|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

India’s leading digital payments platform, FreeCharge, has crossed a scintillating mark of ‘half a million’, ‘FreeCharge Go’ card creation within 10 days of customer roll-out. With this, FreeCharge has inched closer towards it vision of creating a less cash economy.

The ‘FreeCharge Go’ card is linked with the FreeCharge wallet and makes the wallet universally accepted across all online merchants in India. The card was launched in association with YES Bank and is powered by MasterCard. Through FreeCharge Go, customers experience much swifter and ubiquitous transactions. They can top it up by adding money to their FreeCharge wallet and use it on-the-go for all their online transactions.

Commenting on the milestone, Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer FreeCharge said

FreeCharge wallet has crossed 20 million wallet users with over a million transactions a day. Today we have crossed half a million mark for our on the GO card which is a great indicator of how the country is moving towards digital payments. We at FreeCharge are confident that by end of 2016 we will witness a huge transformation in customer spending patterns with more and more transactions becoming digital.

With a strong focus on creating a frictionless customer experience, over 99% of transactions on FreeCharge are completed in less than 10 seconds. ‘FreeCharge Go’ is built to ensure the safety and security of customer data, with state of the art technology wherein data is secured with 128-bit encryption and stored as per PCI DSS compliance. In addition, every transaction using the card needs to be verified by an OTP which is sent to the registered mobile number. The virtual card is accepted at all major e-commerce portals and can be used to pay for movie tickets, book event tickets, pay for various transportation services and leveraged for hyper-local services across all Indian websites.

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 Shah & Sandeep 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

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Zendrive, the mobile technology that makes roads safer through data and analytics, today announced it has raised a $13.5 million Series A round led by Series A round led by Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Capital with participation from Nyca Partners, Thomvest Ventures [Peter J. Thomson] & existing investors First Round Capital, BMW iVentures, Fontinalis Partners [Bill Ford] and Tad Montross. The funding will drive the company’s focus on safety innovation as the world rapidly moves toward the future of transportation.

Pankaj Risbood, Co-Founder & VP-Engineering of Zendrive said

The transportation and logistics sectors in India are undergoing rapid growth and modernization. At the same time, road safety is becoming an increasing focus for regulators and communities [240,000 fatalities on the road in 2013]. Zendrive technology, by virtue of working on any smartphone, fits in very well with the requirements for a solution that is cheap, does not require hardware and can be rapidly deployed nationwide.

Through its product suite, Zendrive’s SDK technology taps mobile sensors to measure driver safety through actions like acceleration, braking, swerving, and phone use, among many others. Zendrive, founded by Google and Facebook veterans, is utilizing powerful artificial intelligence algorithms and hundreds of billions of data points to analyze sensor data and return actionable insights for fleets and drivers. Because it’s software-based, managing and scaling within any number of vehicles is simple and affordable, allowing for more flexibility than a hardware solution.

Shervin Pishevar, co-founder of Sherpa Capital said

Zendrive represents the natural evolution of safety for the next wave of transportation innovation. Stacked with mobile and data experts from Google and Facebook, this team has introduced the first significant driver and passenger safety innovation since air-bags.

Pankaj Risbood, Co-Founder & VP-Engineering of Zendrive added

Zendrive engineering team in India is building state of the art machine learning models to monitor driving behaviors and employing game mechanics to coach drivers to become safer. We are already working with hundreds of billions of sensor data points and growing very rapidly to extract actionable insights for making roads safer.

Zendrive’s technology can be used by a broad list of industries and products including on-demand services, commercial fleets, taxi aggregators, insurance, city planning, mapping, driving instruction, roadside assistance and more. Together, these industries span hundreds of millions of drivers worldwide. With its new investment, Zendrive plans to grow its team and continue honing its road safety technology. This round brings the company’s total investment up to $15 million.

About Zendrive

Zendrive is a company dedicated to making roads safer through data and analytics. It represents the next wave of safety innovation as the world rapidly moves toward the future of transportation that includes on-demand and autonomous vehicles. Through its product suite, Zendrive leverages mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for passengers and drivers. For more information, please visit Zendrive

[Image Credit* – Zendrive]

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 2 Comments

Zappfresh, a fast growing online fresh meat brand focusing on delivering high quality ready to cook meat products has tied up with SRS Grocery, a Delhi based e-tailer having both, online and offline presence with over 100,000 plus customers. This tie-up will not only help Zappfresh to reach out to the customer base of SRS grocery but also give them access to newer markets.

Customers of SRS Grocery will now be able to choose from a wide range of over 40 high quality fresh non-vegetarian options including chicken, mutton, fish & pork and pre-cooked items like ham, sausages and salami. SRS’s already has a comprehensive online product catalogue of over 7500 SKU’s and reach in Gurgaon, Noida & Faridabad. This tie-up will enable them to enter into a new product category altogether. This service is currently available in Gurgaon and South Delhi and would shortly be available in other cities.

