Men dominate venture capital and angel investment industries, but a handful of women tech entrepreneurs in India are taking steps to change that notion.
Tech entrepreneurs and investors Aarti Grover, Meera Kaul and Sarah Dhar have teamed up with Google India managing director Rajan Anandan and other angel investors to invest about Rs 7 crore in genetic-testing startup Mapmygenome.
The Hyderabad-based startup does gene mapping for Indians to discover their propensity for various illnesses, similar to the service provided Googlebacked DNA analysis company, 23andMe, in the United States. Founded by Anu Acharya, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Mapmygenome will use the funding to scale up its service, hire talent and for research and development.
"We partnered with several major hospitals and are looking forward to making these tests available through our genetic consultants, who have advanced degrees like PhD in genetics," said Acharya."The funding will help us first scale in India and then Asia," said Acharya, who has also tied up with online retailers Amazon and Snapdeal to provide the service.
Most of her customers come from metros right now but a growing number from smaller towns such as Vijaywada, Coimbatore, Kharagpur and Jalandhar are turning to the startup to test for diseases like cardiovascular-related problems, diabetes, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and male pattern baldness. "There is a tremendous future for this sector in our country and Mapmygenome is a pioneer in this space," said Aarti Grover, MD at CMS Computers.
Silicon Valley-based investor and entrepreneur Meera Kaul said while her investment was largely based on opportunity analysis, a huge part of the decision was because of the entrepreneur. "I like entrepreneurs that have their skin in the game and Anu (Acharya) is one hell of an investment," said Kaul.
Another investor, Satveer Singh Thakral, chief executive of Singapore Angel Network, is of the view that as India's economy develops, preventive healthcare will form a rising share of the household budget."We are backing this experienced team to scale and make this technology commercially available to people from all walks of life," he said.
Genomic assessment companies can assess even traits such as alcoholism, athletic ability and lactose intolerance as well as specific responses to certain drugs by testing a person's saliva or blood sample using gene-mapping equipment. Next-generation genomics is one of 12 disruptive technologies with potential to deliver economic value of up to $33 trillion a year worldwide by 2025, according to McKinsey Global Institute
One day, when Marc Andreessen, the money man behind such tech giants as Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, was out driving around his home in Palo Alto, California, he nearly hit a crazy old man crossing the street.
Looking back at the fool he had nearly run over he noticed the trademark blue jeans and black turtle neck. “Oh my god! I almost hit Steve Jobs!” he thought to himself.
It was Jobs that day, out on one of his many walks around the Palo Alto area, where Apple are based. Steve Jobs was famous in the area for his long walks, which he used for exercise, contemplation, problem solving, and even meetings. And Jobs was not alone. Through history the best minds have found that walking, whether a quick five minute jaunt, or a long four hour trek, has helped them compose, write, paint, and create.
Here are five reasons that walking is one of the best ways you can spend your time, and how it can help you think better, get more done, relate better, and live longer.
01. It will help make you more creative
Though most people have always thought that their best ideas came when the were on the move, now there is scientific evidence to back them up. A 2014 study from Stanford University in the US has shown that people are much more creative when they are walking around as opposed to when they are sitting still. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, who both authored the paper, studied 176 college students as they completed certain creative thinking tasks.
In this study, the authors used an experiment known as Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task. As part of this, they participants were asked to list as many alternative uses for a common object as they can. For instance, a knife could be used to spread butter, to cut bread, to stab someone, or to flick peas. The answers were then scored on originality, number of ideas and detail.
In their study, Oppezzo and Schwartz got the students to perform this task in a few different variations. Either sitting indoors or sitting outdoors, or walking on a treadmill indoors, or walking outside.
They found that when people were walking, either on the treadmill or outdoors, they were 60% more creative than when sitting around.
To add to this, 81% of the participants saw an increase in creativity when they were walking.
What’s more, when the participants took a second test after walking, they were still more creative, showing the positive effects of walking continued even after they sat down again.
Though there is no further research into how exactly walking makes you more creative, it is likely that it helps to increase blood flow all around your body, including to the brain to stimulate creativity.
Another interesting finding from the study was that there was no difference between walking on a boring treadmill indoors, and being outside among the birds and the bees. This shows that it is not the environment or sensation that is making walkers more creative, but just the act of walking alone.
It wasn’t all good news for walking in the study though. The researchers also found that if you had to do focused thinking while walking, answering questions that required a single correct answer, the results were no better than when sitting.
This study should give you some evidence if you want to build walking into your daily and business life. A simple walk outside can aid your creative brain if you find yourself stuck at a desk and unable to elicit the next bright spark. Instead of sitting, waiting for inspiration to strike, head outside for five minutes and see if the extra blood flow can get the creative juices flowing.
02. It will help you stay healthy
In a TED talk two years ago, Nilofer Merchant, a business innovator that pounds the same Silicon Valley streets as Andreessen does and Jobs did, advocated the virtues of meetings on the move. She had trouble fitting exercise into an already hectic day so started taking her meetings standing up.
