The Co-Founder Issue 11

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Vol. 11

SPORTS EDITION

`100

APPROPRICE IT’S NOT A

PROPOSITION IT’S A PROMISE

INDIA'S LEADING

PRICE COMPARISON APP

1 YEAR OF INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEYS Volume XI |

INVESTMENT REPORT: AUGUST 2017

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Patrick Grove, Founder of iflix, on taking 4 companies from startup to IPO and beyond

The journey of foldable smart scooters – from crowdfunding to selling on Amazon

Learning how to grow business, from the mobile only continent of Africa, Toby Shapshak, Editor in Chief, Stuff Magazine

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Go Green.

EDITOR'S

The Cofounder crew requests you to throw these seeds in cultivable land, and please water it too. Let’s make the world a better place to live.

NOTE

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t “The Cofounder" we are on the mission to bring you stories of amazing startups and entrepreneurs. We bring you insights on how the founder came up with an idea, how they executed it, how they build their team, how they raised funding, and many inside secrets of successful startups. Ever wondered how the startup that was bootstrapped is doing amazingly well? We got it covered too. What about the startups which raised million-dollar funding, created a great hype in the market but failed when it comes to executing the plan? Yes, we have written about startups which crash landed too.

In this edition, we have covered startups like – Be Sports, Bofy, Digifish, Ease My Trip, Fagnum, FinancePeer, Headrun, Shoppingkart24, Whats Up Life, Woodafo, Venture Catalysts etc. Read about Finomena only fintech company from India to have made it to “International Innovator of the Year award” by LendIt USA 2017 shut down after few months of success.

Do you know in the month of July 2017, only 43 startups raised funding when compared to 63 startups last month, and these startups raised close to USD 167,704,000* (based on amounts disclosed by startups – few remain undisclosed). This month has seen whopping 51.32% decrease in investment when comparing to June 2017. Find reports on which startups raised funding, who are the top investors, which industry raised maximum funding, which city is investment friendly and much more reports on investments in Indian Startups for the month of July 2017.

Arunraj R.

Co-founder and Editor of “The Co-founder” Twitter: https://twitter.com/iArunraj

Read to know more.

About The Cofounder The Cofounder is first of its kind Start-up Magazine to revive the conventional method of News and Stories, especially for thqqe startup ecosystem. The Cofounder is co-founded by Adhish Verma and Arunraj Rajendran.

“The Cofounder” is one of its first kind of magazine which writes exclusively about early stage startups and entrepreneurs journey. The main motto behind “The Cofounder” is to inspire the entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs with the stories of startups who have successfully converted their ideas into a profitable business.

If you are an existing entrepreneur, this magazine will help you understand how other entrepreneurs are running their startup and how not to run an organization from failed startups. If you are newbie entrepreneur, this magazine will help you to get insights on how to convert your idea into a profitable business.

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INDEX 09 Shoppingkart24.com -Promise to Serve What You deserve The BEST

12 FinancePeer - Grow Together

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21 Fagnum - Create, Publish, Market

23 Bitcoin's hard fork gives birth to Bitcoin Cash

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Well-begun is only half done: Understanding seed funding and the relationship of VC De-jargoned ICO funds with start-ups of (Initial Coin Offering) today and How Does it Work?

18 Woodofa - We Listen, We Create, and You Enjoy

30 BOFY - It's not a proposition, it's a promise!

33 10 Indian Startups that Shut Down in 2017

37 Motivational Habits That Drive Successful People

40 Guide to rebrand your startup

43 Digifish3 - Become Global Digitally

46 Headrun - The Startup for Startups

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INDEX 58

49 15 Tips for Becoming a Master Networker

What's Up Life - If it's in your City, You will find it here!

61 52 Inspirational Quotes and Mantras to Help You Overcome the Stress of Running a Business

Once a promising Fintech Startup, Finomena, shuts its shop

64 Key factors for Budding Entrepreneurs

55 Expert Sales Tips for Startups

69 Be Sports - Believe, Become

72 Investment report July 2017

66 The Journey of EaseMyTrip

Designed by 3 MINDS DIGITAL www.3mindsdigital.com

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Shoppingkart24 Volume XI |

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Startup Name: Shoppingkart24 Domain: E-commerce Founders: Prateek B Singh and Jyotsna Rai Investment: Looking to raise seed fund of about $200k-$500k URL: http://shoppingkart24.com In this growing era of digitization, most of the established e-commerce players are extending their reach to Tier-II & Tier-III cities to empower rural and urban India. But still, there are so many vendors, retailers and shopkeepers who are not aware of online businesses even though they produce unique and quality products. As a result, the Indian originated brands are losing their share of demand in the market and missing on its fame beyond a certain boundary. As a result, our Indian consumers reach is limited for now to only those few vendors who are listed on top e-commerce sites. With a vision to offer a global platform to many small scale vendors, Prateek B Singh started Shoppingkart24, an online website to showcase their unique & versatile line of products and hence promoting richness & uniqueness of Indian products from local manufacturers, vendors, artisans & craftsmen. His only mission is to promote these smallscale entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs/young entrepreneurs and products from rural & urban India and to assist them to scale up their business. He aims to create a huge marketplace for each of these sellers and consumers who look forward to buying Indian artistic and unique product.

Shoppingkart24’s USP lies in their product offerings, and therefore its future plan is to grow in the Indian market by promoting the art of India & their exclusive products and designs across boundaries. To offer the ease of shopping to all the consumers across the globe, a Mobile Application with a special user-friendly Voice Search Feature is launched, and this is not the end, the company is also planning for offline presence in the market.

Shoppingkart24 is founded by Prateek B Singh, Jyotsna Rai, and team.

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Prateek B Singh – Founder. He is an Entrepreneur by passion and an innovator, who is willing to take risks and generate new ideas to create unique and potentially profitable solutions to modern-day problems. A Commerce Graduate with a sharp mind and ability to rise in spite of all the competition prevailing in the market. He has a keen knowledge of the start-up ecosystem and is also working on few more startups as Co-Founder.

Jyotsna Rai – Co-Founder. (First critic & back support for his ideas). She’s highly focused & committed professional who work towards exceeding professional expectations.

She is a skilled trainer, and she has designed & developed a courseware which was successfully facilitated to the larger audience. She’s a detail-oriented team member with more than 8 years of experience in various industry sectors like - E-commerce, Consulting Operations, Brand Licensing, etc. with an exceptional record of client service & revenue generation.

The Cofounder and crew had a discussion with Prateek and here is the summary of the discussions.

How did this idea strike you?

I am from Varanasi, one of the major holy cities of India which is rich in culture and Indianness. Many of the small shopkeepers over there are struggling to sell their products and wish if they could get an opportunity to showcase their offerings in a channel where they get maximum profit and coverage. Like Varanasi, there must have been vendors from Tier 2-3 Indian cities who are going through the same problems. With this big responsibility, I thought to get all the knowledge about E-commerce working and hence I started my career as a vendor on different e-commerce portals with an aim to start my own E-commerce business in the name of Shoppingkart24.com in 2015. I met Jyotsna in my entrepreneurial journey, and since then from my dream venture it became our dream venture ‘Shoppingkart24’. We only have one mission which is to provide the best selling portal to these neglected shopkeepers and work for their growth.

The journey so far (When you launched, how far the traction is so far?

We started in 2016; It has been tough yet productive and we are growing slowly and steadily. We are proud to acknowledge that we are representing more than 1100+

T HE T E AM How did you overcome it?

Smiling: It is a journey, not a destination; the only thing which is required from an entrepreneur is he/she needs to convince himself. I trust myself and my knowledge on the subject, and I just believe in my knowledge and foresight. We are different in a unique way; we welcome all the budding women entrepreneurs, artisans & craftsmen, new brand manufacturers & designers who are ready to launch their business online. We are confident about our products, and I am sure that we will be slowly and steadily increase our market share.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

In today's world starting an online business is really a big deal. I believe, not every start-up creates the impact but if it survives it creates a history. There is always an aim to do something for myself and for the society as a whole.

Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from them?

My parents, Mr. B. Singh & Mrs. Vidya Singh, are my role models & my biggest strength in life; they inspired me to write my own story which may motivate others in future.

I come from a service class background where I had limited means to start off my venture, but nothing has ever stopped me, all thanks to my family’s support. They always asked me to never shy away from trusting your idea till the time you are learning and improving along side. My only motive is to present the best for my customers & keep improving the things in terms of better service and products, i.e., creating a win-win situation for all.

What’s your funding status?

Funding is an important aspect of any business; currently, we are bootstrapping the venture with the help of Family & Loans from banks.

Are you looking for raising more funds? If yes, how much?

Yes, we are looking to raise seed fund of about $200k-$500k.

The funds will be utilized for adding features to the website, integrating more features in Mobile Application, Hiring Professional Team, Office establishment with amenities & resources so the team can give their 100% productivity.

Also, few funds will be allocated for Marketing & Advertising, Visiting and Adding sellers in remote areas to increase categories on the platform. We are also planning for opening up of new branch offices and installing warehouses to provide quality service at best price.

Who are your competitors?

Competition is important for growth however we don’t have any direct competitors in the market. As of now, we are trying to do online business from the grassroots level by focusing on vendors/customers from tier 2-3 cities.

What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

Do your research before initiating your startup and if possible work as an employee to understand it deeply. And when you are ready just trust in yourself & have confidence in your ideas. Failures are good for longevity, hence use failures as feedback and improvise to lead a better way to success.

Remember every single act has two nodes - positive and negative, and it depends on how YOU take it.

What’s your revenue model?

We work as an aggregator and provide the best products to our consumers. We are serving on Business to Customer (B2C) business model.

What are your future plans with your startup?

Shoppingkart24 wants to showcase the larger product selection to the customers from vendors of rural/urban areas by implementing new features on the website to and hence offering the best customer experience to both our sellers & customers. We foresee 10x growths in customers within a span of next 6 months & increase per customer spend by 2.5 to 3 times. The future plan is to stabilize in the Indian market and create the platform in other countries and promote their products and designs to create a cross boundaries trade.

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FinancePeer Grow Together 12 |

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FinancePeer is a platform which allows the lenders and borrowers to exchange loans directly. The lender chooses a borrower from the list of borrowers to lend money and gain a high rate of interest in return. On the other hand, borrower borrows money and pays EMIs which is much less than market standard.

There are two types of loans that FinancePeer offers - Short term loan and Long term loan.

Short term loan: Borrower • The borrower can borrow between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 60,000 • The tenure to repay the amount is 1to6 months • Interest rate is just Rs 26-31 per 1000rp every month • Unsecured collateral free loans Lender • The lender can lend as little as 100rp • Earn high rate of interests - up to 37% pa Long term loan Borrower • The borrower can borrow between Rs.60k and Rs. 4L • The tenure to repay the amount is 6 to 36 months • Pay interest rate of just 12-19.49% pa.

• Secured collateral free loans.

Lender • The lender can lend starting from Rs. 10000 • Earn a high rate of interests of 11.23-19.67% pa.

• Lender protection is available for security.

There are few issues in the current system like Long queues, Manual documentation, Tedious and long procedure to get loans. A borrower has to wait weeks to get the money, and the lender cannot use the principal amount. To overcome all these challenges, FinancePeer has developed a platform which analyses both Credit and Non-Credit Bureau data (13000+ data points) and uses Artificial Intelligence to expand loan access to people without the credit history. The application process is end-to-end digital and hassle-free, with a high technology integrated credit rating system, it allows instant loan approval and disbursal. FinancePeer ensures that the lenders enjoy a higher rate of interest as compared to traditional banks and borrowers experience lower rates when compared to market standards.

The founding team of FinancePeer consists of RohitGajbhiye, SunitGajbhiye, Debi Prasad Baral, Aman Gupta, and Naveesh Reddy.

• Mr. Rohit Gajbhiye - Founder, CEO: An IITB and Stanford Ignite alumnus with a history of working in the Credit & Liquidity Risk section of the banking industry at DBS, Singapore.

• Mr. Sunit Gajbhiye - Co-Founder, Business Head: An IIM and VJTI alumnus with 6+ years of experience in Business Operations and Product Management from Samsung and Edgeverve.

• Mr. Debi Prasad Baral - Co-Founder, Technology Head: BIT alumnus who lead innovation in IT with 12+ years of experience in enterprise software Product Development & Consulting, through Salesforce & Microsoft.

• Mr. Aman Gupta - Co-Founder, Finance Head: An IIM

Startup Name: FinancePeer Domain: Peer-to-peer lending Founding team: Rohit Gajbhiye, Sunit Gajbhiye, Debi Prasad Baral, Aman Gupta, and Naveesh Reddy Investment: $1,00,000 investment from a veteran investor (Name: Not disclosed) URL: www.financepeer.com alumnus and a CFA Level 3 certified professional with 6+ years of experience in the Finance industry with Ocwen.

• Mr. Naveesh Reddy - Co-Founder, Data Science Head: An IITB alumnus with 3+ years of experience in developing machine learning algorithms for Fraud detection and Sentiment Analysis.

The platform is going live on 1st week of October 2017. Even before the launch, they have more than 1000 registrations, Requests for lending worth Rs. 2cr+, Requests for borrowing worth Rs. 2.9cr+, Transactions of Rs. 31 lakhs+ and has reached over 31k+ people.

The Cofounder and crew had a discussion with the founding team of FinancePeer and here is the summary of the discussion.

How did this idea strike you?

Getting loans is not an easy process, there are issues like • High / Undeserving interest rates; Non-eligibility for the asked amount • Incapability in analyzing non-credit bureau data • Lengthy, manual & time-consuming application process • Waiting weeks to get your money • No privacy creating guilt of borrowing, in cases of nonbanks.

These were the reasons which triggered us to come up with a platform which works on the process of peer-to-peer lending.

To improve the process, we also came up with an Artificial Intelligence based system which calculates the credit score.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

• Brand or Trust Value Due to a lot of frauds happening these days, it is not very easy for a customer to trust a new brand. Due to this, we had to put a lot of effort in customer acquisition to build the trust factor.

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• Human Capital Forming the right team which can share the same passion and commitment as the founders have been the biggest challenge.

Staff is a tricky area for early-stage startups as the selection of each member is crucial, especially when we lack the capital to attract top talents which can be the key to faster progress.

How did you overcome these challenges?

• Brand or Trust Value: This problem seems to reduce after increasing brand awareness through digital and manual mediums, getting the initial set of customers and associating known partners with our firm. Some of our partners includes biggest fin-tech accelerator/co-working space (Rise, Barclays - Mumbai), banks, venture capitalists, rating agencies, etc.

