|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Five years ago, MoEngage was an idea in the minds of founders Raviteja Dodda and Yashwant Kumar; a design to transform user experience and help internet companies retain customers. Today, the startup counts five of the Fortune 500 brands as its customers along with internet biggies such as OYO, Gaana, Tokopedia, and Traveloka among several others.

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Here’s the story of MoEngage – APAC’s fastest-growing customer engagement and analytics platform.

Raviteja Dodda and Yashwant Kumar, both alumni of IIT – Kharagpur, having co-founded DelightCircle app – a leading offers network in India, had first-hand experienced the profits of using technology to engage and retain users. They joined hands to build a prototype in early 2014. The product was ready six months later with a few customers willing to try out. Among other things, the cloud-based product created a unified view of the users’ multi-point interactions with a brand and start using this data to personalize communication with these users.

Today, MoEngage has emerged a purpose-built mobile marketing platform suitable for enterprises in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. Over 50% of the company’s revenue now comes from enterprise clients – an indication of the widespread adoption and maturity of the product. The company grew 200% in the last financial year and is now targeting a revenue of $25MM by 2020. It has raised $14.5 million in funding from marquee investors – Matrix Partners, Ventureast, Helion VC, and Exfinity Ventures. More importantly, the company today has over 500 clients in over 35 countries.

MoEngage is a company who planned to reach $25mn in 2020.Unlike most saas startups who focus on established categories like CRM, ERP, Cloud, etc. MoEngage decided to start off as a cross-channel customer engagement platform by creating a category itself. The business & Marketing operations was focused to initiate a product-feature led growth model primarily targeting enterprise as a category whereas others target SMBs. Asia and SEA markets were chosen for business operations vs companies who typically target the West for such growth.

MoEngage was also recently included in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms – for the second time in a row and believes it (inclusion) is a validation of its image as a complete marketing automation platform for digital enterprises. It is also the only mobile marketing platform from APAC to have featured in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for two consecutive years.

As the company marks its fifth anniversary, Raviteja Dodda, CEO and Co-founder, MoEngage, says

Building a global business requires a relentless focus on the product and the people. We have created a company that is driven by values that encourage freedom, ownership, and leadership. The results of which, is seen in the traction for our product and the positive feedback from our customers. The company is 200+ strong and has offices in  Bengaluru, Jakarta, London, Berlin, and San Fransisco.

MoEngage’s phenomenal five-year journey is also a strong counter to those who claim B2B businesses can’t be built in India and to those who typically focus B2B selling toward the West. “We developed an East-first approach to our product. Large consumer base who are increasingly getting on the internet to get things done, rapid adoption of smartphones, its unique technology & cultural challenges, and rise in disposable income made East a perfect fit for our product,” said Raviteja Dodda, Co-founder and CEO, MoEngage.

The customer continues to be at the heart of MoEngage’s growth. Case in point, MoEngage Sherpa, a set of machine-learning algorithms that auto-optimizes the content and timing of the messages delivered to users. This saves MoEngage customers countless hours and dollars spent on experimenting with marketing campaigns. Another example is the proprietary Push Amplification Platform.

It effectively solves a problem marketers all over the world have been grappling with, high failure rates on push notification delivery. Recently, MoEngage consolidated its customer-focused approach with yet another thought-leading product, Dynamic Product Messaging. DPM enables companies to make highly personalized recommendations to their customers, dramatically transforming the user experience.

About the future, this is what Raviteja has to say

It’s gratifying to know that we have been able to register such strong growth and establish a strong brand identity in these last five years, merely on the strength of our superior technology and relentless focus on customers. We want to continue doing that and work towards our vision of creating the world’s most trusted marketing cloud out of India.

About MoEngage

MoEngage is an intelligent customer engagement platform, built for the mobile-first world. With AI-powered automation, optimization capabilities, and in-built analytics MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels like mobile push, email, in-app, web push, On-site messages, and SMS. Fortune 500 brands across 35+ countries such as McAfee, Samsung, Hearst, and Deutsche Telekom use MoEngage to orchestrate their omnichannel campaigns. MoEngage has been featured on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and is the youngest company on the list.  For more information, please visit MoEngage.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

As India continues to take swift steps towards digitalization, fuelled by policy reforms, technological innovation and digital transformation, India’s start-up ecosystem is looking at the threshold of the next wave of growth by leveraging new technological innovations. The National Association of Software and Services Companies [NASSCOM], launched their report on the Indian Tech Start-up Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s, at the side-lines of the of the 16th Anniversary Edition of NASSCOM Product Conclave 2019.The report has been commissioned along with Zinnov.

