There is a famous quote – ‘Risk & Rewards are two sides of the same coin’ and the same is applicable for monetary investments. However, the investment portfolio would differ from person to person since it is dependent on many factors like risk appetite, assets, liabilities, dependencies, etc. and hence, it becomes virtually impossible for any investment firm to cater to varied investment requirements of such a large audience.

Image Source – Fintech

There is a wrong notion that investing in Mutual Funds or SIP’s is similar & equally risky as investing in the stock market. Due to this, less than 1.5% of the Indian population invested in equity markets and only 2% of India’s household savings were exposed to equity [as per a report from Bloomberg]. However, times are changing and more & more people are willing to invest in SIP’s for long-term benefits, given that they get proper guidance.

This is the problem that many new-age Fintech companies are trying to solve using Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, etc. by giving investors more personalized tailor-made portfolio suggestions based on their persona, long-term & short-term goals, etc. As it is said, you learn from your own mistakes and the 2008 market crash resulted in an Aha moment for entrepreneur Arjun Sarkar. Though he lost a significant amount of money in the crash due to misguidance, he soon realized that it was a ‘larger’ problem that required to be solved. Arjun Sarkar, along with Anup Abhonkar co-founded Everguard Life Ventures Pvt. Ltd. and came up with their first product named SIPtm with the aim to make equity investing simpler by taking investor’s persona and various other data points into consideration. In this episode, we have a chat with Arjun Sarkar, Founder & CEO of the Pune-based startup. The Q&A revolves around the core product SIPtm, fintech, persona-based investing & more. Let’s get started with the Q&A…

Note – ‘I’ in the interview refers to Arjun Sarkar.

Can you walk us through the idea of SIPtm and the team behind the same ?

Idea of SIPtm came to solve the problem of investing for retail investors i.e. answering the questions – Where to invest?, When to invest?, and How much to invest? Because the investor does not know what to do, they invariably go for the default option i.e. trust their friendly neighbourhood bank which is the worst decision they can make. Personally I lost a significant portion of my net-worth in the 2008 crash because I was misled by my relationship manager and invested in the wrong product, that’s when I started taking this subject seriously.

The team comprises of myself – Arjun Sarkar, CEO & Founder of Everguard Life Ventures Pvt. Ltd., the parent company behind the development of SIPtm. I have an MBA from University of Toronto. I have personally managed money for CXO’s and NRI’s in tens of crores for close to a decade and 80% of my personal wealth is invested in mutual funds.

Anup Abhonkar, CTO & Co-Founder has over 18 years of IT experience across domains like Banking, Insurance and Securities. He has worked for leaders in the industry like, Accenture, Barclays and Wipro delivering business critical solutions for Fortune 500 organizations like Aviva and Charles Schwab.

Both of us are passionate about our field. Ask our wives and you will find that we spend most of our time talking about the subject.

What does ‘tm’ stand for in SIPtm ?

TM stands for Through Mobile.

What are some of the data points that you take while recommending a particular SIP or Investment to a particular customer ?

We follow a thorough process backed by research, where we consider multiple quantitative and qualitative factors across domains like Economics [Macros and Micros] and Market and also take customer specific inputs like time-horizon and quantum of investment before suggesting a fund. Research further shows that some categories of funds are better suited for SIP mode of investments so we take that in to consideration as well.

In other words, it is not a cookie cutter approach of following ratings of funds or just looking at the past performance of funds. We are talking investments here, not buying e-commerce products where customer can buy just based on reviews and ratings, they may do well in the short term but will not able to sustain it for a meaningful period of time.

Please talk about ‘Persona Based Investing’ and how can millennials use a platform like SIPtm to plan their investments and maximize their savings ?

‘Persona based investing’ is a concept which maps life stage of investors to priority goals which then helps to filter the optimal investment mix for them. SIPtm is a great product for millennials as it is prescriptive in nature i.e. it is like a doctor listing out the medicine and the dosage which makes decision making very simple. More importantly, the dosage or SIP amounts are in the range of typical monthly savings which can be channelized in a disciplined manner thereby earning much higher returns than other traditional saving products like recurring deposits or insurance products.

Which is the target market segment of SIPtm and can you share some details about the customer demographics of SIPtm ?

Target market segment of SIPtm is people with regular income as SIP mode of investing is a good fit for them.

There are lot of Fintech companies like Scripbox, Sqrrl, etc. that are into goal-based investments, what are the USP’s of SIPtm over their competitors ?

SIPtm is a vehicle to achieve goals but takes a different route than its competitors to reach the goal faster, more predictably and with less volatility. The USP is in the name itself, the app is built ground up for SIP investments only i.e. no lump sum investments which makes the journey less bumpy and more predictable.

The other differentiator is that SIPtm offers a complete solution, right from prescribing the monthly SIP amount, to selection of funds, to distribution of monthly amount between the funds. More importantly, it re-balances the portfolio at appropriate times during the journey i.e. It does not take the fill it, shut and forget it approach.

We are a fintech company i.e. a financial services company that leverages technology to make life easier for our customers. Not the other way round i.e. a technology company that has built a financial app? The nuance is very important as you are suggesting an investment solution not a consumer commodity like laptops and mobile phones where ratings work.

As per a report, there is very small percentage of investors/would be investors who plan to invest in the Equity market [or MF], how does SIPtm plan to change this ‘resistant’ behavior from investors ?

