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|In: Funding|Last Updated:

Cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s investment fund YouWeCan Ventures has acquired a stake in online healthcare marketplace Healthians

Healthians.com helps users discover affordable healthcare, using quality and price transparency. It aggregates diagnostic labs, crowd sourced sample collectors and nearby doctors, as well as makes patients’ medical records available online.

In another industry first, apart from tying up with leading medical labs chains, it is creating Healthians branded lab network in association with labs that will offer standardised pricing, processes and user experience.

healthians-com
Speaking about the investment, Yuvraj Singh said

Having gone through life threatening medical condition, I’m extremely keen to promote preventive healthcare in India. While most of us today have an online social profile or an online professional profile, there’s a large need to use technology to create & track individual health profile. I’m excited to see Healthians trying to solve this problem.

Raj Airey, Founding Partner, Healthstart – an existing investor in Healthians said

We like Healthians’ founders’ vision and execution, and the fact that they’re receiving strong support from entire healthcare ecosystem. Best labs, top hospitals, leading chemists and doctors are tying up, which is a strong validation of the business model. Health tech space is of prime significance to us, and we expect Healthians to become a dominant player through organic and inorganic route over next few quarters.

Speaking about the funding, Deepak Sahni, Founder & CEO, Healthians said

For a healthcare brand, there can be no better partner that Yuvraj Singh, and we are delighted to have him on-board. We will do our best to achieve his dream of taking preventive healthcare to everyone across the entire country.

Healthians’ proprietary self-assessment software ‘Healthians PLUS’ has been created with the help of leading doctors along with software engineers. Users fill online questionnaire, followed by free personal visit by a Wellness Consultant for further screening. The software establishes user’s personal health score, recommends future health checks, and tracks each user’s health over his lifetime.

Diagnostic market in India is approximately $5bn industry, with over a million tests being conducted daily according to an IBEF 2015 study. While the scope of Healthians’ service is large, the business model is asset light.

The hyper local sample collectors and doctors are crowd sourced. Apart from preventive care, the site also caters to chronic patients and patients recommended tests by Doctors.

The portal has received good response from users, with huge savings over original lab prices. The initial growth has been 100 percent MOM and recently it won ‘eTailer of the year’ award for Healthcare category.

Future Plans

In an industry first, company is targeting to form a network of over 1000 Healthians’ branded labs & help them in enhancing capacity utilisation through demand aggregation and technology support, with the first ones slated to come up in over 20 cities including Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai. It also plans to tie up with 2000 pharmacy stores to enable them to offer Diagnostic Tests along with medicine sales to their customers.

While currently focused in Delhi NCR, the company is already catering to customers in 22 cities in India and plans to expand this to over 50 cities. The company plans to profile over 1 million users for HealthiansPLUS, crowd source over 1000 mobile Health Advisor’s, and conduct more than 200,000 tests in next 8 to 12 months.

[Image Credit – Healthians]

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated:

In this article, we have a Q&A with a social entrepreneur Harish Kumar from Ahmedabad [Thanks to my friend Paras Shah for the connect :)]. Harish Kumar has 20+ years of corporate experience who left his cushy job to start social venture Ability On Wheels with the mission – To connect people with disabilities, educate and create opportunities for them to make the most of their abilities, while advocating social change by enhancing the quality of life with developmental or physical abilities through an array of services.

Today we have a discussion with Harish about his social venture, it’s plans, issues faced by social ventures, tips for aspiring entrepreneurs etc. Let us start with the Q&A with Harish

Can you give a small background about yourself ?

I wish to introduce myself as a specially abled person [congenital absence of right upper limb below elbow joint] with a passion for driving. In 2012 I became the first physically challenged person in the country to successfully complete an All India Driving Expedition thereby creating a new National Records in Limca Book of Records. As on date I have on my name 2 National Records in Limca Book of Records. I completed my Masters in Science from IIT Roorkee in 1993 & Masters in Technology from IIT Delhi in 1995.

After working in Telecom Sector for ~ 20 years, I quit the corporate world last year & decided to work on providing mobility services & solutions to the specially abled people of the country. For this purpose I’ve floated an NGO Ability on Wheels Charitable Trust

Give us a small gist about Ability On Wheels [AOW] ?

As you would be aware of Specially Abled people do face lots of challenges & hurdles in mobility. There’s not even a single driving school for the specially abled, there are no wheel chair accessible vehicles & also the public transport is not disability friendly. Since I have myself experienced these hurdles I decided to work on this cause & be a contributor to the society.

There are an estimated 60 million people in the country who are specially abled with mobility restrictions & every year ~ 1 lac people get added in the list. Ability On Wheels is an effort to encourage the specially abled people to take a big leap towards leading a normal life by providing mobility & accessibility services & solutions.

