All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: General|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

We all know the importance of an insurance plan in this fast paced life. We insure our cars, house, bike, life and even mobile phones these days. Most of us have also insured our health by buying a health insurance plan but is it sufficient? God Forbid if one falls prey to a critical illness then may be just a health plan would not suffice to fulfill his medical and day to day expenses. Critical illness takes a toll on not just one’s health but also his job and other sources of income. A health insurance plan will only pay his hospitalization bills and not for his advanced treatments or EMI’s. A critical illness plan provides a lump sum amount on diagnosis itself and one does not need to submit hospitalization bills or be hospitalized for the same.

Let’s take an example, suppose Raj suffers from Chronic Kidney Disorder, Raj doesn’t need to be hospitalized he has to undergo regular dialysis. Regular dialysis doesn’t need the patient to be admitted for 24 hours and also his treatment will need to be weekly or twice a week, which will burn a huge hole in his pocket. Also since he is weak and the treatment is a continuous process his income earning capacity will be hampered and this will exhaust his entire savings. Now if Raj had a critical illness policy he would receive a lump sum on the diagnosis itself, with this lump sum amount he could pay his EMI’s, pay for his treatment, he could also get a transplant done and his savings wouldn’t be hampered to a large extent.

There are many critical illness plans in the market like Bajaj Allianz, Edelweiss Tokio Life – CritiCare+, ICICI prudential Life, HDFC life Cancer Care, Aegon iCancer.

Some plans like HDFC Life Cancer Care and Aegon iCancer only provide cover against Cancer. Whereas Bajaj Allianz has a constraint when it comes to maximum sum assured. ICICI prudential Life is a critical illness rider, Edelweiss Tokio Life – CritiCare+ is a standalone plan which covers multiple critical illnesses that occur in India like – Kidney Failure, organ transplant, Heart attack, cancer, Brain Tumor, major burns etc. Also Edelweiss Tokio Life – CritiCare+ is comparatively cheaper and provides a high cover like up to Rs 1 crore with a multi claim option. Under this multi claim option one can claim thrice, so if the policy holder is diagnosed with three critical illnesses he can claim thrice and hence comprehensive protection is provided.

Understanding that the policy holder will not be in a state to pay his/her premiums after he/she is diagnosed by the first critical illness, the future premiums under the multi claim option is waived off. With the increase in the rate of inflation, it is but obvious that there will be increase in cost of treatment for any critical illness so it’s always advisable to be financially secured against critical illnesses. My opinion is that Edelweiss Tokio Life – CritiCare+ is the best critical illness plan in the market and it can help one bounceback from a critical illness.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Axis Bank, market leader in travel currency cards, have announced the launch of Axis Forex Online, India’s first comprehensive online retail forex solution to empower customers to transfer funds online in more than 100 plus currencies across 150 countries.

Axis Forex Online, in addition to online outward remittance, would also provide door step delivery of forex cards and foreign currency cash, the same day to all resident Indian individuals.

[Image Credit – AxisBank]

Speaking on the occasion, Sidharth Rath, President & Head, Treasury, Corporate & Transaction Banking, said

This innovative offering from Axis Bank, Axis Forex Online is aimed at providing our customers as well as non-customers the ease of making outward remittances, purchasing forex cards and foreign currency cash, all at the click of a button. Unlike conventional modes of remittances, this facility offers a greater degree of convenience to users, with transparent rates and higher transaction limits. And all this can be done by them from the comfort of their home or office.

Axis Forex Online compares favourably with existing alternate options available for outward remittance on virtually all parameters – ease, speed, efficiency and cost effectiveness. The remittance procedure is a simple three step process – register oneself, register the beneficiary and make payment online. Once the one-time self-registration is completed and verified, the user can register multiple beneficiaries and effect money transfer instantly. An existing customer can also use the online outward remittances facility via Axis Bank Internet Banking and transfer money from any Bank account in India to any Bank around the world.

Education, Family Maintenance, Leisure & Travel, Medical and Health care have been observed to be the segments widely used for foreign currency outward remittance.  Axis Forex Online will allow users to remit up to USD 25,000 in a single transaction and limit the retail outward remittance to USD 250,000 per annum. 

