Indian startups are marching towards the coveted unicorn club at an unprecedented pace, with Hyderabad-based SaaS startup Darwinbox being the latest entrant. Underneath the ever-growing list of unicorns, the valuation of early-stage startups also increased in the last two years, noted Bipin Shah, Partner at Titan Capital.
In a conversation with Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Founder and Host of 100x Entrepreneur Podcast, Bipin said, “Until 2019, a great startup idea with an awesome team would be valued around $2-3 million, which has now gone up to more than $10 million.”
Titan Capital’s deals were traditionally classified as Titan Seed Deals (TSD), where the valuation is less than Rs 20 crore, and High Valuations Deals (HVD) for valuations between Rs 20 crore and Rs 100 crore. And Bipin noted that most of the recent deals since mid-2021 have fallen under the HVD category, and added that the average startup in the fund’s portfolio has a valuation of Rs 40-50 crore.
He stated that Titan Capital’s approach to seed investing is purely like gardening: it takes time, stress, and focus to help portfolio companies that are not doing well. Read more.
The Interview
Ready to build your first product prototype? Sequoia India’s Anadamoy Roychowdhry shares a few tips, such as thinking about distribution early on, building to throw away, and utilising no-code tools when you’re just starting.
Check out the first part of this series on why core loops are necessary when creating the minimum viable product (MVP).
Editor’s Pick: Pickright Technologies
When Archana Elapavuluri joined the workforce, she immediately wanted to start investing — right from her first paycheck. However, she did not find a platform that would help her choose the right type of investment.
Archana discovered there was a need for a platform that makes it effortless, easy, and efficient to manage money by helping people to invest in smart curated portfolios. This laid the foundation for Pickright Technologies, a Bengaluru-based wealthtech startup she founded with former colleague Namandeep Bhatia in 2019. Read more.
Having worked in the investment banking industry for a long time, Ajinkya Kulkarni realised there was a discernable gap between exclusive investment opportunities offered to high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), and the low-yield, traditional options offered to retail investors.
To solve this, he launched Wint Wealth in 2020, which helps retail investors buy debt instruments that were earlier exclusive to UHNIs. Over the last 1.5 years, the startup has garnered Rs 100 crore-plus in assets under management (AUM) from users on its platform. Read more.
News & Updates
Bengaluru-headquartered business accounting and inventory management application company Simply Vyapar Apps Pvt Ltd has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by WestBridge Capital. Returning investors IndiaMart and India Quotient also participated in the round.
A cross-border India-UAE VC fund to invest in startups in both these countries with a corpus of $150 million was launched from the India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai. The VC fund is set up with the purpose to source, invest, and nurture promising ventures through an accelerator to fuel the growth of Indian and UAE startups. The investors in this fund will be from UAE, India, and GCC countries.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“This generation has got the front row seat to the biggest technology revolution of our lifetime.”
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/inside-titan-capitals-investment-thesis-wint-wealth-pickright-technologies
Date :-January 27, 2022 at 06:00AM
In a matter of just 16 trading days in 2022, since January 3, the S&P BSE Sensex has seen a huge bout of volatility.
On January 24, at the day’s low of 56,984.01, the 30-stock Sensex was down 1,326.08 points – or 2.27 percent – compared to 2022’s opening value of 58,310.09 on January 3.
Just five trading days back, on January 18, the Sensex had touched 61,475.15 points – its highest in 2022. In comparison, at Monday's low, the index was down by a whopping 4,491.14 points – or 7.31 percent.
And if one compares the Sensex’s 52-week high (and also its recent life-high) of 62,245.43 points, on October 19 last year, at Monday’s low point, the benchmark index has seen a fall of 5,261.42 points – 8.45 percent – in a matter of just 68 trading days.
Clearly, the recent bout of volatility shows steep moves on the benchmark index, and the same has its bearing on the market performance of eight tech startups that took the public route through their initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2021 – also hailed as the best year ever for IPOs.
On Monday, alongside the 1,545.67 – or 2.62 percent – decline in the S&P BSE Sensex, the eight tech startups witnessed an erosion of Rs 38,171 crore ($5.1 billion) in their total market value. It stood close to Rs 2.70 lakh crore ($36.3 billion) on Monday, as compared to Rs 3.08 lakh crore ($41.4 billion) on Friday.