Resistant behaviour is because of fear of loss – The answer is SIP mode of investing as SIPs manage volatility better and as a result, give higher returns at lower risks. Also, SIP amounts are small, so you are not putting a lot of money at risk at any point in time. In case of SIPtm there is another level of assurance, as the suggestions are coming from experts based on 5000+ hours of research. There is also a visible change in the behaviour in the recent times, as per latest figures, India is raking in over a billion dollars in SIPs per month now.

What is the Total Addressable Market [TAM] that you are trying to address with SIPtm?

20 Million SIPs with average investment of Rs 5000 per month

How is the response from the early adopters of SIPtm and what are some the best features that are liked by the community ?

The response from early adopters is great with SIP values ranging from Rs. 5000 right up to Rs. 20,000 per month. The best feature liked by the community is the prescriptive investment suggestion and the overall simplicity of the investment experience.

Currently how many AMC’s are syndicated on the SIPtm platform and how frequently the data is updated on the app ?

This is one more differentiator for us, we have shortlisted only the top 5 AMCs of the country based on some key criterion’s, one of them being the staying power and that is a conscious decision. We may add a couple more in the near future if they pass the criterion’s that we have laid out.

SIPtm Core Team – Anup Abhonkar, Co-founder & CTO [L], Arjun Sarkar, Founder & CEO [R]

Once the user has created an account on SIPtm [and all his investments from various AMCs are under one window], what other services does your team provide to the investors so that they can get more returns from their investments ?

The most relevant and important service provided is the rebalancing of the portfolio and timely interventions to ensure that the customer goal is achieved in time.

Can you give a small glimpse about the tech behind SIPtm ?

SIPtm App has a very simple process flow and UI only because, underneath lies a network of multiple systems, including the App back-end, payment gateway, our back-office tech and RTAs and these systems talking to each in a secure and efficient manner through APIs.

What is the on-boarding process for customers on SIPtm and how has initiatives like IndiaStack, Aadhaar, etc. helped Fintech companies like SIPtm in on-boarding & other services ?

The Customer on-boarding process is very simple and totally paperless. We take minimalistic information from the customer as a one time setup. We know paper work is boring, however this basic information is a part of the Regulatory requirements. After verifying the Customer information, we activate the customer. The customer then goes for the eMandate process. Here is where we use the Aadhaar based e-Sign process that is very simple and reduces the manual 15 days process to just 3 days. So yes, Aadhaar helping immensely in reducing the cycle time as well as going paperless.

SIPtm is currently limited to MF’s/SIP’s, are there any plans/timeline on whether it would be expanded to cover other financial instruments ?

Not in the immediate future as we want to focus all our energy in one area that we are really good at and an area that is under penetrated.

With growing investor and entrepreneur interest in Fintech, many wallet companies like Paytm via PaytmMoney, FreeCharge, MobiKwik, etc. have launched a boutique of finance products on their platform, does this growing competition have an impact on a startup like SIPtm and how it could result in expansion of the fintech ecosystem ?

We do not consider wallet companies as competitors as they do not have the expertise or experience in mutual fund investments. It is like going to a pharmacist who just stocks different products and asking them for a recommendation on medicines to treat a serious disease. But  the fintech ecosystem can benefit if the wallet companies tie up with players like SIPtm as, as they can generate an incremental revenue stream and actually add real value to their users by helping them generate wealth vs earning cashbacks.

Does SIPtm charge any commission from the investment that is being done on the platform ?

Not directly from the customer but through the AMCs we have partnered with. That being said, we do not push mutual funds suggested by the asset management companies as a typical distributor does, just position funds shortlisted by our algorithm.

What is the revenue model of SIPtm and does it follow the Freemium model & do you plan to be a preferred investment partner for enterprise customers ?

As of today our revenue model is commissions. Yes, we plan to partner with enterprise customers in the future but the value proposition for them has to be worked upon.

There is a growing demand of products like SIPtm in Tier-2, Tier-3 cities [and beyond], what are some of the marketing initiatives that your team has taken in order to penetrate into that particular market ?

Yes, we are in talks with potential partners who have a strong existing network in the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

SIPtm is backed by a very experienced founding team and there are very experienced domain-expert mentors behind SIPtm, how has the mentorship helped your team in building the ‘right set’ of features on SIPtm ?

The mentorship has helped us focus on the essentials and cut out the noise. Some of our key decisions on the product road-map have come through the regular calls we have with our advisors. The right set of features has come through a market research project we conducted for our target segment before developing SIPtm and we continue to collect feedback from our live customers.

Can you touch upon the funding of EverguardLife Ventures & are looking for institutional funding in the near future ?

Everguard is internally funded as of now, but we are looking for institutional funding this year for product development and marketing.

The app is currently present on Google Play Store, is there any timeline for the app to be released on the iOS platform ?

We are currently focussing on building traction and incorporating valuable feedback into the Android version. Work on the iOS version is underway and we shall release it shortly.

Do you plan to follow an app-only strategy or there is a plan to open-up a desktop version of the SIPtm platform [since it would definitely be useful for users who log-on the platform from their work location] ?

SIPtm is an app as mobile phones are the preferred mode for our target segment based on our customer research. That being said the algorithm that runs SIPtm is based on our earlier desktop platform called Finanswer which we plan to develop further for other target segments.

After demonetization, there has been a huge demand for payment apps [including UPI], wallet providers providing investment options like Digital Gold, etc. do you see that trend working in favor of apps like SIPtm [that makes an investor’s life smoother] ?

Absolutely, as users get more comfortable using and moving money through Apps it will help apps like SIPtm. We however, do not see payment apps as serious competitors because of the differentiators we touched upon earlier.