What was the trigger of starting AOW?

After creating records in Limca Book of Records I got recognition in the media. Subsequently a few differently abled people approached me with  a desire to learn driving & the process for the same. They also conveyed that they had approached many driving schools & all had turned them back saying we cannot teach you driving.

Then I started exploring & to my horror I could not find even a single driving school for the differently abled. That was the trigger point of AoW. My research also threw up a startling fact – Differently abled people have to first buy a car, get it modified & then only they can get a learner’s license which is a big injustice to them. This driving school will provide them with the option of first learning how to drive & then decide on buying a car.

Can you let us know what changes need to be made in the car in order to cater AOW’s requirement

The proposed driving school plans to deploy two modified / customized cars [registered as Invalid Carriages] to impart driving training to people having various kinds of physical disabilities

Car No. 1 – Manual Transmission with the following modifications

  • Auto Clutch (with engaging / disabling feature (on / off switch)
  • Hand controlled accelerator & brake. The controls would be dual in nature and will not affect the normal foot controls of the vehicle.

AOW_1

Car No. 2 – Automatic Transmission OR Auto Gear Shift with the following modifications:

  • Auxiliary accelerator pedal on the other side of the brake [can be locked & folded when not in use]
  • Hand controlled accelerator & brake. The controls would be dual in nature and will not affect the normal foot controls of the vehicle.
  • Steering Knob

AOW_Right

Do you plan to raise funds for AOW from external investors who fund social enterprises?

Yes, we are open to raising funds through external investors, corporate, government, like minded NGO’s & Individuals.

Since, there are many differently-abled people in India, how do plan to take AOW to other cities?

Plan is to create at least 1 such driving school in every state capital & few other major cities of the country.

What are the major challenges you faced when starting AOW ?

  • Legal & Statutory [convincing authorities that what we plan to do is well within the ambit of law & very much possible practically].
  • Research & Planning – We studied about various such driving schools running in developed countries. Got very good information from a similar school being run by Queen Elizabeth Foundation, London. Went to Mumbai, Bangalore & Ahmedabad to meet renowned modification kit manufacturers. From their inputs was able to decide & plan on 2 cars & modifications as mentioned above
  • Funding

[Ability On Wheels in News – Click on Image to enlarge]

AOW in News

What are your views on social entrepreneurship & social enterprises in India ?

Still a long way to go for acceptance in the society. People look down on us as fools to have left a job of Rs 2 million / annum & get into this. They also say you are looking towards less than 1 % of the population as your customers. Why not get into some business which can cater to a large clientele. As for funding a lot of challenges still remain for social enterprises.

What are some of your thoughts on expanding AOW pan-India [How do you plan to do it ?]

Following options are being explored once the first driving school gets stable & we start getting a decent response.

  • Franchisee model operated by local people under the umbrella of Ability on Wheels
  • Own model [subject to getting attached to a corporate who is willing to fund the scale up]

State Government owned driving schools set up with our guidance [this seems to be least probable].

Some advice to aspiring social entrepreneurs ?

Before jumping into it please be aware of the fact that challenges would be many times more than anticipated. Funding will only happen only when you reach to a certain level of success which may take as much as 3 – 5 years. Social acceptability is very less in our country which is again an added challenge. Revenue or RoI models will not work the way they do in other businesses.

We hope that Harish’s learnings would help you in your venture. If you are an entrepreneur and are open to a Q&A, please email your request to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

ITC Infotech, a leading global IT services & solutions company and a fully owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd has announced the launch of iTech 2015, an annual technology conference platform to foster technology innovation.

The hackathon will provide participants with an opportunity to develop ideas to prototypes across a wide range of business challenges. This platform is also a testimony to ITC Infotech’s commitment towards accelerating innovation in disruptive technology areas.

ITC_Tech_Startup

Aimed at boosting talent amongst technology enthusiasts and providing an acceleration platform for entrepreneurs, ITC Infotech is seeking to engage with innovators and will partner with the winners to help them develop the solution, create a joint go-to market and provide market access. The programme is part of the company’s larger initiative to encourage and nurture start-ups.

About iTech 2015

An entry free competition, iTech 2015 IoT hackathon is a team-based event. Participation is open to students, professionals and developers and IoT start-ups, who will go through a short-listing and selection process. Teams can register on the iTech 2015 registration site and submit their IoT solution idea, post which ITC Infotech will notify the short-listed entries.

As part of the iTech 2015 platform this year, ITC Infotech will organise a 2-day IoT hackathon at its campus in Bengaluru on 4th & 5th July.

Competition categories at iTech 2015

Smart Retail – Retail is about continuously enhancing customer shopping experience. It is also about ensuring availability & visibility of stocks, specifically in Consumer Goods. Entries in this category can focus on anything from stock keeping and inventory management to in-store customer experience. Selected teams will be provided with actual retail display shelves, using which their solutions can be demonstrated to solve this real-world challenge.