• Human Capital: Coming from a good college and professional network helped us counter this issue. We started working with the help of friends, brought in interns to contribute and enhance the business. We raised capital after that.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

Biggest learning from my journey till now is, “Never to Give Up”. Face the difficulties with a positive attitude, and you will see success very soon.

Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from your them?

My role model is Warren Buffet. One of the best lessons that I learned from him is about Investments.

What’s your revenue model?

In current traditional financial systems, people deposit money at low interest, and when people borrow, they borrow at high interests. For, e.g.: In banks, people generally get 7% annual interest on fixed deposit, but when people take a personal loan, they end up paying more than 16% per annum.

This gap exists due operational costs, and changing operational systems in traditional companies takes enormous time, money and resource. At FinancePeer, the person who deposits will make more than what he makes in any conventional systems, and an individual who borrows will borrow at a lesser interest than what he gets in the market. This is possible with FinancePeer due to its greater technology and operational efficiency.

Unlike other systems, lenders and borrowers at FinancePeer don't pay any registration fees, since he contributes to society.

Borrowers pay minimum processing fees (around 2% of asked amount - in long terms loans). Another eye catching point is that there is loan protection fund for lenders(so their money is secured) and no pre-payment penalties.

What are your future plans with your startup?

We will expand the loans portfolio to become one stop loan solution.

Are you looking for raising investment?

Yes. We are looking to raise 7crores by Nov 2017. The funds raised will be utilized for obtaining required licensing for future products, marketing, lead generation, scale up tech infrastructure and team growth.

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Who are your competitors?

There are many peer-to-peer companies in the market like i2ifunding, LenDen funding, Rupaiya exchange, PeerLend, Faircent, lendbox etc.

We are planning to outpace them by, • Product is designed and priced in a way that huge volume of lenders can come on-board, enable the flow of the economy and increase the nation's standard of living as a whole.

Lenders are not charged any fees and given full security, both of which happens only in FinancePeer.

• It also has integrated iterative dynamic financial analysis model.

• Product has AI-based credit rating technology which uses credit and non-credit bureau data (13,000+ data points) • Product processes loans in less than 13min (end to end) • Only end to end digital loan product where registration to agreement signing is 100% digital (no manual intervention at all) • FinancePeer has lucrative partnerships in place to catalyze the process of lending and borrowing What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

There is no right or wrong, believe in your product and make it happen.

Venture Catalysts Volume XI |

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Well-begun is only half done: Understanding seed funding and the relationship of VC funds with start-ups of today.

Spending leisurely Sunday afternoons gardening with his 8-year-old son is one of the most cherished moments in Mr. Nayyar’s life. Explaining the intricacies of gardening, he enjoys seeing the different shades of emotion in the child’s face – curiosity, wonder, and boredom amongst them. Recently, he was explaining how seeds sprout, and the boy was getting impatient to see a sprouting straightaway.

“But you cannot see it immediately. The seed requires patience, hard work, and constant care to sprout,” Mr. Nayyar told him.

“But that’s the guarantee it will come out one day, and so much of our effort will not go to waste?”

“That, my son, is a matter of belief in your efforts and the rules of nature.”

While the son got busy with other things, Mr. Nayyar ruminated over the thought in his mind. He realized that, as was the case with plants, there was a need to be patient with businesses as well, most importantly in the early stages when businesses generally struggle to generate liquidity of their own. Most Indian start-ups, much like their counterparts in the rest of the world, historically have not found it easy to raise seed funds, regardless of their successes or failures in the future.

Seed funding and start-up growth: the changing dynamics of early-stage investments.

Seed funding, or early-stage capital investment in exchange for an equity stake, has seen massive changes in the way it is approached over the last 4 years. While at the beginning of 2013 – the baptism period for Indian start-ups – seed funds flowed thick and fast, investors have since become apprehensive of making early-stage capital investments at higher valuations. This is also partly due to the fact that start-ups hardly consider seed funding as debt and do not allocate the funds wisely, leading to wastage and in the end losses. Due to this growing wariness from investors, we are witnessing a new startup trend – that of equity dilution. Angel investors are often on the lookout for early-stage startups with smaller pre-money valuations.

Such funding propositions are sought in order to increase the ownership that angels have in the investee company. This is leading to the emergence of a trend of single digit valuations and investments worth less than INR 2 crore in many cases.

Veteran angel investor and leading start-up expert Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder of Venture Catalysts, India’s first integrated incubation platform, warns against this trend and deems it unhealthy for the continued growth and success for the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. According to Dr. Sharma, losing more shares at the beginning does not bode well for startups; the more money entrepreneurs raise early without solid results, the more their feasibility and worth reduces for investors. He also stresses that small-ticket investments worth less than INR 2 crore at seed stage are also adding to mortality of businesses. What’s more, investors often end up missing out on lucrative opportunities by investing only in businesses with smaller valuations.

Don’t miss the home runs: Avoiding the lure of smaller valuations.

Dr. Sharma shares some pertinent examples to further underline how this growing trend of focusing on smaller valuations is not preferable for investors. He talks about leading global startups such as Square, Etsy, Shopify, Twitter, and Lending Club, all of which had significantly higher pre-money valuations than the extant industry median for their sectors and growth stage.

India has mirrored the global startup landscape in this regard, according to Dr. Sharma. Between 2005 and 2010, the most successful Indian start-ups including Paytm, Oyo Rooms, Snapdeal, Zomato, etc. have all had valuations in the range of INR 4-7 crore. Only Ola Cabs struck gold with a valuation of INR 2 crore.

While various start-ups, including portfolio companies

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for Venture Catalysts, have made good multipliers with investments worth less than INR 1 crore as well, the examples are few and far between. A recent study estimates that earlystage investors restricting their choices to low valuation ventures have probably missed out on 80% of high-returns opportunities in the last three years alone. This is why the most important question facing investors today, according to Dr. Sharma, is this: how to attain the perfect balance between low valuation investments and high valuation investments? How Venture Catalysts is aiding investors in making smarter investment decisions.

The answer lies in the numbers. If we look at the performance of the top angel investor portfolios in India, we will notice a few common trends. The country’s ten leading angels made 41 early-stage deals on average, investing approximately INR 10 lakh per deal. Out of these 41 investees, 10 went on to raise more funds, with 8 investees raising more than $5 million and 2 deals raising more than $100 million. Less than 1 investee on average turned into a unicorn proposition.

Dr. Sharma’s own investment firm, Venture Catalysts, has been performing better than any of these angels. The differentiation, according to him, is in VCats’ extensive networking and sourcing capabilities. Venture Catalysts has a massive pan-India network of angels and start-ups across multiple geographies, including tier-2 regions such as Surat and Lucknow. This allows VCats to identify emerging highvalue business propositions in these regions before anyone else and offer angel investment, mentorship opportunities, and other support services through its integrated platform.

Being future-ready: Why emerging tech-driven sectors should be high on investor priorities.

Investors must also be willing to explore emerging sectors such as robotics, sustainable fuels, and AI, according to Dr. Sharma, who also underlined the need for the modern angel investor to evolve in step with the competitive, globalized, and robust start-up ecosystem of today. A highly successful angel investor with an enviable track record in start-up investments himself, Dr. Sharma, emphasized the need for early-stage investors to be extremely aware of the threshold of investment that can be accommodated without losing any sleep. He identified $500k as the ideal, balanced figure that gave entrepreneurs enough time and flexibility to create a robust business strategy and drive market traction. Is VC funding still the best source of investment for start-ups?

While there is enough debate regarding the best sources of fund generation for start-ups, there is no effective blueprint

Venture Catalysts that determines the same. The suitability of a source depends on a variety of factors such as the stage of business, the kind of business offering, consumer base, amount of revenue generation, etc. It can, however, be safely stated that, for a startup at the pre-product or research and development stage, seed funding from angel investors, preferably from investors belonging to the same industry, should be considered.

Industry-specific investors and investment platforms such as Venture Catalysts with a diversified portfolio and a very high success rate are the best bet for these startups, as their money comes along with a lot of experience and wisdom. It is just a matter of opening the right doors instead of every door. VCs help to take the most efficient route to a particular goal, and being involved from the seed level stage; they can help a business minimize the number of mistakes they make.

Many successful start-up entrepreneurs are of the opinion that any prospective business person should not focus solely on the VC funds, but look for facilities beyond money, such as a team of advisors. As we approach the second half of 2017, we can still see the Indian start-up ecosphere thriving, though not as robustly as 3-4 years back. For investors to return to the high funding mood and bolster the start-up environment, upcoming businesses need to start respecting the VC money more. They should consider it as a prime debt, and look to devote it solely to purposes that generate quick and highest returns. This should be equally matched by a desire to generate market traction and build a stable consumer base, as these are the 3 pillars based on which a start-up can rise above the baby steps of the seed funding period and make giant strides in the competitive business environment.

- Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-Founder, Venture Catalysts (Author) About Author: A doyenne in the field of early stage investment and startup incubation, Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma is the Co-Founder of Venture Catalysts, India’s first Seed Investment & Innovation platform. In his role, he is responsible for driving the strategic planning and overseeing the overall functioning of the organization.

Dr. Apoorv holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur, and an MBA from Asia Pacific Institute of Management, New Delhi along with a Diploma in Mentoring Start-ups from University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a Ph.D. in Management, Role of Business Incubators in Economic Growth of India, and is one of the very few professionals with academic certification in Incubation and Early Stage Investment currently active in the start-up field. Having been involved in early stage investment since 2002, Dr. Apoorv has a series of professional accomplishments to his name. He was the Project Manager of the JSS Technology Incubator/JSS SEED Fund, which was the first Government-sponsored SEED Fund in India. He then took over the task of establishing Amity Innovation Incubator and was responsible for developing its Amity Family Office Fund as its General Manager. Dr. Apoorv has also led the Indian Angel Network (IAN), India’s first and largest angel network at present, as the Vice President of its Western Region Investments and Technology Incubator. He has also been involved as the Executive Vice President of Venture Nursery, a start-up accelerator. Venture Catalysts, his latest venture, distills his years of experience and proficiency with various fundamental start-up related concerns into a unique, integrated platform providing solutions to all early stage start-up requirements.

The Indian early stage investment landscape is currently illequipped, and disorganized to take on the global leaders, the US and China, and support the country’s booming start-up ecosystem. Moreover, while there are several angel networks, early stage investors, growth accelerators and incubators in India, integrating these diverse solutions to fit their respective business models is extremely challenging for new start-ups.

This has directly resulted in nearly 90 percent of start-ups going under within the first few years of their inception. This is what makes VCats such a relevant and ground breaking proposition in the Indian context. Through its angel network, venture fund, co-working facility and effective postinvestment support, VCats provide a one-stop shop for a host of start-up solutions that aid growth for emerging ventures.

VCats brings together all these start-up requirements under a single integrated, innovation-driven platform to provide comprehensive early stage support to budding ventures – be it funding, technology, infrastructural and logistics support, mentoring, industry connections and scaling-up.

VCats’ founders bring practical, industry-centric insights and business connections that can help make the decisive make-or-break difference to a start-up. Moreover, with all of its board members being seasoned angel investors and its operations being managed by an ex-entrepreneur, VCats ensures optimisation of investment and value-addition for all key stakeholders through structured programmes and early stage focused investment. The company’s highly subsidized co-working space for start-ups also helps budding ventures circumvent the challenges of managing their infrastructural requirements, while its powerful programmes are tailored to attract Series funding forthe investee companies. In conjunction with its comprehensive single-point start-up solutions across various business verticals, VCats will create a new breed of angels comprising seasoned investors as well as a vibrant network of high net-worth individuals such as stockbrokers, businessmen, and builders. Through the participation of these HNIs, VCats will be looking to revolutionize and reinvigorate the seed and early stage investment landscape in the country.

VCats currently has 25-30 seasoned investors onboard, along with several HNIs, and has strong relations with corporate players and Global Accelerators. The company will now be looking at incorporating 800-1000 active angels within its network in the near future to consolidate its India footprint before extending its services on a global level.

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Startup Name: Woodofa We Listen, We Create, and You Enjoy Domain: Furniture/Interior Design Founders: Shashank Jain, Saurabh Jain, and Arpit Jain Investment: Bootstrapped URL: http://woodofa.com

Woodofa is a new age interior design, furniture & decor company, which helps you to renovate your empty home to a fantastic and lively abode or convert your boring office place to an attractive workplace within an affordable cost. After understanding your requirements, they provide the perfect design ideas in the very first attempt, leaving no gap for rework.

Woodofa possesses various high-quality furniture products (present on the website). Apart from these products, Woodofa also provides complete Interior design solutions for its customers.

How does it work?

If you have a home/office which is unfurnished or semi furnished, then you can approach Woodofa.

• Woodofa comes in and understands your requirements, and then they give you the best quote.

• Once you are on-boarded to the world of designs and interiors, they create mood boards and color preferences.

• They will get the work done on site or from their factory depending on your preference and budget.

• They take complete responsibility for quality work and accountability for any damages/repair (if any) • They will be providing after sales doorstep service (if needed).

The secret behind Woodofa’s affordability starts from best sourcing in various sectors such as Wood, Hardware, POP, lighting and of course its zero-cost design concept. They pass on these benefits directly to customers.

They are also a strategic partner with Bajaj Finserv and can offer you financing with 0% interest on your interiors bill.

They have solutions for everything ranging from Wardrobes to Beds, Dining Tables to Sofas, Modern Bathrooms to Modular Kitchens, Traditional Paint to Fancy Wallpaper, Office workstation to Aesthetic Decor of the office or even creating a Co-Working Space. After engaging with Woodofa, you can be 100% assured that the product delivered will be aesthetically beautiful, affordable and within budget.

"The three Jains " - Shashank, Saurabh, and Arpit are the brains behind Woodofa.

Shashank Jain is the Captain of the ship. He is an engineer turned interior designer who is following his passion and love for interiors and furnishings. Before Woodofa, he had worked as a digital consultant with many fortune 500 companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Adidas, Ted Baker (London), Informa (London), Goodlife (Australia), Salesforce,

etc. After spending some time in London, he decided to move back to India and started delivering affordable interior solutions.

Saurabh Jain is the VP - Sales, and Marketing. He has earlier worked with Accenture, India and is now providing exciting interior experience for Woodofa's customers. He has a knack in sales and is also leading Woodofa's partner program.

Arpit Jain is the Creative Head. He has studied in India's best architectural college - School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. He has worked in various sectors ranging from Commercial, Residential, Group Housing, Low Rise Housing, and he was also a landscape consultant to a well know firm in Delhi.

The Cofounder crew had a discussion with the founders of Woodofa and here is the summary of the discussion, How did this idea strike you?

