ORIGA leasing, a highly innovative asset financing companies has raised INR 7 CR from ah! Ventures, 500 Startups and other high profile investors across sectors.

ORIGA Leasing was set up by Shrirang Tambe in May 2013 with a core philosophy of ‘Access to Finance’. It provides alternative financing through its asset leasing solutions to high growth companies across segments such as healthcare, sanitation, waste management, alternative energy, manufacturing and service oriented businesses.

ORIGA Leasing focusses mainly on leasing of assets which generate revenues for its clients. It has developed an highly innovative solution of Asset Life Cycle Management [ALCM] which helps its clients conserve their capital for working capital and marketing while ORIGA takes care of their assets in totality. Thus, the internal accruals and leasing funds the next expansion plan.

ORIGA is the first company in the alternative financing ecosystem with respect to asset leasing for high growth business models. According to industry reports, the market for alternative financing is conservatively estimated to be $50 billion.  There is a huge gap between the conventional financing available and the need of new age companies. ORIGA is critically positioned right in between to bridge that gap.

Shrirang who is excited to have a technology fund ‘500 Startups’ as its investor said

One of the key aspects of ORIGA Leasing is to invest significantly in building a robust technology-right from customer acquisition to asset management. In addition to innovativeness in our leasing products, we also aspire to become world’s largest fintech leasing company. We expect to touch an asset book for USD 100 million within the next three to four years just in India. Fund raised will be used towards leasing of assets, people and technology.

According to Ulhas Deshpande, Investor and Board member ORIGA

It is an innovative business model that would immensely help mid size entrepreneurs gain access to much needed funding. In fact the market opportunity is huge considering that 46% of the SME financing in Europe and 72% of SME financing in America takes place through asset leasing. In India, it is less than 1% of the total credit disbursed.

ORIGA is upbeat about having strong technology in place to deliver the leasing product. This, it believes, will not only scale up the business but will also provide opportunities to take it to other geographies facing a significant credit gap.

Giving an investors’ perspective, Harshad Lahoti, Founder & CEO, ah! Ventures says

ORIGA  Leasing is one of the first companies in India to provide asset leasing solutions for the high growth unbanked and under-banked SMEs. Their hybrid model offers a perfect blend between online discovery and offline delivery of financial products thus helping achieve scale. We believe that the each vertical of Origa has the potential to touch millions of dollars by themselves and ORIGA could, within the next decade, very well aspire to become a bank and contribute to the ongoing financial inclusion drive of India.

Pankaj Jain, Partner at 500 Startups said

The most exciting thing about ORIGA is that it is democratizing how SMEs in India can procure and manage assets that typically have a high capex. This is an incredibly large market that’s been underserved by traditional sources of credit. It’s another example of disrupting the status quo in Indian finance and we are thrilled to be a part of the story.

Both ah! Ventures & 500 Startups invested in ORIGA through the CLUB ah! platform. 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.

The network also recently secured its first profitable exit from Harness Handitouch within 2 years of its investment. CLUB ah! has till date invested close to INR 30 crores in over 13 startups spread across varied industries and domains.

CLUB ah! platform today has over 4000+ startups, 460+ seed/angel investors and over 68 VCs & institutional investors, making it one of the largest platform of investors and startups. The network also recently secured its first profitable exit from Harness Handitouch within 2 years of its investment. CLUB ah! has till date invested close to INR 55 crores in over 17 startups spread across varied industries and domains, including ORIGA.

Nitesh Damani, Director of Sugal & Damani Group and one of the key investors said

ORIGA Leasing, through its business model, will contribute significantly to various initiatives of the Government such as Swacchh Bharat Abhiyan, Make in India and Startup India. It was exciting to see that all the sectors ORIGA started off with in 2013 are foremost in the initiatives taken by the present Government.

Shrirang concludes saying

Financing through asset leasing for revenue generating assets creates capacities, capacities creates jobs and income, which finally goes towards contributing to the GDP of the nation. We are inculcating a new thought – financial inclusion at B2B level.