Adding over 1300+ start-ups in 2019, India continues to reinforce its position as the third largest start-up ecosystem across the world, taking the total number of tech start-ups to 8900-9300 in the last five years.

According to the report, investment in start-ups were steady with USD 4.4Bn in Jan to Sep 2019 across 450 start-ups at a 5% year on year growth trajectory. Funding saw a huge spike at the early stages [Series A, B] as well, with USD 1.6Bn being recorded at 70% YoY growth. The trend witnessed over the year was that start-ups are driving focus more towards the B2B space and almost half of the country’s start-ups are offering enterprise focused services.

India also witnessed the addition of 7 Unicorns in 2019 till Aug, taking the total tally up to 24, which is the third highest number of Unicorns in a single country in the world. Among the new unicorns, it was commendable to see that sectors such as gaming, SCM & logistics and automotive are receiving the recognition they deserve. There are also over 50 potential unicorns in the country at present that have received cumulative funding > USD 50 Mn; pool grew 3X over last year with 35 new additions in 2019.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said

The start-up landscape in the country is becoming the epitome of innovation, with companies bringing out solutions that are aimed at solving locally relevant issues. However, to simulate innovation, government and corporates need to focus on increasing their role as prominent stakeholders playing the part of venture capitalists and providing the appropriate market access, funding, and guidance to seed stage start-ups.

Today, India stands at a very exciting threshold, with the advent of several new technologies, newer avenues have opened. Deep-tech is no longer a mere conversation, but is already seen as a tangible, exciting prospect, enriching lives and enhancing the potential for innovation. There has been a rapid growth in the number of deep-tech start-ups as well as start-ups focusing on the underserved markets.

Increase in internet penetration, better infrastructure for digital transactions and the Indian government’s push towards digital inclusion have evangelized start-ups. Entrepreneurs are now focusing on creating solutions using deep-tech such as artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented reality/virtual reality, blockchain and internet of things, among others.

Over 18% of all start-ups are now leveraging deep-tech, which means there are over 1600 such companies in India. This number constituted only 8% of start-ups incepted in 2014 and has seen a 40% CAGR over the past five years.

Ms. Debjani Ghosh further added

Indian start-up ecosystem has definitely come a long way in providing a level playing field for innovators to flourish by strengthening capabilities and fostering co-creation. The next wave of growth will be at the junction of convergence of technologies, where different sectors will embrace digital to re-define their operations.

The country has over 335 active incubators and accelerators with a capacity to enable over 5000 start-ups every year. More than 65% share of incubators and accelerator programs were added in the last five years, out of which 57% are active outside Tier 1 cities.  The robust start-up ecosystem of India is at a cumulative valuation of USD 95-101Bn and has given rise to 390,000 – 430,000 direct jobs with over 60,000 jobs in 2019 alone.

NASSCOM aims to accelerate this ecosystem significantly by 2025. This entails increasing the number of unicorns to 95-105 potentially and the cumulative valuation to USD 350-390Bn. The target is to also achieve 1100-1250k direct jobs in the start-up ecosystem by 2025. This can be done by improving certain capabilities in proving institutional support at the early stages, so start-ups can tap global markets as well as local markets with ease in public procurement norms and processes.

NASSCOM also recommends building sector specific initiatives such as global centres of excellence [or innovation clusters] for each industry along with industry-specific physical and digital sandboxes. Another area that requires attention is increased corporate and equity investor participation at pre-seed and seed stages; expansion of CSR guidelines to increase capital availability and encouraging the establishment of corporate innovation labs. NASSCOM will continue its drive towards catalysing emerging tech start-ups, build category leaders and support them to create not only for India but also scale up and solve for the world.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

A major concern for policyholders relates to claim management by general and life insurers. In the case of accident claims, there is no uniformity in how life and non-life insurers handle these. There have been instances when the insurance benefits were not paid by the life insurers wherein the insured died while crossing the railway track citing breach of the law as the reason for such rejection. On the other hand, non-life insurers will pay such claims confusing policyholders.

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One reason for the aforementioned discrepancy is the manner in which personal accident coverage is structured. For a general insurance company, such plans are standalone policies. In comparison, life insurance companies include it as an additional rider along with the basic policy.

Personal accident policies comprise a huge business for general insurers

As personal accident policy is a huge business segment for general insurance companies, the manner in which claims are settled is different.