In her TED talk she produced a startling statistic – we are on our butts for almost 10 hours of the day on average.
For many it will be many more as they sit at their desks for the working day and then head home to slump in front of the TV or computer. This is not good for us. Not only are our flabby behinds not built for sitting, but neither are our hearts.
Physical inactivity can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and a large number of cancers. It just doesn’t do us any good to sit around all day. Merchant describes sitting as the new smoking – something which we all do now that is slowly killing us, and that in 10, 20, 50 years time people will look back on as crazy.
In fact, walking is as close to a magic pill that we have. Just 30 minutes of walking each day is enough to dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer and dementia.
Though a good 30 minute walk each day would be best, if you do not have time then you can consider breaking it down into more manageable chunks. 10 minutes in the morning, at noon, and in the evening each will add up and help get your body used to a bit of exercise and like help your heart and brain out as well.
03. It will help you be more productive
If you’ve ever watched the TV show The West Wing you will have heard of the phrase “walk and talk”. In every single episode, the busy staffers of the presidential office were “just too busy, goddammit” to sit around and have meetings, so they would always be discussing, conniving, and gossiping on the move. Though this has become a cliché, something the cast now send up, it’s actually a brilliant idea.
Meetings on the move or walking meetings are very “in vogue” at the moment, particularly in Silicon Valley. The idea being that there is no reason really to hold a meeting over a big piece of wood, so why not take it outside and get some exercise at the same time. Nilofer Merchant says that walking meetings now account for 70% of her exercise during the week, and that they are far more productive than other types of meetings.
For one, there is little distraction. People leave their blackberry’s and smartphones in their pockets when out of a walking meeting, and obviously do not have one eye on their computer screen as can happen when you meet with someone in their office. Plus, you know that you are not going to be disturbed if you are out and about. Of course, this leads to problems for some people.
iPhone Separation Anxiety is real, and people do not like the idea about being away from their desks and electronic contact for any length of time.
Also, people do not know how to act or conduct themselves in such meetings. How do you take notes on the move, for instance? (hint: the same way you do when sitting down – with a pen and paper). Merchant says that, though people can feel awkward about such meetings, they soon see the benefits and are happy to go for walk and talks if you give them a heads up. They then can dress appropriately in sneakers instead of high heels.
Of course, the previously mentioned health and creativity benefits also make walking meetings far better than their sit-down cousins.
If you want to start having your meetings on the move, the best idea is to start with a colleague that also wants to get out and about. Arrange a walking meeting each week where you can discuss work issues together and brainstorm ideas. Then you can reach out to others to gauge interest. As Merchant says, give people warning that you are going mobile and you will probably not have any complaints, and probably a lot more ideas.
04. It’s a great way to communicate
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg both like first meetings with people to be on the move. This is because a walking conversation is so much more natural and distraction-free than most other types of meetings.
Part of this is because these type of meetings are not so great in that there are more than two people. Though you can get a group of people together for a mass walk and talk, it makes more sense for these meetings to be a one-on-one. The job interview for my first job in science was a walking meeting, as me and my soon-to-be boss walked through the streets of Lausanne, Switzerland discussing where we wanted neuroscience to be in 20 years time.
The naturalness of two people walking along in deep discussion and thought is definitely why these walking meetings are catching on.
You might find that if you are having difficulty communicating an idea to a colleague, then you both heading outside and taking the idea for a few laps around the local park helps immensely.
Again, it is likely that the increased blood flow helps you to come up with not only more creative ideas and solutions to problems, but also helps you express those ideas more fluently and helps you communicate with co-workers.
05. You will be following in the footsteps of giants
Steve Jobs’ penchant for walks was revealed in the recent Walter Isaacson biography of the man and the reason for walking’s recent renaissance within the tech elite, but he was hardly the first creative genius to discover that ideas flourish on the move.
Beethoven was an avid walker, taking short breaks to stretch his legs while working, and then spending his afternoons wandering around Vienna. He always took a pencil and paper with him to write down anything that struck him. You can see, or rather hear, the influence of these woodland walks in his symphonies, particularly his 6th Symphony, known as his Pastoral Symphony for its country and woodland elements.
Beethoven’s love of walking rubbed off on another genius of the time, Goethe. The composer and the poet meet in the resort town of Teplice on the Czech-German border and went for a walk and talk through the town. Perhaps, though, this is not the best example of a great walking meeting as, though Beethoven originally idolized Goethe, this was very much a case of never meet your idols. The two disliked each other and never met again. Though I hope Goethe continued his walks.
Another of history’s walking enthusiasts was Charles Dickens. Whether in London or at his country house in Kent he always took long walks. And when I say long, I mean long. Dickens could rack up 30 miles a day, or rather night, walking. He would walk whenever the mood took him and whenever he had something to think about, continuing around the streets of London or the country lanes of Kent until the issue was resolved in his head.
This may be a case of the cure is worse than the disease – walking 30 miles each day is unlikely to be very good for you or your joints. If 30 minutes is the minimum you are supposed to walk, then 30 miles is probably nearing the maximum. But it worked for Dickens, as he created some of his most remarkable and memorable characters when out walking, either through thought or through observing the city and people around him.
