The Chennai Angels [TCA] announced Rs. 1 crore investment in The Indus Valley, engaged in running an online healthy cookware products store. The Indus Valley, was founded in 2016 by the husband and wife duo Jagadeesh Kumar and Madhumitha Udaykumar. Their idea is to transform Indian kitchens with healthier cookware options. The funds will be used to expand their presence in India’s growing home and cookware products space.

Chandu Nair who lead the investment from The Chennai Angels said

Indus Valley is a natural cookware brand designing and selling healthy cookware options that are made using natural materials like iron, clay and wood, working with artisans to produce the products. Their core customers are women in major cities between 25-40 years of age, who are health conscious.

The cookware industry is poised to grow at 21% p.a. and customers are getting increasingly health conscious and the organic food, wellness market, fitness market is growing are all growing at 20-25%. We look forward to working with the Indus Valley team and help them scale up their operations.

Jagadeesh Kumar, Co-Founder of The Indus Valley said

We are extremely excited to partner with The Chennai Angels. Our investors come with varied skill set and would be a great value addition to our company through their constant mentoring and support. More people in India are moving towards healthier lifestyle choices. Our solution to transform Indian Kitchens with healthier cookware products is a constant hit among our target group. 

The Chennai Angels is one of India’s most active angel investing groups. Founded in the year 2007, it is comprised of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders with a track record of starting and scaling large enterprises. Additionally, several seed and venture capital firms hold institutional membership in the group.

Though it is located in Chennai, TCA’s investing members and portfolio investments are not limited by geography. Unusually for an angel investing group, TCA has a diversified portfolio that goes well beyond a restrictive tech focus, reflecting the diversity of its members’ interests. TCA portfolio companies benefit from the collective expertise and rolodex of its members.

upGrad, India’s leading Online Higher Education Company, has acquired CohortPlus, India’s largest and the most active community on Product Management and one of India’s largest communities on Data Science.

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India has seen more than 400% rise in demand for data science professionals across varied industry sectors at a time when the supply of such talent witnesses a slow growth, said Talent Supply Index [TSI] by Belong. Built with the vision of becoming a career partner for people looking to transition into new age careers and having grown organically to 31K+ community members, CohortPlus brings with itself rich consumer insights, which will enable upGrad to enhance its offerings for the learners.

Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, Co-founders, upGrad in a joint statement, said

Employees in India are looking forward to picking up new age skills to make themselves more relevant in the current workforce. upGrad’s highly engaging online learning solution along with CohortPlus’s deep penetration in the community of Data Scientists and Product Managers, will allow us to reach a much larger and relevant audience.

CohortPlus is an online community founded in 2015 by Srinivasan Narayan, which brings together like-minded career aspirants in a single community platform, where they can network with each other, ask and clarify doubts and be abreast of the latest events in the field of data science and product management. Its members comprise of 31100+ professionals from around the world, from companies like Google, Adobe, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, Practo, Zomato etc. It is one of India’s largest and most active communities in Data Science and Product Management.

Members can post their questions and get various perspectives from industry professionals and can also get assistance for job interviews. The 3 member team of CohortPlus is based out of Bangalore. Today this community is one of the largest and the fastest growing community in this domain and continues to grow organically. CohortPlus had raised angel investment from Manish Maheshwari [Twitter India MD], Alok Mittal [Indifi Founder] and Sujatha Kumar in 2015.

Srinivasan Narayan, Founder & CEO, CohortPlus, said

With upGrad’s support, CohortPlus intends to build a proprietary go-to platform for anyone looking to take a step up in their careers. We are looking forward to widen the joint vision of building careers of tomorrow and becoming transformational partners for those looking to up-skill and move up in their careers.

About upGrad

upGrad was founded in early 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli and Ravijot Chugh, with an aim of empowering individuals to reach their full professional potential by providing them with formal educational programs.

The company provides programs in the areas of Data Science, Technology and Management to college students and working professionals. These programs are created by partnering with a number of top academic institutions, including BITS Pilani, IIIT-Bangalore, Cambridge Judge Business School of Executive Education and MICA. The company also has collaborations with some of industry’s best such as Google, Flipkart, Gramener to name a few in order to create a cohesive and practical learning experience.

upGrad has powered over 3 lakh careers since its inception. The company has been awarded the ‘Best Tech for Education’ by IAMAI in 2019. The company received the ‘Best Education Brands’ award by Economic Times and has made it to LinkedIn’s ‘Top 25 Startups’ in 2018. For more information, please visit upGrad.

