4ps oct dec 2016 pdf

India’s First & No. 1 Business & Marketing Magazine

Vol. XI Issue 2 oct-dec 2016

B u s i n e s s

&

M a r k e t i n g

harvard alumna devita saraf, ceo of vu technologies, tells 4ps B&m how she is transforming her organisation to be a new-age brand in the technology space

only ` 50

6

C 201

VOL

IV

E-1

OCT-DE

ISSU

UP IE GRO , PITT IE, CEO TOR OF CK TO YA PITT DISTRIBU ON TRA ADIT IONAL DUCTS IS ARKS THE NAT LI PRO BENCHM NJA PATA GLOBAL CREATE

ND EST A IN THE B EST 150 SING G G BI ADVERTI THE WORLD

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

70 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

CONTENTS

BUSINESS & MARKETING INDIA’S FIRST & NO. 1

BUSINESS & MARKETING MAGAZINE

Volume 11, Issue 2, Oct-Dec 2016

Editor in chief : Arindam Chaudhuri

Editor : A. Sandeep Chief Consulting Editor : Rajita Chaudhuri

Features Editor : Prashanto Banerji

Consulting Editor : Arundhati B. Chaudhuri Managing Editor Projects : Shikha Ghosh Technology Editor : Naveen Chamoli

EDITORIAL STAFF Editorial Co-ordinator : Swapnil Kulkarni

10

india’s most admired e-commerce companies

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Designers : Santanu Chatterjee, Mukesh Kumar, Vishal Rajput Production Director : Gurudas Mallik Thakur

For advertisement feedback and other queries, Write to publisher@planmanmedia.com FOR SUBSCRIPTION E-mail: subscriptions@planmanconsulting.com

founder Interviews

women entrepreneurs

23

28

SANDEEP AGGARWAL

Founder of Shopclues & Droom

43 34

Nidhi Agarwal Founder, KAARYAH One startup even Ratan Tata couldn’t resist Kanika Tekriwal Founder, JetSetGo Fill it! Shut it! JetSetGo it!

ceo speak

39 48

59

80

K. Ganesh

Serial Entrepreneur & Partner growthstory.in

Rajita Chaudhuri Chief Consulting Editor

Tanuj Shori Co-founder, Square Yards How many feet in a square yard?

Praveen Sinha Co-founder, Jabong “India’s start-ups are definitely in an early stage” Deepak Ravindran Founder, Lookup Meet the man who is helping businesses chat with you Pavan Chauhan Founder, Meritnation The collaborative universe

For editorial queries : edit@planmanmedia.com Printed at : Cirrus Graphics Pvt. Ltd., NOIDA-201305 Printed & Publishing by : Ashok Bose on behalf of Planman Media Pvt. Ltd. Editor: A. Sandeep Published from : Planman Media Pvt. Ltd., 48, Community Centre, Naraina Vihar Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi-110028 Visit us at : www.4psbusinessandmarketing.com Editor responsible for the selection of news under PRB act. Entire content copyright© 2007 by Planman Media Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world; reproduction or translation in any language in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The Publisher assumes no responsibility for the return of the unsolicited material or for material lost or damaged in transit. All disputes are subject to exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi or New Delhi.

EditorIal

16

68

INdia’s it giants

03

MARKETING

President : Varun Jindal Marketing and Sales : Gaurav Bhalla, Abdul Rahman

54

DEVITA SARAF CEO, VU TV The complete woman Shaurabh Kochhar CEO, Foodpanda Don’t call! Just install!

64 88 96

column

76

Profile

89

Power Brands Glam 2016

Shiladitya Mallik: Birth of an entrepreneur SIFY: Metamorphosis of a brand Rajita Chaudhuri: Brands & billionaires of tomorrow will be built on the Internet Yogesh Lakhani: The godfather of outdoor media industry A photog-primer of the smashing 2016 show

4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016 | 3

from the

editor’s desk

T

Rajita chaudhuri chief consulting editor, 4 ps BUSINESS & MARKETING

Consumer Maange More!

4 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

he times are changing and so is the customer. The culprits are technology and the Internet.

Thanks to them, things are changing at breakneck speed for marketers as the Internet and the technological revolution has made the consumer want more and more and there seems to be no stopping.

In the early days, it was all about identifying the needs and wants of the consumer and trying to satisfy those needs with the right product. That product was then wrapped around an alluring message highlighting the benefits of the product and how it would change the life of the buyer. That’s all changed now. Today, it’s no more just about the product, its benefits and the branding message; it’s about the ability of the brand to connect with the consumer, to build a lasting relationship with the consumer.

And that has become a difficult task for the consumer of today is insatiable and ‘maange more’ before he trusts you with his loyalty.

Consumer maange more value

Marketing was all about building a brand and giving people value for money. That’s not enough today. The consumer of today wants more than just ‘value for money’. He also wants to know what values you as a brand stand for. More than 80% of consumers believe that a good brand is one which places equal emphasis on both business profits and societal issues. Your brand should stand for a purpose beyond profits. It should have a purpose driven brand story. Responsible consumption is the buzz word today. With our world being plagued with problems like global warming, water scarcity, obesity etc., the consumers are becoming aware of the role companies and brands can play to make the world a better place. By supporting brands with a strong purpose, they feel they are doing their bit too to make the world happier, healthier, greener and cleaner.

Take the case of Kissan. It decided to source sustainably produced toma-

toes, which not just differentiated the brand but soon made it the number one ketchup brand in India.

The Lifebuoy brand of soap ran a campaign called “Help a Child Reach Five”, which focused on teaching children how to wash their hands correctly as India has the highest number of child deaths due to diarrhea and pneumonia. The brand developed a hand wash which could change its color from white to green in 10 seconds – just the time required to kill most of the germs.

Children wait to see the color change, which is not just fun but life saving too!

The brand showed its commitment to a purpose, a cause, and was loved for it.

Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign went beyond celebrity athletes and urged people to find greatness in everyday people. It struck a chord with the viewers and inspired them. Brands are moving on beyond just showing the benefits of their product.

Rin is a good old brand which for decades has promised ‘Chamakti Safedi’.

That’s not enough to stay above competition. Rin has gone a step ahead. While clean clothes give you confidence, Rin has gone on and started a Rin Career Academy, training people in key skills which give them confidence. Skills like speaking good English, dressing appropriately for a job, handling an interview.

Rin has shown that it is totally committed to building confidence. That’s a purpose which goes beyond profits.

Patagonia is a brand that makes money by selling clothes, yet when it launched its ad campaign, it was all about encouraging people to repair their old outdoor garments. The ad provided

Consumers are now looking up at brands who have the power, the creativity and investments to help change this world for the good

Patagonia is a brand that makes money by selling clothes, yet its ad campaign was all about encouraging people to repair their old outdoor garments; Lifebuoy soap’s “Help a Child Reach Five” campaign focused on teaching children how to wash their hands correctly

a lot of tips and tools to help the users fix their own gear. It even offered to buy back gently used garments. Marketers at Patagonia are very clear that it’s the era of unconventional marketing. A brand that can market itself as one supporting a cause, supporting sustainable development would be noticed and liked much more than a brand that made fabulous, yet ‘harmful to the planet and its people’ products. To show how committed it is to its purpose, Patagonia established a $20 million venture fund to invest in socially and environmentally responsible startups. Whole Foods is another brand that has shown that it stands for sustainable development and sensible consumption.

It has a concept called “Community Giving Days” where 5% of that day’s net sales are given to local non-profits.

All through, consumers have been let down by their governments, their leaders, their NGOs who have failed to bring about a positive change in their lives. These consumers are now looking up at brands who have the power, the money, the creativity to help change this world for the good. These are the B Corps – ‘Benefit Corporations’ – who are going to rule in the future and its their marketing campaigns that the consumers will like, and share and believe in.

A purpose-driven brand also has the

most positive and motivated employees who are proud to say that they work for a brand that believes in something beyond profits. LRXD is a full service agency but it calls itself the ‘health and happiness advertising agency’ for it took a policy decision to primarily work for brands that helped make life better.

Made Movement, an agency founded in 2012, decided it would work for brands

deepest relationships with customers, but also achieved the greatest financial growth in the 10 year period of the study. It’s no more about what you sell; rather, it’s more about what you as a brand and an organization stand for. So give the customer not just a great product but a great product that also does great things and he will be your greatest fan and friend!

According to a Millward Brown study, brands focusing on a higher purpose achieved the greatest financial growth and customer connect

Customer maange more speed

that provided jobs to people in the US. Their purpose made them reject work from a lot of big brands, but they say life has never been better for they have a reason to wake up every morning and come to work.

According to a 10-year-long study conducted by Millward Brown and Jim Stengel, brands which focused on a higher purpose did not just build the

The consumer wants everything now and if you want his loyalty, you need to cope up with his demands. Take for example the purchase behavior of customers.

Gone are the days when he would wait for the shop to open and buy. Today, he wants to buy whenever he pleases (thanks to e-commerce) and add to that the fact that he wants his shopping delivered at the soonest. While shopping online, a delivery period of two to three days was acceptable some time back.

Now, he wants same-day-delivery. Soon, he would want everything delivered at his doorstep as fast as a pizza.

The consumer of today not just shops any time of the day, but is texting and messaging his friends at all hours.

Soon, he would want to text and receive texts from companies. A recent survey

by Corvisa (a cloud communications

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 5

from the

editor’s desk

provider) found that 77% of consumers were okay with getting text messages from companies and in fact liked it if the companies texted them about things like fraud alerts, payment reminders, sales, discounts, promos etc. If you as a marketer can use this tool to engage with your customer, there is no better way to build a long lasting relationship.

He texts you like he would a friend and you text him back – that is the speed of communication you should be prepared for. Gone is the concept of ‘contact during office hours only’. If you want to retain your market share, you need to behave just like your customer wants you to or else some other young brand will replace you. Speedy deliveries, speedy text responses will see your profits speeding up!

Customer maange more connection

Marketing is no more a ‘one-to-many’ style of communication; rather, it’s now all about one-to-one. From being a monologue – where the marketers spoke and the consumers listened – now, it’s a dialogue. The consumer speaks and the marketer is expected to listen and respond if he wants to build a long lasting relationship. Not just that, the customer also likes to be spoken to about things he enjoys. Hence the rise of ‘programmatic advertising’. One ad, however brilliant, will not work any more. Soon, marketers would be expected to customize and make multiple advertisements to suit the tastes of different types of customers, and technology is making it possible to do this. Programmatic buying identifies users and groups them according to the sites they browse and then offers them advertisements and promotional materials of products and services that match their habits and tastes. There is growing evidence that consumers are getting bored and irritated with advertisements that don’t interest them. With the help of technology, now marketers can identify the choices of the target consumers and place their ads in front of only those who are interested in that

6 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Rin has started a Rin Career Academy training people in key skills which give them confidence; Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign goes beyond celebrities and urges people to find greatness within

particular product or service. Brands like Nike, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Kia Automobiles are using programmatic buying to micro-target their audience and send them ads customized to suit their tastes and build better connections with them.

The Future

As a consequence, the whole environment is changing. A marketer needs to look beyond his marketing campaigns and promotions and focus more on the very tech-savvy consumer and his overall experience vis-à-vis the brand. Be it

If profits are combined with a greater purpose, brands can not just win goodwill, but also assist their customers in giving back to the society the online visit experience, the in-store shopping experience, the purchase experience and even the post-purchase experience, he needs to understand the big data, its analysis, interpret the results wisely and make the required changes to help improve these experiences.

As marketers, you need to find out who are the social influencers, and try to make them your ‘digital brand ambassadors’. As a vigilant marketer, you also have to keep track of conversations

happening on the social media. Thanks to the developments in technology, today’s marketers have a huge amount of data detailing the digital lives of their customers, giving them extraordinary power. They can now run sharply focused campaigns, reach their target audience much more accurately, respond to disgruntled customers with greater speed, get deep and accurate insights into the purchase patterns of their customers.

Everybody wants to do good, but then, not everybody can. If you combine your business profits with purpose, you don’t just win a lot of goodwill from your customers, but you also help them satisfy that latent need within them of giving back something to the society, which is very fulfilling and satisfying.

Soon, no one would care about the S&P 500 list or the Fortune 500 list; but they would demand a Helping the Unfortunate 500 list, for the latter would be a list of companies who would be making a difference to the planet and not just their balance sheets. So go ahead, use technology to understand your market better, add a purpose to your marketing campaign, unleash your creativity and delight your audience like never before, and give him more than the conventional dose of marketing. Give him a dream and a hope of a better world!

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 67

V Ɗ $ , ,1' 76 1 $ , ,7 *

,1',$ÍV 0267 $'0,5(' ( &200(5&( &203$1,(6 8 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

4ps B&m

METHODOLOGY

India’s it giants and most admired e-commerce companies: the 4ps B&M 2016 listings

Determined after a comprehensive nationwide survey, the most definitive listings of India’s IT Giants and Most Admired E-Commerce Companies is here!

T

he following entails the research methodology that was undertaken to finalise the 4Ps Business and Marketing listing of India’s IT Giants and India’s Most Admired Ecommerce Companies. The research methodology commentary provides inputs on the structure of the research process undertaken, apart from the analysis and depth of interpretation that has gone into assessing the data collected during our nation-wide research, across all small, medium and large enterprises in the specific industries’ categories in association with our research partner, Indian Council of Market Research (ICMR).

A stringent multi-phase research methodology was followed by 4Ps Business and Marketing, in research partnership with Indian Council for Market Research, for determining the 4Ps Business and Marketing listing of India’s IT Giants and India’s Most Admired E-commerce Companies.

The selection for IT Giants has been done after an extensive research across 2532 small, medium and large IT enterprises. The selection for Most Admired E-Commerce companies has been done after a similarly extensive research across 757 e-commerce companies.

The survey was conducted over three discrete and consecutive stages: Stage 1: The survey was initiated by preparing a list of 2532 IT companies and 757 e-commerce companies across India. From this super-list, the initial list of 600 IT companies and 200 e-commerce companies

was generated based on their brand recall, reach, revenues, market capitalization, availability, demand and growth. These companies in both categories comprised both B2C and B2B enterprises. The industry segmentation was done significantly as per the standard adopted by predominant industry research bodies.

Stage 2: Based on the initial generated list, a survey was conducted amongst 8,000 plus

A stringent multiphase research methodology involving proprietary stochastic and factor analysis models was followed respondents from 29 States and one Union Territory (Delhi) of India.

Two structured questionnaires were formed and one-on-one interviews were carried out in the abovementioned geographical locations. The ten factors for which responses were procured for each surveyed IT and e-commerce brand from the 8,000 plus respondents were as follows: Brand recall, brand awareness, brand preference, brand image, brand performance, brand association, brand trust, brand sustainability, brand loyalty and brand

positioning.

For factoring out specific characteristics, additional factors with tested weightage with respect to “brand gross market value” was utilised for the listing of IT Giants, and “brand admiration” was utilised for the listing of Most Admired E-commerce Companies. In order to avoid sequential bias, the order of the enterprises was changed for each of the surveyed geographies. Each State was divided into four zones – namely north, south, east and west – to ensure distributed coverage within the State in terms of the target audience.

The respondents covered were classified as both B2C consumers and B2B consumers, to ensure appropriate response strength for all the brands being researched. The respondents rated each of the brands on the given parameters on a scale of 1-5 (where 1 stood for minimum and 5 for maximum on each respective parameter).

Stage 3: The results from Stage 2 were put through proprietary, stochastic, factoranalysis models to ensure appropriate filtering and tabulation of the abovementioned companies. From the list of enterprises shortlisted in Stage 2, a further sorting was implemented to filter out companies that qualified above the stochastically determined 4Ps B&M Factor Index.

From this list, the top 100 IT Giants and the top 100 Most Admired E-commerce Companies were chosen. This is the listing that you will witness in the upcoming pages of this magazine.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 9

E-COMMERCE 4ps B&m

india’s most admired

e-commerce companies

Apparels & Accessories

Big Bazaar Big Bazaar is the first aggregator of supermarket stores in the world to come up with a whopping number of 101 stores in a very short time-span of seven years from its inception. Today, Big Bazaar, with its wide range of products and service offering, reflects the aspirations of millions of Indians serving people offline as well as with its etail website opening access to its plethora of products from grocery, food, apparels to electronics and furniture. The hypermarket chain now has over 200 stores across India and is inarguably India’s largest in its genre. After merging in 2015 with Bharti Retail, the year 2016 has news of a possible merger with Aditya Birla Retail, which would create a global behemoth.

10 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Jabong Jabong is an Indian fashion and lifestyle e-commerce portal, with apparel, footwear, fashion accessories, beauty products, home accessories and other fashion and lifestyle products. Jabong was co-founded by Arun Chandra Mohan, Praveen Sinha, Manu Jain, and Mukul Bafana in 2012 and funded by Rocket Internet (run by the media avoiding Samwer brothers).

After operational issues and heavy online competition from Amazon and Flipkart, Jabong finally got sold off this year to Flipkart and may be subsequently merged with Flipkart’s fashion brand, Myntra. Irrespective, Jabong and its latest stream of cutting age post modern advertising has ensured it remains one of the most admired brands.

Koovs KOOVS India has been incepted as an independent e-commerce fashion portal in 2010, operating through Koovs. com as an online store especially for western fashion, serving products like menswear, womenswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty products. The website flaunts Indian and international brands.

Craftsvilla Crafting their innovative business idea, entrepreneur couple Manoj and Monika Gupta have founded Craftsvilla an online marketplace that allows users to buy and sell ethnic handmade products to discover unique Indian products.

Zovi Zovi’s central agenda has been to locally craft and manufacture lifestyle apparel and accessory products with quality at reasonable prices. Zovi is positioned as a metaphor for trendy fashion. The brand offers a wide range of fashion products from shirts, denims, polos and a whole lot more items at reasonable prices. Topping the charts of trendy online shopping sites, Zovi provides free shipping and cash on delivery options. The brand strongly believes that high quality apparel and accessories should be in the reach of everyday people.

Myntra Myntra is another name for fashion in India; incepted in 2007, this Bangalore headquartered online portal was founded by Mukesh Bansal and comes under the Flipkart umbrella. In 2011, Myntra extended its product catalogue to include fashion and lifestyle products. Myntra tied up with various popular brands (350 Indian and International brands) to retail a wide range of latest merchandise from these brands. Myntra is rapidly diversifying into home furnishing, personal care segments and jewellery; year 2016 may see Myntra merging with Jabong.

Shoppers Stop Shoppers Stop is a one stop shop Indian retailing company owned by K Raheja Group, which started its operations in 1991 with its first store in Andheri, Mumbai.

The website sells all the products practically available at Shoppers Stop stores, including apparel, cosmetics and accessories. Keeping pace with technology, the brand has also launched its app in February 2016 as part of their omni-channel strategy. From Biba Apparels, Gini & Jony, Nike, Reebok, Louis Philippe, Pepe, to Arrow, Shoppers Stop also merchandises its own brands such as STOP, Kashish, LIFE, Vettorio Fratini and Acropolis.

Yebhi Yebhi, previously named and incepted in 2009 as BigShoeBazaar, is an online portal for buying and selling shoes, later expanding with a variety of products ranging from Apparels, Bags, Mobiles, Watches, Books, Laptops, Home furnishing, Fragrances, Cameras, Sunglasses, and others. The site boasts a registered user base of over 1.5 million users and about a third of it have made a transaction for some product or the other. Yebhi brings the most updated global fashion trends to customers, which has ensured that the brand is one of the most recalled and admired ones in India.

LimeRoad Ankush Mehra, Suchi Mukherjee and Prashant Malik, the founders came up with this unique fashion proposition for women in 2012 through a ‘social ecommerce platform’ where they could create a unique look choosing from a range of available products.

Kaaryah The Big Idea came to Nidhi Agarwal- founder & CEO at the Bangalore airport when she spilled coffee on her shirt and could not find a quick replacement fitting her size on the go. That was the seed for the business and KAARYAH was born and has grown over the years as a premium brand of non-casual Western clothing for all sizes, even those you may not find at standard outlets. KAARYAH offers 18 sizes – three variants in each size– and introduces 150 new designs every month; this has been made possible with a proprietary IT enabled production system. Read our interview of the KAARYAH founder in this issue.

YepMe “Fresh Fashion every day” is what YepMe stands for, being one of India’s biggest online fashion brands. Their target is young India with teenagers and young adults as the segment to cater. Founded by Vivek Gaur, Sandeep Sharma with Anand Jadhav in 2011 and headquartered in Gurgaon, the company specializes in the online retailing of men’s and women’s garments and accessories. Stylophane ranked YepMe as one of the top 20 fashion brands in the world. The youth fashion brand has been the recipient of the “Web-only Brand of the Year” award in 2014 by eTailing India. YepMe continues to gain top of the mind recall through the years. ...continued on page 14

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 11

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

72 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 73

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

Cabs & Local Travel

...continued from page 11

B2B

Jugnoo Jugnoo is an Indian auto rickshaw aggregation platform.

Jugnoo provides on-demand transport and logistics facility across 32 cities in India. It operates through a mobile app available on multiple platforms, which helps connect the user (travelers) with the auto drivers in proximity. The innovative service was established in Chandigarh by Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal (Alumni IIT-Delhi) in October, 2014.

IndiaMart IndiaMart was founded in 1996 by Dinesh Agarwal as an amalgamation of websites with an objective to primarily serve offshore markets. Improved internet penetration in India since 2006 made IndiaMart diversify its focus from being an export-import service platform to an online medium connecting buyers and suppliers in the domestic market. This innovative portal provides B2C, B2B and C2C sales services. IndiaMART has been India’s largest online marketplace and world’s second-largest B2B marketplace after Alibaba as of 2012.

FreshDesk An unpleasant incident with an insurance provider brought out the entrepreneurial self of Girish Mathrubootham, propelling him to establish Freshdesk in 2010.

Freshdesk is the leading provider of cloud-based customer service software.

The flagship product allows organizations to support customers through emails, phone, websites, mobile apps, forums and social media. Freshdesk, allows businesses to monitor real time customer responses across a wide spectrum of media vehicles.

Capillary Technologies Capillary Technologies, a SaaS company is a tech startup founded by IIT Kharagpur alumni duo Krishna Mehra and Aneesh Reddy that has grown with astonishing pace since its inception in 2008. It is primarily a cloud-based customer analytics marketing platform for retailers and consumer businesses. Capillary Technologies was built to utilize mobile technology to facilitate (brick and mortar) retailers interaction with customers online. InTouch is their flagship software, which uses Big Data significantly.

OLA It was in late 2010 that Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati started Ola, an Indian online transportation aggregator under ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd. Ola has a fleet of over 200,000 cars across 85 cities in India.

Ola was valued at $5 billion last year and has only seen its valuation growing since then. Ola has merged technology and transport together to bring mobility for a billion Indians. Inspired by Uber, Ola has beaten its competition hands down in many Indian cities.

Meru Cabs Meru Cabs wesfounded by Neeraj Gupta in 2007. Meru Cabs has been a forerunner in taxi aggregators based in Mumbai, India. To its biggest credit, this earlier offline aggregator has used technology to advantage and has become one of the leading online players in its genre. As of now, it provides cab booking facilities through multiple options like calls, website or through their mobile application. Meru even has a Cab Wallet system for payments. Meru has now even integrated their service with Google Now. Mega Cabs Mega Cabs has been a pioneer in introducing world-class taxi services in India. It has positioned itself as a safe, comfortable and reliable alternative. Founded in 2001 by Kunal Lalani, Mega Cabs, now has over 3,500 cars across seven cities, and has set an ambitious target of taking its fleet size to 25,000 by 2020. In six years, it plans to pump in Rs 4,000 crore, expand to 40 cities, take its revenue to Rs 6,000 crore and leverage more technology. The company was the first to innovate the aggregated car rental model, later followed by the likes of Ola and Uber.

14 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Deals & Discounts

Bag It Today Bagittoday.com is an ecommerce venture by Living Media (India Today Group). The online portal’s focus is to deliver a wide range of most sought-after items chosen from the best brands in the world, complementing the same with the greatest service experience to clients. Brands on board include Satya Paul, Samsung, Nokia, Swatch, Calvin Klein, Mont Blanc, Kodak, HTC and many more. Bag It Today aspires to combine style and value with world class quality. It is seen by today’s customers as being at the forefront of the high street revolution and fashion trends.

Education EduKart Simplilearn Simplilearn – one of the largest professional certifications company – is an online education portal providing professional certification training. Based in Scotts Valley, California, USA, the company was founded by Krishna Kumar in 2009. He posted free video lessons and a practice test there; since then, the site has gained more than 450,000 users from 150 plus countries and is growing by leaps and bounds.

Started in 2011 by Ishan and Mayank Gupta with only a handful of certification courses, EduKart has now evolved into a leading education marketplace, offering students a platform to enroll into more than 2,500 courses in degree, diploma, certificate, entrance coaching and K12 categories. EduKart has enabled students to access global education. It also offers certificate courses in areas of retail, finance, telecom, digital marketing, programming languages, project management, and IT. EduKart even provides job placement assistance through its job portal on the website.

MobiKwik MobiKwik is a mobile wallet and online payment system on which users can store virtual money to pay utility bills and shop using the online wallet with over 70,000 merchants available online with added features like mobile and DTH recharge.

MobiKwik was founded by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku in 2009. It has an extended service portfolio on mobile apps. MobiKwik tied up with various online merchants such as eBay India, BookMyShow, Dominos India, ShopClues and Snapdeal to provide a payment option on e-commerce sites giving accessibility through their wallet.