Another Victorian heavyweight that enjoyed a ramble around Kent was another Charles, Charles Darwin. Darwin had a gravel path installed at his home, not unlike a race track, that he would walk around each day as he thought about problems. The number of laps he did depended on the difficultly of the problem at hand. He would stack stones at the start of his walk and the knock them down one by one as he went round, describing the difficulty of the problem as a three, four, or five-flint problem.
Jobs’ walks around Silicon Valley have led to this being a particularly common trait among young tech leaders.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in particular is very fond of a walking meeting. If you are lucky enough to be being considered for a high up position at Facebook, don’t expect to be interviewed by Zuckerberg in his office. No, the man will take you on a tour of the campus, pointing out the different divisions and sounding you out about your experience and thoughts on the company. His piecè de résistance is to finish the walk and talk meeting on a promontory overlooking Silicon Valley and the other tech giants, telling you that he is bigger, better, and richer than all below, in true super-villain style. Presumably you get pushed off if you decline his offer.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and now heading up digital finance company Square, takes all new hires at Square for his ‘Gandhi walk’ on their first Friday. This is an epic walk through the streets of San Francisco to the Square offices while he espouses on the guiding principles behind Square.
If you are choosing to spend your afternoons rambling in the woods, or chose to take people out for a wander rather than meet in a stuffy office, you know you are in good company.
Take a walk today!
The conclusion is… walking is great. Not only will it make you more creative, it will help you get those ideas over to your colleagues better and allow you to fit more into your day. All while helping you not to die early. Fantastic.
So, why don’t we do it? Well, sometimes it’s cold outside, or raining, or we are feeling sluggish, or any other of a thousand reasons we have to not get up and out each day.
But if you start with just finding a few extra minutes each day for a walk, or try to move some part of your day, such as meetings outside, then you’ll find that walking is as natural as… walking. You’ll think more, do more, learn more, and live longer. Get walking!
Retailworx Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates food and vegetable retailing startup Freshworld, has raised an undisclosed amount from IAN and Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of IT giant Infosys, the company said in a release.
The investment was led by IAN investor Nagaraja Prakasam who co-invested with Gopalakrishnan. As a part of the agreement, Prakasam joined the board of Freshworld.
Prakasam has over couple of decades experience and as an angel investor in agriculture space, he has invested in 10 startups and made three exits.
Freshworld was founded by Rajiv Rao who has over two decades of experience in the telecom industry.
“This investment will enable us in expanding the business and increasing the reach & scale of Freshworld’s retail network. We are looking to upgrade the current model of our carts, strengthen our technology piece and also plan to foray into an organised retail store format for the fresh category only. This would be based on the popular friendly neighbourhood retailer concept or what is known as a convenience store, closer to our consumer,” commented Rao.
Bangalore-based Freshworld ventured into a 'farm-to-home' concept by organising fruits and vegetables (F&V) retailing through a street vendor using battery-operated carts. Each cart uses a tablet, printer and communication technologies to provide receipt, track inventory and analyse data.
"Freshworld is in line with my vision of supporting sustainable technologies in solving problems. I feel this is the next-level disruption in the F&V industry and we expect to see a lot of growth in coming years. I hope to see more ‘green carts’ dotting Bangalore and many more cities soon," said Gopalakrishnan.
In July 2013, Freshworld received an undisclosed amount in its first round of angel funding from family and friends.
Digital India in the next 10 years will have a $550 billion to $1 trillion impact on the GDP resulting from the use of intelligent applications of technology. This is 20-30 per cent of India’s incremental GDP growth and 3-6 times the current economic contribution of the industry itself, according to Noshir Kaka, Managing Director, India, McKinsey & Company.
In the next four years, there will be a dramatic change in technology in India with the largest migration in mankind’s history after the invention of the Internet taking place with humans attaching themselves to the internet. It is expected that 350-550 million people will join the mobile internet in the next four years.
This is a huge shift, and that’s why the Centre is putting Digital India as the centrepiece, he said at the inaugural session of the annual convention of the Madras Management Association on the theme India 2015 – The Year of Resurgence.
The scale of opportunity will come mainly from sectors like financial services, which will be the largest, followed by education, healthcare, agriculture, food, energy, infrastructure and government services.
“This is the opportunity for all of us if we use technology intelligently. It is not about using complex technology for algorithms but use of simple technology for India today,” he said.
“We cannot solve problems of India today without aggressively leveraging technology. We have the technology and the capability, and need to leverage what we do with it for the rest of the world, for India. My belief is that resurgence should never lie only with the government, which is only an enabler. We will see people will be retrained and new technology will emerge for India, and from India. We will see a huge theme around innovation that will lead to huge growth,” he said.
The impact technologies are going to have on the industries like manufacturing, financial services, government, energy and agriculture is expected to be between $16 trillion and $39 trillion in the next 10 years.