At YourStory, we analysed these eight tech startups’ listing day closing prices and the value at which the S&P BSE Sensex closed on the respective listing days.
And, after rebasing the closing prices and the Sensex’s close to 10,000 on the respective listing days, we have arrived at the invested value’s performance at the close of trade on January 24 (Monday). Read more.
The Interview
FarEye CEO Kushal Nahata deep-dives into the journey behind building a global end-to-end logistics startup from India and outlines the company’s expansion plans, and the road ahead.
Founded in 2013 by Kushal, Gaurav Srivastava, and Gautam Kumar, FarEye is gunning for an enhanced delivery experience for end-customers through its intelligent delivery management platform.
Editor’s Pick: Techie Tuesday
Prasanta Kumar Ghosh, Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bengaluru, has developed several patented voice technologies using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Augmented Reality (AR). His love for science and technology developed early on when he was in school.
In this week’s Techie Tuesday, we feature Prasanta, whose work in speech recognition is transforming many lives. Read more.
Started in 2016 by XLRI graduates Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper to disrupt the unorganised private tuition sector in India, PlanetSpark sought to transform traditional KG to Class 8 tuitions by combining physical teaching with mobile technology.
However, the platform pivoted to online classes in October 2019 after seeing the dramatic rise in demand for edtech. With over 2,000 tutors and 22,000 students trained so far on its platform, the Gurugram-based startup aims to make children between 4 and 16 years confident communicators. Read more.
Fullerton India and One97 Communications Limited, the parent company of Paytm, have partnered to provide lending products to MSMEs. The initiative aims to fulfil the credit needs of MSMEs across small cities and towns to help them scale up their businesses.
Ezetap has announced that Byas Nambisan, CEO since 2019, has now been elevated as a Co-founder by the Board. This is in recognition of his leadership in bringing the company to the forefront of India’s dynamic fintech landscape.
Flipkart has ramped up its grocery operations to now service consumers in 1,800 cities, including Ajmer, Amritsar, Bhuj, Dehradun, and Kanyakumari, among others. With this expansion, Flipkart is now present in 23 states, taking its reach to 10,000 pin codes.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO, Zomato
“Anything good and meaningful takes decades to build.”
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/indian-listed-startups-stock-market-planetspark-deepinder-goyal
Date :-January 25, 2022 at 06:00AM
Year after year the global interest in crypto money is growing beyond all predictions. Even the COVID-19 led challenges of 2021 couldn’t hinder the arrival of new layer-1 blockchain networks. Exactly why, there was a swathe of DeFi wallet developmentservices that supercharged the successful launch of crypto products. For the users, it's an exciting alternative to invest and generate passive income. For blockchain development company Antier, this is a goldmine of opportunity for the Indian blockchain fraternity.
Confident about India’s stature in the industry, Vikram R Singh, CEO, Antier Solutions shares, “Cryptos have been around for more than a decade now. However, 2021 was different. Not only did it introduce new blockchains but also put India on the global map. Today, 7.3 percent of the country’s population is investing in cryptocurrencies. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative for businesses to accept and enable cryptocurrency payments. The first step to that is building a crypto wallet and India will surely be the biggest market.”
This assessment could hit the bull’s eye because India already ranks second in terms of crypto adoption. In fact, the country was one of the fastest adopters of fintech digital solutions even before cryptos. More than 200 million people were using online banking before cryptos became popular here. This testifies the preparedness of the users and services providers alike to lead the Crypto DeFi wallet developmentindustry.
Understanding the popularity of crypto wallets
Crypto wallets are like any other payment wallet, built specifically for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, etc. They allow owners to store, trade, and buy or sell their cryptocurrency securely. A wallet comprises two types of keys - public and private. While the public key is like a public address which owners use to receive crypto, the private key is like the personal password which enables the owner to transfer currencies from their wallet to another.
The demand for cryptocurrency wallet developmentis soaring because they are the gateways to faster and safer peer-2-peer transactions across demographics.