Furniture and Furnishing industry is unorganized and primarily dominated by local carpenters and small business owners, as they "seem" to do the work at a lesser price. But the catch here is that the quality of products they use and workmanship does not match with the commitments they make. Most of the people start complaining about bad work and quality that needs repair, right after they move in. The customers are unhappy with the current solution available in the market, and we started Woodofa to fill that market gap.

We as professionals understand your requirements and moods better than anybody else. We are delivering the best quality and best experience at the same or slightly higher cost than the local carpenters. Try us after working with a carpenter, and you will know the difference.

The journey so far (When you launched, how far is the traction so far?)

We initially launched Woodofa as a furniture e-commerce in August 2015 and pivoted to affordable interior solutions in January 2017. We have been doing some exciting work for clients in Delhi-NCR and primarily in Noida.

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Who are your competitors?

The local Carpenters in the region as people tend to falsely believe that they are doing similar work at a lesser price.

Livespace and other online agencies are not our competitors because the price range we are offering is much less because of our in-house manufacturing and onsite delivery capacity.

How are you planning to outpace your competitors?

We intend to gain customer attention and trust by our quality work and innovative designing at a competitive price.

What’s your revenue model?

We are working on per project delivery model, where the customer pays for his entire interiors ranging from Rs. 2 lakhs to Rs. 20 lakhs per flat. Woodofa delivers the complete project with the main elements such as Wardrobes, Kitchens, False Ceiling, Sofa, Lights, Wallpapers, Decor, etc.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

The biggest challenge we faced was to prove the difference between our work and the work of a carpenter, even if we offer services at zero cost. Initially, it was challenging to disrupt the mindset of a customer for making them engage with Woodofa and not with local carpenter services.

How did you overcome it?

We showcased our various projects and proved them the difference of quality and professional commitments we make, unlike a local carpenter or a vendor. Woodofa manages the entire interior experience, and the customer is assured of quality and timely delivery. Before commencing the project, Woodofa gives an estimate which is close to an actual cost, unlike other agencies. Also, our client testimonials helped us to overcome the issues.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

Biggest learning came while pivoting Woodofa from just furniture e-commerce to an affordable interior solution company. We learned that customer needs professional guidance even before buying smaller items such as rugs, decor, furniture etc.

Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from your them?

Many mentors in our journey have helped Woodofa to get its current shape. Our parents who had decades of experience in Wood and Timber business taught us how to overcome the hurdles of interior and furnishing business.

Mr. KunalSinghal (EazyERP) keeps on mentoring and guiding us to path upwards.

Have you raised funding before?

No. We are currently bootstrapping.

Are you looking for raising more funds?

We will be looking to raise funds at an appropriate time in near future.

What are your future plans with your startup?

We are looking to organize the interior and furnishing space in Noida for next 6 months. Once this is set-up, we will be looking to expand in Delhi/NCR.

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The Founders

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Fagnum Create, Publish, Market Volume XI |

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Startup Name: Fagnum Domain: Content Marketing Founders: Mohd Wasi Investement: Bootstrapped URL: https://www.fagnum.com/ Fagnum is a unique content publishing and marketing platform to help the budding startups, bloggers, filmmakers, websites and content writers to help them grow and flourish. It is the platform which lets them showcase their hidden talent like culinary skills, singing talent, any form of art, etc. It provides equal opportunities to all to present their talent and get promoted across all social media platforms by Fagnum.

How can Fagnum help users?

Are you looking for a platform to make you stand apart from the crowd, to get renowned for your skills/talent?, then Fagnum is the right place. They will make sure to make your journey a happy and successful one. They organize monthly article writing contest and short movie making contests to draw in talent from across the globe. The best part of these contests is that there is not just one winner but a list of winners. They award the talent with certificates and prize money, and their algorithm makes sure that fair judgments are carried out, and no human is involved in deciding the winners. Fagnum also promotes your entry across all social media platforms, so you flourish in the digital space under the brand Fagnum.

How can Fagnum help sponsors?

They don't consider sponsors as money minters, but their partners are standing tall with them on every platform. They take responsibility to market their sponsors, and they do this by organizing contests. The reason being if you approach one person or one company to promote your idea/product/ service then they will implement only their old strategy for promotion. But if a contest is organized with a pool of talented contestants, you will get different approaches, different ideas, varying tricks, multiple methodologies and the best one can be implemented. So if you want to launch any product or service, if you want to develop a website for your company, if you want to improvise your product, if you want new ideas for your service improvement, then Fagnum is a perfect choice. They will help you to achieve your task by organizing contests and delivering the best to you. Fagnum will also back you on all the social media platforms and help you grow.

Mohd Wasi is the founder of the team, and some part time members are working in his team. He started his career as an Engineer in Huawei Telecom and then shifted to Paxterra Software Solutions as a Software Engineer. After that, he started Fagnum.com which was a market place for chartered accountant and lawyers, but that concept didn’t take off well.

He then shifted to Content publishing and marketing platform.

Dear Writer, Warm Greetings from Fagnum.com. Fagnum is organizing its 8th article writing contest with an enticing theme.

Hope you will like it and participate in huge numbers. Do spread the word to your friends and relatives and help us in making this contest a grand success.

About the Contest 1. Article writing contest will start from 4th December 17 and

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last until 28th December 17. You can submit your article at care@fagnum.com.

2. The theme of this month is bit different. Unlike previous contests this time we want you to write an article about your city/locality. We want to hear your own story, the story from where you belong, the story of its evolution, the story of its success, the story of its rise, the story of its mob. You can write on any topic (yes any topic because your wish is our command) varying from listing down beautiful points about your city to writing on the family living next door which has broken all the societal norms to carve out a new path. An article about the struggling startup above your floor to the local business which has set the market on fire with its innovative idea. A story about the breakthrough brought in by a local innovative product developed by the young teenager to a cover story about the new campaign running in your city to empower the underprivileged. We urge you to write on anything under the sky happening in your city which you feel should be heard by the crowd out there. However, you should write with the prior consent of the person/company involved. Endorsing of big brands and established firms is not allowed. The sole purpose behind this theme is to encourage writers from every nook of the country to showcase their writing skills with their insightful cover story. This way the local market will come to know about you and Voila you have already established yourself as a proven content writer. The doors of opportunity will open for you and you will be asked to sponsor many local stories. Isn’t this an excellent idea.? So pull up your socks and pen down a breathtaking and insightful article/story. We can’t wait to hear from you.

3. First rank holder will get a cash prize of Rs. 1500; the Second and Third rank holder will get a cash prize of Rs. 1250 and Rs. 750 respectively.

4. 4th to the 8th rank holder will get a cash prize of Rs. 500 and 9th to the 15th rank holder will get a cash prize of Rs. 300.

5. Entries will be judged on the basis of pageviews, article length and Avg time spent by the reader on your article.

Rules 1. Fagnum is against plagiarism, and only the original works will be published. Any attempt to publish copied content will be discarded, and the defaulter will be banned from participating in the next one contest.

2. Fagnum holds the copyright to the articles/stories. The due credit will be given to the author, but it restricts the author to publish the same article/story on any other platform even their own blog space.

3. Each page view will be awarded 1 point. Critics points will be awarded for average time spent on the article by the readers, and the critics point will be awarded out of 500.

4. Article's length must be greater than 500 words, and if the article's length is greater than 700 words, 200 points will be added in Critics column.

5. If the overall average time spent on the article is less than 2 minutes, then the prize money won't be awarded.

6. After publishing the article, the writer has to share the link with a message in the brackets (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=oHYRsyMSw90) to their facebook timeline and mention fagnum or tag fagnum and will earn 100 points in critics section.

7. Refer a Blogger or a Writer and earn 50 points per referral.

One user can refer at the most of two writers.

Check below link for current statistics. http://www.fagnum.com/article-writing-contest/ Share your article at care@fagnum.com, and for any query, you can call us at 8867861530.

We are eagerly waiting for your article.

Thanks Team Fagnum

BITCOIN Bitcoin’s hard fork gives birth to Bitcoin Cash Early this month (Aug 2017) bitcoin’s blockchain forked — meaning a separate cryptocurrency was created called Bitcoin Cash.

What is Bitcoin?

A digital currency, used to make payments of any value without fees. It runs on the blockchain, a decentralised ledger kept running by “miners” whose powerful computers crunch transactions and are rewarded in bitcoins.

Who invented it?

Satoshi Nakamoto, a secretive internet user, invented bitcoin in 2008 before it went online in 2009. Many attempts to identify Satoshi have been made without conclusive proof.

What is Bitcoin Cash?

In August 2017, the blockchain forked to support another cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash, which is optimised slightly differently. People who held Bitcoin received an equal value of Bitcoin Cash following this ‘hard fork’.

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Bitcoin, now almost a decade old, is struggling to cope with a recent surge in popularity that has seen Bitcoin transactions are completed when a “block” is added to the blockchain database that underpins the currency, but at present blocks are limited to 1MB every 10 minutes - or seven transactions per second. This compares to 2,000 per second for Visa and means that at peak times bitcoin transactions can take hours to be fulfilled, inhibiting the currency.

The two rival proposals - Segwit2x and Bitcoin Cash - are both seeking to solve this problem in different ways.

• Segwit2x proposes moving some of bitcoin’s transaction data outside of the block and on to a parallel track to allow more transactions to take place. After that happens, blocks would double in size some time in November.

• Bitcoin Cash does not propose moving transaction data outside of each block, but wants to increase the size of each to 8MB. Its backers are sceptical that the Segwit2x plan will follow through with doubling the block size later on.

Segwit2x has been adopted by enough of the bitcoin community to proceed, but in recent days more have signaled their support for Bitcoin Cash, saying the rival

proposals do not go far enough.

Early this month, key miners and developers of bitcoin agreed to adopt a new way of operating the cryptocurrency.

Since the technology is open source, changes are made to its underlying code if agreed by a consensus of users.

The new technology, called Segwit2x, has gradually been adopted by key players in recent days and appeared to avert a “civil war” over how to move forward. Both technologies will help make transactions faster and more efficient. The newly-created Bitcoin Cash will operate as an independent digital currency, along with Ripple, Litecoin, Zcash, and others.

However, a rival system has gained traction in recent days called Bitcoin Cash. The new system was launched recently.

Most people store their bitcoins in online wallets or exchanges, rather than downloading them onto a physical hard drive. The majority of these portals have said they will proceed with the mainstream Segwit2x proposal. Users who have downloaded their bitcoins onto a physical drive, rather than have a website act as their custodian, meaning you should receive both versions.

This isn’t the first time that a blockchain-based cryptocurrency has been forked. In June 2016, a similar hard fork occurred with Ethereum, following the collapse of its Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). The blockchains created in the process were called Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. In the fourth quarter of 2016, Ethereum underwent two other forks.

With the emergence of advanced digital payment technologies, the Indian Bitcoin market has witnessed rapid growth in recent times. According to a 2016 BitConnect report, India currently has a Bitcoin population of more than 1 Mn Users. As per a 2016 Trak.in report, India boasts more than 50,000 wallets. Of these, 700-800 Bitcoins are operated daily.

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How the Bitcoin civil war affects the Indian market is something only time will tell. However, most wallets and exchanges in the country will keep using the original system.

In fact, two major Indian startups, Zebpay and Unocoin, will not be supporting the new Bitcoin Cash. This will, in turn, make it difficult for the new cryptocurrency to gain traction in India.

In June 2017, the country’s Finance Ministry announced the creation of a special committee that would be suggesting measures for minimizing security breaches and vulnerabilities related to cryptocurrency usage. The initiative was deemed as the government’s first step towards legalizing Bitcoin cryptocurrency in India.

Over the past few years, despite the lack of regulations in the Indian digital currency industry, a few exchanges have sprung up. The exchanges have teamed up with a number of self-regulated trading platforms, equipped with strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering systems. Among these are startups like BuyUcoin, Zebpay, Coinsecure, and Unocoin.

These startups have also attracted investor interest. In September 2016, for instance, Bengaluru-based Unocoin raised $1.5 Mn in a Pre-Series A round from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels, and ah! Ventures. Bitcoin trading platform Coinsecure secured $1.2 Mn as part of its Series A investment round from an undisclosed investor in April 2016. Earlier in January, Ahmedabad-based mobile Bitcoin wallet startup Zebpay raised $1 Mn Series A funding from angel investors.

While the market is only just starting to gain traction in India, the Bitcoin civil war and the hard fork will likely complicate things even further. So far, most exchanges and miners in the country have decided to continue using Bitcoin.

Because the use of cryptocurrencies in India has still not been legalised, it is too early to predict the financial impact of the Bitcoin civil war and the hard fork. That said, it would be interesting to see if Bitcoin startups in the country will adopt the new technology, which guarantees transaction rates that are eight times the current speed.

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ICO De-jargoned ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and How Does it Work?

An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is used by startups to bypass the rigorous and regulated capitalraising process required by venture capitalists or banks.

An initial coin offering is similar in concept to an initial public offering (IPO), both a process in which companies raise capital, while an ICO is an investment that gives the investor a cryptocoin, more commonly known as a coin or a token in return for investment, which is quite different to the issuance of securities as is the case in an IPO investment.

Before getting into the details, it’s worth providing some detail on blockchains, tokens and cryptocurrencies.

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Blockchain A blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record, not just financial transactions, but anything of value. It’s essentially a digital spreadsheet that is duplicated across a network of computers. The network is designed to update the spreadsheets on a regular basis. As the information is shared and regularly updated and not stored in a single location, it’s considered to be truly public and easily reconciled.

Tokens Tokens are coins that are offered during an ICO and would be considered an equivalent to shares purchased in an IPO and are also referred to as cryptocoins.

Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies are a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. It is not issued by any central authority, such as a central bank, taking it out of the reach of governments who can interfere or manipulate. The transactions are anonymous in nature.

Tokens issued from an ICO will have a value, with the ICO allocating equivalent to equity to the token, which gives the investor ownership with voting rights and, in certain cases, qualifying for dividends.

While this will be the closest format of an ICO to IPOs, the vast majority of ICOs issue tokens that are an asset giving investors access to the features of a particular project rather than ownership of the company itself.

It’s ultimately the process of crowdfunding a new cryptocurrency project, involving a token sale, with the cryptocurrency project raising capital to fund operations, with investors receiving an allocation of the project’s tokens in return.

ICOs tend to be open from between a few weeks to a month, though some have been open for longer and fund raising for a particular ICO possibly taking place on multiple occasions, unlike an IPO which is a onetime event.

Some key characteristics of an ICO include: • Participation in a project, Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) or an economy.

• Coin ICOs generally sell participation in an economy, while token ICOs sell a right of ownership or royalties to a project or DAO. • Owning tokens do not always give the investor a right to vote on the direction of a project or DAO, with the rights of the investor embedded within the structure of the ICO, though generally the investor will have input throughout a project lifespan.