Technology has now become a tool that can be used by everyone to access equal opportunities. It has made it possible for everyone to conveniently complete their day-to-day requirements. It has brought the entire world together and the service industries are benefiting from it too. The use of technology in the insurance industry has made it simpler for customers to connect with insurance companies. The insurers can serve their customers better as technology makes the entire process faster and more accurate. The digitalization of the insurance industry has transformed it into a more secure place for the people.

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Buying a life insurance policy has become quite easy with the help of technology. There was a time when it was quite time-consuming to apply for a policy. There was a lot of paperwork required and you needed the help of the insurance agents to make sure that you do not make any errors in the application. From human error to lack of clarity, everything was challenging when it came to buying an insurance plan. Those days are behind us. With the use of technology, insurance companies are now able to reach out to more customers and make the policies available to them.

This has led to more and more customers buying insurance online. It has not only made the process simpler but technology also saves a lot of time. The existing customers and potential buyers now understand the importance of technology in the insurance industry.

The processes required to complete buying and claim settlement in the insurance industry used to be tedious. The regulations regarding the policies were completely different too. The use of technology has made it possible for the customers to use the online portals of the insurance companies and complete the processes without the help of any third party. Another thing that insurance technology has simplified is the process of comparing insurance policies. Previously, you needed the help of experts to determine which insurance company can meet your needs. Today, it is possible for you to simply find information regarding different policies online and make your own decision.

Now, insurance companies offer tools to calculate premiums online. These tools are easy-to-use by anyone. So, you can check how much you need to pay in order to get the covers you need. This way, you do not have to pay for anything that you do not need and make your policy more affordable. Buying life insurance is important, and the online availability of the policies comes with all these great advantages. If you notice the current trends regarding the use of technology then you can easily understand the effects of technology in insurance and how far-reaching will it become in the near future.

Use the benefits of the online insurance industry and make sure to maximize your profits. Utilize every facility that comes with technology and invest in the right insurance policies.

If you are looking forward to buying your own house, a home loan can be a great financial aid. Instead of liquidating your entire savings, opting for a home loan is always a better choice. Financial institutions can help you realize your dream of buying your own house by offering easy monthly installments and convenient repayment tenure. However, before you settle for a home loan, ensure that you are well-aware about its intricacies.

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One of the key factors while opting for a home loan is the interest rate. Therefore, choosing the right interest rate is crucial to avoid any financial stress during the loan tenure. However, most individuals face a lot of dilemma when it comes to choosing between fixed and floating home loan interest rates. Below is a guide that will help you have a better understanding of fixed and floating interest rates.

Fixed Vs Floating – What to choose?

Both fixed and floating interest rate have their pros and cons and borrowers should make a choice depending upon their convenience. A fixed interest rate on a loan ensures that the equated monthly installments or EMIs remain constant throughout the tenure of the loan. On the contrary, in case of floating interest rates, the EMIs would fluctuate as per the market dynamics, that is, when interest rates increase or decrease.

Fixed interest rates – Advantages & Disadvantages

Home loans come with a long tenure. Opting for a fixed interest rate will provide you a clear idea about your monthly installments. You can have a better understanding of your loan repayment by opting for a fixed interest rate.

On the other hand, it is observed that the fixed-interest-rate loans are anywhere between 1 to 2.5% higher than floating-interest-rate loans depending on the financial institution you opt for. Moreover, most banks offer fixed interest rates for a limited duration, thereby subjecting the borrower to floating market rates once the fixed rate period is over.

Floating interest rates: Advantages & Disadvantages

Floating interest rate won’t be a feasible option if you have a fixed monthly budget, as it does not give a clear idea about the monthly installments. However, floating interest rates have gained popularity in recent times as they are usually lower than fixed interest rates. A lot of financial institutions are now attracting Home Loan applicants using floating interest rates as low as 8.35%.

Leading NBFCs like Finserv Markets, offer a transparent floating interest rate on home loans. Moreover, applying for a home loan with Finserv Markets is a hassle-free process. Minimal documentation, fast and user-friendly online process and flexible repayment options are some of the major benefits of opting for a home loan with Finserv Markets. Additionally, you can also customize your loans so that it suits your needs in the best possible way. Lastly, Under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, first-time applicants get the added benefit of reduced EMI’s and interest rates.

So what are you waiting for? Take your first step towards purchasing your dream home now.

Finserv Markets, from the house of Bajaj Finserv, is an exclusive online supermarket for all your personal and financial needs. Loans, Insurance, Investment, and exclusive EMI store, all under one roof- anytime, anywhere!