About Axis Bank

Axis Bank is the third largest private sector bank in India. Axis Bank offers the entire spectrum of services to customer segments covering Large and Mid-Corporates, SME, Agriculture and Retail Businesses.

With its 2,805 domestic branches (including extension counters) and 12,631 ATMs across the country, as on 31st December 2015, the network of Axis Bank spreads across 1,796 cities and towns, enabling the Bank to reach out to a large cross-section of customers with an array of products and services. For more information, please visit AxisBank.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Tee20 have announced the official launch of the first and only shopping service for men. Tee20 offers the convenience of e-commerce with the confidence of traditional retail shopping, utilizing the power of the Internet to bring the benefits of boutique shopping to the masses.

Tee20 puts a unique spin on shopping, offering live fashion experts to help determine any man’s clothing needs. Upon signing up for the service, Tee20 members receive a variety of hand-picked items based on personal preferences such as personality, profession, budget and lifestyle. Tee20 is a 100% free service with no shipping costs for delivery or returns on merchandise. You pay only for what you keep.

[Image Source – http://www.tee20.com]

Prasanna Venkatesh, CEO of Tee20 said

I found that many men were too busy to enjoy shopping, but they still wanted to look and feel good in their clothing. I created Tee20 as a way to give the savvy man a truly hassle-free, personalized and customized shopping experience that would not interfere with their busy schedules.

We use machine learning programs to help determine clothes that our members are most likely to keep. After being a member for over a period of time, we should be able to send you exactly the clothes you like matched with stuff missing in your wardrobe.

Personalized Service – Fashion Experts

Tee20 is based on relationship building by creating a personal, professional, one-on-one shopping experience for all customers, and has experts based across the country to help serve any fashion need.

Join the Revolution – How Does Tee20 Work ?

Simple. Choose a plan. Once you are done picking a package, give them some details by filling a really short questionnaire’. Super Stylists will receive a notification that you are on-board. They will immediately start working on how you will look with what. Once they find a perfect match, our job is to ship those shirts/Tees to you. Fall in love with it.

Visit tee20 for more information

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Exotel, one of India’s leading cloud telephony companies has announced its global expansion plans, beginning an entry of their popular API platform into the South-east Asian market, with a foray into Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. The company is primarily targeting the tech-enabled service industry which can benefit greatly with their developer-first approach; with an aim to help businesses talk to their customers with accountability, tracking and privacy intact.

An initial investment of USD 10 million is planned for the next two years, a majority of which will be operational and sales spends.

Exotel will be launching their API platform globally as opposed to the product that is available in the Indian market, as the API is easily scalable and customisable for any tech-enabled service. The overseas operations will be overseen by Varun Raj, who was the co-founder of Voyce, a customer-feedback firm that Exotel had acquired last November. Singapore will be the headquarters for Exotel’s South-east Asia operations.

Speaking on the expansion, Shivakumar Ganesan, Co-founder and CEO, Exotel said

When we were thinking of our expansion plans, we first wanted to target markets similar to India. Both in terms of culture and population, South-east Asia is therefore the logical first step. The propensity of people to use the service of tech-enabled companies in this region to go about the daily lives, is high. In India, we estimate that people in the metros use tech-enabled services 0.27 times a day. This tech-enabled service could be anything ranging from booking a cab to ordering a meal online to buying something from an e-commerce website. In Singapore for instance, we estimate the same to be at least 0.7 times a day per day. This makes the addressable market for Exotel in Singapore over 50 million SGD.

Many players in these verticals are looking to optimize their operational efficiency thereby saving money, and Exotel plays an important role in helping them do this.  For the current customers looking to expand, Exotel is their preferred partner and many are already in talks with the company for support in the new markets as well.

Shivakumar Ganesan, Co-founder and CEO, Exotel added

We are going to be adopting a developer-first approach globally. As a behind-the-scenes ecosystem enabler, we will also support early-stage startups by offering them Exotel for free. We will look at these startups as fellow entrepreneurs and not customers, helping them in whatever little way we can.

The South-east Asian market already has a couple of international players whose platform, however, is primarily tuned to the US market, and not so much region-focused. Exotel’s infrastructure has been designed in such a way that the call quality and reliability will be far superior for the local market.