2017 was a tough year for startups [especially from funding point of view], how according to you should entrepreneurs deal with such adverse situations ?

Entrepreneurs should always be prepared and focus on their customers to earn revenue. Also, look out for investors who understand your domain well and who can help raise money when it is required, so that the team can focus on the product and business development.

SIPtm team is currently working out from a co-working space in Pune, what are some of the advantages for a startup/growth company while working out from a co-working space ?

You grow your network and get a chance to test your ideas quickly since the target segment is around you and more accessible.

There is lot of talk about implementation of Blockchain, AI, etc. in Finance & Fintech, what are your comments on the same and where do you see the tech moving ahead in the next 3~5 years ?

The ‘Blockchain’ and ‘AI’ landscape looks promising in delivering value to businesses and thereby increasing customer service levels which is very important in Finance. Organizations currently are trying to get a hang of it in multiple use cases and it will be a mainstay in the near future.

Some books that you highly recommend for entrepreneurs and some closing comments for our readers ?

The books I would recommend are E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, Founder of Michael E Gerber Companies and Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Founder of PayPal

We work really hard all our lives to earn money but do make our money work hard for us, by the time we realize this, half our working life is over. I would advise your readers to start investing early as time in the market is the most important factor and it is totally under our control. Investing is a process, boring maybe, but definitely life changing if taken up seriously.

SIPtm for Android can be downloaded from here. We thank Arjun Sarkar for sharing his insights with our readers and walking us through his journey. If you have any questions for him, please share them via a comment to this article or email them to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com

Tessol, a Mumbai-based startup in the CleanTech-led cold chain logistics space, has recently raised an undisclosed amount in follow-on equity funding from early stage venture capital firm 1Crowd, and existing investors Infuse Ventures and Ankur Capital.

Image Source – Tessol

Founded by IIT Delhi – Harvard alumnus Rajat Gupta, Tessol aims to revolutionize the cold chain distribution in India using its proprietary ‘Energy Storage’ technology based solutions. These products and solutions, while being environmentally sustainable, reduce the lifetime cost of cooling by more than 50% therefore making cold chain on low value products viable.

Over the last few years, Tessol has developed solutions ranging from farm level collection to home delivery and works with the largest FMCG, food processing and e-commerce players in India. Funds raised in this round would be utilized by Tessol for strengthening the current product suite and bringing some disruptive products that were under development to pilot and commercialization.

Rajat Gupta, CEO of Tessol, who has several years of past industry experience, said

There are huge gaps in the Indian food supply chain and while there are several cold chain products available in the market, there is a dearth of viable solutions. At Tessol, we believe in partnering with our customers and working out system level solutions that can drastically impact costs while improving the performance.

Anil Gudibande, Co-founder – 1Crowd, said

We see Tessol occupy a sweet spot at the intersection of India’s underserved cold chain architecture and a vacuum in environmentally-friendly clean energy solutions. Tessol’s farm-to-fork product range serves myriad use cases, application segments and customer profiles, and the breadth and depth of their client roster bears ample testimony to the efficacy of their innovation-driven offerings.

Amber Maheshwari, Vice President – Infuse Ventures, said

Tessol is one of the very few innovation-driven cold chain product companies. With their superior energy-efficient technology, already adopted by many marquee clients across industries, the company is well-positioned to service the growing demand for cold chain infrastructure.

Krishnan Neelakantan, Senior Director – Ankur Capital, said

We are excited about the rapid growth in Tessol’s range of cost efficient, high performance cold-chain solutions, which is bringing in new, quality-conscious customers across end-user segments. We believe Tessol’s technology can, over the longer-term, aid significant reduction in losses in the agri/food chain from the current high levels.

About 1crowd

1Crowd is an early stage investor and startup ecosystem with a unique co-investment lead equity crowdfunding platform and seed & early stage Fund. Launched in 2015 by a team of experienced bankers, with two offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the platform has invested in over 17 ventures, with over Rs. 40 crores in AUM. Recently, 1Crowd announced the first close of its seed & early stage Fund. For more information, please visit 1Crowd.

Uniphore Software Systems has been awarded the NASSCOM AI Game Changer Awards for 2018 under Speech Recognition category for its innovative Automated Speech Recognition [ASR] engine for language processing. The award is instituted by NASSCOM’s Centre of Excellence; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence [CoE-DSAI].

Image Source – Uniphore

Uniphore’s award winning innovation, ASR engine for language processing converts speech to text. This engine is trained to understand the differing accents, pronunciations and vocabulary that are common in the Indian languages as well. This has led to significant improvement in overall customer experience and brand loyalty for the enterprises.

While commenting on this recognition, Umesh Sachdev, CEO – Uniphore Software Solutions said

We are very happy and proud of this recognition from NASSCOM. Speech Recognition is the most complex deep technology space. Uniphore has built three products which unleashes the power of speech for enterprises. Our products help enterprises to mine the big data and help deliver better business out comes and superior customer experience. Today our products can recognize 100 plus global languages, including 17 Indian languages.

NASSCOM has constituted AI Game Changer Awards award to recognize, showcase & publish the most innovative, high impact and high-tech AI solutions that organizations have delivered internally or to their clients. The award that featured 50 innovative ideas in AI included categories like NLP, IoT, computer vision, advanced analytics and robotic process automation apart from speech recognition.

