You have a path-breaking idea and willing to quit your job to start-up on your own, great! But depending on the idea and the market that you are targeting e.g. mobile, software, IOT, etc. you need to figure out whether you need to look out for external/institutional funding or continue being a bootstrapped startup [on the lines that you at least have an MVP ready]. If you are a hardware startup, you might also think of starting a Kickstarter campaign.

Wrike, a project management software products platform that is used by high-performance teams has come up with a very informative infographic titled 7 Ways to fund your startup. We liked the overall presentation due to which it can be an informative guide for a newbie entrepreneur or for someone who is willing to take their startup to the next phase.

7 Ways to Fund Your Startup
Infographic brought to you by Wrike project management software products

Do leave your feedback in the comments section…

The Grand Finale of Conquest 2017, BITS Pilani’s international startup challenge, concluded on a high note at Hyatt Regency, New Delhi. With DCB Bank as the title sponsor, Conquest has been become a paradise for startups, providing them with a chance to voice their ideas, network with industry leaders, and obtain incubation and funding opportunities.

The winner’s position was grabbed by Recopro,? which manufactures recyclable paper pallets which are cheaper, stronger & greener than the traditional wood counterparts, while the runners up were Incredible Devices,? which works on providing affordable treatment techniques for CVD, a disease with a fatality rate of 80%. The winner and the runner-­up have been awarded INR 250k and INR 150k of equity­-less cash funding.

Conquest, BITS Pilani’s International Startup Conclave, is an initiative whose wheels were set in motion back in 2004. Thirteen years have passed by, with a couple of revamped models and success stories laden throughout, with a lot more promise exuding from Conquest 2017. The edition, in association with Zoho, Accel, WNS and PayU, raked in 1000+ startup applications and in partnership with Letsventure filtered the number down to the Top 50. The demographics and sectors of the registered startups were variegated in equal measure, making the competition pan-India with a few foreign applicants. The number was brought down to the Top 50 based on a rigorous scrutiny spread across 36 extensive parameters.

The top 50 startups were then mentored on a one-on-one basis in mentoring sessions held at Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The networking sessions witnessed attendance from the likes of Meera Iyer, CMO – Big Basket, Ashish Goel, Head of Product – Zomato and Suvonil Chatterjee, former CDO, Housing and Flipkart.

Dr. Bindu Dey, the Guest of Honour for the Grand Finale, ?is the current secretary of the Technology Development Board. In her address to the gathering, she emphasized on the importance of commercializing the results of research, and the role played by Technology Development Board in the same.

Praveen Kutty, Head of Retail and SME Banking, DCB Bank, on his experience with Conquest, said

The experience has been brilliant as always. It is our third year of association with Conquest, and each year, the finalists have been splendid. We have actually started interacting and doing business with a couple of finalists from the previous editions. Conquest is a remarkable event, and it is commendable what the team does to put it together.

The itinerary consisted of two panel discussions, a pitching round for the Top 10 startups in front of  investors from over 25 investment firms and leading industrialists, a networking lunch along with interaction of the jury with the audience in the Fish Bowl round.

The first panel discussed nuances that a young entrepreneur should keep in mind. Some of the panelists who shared their thoughts on the topic were Nishith Rastogi, CEO & Founder of Locus.sh, Barath Shankar, Senior Analyst, Accel Partners. Dhruv Mathur, Co-Founder at Little Black Book, Abhishek Gupta, COO at Tlabs and Sanjay Nath, Managing partner at Blume Ventures.

The second panel, consisting of Vivek Khare, Director Strategy at LetsVenture, Abhiraj Bahl, Co-Founder at Urban Clap, Vikram Upadhyay, Chief Mentor at GHV Accelerator, Shantanu Mathur, Country Head at Knowlarity and Sujit Panigrahi, CEO, Fitness 365,  discussed the troubles of innovating in a risk averse country like India.

