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|In: India|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In an effort to provide a comprehensive overview of the Indian Games industry, The National Association of Software and Services Companies [NASSCOM] have released a report titled the Indian Games Market Review at the NASSCOM Gaming Developer Conference 2015 taking place in Pune. The report aims to provide an overview of the Indian media & entertainment industry and digital landscape, showcasing the history and evolution of the Indian games industry, an assessment of the Indian games market from consumer spending and demographic insights into the Indian gamer.

Talking about the findings of the report, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM said

To provide a holistic picture of the growing gaming landscape in India, NASSCOM interviewed the key players to conducted an extensive survey of the Indian developer and service provider ecosystem. The report provides a road map to start-up’s, Indies and investors based on internet usage patterns, mobile smartphones and tablets, to digital media and mobile advertising.

According to the report, mobile gamers lead the market in India, with a Smartphone install base estimated at 200 million by the end of 2015 that is estimated to grow by 100 million each year thereafter.

  • Approximately 40 to 50 million people play games on their smartphones and feature phones, with an annual growth rate of 40% to 50%.
  • Mobile gaming revenues are currently estimated at $150 million across all revenue models.
  • Additionally, the console market size, is estimated to be around 3 – 4 million gamers, with 3 – 3.5 million of lifetime sales for all consoles including PlayStation 2 [2 million] and 100,000 units for PlayStation 4 and X-Box One combined.
  • The cyber cafe market is currently estimated at 3000 cafes in India with games, of which 1500 have 5 machines or more dedicated to games.

It’s estimated that there are 250,000 active PC/MMO players, with popular games including Counter strike, DOTA, League of Legends and World of Tanks.

On the content creation side, the report outlines a young industry that has changed dramatically in the last five years and now includes over 200 games development studios and service providers. The advent of self-publishing, investment and crowdfunding, has led to a new breed of agile indie developers, whose focus is on mobile and PC social games.

More than half of Indian Game Developers and Service Providers were established from 2012 onwards and the industry follows a lean structure, with 57% of companies having less than 10 employees and in 2014, 27% of all Indian Game Developers and Service Providers had revenues of above $1.6 million. The report further states that, 75% of Indian developers are focused on building games for the global gaming market. 96% of developers work on mobile games, with 61% of those building free-to-play games. Among studios, arcade games are the most popular genre, followed by puzzle and racing releases.

Currently most game developers and service providers in India are focused on the global market, with development, game art services and animation being the main sources of revenue. Approximately 9% generate revenue from the domestic market, while foreign games dominate the app store rankings. With recent developments such as Apple and Google lowering the minimum price for apps and in-app purchases in India, the report expects more Indian companies to turn their focus towards the Indian market in the future.

On the sidelines of the NASSCOM Gaming Developer Conference 2015, NASSCOM also announced the winners of the NGF Awards 2015, to evangelize the community in India and recognize their achievements in Game development and encourage the creation of IP. The Winners are:

To view the full Indian Games Market Review report visit NASSCOM report

About NASSCOM

NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPM industry in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1800 members, which includes both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM’s member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPM, e-commerce and web services, engineering services and animation and gaming. NASSCOM’s membership base constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs about 3.5 million professionals.

|In: CloudComputing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Zoho has launched Zoho Motivator, its insight driven software for maximizing the performance of sales teams. Available immediately, Zoho Motivator marks the company’s foray into gamification. It works with the company’s customer relationship management software, Zoho CRM, and uses contests, scorecards and leader boards to help sales people maximize revenues and help increase team engagement.

ZohoMotivator

Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist of Zoho said

Sales is about numbers, and driving desired behaviour in salespeople is instrumental to achieve them. Sales teams often focus squarely on targets and neglect the practices that lets them achieve those targets. Zoho Motivator not only increases revenue by driving desired behaviour and improving the sales process, but also makes sure salespeople have fun while they’re at it. Zoho Motivator puts sales teams in the game.

