5 offbeat Indian start-ups worth investing in

India is the fastest growing and third largest start-up ecosystem globally, Nasscom states.

India has become a start-up hub with more than 800 start-ups setting up annually. Henceforth, start-ups have become one of the most potential sources of Indian economy.
We bring you five offbeat start-ups which are worth investing into.


1. BinBag- With e-Commerce evolving, buying an electronic gadget is only a click away. But what about their disposal? More than 90 per cent of e-waste ends up in land fillings. Bangalore-based start-up provides a solution to manage your e-waste in the best possible way. Customers can request a pick-up call or even email or walk into partner outlets to drop their e-waste. The startup also rewards and recognises those who dispose off their e-waste responsibly.



2. MadRat-In this age of technology are you worried about your kids' social upbringing? Yet you can't help but buy him a video game for offline games are age old and boring? With their wide range of innovative and technology infused offline games, MadRat comes to the rescue.


3. PeeBuddy- This Delhi based start-up has solved the problems of millions of women who hold their pee inside till their "bladder is about to blast" for public toilets are too dirty. Their disposable paper urination device solves not only that, but helps them to stand and pee as well. Saving the men from the whining of their counterparts while traveling. That was how the idea emerged.


4. Janta Choupal- The world's first political social app completely dedicated to increase the participation of the youth and common people to improve social governance. Here's an idea for Facebook and Google to invest in these times of political turmoil.


5. Grey Orange- Somewhere down the solitary highways, besides those unsuspicious shops, an army of robots is being built to take over the warehousing business. Sounds like a new Asimov novel? It is not. Gurgaon based start-up Grey Orange builds worker robots to make faster and efficient deliveries. This is the future of delivery system in India.
(image credits: peebuddy.in, madratgames.com, india.zonestartups.com, lemonideas.in, greyorange.sg, Facebook)

Weight loss app Truweight raises Series A funding from Kalaari Capital

Truweight, a Hyderabad-based tech startup promoting sustainable fitness and healthy lifestyle, has announced its Series A funding from venture capital firm Kalaari Capital. The undisclosed amount of funding will help Truweight to strengthen its presence across India and to launch a mobile app for making the healthy way of weight loss accessible at one's finger-tips.

 

Truweight offers solution for weight loss that combines its staple of "Super Foods" with a customised nutrition mentoring plan. Super Foods are nutrient-rich food considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being. Truweight has around 30 food products that are made with over 25 such Super Foods like spirulina, barley grass, alfaalfa grass, acacia gum, herbs, foxtail millet, to name a few.

Vishnu Saraf, Co-Founder and CEO said: "Truweight was started with the mission of giving people a trustworthy option to lose weight, in the right way. After enabling more than 7,000 weight loss success stories, we are now going to increase our reach through our mobile app. The funding amount will be used to hire key people, innovate and add few more food products, build a revolutionary health app and establish physical centres in Bangalore and Chennai."

The Indian entrepreneur eco-system has seen the emergence of several start-ups catering to health-based issues. In recent times several new health apps have been launched and have received venture funding. This includes GOQii, which integrates wearable's with expert-led personalised training, Obino is a do-it-yourself weight-loss app, Practo is a healthcare app that allows users to find relevant doctors and book appointment.

"Truweight has a genuinely fresh approach to weight loss in a market cluttered with short cut offerings like pills, potions and exercise machines. They believe that each individual deserves customized mentoring according to their body type, lifestyle and tendency to put on weight. At Kalaari Capital, we appreciate the vision of the co-founders and believe their technology driven, customer centric and truthful approach to a pervasive problem will bring them tangible success in the burgeoning health and wellness market in India," said Rajesh Raju, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital.

Truweight doesn't believe in calorie counting and approaches weight loss differently. Their team of 30 nutritionists also takes into consideration crucial factors like thyroid and lifestyle related challenges while designing a custom diet plan for their clients

Co-founders of Nanojobs start BookMyBai to bring professional maid hiring services to India

Sanjay Manaktala’s sketch video on interviewing a maid might have gone viral, but it brought home the issue of hiring house help. Finding someone reliable is a big problem that home owners face today. Also, with the busy schedules most people have, personally hunting for house help has become increasingly difficult.

