All Posts in startups

|In: Funding|Last Updated:

Akosha, a messaging platform for all consumer-to-business interactions, announced that Sequoia is leading a new Rs.100 crore Series B round. This new round of financing will be used to hire over 200 software engineers and product managers to build out the platform & fund the exponential growth of Akosha’s new mobile app for connecting users and businesses.

Akosha

Akosha was founded on the insight that the quality and channels of consumer’s interactions with businesses are broken and outdated. Akosha handles 30,000+ consumer inquiries every day over the web, telephone and its Android chat app. Akosha monetizes these inquiries by providing Akosha’s enterprise software OneDirect to brands.

Brands are able to leverage Akosha’s software to have a fast and personalized interactions with their consumers. Over 130 large brands use Akosha’s OneDirect platform to respond to consumer inquiries every week. Around 30 of these enterprises have become paying customers who subscribe to a premium version of the OneDirect Enterprise Suite. Kotak Mahindra Bank, Voltas, Aircel, Snapdeal, Micromax and Makemytrip are some of the leading brands currently using Akosha OneDirect enterprise solutions.

140,000 users have downloaded Akosha’s new android app in just 4 months with an average rating of 4.5. Consumers use the Akosha app for product discovery, pricing information, discounts, customer service, booking appointments, travel research and so on. Currently, the app supports more than 18,000 chat sessions per day and have been growing 20-25% week-on-week.

Akosha_Android_App_Screen

Over the last year, the company has grown its employee base from 180 to well over 300 and recently opened a technology and product office in Bangalore. Building on this momentum, Akosha will use the additional financing to continue to expand its software engineering teams, accelerate product development, and invest in growing its user base. Akosha’s expects to add 400-500 people to its team this year.

Akosha was co-founded by Ankur Singla, a National Law School, Bangalore graduate who was deeply moved by the poor quality of customer service in India.

Quote from Ankur Singla, Chief Executive Officer, Akosha

We started 4 years ago to help consumers with post purchase issues. With the growth of mobile, we aim at building a messaging platform for all interactions between consumers and businesses including discovery, buying, appointments and customer service.

We hope to be doing 100,000 customer interactions/day within 3 months. But I think we’re just getting started. We are confident that in the near future, Akosha chat will be a competitive customer service differentiator for businesses

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors said:

We have always believed in the thesis that consumers need a better way to interact with businesses. We are inspired by Ankur’s vision for becoming a single destination on the smartphone for users to interact with hundreds of businesses and online services.

We are delighted to lead our third round of investment in Akosha, starting with a $200,000 seed investment in 2011.

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: Funding|Last Updated:

Zopper, India’s leading hyper-local mobile marketplace, has recently unveiled its fully operational office in Bengaluru. The underlying motive behind this strategic move is to bolster its technological prowess, by recruiting talent in vital areas of operations and technology. With the city famed for its IT talent, the company aims to invest in the same to scale the growth ladder through rapid improvement in its technological foundation.

Zopper

Neeraj Jain, Co-founder & CEO, Zopper commented

With the hyper local mobile marketplace trending, thanks to the increasing proliferation of smartphones in the country, we realize that in order to leverage this opportunity, we must strengthen our services in terms of technology.

Our vital presence in Bengaluru gives us access to head-hunt and hire across the cream of talent in terms of IT. This will help us architect a seamless and solid infrastructure for Zopper’s fast expanding network in the country.

The company aims to activate expansion on an accelerated pace pan India and is taking definite steps to successfully execute its plan on the back of steady technological progress.

About Zopper

Zopper is India’s largest hyper local mobile marketplace featuring over 5,00,000 offline retailers. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Surjendu Kulia & Neeraj Jain, Zopper taps on the benefits of shopping at a retail store and marries them with the convenience of shopping via mobile phones.

Users can buy from the comfort of their homes/offices and get the product instantly from their nearby trusted stores. It is backed by investors such as Tiger Global, Blume Ventures & Nirvana Ventures Advisor’s, the company has raised over US$ 6.5 million in venture funding.

[Image Credit – Zopper]

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

Introducing the concept of showcasing ones’ own style and trends to the like minded people across the vertical, Dilbole.com, a unique style shopping platform, has been launched, bringing a whole new experience online.

DilBole aims to be a product bookmarking tool to showcase and discover style to the online community. It a platform for both men and women that offers a variety of category to choose from i.e., apparel, lingerie, accessories, gadgets, footwear, jewelry, cosmetics, furniture, home decor etc.