About ORIGA

Guided by the philosophy of “Access to Finance”, ORIGA extends asset leasing solutions to enterprises that aim for business expansion. ORIGA puts more emphasis on innovation and high growth business model than on the credit history of the applicant. It thus acts as a growth engine for entities at all stages. The leasing solutions offered by ORIGA to the entities help them build capacities that empower them financially to scale up and provide the last mile delivery of their services and goods in a highly effective manner. For more information, please refer ORIGA

Leading internet multinational Letv, announced its decision to enter the Indian market by early 2016, at the launch of Letv’s latest products in Beijing. The Beijing based company said that it would be looking at replicating its highly successful content-device ecosystem in the country, providing users with a whole new entertainment based experience.

Working towards providing Indian consumers with local entertainment based content such as movies and TV shows, the company said that it was looking at forging partnerships with local content providers and creators to create the first of its kind entertainment and content based ecosystem in India.

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Letv will not only bring its exciting devices to the country, but also its impressive content based Eco User Interface that will provide consumers with access to Letv’s unique and world class content-device based ecosystem that has found great success in the Chinese markets.

Considering the Indian government’s invitation to international firms to set up manufacturing units in the country, the company further suggested that as a part of its long term vision, they would also be looking at setting up production lines as well as R&D centres in India.

At the launch event, Mr. Jia Yueting, founder of Letv said, “Letv could enter into India by early 2016.”

At Letv’s launch event in Beijing, more than 7,000 guests, including industry leaders, opinion leaders and fans, witnessed the launch of Le 1S phone & the world’s largest smart TV – a 120 inch Le TV.

[Image Source* – Letv]

About Letv

Letv is an iconic global technology company that converges culture, content, innovation, lifestyle and entertainment around the world in a way no other company to date has been able to do. Letv opens new opportunities for consumers and the technology and entertainment industries with a jaw-dropping array of products and devices that fit perfectly into a broad spectrum of lifestyles – along with exciting content that keeps the innovations fresh, relevant and always compelling. The Letv ecosystem includes smartphones, TVs, transportation, film and entertainment. Letv is not a lifestyle brand, but a brand built to fit the consumer’s lifestyle!

Mphasis & Knowledge@Wharton – the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, have partnered to discover Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation. Digital Revolution, demands a new way of thinking.

The seismic shift in technology that began to shake the business world over two decades ago, will not just upturn it but will do it in compressed time frame. Corporate leaders today can suffer from a sense of digital disorientation because of all the noise in the market about technology and innovation. The condition is especially acute for CEO’s trained in the analog world who must now, steer the ship in uncharted digital waters.

The journey of discovering Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation is through a collaborative series of C-suit practitioner interactions. One such forum is being hosted on November 2nd, 2015 at The Penn Club in New York City. The event titled ‘Fast Forward: Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation’ brings together top executives from major brands to share first-hand experiences of digital transformation, ideal digital transformation methods and insights on digital technologies.

Mphasis_logo

The line between digital technology and businesses blurring, every business now faces the challenge of sharpening its competitive edge by making use of digital products and services. As forward-looking leaders, chief executives have the need for the digital transformation of their enterprise, people and prepare for a digital future.

Defining digital transformation

  • The personal transformative path to becoming a digital leader
  • A mind map for the forward-thinking C-Suite
  • Rethinking ROI, post-digital transformation
  • Incorporating collaboration around the customer into your digital transformation strategy

Sample list of speakers

For details, registration please refer the following link.

About Knowledge@Wharton
Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The site, which is free, captures relevant knowledge generated at Wharton and beyond by offering articles and videos based on research, conferences, speakers, books and interviews with faculty and other experts on global business topics. For more information, please refer knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

[Image Credit* – Mphasis]

Helpchat, the chat-based personal assistant app that helps users get more things done, records a phenomenal 1 million downloads in just eight months since launch. The app is rated 4.5 on the Google Play Store. The unprecedented response to the app is testimony to the company’s unrelenting effort in simplifying daily tasks and becoming the default behaviour of users for a variety of daily needs.

It has registered maximum traction in Bengaluru, followed by Delhi-NCR and then Mumbai. The services that are most popular with users include mobile recharges, laundry, food ordering, household services, shopping deals and coupons etc.