About Uniphore

Uniphore Software Systems is headquartered in IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai. Uniphore was incubated in IIT Chennai, India in 2008 and currently has offices in India, Singapore and U.A.E with about 100 employees spread across all locations. Uniphore’s investors include John Chambers, Kris Gopalakrishnan, IDG Ventures India, India Angel Network, YourNest Angel Fund and Ray Stata. Uniphore has worked with over 70 enterprise customers and served over 4 million end users.

Singapore based Health Tech startup, Symple Wellness Platform [SWP] has acquired Pune-based AllizHealth, a wellness & health analytics platform for an undisclosed sum. AIH will be rebranded to ‘Vivant’, SWP’s operating brand.

Image Source – Vital

The acquisition dramatically speeds up Vivant’s expansion into the India market and brings with it a robust technology architecture, a strong operating team of almost 40 people across various functions, and close to 750,000 end customers. Three AIH Co-Founders will continue with Vivant – Chinmoy Mishra as Chief Business Development Officer, Dr. Rasmi Mishra as Chief Product Innovation Officer & Gaurav Vij as Chief Technology Officer.

The combined platform will provide a comprehensive digital health offering with over 6,500 partners with strengths across the care spectrum to empower individuals to engage with their health to get healthy, stay healthy or manage disease. The platform will also deliver solutions emphasizing maternal health, menstrual health, diabetes, orthopaedics, cardiovascular, child nutrition and elder care. Customers will also have access to Vivant’s Advisory Board, which includes internationally and nationally recognized experts across key fields that impact individual and community well-being.

Anupa Naik, CEO – Vivant, said

This acquisition brings with it an outstanding team and technology capabilities that will strengthen our ability to help customers engage with their health meaningfully and productively. This is a significant investment for us and reaffirms our commitment to the Indian market. We warmly welcome the AIH team to Vivant and look forward to working together.

Chinmoy Mishra, Co-Founder of AIH, said

We are delighted to join forces with the Vivant team and look forward to bringing our services to customers at scale. Vivant’s strong domain expertise and leadership team was a natural fit for AIH and we look to our shared future with great optimism.

About Symple Wellness Platform Private Limited

Symple Wellness Platform Private Limited is a Health Tech company based in Singapore. Through its operating brand ‘Vivant’, SWP delivers a digital healthcare platform that helps customers engage with their health across the care continuum, helping them get healthy, stay healthy or manage disease. The wide range of services include digital health records, health risk assessments, doctor consults, health check-ups, health coaches and condition management programs. For more information about Vivant, please visit Vivant

About AllizHealth

AllizHealth founded in 2013 by Chinmoy Mishra, Dr. Rasmi Mishra, Gaurav Vij and Dhairya Gupta, is a Pune based Health Tech venture. As a consumer focused ‘wellness & health analytics platform’ for early identification, tracking and management of health risks and conditions the platform enables users to store/access/share health information efficiently, track various health risks and parameters, store digitized health documents and connect with care givers. At the time of acquisition, the AllizHealth team of 40 people serves several clients from corporates & insurers to healthcare companies & retail customers with an overall end customer base of 750,000 lives.

Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform, announced the closing of its $21 million Series C funding round from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Blume Ventures also participated in this round. Unacademy has raised $38.6 million in total so far.  The funds raised will be utilized to onboard new educators on the platform, penetrate deeper in categories including pre-medical, GATE and CAT, and further strengthen the core product and technology team.

Image Source – UnAcademy

Commenting on the announcement, Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy said

Right from the outset, we have focused on growing the platform by empowering the best educators. We have grown tremendously since our inception, and just last month, more than 3000 educators were active on the platform and lessons created by them were watched more than 40 million times by learners.

I am thankful to our existing investors for infusing Unacademy with growth capital and reaffirming their faith in us. We will utilize these funds to invest heavily in our product and technology to make Unacademy one of the best global internet products out of India. We remain committed to growing our platform with more educators, learners and categories.

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital [India], Singapore said

Sequoia India is thrilled to lead the new round in Unacademy, which is already making a big impact in India’s online learning space.  Gaurav, Roman and Hemesh are driven founders with a very focused mission, and that is having a clear effect on the pace of production innovation, team building and overall growth.

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. The platform empowers educators by making it easy for them to create high quality educational lessons on the Educator App, that learners access via the Learning App.

Alok Goel, Partner, SAIF Partners, said

Unacademy has demonstrated tremendous progress towards their goal of delivering personalized learning by connecting great quality educators and students on their platform. The company has diversified across several new domains and has achieved amazing word of mouth among learners. We are excited to continue supporting Gaurav and team in their journey.

Sameer Brij Verma, Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, said

We are super excited to support the Unacademy team on their mission to become India’s largest online learning platform. The team has done a great job in building market leadership in the government test preparation domain since we led their Series A round in early 2017, and they are aggressively expanding to new examination categories.

In October 2017, Unacademy also launched ‘Plus’ courses on its platform with a private discussion forum, live video classes, and a personalized classroom learning environment with its top educators. Currently, more than 30 educators take paid ‘Plus’ courses on the platform apart from the lessons that are also available for free. Since the launch of Plus courses, the company has achieved a 6x growth in its monthly revenue.

About Unacademy

Unacademy is an education technology platform founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. It was started as a YouTube channel by Gaurav Munjal in 2010. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Unacademy is India’s largest learning platform that brings expert educators together with millions of students in need of quality education. With a growing network of 10,000 registered educators and 3 million learners, Unacademy is changing the way India learns. The company has raised $38.6 million so far from prominent investors such as Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. To know more, download the Unacademy Learning App from Play Store or Unacademy Learning App from the iOS Store

Airbus subsidiaries NAVBLUE and Aerial have signed contracts with three Indian startups, accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, to power cutting-edge technologies that will help usher in new industry benchmarks in aeronautical data services, flight operations and imagery services.

