All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Investments for several individuals are just allocating funds in tax-saving investments to save tax under Section 80C. However, the newer tech-savvy generation has started considering investing in different life insurance plans or mutual funds that can help them to attain financial freedom.

Gen Y and Gen Z constitute the people that fall in the age group of 27 to 37 years of age. Millennials represent about 34 percent of the Indians and precisely 47 percent of the workforce. Their approach towards investments is quite different from their preceding generation, as Millennials tend to evaluate their investments from a technological point of view. Hence, being a financially and technologically literate generation, millennials opt for online channels for their investment decisions.

Investors are often bombarded with different investment options for their portfolios. One of the biggest dilemmas faced by them is choosing between insurance and ELSS mutual funds. Before we understand the right investment option for your portfolio, let’s quickly recall what ELSS funds are.

What are ELSS mutual funds?

Equity-Linked Savings Scheme, also known as ELSS [Tax-Saving Mutual Funds], are investment securities that invest a majority of their corpus [at least 80 percent of their assets] in equity and equity-related instruments. ELSS offers dual benefits of tax-saving attributes and capital appreciation.

Keys aspects to consider before choosing from different types of investment

Financial Goals

Indeed, an insurance policy is a vital component of a portfolio for any as it covers the financial security of your children, parents, or dependents. Mutual funds are a useful tool to meet one’s long-term financial goals, such as paying for higher studies, buying a house, starting a business, etc.

Returns

If an insurance policy is solely utilized for investment purposes, it is not only expensive but also does not promise spectacular returns as in the case of mutual fund investments. However, new insurance plans are consumer-friendly, paired with more substantial insurance rewards and returns for shifting times.

In addition to mutual fund schemes offering the option of fund diversification, one can also maximize their returns without having to depend entirely on a single mutual fund for growth.

Liquidity

If we talk about liquidity with respect to mutual fund investments, except with ELSS funds,  these securities provide high liquidity. One should note that ELSS funds have a lock-in period of 3 years, one of the lowest as compared to different Section 80C investments.

One should also consider the tax aspects of their investment options. The premium paid towards an insurance policy is subject to tax deduction up to the maximum limit of Rs 1.5 lac. Further different policies offer tax benefits under Section 80C and Section 80D of the Income Tax Act, 1961. ELSS tax-saving funds also offer tax benefits of up to Rs 1,50,000 under section 80C of the IT Act. An investor can save up to Rs 46,800 by investing in these tax-saving mutual funds.

Conclusion

The decision to invest in mutual funds or insurance policies entirely lies with the investor. Before investing, an investor should analyze their investment needs. The right investment option is one that aligns with your financial goals, investment horizon, and risk profile.

Happy investing!

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Mutual Funds is a pool of funds collected from several investors used to invest in a number of securities such as bonds or capital raising instruments in the money market such as share equity. These funds are managed by experienced professionals known as fund managers. Fund managers prepare a diversified portfolio and to build a capital out of your invested fund along with other investors.

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Think of it this way – If you buy a unit of a mutual fund, it would mean that you are buying a unit of the asset or portfolio prepared by the mutual fund company. Therefore, buying a unit of a mutual fund is not the same as acquiring the stocks of a listed company.

There are a number of advantages of investing in mutual funds. A mutual fund is a service that gives you a wide variety of sectors to invest in without having to exhaust yourself with research overload of individual stocks of different companies in different sectors.

Advantages of investing in mutual funds

1. Diversified Portfolio

A diversified portfolio will always save you from unforeseen downfalls of any sector. For instance, imagine you have a portfolio with investment in industry, real estate and energy sectors. Now, if in a particular quarter, the real estate sector takes a sudden hit and energy sector happens to flourish.

A diverse portfolio of that sort will not only save you from the losses incurred but also, you might be able to take advantage of the thriving energy sector. Thus, one of the benefits of mutual funds is that you can easily find diverse portfolios and gain superior returns.

2. Economies of Scale

We have come a long way from using old school filament bulbs to the new LED bulbs. Ever wondered how did these become so cheap that even the poorest households have LED bulbs to save power consumption?

This is an example of the economies of scale wherein with larger investment and greater production, you can bring down the ‘cost of production’. Thus, by pooling funds from several investors, mutual funds employ the fundamentals of economies of scale. The volume of their transactions helps save the cost of transactions.

3. Divisibility

An individual stock-picker can buy several stocks of lesser value in a company at once and be left with an odd sum of money in his account, while the advantage of investing in mutual funds is that your fund can be allocated to create an asset consisting shares of higher values instead of having to wait for several months, save and then invest.