As per a Forrester study, merchants who accept Bitcoin attract new customers and sales. Their purchase amounts are almost twice that of credit card users. Therefore, banks and other finance services providers don’t want to miss the unearthed potential. As an experienced DeFi development company, Antier understands this space in and out. The company has launched 100+ crypto products for a wide range of enterprises.
Launch your crypto wallet in less than 15 days
In the past three years, there have been multiple crypto wallet development services that cover a spectrum of solutions. These include centralised wallet development, decentralised wallet development, NFT wallet development, multicurrency wallet development, mobile wallet development, and web wallet development.
As one of the earliest Indian entrants in the industry, Antier leads the pack with fully customised and ready-to-deploy wallets. Vikram explains, “We receive numerous wallet development requests every day and the greatest challenge for most of these businesses is the stakeholder pressure to arrive early. Our white label solution is specifically designed for small-medium scale businesses who want to launch their platforms in record timelines. So performing a fast track go-to-market project takes 15 days. That covers most of the essential features.”
Antier’s DeFi crypto wallet services include mobile wallets, web wallets, hardware wallets, and desktop wallets. Apart from signature features such as cash-out, vendor payments, swapping, in-chat transactions, staking, and yield farming, Antier also provides multi-language support, QR code scanner to automatically scan wallet address, automatic conversion rates, auto denial of duplicate payments, NFC (Near Field Communication) support, and multi-coin and multi-asset support.
The solutions aim to empower small and medium enterprises to raise capital and accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the market. With consistent effort and unparalleled service, the team has gone on to support over 20 global finance companies in expanding their DeFi portfolios to more currencies and investment protocols.
Web 3.0 in Action
The era, popularly known as web 3.0, rides on decentralisation and blockchain products are at the helm of it. Enterprises who have woken up to the transformation are bound to benefit in the long haul. Needless to say, the Indian tech community will exercise its super power of learning new technologies faster than anyone else. And companies like Antier will continue to hone local talent and deliver high quality products.
If you want to build your own crypto wallet, please click here.
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/antier-solutions-leading-indias-crypto-wallet-development
Date :-January 24, 2022 at 06:40PM
Ezetap recognises a strong leadership team, elevates Byas Nambian to co-founder
Ezetap has announced that Byas Nambisan, CEO since 2019, has now been elevated as a Co-founder by the Board. This is in recognition of his leadership in bringing the company to the forefront of India’s dynamic fintech landscape.
The Board has also recognised Arjun Ramesh, Vice President International Sales, UAE, and Tamal Das, Vice President Customer Solutions & Software Engineering QA, as members of the Founding Team. In the past six months, the company also promoted Vineet Suneja to Chief Revenue Officer to spearhead business development and alliances with the leading merchant acquiring banks, fintech partners, and retail channels.
Ezetap has shown strong growth over the past few years and has expanded its partnership to now cover seven leading banks in India and has most of the marquee enterprises as its clients. The company grew over 90 percent YoY as of December 2021. It processes $8 billion in annualised GTV through 4 lakh retail points and is aiming to reach Rs 7,500 crore in annual revenue by 2024.
Flipkart Grocery expands its service to 1,800 cities across India
Flipkart, India’s homegrown ecommerce marketplace, has ramped up its grocery operations to now service consumers in 1,800 cities, including Ajmer, Amritsar, Bhuj, Bokaro, Daman & Diu, Dehradun, and Kanyakumari, among others. With this expansion, Flipkart is now present in 23 states across the country taking its reach to 10,000 pincodes.
Consumers will now have an option to purchase high-quality value-driven grocery products with a selection of more than 6,000+ in a safe and seamless manner. At the same time, the expansion will help support local farmers as they leverage the platform to become part of the digital economy. As the third wave of COVID-19 becomes imminent, customers across these cities will be able to get groceries safely delivered at the doorstep, without having to leave their homes.
Flipkart has made deep investments in its grocery business for the last two years, and today caters to its pan-India customers through 22 grocery fulfilment centres. These centres are spread across 25.2 lakh sq. ft. in total, creating thousands of direct and indirect job opportunities and boosting local employment.