As the only company to offer both gamification and CRM solutions without depending on a third party, Zoho delivers superior functionality and tighter integration compared to other solutions in the market.

Zoho Motivator’s key benefits

Drive revenue with insights that matter

Business intelligence through KPIs and Dashboards – A sales manager can define various criteria or KPIs like leads generated or potentials created, and track performance in real time. They can also customize dashboards and analyse data on these criteria to identify areas of improvement.

Deeper insights through metrics like Pipeline Velocity and Pipeline Stages – Pipeline Velocity indicates how quickly opportunities are moving through the sales pipeline on their way to becoming won deals. Pipeline Stages provides insights about bottlenecks in the sales pipeline.

Encourage the right sales behaviour and activities

Define desired sales practices by setting Custom Targets – The process is as important as the outcome. Managers can drive desired behaviour in salespeople by setting targets like “Making all client calls by noon” or “Meeting prospects every week”. Revenue happens when sales teams follow the appropriate sales activities and methodology. Zoho Motivator allows sales managers to focus not just on the outcome, but also the process.

Real-Time Scorecards for insightful results – The right feedback at the right time helps in improving sales processes. Salespeople can have access to a real-time report of their current sales contest using scorecards which also helps in team building. A high performing individual can be paired with a low performing individual and work together as a team – this way everyone is motivated to perform better.

Drive sales team engagement

Motivator TV drives awareness and engagement – Cultivate motivation through recognition. Sales victories and contest winners can be showcased on big-screen TVs for better team motivation and engagement. Zoho Motivator also provides a convenient on-screen ticker that displays real-time notifications to the sales team – so everyone knows how they are doing in the current contest or sales period.

Contests and Leader boards to energize salespeople – Contests do more than just motivate individuals. They provide the opportunity to work together as a team and break the tediousness of everyday tasks while fostering healthy competition. Leaderboards are concise dynamic scoreboards to showcase rankings among contestants.

Zoho Motivator complements Zoho CRM and helps users get the most out of it. Users will need a Zoho CRM account in order to reap the benefits of Zoho Motivator. All basic CRM data like leads, potentials, etc is automatically synced from their CRM account the moment they sign up for Zoho Motivator.

Pricing and Availability

Zoho Motivator is available immediately, and works seamlessly with Zoho CRM. There’s a five user free plan to start with, and the fully featured plans range from $60/month for five users, billed annually, to $200/month for 25 users, billed annually.

For more information, please refer Zoho Motivator

[Image Source* – Zoho Blog]

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Shirsa Labs, an Ed-tech startup has raised USD 250K angel capital funding through ah! Ventures, a startup focused growth catalyst bridging ideas and money. Founded in 2013 by Sukhada Tendulkar & Mandar Desai, Shirsa Labs uses online engagement platform Planet of GUI to entertain and educate children mainly in the age group of 6-13. The deal was solely advised and syndicated by ah! Ventures and led to closure on its private equity investment platform, CLUBah

Shirsa Labs is India’s first dedicated content driven engagement learning platform for kids. Shirsa aims to stimulate the intellectual and learning skills of children by using a healthy combination of online and offline interactive methods.

It has multiple games, worksheets, videos, DIYs which engages kids and boosts their cognitive learning. Each offering is crafted using the most recent findings from the field of child development. Every child undergoes a free assessment and is provided with a detailed report on his/her cognitive profile with a customized program. This program is scheduled for kids to play 30 minutes a day and 3/4 times a week. A detailed quarterly report is sent to the parents to help them monitor child’s progress on the platform.

Sukhada Tendulkar, Co-Founder & CEO of Shirsa Labs said

In the larger context of children’s growth and development, we strongly felt that there is a huge open space where significant value can be created for children, parents and educators. Kids love play online, parents want actionable information and educators can teach better when children are motivated. We have connected these points and want Shirsa Labs to be a collaborator in this exciting eco-system that must work together.

Sukhada sees Shirsa Labs as a new category creator which she calls “enter-cation”; derived from ‘entertainment and education’.