One can choose the products from over 25,000+ online shopping sites including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra etc.

DilBole

The portal allows users to browse or flip through products from the other portals, create his/her own style & trend , showcase it to others and get the credit as a STYLIST!

  • Dilbole allows users to create a wish-list & categorize them into different mood attires like party wear, formals, casuals, beachwear etc. Users can then showcase their wish-list and can get the credit.
  • Users can also save the products they like from online stores, add the product using the chrome extension or using a link. On an mobile they can directly share product to Dilbole App from other shopping apps like Flipkart, Myntra etc.

Talking on the same, Khaleel Pasha, the founder of DilBole.com said

Dilbole.com aims to bring out the stylist within the person to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and smart buys. Style is just not the periphery of any gender. I would like to invite both Men and Women to join the “Stylocase” wagon with our portal and app.

They can now make their own style statement with the collections and can showcase it the way they like to share with others. We have tried to create a me-time for our users who love shopping

In a short span of time, since its launch Dilbole.com has succeeded in attracting and engaging people and won huge accolades. It guarantees loads of fun, fashion and style for fashion junkies and shopaholics at Dilbole.

DilBole.com is the right place to discover people, products and brands based on the style they are looking for. Fashion bloggers, stylists, fashionistas and proud shopaholics are part of the core. With an ever-increasing database of 1,80,000+ products, 25000+ online stores and over 10,000 brands, this is the right place for shopaholics to come to!

It is available both in web portal and mobile application for android can be downloaded from here.

About the founders of DilBole.com

  • Khaleel Pasha is a master in computers science from NIT Warangal. Worked for around a decade in eRetail industry with eCom biggies like Amazon, target, mothercare and marksandspencer. He had many stints of starting up before all in eCom domain. Backed with his experience he has very deep insight into the eCommerce and social shopping space.
  • Hemakiran is a masters in computer science from BITS Pilani. Bitten by the entrepreneurship bug he joined Khaleel to change the way India shops. Before this he was with Broadcom. Experience with bootstrapped start-ups made Kiran a package of diverse skill-sets. He takes care of design and marketing aspects of Dilbole.

Do give DilBole.com a spin & share your experience 🙂

|In: Marketing|Last Updated:

Culture Machine, one of the fastest growing digital video networks in Asia, which has always stood by its promise of providing quality content backed by cutting edge technology, takes its commitment further with the launch of Intelligence Machine platform.

Through its rich data driven insights, Intelligence Machine identifies the content recipe for brands & creators that resonates with their targeted audience and enables them to translate the insights into a reliable programming strategy. It indexes and analyzes over 1.5 billion videos across the digital universe on a daily basis.

Culture-Machine-logo

Commenting on the launch, Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO & Co-Founder, Culture Machine said

Social Platforms are the new cable operators; YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all video platforms and knowing what content to create and to create that content at scale, across platforms, is at the heart of building a successful brand online. Intelligence Machine helps solve this problem and understand audiences and their taste preferences using cutting edge technology.

Venkat Prasad, COO/CTO & Co-Founder, Culture Machine said

We at Culture Machine believe in the power of technology, which will be the key differentiator for success in the digital marketplace. Intelligence Machine provides unmatched insights on the best content type and format’s that resonates with the targeted audience for a given brand or product and enables the user to translate that insight into concrete actions. Think of it as a “money-ball” for content for brands & publishers.

Key features of Intelligence Machine

  • Identifying a brand’s share of voice across video platforms, in different geographies and online communities across earned and owned media.
  • Bench-marking the brand against its industry on digital media and giving them a recipe to improve its standing.
  • Discovering successful content formats for an audience segment in a given industry and topical trends in relation to them.

About Culture Machine

Founded in 2013 by Sameer Pitalwalla and Venkat Prasad, Culture Machine is a Digital Media Company that creates entertainment for the Internet generation by combining cutting edge technology with great content. Culture Machine’s engineering team includes senior data scientists and some of the best software architects in the industry. For more information, please visit their website.

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Urban-LadderWeb & Technology entrepreneurs Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan have made an investment in Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture and home decor company.  The Silicon Valley based entrepreneurs have come on board as investors at a time when the company is ramping up its technology platforms and offerings, to redefine furniture shopping in India.

Technology will be a key driver in Urban Ladder’s growth. The company is working on several tech innovations to solve complex furniture e-commerce problems.