4. Lastly, another perk is the professional management of your investment. The fund managers invest the funds into only a thoroughly researched portfolio.

So, besides considering the above advantages, you should still consider exploring more to understand your risk appetite. This approach will aid you in choosing the right funds to achieve your investment goals.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

90 percent Pharmaceutical marketers are of the view that non-transparency of ‘doctor reach and results’ is a major bottleneck in adoption of digital in Rx drug marketing, as per a survey conducted by Doceree, the first global network of Physician-only platforms for programmatic marketing.

It is a well-known fact that Pharmaceutical sector lags far behind on digital adoption compared to consumer brands which have witnessed tremendous growth adopting digital marketing technologies.

Over the last decade, innovative digital business models emerged in a lot of sectors. However, pharmaceutical by and large remained an exception in opening up to digital mediums. The marketing approaches are still confined to traditional ways of doing business and Physician marketing is nowhere close to consumer marketing that grew leaps and bounds after companies in the space switched to digital methods and made them an essential tool to reach out to their target audiences.

‘We partner with multiple digital platforms. But the results are not very satisfying and many a times there seems to be discrepancies in the data shared. Deciphering reports that are shared by partner digital platforms isn’t an easy task and data points a lot of times do not match with the results shared, leading to disparity. This lack of transparency, thus, poses a big challenge for us to use digital channels,’ said a Pharma marketer on condition of anonymity.

Doceree conducted the survey with 500 Pharmaceutical marketers of top Rx drug companies, including Abbott, Pfizer, Cipla, GSK and Novartis, to understand how big stumbling block non-transparency was in digital adoption among Pharma marketers.

To fix the persisting issue and nurture trust among Pharma marketers and build the category, Doceree has introduced AI-enabled dashboard that ensures its clients – pharma brands and media agencies – get reports and updates about their campaigns in real time.

Dr. Harshit Jain, Founder & CEO, Doceree, said

Rx drug brands spend a lot while marketing on generic digital platforms. However there is no visibility of progress of digital campaigns, thus defeating the very purpose of using a digital medium. They spend monies on the digital medium to reach out to Physicians, but are not very sure about the genuineness of results.

For Pharma marketers who are already skeptical about using digital mediums, the situation has only compounded further and led to trust issues. Our AI-enabled dashboard will provide complete transparency, control and the ability to optimize for better efficiencies. A lot of brands are already channeling all their digital marketing spends through Doceree now.

At a time when digital is gaining a strong foothold, Doceree is striving to create an ecosystem that establishes trust among Pharma marketers and help them unlock the true potential of digital medium.

About Doceree 

Doceree is the first Global Network of Physician-only Platforms for Programmatic Marketing. Founded in 2019 by eminent healthcare marketing professionals, Doceree aims to address the problem of rising cost of healthcare by bringing efficiency and effectiveness to Physician engagement by using data and creativity. It raised $1 million in seed funding from a group of angel investors from India and the US in May 2020.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The Vedanta Group has announced the launch of Vedanta Spark, an initiative wherein the company is looking to partner with early-stage, growth stage and venture stage Digital Tech start-ups in order to tap into massive innovation and growth opportunities.

Through Vedanta Spark, the company seeks young & innovative start-up companies and specialists to come forward and join hands with Vedanta thus unlocking value and growth potential at an accelerated pace. Vedanta Spark is looking at start-ups from across the globe as part of the program, working in areas such as 360 Degree Sustainability & Excellence in HSE, Operational Excellence – Volume, Recovery & Efficiency Improvement, Asset Optimization and Predictive Maintenance, Exploration, Mining & Blasting, and so forth.

Sharad Gargiya, Senior VP, Group Commercial, Vedanta Limited, said

We are focused on nurturing Innovation at Vedanta and making it a way of working across all our operations and functions to energize and encourage our passionate leaders to think and act differently. It is our firm belief that by including innovation in everything we do will transform the entire organization and will bring a fresh energy and speed.

Speaking on the launch, Anand Laxshmivarahan R, Chief Digital Officer, Vedanta, said

To foster innovative thinking for disruptive ideas, it is essential to engage with people inside as well as outside the organization who can challenge the status-quo and offer a different perspective.

The initiative will offer various advantages for the start-ups: Partnerships & Collaborations, Leverage massive capacity & resources of Vedanta group, Tech & business expertise and most importantly strategic investments opportunities for the start-ups that offer significant value to Vedanta Limited.