Mensa Brands acquires majority stake in gardening solutions brand, TrustBasket
In its third partnership of 2022, Mensa Brands has invested in homegrown online gardening solutions brand TrustBasket.
TrustBasket offers a range of gardening solutions catering to different consumer segments — from gardening kits for hobbyists to compost makers and specialised soils for professionals.
Founded in 2015 by Santhosh Appaji, Santhosh Kumar N, and Shekar N, the brand claims to have served over 1.2 million customers in the last six years. TrustBasket’s products are available on its D2C website and Amazon and other e-commerce platforms.
ISB Executive Education collaborates with Eruditus to upskill professionals in Business Analytics
The Indian School of Business (ISB Executive Education) has announced the launch of the next cohort of the 12-week Advanced Business Analytics Programme with Eruditus. The programme will start from February 14, 2022.
The Indian Big Data Technology and Service Market has grown significantly in recent years with an expected CAGR of 35.1 percent in the forecast period 2021-2026. By 2022, 90 percent of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency. As per a report by Gartner, nearly 33 percent of large organisations will have analysts catering to decision intelligence and decision modelling by 2023.
Launched in April 2021, over 568 professionals have completed the programme already.
Spinny plans to expand to more than 30 cities by end of this year
Used car retailing platform Spinny announced the launch of a #WithExtraCare initiative to achieve a completely contactless car buying and selling experience for customers.
The startup aims to expand to more than 30 cities by the end of 2022 and will strengthen its online deliveries to simplify the used car buying process for consumers. The company plans to bring more technological advancement and modern solutions with contactless home deliveries this year in line with increasing consumer shift towards safety, convenience, and environment-friendly personal mobility.
Presently, Spinny is operational in 22 cities, including Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore, Kochi, and Coimbatore.
Embedded finance startup Falcon emerges from stealth; to hit $30M revenue by March ‘23
Embedded Finance startup Falcon has launched in India, announcing its target of hitting $30 million in revenue by March 2023. Falcon has already received backing from a number of investors from the US, India, and the Middle East, indicating the interest of the global community in the $24 billion market opportunity as companies rush to offer embedded payments and lending products.
Shamir Karkal (Founder, Sila Money), Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta (Founders, Licious), Jeremy Solomon (Former CFO Affirm), Boling Jiang (Founder, Lithic), Rangarajan Krishnan (CEO, Five Star Finance), Deepak Shahdadpuri (MD of DSG Consumer Partners), Devesh Sachdeva (MD, Fusion Microfinance), among executives from Softbank, UAE Sovereign Fund, Silicon Valley Bank, Robinhood, and Facebook are early backers of the embedded finance platform.
Ex-Ola Head of Design Asis Panda joins employee wellness platform Nova Benefits
Nova Benefits, an employee wellness platform focussed on corporate health insurance, announced the onboarding of Asis Panda to its leadership team, as Director of Design.
Asis comes with over 10 years of cross-functional expertise in design, insurance, and financial service, along with a deep knowledge of Product Design and Payments. Prior to joining Nova Benefits, he was the Head of Design at Ola, where he managed three key verticals, which included Ola delivery, Ola vehicle commerce, and Ola financial services. Before Ola, Asis was the Head of Design at Haptik – a SaaS company based out of Mumbai.
In his new role at Nova Benefits, Asis will lead the product design and creative teams, playing a vital role in enabling excellent customer experience.
Isthara acquires ‘Letsmobility’ to bolster technological solutions in the co-living and foodtech sectors
Isthara Coliving has acquired Letsmobility, a leading software product engineering company. Through this acquisition, Isthara aims to leverage Letsmobility’s private cloud-based microapps platform, Livet, to digitise operations and introduce advanced tech solutions in the highly fragmented co-living and institutional cafeteria sectors.
Isthara aims to enhance its core technology by merging it with the proprietary machine learning framework developed by Letsmobility. Through the integration, Isthara will develop and advance into a pioneering Framework 2.0, which will enhance the digital interface of the company’s customer-facing applications. Additionally, the platform’s AI-powered suggestions, business reports, and custom workflows will enable the company to improve efficiency and streamline operations.