Smart Manufacturing – Entrants should create a solution to constantly monitor and predict in real-time the health of machines and equipment to enable proactive servicing and avoid disruption of manufacturing units. Entries and solution ideas can also be shared on creating smart manufacturing units and assembly lines, which can utilise analytics to optimise the production process – a step towards realising the ‘Make in India’ drive.

Smart Supply Chains – Entries should have ideas on how IoT solutions can help create a smarter supply chain – warehouse, inventory management, transportation, planning and tracking, demand-planning, etc.

Smart Agriculture – Entries should have IoT solutions that provide feedback/recommend corrective action from remote farms to research laboratories for agriculture.

Open Category – For entries on IoT ideas that do not fall in the challenge areas mentioned above. ITC Infotech’s panel of experts will assess the submission on the strength of the business case presented and its viability for companies to adopt and implement.

Commenting on the event launch, Ms. Sushma Rajagopalan, CEO & MD, ITC Infotech, said

iTech 2015 is one of our multi-dimensional initiatives for encouraging innovation and boosting tech entrepreneurship. This year’s theme is the “connected world” and “Internet of Things”. We have created this platform to aid participants in developing prototypes of their ideas to address real-world business challenges. We will nurture some of the relevant ideas in our Innovation Lab to drive competitive advantage for ITC’s businesses or our clients’ businesses.

The winners and runners up will be awarded a cash prize of Rs. 2,00,000 & Rs. 1,00,000 respectively.

For more information on iTech 2015, please visit iTech 2015 official page

[Image Credit – iTech 2015]

|In: Marketing|Last Updated:

When it comes to smartphone, I still own age old Samsung Galaxy Note-I. When I purchased the device, the App Ecosystem was not so mature but now, Fast-Forward 2015; my device is VERY low on memory & installing/updating existing apps is a hurricane task.

I used Any.Do for Task Management since the app works like a breeze. However due to memory issues, I had to uninstall the App.

AnyDo_Logo

As humans, we always appreciate if someone addresses us by name i.e. instead of writing “Hi” in email, “Hi Himanshu” sounds much better since it is more PERSONAL. Upon un-installation, I received an e-mail from the CEO of Any.Do requesting me to “Come back to Any.Do” & the message was innovative & personal 🙂

[Click on the image below]

Email from Any.Do for user retention

This email definitely created a LARGER impact since it was addressed to the “User” & might act as a catalyst for “User Retention” [Insightful discussion on User Retention here]

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

A common concern for people shopping for furniture is finding the right way to dispose their old furniture. Either they do not know who to dispose their old furniture to or are hassled by the trouble of transporting it to the right person.

To help customers solve this problem, Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture and home decor company has tied up with Milaap to launch the ‘Exchange for Good’ initiative in Bangalore.

UrbanLadderLogo

When a customer chooses the exchange offer on the website, they receive a 10% discount on the new purchase and the Urban Ladder  team picks up the old furniture to ensure it is donated to someone in need.

Through Milaap, Urban Ladder has partnered with 11 NGOs across Bangalore who will receive the old furniture. The initiative provides an opportunity to customers to donate their old furniture while purchasing at Urban Ladder and give others a chance to start their life afresh. These NGO’s contribute towards Women Empowerment and are involved in Education, Health and Community development.

Here is how ‘Exchange for Good’ Programme works :

UrbanLadder-Exchange

Currently, the Exchange for Good initiative is active only in Bangalore.

For further information you can log on to https://www.urbanladder.com/exchange-for-good#ngo

|In: Elearning|Last Updated:

The June edition of “Startup Saturday [Hyderabad]” is planned on 13th June. The theme for the meetup is “Exploring opportunities in the Learning & Education Space“. This is a  discovery format Startup Saturday to uncover some of these new startups coming up in this booming space.
Startup-Saturday

Meetup Agenda

Detailed agenda of the meetup is below:

Introduction

10:00 – Registration
10:15 – Introduction
10:25 – Ecosystem Announcements

Startup Speak

10:30 – OutLife, Founder Diyanat Ali
10:42  – MyRank, Founder-Savinay
10:55 – WeMakeScholars, Founder
11:07 – Kaddy, Founder-Govind
11:20  – TBD
11:32 – TBD

Expert Speak

11:45 – Serial Entrepreneur in Edu space [TBD]

Investor Speak

12:00 ~ 12:15 – Investors from Hyderabad Angels
12:30 Networking

Location & Timings

La Makaan [13th June, 10 AM]. Registration can be done at the following link.

In case, if you wish to nominate an expert speaker or a start-up for the above mentioned theme, you can email the details to the following email-id.