Vish Sahasranamam, Co-Founder & CEO, Forge, said

Easily the most comprehensive corporate open innovation program in India thus far, spanning 16 opportunity themes and over 75 innovation challenges, cutting across several core industrial functions in a globally diversified conglomerate as Vedanta Resources Limited.

Envisioned to catalyze the seeding, building and scaling up of a permanent corporate innovation function to exploit start-ups as innovation and growth partners, Vedanta Spark is an amazing opportunity for Forge to execute a global corporate start-up accelerator program.

The project will start with a discovery phase for start-ups to register on the VedantaSpark, choose the challenge area according to their expertise and then fill an application form and submit a pitch explaining their technology and benefits for Vedanta.

From an expected 1000+ registrations across the globe, top 20 start-ups will get a chance to work with the different entities of Vedanta following a thorough evaluation process by expert panels consisting of Vedanta’s professionals, domain experts and external mentors from reputed govt. ministries and industrial sectors.

The program partner for Vedanta Spark is Forge [incubator for Managed Corporate Innovation & Start-up Accelerator Services that has worked with Ministry of Defense, NITI Aayog, etc.]

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

It’s the age of the Internet. From a needle to a jumbo jet, one can find anything and everything online. If you have a business, be it of any kind or size, chances are you have a beautifully designed to showcase and market your products. It acts as your storefront for prospective consumers. Now imagine having a store which is almost always inaccessible because of construction, repairs, maintenance, etc. It doesn’t bode well for your business. Does it?

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A web hosting service provider can help you keep your website up and running. They work round the clock to protect your website from any disaster and aid you in running your business smoothly.

Benefits of Web Hosting Services

A good web host is a much-needed investment and one that comes with many benefits.

Dependability and higher uptime

These two factors combined tell you about the running time of your website. As a thumb rule, website hosting services across the board promise 99.9 percent uptime. This means that you will rarely face an issue where your website is inaccessible due to some technical issues or maintenance problems.

Constant downtime can turn your users towards your potential competitor and result in revenue loss. Therefore, before signing a contract with a service provider, do go through their policy and guidelines and check if they offer any guarantee for unexpected or more than regular downtime.

Storage and bandwidth

If you are running a business online, chances are you will need unlimited space and bandwidth to support your expansion. Some WordPress website hosting service providers offer both under dedicated hosting plans. However, shared hosting plans and VPS offers you limited storage and can only handle a fixed volume of traffic. Any more than that and you will be able to notice a drop in your website’s performance.

Robust customer support

This is something that ranks lowest on anyone’s priority list when choosing a WordPress hosting company in India. Probably because no one thinks they will have a use for it. Its requirement becomes quite evident when you find yourself in a puddle right before a major event.

That is why you must do a test run to check if the service provider’s customer support is responsive and their turnaround time. It is to ensure that your issues are dealt with quickly, and you do not face excessive downtime.

Domain Management

It is quite possible that when you started your business, you had just one registered domain to your name. As such, you chose a web hosting plan that was good for a single domain. However, gradually as your business evolves and expands, you may need to own more domains or subdomains to support your main website.

Therefore, it will be best to opt for a service provider that offers you a plan with the possibility to host multiple domains at once. They must also be equipped with domain management tools for effective managing.

To run your business in the digital era, it’s important to hire the right website hosting service provider. Thorough research of all options is critical to making a sound decision.

|In: Fintech|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In line with its mission to help Indians simplify their financial life and feel more confident about their money, India’s favorite investment app, ETMONEY, has partnered with Google to offer Google Pay users a super-simplified way to invest in Mutual Funds and National Pension System [NPS].

The integration of ETMONEY’s feature on Google Play will help its users enjoy a seamless experience without leaving the platform. This collaboration will allow Google Pay users to identify the right Mutual Funds and invest in them within minutes using their Google account and UPI ID.

Google Pay users won’t need to create any user ID or worry about remembering multiple passwords. They will also experience the same ease while investing in the world’s cheapest retirement product, the National Pension System.

To make sure millions of Google Pay users who are staying away from investing due to hassles involved in completing KYC can start their journey to wealth creation, ETMONEY has enabled zero paperwork, instant KYC on the Google Pay App. Users can also go through curated lists of investment themes, see top mutual funds, and do a comparative analysis to make investment decisions quickly and with confidence.