Erik Azulay, Director, Nexus Startup Hub was among the members of the jury. Talking of Conquest, he said

The quality of startups and the pitches that I saw here has been much better than at other events. Kudos to Conquest for ensuring quality at every stage!

The Fish Bowl round was the most looked forward session where the students and entrepreneurs in the audience were given a chance to directly interact with the corporate leaders at the event by asking them questions in an open ­to ­all discussion. The jury members, including Nilesh Kothari, Managing Partner, Trifecta Capital amongst other distinguished industry leads, were part of the session. The session was an enthralling experience, with discussions on topics ranging from the rise in popularity of Initial Coin Offering [ICOs] to the heated debate on Artificial Intelligence.

With a handpicked audience consisting of some of the biggest names among VCs and Angel investors, the top 10 start-ups in the country as well as students from the leading institutes of India, the Grand Finale of Conquest 2017 has lived upto its reputation of being a startup paradise, and every startup enthusiast’s networking dream.

PayPal, the global leader in online payments have announced a shortlist of five new Financial Technology [FinTech] startups – Finbox, Neoeyed, Paymatrix, Scalend and Tybo as new entrants into its PayPal Incubator in Chennai.

The announcement was made after the final round of pitching during the 5th Incubation Challenge, where 10 shortlisted startups from 250 startups presented to an esteemed panel of judges including Guru Bhat, GM Technology & Head of Engineering – PayPal, Anupam Pahuja, MD – PayPal India and Rama Bethmangalkar, Venture Capitalist, formerly with Ventureast.

As a part of PayPal’s vision to transform and democratize financial services, the Incubator helps elevate and drive innovation across the FinTech industry with a focus on startups in financial technology as well as adjacencies like loyalty, machine learning, big data and logistics among others.

Guru Bhat, GM Technology & Head of Engineering – PayPal said

In its 5th year, the PayPal Incubator has received an overwhelming response with over 250 applications from early stage FinTech startups – a 150% growth from last year, reflecting both the need for an incubation program, as well as the FinTech industry’s potential. Our program is designed to help our newly incubated startups script their own success stories by facilitating access to PayPal’s expertise in cutting-edge technology and by enabling them to leverage PayPal’s market leadership around the world.

Launched in 2013 in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs [TiE], the incubator provides a conducive environment for early-stage startups to grow and evolve at PayPal’s Technology Center in Chennai. The program offers startups technology counsel and mentorship, infrastructure support and networking opportunities with both investors and customers. In addition to these, PayPal will also be picking up an undisclosed stake in each of the selected startups this year.

Shortlisted Startups

Finbox is a digital lending software as a service which enables lenders to digitize their user journey and underwrite using alternate data. FinBox’s platform combines multiple APIs to build various digital lending experiences across use cases. FinBox API’s enable lenders validate Identity, underwrite using data from traditional and non traditional sources and cross sell financial products to their customers. FinBox products integrate seamlessly with the lender’s mobile and web properties and also with the loan management system backend.

Neoeyed helps the businesses to generate more revenues and improve users’ security by simplifying the login and registration processes on mobile applications. Using mobile devices, Neoeyed can recognize users by collecting information about human behavior that allows them to login without effort, nothing to type, nothing to remember, nothing to do…Transparent, simple, secure

Paymatrix is an analytics-driven property rental management platform that streamlines rent payments and collections for tenants, landlords and property managers. The platform’s dashboard provides solutions for end-to-end rent management including tenant screening, credit facilitation for rent deposits, rent documentation, rent automation, renters and landlords insurance and also helps in better interaction between tenants and landlords.

Scalend offers a ready to use AI enabled customer insights platform for financial services companies. The platform combines proprietary AI models with Big Data – Hadoop’s unlimited storage and compute power to help BFSI & Fintech companies generate actionable insights around omni-channel customer journey, back-office optimization, in matter of weeks not months or years

Tybo is a cloud based omni-channel e-commerce platform designed for home based and small-sized businesses. It provides the merchant a single view of their evolving business across multiple sales channels. The platform is focused on easy set up, simplicity of use and customizable design to create a beautiful storefront. It also enables end-to-end integration with supplier system and saves time by importing products directly into their store with real-time inventory sync.