Social Media details – Facebook Event Page
Share/Like/Post/Tweet: hashtag #SSHYD

[Image Credit – BuzzInTown]

|In: Food-Commerce|Last Updated:

With an intention of solving the million dollar question of ‘what’s for lunch or dinner today’ for professionals and metro families, Bite Club, a Gurgaon-based chef-designed virtual restaurant is offering affordable home-style wholesome meals handmade by an expert community of chefs using the freshest ingredients. The guilt-free meals, desserts, and drinks are delivered straight from the kitchens of home chefs, recipe bloggers, ex- restaurateurs, professional chefs and many more.

BiteClub

The unique concept of Bite Club was initiated and implemented by three young engineers Prateek Agarwal, Aushim Krishan and Siddharth Sharma who during their bachelor days had no access to fresh and high-quality food. This prompted them to introduce an exclusive ‘restaurant in the cloud’: a virtual restaurant.

Prateek Agarwal, the CEO and Founder, Bite Club commented

A majority of times, people in metro cities have no access to good food and are left with an unpleasant experience when they order from restaurants. They also end up spending exorbitant amounts for the food they consume, which is mostly unhealthy with no guarantee of freshness or novelty. We at Bite Club celebrate good food and cater to those who are fans of variety and taste. We understand our patrons very well and our purpose is to fix their dilemma of access to delectable and appetizing food made with fresh produce. What’s more! We make sure that there is no minimum value to place an order.

Carrying certain traits of both a restaurant and a Tiffin service, Bite Club is not conventionally one or the other. Instead, it can be termed as a technology and logistics platform that efficiently connects the chefs to the consumers.

Within one year of its dawn, Bite Club has remarkably served over 25000 meals to 2000+ customers. Aiming to take its services beyond Gurgaon, it envisages delivering its sumptuous lunch and dinner boxes to every city of India and possibly even beyond.

Bite Club Android App can be downloaded from here

About Bite Club

Bite Club is a Gurgaon-based chef designed virtual restaurant which facilitates its native presence through android, iOS and web apps. It was brought into existence in November 2014 by three young engineers Prateek Agarwal, Aushim Krishan, merely a year after graduating from IIT alongwith Siddharth Sharma from NTU (Singapore). Bite Club was galvanized to fix the dilemma of access to delectable and appetizing food made with fresh produce. Sticking to their mantra of serving “Wholesome meals handmade by an expert community of chefs using the freshest ingredients,” it veers from regular restaurant fare. Bite Club lauds good and interesting food featuring a daily rotating lunch and dinner menu of sumptuous meals, desserts and drinks designed and prepared by chefs who promise innovation and variety with every meal.

[Image Credit – Bite Club]

|In: Education|Last Updated:

Akosha, a messaging platform for all consumer-to-business interactions, is now extending its services to students who are seeking admission in Delhi University. Through the Akosha app, they can chat with experts and have all their queries and doubts regarding the DU admission process answered within minutes.

At present, Akosha is receiving 500 queries per day and its Facebook page for the initiative already has over 10,000 likes.

Akosha

The idea behind the initiative is to save students some anxiety and trouble that has become a common feature of getting admissions into the most popular and prestigious university of the country. Now, instead of running around in the heat from pillar to post, trying to get clarity on their basic doubts, they can sit in the comfort of their homes and just ask the Akosha experts through their mobile apps.

The questions that students ask range from basic queries about important dates, admission tests etc. to more vital and oft-confusing questions such as eligibility for various courses and impact of not studying a subject in school on the cut-off.

Speaking on the initiative, Ankur Singla, CEO & Founder, Akosha said

The vision behind the initiative is to leverage the benefits of technology to solve regular pain points of the common man. On the Akosha chat app, we have 7 channels at the moment and this initiative falls into the category of education. This is one domain that is extremely crucial but is often replete with complex procedures and unclear stipulations in our country. Going forward, we will introduce more such campaigns to solve the basic needs of our users.

The experts that Akosha has enlisted are second year students of the University who are well acquainted with all the nitty-gritties involved and are also interacting with heads of departments and attending Open Sessions on campus to be on top of all the happenings. They are therefore in a position to help out students with ready access to all vital information in a few clicks.

Akosha app on Android can be downloaded from here

About Akosha

Akosha is a horizontal platform for all consumers to business interactions. Customers can connect with any businesses using an Akosha mobile app, dedicated customer care helpline and website.

Akosha has received over 40,00,000 consumer queries across sectors, including telecom, consumer appliances, ecommerce, mobile, banking and insurance in 2014. The company has 350+ employees and 3 offices in India.

On the B2B side, Akosha OneDirect is a social CRM platform that helps brands in managing their customer experience across all online channels. In May 2015, Akosha secured $16 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital.