‘Software is a global business’ – 25 quotes of the week on digital transformation

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous edition here). This special series of quotes focuses on the increasing impact of digital media around the world. Share these 25 gems and insights with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

See also our pick of Top Quotes of 2021 on Entrepreneurship, Investment, Digital Transformation, Storytelling, The India Opportunity, Pandemic Resilience, Failure Recovery, Design, and Art.

Growth of gaming-focused adtech will be exponential in the coming decade across geographies with the growth of gamers and game publishers across freemium, Web 3.0 and skill-based real money gaming. - Manish Agarwal, Nazara

Decentralised gaming metaverses are going to give autonomy through ownership to creators and users alike. - Anshul Rustaggi, Totality Corp.

In the last two years, the readership for quality, intelligent content has grown significantly. - Mohika Sharma, The Jurni

The year 2022 will see a huge increase in programmatic audio due to increasing interest of publishers and availability of proper technology and standards to provide it. - Pankil Mehta, Alchemy Group

ALSO READ

[Year in Review 2021] Meet the top 10 techies we celebrated this year

Consumers are discovering brands, discovering products and now even transacting based on recommendations by creators. - Darpan Sanghvi, Good Glamm Group

Marketing is one of the largest spending categories for companies but many of its decisions are still driven by intuition rather than data. - Priya Saiprasad, SoftBank Investment Advisers

The inculcation of tech has enabled marketers to devise a flexible content execution strategy. It has also supercharged their marketing endeavours and forced brands to adapt to the fast-changing landscape. - Mayank Jain, Scalenut

Every other space has its own rules and regulations, but a website is a timeless artifact that people can always visit. - Ajit Sivaram, U&I

One of the many benefits of the internet is that this medium makes mental healthcare more approachable while also being readily accessible. - Rakesh Sharma, AtEase

Technology adoption and digitisation will lead the transformation of dental practice putting patient convenience and comfort at the centre in delivering products and services. - Ranjith Menon, Chiratae Ventures

What you will see now is more and more formal education getting digitised. - Ruchir Arora, CollegeDekho

The shift from legacy to digital processes continues to disrupt every category, including the multi-billion dollar field service management industry. - Shailesh Lakhani, Sequoia India

ALSO READ

[Year in Review 2021] From unicorns to IPOs, top 10 Indian startup milestones this year

Both international and homegrown chain hotel brands will expand their portfolio through acquisitions and the sector will see a rise in demand for hospitality technology solutions. - Aditya Sanghi, Hotelogix

Even minor tech-driven enhancements that can save even an hour of on-road time per trip can lead to incremental savings in fuel consumption and wages, bringing the operational costs down. - Karan Shaha, Vahak

Automation, electromobility and connectivity, along with new-age business models and technologies, are transforming the future of the transport industry. - Kamal Bali, Volvo Group, India

In the agri-domain, the sample size of the problem statement is huge and requires collaborative approach to deliver large scale impact. - Shashank Kumar, DeHaat

Lack of financial literacy confuses ordinary citizens to make decisions on which financial assets to own. It is a complex space to understand which leads to decisions taken based on fear or greed. - Neeil Chaurushi, North Alliance

Advancements in technology have sprouted new innovations in the field of AI, blockchain, ML, robotics, and IoT – these will help in furthering the standard of next-gen digital traceability solutions like smart labeling and digital tracing. - Aarti Gill, OZiva

SaaS companies are now realising the importance of developers who could empathise with blue-collar workers and have an emotional quotient (EQ). - Naveen Asrani, AWS

Work, leisure, and social contact are becoming more intertwined as more people use digital technologies. Even after COVID-19 is over, these trends are here to stay. - Ankit Gaur, Livpure

ALSO READ

[Year in Review] Meet these Indian women who used social media to drive change and social impact

The phrase ‘Your network is your net-worth’ couldn’t be truer in the digital age. Technology and innovation have paved way for a connected world and specialisation is our way of life. - Mohua Sengupta, Mashreq

Often businesses end up implementing processes or systems too early in their journey to measure metrics like revenue or growth. - Deepak Bala, Rocketlane

Automation is the perfect fit for businesses that require the accuracy of information. These tools ensure the data is accurate, reliable, and precise from the point of entry to the final step of the process. - Vicky Jain, uKnowva

The objective of any SaaS or cloud company, in respect of security, should be to establish and maintain the trust of the customer. - Binod PG, Atlassian

ALSO READ

[Year in Review 2021] Trends, technology, talent – Top quotes on digital transformation

Developers now also have to think about how they can be more collaborative in a remote work setting. - Nikhil Nandagopal, Appsmith

When you go out and help people fix problems, it's not just the technology but how people are using it. You really get to see how technology is applied and how transformative it can be. - Matt Robinson, Raahi

Software is a global business, and no matter where you start, you need to compete against the best for creating institutions that last. - Arpit Maheshwari, Stellaris Venture Partners

YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).