Sukhada adds

Children today are exposed to multiple gadgets and online medium. There was a fight for my television time with my mom and today the exact same thing is happening for the gadget and internet time. The digital native generation deserves a better solution to the problem and we are here for all those young kids who love playing online.

Mandar Desai, Co-Founder & CFO of Shirsa Labs, further elucidates

Parents can be assured that children are safe on our platforms. We have the best content from across the world. Partnered with biggies like NatGeo, Discovery, and many more, gives us an access to tons of content which is loved by kids. Child safety is our utmost priority. Our scalability & real life connect positions us uniquely to deliver significant value to the young ones.

Through the online Economy, Children earn Geekos [the currency on the platform] which they spend to buy uniquely matched stuff from the platform. As we understand the child more on the platform through analytics, we generate insights and personalized recommendations for parents.

Kunal Ambasht, Director & COO, Shirsa Labs said

Its proposition philosophy is based on the most recent researches in India and other countries that agree on one common finding about the key role motivation plays in learning outcomes of children. Learning is the foundation of multiple cognitive skills and learning styles. Non-school based solution which complements the learning at schools for K1 to K8.

Our team is an interesting cohort of artists, technologists, educators and business professionals. All of us are driven by a common passion for providing equal opportunity for learning and development to children from a wide spectrum of social and economic background.

Shirsa has developed a multi-pronged approach to attract children using a personalized story-line, engage parents with quantified reporting and involve educational institutions with goal based co-curriculum lab solutions. Both virtual and real world tools have been utilized to create a comprehensive product for the three stakeholders mentioned above.

Manuel Fernandes, the Tech wizard at Shirsa Labs adds

Technology, smartphones, internet and data analytics are the most powerful tools at our disposal today. Used intelligently, they provide us an unprecedented opportunity for creating engaging products across multiple platforms and hence reaching out to millions.

The startup will use this round of funding to strengthen its team further and are in talks with senior industry people for the same. Shirsa aims to make Planet of Gui app, number 1 in edutainment category in India. With its flagship product the startup is eyeing at the entire global market. This is a global platform and team Shirsa is committed to reach to maximum potential.

Giving an investor’s perspective, Harshad Lahoti, Founder & CEO of ah! Ventures said

The market that Shirsa is targeting is phenomenally large. India has over 100 million students enrolled in K1- K8 which is almost 20 to 200 times that of US and UK respectively. Besides, evidence of increasing enrollment in private schools in rural India – from 18% in 2006 to 25% in 2011 to over 30% today – is proof enough that even rural India is exploring newer and innovative avenues of teaching and learning. This coupled with the fact that Shirsa has over 70,000+ registered students, access to over 2,000+ schools and unique content sharing partnership with the likes of NatGeo, Discovery and others have made a compelling case for investment for the CLUB ah! investors. ah! Ventures is thrilled to be a part of this journey.

This deal was concluded through ah! Ventures’ private equity investment platform, CLUB ah!. CLUB ah! is India’s first full-spectrum startup investment network and platform comprising of over 500 investors, including some of the renowned angels and early-stage VCs.

CLUB ah! platform today has over 4500+ startups, 465+ seed/angel investors and over 65 VCs & institutional investors, making it one of the largest platform of investors and startups. The network also recently secured its first profitable exit from Ed-tech venture Harness Handitouch within 2 years of its investment. CLUB ah! has till date invested close to INR 60 crores in over 20 startups spread across varied industries and domains, including Shirsa Labs.

Shirsa will be the second Ed-tech startup in recent times that ah! Ventures has helped raised capital for apart from iDreamCareer. Previously they have also invested in many other Ed-tech ventures like LogicRoots, TestBook, uFaber and Harness Handitouch.

ah! Ventures is in the process of closing 3 more deals in the coming weeks.