Naaptol Naaptol is a leading home shopping company in India available on the virtual platform and sells various products in categories ranging from apparel, electronics, home furnishings, kitchen appliances, furniture and other utility items.

Naaptol was started by founder and CEO Manu Agarwal, an IIT Kanpur alumnus in 2008 primarily serving as a product research and price comparison service.

Naaptol (Hindi for ‘Bargain’) provides a platform for merchants and sellers to sell their products, which are compared through web analytics, providing invaluable customer support.

MeritNation MeritNation’s apparent central belief is helping the nation reclaim its merit (thus the play of words). One of the leading online tutorial portals in India, MeritNation is segmenting itself for increasing e-literacy in India. Setting up entire virtual schools on their education portal through elaborate live classes, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises, practice tests and expert help, the brand’s intention is to make schooling easy for students. The platform is rapidly adding thousands of K-12 students, of which over 60% join via the mobile platform. ...continued on page 21

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 15

SQUARE YARDS 4ps B&m

16 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

How many feet in a square yard?

the husband-wife co-Founding duo of Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta have made square yards india’s top residential estate distributor; 4ps B&m meets up with them to find out how

4

Ps B&M: How did you think of starting Square Yards?

Tanuj Shori: I’m an investment banker and Kanika had done her stints with the wealth management industry, apart from Bollywood & modeling before we moved to Singapore. So there was a point of time where she wanted to start an entrepreneurial venture, and I started more as an investor. So how did Square Yards and real estate come along?

We used to invest heavily in personal capacity into real estate. We had a portfolio of products not just in India, but globally too. But every time we went and invested something specifically in India, a big pain area was that there was not a single professional who could sit across the table and tell us what we wanted and what we did not want, lesser so in terms of numbers, in terms of accurate market trends and so on and so forth; people were just blindly telling us that the market doubled in the last four years and will double in the coming four years. That’s when we realised there was significant need for an intelligent, number- and process-driven player in this market.

Kanika Gupta: Another front where we felt there was a dire need for professionalism was client servicing. This was one of the areas that had a very big gap. As Tanuj says, whenever we wanted to reach out to developers for inputs on various fronts, there was nobody to help us and guide us through even the transaction cycle.

4Ps B&M: How did you think of the name Square Yards?

Kanika: The first thing that comes to

anyone’s mind when they go for purchasing a property is how many square yards is the area. So I would say that the name was purely intuitive.

4Ps B&M: But why go online? Did you feel there was a gap in the industry with respect to online presence of players?

Tanuj: Online was never actually a prime focus for us. We thought of online only as

Every time we invested something in India, there was not a single professional who could understand what we wanted or did not want a supportive platform at that point in time.

That was simply a starting point. When we thought about the idea, we both came to India, spent a few months here and met some industry players like IndiaHomes, Housing.com, Investor’s Clinic, and others. Every day that we spent here, our conviction grew that this is the sector where fortunately or unfortunately no one has tried to build a truly professional organization. No middleman has tried to build an organization. Anywhere in the developed world, in any industry whatsoever, manufacturers have a role to play, distributors have a role to play and clients too have a

role to play. But in India, because no one ever attains scale, manufacturers (builders and developers) themselves were distributors. Developers were selling 70% of the stock either themselves or mostly through the unorganized market. But there was no B2B platform or an organization to organization platform present.

4Ps B&M: Real estate is not recognized as an industry in India. In such a case, would not establishing something organized be tough?

Tanuj: I would say it is the opposite; as no one has done it before, it becomes far easier for us. One could get the right talent as one is the only organized choice in the industry. You can also say that being organized would provide one with a significant amount of bargaining power with developers. The entire sector being fragmented, disoriented, disorganized has been a big opportunity; and we still haven’t done anything noticeable out of that. What we have is simply a 2% market share!

4Ps B&M: One successful husband-wife startup is Infosys, where the wife took a backseat while the husband led the business. How have you organized your individual roles?

Kanika: We have demarcated our roles and we both do very different things on a daily basis, which are totally independent.

I take decisions for various verticals and have enough independence to work.

Tanuj: Well, the fact is that Kanika started Square Yards and I became involved only six months later. Subsequently, she stepped down from the CEO’s post for me. Because

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 17

SQUARE YARDS 4ps B&m

we run a sales organization, apart from taking strategic decisions, I also take care of the sales numbers. She takes care of the remaining structure – whether it’s expansion of international footprints, marketing, CRM and call center.

4Ps B&M: How have you managed to grow so fast? The so called ‘real estate mafia’ generally is quite omnipresent and ready to be of nuisance value to high growth corporations...

Tanuj: We haven’t actually faced any such thing. Our organization is a very organized one with systems in place. In the initial months, when we started going out, we needed management people. And those were early days. So, like any other startup, we would also have trouble hiring key people. We took an alternate route. We pretty much put a chopper on the heads of everyone we grew up with and studied with, anyone we felt could make a difference. Now, in our management team, we have these 16 principal partners who come from significant positions in banking, branding, technology and the real estate industries. The only difference is that they have not been hired. We all know them personally, so overnight, from two cofounders, we grew to 16 co-founders. All of them have equity participation in the company and we now have 16 mini-CEOs. The reason why we grew faster than any of our competitors is that we did fifteen different things at the same time; and these are professionals who have significant ownership to run those mini-ships as mini-CEOs. And it’s my job at the end of the day that everyone has synergy while people head separate verticals and separate regions. Very rarely is there an overlap between the fifteen of us.

4Ps B&M: How would you describe your organization in two to three lines?

Kanika: We are a bunch of passionate people who are doing something which we love doing. We have the freedom to innovate, we have the freedom to do what has not been experimented; so this is still a young startup at heart. Although we are now two years old, that startup feeling,

18 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

that startup culture is still there, and that is what is keeping us alive and taking us to the next level.

4Ps B&M: How do you define your core service?

Tanuj: We are India’s largest real estate aggregator and distributor. Now, how we are building it up? We are amalgamating various verticals. We started by building a purely offline direct-sales business; that was the starting point. We started it in one city and replicated it in other cities.

What we did differently is that we went to NRI markets and started replicating the sales model in those markets. Although we had a unique model, we were then still small. Concurrently, we recognized that growth could not come purely imagining

In our management, we had 16 principal partners; we knew them personally and they became co-founders with us of this as a scale business. Then we started introducing technology and that is the time when acquisitions came along. You have to understand that 90 odd percent of the real estate market is driven by brokers.

With the real estate industry not being transparent and there being no bill in place, we can’t expect to replace this 90% of the market. This is similar to the cab space in India, with a majority of players being unorganized. That’s why we decided to do in this industry what Ola did with the cab industry. We’re enabling the brokers to make faster money, more money, and efficient money. So it’s a real estate aggregation model, starting with Indian real estate, extending to international real estate, which has been extended further to mortgage. Now, we are setting up new ver-

ticals like portfolio management services and facility management services. To put it this way, I believe there are 36 boxes which need to be ticked in real estate, and we have scratched only one box. How would you see Square Yards three years down the line? We would have a very dominant market share in any value chain related to real estate – whether it be mortgage, real estate investment, land acquisition, NRI segment sales or related global sales.

4Ps B&M: Your focus on NRI markets is unique. What are your other differentiators from the competitors?

Tanuj: Scale. I will still say that the best answer is scale. I think in any industry, any sector, the best way to get bargaining power is scale. Unless we have scale, we are not entertained across the table; at the same time, if we have scale, we can enjoy bargaining power. What we did different from other players is that we went berserk when it came to growth, we did not hold back. We didn’t put any rule that we’ll focus on a new city only after handling one city. The reason why we did that is because every city has multiple micromarkets – also, what happens in Gurgaon does not drive what happens in Mumbai, and what happens in Mumbai does not drive what happens in Bangalore. So we expanded in one big leap; and this also helped us diversify the management risk. Honestly speaking, we pretty much ran the same business model that our competitors were running.

We just did it on a far larger, far more differentiated and far more faster scale.

4Ps B&M: How is it that you could do it and they could not?

Tanuj: Organizations are built, organizations are broken, but not around capital, not around technology – it’s all about people. Capital is a commodity. You give $20 mn in the hand of five people and how they handle it is basically a function of how they want to spend it. Effectively, it all boils down to people. Like Kanika pointed out, the sixteen of us haven’t taken a holiday in the last one year. And when you have people who are so passionate running their verticals, trying to make

Square Yards has used scale to differentiate itself from its industry competitors, aggregating prime residential estate across multiple cities at the same time, not restricting themselves to metros like New Delhi (above), Gurgaon, Mumbai etc, thus gaining considerable bargaining power with on-ground stakeholders

them successful, it becomes almost like a combination of 16 startups. I think that’s why we are a powerhouse.

Kanika: We scaled up both vertically and horizontally. There are verticals which we could start at the same time, something that would be difficult for any startup to do. For example, we have simultaneously started our India plans, and at the same time, we scaled up in the commercial sector and in the NRI business arena; we are also engaging a space called International Project Marketing (IPM) that is bringing global properties to India, which nobody is doing currently.

4Ps B&M: Can you tell us something more about IPM? Tanuj: Eventually, India is India and the globe is the globe. Our belief is that we won’t get into any vertical where we can’t be a leading player in 12 months. We first thought about getting into wealth management, but we didn’t. It’s similar with secondary resale and rental. It is a massive market. Do we want a share of that market? Yes. Are we best placed amongst

the industry incumbents to do that? Yes. Why are we then not doing that? Because, we do not have the right business model yet. But when we cracked the IPM code, the primary code, it applied everywhere. It applies here, it applies in Dubai, it applies in London, it applies in Australia. So we started Dubai as a test case a few months back. Today, we are seeing massive results.

IPM now contributes 10% to the revenue and its doubling up every month. So, in the next three years, more than 50% of our business revenues will be non-India.

4Ps B&M: You did not go for institution-

Today, the IPM division contributes 10% to our revenues; this will grow to more than 50% in the next coming three years

al investors initially. Why was that?

Tanuj: There’s a reason behind that. To understand that, you have to know that we also take wrong decisions. But as long as we get seven out of ten decisions right and as long as we have the agility to repair the wrong decisions and make it right, it’s alright. So that was the basic reason due to which we did not want an institutional investor on our board for some time. Then we started looking for alternative sources of capital. We structured our products as such in terms of convertible instruments.

We raised $15 mn from the market, mostly retail clients spread over 50 odd people, all personal contacts. When we reached a sizeable scale about six months back , then we started reaching out to institutional investors and very soon, we should see a big deal. I have always believed that if you have the right business model and the right economics at heart, investors would come automatically. I am again the kind of entrepreneur who strongly believes that business should not be built on traffic, or with the belief that we shall earn 25 years later. The main job of a business is to make

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 19

SQUARE YARDS 4ps B&m

money. It may make more money, it may make less money, or it may be at a stage where it may make money at double the scale, but a business model should know how to make money.

4Ps B&M: In this whole thing, you haven’t talked about your advertising strategies and plans.

Tanuj: A Coca Cola has to go for advertising, It has 5% of its revenues set aside for advertising. We also have 10% of our revenues set aside for marketing, but that is for lead generation marketing and not brand marketing. A brand will be built at some point of time when we believe that we have an offering. We are still evolving, processes are not strong, we are still an early baby. For example, we will avoid doing a full=blown campaign at this stage.

Yes, that may make sense when we control the monopoly in the market. Yes, when there is a demand generated by one million hits on my website everyday, and I am able to cater to them and am able to transact with them, then yes, I might advertise to keep those eyeballs coming.

4Ps B&M: You have had a PR campaign where you have told the world that you have achieved operational profitability in such a short time. How did you do that?

Kanika: We reached operational profitability in 22 months flat.

Tanuj: Without taking the name of our competitors, our cost is the same as them, but our revenues are four times higher.

And we are running our business with the same people that they used to have.

It’s just that we have been a sales-centric organization. I have never been a fan of technology taking over the organization.

I have always believed that technology should be central to an organization to enable it to grow 100 times faster. The mind and heart of the organization should be in the industry where they are. We were and are very clear – we are a sales organization.

Our DNA is sales; and technology has to play a very important role so that we are not limited in our growth. If we are doing “x” revenue per month now, how do we

20 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Noticed significantly by media when the above mentioned story broke last year – from Economic Times in the north to The Hindu in south – Square Yards has become the poster boy of organized estate

We also take wrong decisions; but that’s alright as long as 7 out of 10 decisions are right and we remain agile to repair the wrong steps make it “10x” in a few years with the help of technology? It could be usng internal ERP, it could be using lead generation campaigns, it could be digital marketing, it could be portal traffic, it could be anything, but the focus has to be sales-centric.

4Ps B&M: How would you see the growth going forward?

Tanuj: Our target is that by 2019, we should be earning an income of over $100 million. We’re targeting a 15% market share of the Indian real estate market, which means around seven to eight times growth from here. In the global real estate arena, we are still tiny. Only 5% of our work force is in the global market, and this we need to increase to 20 to 25%. In

mortgage, we are already India’s third largest player and our target is to become the largest player in the next 12-15 months.

Then, we are planning to launch estate portfolio management services. No one in India, in a sizable scale, does residential portfolio management services; we aim to be the largest player there. These will be our four key verticals. What Kanika is concurrently focusing on is to create a marketing agency, which is a non sales vertical. This will create a digital army and will help in lead generation for all the developers, irrespective of the fact whether they have a working relationship with us or not. There can always be a relationship on the marketing front.

Kanika: Especially in the global markets.

Tanuj: I truly believe it’s over a billion dollar organization opportunity...

4Ps B&M: With a no-weekend-off culture at your office, how do you manage your personal fronts?

Kanika: There is a lot of support from our respective families. Both our parents support us considerably and take turns to stay with the children when we’re not there at home and are travelling. Currently, we’re on a mode where Monday to Thursday, we’re in India and Friday to Sunday, we’re in Dubai because that’s the time when we can spend some time with the kids.

4Ps

...continued from page 15

School of Skill (SKILLdox) School of Skill is a gateway of SKILLSdox, an education technology company with its head office located in Ottawa, Canada, which has its operating office situated in Mumbai, India. SKILLdox’s aim is to collaborate with global quality educators and connect them online to the mass population of India. School of Skill provides online access to quality education through partnerships with educational leaders in Canada, USA and India. School of Skill’s vision is to upgrade the quality of life across the world through online education made assessable and available at ease online.

Vedantu Vedantu Innovations Pvt. Ltd. founded in 2011 by four IITians, Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena and Anand Prakash has launched its online tutoring platform in October 2014. The Sanskrit words Veda (knowledge) and Tantu (network) have crafted the company’s name, Vedantu. The start-up operates on a marketplace model for volunteer/ freelance tutors, wherein aspiring students can browse, search or choose to learn from preferred online tutors of their choice. The online platform has rich content of 21,000 hours of live learning available to over 17,000 students.

Infibeam Infibeam, founded in 2007 by Vishal Mehta, headquartered in Ahmedabad, India is an internet and e-commerce conglomerate operating in online retailing, e-commerce software and internet services. The company offers cloud based online services in B2C and B2B verticals.

Infibeam’s businesses include online retailing through its flagship website ‘infibeam.com’, e-commerce platform software service through ‘buildabazaar.com’, e-commerce marketplace ‘dhamaal.com’ and its own branded e-book reader.

Electronics

Reliance Digital Reliance Digital is a consumer durables and Information Technology initiative by Reliance Retail, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries. It is the 2nd largest consumer electronics company in India successfully foraying into the online segment. The first Reliance Digital Store was set up in 2007 at New Delhi. With the launch of premium stores Digital Xpress and Mini stores, the brand plans to scale up its current store count.

Croma Venturing into the large electronics retail market, Tata Group’s Infiniti Retail Ltd has promoted the Cromā premium retail chain for consumer electronics and durables. It is now amongst the largest such stores in its genre, having successful expanded into Croma Kiosks and Croma Zip stores. From Cellphones, Cameras, Laptops, Tablets, Televisions, Music Systems, Home Appliance to other accessories, Cromā has 6000 plus products across 8 categories. Croma online retail store’s market share is 11% of all e-commerce sales in India, thus ensuring the brand’s leadership in India.

Unacademy It is indeed an inspiration when one of the youngest IAS officers leaves his position of authority and reputation and peruses his passion for imparting education. This is the story of Unacademy, an online portal which provides free educational content to civil service aspirants in 2013. The portal provides free educational material to aspiring students through its website and also streams video tutorials updated periodically. More than 2 lakh students study on this portal as subscribers to the channel. The disruptive start up has raised a $500,000 seed round of funding.

NEXT Next Retail India Ltd is a subsidiary of Videocon Industries Ltd operating in the consumer electronics space in India. It was founded in 2003 and is now amongst India’s largest electronics retail chains. The brand is continuing its domination in the online space too. Next has developed its positioning as a multi-brand, multi-product retail chain storing a wide range of consumer durables, from air-conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves, to home theatre systems, mobile phones, gaming consoles etc.

The MobileStore The MobileStore Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Essar Group. The brand presently has over 1000 shops in 150 cities, with its headquarters located in Mumbai. It launched its website in April 2008, and since then has been counted amongst the leaders in the sale of mobile phones of domestic and international brands like Apple, BlackBerry, HTC, Karbonn Mobiles, Micromax, Motorola, Spice, Samsung, and Sony. The MobileStore continues to retain its admiration amongst Indian consumers.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 21

Entertainment Recreation & Movies Ticketing Wynk Wynk Limited is an innovative wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel founded in 2015. Wynk provides online content including music, movies, and games specifically designed for smartphone users. Wynk is available on Android, Windows and iOS. Wynk offers an integrated mobile music experience with full track audio streaming, internet radio, caller tunes and other services. Wynk even curates playlists for artists and genres to customize the experience. Wynk has crossed an awe inspiring feat of 5 million downloads in just 6 months of launch. Wynk is today one of the most popular virtual stations for music lovers in the country and has been featured by Google in the ‘Favourite Apps’ section on Google Play Store.

Redefining the way India watches movies, PVR Cinemas is the country’s biggest cinema chain with over 500 screens spread across over 111 Cinemas in 45 cities. While the first phase of their restructuring occurred when they upgraded their single screen halls to multiple screens, the second phase of their growth occurred when they started taking over other movie halls and movie companies. The third phase occurred when they entered the distribution business. The fourth phase occurred when PVR revamped their online presence and became one of India’s biggest online ticketing platforms. PVR retains its numero uno status and continues to be a rage.

BookMyShow It’s difficult to find a youngster who has not booked ticket on BookMyShow. It is India’s biggest online movie and events ticketing brand used widely by a wide spectrum of audiences across cities in India. The online booking website facilitates ticket sales for movies, plays, concerts and sporting events through the online

platform. BookMyShow has a network of close to 1000 cinemas spread across 200 cities and towns. Nearly 60 percent of its transactions happen via its mobile app. Founded by the trio Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande in 1999, during a vacation to South Africa, BookMyShow retains a cult status.

Gaana Gaana.com provides free and licensed music capitalizing on the trend of music popular amongst youth.

Launched by Times Internet, Gaana is a commercial music streaming service showcasing both Indian and international music content. The online musicstore features music from 21 languages including the major languages such as Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and other Indian regional languages. Gaana.com allows users to make their playlists public so that they can be seen by other users. In an extremely short time, Gaana.com has become India’s number one music portal.

...continued on page 26

4ps B&m JABONG

“INDIA’S START-UPS ARE DEFINITELY IN AN EARLY STAGE” praveen sinha, co-founder, jabong

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 23

JABONG 4ps B&m

From working for India’s biggest automobile manufacturing company to co-founding Jabong, one of the most well-known brands in the e-fashion sector, Praveen Sinha shares his knowledge and experiences with 4Ps B&M

H

ow did Jabong happen to you?

I always had aspirations to start something of my own.

While pursuing my MBA, I launched my first venture, Aquabrim, a water solution company. While I was in McKinsey, I continuously kept looking out for big startup ideas, and at that time I realised the opportunities in e-commerce.

When we started in 2011, the industry was at a starting stage, even in terms of fashion merchandising. There were few players in the market and we found good traction in the e-commerce fashion merchandising industry and realised that there was a huge potential in this sector.

Did you always think you would be an entrepreneur?

Yes, post my graduation, when i started my first job at Maruti Udyog, I realised that I wanted to convert idea into reality, and hence being an entrepreneur was the preferred choice.

Israel is a start-up nation that has shown the world how entrepreneurs can change a country. What are the lessons India and Indian entrepreneurs can learn from Israel?

Israel being a small and young country has produced significantly more productive high-tech startups. Israel is a startup nation that has shown the world how young startup entrepreneurs can change a country with their product focus, innovation, technology, risk-taking and creative population. Most important has been their focus on building/developing global products/services and not necessarily products for their domestic consumption. A few attributes which we can learn from them are 1. Accept failure: learn from them and build something better; 2. Networking skills: connect with relevant people to scale and refine the idea; 3. Government

24 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

support: in terms of favourable policies and government sponsored research platform.

Is Modi’s vision of “Start-Up India, Stand Up India” the right way forward?

I think Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s direct involvement in promoting startups with “Start-up India, Stand up India” is a great step towards signalling the importance of start ups. It has also helped simplifying the startup process, and that will be helpful to overcome business obstacles like costs, procedural complexities and delays for entrepreneurs trying to set up new businesses, which i believe will give impetus to innovation and will encourage many young entrepreneurs to turn ideas into action. But there are many elements

SOME OF THE VENTURES MAY FACE TROUBLING ISSUES AND MIGHT BE CURRENTLY DOWNGRADED which still need to be done. However, I see many initiatives enabling and empowering the start-up community, for example, providing Twitter handles for startups is a good use of social media.

Is India’s start-up boom a bubble that’s ready to burst?

Indian start-ups are definitely in an early stage. I would say startups are undergoing a reality check rather than saying that they are in a bubble (some of them are heated, though). Some of the sectors and ventures

may face troubling issues and might be currently downgraded by the market; but fundamentally, start-ups in India will sustain and survive in the long run and will continue growing, as Indian start-ups are built on a strong foundation.

You are an active investor too with investments in varied organisations like Anasha Art, Wassup etc. What do you look for while investing?

1. First, I always look at the team including founders, their passion backed by product and customer focus. The team should have a good combination of strategy and execution where execution has higher weightage.

2. The strength in the idea 3. Scalability: In terms of market opportunity and market size 4. Existing competition/differentiation 5. Business fundamentals: measured on profitability impact, employment creation impact or social/ environmental impact.

How would you define your leadership style? A leader who inspires you? a. Detail oriented b. Hand holding but not micro managing c. Getting together to build something beautiful and big Many leaders inspire me. It’s the quality of a leader that influences me and hence I draw inspiration from multiple leaders.

There are many life events of Swami Vivekanand and Ratan Tata that inspire me.

People are the most important part of any successful organisation. How do you make your best people stay?

Today’s employees desire to learn new things, create wealth, and have a healthy work-life balance. We provide them opportunities to work on projects across departments that expand their overall knowledge and also prepare them for higher responsibility/career growth. We

While Praveen Sinha is significantly known for co-founding Jabong, he is also an investor in companies like Anasha Art, Wassup and the likes

make sure we’re paying them competitively. However, I think the most important is the culture, where we are transparent, open, respectful and helpful to each other, which motivates them to stay back.

What would you describe as your most successful moment in business?

I have been part of many ventures now and some of them we have initiated from idea to reality. Getting the first client and their feedback is always delightful. There are many successful moments, varying from celebrating scale, customer feedback to getting investment.

Your advice to budding entrepreneurs?

I would advise focus on execution without compromising on business fundamentals.

You will be pulled in ten million different directions but you should be able to clearly state your priorities (for the day, month, and year ahead). You have to stay focused.

Your targets may shift so it’s important to stay nimble and you must be smart about what you’re working toward.

When you are not working, what is it that we can find you busy with?

Reading and walking are to me great com-

fort as these facilitate self-reflection and self-discovery Another thing you can find me busy with is networking with upcoming entrepreneurs.

What are your plans for the future?

Currently, I am focusing on making a roadmap for the next stages of my existing ventures. I am engaged in identifying the longer term future trends and demands of the marketplace, regionally and globally.

As we can’t completely predict the future, so my approach is to consider multiple scenarios and make some collective bets to create a true, shared vision of the future.

Your views on the new bill on FDI in

INDIA HAS A FEW YEARS TO GO BEFORE IT CAN BE COMPARED TO US AND CHINA ON E-COMMERCE

e-commerce?

It’s a well thought out bill, which might need further detailing. Having a clear cut regulatory framework helps the ecosystem to avoid ambiguity and improves investments in the sector.

How will the e-commerce sector in India shape up in the future?

India will be very close to US and China in terms of e-commerce market opportunities. However, we have a few more years to reach there. There will be multiple disruption not only in the product sector but in the service sector as well.

The new buzz word is ‘m-commerce’ – mobile commerce. What are your opinions on this as far as India is concerned?

M-commerce is growing rapidly as a stable and secure supplement to the e-commerce industry. Shopping and payments through smartphones are the new trends. I believe most of the e-commerce transactions will move to mobile and m-commerce will contribute to a major part of the e-commerce industry’s total revenues. Smartphones are becoming the central part of shopping experience for many people despite internet penetration being low. 4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 25

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

...continued from page 22

Etail Flipkart

FabFurnish

Online shopping is equated with Flipkarting in India nowadays and that’s what is a clear example of the stupendous growth the online retailer has shown over the years.