Bengaluru based Datasigns Technologies has raised USD 1.5 million Pre-Series A funding from SRI Capital, Beenext and Pravega. Datasigns Technologies, founded by Monish Anand, Rahul Sekar, Anand Barua and Tushar Patel, had earlier raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Sanjai Vohra [former MD of JP Morgan], V. Bunty Bohra [Managing Director and India CEO of Goldman Sachs] and Peeyush Misra [Ex- Partner and MD at Goldman Sachs].

Image Source – Fund Raising

SRI Capital’s portfolio includes Fab Hotels, Healthify and Yellow Dig among others, Beenext has invested in – Droom, Citrus pay, No Broker, Faasos and Pravega Ventures has invested in Crofarm – an agri-tech company, Innovaccer – big data platform for enterprises.

Datasigns Technologies is a mobile first lending platform, which lends via their android application called Shubh Loans. Shubh Loans is a vernacular language app which builds a proprietary credit score and report for loan applicants, thereby helping them understand their credit standing holistically.

Sashi Reddi, Founder & Managing Partner of SRI Capital said

Proud to back a rockstar team, led by Monish Anand, in the consumer lending space in India. Many massive companies are going to be built in this space, finally being able to lend to the next 200 million consumers—Shubh Loans will be one of them.

Shubh Loans score is dynamic and changes with applicant’s financial and non- financial behaviour. Using the Shubh Loans app, users can apply for a loan of up to 2 Lacs with maximum 2 years tenure. Datasigns has partnered with multiple banks and NBFCs, helping them in building their loans books.

Monish Anand, Founder & CEO of Shubh Loans stated

We are excited to have these great investors on board, at the same time we are even more determined to stay disciplined and execute our plan well.

Rahul Sekar, Co-Founder & Chief Data Scientist said

The lending business in the country is at an inflection point, our focus is on creative and responsible use of data to bring financial literacy and credit to people who deserve it the most.

Shubh Loans takes pride in its aim to democratise credit by making it available to all and believes that an unserved customer doesn’t make for an unservable one. Shubh Loans has set its sight on bringing over 10 lacs people into the formal banking system as part of its mission 2020.There are currently growing at 50% month on month and have tied up with over 9 lending institutions.

Fintech Valley in Vizag, a sustainable global Fintech ecosystem have announced the establishment of government sponsored Fintech Valley Accelerator at Visakhapatnam in collaboration with ICICI Bank and Mahindra Finance as corporate partners and Microsoft as the technology & acceleration partner.

Image Source – Fintech Valley

Fintech Valley in Vizag created by APEITA [Government of Andhra Pradesh], is a self-sustainable global Fintech Ecosystem that focuses on converging finance and technology to create large avenues of growth through industry-enablers, world-class infrastructure, entrepreneurship and innovation.

ICICI Bank and Mahindra Finance have always leveraged technology to pioneer digital innovations and provide world-class banking experience to their customers. These institutions are focused on leveraging the current transformational trends in technology to bring value to their offerings. The first cohort of the accelerator program will have 10-12 startups working to develop solutions for ‘Financial Inclusion’, ‘Security and Fraud Prevention’ and ‘Customer and Risk analytics’ for a period of 12 weeks. This will be a resident program based out of Visakhapatnam and will provide selected Fintech startups an opportunity to catalyze their development through a combination of support, guidance and training.

The recruitment process for the accelerator has commenced, and the first cohort will start in first week of October. The program will conclude with a grand demo day in January 2018, in presence of corporates, mentors and investors from across the world. This is in continuation of the vision of the AP Government to bring ecosystem players together in the Fintech Valley and nurture a ‘fintectonic’ culture in the state that enables traditional models of business. The accelerator program aims to act as a catalyst in the growth of startups by connecting them to Fintech ecosystem players and develop the startup community in Visakhapatnam.