  • Although traveling on the roof of a crowded bus is a breach of the law, if an insured die due to an accident, in this case, the claim is still paid by the general insurer
  • If an individual driving on the wrong side of the road meets with an accident and dies, the claim is still paid because though not legal it is not a criminal offense
  • If a person crosses the tracks dies in an accident; although this is not legal, general insurers are not very stringent in settling claims

However, the insurance claim in the aforementioned cases may be rejected if the deceased was drunk or under the influence of any addictive substance. Most insurance companies do not strictly adhere to the legality of the claim unless it is relevant to a particular case.

Crossing the road without a zebra crossing is also a breach of law. Similarly, traveling on the footboard of a train is not legal. However, insurance companies do not follow very stringent laws and often claims are paid in case of such accidents.

Life insurance claims and breach of law

The core objective behind keeping the breach of the law as one of the life insurance rejection reasons is only to ensure that individuals do not take the laws in their hands. General life insurers often are lenient to such breaches as personal accident covers are a huge business.

For life insurers, personal accident cover is an add-on rider and as per the regulatory guidelines, the sum assured under a rider cannot exceed the basic sum assured. Nonetheless, when a life insurance claim is rejected, the policyholder and his beneficiaries are the sufferers.

One way to avoid such disappointment is to thoroughly read all the terms and conditions at the time of purchasing the policy. Individuals must clearly understand the inclusions and exclusions, as the nature of every policy sold by different types of insurers varies. Therefore, individuals must compare different policies and understand the clauses before making their buying decision.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Finding a business niche is the primary and the most important step towards building and growing a successful enterprise. It gives you the opportunity to cater to the specific needs of the consumers. You can take a niche approach in terms of your area of operation, the customers you cater to, or even the platform you sell through.

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Finding your business niche will allow you to give a head start to your entrepreneurial journey. Moreover, it can help you map a well defined business strategy, which, in turn, can prove to be beneficial while availing a small business loan for your startup.

Take a look at how you can find your business niche

  • Explore your areas of interest and expertise. Try to come up with unique business ideas that match your passion and skillset
  • Establish a business that you are passionate about. Working in the area of your interest will motivate you to achieve more.
  • Work hard on your niche idea and you can instantly boost your chance of making profits.

Conduct market research

  • Before you settle on a business idea and decide to go ahead with it, make sure to conduct detailed market research. It will give you a clear understanding of your target audience, your competitors within your chosen niche, the demand for supply, and the availability of business finance.
  • Researching the market will also help you understand if your business idea has been explored by several other people and has lost its uniqueness. If this happens, you should consider identifying a new niche.

Study your competitors

  • You should study your competitors in detail. This will help you understand how other businesses have performed in the same domain. Knowing your competitors’ proficiency and shortcomings will allow you to craft your business idea in a better way.
  • You should also try to gather information regarding what percentage of the market are your competitors taping into. Then analyze your own products or services and think about whether you can offer your target audience something better than your competitors.

Calculate the profitability

  • Analyze the costs attached to the products or services you are thinking to offer. This will help you understand if it a viable proposition.
  • You can identify profit patterns and take the required measures to ensure success for your business.

Once you have identified your business niche, you should start working towards establishing your business. In order to establish your startup, you would require access to a substantial amount of capital. You can consider availing a small business loan for the same. With leading financial institutions, you can apply for a business loan online from the comfort of your home. Simple eligibility criteria, flexible repayment option, instant loan approval and quick disbursal of the loan amount are some of the advantages of availing a small business loan with a prominent financial institution.

While availing a small business loan, you should compare various loan offers provided to you by different financial institutions and settle for the one that best suits your needs. Moreover, it is also advisable to review the financial institution carefully opting for it. You should settle for a financial institution that offers a business loan with the most competitive interest rate. This can reduce the repayment burden and decrease the overall cost of borrowing in the long run.

Lastly, do not forget to read the terms and conditions of the loan agreement carefully before signing it. This can help you prevent any inconvenience in the later stage. So what are you waiting for? Find your business niche, avail a small business loan, and start your entrepreneurial journey today.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Life insurance is a contract between an individual and an insurance company. It protects the nominees of the insured in case of an unfortunate death. Insurance literacy in India is low due to which there is a reluctance to buy life insurance plans.

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However, things are changing slowly in the country. If you are someone who has not invested in life insurance, explained ahead are the consequences of not having such an insurance plan.

  1. Leaving the dependents in a financial crisis

One of the top benefits of life insurance is that it provides financial security to your loved ones when you are no longer around. If you do not have a plan, your loved ones will have no financial safety and end up in a terrible crisis.