Author :- Madanmohan Rao ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/quotes-digital-transformation-software Date :-January 27, 2022 at 07:50AM

Inside Titan Capital’s investment thesis

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. 

Since its inception in 2015, Titan Capital has identified and seed invested in more than 200 startups, including six unicorns Ola, Mamaearth, Urban Company, Razorpay, Snapdeal, and Ofbusiness.

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.

---

Startup Spotlight

Buy debt instruments with Zerodha-backed Wint Wealth 

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.” 

— Puneet Chandok, President, India and South Asia, AWS

---

Now get the Daily Capsule in your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter today!

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

[Startup Bharat] These Goa-based entrepreneurs are simplifying credit for retailers and distributors

India has approximately 6.3 crore MSMEs and over 12 million kirana stores. But, despite the gargantuan numbers, there is a vacuum of organised credit available to the sector, leading to a credit gap of $250 billion.

Hailing from a family engaged in the FMCG distribution business for over three decades cousins Sanket Shendure and Sanmati Shendure developed in-depth domain expertise along with a rich understanding of the challenges faced by Indian retailers.

The duo launched Minko in January 2021 to address this credit bottleneck through a full-stack Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) led payment product for independent distributors in the Indian retail market.

“Currently, in the FMCG segment itself in India, 90 percent of the $100 billion worth of R2D (Retailer to Distributor) payments are executed in cash. Minko’s services will enable digital adoption among grassroot retailers and distributors through a unique credit-led payment product,” Sanket tells YourStory.

The backstory

The founders started their journey with a domestic money remittance business way back in July 2017, which was facilitated by a network of retailers and kiranas who acted as agents.

These agents helped users, typically migrant labourers working away from home, send money to their loved ones. They would give the cash to these retail and kirana store owners, who then wired the money on their behalf.

The entire transaction process was being powered by ICICI Bank and Paytm Payments Bank in the background.

By 2020, Minko, then known as Minkspay, had built a distribution network of 10,000 retailers, who were processing close to half a million transactions per month.

“We have processed more than $100 million transaction value from our system altogether over these three years. But the only thing we realise is that we are just acting as a distribution channel for the banks to get their product to smaller retailers and make them agents on their network,” says Sanket.

The COVID-19 lockdown changed things as the founders realised their business was just “replaceable at any given point of time”.

“That is when we decided to build a business which adds significant value to retailers and we built it from scratch. We came across the elephant in the room — the credit challenge faced by smaller retailers after the first lockdown,” recalls Sanket.

Co-founders of Minko

ALSO READ

[Funding roundup] B2C social commerce startup Gobillion, fintech platform Minko raised early-stage investments

Facing cash issues themselves, the pandemic led many distributors to reduce their credit periods to retailers to less than a week. On the other hand, retailers wanted at least two to three weeks' time.

That is where the co-founders realised that there is a big opportunity to create a BNPL stack for these distributors as well as retailers. Further, there are lenders or NBFCs that also want to bridge this credit gap.

The duo pivoted completely to a credit model, and rebranded to Minko in January 2021, ​​to primarily focus on building a formalised BNPL.

How does it work

The Minko platform allows FMCG and pharma companies and their distributors to save on cash collections costs along with lowering follow-up costs for payments, which are now digital and settled automatically online.

Minko offers credit limits between Rs 5,000 and Rs 2 lakh for a period of 5-30 days depending on the retailer's choice.

YS Design Team

Sanket says, “NBFCs cannot source these borrowers and retailers on their platform just for a loan of Rs 10,000 for 40 days because the operational costs would be massive. We realised we can only solve this by becoming an aggregator or solving this problem end-to-end for all three stakeholders — retailers, distributors, and NBFCs. This is where we came in to give the kind of experience that Flipkart and Amazon have given us with the kind of buy now pay later experiences since last two to three years.”

The startup launched its flagship product Minko Credits and built a mobile app.

First, a distributor comes onboard the platform and asks its retailers to use Minko’s mobile app. And then, NBFC or lenders facilitate the credit line to the retailers.

At present, more than four NBFCs are working with the startup.

With a 30-member team handling a network of 100+ distributors with 10,000+ retailers, Sanket (CEO) handles product, tech, and fundraising while Sanmati (Co-founder) leads sales and business development.

Differentiated product line

Apart from its flagship product, the startup added three new products within the last six months — Minko Invoices, Minko QR Code, and Minko Gold.

Through Minko Gold, every time a retailer makes a payment to the distributor, Minko helps them get a cash discount or cashback in the form of gold, which will help these retailers to generate a kind of SIP of digital gold.

“Eventually, they can withdraw one gram or five gram or 10 grams of gold as and when that kind of accumulation of gold happens and we have partnered with SafeGold in the background,” says Sanket.

Minko QR code is for users less likely to use internet banking apps or any digital banking apps for transacting or transferring money to their distributors in a digital form. Through Minko QR code or a QR card, retailers can make a payment to their distributor by scanning the code.

