Delhi Based Ruplee Wants To Make Dining Out A Cashless Affair

It all started with a 20-minute wait. Wait to get a bill and then wait for the remaining change, has changed the way many restaurants in Delhi operate. Natasha Jain, a graduate from Stanford wanted to solve this problem of long, useless wait for the restaurant bill.

She came back to India with an intention to build this offline restaurant payment application, wherein the end-customer could just pay the bill using the app and even receive the bill in his/her email. Within one year, Ruplee has a team strength of 30 with operations in Delhi and Gurgaon, and is entering Mumbai to capture the market.

Differentiated Offerings

In a normal restaurant versus a Ruplee partner restaurant, normally, in a usual restaurant after you finish your food, you call for the cheque and wait for it until it comes to you, but if it were a partner restaurant with Ruplee, you can just open the app, request for the bill through app, and after receiving  the bill, pay it by using credit or debit card, net banking or online wallet service. You also receive a copy of the bill in the email. Hence, it saves a lot of time.

Since, the app saves previous history, you can even watch your monthly spent in dining out. “It is a payment solution for anybody in offline space. We enable everything that you do for credit card, becoming the payment mode across any merchant in the offline space. Therefore, we say leave your wallet behind,” Natasha added. “We do not aim to be another e-commerce portal, we are just connecting the offline world to online.”

How It Is Different From Others

Ruplee app takes offline restaurant payment experience to online through its mobile app. It connects to a payment gateway where you can pay through wallet, credit card, netbanking or any other payment mode.

However, in last few months, it has pivoted to play a larger role than just a restaurant payment application. For the restaurant owners, the application provides other services like managing social media  and even customer analytics. This helps Ruplee expand its service from just commission-based payment to solutions and services model. They provide a report to the restaurant owner which has data about the customer, amount spent, the frequency of visits and choice of menu. “We are now monetizing on transaction analytics to bring the customers back to the restaurant,” Natasha added.

Ruplee started the pilot with its associated restaurants in Delhi, and has managed to built a network of 150-200 restaurants in National Capital Region that transact over Ruplee since its launch. It is now entering Mumbai where it has partnered with 15 restaurants for now. The company plans at expanding in other metro cities such asPune, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Meanwhile, the startup is also looking at portfolio expansion, and is holding talks with Retail chains, Spa & Salons and delivery services to adopt Ruplee payment. For home delivery, it has tied up with Crusty, Big Wong, Beyond Breads, Queens, Urban Dhaba and more.

Currently, the app has 100K downloads and is adding around 30,000 downloads every month.

A Quick Look At The Sector

A report by IAMAI noted that in next two years there would be 317 Mn smartphone users. Another report by Ken Research shared that digital payments market will be $120 Bn opportunity by 2019, driven by rising number of digital payments. It wrote, “The payment services industry grew at a CAGR of 142.9% during FY’2012-FY’ 2014. Ezetap, Mswipe and iKaaz are some of the major players in the MPOS segment.”

According to the data shared by RBI more than 25 Mn transactions were on the mobile payment and the overall value of these transactions was roughly $3Bn.

And when you combine offline restaurants, health & beauty services and delivery services you are talking about market size opportunity of over $70 Bn cutting across the 3 segments.

Competitive Landscape And Other Challenges Ahead

Ruplee is grappling with inconsistency of network and time-taking transactions. “Sitting and ideating in Silicon Valley, while you are building an app your priority is product feature and value to business, but this is not the same in India, because you have to keep the infrastructure in consideration. Network issue is a huge thing for us because it is the app experience getting diluted,” she shared.

Bringing customers on board has been another major challenge for the company, and thus, need to  enhance customer education, and create awareness of the product to drive sales. There would be a low-barrier in cities where people are used to online payments for everything, including grocery shopping, traveling and more. The industry will expand as more players enter Like Momoe, Ultracash and Ftcash.

Started in 2014, Momoe is chasing an aggressive target of bringing a million users on board and connecting with over 2000 merchants. It recently raised $1.2 Mn of seed round fund from IDG Ventures India, Jungle Ventures and India Quotient. Another player, LivQuik, started in 2012, was backed by Snow Leopard Ventures last month. They invested over $1.6 Mn in the venture. FTcash too started in August by Sanjeev Chadhak, former CFO at Deutsche bank and Deepak Kothari who joins from Grant Thornton. It is a humble start for the firm from Mumbai, which has already got some 150 merchants on board. It also has players that are into restaurant POS solution.