Mr. J A Chowdhary, Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister – Govt. of AP said

The Andhra Pradesh Government and Fintech Valley Vizag is excited about the Fintech Valley Vizag is all set to converge finance and technology and create large avenues of growth. The accelerator program aims to act as a catalyst in the growth of startups by connecting them to the leading Fintech ecosystem players.

For application process and other details about the Program, please visit #FintechValleyVizag

The Indian School of Business [ISB] and SAP Labs India have entered into a collaboration to nurture technology-based start-ups in the social space, focusing on ventures which are working in areas that have relevance to national priorities.

Image Source – Jumpstart Social Enterprise Accelerator

Titled Jumpstart Social Enterprise Accelerator, the programme aims to identify and support 10 early stage and 5 growth stage promising ventures by providing guidance, mentorship and scaling up their technology solutions that can bring about a large scale impact in the lives of common people. Start-ups targeting sectors such as education, healthcare, water & sanitation, energy, agriculture, financial technology, infrastructure, livelihoods and others are eligible to apply for the programme.

Sharing ISB’s objective in promoting the initiative, Professor Rajendra Srivastava, Dean, ISB said

ISB is committed to its goal of taking on a larger role of incubating and supporting entrepreneurial ideas as well as scaling up ventures that will potentially generate employment, foster economic and social progress and create significant social value for the country.

The ISB SAP Jumpstart accelerator programme is one such initiative to support promising entrepreneurs in thinking big and help scale their businesses to create impact in areas of national priority and help build a better tomorrow.

Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director of SAP Labs India & Executive Vice President, Enterprise Cloud Services, SAP SE said

We are pleased that the SAP ISB Social Enterprise Jumpstart program is growing to accommodate more social enterprises.  Through this initiative, we are supporting in creating investible and growth oriented social enterprises which can contribute to the economic development of our country.

The first cohort of this accelerator programme was launched in  July 2016 where ISB and SAP received 400+ applications from diverse sectors. Five early stage start-ups in the areas of financial technology, sustainable development & livelihood, agriculture and skill development were shortlisted and mentored. As a result, all the 5 ventures from the first cohort have scaled up their business operations, received funding or have been taken over.

How to apply for the Jumpstart Social Enterprise Accelerator

Start-ups will be short-listed through a nation-wide selection process based on their innovation, social impact and scalability. Shortlisted finalists would be invited for a business plan pitch and interview by a panel consisting of business experts, investors, faculty & members of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at ISB, & SAP. To know more about the application process and criteria, click here

Kings Learning, a technology-driven spoken English learning startup, has raised USD 2.5 million in funding from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, together with other US based tech investors. The organization aims to address the employability issue in India amongst underserved youth owing to poor English language and communication skills, through offline, online and blended delivery channels.

Image Source – 1, 2

Enguru, Kings Learning’s mobile-based spoken English app, allows users to self-learn both general spoken English and employability-focused conversational English.  It also allows users to learn English in their native language and currently supports 28 different languages. The app has been downloaded about 2 million times till date, and is currently being used to improve spoken English skills by more than 120,000 active users monthly. The app’s platform is adaptive & gamified with real time assessments, which makes it easier for not just individuals but also corporates to use it for their employee training modules.

Arshan Vakil, Co-Founder and CEO, Kings Learning, said

Our goal is to leverage innovative technology and creative content to deliver high quality and engaging English education to all. We are excited to partner with our investors as we move into the next phase of our growth which will primarily be focused on scaling up our offerings like Enguru, strengthening our technology and analytics engine and expanding the Kings Learning team.

Prachi Windlass, Education Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said

English has become a ticket to enter the booming knowledge-driven job economy of India, however, few have access to quality English language training. Almost half of the graduates in India, primarily from underprivileged backgrounds, are considered unemployable in most of the sectors due to lack of spoken English skills. Thankfully, mobile internet explosion, supplemented by exemplary work undertaken by technology-driven organizations like Kings Learning, is helping address this problem. We are excited to support Kings Learning’s efforts in their journey ahead.