Speaking on the integration of ETMONEY on Google Pay, Founder-CEO Mukesh Kalra said

Innovation has been the cornerstone of our growth. ETMONEY’s integration with Google Pay is yet another innovation that marries the convenience of ETMONEY with the expansive reach of Google Pay. This will be a big push for the country’s financial ecosystem.

We are starting with Direct Mutual Funds and NPS and will soon expand to our other offerings in the near future. The sheer reach and native experience offered by both platforms will be extremely helpful in driving the mission of simplifying the financial journey of millions of Indians.

About ETMONEY

ETMONEY is an app for financial services that is simplifying the financial journey of new-age Indians. Consumers use ETMONEY to invest in zero-commission Direct mutual funds for Free, protect their families with unique Insurance solutions & use ETMONEY Credit Card to take instant loans at low-cost.

Growing at 350% yearly, combined with multiple innovative solutions, it has grown to 7Mn users from more than 1300+ Indian cities and is driving more than $500Mn of non-payment annual transaction volume on its platform.

|In: Fintech|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Ten leading fintech companies have been selected for the seventh annual FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific, a mentorship program created by Accenture that helps startups fine-tune their business plans and solutions by pairing them with mentors from leading financial institutions.

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This year’s program received applications from 162 companies across more than 30 countries, with solutions related to the five themes for the 2020 program:

  • Data & analytics
  • Digital bank solutions
  • Emerging technologies
  • Health insurance ecosystem
  • Intelligent automation


Leveraging artificial intelligence [AI], advanced analytics, natural language processing and other technologies, the 10 selected startups – which hail from seven markets, including India – have developed innovations designed to help financial institutions address a variety of challenges, including keeping up with compliance requirements, analyzing large volumes of structured and unstructured data, and building more-personalized customer products and services.

The Lab will partner startups with senior executives from the participating financial institutions, as well as with technology entrepreneurs and industry experts. The mentors will work with the companies to further develop their solutions and business strategies through a series of virtual meetings, user-group sessions, workshops and networking opportunities, helping them connect with potential customers at top institutions.

Sonali Kulkarni, Lead – Financial Services, Accenture in India said

We are seeing some fantastic innovation coming out of India’s fintech ecosystem, be it for digital payments, credit and risk management, underwriting or security. As per an Accenture analysis of data from CB Insights – a global venture-finance data and analytics firm, released in February 2020, fintech investments in India nearly doubled, to US$3.7 billion in 2019, making the country the world’s third largest fintech market.

The FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is a collaboration between Accenture and leading financial institutions, which this year include AIA International Limited; Bank of America; BlackRock; China Construction Bank [Asia]; Credit Suisse; Dah Sing Bank; Generali; Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Asia) Limited;  and more.

The 2020 Lab formally kicks off in October and culminates in December, when the participants will present their solutions at a virtual Demo Day to an audience of venture capitalists and financial industry executives.

The 2020 FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific participants are: 