Leading payment solutions provider, Innoviti Payment Solutions, announced a significant upswing in the volume contribution of the fast-growing UPI payment platform to its overall payment transaction processing in offline retail stores after introduction of ML-based Path Predictor technology.  Path Predictor, a patented technology of Innoviti, uses Machine Learning to decipher patterns lying deep within millions of transactions passing through Innoviti to create models that dynamically and in real-time select the best path for a UPI transaction, leading to dramatic change in UPI success rates and a seamless consumer experience.

Since introduction of this technology, over the recent 3 months of Q2 2019, UPI@POS transactions at Innoviti have grown to contribute nearly 2% of Innoviti’s overall transaction processing volume. This technology was also used by Innoviti to enable Google Pay across its stores and the combination of UPI through Google Pay and Path Predictor has led to volumes climbing to nearly 10% for several stores.  The convenience from this seamless experience is visible with a nearly 21% repeat monthly usage of Google Pay by consumers for their daily purchases in such stores.

In offline retail, where card acceptance through POS is a must, the checkout experience using UPI was less than optimal due to high transaction failure rates.  With the addition of Path Predictor, Innoviti has crossed this hurdle and looks forward to a multi-fold surge in Google Pay and other UPI-based payment formats in the coming months.

Commenting on the partnership, Sajith Sivanandan, Business Director, Google Pay and NBU, India said

Our vision is to enable fast, seamless, and secure payments for our users anywhere, at any time, whether they are paying other users, buying products or services online, or shopping at a retail outlet. The offline ecosystem forms an important part of this objective and we’re excited to partner with Innoviti and facilitate this across the country.

Rajeev Agrawal, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Innoviti said

We are very excited by the upsurge we are seeing in customer usage of UPI-based payments at physical stores after the roll-out of the Path Predictor tool. With rapid increase in payment transactions and increase in number of payment types, conventional technology approaches are unable to deliver desired consumer experience. Innoviti has been investing deeply into data sciences and machine learning to push the technological edge for our customers to the next level. We are delighted that our machine learning strategy coupled with superior integration with Google Pay is showing results for our merchants.

Google Pay has been deployed by Innoviti across 12,000 points of acceptance including in large pan-India retail chains like Reliance Retail, Vishal Megamart and others. It is being extended to Innoviti’s entire merchant base in a phased manner.  Across India Innoviti processes 5B$ of payments annually from over 1000+ cities, with a throughput per point of acceptance of 7000$, 2x of India’s average [as per RBI data].  Innoviti provides payment solutions to merchants doing digital billing, by integrating their billing and payment operations into one seamless flow.

The Indian startup ecosystem has boomed at an unprecedented rate in the past decade. The country is now being reckoned as the third largest startup economy in the world, after the UK and the US. Such statistics often fail to convey the complete story. In this case, though the numbers tell an impressive saga, they do not tell us the number of failed startups and broken dreams. A report by IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics found that 90% of Indian startups fail within the first five years.

On a closer look, the primary reasons for this are the lack of understanding of the compliance, various socio-economic hindrances and the one which stands out above the rest – lack of early-stage startup accelerators. While the number of accelerators in the Indian market has significantly hiked since 2014, the ones that cater to early-stage startups are significantly lower. 

While the number of startups and startup accelerators are witnessing a significant jump, a majority of both just cater to the tech industry. Startup industry has now become synonymous to that of the tech industry. 

Breaking the industry myths, Viridian Accelerator Centre [V@C], formerly known as Espark-Viridian, has accelerated more than 300 startups across various sectors with a success rate of 86%*. Startups accelerated vary from idea-stage to ones that had their revenue system streamlined. Contrary to industry belief, V@C also observed that there is a significant rise of startups in the unconventional sectors.

A large number of startups that were accelerated belonged to the education and agriculture sector. Innovative ideas from such sectors often miss out on the traction they deserve following the lack of initial guidance from an accelerator. 

Success of a startup in today’s time is gauged by the amount of funding it raises. Nasscom’s Startup Report’ 2017 suggests that around 20-25% of Indian startups end up shutting down after receiving the early stage funding. This can be primarily attributed to two things – 1. Dilution of equity which prioritizes expectations of the investors to drive revenue rather than building on the idea and 2. The inexperience of new entrepreneurs to understand how to use the raised funds, or for that matter, to know whether they even require funding at an early stage.

V@C believes that the passion behind an idea is more important than anything else in order to lay the basic foundation of a startup and hence, it does not take any equity from a startup to accelerate like other startups. This gives the founding team the drive to work on their idea and understand the complete dynamics of entrepreneurship rather than concentrating on raising funds.