Minko Invoices helps retailers get a digital copy of the invoice once the retailer makes the payment either on credits or otherwise.

“We give you a Minko stack, to distributors, which they need to download and sign up and connect with their ERP system. And as soon as they go live as a distributor in the platform, not just the retailer who takes on credit but remaining retailers who actually get the physical copy of invoices can now start receiving a digital copy of invoices via Minko,” states Sanket.

Minko generates revenue by facilitating the BNPL transactions on its platform from different stakeholders right now.

“For Minko Invoices, we collect transaction fees on a per turn transaction, from the distributors. In the case of Minko Credit, NBFCs share a certain set of interest rates with us as the platform fee and that is how we generate revenue right now,” adds the co-founder.

Without disclosing exact figures, Sanket adds, “We have processed more than 4,000 credit transactions in just last eight months and we have disbursed more than a $2 million worth of credit (over Rs 15 crore) from our platform to for more than 110 suppliers and distributors in four states of India — Goa, Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka.”

Funding and way ahead

The retail fintech platform had raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by LC Nueva AIF, an India domiciled Category II AIF Fund, where LC Nueva Investment Partners LLP is the Investment Manager with participation from, LetsVenture Founder and CEO Shanti Mohan, and Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED.

Over the last six months, Minko has onboarded 10,000+ retailers and distributors of reputed brands, including Unilever, Parle Agro, Coca-Cola, Haldirams, Britannia, etc. Other players operating in a similar market include Rupifi and ePayLater.

From its current presence in Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Bihar, the company aims to expand to other states in India in the coming year and expects to onboard over one lakh retailers and distributors.

---

Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta

Author :- Trisha Medhi ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/goa-credit-facilitating-startup-minko-retailer-distributor Date :-January 27, 2022 at 06:55AM

Inside Titan Capital’s ‘gardening’ approach to investing in early-stage startups

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.

Since its inception in 2015, Titan Capital has identified and seed invested in more than 200 startups including six unicorns Ola, Mamaearth Urban Company Razorpay Snapdeal and Ofbusiness

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.”

ALSO READ

[Funding roundup] One more for the unicorn list, D2C brands, and a sustainable footwear startup

Gardening early-stage startups

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.

“By mid of 2021, our TSDs were zero that year and it was all HVDs every month. So, we had to remove that demarcation because you hardly get companies with valuation of Rs 13-14 crore. Recently, when I was studying all our portfolio performance, the average valuation for startups invested in the last four or five months was around Rs 40-41 crore,” Bipin explained.

Through LinkedIn and emails, as well as on-going internal reviews, Titan Capital has reviewed over 3,500 startups last year. Out of this, Bipin went through a funnel of 500 startups and Titan Capital made over 90 investments with an average check size of Rs 75-80 lakh.

While they may not be huge checks, Bipin said entrepreneurs seek Titan Capital’s backing for their network and guidance, revealed most founders shared in their feedback surveys.

“We are very clear as a joint consensus that our team needs to be available for our portfolio companies wherever they need and we are not someone who forces founders to do board meetings or impose our thesis. In fact, Titan’s thesis is not to join any board as a director and we generally join as observers and remain very silent,” he added.

He stated that Titan Capital’s approach to seed investing is purely like gardening: it takes the time, stress, and focus to help portfolio companies that are not doing well.

ALSO READ

How Indian startups are scaling up to next level of growth

Lessons in startup investing

When most of his peers were happy landing roles as financial analyst and consultants at global brands, Bipin pursued his interest in startups and worked with Susanto Mitra in the angel investing field after graduating from IIT Bombay in 2013, where he served at the Entrepreneurship Cell for two years during college.

From there began his journey of scanning through startups and there has been no looking back. Bipin said his learning is to jump at the right time and to work with founders who are truly passionate about their ventures.

He added that this decade truly belongs to entrepreneurs in India and startups across sectors are going global.

To know more, listen to the podcast here:

01:18 – Joining Titan Capital

06:10 – Finding soonicorns and unicorns

08:27 – How did Titan Capital manage to make 90+ investments in a year?

12:02 – What support does Titan Capital offer to portfolio companies?

15:58 – Thesis: Focus on bottom 50 percent of companies

28:10 – Change in valuation at the seed-stage

31:20 – Learnings in the last six years as an investor

---

Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta

Author :- Tenzin Norzom ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/titan-capital-seed-funding-investment-early-stage-startups-valuation-unicorn Date :-January 27, 2022 at 05:50AM

Sequoia Capital India announces Surge 06 with total funding of $60M

Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up programme, launched its sixth cohort, where Sequoia Capital India and its co-investors invested in 20 early-stage startups, with funding totalling $60 million.

The cohort featured startups belonging to SaaS, Dev Tools, cybersecurity, edtech, D2C, fintech, and agritech sectors, who are leveraging tech to solve some of the biggest challenges faced by consumers and businesses globally. 

According to Sequoia, this batch of startups is geographically diverse. While 50 percent of companies are based in India, it got new entrants from Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan, alongwith companies from Bangladesh and Australia.