• The majority of ICOs involve the creation of a defined number of coins or tokens prior to sale.

• ICO prices are usually established by the creators of the economy, project or DAO. • ICOs may have multiple rounds of fund raising, with coins or tokens on offer, increasing in value until the release date, with early investors likely to have greater rewards embedded within their tokens as an incentive.

• ICOs conclude once the coins or tokens are tradable in the open market.

For companies raising capital through ICOs, the advantages include: • The project, DAO or economy is not necessarily subject to direct taxation, which in contrast to companies fund raising through IPOs. • Sales of coins or tokens are direct, including multiple rounds, with few if any intermediaries required in the process, investors basing investment decisions on the content of white papers prepared by the fund raising entity.

While ICOs are to mainly raise capital for a start up, they are also used to kick-start the sale of a service to be taken to market or the use of a new cryptocurrency. On most occasions, the investor becomes the consumer of the service being offered by the company raising funds through an ICO, which allows investors to buy coins at a discount, though valuation will ultimately be dictated by supply and demand once released to market.

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How Does ICO Work and How to use ICO?

Start ups kick start the ICO process by establishing the blockchain and set up of protocols and rules, at which point an ICO data is announced. For the creator, the next step is to begin mining for coins that will sold during the ICO, with social media sites, Reddit and a rising number of cryptocurrency related website used as a marketing medium to attract investors ahead of the ICO data, creators looking to draw in as much interest as possible to not only raise the required funding, but also push demand and prices post ICO. In the background, the creators will make their final checks and adjustments to ensure its smooth sailing by the time of the ICO. For the cryptocurrency creators, they will need to join an exchange, the exchange similar to that of a stock exchange during an IPO, with investors needing to have an account with the exchange to be able to buy the new cryptocurrency with other cryptocurrencies or fiat money.

Active and up and coming ICOs can be found through various sites, with the purchase of cryptocurrencies being made through the selected exchange, with investors also able to buy directly through the creators official website.

Exchanges that are widely recommended for the purchase of new coins include Bittrex, Kraken, Poloniex, Livecoin, SpaceBTC, Bitlish, though there are many others.

Documentation requirements vary depending upon the investor domicile, with the requirements outlined on the respective exchange’s site and creator website.

A step by step of an ICO can be summarized as follows: • Pre-Announcement: This is the marketing stage of a future project through sites frequented by cryptocurrency investors, with the creators of the project preparing a white paper, essentially an investor presentation outlining the details of the project. Once the white paper has been circulated, the company will get a sense of whether there is investor interest in the project proposed, with the company then addressing concerns and addressing risks raised by would be investors to reach a final business model and a final version of the white paper.

• Offering: This is the final version of the white paper, setting out the terms of a contract for the benefit of the investors, made on behalf of the company entering into the ICO. The offer will outline the project details, the total amount of capital required, together with project timelines.

It will also indicate the financial instrument to be sold during the ICO, normally tokens. The financial instrument will have a value assigned to it, together with the rights of the investor along with the expected period after which the company will commence returning earnings to investors, traditionally by way of dividends. Once the offer has been signed, the ICO start date is announced and the marketing

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campaign moves into overdrive.

• Marketing Campaign: This is a pivotal component of the ICO, with the marketing campaign key to the company being able to raise the necessary capital.

Companies are generally nascent and unknown, bringing marketing agencies into the frame to make the necessary presentations, etc. The campaign will tend to last up to a month on average, target audience being institutional and some smaller investors. Participants of crowdfunding programs tend to be the main segment, investors generally more willing to back projects, with their involvement in the project considered a positive for both the investor and the company. Once the marketing campaign comes to an end, the buying and selling of tokens commences, with the company having established an exchange for investors to acquire tokens.

• ICO: Companies generally release tokens on blockchain in two ways: o Collect the specific capital, outlined within the offer, and then divide and distribute the tokens to the investors based on initial investment made. o Alternatively, tokens are sold on cryptocurrency exchanges, which means that the tokens need to be released on a number of exchanges in advance for trading.

Once the sale has ended, the company commences on its obligations.

For the investor, it’s a case of exploring the various exchanges or social media sites that publish active and up and coming ICOs and then opening an account, acquiring the tokens, having completed the necessary due diligence on the company or project in question.

Successes from ICOs are well publicised, with some of the most well-known ICOs including, but certainly not limited to: • Ethereum (ETHER-ETH): US$18.5m raised in capital.

At ICO investors paid US$0.4 per Ether back in 2014. The value of an Ether hit a high of US$14 per Ether in 2016.

Ether is certainly one of the more well-known early success stories. Year-to-date, Ether’s market cap has surged in excess of 500%.

• ICONOMI (ICN): US$9.1m in capital raised.

• Maidsafe Coin (MAID): US$7m raised in just 5-hours, which had been the record for the most amount of capital raised in the shortest period of time.

• Golem Project: The Company’s goal is to build a P2P global computer network, with blockchain data handling payments in GNT tokens. US$8.6m in capital raised in just a matter of hours.

How to Join Initial Coin Offering?

To invest, the first step of the process is to identify which project or company launch is of most interest and while searching through the ever-increasing number of ICOs hitting the worldwide web, set up a cryptocurrency wallet.

With a lack of formal structure, each ICO will likely have a different set of requirements, though ultimately it’s a simple process of sending tokens upon payment by cryptocurrency to the blockchain identified and listed on the ICO website, which will also provide the investor a step-by-step guide into the investment process.

Public sites, such as Blockchainhub, advise that before investing it is important not to use any kind of an online wallet or exchange. Backers are generally required to export their private keys into another wallet in order to access their new coins, so it is vital to ensure that the wallet’s private keys are exportable.

Companies have looked to facilitate the process by making available functioning online wallets for their ICOs, where the investor can send the money directly to the wallet established, the funds exchanged for tokens using the exchange rate at the time of purchase, with the tokens

deposited into the wallet. Others remit the purchased tokens to the address from which the funds were sent.

Investors will also need to be aware that certain wallets may be incompatible with the tokens and are therefore not visible following purchase and receipt. For this reason it’s essential to have a wallet which permits the export of private keys, so that it is permissible to transfer the tokens to a new compatible wallet.

It’s become far simpler since the launch of Ethereum, with creators setting up userfriendly campaigns, with Ethereum’s wallet supporting multiple tokens, making access to purchase tokens far easier than before.

Outside of identifying the ICO itself, due diligence is also recommended in the interest of avoiding scams and Ponzi schemes, with ICO Rating providing would be investors with a full assessment of the project or company in question and other companies providing some additional background should more details be needed.

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BOFY

It’s not a proposition, it’s a promise!

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BOFY stands for Being Organic for You. BOFY is an online shopping platform that offers a range of 100% certified organic products. Bofy has a wide variety of Certified Organic Products like Kitchen Groceries, Personal Care Products, Health Supplements, Home

Startup Name: Bofy Domain: E-commerce Founder: Mahek Jain Investment: Bootstrapped URL: https://bofy.in/

Furnishings, Yoga Wear, Apparel for men, women, and kids, etc. All their products are Chemicals-Free, PesticidesFree, GMO-Free (Genetically Modified Organisms), Pure, Natural and Certified by Organic Certification Agencies like USDA, India Organic, NPOP, Ecocert, etc. It combines the essence of deep rooted organic market values with fair trade business practices. Giving back to the society or Fair remuneration/profit sharing with organic producers are the fundamentals of BOFY's business values.

BOFY is on a mission to offer a platform where users can shop for authentic, pure, certified organic products without confusing organic with natural/herbal/ayurvedic products.

These days such words are being interchangeably used by most of the people as they don’t know the exact meaning of Organic products.

Mehak Jain is the founder of BOFY. Hailing from a small town Alwar, in Rajasthan, Mehak did her schooling in Alwar itself and moved to Delhi for her graduation. She pursued B.Sc. (Hons) Chemistry from Hindu College, Delhi University and did Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM)/MBA in Finance from Goa Institute of Management. She got a job with Crisil, Mumbai through Campus Placement Process. After working for 6 years in reputed corporates, the pursuit of “giving back to the world” came into being and she started BOFY The Cofounder crew had a discussion with Mehak and here is the summary of the discussion,

The journey so far (When you launched, how far is the traction so far?)

BOFY went live in mid-April 2017 and the journey so far has been good. In the beginning, it was frustrating when we didn't get much response from the market, but it's slowly building up.

It’s just been 4 months, and we are working hard to get good traction as well as grow exponentially on a month-on-month basis.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

Well, everything is a challenge when you start something of your own, however, coming from a non-IT background, our biggest challenge was to understand technology. Technology is the backbone of our website, and we faced many challenges in developing the website and bringing it to the level where it is now.

How did you overcome it?

TIME does everything. With passing time, we understood how and which technology can be applied to our venture to achieve our targets. With a lot of impediments on the way, we finally found a technology partner, who helped us in making the website what it is today.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

As I learn something new every day, I have a never-ending list of learnings throughout my journey. However, the biggest learning is getting to know how to get work done from people in various verticals like IT, Social Media, etc.

What’s your revenue model?

BOFY is an online marketplace where we list multiple sellers who deal in certified organic products across food, clothing, personal care, health supplements, home furnishings, etc. Every product sold has a fixed margin, as mutually consented with the respective seller and that’s primarily our revenue.

What are your future plans with your startup?

One of our plans includes shipping certified organic products across the globe. Currently, we are only shipping within India.

Have you raised funding before?

No, we haven’t raised any investment yet. BOFY is a self-funded start-up.

How did this idea strike you?

Well, prior to BOFY, I had over 6 years of experience working with reputed corporate companies like Crisil (the rating agency), Royal Bank of Scotland and my last stint at IIFCL Mutual Fund. It may very well sound cliched, but, with my last stint, I wanted to do something unique, on my own and give back to the mother earth. Organic, as a concept, always arouse my interest, and it developed into a reality when I attended training on Organic Farming. That marked the beginning of BOFY's journey. I wanted to give a platform to the masses, where they can shop for authentic, pure, certified organic products without compromising on quality. The USP of our portal is that we don’t keep anything and everything, but just CERTIFIED ORGANIC products; not natural, ayurvedic, herbal or anything else.

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Are you looking for raising more funds?

We do have plans to raise investments to improve technology, marketing, and promotional activities.

Who are your competitors?

Every website selling organic as well as non-organic food items, clothing, home furnishings, personal care, etc. are our competitor.

How are you planning to outpace your competitors?

We are planning to outpace our competitors through better product offering and selling only genuine certified organic products.

What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

Every single day brings a new learning to us, and I learn every day. There are times when we lose hope and get frustrated, but, that is also learning. Don’t lose focus, stay focused and have patience. Do your work sincerely and smartly, and it will fructify.

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7Cube26 • Founded in: 2012 • Founded by: Saurav Kumar, Abhilekh Agarwal and Aakash Jain • Shut Down in: March 2017 Mobile technology startup Cube26 Software Pvt. Ltd has closed its Internet of Things (IoT) business which has led to several job cuts. The firm had raised $7.7 million (Rs 50 crore then) in seed funding from Tiger Global and Flipkart in October 2015. The firm has now decided to solely focus on its software and services business.

Cube26 launched its first IoT product, a Bluetoothcontrolled color-changing smart bulb, in November 2015 under the brand IOTA. The company introduced a new IoT brand, Reos, in August last year, under which it launched a suite of smartphone apps as well as a new version of the smart bulb, Reos Lite.

8Stayzilla • Founded in: 2005 • Founded by: Yogendra Vasupal (Yogi), Rupal Yogendra, Sachit Singhi • Shut down in: February 2017 Yogendra Vasupal, co-founder Stayzilla announced the shutdown of the venture through a Medium blogpost in February 2017. The reason stated by Yogi was the lack of local network effect, inability to expand quickly, and cost effectively plus high costs and low revenues. Not only this, the firm was in plenty of legal trouble, following the startup shutdown with Yogi being arrested on charges of fraud.

Founded as an online travel agency for hotel bookings named as Inasra, Stayzilla was latterly renamed and pivoted to a hotel aggregator model in 2010. Backed by investors including Matrix Partners and Nexus Venture Partners, the company had raised $33.5 million funding in three funding rounds – $500K in 2012, $20 million in 2015 and $13 million in 2016.

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Taskbob

• Founded in: December 2014 • Founded by: Aseem Khare, Abhiroop Medhekar, Ajay Bhatt and Amit Chahalia • Shut Down in: January 2017 Home and beauty services startup, Taskbob, shuts down its operations due to unforeseen circumstances.

According to the media reports, the decision of shutting the operation came after the startup failed to raise fresh funds since February last year.

The startup that had also acquired Zepper, a Bengaluru-based home services startup had raised Rs 28-crore Series A funding from Ivy Cap Ventures and existing investors Orios Ventures Partners and Mayfield India.

10Prophesee • Founded in: 2014 • Founded by: Ishaan Sethi, Harshil Gurha, Jitesh Luthra • Shut Down in: January 2017 The reason for shutdown remains unknown. The startup empowered brands with data-driven insights that allow managers to compare and analyse digital campaigns and execute directly from the platform.

The firm had raised $516K funding in an angel round from Indian Angel Network (IAN), Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs India (SA&E India). Ajay Lavakare, Bikky Khosla, and Satveer Thakral were the lead investors in the company.

MOT I VATI O N

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Motivational Habits That Drive Successful People Have you ever been awed by the motivation of a successful entrepreneur, leader or athlete? It’s not jealousy. Far from it. It's respect for how motivated they are. Even though I consider myself fairly motivated, their examples encourage me to become even more focused and driven.

The good news is that by adopting the following ten habits, anyone can become more motivated.

Find your why.

“Highly motivated people start with their WHY. WHY do you do what you do?,” asks J.D. Meier in an article for Time.

“If you climb a mountain simply because it’s there, that’s probably not enough to keep you going when the going gets tough. If you know WHY you do what you do, and it matters deeply to you, then you will find your strength in any situation,” adds Meier. Why do you want to start a workout regiment? Because your doctor suggested it? Did you spouse mutter a comment? Are you tired of feeling lethargic? Once you find your why, you can use that to motivate you to follow through with exercising.

Feel what you feel.

“When disappointing or upsetting things happen, some people get overwhelmed with negative emotions, while others try to avoid those feelings altogether,” writes author Erika Anderson in Forbes.

“Neither alternative works very well - getting stuck in anger, frustration, sadness, or disappointment can paralyze you while pretending that you're not feeling anything can have long-term negative effects on your health and mental state.”