  1. Your family will be in debt

In case of an unfortunate demise of the breadwinner, the family members end in a debt trap. Certainly, this is something that you do not want for your loved ones. Any loan can be taken care of if you have invested in the right type of insurance plan. If you do not want to burden your family with your debt, a life insurance plan is essential.

  1. Unprepared for huge expenses

If you want to start a business of your own or have planned to change your job, financial security is something that will stop you. Without the necessary financial back-up, it is not a good idea to leave a job. Besides a change in job, there are other milestones in life like wedding, the birth of a child, and a dream foreign trip. A suitable life insurance plan such as a money back insurance plan can help tackle these expenses with ease.

  1. Your child’s future will be unsecured

As a parent, you want to send your child to a reputed school so that he/she has a bright future. The cost of education is constantly rising and if you do not plan beforehand, your child’s future will remain insecure. A life insurance plan will help your child transform his/her dreams into reality even when you are not around.

  1. You will be dependent on others after retirement

Once the regular source of income stops, you will have to remain dependent on others for finances. If you buy life insurance now, you are already planning for your retirement. Choose a retirement plan to take care of all your post-retirement financial needs. In case of an unfortunate incident, your dependents will receive a death benefit.

  1. Unable to save on taxes

The last reason why life insurance is important is to save taxes. Undoubtedly, you do not want to lose your money in income tax. Therefore, you need to try to save as much as possible. The amount invested in the life insurance premium is eligible for a deduction under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act, 1961. You can claim a deduction up to INR 1.5 lakh under this section.

Consider these consequences and remember to buy a life insurance plan well in time. It is not only for yourself but also for your loved ones.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Most people confuse themselves into thinking that Health Insurance and Critical Illness Insurance are similar to each other when they are not. Some people do not understand whether to buy a health insurance plan or a critical illness insurance or a combo of both.

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What you don’t realize is that there’s a vast difference between the two as each one of them serves a unique requirement, here’s how.

Coverage

Coverage is offered for a range of illnesses. Health insurance also provides restoration of the sum insured, ambulance charges, domiciliary hospitalization, etc. After the waiting period is completed, even pre-existing diseases and maternity diseases would be covered. However, the number of critical illnesses covered under a policy depends on your insurance provider.

Policy Period

Usually, you avail a health insurance plan for a year and then renew it every year. But, the case isn’t similar for critical illness insurance, it is bought for a longer duration of time.

Waiting Period

The waiting period of a health insurance plan is usually 30 to 90 days. Hence, you cannot apply this if there is an accident. Under a critical illness insurance, the waiting period varies from one health insurer to another. You can claim the sum insured amount upon diagnosis of the illnesses only after this period is completed.

Reimbursement

Under a health insurance policy, if the hospitalization exceeds 24 hours, the expenses will be covered. You can also get the medical bills and treatment costs reimbursed, after the treatment is completed. However, under critical illness insurance, the sum that is assured will be paid to you in full, if you survive 30 days after the surgery or diagnosis.

Benefits

Health insurance policies are indemnity plans, and they cover the actual hospitalization. For filing a claim, you must submit all the medical bills, treatment expenses and other relevant bills. After this, you will be compensated upon verification of your bills and medical expenses.

However, critical illness insurance are fixed benefit plans. If you have any critical illness and it is included in your insurance policy, you will receive an amount which can be utilized by you according to your wish. You can do whatever you want, such as paying off the liabilities, taking the best treatment, paying off any other debts with the received amount after you’ve claimed a critical illness plan. Whatever sum insured is received by you after claiming health insurance can only be used to cover the medical expenses.

Cost of premium

Because of its comprehensive coverage, the premiums that are paid in case of a health insurance plan are higher. On the other hand, under the Critical Illness Cover, the premiums are less. Go for the plan that best suits your needs and the premium does not burden you.

Coverage for members

A regular plan provides health insurance for senior citizens and even an entire family. However, under a critical illness cover, only an individual is covered based on the sum insured. In simple words, both health insurance plans and critical illness plans cannot be replaced with each other. You get unique and different benefits or coverage from both these insurance plans.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Analytics Vidhya’s third edition of DataHack Summit, India’s Largest Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will be held from 13~16th November 2019 at NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bengaluru. Global AI Leaders, Researchers, Machine Learning Experts and Data Scientists will be attending the summit to spark discussions on nextgen data technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Reinforcement Learning, Natural Language Processing, GANs, Computer Vision, Explainable AI, Cloud Computing, Deep Learning, Transfer Learning, Quantum Computing, and Speech Recognition.