Surge 06 will kick off on January 27, where founders will go through a rigorous 16-week virtual programme.

Some of the past speakers and mentors in the programme included Ankiti Bose (Zilingo), Ashwini Asokan (vue.ai/Mad Street Den), Binny Bansal (Flipkart), Byju Raveendran (BYJU’S), Doug Leone (Sequoia Capital), Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks), Kunal Shah (CRED), Nithin Kamath (Zerodha), Sanjeev Bikchandani (InfoEdge), and Vidit Aatrey (Meesho).

“The exceptional calibre and talent displayed by the founders of each new Surge cohort continue to humble us. Every founder brings with them the kind of bold innovation and purpose the world needs to solve some of the most pressing problems today,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Surge and Sequoia India.

He added, “Many of our companies are building strong, digital foundations that are opening pathways to international markets. We’re excited to be part of our founders’ ambitious journeys as they work towards becoming global businesses of the future.”

Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Sequoia India

ALSO READ

Early-stage investment heats up, and biggies want a piece of this pie

Surge 06 Cohort

Surge 06 featured the largest number of software startups, who focus on cybersecurity, customer engagement, talent development, payments, digital learning, mentoring, retail investing, etc.

At present, two cybersecurity startups are in stealth mode.

Here’s a list of Surge 06 startups:

• 10 Minute School: 10 Minute School provides affordable and accessible education for K-12 and college students, university admission test candidates, job-seekers, and people looking for specialised skills training in Bangladesh. 

• Airavana: Airavana reduces privacy risks and improves data security while providing customer data discovery across more than 150 cloud applications. It enables enterprises to manage and protect customers' personal data in consonance with privacy regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). 

• Aqgromalin: Aqgromalin is building a full-stack agritech platform to help farmers diversify into animal husbandry and aquaculture. The Chennai-based startup provides a data-backed traceable supply chain to farmers, butchers, and meat companies for their poultry, seafood, and livestock needs.

 

• BambooBox: AI-powered SaaS platform BambooBox helps companies build high-quality pipelines through engagement across an entire account than a single lead. 

• BiteSpeed: BiteSpeed is building a conversational commerce stack for D2C brands, which will enable online brands to interact with customers and sell products on apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Using chat as the core communication channel, BiteSpeed solves for the entire ecommerce customer journey, from retargeting to providing shipping updates to customer support.

• Blend: Blend is on a mission to turn every online seller into an ecommerce pro with an AI graphic design and marketing app that creates product visuals, social graphics, product descriptions, and ads in seconds.

• Canary Mail: Canary Mail is reimagining email security for modern businesses and individuals. With easy to use email encryption, protection from inbound threats, and human error prevention, Canary Mail delivers 360-degree email security and helps achieve regulatory compliance without compromising on user experience. 

• Checkbox: Checkbox, a no-code Expert Process Automation (EPA) platform, enables business users to develop their tools and software using intuitive ‘drag and drop’ technology.  

• Cooby: Cooby is reimagining sales management for a messaging-first world by building the best-in-class engagement and team management solutions on top of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and LINE. 

• Grupin: Indonesia-based social commerce platform Grupin offers an interactive community-based shopping experience to consumers, along with the benefit of large discounts on bulk consumer products. 

• HelloMida: Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) fashion brand HelloMida is built on a real-time retail model that empowers Southeast Asia’s digitally native Gen Z consumers to express and celebrate their individualism.

• IIMMPACT: IIMMPACT is a one-stop platform for payments and data aggregation for Southeast Asian companies. It aims to help Southeast Asian companies build fintech solutions by providing a full suite of world-class APIs, ranging from mobile top-ups, utility bills, government services, insurance, and travel under one umbrella. 

• Infina: Retail investing app Infina makes it easy for young tech-savvy Vietnamese to start their investing journey with minimal risk. 

• Manatal: The end-to-end recruitment and onboarding SaaS platform is on a mission to transform how the world recruits. Using an AI-powered Applicant Tracking System, Manatal helps companies onboard in minutes, leveraging the latest technologies to win the war for talent.

• Peakperformer: Peakperformer aims to democratise leadership coaching for managers at all levels and help them build behavioural skills in an engaging, measurable, and continuous manner. The digital coaching platform enables organisations to create strong leaders at all career levels.

 

• ScanPay: ScanPay aims to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) accept payments from customers seamlessly using just a smartphone. 

• Shajgoj Limited: Shajgoj is on a mission to inspire every woman to celebrate beauty with confidence by providing authentic products at reasonable prices from renowned brands and local distributors through its physical stores and online platforms. 

• Toplyne: Toplyne helps revenue teams at product-led SaaS companies to convert freemium users to paid subscribers. The plug-and-play platform enables sales teams at product-led growth (PLG) companies to identify accounts most likely to convert by analysing user behaviours within a product and determining which users have shown high intent to buy. 