  • Knight FinTech [India] – A Singapore- and India-based fintech, Knight FinTech provides an AI-powered, SaaS-based treasury management and credit assessment platform to help financial firms increase returns and decrease risk. Its interest rate and credit risk models analyze millions of data points to provide actionable insights to treasury managers or dealers taking a position on yield curve or taking a corporate credit risk exposure.   
  • Fedo [India] – Fedo’s algorithm quantifies an individual’s risk for various diseases and his/her propensity to file a claim over the next few years, based on a photograph, enabling insurers to onboard and underwrite customers digitally with little to no manual intervention. The solution has helped Fedo’s retail health insurance clients reduce underwriting costs by 50% and turnaround times by more than 70%.
  • Fano Labs [Hong Kong] – Specializing in speech recognition and natural language processing technologies across a wide variety of languages and dialects, Fano Labs helps enterprises with customer service, compliance and other lines of business, enabling them to accurately identify potential compliance risks, reduce costs, and uncover potential sales opportunities.
  • KADA [Australia] – KADA’s AI-based platform, known as K, enables financial institutions to scale data knowledge across the organization. By analyzing millions of event logs, K helps companies identify hidden context of data, understand how its people use data, and create networks between data stored in data warehouses, data lakes and analytical tools — giving people the knowledge they need to deliver faster and better data outcomes.
  • Flybits [Canada] – Flybits is a leading customer experience platform for the financial services sector, delivering personalization at scale. With an extensive collection of customizable modules that preserve consumer privacy, Flybits enables banks to increase speed to market, and maximize return on investment through its digital channels. Flybits enables financial institutions to elevate their mobile apps, creating a ‘human-touch’ experience and advancing the customer experience beyond transactions.
  • SPIN Analytics [United Kingdom] – SPIN Analytics helps tier-one and digital banks improve credit risk management with its explainable AI-based platform, RISKROBOT. The platform provides 10x acceleration of model development, validation, documentation and deployment, which reduces maintenance time by at least 90% and total costs by 70%. Encoding 28 years of credit risk-modeling experience into AI and insights, the platform helps banks make decisions and control assumptions. The solution covers all types of credit risk models for regulatory, risk management, and business purposes.
  • Capitalise.ai [Israel] – An Israeli-based startup offering non-technical traders the ability to automate their trades, using free-style text with no coding needed. Capitalise.ai’s trading platform turns text into complex algorithmic trading strategies, using natural language processing technology. Capitalise.ai’s platform is already being used by leading brokers around the globe, amplifying their performance by offering their traders a unique trading experience.
  • UVAS [Singapore] – UVAS (by Atlant.io) is a securities exchange offering primary issuance of shares and debentures, secondary trading and optimized post-trade process, with automatic clearing, settlement and custody, all at 90-95% cost savings compared to other exchanges. UVAS strives to remedy the situation of illiquidity and opaqueness in capital markets and serves as a turnkey solution for the alternative asset space.
  • Symbo [Singapore] – Symbo uses its proprietary digital insurance platforms to digitize insurance distribution in partnership with insurance companies. Its award-winning mobile app helps insurers digitally engage with intermediaries, tied agents and financial advisors by simplifying insurance transactions.
  • Staple [Singapore] – Staple’s cognitive AI-based solution helps reduce the costs of back-office operations, such as compliance and onboarding checks. By combining computer vision, natural language processing, optical character recognition and machine learning, the solution can read, interpret and extract data from documents at scale, regardless of layout, format or language.

Launched in Hong Kong in June 2014, the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific has received more than 1,000 applications since its inception, and the program’s 49 alumni companies have raised US$525 million and created more than 1,500 jobs after participating in the program.

The FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is modeled on similar programs that Accenture co-founded in New York and London in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Globally, the Labs’ alumni companies have raised, in total, approximately US$2 billion in venture financing after participating in the program.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Streamr, the world’s leading de-centralized network for real-time data, announced the plans to expand their developer ecosystem to India with the launch of the Streamr Data Challenge, an open innovation program that leverages the Indian developer ecosystem to build digital-first applications that can integrate with Streamr’s Data Union framework.

The open innovation program will provide winning projects with up to USD 5000 in funding along with seed funding opportunities through its investor network and mentoring to build a strong foundation for capital-efficient growth on a case-by-case basis depending on viability.

Spanning over 4 months, the program includes incentives such as a USD 200 USD grant to each team that qualifies for the first cohort. The Data challenge will be interspersed by multiple meetups and webinars and will begin with a one-week long mentor session, followed by a two-week-long intensive acceleration period. The ongoing support ranges from access to tech guidance on projects, networking opportunities, PR support, and more.

India is leading the global data consumption market with the increasing mobile data connectivity [3G/4G], falling data tariffs, rising smartphone penetration, and growth in broadband connectivity across India. The exponential data growth in India is projected to continue, with internet traffic expected to increase four-fold from 21 exabytes in 2016 to an estimated 78 exabytes in 2021 as per the report by Omidyar Networks.

Streamr understands the huge concern to data privacy and the need to identify feasible concepts solving problems in the big data space and thereby expand their developer base in India.

Henri Pihkala, Founder and CEO of Streamr, said

We are very excited to connect with the vibrant developer ecosystem in India! We think that Streamr’s Data Union framework can be used as a meaningful tool to solve key problems in data collection, usage, and availability – problems that consumers and businesses face on a daily basis.

The goal of the Streamr Data Challenge is to build new tools to democratize the value of our data and to find new ways for users to own and control their data.

Streamr is a distributed, open-source, software project,  founded in 2017 with the mission of creating a decentralized platform to trade and distribute information while allowing people to regain control over the data they produce. Through its Data Union concept, individuals can crowd sell their information through the Streamr Network along with their fellow Data Union members. Designed for safe data delivery and exchange, the Streamr Network is scalable, low-latency, and secure.

The 16-week ‘Streamr Data Challenge’ hackathon is launched in partnership with Lumos Labs, an innovation management firm specializing in running technology open innovation programs in India. The registrations are open from today for developers across India. For more details on the challenge and the registration process, visit Streamr Data Challenge Registration Page.