Posist, a cloud based point of sale solutions provider is another player. Headquartered in Delhi, it serves more than 1500 customers in over 62 cities and 5 countries.

On the other hand, Paytm, is working with offline stores to increase their reach, while MobiKwik has tied up with café chain, Café Coffee day and large format hypermart Big Bazaar.

Editor’s Note

Ruplee started as a restaurant bill pay service and is indeed trying to enter into a bigger play, with more services, but it is also leaving the niche and getting into mainstream. While this increases the market size of the company, it takes away the essence of how you define it.

The business model circumscribes that of a digital wallet, a POS solution, restaurant analytics and more. In its niche, Ruplee has a potential to make a great impact connecting offline businesses to customers, it also makes a good acquisition case study for a mobile wallet helping it complete the solution. However, it also carries the concern of being crushed by the larger players, who might spread in this space and eat over the business.

(http://inc42.com/startups/ruplee/)

Gurgaon Based FoodPort Aims To Change The Way People “Eat At Work”

The food delivery sector is a $2 Bn market growing at 30-40% annually. The opportunities in this segment are immense. With the aid of professional chefs and fast delivery options, there has been launch of a number of Fast Food Chains. However, there still remains a gap as there isn’t a  professional, customer-driven service that would really excite people to buy food everyday from them. People are actually compromising on the quality of food at work as they don’t have access to homely food or decent enough canteen.

Understanding this gap, Aman Gupta along with  Prateek Soni had launched Foodport sometime back.

Before starting FoodPort, Prateek was working in Delhi in the hospitality industry with his father while Aman was working in Pune with Citi Group. One day during lunch break, they were discussing what was there for lunch. While Aman had to  fill his belly with a boring thali from the office canteen, Prateek had access to a lavish gourmet meal. This made the two realized that there is gap between people who’re looking for a healthy, nutritious meal and a service which provides just that. This was the genesis of their idea of a food-tech startup.

After discovering the problem area, Aman and Prateek co-founded FoodPort, a startup which aims to change the way ‘people eat at work’.

How It Works

FoodPort works on a simple principle of getting gourmet meals delivered at an ultra-fast speed to the customer. The website offers four time-slots (between 12 PM – 4 PM) for food delivery. Each order can be placed 45 minutes before the time-slot closes. Next, the food gets delivered in a pre-fixed time slot with state-of-the-art packaging. The company has ensured that customers can choose their desired time, when they want to get food delivered. The packaging is 100% recyclable and the trays inside are microwaveable.

The company’s kitchen is supervised under D.K. Soni, Ex-Head Chef at Taj SATS and founder advisor of FoodPort. Although, right now there is no option of customizing a meal, Aman said that if a customer has certain medical condition and he/she informs the team, FoodPort will take care of the details as required.

Target Audience

Currently, the company targets bachelors and working professionals. Prateek says “Our services include a fairly fast check-out process. There are 4-5 items available everyday. We’re conscious about keeping items offered to a limited number because we don’t want our users to go through a laundry list of sorts. The fast check-out process ensures that customers get their food on time.”

Monetization, Funding And Traction

FoodPort has raised a seed funding $100k from GHV Accelerator after it became part of the accelerator program. Vikram Upadhyaya, Chief Evangelist and Mentor had said that while other food startups are either food-focused or tech-focused, FoodPort has the perfect marriage of these two that makes the business model scalable and also gives the prospects of having a hockey-stick growth chart.

The funding will aid FoodPort in targeting a GMV of $45-50K per month, by October, 2015.

The company, currently, serves over 100 meals/day with plans to scale upto 500 meals/day by October, 2015. An average meal from FoodPort costs about INR 150-200, and is available in three different cuisines, Indian, Continental and Oriental.

Challenges

Aman elaborates, “We have had a very shoestring budget for marketing. All the promotions we’ve achieved so far have been via word of mouth. It was particularly hard to get the word out in such a competitive market.”