Image Source – AirBus

NAVBLUE signed up Bengaluru-based Stelae Technologies to enhance aeronautical data services quality and consistency while enabling faster introduction to the market of the next generation fully data-driven and connected EFB [Electronic Flight Bag] solution. NAVBLUE also extended its agreement with EFlight with the aim of providing a comprehensive service solution to the Indian business aviation market.

The third agreement was signed between Airbus Aerial and Navi Mumbai-based Airpix for a joint go-to market in India to provide geo-analytic solutions and imagery services in the country. The agreements mark the successful culmination of Season 3 of Airbus BizLab’s start-up acceleration programme TAKE OFF 2018, which seeks to bolster the Indian government’s ‘Make in India’ and Startup India initiatives. The latest partnerships are in addition to those that Airbus signed with Bengaluru based start-ups – Neewee and EFlight in February 2018.

Bruno Gutierres, Global Head, Airbus BizLab, said

For the last couple of years I have been convinced with the potential and the quality of entrepreneurs in India. I am pleased to see that all these partnerships between Airbus and Indian startups are proving me right.

Bizlab is a part of Airbus’ innovative strategy to bring together start-ups and Airbus intrapreneurs to work and speed up the transformation of their innovative ideas into valuable businesses. It has a community of over 2000 B2B start-ups from India, South East Asia and Israel. Through its six-month acceleration programme for start-ups and internal projects, Airbus Bizlab gives access to a large number of coaches, experts and mentors in various domains that help start-ups and internal projects speed-up the transformation of their ideas into valuable businesses.

As part of the TAKE OFF programme, Airbus BizLab will sponsor two travels to Europe for Indian start-ups in a period of six months as well as fund up to 50,000 Euros to them for the demonstration of proof of concept.

Fabrice Villaumé, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at NAVBLUE, said

NAVBLUE believes in India’s potential for multiple reasons. One is India’s proven capacity for innovation within the IT sector, which is demonstrated perfectly by the start-ups present at the Airbus’ BizLab, with whom we work very closely. Another is the potential of the aerospace industry; India has the world’s fastest-growing domestic airline market.

We are very excited to work with startups and SMEs in India to help power this growth, and bring value to the Indian aviation industry with our integrated solutions.

About Airbus Aerial

Airbus Aerial focuses on developing new imagery services. These services leverage the best software and aerospace technology from across the globe to offer actionable data and analysis of information provided by drones, satellites, high altitude aircraft and other sources

About NAVBLUE and N-Flight Planning

NAVBLUE is an integrated Flight Operations and Air Traffic Management Services company providing end-to-end, innovative and integrated flight operations solutions for a wide-range of customers around the world. NAVBLUE’s flight planning system, N-Flight Planning, is well renowned for its adaptability to each customer’s specific needs. It enables a number of flight operation benefits and reduced operating costs through increased flight plan accuracy, dynamic route construction and higher productivity of dispatchers and flight planners. NAVBLUE’s N-Flight Planning also offers superior route optimization results, with integrated avoidance of in-flight hazards, such as forecast turbulence and icing.

Technology is the single greatest reason for man to believe in a better future. But technology is complex and messy and every time it makes progress, it seems to leave many behind. At this precise juncture, lies the role of design. It has the ability to make technology as palatable to human beings as is possible. The role of design is to humanize technology so that the complexity and the mess is hidden from the users. The users then just have to keep in mind what they want to achieve and not worry about the complex ways in which that objective will be achieved.

Image Source – UX Design

The objective of the field of design is to help a business achieve its goals. Therefore, if it doesn’t contribute to the bottom line, it cannot be considered successful. This is where Redd, a specialized design studio can come to the rescue of startups as well as large organizations. Redd specializes in developing version 1.0 products which is the holy grail when it comes to UX design. Redd develops wire-frames, perform user studies, produce visual, web and graphic designs, icons, content and illustrations and perform analysis on already implemented designs for brands. Ancillary services like branding and copy-writing are also included in the process. At the core, Redd excels at developing version 1.0 applications – a huge challenge in the UX field. Today we have a chat with Sharan Grandigae, Founder & CEO – Redd about essentials of design, aspects of design development, work being done by Redd, funding, etc. So, lets get started with the Q&A…

Can you please walk us through Redd and its core team composition ?

Redd was founded by me, Sharan Grandigae, and I am the CEO of the company. We have two Senior Partners, Abhilash K V who heads the design function and Priti Srinivasan, who heads marketing. Apart from this, there are two Lead Designers, Akshitha Praveen and Ashwita Palekar who head the different teams that are formed for executing the projects that we undertake. Interestingly, 73% of our employees are women and one of the leads is only 24!

Redd is a specialized UX Design Agency. How can Redd help early-stage as well as growth-stage start-ups by partnering in their product design and development ?

Early stage start-ups have the challenge of answering two vital questions: first, whether the product or service they are offering is useful, and second, how much are people willing to pay for the product or service. While these are straightforward questions, they are incredibly hard to answer, and many entrepreneurs have a tough time figuring out what it is they can offer or who is their customer. By taking a user-centric approach in designing their product or service offering, we can help answer these questions first before packaging them correctly for higher conversion or beginning to address ancillary revenue streams.