Flipkart originally started as an online bookstore founded by IIMA alumni Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. Flipkart now employs over 33,000 people providing thousands of products from national and international brands to hundreds of thousands of customers. India’s answer to global e-tailing brands, Flipkart’s brand is amongst the most admired and respected in India.

Entrepreneur trio Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal and Vaibhav Aggarwal launched FabFurnish. com in 2012. It is essentially an online content driven marketplace which does retail and delivery of home products at doorsteps. An innovative e-store initially started with 2000 products and progressively scaled to plethora of over 1 lakh products to choose from. The e-store contains 600 plus brands and in 2016, became part of the behemoth Future Group which is India’s biggest organized retail player.

ShopClues ShopClues.com is an online marketplace headquartered in Gurgaon, India. ShopClues was founded in November 2011 and now has over 400,000 merchants and small businesses listed on its marketplace, and ships more than 3.5 million items every month across all product categories to choose from on the platform catering to almost 42 million visitors every year spread across 9500 locations in the country. Read the interview of ShopClues founder, Sandeep Aggarwal, in this issue of 4Ps B&M.

Lenskart Lenskart was founded by Peyush Bansal and Amit Chaudhary in 2010 has changed the way people see the world through their lenses. Capturing on a very niche and largely untapped and unorganized sector, the online eyewear portal has galvanized the market with its exceptional growth. The online retailer sells eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and eyewear accessories with an all India reach including important cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Lenskart gives great discounts and amazing offers on a daily basis.

Starting as an online player, Lenskart switched to an omni-channel approach to provide eyewear in hypermarkets, high streets, malls, hospitals and even at home. Lenskart sells 5,000 spectacles a day making it one of India’s top two eyewear firms. Lenskart plans to expand by opening 1,000 brick-and-mortar shops through the franchise model.

26 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

SnapDeal Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate along with school friend Rohit Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi founded SnapDeal in 2010. It expanded in September 2011 to become an online marketplace and became one of the most recalled brands. Started as a discount site to provide the best deals to online customers, SnapDeal was amongst the first Unicorns of the Indian eCommerce space and has a plethora of products across categories like mobiles, electronics, home and kitchen, sports, books, restaurants, entertainment, fashion accessories, apparel and footwear.

Indiatimes Shopping Indiatimes Shopping one of the country’s oldest e-commerce platforms established in early 2000 is a part of India’s leading media house - The Times Group. Envisioned to provide a hassle-free shopping experience and all that a customer wants, Indiatimes offers an extensive range of products in all major categories. Indiatimes shopping has a reach farther and wider than any other e-commerce player in India. As part of the Times Group, Indiatimes Shopping provides and gets considerable synergy from the media conglomerate, ensuring that readers of the publications of the media group have a 360 degree experience. Indiatimes Shopping remains amongst the most liked and respected amongst portals in India.

Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma founded Paytm (a play on Pay Through Mobile), the mobile wallet company in 2010. Today, it offers a full marketplace to consumers on its app mobile and desktop site. Today, Paytm is India’s largest mobile commerce platform with over 100 million wallets and 10 million app downloads. Paytm has scaled to more than 60 Million orders per month. In 2015, Paytm received a license from RBI for starting India’s first payments bank. Paytm has also been rated as one of India’s leading Unicorns.

Pepperfry Pepperfry is a leading player in the online furniture market. Founded in 2012 by Ambareesh Murty & Ashish Shah, the brand has focused on shifting consumers’ preference of buying furniture online from offline.

Pepperfry is a clear leader in this segment with 45-50% market share of the online segment. It has got first

mover’s advantage in the category and is extremely differentiated from other players in the market with respect to aspects like variety, pricing, servicing and delivery.

Urban Ladder Urban Ladder, a Bangalore based start up founded by Ashish Goel, offers a unique selection of stylish, contemporary furniture online. Their online furniture range includes sofas, beds, dining tables, TV units, wardrobes, dressing tables, and many other customized furniture options to choose from. All wooden furniture designs are available online too. The differentiating factor for Urban Ladder is the fact that the portal focuses on providing modern, contemporary and fashionable designs on all their offerings, apart from adhering to world-class standards.

HomeShop18 HomeShop18 is an online and on-air retail and distribution venture of Network 18 Group. HomeShop18 is the pioneer in TV shopping in India as it changed the way India shopped by launching the first 24 hour home shopping TV channel. The company brings the perfect balance between TV shopping and digital/online shopping with India’s best online selling site, HomeShop18.com and HomeShop18 Mobile App. This is the only home shopping site in India that equally caters to the wide customer base through television, online and digital medium.

Quikr Founded by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas in 2008 as an Indian classified advertising platform, Quikr is headquartered in Bengaluru. It has listings in over 1,000 cities in India in several categories such as mobile phones and household goods. It is now India’s no. 1 online classified platform and aspires to empower every Indian to independently connect with buyers and sellers online.

Capitalising on the brand, Quikr is extending its reach into the online market for cars, real estate, jobs, services and education.

Financial Services BankBazaar BankBazaar is the world’s first neutral online marketplace which gives consumers access to customized rate quotes on loans, credit cards and personal finance products such as insurance policies. In 2008, with an initial capital of Rs. 45 lakh, BankBazaar. com was started with a team of 6 people in Chennai. The name was chosen as it signifies a choice and comparison of banks. The founders Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty and Rati are a group of entrepreneurs who had worked in companies like Deloitte, Amazon.com, Capital One and Microsoft. From then till now, BankBazaar.com has gained a most admirable position in India.

Coverfox At Coverfox, buying insurance is not just about avoiding risk, it’s about outfoxing the confusion lying within. With 25 insurers and 100+ products to choose from, Coverfox works actively to find a plan that is ideal for customers. From providing them with the right information to offering unbiased comparisons, Coverfox is a one stop solution for all financial concerns. Coverfox was cofounded by Varun Dua and Devendra Rane, who had experienced issues in real life with respect to financial products and decided to come together to create an online solution. And once the Narayana Murthy led Catmaran Ventures invested in them, the company entered the big league. ...continued on page 32

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 27

Lookup

4ps B&m

28 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Meet the man who is helping businesses chat with you Deepak Ravindran, Founder, Lookup, and serial entrepreneur, has roped in the likes of Biz Stone (Co-founder, Twitter) as investors; in conversation with 4Ps B&M

H

ow many startups have you nurtured? How did the idea of Lookup come up?

I have nurtured three start-

ups till date.

(1) Innoz (2007- 2013): The world’s largest offline search engine on SMS. (2) Quest (2014, Bay Area): A location based query platform (3) Lookup (2015-present): An app that allows consumers to chat directly with local businesses Taking my first steps in the town of Thrissur in Kerala, I grew up where everything one needed was bought from small local shops, be it groceries, electronics, medicine, or clothes.

Most of the retail outlets are very small, and one may not have the thing one wants. This is a problem not just in small towns, but even a tech-savvy city like Bangalore. Though people may have gotten used to shopping in malls or ecommerce sites, they still run to the local drugstore for stomach flu pills or the BP medication that they run out of. I did some research on how people talk to local businesses, and found that there was no central and easy to use service that solved this problem. Most of the people were still using the traditional way of calling stores. So I thought of a solution – what if a message sent before you set out for a shop told you if the pharmacy has that pill in stock or not? Or what if you can take a picture of the doctor’s prescription with your phone and send it to a nearby shop? And communicate with them without sharing any confidential data like your phone number? That’s how I came up with the main idea of Lookup.

The idea for Lookup struck me like a

light bulb when I was visiting my hometown in Kerala. I saw my mom chatting with her grocer over WhatsApp and placing an order. That was truly an eye-opener for me since I discovered people were using chat for an all-new purpose. With WhatsApp, I noticed that once people saved each other’s contact numbers, they could view the other’s frequently changing display pictures and statuses. This came with some privacy issues. I created Lookup to address those issues, ensuring consumers do not have to worry about their privacy being invaded when chatting with storekeepers they have never met before.

The chat platform is creating a big revolution in the global retail market and is becoming integral to the modern society Is chat based commerce going to be the future of e-commerce?

Yes. Chat is eating the world. According to Chris Messina, inventor of Hashtag, 2016 will be the year of conversational commerce. Everyday people are discovering that the chat platform is not just a medium through which they can interact with people but also a platform for accomplishing various day-to-day tasks. Chat is be-

coming the main medium through which people are getting things done. Every new app that is being launched comes with a learning curve. This is where chat apps have an edge over other apps since they surpass this barrier owing to their simple singular user interface. And that’s why, it is the second largest medium of communication in the world.

The thought of connecting producers to consumers through chat was very appealing for they could solve the everexisting problems of miscommunication, time lag and several other redundancies.

I strongly believe that the chat platform is the way forward to answer people’s queries, albeit with a personal touch. The chat platform is creating a big revolution in the global retail market and it is evident that the chat interface is becoming an integral part of this modern conversing society.

Your new initiative Lookup has successfully managed to close funding from the likes of Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Narayana Murthy (Catamaran Ventures) Vinod Khosla (Khosla Impact Fund) and Oliver Samwer (Global Founders Capital). What is the most important thing a founder needs to keep in mind while approaching a VC? Great investors back founders who have a great vision. They not only provide monetary support, but also take time in mentoring and turning ideas into reality.

It is all about execution in the end and not just a great idea. Also, most of the investments happen with strong introductions.

One has to constantly build their reputation and network to create an imprint on the minds of the investors.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 29

Lookup

4ps B&m

What according to you is the key thing that investors are looking for in a startup and its founder?

Great vision, brilliant product and excellent team.

You dropped out of college in India to pursue your dreams, but it was your stint at MIT in the US that helped you catch the attention of Biz Stone. Tell us more about your initial years and the most important lessons.

“Some years ago – never mind how long precisely... nothing particular interested me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

This (modified) opening quote from Melville’s Moby Dick perfectly captured my state of mind when I ventured out as an entrepreneur to avoid the job-seeking rat race but pursue something new. I’ve always wanted to become an entrepreneur.

I was born and raised in a small town called Thrissur in Kerala. I had been fascinated by electronics from a young

age but it was not until I turned 12 that I saw a computer in a science exhibition!

To be able to afford one at the time was close to impossible. My father proposed a challenge – if I scored over 80% in my forthcoming exams, he would buy me one. Academia was not one of my strong suits, but this was an exciting dare and I managed to score a distinction. My fascination with computers and internet began on the Pentium III home computer and 56 kbps modem with internet access.

I started creating websites for local stores, and was hungry to learn and create. That was my driving spirit. The internet opened my mind to a whole new world and I was instantly hooked. I have always enjoyed wide-open pursuits where I can create without any constraints. As a 16 year old boy in high school, I sourced and sold tech magazines and CDs to fund my pocket money, while other kids were busy saving Super Mario’s girlfriend!

I founded Swades Solutions, an offshore Web design/SEO firm, in 2005.

However, I did not take it forward in order

to pursue a bigger dream. From the confidence of my first venture, I moved onto chasing bigger dreams. I also launched an e-commerce/deal website, Just4sale.in, during my high school summer vacation before I got admission for college. The website failed because of the lack of team support. Failure did not disappoint me so I never stopped experimenting. I later decided to study engineering to source a team for my next idea. At the age of 21, after joining Kannur University to study Computer science, I dropped out and co-founded Innoz along with 3 friends – Hisam, Ashwin and Abhinav. We started a service called SmsGYAN as our final year project. It instantly became a raving success inside our college campus which soon spread to other parts of the state and country. Internet penetration is still low in India, and the number of mobile phones have overtaken laptops and PCs. This fact motivated us to build a cost effective platform on mobiles for instant information. Everybody – irrespective of age, location or vocation – has questions to

Ravindran’s app SMSGYAN at one point of time became the world’s largest offline search medium, with over 130 million users

30 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

ask, be it simple or complex. Not everyone with a query has access to the internet to get the answer. Imagine being able to get all the information you ever needed by just sending an SMS! SmsGYAN did just that.

When the service started going viral, we decided to build a company around it and named it Innoz (coined shortly for innovation). SmsGYAN later became the world’s largest offline search engine allowing its 130 million users to text any question and get answers immediately, without the need for internet on their mobile phones! The product boomed in a few years which was followed by partnerships with every telecommunications provider in India, and it soon came preloaded on devices. We were profitable from day one. We monetised it through cellular subscription, one rupee per query, and developed a subscriptions model of 30 rupees per month.

Then came Android. When low-end Android phones hit the market, smartphone penetration skyrocketed. In September of this year, India was named the fourth largest smartphone market, with 111 million connected devices. Accepting that the market had moved on, and knowing that me and my team had built a product worth salvaging, we looked to emerging markets abroad. Other countries reached out to us for the service we built, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia where internet usage as well as the number of smartphone users was much lower in comparison to India. As a result of this demand, we decided to give away the source code for free via www.offlineinternet.org Thereafter, in 2013, I started my next venture named Quest which was targeted at the US market and raised seed funding from 500 start-ups and other angel investors. Quest was a Q&A app with inbuilt geo-tagging to help users find others nearby who can answer questions. I built it with a friend Mohammed Hisamuddin – one of my college mates who co-founded Innoz, the startup behind the SMSGyan app. Unfortunately, Quest was not able to gain significant market share in the US, where there are a few players in this space like Jelly, Quora, etc.

Lookup was the successor. It was born from the usage pattern that we observed while working on Quest. A lot of the queries on Quest were related to local businesses. Some even got responses from those running the outlets.

I launched Lookup in 2015 and positioned it as an instant messaging app that connects users with local businesses. It allows retailers to respond instantly and never miss a query or a potential sale. It guarantees the user a response within 5 minutes and allows them to find prices and availability of products or services, book appointments, or make reservations at restaurants in one’s locality.

Biz Stone and I knew one another on a need-to-know basis, as my previous startup Innoz had a partnership with

The biggest learning I got from my mentor Kris Gopalakrishnan (Infy founder) has been humility; that is how I wish to be Twitter. What started off as a general exchange of ideas on the Indian market and its potential, turned into an investment discussion on Lookup. He also introduced me to Twitter’s other founder, Jack Dorsey, who I turned to for advice.

Facebook also has introduced chatbots.

Is it going to help Lookup spread its reach faster?

We are going to launch a Lookup bot inside Facebook shortly. Previously, we launched Lookup inside Twitter called Lookuplite.

What are your plans for Lookup for the future? Where do you see it 5 years from now?

Our future plan is to have 1 million local businesses and 3 million users by 2017 on

our platform.

India has over 40 million small urban businesses with less than 10 employees each. These include everything from coffee shops and groceries to small restaurants.

Traditional organized retail never really got big in India, our bet is that mobile commerce will leapfrog it and work with mom and pop stores. About 95% of these small merchant businesses (SMBs) do not have a good digital presence.

The future of Lookup would be to bring all the SMB’s online and enable them to do commerce over chat, which we believe is the simplest platform that everyone understands. We want Lookup to become one among the top five apps in India in the next five years.

You are a big soccer fan and it seems that the world of business is not much different from that of soccer. Recently, Leicester City won the Premier League.

The odds of Leicester winning at the beginning of the season were 5000/1 and yet the David managed to beat the Goliath. Is Lookup also the David of hyperlocal business ready to take on the Goliath and bring about a disruption!

There is over $10 billion invested in all ecommerce companies in India so far. The odds of Lookup beating these well-funded companies is tough. However, we believe our model is very innovative, and nothing is impossible. Leicester City is definitely an inspiration.

As a young founder, what is your best advice to the budding entrepreneurs?

Take chances when you are young, tell stories when you are old.

A leader you look up to?

By far, my mentor and role model has been Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the cofounders of Infosys. The biggest learning I got from him was humility. No matter how big and far you get, maintain the simplicity in your life. In other words, work more, worry less. Despite being one of the richest Indians in the world, he leads a simple life and is the humblest of all people. That is how I want to define my life as well.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 31

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

...continued from page 27

Paytm Paytm finds its second mention in this listing, due to its original claim to fame, in other words, due to the fact that in the listings of e-commerce companies recognised and admired in the financial sector, Paytm is considered amongst the leaders. The first mention of Paytm in this listing occurs a couple of pages earlier, in the listing of e-commerce companies recognised for their significant contributions in the e-tailing space. Without doubt, to be considered in one category itself is commendable, and to be considered in two, is a mark of ubiquity.

Policybazaar PolicyBazaar is an Indian online life insurance and general insurance comparison portal headquartered in Gururgram, India, co-founded

by Yashish Dahiya in 2008. It has changed the insurance landscape of India bringing in revolutionary changes and considerable growth in the insurance sector in India. Apart from Info Edge (India), companies like Intel Capital, Tiger Global Management, Inventus Capital Partners and Ribbit Capital have invested in PolicyBazaar.com over multiple rounds of funding, proving the admiration for the firm.

PayU Money India PayU India is the flagship company of Naspers group, which is a $25 billion internet and media conglomerate listed on London and Johannesburg stock exchanges respectively. PayU provides state-of-the-art payment gateway solutions to online businesses through its cutting-edge and award winning technology.

PayU India serves more than 4000 merchants including leading ecommerce companies like Goibibo, Rechargeitnow, Jabong, Snapdeal, Bookmyshow, Ferns n Petals, Tradus, Travelyaari, Zomato Groupon India etc.

Fitness, Beauty & Wellness VLCC Online Guided by the motto of ‘Transforming Lives’, the VLCC Group has ignited the spark of self-transformation for countless lives providing wellness for life. Founded by Ms. Vandana Luthra in 1989 as a beauty and slimming services centre, the company presently operates in 319 locations across 146 cities with a presence in 11 countries.

It is strengthened by over 4,000 employees. VLCC Online is the etail channel of delivery for both products and services. VLCC offers products and programs for scientific weight loss solutions and therapeutic approach to beauty treatments. As of today, it is one of the most admired e-brands available in the specific genre.

32 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Roposo Roposo is one of the biggest fashion social networks to search for amazing products and share posts. It gives customers opportunity to express their style, follow celebrities and trendsetters. Founded by Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena and Kaushal Shubhank (all IIT alumni), Roposo is a catchword which means relevant. This youth brand is curating fashion, organized for specific (relevant) requirements.

Customers can find what they need with discount alerts and best deals. Roposo has indubitably claimed leadership as a fashion search engine segment.

ShaStore ShaStore is an online channel of Shahnaz Herbals Inc., the internationally acclaimed brand for organic beauty care products. As is the brand’s niche, the products are based on Ayurveda, combining ancient traditions with the latest scientific techniques.

The largest herbal chain of its kind in the world has a global network of salons, spas, shops, beauty training academies and has patents of many formulations for beauty and health care products. Shahnaz Husain, the legendary CEO and Padma Shri awardee, has ensured the iconic status of the brand.

Food, Restaurant Bookings Zomato Zomato was earlier known as Foodiebay, conceptualized in the cafeteria of Bain & Company. Zomato is a restaurant search and discovery service founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. It currently operates in 23 countries, including India, Australia and the United States. It also provides user reviews and ratings. With dedicated engagement and passionate management, the site is enabling restaurants to focus on food quality, and customers to choose from the best offers.

Faasos

Easy Khaana

Faasos is an Indian “food on demand” online portal incorporated in 2011 by Jaydeep Barman (INSEAD alum) and Kallol Banerjee. Faasos operates in the 17 largest cities in India taking orders via its mobile app. Launched in 2014, it is the only vertically integrated food business in India. Faasos receives 10,000 orders a day across India and has recorded a growth rate of 20-25 per cent month-on-month – 800,000 downloads with 200,000 processed orders through its mobile app.

Easy Khaana, founded by Aayush Anand, is one of the leading corporate food providers in Delhi NCR. The brand is focused on making food not just affordable and convenient but also fresh and delicious. This online food portal delivers home-cooked food on the table. Professionally packaged meal boxes for delivery are made available for events or trainings. As a corporate caterer, this corporate food curator caters to the discerning consumer, one who prefers homecooked food than off the shelf.

Swiggy “We are all about food” is the philosophy of Swiggy, a food ordering and delivery company based out of Bangalore. It was inspired by the thought of providing a comprehensive food ordering and delivery platform from the best restaurants in the vicinity catering to the urban customers. Swiggy has its own exclusive fleet of delivery personnel to pickup orders from restaurants and deliver it to customers.

Grocery, Fruits & Vegetables BigBasket bigbasket.com, founded by Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh and others in 2011, is India’s largest online food and grocery store. The megastore has at its disposal over 18,000 products to choose from and more than 1000 brands in its catalogue. Product categories vary from fruits and vegetables, rice and dals, spices and seasonings to packaged products, beverages, personal care products, and meat products.

Products are handpicked to help users get the best quality at an affordable prices. Orders are delivered at the doorstep, anywhere in the cities where bigbasket.com operates.

Godrej Nature’s Basket Nature’s Basket is the Godrej Group’s answer to e-tailing Zopper portals. Growing with pace in the segment, it is today Zopper is an online hyperlocal India’s preferred retail destination for quality food marketplace helping consumers from across the globe. Nature’s Basket has scaled find products and check offline prices. into a 36-store chain of premium utility outlets Founded in 2010 by Surjendu Kuila and strategically located at prime locations in Mumbai, Neeraj Jain, Zopper was the first mover in Delhi/NCR, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Users can purchase all products online on its website for services at its specific category, featuring over doorstep. Nature’s Basket is supported by an expert 15000+ stores in the portal. team of food experts who search for the best and newest food products from around the globe. ...continued on page 36

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 33

KAARYAH

4ps B&m

one startup even ratan tata couldn’t resist KAARYAH has rewritten the stylebook on women’s wear; 4Ps B&M converses with Nidhi Agarwal, founder and CEO, KAARYAH, to find out how it’s all progressing 34 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

H

ow did you come up with KAARYAH? KAARYAH was the outcome of not being able to find a basic white shirt that fit well when I spilled some coffee on myself just before a meeting. This was followed by a survey to ascertain if other women faced similar problems. Interestingly enough, it indicated that most Indian women faced a problem finding western clothes with the right fit. KAARYAH then studied ~1,500 women with varied body shapes to come up with a proprietary 18 size-set that no other brand offers even internationally.

The brand is now focused on offering wardrobe solutions that help discover not just the best possible fit but also what flatters different body types.

Ratan Tata has invested in your brand.

How difficult was it convincing him?

What was that one thing which caught his eye and helped you clinch the deal?

Getting investments from Mr. Ratan Tata was the first and perhaps one of the greatest milestones for KAARYAH. It was not just about the money but the validation that came with it.

Having him onboard is a huge validation of KAARYAH’s concept and that it’s a genuinely good business.

How has your journey been as an entrepreneur? What are the lessons?

Being an entrepreneur has taught me a lot about how things work outside of a Fortune 100 company (I have earlier worked with Honeywell, Bain, Airtel, KPMG before starting KAARYAH) and also a great deal about myself. Among other things, I learnt that patience and persistence must go hand in hand. While persistence will demand you remain relentless and tunnel-visioned, patience will demand empathy and time. It’s the ability to apply persistence to build momentum and show patience to truly enable your environment that perhaps leads to a situation that is truly your dream.

It’s said the first impression is the last

impression. How important are clothes in creating first impressions especially in the work place?

One’s clothes are a significant representation of who they are as people. Clothes are also perhaps the best way to express how you’re feeling on a certain day. Several studies time and again have indicated that the way you look has much to do with how you feel within, which also brings us to believe that it’s important to dress well.

As far as dressing for office goes, I believe one must dress for the role they have/ aspire for as your clothes greatly impact people’s perception of you. So if clothing is such a crucial factor, it must by all means be used to one’s advantage.

What makes KAARYAH different from the other apparel brands?

KAARYAH offers 18 size options as opposed to other brands offering a maximum of 6 or 11 sizes. At KAARYAH women not only find their ‘Perfect Fit’ but also highly personalized wardrobe solutions. Our business model allows us to improvise and personalize like no other apparel brand can promise to. Our innovative products apart from offering the ‘Best Possible FIT’ also come with unique problem solvers that are exclusive to KAARYAH. We have the largest catalogue in the world for women’s shirts and trousers and also the highest refresh rate with 250-300 new designs introduced every month. Our return for fit is lower than the industry average internationally.

Mohandas Pai has also invested in your

We have the largest catalogue in the world for women’s shirts and trousers and also have the highest refresh rate

brand. What is it that investors look for primarily in a startup?

I think the first thing that any investor looks for is viability of the business idea itself. So if a business idea is promising enough and is likely to make profit, it will find the right investor sooner than later.

The second factor I would imagine is trust in the entrepreneur and his/her team running the business. If these two factors are in place, things in all probability will work out in favor of both.

As a new online apparel brand what were the challenges you faced?

I think the two major challenges we faced were the same as any other start-up, i.e. securing funds and acquiring the right team to run the show. As an apparel brand, KAARYAH begun to get noticed quite in the early days due to a clear “product market fit” and unmatched “innovation”. Infusing the voice and feedback of customers in our products is what makes us stand out from our competitors and by virtue of this KAARYAH has carved out its own userbase/target group.

What has been your most successful entrepreneurial moment?

I think any time my family, friends and team come back and tell me that they are proud of me and they care for what I am doing, I feel like I am really lucky. From an entrepreneur’s point of view, isn’t it the largest gratification to have even one person believe you and your idea and stand in support of it?

All along this journey, who has been your pillar of support?

My parents! They have never told me what to do or held me back from doing what I have wanted to. They have truly enabled me in every way imaginable and only stood guard of my health & happiness.