About Shirsa

Shirsa Labs, based on the latest findings about child learning & stimulation, has built an after-school world especially for children where learning is fun and personalized. Planet of Gui got its name from Joy Paul Guilford whose theory “Structure of Intellect” was a major breakthrough that lead to impacts on schools, teachers and parents around the world. For more information, please refer Shirsa labs

|In: Incubators|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

PayPal, the global leader in online payments have announced the selection of four new Financial Technology [FinTech] startups – CashFree, D-Rewards, Notifie & ftcash – as new entrants into its ‘Start Tank’ Incubation Center in Chennai. The announcement was made after the final round of pitching during the 4th Start Tank Incubation Challenge on Friday, which saw more than 125 startups apply for a place in the incubator this year.

Start Tank demonstrates PayPal’s commitment to enabling the startup ecosystem in India. Launched in 2013, the incubator provides an obligation-free environment for early-stage startups to evolve at its exclusive facility in PayPal’s technology center in Chennai. PayPal offers incubated startups with technology and business mentorship, infrastructure support and networking opportunities with both investors and customers.

As PayPal looks to transform money and become an everyday part of people’s financial lives, Start Tank has aligned its focus around startups in the Payments and FinTech space. Applications called for startups focused on core payment features such as wallets, gateways and remittances, as well as payments enablers and adjacencies like bio-metric authentication, security and financial inclusion.

Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology, Asia-Pacific, PayPal said

I am excited to see the entrepreneurial space in India take-off in just a short few years. Today, India ranks third among global startup ecosystems in the world PayPal’s Start Tank has been tremendously successful since its inception. All of our incubated startups so far have either successfully secured funding or are finalizing strategic partnerships. We are delighted to welcome this promising new batch of startups into Start Tank, and look forward to them scaling even greater heights through our incubation program.

ThinkTankWinners

Start Tank Incubation Challenge winners

CashFree

Founded by Akash Sinha & Reeju Datta, enables payments to provide a better buying experience for consumers making online and cash transactions. By keeping payments at their core and building tools on top of it, they want to simplify the way people pay for their products they buy every day.

Reeju Datta, Founder, CashFree said

Being associated with a brand like PayPal is a huge step forward for a young payments startup such as CashFree. Globally speaking, we don’t think there is anyone better than PayPal to handle problems associated with payments on a large scale. We hope to leverage this  expertise of PayPal, specifically in the areas of risk management as that will be one of the key issues for our startup as we scale-up.

D-Rewards

Founded by Vijay Krishna & Shoaib Mohammed is a cloud-based CRM tool for offline small business retailers that enables end-to-end customer engagement using loyalty as a platform for profiling. It features in-house analytics & targeted promotions, bridging the gap between the business and its customers.

Vijay Krishna, Co-Founder & Head of Business Strategy, D-Rewards said

D-Rewards was designed to bring ease of customer engagement for businesses, keeping in mind the customers and the various ways through which they can be pampered. It has been an exciting journey so far, engaging 20000 consumers part of 48 outlets across Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad using our product to give out 8.5 lakhs in loyalty & selectively target customers with customized offers.

However, being incubated at Start Tank opens up new windows of opportunities for us. We currently don’t have an advisor or mentor on board to guide us through the process of setting up a startup and we hope to benefit from PayPal’s expertise in this field.

ftcash

Founded by Sanjeev Chandak, Deepak Kothari  & Vaibhav Lodha aims to empower the under-served micro-merchant sector with the power of mobile payments. It provides seamless solutions for micro-merchants to accept payments through multiple payment instruments including debit cards, credit cards and mobile wallets.

Sanjeev Chandak, Chief Executive Officer, ftcash said

It feels great to win PayPal’s Start Tank incubation challenge and we look forward to the experience. It has been less than a year since we launched Ftcash and there is still a long way to go. We hope to leverage PayPal’s technical and business acumen to improve our product as well as service offerings to our customers.

Notifie

Founded by Dr. N. Raja Chinnathamby & Arun Nedunchezian aspires to be the one-stop messaging platform for a two-way business to customer communications via Smartphones.