For example, a client came to us to help design a system aimed at the construction industry. While they came in asking us to design an application aimed at making it easier for the customer, the trouble was that there were so many services that the platform could put a potential customer in touch with, right from architects, plumbers and electricians to earth movers and scaffolders. This would undoubtedly overwhelm any user and they would simply drop off. Thus, we helped them create packages of services under the headings ‘For new home buyers’, ‘For re-modelling an existing home’, etc., which easily explained which package a customer can choose.

But more than that, the client wasn’t thinking of the business from the perspective of a digital platform and this didn’t allow them to see the ancillary revenue streams available on the platform through the ads, building pages to showcase work that vendors had done, etc. We were able to identify these because we had done it for several other clients before.

Clients that come to us in the growth stage have typically been through the first round of figuring out what the customer wants. They are looking at optimising their presentation and processes so as to increase conversion and scale their businesses. They may have one or several goals to achieve, such as increasing their user base, the total billing per customer, time spent on the site, and referrals or frequency of purchase; generating sales leads or any other such key performance indicators.

Once they define the goal of the design process, we examine their existing system, analyze their traffic data, customer profiles and conversion patterns and begin finding the right solutions to the problems we identify within the system. We help design simple and efficient systems that help the user achieve their goals while simultaneously achieving those of the company.

In how many different business verticals does Redd have expertise in? Can you now list down successful case studies in those verticals ?

At Redd, we have stayed away from specializing in just a few industry verticals as that’s a recipe for disaster for a creative agency. Instead, we take on projects from as wide a range of industry verticals as possible. Our team is currently working on the pregnancy experience of a mother-to-be while figuring out the best ways to sell steel even while finishing up a project related to core banking! We learn something new every day.

And this isn’t just us staying generalists because it is interesting for us, there are clear business reasons for doing so. Many companies can hire design teams in-house, but the problem is that these become entrenched in the systems that they are developing. This entrenchment can cause them to only be able to see the next stage of evolution of the product or the stage after that. But how does a client’s business achieve evolutionary jumps that can induce spikes in the company’s growth? That jump can only come from lateral thinking and that’s the one reason clients who have design teams in-house still come to us.

For example, we learnt something while standing in jewellery stores observing customer interactions when we were engaged by BlueStone to redesign their e-commerce site. That learning stayed with us and sparked a new idea that found application when we were later engaged by Lenskart for their mobile site redesign. Who would have thought that jewellery and glasses were related? And if you think about it from Lenskart’s perspective, many cycles of design-development-research-analysis were saved because of this!

Since you have worked with a range of clients, can you tell us what are some of the misconceptions that a few start-ups [or companies] have about UX Design and how Redd hand-holds such start-ups in their design journey ?

Misconception #1 First and foremost, people think UX design is about beautification. It isn’t. It is essential to the core functioning and profitability of a business. You would have noticed so far that I have not mentioned aesthetics even once. The reason is that we no longer live in a world that tolerates bad-looking products, so beautification and aesthetics are a base-level requirement. Design goes beyond and examines the efficiency of an entire business system and helps tune that to achieve the best that it can.

Misconception #2 Second, the right time to engage a UX agency is after the product is built and functioning. People seem to think that this is the cheaper approach but that’s a matter of perspective. If you are an early stage start-up, you want to know whether you have a product that people will spend their money on. What if your offering is good but the way it is presented is below average, or it’s not easy to use the product, or if the payments for the same were difficult to make? If these points resulted in poor conversion, would you write off your offering as bad? There are many reasons why a business fails but the reason you work with a UX designer is to provide the business the best chance it has to succeed.

Misconception #3 Third, it’s cheaper to hire a designer in-house rather than an agency. While different agencies charge differently, hiring the right design talent is hard and retaining them in the long run is harder when you take into consideration the fact that most designers revel in working on a variety of things rather than on one thing for a long time. It’s better to own the technical development team in-house and outsource the design function to specialized agencies.

Please share your engagement policy with companies and how does Redd act as a co-enabler rather than just being a design partner [for them] ?

We work in two ways: on fixed-bid projects and on retainers. For most first-time engagements with clients, we work on a project basis for a fixed scope of work. This keeps expectations clear for the client. We work on the retainer model when clients want to work with us like an internal design team, providing us tasks every week. We set aside a specific number of hours that the client can use, and they can assign us any task related to any of the services offered by Redd for a simple flat monthly fee.

Whichever way we engage with clients, we make sure that we do all the work necessary to create the right experience from market and user research, to creating the communications materials that are going to be required post the UX design stage.

Mr Sharan Grandigae, Founder and CEO, Redd

There are many design agencies catering to web, mobile design; what are some of the core USPs that Redd brings to the table for its clients ?

Most UX design agencies’ DNA is in graphic design but Redd’s background was in the development of custom software that run various business operations. Through this, we have developed a keen sense of not only development methodologies but also of how businesses function at a core level. Redd can move fluidly between discussions on front-end frameworks and version management systems to EBIDTA and the four P’s of marketing!

With User Experience and Seamless design across devices becoming increasingly important, what can you share about some of the best practices in design and how start-ups can leverage the same to design well-crafted products ?

A pattern we are seeing across the board is that a customercs experience is not only delivered on one medium, such as mobile websites, but occurs across the desktop website, mobile apps and also with walk-ins at stores. For example, one common pattern we’ve seen across clients is that their browsing is high on mobile web and apps, but purchases tend to be made on desktop websites or at stores. So we’ve adopted a ‘universal commerce’ approach which allows us to design experiences that begin on one medium and end on another.

This is the paradigm shift that we see happening and one that we would prompt other entrepreneurs to take into consideration when thinking about their user experiences.