---

Edited by Suman Singh

Author :- Sindhu Kashyaap ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/sequoia-capital-india-announces-launches-surge-06-sixth-cohort-rajan-anandan Date :-January 25, 2022 at 06:00AM

Indian listed startups vs the stock market mayhem

Good Morning,

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.

---

Startup Spotlight

To become a leader in the communication skill segment

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.

Co-founders, PlanetSpark

---

News & Updates

• Foodtech unicorn Swiggy has turned decacorn after raising $700 million in funding led by Invesco, six months after it raised $1.25 billion. Swiggy is now valued at $10.7 billion, up from its previous $5.5 billion.

• 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.” 

— Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder and CEO, Zomato

---

Now get the Daily Capsule in your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter today!

Author :- Team YS ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/indian-listed-startups-stock-market-planetspark-deepinder-goyal Date :-January 25, 2022 at 06:00AM

[Techie Tuesday] Meet IISc’s Prasanta Kumar Ghosh whose patented speech and voice technology products are helping cancer patients

Prasanta Kumar Ghosh, Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bengaluru, has developed several patented voice technology using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Augmented Reality (AR). But his love for science and technology developed early on when he was in school.

“As my father days had struggled significantly to get the right education, he made sure that I was well educated and had the right tutoring and mentorship. But what really excited me in my high school days in 1996 was electronics and the work that ISRO was doing then,” Prasanta tells YourStory.

His father was a government employee and his mother was a homemaker. For Prasanta, the aim was to get a job immediately after graduation. Despite his love for the work ISRO was doing at that time, he, however, couldn’t take up the organisation’s offer as he was already working in a different organisation.

“After graduating in electrical engineering from Jadavpur University in 2003, it was exceedingly important for us that I find a job. I had started applying everywhere I could, which gave me job offers from different places, and I started working at Usha Comp Private Limited in Kolkata,” he narrates.

Prasanta Kumar Ghosh presenting poster titled "Automatic classification of question turns

in spontaneous speech using lexical and prosodic evidence" in ICASSP 2008.

ALSO READ

[Techie Tuesday] From being a part of Windows 95 launch to building the first global BNPL product, meet ZestMoney’s Ashish Anantharaman

The world of research

However, he was never interested in taking up a job and rather wanted to research and work on electrical engineering and newer technologies. “I explained to my father that quitting the job may seem like a tough call, but in the long run, it would pay more dividends,” explains Prasanta.

Thereafter, he attempted the IISc entrance exam to pursue post-graduation studies.

“My rank was 489, thus I missed out on a lot of IITs and even IISc. My friends joined IISc and they kept telling me that there was a vacancy for a research position at the institute. I cleared the exam in 2004, and then was selected for the programme,” he says.

It was during this time that he got an offer from ISRO. While pursuing his MSc at IISc and simultaneously working there, he realised he could build and work on solving significantly larger problems.

“The faculty members at IISc were nothing short of inspirational. Their style of teaching and the way they inspired people to pursue research made me fall in love with the field, and I decided to take on the role of a researcher,” adds Prasanta.

This meant putting in a lot of hard work academically. Despite having a job offer from a startup, Prasanta decided to continue on the academic route. He went on to become a research intern at Microsoft Research India where he focused on the area of audio-visual speaker verification in 2006.

Prasanta Kumar Ghosh on commencement at the University of Southern California in 2011.

ALSO READ

[Techie Tuesday] Meet Raahi's Matt Robinson who went from solving server issues at CERN to working on hybrid cloud

Speech compression

“I focused my research and work on speech compression. When you speak on a phone today and record the conversation, the voice is transmitted to your friend after compressing the audio. My work is around non-uniform sampling-based compression. Any waveform can be sampled across three key locations. You don't have to look at the whole signal or all the samples, but the key locations are compressed and reconstructed,” explains Prasanta.

He went on to publish his research which fetched him a thesis award. It also made him realise that he could do more work in the space. “It got me to look at the other options in the field of speech and I started looking at places in the US where I could do my PhD,” he adds.

He went on to receive his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles in 2011. It was there he learned how different interdisciplinary work can be done.

Multipdisiplinary approach

“I worked at the intersection of science and technology. I worked with linguists, engineers, mathematicians, and others to build speech-recognition technology. I understood how an FM (frequency modulation) transmitter generates signals and this was the base for understanding how human speech worked,” explains Prasanta.

He also had experience working on a special electromagnetic programme at USC that would record and track the motion of the lips and tongues, and jaw movements while speaking. This further led to building the different voice recognition modules.

“I had this idea when I was at LA which has a large Hispanic population that preferred speaking Spanish than English. I had a project where the speech of the doctor, which was in English, could be translated to Spanish so that the patient could understand them,” he explains.

During 2011-2012, Prasanta was with IBM India Research Lab (IRL) as a researcher. He was also awarded the INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India in 2012.

“At IBM I worked more around intent classification in speech. For example, if someone asks ‘should I carry an umbrella tomorrow’, they actually want to know the weather for tomorrow,” says Prasanta. He also worked on text analytics and its intent.