Instead, find the middle path where you actually feel your feelings and then move through them. If you’re really ticked off about a colleague who stole an idea, it’s all right to let that anger out in a healthy way, such as venting to your best friend. Instead of letting it fester, get it off your chest and move on.

Get your morning started on the right foot.

One of the easiest and most powerful habits that drive motivation is kicking off your day correctly by having a morning routine. Think about it. Getting you started on the right fee makes it a lot easier to stay motivated through the entire day.

To ensure that you wake-up on the right side of the

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bed, try these tips: • Have a reason to get out of bed. It could be anything from walking your dog to making sure your kids are off to school to squeezing in a workout before work.

• Stretch and breathe deep. This gets the blood and oxygen flowing to your brain, and helps you get up.

• Do something simple to start the day. Just start by making your bed, it's not because you want the bedroom to look presentable. It’s because it’s an easy task that makes you feel like you've already accomplished something - even though you’ve only been awake for a couple of minutes!

• Create rote tasks. As explained by Due’s Miranda Marquit, “Look for ways you can make mornings easier by creating rote tasks that are easy to accomplish. We don’t like to face a day that starts hard. Do what you can to make it easier. Once you’re up and moving, you’ll feel better and eventually be awake enough to tackle the hard stuff.”

• Set goals for the day. This doesn’t have to be lengthy. Just list your top priorities for the day.

Change it up.

There’s an old saying: variety is the spice of life. Variety keeps your motivated to meet goals when you haven’t yet made much progress and risk falling into a rut.

Changing things up is like your workout routine. You can’t just work on your legs. Other parts of your body need some loving too. Keep doing the same exercises, and you’ll soon plateau.

The same goes for any aspect of your life. Changing things up gives you a chance to break-up the monotony, try out new skills, and have new experiences that can lead to new ideas or develop a new passion.

Chart your progress.

This is a simple way for you to see how far you’ve come along. Sounds simple, but think about when you set a reading goal. Maybe you want to read more books.

Your initial goal is to read just for five minutes a day

but once you start you're reading for 10 minutes and now you’re up to 30 minutes a day, and you're flying through books.

If you can do thirty minutes, then why not bump-up to forty? Just imagine all the books you’ll be able to read! Mark this on your Calendar each and every day.

Create environmental anchors.

This is simply writing your goals or inspiring quotes on a Post-it or 3x5 card and placing it on the wall of your office, the inside of your car, bathroom mirror or calendar. A daily reminder of your goal will push you to accomplish it.

Join a group, online or offline.

Self-motivation is tough. Think about going to the gym by yourself or when you tried to quit smoking.

It was probably a whole lot easier when you had a partner in crime so that you could push each other.

Whether it’s joining an online forum, taking a class or joining a support, being with people who share the same goal will keep you focused and motivated.

You can share advice, provide moral support and inspire each other to keep pushing forward when you feel like throwing in the towel.

are motivated by emotions and when we visualize we also experience the emotions that are associated with the thing we are visualizing,” writes Parvez.

“By visualizing how your life will be like if you did or didn't reach your goals, you can motivate yourself tremendously. You can both positively and negatively motivate yourself by visualization.”

Believe it or not, research has found that mental practices are almost effective as true physical practice for athletes.

Additionally, as Tomas Laurinavicius explains in the Huffington Post, “Visualization process works as a form of relaxation as it reduces anxiety, with visualization there are no limitations, you can be and do anything.

You can gain inspiration to pursue your dreams as you have already seen them happen, boost confidence and improve focus to work toward your goals.”

Laurinavicius recommends that you, “Start with a simple skill that you want to learn, like waking up earlier or eating slower. That way you can practice with something easier and strengthen your visualization skills before tackling the big complex skills.”

Develop gratitude.

Just by identifying the one thing every day that you’re grateful for is powerful enough in helping your achieve both mini-goals and your big goals since it develops the ability to look for a daily opportunity that you can grow from.

For example, if you’re grateful that you just landed a new client today, then use that feeling and experience to secure two new clients tomorrow.

Discover your passion.

Obsession can be an extremely powerful motivator since it creates its own motivational might. In fact, the most successful individuals are those are who chased their passion and are doing what they love to do.

When you become passionate, whether if it’s at work, exercising, or volunteering, it no longer becomes laborious. It becomes something that you enjoy, looks forward to, and want to get better.

Visualization.

“Visualization is the process of forming mental images and pictures of the desired future,” writes Hanan Parvez for PsychMechanics. ”Those who have dreams and visions of an ideal future life visualize more naturally than others.

Visualization is not idle, fruitless activity like daydreaming but in fact, it can dramatically increase a person’s chances to turn his dreams into reality.”

How can visualization encourage motivation? “We

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Guide to rebrand your startup Why go to the trouble and expense of rebranding at all? The answer is simple and compelling. Your business environment is always changing and you can’t afford to be left behind.

New competitors, changing customer tastes, disruptive technologies and many other factors alter the dynamics of the marketplace. In this environment, the firm that fails to adapt loses. Most of us in the professional services are so busy doing our work that we don’t have the time, patience or energy to monitor changing market conditions and the evolving needs of our clients. That means every five to ten years any firm will find itself out of synch with the marketplace and, if it waits too long, struggling to compete and stay relevant.

Rebranding offers a cure.

So how do you know that it’s time to rebrand? What warning signs might you look for? Here is a list of twelve common indicators that your firm’s brand may no longer be doing its job.

1. Are you are getting fewer leads than in the past?

2. Are you are entering a new market?

3. Are you are introducing significant new services?

4. Has your firm’s growth slowed or stopped?

5. Have new competitors entered the marketplace?

6. Does your visual brand look tired compared to the competition?

7. Do you struggle to describe how your firm is different?

8. Are you losing a higher percentage of competitive bid situations than in the past?

9. Has your firm changed significantly since you last adjusted your brand?

10. Are you struggling to attract top talent?

11. Have your customers changed significantly?

12. Are you trying to figure out how to take your firm to the next level?

If you answered yes to any two of these questions, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your brand.

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Branding Process Branding process generally fall into three broad phases, 1. Get the Strategy Right 2. Build the Brand 3. Roll Out the Brand

PHASE 1: GET THE STRATEGY RIGHT

As tempting as it may be, you should avoid jumping into the visual side of branding (logo, colors, website, etc.) without doing the due diligence first. You’ll need to do some research to understand where the market opportunities lie and what changes you need to implement to make the most of them.

Your branding team will likely want to research some or all of the following key areas: 1. Internal staff: Your firm’s management team and staff provide an internal perspective on your brand. This is particularly useful (and eye opening) when compared to the perceptions of external audiences.

2. Current clients: Existing clients will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses. Use this information to improve operations and client communications.

3. Former clients: Former clients can offer clues to building more lasting relationships. They can also illuminate weaknesses that you never knew existed.

4. Prospects: Prospective clients in your target audience will give you a general sense of your awareness in the marketplace, how you stack up against the competition and how people perceive your company and current brand.

5. Lost prospects: Nobody will provide better insight into your perceived weaknesses in the marketplace than these folks.

6. Influencers: In some industries community leaders, can be powerful influencers. They can provide a valuable perspective on a firm’s perceived strengths and weaknesses and point out missed opportunities. In other industries, such as technology, analysts or well-known bloggers can steer purchasers to certain firms and technologies.

PHASE 2: BUILD THE BRAND

When people talk about branding, this is the phase most of us think of — logos, colors, type, design. It’s exciting to see a new brand literally taking shape before your eyes.

Just remember to stop periodically and check your progress against the roadmap documents you produced in Phase 1. Make sure the materials developed by your branding or design firm reflect your differentiators and your market positioning.

Build out your brand in a logical order. Is that photo of a handshake really setting you apart from your competitors?

1. If you are considering a name change, for instance, do that first. Everything builds in one way or another on your business’ name.

2. Develop your logo and tagline next.

7. Competitors: If you truly know your competition, you know how to succeed. Learn where opportunities exist to differentiate you firm, how to speak with more clarity and how to build competitive advantage.

3. From there, you can go in many directions: stationery, website, brochures, PowerPoint template, sales sheets, proposal formats — until you have a full set of business tools.

For items 1 through 6 above, you’ll need to conduct qualitative phone or in-person interviews. If you want to receive honest answers to your questions, however, use an impartial third party to conduct the interviews, preferably an individual or firm that can handle the calls with skill and professionalism.

Competitive research can typically be conducted online by reviewing websites of key competitors. What constitutes a “key competitor,” however, can be tricky to determine. Once you’ve drawn up a reasonably accurate list of competitors, you’ll want to collect brand-relevant data on each, such as their logos, brand colors, taglines, key messages, key service offerings and visual stylistic characteristics.

4. At some point, however, you may want to establish guidelines for your visual brand (also called your “brand identity”) that impose some limits and protect your investment. Ask your branding team to develop a set of brand style guidelines to govern your brand’s implementation.

Your branding team will analyze this body of research and develop these deliverables: 1. Brand positioning statement: This brief paragraph describes your unique value proposition, differentiation attributes and market positioning. Ideally, this statement is intended for internal use and subsequent marketing message development.

2. Key differentiators: A list of the characteristics that set your firm apart from otherwise similar firms in the marketplace (especially your key competitors).

3. Messaging architecture: This document identifies your target audiences and provides customized messages to each. In addition, the architecture document presents potential barriers each audience may raise when considering your firm, as well as responses to overcome each barrier and evidence needed to support it. This document will become an invaluable resource to many people in your firm — from sales staff to marketing copywriters.

These guidelines, which can range from a single sheet to hundreds of densely-packed pages, ensure consistency across all your visual communications. They lay down the law regarding logo usage, typeface options, color palette and image style — some even go into exhaustive detail about grid layouts and other arcane aspects of design. For most firms, a modest document of 10 to 25 pages is usually sufficient.

PHASE 3: ROLL OUT THE BRAND

Once you’ve developed your new brand, it’s time to take it to the marketplace. A brand rollout plan is a detailed roadmap that charts out where you need to go and the optimal route to get there. Any useful plan will include the following elements: 1. Internal launch. Before you can take your brand to the outside world, you need to introduce your new brand to your entire staff and get them excited about its potential. The brand rollout plan will spell out the activities and materials required to achieve critical internal buy in.

Some branding teams will add a fourth deliverable at this stage — a visual expression of your brand, which provides a preview of your visual brand.

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2. Education. A brand is as much about what your people do and say as about you new logo, tagline and website.

That’s why it’s important to take your staff through a training program that gives even non-sales staff the understanding and talking points they need to embrace and articulate the new brand. When your staff and brand values are aligned, your message is more likely to resonate with clients and prospects. That means more leads, more referrals and more business. The brand rollout plan will lay out the steps you need to take to educate your employees at all levels about your positioning and brand characteristics. More important, it will teach them how to talk about the company and its services in a way that differentiates your firm from the competition. When everyone from the administrative staff to senior executives communicate these values in the same way, the brand becomes far more powerful.

3. Public launch. Your brand launch is a rare opportunity to command attention in the marketplace and make a bold statement. You’ll want to make the most of it. The brand rollout plan will provide specific tactics and a detailed timeline to announce your new brand targeted, as appropriate, to clients, partners, referrals sources, the media and prospects.

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DIG

Digifish3 Become Global Digitally

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Digifish3 is an insightful • How did this idea strike digital outreach and you?

Startup Name: Digifish3 powerhouse, comprising We noticed the lack of of a group of dynamic connection between users and Domain: Digital Agency individuals. They cater to brands. Brand recall was a major Founders: Sandeep Banger their clients with a datadrawback faced by most brands, and Ashmita Dhingra centric approach towards and to do the right promotion Investment: Bootstrapped achieving an innovative and gain engagement with the and impactful presence users was the major challenge URL: http://www.digifish3.com/ in the digital world. They faced by most brands. To fill are a full-service digital this gap, Digifish3 came up with advertising agency which the idea of catering end to end is best known for its strategic branding solutions and digital needs of brands and users, i.e., to help brands in reaching world-class creativity. out to the right audience and also hook them up with the ones who want to be the with the brand.

They are well described by their tagline, “Become Global Digitally.”

Digifish3 is a 360-degree service agency that started with • The journey so far (When you launched, how far is the adoption of a unique ideology. This digital philosophy the traction so far?) encompasses a way of thinking and the method adopted for Digifish3's journey had been a bit of a rocky road, as brands across all genres. The uniqueness of the agency lies convincing clients about the benefits of digital marketing is in their approach of having customized strategies for each a difficult task. From the time of inception till date, we made brand to reach their target audience and attain great brand an impactful change in the overall digital domain. We are now connectivity. Digifish3's expertise extends over a wide gamut making brands popular online and driving our plans better of services covering all the aspects of digital marketing. The and ensuring project fulfillment. We do proper research, idea of providing digital services was inspired by the shift in execute the plans and measure the outcomes of the strategies the market from traditional forms of marketing to the much implemented. We now have a process that we can rely upon more internet savvy techniques. As the world is progressing and can attain better results from our employees. Our end towards digitalization, the brands are acquiring maximum goal is a better future for the professionals working with us, attention from this channel. and in-turn better future of Digifish3.

Digifish3 works upon 3 pillars of marketing that includes • Presence • Promotion • Engagement They help brands by making them popular on various social networking sites and promote them through Mobile Advertising, SEO, Affiliate Marketing, AdWords, Websites, Branding Strategies, Celebrity Connect, etc. They give a right medium for brands to showcase themselves to increase sales, and helps users in reaching out to the right product/brand.

With established brands, Digifish3 works for boosting and optimizing digital exposure, and with upcoming brands, they help in creating the right digital footprint.

Mr. Sandeep Banger and Mrs. Ashmita Dhingra are the founders of Digifish3. They have an experience of 18+ years in the field of marketing, digital marketing and branding.

They have worked for brands like Vodafone, Hungama, Seven3Rockers, etc. They have also worked closely with Airtel, Aircel, Docomo, Samsung, etc. to drive acquisitions and understand consumer behavior in the digital space. Both the leaders of the organizations understand the consumer mindset and brand requirements very well. They are a team of enthusiasts and have an epitome of energy. The dynamic individuals have built up a team of professionals who are now catering to people by understanding the value of the organization and showcasing their skills. Every brand that works with Digifish3, are provided with outstanding strategies and best brand-users connect mechanism.

The Co-Founder crew had a discussion with founders of Digifish3 and here is the summary of the discussion.

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• What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

The biggest challenge Digifish3 founders faced was making a brand name for themselves in the “New Age Media Market - The Digital Media.” Creating their digital domains and sustaining in a market of start-ups, along with big giants in the marketing/advertising field was surely an obstacle.