Can you share some details about the funding status of Redd and are you open to institutional funding ?

We have been bootstrapped all along and have been building based on our own revenues. We are looking for funding only to launch some products being developed in-house.

Which according to you are some of the beautifully designed Indian as well as global products ?

Bangalore’s own Ather Energy’s electric scooter is a fantastic innovation in the field of product and service design. Not only have they succeeded in designing a very well-thought-out scooter, but they have also considered the ownership experience and designed the right sales packages. On the global front, unsurprisingly, I see what Tesla is doing as the new benchmark for how products and services need to be thought of, planned and executed.

There has been a significant rise in the number of product [read hardware] start-ups in India, are you looking to venture into product and UX development for such start-ups ?

Every field of design has the same underlying principles and thinking methodologies for producing the outcomes in their respective fields. We see the design of products as a natural extension of our current capabilities, so yes, this is something we intend to do.

You have been in the business for a couple of years. What has been your overall learning experience running a bootstrapped enterprise like Redd ?

I think we have learnt a lot already. But the funny thing is that while one would expect to have learnt something new and unique, the number of things that fall within that category are very few and rarely impact your business in a meaningful way. The single most impactful lesson I’ve learnt is that everything, even the most complex of ideas, can be understood by breaking it down to its principles.

So, along those lines, I would phrase the fundamentals of business with the following five principles:

  1. You have nothing if you don’t have a customer who is willing to pay you for what you have to offer.
  2. Put together a great team who can share in your passion.
  3. Pay attention to finances, especially cash-flows.
  4. Build processes that can scale when your business does.
  5. You need a think-tank that has people with whom you can discuss business ideas on an ongoing basis.

Though it is late to ask, what is the overall target market of Redd and do you service global companies as well ?

Our target market is technology or technology-enabled companies that are looking to build something innovative. We typically deal with start-ups wanting to scale and enterprises that want to be more agile. Some examples of global companies that we’ve worked with are Infosys, L&T Infotech, FIS Payment Solutions and TopUniversities.com.

There has been lot of buzz about chatbots, at least their usage is exponentially increasing in the fintech, healthcare, edtech sector. What are your thoughts on the same and how exactly should start-ups [as well as growth stage companies] make use of chatbots effectively ?

There are many stages of interactions between customers and a company. The early stage interactions are more general, repeated and substantially vast in number compared to later stage interactions. These early stage interactions are best handled by bots and there needs to be a smooth hand-off to a live person when the discussion gets more specific.

We have developed our own chatbot called Cruz and use it on our website. It manages many of our conversations with prospective clients, candidates searching for jobs and students looking for internships and has handled a lot of these smoothly. It has, in fact, become better over time.

Redd has a string of clients [ranging from start-ups to huge companies like L&T]. What are some of the learnings while dealing with such a wide range of clients and how agile [and open] are big companies to suggestions and change ?

Our job, in a way, is to understand the vision of the promoter and express that in terms of an app. With start-ups, we are typically working directly with the founders and this process is relatively easy. With large enterprises, a special team may be assigned to work with us, but the decision maker is rarely in the room. So, it is like us making proposals and then waiting for them to run the ideas up the decision chain and get back to us.

While these are indicative of the behaviors of majority players within each group, we have seen start-ups with many decision-making layers and we have worked with enterprises that make decisions and move faster than start-ups! So, it’s not like these stereotypes are always played out.

Does Redd also deal with clients in emerging economies since the entrepreneurial talent is blooming in places like Vietnam, Chile, etc. ?

We are open to it, but haven’t worked with clients outside of India, the UK, the US and the UAE yet.

Effective UX does help in user engagement and conversion rates [at least for e-commerce kind of sites]. Please share some learnings from Redd on how it helped clients in these two areas [or any areas in retention] ?

For us to design better experiences, we need to really understand the concerns and constraints users go through during the purchase of or engagement with a product or service. This helps us frame our client’s offerings in such a way that their customers consume them. This usually helps in engagement first and consequently in conversion.

For instance, when we were engaged by BlueStone.com who sold jewellery online, we stood in jewellery stores and observed how customers purchased jewellery. The first thing we observed was that when customers came into the store and asked to see, say bangles, the salespeople would bring not one, but several trays of jewellery at a time. This seemed like such a waste to us because so much effort was being spent in bringing out the trays and then restacking them after the customer had left, so we asked the salespeople about this. What they said changed the way we thought about selling jewellery forever.

They said that customers rarely walk into a jewellery store with the intention of buying one particular piece of jewellery because this purchase is driven not by utility, but by emotion. So, there’s no way to ascertain through questioning what the customer has in mind specifically because they rarely do and even when they do, it’s not like they won’t change their minds if they see something better. The only thing that the salespeople could do to increase conversion was to bring out trays and trays of jewellery, thus increasing the chances of the customer seeing something they like and purchasing them.

This was the core learning around which we designed BlueStone’s e-commerce store – to increase the number of items seen by clients in each session. The way we went about doing it was complex and intricate, but it’s based on such a simple learning!

There has been a surge in the number of conferences on Design [DesignConf], Technology, IoT, etc. How do such conferences result in the blooming of the eco-system and is Redd a part of any such consortium ?

These conferences show how big the field of design is becoming. These kinds of conferences are usually great forums to share and exchange ideas from each field of design. But interestingly, the number of sessions being conducted on ‘design thinking‘ has specifically increased over time and is being subscribed to by non-designers more and more. This is a great indicator to me that design is gaining acceptance outside of the design world and is here to stay.