He again joined IISc after his stint at IBM. After having worked on speech recognition, the next level was working on audio-visual speech recognition.

“We speak with gestures, and it is important to understand how gestures can create realistic animation. We have an optitrack motion camera device that can record someone’s gestures when they speak, which can help in understanding speech behaviour,” he explains.

Prasanta receiving honourable mention at MHI Research Festival for paper titled "Processing speech signal using auditory-like filterbank provides least uncertainty about articulatory gestures"

ALSO READ

[Techie Tuesday] Meet Rajesh Jain, India’s first website creator who sold his news business to Sify for $115M in the country’s first dotcom acquisition

Working on healthcare

Prasanta has also worked with hospitals like NIMHANS, St Johns, Bengaluru, etc. “Using the sound of your voice, we can, for example, try and understand how much the lung is congested. With HCG Hospital, we are trying to understand if you have a problem with your voice box. Many cancer patients have lost their voice box; we are trying to convert their speech into natural speech. Other than that, we are working to detect and improve the condition of patients with neurological problems who have a problem in speaking,” says Prasanta.

Now, he is working on speech recognition and voice technology using AI, ML, and AR. It offers the promise of improving livelihoods, especially in rural parts of India.

However, while India is home to 22 official scheduled languages, and a total of 6,661 mother tongues, leading internet companies in India are currently focusing only on five or six Indian languages.

Although the market is still nascent, the lack of investment in local languages and dialects is one of the fundamental bottlenecks for the growth of voice technology in the country. Prasanta’s project aims at addressing this bottleneck by reaching out to the wider Indian language base and laying the foundation to make it beneficial for the masses.

Advising young techies, Prasanta says, “Find out what you are really passionate about and focus on that. Once you decide to go all out to build and work on your project, find the support of the right people. Anything you do today needs multiple people coming together, and then everything will fall in place.”

---

Edited by Kanishk Singh

Author :- Sindhu Kashyaap ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/techie-tuesday-iisc-prasanta-kumar-ghosh-speech-recognition-ai-ml Date :-January 25, 2022 at 05:55AM

[Funding alert] Darwinbox turns unicorn; raises $72M in Series D round led by Technology Crossover Ventures

Hyderabad-based HRtech startup Darwinbox raised $72 million in a funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), along with participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEV, and SCB 10X.

The company’s valuation post the Series D round has crossed the $1 billion mark, with the total investment raised thus far crossing $110 million. The company has grown 200 percent since the last fundraise from Salesforces Ventures, around a year ago.

Founded in late 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni, Darwinbox aims to use the funds for global expansion by accelerating its platform innovation agenda, strengthening its product, engineering, and customer success teams, along with scaling its go-to-market (GTM) presence in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and MENA (Middle East and North Africa).

The team added that they aim to take Darwinbox public by 2025.

Darwinbox co-founders

ALSO READ

[The Turning Point] Why these McKinsey and EY consultants built a HR product now used by Bisleri, Swiggy, and Paytm

Turning unicorn

In a conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory, Rohit, Jayant, and Chaitanya spoke about Darwinbox’ journey to becoming a unicorn. When asked what does the coveted status means for the team, Rohit said,

“It is a milestone; we will feel happy about it for maybe a day, but after that, it is going back to business. It is just a milestone and not the destination. The journey has been a humbling one, with customers believing and taking bets on us at different stages. Also, our employees took the faith and belief in Darwinbox in the early days, and the right investors came at the right time.”

The new unicorn is a cloud-based HRtech platform that caters to an organisation’s HR needs across the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, core transactions (leaves, attendance, directory), payroll, travel and expenses, employee engagement, performance management, rewards and recognition, and people analytics.

The new-age platform combines highly configurable workflows, intelligent insights, and smart interfaces to help enterprises unleash the true potential of their workforce.

“Valuations are an outcome and these are generally tough to handle. What we can control is the product. Building for extraordinary agility and delivering stellar employee experience have been critical in defining success for Darwinbox’s customers. We will continue to invest in new and innovative technology to deliver a frictionless experience for the work-from-anywhere workforce,” said Chaitanya.

The trio worked for the likes of McKinsey and EY, as well as their clients, and realised that those companies did not have the best HR systems. The main asset for these companies were the people, and they needed the best systems for HR.

So, they decided to start Darwinbox in 2015 with an investment of less than Rs 30 lakh. Their first breakthrough came in the form of Delhivery. Now, the company is expecting the overall team to grow by 100 percent and is also preparing to launch in the US this year.

Darwin co-founders Rohit, Jayant, Chaitanya

ALSO READ

Future of Work: "AI will not replace HR," says Darwinbox's Chaitanya Peddi, on the role of HR tech in the new normal

Building for the employee

“Among those who gave initial feedback was Mohandas Pai, an early investor in the startup, who said, ‘if you are building something in the HR space, can you build something for the employee? At least someone needs to build for them.’ Many previous HR systems have been built for the IT function, but our system touches everyone in the company – from the CEO to the fresher,” explained Jayant.