KAARYAH today stands on the strength of their shoulders, which have stood in support during the toughest financial, emotional and physical times, not just for me but even for my team, and unconditionally so.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 35

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

...continued from page 33

Grofers Orange T-shirt wearing delivery boys, a unique feature that Grofers has made ever present in the modern day metropolis. Grofers is a local mobile e-commerce platform that is transforming the shopping experience for the common man by providing the first to last mile delivery service to its e-commerce clients (shops, basically). An online app is available where registered users can order household items from the listed shops to be delivered to their doorstep, quickly. The online portal offers a wide range of groceries, fruits and vegetables, even including cosmetics, electronics, bakery items, flowers and others.

Reliance Fresh Direct Reliance Fresh Direct is the Mukesh Ambani group’s online foray into providing all household items available at 1691 Reliance Fresh outlets across the country. These stores sell fresh fruits, vegetables, staples, groceries, fresh juice, bars and dairy products. The brand is working on its “farm-to-fork” theory, sourcing fresh goods from farmers and selling directly to the consumers, removing middlemen out of the way. Given the backing of the Reliance group, this online brand is only going from strength to strength and is expected to maintain its massive leadership in the coming years.

Healthcare & Pharmacy

HealthKart HealthKart, a venture of Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd. is an online portal for dietary supplements and allied health devices in India initiated by Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari in 2011. It is an online facility platform for people interested in health and fitness products. From protein supplements to vitamins, from quality brands to generics, all are available at value prices. Its app HealthKartPlus, a generic medicine search engine application, helps users know about medicines better. Its app witnessed over 500,000 astonishing downloads within a few weeks of launching. HealthKart is one of the few true blue health portals that has seen its user base growing week after week.

NetMeds NetMeds - India’s most convenient online pharmacy is an online pharmacy based in Chennai, India. Netmeds provides online ordering and mail delivery of prescription and non-prescription medications. Pradeep Dadha Group of Companies announced the establishment of Netmeds.com in 2015. MAPE Advisory Group, a financial services firm, is funding the venture as an investor in the privately owned pharmacy.

Online Pharmacy store is producer of a wide range of prescription medicines and other health products available all across India.

Customers place their orders online to receive delivery to their homes. Indian consumers had no choice but to travel sometimes long distances to buy their medications and to wait in queues at pharmacies to make their purchases.

Netmeds.com continues a legacy of 100 years of success in the pharmaceutical industry.

36 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Portea Bangalore based serial entrepreneurs K Ganesh and his wife Meena Ganesh started Portea, a site which facilitates doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, who have met rigorous quality standards. As a result of using Portea’s services, patients are able to stay in their homes longer, save money, and have peace of mind. Portea Medical delivers quality care with compassion. It brings world class medical care into patients’ homes and aims to make primary healthcare not only more accessible, but also more affordable and accountable to patients’ needs. Read the co-founders’ interview in this issue.

1mg (HealhKart Plus) Segmenting into 1 of the most ignored and niche segment in Indian market HealthCare 1mg- App HealthKartPlus App- a generic medicine search engine application that helps users to know about medicines better. Mapping health awareness with online presence of facilities on the go App has gained huge response in short run. Iconic App has seen over 500000 astonishing downloads as on April 27, 2016. Its parent company HealthKart is a venture of Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd. is an online portal for Dietary supplements and allied health devices in India initiated by Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari in 2011.

Practo Practo, founded in 2008 by Shashank ND & Abhinav Lal, helps patients registered on the health portal to access and get appointments with the best doctors around their locality.

The Practo app provides each user with an intelligent healthcare account for the entire family that securely stores all their healthcare data, enabling ease in future documentation. Further, the app allows patients to make informed decisions with respect to their health needs, so that they can understand the relative specialisations of doctors, hospitals and other medical outlets, as well as respective pricing.

Voylla Voylla an online portal for designer apparels was founded by Vishwas Shringi, in the year 2011. Voylla started as a designer apparel selling portal, and later diversified into a full-fledged e-shop that provides jewelry and accessories from designers across India to customers worldwide.

Voylla claims to have more than 35,000 unique designs and adds 1000 new designs every week to their collection across various jewelry categories, including fashion and silver jewelry.

Tanishq

CaratLane A jewellery retailer Mithun Sacheti joined hands with an IT entrepreneur Srinivasa Gopalan to form Lister Technologies, which subsequently formed Carat Lane in 2008. CaratLane.com is one of India’s leading e-commerce portals in the gems and jewellery segment and one of the most visible online brands in the country. Carat Lane’s online inventory includes diamond jewellery and Gold ornaments (including Gold coins); the company has several thousand vendors who supply gems on request. With a network of over 4000 global vendors, Carat Lane offers its featured and showcased products to customers in more than 150+ cities and towns across the length & breadth of India.

BlueStone Established in 2011, BlueStone is one of India’s fastest growing and leading online jewellery destinations that showcases high quality fine jewellery with strikingly exquisite designs. The online luxury brand aims at revolutionizing real jewellery and lifestyle scenario in India with a firm focus on craftsmanship, quality and user experience, building a large family of loyal consumers in India and abroad. The brand houses more than 4000 unique designs for customers to choose from, all these designs are crafted to perfection with utmost care giving customers the flexibility to customize the product’s gold purity and colour or diamond clarity to suit their needs. In-house awardwinning design teams that pay great attention to detail are its USPs.

Pioneering the concept of branded jewellery and ornaments in India, Tanishq from the Tata Group is a prominent jewellery brand in the country, which has used the online mode to replicate the values that it stands for. Tanishq’s online sales channel brings a fresh perspective to the skillful craftsmanship of each meticulously hand-woven creation, with a strong appeal for women.

Belonging to the Tata stable, the biggest advantage for Tanishq has been the trust factor that customers associate with it.

21diamonds 21Diamonds’ unique business model, based on innovation and customization has made it one of the biggest online jewelers operating in India. The luxury diamond brand’s approach is based on quality and design; it provides superlative jewellery collections and also gives opportunities to the customer to create unique, fully customizable pieces. This concept has allowed 21Diamonds to expand internationally at a fast pace and by virtue of that, they currently operate in 13 countries worldwide. India has seen customers adopting the products of 21Diamonds with ease, leading to its inclusion in this list of most admired brands.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 37

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

Logistics

GoJavas GoJavas was founded in 2013 by Vijay Ghadge, with the vision to become the forerunner in providing reliable, time-bound logistics and supply-chain solutions to business partners.

Key growth differentiators of GoJavas are its network reach, state of the art technology platform and hands-on approach for customer service making them one of the fastest growing ecommerce logistic companies in India. Their customer focus has helped them in delivering exceptional value to clients and has made them the logistics partner of choice for the most trusted brands in India, making its inclusion into this list a no-brainer.

Online Directory

EKART EKART is the brand name for Instakart Services Private Limited, a Flipkart Group company, that provides end-to-end logistics and supply chain solutions including omnichannel warehousing, transportation, forward delivery service, return pick-up service, value-added services such as document collection and KYC for ecommerce marketplaces, brands, sellers in the B2B, B2C and C2C space. EKART is a consumer courier service available online. This enables the consumer to book a door-step pick-up online for courier at a desired time slot. Ekart courier travels via reliable and traceable supply chains right from warehouse to customers’ door-step, with a real-time track and trace facility.

Parcelled Parcelled is the new way to courier stuff sitting at your home. Parcelled doesn’t have any

outlets or branches because they don’t want customers to go out of their house to ship anything. Parcelled is based on the concept of convenience and is serving customers at varied places. Parcelled provides their clients a very simple and easy way to send couriers from their home with the customized packages suitable to each pocket. Parcelled delivers goods pan India covering up to 20,000 pincodes. While such a facility was previously available to commercial customers, Parcelled is the first mover in the home segment.

JustDial Founded by V S S Mani in 1996, JustDial is a ‘one stop shop’ online directors where surfers are assisted with day-to-day and exclusive planning and purchasing activities.

The classified listing brand provides pan-India search services via the Phone, Web, Mobile and SMS and has perhaps the strongest hold on local business information pan India, due to their business mapping efforts that have spanned over a decade. JustDial services have also been extended to making orders and reservations for leisure, medical, financial, travel and domestic purposes. ...continued on page 42

38 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

4ps B&m

Jetsetgo

FILL IT! SHUT IT! JETSETGO IT!

From BBC to Huffington Post, global media has applauded the gumption of Kanika Tekriwal, founder JetSetGo (India’s first online marketplace for chartering jets and copters), who beat cancer in her 20s and made it to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2016; 4Ps B&M catches up with her for an insightful interview

C

hartering a private jet is now as easy as booking a cab, thanks to this very unique initiative.

Initially, how did you come upon this idea?

I’ve been working in the business aviation industry since the age of 17 and have garnered experience in both India and UK. Thoughts that come to one’s mind when imagining flying in a private jet are probably mixed – ranging from an uber luxury mode of travel to one available at the beck and call of only the rich or the ultra-rich.

Think harder and one would imagine this as a means of travel that enhances agility and efficiency for corporates in an ever complex world. Not many would appreciate the important role it plays in connecting locations that are still not served

or economical to do so by commercial airlines. We saw the darker and more difficult side to the general aviation business in India. Issues ranged from: • Customer frustration dealing with charter brokers who provide limited choice or transparency and exploited price arbitrage opportunities based on customer needs.

• Inefficient pricing models forcibly used by operators due to inadequate demand aggregation options.

• Inadequate or sub-standard level of ground infrastructure and quality of service further compromising the customer experience.

• Weak supply chain for services and parts especially for legacy aircraft owners increasing operating costs and scheduling down-time.

• Cumbersome trip planning and significant regulatory compliance costs for operators.

JetSetGo was conceptualized to be an exciting new venture that aims to revolutionize the private aviation business in India by redefining a customer’s charter experience through an end to end control of the value chain with collaborative partnerships and technology at its core.

You faced a lot of resistance from family when you started out on this journey.

How did you manage during those difficult initial years?

I just kept going.

What are the reasons people charter a private jet for?

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 39

Jetsetgo

4ps B&m

There are two types of customers JetSetGo caters to: the business traveller and the leisure traveller. Both of these consist of domestic and international clientele. The international traveller is accustomed to using private jets world over and comes with requirements which could range from a particular type of caviar being served on board to the thread count of the bed sheets – our business is to turn every wish into a command. The domestic traveller understands the ground reality in India and definitely comes with lesser requirements, at the same time his expectations are increasing everyday.

Those using private jets for business generally do so to travel to airports not being serviced by commercial airlines in India today or to save time or even a combination of both. We often see cases wherein business people who are traveling with three or four colleagues in business class, say, “Why wouldn’t we fly private for close to the same price?”

Over and above which, it saves on airport time, plus the aircraft are business enabled with sat-phones and Wi-Fi keeping the discerning business traveller ever connected. The business traveller’s priority is flexibility; so, if a customer calls five minutes ahead of departure and says reschedule departure to tomorrow – we have to make it happen.

Travel advisors report that the number of affluent travelers between the ages of 40 and 55 has skyrocketed. Not only that, more well-off families in their 30s and 40s are planning vacations and adventure trips with their young children.

The reason: they love to travel and want their children to experience the world. At JetSetGo, we have seen this trend take over where leisure travellers use private jets to travel to off-beat locations with the desire for never tried before experiences only increasing.

The leisure traveller likes to be pampered and spoiled with fine dining, superior service and his choice of entertainment. At JetSetGo, our USP is reimagining private aviation; so we convert a private jet ride to a travellers’ holiday destination into an experience by itself. Since leisure travel-

40 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

lers involve travellers of all ages, special care is taken to ensure there is something for everyone.

The leisure traveller loves unique experiences – for example, we recently hosted an all out bachelor party on a private jet for a customer. On another instance, we hosted a little birthday party for young kids at a helipad along with joy-rides on a helicopter.

Our customers, who range from the likes of the Ferragamo family to CEOs of fortune 500 companies to billionaires, love the fact that post a phone call, all their travel requirements are taken care of by us, along with which the brand delivers an unsaid assurance of true luxury, quality, comfort and safety.

Our biggest learning has been that in the world of luxury today, experience and perception are far more important than utility. Every customer using a private jet, irrespective of the purpose, likes the image that comes along with it – which simply reads rich and busy.

The future of the industry is all about bespoke, exclusive, discreet experiences.

The customers exist and so does an active market – it’s all about delivering what they want. In the world of private jets – the sky is literally the limit.

You have introduced a very novel concept of JetSteals, which seems to be completely changing the face of private air travel.

Can you tell us something more about it?

JetSteals is a program that provides travelers seats on private jets for domestic trips, with prices ranging from Rs. 4,600 to Rs.

Every moment during the past five years has been very important; those I value most are the hardest ones, which taught me to stay strong

Tekriwal is ensuring that business and leisure travellers need not stay cloistered at international airports (like the one featured above) or confined to the current air travel standards.

Through JetSetGo, Tekriwal is providing worldclass luxury and business travel at prices and standards never before seen in India

45,000. Our Idea is to ensure that people with diverse financial background should have the option to travel by private jets.

I strongly believe that we have to open the market up to a bigger market size and Jetsteals is a step towards that.

The price for individual seats on a lower range private jet model like a Beechcraft 200 would be Rs. 4,600, mid range private jets like the Hawker would be approximately Rs.20,000 and for the higher range models like the Falcon or the Challenger, the price range could go up to Rs. 45,000.

You have been featured in BBC’s list of 100 Most Inspiring Women in the World and Forbes 30 Under 30 list. What have been the most treasured moments of this immensely successful journey?

Every moment during the past five years has been very important to me. Those I value most are the hardest ones, which taught me how to stay strong, believe in my dreams and keep going. Some treasured memories are of signing my first contract with a customer, receiving a message at 0200 that the patient we flew in on air ambulance is now fighting fit, the owner of one of the countries largest corporate houses telling me that I am his clone and will revolutionize the industry – it’s been a very, very beautiful journey, which I wouldn’t change for any thing in the world.

It takes immense grit and courage to stay positive and keep moving ahead. In spite of being diagnosed with cancer and despite a lot of family pressure, you have made it big. Who or what is it that kept you motivated ?

In fact, what motivates me largely is the fact that the power to change the world lies within me – nothing will stop me from doing so.

JetSetgo is not just making luxury air travel more accessible but it’s also making a difference in the society. Tell us more about the air ambulance service you have launched.

JetSetGo launched an air ambulance service to offer better emergency services and help improve healthcare access, even in remote areas of the country, with the objective of increasing the odds for saving lives. JetSetGo quickly targets the right aircraft or helicopter and hospital at the right location proximity, minimizing the cost and time for transit from Point A to Point B. JetSetgo is backed by cricketer Yuvraj Singh and recently even tied up with Droom. Even today, women entrepreneurs find it difficult to get funding. Did you face similar challenges?

Not at all. It took us all of 40 minutes to close our first round.

Apart from steering a very successful

startup, you are also a pro at steering a plane. How did you get interested in flying? What are your other hobbies ?

Flying came naturally to me – some things just happen I guess. As for my other hobbies, I also love reading, painting and of course travelling.

You are surely an inspiration to many but who inspires you?

Undoubtedly, my mother.

Your biggest learning as an entrepreneur and your advice to budding entrepreneurs of today?

Use every “No” as a stepping stone to success and turn every “No” into a “Yes” through your journey.

Your message to the numerous girls out there who may have great dreams but do not have the courage to pursue them?

Successful people do not do different things but they do the things differently.

Step up – Step out!

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 41

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

...continued from page 38

UrbanClap UrbanClap is an app-based service marketplace that connects customers to service professionals. Founded in 2014 by Raghav Chandra, Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, it has raised $37 million till date in funding from Bessemer Venture Partner, Accel Partners, SAIF Partners, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal), and Ratan Tata.

UrbanClap acquired HandyHome, a Mumbaibased after sales service platform in January 2016. UrbanClap is redefining the facility classified segment in India by offering a plethora of services, previously unavailable to the home consumer.

Lookup Lookup is a free and secure messaging app that gives shopper’s access to anything on demand from local shops and provides businesses the opportunity to grow. Lookup facilitates users to deliver products, make bookings and more. Lookup hyperlinks every local store in the nearby vicinity with a simple chat app which gives user synchronous connection to the vendors on the platform. With a one million strong customer base, Lookup is looking up!

AskMeBazaar Although the latter half of 2016 saw the AskMe brand closing down due to operational issues, the fact is that AskMeBazaar (owned by Getit Infoservices Private Limited) still retains its recall and admiration amongst its consumers and other stakeholders. AskMeBazaar did make an earnest effort to recreate the great Indian shopping experience online. Known for its simple, easy to use buying process, the online retailer’s presence will be missed in the Indian marketplace.

Realty

99 Acres 99 Acres is an Info Edge company which is one of the first and leading property sites in India. The real estate major has an in-depth understanding of the Indian consumer internet domain and widespread network of dealers and properties across India. With years of experience in the domain, strong cash flow generation and a diversified business portfolio, 99 Acres is one of the very few profitable pure play internet companies in the country. 99acres.com is now considered India’s largest property marketplace covering almost all the major cities and a large number of agents and developers. Backed by world-class processes, 99 Acres is here to stay.

42 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

NestAway Nestaway, a start-up based out of Bangalore, is India’s fastest growing “Home Rental Network” which provides better rental solutions via the online mode. The brand helps you find, book & move in to a rental home of choice across Indian cities - all from within their app.

NestAway also helps subscribers to request for services, from movers of items to home enginners, from tap leakage repairmen to door-locksmiths... It also accommodates all pocket sizes giving options for all budgets, with customized requirement for a bed, a room or an entire house. ...continued on page 46

4ps B&m meritnation

THE COLLABORATIVE UNIVERSE

One of the first movers in the online knowledge space for school children, meritnation’s co-founder Pavan Chauhan shares his remarkable journey with 4Ps B&M

H

ow did the idea of an online education company come into your mind?

Our foray into the online education space coincided with a time when the education landscape in India was changing rapidly. Ritesh and I worked for ten years in a successful brick and mortar educational set-up before we started to feel restricted by the potential of reaching out to students only through offline centers.

As teachers and counselors, having been in

this line for so many years, we understood the limitations of the classroom based delivery method which catered to a group of students as a whole rather than addressing their individual needs.

We believed that with accurate problem assessment, an average student can be turned into a self motivated and successful learner. With this in mind, we started scanning the education landscape and found that the online K-12 segment was largely untapped and could be a great

opportunity for us business wise and of course, matched our calling in life. So in 2009, we launched the learning solutions portal meritnation.com and leveraged technology to identify and understand each student’s specific requirements and provide them with customized content.

Are online courses soon going to make textbooks obsolete?

There are different types of learners. Some like to read and understand the concept,

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 43

meritnation 4ps B&m

others like to watch and listen, while there is another category that likes to learn through demonstrations and animations.

Books are vital to the learning process but they alone cannot cater to all these types of learners. Virtual education content is increasingly becoming more effective and intelligent and is filling this gap effectively.

Today, software is even capable of adapting to the ways in which individual students are acquiring information. The online medium of learning is definitely a far more enriching, engaging and flexible medium.

It is even more effective with respect to time and money.

Further, because these online courses are developed by experts in the field and regularly updated, they never run the risk of becoming outdated or obsolete. Both the self study and live class courses at meritnation have been specially designed by experts keeping in mind student attention spans and their unique motivations, to make learning a fun and engaging experience for them.

Yet, another factor that is making the online medium an increasingly preferred mode of learning for students is the convenience of having everything that they need to study – all notes, test papers and study material – readily organized, just a click away.

Is tech-based learning more effective than the traditional form of learning?

Tech-based learning helps you to assess and analyze your problem areas far more effectively and accurately. For example, meritnation has an assessment tool that accurately points out the exact level at which the student is facing a problem in understanding the concept. It provides personalised reports to students after every test which highlight their strengths, weaknesses & time taken across various topics. This allows the students to focus on eliminating their weaknesses instead of studying all topics.

Technology also helps to bring in social learning and gamification elements into the teaching-learning process making it more effective and fun.

44 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Tell us something about the model that meritnation follows? meritnation aims at inculcating a 360 degree, year long, concept building approach towards studies, using live interactive classes and video tutorials to make the student understand a topic thoroughly.

We have a freemium model where students get to sample free NCERT and popular textbook solutions and get their doubts resolved by our panel of subject matter experts through our hugely popular Ask & Answer forum. We have over 16 lakh questions and 40 lakh answers in the forum. Demo video tutorials, live classes, tests, reports etc are also made accessible

Each chapter goes through a thorough quality check before being synced to the live database and provided to the students.

for the students to sample the website. To gain complete access to all the resources, however, one has to go for an annual paid subscription. The content is available for students studying in the CBSE, ICSE/ISC, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu Boards.

meritnation is not just about online tutorials but it’s also about a lot of fun and interaction with fellow students. Do these things impact learning?

At meritnation, we believe in completely debunking the myth that learning has to be a serious, one-sided affair. Learning is a pretty complex process, and when you analyse the process of learning, concentration stands out as a major criteria for a better understanding of the concept, and remembering it long enough to apply it in daily life. If a topic is explained through an interesting video, the learner is less likely to lose focus and is more likely to remember the concept because of the application of the concept shown in the video. meritnation does not want learners to worry about or waste time trying to collate study material, reference books, revision notes etc. They can easily find all of these on the website and can connect with not only experts for academic doubts or queries, but can also chat with their friends on our social pages. Our school pages help connect students across school and allow them to create study groups, download and upload important class work, notes, test papers etc with each other.

When students study together and discuss a topic with their friends, they tend to remember the concept better, and we at meritnation have successfully introduced various social learning elements to make the learning process fun and engaging.

What is the process that goes behind uploading each lesson on the site?

Several specialized teams come together to make available the content that you see on the website. The content team breaks down chapters into concepts after referring to a vast repository of study material and then maps them into separate grade-subject combinations to age and class appropriate curriculum. New textbooks and chapters are also defined in the database and then tests, practice questions etc are added.

How have online platforms changed the face of education at school level?

The personalization of attention through technology by employing smart analytics and customised recommendations for the students is a major game-changer in the Indian education system today.

For example, in India, it is difficult for the teacher to track and focus on the progress of each child in a class of 45-60 students. By using e-learning platforms, teachers can now delegate the initial

If a topic is explained through an interesting video, the learner is less likely to lose focus and is more likely to remember

At meritnation, over 12,000 hours of live classes have been conducted till date, without compromising on the quality of the inputs of teaching

introduction of the topic to the website.

The students can watch the video and can discuss individual problems in the class the next day. More time thus, is allotted in understanding and solving individual problems of the students.

What are your plans for the future?

As the pioneers, the biggest challenge for us is to cater to and shape the aspirations of students and to make them more effective and efficient. When we started in 2009, there were no online education companies catering to the K-12 segment. Therefore, content was the focus.

We created world-class learning aids and used technology for providing customized education to students. Now that many companies are creating content and it is no longer a scarce resource, we are working to transition ourselves from a pure play content company to a service company.

We feel the tuition market in India is very inefficient and is extremely unorganised, especially for the junior classes.

We want to make studies more effective by removing inefficiencies of the physical tuition market. Overall, we see online tuitions replacing physical tuition in the upcoming few years and we want to be the harbinger for this change.

With competition heating up in the edtech sector, a unique branding strategy helps one stay ahead of competition.

What is meritnation’s USP? What makes meritnation unique is the fact that we have the largest repository of high end quality content spread across the top boards in the country. The learning resources by meritnation.com range from high-quality multimedia study material, tests, detailed reports, curriculum-aligned activities to specific online test packs for entrance exam requirements.

Gamified learning, attractive multimedia tutorials, live lectures taken by top notch IIT-ians as part of our faculty have attracted more than 1 crore users to the website. As far as technology is concerned, meritnation aims to remain ahead in the

By using e-learning platforms, teachers can delegate the initial introduction of the topic to the website, thus optimising the process

technology adoption curve, its content is available on popular mobile platforms like Android and IOS. We are investing in developing adaptive learning platforms that will be capable of customizing the content for each of its students.

A successful team is the secret behind any successful organisation. Your views on this. meritnation.com is a knowledge company.

Its biggest assets are people. A significant percent of our investment goes into people. The education sector is a highly research intensive sector and as a company, we are constantly investing in new research and development. We believe that having the right people (those with the right talent, skills & knowledge) in the right roles, with the right leaders is the key to an organization’s success.

We are lucky to continue to have a large number of people, who were with us when we started the site in 2009. These people have grown with the organization and now don larger responsibilities. On our way, many young, bright and committed people, who wanted to make a difference to the way education is imparted in this country, joined us and today we have a great team which is dramatically committed, passionate and is driven.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 45

E-COMMERCE

4ps B&m

...continued from page 42

PropTiger PropTiger.com an ambitious property website was founded by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma, and Prashant Agarwal in 2011. Having its headquarters in Gurugram, India, PropTiger is an independent online real estate advisor focusing on property advisory and loan advisory.

PropTiger.com has 18 offices in 9 different cities and lists 156,300 real estate properties across India. The company has more than 300 agents, and has sold 14,000+ houses valued over Rs 8,000 crores. It also assists potential clients with home loans and property registrations. PropTiger.com also allows registered users to visualize properties in 4D.

IndiaProperty Founded in 2006 by Ganesh Vasudevan with the objective of simplifying property buying and selling, IndiaProperty.com is India’s leading property portal. Property seekers discover properties online and make informed decisions through market information and makes property selling online simple, fast and easy through innovative marketing solutions. The housing portal maps property buyers with a well thought through interface for property search and instantly connect them with genuine sellers. This is supplemented with well-researched market reports, personalized and genuine advice, enabling easier & intelligent property buying decisions.