Managing logistics also at times serve as a great challenge. Beating the traffic in Gurgaon and delivering the food on time is definitely a challenge. Delivering food with the right kind of temperature is a must for the company. There haven’t been too many innovations in this front as of now. Says Prateek, “We’re trying to eliminate these kinds of temperature variations. We spend our time perfecting the food delivery part of it.”

Future Plans

FoodPort plans to move to a real time delivery model, delivering it within 30 minutes. Currently, it is focused on office lunch only, Prateek and Aman are also planning to expand to other markets such as dinners and weekend meals.

Aman is certain that limiting the no. of items will help the team of 15 people optimize faster delivery.

Currently, FoodPort  is based and operates out of Gurgaon. In the near future, they plan to expand to Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Mumbai. Prateek said, “We are planning to expand to all of India and starting with a handful of cities is the way to go.” The company hopes to convert to an IPO in future.

In recent times, the food delivery sector has seen a host of startups launching and grabbing funds for expansion. Delhi-based Frsh, Foodeato, Gurgaon-based Yumist, Eatonomist are all internet first restaurants, and are targeting the user base same as of FoodPort. There are also SpiceBox, HolaChef, Bhukkadpanti, Nashta, NutriTown and Mr.Hot. The competition is tough. However, FoodPort wants to curve a niche out for itself by the kind of food they offer, i.e. gourmet and nutritious meals at affordable prices. “It is a matter of ‘habit forming’”, says Aman.

(http://inc42.com/startups/foodport/)

GoJavas Snaps Up Fresh $20 Mn From Snapdeal

Snapdeal officially announced today that it has invested an additional $20 Mn (INR 131 crore) in logistics and delivery services venture GoJavas. This is the second round of investment made by Snapdeal in the company.

Earlier this year, Snapdeal had entered into a strategic partnership with Gurgaon-based GoJavas and invested an undisclosed amount in it.

“Our partnership with GoJavas has been tremendously successful. With the freshly infused funds, our aim is to help GoJavas become more successful and further expand their reach. Our teams will continue to work together closely in the future as well,” Rohit Bansal, co-founder, Snapdeal said in the company issued press release.

The new funds will be deployed to build capacities for the future and strengthen the supply chain ecosystem, the company said. GoJavas will use this investment to expand its operations to 100 more cities within the next 6-12 months.

According to Mint, Snapdeal increased its stake in the logistics firm from 20% to 42%.

Gojavas currently manages over 1 Lac square feet of fulfillment centers and has a delivery radius of 350 cities and towns in 3000+ pincodes. It closed the FY 2015 with revenues of over $30 Mn (INR 200 Cr).

Vijay Ghadge COO, GoJavas said, “Our strategic partnership with Snapdeal has helped us become one the largest independent logistics players in the country with current revenue run rate of INR 500 Cr ($77 Mn), while keeping our operations sustainable and efficient because of the higher visibility of future sales and targeted cities for expansion.”

“We were able to speed up our innovation pipeline because of assured support for new products like the 90 minutes reverse pickup as well as open box delivery for electronic products,” he added.

Snapdeal, which unlike its competitors does not possess its own logistics and delivery unit, has been working consistently for the last 8-10 months to strengthen its supply chain and logistics. The company has invested $100 Mn in the last 6 months to improve it delivery timelines by 70%. It will invest an additional $200 Mn in the next 12 months to further strengthen its supply chain.

Both the teams have also worked together to come up with innovative last-mile solutions like card-on-delivery, 90 mins reverse pick up and 4 hr delivery services.

Earlier this week, Snapdeal launched its omni-channel platform named as ‘Janus’. The platform integrates offline and online retail channels to provide a seamless and differentiated shopping experience to its customers.

It also recently invested in Gurgaon-based mobile-first hyperlocal grocery delivery startup PepperTap and aims to go public in India in the next five years.

An Article by Rahul Raj

(http://inc42.com/flash-feed/gojavas-snaps-up-fresh-20-mn-from-snapdeal/)

Zovi Founders Led App Only O2O Marketplace For Deals, Little, Eyes $ 57.6 Bn Big Market Opportunity

You are sitting at a coffee shop in a central business district, thinking of getting a haircut, or worrying about your health and fitness, it should not be utopian to your mobile to find a nearby salon providing haircut at discount, or a nearby fitness gym offering membership discount right away.  There are many apps offering deals and discounts, there are many app to locate nearest store, but live deals was missing.  And this is what Zovi founders, Manish Chopra and Satish Mani realized during a casual conversation.