He added that the idea is to focus on what kind of problems you are solving for the last mile. “It was this hypothesis that gave us the courage to go head-on against larger giants who possibly have funds that can rival the GDP of a small nation,” he added.

"Investing behind technology to manage talent has become inevitable for organisational success. Darwinbox demonstrated the ability to build agile, innovative, and user-friendly solutions along with deep customer-centricity – which has made them a platform of choice for several leading enterprises,” added Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and a Venture Partner at TCV.

Adding further, Chaitanya said, “The product’s focus is on solving the challenges of people function in large and diverse organisations with complex structures using the best of technologies. We will invest heavily in further strengthening our platform, especially our analytical layer with AI and ML capabilities to aid decision-making.”

Competing with giants

The founders said what helped them in their journey was keeping up with the pace of change happening around them. They added that agility and building around customer needs are important for success.

The company also stated that over 1.5 million employees from large conglomerates, fast-growing technology giants, and leading global brands like Nivea, Starbucks, Dominos, T-Systems, AXA, Tokio, Cigna, JSW, Adani, Vedanta, Mahindra, Kotak, NSE, Ujjivan, Makemytrip, Swiggy, and Tokopedia were able to adapt to the new normal with Darwinbox.

“SaaS is a new opportunity today, and it is India’s next big opportunity for the world. It is a convergence of multiple factors coming together – talent, ability to sell, and multiple things coming together at the same time,” Jayant said.

---

Edited by Kanishk Singh

Author :- Sindhu Kashyaap ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/hrtech-saas-startup-darwinbox-unicorn-series-d-funding-valuation Date :-January 25, 2022 at 06:00AM

Focus and execute...our stock price will take care of itself: Deepinder Goyal tells Zomato employees

Ever since its listing on July 23 last year, the share price of foodtech decacorn Zomato never went under the three-digit figure.

On BSE, the Zomatostock touched a low point of Rs 112.55 apiece, on Friday, January 21, and that did not seem abnormal given the volatility that Indian equity markets have witnessed in recent weeks.

For the record, just five trading days ago, on January 18, the Sensex had touched 61,475.15 points – its highest in 2022. In comparison, at Monday's low of 56,984.01 points, the 30-stock index was down by a whopping 4,491.14 points – or 7.31 percent.

In the Monday mayhem, the Sensex lost 2,053.17 – or nearly 3.5 percent – to touch the day’s low, compared to Friday’s close of 59,037.18. At the end of the day’s trade, the benchmark index shredded 1,545.67 points – or 2.62 percent – to close at 57,491.51 points.

And Zomato was anything but an exception in the volatile correction of Monday. On the 127th trading day since its listing, Zomato breached the psychological three-digit barrier, and fell to Rs 91 apiece.

ALSO READ

Eight listed tech startups including Zomato, Nykaa, PolicyBazaar lose Rs 38K crore in market value

Apart from touching its lowest point since listing, the 20 percent single-day fall triggered the lower circuit on the stock.

After market-hours, a note addressed to Zomato employees from Deepinder Goyal, Zomato’s Founder and CEO, started making rounds among market circles, as well as on social media.

If one wonders why a CEO of a recently-listed tech startup wrote to his employees on a choppy day in the stock market, there are three reasons behind it.

One; Zomato has got accustomed to stock price movements – both downward and upwards – but not a steep fall breaching the three-digit mark.

Two; open communication makes startups stand out as compared to larger corporations, and Deepinder personified this belief.   

Three; according to Zomato's shareholding pattern for the quarter ended December 2021, Zomato’s Employee Benefit Trust holds over 233.39 million shares, which works out to be 2.97 percent of Zomato.

Compared to Deepinder’s 4.69 percent shareholding through 369.4 million shares, the employee benefit trust’s holding is a little over 63 percent of Deepinder’s personal stake in Zomato.

“Employees are the very crucial assets in technology-run businesses, and communicating with them during a crisis takes the trust in management to another level,” says the chief executive of a boutique wealth management outfit in Mumbai.

Coming back to Deepinder’s note, he started with the mention of Zomato’s stock price coming down by nearly 30 percent over the past week to Rs 94. Going by the timestamp of Zomato’s price movement on BSE, the time of price reference is expected to be after 9:55 AM, post which the stock fell below Rs 100 apiece.

“We have no idea whether we have hit the bottom yet,” Deepinder wrote. Clearly, he would not have imagined that the stock was going to hit its 20 percent lower circuit as the trading day was approaching its close.

Deepinder added that Zomato’s market capitalisation is down by nearly $10 billion, from the peak of nearly $17 billion. “But still above our IPO valuation of close to $8 billion,” he wrote.

“This is likely on account of global sell-off in growth tech stocks which has led to numerous stocks like Doordash, Delivery Hero, Netflix, Peloton, Zoom (and the list goes on...) being down 40-80 percent over the past 2 months,” Deepinder added.