Today, there is a growing demand for online services, whether it is for a plumber, an electrician, or house help. Organisations like Househelp, Nanojobs and Honestcollars help you get house staff like maids, nannies, and in some cases even plumbers and electricians. Some others like UrbanClap and Housejoy helps people find trustworthy help like plumbers, electricians and hardware repair guys easily. UrbanClap in fact also helps people find other services like an interior designer and a yoga teacher.

BookMyBai, by Anupam Singal and Vikash Chowdhury, the Co-Founders of Nanojobs, is one such online company. It was established with the aim of providing reliable house help. “The market for this segment is huge as every household requires domestic help. One wayto find domestic help is by contacting maid agencies. We tried using the services of these agencies and were stunned to see the lack of professionalism. Most of them are fly-by-night agencies who would take an advance payment and vanish,” says Anupam. Since the partners had the expertise from NanoJobs.com, they decided to launch BookMyBai to tap into the potential USD four billion industry.

Anupam and Vikash with a team member

The maids, who are associated with BookMyBai, do not have to share any part of their salary with the organisation. Anupam believes that ‘choice’ for years has been a resource of the upper and middle class segment. With BookMyBai, the team hopes to give choice to the bottom-of-the-pyramid jobseekers in employment opportunities.

Current scenario of booking maids online

The duo believes that the market is clustered with several mom-and-pop agencies due to lack of government organisations. According to Anupam, these companies register themselves with some local search engines and take the money in advance and disappear. Most of them he says never return calls, and if they provide a maid, the maid will abscond after a few days and the employer will be running helter-skelter trying to locate the agency as he would have paid the recruitment fee.

To solve this ambiguity and bring in professionalism, BookMyBai, provides video interviews of the maids, so that potential employers have a clear idea of who they might be hiring.  The video interview answers most of the questions the homeowners would have asked, thus saving time.

With experience from Nanojobs and the blue-collar manpower sector, the duo had found that almost 30 per cent of the job postings that they had received on Nanojobs were for maids, baby sitters, cooks, or caretakers for patients.Blue-collar jobseekers were not tech savvy and to cater to them they would require anend-to-end solution.“Also the rising complaints against maid agencies on the consumer complaints site helped us understand the market potential,” adds Anupam.

The hiring process

The four main categories that BookMyBai offers household help in are –maids, baby sitters, cooks, and caretakers. The team generates a database of maids through their sources and then shoot a two-minute video interview of the domestic help. The video clip has the basic 10 to 20 questions that any employer would ask a maid in a face-to-face interview.

Anupam adds: “We are very focused on the quality of the maid and the security of the client. Various types of the background verification, address verification, document verification are done before the maid is listed on the platform. Being a marketplace model, this does not come as a cost to us but adds a lot of advantage to our offering.”

The team charges one month’s salary as consulting fees from the client. They also guarantee a free replacement if the maid happens to leave within six months of joining. “We are bootstrapped right now but are talking to a few investors for raising our first round,” says Anupam.

The learning curve and team

Unlike Nanojobs, BookMyBai follows a marketplace model, thus reducing the database acquisition cost. The team has also learnt with time that the consumer is willing to pay any amount if the service quality is close to his expectations. “About 80 per cent of our new clients are from referrals and word-of-mouth. A satisfied client calls up 10 of his friends to tell them about BookMyBai,” says Anupam.

The company has two senior advisors, PawanBorle (Senior VP, FlyDubai) and Sanjay Enishetty (Partner, 50K Ventures). Anupam handles the technology part of the company and Vikash handles on-ground operations along with vendor empanelment. Alcino Dsouza is the COO of the company and he comes with over 15 years of experience in handling recruitment and vendors. Vaishnavi Kadam is the head of operations (client satisfaction) and has over 10 years of experience in call centre management.

Anupam says that they are inspired from the fact that that they are solving a big problem of everyday life. “I personally call up some of my clients to get feedback about our service and concept. When I get appreciation from them, it gives me great satisfaction,” says he.

The team believes that trust is an immediate challenge. Anupam further adds, “Due to the rogue agencies, the employers have stopped trusting everybody. Only time and service quality will conquer this problem. We are very growing rapidly at a 300 per cent increase in revenue every month. This is possible only when the clientsare satisfied and refer us to others.”

Way forward  

BookMyBai has already formed a good base in Mumbai. After raising the first round of funding they will launch in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune. “By 2017 we would want to be present in 40 cities across India and expand our offering to other class of personal staff like drivers.We also plan to launch a service where the maids will be on the payroll of BookMyBai. The maids would then be enrolled with PF, ESIC, and given a medical insurance,” concludes Anupam.