About Exotel

Exotel is the most reliable and scalable cloud telephony platform in India. Founded by Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan and Siddharth Ramesh in 2011, it powers voice communication for over a 1000 businesses including brands like Ola, Uber, Flipkart etc. Voice & Data picked Exotel as the Editor’s Choice Emerging Company of the Year 2014. Nasscom’s Emerge Product conclave picked Exotel as one of the top 10 emerging startups in India. For more information, please visit Exotel

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

It’s a typical night. You’re in the zone with a half-full Red Bull by your side. You have come a long way in learning a brand new programming language when—bam—you run into a problem you’re not quite sure about. So, you do what any programmer would do in your situation: You search for the solution.

This is one of the most common productivity pitfalls for programmers today. If you want to improve on or learn a new algorithm, you search in engines and figure out which blue link to click. Then, you have to transfer all of this into your editor. You trial and error until you find the right solution.

If only there was a way to search a function and immediately see the solution in one step. Starting today, you can.

A New Way to Learn Programming Languages and Play with Code

Microsoft’s Bing and HackerRank are teaming up to provide millions of programmers an easy way to find useful search results. The best part is that the code runs on a live code editor within Bing’s search engine. Typically, engineers go to search engines to get answers on various sites like, Stackoverflow, Stackexchange and other blogs. Now, you have a streamlined alternative that will not only spit out the code solution you need but also edit the code and play with it in real-time. No IDE installation required. This will save you endless time you used to spend going back and forth from search to your code editor.

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say you wanted to concatenate a string in C#, but you have no idea how. All you would have to do is search the query and hit enter. You’ll immediately get the accurate solution, as well as the opportunity to edit the code right in your search results.

Marcelo De Barros, Group Engineering Manager for the UX Features and Shared Tools at Bing said

In addition to learning how a certain algorithm/code is written in a given language, users will also be able to check how the same solution is constructed in a range of other programming languages too -providing a Rosetta-stone model for programming languages.

What are you waiting for? Start playing with code on Bing now!

|In: Review|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

A decade back, if you talk about dating to anyone it would have resulted in a very “Surprising” kind of reaction. Dating was not very acceptable. But with the advent of technology and change in mindsets, people today are open to Dating since it helps them know the person before they may/may not delve into the most important decision – Marriage. With social media being on the rise, it has given way to another phenomenon called as “Social Dating” and “Online Dating”.

So, the next question that arises is “Which option should someone prefer – Online Dating or Meeting someone offline” ? Well, there is no single answer to this question but considering the amount of time that each one of us spend on Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter etc.; Online seems to be an Ideal option. In fact, few years back I met my wife Janukin online and that early bonding definitely added trust in our relationship.

In fact, many matchmakers are incorporating Online in their offline business models which definitely proves that ‘The online formula is working’!! But as we have seen in movies and heard from many of our friends that Online relationships might not always work. It is true to a certain extent. Similar to Hyper-local Commerce (where Buyers are connected to Sellers in their close vicinity), startups like ShowMeInterest want to leverage the power of Facebook in order to find your Next Date 🙂

Features of ShowMeInterest  [for online daters]

As mentioned earlier, online dating comes with it’s own share of advantages and dis-advantages. So, let’s look at some of the features of ShowMeInterest that might get your excited !!

Ease of Access – Facebook is a Vicious Circle since there choices can turn out to be un-limited so, it becomes an important decision that contacts are managed properly. With ShowMeInterest, you can log-in using your Facebook/Email account and narrow down your search for the next date with different filters like Age, Height, Weight, Area Pin-Code, Hair Color etc. Doesn’t this sound similar to Hyper-Local shopping 🙂

Anonymous Search – After you log-in to ShowMeInterest, you would be prompted with list of members out of which some might be your next Potential Date. Once you look at someone’s profile, the other member (whose profile has been seen) would be intimated which makes ‘Searching for Date real-time’. However, there might be some members who prefer to stay Anonymous (so that other member does not come to know that his/her profile has been seen) and ShowMeInterest takes this into consideration in a very elegant manner !!

Suggested Matches – Just like Matrimonial websites, you would receive emails of suggested matches in order to make your ‘Date Search’ easier. The powerful part about ‘Facebook Dating’ is that if you are interested in someone, than you can get to know about that person from ‘The friend’s Network’. This makes knowing the person much better before you can take the ‘Online’ meeting ‘Offline’.