“Valuations can swing massively without any change in the fundamentals of the business depending on macro-economic factors like inflation, interest rates,” he further noted. “We had no control on our valuation going up from $8 billion in the IPO to $17 billion at our peak, and vice versa now.”

ALSO READ

With Zomato, Nykaa, Paytm and more startups going public, what does it now mean for founders to run a listed company?

For the record, at $9.67 billion on Monday, Zomato’s market capitalisation fell by $7.2 billion – or 42.7 percent – from $16.88 billion on November 25 last year. That’s near -43 percent correction in a matter of 43 trading days.

In his note, Deepinder added that there is an important lesson here for all of them, which he wanted to reiterate. “We cannot control the market’s sentiments or the macro-economic factors which also significantly impact our valuations,” he wrote.

“What we do control is our execution and the value we create for our internal and external customers. Focus, and execute, in the long term, our stock price, amongst other things, will take care of itself,” Deepinder added.

He went on to reveal a secret in his note. “I have been waiting for the bear market for a long time now – that is when funding dries up for everyone, and companies with the most solid teams and execution rise to the top.”

However, the timing of Deepinder revealing his secret love for bear markets – which causes drying up of funding – and Zomato hitting its lower circuit turned out to be an irony of sorts.

This is because on the same day, Zomato’s arch-rival – Swiggy — revealed that it had raised $700 million at a decacorn valuation of $10.7 billion – up from its previous valuation of $5.5 billion some six months ago.

Deepinder, towards the end of his note, spelt out that he is confident about Zomato’s overall strategy as a business. “Let’s continue executing… creating value, cutting costs, and like always, not look at the stock price,” he noted. “We are adequately capitalised and don’t have much to worry about except execution.”

---

Edited by Kanishk Singh

Author :- Rajiv Bhuva ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/zomato-lower-circuit-deepinder-goyal-letter-stock-market Date :-January 24, 2022 at 11:20PM

NowPurchase founder on recent fundraise, expansion plans, and more

NowPurchase, a procurement technology company for the metal manufacturing industry, recently raised $2.4 million in a seed funding round led by Orios and InfoEdge Ventures. Angel investor Neeraj Arora, former WhatsApp global business head and Co-founder HalloApp, also participated in the round. 

For founder Naman Shah, the fundraise is a validation of the business from investors. “It is a validation that large businesses could be built in a vertical domain-specific approach in the business-to-business (B2B) segment,” he told YourStory. 

Naman, along with his cousin Aakash Shah, launched the startup in 2017 with an initial capital of $300,000 from family business Nipha Group. 

With the latest round of funding, the Kolkata-based company plans to expand its geographical presence in the country including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi NCR and also increase its supplier base, adding global suppliers in its portfolio, to provide more efficient materials, Naman said. It has already added a supplier in Turkey.

ALSO READ

BHIVE's fintech investment platform for HNIs hits monthly revenue of $1million; opens fresh round of funding

“We've been at it for around four years. But in the last two years, since a pivot, things have been going really well. We are very excited to bring on board a set of investors who are specific to the seed stage, but also think long term,” said Naman. 

NowPurchase started as a B2B horizontal ecommerce platform that helped companies across various industries but pivoted to the metal manufacturing market starting December 2019. 

“We realised that we are not being able to differentiate enough or become a real procurement partner for our customers, where they value us beyond just the price and delivery. We wanted to become a critical piece of their supply chain,” Naman added. 

The startup decided to work with foundries (factories for casting metal) in West Bengal, where the company already had a presence. 

Over time, during the pandemic, it saw another opportunity in helping manufacturers improve their efficiency and productivity. This led NowPurchase to build manufacturing intelligence software to help small and medium businesses decide how to use their raw materials efficiently to make their end product.

Ankan Adhikari, who had previously founded Pyoopil Education and later sold it to upGrad in 2016, helped to build the startup's tech offering as its Chief Technology Officer since January 2021.

“Digitising procurement is a critical milestone and one of the most important gaps that remain to be filled in India's manufacturing sector,” Vinit Bhansali, Senior Vice President at Orios Venture Partners, said in a statement at the time of the funding, “NowPurchase's tech-first platform will be a game-changer in this space.”

The startup claims to have 100 customers at the moment including Kejriwal Castings, TATA Metaliks, MBK Castings, Crescent Foundry, AMIK Metals. About 65-70 of them place orders every month, the company said.

Going forward, it plans to add more functionalities to the product, build its technology team, and work on its adoption and scale, and grow its business three times by volume by December 2022.

In addition, NowPurchase expects to grow to a 100-member team by the end of 2022 from about 35 at the moment. 

---

Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta

Author :- Malvika Maloo ( ) Source :- https://yourstory.com/2022/01/nowpurchase-seed-funding-global-suppliers-expansion-technology-team Date :-January 24, 2022 at 08:02PM