Flipkart founders-backed Ather Energy bags $12M funding from Tiger Global

Bengaluru-based automotive startup Ather Energy has received US $12 million funding (Rs 75.33 crore) from Tiger Global. The new round of funding will be used for development, testing, production and the launch of Ather’s first smart electric two-wheeler – the Ather S340.

Ather Energy is the brainchild of IIT-Madras graduates Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. The company was incubated at their alma mater’s Engineering Design Department in 2013 and later under the Incubation Cell at IIT Madras. Earlier, Ather received its first seed fund of US $1 million in December 2014 from Flipkart founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal.

YourStory spoke to Tarun Mehta, Co-founder of Ather Energy, to know more about the deal and future plans.

Ather Energy – a brief overview

Ather Energy aims to build smart, connected electric vehicles of the future. The company is developing a product Ather-S340 which would be at par with any petrol or electric two-wheelers available in the market today.

The Ather-S340 is a connected vehicle powered by lithium-Ion battery pack, featuring a digital touchscreen dashboard, has a light-weight aluminium chassis and offers a top speed of 75 kmph. Designed by Ather from ground-up, it’ll be the first electric scooter to be completely designed and manufactured in India. The smart dashboard in the vehicle will enable users to create personalized profiles, choose riding modes and set other ride preferences. Being one of the first connected vehicles in the country, all vehicle’s data is constantly logged and monitored enabling on-board diagnostics and issuing notifications for any maintenance.

Funding – last round, current round & future rounds

The last round of funding was used primarily for development only. The company performed very little testing in last five-six months. Tarun says,

Now, Ather Energy is almost ready with the complete prototype. For the coming three-five months, rigorous testing and design will be the main focus. By Oct-Nov’15, we are aiming to finalize the final design and the vehicle will hit the production by early next year. This investment will help us continue to evolve our product and scale it towards launch.

Ather is currently at an advanced stage of integration on the vehicle platform and testing of the functional prototype. Test rides are scheduled for October this year and the company claims to be seeing an increasing number of sign-ups for the same on their website. The AtherS340 is planned for launch in Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi by early 2016.

Ather Energy is not actively looking to raise funds and there’s no news expected from this department for the rest of the year. According to Tarun, though Ather Energy was not very keen to raise funds, this deal got sealed because Tiger Global is one of the best institutions for them to get funded from.

Ather’s strengths

Though both the co-founders have six patents between them, none of them is in the automotive sector. Tarun says,

Our strengths are our philosophies which have even led sometimes to get us out of the investors’ discussion. We believe in and are working towards vertical integration involving intuitive product design. We can’t just take any element off the shelf and put it on Ather bike. Everything from design to development is taking place from scratch.

Ather’s diverse team which includes mechanical engineers, data scientists, computer scientists, electrical and electronics engineers have contributed a lot to reach the current stage. There are 45 members in the team with 35 full time and 10 freelancers. Almost 90 per cent of the employee strength includes engineers or designers. The company is planning to hire many more in next few months.

Production unit and future

Tarun said that they are planning to set up the production unit close to Bengaluru though it’s not clear if the entire production process will be in-house or some vendors, suppliers and contractors will be involved as well. But Ather will control the process for sure even when going ahead with different vendors, suppliers or partners make sense for the company.

Tarun stated that he’ll be surprised if the smart electrical vehicle market doesn’t pick up in next two-three years. Though there is no other company doing similar stuff in India, he won’t be surprised to see the likes of Brammo motorcycles and Tesla entering the Indian market soon.

Sectorial analysis 

According to Tarun, automotive is one of the best industries and the fact that a lot of people have not cracked it makes it even more interesting. He says,

Ather Energy doesn’t classifies itself in electric vehicle category, but in the automotive industry. We’re building smart vehicles which is very different than the Hero electric or other existing vehicles, in terms of  speed, performance and target group. Ather stands for futuristic technology and machine learning that’s visible from every component we’ve designed for the vehicle.

Sales figures of electric vehicles in India were good in 2009 but after that the market collapsed suddenly. Tarun believes that this happened despite people liking it. The market couldn’t provide what was expected by the consumer. He says,

Unlike most internet companies, we can’t just pump money to drive the sales and customer acquisition