Housing.com Housing.com is a Mumbai-based online real estate search portal which allows customers to search for housing based on geography, number of rooms, and various other filters like vicinity. The company has mapped 6,000 brokers and serves 40 cities in India including Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi. Housing.com has its Data Science Lab in four cities: Bangalore, Gurgaon, Pune and Hyderabad. The portal was amongst the first online property websites to list properties submitted by users, either brokers or owners, on an interactive map. Search results are filtered by available rooms, lifestyle ratings, child friendliness index (CFI), and area-based pricing.

Services

Magicbricks Magicbricks is a common online platform for property buyers and sellers to locate properties of interest in India; user can source information about all property related issues. A division of Times Internet Limited, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. Magicbricks along with with IIM Bangalore launched the Housing Sentiment Index. Apart from buying, selling & renting properties in India, users have access to features like mobile searches for property, agent, builder and price trends and research support. MagicBricks also was among the first ones to come up with an interface for the mobile users to post their properties, upload property photos and videos, edit details, and refresh listings.

InMobi InMobi, earlier known as mKhoj, started as an SMS-based search platform founded by Naveen Tewari.

In 2007, the company switched to mobile advertising venturing into a more scalable business model.

InMobi is now a mobile advertising and discovery site with 17 offices across the globe. As one of the world’s largest independent ad networks, InMobi reaches almost a billion monthly active touchpoints, and 30,000+ publishers. MIT Technology Review’s 50 most disruptive companies of 2013 featured InMobi.

TimesJobs TimesJobs.com is an employment website from the Times Group operating in India and Middle East.

Times Jobs provides placement services by connecting job seekers with recruiters having a huge network of associates. The online job portal earns revenues with paid services for job seekers and sale of databases to companies. TimesJobs.com has differentiated its services in unique ways, including reaching out to the job seekers and advising them about improvements to their profile, and also ensuring that interesting jobs on other portals are also listed on TimesJobs.

46 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Naukri.com

Droom

ImagesBazaar

The brain child of Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Naukri. com is the brand of Info Edge (India). It was India’s first recognised and well-advertised job portal. It went public in November 2006. Conceived as a platform of jobseekers and hiring managers meet, the services went commercial in October 1997. On date, Naukri.com has a database of about 44 million registered job seekers and an average of about 11,000 resumes are added daily while about 130,000 resumes are modified daily. Naukri.com leads the online job market with 70% traffic share. The website has retained its leadership in the job market with innovative plans for the jobseekers.

Founded in April 2014 by Sandeep Aggarwal in Silicon Valley, Droom is India’s first & largest marketplace to buy and sell new and used automobiles and automobile services. Droom has taken a completely innovative and disruptive approach to build trust and pricing advantages for buyers to provide a better way of buying automobiles, as the existing customer experiences provide evidence of many pitfalls. Droom uses the technology driven marketplace approach, enabling transactions between buyers and sellers by bringing transparency, building trust, and mitigating information asymmetry leveraging technology and data. With Droom’s innovative approach buyers get a huge selection, low prices, and develop trust. Read the Droom founder’s interview in this issue.

ImagesBazaar was launched with a burning desire to create the world’s largest collection of creative images with Indian faces. It is a collective endeavour of thousands of passionate photographers led by renowned photographer Sandeep Maheshwari, who incidentally has even created a world record in professional photography. ImagesBazaar provides creative professionals all over the globe with an imperative resource for searching, purchasing and downloading Indian images. The uniqueness in imagesbazaar is the fact that it continues to document the varied facets of India, its people, culture, geography and related aspects. Truly, an admired company with an admirable focus.

CarDekho.com CarDekho.com is an auto portal based out of Jaipur, India founded in 2008 by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain. The portal provides complete freedom to the car-fanatics of India to watch, know and understand automobiles at their core in much greater detail and from a wide variety of viewpoints. It monetizes lifecycles of car owners via applications like CarBuddy. It also provides reviews, price information, on-road prices and comparison facilities for new cars, as well as classified listings for used cars. CarDekho has received the ‘Best Car Website 2012’, ‘Most Popular Website 2012’ and ‘Website of the Year India’ awards given twice in a row – in 2011 and 2012. You can add this listing to the website’s various sparkling accolades. ...continued on page 51

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 47

INTERVIEW

DEVITA SARAF

48 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

The Complete Woman

A Harvard alumnus, Devita Saraf started her own venture at the age of 24. Hobnobbing with the likes of Richard Branson, Devita loves fashion, takes time out to teach children at the local municipal schools, and even models for her own brand.

Rajita Chaudhuri caught up with the dynamic, iconoclastic and confident, young CEO of Vu TV to get an insight into her world and her views on the changing role of women in today’s corporate world

A

smart CEO of a smart TV brand. Has being a woman been difficult in the technology space considering the fact that worldwide there are very few female CEOs in this sector?

Not really. It is an industry of intelligent and educated people and most of the people are thorough professionals, so it is a good corporate environment with focus on individual competence and merit. And if you are focused and knowledgeable, people will respect you irrespective of age or gender.

You have been a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, apart from being a trained Odissi dancer and having a 3rd term teacher’s diploma in Ikebana from the Ohara School Japan; you have formally learnt jewelry designing from the Indo-American Institute of Design and Fine Jewelry and are an avid speaker, apart form having been appointed on the advisory board of the Viterbi School of Engineering. How do you do so much?

What is the secret of your time management skills?

I use my personal time well on building my talents, improving my health or learning from other achievers. You have to plan your lean time as well as your work time, so you don’t end up wasting precious hours in the day.

From modeling your TV (you have designed the interior of your smart TVs) to

modeling for your TV brand, you have done it all. How did the idea of being your company’s brand ambassador come about?

The brand ‘Vu’ stands for luxury, quality, youth and innovation. Starting out Vu at age 24 after having studied at Harvard and USC, and hailing from one of the pioneering family businesses in tech, my team felt I was the correct representation of these brand values and therefore I decided to model for the brand. However, an old associate told me that I shouldn’t model for Vu (the way Branson and Zuckerberg are the face of their business) because I am not a man and I am not a foreigner. This made me realize how much we undervalue ourselves as Indians and as women, and it drove me to be the public face of my

An old associate told me that I shouldn’t model for my brand (the way Zuckerberg and Branson do) because I was not a man; this made realize how much we undervalue women

company. Why should a male actor, who is 20 years older than me, be representative of my business and my generation?

You are one of the most fashionable CEOs of the Indian corporate world.

How would you define your essential fashion style?

The key is to enhance your image and re-invent every few years. Earlier, women wore button down shirts because they wanted to dress like men and merge into the environment at work. Today, you can wear a dress and still be seen as a woman professional. Of course, I do have a stylist [Ami Patel] who keeps my fashion on point.

You are a fabulous speaker and have spoken in many forums. It’s said that great leaders are great speakers and great readers. What is the role of communication in leading a team?

Communication portrays confidence and trust. We often vote for the best speaker in politics but the follow-up is more important. So when I communicate, I try and bring personal examples in my speech to endorse my opinion. It is a system of gestalt and it allows you to connect with your audience so that they feel like everything you say is relevant to their lives and their work.

Vu TV is a new-age brand made In India and ready to give the big brands a run for their money – as is evident from the

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 49

INTERVIEW

DEVITA SARAF

Given her storied background (Harvard, and family business legacy), the team at Vu believed that Devita was the perfect representation of Vu’s brand values – thus, she became the model for the brand

online sales of the brand. What shall be the role of online sales in the future?

How much would you invest in online marketing?

Online marketing is just a form of distribution. You need to focus on all customer touchpoints – retail, ecommerce, large formats, traditional retailers, direct sales force etc.

You love balance sheets as much as you love fashion! Which are your favourite shopping destinations? Your favourite brands?

My favourite shopping destinations are mostly Europe and USA because I wear Western clothes 90% of the time. Paris and NYC are usually where I stock up on clothes which are classy, elegant, fashionable and feminine. I usually have a personal shopper at Galleries Lafayette in Paris to help me decide my wardrobe for the season. Burberry is a brand I have been associated with and it remains a personal favourite.

50 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

In today’s era of social networking, the ‘right image’ is most critical for the success of a brand or a leader. What would be your opinion on that?

My posts online are of the time I spend teaching kids in municipal schools or interacting with business leaders such as Richard Branson in Europe or product launches of Vu TVs. It shows that business leaders have a well-rounded personality and are constantly inspired when they interact with all types of people. I refrain from posting too many personal pictures because I do believe in the traditional values of protecting my family and friends.

You have interacted with the likes of Sir Richard Branson. What has been the experience like?

Unbelievable. He was such a humble and modest person, who genuinely encourages people around him to give their very best.

When I asked him the pros and cons of being the face of one’s business, his witty reply was if he had had my face, he would

have been even more successful. Only a very secure person can say something like that in an audience of 2000 people.

A lot has been written about the complete man. What makes a ‘complete woman’?

Someone who is balanced in her life and feels secure and happy from the inside. A complete woman focuses on her career, enhances her personal life, designs her living according to her tastes and treats everyone around her with grace and dignity.

Also, she is self-motivated and isn’t doing what she does because it is what society or her family expects of her.

If there were one important piece of advise that you would like to give to the female entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Do it for yourself, not to prove to anyone.

We all want respect, resources and a good future and that should be the motivation to run a business, and not to follow any trend.

4Ps

...continued from page 47

Travel & Hospitality Cleartrip Cleartrip Pvt. Ltd. is a leading online travel company providing online booking services for flights and train tickets, hotel reservations, and domestic and international holiday packages. Cleartrip was founded in 2006. The mission of Cleartrip has been “Making Travel Simple”. To that extent, Cleartrip has set up booking contracts with over 15,000 hotels across the globe, Cleartrip also offers a range of holiday packages comprising flight-and-hotel combination deals for destinations around the world.

Cleartrip remains an admired brand.

IRCTC Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the railways. It is by far India’s largest travel portal with its magnitude of travelers across the length and breadth of India. IRCTC is known for having changed the dimensions of railway ticketing in India. It pioneered internet-based rail ticket booking through its website, as well as from the mobile phones via GPRS or SMS. It has extended its service offerings to flights and hotels booking facilities too.

MakeMyTrip Nurtured from a single idea to empower the traveller, MakeMyTrip made its mark being the pioneer of the online travel industry in India. With its passion to serve better and innovatively, MakeMyTrip has revolutionized the travel industry over the years. MakeMyTrip.com is India’s leading online travel portal (next only to IRCTC). Founded in the year 2000, not only does MakeMyTrip have its online presence, it also operates through 65 retail stores across 50 cities in India, along with international offices in New York City and Sydney.

OYO Room Started with a goal to change the way people travelled, OYO Rooms was started in May 2013 by Ritesh Aggarwal at an early age of 22, implementing the concept of ‘Budget Hotels’ in India. Ritesh’s idea took fruition when he was awarded the Thiel Fellowship (instituted by the PayPal founder). Today, in a short time, OYO Rooms has become India’s largest branded network of hotels spread across 10,000+ hotels in 250+ cities of India offering standardized stay experiences at unmatched prices; for records, it is also India’s largest hotel room aggregator (more than 100,000 rooms). The OYO app for guests assists in booking rooms, ordering beverages and requesting room service.

Travelguru Travelguru.com was the coincidental conclusion of a midnight chat between the two founders Ashwin Damera, a Harvard Business School scholar with his classmate Ganesh Rangaswamy in 2005. Inspired by the significant growth of the e-commerce market in India, both started Travelguru.com. It is one amongst India’s leading travel portals, offering customers the best prices on flights, hotels and holiday packages across India and the world. It provides access to deals on 21,000+ hotels in India as well as 430,000 hotels worldwide.

Yatra Yatra.com is another of India’s leading online travel portals. Founded by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra in August 2006, Yatra.com is today ranked as one of the leading providers of consumer-direct travel services in India. Yatra.com provides reservation facility for more than 50,000 hotels in India and over 500,000 hotels around the world. The brand handles 20,000 domestic tickets and 7500 hotels and holiday packages a day, making it one of the highest gross transaction value handling companies in their industry space. It remains one amongst 4Ps B&M’s most admired e-commerce brands.

"Significant material within the listing has been sourced from the websites of the corporations listed. Material sourced from Wikimedia and associated encyclopedia are credited to respective authors. Planman Media takes no guarantee of the accuracy of the material sourced thus herein."

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 51

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

74 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 75

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

THE 4PS B&M LIST OF INDIA’S TOP 100 IT GIANTS! 3i Infotech Ltd 3i Infotech Ltd (established as ICICI Infotech Ltd) is an IT company based in India incorporated in 1993 headquartered in Mumbai. The company provides software products, IT services and business process outsourcing for a variety of industries including insurance, banking, capital markets, mutual funds and asset management, wealth management, government, manufacturing and retail. The products of the company are Premia, MFund, Orion, Kasle ULS and Amlock. These products and services include managed IT services, application software development and maintenance and IT consulting.

Acer India Acer was founded by Stan Shih, his wife Carolyn Yeh, and a group of five others as Multitech in 1976, headquartered in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. Acer’s products include desktop and laptop PCs, tablet computers, servers, storage devices, displays, LED, LCD and plasma televisions, smartphones and peripherals. It also provides e-business services to businesses, governments and consumers. In 2015, Acer was the sixth-largest personal computer vendor in the world. Acer increased worldwide sales while simultaneously reducing its labor force by identifying and using marketing strategies that best utilized their existing distribution channels.

54 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Adobe Systems Adobe Systems Inc. founded in February 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke is an American multinational computer software company, headquartered in San Jose, California. Adobe has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development. It is best known for Photoshop, an image editing software, Adobe Reader, the Portable Document Format (PDF) and Adobe Creative Suite, as well as its successor Adobe Creative Cloud.

AGC Networks AGC Networks a leading Global Technology Solutions Provider is a subsidiary of the Essar Group, a $39 billion multinational conglomerate with over 73,000 employees. Over the years, AGC has been an unprecedented leader as a Solution Integrator with a differentiated vertical approach providing innovative solutions in the following four quadrants in the ICT domain. With presence in 9 countries and with a network of offices in India, AGC has a more than 3000 strong, diverse customer base including Fortune 500 companies and over 700 employees. Since inception, AGC has installed over a million unified communication ports, 500k dataports, and 100k video endpoints worldwide.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) incorporated on May 1, 1969, by Jerry Sanders is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. AMD’s main products include microprocessors, motherboard, chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems applications. AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors.

APC by Schneider Electric India APC by Schneider Electric, formerly known as American Power Conversion Corporation, is a manufacturer of uninterruptible power supplies, electronics peripherals and data center products. APC was founded in 1981 by three MIT Lincoln Lab electronic power engineers. PowerChute is a computer program by APC used to control the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) the company produces. It provides unattended shutdown of servers and workstations in the event of an extended power outage. Now the leading name in IT departments large and small and among APC’s vast community of channel partners with history of innovation has pushed APC products into the global spotlight with infrastructure, management, and data security solutions protecting organizations around the world.

Apple India Apple needs no introduction being the No. 1 IT brand in the world, the world’s largest information technology company by revenue, largest technology company by total assets, and the world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer founded by technology maverick Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976. The global giant with headquartered in Cupertino, California, designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services.

ASUS India ASUS comes from the last four letters of “Pegasus”, the winged horse in Greek mythology. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. is a Taiwanese multinational computer hardware and electronics company headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan founded in 1989 by T.H. Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh and M.T. Liao. Its innovative products include desktops, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, networking equipment, monitors, projectors, motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage, multimedia products, and peripherals...

Aurionpro Solutions Limited Aurionpro Solutions Limited is a global technology product and solution provider, headquartered in Mumbai, India and San Ramon, North America; the company has established 22 offices across 12 countries serving over 100 clients across 22 countries. The company was started by Amit Sheth and Paresh Zaveri on October 31, 1997 as Value Added Information Distribution Services Private Limited. The name of the company was subseqently changed to Aurionpro.

Birlasoft Birlasoft is an Information Technology firm providing services in the fields of Manufacturing, BFSI, Insurance, Media and Healthcare.

Birlasoft’s portfolio of services includes Enterprise Application Services, Custom Application Services and Specialized services like Testing, Analytics and Logistics.

Birlasoft deploys a host of innovative solutions and service architectures across the global Banking, Consulting and Outsourcing spaces, emerging as powerful business enabler that lend versatility and flexibility.

Canon India Canon India is a 100% subsidiary of Canon Singapore Pte. Ltd. This world leader in imaging technologies was incorporated in India in the year 1997, has offices spread across 14 cities and an employee strength of over a 1000 people. The company offers a comprehensive range of over 200 sophisticated and contemporary digital imaging products in the country that includes digital cameras, digital SLR’s , lenses , digital copiers, fax-machines, inkjet and laser printers, semiconductors. Canon has 550 primary channel partners, and over 6000 secondary retail points spread over 5000 towns.

Capgemini India CapGemini India was established in 2001 with its first office located in Mumbai, and today operates as a world-class offshore centre through its unique ‘Rightshore Strategy’ serving global customers and simultaneously serving Indian markets through its Local Business Services arm. It earned revenues of Rs. 6,305 Crores with a 15% growth in 2014-15.

Capgemini India employs over 85,000 people across nine cities. Capgemini has strong domain expertise to assist clients across the Government and Public Sector comprising Energy and Utilities, Manufacturing, Telecom and Financial Services with dedicated teams to service the local markets.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 55

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

Cisco India Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American corporation technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures and sells networking equipment worldwide. Cisco commenced India operations in 1995. The Cisco Global Development Center is in Bangalore and is the largest outside the US. It is the largest networking company in the world. Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by Leonard Bosack of Stanford University and his wife Sandy.

CORE Education & Technologies Limited CORE Education & Technologies Limited (formerly known as CORE Projects and Technologies Ltd.) founded in 2003 is an Indian global education company headed by Sanjeev Mansotra, has its corporate headquarters at Mumbai and international headquarters at Atlanta and London. CORE has diversified into an integrated education company and provides solutions to 7 states in India, 3 Caribbean nations, 20 states in the US, offering services to 40 Institutions in UK and 8 African countries with 3,125 employees worldwide. CORE enables the creation of a better future across the globe by providing transformational and innovative solutions for the entire education continuum.

CMC Limited Incorporated in 1975, CMC is a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, with 18 offices among major Indian cities and more than 180 service locations across the country. Branch offices in the UK and Dubai service CMC’s markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East with more than 3,000 employees. An end-to-end information technology solutions and services provider, CMC is the No 2 software developer in India, the country’s top third-party maintenance and support provider and is rated among the top five organizations in the field of computer education.

Computer Sciences Corporation Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) was founded in April 1959 in Los Angeles, California, by Roy Nutt and Fletcher Jones. CSC initially provided programming tools such as compiler and assembling software; it is now an American multinational corporation that provides information technology (IT) services and professional services having 56,000 employees in over 60 countries. CSC has been a Fortune 500 Company. On May 24, 2016, CSC announced that it will merge with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Enterprise Services division to create a new pure-play IT Services Company.

Cognizant Technology

CSS Corporation

Cognizant Technology Solutions is an American multinational corporation providing customized information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States. The global IT major ventured into application development, complex systems integration and consulting work adding to its development portfolio with over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 233,000 employees. Fortune magazine named it as the world’s fourth most admired IT Services company in 2015. it is one of the fastest growing companies in India with18% growth.

CSS Corp is the global leader in technology support with over 140 clients, including Fortune 1000 enterprises. It has more than 5,500 technology professionals across 15 locations globally. Technology support is the main plank of CSS with customer experience at the core to make clients count on expertise in supporting enterprise and consumer products, managing IT infrastructures, and deploying networks.

CSS has a rich heritage of managing large and complex support ecosystems. From IoT, enterprise or consumer products, data centers, applications and desktops, CSS has built its reputation on delivering.

Compuage Infocom Compuage Infocom is one of India’s leading IT distribution companies, having a countrywide presence as a value added distributor of global IT brands. Compuage is a system oriented and process driven company. A strong IT enabled distribution backbone, a solid financial and inventory management system, a young and dynamic sales team and a committed channel spread across the country is expanding growth of the company. With a proven track record of strong after sales service, Compuage offers technical expertise that assures complete reliability and performance. It is the leading IT distributor and authorised service provider for brands like ASUS, CREATIVE, FUJI FILMS, HP, TOSHIBA and others.

56 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Cybage Software Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd. is a technology consulting organization founded in 1996 by Arun Nathani, Deepak Nathani, specializing in outsourced product engineering services offering application development and maintenance. Cybage is headquartered in Pune (Kalyani Nagar) with development centers in Pune, Hyderabad and Gandhinagar in India. Cybage has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore, Japan and Australia. As a leader in hi-tech and product engineering space, Cybage works with some of the world’s best Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Cybage solutions are focused on modern technologies, and are enabled by a scientific, data driven system called ‘Excelshore’- Model of Operational Excellence. This unique model de-risks approach and provides better predictability.

Cyient Cyient (formerly Infotech Enterprises) is an Indian IT company working on engineering, networks and operations. It has more than 12,000 employees across 38 nations. Cyient features among the top 30 outsourcing companies in the world. Cyient has found immense opportunity in the GIS arena and progressively yielding benefits from the domain. The company became public with its own initial public offering (IPO) in March 2013. Cyient aspires their clients to be more capable, more flexible and more competitive, so they get to market faster and reach further to leverage technology for designing a better tomorrow. The IT major helps clients to overcome social challenges through a comprehensive range of engineering products.

Dell India DELL traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell founded Dell Computer Corporation based in Round Rock, Texas, United States. The IT Hardware major with the acquisition in 2009 of Perot Systems entered the market for IT services and now develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is one of the largest technological corporations in the world.

D-Link Corporation It was founded in March 1986 in Taipei as Datex Systems Inc. D-Link Corporation changed its name from Datex Systems Inc. in 1994. It began as a network adapter vendor and has gone on to become a designer, developer, and manufacturer of networking solutions for both the consumer and business markets.

Today D-Link is multinational networking equipment manufacturing corporation.

Fujitsu India Fujitsu operates in India through its subsidiary Fujitsu Consulting India Pvt Ltd. It explores the IT Services and Software market in India and also operates Fujitsu’s delivery center. In the last two years alone, Fujitsu India has added a significant number of flagship customers to its roster and has established itself as a force to reckon with in the Indian market. Fujitsu Consulting India uses a blended-delivery model where its resources work onsite and offshore to deliver projects globally managing customers operating in Continental Europe, Nordics, UK & Ireland and APAC. Fujitsu is the fourth-largest IT vendor in the world.

eClerx eClerx Services Limited, founded in 2000 is an Indian knowledge process outsourcing company based in Mumbai. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, eClerx has five delivery centers across India to support a diverse global client base, including the world’s leading Financial Services, Broadband, Cable and Telecom, eCommerce and Retail, Industrial Manufacturing and Distribution, Software, Media and Entertainment and Travel companies. In April 2012, eClerx acquired Agilyst Inc to grow its footprint in the U.S. cable and telecom industry. Acquisition of Creative Services Agency CLX Europe helped eClerx too.

EMC India EMC, founded in 1979 by Richard Egan and Roger Marino is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver information technology as a service (ITaaS). EMC Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, United States. EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other products and services that enable businesses.

Epson India Epson is part of the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation which comprises over 81,000 employees in 97 companies around the world being the largest manufacturers of computer printers, and information and imaging related equipment, headquartered in Suwa, Nagano, Japan. Epson is a global leader in imaging products including printers, 3LCD projectors and small- and medium-sized LCDs. With an innovative and creative culture, Epson is dedicated to exceeding the vision and expectations of customers worldwide with products known for their superior quality, functionality, compactness and energy efficiency.

From personal desktop products to those that can be networked across large organizations, Epson offers varied solutions.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 57

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

Genpact Limited

HCL Infosystems

Genpact Limited is a multinational global leader in digitally-powered business process management and services, registered in Bermuda with executive headquarters in New York. Genpact began in 1997 as a business unit within General Electric. In January 2005, Genpact became an independent company to bring process expertise and unique DNA in Lean management to clients beyond GE, and then in August 2007, became a publicly-traded company listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company has more than 65,000 employees and clients from 25 countries. Its current clients include more than 100 of the Fortune Global 500.

HCL Infosystems Ltd. is India’s leading Distribution and IT Services Company serving Telecom, IT, Office Automation and Consumer Electronics sectors covering more than 15000 towns across 664 districts in India. The IT firm’s distribution business has an unparalleled network reaching more than 100,000 retail outlets, over 800 Direct and Micro Distributors and over 12400 Channel Partners across India. The Indian IT major enables business transformation and enrichment of lives by delivering sustainable world class technology products, solutions and services in our chosen markets thereby creating superior shareholder value.

Geometric Technologies Geometric Technologies, Inc., is a subsidiary of Geometric Limited established in 1981. Geometric is a specialist in the domain of engineering solutions, services and technologies. Its portfolio of Global Engineering services, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Embedded System solutions, and Digital Technology solutions enables companies to formulate, implement, and execute global engineering and manufacturing strategies aimed at achieving greater efficiencies in the product realization lifecycle. It supplies CAMWorks, its flagship product- Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM Software) to global clientele.