The platform supports various multimedia formats and aims to be the ideal replacement for traditional SMS. Notifie currently has five paying customers from the education, financial and retail industries.

Arun Nedunchezian, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Notifie said

For a startup, validation is everything and to receive that from a company like PayPal is highly satisfying. Notifie currently has five paid clients. However, there are several factors that goes into making a startup successful and we look forward to learning those nuances from PayPal. We look up to the company as a successful startup and hope to get their support in helping us reach the next level.

PayPal’s Start Tank incubator was launched in 2013 in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs [TiE] Chennai. The Start Tank incubator has previously hosted six startups and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists.

Three companies incubated at Start Tank – Kobster, Fantain and DoPartTime – successfully graduated in May 2015. Kobster also secured an undisclosed amount of seed investment, while PiQube, another startup currently being incubated at Start Tank, recently raised $500,000 from The HR Fund.

In 2014, PayPal’s ecosystem work was recently recognized with the ‘Ecosystem Enablement for Startups’ award from Zinnov, in July 2015.

About PayPal Start Tank

PayPal India formally launched its startup incubator in association with TiE Chennai in November 2013. The exclusive facility in PayPal’s Chennai technology center provides an obligation-free environment as well as technology and business mentorship for select startups to evolve. It has an office area of more than 11,000 square feet with a world-class incubation space, state-of-the-art conference rooms and other amenities.

Start Tank is located globally across PayPal offices in London and Chennai and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. More information about Start Tank here

|In: India|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

iQor, a global provider of customer contact solutions & product support services, has announced plans to invest $200 million in building an expanded, pan-India service network to deliver world-class end-to-end aftermarket services.

Currently the company, the largest aftermarket services provider in the world, operates depot repair/refurbishment services at state-of-the-art facilities in Manesar [Gurgaon], Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore, and company owned-company operated premium customer-branded walk-in centers and on-site services in 82 cities and 17 states. iQor also operates a 1,000-seat contact center in the Delhi National Capital Region [NCR].

Speaking about the expansion, Hartmut Liebel, iQor’s CEO said

India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy and is projected to be the second largest smartphone market by 2016. With infrastructure and staff already in place throughout the country, iQor is perfectly positioned to meet India’s increasing demands for skilled, immediate product support.

The expansion will create 20,000 new jobs in all of India’s 29 states. Part of the growth will come from the opening of two new repair depot hubs in Chennai and Hyderabad as well as new walk-in service centers along with on-site services for some of the world’s foremost manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, notebooks, digital players and consumer products.

iQor plans to nearly quadruple its network of convenient, brand-exclusive centers, which offer face-to-face product support and first- and second-line technical assistance, in the coming months. By the end of 2015 iQor will be increasing its footprint to 115 locations in 109 cities and 22 states.

Sanjay Vidyarthi, Managing Director-India said

All our global and domestic clients are expanding massively in India. They are all looking for one or two partners to deliver quality services across the country. With our exceptional end-to-end in-country capabilities, we intend to become their partner of choice.

About iQor

iQor provides business process outsourcing and product support services in 17 countries, with 32,000 employees. Their award-winning technology, logistics and analytics platforms enables them to measure, monitor and analyze brand interactions, improve business processes and find operational efficiencies that lead to superior outcomes for it’s partners across the customer and product life-cycles. For more information, please visit  www.iqor.com or follow @iQor at linkedin.com/company/iqor

|In: Digital|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Reiterating its commitment to Digital India, Intel India have announced the launch of Intel Education Digital Wellness Program in Assam, including the release of an Assamese version of Digital Wellness curriculum for students and teachers in government schools.

As part of this initiative, Intel India will closely work with the education ecosystem in Assam to enable a safe cyberspace for the students and youth. The announcement comes as the latest in a series of engagements that Intel has been running in the state since 2006.

The Intel Education Digital Wellness Program, developed by Intel Security Group, is an empowerment program for students and youth to make them aware of the possible risks of using the Internet and equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills to avoid such risks and stay safe and secure while on the Internet. The Intel Education Digital Wellness Curriculum is designed to be delivered through training modules, created especially for children and administered by the school’s teachers and master trainers.