About Kings Learning

Founded in 2014, Kings Learning is an ed-tech startup aimed at providing employability focused English language & communication skills training through technology products. For more information, please visit Kings Learning and EnGuru App Website

Brigade REAP, an accelerator program with its key focus on the Real Estate sector, had its Handover Day of the second cohort at the Sheraton Grand Hotel, Bengaluru. Launched in October 2016 with an intention to leverage technology which can help in delivering greater efficiencies to the Real Estate sector, 340 plus start-ups were evaluated for Cohort 2 and after two rounds of intense jury selection, 8 start-ups were inducted into the program.

These start-ups went through a rigorous four month mentorship and training program before being handed over to the real estate Industry for consumption of their products and services.

At the Handover Day of the 2nd cohort, these 8 start-ups presented their business to the audience which included eminent developers from the Real Estate Industry, Investors, HNI’s, other start-up founders and top management of global corporates. The representatives of the real estate industry participating in the program also spoke about technologies impacting real estate which indicated the improving intervention of technology into the Real Estate sector.

Speaking on this occasion, Ms. Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP said

The first cohort of REAP saw success, with 3 of the 4 graduating start ups getting funded. The 4th start up  is currently in the process of closing their funding as well. Brigade  invested in QwikSpec as a lead investor along with other prominent investors. Snaptrude, which is also part of  Cohort 2, is another company Brigade will be investing in, alongside other developers. We feel the Real Estate industry is opening up to Tech adoption as potential for tech to improve operational efficiency is undeniable. Our role at REAP is to ensure that the start ups  curated during the program  are ready to tackle pressing issues of the industry.

The 8 start-ups that presented at the Handover Day are:

Aap Ka Painter – A house painting Solutions Company that delivers a hassle free experience by simplifying the path from inspiration to transformation of a dream home by leveraging art, science and technology. More information here

CRE Matrix – A data analytics platform that provides  information on accurate and trusted Lease & Sale transactions, Rental & Absorption projections, Asset level reports, micro-market analysis and Asset Valuation for commercial real estate. More information here

DesignSense – A Cloud based collaboration platform that helps Real Estate companies get RERA ready by connecting Project Management, Location and Engineering data with various stake holders and customers, enabling seamless flow of information between them. More information here

Natura – An Urban Plantscaping company that helps create easy to maintain green spaces resulting in breathing environments with reduced energy & Construction costs. More information here

Props {AMC} – A Real Estate Insights & Asset Monitoring Platform with a single, integrated, tech platform backed by robust data & information enables, seamless, transparent and complied transactions to monitor both Real Estate properties and securities. More information here

Snaptrude – An intelligence enabled 3D Rapid Modelling for Real Estate that solves the design problem by automating digital designing that transforms a hand drawn sketch to a 3D BIM model. More information here

Soukwagon.com – A one stop B2B procurement marketplace for food & beverage businesses that helps HORECA (Hotel, Restaurant, Catering) industry in sourcing & procurement by listing products with negotiated B2B prices on their platform. More information here

ZeeSense – A Unified, Safety and Security Solution for gated community that solves the problem with an approach to Connect, Automate and Analyze. More information here

The REAP accelerator is now accepting applications for the third cohort and has received an overwhelming response so far. For more information, please visit Brigade REAP

About Brigade REAP

Brigade REAP is an accelerator program focused on technology start-ups whose end product/ service is applicable to Real Estate. Be it Residential, Commercial or Hospitality they have their hands on all the streams.The program is headed by John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor for the program and Apul Nahata, Mentor-in-Residence. REAP has partnered with CISCO, Intel and Microsoft Accelerator as technology partners to make technology intervention better and also partnered with JLL, a professional investment management firm.