Helpchat is a personal assistant app that completes task on users behalf, has passed on $6 million worth of user requests to its partner businesses in last 3 months. Helpchat customer promise is to provide user the best available option for a particular task and get it done on user’s behalf.

Speaking on the success of Helpchat, Ankur Singla, Founder and CEO, Helpchat, said

Since inception, we, at Helpchat have had a single-minded devotion to amplifying the users’ ability to get things done. The overwhelming response is a manifestation of our committed efforts. We use these figures as impetus to push us further and propel us to achieve greater things as we go ahead.

Helpchat has recently launched an automated conversational feature to help users schedule their laundry, order food, get suggestions on the best shopping deals etc. Forward-thinking initiatives such as this have enabled Helpchat to carve a special niche for itself in the consumer mind-scape.

As Helpchat has already registered a million downloads, its current focus is going to be on delivering a superb experience to its existing users. Through word-of-mouth publicity it aims to soon reach its target of one lakh daily active users.

About Helpchat

Helpchat is the personal assistant app that helps you get more things done. Be it anything, from recharging your phone to tech support, from travel booking to holiday guidance, from ordering food to shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from finding gifts to suggesting the best electronic item, from doing a web check-in to getting your laundry done – Helpchat can get all of them done for you.

Hike messenger, one of India’s fastest growing Internet companies have announced appointment of Hemant Goyal as VP of Finance & Gautam Vohra as its General Counsel. Both Hemant and Gautam will be reporting to Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO Hike Messenger

Hemant comes from Unilever Singapore, where he was Finance Director for Global Supply Chain. He has worked with Unilever for over 12 years in various roles and across geographies including India and Europe. Prior to Unilever, he was with Tata Motors.

The Company has also roped in Amazon India’s Principle Legal Counsel Gautam Vohra as it’s General Counsel. Gautam is one of the leading legal experts in technology and intellectual property matters and as General Counsel for Hike. He will focus on building the legal, compliance & policy functions as the company expands to the next level of growth in India and envision a global footprint.

On the appointments, Kavin Bharti Mittal said

With Hemant and Gaurav on board, we add a strong financial and legal foundation to our leadership team. Both Hemant and Gaurav bring incredible cross-domain experience in their respective fields and we are excited to have them on join us.

On joining Hike, Hemant Goyal said

I am delighted to join Hike and work with this exceptional team. I’m excited about the umpteen possibilities to be explored within Hike and I look forward to sharing my experiences and contributing to the future direction and growth of one of India’s fastest growing internet companies.

Gautam Vohra commented

I’m thrilled to be a part of the organization at a time when the company is well-positioned to tap new possibilities during this time of ever evolving mobile-first rather mobile only world. Look forward to contributing towards the accomplishing the mission of bringing India online.

Hemant and Gautam take charge at a time when Hike readies for the next phase of growth in India’s fast growing mobile internet market. The company has been growing at an exponential pace and also building it’s leadership team as it continues to innovate in the hyper competitive messaging space.

Hike messenger also recently strengthened their leadership positions by roping in Vidur Vyas as VP of Marketing and Sumit Mehra as Studio Head.

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

FreeCharge, India’s leading digital payments platform, have announced that it has crossed 5 million mark in mobile wallet users, a 4x wallet user base growth in less than four weeks. With this momentum, FreeCharge continues to set new records in terms of building user base.

It was the fastest to reach 1 million mark within a week of the launch. Customer roll out of the FreeCharge Wallet was initiated on 25th September, making this wallet the first in the country to achieve the milestone of 5 million users within 30 days of customer roll out.

FreeCharge

FreeCharge Wallet has seen over 40% of growth from new use cases from Snapdeal and Mumbai metro and expect the numbers to grow with new merchants getting added. The FreeCharge Wallet witnessed great response during the Snapdeal Diwali sales.