In the next few months, it evolved into an idea of bringing a new O2O (online to offline) service marketplace, Little, which will connect merchants and small businesses with customers. While merchants will see higher utilization of their assets,  customers will be getting same service at a better rate. Manish said, “We spoke to many merchants, and found their major pain point was getting customers. Be it fitness center, salon, restaurant or any service, the average utilization rate was between 45%-60% only. Heavy marketing spend on ads, fliers and even social media wasn’t drawing enough traction.”

He added, “We are not a ‘marketing partner’ who helps them get only for a bit and then goes to market their competitor. We stay with them to help them sell their extra inventory, when and at whatever price they want to do so.”

What Little Has To Offer

Manish Chopra,a technology veteran with 20 years of vast experience, has worked with global firms like Oracle and Microsoft. He was heading Microsoft in Singapore before he was appointed the CEO for  Zovi.  Co-founder Satish Mani, before taking the role of  Chief Technology Officer at Zovi was heading the technology division at Cleartrip.

Little is an app-only deals marketplace that offers deals based on location – restaurants, theatres, hotels, weekend getaway, salons & spa, gyms and more. Customers can browse through a number of deals on the app based on their location and get a list of the deals. The difference here is these are live deals that are running now, but might get expired say in two hours. This provides an impetus to the customers to take action, encouraging them to make a purchase.

According to Manish, Little will build analytics to pick details of users’ behavior in terms of kind of deals they like or tend to buy and start to personalize their results based on such learnings.

These deals are however managed by the merchants. The platform is a dynamic marketplace, where merchants control the amount of deal, the timing and duration of any deal. After a customer accepts a deal, he/she can share the coupon on app and use the deal. One such merchant is Paytm. Whenever customer uses Paytm wallet to recharge a phone or pay any bill, he/she can either chose to take a coupon from Little, or pay for services through Paytm wallet. It has also clinched a deal with Café Coffee day, live across its 900 outlets in 11 top cities.

Business Model

Little follows a simple business of commission per customer per service. At present, the product is still in beta phase and made available to select 4000 people for use. The final product is expected to be out for public download towards the end of this month. However, Little claims to have boarded over 7000 merchants and once it is out in market, it will have almost 15,000 live deals on the platform, across 11 cities.

The larger game plan is to have the largest and deepest merchant ecosystem, positioning itself as largest marketplace of deals in the consumer lifestyle space. The target is that at any point of time, there should be at least 50,000 live deals on the app, with over thousand merchants.

“At the very core, ‘Little’ is super focused on Customers. Becoming the ‘de-facto’ ‘go-to’ mobile app for the 18-30 years old smartphone users in urban India,” shared Manish.

The company recently raised over $50 Mn in first round of funding led by Paytm and existing investors of Zovi, SAIF Partners and Tiger Global. The company currently employs over 400 people.

Market Size

According to a blog post in India Brand Equity Forum, coupon sites receive 7.6 Mn unique visitors in a month, making it almost 13.5% of the total e-commerce market in India.

Retail spend in top 7 metros is calculated to be $ 57.6 Bn and country’s e-commerce market is estimated to expand to over US$ 100 Bn by 2020 from $ 3.5 Bn in 2014.

Challenges Ahead And Competitive Landscape

Little is trying to bridge the gap between the unorganized and scattered merchant market, and the customer. While they are talking about huge numbers, on boarding merchants has been a challenge for the team. Even if these merchants understand the business model and are cognizant about the returns, they have grown skeptical seeing many companies/startups venture into this space over the last five years and fall or fail to make an impact.

Secondly, many years ago, around 2010, a Bangalore-based startup came up with a similar business model of location-based deals. Tazzaa, later renamed as Localbeat, died a premature death. It was very early in the game, even before location based services became common, and there weren’t many Android smartphones around to adopt it. Furthermore, the merchant education and awareness remained difficult. Little is little benefitted with its timing and market readiness; however, the secret sauce will be in execution.

Editor’s Note

What Little is offering might look similar to that of Groupon or Freecharge coupons or typical couponing site like CouponDunia and CouponRani does. But the differentiation should be localization and personalization through analytics.