Some of the key focus areas for Urban Ladder are mobile, data and analytics and product visualization. In an effort to provide world class furniture shopping solutions, the company will triple the size of its tech team in the next 6 months.

Speaking about the latest round, Ashish Goel, CEO & Co-founder, Urban Ladder said

We are thrilled to have veterans like Anand and Venky onboard as investors to mentor and guide us. They have done some fantastic work in technology, and set very high global benchmarks. It is great that they believe in the potential of the Indian e-commerce industry and are reinvesting in the ecosystem

Speaking about the funding, Anand Rajaraman, Founding Partner, Cambrian Ventures said

Furniture and home décor is a highly unorganized category in India, and Urban Ladder has been able to fill the need gap by finding great solutions for customers. The company’s journey has been very impressive. It’s a great team, off to a terrific start, and well positioned to be the leading furniture and home decor company in India

Urban Ladder is on massive growth path to achieve its vision of making a million homes beautiful. The company is strengthening its product portfolio and introducing new categories, along with geographical expansion to 30 cities by the end of the year.

Urban Ladder has thus far raised $77 million from Sequoia Capital, TR Capital, Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners and Steadview Capital in the last 3 years. Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Group made a personal investment in the company in November 2014.

|In: startups|Last Updated:

usf-logo-300px

A month after the first StartEdu competition, Unitus Seed Fund held its second online event, called StartEdu 1B. After receiving record number of applications for the startup competition, only ten made the finals.

Get Set Sorted emerged as the winner securing 5 Lakhs, while Classalyze bagged the runner up title. Both the winner & runner-up get introduced to angel investors who are interested in early stage education companies. The companies were assessed based on factors including Impact on the masses, Team, Innovation, Business Model, and Presentation after hours of reviews and deliberations.

More about the Winner & Runner-Up

Get Set Sorted based out of Pune is a career guidance platform offering end-to-end guidance to high school students through online and offline channels. They suggest top 3 career options based on: Aptitude, Interest, Personality, Career motivations as well as connect them to counselors along with providing career content. 

Classalyze, located in Gurgaon is an online tool that helps teachers check for & improve understanding using formative tests. Besides creating high quality formative tests, which can be conducted both offline and online they also provide meaningful and actionable feedback through online dashboards to teachers and principals.

Speaking about the event, Will Poole, managing partner & co-founder, Unitus Seed Fund said

We extend huge congratulations to the competition winners. The prize money, as well as receiving the benefit of training and mentoring from our Speed2Seed incubator and accelerator partner is sure to secure a bright future for these innovative startups.

The quality of the projects presented by all of the entrants proves that India is brimming with innovation and energy from a growing community of visionary entrepreneurs focused on the opportunities in the education sector

The 2nd edition of the StartEdu competition was held over a 4.5 hour marathon online pitch-fest, with viewers in Seattle and Boston USA, Bangalore, Jaipur, Goa, Hyderabad and Noida. The StartEdu program is presented jointly by Unitus Seed Fund & Sylvant Advisors.

Announcement of 3rd edition of StartEdu

Applications for the third & final edition of StartEdu competition for 2015 would open from July 1st, 2015. For more information, please refer the official StartEdu Page

About Unitus Seed Fund

Unitus Seed Fund is a new $23 million seed-stage investment fund based in Bangalore and Seattle that invests in startups innovating for the masses in India. More information here

About Sylvant Advisors

Sylvant Advisors works with entrepreneurs and early stage companies to accelerate their growth. Beginning with critical investment or fund raising effort, drafting business strategies, providing operational support and being a part of an entire growth lifecycle are the key levers to accelerate the growth of these entrepreneurial ventures. Sylvant is based in Bangalore. More information here

Image Credit – UnitusImpact.com

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated:

Yuvraj Singh’s recently floated Startup Fund Youwecan Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in Mobile Beauty and Wellness Platform Vyomo in its seed funding.

YouWeCan

Vyomo is the first investment of the Youwecan ventures. Explaining his excitement, Yuvi said

We would like to support empowerment of millions of Beauty Professionals and help them improve their lives, income and be part of their personal milestones. Ultimately, we decided to invest in Vyomo based the execution capability of the team headed by MBAs from the London Business School, a truly great product and our belief in the vision of Vyomo that the Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics can simplify the lives of millions of Indians

According to KPMG report, Beauty and Wellness Industry in India will be US$13 billion by 2017 and within MENA region it was US$25.5 billion in 2014 as per the global market intelligence firm Euromonitor International.