Kaka said about 30 per cent of the work done by knowledge workers today is not likely to be done by humans anymore. In other words, in the next 10 years machines will do 30 per cent of the work that humans do today, he said.
The Indian IT services in the first 20 years of its existence added one person for every dollar added. It is now down to 0.5 and for the next $100 billion that this industry is going to add, “we are going to take one-third of the people that we historically needed”, he said.
“In India, we will have an opportunity because as technology takes away jobs, it also creates new jobs of 14-28 million that did not exist in the past mainly from non-farm sectors,” he said.
Technological innovation is indeed important for economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities. Driven by extremely young, diverse and inclusive entrepreneurs, the Indian startup ecosystem is rapidly evolving. One such innovation driven technological startup is Invoxel.
Who says every entrepreneur story starts with the dream of making money? Some might even start with the humble thought of making life simpler; as it did for IIT Delhi alumnus Sachidanand Swami.
It was at a tea table discussion with a friend on SCI FI products that Swami came up with the idea of smart surface, but there was still a long way to go. During his tenure at Denmark Technical University, he started connecting with various resources and made up his mind that he would come up with a prototype. He turned to India and turned up at the doorstep of an IIT Delhi professor. The professor agreed to keep him as a summer intern.
Swami’s startup Invoxel is an amalgamation of hardware and software technology to design and develop a multi user smart surface. Team Invoxel includes Chirag Gupta from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, and Mukesh Kumar from the Department of Computer Science, IIT Delhi. The three are avid travellers and shutterbugs.
Their very first achievement was winning the first prize at the Open house at IIT Delhi and TechFest IIT Bombay. This was followed by Grant from DST and then the laurels followed. They also won the Power of Idea (Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad -2012) and the AGM Innovation Award (IIT Delhi – 2012) in India; abroad they walked away with the Innovators Award (Russian Union of Youth, Chita, Russia-July 2014) and the Top 100 Innovators Award (Open Innovation Forum, Moscow, Russia – Oct 2014). The latest feather in their cap is the Top 6 Innovators Award (Alumni Day IIT Delhi, 2014).
Team Invoxel receiving Top 6 Innovators Award at Alumni Day IIT Delhi, 2014
Now they have started being noticed
Invoxel brought home the prestigious grant of Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP) by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in 2013. This propelled the prototyping and shaping of as an innovating product. The first product sale worked as an investment and provided for mentoring. It then sold its first stage beta products and paved the path to various segments and clients like Oil India, Petronet LNG and Protiviti.
One of their first clients was AUDI India. The company was looking for smart surface installation for their Q3 Vendor Meet and team Invoxel made a prototype in two days and installed four units of the first stage product at a venue in Gurgaon. This gave them a burst of confidence and they took up Spark Minda Group project which is their first product installation.
Today, Invoxel is a pioneer in bridging digital communication gaps which it does by offering interactive solutions on digital multi-user smart surfaces technology. Its expertise is providing multi user interactive smart surfaces to groups of users. Invoxel Smart Surface is integration of hardware technologies and touch inputs through the smart glass surface. Multiple users can work simultaneously on smart surface table for intuitive interaction to make collaborative group communication. It has the capability to capture attention of users and they can ideate together. Invoxel’s digital landscaping is a tool for impressive corporate representation.
The team’s vision is to expand and provide technological sustenance to corporate houses, in the field of education, hospitality, the entertainment industry, tourism, infrastructure and real estate by using smart surfaces technologies.
Swami proudly shares, “It was indeed a challenging mile stone which we achieved when we completed our project with Spark Minda Group, an esteemed company in automobile component manufacturing. Team Invoxel was guided and led by Chairman Ashok Minda while support was provided by his management team to achieve the desired results. Team Invoxel took up this challenge with a lot of determination and worked towards this wonderful opportunity. This happens to be our stepping stone to such opportunities globally.”
Invoxel Product at Spark Minda, Ashok Minda Group, Gurgaon
Spark Minda Group is utilizing Invoxel’s multi user smart surface for interacting and showcasing business setups, branding and futuristic discussions with their stakeholders. Invoxel’s multi user smart surface contains Spark Minda Group’s company landscaping along with video representation of Ashok Minda, Group Chairman. Invoxel’s smart surface product is able to give the opportunity to groups of users to look into Minda Groups Company’s representation on global maps simultaneously and deep down into the information about their business with respect to customer’s base, size of operation, manufactured products, quality certificates and futuristic plans.
Swami adds, “Successful project implementation at Spark Minda Group gave strength, confidence and vision to entire team. Team Invoxel with their ‘never say die’ attitude has put up their best to take their startup ahead. Without support from team it would have been very difficult for Invoxel to achieve its first long interactive smart surface.”
Invoxel is open to technology product visionaries, advisories, investors and supporters to join the band wagon. Their belief is, “Innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect and grow into reality.
Ten shortlisted start-up teams will get to present their entrepreneurship ideas in 10 minutes each to a panel of over 12 angel investors and get an opportunity to win on-the-spot funding up to Rs.10 lakh each at the two-day Entrepreneurship Summit organised by IIT Bombay which opened on Saturday
.