Viridian Ventures, a venture catalyst in the startup and SME space with more than 250 professionals across the development, manufacturing, investment management and advisory functions instituted Espark-Viridian [now V@C] in association with Entrepreneurial Spark, UK. The non-profit accelerator has been pushing the idea of entrepreneurship in India and helping young entrepreneurs to believe and pursue their dreams.

V@C has been promoting the spark of entrepreneurship throughout its journey with innovative competitions such as Big B – a startup idea competition catering to young aspiring entrepreneurs, WE – a mentoring session for women entrepreneurs, Case In Point – a case study competition to give the aspiring entrepreneurs an understanding of real problems that startups face. The more V@C interacted with young aspiring entrepreneurs, the more it felt the need to connect with its target audience. Learning from the insights Espark-Viridian rebranded itself to V@C which resonates more with young entrepreneurial minds.

*Success rate = number of  startups with a prototype + number of startups operational / total number of startups x 100

How many times have you opened and read an email from a company because the subject line was interesting and content in the email was personalized? That company could either be an e-commerce firm promoting discounts on products or company cross-selling products as per your purchase history or sending a reminder about the price increase in items left in the shopping cart. Such companies create effective & customized email drip campaigns with tools like Snov.io. Drip emails are extremely useful and bring a lot of profit to their users.

It is the era of hyper-personalization and the intent of making an important decision [buying, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.] is key when the email is personalized. As per a report, 86% of consumers who responded to the survey feel that personalization plays a major role in making purchase decisions.

Though social media marketing is an integral part of online marketing strategy, email marketing is still a vital piece as far as online marketing is concerned. It is also referred to as Drip Email Marketing which is a direct marketing strategy where promotional pieces are sent across to existing and prospective customers, details of which are captured in a lead nurturing campaign. The name is derived from drip irrigation where plants & crops are watered in small amounts over a long period of time to achieve the necessary results. Just the same is with drip emails: one by one, emails are sent to people with some pauses.

Why use Snov.io?

Snov.io is a leading platform using which customers can create effective email drip campaigns that can be sent at different phases of the sales funnel or campaign’s life-cycle. It follows a freemium model hence you can use the majority of the features before you plan to use the premium version. The primary benefit of drip campaigns is that it keeps the existing customers updated about the progress as far as the product is concerned and generates better opportunities to cross-sell products. Using drip emails from Snov.io, you can schedule, design, and send drip campaigns based on specific actions, triggers, or customer history. It is a great way to keep the customers and users engaged through the life-cycle that comprises stages – Awareness, Interest, Consideration, and Purchase [pre & post].

Manual sending emails is a challenging task and it will not yield the same results like email drip campaigns built with the help of Snov.io. Using Snov.io, you can set multiple-step hyper-personalized email campaigns with minimal effort and track results to measure effectiveness and perform necessary actions. To get started with the creation of drip campaigns on Snov.io, you need to create an account on the platform.

A step-by-step guide to creating an email drip campaign

Now that you are logged in, you are all set to create an email drip campaign on Snov.io. Below, there are some of the major steps you need to take.

1. You need to visit the Email Drip Campaigns section on the web application. In this section, you can see a list of all the email drip campaigns that you have created so far. Click the New drip campaign button and give an appropriate name to the campaign. The name should be in-line with the purpose of the campaign; names like Campaign-1, Campaign-2, etc. should be avoided.

2. You can choose one of the active accounts or set up a new one for sending emails. Once you have the list of contacts to which you plan to send an email drip campaign, you need to decide whether you want to send emails to only verified email addresses or to all. If a recipient has multiple email addresses, you have the option to choose whether the campaign should be sent to all of them or only to the first one.

3. Once you select the sender’s email account the users will reply to or feedback will be sent, you need to select the recipients of the drip campaign. It is better to create a list of recipients since it eases the task of managing the list. There are four types of elements to create an email drip campaign – Email, Trigger, Delay, and Goal. In the campaign created by us, we seek feedback about the blog from our subscribers.

4. It is recommended to add the elements of personalization in a drip campaign since they make the campaign more effective. By default, there are 11 system variables, though if you need more, you can manually add the ones you need.

5. You can set a Trigger condition [Contact opened email or Contact clicked on the link from email] after which the drip campaign will stop for certain time duration and the next email will be sent later.