Many people started an organization without understanding the evolution of the market, but to be successful in this new age media, one required vision, a clear understanding of marketing and the roadmap. To top it all, people were not aware of digital, and to make brands experiment this methodology was a significant risk. Digifish3 even took the risk of bearing initial costs for brands to showcase results, and when the results were showcased, the brands were ready to pay. Financial crunches, time-management, processes, and to make people understand the new marketing domain - it all took time!

• How did you overcome it?

We overcame the biggest challenges by being headstrong to take Digifish3 as one of the leading digital agencies in the market catering 360-degree digital services. Secondly, we had our processes aligned along with a roadmap for operations. Lastly, we shared our vision and mission with all our employees and asked them to be a close knight team to achieve our goals. Even at the time of hindrances, at the time of our lows, we made sure to remain high and attain the best of our potential and be like the Phoenix.

• What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

The biggest learning was that nothing beats hard work.

Working hard when things are not going as planned, taking calculated risks and not being stuck with the problems no matter how challenging the journey was, is our best learning.

The other learning is about being confident and not covering up the faults; rather face reality and do the best to work around the flaws and accept them. Learning from the past and not making a decision just based on monetary profits is another major entrepreneurial learning. Don’t be afraid to start small, was an idea we had when we started, as we believed that one needs to start from somewhere and if one has the driving force for it, nothing is impossible.

• Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from them?

Role Model for Digifish3 has been its charismatic founder - Sandeep Banger, who is a risk taker and a strong-minded individual. He has an aim of growing the organization big and nurturing various lives by his motivational teachings and guidance. He is a self-made man and achieved success through sheer hard work despite all odds. He is a well-versed man in all subjects like politics, business strategies, and numerous other topics. The best thing he imparts is confidence, hard work, humility, dedication, and compassion.

• What’s your revenue model?

Digifish3 started with a service model, and now we are getting involved with various products/brands as their exclusive digital partners. We assist a brand in conceptualizing and implementing strategies for the product from scratch. We are also coming up with our own products in the B2C segment.

So, the revenue model for Digifish3 is a mix of both Services as well as Products.

• What are your future plans with your startup?

We are no more a startup. We have various plans aligned for growth, and one of our major plans is – Digifish3 Training, which is an extended arm of our business. We started noticing a huge gap in people's knowledge in Digital Marketing, so we designed a course which caters to each individual according to their requirement and their domain, rather than just providing mere basics. Along with this, we aim at getting ourselves into products in genres like fashion, healthcare, and recruitment.

Secondly, we are also developing few B2C products to ensure better lifestyle for consumers.

• Who are your competitors?

None. Competition is when you feel some people are doing the same thing you do but in a better way. We didn't find any such companies as of now. We compete with ourselves, and we cater to attain the best results for the brands associated with us.

• What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

Be a hard and smart worker with zeal, dedication, and determination to achieve something in life.

It takes time and patience to achieve something, so work towards it and don’t lose hope. Together one can reach greater heights, so look for someone who has similar aspirations and can offer endless support.

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Headrun

The Startup for Startups

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Startup Name: Headrun Domain: Web Crawling Products: Buzzinga, Hyperbase, Guru Founding Team: Karthik Bala, and Prashanth Ellina.

Investment: Bootstrapped URL: Headrun - http://www. headrun.com/, Buzzinga - http:// buzzinga.com/, Hyperbase - http:// hyperbase.io/

• It was nominated as the most promising start-ups in India in 2015 • It was selected in Kyron accelerator program in Bangalore • It received Hot 100 award powered by NetMagic and KPMG. URL - http://buzzinga.com/ Hyperbase Hyperbase is a self-service Business Intelligence visualization framework that allows businesses to build fast, intelligent and complex data visualizations. It has a user-friendly data analytics platform that lets you perform complex data operations intuitively with the ability to modify any dataslice or dashboard quickly and with ease.

URL - http://hyperbase.io/

Headrun is one of the top web crawling companies in Asia.

They crawl around 5000+ websites across 55 countries in 14+ languages every day. Headrun's web crawling expertise lies in the industries like Entertainment, Real Estate, Sports, Travel, Financials (Stocks), News and Media, etc.

Services: Headrun offers services like, • Web Data Extraction OTT/Video Meta Crawl, Sports/Real Estate Database Aggregation, Comparison Engines, Custom Mashups.

• Mobile and Web App Development IOS and Android Dev, intricacies of code base fragmentation and resultant cost factors, Django/Python/MySQL/Apache/ Nginx environments.

• Custom Software Build Custom Data Extraction and DaaS solutions, Industry / Organisation specific crawling infrastructure, Client specific technology consultation and build.

Headrun has worked with clients like Sapient, Tivo, Aricent, Cleartrip, Blackbuck, Miebach, Worxogo, NextWealth, etc.

Products Headrun offers a custom solution as per the client's requirement, and if the solution is universal, they develop a product and offer it as service to various clients.

In the journey so far, Headrun has created uber-cool products like Buzzinga, Hyperbase, Guru, etc.

Buzzinga Once they had a client requirement to understand the customers view about the brand in social media. While working on it, Headrun found that many brands can benefit out of the solution they are developing. That moment was the birth of Buzzinga - Buzzinga is a social media listening, analysis, and reporting framework. Buzzinga crawls data from all the major social media platforms, and 100000+ websites like news, blogs, forums, etc. It analyzes and compares the social performance of the brands, identify and connect with the key people who can influence the brand and industry, understand brand associations, empower and engage with customers on the go, etc.

About Headrun Headrun was started in 2010 by Karthik Bala and Prashanth Ellina; Prashanth eventually moved to US to explore the startup ecosystem. Later, Raja Emmela on-boarded as CEO. Phanipriya Vangala (COO) and Rishi Mazumdar (CPO) are the other core members of the team. Currently, they have around 75 members in the team (Python Engineers – 50, PHP Engineers – 10, Admins – 5, Others – 10). Headrun's head office is located in Koramangala, Bangalore, and its Rural Development Center in Chirala, Andhra Pradesh.

The Cofounder and crew had a discussion with Raja Emmela and here is the summary of the discussion.

What’s your inspiration behind starting up Headrun?

We were introduced to web crawling industry by one of our clients. Unlike other IT services, web crawling market is less crowded, and there is a huge demand from enterprises in the US. Any companies which have a huge customers or data needs our service, and we started Headrun to fill this gap.

What’s your vision with Headrun?

Our vision with Headrun is, • We are aiming to be a 2Million USD Company by 2020 • We want to be the No.1 Web Crawling company in India by 2018 • We want to establish and run a 100 seater Software Development company in rural areas by 2010.

How is your journey so far?

We started as a 2-membered team in 2010 and has grown to a 75-membered team. We are also reaching the milestone of reaching 1Million USD turnover by the end of this financial year.

How was your journey as an entrepreneur?

I was a failed entrepreneur; my 1st startup – Identity was in the same space, but it didn't take off as Headrun. I ran Identity from 2007 to 2012 and later moved on to run Headrun.

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What are the challenges you faced as an entrepreneur?

If your business is not growing then it doesn’t make sense, we were bootstrapping and the major challenge we faced was to scale. We didn't want to take investors’ money and grow faster; instead, we want to learn and grow gradually.

We wanted to increase profits, enhance our employee strength and double our technical expertise every year.

Another major challenge we faced was in recruiting top talents and retaining those talents. Our core team consists of Python engineers, and it's not easy to get expertise in our field.

How was your experience in bootstrapping?

It's not easy to bootstrap and scale up a company. At Headrun, we focus on building a business that lasts forever.

I don’t want to create a business like the startups which we see today, which grows and die overnight.

We had lot of offers for acquisitions and mergers, but we chose to scale up on our own bandwidth.

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NETWORKING

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15 Tips for Becoming a Master Networker

As the old saying goes, “it’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” Networking can be your key to success -- granting you access to a host of opportunities with jobs, investors and even customers. And, thanks to a host of advances in technology, the playing field has been leveled. Anyone can build connections and grow their network, so long as they invest enough time and resources in the right strategies.

Here are the 15 tips to help you become a master networker.

1. Be yourself.

Before diving into any tactical strategies, there is a virus going around the professional world today, and it is rooted in fake and superficial behavior.

Everyone is putting on a facade, trying to be the person they think other people will like.

What they do not realize is that what everyone really wants to see, whether they are on LinkedIn or at a conference, is real people. Human beings enjoy talking to other human beings, not spammy advertisements or built-up personas. We want real, living people.

2. Be direct and honest.

On the same note, a lot of people seem to believe that to be a good networker; you have to impress everyone else in the room. While you do want to be memorable, lying to get there is not the best strategy. It is generally easy to spot a liar.

And even if people do not catch you at first, sooner or later some smart person will expose your falsehoods to the rest of your network, forever tarnishing your brand and reputation. It can be absolutely devastating.

3. Build relationships.

Often, professionals make networking seem transactional. The reality, however, is that building your network is about interacting with other

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humans. It is a relationship based, not a sales product. You are not trying to sell these people anything (especially not the first time you meet them). Remember that you want these people to like you, not buy a car from you.

4. Meet in person.

Establishing connections via email is one thing, but actually getting together face to face takes the relationship to a different level. Take advantage of networking meetups or events to get to know people. These offer opportunities to quickly grow the number of deep connections you have in a short amount of time simply by sitting down for coffee with new people.

5. Show up early.

If you are attending a networking event, spend the extra 5 minutes and get there early. This does 2 things. First, it shows that you care. People who are prompt demonstrate that they are prioritizing whatever it is they are showing up to. Second, it indicates that you are organized. No one wants to do business with someone who is sloppy; prompt people have their schedules under control.

6. Provide value for free.

Once you’ve ditched the cheesy sales pitch, realize that everyone online and at these events is selfishly looking for things that further their own careers and companies. And there is nothing that these people want more than free resources! So,

start providing others with value, for free. It does not have to be anything massive, and might be simply a strategic recommendation or titbit of advice. Investing just 5 minutes of your time to help someone else could pay dividends in the long term.

7. Take notes.

After meeting someone (either in person or on the phone), jot down a few notes. Try to remember small details that the other person shared with you. Remembering simple things like what they like to eat or where they like to travel, can become important bits to use in later interactions.

8. Follow up.

Another great way to show that you care about the people you meet is to send a simple followup email. Using any notes or pieces of information that you remember, write an email that includes your appreciation for what they had to say and perhaps ask a follow-up question.

9. Have specific questions.

People cannot help you if you don’t really know what you want. These are the worst type of networkers, the people who only ask general questions without much substance. Come with a specific, concise question and you’ll find people are 10 times more likely to help you out.

10. Have fun.

Don’t forget to smile! Far too many of my friends have gone all in on their work, forgetting about what is really important to them.

If you are not having fun in the process, and building relationships with people you actually enjoy spending time with, then perhaps you are going about this in the wrong way. People like to hang out with people who are smiling and having fun. Just try it, a smile doesn’t cost you anything!

to become a super-connector. Once you’ve begun building out your brand, you’ll find you know lots of people who would benefit from simply talking with each other. Spend the two minutes it takes to write an introduction email, and you have just made two people’s days! This will pay off in the long run.

13. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

Optimize for quality, not quantity. With the right software and strategy, it is fairly easy to throw your name out there and establish hundreds of surface-level connections. What is far more challenging, and more valuable in the long term, is establishing a few dozen close friends who you can rely on for big favors and help. You’ll find these deeper contacts to be more helpful when you need them -- the types of relationships that actually change lives.

14. Do an audit.

Every few weeks, you should do an internal audit of your time/network to see if you are surrounding yourself with the types of people who are (a) making you a better person and (b) challenging you in the right ways. It can be tough, but thinking about who you spend your time with to ensure you are on the right path is often extremely helpful.

15. Set realistic expectations.

If you really want to get your name out there, prepare to fail a lot and be ready to rebound. You will write tons of content that you think will go viral, but none of it will. You will pay lots of money to go to events and walk away with no value. That is the nature of the beast. If it were easy to build out a big network, everyone would do it. But it isn’t, it’s a long-term game that you will have to compete in.

11. Be memorable.

Many of us go overboard in trying to impress others because we think that is the best way to be remembered. While that technique sometimes works, far more often it is easier to be memorable than impressive.

Being different is actually far more achievable than being the very best. Try to think of ways that you and your brand separate yourself from the crowd -- like interesting stories or unique experiences.

12. Become a connector.

An easy way to provide value to others for free is

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Inspirational Quotes and Mantras to Help You Overcome the Stress of Running a Business

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Be vulnerable, be courageous, and find comfort in the uncomfortable.

Just for today.

Prepare like you have never won and perform like you have never lost.

Trust the process.

A vision is a dream with a plan.

You only fail when you stop trying.

Make it a great day or not -- the choice is yours.

Life is either short or really, really long. Either way, you better spend it doing what makes you happy.

Bloom where you are planted.

People support a world they help create.

Wherever you are, be all there.

Nothing in nature blooms all year. Be patient with yourself.

Have fun.

Work as if someone is trying to take it away from you.

Don't major in minor things.

Be stubborn and flexible at the same time.

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A flourishing career starts with persistence.

Go & do.

Believe, achieve. Doubt, you're out.

No means not yet!

If opportunity doesn't knock, then build a new door.

Oh what the f*%&, go for it anyway!

E+R=O, there is always an (E)vent and there will always be an (O)utcome but how you (R)espond determines what happens!

Happiness is a choice.

Progress is a process.

As you think, so you shall be.

I am safe to _______.

You are here on purpose.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.

Under promise, over deliver.

No one is going to do it like me.

Be brave.

Onward and upward.

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SA LES

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EXPERT SALES TIPS FOR STARTUPS 1. EMBRACE SOCIAL SELLING Use Social Networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to find and be found. The modern buyer is digitally driven, socially connected, mobile, and empowered.

Social is an additional channel to do Research to be Relevant to build Relationships that drive Revenue.

Further, you can use Social to shine the spotlight on your BEST salespeople -- guess what? -- they're not on your payroll -- they're your customer advocates.

Your employees need to look as good online as they do offline -- optimize social profiles to attract customers. If you suck offline; you'll suck more online. #Don'tSuck - Jill Rowley, Keynote Speaker, Social Selling Evangelist, Startup Advisor, Investor

2. WORRY ABOUT COMPETITION

CUSTOMERS,

NOT

If you're worried about your competition in tech, save that worry for when your company has achieved greater than 10% market-share. In the meantime, worry about your prospective customers who are using nothing as an alternative to your product or service.