The “10 Minute Million” event is one of the highlights of the summit, which each year brings together students, industry experts, business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs on the same platform. In its 10th edition now, the summit will feature this on-the-spot funding event for the first time on Sunday afternoon at the Lecture Hall Complex at IIT’s Powai campus.
The 10 selected start-up teams will get five minutes to pitch and explain their entrepreneurial idea, and five minutes to answer the questions raised by the investors on the durability of the concept, the revenue streams, the return on investment etc. “Only 10 start ups were shortlisted from over 250 applications were received,”said Sagar Sheth,
The panel of investors include Ajay Pandey, CEO and board member from the Tata Group, Ajeet Khurana, angel investor and CEO of IIT Bombay’s Society for Innovation and Entrepreurship (SINE), Bharat Banka, founder, Aditya Birla Private Equity, Ravi Gururaj, an investor who has funded five such start-ups in the past, Suneel Bandhu of Tata Teleservices among others.
An initiative by the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Bombay, E-Summit is a confluence of visionary students, professionals or anyone who wishes to be one of those crazy rebels who will change the world, start his own business or fund a business and become a trend-setter.
Inaugurating the summit, H.S. Pandalai, Deputy Director, Finance & External Affairs, IIT Bombay said, “E-Summit has grown bigger and better over the years and has become the one-stop destination for all budding entrepreneurs. IIT Bombay offers host of facilities to nurture entrepreneurship among students and I hope this Summit will provide an opportunity for young enthusiasts to interact with best of the minds and learn from their experiences.”
The keynote speakers at the inaugural session were Mr. Anil Gupta, Michael Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and Mr. Salil Donde, Executive Vice President, NASDAQ, who spoke on Entrepreneurial Indigeneity and Globalization.
“Entrepreneurs may need to take risks, big risks but do not take fatal risks...Focus on the business model and not the business plan; Opportunity comes at most unexpected times, so grab it. Data and analytics are vital, irrespective of the field you are in. And you learn more when you fail than when you succeed,” Mr. Donde told students sharing experiences from his journey.
When I graduated from IIT Bombay in 2008, turning down a job to do a startup was serious career suicide. Being poor for years, disownment by your parents and a significant decrease of market value in the marriage department were to be expected as well.
Last October, India’s fastest growing e-commerce startup Snapdeal raised $627 million at a reported valuation of over $2 billion. At the same time, India’s Uber-style service, Ola raised $210million while being valued at over $1 billion in under 3 years. Later in December, India’s largest online retailer Flipkart raised another $700 million at over a $11 billion valuation. Last week, India’s online restaurant guide Zomato bought US based startup Urbanspoon for over $50 million, making this deal the largest purchase of a US based internet company by an Indian startup.
Clearly, things have changed.
Being a founder myself, I was curious to understand what caused this to happen. Over the last 2 weeks, I travelled across India, met some amazing people and asked a lot of questions. Over 20 founder visits, 3 investor coffees, 1 IIT campus and several Ola rides later, 3 trends have emerged as part of this Great Indian Startup Frenzy.
Rise of new startup hubs — Kormangala and Powai
Both Koramangala in Bangalore and Hiranandani Powai in Mumbai are becoming thriving ecosystems to nurture startups in India. Kormangala is a small neighborhood of Bangalore with several startup offices, coworking spaces and founders working out of coffee shops. Bangalore being the IT hub of India, its residents are the perfect early adopters — young, mobile and hungry for new products. Startups in Kormangala are able to easily get user feedback, hire talent from other tech companies and find mentors in other successful founders nearby.
Hiranandani Powai, on the other hand, is right next to IIT Bombay. This proximity creates a constant stream of talented graduates wanting to create the next Housing.com, an online property search site that started from a dorm room at IIT Bombay. This attracts the presence of capital as well — several VC firms, including Sequoia Capital, are starting offices right outside IIT campus in Powai. Zishaan Hayath, one of the most prolific Angel Investors in India, operates an investment club out of his Powai residence while he runs the fast-growing education startup toppr.com as his full-time job.
Exponentially growing VC investments
Being a developing country, venture capital goes much farther in India than the Valley. But, unlike the Valley, it is in limited supply. Indian startups need to be much further along than startups in the Valley in order to raise rounds. Hence, successfully raising money can allow startups to scale rapidly and outrun their competitors. Investors at all stages have taken notice and are capitalizing on this trend by significantly increasing activity in India.
Example — Ola and TaxiForSure were going head to head in June ’14, with Ola having a slightly larger fleet size. SoftBank invested $210 million in Ola last October. Fast forward 3 months: Ola has grown over 4X in size with 60,000 cabs in over 52 cities while Taxiforsure has a significantly smaller fleet in about 37 cities.
In fact, SoftBank investing billions in India after their Alibaba success has played a big role in the increase in startup activity over the last year.
“We believe India is at a turning point in its development and have confidence that India will grow strongly over the next decade. As part of this belief, we intend to deploy significant capital in India over the next few years to support development of the market.” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Corp.