HCL Technologies HCL Technologies Limited a subsidiary of HCL Enterprise is a multinational IT services company founded by Shiv Nadar in 1976, headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. HCL offers services in IT consulting, enterprise transformation, engineering and R&D, and business process outsourcing (BPO) operates across number of industry verticals including aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, energy, independent software vendors, media and entertainment, retail and server and storage, telecom and hospitality to name a few. HCL Technologies is one of only eight 21st century listed technology companies in the world to cross $1bn in Net Profit, $6bn in Revenue and $15bn in Market Capitalization.

Google India Google needs no introduction in the age of internet. It is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products led by Indian CEO Sundar Pichai. The services include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Large chunk of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. Google has grown leaps and bounds, but you knew that already...

GTL Limited GTL Limited (previously Global Telesystems Limited) a Global Group Enterprise is a Network Services company. It is India’s largest network services provider to the world having more than 80,000 towers after its merger with Rcom. GTL is essentially offering services and solutions to address the Network Life Cycle requirements of Telecom Operators, Technology providers (OEM’s) and Tower Companies across Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East. GTL achieved total Income of Rs. 2,586.59 Cr. (US$ 419.10 Million) for the FY 2014-15.

Helios & Matheson Information Technology Ltd Commencing operations in 1991, Helios and Matheson has helped scores of clients maximize the performance of their organizations with a powerful suite of IT services driven by a seamless global delivery model. The company, headquartered in Chennai, operates with offices and subsidiaries in USA, Singapore etc. Over time, it has built a strong presence in Europe too. Sustained infrastructure and marketing investments have helped them create a world-class knowledgenetworked work environment. ...continued on page 62

58 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

4ps B&m

foodpanda

don’t call, just install! foodpanda is undoubtedly the torchbearer of the online food ordering industry, managing to retain its lead through the ups and downs in the online space; 4Ps B&M in conversation with Saurabh Kocchar, Co-founder & CEO, foodpanda

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 59

foodpanda

4ps B&m

I

nnovation is the key to staying ahead of competition and you have brought in a lot of interesting innovations into foodpanda – like your concept of ‘express meals’, your partnering with Jugnoo (auto rickshaw aggregator) etc. What are your other innovations and how have they fared?

Innovation is the core of foodpanda and over the last few years, we have evaluated our business, processes and technology and created innovative technologies and solutions on all fronts keeping in mind reliability, quality and sustainability of our business. We have innovated strongly on the technology side and have been introducing several solutions for better management of food discovery, order processing and for making the delivery experience better. The technology provides significant cost and efficiency improvements for restaurant partners and has furthermore helped to reduce the delivery time for foodpanda customers.

On the front end, it is important to constantly bring new services so as to make sure we provide a better customer experience. Thus, we have introduced new services like the first of its kind quick meal service, foodpanda Express Meals in Delhi and Bangalore, Express Guarantee in Delhi and Pune that promises to deliver food within 45 minutes, and several other tie ups with IRCTC (to deliver food to train passengers), Jugnoo, and many more.

With these new innovative services, we are able to reach out to the existing as well as potential consumers and build a stronger consumer base. We are equally focused on providing a reliable experience to our restaurant partners and have developed several proprietary technologies and processes. Also, foodpanda’s restaurant management application allows order automation, synchronization of opening hours as well as menu item configuration. We have also rolled out our last-mile-delivery technology across India and have started to take tighter control of the food delivery process for a large part of its restaurant partners. When it comes to managing operations effectively, we achieved 98% automation rate in order processing, thus

60 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

reducing manual errors leading to better customer experiences.

In the recent times, the online food industry is seeing a lot of downsizing, devaluations and closures. What are your thoughts on this?

Food delivery business is still at a nascent stage and is riddled with a lot of unique operational challenges. What we need to understand is that every new age industry/ segment goes through four initial phases.

Torch bearing is the first stage where a company leads and paves the path in a certain segment; in this case, foodpanda was the pioneer into the food ordering and delivery segment. Going forward, every industry experiences the mushrooming of many players – small and big – and comes up with unique strategies and ideas. This is an experimenting stage where few are successful and a few wind up too; and it is after which, there is a shakeout phase;

something that we are witnessing now in the food tech industry. Downsizing, devaluations and closures tend to happen during this phase, while it is a necessary phase to restructure and organize the industry. To be able to sustain through all these phases, it is important to preempt the situation and decide on the course of action accordingly. At foodpanda, we are confident of our performance and our ability to constantly innovate which has helped us grow and sustain our business model. The industry has matured considerably over a period of time and we will now see consolidation of businesses in the coming years. The industry will soon stabilize and the ones who sustain the ups and downs, will witness spectacular growth and progress.

When you took over foodpanda, what were the biggest challenges you faced and how did you resolve them?

When Saurabh Kocchar joined foodpanda, the online food ordering platform had just gone through two acquisitions – JustEast and TastyKhana. Right after joining, the biggest challenge for Kochhar was to ensure a seamless integration of the system, processes and the three teams

tions, for example, we built a proprietary data warehouse which makes all type of analysis and reports automatic. We built a point of sale system for restaurants which makes order transmission and menu updates automatic. We have built an automatic campaign tool for our marketing as well.

When I joined foodpanda, we had just gone through two acquisitions – JustEast and TastyKhana. The biggest challenge was to ensure a seamless integration of the system, processes and the three teams.

We had to redefine how we went ahead in terms of people, process and product, and find what’s the right model and right processes. There was obviously some value in what people had followed in nine years versus what we had done in two years. The integrations brought us scale, reach and matured processes.

Being the pioneers and leaders of the food aggregator industry, we encountered situations first and had to adapt and find solutions keeping customer experience at the core. Post the new management coming in place, we heavily invested our resources into processes and technology and also took steps to become sustainable and profitable within the targeted timeline.

We made several technological innova-

‘Growth over profits’ seemed to be the mantra for all the big players in India.

Your comments?

India is a very challenging yet rapidly growing market. I believe, more than growth, it is important to examine and stabilize operations and processes. Once that is done, then the growth and profits will follow. Secondly, it is important for every company to pick up the right opportunities wherein they can grow and achieve profitability. In the same way in which we are building for the shift from offline ordering (by calling restaurants) to online ordering (through foodpanda’s app), we are also focused on resolving all offline processes from within the organization. I’m very happy about what has been achieved in India towards a higher automation of the business.

Indians love food. The variety of food available across India is mind boggling.

What are the unique challenges that a food delivery company is most likely to face in India?

Geographical diversity definitely serves as a challenge and the best example is our delivery system. Singapore, for example, has a pin code for a set of four houses. India has one pin code across four hundred thousand people. People somehow fail to understand the complexity of what goes on behind the scenes. The front-end is seemingly similar but the engine is very different. The challenges on the ground are far bigger than anyone can imagine.

We face issues from mindset to infrastructure to capabilities when it comes to automating each and every restaurant.

Mapping technology to locate restaurants and people is a challenge in setting up a delivery network in such a market. 99% of the food ordering market in India is still offline, only a small fraction is online. It’s our constant endeavor to move that offline user base to online.

What are foodpanda’s plans for the coming year?

We are very excited for foodpanda’s future in India and have laid a very strong foundation for our business which has grown over 10 times last year and will continue to rapidly grow this year as well. This year, we aim at providing value through delivering quality, reliability and seamless experience as well as timely deliveries to our customers and partners. We are focused on building scalable revenues and capabilities with a long-term goal.

How do you see the food tech industry evolving in the coming future?

We see a lot of opportunities in the food delivery segment, which is a $15 billion industry. We realize that consolidation of businesses is inevitable and the industry will stabilize in the near future. We see a lot of potential in the business and will always strive to provide the best in class, timely and seamless customer experience.

While keeping our focus on customer experience, we have innovated and introduced various services at foodpanda that have helped us achieve operational profitability within the last few months.

Technology innovation will play a big role in the growth of the food sector, therefore, we been introduced multiple tech solutions for better management of food discovery, order processing and for making the delivery experience better and seamless.

What kind of food does the foodpanda chief enjoy?

I am a true blue Punjabi and a food lover.

I enjoy everything from Butter Chicken to Mexican and Thai cuisine.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 61

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

...continued from page 58

Hewlett-Packard India Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard graduated with degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and founded The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) in the garage in Palo Alto, California USA in 1931.

An American multinational information technology company, HP develops and distributes a wide variety of hardware components along with software and related services to consumers. HP’s clients range from smalland medium-sized businesses to large enterprises and governments.

IGATE IGATE is an IT Services company, founded in 1996. The IT firm operates in North America, Asia, Europe, Japan and Australia, providing technology consultancy and services. IGATE has over 70 offices and customer delivery centers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and a workforce of over 31,000. IGATE acquired Patni Computer Systems (Indian origin IT firm) three times its size with a value of around a billion US dollars in 2011; this acquisition was the largest cross-border leveraged transaction in the IT sector of that time. On April 27, 2015 French IT major Capgemini unveiled a deal to acquire IGATE in a $4bn deal.

Hexaware Technologies Limited Hexaware Technologies Limited (HTL) is an information technology and business process outsourcing service Provider Company founded in 1990, based in Navi Mumbai, India. The company’s core area of work spans development support, integration, implementation and testing services across all major enterprise software systems such as PeopleSoft, Workday, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. The company provides software services in airlines, banking and financial services, healthcare and insurance sectors. NASSCOM has ranked Hexaware in the list of top 20.

Infinite Computer Solutions Infinite Computer Solutions started off its business in 1999 with a focus on telecom technology and eventually moved on to become the experts in Healthcare IT Solutions headquartered in Bangalore, India. It was founded in 1999 by Sanjay Govil and has been ranked among the Top 20 IT Services providers by the Indian IT Industry body NASSCOM. Infinite has over 5,000 employees and 8 global delivery centers across India, US, UK, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Infinite provides technology-based business process solutions, next-gen mobility solutions, and product engineering services.

Hinduja Global Solutions Ltd

Info Edge (India) Ltd

The history of HGS (Hinduja Global Solutions) began in 1993 under the name ALIT Ashok Leyland Information Technology, providing information technology services; in 2000, ALIT merged with Hinduja Finance Corporation (HFC) to form HGS. HGS, a part of the Hinduja Group, is a corporate business and service provider headquartered in Bangalore. It has over 40000 employees worldwide with a large employee base in India. It has widespread presence in about 12 countries including Philippines, USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Mauritius, UAE and Jamaica.

Info Edge (India) Ltd. is an Indian on-line classified company founded in 1995 by Sanjeev Bikhchandani, headquartered in Noida. It owns eCommerce ventures Naukri.com, Shiksha.com, Jeevansathi. com, Naukrigulf.com and 99acres. com and stakes in many other internet businesses. It is one of the earliest Internet companies in India and its online recruitment brand Naukri.com became the leading job portal. It was the first Indian dotcom to IPO on an Indian stock exchange on April 27, 2006. With a network of 62 offices located in 43 cities throughout India, Info Edge has 4,000 employees engaged in innovation, product development, integration with mobile and social media.

IBM India A brand to reckon with, being renowned as one of world’s most admired organizations over the years, IBM India Private Limited is the Indian subsidiary of IBM having offices in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and other major cities in India.

Compared to its offices globally, IBM has its largest number of employees in India (close to a third of its 430,000 employees world over are based here) earning the IT giant Rs. 20,442 crore revenues in the year 2014-15 with 9% growth. IBM in India is a critical component in IBM’s global business model. IBM offers capabilities without borders, eliminating any gaps within the global network.

62 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Infosys Limited Infosys Limited is an Indian multinational corporation and a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. Founded in 1981

by Narayana Murthy, other stalwarts like Nandan Nilekani, and S. D. Shibulal became torchbearers. Infosys is the second-largest Indian IT company by 2016 revenues growing by 6% from Rs. 53,319 crores in 2014-15. With its market capitalization at Rs. 263,735 crores ($42.51 billion), it became India’s sixth largest publicly traded company on 15 February 2015.Infosys has a global footprint across the world serving 1,045 clients across 50 countries.

Ingram Micro Ingram Micro’s roots trace back as distributor Micro D, Inc. Started in July 1979 by husband and wife pair Geza Czige and Lorraine Mecca, it has today grown into the world’s largest wholesale technology products distributor. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Ingram Micro distributes and markets a large variety of electronics sourcing from blue chip manufacturers such as Acer Inc., Apple, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung and others. Ingram Micro has secured the 62nd position in the 2015 Fortune 500 list, operating in 160 countries with approximately 200,000 customers worldwide.

Intel India

ITC Infotech ITC Infotech is a specialized global full service technology solutions provider, led by Business and Technology Consulting. The company is focused on creating value through Domain, Data, Digital, Design and Differentiated Delivery for Supply Chain based Industries like Retail, Manufacturing and Services Industries including Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, Airline, Hospitality. ITC Infotech is committed to consistently deliver enduring value on its 5D Framework.

Intel Corporation is an American multinational founded on July 18, 1968 by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

Intel is the world’s largest and highest valued semiconductor chip maker. Intel supplies processors for global manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, HP and Dell. Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, embedded processors and other devices related to communications.

Intex Technologies Intex Technologies (India) Ltd. was incepted in the year 1996. Headquartered in New Delhi, it is a major player in India in mobile handsets, consumer durables and IT accessories. The brand exhibits an exhaustive portfolio of 16 product categories ranging from mobile handsets, mobile accessories, multimedia speakers, LED TVs, washing machines and wearable. Intex has 29 branches - stock and sales offices, a distribution network comprising over 1100 distributors and more than 80,000 dealers spread across the country employing over 13000 people.

Intuit Inc. Intuit Inc. founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx in Palo Alto, California is an American software company that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals. Intuit promotes the personal finance programs Quicken and TurboTax, and small business accounting program QuickBooks. In addition, they produce QuickBooks Point of Sale solution for small retailers, professional tax solutions ProSeries and Lacerte, and the cloud-based, low-code development platform QuickBase.

Intuit Inc.’s India headquarters, based in Bangalore, houses the company’s Development Centre.

Iris Computers Iris Computers is a topend IT Hardware and Telecom distributor, founded in the year 1996

and headquartered in New Delhi (later acquired

by Inflexionpoint in the year 2013). Since inception Iris has been creating innovative hardware products and technological solutions to its clients across the country. Iris has formed strong partnerships with a large number of IT vendors for distribution of their products and solutions.

Main service offering of Iris is high end server and storage products through a robust network of over 6000 channel partners.

Juniper Networks Juniper was founded in 1996 by Pradeep Sindhu. Juniper Networks originally focused on core routers, which are used by internet service providers (ISPs) to perform IP address lookups and direct internet traffic. Today, Juniper Networks is a multinational corporation that develops and markets networking products.

Its products include routers, switches, network management software, network security products and software-defined networking technology, apart from developing new softwaredefined networking products. ...continued on page 66

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 63

SHILADITYA MALLIK 4ps B&m

Birth of an entrepreneur – 9 lessons I have learnt in the past 9 months as an entrepreneur

The co-founder of MobillionLabs, Shiladitya Mallik, is as prolific a writer as are his entrepreneurial ideas. This ISB alumnus gives a seat-of-the-pants’ view of what it is to be an entrepreneur and why one needs to be prepared for the reality shock!

I

t has been nine months since I’ve left the relative safety of the corporate world and plunged into the uncertain waters of the startup world. Nine months is a good time to take a step back and mull over some of the lessons that I have learnt.

No one said that founding your own startup will be easy. And they were right!

Over the past months I’ve interacted with lots of founders and investors. I’ve read hundreds of Quora answers on startups.

I’ve digested blog after blog on Medium – all on startups. Some of the stuff that I’ve learnt were already covered by others.

Some realizations might be just personal to me. And I have learnt some lessons the hard way – by incurring bad losses.

Anyway, here are the nine lessons that I’ve learnt over the past nine months as an entrepreneur.

Passion is overrated

Ever since Steve Jobs said “Follow your passion”, the world was never the same. In reality, I found that more than passion, we need determination, grit and perseverance.

Without those three ingredients, any sparkle of passion will vanish at the first brush with startup reality. Not every day will be good. In fact, most days will be bleak – we have to face rejection from customers, battle self-doubt on the product viability and fight the impending threat of running

Shiladitya Mallik

Co-founder, MobillionLabs

4ps B&m SHILADITYA MALLIK

out of cash. I don’t think being passionate about entrepreneurship has helped me survive those dark days. Taking one day at a time with the determination of seeing it through and the belief that tomorrow will be a better day, has helped.

Ask first, build next

It has happened to all of us – we get struck by a wonderful idea that can change the world. Being passionate entrepreneurs, we immediately start building what we see in our mind’s eyes. And we don’t stop till it is perfect. We don’t stop to ask any potential customers – what do you need? Why? Because their answers might be unsettling.

Because they might not be able to articulate it as clearly. Because we are so excited to get going. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.

But the sad truth is, any idea that is not validated by customers has a high chance of failure. Don’t do it. Talk to customers.

Follow the customer’s pain and solve it. You will have the seed of a winning product.

Surveys are meaningless, stories are meaningful

Talking about asking customers, most of us float a short survey trying to validate our fledgling ideas. In my experience, surveys are useless. Take your time to go and personally speak with potential customers.

At least 25 of them. Yes, it will take time.

Yes, it will be much more work. But you’ll learn much more than what you would have through a survey. Before building QuizPrompt, our enterprise quiz app, we had spoken to dozens of customers, trying to understand their problem in equipping sales force with the right knowledge. The more we spoke, the more we learnt. Customers shared stories of real-life scenarios, that you can never capture in a survey. And guess what – once the product was ready, we went back to those same customers to try it out. I say that’s a double win.

Paperwork matters

Entrepreneurs are risk takers. Yes, we are.

But if there is one area where we can’t afford to take risk is in compliance and paperwork. Don’t risk it at all with the

government and the tax folks. I know what you’re thinking – I’m just a small startup, let me grow some more, then I’ll fix these issues. Don’t. Outsource if you have to, but get someone to do the compliance stuff for you. Later on, when you’re big, it will save you a lot of hassle.

Rejection is the norm

Planning to startup on your own? Then plan for rejection. The amount of rejection really took me by surprise. In my last job, getting a meeting with a CXO of any top company was as easy as writing a mail. The brand of the organization I was working for did the rest. Once I stepped out of the corporate bubble, it was entirely different.

You have to be patient. People will keep you waiting. More than once, I have flown to

Planning to startup on your own? Then plan for rejection.

People will keep you waiting and cancel appointments; don’t take it too personally a different city, just to meet an important customer, only to find the meeting has been cancelled. Don’t take this personally.

Perfect is the enemy of good

Your software will never be perfect. There will always be one more feature to add and one more bug to fix. Don’t fall prey to the fetish of perfectionism. I’ve been guilty of this many times, before I learnt the hard way. Ship things fast, break things early, fix as you go. The feature on which you’re spending an insane amount of effort, might not be important to your customer. As customers use your product, you’ll get realtime feedback about the actual problems.

Focus on those. As startups, our resources are limited, so focus is the key.

Hustle, hustle, hustle

One lesson I quickly learnt was that nothing is handed over a platter to an entrepreneur. We have to think on our feet, use our resources and get things done. With limited resources, we need to get more things done. That means having the guts to do things that we’re not good at. Over the past months, I’ve played many roles – administered our AWS clusters, designed our logo and brand identity, managed the company books, did heavy duty coding, played the role of customer support executive, led business development activities...

Of course, once your ship stabilizes, you definitely want to delegate more and more.

But for the initial phase, the founders have to do many things on their own.

No Health, No Wealth

One thing that I’ve read over and over again from many seasoned entrepreneurs is the focus on your own health while you are on your startup journey. We all have to pull off those all-nighters when the deadline hits. We all need to work without any break for weeks. We all have days when you don’t have the time to even grab breakfast. But continued disregard of health will spell trouble for both you and your company.

So early on, I promised myself to do two things come what may – exercise regularly and eat timely. When I don’t have time to hit the gym or when I’m travelling, the 7 Minute Workout app is of great help. You really don’t have any excuse not to spare seven minutes every day for exercise.

Balance like a pro

Finally, my deepest realization is that entrepreneurship is all about balance. There are too many conflicting demands, too many issues vying for your attention. It is very easy to get lost on the unimportant stuff. It is all about balancing the different demands of the job. The one thing which I have found very useful is to set aside 30 minutes every day for contemplation. While the whole day is about action, spending those 30 minutes helps me to decide the priorities, both short/long term. All in all, I hope to learn and unlearn a lot of things as I continue on this exciting journey.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 65

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

...continued from page 63

KPIT Technologies KPIT Technologies (formerly KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd) is an Indian multinational with registered headquarters in Pune, Maharashtra.

KPIT was cofounded in 1990

by Ravi Pandit and Kishor Patil, as KPIT Infosystems. It has 10 development centers and 34 offices spread across 16 countries. KPIT has filed multiple patents and has won several awards for innovation.

The company provides product engineering services and solutions, IT consulting services and technologies. KPIT is focused on the three industries namely manufacturing, automotive & transportation and energy & utilities.

Mastek Limited Mastek (founded in May 1982 by Ashank Desai, Ketan Mehta and R. Sundar) is a multinational information technology services company headquartered in Mumbai, India. It is one of the oldest software companies in India which has a major presence in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East and also eight global delivery centres in India and Malaysia with employees over 3,200 professionals.

Mastek became the first company to develop Enterprise Resource Planning software in India.

The seasoned IT firm’s focus is on delivering business value and enhanced business capabilities to clients.

Microsoft India Microsoft India Private Limited is a subsidiary of American software giant Microsoft Corporation, headquartered in Hyderabad, India. The company first entered the Indian market in 1990 and has since worked closely with the Indian government, the IT industry, academia and the local developer community to usher in some of the early successes in the IT market. Microsoft currently has offices in the 13 cities. Increasingly, the company has become a key IT partner of the Indian government and industry, supporting and fueling the growth of the local IT industry through its partner enablement programs.

Microsoft in India employs about 6,500 people and has six business units.

L&T Infotech L&T Infotech is a global IT services and solutions provider established in 1997 as an IT unit and subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro (L&T), a multi-billion conglomerate, and India’s largest Technology, Engineering, Construction, Manufacturing and Financial Services organization, with global operations founded by Soren Kristian Toubro Henning Holck-Larsen.

Being one of the fastest growing global IT services company, it is ranked by NASSCOM as the 6th largest software & services exporter from India and among the top 20 IT BPO employers in 2014. L&T Infotech provides end-to-end IT solutions to Banking and Financial Services, Insurance, Energy, Hi-Tech & Consumer Electronics, Utilities, Engineering and Construction, Travel & Logistics industries.

Lenovo India Lenovo Group Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology company founded by Liu Chuanzhi in 1984 having headquarters in Beijing, China, and Morrisville, North Carolina, United States. It manufactures and sells personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, and IT management software. In 2015, Lenovo became the world’s largest personal computer vendor by unit sales.

Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in 2014. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire the mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google.

Lycos India Lycos is a university spin-off that began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University’s main Pittsburgh campus in 1994. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. Lycos enjoyed several years of growth during the 1990s and became the most visited online destination in the world in 1999, with a global presence in more than 40 countries. The company moved away from a search-centric portal and toward a community destination for broadband entertainment content in 2005. As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and location-based services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to Ybrant Digital.

66 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Mindtree Mindtree Limited is an Indian multinational information technology and outsourcing company headquartered in Bangalore, India and New Jersey. Founded in 1999, the company employs over 16,500 employees with annual revenue of $700 million. The company deals in e-commerce, mobile applications, cloud computing, digital transformation, data analytics, EAI and ERP, with more than 290 clients with a total of 16,623 employees in 28 offices across 48 nationalities across the globe. Its largest operations are in India and major markets are United States and Europe. The company was formed on 18 August 1999 by ten IT professionals, who formerly worked for Cambridge Technology Partners.

Mphasis Mphasis is a leading IT solutions provider, catering to financial services, telecom, logistics, and technology industries based in Bangalore, India.

It offers Applications, Business Process Outsourcing and Infrastructure services globally through a combination of technology knowhow, domain and process expertise. Mphasis was formed in June 2000 after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited owned by The Blackstone Group L.P. Over the years Mphasis has marked an indelible impression in the IT solutions domain with rich portfolio of clientele.

Neoteric Infomatique

NIIT Technologies Limited NIIT Technologies Limited is an IT organization founded in 2004 by Rajendra S. Pawar and Vijay K. Thadani, with its clients spread across the globe in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. NIIT offers a range of services, including Application Development and Maintenance, Infrastructure Management, and Business Process Management. Focused on Digital Services, the company is helping businesses design agile, scalable, and digital operating models. NIIT Technologies services clients in travel and transportation, banking and financial services, insurance, manufacturing, and media verticals.

OnMobile Global

OnMobile was founded in 2000, originally incorporated in California under the name Onscan Technologies India Private Limited as a spin-off from Infosys. Currently, it is headquartered in Bangalore and serves customers in 59 countries and is one of the top companies operating in the telecom value-added services space. It has collaborated with a series of internationally renowned mobile operators. The company offers content management, content aggregation and distribution, voice short codes, missed call alerts, multimedia push services, mobile search, ringtones, voice portals, music products, mobile radio, entertainment products like football, cricket, quizzes etc.

Oracle India NetApp India Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 Throughout the world, leading organizations count on NetApp for software, systems, and services to with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name manage and store their data. The leading IT firm helps enterprises and service providers envision, deSoftware Development Laboratories (SDL), ploy, and evolve their IT environments. Customers also benefit from NetApp’s open collaboration with headquartered in Redwood City, California other technology leaders to create specific solutions.