With over million customers using their smartphones for buying deals and increased awareness among the merchants towards this new trend, the time is ripe to be in market, however, this is a business with low entry barrier. It will be interesting to see how they achieve scale and constant fund flow, because among all success stories we also have stories of startups failing to cope up with the market competition.

An Article by Akankasha Prasad

(http://inc42.com/startups/little/)

10 Things To Consider Before Joining A Startup

Startups are unlike your typical workplaces. When an outsider describes it, your reaction would either be wonder and awe, or a little bit of confusion as to how things work. Even if you have been exposed to Startup workplaces before, we’ve compiled a list of 10 things to consider before joining a Startup.

It’s not very easy to describe how exactly a Startup workplace would be like. Each company has a different culture, owing to the people who founded the company and its early employees. Each workplace has a different environment, people, mindset, and many other things.

If you haven’t worked at a Startup before, then this post has a list of things to consider when joining a Startup.

Who Are The Founders Of The Startup?

Seriously, before you join a Startup, you should definitely try to find out about its founders. Who are they? Where do they come from? What’s their background and what have they achieved?

You need to know about them, not only because they are the owners of the company you are hoping to work for, but because you need to be confident of their abilities before you start to put time and effort into their company.

Don’t judge the founders on their past failures. At the same time, if they were successful before, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be successful again. But what matters is how the founders handle the situation when things go crazy. So Google them up right now and figure if the founders are people you’d like to catch up with over coffee.

Where Does The Money Come From?

One of the most important things to consider when joining a Startup is the money. Where does the money come from? Is the Startup bootstrapped and highly profitable (very rare)? Or are they venture-backed and have millions in their bank account?

Either way, you should try to find out whether the company has what it takes to survive the next 6-12 months, because if they don’t and you have even the slightest doubt, you need to start asking for assurances. While you may feel squeamish while asking someone for this information, it is crucial to your well-being and future.

What Stage Is The Startup In?

Let’s face it guys, there are few rewards in life that you can get without taking risks. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t do any calculations prior to taking a risk.

What stage is the Startup you’re considering to join presently at? Joining an early-stage venture that’s not received traction for their product and don’t have seed funding is a gamble. Unless you’re 100% convinced of the idea and the founders, your risk will get multiplied with doubt. Things don’t get any better after that.

On the other hand, if the Startup has gained initial traction, with the product showing promise and customers receiving it very well, it might be a great time to jump in. Chances are, the company is trying to secure funding. If you get in before that happens, you might pick up some equity or attractive ESOPs. Think wisely, and if you think it’s going to work, jump right in.

Of course, the lowest risk is to join a Startup that’s VC-funded. The company has gained enough traction and are on the right path. Chances of such a company burning down is considerably lower.

What Is The Work Culture Of The Startup?

This is perhaps one of the most important things to consider before joining a Startup. The culture of a Startup defines it. There may be times when the company’s future is in doubt, but the company’s culture is what’s going to keep everyone’s mood afloat and probably contribute towards saving the company.

There was a time when the office didn’t have a working Internet connection, some outage caused by a power cut. Instead of people packing their bags to get up and go home, a group of people started playing Gangs of Wasseypur on one laptop and hooked it up to a speaker set. Pretty soon, half the office (including the founders) were huddled around the area, all of us watching the movie.

Related: 7 Reasons You Should Work For A Startup Company At Least Once

It’s one thing for a Startup to have an amazing culture. But you also got to keep in mind that not everyone is cut out for the open culture that you find in most Startup offices.

Many people find it hard to work with all the distractions, the lack of solid hierarchy structures bother many people. You might not know it now, but it might become a constant needle on your back once you actually start working in the Startup and realize that you aren’t a fit for its culture.

What Is Your Role In The Startup?

If you’re considering joining a Startup, probably giving up a corporate job or something else, then you need to know what your role will be in the Startup. Will you be a regular 9 to 5 employee who comes, does his job, and leaves? Or is your role going to be pivotal to the success of the company, or one of its products, or something similar?

It’s important to figure this out well in advance. Having a huge role and getting slapped with responsibilities is one thing, but when you know your exact role and its impact on the future of the company, you will be motivated to work harder. Trust me on that.

Will You Have A Mentor In The Startup?

If you’re joining a Startup right out of college, chances are you know nothing about the job you’ve been hired to do. Which is why it is crucial that you find a mentor in the Startup.

During my 8 months working for a Startup, I transformed from a person who would wonder how things happened to a person who’d ask for the data of how things happened, be it anything. The approach to the problem, the thought process involved is something I picked up from my mentor and my boss.

Which is why it is important for you to consider whether the founder or your boss is someone experienced who is going to guide you. Will he give you that initial nudge in the right direction before you start taking matters into your own hand? Or are you going to be thrown into chaos and confusion at your workplace?

While the second scenario isn’t as bad as it sounds (you’ll learn faster than ever when your ass is on fire), having that right mentor who shares his knowledge and experience with you, teaches you tricks of the trade, will go a long way in defining your career and your work at that Startup.

Are You Flexible To Work Multiple Roles?

If you think you’re only going to be doing the role you were hired for in a Startup, especially an early stage one, then boy are you in for a ride.

Hired for a sales role? Don’t be surprised if you have to lend a hand with marketing, or maybe business development, or maybe even updating the company’s social media pages once in a while.

Your role isn’t defined in a Startup. Sure, you’ll generally be a sales guy, but you’ll get hands-on exposure to various other roles. If you look at it the way I do, then you’d jump at every opportunity to learn as much as possible out of it.

Are You Comfortable With Unpredictable Working Hours?

On some days, you’ll enter office post-lunch and leave after the evening snack. On other days, it would be a 9 to 9 grilling session, with work carrying over for the weekend.

There are good days, then there are bad. You’ll be bored out of your mind, and you’ll also have way too much on your plate with too little time to complete everything.

It’s how working for a Startup is going to be, a roller coaster ride. And for most parts, you’re also going to love it.

Are You Sold On The Idea Of The Startup?

Another point that far too many people ignore while considering Startup jobs is the idea of that Startup. Don’t get sold on ESOPs or a high salary too quickly. It is important for one to believe in the idea that the Startup is based on.

Doing a quick research on the history of the idea will tell you about who have tried and who have failed. You’ll learn whether the idea has already been refined by Startups in other parts of the world, or if the idea is so fresh that it is yet to be refined into its final form.

Understanding the idea, and more importantly believing in it, contributes greatly toward your mindset after you start working for a Startup. Ask yourself this – Do you just want to pick up a high paying salary, or do you want to work towards realizing an idea that you strongly believe in?

Why Do You Want To Join A Startup?

The last point is also the most important one in this list. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself the ‘WHY’ question while considering joining a Startup.

Why do you want to join a Startup? The answer can be – “Well, they are paying more than the corporate job.” It can also be “I love working in a high-intensity environment with lots of motivated people in the room attacking a problem day-and-night trying to solve it.”

But the most important thing is for you to realize what the answer to this question is for you.

Article by Preetham Nath

(http://inc42.com/buzz/10-things-to-consider-before-joining-a-startup/)

This Startup Wants To Be The Shark Of The CRM Ocean

(Article by Meha Agarwal)

In any organization, sales team plays an important role and thereby requires efficient tools and resources to achieve targets. Although, technology, to an extent, has made their work easier, a majority of traditional platforms offer automation of sales processes operationally. As per facts, an average sales representative sees 5 LinkedIn profiles while almost 22% of them have incomplete information of their prospects. Also, on an average, the entire sales force of the company is replaced every 4 years, thereby resulting in data loss, wastage of time and poor efficiency.

In order to ease this out, Ajay Chauhan and Saif A., came up withSalezShark in US last year and launched its subsidiary in India in early 2015. SalezShark, as a CRM platform, aims to nurture connections between businesses and their customers. It helps sales professionals comprehend their clients’ personality traits better and facilitates stronger relationships for increased sales opportunities and multiplies profits.

“With SalezShark, we aim to create a disruption in the cluttered CRM market. We seek to equip organizations and sales professionals with a tool which is not only easy-to-use but also helps them in achieving higher sales targets,” said Saif A., a seasoned entrepreneur based in the US..

What is SalezShark CRM doing differently to increase its market share in India?

SalezShark’s Relationship Cloud builds an intelligent web of relationship network to make connections with prospects easier and faster. It enables tracking down customer’s response to a particular product or service, likes and dislikes, spending pattern, etc. which allows a business to form an accurate gist of the customer with a complete array of information such as location, age and gender. Based on the comprehensive set of information, businesses are enabled to segment the customer base according to their specific needs and on basis of their purchasing power. In the process, businesses can identify the segment of their most loyal customers and actuate targeted marketing saving costs and optimizing returns.

At the same time, Marketing Automation on the platform allows business to efficiently set up and track email marketing and social campaigns. Also, with the help of contextual intelligence and recommendation engine, one can measure results at every stage and target the right audiences all through the sales cycle. Other features provided on the platform includes Sales Automation, Intelligent reports, 360 degree collaboration with social media, enterprise social network, data sources like Dataguru and Global Datapedia, etc.

As believed by the Salezshark team, their USP lies in the creation of compelling factors for sales people, giving them a reason to love their CRM platform. The platform fetches customer intelligence – likes, dislikes, preferences, workplace etc, in front of the user, within just a few seconds.  This not only encourages the sales professional to customize his sales pitches but motivates him to really understand the need of his customer, leading to a higher number of positive results.

“SalezShark envisions disrupting the market by transforming the traditional CRM space to an innovative user friendly platform. We want to enable organizations to perform better sales and manage processes efficiently, and help change the way companies sell,” said Ajay.

Market Opportunity In CRM Space

According to a NASSCOM survey report, SMB market is expected to grow at YOY rate of 15% CAGR.

IT spends of such companies are expected to grow further with CRM platforms as their top priority. SalezShark CRM.

As per Gartner, the CRM space will be growing rapidly, with a revenue forecast of $36 Bn by 2017.

SaaS- or cloud-based CRM deployments currently represent more than 40 percent of all CRM deployments, and look set to reach 50 percent during 2015.

Of the top performers in B2B, 69% use Marketing automation for Customer acquisition and 50% for Customer Retention. – ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)

Current Traction, Monetization And Plans Ahead

Since the incorporation of SalezShark, before coming to India 6 months ago, the company has around 50 new customers joining onboard. They targeted SMEs initially but now services have been expanded on an Enterprise level too. Till date, a total revenue of INR 2.5 Mn has been earned. The success ratio of company is about 70% right now, associating with brands like Neo Synapses, Prognosis Digital, Buildwell, WeVerify and UTL India.

The company is presently offering three packages in a price range of $20-65. The founders have invested over  $1 Mn in the company since its incorporation. “Our focus is to bring the product to a world class level with at least 100 customers on board expanding the CRM to around 5000 users by the end of this year and proceed further to pitch to the venture capitalists to raise more funds.” said Ajay.

Challenges And Competition

As per Ajay, most SMBs do not have a clear set of objectives which they would like to achieve through CRM.  These objectives need to be listed and defined as measurable metrics. Another prime challenge they encounter is the lack of importance given to appointing a core CRM team. It is important to realize that it is not an IT project and a specialized CRM team would be required to handle the same.

Other players in this space include Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, MHelpDesk, FreshDesk, ZenDesk, etc. On the competition front, the founder believes that they have done their benchmarking with some of the biggest industry players, in terms of features and efficiency of the product. “But, at the same time, we offer premium services at affordable prices, quite contrary to other players in the market. SalezShark is apt for businesses who aim to streamline their processes, and want to spend maximum time in selling, rather than aggregating things spread in a haywire manner,” he added.

Editor’s Note

The CRM space today is quite cluttered and is getting crowded. Till now, sales representatives have been viewing CRMs as a mundane platform, wherein manual data entry takes up most of their time. However, technology updates have garnered them with right customer intelligence, thereby improving their overall performance. Thus, we see the space far away from saturation and hope to see some more exciting fusions.

(Source: http://inc42.com/startups/salezshark/)

Startup From Kerala Pulled Off Asia's Largest Crowdfunding Campaign

The Secret To Exploride's Crowdfunding Success: Start Early

Exploride has set a record in the crowdfunding history of Asian startups. The company’s Indiegogo campaign crossed the initial target of $100k in just five days, and has now reached a whopping $500k mark in 40 days of its launch.

Exploride’s campaign has been backed by 1,800 people from over 50 countries across the globe with maximum number of pledges coming from the USA. The product is priced at $299, and the Early Bird lot will be delivered worldwide in January 2016.