The Vyomo Mobile App for Salons, Spas and Stylists will be available for both IOS and Android from May 2015. The Customer App will be launched in July.

Speaking at the occasion, Abhinav Khare, Founder & CEO, Vyomo said

Signing-up with Youwecan Ventures for securing our seed funding is an important milestone for the company, and one which will allow us to scale and expand to meet the demands of our global users.

In 3 years, Vyomo will shift the paradigm of Beauty and Wellness Industry where the Stylists and Beauty Professionals will get the place they deserve. Vyomo will bring more than 1 million stylists on the platform by 2017 and improve their earnings by allowing millions of customers to instantly access and book a hassle free Salon and Spa experience.

Our aim is to create a complete solution for Beauty Professionals to manage and grow their business through a smart-phone, and customers to book appointments instantly through their mobile devices, and ultimately repeat the success story of tech startups within Cab industry.

The App for Salons will provide professionals from the Beauty Industry an end to end salon management software that grows and simplifies their business by providing increased traffic, CRM, ERP, EPOS, Performance Management, Booking Management and Online Presence backed by state of art Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence.

About Youwecan Venture Fund

Youwecan is a 50 CR seed fund that is created to empower young entrepreneurs on their journey to build brands and successful business ventures and improve the life standard of society. More information at their website.

About Vyomo

Vyomo is a Mobile Beauty and Wellness Platform that is backed by Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics to simplify the way beauty & wellness services are requested offered and rendered. It was founded by the London Business School classmates Abhinav Khare and Poonam Marwah.

  • Abhinav Khare Founder-CEO is Strategy and Corporate Development Expert with 10 years’ experience in 3 continents and 32 countries in the domain of Market Entry, Strategy Execution and Building Analytics products. He has an MBA London Business School and MSc in Technology Management from ETH Zurich.
  • Poonam Marwah Co-founder-COO has got 16 years Operations, Internet Marketing & Technology. Successfully lead 3 new ventures, growing organizations and managed complex projects. She holds MBA from London Business School, Masters in Computer Application, PMP, she is also a US Patent Holder.

Image Credit – pixr8

|In: Business|Last Updated:

NASSCOM organized its third regional edition of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2015 at the Novotel Hotel in Hyderabad. The one day conference served as a vital platform for Indian product start-ups and emerging companies to access knowledge & support available in the ecosystem.

The inaugural address was given by Rajiv Vaishnav, Vice President, NASSCOM & the key note address by Ravi Gururaj, Chairman,NASSCOM Product Council. The conference was attended by industry leaders from the products industry, venture capitalist, entrepreneurs and consultants, who shared their views on the evolving product landscape.

NASSCOM

The Hyderabad edition of the conclave witnessed curated sessions for budding entrepreneurs, early stage founders and start-up product teams on the intricacies of structuring a business entity, protecting your intellectual property, raising initial capital, growing your product business & building market momentum for early stage products. The conclave additionally showcased interesting startups that were a mixture of burgeoning product innovations and exciting new solutions.

Speaking at the occasion, Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM Product Council said

The product landscape has witnessed tremendous growth, and is now considered as one of the fastest developing domains of the industry. With the Internet of Things being the new land of entrepreneurial opportunity, there is a need to create an ecosystem for transfer of knowledge and technological know-how amongst start-ups and academia.

Hyderabad has been a breeding ground for some of India’s largest business houses, and has always been very supportive for the new businesses with its friendly policy structures. It was a pleasure to witness some of the most innovative product companies at the conclave with offerings ranging from e-commerce to cloud platforms.

The rapid growth in establishment of new technology product & digital start-ups has positioned India as the 4th largest base of start-ups world-wide. India currently boasts of over 3,100 start-ups, with an addition of 800+ start-ups in 2014 alone. Product startups, for their sheer scope and with their impressive applications and numbers, have formed the backbone of the ecosystem which in turn is playing a key role in the growth of the Indian economy.

The conclave recognizes that the time for the Indian product story is ripe as the country’s IT industry moves beyond its leadership in the services sector towards IP and products. The Hyderabad edition of NPC, witnessed a turnout of over 400 delegates encouraging companies located in the region to participate and interact with some of the super achievers in the Indian Products arena.

About NASSCOM

NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPM industry in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1800 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM’s member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software services, software products, consulting services, BPM, e-commerce and web services, engineering services and animation and gaming. NASSCOM’s membership base constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs about 3.5 million professionals.