovation and have disrupted their respective industries. We at ZAPR, share their DNA of leveraging technology to solve intractable problems and their participation in this round, along with the tremendous support we’re received from the media and advertising industry, further reinforces our beliefs.

As the importance of seamless 360 degree marketing increases for brands, ZAPR’s ability to connect the TV screen with the mobile screen, ensures that the same user can now be engaged across several mediums. Brands are increasingly looking to move their budgets from TV to mobile and the ZAPR platform is suitably positioned to catalyse that shift. Additionally, the sheer scale of ZAPR’s data, drives incredible insights for brands and broadcasters.

Nishant Verman, Sr. Director- Corporate Development, Flipkart said

With mobile and internet bringing in a paradigm shift in the way media is consumed, Zapr is surely looking at a very exciting growth road-map. The team has firm grounding in terms of understanding of the media ecosystem. We are confident that with a well-defined strategy and innovation; Zapr will have a unique position in the media space.

ZAPR was a graduate of the first batch of the GSF accelerator, founded by Rajesh Sawhney. Since graduating from the accelerator, it has been working closely with numerous media veterans like Samir Bangara. Samir, formerly MD Disney (Digital) and currently Co-Founder, MD Qyuki has been closely associated with ZAPR as an angel investor and mentor supporting the team on strategy and fund raising.

Other media and technology veterans such as Roshan Abbas, Naveen Tewari, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Rajesh Kamat, are also investors in ZAPR.

About ZAPR

ZAPR was co-founded in 2012 by IIM Ahmedabad batch-mates, Deepak Baid, Sajo Mathews and Sandipan Mondal. The company is India’s largest media consumption repository and audience targeting platform. ZAPR’s proprietary technology profiles the offline media consumption behaviour of millions of people, enabling content owners and brands, for the very first time, to identify their offline audiences and re-engage with them on digital and mobile. For more information, please visit ZAPR

[Image Credit* – pixvc]

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Are bloggers spending more time writing ? Do they write longer or shorter posts? Has publishing frequency changed for the typical blogger ? In an effort to identify the business blog trends of 2015, Orbit Media asked 1074 bloggers 11 questions. Feldman Creative has come up with the blog trends such as writing time, post length and publishing frequency. Below are the trends that have been identified:

  • Blog trend 1 – Bloggers are spending more time on each post
  • Blog trend 2 – Bloggers are going deeper into topics
  • Blog trend 3 – Most bloggers publish weekly or more

For more information, please refer Blog Trends – 2015

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Hike Messenger, India’s only homegrown and fastest growing messaging app, has announced that some of the world’s top notch tech veterans have invested in the company in their personal capacities and are playing advisers to it.

These top veterans include:

Adam D’Angelo, Founder and CEO, Quora – Adam previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Facebook, where he oversaw new product development and managed the engineering team. In addition, he guided the site’s architecture and infrastructure and started the company’s growth team.

Prior to serving as CTO, Adam led the Facebook Platform team and, as an engineer, built the initial infrastructure for news feed and the first generation of the company’s advertising targeting and delivery systems. He has invested personally in Instagram, Nextdoor, Asana and Wealthfront.

Aditya Agarwal, Vice President Engineering, Dropbox – Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company he co-founded that was focused on improving group collaboration and communication. Prior to Cove, Aditya was the Director of Product Engineering at Facebook where he oversaw the development of core products such as News Feed, Search, Photos, Profile and Applications. Aditya was one of the first engineers at Facebook.

Ruchi Sanghvi, Ex-Vice President, Operations, Dropbox – She was responsible for product, recruiting, marketing, communications and other functions. She came to Dropbox through its acquisition of Cove, a collaboration software company she founded in 2011.

Prior to that Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook, and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of key features such as News Feed. In the past, Ruchi has been awarded the Tech-Fellow award for ‘Engineering Leadership’, included in Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business’ & featured by BBC as one of five Indian technology pioneers. Ruchi is an active angel investor and advisor to many technology startups.

Matt Mullenweg, Founder & CEO of Automattic Inc. and Co-Founder of WordPress – As an online social media entrepreneur, Matt gives back to the startup community through his angel investment firm Audrey capital, which has backed over 100 companies since 2008, many of which have been acquired.

Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike Messenger said

It’s great to have the world’s top brains in tech share Hike’s vision; and not just entrust us with their investment, but more importantly, also advise us on our product and strategy. Each of the them brings with him/her a core area of expertise, which we at Hike find immensely useful as we aggressively grow in India.

Hike has seen phenomenal growth in India over these last 3 years, having acquired 70 million users and transacting over 30 billion messages per month. Over the last year, Hike has brought on board solid leadership from brands like PepsiCo, Amazon, Unilever, Zynga etc. to power its next phase of growth and has been hiring top global talent.

Quotes about funding & Indian Market

Ruchi Sanghvi, ex-Vice President, Operations, Dropbox & Aditya Agarwal, Vice President, Engineering, Dropbox

India is close to our hearts and we understand the challenges faced by the billion plus people of India. It’s quite clear that messaging is playing a key role in bringing people online in a mobile first market like India and Hike Messenger has begun to play a pivotal role in that market. We are both aligned to Hike’s vision and are excited about what comes next.

Matt Mullenweg, Founder and CEO of Automattic Inc. and Co-Founder of WordPress

As an online social media entrepreneur myself, I have keenly observed India. I believe in Hike Messenger’s vision and I can see the team gearing up and are well positioned for aggressive growth in the country.

Hike’s Growth Story

  • Dec 2012 – Global launch
  • Feb 2013 – Messaging traffic grows 10X week on week
  • April 2013 – Hit the first 5M user milestone in just 4 months of its launch | Raised $7M from BSB
  • Feb 2014 – Hit the 15M user mark
  • April 2014 – Received $14M fresh funding from BSB
  • June 2014 – Crossed 20M user mark, launched first TVC
  • July 2014 – Hit #1 rank on App stores
  • August 2014 – Crossed 35M user mark, receives $65M fresh funding led by Tiger Global & BSB
  • November 2014 – Launches regional stickers on hike
  • January 2015 – Launched free Hike Calls
  • February 2015 – Launched Cricket Scores on hike
  • Aug 2015: Hike announces 20 billion messages per month and launched Hike News
  • Sep 2015: Launched Group Calling with upto 100 people

Additional information

You can download the app at – http://get.hike.in For more information, please visit the Hike Blog

[Image Credit* – Wikimedia]

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

iBus Networks & Infrastructure private Limited, leading provider of connectivity solutions inside buildings; raises Series ‘A’ growth capital of Rs 150 Million from Vallabh Bhanshali of Enam, N Squared Management LLC, USA & family office of Mr. Jagdish & Sandeep Mehta

iBus has also announced the appointment of Sanjay Kapoor, former Micromax chairman, as the Non Executive Chairman of the company and Mohandas Pai, ex-Infosys board member and will be an advisory board member. Mr. Kapoor will steer and provide strategic direction to the company and Mohandas Pai will mentor and advise the team both Mr.Kapoor & Mr.Pai are early investors in iBus.

[From left Mr. Sunil Menon, Mr. Ram Sellaratnam and Mr. Subash Vasudevan]

The funding will be used to drive deployment of iBus solutions across the country and multiple segments to deliver connectivity inside buildings

Reflecting on the infusion of growth capital, Ram Sellaratnam, CEO, iBus said

Today connectivity is basic utility. When people look at premises, they check water, electricity and connectivity. If connectivity is poor, the location will suffer. Inside buildings connectivity is a multi-dimensional problem. Our patent pending technology platform comprehensively solves voice, data, proximity marketing and machine to machine connectivity problems. That makes us a unique and innovative solution provider.

Cipher-Plexus has been an exclusive Investment Banker to the transaction as well as one of the Investors. Kunal Kumthekar, Founder & Managing Director of Cipher-Plexus said – We are extremely happy to be associated with iBus team and will keep on adding value as we have been doing so far.

About iBus Networks & Infrastructure Pvt Ltd

iBus Networks & Infrastructure Pvt Ltd was founded in 2012 by technology professionals with proven executive experience from Airtel & Infosys. iBus is a leading provider of connectivity solutions inside buildings. It not only provides for ‘Talk solutions’ but data, proximity marketing as well as building IOT- Internet of Things solutions using proprietary technologies.

IBus endeavours to work closely with all eco-system players including Service providers, device players, content & storage partners etc. to enhance in building data experience of consumers. All major telecom provider are partnet and all major malls, hotels, commercial premises, hospitals etc. are clients for iBus. iBus is promoted & led by Mr. Ram Sellaratnam, Mr. Subash Vasudevan and Mr. Sunil Menon who bring many years of operating experience from companies like Infosys, Airtel, Essar etc. For more information, please visit iBus Networks

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Startups Club, a premier destination for early stage startups announced the kick-off of their year-long event, Demo Day 2016 in Bangalore. Demo Day 2016 will take place across 10 cities and provide early stage startups with the opportunity to attend boot camps, meet investors, secure funding and win prize money.

The 4th edition of Demo Day will be hosted in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Vizag. Each city will have local startups presenting their ideas and one winner from each city will win prize money of Rs. 1 Lakhs.

These top 10 winners will then participate in the Chennai finale in December 2016, where they will present their ideas to a prestigious panel of Investors, Mentors & Entrepreneurs. The national winner will be awarded with a Grand Finale Prize of Rs. 5 Lakhs plus many tools as support system.

Indian startups are attracting more funding in early stages than ever before. In the first nine months of 2015, around $1.4 billion in early stage investments—the highest ever for the country—has been pumped into startups, according to data from Venture Intelligence, a research firm. Last year, 304 deals saw a total funding of $1.2 billion.

Salma Moosa, Core Organizer, Startups Club said

Demo Day is a platform for a cherry-picked set of startups to pitch to a set of investors to possibly raise funds. Demo Day 2016 promises to be bigger and better, covering 10 cities across India, with over 1500 attendees across locations and participation from around 100 startups. We are confident that early-stage startups will leverage the platform to take their ideas to a larger audience and create a compelling value proposition.

A PAN-India hunt for startups, Demo Day simplifies the process of meeting with investors one on one, to pitch ideas directly, get validated and get funded. For participants it is a platform for sharing ideas, networking with industry veterans and reaching potential Seed and Angel investors.

Visitors can listen to the thought leaders of the ecosystem, network with entrepreneurs and observe the trends in the startups world. More information on Startups Club Demo Day 2016 is available at the following link.

About Startups Club

Startups Club is a premier destination for early stage startups. Startups Club is present across Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, with Ahmedabad, Cochin, Delhi, Pune, Vizag & Dublin [Ireland] just launched. They organise startup meetups across the 11 cities regularly. As a part of the meetup, they discuss various topics that are relevant to startups and encourage discussions amongst members based on their experiences. The meetings attract between 30 and 70 members on an average and our member base has grown to more than 6000 plus.

[Image Credit* – Startups Club]