Thrilled with the achievement, Govind Rajan, COO, FreeCharge and CSO, Snapdeal, said

5 million users in less than 4 weeks, reflects our focus on the user experience. What delights us is not just breaching the 5 million mark, but the quality that underpins it. With an average of > 5 transactions per user, it is not just the fastest quantity but best quality as well. The FreeCharge app was rethought from the ground up to sharpen focus on habit commerce. All payment transactions are now a tap away and can be finished in under 10 seconds.

The growth is fundamentally driven by user experience and we are scaled up thus far without any advertising. FreeCharge Wallet is currently being used by Snapdeal and FreeCharge customers and will be soon extended to many other merchants. We are focused on creating Habit commerce and making payment transactions smooth, swift and secure for consumers and merchants. We foresee digital payments as a game changer in online commerce in near future.

The core of the design philosophy at FreeCharge is centred on design that helps build habit. The ease of use on FreeCharge platform allows consumers to complete all transactions in less than 10 seconds. Customers are Auto enrolled and this helps in repeat transactions even faster with just 1 click. With a great user experience consumers transact with a high degree of Frequency on FreeCharge.  On an average consumers transact over 5 times a month and an average of over 50% of the users transact every month on FreeCharge.

FreeCharge is compliant with leading industry standards like PCI DSS, making it the quickest and most secure wallet. FreeCharge wallet is powered by cutting edge technology. It is a robust and flexible platform that leverages enabling technologies such as HCE, NFC, QR code and BLE to create a most intuitive consumer experience. FreeCharge’s aim is to build habit commerce and through its partnerships, FreeCharge is set to generate the most compelling consumer experience.

About FreeCharge

FreeCharge is India’s leading digital platform for recharge and utility payments which provides prepaid, post-paid, DTH and Electricity bill payment for almost all Indian service providers. FreeCharge was founded in 2010 by Kunal ShahSandeep Tandon and had received funding of over $120 million in the last 4 years. In the largest acquisition in the consumer Internet space yet, Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge in Apr’15 resulting in India’s largest m-commerce ecosystem.  For more details, please visit FreeCharge

Zoho has announced the launch of Zoho Inventory, its cloud-based inventory and order management software for retailers and businesses that sell online. Zoho Inventory automates inventory and fulfillment tasks to ensure the right products are in stock at the right time, in the right locations and that orders are filled quickly and efficiently. The new software also streamlines companies’ back office and front office operations by integrating with Zoho’s online accounting software, Zoho Books, and its customer relationship management application, Zoho CRM.

Users can get a 14-day free trial account of Zoho Inventory here.

One of the most challenging tasks for business owners is inventory and order management. Having product available to meet customer demand at the right time & at the right location is critical to any product-selling business. Conversely, rising inventories means wasting assets that can sap much needed cash from a growing company. In order to reach the right balance and optimize business, companies need to adopt just-in-time inventory practices.

Raj Sabhlok, president of Zoho Corp. said

Inventory and order management is important to companies of all sizes. SMBs, in particular, can reap significant rewards when they automate those functions; but many still use a spreadsheet – or pen and paper. Zoho Inventory efficiently manages inventory and orders, optimizing them to dramatically increase revenues and profitability for any company that sells online or off.

Zoho Inventory Highlights

Manage online and offline orders

Zoho Inventory offers a centralized inventory from which users can manage both online and offline orders and stock levels across multiple channels. In turn, business owners can expand their reach and avoid a lot of the trouble that comes with multi-channel selling.

The new service integrates with Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Etsy; so items, contacts and sales orders in those channels will be imported to Zoho Inventory. More, when a purchase is made in one channel, stock levels are automatically updated in all channels. When an item is packed and shipped, the status is updated in the corresponding channel.

Just the right amount of stock

Users can keep their product list organized and get notified when product stock falls below desired inventory levels. This way, users can avoid losing out on sales due to stock-outs. With Zoho Inventory’s powerful reporting features, users can optimize their purchases and inventory levels and get critical insights about their businesses.

Fulfill orders in time

Zoho Inventory takes care of order fulfillment as well and works with 25+ shipping services. Owners can make use of that integration to get real-time shipping rates of different services from one place. Also, the status and in-transit location of each shipment will be updated at regular, user-defined intervals.