Qjobs crosses 2M users; clocks 10x growth in a year
Qjobs, a jobs platform for blue and grey collar recruitment, claims to have achieved 10x growth amassing two million job seekers in a year. In a statement, Qjobs claims that it added the latest one million job seekers in a "record time of 100 days" and more than doubled jobs in Q3 FY22 itself, buoyed by the seasonal festive demand by enterprises and SMBs.
Qjobs was launched in November 2020 to efficiently address the recruiter and candidate hiring gap by offering verified jobs to job seekers and pre-screened and skilled candidates to recruiters.
Backed and powered by Quess Corp, QJobs helps top companies in India get access to identity verified and pre-screened candidates to meet their intensive hiring needs. For job seekers, QJobs has verified job opportunities in 20+ industries across India to apply from. It has a strong network of top employers including Shadowfax, Rapido, among others.
Wadhwani Foundation and National Entrepreneurship Network announce the launch of “Wadhwani TakeOff”
Wadhwani Foundation and the National Entrepreneurship Network [NEN] announced the launch of the "Wadhwani Takeoff" programme, which aims to provide an incredible opportunity for shortlisted startups and entrepreneurs to secure an all-expense-paid trip to Silicon Valley, the global centre of technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
The Wadhwani TakeOff programme will give shortlisted participants extensive exposure to the famed entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Valley through networking exposure with entrepreneurs, mentorship by business leaders and entrepreneurs, and the opportunity to pitch ideas to investors.
It seeks to encourage and excite students already enrolled in the NEN entrepreneurship course and will simultaneously motivate new students to enrol in the course. Eligible participants who end up with a commercially viable idea/venture and get top certification by an independent global jury will make it to this all-expense-paid Silicon Valley trip.
Zypp Electric partners with EVs spare parts provider Mechanifyspares
EV logistics startup Zypp Electric announced a partnership with Mechanifyspares, an online platform dedicated to providing auto components and spare parts for EVs. The aim is to procure and repair the 5,000+ EVs currently on road, seamlessly.
With Zypp Electric, Mechanifyspare aims to organise the disconnected electric two-wheeler (E2W) market by augmenting the existing supply chain and proprietary technology.
Under this partnership, Zypp’s dedicated team that handles repairs of its EVs will now be able to procure required spare parts by placing an online order and getting it delivered across the cities Zypp is present in. Further, Zypp will also enable Mechanifyspares in becoming a one-stop solution for all sorts of EV challenges related to maintenance and repairing.
Praveen Joshi, former Director Engineering, Sharechat, and Nitin Babel, Co-founder of Niki.ai join Lokal
Lokal, a hyperlocal social media platform, today announced the appointment of Nitin Babel as Vice President Operations and Praveen Joshi as Vice President Engineering. The appointment of both senior leadership roles is a critical step towards achieving Lokal’s vision of building India’s first super app for towns.
With this strategic move, Lokal aims to achieve operational excellence and a strong digital architecture to extend digital opportunities for India's Tier II and III users in their native languages. Nitin Babel has featured in Forbes Asia 30 under 30 and honoured by IIT Kharagpur as Young Alumni Achiever. A Digital Bharat enthusiast, he brings years of expertise and research on understanding the needs of the next billion users.
As VP-Operations, Nitin will be responsible for devising the operational strategy and aligning all the business verticals to contribute towards the larger business vision. Nitin has been a part of the startup ecosystem for over seven years. In his previous role as Co-founder at Niki.ai, he was instrumental in establishing a user-first culture across the organisation.
An industry veteran, Praveen Joshi comes with over 15 years of experience in architecting and delivering innovative large-scale technology platforms from conception to market. As VP-Engineering, he will focus on orchestrating a robust tech framework, facilitating the business to garner high-impact results through an integrated and unified digital strategy. Leading the team of developers, engineers and collaborating with product managers, Praveen will also closely mentor the tech talent at Lokal.