For start-ups, the core team is very important. How did you as a founder deal with hiring for Redd and please share some effective tips from hiring in start-ups ?

Redd is composed not only of people who are trained in design as a part of their education, but also those that came to it from outside [like me]. We’ve been extremely lucky in having been able to hire great people right from the beginning. I have met and hired everyone myself and don’t anticipate that I will ever hand this function off to anyone else in future. But to make my process a little easier, I have an automated system that sends back a set of four questions to anyone applying to Redd. The answers to these questions tell me a lot about the people even before we meet them.

We are able to weed out a huge number of applicants right at this stage and the ones that make it past this point are typically only met with to assess skill and culture fit within our company.

Some ideas on UX and Design that can be used as an effective tool for growth marketing ?

Improving the UX of an offering makes it 16% more likely to be recommended to others [Forrester] – that’s probably the only fact that I can quote about the effectiveness of UX. We don’t have more data other than the fact that all our clients are continuing to grow in size after our engagement with them.

Books or resources you highly recommend for Design Aspirants as well as entrepreneurs?

Guns, Germs and Steel, Sapiens, The Consolations of Philosophy, and Good to Great. The first four seasons of the TV show The West Wing are a must-watch.

We thank Sharan Grandigae for sharing his insights with our readers and walking us through his journey. If you have any questions for him, please share them via a comment to this article or email them to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com

Completing the largely existent care gap between hospitals and home, SuVitas Holistic Healthcare launched Bengaluru’s first dedicated transition care facility in Domlur. In spite of having one of the fastest growing healthcare ecosystems of the country with improved tertiary care hospitals, Bengaluru has been consistently falling short in providing quality follow up care for the effective management of critical ailments. Filling this need gap, the pioneers of transitional care in India, SuVitas brings to the startup city a 60 bed post hospitalization rehabilitation center with specialized programmes for stroke, head injuries, spinal cord injuries, hip-knee replacements and post cardiac procedures.

Image Source – Suvitas

Post undergoing prolonged critical care, a patient needn’t be fully recovered to go home and will require skilled nursing care and regular physiotherapy, besides proper nutrition and emotional support. When patients go though transition care before going home, there is improved independence and functional outcomes thereby enabling accelerated and empowered recovery along with enhanced quality of life.

Since its launch in Hyderabad in 2015, SuVitas has fueled a revolution in the country’s healthcare scene by introducing world-class transition care, bringing together protocol-oriented personalized care plan in a home-like relaxing environment through a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team of doctors comprising of physicians, skilled nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, clinical psychologists and dietitians.

Medical circles of the city revealed Bangalore has only 2500 ICUs in the private sector. This is way less than the required number to support the rising incidences of strokes, road accidents, spine injuries and total knee replacements reported annually in the city.  Dr Vijay, Director, New Initiatives, SuVitas remarked

Considering the shortage of ICU beds in the city, insufficient trained rehab professionals and financial challenges to setup more critical care facilities, there is tremendous need for effective utilization of critical care services and ICU setups through transition care.

Transition care serves a patient’s needs at 1/3rd cost of a hospital and 1/10th cost of critical care management and is therefore considered to be an affordable value addition to improve one’s QALY [Quality Adjusted Life Years].

Shedding light on SuVitas’ aggressive expansion plans, Sateesh Andra, Founder and Board Director, SuVitas said

Post-acute care is gaining greater relevance in today’s value-based care world. The growing base of non-local patients, increasing demand for long-term quality care for neuro cases, nuclear family culture and the flourishing medical tourism industry can significantly scale up the growth of segment.  With transition care expected to grow to a 10,000 bed requirement in the near future, we expect SuVitas to emerge as an indisputable leader in the category.

Dr Harish Kalathil, Director, Operations, SuVitas confirmed the brand is ramping up its expansion plans and is looking at raising an expansion capital of Rs 15 Cr for launching two more centers in Mumbai and Chennai within 18 month’s time. He added

We are glad the medical circles have recognized the integral role played by SuVitas in completing the care continuum over the past few years. In our second stage of expansion, we are looking at raising an additional VC funding to expand our presence to eight cities including Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Kochi and Coimbatore among others.  With an impressive year on year growth rate, SuVitas reported a revenue growth of 140% during the FY2016 to FY 2017 and 50% from FY2017 to FY2018. 

Highlighting the niche SuVitas has been able to create overcoming existing challenges in the industry, Dr Ramesh Byrapeni, an interventional cardiologist and Founder, Board of Director SuVitas said

While transition care is considered equally important to mainstream medicine in developed economies, India is gradually waking up to its necessity. The rise in hospital-acquired infections and re-admissions in hospitals along with inefficient utilization of the critical care facilities have triggered the need to improve patient outcomes by offering to continue care through inpatient rehabilitation.

With over 900 plus recovery stories of patients from different states of the country, Middle East, US & Singapore, the category defining venture, SuVitas has evolved to be the preferred rehab partner by reputed specialists including neurologists, neurosurgeons, intensivists, orthopedicians and cardiologists across the nation.

About SuVitas

SuVitas is the leading provider of inpatient transition care facilities that enables individuals to ‘Live Again’. SuVitas serves patients who have undergone treatment for serious ailments across neurology, cardiology, orthopedics and early stage oncology, and are not completely recovered to go home. Combining protocol-based care plans with personalized attention in a home-like environment, SuVitas helps individuals achieve enhanced flexibility, strength and independence. SuVitas is a privately held, angel-funded company with its headquarters in Hyderabad.