- Adam Metz, VP TerrAvion, Amazon #1 Marketing Author

3. CREATE YOUR MOMENT OF TRUTH AND MAKE IT COUNT Create a reason a prospective customer MUST hear you out; something so compelling or drives so much curiosity that they agree to book a call or meet with you. Then you have a single moment of truth to deliver on this and convince your prospective buyer that the solution you offer would truly change the way they do something for the better. They key to this moment of truth is to have a well-honed and repeatable way of showcasing the value of your product or solution - something that goes well beyond a simple product demo but includes customer examples, ROI stories, passionate quotes, and teachings about how something is changing and how you harness it to add value. The more you deliver this personalize story consistently, the better you will get at it, and the higher the likelihood of closing business. Focus on making sure these moments of truth count.

- Jim Benton, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer, ClearSlide, Inc.

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4. FIND COMPATIBLE SALES TALENT More and more startups with strong initial traction have been founded by engineers. Very often "sales" to these founders is like coding is to sales pros. Many founders make the mistake of hiring "seasoned and experienced sales veterans" from traditional and established tech companies, which is very often too much too soon and results in bad outcomes and lost, valuable time. Founders should seek out and consult with sales veterans with deep experience that understand the startup landscape and can recommend near, mid, and long term sales plans and strategies often for a fixed fee or company stock tied to specific deliverables and milestones. Beware the temptation to associate successful selling at Oracle or Salesforce to similar success at your company.

- Dwight Foster, Vice President of Sales and BD, Cirrus Insight

5. DON'T PITCH THE PRODUCT, LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER It's very easy in sales to want to pitch your product offering and explain your solution right away to your prospects. Don't let this be the case, and ask questions first to uncover THEIR business and THEIR needs. You will get more customers and referrals when you take the time to understand their landscape and make the selling process as easy as possible for them to do business with you.

- Brooke Botros, Dir. of Sales, Spanning

6. DRILL SMARTER Selling a startup's product is like prospecting for oil. And it is tempting to get excited when you see some oil seep into the first well you dig, and keep drilling. That's dangerous-- to scale, you need to tap a gusher. That first taste of oil-- a great customer call, for example-- can keep you from moving on to where you should really be drilling.

we sell. The days of a sales person as a purveyor of product information, features and benefits is long gone.

- Frank Slovenec, partner at Jack B. Keenan

8. LEVERAGE YOUR PASSIONS You cannot avoid the social interaction of networking especially in the Bay Area. Whether it’s going out to dinner with friends, running into an old acquaintance from college, seeing a co-worker outside of the office, or being introduced to a new connection, this city is an open arena for social networking, which makes it great. My advice is to not only attend networking events, but find some fun, exciting and interesting things to do– join clubs, groups, teams–whatever it may be, get involved with others who share similar interests. In essence, leverage your passions. In doing so, you directly leverage your networking.

- Braydan Young, Vice President of Business Development, First Job

9. DON’T WRITE BIG SALES PLAYBOOKS You absolutely need aggressive sales development – do multiple touches by email and phone for both inbound and outbound leads. But don’t write up big sales playbooks, because no one reads them.

Sales development solutions are affordable for small teams, you’ll get more touches per rep (and thus more conversions) per week – and won’t waste time writing something no one will read!

- Nilay Patel, Co-Founder & CEO of Selligy

- Ryan Nichols, CEO, Tylr Mobile (ex-Appirio)

7. FOCUS ON HOW WE SELL In this time of an abundance of immediately available information, about every product and technology: How we sell is much more important than what

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What’s Up Life

If it’s in your City, You will find it here!

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Startup Name: What’s Up Life Domain: Media Founder: Gaurav H Luthra Investment: Bootstrapped URL: http://whatsuplife.in

What's Up Life is a hyperlocal lifestyle media platform to discover exciting new things and places that your city has to offer. There are so many things to explore in all cities which people tend to miss out, and that’s the gap which What's Up Life is trying to fill up.

What’s Up Life is an elite member base of establishments and service providers that represent the very best a city can offer. It’s a destination portal, covering the full spectrum of events, restaurants, hotels, shopping, wellness, spas, getaways and a lot more to help experience and explore the city. Unlike other listing sites; What’s Up Life selects only those establishments which are best in class. They offer engaging social media pages, editorials, calendar to keep you updated with all the activities & events, listing platform to discover all the places across the lifestyle category.

Benefits of Association with What’s Up Life • Get associated with a youth-centric, dynamic website which is the best way to explore the city online.

• They connect with the digitally active target audience of the city, through planned Social Media campaigns managed by the respective city social media channels.

• Get marketing opportunities with the listed members of What’s Up Life.

• Gain association with the of best in class events, businesses and different social groups in the city.

• They offer a dedicated one-page website giving the indepth information about your business along with some beautiful pictures.

Gaurav H Luthra is the founder of What’s Up Life; he is an Alumni from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. He started his professional career working with a telecom company and then ventured in Real Estate consulting business before starting up What’s Up Life. Gaurav is someone who loves to multitask as well socialize, he is an active networker and a member of organizations like CII-Young Indians, TIE, BNI, Internations, Entrepreneur Cafe & more.

being born & brought up in this city and living here for last 30 years, I would myself not know about what all this city has to offer at any given time. So, I thought to make it easy for people by coming up with this portal which only deals with various aspects of Gurgaon as a city. Gurgaon is still one of the most under-marketed cities in India, and we wanted to be the first one to make people know the city in a much better and in a youthful/colorful way.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

In both my businesses, I had to learn everything from the beginning all by myself. Be it when I was in Real Estate or the current Media business, I learned Social Media Marketing, Content, Google Adwords, Website Technicalities, PR & Digital Media etc. Not coming from a Mass Media or Journalism background, I did everything from scratch over a period of 4 years.

How did you overcome it?

The Zeal to keep on improving and making the product more user-friendly adding new features. I was working in all fields all by myself like Sales, Tech, Business Development, Marketing, Content, Social media etc.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

The biggest learning so far is that you should succeed or fail fast, similarly hire or fire fast and there is no point in dragging things. Always rely less on freelancers and hire full-time people who can commit all their energies to your success.

It’s always good to have a co-founder in the business, it will help in pacing your growth two folds.

Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from your them?

I don't have any specific mentors. My Role Model are those entrepreneurs who don’t believe in burning money to make it big.

What’s your revenue model?

We being one of the largest Influencers in the city - a lot of Hotels, Restaurants, Startups, Brands & other businesses come to us for promoting them on our platform.

Gaurav H Luthra

The Cofounder and crew had a discussion with Gaurav and here is the summary of the discussion, How did this idea strike you?

As a resident of the most dynamic city in India, I wanted to give people a different view of the city where I was born and brought up. Despite being a resident of the city, I use to miss out all the new things, places, events etc. that the city has to offer. So, What’s Up Life was a culmination of my idea to present the best in class offerings of the city in an interesting way.

It's usual to hear your friends saying - What to do in Gurgaon?

Where to go out today? what's new in the city? etc. Despite

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The journey so far (When you launched, how far is the traction so far?)

We had an incredible journey so far, 1) We are having more than half a million visitors per month on the website with over 1.2 million page views 2) We have a social media reach of more than 8 million people every month.

3) We have more than 5lakh followers across all Social Media Platforms.

What are your future plans with your startup?

We want to add more interesting features in the platform to make it more handy & useful for the people/followers.

Have you raised funding before?

No. We are Bootstrapped.

Are you looking for raising more funds?

Yes, we are open to raising investment.

The funds will be used for expanding into new cities and strengthening our operations into existing ones.

Who are your competitors?

Content Business has a new set of competitors every 6 months. Most of them have a lot of money, so that does not account for us, we serve with passion and persistence.

What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

For any business learn from other’s people and then start your own. The market is too competitive to start something from scratch.

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FINOMENA Once a promising Fintech Startup

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Bangalore-based fintech startup Finomena has shuts its shops after it failed to raise series-A funding and now it is no longer accepting new users on its website.

Founded by Riddhi and Abhishek in September 2015, Matrix Partners-backed Finomena (a stylised wordplay on finance and phenomena) uses alternate data sources and proprietary algorithms to evaluate credit-worthiness of borrowers.

Abhishek Garg, an IIT Delhi graduate who was working as a management consultant, faced a problem when he applied for a home loan in 2014. He was rejected by four banks, despite having a CIBIL score of 785. The reason cited was simple – he was too young to fit in the processes. That made him wonder how inaccessible would it be for others of his age group. It is this thought that triggered his entrepreneurial dreams.

His instinct got a major impetus when he met Riddhi Mittal through mutual friends. Riddhi, a Stanford University graduate, had previously worked at companies like Microsoft and Facebook. She wanted to use her expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence to fuel her entrepreneurial dreams.

They connected on a question that was bugging them - What was the last innovation that happened in banking?

Finomena was their reply.

Finomena facilitates small ticket loans to students and young professionals for buying electronic devices and appliances. It enables borrowers to purchase aspirational phones, laptops and other consumer electronics online by opting for easy instalments or financing options.

for more data, within the long tail

A user can choose a device of her choice from sites like Flipkart, Amazon, etc. and paste the link on Finomena. After that they need to sign up or sign with personal details. Subsequently, Finomena will ask for KYC (Know Your Customer) proofs like address, voter ID, and bank statements. Finomena claims to take less than 24 hours to risk-assess the applicant, after which the application is sent to their partner financial institutions and nonbanking financial companies (NBFCs) for approval.

Once approved, the partner organisation decides an interest rate and processes the request.

In March 2016, Finomena raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners India. Other participants in this round included Kaushal Aggarwal, managing director and co-founder of Avendus, Harshvardhan Chamria of Magma Fincorp, and other leading entrepreneurs and angels.

Finomena categorises data into 3 types: • Direct: Given directly by the user in their application • Indirect: What can be procured about someone through the public web using our automated information extraction and retrieval algorithms at scale • Derived: When a clue in the other two sources makes us look harder in a certain unforeseen direction

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Applicants can be students, young professionals and, to some extent, self-employed people, who want small loans in the range of INR 5000 to 1 lakh for buying electronic devices (laptops, phones, etc).

Failure.

According to Gurgaon-based RedCarpet report in 2016, the Indian market for loans to college students to buy consumer products is worth about $8 Bn. Whereas, Finomena estimates the same loan market for young professionals and self-employed people to be valued between $40 Bn and $50 Bn. So, according to Finomena, the total addressable market size for them is worth around $50-60 Bn. Finomena is the only fintech company from India to have made it to “International Innovator of the Year award” by LendIt USA 2017, the world’s largest show in lending and fintech.

The primary reasons for shut down of the startup is said to be high cash burn and moreover cost of acquisition was high for any plausible buy out. “The startup managed to bring down the costs, but it wasn’t enough to bring up the average ticket size. Now in the second phase of expansion they need funds, but the cash burn makes it difficult,” said an analyst.

According to Money Control, “The company was in the market to raise series A funding since early this year, but that didn’t materialize. There were two buyout offers too. That failed because of valuation,”

value terms with deal volumes reduced to half with 120 deals in Q1 CY2017 in comparison to 245 deals in the same period last year.

Last two years have saw a lot of early stage startups shutting their shops including some heavily funded as well like Stayzilla and Askme.

The year 2017 saw a serious funding crunch for young startups as according to a latest report by Tracxn, a startup analytics firm, the number of angel and seed investments made in the first half of 2017 (January to June) is down to 260, indicating a drastic drop from 419 in the first half of 2016. Whereas, Seed funding has seen a steep decline from 278 to 152.

Earlier in May 2017, News Corp, had released Startup Deal Report Q1 CY2017. According to this report, investors prefers late stage funding. The report states, angel and seed investments fell both in volume and

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Key Factors for

Budding Entrepreneurs

A true entrepreneur is a doer and not a dreamer It’s a bumpy ride to reach the desired goal. It has its fair share of loneliness, risk taking, difficult decision making, failures and lots more. One aspect that surely becomes your guiding light throughout the journey is your self-confidence. Anyone can pursue entrepreneurship; however, not everyone can be successful at it and that’s the bitter truth.

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Here are key factors you should possess to become a successful entrepreneur.

Rational Decision Making Remember that you will run your own race, you will be the referee, and you will be your own competitor. During your race, you will have to take decisions about what works and what doesn’t. Many a time, you will have to be rational, have the prudence and decide whether what works now may or may not work for future; many times you will just have to follow your gut.

Risk Taker No entrepreneur should fear outcomes. One must have the courage to take risks, get beaten down 10 times and still have the ability to stand up again one more time. Always remember, everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Love What You Do An entrepreneur should have genuine love and commitment for his/her work, ideas, thoughts and most importantly towards the people who have believed in him/her and are a part of the ambitious dream now. Understanding them, building strong relations with them and encouraging them to perform better are the keys to successful entrepreneurship.

Organizational Entities In business, an entrepreneur has to take care of three entities namely employees, customers, and finances. The order of preference may vary from person to person, and if I speak of my personal choice, my primary focus is my employees. If they are happy, they will, in turn, keep my customers happy and if my clients are happy, then they will use my products/ services eventually helping me achieve my financial goals. So, for me, the correct order is employees, customers, and finance.

Firm Control over Mind Our mind is accustomed to certain things, situations and emotions and any new change in the routine cause a hindrance. An entrepreneur should be able to adjust well to dynamic situations and not let situations take a toll on the mind. One should be able to handle a given situation in the best possible way while also being farsighted at the same time; never lose sight of the big picture.

These factors are mandatory steps, which will help an entrepreneur to mark his/her place in the world. Each one is walking their own path, and therefore the challenges faced by each of them can vary drastically.

Always keep one thing in mind, if you want to make a mark in life, you can’t sit and wait for it to happen. You have to be the one who makes it happen.

Great Speaker & Efficient Salesman It is necessary for a business man to be a good speaker so that you can convey your ideas to people motivate them and be an inspiration for many. An entrepreneur should be quickwitted to know the right skills of selling his idea/product. No matter how brilliant the idea is if he cannot put it across well, it becomes a waste.

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Startup Name: EaseMyTrip Domain: Travel Founders: Nishant Pitti and Rikant Pitti Investment: Bootstrapped URL: http://easemytrip.com

With time, travel has not only remained a choice or matter of taste rather it has become a requirement of every individual.

With the broad range of products like Flight Tickets, Hotels Booking, Holiday Packages, Car Rental, Bus Booking, B2B & B2C White Label Program; EaseMyTrip is on the vision to provide a one-stop platform which offers hassle-free travel solutions to its customers.

They offer fastest online booking of Air-Tickets, Hotels, Bus, Car Rentals and Holiday Packages in the market. And they have an excellent customer support center that solves customer issues in the least possible time. They have holiday experts who help users in choosing right holiday packages as per their budget and needs.