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/startup-news-updates-jan-24-2022-flipkart-grocery-ezetap-cofounder
Date :-January 24, 2022 at 05:36PM
India's average net worth is booming and according to the latest report by Credit Suisse, a majority of India's wealth is held by the top 5 percent of HNI (High Networth Individuals) who own ~62 percent of India's assets. But among the 5 percent, only 0.1 percent is well served. The remaining have tried their hand at Fixed Deposits (FD), equity investments, mutual funds, residential property, etc, but they actually have the appetite to invest beyond these traditional methods. The challenge lies in the lack of accessibility to institutional-quality investment opportunities like Commercial Real Estate (CRE).
While Angel list and LetsVenture do a similar syndication deal that allows HNIs to invest in startups and alternatives, BHIVE is a similar platform, where instead of startups, you get to invest in alternative assets like Commercial Real Estate (CRE), Revenue Based Financing (RBF) and international real estate.
Today, apart from investing through BHIVE’s FinTech platform in opportunities, retail investors can now invest in BHIVE company directly as angel investors. BHIVE has oversubscribed their offering on the LetsVenture platform by around 105 percent in a week and reviews are a testament to how much people love the product and the CRE market in general.
Creating a pool of wealth for HNIs
In the Indian market, bank deposits have a cumulative value of over $2 trillion. Currently, the rates that fixed deposits are offering is just about matching the annual inflation rate. Rental yields from investing in residential apartments have also dropped to ~2.4 percent per annum which is even lower than fixed deposits. Many HNIs are exploring investing in other asset categories such as CRE that offer better monthly income plus long-term appreciation.
"Imagine, even if we’re able to capture 1 percent of this market share, we’re looking at a huge number like $20 billion of assets coming under our management over the next few years," says Shesh Rao Paplikar, Founder, BHIVE.
The need of the hour is a competitive and comprehensive platform that allows HNIs to invest in international real estate, CRE, schools, hospitals and the like. And this is where BHIVE's fintech investment platform bhive.fund comes in.
BHIVE is now in the advanced stages of closing its Pre Series A round. They saw a phenomenal response on the LetsVenture platform and are closing on the round further with a few micro VCs and well-known angel investors.
"In the third straight month of starting full-fledged sales, we hit Rs 7.76 crores of the sales in a single calendar month. This was also possible as we have been able to bring close to Rs 200 crores worth of inventory onto the platform for HNIs to invest. We realised that it’s important for us to raise $1million to $2 million in the company right away to ensure that the growth momentum continues. This money will be deployed in sales, marketing and technology before we kick off the long effort of closing on a larger Series A round. We’re quite thrilled by the response we’ve got so far on our funding round. You can expect some big announcements to come soon,” he says.
Sunitha Ramaswamy, President, Early Stage, LetsVenture says, “BHIVE has been one of the early pioneers in the co-working space and has over the years, showcased a forward-thinking attitude. They've launched BHIVE Fund for HNIs to invest in CRE and other alternative asset classes which gives much better returns compared to traditional investment options. This is indeed a great investment opportunity since a platform like BHIVE Fund helps individuals to become fractional owners as well of the property they invest in. With the team now looking to expand their full-stack services in the real estate sector, we at LetsVenture, are looking forward to working with the team.”
By the end of FY21-22, BHIVE plans to achieve an AUM (Assets Under Management) of Rs 200 crore and by the end of the next financial year, to hit the Rs 1,000 crore mark.
Sourcing the best CRE deals
While BHIVE offers Fractional Real Estate (FRE) and Revenue Based Finance (RBF) in the CRE space, the potential for CRE is immensely high, with the highest being in Bengaluru worth over Rs 20,000 crore.
While globally, the space has already picked up the pace, HNIs, here in India, are missing out on great deals. This gives BHIVE an opportunity to fill the gap by offering them investment opportunities in the deals that they were missing out on before.
"I tell people that they originally came in to be an investor in real estate, but accidentally ended up being a landlord. Who wants to get a call from his tenant in the middle of the night to fix hospitality issues? Like Blackstone, we want to bring deals to our clients that give them high returns. Our goal is to be like the Blackstone for retail investors or HNIs,” says Shesh.
He adds, “Like true investors, they need to analyse the opportunities and decide which ones to invest in and what kind of portfolio they want to build. We have a huge team that understands the nuances of the real estate market and takes the effort of scanning through a lot of properties to source the best deals. We want to ensure people spend more time on analysis of available opportunities than managing the asset, which would be the case if they themselves invested in the asset," says Shesh.