Exploride was started by Sunil Vallath in June 2015, after realising the urgent need of display alarm and safety devices for cars. As per his research, there were hardly any products that served the purpose; either they were too costly for common people or they lacked in quality measures.

Exploride is a futuristic hands free heads up display for cars controlled with gesture and voice control substituting the needs of multiple devices for maps, car infotainment systems and smartphones while driving. It is incubated by Startup Village, Kerala and had also raised a seed amount of $75K from Project Guerilla  and other investors.

Related: This Indian Startup Navigates The World To A Futuristic Driving Experience

Interestingly, three more incubatees of Startup Village, Kerala had raised crowdfunding in the past year. Mindhelix raised $120k on Kickstarter for its smartphone security device Rico, SectorQube crossed its initial target and reached the mark of $125k for a smart microwave oven MAID and RHL Vision raised $200k for a wearable ring FIN in March 2014.

In addition to being the sole player in the Indian market, now Exploride is also the most successful crowdfunding campaign from India. We got in touch with Sunil to know more about his crowdfunding journey –

Inc42: Why did you chose crowdfunding instead of seeking funding from more investors or other traditional sources?

Sunil: Through crowdfunding we wanted to validate our product. Exploride has been accepted by over 50 countries. The campaign also helped us gain product and market validation. We received nearly  600 comments on Indiegogo and 4500 of personal mails, out of which we tried to reply to 99% of them. These feedbacks have helped us  understand the customers better, like some US customers don’t prefer Google Maps, some prefer Waze. So now we are thinking about bringing those changes.

Inc42: Why Indiegogo and not any other crowdsourcing platform

Sunil: Exploride is a global product and to reach a global audience, we went for Indiegogo.We have received a stellar set of pledges, including countries like Thailand, Romania, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, Panama and more.

Inc42: Many crowdfunding campaigns face difficulty gaining traction. What was your approach to draw traction to the campaign.

Sunil: We started pre-launch campaign five months before the launch; reaching out to various blogs, newspapers and other marketing channels. Many companies start only a month before the launch. Pre-launch campaigns help you in building trust with the  customer and to create a base of backers looking up to your product. One needs to educate the customers.

Also, the month and day of launch plays an important role. You have to see whether the market is doing good during that month. For example- in the US, people receive tax returns in the month of March, so it’s a good time to launch.

Inc42: Exploride received a lot of media mentions before, during and after the launch of your Indiegogo campaign. What do you attribute this to?

Sunil: This could also be brought down to starting early. We received such a response from media because the campaign was doing well. We were trending for 20 days of our campaign and that attracted media attention.

Inc42: What do you feel are the most common misconceptions with the crowdfunding process?

Sunil: One major misconception going around crowdfunding is that one needs to put personal money to make the campaign trend. You don’t have to do that, just start early with the pre-launch campaigns and you’ll have a good amount of backers to start with.

Another misconception is that huge PR campaigns are required for pre-launch, which is not true. We just had a $1000 PR campaign.

Inc42: Do you think without Indiegogo platform, it would have been difficult to get this kind of response for the product.

Sunil: Of course, crowdfunding is a very feasible way to reach such a diverse audience. Without Indiegogo, it would have been difficult to reach a base of 2 Mn people. We were in Indiegogo newsletter for three times and that had helped a lot.

Inc42: Now that you have got such an amazing response, what are your future plans?

Sunil: Now the focus is on manufacturing,  we want to prove the world that India can build a  top quality, global product without compromising on the feasibility.

Inc42: What advice would you give to other startups who are considering setting up a crowdfunding campaign?

Sunil: Keep interacting to your user. They will help you change for better.  Also, it’s very difficult to deal in hardware, but don’t lose hope. Be positive!

Inc42: Do you see a trend of  crowdfunding coming up in Indian ecosystem.

Sunil: Yes, it’s very much here. Recently, I’ve been in touch with 4-5 young startups, and they sound promising enough to raise $1Mn worth of crowdfunding. India is indeed eyeing a Hardware revolution.

With our Prime Minister stressing on  Digital India and more young minds pulling off pathbreaking hardware innovations, crowdfunding is potentially the next trend of our startup ecosystem.

( Source : http://inc42.com/buzz/exploride-raised-500k-in-crowdfunding/ )