EaseMyTrip was started with a small team of 4 members in 2008. In 9 years of its existence, it has become one of the leading travel companies in India. Last year, the company’s turnover was around Rs. 1800 crores. Presently, EaseMyTrip network is comprised of 42,000 travel agents, 5 Million direct customers, 1800 Corporate Companies and 640 White label solutions.

Nishant Pitti and Rikant Pitti are the founders of EaseMyTrip; they are also one among the youngest entrepreneurs of India.

• Nishant is a commerce graduate from Delhi University and a born entrepreneur. He has been the honorable secretary of the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAAFI) from 2012 to 2014. He also has co-produced movies like “Madaari” and “Freaky Ali.” • Rikant is a B. Tech graduate from Kurukshetra University, and this makes him more technology-friendly and technically sound. He primarily contributes in the technical developments, marketing, innovations and streamlining operational processes.

The Cofounder crew had a discussion with the founders of EaseMyTrip and here is the summary of the discussion.

How did this idea strike you?

The idea of starting EaseMyTrip struck us when we found that we were conned by a travel agent on our personal travel. After that, we became very keen to reduce costs on the travel plans of our family members, and that resulted into establishing our own travel agency. After becoming a travel agent, we identified the key concerns of customers and travel agents, and this gave birth to EaseMyTrip.

How did you get your first customer?

We got our first customer within our family itself, when

we started booking flights for them by charging some pocket money. Officially, we came into the business by advertising through a renowned online business portal. Post advertisements, customers started calling us, and we began booking travel services.

What’s your revenue model?

We make bulk purchases from the airlines, hotels & bus operators and then distribute it through different channels by keeping our margins.

Can you give a background about your market/ domain?

Travel Industry is a challenging industry. The only mantra to survive here is progression and foresee the trends. That is what we are always focused on and secret recipe behind our success.

Have you raised funding before?

EaseMyTrip has not received any external VC funding till date. We have invested few family owned money, and we are already making profits.

Are you looking for raising more funds? If yes, how much?

No, we are not looking to raise investments.

What are your future plans with your startup?

EaseMyTrip is targeting to expand its business in Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 cities of India by opening its branch offices. We also have plans to open EMT Holiday Hubs in all major cities for increasing revenues from Non-Air Products, including hotels, holiday packages and car rentals. The company has its overseas branches in Thailand, Singapore, Maldives and Dubai; and our next plan is to open branches in London, Hong Kong, Australia and the United States to serve the customers traveling to & from these locations with efficient & cost-effective services. We want to promote India majorly as an important tourist destination in overseas markets.

Who are your competitors? How are you planning to outpace your competitors?

EaseMyTrip is one of the leading travel companies in India and all other leaders in the travel industry are our competitors - I don’t prefer to name anyone. We are taking every initiative to make our products and services better, and we walk that extra mile to make our customers satisfied with our services. Travel experts in EMT office always keep researching so that clients can get the best value for their money and beautiful experiences on their journeys. This is the best thing that one can do to outpace their competitors.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup? How did you overcome it?

After establishing the company, we also started providing services to the agents and the first challenge that we faced was our age. Agents were not taking us seriously as Nishant was of 19 years and I was 17 years old that time. It was difficult for our associated agencies to rely on teenagers.

Another big challenge was the growing competition in the travel business market. As far as our age is concerned, we didn’t grow suddenly but we tried our best to pursue the customers on believing us. We also reduced our margins and made flight tickets, hotels and packages more affordable for customers. Some challenges are still there, but we are moving due to our hard work and vigilance.

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What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

As an entrepreneur, I have always learned that a businessperson should never be afraid of his failures or challenges coming on his way. These challenges help you sharpen your skills and make you more firm for achieving success.

What’s your tip for the budding entrepreneur?

Any aspiring entrepreneur should be very much focused and work things perfectly. They should know that it’s not only essential to create a profitable business, but it is also important to manage and grow it happily with every day passing. When they are new, they should concentrate on managing cash and maintaining a low overhead. They should take care of their health and then go on for progress.

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Startup Name: Be Sports Domain: Sports Founding Team: Krit Singh Jamdagni, Tenzin Rinchen, and Deepak Pathak Investment: Confidential URL: www.besports.co.in Facebook: https://www.facebook. com/BelieveBecomeSports/ Instagram: https://www.instagram. com/besportsindia/

India has a population of 1.2 billion and counting, but still, a majority of the population is deprived of quality sportswear, equipment or even training.

Be Sports aims to cater for everyone who dreams to be a part of any sports. They provide a 360-degree holistic sports solution to everyone who needs sports - it could be sportswear, a sports event (at a corporate level or grassroots level) or supporting talents from a financially troubled background. Be Sports is one of the only companies in the market providing all sports facilities under the same roof.

Krit Singh Jamdagni, Tenzin Rinchen, and Deepak Pathak are three college friends with Sports Management background.

They say that "Once we knew what we wanted to do; there was no stopping us from doing. We dropped out of our final year of MBA in Sports management to pursue our dream."

The Cofounder crew had a discussion with the founders of Be Sports and here is the summary of the discussion.

How did this idea strike you?

The three of us were looking for an internship during

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our post-graduation, and it was quite a struggle to score an internship. One day while looking for a football jersey without any fruition we realized there is a huge gap for finding good quality sports merchandise at a reasonable price. We did our share of research and decided to start a company that would offer sportswear at an affordable price.

We wanted to give back to the society, so we added talent management to our services, and later event management was also added to present corporate companies with an opportunity to play at the competitive level.

What is the biggest challenge you faced as an entrepreneur while establishing your startup?

The biggest challenge was the attitude retailers had towards our product; because they were ready to compromise on the quality to make an extra penny How did you overcome it?

We decided that we would bear the brunt but won’t compromise on the quality.

What is the biggest learning so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

The biggest learning is that you should be actively involved in each and every aspect of the business. It will help you understand the market better, and nobody will be able to take advantage of your weaknesses.

Who is your mentor/role model? What’s the best lesson you learned from your them?

Everyone in the market has been our mentor, they all have helped us along the way in the process of setting up our dream.

What’s your revenue model?

The revenue model is a mix of a different aspect of business in a different ratio - Sportswear 50%, Sports event-35%, and Talent Management-15%.

The journey so far (When you launched, how far is the traction so far?)

The traction so far has been tremendous; everyone we spoke to have been receptive to the idea. The very idea of all

elements of sports under one roof sits well with everyone, be it sports personalities, my team, and family or the talent we sponsor.

Are you looking for raising more funds?

Yes, we are looking for investment.

These funds raised will be utilized for honing the skills among our talent pool.

Give us a brief about your market/domain?

Sports market at the moment is thriving in our country, more emphasis being put on the role of sports in the overall development of a person. There are many players in the market, but the demand supply paradigm is still in favor of supply.

What are your future plans with your startup?

Our plan is to be No.1 sports management company in India and to compete with major international players in the market.

Who are your competitors?

At the domestic level, our competitors are Shiv Naresh, Sports Sun, Dida Sports etc. In the international market, we are competing with likes of Nike and Reebok.

How are you planning to outpace your competitors?

Wait and Watch! (winking) What’s your tip for newbie entrepreneur?

All I can say is, Business is not just about making profits, it's more about the passion you have for something. At the end of the day, business is a balanced equation between what you can do for society and how society can contribute to your Business’ growth.

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Investment Report - July 2017 S.No

Startup Name

Domain

City

Investors

Amount (in USD)

1

Billion Loans

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Reliance Corporate Advisory Services Ltd

10,00,000

2

Ecolibriumenergy

Technology

Ahmedabad

Infuse Ventures, JLL

26,00,000

3

Droom

eCommerce

Gurgaon

Asset Management (Asia) Ltd, Digital Garage Inc

2,00,00,000

4

Jumbotail

eCommerce

Bangalore

Kalaari Capital, Nexus India Capital Advisors

85,00,000

5

Moglix

eCommerce

Noida

International Finance Corporation, Rocketship, Accel Partners, Jungle Ventures, Shailesh Rao, Venture Highway

1,20,00,000

6

Timesaverz

Consumer Internet

Mumbai

BCCL

10,00,000

7

Minjar

Technology

Bangalore

Blume Ventures, Contrarian Undisclosed Capital India Partners, Emergent Ventures India, Pallav Nadhani, Ashish Gupta, Sharad Sharma, Sirion Labs

8

MyCity4kids

Consumer Internet

Gurgaon

Undisclosed

9

Clip App

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

India Quotient, Shunwei Capital 10,00,000

10

Upwardly.in

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Sreeram Iyer, Suvo Sarkar, Anita Gupta, Likemind Ventures

Undisclosed

11

Autorox.co

Technology

Hyderabad

Mitsui & Co.

30,00,000

12

Fabogo

Consumer Internet

Pune

Dunamis Ventures Pte Ltd

22,50,000

13

Flickstree

Consumer Internet

Mumbai

Venture Catalysts, Sourav Ganguly, Ankit Aditya, Moksh Sports Ventures

4,64,000

14

Design Cafe

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Fireside Ventures, Apurva Salarpuria, Sidharth Pansari, Sprout Capital

Undisclosed

15

Innoviti

Technology

Bangalore

SBI-FMO Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamaran Ventures

1,85,00,000

16

VDeliver

Logistics

Hyderabad

Corvus Ventures, MAPE Advisory Group

Undisclosed

17

Bottr.me

Technology

Bangalore

500 Startups, Purvi Capital, Undisclosed Rajan Anandan, Abhishek Gupta

18

Arcatron

Technology

Pune

Indian Angel Network

Undisclosed

19

QwikSpec

Technology

Bangalore

Brigade Innovations LLP, TV Mohandas Pai, Suhail Rahman, Bobby Reddy, M George Oommen

5,40,000

20

Chumbak

eCommerce

Bangalore

Blacksoil Capital Pvt. Ltd

17,00,000

21

Increff

Technology

Bangalore

Sequoia Capital, Grey Orange, 20,00,000 Rajesh Ramaiah, Anshuman Das, Rishi Das

22

Vayana

Technology

Pune

IDG Ventures India Advisors, Jungle Ventures

Undisclosed

40,00,000

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

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Investment Report - July 2017 S.No

Startup Name

Domain

City

Investors

Amount (in USD)

23

MObiquest

Technology

Noida

One97 Communication Ltd

Undisclosed

24

Ambee

Consumer Internet

Hyderabad

Uber Technologies Inc, Amaya Capital LLP

Undisclosed

25

Ideal Insurance

Consumer Internet

Kolkata

Xelpmoc

Undisclosed

26

Hypernova Interactive

Technology

Bangalore

Kae Capital

Undisclosed

27

Rentomojo

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

ain Capital Ventures, Renaud Laplanche

1,00,00,000

28

AirCTO

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Francesco Cara

Undisclosed

29

Playablo

Technology

Bangalore

ABI-Showatech (India) Ltd

6,00,000

30

Trupay

Technology

Gurgaon

Kae Capital, M&S Partners,

7,00,000

31

Brick2Wall

eCommerce

Gurgaon

Subramani Somasundaram, Sundeep Sahni, Mayank Mittal & Others

2,00,000

32

FableStreet

eCommerce

New Delhi

Harmeet Bajaj, Pameela P, Fusiontech Ventures & Others

Undisclosed

33

Monsoon Fintech

Technology

New Delhi

Sunil Kalra, Aditya Singh, Rishi Srivastava, Rajan Anandan

Undisclosed

34

MonkeyBox

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Blume Ventures, NB Ventures, Nspira

Undisclosed

35

Noticeboard

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Stellaris Venture Partners,

12,00,000

36

Byju’s

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Tencent Holdings

3,50,00,000

37

Creator’s Gurukul

Others

New Delhi

Yuvraj Singh

Undisclosed

38

Fab Hotels

Consumer Internet

New Delhi

Goldman Sachs

2,50,00,000

39

ThinkerBell

Consumer Internet

Bangalore

Indian Angel Network, Anand Mahindra

2,00,000

40

1mg

eCommerce

Gurgaon

HBM Healthcare Investments, 1,50,00,000 Maverick Capital Ventures, Sequoia India, Omidyar Network and Kae Capital

41

Jhakaas

Consumer Internet

Mumbai

Amen Dhyllon

Undisclosed

42

BigStylist

Consumer Internet

Mumbai

Info Edge (India) Ltd

12,50,000

43

Gympik.com

Consumer Internet

bangalore

RoundGlass Partners

Undisclosed

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

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Industry wise Investment

City wise Investment

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

74 | 74 |

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Top

Startups Investment Report - July 2017

35 30

25

25

15

18.5

20

20

Startups Byju's

35

($MN )0

Startups Fab Hotels

Investors Tencent Holdings

Industry Consumer Internet

City Bangalore

15

10

Investors Goldman Sachs

Industry Consumer Internet

City New Delhi

Startups Droom

Investors

Startups Innoviti

Asset Management Investors (Asia) Ltd, Digital SBI-FMO Fund, Garage Inc Bessemer Venture Partners, Industry Catamaran eCommerce Ventures

City Gurgaon

Industry Technology

City Bangalore

Startups 1mg

Investors HBM Healthcare Investments, Maverick Capital Ventures, Sequoia India, Omidyar Network and Kae Capital

Industry eCommerce

City Gurgaon

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

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Investment Report Report -- July Investment May 2017 2017

50

35

40

25

30

20

10

Tencent Holdings

Investor

Startup

Goldman Sachs

Byju's

Startup Fab Hotels

Investor

1 .7

Investor

2.2

3

($MN )0

Mitsui & Co.

Investor

Startup

Dunamis Ventures Pte Ltd

Autorox.co

Startup Fabogo

Investor Blacksoil Capital Pvt. Ltd

Startup Chumbak

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

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Month on month investment report 300

64mn 23mn

No. of deals- 71

25mn

30mn July 16

100

No. of deals- 72

No. of deals- 80

No. of deals- 65

Mar 17

Sep 16

No. of deals- 71

18mn

Dec 16

50

June

286mn

25mn No. of deals- 72

34.5mn

Jan 16

Oct 16

No. of deals- 96

Amount ($10mn)

No. of deals-72

No. of deals- 87

200 150

Apr 17

Nov 16

Aug 16

250

73.2mn

25mn

No. of deals- 72

25mn Feb 17 No. of deals- 48

0

mn 178.6mn 16.7 July 17

May 17 No. of deals- 68

No. of deals- 65

Week on week investment report - July 2017 150

77.5mn

125 100 75

Week-4 Week-1

Amount ($mn)

No. of deals- 10

50

No. of deals- 9

46mn 26.5mn Week-2 No. of deals- 10

17.5mn Week-3 No. of deals- 14

25 0

June 2017 v/s July 2017

(All the representations are based on data disclosed by startups. The startups which chose not to disclose the funding details are not reflected)

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