United States. Oracle is a world leader in devel20 years on, NetApp is still delivering innovation that opment of database software and technology, gives clients an edge over competitors. It helps cuscloud engineered systems and enterprise softtomers do things that have not been done before. Together with a global network of partners, NetApp ware products. The company also develops and deals with complexity to help customers achieve the outcomes that are simple and matter the most. builds tools for systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource NIIT Limited planning, NIIT was established in 1985 by Rajendra S. Pawar and Vijay K. Thadani, graduates from IIT Delhi. customer relationship management and supply NIIT Limited is an Indian Multinational company that offers learning management and training delivery chain management software. In 2011 Oracle solutions to corporations. IT services business of NIIT was demerged was the second-largest software maker by revinto a separately listed company NIIT Technologies in 2006 helping NIIT enue, after Microsoft. Oracle India reported Rs. Limited focuses on Corporate Training, Vocational Training for Ser12,440 Crore revenues in 2014-15 marking 9% vices Sectors and Education and Training in Schools. NIIT introduced growth. With hundreds of thousands of customa franchising model in IT education for the very first time in India. NIIT is a global leader in Skills and ers, Oracle is a part of the global tech-future.

Talent Development offers multi-disciplinary learning management and training delivery solutions to ...continued on page 73 corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries.

One of India’s leading national value-added distributors in the IT space, Neoteric infomatique Ltd was established in 1991 by Paras Harshad Shah an alumnus of Case Western Reserve University, USA. Over the years, with passion, foresight and unflinching determination to provide the best quality IT products and services to Indian customers, Neoteric has emerged as one of the most respected IT distribution organizations, covering over 50 cities in India and with expertise built around multiple verticals.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 67

DROOM

4ps B&m

68 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

A smashing business model, 30000% growth... what’s next?

Sandeep Aggarwal, founder Droom, has put his chips on this online automobile marketplace model; 4Ps B&M queries him on the current and future growth plans

D

room is India’s first marketplace for automobiles. How did the idea of Droom come about?

One of the most initial thoughts was to bring transparency for a marketplace which is niche for automobiles. In India buying and selling used automobiles is completely broken and full of pitfalls.

Thereafter, I came up with 52 ideas at Silicon Valley, each one of them I thought would make a billion-dollar company in India. Then I compared those ideas on around about three dozen parameters. After comparing and filtering them, I was left with just two ideas and eventually Droom made it to the final decision.

From an aircraft worth about Rs. 64 lakhs to a bike worth Rs. 3,500, everything is available on Droom. How does Droom manage such a wide business horizon?

Droom aims to benefit its consumers through great experiences. We also believe that this is a time for the evolution of the automobile sector in India as it is getting more organized. Also, we want to bring forth the idea that automobile should not be limited to just wheeled vehicles.

For example, there are two aircraft that are available for sale on Droom: a Legacy 600 for INR 64.52 crore and Hawker 900 XP for INR 45.99 crore. At the other end of the spectrum, it also markets twowheelers: the cheapest, a Hercules Sparx 24-inches bicycle, costs INR 3,900.

With this widening business horizon, end-to-end facilitator Droom is all set to raise another up funding in the near future to fund its expansion plans in six South-

East Asian countries and Europe in the next two years. Founded in April 2014 in Silicon Valley, Droom came to Gurgaon in India in 2015, funded by some leading global venture investors, raising INR 130 crore so far. In the last 16 months, we have roped in 41,000 automobile dealers with 1.5 lakh listing of vehicles, having a total value of INR 2,500 crore.

How comfortable are Indians with online automobile transactions? What about aircraft transactions?

Automobile freaks are heavily relying

We have grown 300 times in the last 7 months by ensuring that rather than spend on ads, we spend on solving pain points on online marketplaces for purchasing vehicles. The trends are very visible and super strong. We sold vehicles worth INR 5 Lacs in January 2015, our first month of revenue and we reached INR 15 crores in automobile transactional revenue in July 2015.

We have grown 300 times (not 300%) in seven months. And this is as strong a trend as it can get in support of evaluating the traction for Droom as India’s first marketplace for automobiles. We have sold vehicles worth INR 50 crores in the last seven

months. At present, we are witnessing a low number of aircraft transactions but with the changing lifestyles of the country’s urban population, the aircraft transactions are expected to catch up fast.

Today, Droom has the largest geographical footprint, with its presence in 145 cities across India. How did you achieve so much so soon considering you started the Indian operations in 2015?

We have grown 300 times in 7 months and the reason for this growth is that unlike other offerings online that spend way too much money on marketing, we are solving pain points for buyers and sellers. The used automobile business suffers from trust and pricing issues for buyers and we are solving those problems with the use of technology and data sciences in a way that has not been done before. We are solving them fundamentally and that is the reason we are being rewarded by the overwhelming response of our offering by both buyers and sellers.

A good marketing and advertising strategy is one of the key pillars of a brand’s success. Droom came out with a very interesting campaign “Save our Vehicles” on April Fool’s Day. What was the idea behind this? What was the response?

Which have been your most successful campaigns?

Vehicle abuse is an ugly truth today. Every day we see cars crashing and burning in the most ridiculous way, while in real life we come across people not paying heed to such mishaps. It is to counter these instances of vehicular abuse that we came up with “Save our Vehicles” campaign to

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 69

DROOM

4ps B&m

educate policymakers and public about this highly sensitive issue and generate awareness among the vehicle owners about the needs and requirement of the vehicles. The idea received good visibility over the print and social media and was much appreciated within the fraternity.

Our campaign involving chopper rides with Uber on Christmas Day was a very successful campaign, which hit the right chord among the consumers. Droom entered into a strategic alliance with Uber for the festive period to bring on-demand chopper rides. The move was facilitated by the aerial vehicle category on Droom’s platform, which allows Droom users to rent and purchase aerial vehicles to fulfill all of their private aviation requirements.

Under the partnership, Droom will enable reservations for half-hour chopper rides through the Uber app on Christmas Day. For a similar successful campaign, Droom and Uber had previously collaborated for a ‘Supercar on Demand’ initiative, allowing consumers a chance to rent premier vehicles such as Audi R8 and Hummer.

Culture is what makes an organisation; Droom aims to make it enjoyable for associates to come to work everyday How does one retain one’s best people?

For me, the mantra is ‘Get your employees to fall in love with your organization’.

Finding and keeping talent is one of the key problems organizations face today. It is highly important to communicate your vision in a compelling way. Show everyone the role they have to contribute to this vision. We create opportunities for our associates to connect with each other for support and to improve communication in work teams.

For Sandeep Aggarwal, founder Droom, the best way to retain one’s best employees is to make them fall in love with one’s organisation and make them believe in the vision of the company

Droom seems to have a very happy and friendly environment, with things like ‘cake throwing competitions’ happening in the organization. Tell us a bit more about your organization culture?

Culture is what makes an organization.

Droom aims to make it enjoyable for associates to come to work every day. We focus on helping each other to bring out their true potential. We give no room to politics in our environment.

As an innovative organisation, we believe in adaptations, prototyping and fast iterations and encourage people to do experiments. Not everyone gets the same thing right the first time, but with the power of iterations, our associates are empowered and they create a great value proposition for the user. We know that the current millennial generation is very technologically savvy and we need to give them the right opportunities for them to blossom appropriately.

The new buzz word is ‘m-commerce’-mobile commerce. What are your opinions on this as far as India is concerned?

The landscape of m-commerce in India is undergoing an exciting transition. India is witnessing an impressive rise in everyday commerce conducted via mobile phones.

With the population becoming more and more tech savvy, the e-commerce companies are racing to embrace mobile, with some ditching their web platforms completely. In the near future, m-commerce will be the way for the companies.

You have an app named ‘Eco Ninja’.

How will this app help in increasing the branding and visibility of Droom?

Available on the app stores, the Eco app enables sellers to schedule comprehensive automobile inspections from highly trained and certified professionals called Ninjas. The inspection conducted using Droom’s proprietary methodology covers an exhaustive list and generates a comprehensive auto inspection report. This digital report will help the sellers and buyers the most informed decisions. Droom has partnered with Carnation to reach out to empower the technicians in 36 cities and

70 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

As per Aggarwal, marketplaces were never out of compliance of India’s FDI rules and are in fact providing invaluable support to 20 million Indian SMEs

allow Eco users access to Carnation’s extensive network of workshops and skilled technicians. Eco Ninja is becoming the most trusted app with a significant number of downloads.

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur.

What is the toughest and most difficult part of this journey?

An innovative bent of mind and the tenacity to overcome challenges are required qualifications for any founder looking to attract investments. I believe that technology plays an extremely crucial role in creating winning ventures, and supports founders who believe in frugality and economic effort as a means to achieve success.

Some details on Droom’s funding...

Automobile-focused marketplace Droom has raised $16 million (INR 100 crore) funding in Series A led by Lightbox. The company has utilized the funds to add 20 automobile and 12 service categories hosting over 50,000 sellers and 200k listings in 18-24 months. Droom also plans to expand into South East Asia by early 2016. The first round of funding for Droom was led

by Beenos. Droom is on its way to double its headcount over the next few months by hiring talent from leading institutes for functions like technology, marketing and customer support.

A leader you admire.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Welch.

You are also a serial entrepreneur and an early-stage investor. What do you look for while investing? Which are your most promising investments?

I have always believed that any business idea, no matter how novel, is only as strong as the people driving it. I have invested in Wydr, a performance based wholesale marketplace. It fits in perfectly into my vision of game-changing ventures and has the potential to aggregate the wholesale market at an unprecedented scale.

What are your future plans?

From a revenue of nearly INR 900 crore from 3,400 transactions in 2015-16,

From a revenue of Rs. 900 crore in 2015-16, Droom is targeting Rs. 15,000 crore of revenues by the end of year 2018

Droom is targeting INR 3,000 crore worth of gross revenues by March 2017 and INR 15,000 crore by the end of 2018. With a 12% annual growth, India’s automobile sector is expected to expand from USD 125 billion now to USD 250 billion by 2020.

Online transaction in this sector is also expected to increase from 0.25% now to 8% by 2020. We are targeting 50-60% of this business, worth about USD 300 million. Droom is looking to further expand its operations to add 20 automobile and 12 service categories hosting over 50,000 sellers and 2,00,000 listings in the next 18-24 months. Droom will expand categories as well as geographies in the coming time.

Your views on the new bill on FDI in e-commerce.

I have welcomed the government’s move on bringing further clarity on FDI in marketplaces. However, marketplaces were never out of compliance of India’s FDI. As marketplaces truly work, they are no different than Infosys and Wipro for they provide technology and ecommerce services against buying and selling items.

A well run marketplace is a technology, platform and services company vs retail or ecommerce company. Marketplaces are empowering 20 million SMEs to sell online and participate in the retail revolution of India versus sitting in the sideline because

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 71

DROOM

4ps B&m

they do not have capital or technological know-how comparable to large corporations. I welcome wholeheartedly the further clarification that the government is providing.

A management lesson your learnt while in college which has worked for you in real life too?

Of the many lessons that I have learnt, is that founders need to be strongly motivated by a cause, as opposed to those driven by quick money, have the vision to identify an addressable opportunity and the clarity of purpose for optimum thematic leverage.

What are your best innovations so far?

Some of our best innovations comprise the following: Orange Book Value: Droom’s Orange Book Value is a technically advanced engine that does comprehensive algorithmic calculation to give you a fair market value for the vehicle you are willing to buy.

Orange Book Value (OBV) is India’s first algorithmic pricing engine to calculate the fair market value of any used vehicle. Right valuation of a pre-owned vehicle has always been a strenuous task for both buyers and sellers and OBV has been especially designed keeping this in mind. The long term vision of developing OBV has been to determine the valuation of every vehicle on

Of the many lessons that I have learnt, one is that founders need to be motivated by a cause than by quick money Droom – from bicycles to planes.

Full Circle Trust Score: Droom’s Full Circle Trust Score is based on Droom’s proprietary technologies and algorithms that take into account trust factors that are important while buying used automobiles, such as auto inspection, warranty, verified seller, attractiveness of pricing for buyer, and level of disclosures by the sellers.

Droom’s Full Circle Trust Score will allow buyers to develop more objective assessment and comfort around the vehicles they are considering buying. Our Full Circle Trust Score is equally attractive for sellers who want to adopt best practices and offer nothing but the best to the buyer community. Seller listings with higher trust score will automatically emerge as winners on Droom’s marketplace.

Eco App: Eco is India’s most advanced,

Sandeep Aggarwal, founder of ShopClues, maintains that when he set up Droom, despite his having left ShopClues, investors trusted his past experience and invested in the business potential of Droom

72 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

independent, objective and unbiased auto inspection and verification service provider. Inspection is performed using Eco’s proprietary methodology by professionals.

The inspection checklist is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive covering all the important points needed in verifying or inspecting a vehicle.

Once inspection/ verification is ordered by a customer, the service will be delivered at their doorstep at a convenient time as specified by the customer. Post the completion of inspection/ verification, a digital report is delivered to the customer that contains all details.

How does your business model work?

Here’s the math – token amount is between 2-3% (depending upon the category) of the final selling price that is paid as advance money by the buyer on Droom’s online platform. Rest 98-97% of the final selling price is paid directly to the seller (100% final selling price = 2% token amount + 98% final value payment). It is fully refundable, no questions asked, under our buyer protection support.

Once the buyer pays the token amount, the listing gets deactivated and the buyer can meet the seller to test drive and inspect the vehicle before closing the transaction.

In case of order cancellations, the token amount is processed within five business days of the cancellation. Droom is a completely performance based marketplace where you pay only when you sell. As a seller, you can have as many listings as you want and there is no need to pay any listing fee. The bare minimum requirement to list an item at Droom is possession of the item with valid ownership documents. You just need to tell us the “Make-Model-YearTrim” of the vehicle and we will auto-create the listing for you in less than 10 seconds.

We highly encourage sellers to upload latest and high quality pictures of the vehicle.

Droom provides three kinds of pricing formats “Fixed Price”, “Best Offer”, and “Auctions”. “Fixed Price” allows you to buy at a fixed price while “Best Offer” allows room for negotiation. “Auctions” allows buyers to bid on vehicles, which are subsequently sold to the highest bidder.

4Ps

...continued from page 67

R Systems International Limited R Systems International Limited, founded by Satinder Singh Rekhi in 1993, is a software and information technology services company and Business Process Outsourcing services provider headquartered at Noida, India. The company provides software development and maintenance support to Fortune 1000 clients and medium-sized businesses. A specialized IT Services and Solutions and IT-enabled Services provider, it caters to a wide range of global customers and covers five major verticals.

tive dia g innova are In y offerin n w a mer t p to f m s o o u as of c ology c wes S n re o h a c B e te th y l e in loba ement, Pitne c. is a g commerc customer engag In le s e b a w n o e t on e, Pitney B tions tha 1.5 milli telligenc and solu ore than cation in ts M lo c u . t, e d n e rc ro p agem omme tion man lobal ec informa g, and g in il a m and ly 100 shipping roximate p p a in ut, the world clients onnectic und the C , ro a rd s fo ie ons Stam Pitney countr ts, soluti wide. At Based in c d . u rl s d e o ro w w p o s yee rely on Pitney B 0 emplo ucceed. ices from ly 16,10 te a clients s g im and ser v x in lp ro e p h p a n o s ve y ha team thri compan exper ts h c te , s Bowe

Persistent Systems Persistent Systems is a technology services company which was incorporated on May 30, 1990, becoming a public limited company on September 17, 2010 with the name Persistent Systems Limited.

Persistent has facilities in three continents, with nine development centers in Europe (Grenoble), America and Asia. In India, Persistent operates from Pune and houses teams of development engineers in three facilities, named Bhageerath, PingalaAryabhata and Hinjewadi (known as Veda Complex, which consists of 4 towers named as Atharavaved, Samved, Yajurved & Rugved), other offices are spread across Nagpur, Goa, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Persistent earned revenues of Rs. 1,882 crores in FY 2014-15.

rLtd inco ces Servi Ser vices d & n l a g ia g c n i n in a fin onsult sult vider of is Con Polaris C 3 is a pro y modernization 9 9 Polar 1 in c porated cts, lega nkgy produ r core ba fo g in technolo lt u set s n o c and h and as g, wealt ser vices in k n 12 FT a 0 b 8 orate hed its c n u la ing, corp s olari chnoll 2013, P ancial Te ri in p F A to In d . nce ging the icate d at brin nter ded nd insura e e a t C im t n a e rs is m fi , laris rld’s develop manage ity of Po ing and – the wo r rs rn e a te iv n le n e h u C ug te Design corpora ether thro nda, the sses tog e s. c te ro ia p c l ogy. Nala o er ass izationa w n a o p rg m o e f core o at would iatives th ment init

ompany ns Ltd lutions c lutio o o S S s d n n a tio lting hallenge forma y Consu ons to c g ti n I lo lu Rashi Peripherals o i o n s v h y c g in Prith ation Te technolo uar tered an Inform state-of the-ar t nt headq e vi is a m n th o ri ir Prithvi is P g “Adding Value beyond Logistics” is vidin attle. ss env e ro e S p in n s in o u d b d develop locate focuse anging what Rashi Peripherals works towards plication ad office pidly ch p e a ra h of d S ’s e n y a U g a duct e ran in tod d their emerging to be one of the leading value iding pro ffer a wid India an v o , ro d y p a e n , b h a n T ra tion d atio es.

Hyde added distributors in the country with plementa d organiz on ser vic ti te im ra t ra g c g je te te in e pro fully in 27 years of presence in IT Distribution. Today, Rashi has 53 branches tion and rehensiv stomiza to comp g in lt ment, cu u s offices and 56 service centres spread across Tier I, II and III cities of n from co stomers ser vices ns for cu India and more than 9000 Partners in 750 cities. Rashi’s distribution o ti lu o s nd end to e brands comprise world leaders like AMD, APC, Apple, Asus, Google, HP, e globe. s s acro th INTEL, LogiTech, Lenovo, NVIDIA, SanDisk and Toshiba . Established in the year 1989, Rashi has come a long way in distribution and is amongst the top 5 IT distributors in India tapping Rs. 2,984 crores revenues in 2014-15 with an amazing 36% growth.

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 73

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

Redington India Redington commenced its Indian operations in 1993 and is today positioned as the largest Supply Chain Solution Provider in emerging markets. With its corporate office in Chennai, it has 42 sales locations across India. Redington provides end-to-end supply chain solutions for all categories of Information Technology products like Desktops, networking, software and enterprise solution products along with Consumer and Lifestyle products to over 100 international brands. Over 1300 highly skilled and committed professionals help Redigton India deliver its products and services to farthest corner of the country.

Samsung India Samsung founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 is one of the world’s biggest business conglomerates operating across borders in multiple domains. Through innovative, reliable products and services, talented personnel and global presence having collaboration with strategic partners and customers spread across the globe, Samsung is taking the world in imaginative new directions.

From humble beginnings as a small trading company, Samsung is present in every second household.

SAP India IBM engineers Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner and Claus Wellenreuther founded “System Analysis and Program Development” (SAP) in June 1970 headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, with regional offices in 130 countries. Today SAP is undoubtedly at the centre of the technology revolution in the fast paced dynamic business world. Being the market leader in enterprise application software, SAP helps organizations mitigate the adverse effects of complexity to create new opportunities for innovation and growth. The company has over 293,500 clients in 190 countries.

Ricoh India Ricoh is a global technology company specializing in office imaging equipment, production print solutions, document management systems and IT services. Headquartered in Tokyo, the Ricoh Group operates in about 200 countries and regions. Ricoh operates through a robust network of 24 offices, and over 2500 dealers and business associates spread across the country. The Ricoh Group has sales and support, production, and research and development operations in nearly 180 countries. It is a market leader in Office Printers, Digital Duplicators, Production Printers, Projection systems and video conferencing solutions and related software technologies.

RMSI India RMSI develops innovative solutions that integrate geographic information with niche business applications. RMSI’s success is hidden in their unparalleled domain expertise, and unique application of geospatial technologies. RMSI is a global IT services company providing geospatial and software services to clients across the globe, in sectors ranging from utilities, wireless telecommunications, land information management, agriculture & natural resources, and risk and insurance.

Rolta India Rolta is an Indian company for CAD, CAM, business intelligence and big data solutions, geographic information system (GIS) solutions, EBusiness and related services established in 1989

by Kamal K. Singh, headquartered in Mumbai. Rolta helps organizations gain valuable business insights and provides dynamic technology solutions for various verticals including Federal and State Governments, Defense and Homeland Security, Utilities, Process, Power, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail, and Healthcare. Rolta has executed projects in over 40 countries. It employs around 2000 workers in India and international subsidiaries. It employs around 2000 workers in India and international subsidiaries.

74 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Savex Computers Savex Technologies Private Limited, a Rs. 4,000 crore IT company founded by Mr. Anil Jagasia, headquartered in Mumbai, has 72 sales offices across the length and breadth of India catering to 6,000 IT resellers across India and is the third largest Information and Communication Technology (I.C.T.) distributor in India. With a pan India presence built over two decades of expertise in distribution, Savex offers its vendors access to more than 7000 Channel Partners, Retailers, Corporate Resellers, VARs and System Integrators. Savex has always strived to continually discover new ways to take costs out of the supply chain and has continuously improved its business processes.

Seagate India

Spanco Ltd

Seagate Technology PLC is an American data storage company incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology. Since 2010, the company is incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Cupertino, California, United States. Seagate was a major supplier in the microcomputer market during the 1980s, today dominates the HDD market. In 1989, Seagate acquired Control Data Corporation’s Imprimis division. It also acquired Conner Peripherals in 1996, Maxtor in 2006, and Samsung’s HDD business in 2011. Seagate is the global leader in data storage solutions, developing amazing products that enable people and businesses.

Spanco has been an active player in creation of technology infrastructure for over a decade and today ranks amongst the best in India. It has presence across India and provides high quality, cost effective scalable technology infra solutions with more than 15,000 employees

SFO Technologies SFO Technologies, which operates in the Healthcare, Telecom, Industrial and Energy and Transportation sectors, aims to offer a comprehensive solution in design, engineering, software development and Electronic Manufacturing Services. SFO Technologies has hardware and software facilities adhering to world class standards, spread across Trivandrum, Cochin, Bangalore and Mysore in India and in the USA. SFO Technologies is the flagship company of the 300 million dollar NeST Group of companies with more than 4000 employees. SFO Technologies has a very robust R&D center which aims at synchronized design between competencies thus ensuring a smooth and hassle free experience for clients.

working across four continents. Spanco caters to large complex technology infrastructure projects across Government, Power, Transport and Telecom Service Provider’s space. They also have a formidable presence in the BPO space catering to India, US, Europe and African markets. Spanco is empanelled as a system integrator with Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and is aggressively participating in modernization programs like Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (RAPDRP) and Distribution Franchise (DF).

...continued on page 78

SUBSCRIBE NOW

YES, I would like to subscribe to the following magazines as indicated below: MAGAZINE

FREQUENCY

UNIT Price

1 YEAR (You Pay) You Save

India Busin ’s First & ess & No. 1 Maga Marketing zine

Tick

The Sunday Indian

Monthly (12 Issues Per Year)

50

540

10%

4Ps Business & Marketing

Monthly (12 Issues Per Year)

50

540

10%

RAJITA NEW CHAUDHUR KIDS ON THE I ON LIVING STRIN LIFE WITH BLOCK – GS ATTAC NO HED

VOL. XI ISSUE APRIL 1 -MAY 2016

B U S I N E S S

&

LEGEN KAKK DARY AD-MA AR KER PRAH THE MAKININ AN EXCLU LAD G SIVE HOW NOT TO OF AN ENTRE COLUM WORK PRENE N: ER ANTSJOIN THE ARMY UR: OF

M A R K E T I N G

A 4P

s B&

M Ex clusiv e Sur

PIYUS H OGILV PANDEY, Y BRAN & MATHEREXECUTIVE D DISCU GURU HOLDAND HALLOCHAIRMAN, WED S AN THRIL SSION ON BRAN INCISIVE LING TÊTE-À DS -TÊTE IN A

vey only

4Ps

` 50

Cover

-Resiz

e-Apr-

16.ind

d 1

TOTAL AMOUNT ` 4/8/20

16

Enclosed is Cheque / DD No. Dated Please write your name and address on the reverse of Cheque/DD

43

Bank Drawn _______________________________________________________

Favouring “Planman Media Pvt. Ltd.” for ` Name Address ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________ City ________________________ State ___________________ Pin ____________________ Phone

E-mail _________________________________________________________________________

Please fill this order form and mail it with your remittance to PLANMAN MEDIA PVT. LTD., 48, Community Centre, Naraina Vihar Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi-110028 Terms and Conditions : Rates & offer valid in India only. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of your first copy of the magazine/s by courier/post. For queries call 09818755583. All disputes be subject to Delhi jurisdiction only.

E-mail: subscriptions@planmanconsulting.com

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 75

Bright

4ps B&m

Why playing outdoors profited yogesh lakhani

The mercurial man has transformed the outdoor media industry in India to world class standards... 4Ps B&M profiles the quasi-legend and his corporation

Y

ogesh Lakhani is a name synonymous with a talent powerhouse and one who embodies profound dedication and commitment to his work. His story is truly inspiring and has the potential to make one realize that indeed, nothing is impossible if one has firm determination and conviction in one’s heart. He is the epitome of a rags to riches story and somebody the industry now looks up to. But it was not always like that, with Lakhani’s initial years being right out of a Leo Tolstoy novel.