There will be more than 1000 AI & ML professionals attending 8 workshops, 30 hack sessions and more than 70 talks.

The conference will witness speakers including

  • Dr. Geetha Manjunath [Founder & CEO of NIRAMAI]
  • Sayan Ranu [IIT Delhi]
  • Dat Tran [Head of AI at Axel Springer Ideas Engineering]
  • Ujjyaini Mitra [Head of Data, ZEE5]
  • Xander Steenbrugge [Head of applied ML-research at ML6]
  • Prateek Jain [Microsoft]
  • Jayatu Sen Chaudhury [American Express]
  • Nishant Agrawal [Intel]
  • Dr. Vikas Agrawal [Oracle Analytics Cloud]
  • Dr. Harshad Khadilkar [TCS]  and
  • 100 more experts sharing their views on the impact of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning.

According to Kunal Jain [Founder & CEO, Analytics Vidhya]

We are on mission to build next-gen data science ecosystem and with DataHack Summit 2019 – we aim to bring together people, machines and their collaborative experience to make our world data-driven! After the immense success of the DataHack Summit 2018, the Summit has become bigger and will go deeper on the subject. With more than 70 sessions from experts across the globe spread across 4 days – there cannot be a better place to learn about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

After looking at the response of the data science professionals from previous years, the organizers have decided to add one whole day of the conference as Hack Day i.e., on  15th November 2019 exclusively for hack sessions. Hack sessions are live interactive sessions by the top data scientists, who build Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning applications in front of the participants. World’s leading organizations like American Express, Intel, Ericsson and Amazon Web Services have partnered with Analytics Vidhya at DataHack Summit 2019 to build a vibrant community of Data Science.

For more details, please visit DataHack Summit 2019

If you are a data professional, or someone who wants to see machine learning in action – DataHack Summit 2019 is the place you want to be!

About Analytics Vidhya

Analytics Vidhya is currently India’s Largest & world’s leading data science community and with more than 4,00,000 data science enthusiasts from 150+ countries across the world.

Analytics Vidhya is the world’s leading knowledge portal for serving all the learning & career needs of data scientists through the latest blogs & articles, machine-learning hackathons, data science training, online courses & programs, conferences, meetups and job opportunities. It is also one of the fastest-growing online training platforms in the world in the AI & ML domain.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Before the festive season of Diwali, people try to renovate and paint their houses in order to make them look attractive. Families make a list of new things to buy, ranging from new clothes, electronic appliances and gifts for relatives and family members, but all this requires a lot of funds.

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Such a high and urgent requirement of funds during Diwali season can only be fulfilled through a gold loan by mortgaging gold articles to a lending institution like banks or Non-Banking Financial Institutions [NBFCs].

Currently, there are various banks and NBFCs that offer gold loan to individuals at attractive interest rates. And with Diwali around the corner, the lending institutions may provide special offers in order to make their gold loans more attractive to borrowers.

Procedure to apply for a gold loan differs from one financial institution to another. But basically, you have to pledge your gold article to the lending institution, which will check its purity and evaluate its market value.

After the verification of the required documents submitted by the loan applicant, the Gold loan is sanctioned, which can be up to 80% of the gold value.

Below is a list of advantages of getting gold loans

No need for Income proof

If you apply for a personal loan, the bank will ask for your income proof to make sure that the person can repay the loan or not. But not in the case of gold loans, where the borrower has to deposit gold to the lending institution who will then give the borrower the loan amount. All this will happen without the need for salary or income proof of the individual.

No adverse effect of bad credit score

Bad credit score will not have any effect on your prospects of getting a gold loan. The lending institution sanctions gold loans once they acquire and verify the gold articles provided by the loan applicant.

Low-interest rates

Compared to the interest rates of unsecured loans like personal loans and home loans, the gold loan interest rate is comparatively much lower. Secured loans like gold loans are secured with gold articles which are mortgaged as collateral.

Speedy sanction

The gold loan does not require days or months to get sanctioned. The documentation requirements are minimum which leads to speedy sanction. Once the gold is handed over to the lending institution, the loan applicant will receive the loan amount in cheque or cash. The time taken on sanction depends on the verifications of documents and gold.

Easy to procure

It is easy to get a gold loan by just mortgaging your gold articles to the lending institution and getting loan amount upto 80% of the gold market value. As mentioned above, there are no additional paper works required which reduces the time taken in getting gold loan approvals.

Next time if you need some urgent funds, especially during festive seasons, do make good use of use gold jewellery by taking a gold loan.