Cheap labor powers the product
Today’s successful Indian startups allow users to replicate their offline behaviors on their mobile phones. Interestingly, all such startups use an organized, on-the-ground labor force as a key component in delivering the product experience in one of two ways.
Collect data used in product features. Housing.com has a massive workforce tasked with visiting each and every house on the website to document its features — from taking beautiful pictures of the house to whether the neighborhood has a swimming pool or not. This is very valuable data that makes Housing.com 10x better than it’s competition and creates a solid moat around their business.
Deliver the end-user experience. Flipkart employes a network of delivery boys to handle last mile delivery to people’s homes.
A cheap labor force makes implementing any idea possible in India. Leveraging this asset is not just a good idea, it’s a necessity in India.
Now is the time to start a company in India
Too risky? Well … here are a few other ways you can contribute to the ecosystem:
Work for an Indian startup. There is a huge demand for good talent, especially at senior levels. Salaries over $200,000 aren’t unheard of.
Invest in startups. Your college network can be very effective in finding them. Angel list and termsheet.io are good resources as well.
Use Indian products and send them feedback.
Help Indian products get distribution in your country.
Signup for this newsletter I started to stay informed about new products launching in India.
“It was in the year 2008, my first year in college, that I first read about Dr. Devi Shetty, Founder of Narayana Hrudalaya, and his immense contribution in the field of affordable healthcare. What amazed me the most was the power of economies of scale in providing basic healthcare to the under-served in India. But it was only around two years back when I was admitted in Narayana Hrudalaya after being diagnosed with Sarcoidosis, that I saw for myself the impact of this healthcare institution,” says Pranat Bhadani, a core team member at Medyog.
Medyog is an online healthcare aggregator for diagnostics, with a special focus on preventive healthcare.
Pranat adds, “Post my surgery, I had to do monthly follow-ups and it was then that I realized the hassles that an individual faces to get information around diagnostics. It seemed impossible to find answers to questions such as ‘Where can I undergo this test?’, ‘How much would it cost me?’, ‘Which diagnostic center is better?’ etc.
At the same time, startups like Flipkart, Ola, and Housing, etc. were making lives simpler in almost every other sector. I wondered why a critical sector like healthcare ignored. I was surprised to see how little was being done in the healthcare space when the Internet revolution was transforming the consumer experience in every other sector I could think of.”
Medyog aspires to bring in transparency and convenience in the healthcare industry by answering questions for consumers which Pranat had to struggle to find the right answers to.
Though Medyog is not the first enterant in this market, Ziffi.com which raised 15cr in Series A & DoctorC.in which raised 2.5cr in seed round last year are trying to bloom in the same segment.
The Medyog team says, “Apart from the simplicity of our design and ease of transaction, our competitive advantage also lies in our two unique initiatives, Smart Preventive & SASH.”
Hear’s more about Medyog, the market it is going after and its one-year journey from the Co-founders Shantanu Jain and Nitin Jain. They have partnered with 15 different centers in Bangalore and are currently a team of four.
The market
Diagnostics is a USD 3.5B+ market in India. Preventive healthcare on the other hand is only about $250M of the total healthcare market. We are excited about the potential of the preventive healthcare market. We envision increasing this share to thee-four times. Though this will surely be challenging, but it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. As people start spending more on preventive healthcare, the total diagnostic spend will start decreasing. We believe it is possible.
Need for preventive healthcare
Majority of the population takes reactive healthcare measures. Wouldn’t we all prefer to cure the disease at stage zero? According to the Health Ministry reports, more than 63 million people in India are forced into poverty every year due to “catastrophic” expenditure on healthcare. And this is the financial impact of the reactive healthcare measures. Tobacco consumption alone is expected to take more than 200 million Indian lives in this century. To take a more specific example, Bangalore is facing a major health crisis, one that has been overlooked both by the society and the government:
More than 25% of children in Bangalore have Asthma
More than 15% of adult population in Bangalore have Diabetes
These stats shed some light on the need for a call for a strong collective response and we believe preventive healthcare can be the answer to some of these problems. Most ailments do not occur overnight, and can be detected at an early stage through regular check ups. The idea is to avoid severe health complications that could take a toll on both your biological as well as financial health. Medyog helps users go through various preventive health plans and identify the best one for themselves. We even customize preventive health plans based on your symptoms, lifestyle habits and family medical history.
A little deep dive in the market will reveal the existing nexus between the doctor and the diagnostic center. The Indian diagnostic setup is currently driven mainly by doctor referrals and the user has very little choice in the whole process, though preventive healthcare is a little bit of an exception.
Through Medyog we aim to restructure the industry from doctor driven to a doctor-patient driven. We firmly believe that what COD did for online shopping, preventive healthcare will do for online diagnostic segment.
How Medyog works?