Zappfresh, founded by Shruti Gochhwal and Deepanshu Manchanda in 2015, is one of the fastest growing direct to consumer online fresh meat brand focusing on delivering high quality ready to cook meat products. Currently available in the Gurgaon and Delhi, Zappfresh is already delivering to over 10,000 happy customers in these two markets and aims to reach 30,000 customers by mid-2016.

Zappfresh currently delivers fresh meats, fish, pork, chicken, sea food and other non-vegetarian ready to eats. The company has also partnered with ‘ColdEX’, India’s number one cold chain logistic company for managing their supply chain inventory.

Commenting on the tie up, Shruti Gochhwal, co-founder, said

The meat business in India is growing at an impressive rate. The segment has grown at an average 18% CAGR across category. Chicken tops the list followed by fish and other meat products. The Poultry industry alone is a INR 40,000 crore market now. Even if we are able to scratch the surface of this market, we are talking about Zappfresh being in pole position. We have aggressive expansion plans and are looking at similar synergies in newer markets.

Deepanshu Manchanda, Co-founder, Zappfresh further added

We are very pleased on our association with SRS Grocery, as it aligns with our strategy of delivering high quality products to customers.  With this tie-up we look forward to further increasing our market share in the geographies we are currently present in and also get access to newer markets. Currently we are reaching out to over 30,000 unique customers a month and expect to double this number by the mid-2016.

Pratik Jindal, Managing Director of SRS e-Retail Ltd., said

Zappfresh has created its own niche in the meat space industry by providing neatly packaged and carefully inspected high quality meat products. With this association we want to leverage Zappfresh products and offer a convenient solution to consumers who want to shop for quality and hygienic meat products but are strapped for time.

Zappfresh had earlier raised INR 2 crore [$300,000] in angel round of funding from a couple of high profile investors in 2015.

About ZappFresh

Founded by Shruti Gochhwal and Deepanshu Manchanda in 2015, Zappfresh is one of the fastest growing direct to consumer online fresh meat brand focusing on delivering high quality fresh and ready to cook meat products. Currently available in the Gurgaon and Delhi, Zappfresh is already delivering to over 10,000 happy customers in these two markets and aims to reach 30,000 customers by mid-2016.  The company has already created local fulfillment centers in these markets and have partnered with several online and offline channels to further boost delivery. They have one central processing unit in Gurgaon and two delivery hubs in Delhi. The company has also partnered with ‘ColdEX’, India’s number one cold chain logistic company for managing their supply chain inventory.For more details, please refer Zappfresh

[Image Credit* – WorkAdvantage]

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

What if a mobile phone app could assess the risk of an individual and provide ideas to better manage that risk? Well, that thought helped IIT-B bag the first prize.

Between 30-31 January, Swiss Re held an event entitled My Personal Risk Advisor Hackathon where 16 teams of 70 technologists comprising students, developers and entrepreneurs built applications that enable individuals or small business owners to assess their total risk.

Organised along with IBM, India’s first reinsurance hackathon offered a unique garage-like experience for its participants and provided an opportunity to develop ideas into prototypes. The prototypes were judged based on innovative technology integration, dimensions of risks that were considered while developing the solution, user experience and technical complexity. A panel of esteem judges, which included members from Swiss Re and IBM evaluated the apps.

Alok Kumar, Managing Director, Swiss Re Bangalore said

The reinsurance sector is at the cusp of a radical transition and the convergence of new technologies will help us manage consumer expectations and to better manage risk. Such a platform enables exploration of emerging and disruptive technology to reduce the protection gap, besides further encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurs and start-ups in the sector.

Team IIIT-B represented by Abhijay Vuyyuru, Anubhav Bhardwaj & Lijo Johny were adjudged as the winners for their solution. This WhatsApp-based application can click a picture of the food you eat and distribute it to a specific group. This application analyses the image of the food and highlights the calorie content and recommends healthier alternatives. The winning team was awarded a cash prize of INR 3 lakhs.

  • An app for monitoring food intake of high-risk patients using image recognition and NLP, wins the first prize.
  • 16 teams representing brightest minds from start-ups, developers & students community developed prototypes using IBM Bluemix suite.

Team IIIT-B represented by Amit Gupta, Daksh Varshneya, Tanmayee Narendra, Prerit Jain, Pawan Dhananjay bagged the second prize and were awarded INR 2 Lakhs.

Manu Dwivedi, Chakshu Ahuja, Rahul Radhakrishnan and Saurav Tomar were declared as the second runners-up and were awarded Rs 1 Lakh.