The process is simple. BHIVE acts as the dealmaker and identifies and sources the deal, structures an investable deal, syndicates the deal investments, and also manages the assets.
A niche offering led by experts
While a lot of companies offer RBF and FRE in the CRE space, there's no other platform that offers both, except BHIVE. "We're targeting HNIs who want both these products. We're taking a global outlook but targeting the Indian audience," says Shesh.
What makes BHIVE stand out is the ability to not only strike the right deals, but manage the assets through its sister concern BHIVE workspace, wherever suitable. With 130+ investors on their platform, they are a digital-first company driven by an exceptional team of founders who bring a wealth of real estate, technology and investments knowledge to the table.
“At the end of the day, what we’re building here boils down to the quality of the team in our arsenal. The comprehensive set of offerings and the credentials of the team makes the business less imitable, thus setting the barriers to market entry higher. While many are trying to do FRE, building a wealth creation platform like www.bhive.fund is extremely difficult. Hardly anybody has the kind of experience and skills the founders here have got in CRE, deal-making and leasing,” says Shesh.
He further explains, “BHIVE’s finance team is in a different league with the kind of talent we’ve been able to bring on board. Our app that is already released is already ahead of most of what others have been trying to do. Also, on a global level, we’re one of the few who have the ability to build something that goes well beyond just being FRE listing platform and to be a true wealth creation platform with multiple types of offerings, the ability to manage the assets and thereby manage the risk for investors.”
Prior to coming back to India in 2014, Shesh worked in Wall Street. He has strong experience in technology in the financial domain. Since 2014, he has been an integral part of the Bangalore startup ecosystem and has also worked closely in the Bangalore Commercial Real Estate world over the years. Shesh and Co-founder Monnappa were both classmates at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), where they both studied Computers Engineering.
Sandeep Gupta, headed MB Invest at Magicbricks and also founded a blockchain tech startup, before joining BHIVE. In his corporate career spanning two decades, Sandeep has worked with Britannia Industries, Bombay Burmah, New Chennai Township, Cinépolis, and GMR. He holds a certificate in investment performance measurement. Sandeep is an IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA) alumnus and a CFA charter holder.
An alumnus of NITK and IIMA, Monnappa Bayavanda, before joining BHIVE, was part of the Amazon India founding team and prior to that, he was a solutions architect in i2 technologies (later JDA software and Blue Yonder).
Future outlook through the tech lens
BHIVE is on a strong growth path and is transforming the world of real estate by looking outside the regular ways of investing. In the future, they plan to diversify more into FRE and the wealth management category, and penetrate the international CRE market.
To manage the large influx of investors in CRE, technology is the only way. The bhive.fund app is available on the Google Play Store, where highly lucrative deals are made available to avid general investors. There are videos for each asset class, everyone gets a passbook, they can access investment memos and wealth analysis reports. The app will be made available on the Apple app store by the end of January 2022.
"Indians are the second biggest savers after China. We don't have the wealth mindset and don't put our money into opportunities where it can turn into wealth. We save money instead and spend it later. At BHIVE, we want to change that narrative," says Shesh.
If you have any further queries with regard to the investment, you can reach out to Ceooffice@bhiveworkspace.com.
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/bhive-fintech-investment-platform-hni-hits-monthly-revenue-1million
Date :-January 24, 2022 at 03:52PM
When the COVID-19 pandemic dashed plans of businesses across the country in 2020, the Indian startup ecosystem emerged as a force to reckon with by innovating at scale. Powered by talented and hard-working teams, these startups pivoted overnight to build state-of-the-art solutions that could meet an evolving customer demand.
In tandem with the rise of the startup ecosystem, the hiring scene in India is also witnessing new developments, especially when it comes to recruiting tech talent. For instance, the Indian IT sector has seen its highest number of active job openings since March 2020 due to the large-scale 'digitisation and virtualisation of enterprises' amidst the pandemic.