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments
From earthquakes to heavy floods, there has been a seemingly endless run of news about natural disasters this year. In these types of unfortunate circumstances, the first concern is clearly loss of life but businesses also suffer not only due to infrastructure damage, but also because of the disaster’s effect on companies’ valuable data systems.
Stellar Data Recovery, the leading provider of data recovery, email migration and data erasure solutions, shares how companies can sustain or resume business operations during and after natural disasters like floods observed in Chennai recently.
We all know how dangerous water is, for digital devices. We always take special precautions to keep our gadgets like mobile phones, cameras, laptops etc., at a safe distance from water. But we are helpless in case of natural calamities, like what happened in Chennai recently. The extent of damage which has happened in the city is unimaginable. Rains flooded almost the entire city and brought it to a halt.
Offices, houses, airport, railway stations, roads all were flooded with rain water. Data systems on the ground floors and basement areas were completely submerged under water and this has made important data inaccessible which may lead to many businesses suffering, even more, losses. As an Industry leader, Stellar Data Recovery has an obligation to help businesses and citizens of the city in these trying times.
Stellar Data Recovery have successfully retrieved data from water damaged, wet or flood hard disks over the past twenty-three years.
Data Recovery Services
Stellar guarantees up to 100% of your valuable data by deploying highly skilled recovery professionals, specialized expertise & cutting edge technology, when you need it most. Company support a wide range of Media’s such as Desktop hard Disks (5.25”), Laptop Hard Disks (3.5”, 2.5” & 1.8”), USB Devices & Removable Drives, Zip Diskettes, CD, DVD, Floppies, Memory sticks & other digital media devices with unmatched success rate available in the country.
They ensure accurate, timely & confidential data recovery from DOS, Windows 3.x /95 /98 /Me/ NT/ 2000/XP/ 2003/ Vista/ Windows 7/ Windows 8, Novell Netware, UNIX [SCO, BSD, Sun, HP-UX], Linux [Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake], Mac and other operating Systems. Besides this it also provides expert data Recovery Services on mirrored, Hardware & Software RAID, Striping and other complex server storage box configurations. Stellar follows strict documented process ensuring maximum transparent interface to our customers, ensuring 100% data confidentiality and consistency in our recovery success rate with continuous evolving technologies.
Why Stellar ?
Stellar is the only focused data recovery company in India with an expertise of more than 20 years. Stellar is one of the largest team of R & D professionals engaged by single data Recovery Company. It is best in class infrastructure available to handle data recovery jobs, approx 400m2 of class 100 clean room lab space. It is the only data recovery company in India to have 24*5 online & voice based technical support.
At Stellar we can help you to recover your Business.
Here are their disaster recovery “Do’s and Don’ts” compiled by Stellar:
  • Do not turn ON the power of your computer system/ laptop or storage box or external USB HDD or the servers.
  • Do not plug in any of your storage media which was submerged in water, to your computer.
  • Do not try out any solution advised by local unqualified maintenance engineers on your own, this may lead to permanent data loss.
  • Do not open your hard drive and expose the storage media, this may lead to permanent data loss.
  • Do not attempt to dry the disk. The dry out will lead to deposition of contaminated residue on the disk’s platters and heads which will cause physical degradation of platters. They may cause more damage and diminish chances of successful data recovery.
  • Keep the disk wet. This stops the hard disk’s corrosion and data recovery experts would be able to clean and dry the platters correctly with minimum damage to platter surfaces.
  • Ensure that the disk is opened only in a class 100 clean room lab by a qualified data recovery expert.

 

For more information on Stellar & To know how to protect your crucial data, please refer case-studies from Stellar

[Image Credit* – TopTenReviews]

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Swiss Re, in partnership with IBM has announced its plan to host India’s first innovation hackathon event exclusively for the reinsurance industry. The two day event, scheduled on 30 – 31 January, 2016 at Workbench Projects, Bangalore, aims to provide participants with an opportunity to develop user-based apps, utilizing data science, and harnessing cognitive technology from IBM Bluemix suite to address the growing needs of the insurance industry.

Themed My Personal Risk Advisor, the purpose of the challenge is to enable individuals or small business owners to assess their total risk profile and learn about various product offerings. The hackathon is open to students and developer community – all those who aspire to design technology and aims to encourage developers to create innovative applications that can be integrated with digital solutions.

Alok Kumar, Managing Director, Swiss Re Bangalore said

The world, today, is rapidly changing and to keep pace with the risk landscape, we need to continually innovate around how we offer risk protection products. Through this hackathon, we are creating an innovation platform that reinforces our long-standing commitment to bring out new and improved solutions that directly addresses real-world business challenges for the insurance industry.

An entry free competition, the hackathon is a team-based event. The participating teams will go through a short-listing and selection process. Teams can register on the Swiss Re registration site and submit their idea, post which organizing team will notify the short-listed entries.

The last date for online registration is 20 January, 2016. The winners will be rewarded with exciting cash prizes and also be considered for an exciting career placement at Swiss Re Bangalore office.

About Swiss Re

The Swiss Re Group is a leading wholesale provider of reinsurance, insurance and other insurance-based forms of risk transfer. Dealing direct and working through brokers, its global client base consists of insurance companies, mid-to-large-sized corporations and public sector clients. From standard products to tailor-made coverage across all lines of business, Swiss Re deploys its capital strength, expertise and innovation power to enable the risk-taking upon which enterprise and progress in society depend. For more information about Swiss Re Group, please visit Swiss Re