Commenting on winning the hackathon, the first prize winners said

We are thrilled to win. Being the second most populous nation, India is prone to high health risks and diseases. Our idea was to develop a solution that enable individual to assess and foresee their risk based on the individual’s personality and dietary profiling. 

About Swiss Re

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

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

Shimply, one of India’s fastest growing, multi-­category online bazaar for Indian products has launched its mobile app. The app features a patent pending technology of Virtual Trial Room which gives you the freedom to see in advance how the products of your choice look on you, before you decide on one. These products have been sourced from different states of India & Shimply guarantees dual benefit of unmatched selection of products and value for money.

The virtual trial room by Shimply.com addresses the common problem that every woman faces while shopping online – trying on the product. With this feature, Shimply.com will make online shopping experience as close to physical shopping.

This technology makes use of the camera on the customer’s phone to click their picture and then place a product on it to see how it will look. With the app, customers can try on multiple products, virtually; the product can be dragged to any part on top of the picture with hand gestures and touch features. The product and base picture [of customer] can be resized to generate a parallax and 3D effect that allows the customer to see the product in a way as if customer is actually wearing it.

Another amazing quality of this technology is that the customers can actually try home decors [like paintings/furniture, etc.] virtually to see how it looks on their wall/room. This ground breaking technology can also be used in shopping malls to let customers try on various dresses, without actually going to a trial room.

The patent pending technology aids the users to click their picture and try the products on the app without saving the picture on the phone. Also, it saves the customers from the peeping tom problem.

Rajat Garg, Founder and CEO of Shimply.com said

In e-tailing categories like apparel, accessories, and furniture, consumers want to touch, feel and try before buying. Not only the consumers’ hesitation about the look of clothing or an accessory, disappears with our app, it also helps them try unique products which represent the Indian diversity and culture. This is the reason why we encourage people by saying ‘India ko try kar ke dekho’.

Features of Shimply.com App

Virtual Trial Room – With this feature, Shimply.com’s app will not only come home to deliver your product, but also give you the freedom to see in advance how the outfits of your choice look on you, before you decide on one. We are bridging the gap between online and offline through its virtual trial room technology and is enabling users to try India in the online world.

Huge Selection – Choose from an exhaustive collection of 1.7 crore products. You can shop for Sarees, Jewellery, Salwar kameez, Bridal Suits, Kurtis, Men Apparel, Bollywood Actress Dresses etc. Shimply.com online shopping app will also provide you with huge discounts on ethnic wear, jewellery, beauty & personal care, ayurveda, books and more.

Authentic products, fast shipping – We take pride in having hand-picked sellers who have certificates like pure silk mark, hand-loom mark, GI certification etc to make sure that you are getting the best of the products. These products are sourced from different parts of India and reflect India’s diversity & culture.

Shimply app can be downloaded from the Google Play store from here

[Image Credit* – Shimply]

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

NASSCOM is all set to host its annual three-day flagship event – NASSCOM India Leadership Forum [NILF] from February 10-12, 2016, at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. NILF is an annual event where thought leaders and global influencers congregate to address, deliberate and exchange ideas on the emerging themes of the future. This time, the forum’s deliberations will be around the theme – The Smart Enterprise – transformative to disruptive.

The conclave will look at addressing the key challenges faced by businesses around the world and focus on the rapid changes they are going through. The expanding limit of computing power has triggered the ability to create new markets through differentiated products, deepening the customer experience and dramatically altering operating cost structures through greater process automation and removing the latencies of the physical world. Sessions spread across the 3 days will focus on the opportunities for businesses to remain relevant in the times to come.

Elaborating on the theme for NILF 2016, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said

Over the last 24 years, NILF has succeeded in positioning itself as one of the key events for the IT-BPM industry. This year the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum will focus on the evolution of technology and how enterprises have now begun adopting new technologies that will displace established norms and evolve the existing ecosystem.

This year, NASSCOM will also set-up an experience zone at the NILF, to showcase its overarching theme. The exhibition will highlight through installations relevant symbols of technology, discovery and designs. Each day, the exhibition will highlight a different theme that are in line with the developments of the industry.

While Day 1 will showcase Smart Enterprise and its technological as well as structural dimensions, Day 2 will feature Consumerization of technology – The Enterprise Disruptor; followed by Day 3, featuring The Shifting Face of Global Sourcing.

The forum will further evaluate insights from customers, analysts and thought leaders on the digital future and how to stay ahead in this rapidly changing world. The event is expected to host 45+ sessions, with more than 150 speakers, and representatives from close to 30 countries.

For more information visit NASSCOM Leadership Forum 2016

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Delhi-based commercial real estate portal Creindia has launched an online commercial property fest CREBazaar on the 30th January. Being hosted on the site till 2nd February, this four day fest is showcasing more than 500 commercial properties in Delhi-NCR with limited period deals. Further addition of properties will be kept on adding during the event days.Projects being offered are nearing possession and include sale, lease and pre-leased options.