It would be interesting if ShowMeInterest can leverage the power of Social Media and Analytics to connect Potential Daters (who are in close vicinity) with offline-joints (e.g. cafes, pubs etc). Though we are no guru’s in Dating business, but I know couple of my friends who could find their match using ‘Power of Social Media’ for online-dating. We may definitely argue that you can never know 100% of a person by just interacting online and that is what your end goal should be – ‘ Put an end to the Digital Dating and know more about the person with Offline medium’.

But before you take the ‘Offline Route’, you would have already known a lot about your date from his/her ShowMeInterest Profile 🙂

|In: Infographic|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

This year’s MWC has unveiled some really cool flagship phones. Obviously, some of the big players were missing from the show, but then Apple has never actually been a part of the MWC. Despite that smartphone enthusiasts have some killer phones to look forward to this season. Samsung has already announced its flagship Galaxy S7, which is ready for shipping throughout the US. However, there have been some equally good introductions from the Chinese phone makers OPPO, Meizu and Xiaomi. Oppo’s VOOC charging technology will revolutionize the industry.

But, to put things in perspective, know that the expected number of mobile devices is all set to exceed the total number of people by the end of this year. The population currently stands at around 7.1 billion and the number of mobile devices is expected to cross 7.7 Billion. With 1.8 million smart phones being sold every day, it won’t take long.

But, why are we so interested in smart phones? How does the majority of the American population (since it has huge penetration of smart phones) use them? These are all valid questions which deserve detailed answers. The top reason why they use Smart phones is to stay connected with their family and friends.

With over 370 million likes on Facebook from mobile users and 380 million daily tweets every day, it is no wonder that this is the cheapest way to stay connected. If you still don’t own a smartphone because of its cost, then we suggest going through Groupon for some exclusive smartphone deals, otherwise you are missing out on the fun.

But, there are other reasons as well. For example, 75% of the Americans use their cell phones in the Bathroom and 88% of them use a smartphone while watching TV. On average, people check news on their phones about 40 times a day.
Are you intrigued by the facts! Well we have lots more. We are considerate people, so we have arranged them in a well-meaning infographic for ease of access.

Smartphone: How We Use Them
[Info-graphic Source : Rebates Zone]
This infographic has been co-produced by Rebates zone and Himanshu Sheth’s Blog. What do you majorly do on your smartphone, share your experience in the comments section.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

FasterCapital [a virtual incubator based in Dubai, UAE] has launched its second round of funding for 2016 which begins on 15th of March, 2016 and ends on 16th of Apr, 2016. The first round of funding [which ended on 19th of Feb, 2016] has attracted more than 800 entrepreneurs from more than 80 countries. 50 startups were accepted into the acceleration program. FasterCapital will release the names of the accepted startups on its website and social media.

FasterCapital hopes the message will reach wider audience of dedicated and enthusiastic entrepreneurs who seek both capital and incubation. Each startup goes through three level of assessment: Business, Financial and Technical. The study will be communicated back to the entrepreneurs so that they can take such study in the development of their startup. Entrepreneurs will get [for free!] an extra professional opinion about their startup, potential obstacles and ideas for improvement! All accelerated companies will receive services such as Mentorship, Marketing study, Feasibility study, Technical consultation, New sales channels and Financing.

[Image Source – FasterCapital on Google Plus]

FasterCapital offers two programs: Acceleration Program and Incubation Program. In the “Acceleration program”, FasterCapital will provide mentorship, access to capital and extra consulting services [legal, technological and marketing] to Entrepreneurs. What distinguishes FasterCapital is its “Incubation Program” which might appeal to non-technical entrepreneurs.

FasterCapital will become a co-founder [technical co-founder] and co-funder [as one of the first investors] and will provide technical development per equity [up to $500k for each startup]. The “Incubation Program” might also appeal to tech entrepreneur who seek some help in covering some of the early investment in the startup. FasterCapital has more than 100 internal developers with different skill-sets who are already working on multiple projects. Startups can apply to join Virtual Incubator at FasterCapital For Entrepreneurs

About FasterCapital

FasterCapital is a virtual incubator based in Dubai Internet City, UAE. FasterCapital has more than 18 startups that have graduated already and 22 pending incubation. For more information, please visit FasterCapital