Enables users to discover prices, compare offerings and make a choice based on reviews and ratings of the centers
Has discounts for the tests/packages
Users can get the reports online to share it with the doctor
Allows users to have their personal online repository
Allows creating multiple profiles under one account to managing one’s family’s healthcare needs
Provides personalized health plans
There are no convenience charges, no registration charges, and no subscription charges, either from the user or from our partner hospitals/diagnostic centers. Our partners provide us with discounts on each test/package and we pass on the major chunk of it to the user, while retaining a small fraction.
Healthcare is the most sensitive aspect of life for consumers and hence in addition to our social media campaigns, our focus is on personal interactions to raise awareness of Medyog. You can spot our team outside parks and health clubs in Bangalore early in the morning, creating awareness about preventable diseases and explaining the importance of regular health check-ups.
Some learnings
Don’t just ask your initial users for feedback, meet up with them and observe them using your platform. This will provide you with key insights to the behavior of the user, which you otherwise wouldn’t have known, and help you design accordingly. For instance, we were receiving complaints that there weren’t enough tests on our portal and that users weren’t able to find what they were looking for. In-spite of having more than 2000 tests, we thought that we still needed to add more and were about to prioritize adding new partners over everything else, when in one of our “feedback” sessions, we observed that a lot of people were making minor spelling mistakes while typing the name of the test, due to which they received no results and hence felt disappointed with the platform. We quickly incorporated a fuzzy logic in the search and the results have been amazing.
With its Mars Orbiter, Mangalyaan, India scientists showed that they could stand head to head with their peers in the West. Indian entrepreneurs demonstrated today that they can also stand head to head with the best in the world. A tiny startup from India with no experience in robotics or space flight just won a $1 million prize for meeting significant milestones in developing a robot that can safely land on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send Mooncasts.
Five teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE have just been awarded a combined $5.25 million. Team Indus is one of them. It took on companies that had been funded by billionaires, had received the assistance of NASA, and had the support of leading universities all over the world—and won.
This is good news for India for sure, but it is better news for the mankind because it shows that governments no longer have a monopoly on space exploration. Now that the baton has been passed to entrepreneurs, we can expect to have private spaceflights to the Moon. This will likely take two to three decades, but we will get there.
What has changed since the days of the Apollo Moon landings is that the cost of building technologies has dropped exponentially. What cost billions of dollars then costs millions now, and sometimes even less. Our smartphones have computers that are more powerful than the Cray supercomputers of yesteryear—which had strict export controls and cost tens of millions of dollars. We carry high-definition cameras in our pockets that are more powerful than what are on NASA spacecraft. The cameras in the Mars Curiosity Rover, for example, have a resolution of 2MP with 8GB of flash memory, the same as our clunky first-generation iPhones. The Apollo Guidance Computer, which took humans to the moon in 1966, had a 2.048 MHz processor—slower than those you find in calculators and musical greeting cards.
The same technologies as are available in the USA and Europe are available world wide. Innovation has globalized.
Team Indus
That is why Team Indus was able to compete with companies such as Moon Express, which has the backing of several billionaires and received key technologies from NASA to help it get its start; Astrobotic, which is a spinoff from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute; and Israel-based SpaceIL, which has the backing of the country’s top research institutes. The Bangalore-based startup was founded by a former I.T. executive, Rahul Narayan and four of his friends: an Air Force pilot, a marketing executive, an investment banker, and an aerospace engineer. Neither company had experience in building spacecraft or robots, yet they were able to build technology that could navigate to the Moon.
Narayan says he expects completion of his space mission to cost around $30 million. Moon Express CEO Bob Richards estimates $50 million. These numbers are higher than the $20 million prize that they hope to win. But both see far greater opportunities: they hope to be pioneers in what could be a trillion-dollar industry. Richards is looking to mine the Moon for minerals and bring them back to Earth.
The Google Lunar XPRIZE has twenty-six teams competing from around the world. Collectively, they will spend in the hundreds of millions of dollars on their efforts. For them, it is not all about winning the contest; many of the losers will still commercialize their space technologies or put their knowledge to use in other fields. This is the power of such competitions. They lead entrants to spend multiples of the offered purse on innovative solutions. And they motivate people outside the industry, such as Narayan, to enter it with out-of-the-box thinking.
Innovation prizes are not new. In fact, a number of celebrated historical feats were made possible, in part, by the desire to win these prizes. In the 1920s, New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize to the first person to fly non-stop between New York and Paris. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before an American airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh won the competition in 1927 with his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh’s achievement made him a national hero and a global celebrity. And it sparked the interest and investment that led to the modern aviation industry.
That is what I expect will come of the Lunar XPRIZE. And that is why I am looking forward to booking my round-trip ticket to the Moon one summer in the 2030s.
XPRIZE Foundation also launched its India operations in December. I expect it will inspire Indian entrepreneurs to solve many big problems that the country has. I have promised Ratan Tata, who is sponsoring this, and my good friend Peter Diamandis, who founded XPRIZE Foundation, that I will work with them to unleash the energy of India’s entrepreneurs. If Indians can reach the Moon, they can surely solve India’s problems of energy, learning, food and nutrition, shelter, clean water, social justice, connectivity, and waste.