The large-scale hiring across the startup sector has led many budding startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to rope in tech-based human resources management solutions like Keka. It’s a B2B human resource management system that enables companies to automate their HR process and focus exclusively on grooming and supporting their employees. The SaaS-based platform enables startups and SMEs to scale and adapt to challenging business conditions effectively by leveraging automation to manage their talent.
Leveraging technology for talent management and acquisition
Established in 2015, the company was founded by Vijay Yalamanchili and Sashi Pagadala in Hyderabad. The two founders decided to launch a SaaS-based HRMS company after noticing how poor user experiences and legacy interfaces were crippling HR management in India.
Over six years later, the company has emerged as an industry leader in the SME HRtech space with its unique solutions that can be customised according to the requirements of various industries.
From automating payroll systems and building digitally connected workplaces to creating a digitised hiring and onboarding platform, Keka is a one-stop solution for automated HR services that help boost long-term business growth and promote seamless user experiences. These solutions are disrupting sectors like pharmaceuticals, healthcare, IT, manufacturing, banking, financial services, retail and technology, among others.
After transforming India's SME HRtech space with its cutting-edge offerings, Keka is now all set to venture into international markets and is eyeing global expansion. The HRtech company is already making strides in Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates. The team believes that the current business landscape is an opportune time for the company to expand globally and its solutions have the potential to drive impact internationally.
Eyeing global milestones
Talking in depth about the company's global plans, Barun Mallik, Lead-Marketing Strategy & Operations, Keka said, “Our team has enabled this through an array of updates and advancements. We hope that this global expansion move will help increase our wingspan.” Though the requirement for HRTech solutions is steadily rising across the world, the company plans to venture in to U.S and European markets for now.
Barun also said that Keka aims to expand geographically in a phased manner.
Keka's current clientele includes over 4,800 companies spanning 30 countries. It aims to double the figure by 2024 and ramp up its international clientele by 30-40 percent.
Deep-diving about the challenges that the task might entail, Barun says, “We are aware that we will have to face several challenges. We are actively looking at solving them come what may because we are confident of our team’s caliber. Our team is our strength and we look forward to leveraging its talent. We are also welcoming partners to get connected with Keka and join us in our growth journey.”
Author :- Team YS ( )
Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/us-european-markets-keka-global-hr-industry-innovative-solutions
Date :-January 24, 2022 at 11:46AM
Gurugram-based PlanetSpark is on a mission to make children between 4 and 16 years confident communicators.
Started in 2016 by XLRI graduates and hostel wingmates, Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, to disrupt the unorganised private tuition sector in India, PlanetSpark initially sought to transform traditional KG to Class 8 tuitions by combining physical teaching with mobile technology. However, it shifted its focus to online learning, and later to communication skills – a segment that has helped it grow.
“Our approach towards children’s communication skills development goes beyond the theoretical framework. We spent three years designing a curriculum that could make ‘public speaking’ and ‘writing’ interesting and application-based for K-12 kids,” Maneesh tells YourStory.
Today it offers live 1:1 classes in public speaking and creative writing for children aged 4-16 years. Children coached by PlanetSpark have also become YouTubers, podcasters and published authors across 13 countries including the US, Middle East, Europe and India. YourStory takes a deep dive into its growth trajectory so far and the road ahead. Read more.
The Interview
Hear thought leaders discuss the way forward for India’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) landscape, how developing partnerships accelerates growth and future-proofs young companies, the role of tech moats as differentiators and enablers of faster go-to-market for products, and finally, cost-effective cloud strategies at scale, so SaaS companies and their teams can spend more time building software that changes the world as they deploy faster and scale easier.
Editor’s Pick: Arcana Network
Launched in 2019, Bengaluru-based Arcana Network has built a storage and privacy stack for Ethereum DApps and works with developers across crypto, NFTs, DeFi, etc. as well as Web 2.0 products in fintech, healthcare, SaaS, etc to bring privacy and security to data. The Decrypting Story unpacks the startup. Read more.
Bengaluru-headquartered deMITasse Energies is a clean power generation startup that is building next-generation power plants that have zero emissions and are capable of storing long-duration grid-scale energy.
The startup ties up with energy generators, refineries, etc to help them save excess energy and use it when there is a greater need for energy. Read more.