Speaking at the launch, Kumud Srinivasan, President, Intel India, said

Intel has long been committed to the vision of Digital India. It is important for us to enable a robust and safe digital environment for everyone, particularly young citizens to be able to appropriately use the benefits of digital world. We believe the Intel Education Digital Wellness Curriculum is a key step in that direction and it will contribute to accelerating innovation and technology adoption in Assam.

As a part of the Intel Education Digital Wellness Program in Assam, Intel India will collaborate with the Department of Education, Government of Assam to impart training to 35,000 faculty and students in government schools on Digital Wellness and related initiatives, this year. In the last academic year, this Program was successfully implemented in Karnataka and Haryana, reaching out to 1,10,000 students & teachers.

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Imagine a world where all information was personalized just for you and your specific areas of interest. This might seem like an unreachable goal, but this is a new norm for the Indian e-commerce Industry. abof.com [All About Fashion], an online one-stop fashion brand for clothing, footwear and accessories targeted at the millennials, is seeking to redefine the Indian online shoppers’ experience by showcasing personalized and curated shop-able content that is sharply customized to the tastes and interests of the individual.

abof.com recognizes that every person has what it takes to be reborn as a star and seeks to make its consumers dress fashionably and look famous.

abof has chosen to innovate in the presentation of user experience, design of the website and selection of merchandise. This is presented as exciting dose of fashion content, style tips, trends and fashion news, which combines the visually stunning picture-led approach of Instagram with short and sweet Twitter-like shopable stories. This approach may seem alienating and even chaotic to a mature audience, abof believes that their millennial consumers connect with this approach comfortably.

Prashant Gupta, President & Chief Executive Officer, abof.com said

We seek to make abof the one stop destination for all the fashion needs of the millennials. Apart from adopting a tone of voice and visual language which we believe will connect with them better, we have gone one step  further to deliver personalized shop-able content to our customers based on their information, real-time behavior and preferences. Our ‘What’s Hot’ section is in fact the landing page of abof.com which defines our commitment to inspiration and discovery based commerce.

Built for fashion conscious millennials, who have a unique take on their personal style, abof begins its engagement with its customers right from the start with a unique style quiz that helps understand the persona of the consumer and the style preference. Based on this information, abof customizes its ‘What’s Hot’ section to deliver more accurate, relevant, and personalized content that truly matters to them.

About abof.com

abof.com is a go-to online destination for the best in fashion shopping, news and trend watching! abof.com has got the most trendy and celebrity-inspired apparel, footwear and accessories that belong in every fashionista’s wardrobe in India. If one wants to get famous, abof assures fast deliveries of the best in branded clothing! Start Shopping Now!

|In: Android|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Money View, an app aimed at making users ‘financially fit’, has launched an innovative referral program titled ‘The Goodness Revolution’ to spread its financial fitness mantra this festive season. This campaign is an attempt at reinforcing the message of goodness of the app, especially during this season when one can take a myopic vision towards their shopping and entertainment expenses, and will be on till November 8th, 2015.

Money View operates on the philosophy of giving its users an overview of their financial status which can enable them to take prudent and judicious financial decisions. While more than a million Money View users have benefited from the app, The Goodness Revolution proposes to galvanize its users to cascade the message of the benefits of financial fitness to a wider audience.

In order to participate in this exciting campaign, users will need to refer their friends using a referral code through the app. If you are not a Money View user, you can still participate by downloading the app and then refer your friends. What’s more, when the friends you referred download the app, you and your friends stand to win the new LG Nexus 5X, along with other exciting prizes like Fit Bit Fitness bands, Honor Power Banks, BookMyShow tickets and Wildcraft bags.

Money View firmly believes that during this festive season when most brands are incentivizing everyone to spend, it becomes all the more important is to reinforce the need to take control of their expenses. For more information on this contest you can log on to Money View Facebook page