Can a yummy pastry or even the perfect biryani be deconstructed into such precise ingredients, measures and processes that they can be exactly replicated in dozens or even hundreds of bakeries? Can a work of art be broken down and simplified to such an extent that mere craftsmen can make replica after replica consistently? Can modern ovens be programmed to fine-tune the temperature and time controls that mothers learnt over years in the kitchen?
Yes, they can. When a baker boy from Chennai went to IIM Ahmedabad, that’s what he figured. And the result is Ovenfresh, a QSR (quick service restaurant) chain founded in 2008 by Rajiv Subramanian.
Currently, Ovenfresh is in 15 A-Grade locations in Chennai and 10 in Bangalore. They serve over 1000 plates of baked biryani every day, and see lakhs of footfalls every month. The plan is to have 50 Ovenfresh outlets by this year end. “Hyderabad and Pune will be the next two Indian cities we will go to. In the next 3 to 5 years, we aim to be in all the top 15 cities in India. We will go for series B round of funding in 9-12 months,” Rajiv says. Revenue of Rs 200 crore is the medium term target.
A baker and a banker
The story began way back when Rajiv’s mother, who had a Masters in Food & Nutrition, ran a bakery in their backyard in T-Nagar, Chennai. He used to help her run it but had little expertise in the kitchen.
Rajiv went on to study computer engineering at the University of Madras, and worked with Oracle for a few years before getting into IIM-A. After his MBA, he joined Lehman Brothers, with whom he had done his internship earlier. He worked with them for a year, saved enough to bootstrap with 20 employees, and launched Ovenfresh.
It was conceived very differently from the home bakery Rajiv grew up in, because it had a model which could be easily replicated from one location to another. “Working on corporate finance with Lehman Brothers taught me how to scale,” Rajiv explains.
The secret sauce
“Our vision was simply to create a place where we’d love to eat at – every day. For this, the food had to be fresh, affordable and of high quality,” Rajiv says. To serve freshly baked food, and also manage time, costs and consistent quality was the challenge. Rajiv’s engineering background and business school training came into play here.
The initial months were spent experimenting with food. For every dish on the menu, ingredients were measured precisely, the heat monitored and the whole process documented to the last detail on an Excel sheet. “It was like building a prototype that can be replicated easily. This took a long time,” Rajiv recalls.
Trial and error played a part in formulating other components of the bakery as well. For instance, in the beginning, they had cappuccinos and lattes on the menu. “But when we realized that we ourselves liked to drink filter coffee instead, we took cappuccino and latte off the menu and added filter coffee instead.” That turned out to be a big money-saver as filter coffee could be priced much lower and is very popular. “It costs us close to Rs 20,000 to set up a filter coffee system vis a vis the Rs 4 lakh we used to spend on each cappuccino and latte setup. Now we are selling between 800 and 900 cups of filter coffee a day, at each of our outlets,” Rajiv says.
The process-centric approach
Rajiv’s mother helped him zero in on what would go on the menu. She baked countless perfect puffs and pastries and brewed coffee after coffee till Rajiv fine-tuned the processes he would need to recreate them in Ovenfresh outlets. They bought the best ovens and kitchen equipment available to make baking smooth and quick.
When they finally opened shop in Chennai, everyone in the 20-member team, including Rajiv, could whip up a pastry or two in minutes. “My cooking skills are still abysmal but the process is so streamlined that anybody can just follow the simple instructions and bake perfectly,” Rajiv says.
He took us through an Ovenfresh backend kitchen in Sarjapur, Bangalore. Monstrous steel machines – high-tech German ovens actually — lining the walls and employees wearing white aprons, it looked more like a laboratory. There were packets of what would be baked into a biryani – chicken, rice and spices in pouches. All one needs to do at the Ovenfresh front-end — that is, the outlets where customers go to eat — is mix the carefully measured ingredients, load it into an oven, punch a few buttons and lo, behold! Your baked goodie is ready to eat.
This process-centric approach was the differentiator for Ovenfresh. “Right from the start, I wanted to bring as much tech into play as possible. That baking or cooking is an art is a misconception. It is actually science,” he says.
“How do we take classic, everyday mass consumed Indian food products and create a process for it which no one had seen before — figuring that excites us.” That is the question Rajiv answers at Ovenfresh.
In March 2013, Kalaari Capital invested in Ovenfresh and came on board. “By then, Kalaari already had made successful investments in the retail sector. So compared to any other investor, they knew the space well and had a lot of insights to offer us. We usually had to explain the QSR model, and why we focussed on a process-centric approach and so on, but with Kalaari, they understood what worked well and could identify the potential in our model. They saw value in what we were doing though at that time we had just 10 outlets,” Rajiv says.
Ovenfresh mainly targets corporate customers, inside tech and business parks. “Those working in such places want to have good quality food without wasting any time. Most of our customers grab their coffee and quick-bite and head back to work,” says Rajiv.
Ovenfresh also has a few outlets on high-streets, which are open to the public – but Rajiv is clear in his focus: Building a business that creates value for customers, employees, and the partners.