Ajay Rakheja, CEO & Co-Founder, Creindia said

Our USP of the event lies with our plan to showcase only ready to move-in or 70% completed commercial properties, with the added advantage of attractive discounts for limited time period

Commercial real estate market in India has in recent times opened up avenues for retail investors to enter and benefit from the higher yields than those offered by other asset classes such as residential. With smaller floor plates [10,000 sq.ft. or lower] now being offered in markets like Delhi NCR, it is easier for potential investors as well as smaller companies to take up office or retail space.

Increasing consolidation among corporates as well as the growth of new sectors such as e-commerce are fueling the demand for commercial real estate. Against this backdrop, technology intensive tools that are built around information gathered from the field are reducing the lead time for transactions.

Creindia offers a decision tool that is being used by corporates, start-ups, developers, consultants and investors to gain access to on-ground information about selected micro-markets. The listings on the site are all verified by a team of experts and the details being presented are up to date with the current status of each property.

Ajay Rakheja, CEO & Co-Founder, Creindia further added

Through the CREBazaar four day showcase, interested buyers and investors are being offered a selection of the best deals in the Delhi NCR commercial real estate landscape. This is the best time to invest in commercial real estate and we have seen increasing interest from all sections of the market for the products on offer.

The ‘CREBazaar pre-registration’ that we opened 15 days ago saw more than five lakh visitors, The reach of this event is spread and targeted to HNI, NRI , Startups , SME, Brokers, Developers , landlords and Fraternity members.

The site currently showcases more than 15,000 listings of properties in and around Delhi NCR , Chandigarh and Lucknow. The products on offer include offices, high street retail options, IT/ITeS buildings and will soon be expanded to include warehouses, malls, industrial spaces, standalone buildings, built-to-suit options and other commercial real estate offerings in Delhi NCR and beyond.

CREindia was awarded ‘Emerging Commercial Real Estate Portal Award’ at India International Property Awards 2015 in September.

About Creindia

CREIndia is India’s fastest growing marketplace for the commercial real estate fraternity, integrating innovative technology, inventory data bank and research on macro and micro markets to offer the best real estate solutions. CREIndia aims to break traditional ways of searching an office or retail space cross cities in India. For more information, please visit Credindia

[Image Credit* – Creindia]

|In: General|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Most of us [or should we say], all of us would have watched the movie 3 Idiots. There was a very interesting dialogue at the end of the movie where Aamir Khan advises Madhavan on why he should ‘pursue’ his dreams to become a wild-life photographer. I had a friend in my engineering college who was very good in Drama and very active in all the cultural festivals. He was a good student but after he passed out of engineering, he went on to pursue his dreams. He went on to become a Film Director [More about Jayprad Desai here]

Well, this is one a one-off scenario and we come across such stories where engineers pursue career in entertainment, Doctors become singers/reality TV stars, Bankers become Best-Selling Authors and many more… Divergence in the career path could either be ‘Imposition of Parental Pressure’ or ‘Late Self-Realization’. Many times, my wife Janukin [who is a passionate teacher] & myself have discussions over tea about her students, interaction she has with parents, her student’s likes & dislikes, their aspirations. One ‘common’ thing that we realized is that kids have varied interests which they would like to pursue as their career and they require their parent’s support & guidance in order to fulfill their dreams !!  In a nutshell, Children have innumerable career options, thus parents need to be prepared for their decision and should Do their Homework

An interesting experiment titled ‘Do Your Homework‘ [#DoYourHomework] was conducted at multiple sites namely Crossword & KidZania. It was initiated with a group of parents and their children. Children were asked to draw a picture of what they would like to become in future while parents were asked to paint what they would like their children to become in future. They were told not to interact with each other during the course of the activity.

Two important things that can be learnt from the video are a)  Children today want to follow their passion & areas of interest b) Parent’s role is to be prepared to fulfill their children’s aspirations.

There are tons of resources freely available for parents like ‘The Homework App‘ to ensure that they are on the same page as their kids about their future. The calculator feature would keep them informed about the education expenses and help them be ‘Financially’ prepared.

As they say ‘Learning should be fun’ and what better way than to make it Visual. There are books curated to inspire the children to explore the various careers by way of reading short stories on various professions, trying their hand with coloring or solving crossword puzzles on various professions. This could be a ‘Litmus Test’ for parents to know their kid’s interest.

As mentioned earlier, parents need to be emotionally & financially prepared to support their child’s education, hence it becomes very important to invest wisely. If you are a ‘Risk-Averse’ investor, you definitely have an option to invest in ELSS tax saving instrument and cut down your taxes paid. Do have a look at  investor education awareness campaign, Save Less & Share More 🙂

As the legendary Steve Jobs said

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.