6. You can add the Delay element that will pause the campaign for the specified time after the reply is received.

7. Your drip emails may have a certain goal or goals associated with it e.g. in our case, no further emails should be sent to the subscribers after the feedback is received. After the set Goal is achieved, no further emails are sent in the automation flow. This gives flexibility to the campaign creator since they need not monitor the goals all the time. Shown below is the final drip campaign that we’ve created for seeking feedback about the blog from our subscribers.

The effectiveness of any type of email campaign also depends on the time when the campaign is sent to the recipient. For example, if your users are predominantly from India, it makes sense that the campaign is scheduled according to Indian Standard Time [IST]. Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns tool also lets you schedule campaigns as per different zones that you can achieve the best Click Through Rate [CTR] or Click To Open Rate [CTOR].

Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns benefits

To persuade you, we’ve collected some benefits of using the Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns tool.

  1. Drip email in minutes: You can create a highly-customized email drip campaign within minutes since the tool is easy-to-use and does not require any technical know-how.
  2. Track campaign performance: You can send emails to your users and customers in one go and keep a track of the campaign performance. You also have the flexibility to fine-tune the campaign in case it does not show relevant results.
  3. Schedule campaigns for better results: You can schedule campaigns based on your customer’s time zone so that the campaign reaches the intended recipients when it matters the most!

If you are an email marketer looking to improve the performance of the sales funnel, you should definitely give Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns a try.

Since most of the consumers are online, it is important for brands and businesses to have a presence online. And for that, many brands are establishing their own websites and blogs. But just starting them is not enough. If you want good traffic, more clicks, better ranking, and high ROI you have to work on it, and that is where SEO comes in.

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Make SEO an essential part of your marketing strategy and keep track of its trends. It is important to keep a track on it, because every year new SEO trends come and you don’t want to be left behind.

In this blog, we will talk about some of the newest SEO trends that you must look out for in 2019.

  1. Optimize for more than Google search engine

Since years, Search engine optimization was done keeping Google in mind, but in 2019 this trend is changing. People nowadays search on various things about products, and you have to optimize for that too and not just your website if you want to get more business.

Currently, people search on Amazon for things they have to buy or on the app store for a particular app. Thus, it is crucial that you learn how to drive traffic from other things too.

In simple terms, 2019 is asking you to be on top of everything, whether it be Amazon, or app store, or a podcast channel, anything where people can search for your brand.

  1. Content should be exceptional and of high quality

As usual content will always be the king, many trends will come and go, but this won’t. If you want your content to come in the top three Google searches, use exceptional and quality content. Especially, since 2018, as Google has updated its algorithm to intensely focus on evaluating the quality of a blog or sites content.

The websites that will have exceptional content with depth will have great rankings and enough organic traffic.

It is crucial that you publish good content, something that is relevant to the consumers and informs them about your brand too. Make sure your content strategy is not just about getting more users, but also about engaging them. You should also insert the relevant images, so that your content look good. You can use Canva to make amazing blog images.

  1. Include Microformats to your website

In terms of coding, microformats are HTML patterns that provide information about your website to Google.  It helps search engine to know what exactly is your website about and then rank you appropriately.

If you provide honest microformats, Google will reward you with better rankings. Also, it makes your content more engaging for the consumers and encouraging them to click on it. As we all know, more clicks mean more traffic and better revenue.

  1. Voice search

A study has shown that by 2020, 50% of the searches will be voice searches. Voice-enabled devices like Alexa and Google home will perform most of the voice searches on behalf of consumers without making use of a screen.

Voice searches are long, so SEO for that is completely different. You will have to find 7-9 words phrases as your keyword including a question that people might say while voice searching for your brand.

Consumers usually ask what, where, how, and when questions so optimize your website for that.

  1. Focusing on technical SEO is important

In 2019, you will have to focus on the technical SEO of your website, because every year numerous sites are coming up and their complexities keep increasing too. Focus on these areas as part of your technical SEO:

Speed – You will have to work on your site’s speed, and make it fast and simple. Google will rank your site better if it loads quickly.

JavaScript – Most websites even now use JavaScript and its frameworks to create their website. That is why you have to be a little familiar with JavaScript so that you can understand how a search engine works with such sites.

PWA – Progressive web apps are the future, and you have to figure out a way to make sure that your website has a future as PWAs.

These are some of the trends that you need to implement in your SEO marketing strategy. To know about more trends, keep watching this space.

About the Author

Kavita Paliwal is an Outreach Specialist cum Content writer at ViralChilly. When not glued to her laptop, she can be found making travel plans that rarely happen :). Connect with Kavita on Twitter @dreamerkavita