Works with Zoho’s accounting software

Zoho Inventory integrates with Zoho Books, the backbone of the back office that lies at the heart of Zoho finance solutions adopted by many retailers and online sellers. Zoho Inventory can leverage Zoho Books to ensure data integrity and eliminate duplicate data entry. The integration also provides Zoho Inventory users an integrated view of their business; so for instance, purchases from vendors and invoices for inventory made in Zoho Inventory are automatically recorded and reflected in Zoho Books.

Works with Zoho’s CRM software

Zoho Inventory also integrates with Zoho CRM, so all contacts, invoices, items and sales orders are reflected in both applications. This way, sales people know what stock is on hand and what is back ordered. The inventory insight ensures sales teams sell what they have and set customer expectations appropriately when selling items that are out of stock.

Zoho Inventory also features a mobile app for iOS users that lets users find status updates of orders in real time, from anywhere

Pricing and Availability

Zoho Inventory, along with the iOS app, is available immediately for businesses. For details on pricing plans, visit http://www.zoho.com/inventory/pricing. All users get Zoho Books Professional Plan for free to manage their accounting. All Zoho Inventory plans include a 14-day,free trial that can be accessed at Zoho Inventory SignUp

Pine Labs, the largest integrated payment solution company of India has introduced Paybypoints – This platform enables card holders to pay for purchases & services instantly through their reward points accrued on leading banks/issuer cards, at a wide range of merchants.

In India, the average monthly points earned are worth Rs.50 crores and monthly redemption is about Rs. 20 crores.  Paybypoints enabled  merchants can now accept the redemption of reward points through Pine Labs point of sale, while accepting card holders payments at point of sale [POS]. Its first of its kind technology platform which aggregates India’s top loyalty reward programs on a single platform.

The process of reward points redemption for the Card Holders, which otherwise was a tedious and time consuming through catalogs ; now with Paybypoints is easy, convenient and the one with the magic of ‘instant gratification’ by facilitating use of reward points instantly at POS, to get what they want. No more wasting or lapsing of reward points, plus the card holders get an array of merchant outlets to choose from, to spend their reward points. The use of reward points, not cash or card to pay for a purchase or a service, is what creates – The true joy of shopping for the consumers. Paybypoints platform is estimated to give easy and convenient reward points redemption to reward point bank worth of Rs. 3000 crores held by more than 300 Million Card Holders.

Sharing his perspective about the launch, Lokvir Kapoor, CEO, Pine Labs India Pvt Ltd. said

In India, there is a huge pile of accumulated reward points and the card holder usually end up not utilizing it. In short, there is tremendous potential to increase spending at the merchant outlet with Paybypoints. Giving an option to pay with points creates a great pull for the card holders to Paybypoints enabled merchants.

Various marketing campaigns by Banks/issuers & Pine Labs would further create the reach and the opportunity for the merchants to access premium customers. Paybypoints, one single platform helps merchants to engage and acquire premium customers of multiple premium loyalty reward programs.

Paybypoints has brought together leading issuers like Amex, Citibank, Axis Bank, PAYBACK, etc. on a single platform. Some of its respectable and trusted partners are- Apple, BOSE, Samsung, The Mobile Store, Croma, Clarks, Vishal Megamart, VLCC, Wildcraft, Beer Cafe, Costa Coffee, Chaos,Shoppers Stop, Babyoye, Central, Westside, Marks & Spencer etc.

About Pine Labs

Pine labs is the largest integrated payment solutions company that simplifies payment acceptance, while creating business opportunities for Issuers, merchants and brands. Pine Labs began its journey with specialty payment and loyalty solutions for closed-user group applications for Retail Petroleum industry. Today it has evolved into a payment acceptance partner choice with a POS base of more than 1,00,000 ranging from large worldwide enterprises with a wide network across India to locally-owned small businesses.

Pine Labs merchants and partners get a robust platform to create new revenue streams with best in class value added solutions like Instant EMI, Instant Discounts, Cash Back Programs, Pay by Points, Loyalty Solution, Gift Solution, Targeted Promotions, Dynamic Currency Conversion etc.  For more information, please refer Pinelabs

[Image Credit* – Pine Labs]