Lakhani’s remarkable journey started the day he completed his SSC (12th grade) exams. While he tried considerably to get work in respectable firms, none would employ him due to various reasons.

Dejected, but still with a never say die attitude, Lakhani decided to do whatever it would take to start earning his living. The first job he got was of a mere slide delivery boy. The slides he used to carry were from

media agencies to printing and publishing units and vice versa. He also fixed broken banners. Industry insiders recall how Lakhani would be seen spending nights at the suburban railway stations in Mumbai just to ensure perfection while repairing some or the other railway board. The pay was tough, the work was tougher, the will to succeed was the toughest.

But Lakhani’s experience was pro-

He is regarded as the godfather of the outdoor media industry and as the man who introduced global benchmarks

Yogesh Lakhani (extreme right) receiving a commendation at the Power Brands Glam 2016 conclave from Union Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan in the presence of Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri and Ms. Ritu Beri

76 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

viding him invaluable insights into the workings of the outdoor media industry.

And that’s when Lakhani decided that he no more wanted to work for others and decided to branch out.

In 1990, he took up a small table space with just one office staff and started selling billboard space. Things started developing rapidly when he acquired all the railway billboard sites of one of the prime suburbs of Mumbai. By 1995, he was selling around 200 banner sites around Mumbai. That’s when Lakhani decided that he needed to formalise the endeavour into a professional corporate structure. He took up a large office space at the Borivali suburb of Mumbai and kick-started his venture, Bright Advertising Agency (now known as Bright Outdoor Media Pvt. Ltd).

With an initial professional team of 25 members trained and groomed by Lakhani, Bright not only grew within Mumbai, but expanded throughout India in quick time, with offices coming up initially in Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad, and subsequently in various other cities of India. Today, you can find Bright’s headquarters in the plush commercial area of Andheri alongside offices of famous production houses like Yashraj films, TSeries and Balaji Motion Pictures etc.

Lakhani shares with 4Ps B&M that it was just pure conviction to his work that made him work relentlessly everyday to make his dream possible. Today, Lakhani is considered a visionary before his time and the godfather of the outdoor media industry, who introduced global benchmarks in outdoor media advertising and marketing. So the next time you see a billboard, check the legend at the bottom. If it says “Bright”, well, take a bow...

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 77

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

...continued from page 75

Sify Technologies Sify (formerly Satyam Infoway Ltd.) a subsidiary of Satyam Computers before being sold to Infinity Capital Ventures is an Indian information and communications technology company. Established in 1995 at Chennai, Sify played an important role during the early spread of Internet and e-commerce in India. Sify used to run the’ i-way’ chain of Internet cafes; by August 2003 it had over 1,000 cafes in India. In December 2003, Sify launched video-conferencing facilities in its Internet cafes. Sify became the first ICT Company in India to own a submarine cable landing station in Mumbai with connectivity on both eastand-west sea corridors in 2012. They are pioneers in providing multi-city carrier-neutral Data Center hosting with 6 Tier II and 15 Tier II Data Centers.

Sonata Software Limited Sonata Software Limited is a global IT Services company, that provides services in business intelligence and analytics, application development management (ADM), mobility, cloud, social media, testing, enterprise services (ERP and CRM) offering infrastructure management services. Founded in 1986 as the IT division of Indian Organic Chemicals, headquartered in Bangalore, the company created an independent identity in 1994 and went public in 1998. Sonata services are focused on helping clients make an impact on business and drive value through IT.

Supertron Electronics Supertron Electronics Pvt Ltd is a leading Information Technology and Telecom company of India and among the country’s ten largest IT product distribution intermediaries. Established in 1993 in Kolkata by Mr. V.K. Bhandari, the company’s flagship business is the distribution of a wide variety of IT products including Servers, Desktops, Laptops, Netbooks, PC components, Peripherals, Storage products of international vendors like AMD Firepro, Corsair, Sapphire etc.

Syntel Syntel, Inc. is a U.S.-based multinational provider of integrated technology and business services founded in 1980 by Bharat Desai, Neerja Sethi, headquartered in Troy, Michigan. Syntel services its clients through 17 global development centers in India and the United States. Syntel is the global leader in digital modernization services, with a core suite of automation-driven IT and knowledge process services. Syntel believes in a “Customer for Life” philosophy to build collaborative partnerships and creates long-term business value for its clients by investing in IP, solutions and industry-focused delivery teams with deep domain knowledge. Syntel India managed to source Rs. 5,586 crores revenues with steady growth.

TAKE Solutions TAKE is a global technology solutions and service provider, with significant focus across two principal business areas – Life Sciences and Supply Chain Management. Started in the year 2000, TAKE has grown exponentially over the decade and is today represented by over 1000 employees catering to more than 400 marquee clients operating through 13 offices across 8 countries. With its global headquarters located at Chennai, India and US headquarters at Princeton, NJ, TAKE makes its global presence felt through its well-established offices across North America, European Union, Asia Pacific, Middle-East and South-East Asia.

78 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Symantec India

Founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with a National Science Foundation grant, Symantec was originally focused on artificial intelligencerelated projects, including a database program. It is an American technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. The company produces software for security, storage, backup and availability - and offers professional services to support its software. The name Symantec represents a combination of the words “syntax” and “semantics”.

Tata Technologies Limited Tata Technologies Limited is a Tata Group subsidiary that provides services in engineering and design, product lifecycle management; manufacturing, product development, and IT service management to automotive and aerospace original equipment manufacturers and their suppliers. The company was founded in 1989 and now operates in 14 countries, with a combined global work force of more than 8,000 employees. The IT consulting firm is active in North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. Tata Technologies personifies the value systems of the Tata group, ensuring ethical commitment towards the society while driving services to world-class standards. ...continued on page 86

4ps B&m

OPINION

Planet of the APPs How to maximize potential returns and intrinsic value using the power of apps – and how to ensure that you know what the logo of SnapChat looks like (that too) SWAPNIL KULKARNI

T

he term “app” has become a ‘buzzword’, and that’s a nobrainer. A handful of years back, the word “app” was even listed as the “Word of the Year” by the American Dialect Society, marking its ubiquity to the world of technology. Technology columnist David Pogue rightly quoted, “Newer smartphones could be nicknamed “app phones” to distinguish them from earlier less-sophisticated smartphones.”

Usage of apps has become increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users. Market research firm Gartner predicted that 102 billion apps were downloaded in 2013 (91% of them free), generating $26 billion business in the US, an increase of 44.4% on 2012’s US$18 billion. And how did the tide move since then? Google Play and Apple stores alone generated $5 billion of sales in quarter 2 of 2015.

Not many would remember now that the genesis of Google Play was from an online marketplace known as the Android Market, which opened in October 2008 and spread like a wildfire in the virtual space. Google Play in reality launched on March 6, 2012, with the merger of Android Market, Google Music, and Google eBookstore, marking a paradigm shift in Google’s digital distribution strategy. The Google Play store has reached over 1.43 million apps published and over 50 billion app downloads. Apps are being downloaded on a similar frenetic scale on other app distribution platforms too, like Apple’s App Store (Mac/iTunes), Windows Store, BlackBerry World (yes, it still exists) and others. The fact is that while earlier, a great app would involve a lot of scepticism before critics actually accepted its greatness, the times have changed.

No more are any eyebrows raised when apps like SnapChat get lofty valuations making co-founder and CEO (Stanford University dropout) Evan Spiegel the world’s “youngest billionaire” at an age of merely 25. An anecdote doing the rounds of the tech circles confirms that today, a person is considered ancient even if he knows the workings of Facebook or Linkedin or Twitter. Well, ask yourself, do you know what does the logo of SnapChat look like on their app? If the answer is “hmm...”, you’re ancient.

So how is all this related to your busi-

Computing and Internet being dominant parts of the economy, the transfer of knowledge has become machine-to-human ness? Internet users in India are growing exponentially and smartphones are leading this revolution. With the arrival of low-cost, mid-range smartphones (thanks to companies like Xiomi, Vivo, Oppo and Micromax back home in India), a large percentage of the population is accessing Internet on mobiles for the first time.

A recent report by IAMAI and KPMG projected that India will reach 236 million mobile Internet users by 2016, and 314 million by 2017. With over three million plus apps on Android and iOS app stores, 100+ funded startups and enterprises that

are focusing on their mobile app strategies, estimates say that even capturing 30% of this market can reap huge rewards.

Keeping speculation aside, there’s a far more significant trend underlying the whole economy. One of the most important activities of human mankind has always been the transfer of knowledge and skills from generations. Knowledge was documented in books and lessons were offered in classrooms. This is how we have advanced as a species. However, this process has shifted dramatically over the last century due to modern means of communication and due to the youth of today having unhindered access to this vast ocean of information over internet.

Computing and the internet being a dominant part of the economy, the transfer of knowledge has increasingly become machine-to-human. Knowledge is now stored on countless servers, displayed on webpages, and accessible by apps. Many potential students now turn to Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) like Udacity, Coursera, Vedantu, EduKart and others on the Internet to gain professional learning. The extent of knowledge available is such that Harvard Med School now allows interested students to clear all their subjects through the online mode.

The point of all this is that the youth of today is not on desktops, and not even surfing the internet using search engines (umm, okay, they do do that, but that too through, say, the Google Search app).

You’ll find them inside apps. Given that huge sums of money are riding on how today’s youth choose one brand over the other, the call of the day is to believe that whatever your business is, if you wish not to be ancient tomorrow, get an app!

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 79

ENTREPRENEUR SPEAK 4ps B&m

80 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

the couple with the midas touch

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR AND PARTNER OF VENTURE BUILDER PLATFORM GROWTHSTORY.IN K. GANESH IN A CONVERSATION WITH RAJITA CHAUDHURI SHARES INSIGHTS ON HOW HE AND HIS WIFE MEENA ACHIEVED UNIQUELY SERIAL SUCCESSES

G

rowthStory is one of India’s largest startup platforms.

How did it start? What is the vision behind it?

K. GANESH (KG): I would like to call GrowthStory a venture build up platform.

We promote ventures under GrowthStory. BigBasket was the first company we invested in. After selling TutorVista to Pearsons for $213 million, we were looking at how to participate in the Indian startup scenario. Eventually, we came up with the idea of a ‘parallel entrepreneurship’, which basically is promoting greenfield ventures under our venture builder platform GrowthStory. BigBasket, as I said earlier, is the oldest; and then there are Bluestone, Portea, FreshMenu, Homelane etc. Primarily, these are direct-to-consumer companies and consumer internet companies, which address the ‘roti-kapdamakaan’, healthcare and education sectors and spaces.

4Ps B&M: You once said, “Where the government fails is where the new entrepreneurs should pitch in...”

KG: Yes, that’s right. Basically, there are a lot of basic infrastructure – things like education and health care – which, in countries like Europe and USA, are taken care very well by the government. In India, unfortunately, the government and the public system for both education and health care are abysmal and inadequate and that’s the opportunity for entrepreneurs to do startups in those spaces. The same principal is involved in startups like BigBasket and Portea. In an evolved econ-

omy, you do not need so much of logistics and delivery kind of solutions, whereas in India, you need it because infrastructure is inadequate. Also, it gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to start without really being transformational geniuses. You don’t have to be extremely innovative or a genius to start something here in India, whereas in places like USA or Europe, where the basic problems have already been solved and done with, it’s a much tougher game to start with something. In India, there are still so many basic problems to be taken

What makes us really bullish at GrowthStory is our ability to build brands in India care of, so many challenges, so much that needs to be done to build the basic existing ecosystem.

4Ps B&M: Disrupters are the new entrepreneurs. In fact, Portea is in itself a disrupter in the health care space. It literally shook up the whole health care segment by bringing medical assistance right to door step to the common man.

KG: I think that’s a slightly exaggerated view (laughing). In India, tertiary care is of

world-class standards because of worldclass doctors, hospitals, latest medical equipment available in hospitals; so, if you take Medanta, Manipal, Fortis, Max, any of those, you have world-class facilities. But outside tertiary care, there is a complete vacuum, complete as in zero – there is no organized player, no branded player, where you can get things like physiotherapist at home or a nurse, a nursing attendant, or a doctor/GP coming home or a place to get medical equipment at home. It’s completely unorganized.

So, I would not say disruption; I would rather term it as identifying a virgin market, an open space, and moving into it very fast with scale and technology and capital.

That, basically, is the Portea model, a firstmover model. In terms of size and scale, in India, the entire health care market is about $80 billion; out of which $40 billion is related to tertiary care, inside hospital and hospitalization treatment. For the remaining 50%, there was no player.

Take the case of Big Basket – I won’t really call it innovation. We are buying the same grocery and delivering it home, but if I use technology correctly to the last mile, use analytics, it’s a better way of doing the same thing. So, it’s not rocket science; it’s really all about finding an opportunity.

The simplest way is just look around you and see where the challenges are and build up a framework around it. Whether it’s Flipkart, or Big Basket or Portea, all have been based on this simple model about identifying challenges.

The second thing that makes us really bullish at GrowthStory is our ability to

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 81

ENTREPRENEUR SPEAK 4ps B&m

build brands in India. In India, you don’t really have brands. You have high-end brands but we don’t have any brands at the non-higher-end segment, the day to day segment. For example, if you take the case of rice, sugar, pulses or other staple foods, people really don’t know what are the brands. They will know of a high end atta – Ashirwad Atta – which they will be able to buy. But sugar or salt brands?

Most of them wouldn’t know. In India, the previous generation was not really brand conscious. What has happened today is that because of the prevalence of the television and media channels across the country, thanks to direct-to-home, today Indians are brand conscious and desire to have brands, but those brands are not available. This is where GrowthStory steps in and is aiming to build brands for India.

4Ps B&M: Even today, reports mention that women find it very difficult to attract venture capitalists. Is that true? If so, then what is the main reason?

KG: I don’t know about the statistics but I feel that venture capitalists, as a group, as a category, do not discriminate. Statistics is a reflection of the fact that at the beginning of the funnel, there are a less number of women coming in through the system.

ONE SHOULD NOT LOOK AT ENTREPRENEURSHIP PURELY FROM THE VC FUNDING VIEWPOINT The number of women entrepreneurs per se is small. I would attribute it more to the number of women entering and seeking venture capital as a percentage of total number of people, than to any specific discrimination. Obviously, right from representation on the board to the CXO level, in all of that, there is a disparity in the number of women.

Secondly, we should not look at entrepreneurship purely from the point of view of only venture capital funding. That is only one small sliver of entrepreneurship, even though that gets maximum media attention, front page news because of valuation, because of boom, bust and all that stuff – it gets too much attention. The real

Tutorvista (below, head office), one of the startups founded by Ganesh and Meena, brings teachers and students together via a robust web platform; 95% of the teachers are women

82 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

entrepreneurship [is that] 99% of entrepreneurs don’t take money. So it’s not that women are not entrepreneurial. VC is only one part of the reason.

Another perhaps potential reason could be the financing nature of VCs in India is mostly technology-led. They typically invest in technology firms; and again there, it becomes a question of supply.

How many women technology entrepreneurs are there vis-à-vis men in terms of technology entrepreneurship? So the same disparity, you will find between a tech entrepreneur and a non-tech entrepreneur.

The amount of VC funding for a non-tech entrepreneurship will be very, very low.

So, I would say it’s more a function of the sector and the lack of women per se rather than any bias.

Ignoring women would mean missing on 50% of the big potential candidates, which is a pity for VCs, investors as well as the startup ecosystem, by not having proportionate or at least close to proportionate representation. It’s an opportunity missed for all, forget about equality or parity.

There is no lack of enterprise as far as women are concerned. If I take the example of TutorVista, then we had a model where teachers used to work from home and teach students in the US. Now, 95% of those teachers were women. I would call each one of them entrepreneurs. They were required to wake up at 2:00 am in the morning, learn the US curriculum, learn to deal with the US students. We gave them the opportunity to have flexibility in their time, so they could choose their time, whether they wanted to start at 2:00 am or 3:00 am at night, whether they wanted to work for 8 hours a day or 4 hours a day.

Also, they were required to work from home. The moment they got the flexibility, they lapped up the opportunity. So, in terms of enterprise, I saw no lack of it among those women. In fact, a woman is best suited for multi-tasking. She has to play the role of a mother, a caretaker, a homemaker etc. She also has a higher emotional quotient and by nature can do multiple roles. So, I don’t see women in any way less than the men.

4Ps B&M: It’s amazing you had 95%

KG credits Meena for bringing in a lot of unique and complementary strengths to their ventures; KG considers Meena to be very good at execution and scaling

it is very difficult to expect any change.

women at TutorVista. It reminds one of Mr Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, who always believed in the entrepreneurial spirit of women; above 90% of the Grameen loans have gone to women.

KG: Yes, it’s absolutely true! Take the case of Portea. Here too, in terms of nurses and nursing attendants, we have more women than men. Of course, many may argue that as a job, it’s more suited for women. But take the case of TutorVista, which is more gender neutral and here too, we have had more women than men and they did a fabulous job!

4Ps B&M: So it just makes pure business sense if you do not discriminate between men and women and give them equal opportunity.

KG: Absolutely! Otherwise, you are ignoring 50% of the population. You are trying to fish in half the pond. The objective is to get the maximum amount of fish and the best fish, then why would you want to do it

in half the pond? Statistically, it’s unwise to ignore one half the population and to say that I will only focus on the other half. You are losing out on talent.

TutorVista did not just have 95% women, but 25% of them were also PhDs. They were from all over India – from places like Jamshedpur, Teensukhia, Vizag. All PhDs who were teaching kids in the US. So a US student got a PhD to teach him at the dial of a call. We could do that because we could remove issues about location and space and get the best quality.

4Ps B&M: Israel has been called the ‘startup nation’ and it has shown the world how a nation can achieve huge economic growth. Can India learn something from this economic miracle ?

KG: Yes. The fundamental challenge in India in my opinion is what we call the ‘demographic dividend’. There is a significant number of young in India’s population; and if we want to get any kind of advantage from this, we need to provide employment to these young people. Without this,

4Ps B&M: You are the golden couple of the Indian startups. Whatever you touch turns to gold! How do you choose where to invest? Is there something special that you look for in a startup or its founder?

KG: Like they say in mutual funds, past performance is not indicative of future returns. So, whatever has happened in the past to our one startup has no relevance to the next startup, because every startup is new and the jury is out on every startup; so till the time we monetize things, it’s only work in progress.

Secondly, at GrowthStory, we don’t just invest in companies; we become the promoters of the company. We start the company. We don’t just look at a startup but we look at the next 5-10 years. We evaluate where are the open areas, where can we create value, where are the opportunities... the wide spaces where you can build brands and build valuable businesses. So we start with a thesis like that, we do some research on it, speak to people, and then the core founding team, along with some of the resources that have worked with us, spends 3-6 months doing pilot, pivoting, testing the market and all that.

Afterwards, after one has identified the right spaces, open areas, and for that area has obtained the right core founding team, free experiments, running/failing fast and doing pilots... and after all this work, go ahead with the business. So that is the formula that we have. It’s worked out so far so well; but again, that has no importance because for us, each startup is a new story. Every entrepreneur in the morning is naked in front of the mirror, so there is no past that gets 100% carried into the future. It’s like every test match is a new test match.

4Ps B&M: When you are not starting startups, what is it you are doing in your free time?

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 83

ENTREPRENEUR SPEAK 4ps B&m

It takes Meena and Ganesh almost three to six months of initial research into an investment opportunity to decide the potential; this was the procedure they followed to invest in ventures like Portea, FreshMenu, BigBasket, Avagmah et al

KG: I play tennis everyday. I’m a fan of tennis. Plus I like to spend time with my family. I don’t party.

delivering the services. Ultimately, for an entrepreneur, it’s only monetization that matters.

4Ps B&M: Your opinion on this whole concept of ‘unicorns’.

KG: Unicorn is a creation of the media.

During the early days, it got hyped up.

From a purely startup ecosystem point of view, the positive aspect of unicorns is that it has shown that in India, it is possible to create a billion dollar company. Till two years back, one of the biggest question was “Can India have a billion dollar company?”

The world knew that US and China are big markets which can create big companies – but could India do the same? That question got answered by the unicorn status. That, I would say, is the only good part of it. Other than that, I don’t think you as a consumer – whether you are buying from Flipkart or are taking an Ola – are not worried about the valuation of your service provider, whether it’s $15 billion or $10 billion. Personally if you ask me is the valuation right – I don’t know.

It’s a question of the buyer and seller in the ecosystem. Even if a unicorn is worth half whatever it was valued last, it’s still a very valuable company, and more importantly, doing an extremely good job.

So I don’t think we should get too much worried about the changes in valuation. We swing from one extreme of euphoria to the other extreme of gloom and doom. Personally, for me, it does not matter as long as they are there and

4Ps B&M: You have been an inspiration for a lot of people. Is there anybody who has inspired you? Is there someone who motivates you to face everyday with fresh enthusiasm?

KG: I have been motivated and learnt a lot from a lot of people. Specially for me, on a personal level, my motivation has been my mother. On a professional level, my first

84 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

INDIAN UNICORNS HAVE SHOWN THE WORLD THAT INDIA CAN CREATE BILLION DOLLAR FIRMS job was working with Shiv Nadar in HCL, and between by first and second venture I worked with Sunil Bharti Mittal. So both of them had a strong influence on me. I had just two jobs in between my ventures and both were under these people and they have been my biggest inspiration.

Are Prime Minister Modi’s initiatives like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Startup India,

Standup India’ going to change things in the future?

It is nice to see the government recognizing the importance of the startup sector as a key one for creating growth and employment opportunities. The policies announced, the focus and centre-stage attention given to entrepreneurship, steps to remove bottlenecks and bureaucratic formalities are all welcome. The steps are very encouraging and in the right direction. But before we open the champagne, we need to see the implementation.

Some concerns are still unaddressed and open ended. The issue of angel tax , the need to get a fair market value estimate, not being able to give stock options to consultants, advisors, trying to get certified as an approved “startup” by agencies to avail of the benefits... are all grey areas and need to be addressed.

The allocation of Rs. 10,000 crores for startup funding is a great move and will provide much needed impetus to a lot of sectors that are starved of risk capital. Again, the smooth implementation without red tape, channelizing this without leakages and corruption, ensuring it reaches the under-served sectors and regions instead of going to technology-only startups – which anyway get considerable VC funding – is important.

You and Meena are a great team. What are the unique perspectives she brings into the business?

Meena brings lot of unique and complementary strengths to our ventures and especially GrowthStory. She is very good at execution and scaling. She can go from a macro view at 10,000 feet to micro details at the ground level very quickly. She has a great EQ and builds professionals around her very well. She is very good in developing leaders and building a strong “A” team.

She is an inspirational role model to professionals.

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 71

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

...continued from page 78

Tata Elxsi Tata Elxsi- a design company is a part of the $100 billion Tata Group which addresses the communications, consumer products, healthcare, media and entertainment, semiconductor and transportation sectors. The company headquartered in Bangalore, India is supported by a network of design studios, development centers and offices worldwide. It implements and integrates complete systems and solutions for High-Performance Computing, CAD/ CAM/ CAE/ PLM, Broadcast, Virtual Reality, Storage, and Disaster Recovery and also offers electronics, software development and system design services for the automotive and aerospace industry.

Tech Mahindra Limited Tech Mahindra Limited (earlier Mahindra British Telecom- MBT) a part of the Mahindra Group founded by Anand Mahindra in 1986 is an Indian IT multinational headquartered in Pune, Maharashtra. Tech Mahindra won the bid for Satyam Computer Services when the former collapsed in 2009, making it one of the largest merger deals in India’s tech industry, uplifting it from the dismal situation. It was initially rebranded as Mahindra Satyam and finally merged with Tech Mahindra in 2013.

It operates in information technology, networking technology and BPO spaces. Tech Mahindra is a $4 billion company with over 1, 05,400 professionals.

Teleperformance India Teleperformance India, established in 2001, is the leading provider of outstanding Omnichannel Customer Experiences. Known for its quality offering and outstanding people practices, Teleperformance India evolved into the preferred offshore contact center outsourcing option for English speaking nations. It is also a well recognized name within the domestic market for its full suite of solutions extended in English and 11 regional languages. With operations spread across Gurgaon, Indore and Jaipur, over 7000 Teleperformers deliver Omnichannel Customer Experiences, with solutions ranging from Customer Care, Technical Support, Debt Collection, Customer Acquisition, Social Media, Data Analytics etc.

Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) a subsidiary of the Tata Group is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) service, consulting and business solutions company headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra founded in 1968. TCS is India’s No. 1 IT Company with Rs. 94,648 crore revenues in 2014-15 showing 16% growth and is the world’s 10th largest IT services provider, measured by the revenues and market capitalization ($80 billion). It is now placed among the ‘Big 4’ most valuable IT services brands worldwide. TCS is the second-largest employer among listed Indian companies with more than 335,620 employees in offices spread the world over operating in 46 countries.

Being publicly listed on 25 August 2004 TCS has been changing lives across the globe.

Vakrangee Vakrangee is a technology driven company, focusing on creating India’s largest network of last-mile retail points-of-sale, to potentially enabling every Indian to seamlessly benefit from financial inclusion and from a wider access to basic goods and services. The firm leverages their vast network of retail access points to deliver real-time BFSI services, Government-to-Citizen Services and Business-to-Consumer Services to the rural, semi-urban and urban markets. It has earned Rs. 2,775 Crores in 2014-14 with a whopping 41% growth. Vakrangee aims to be the most trusted consumer service point for rural India, by making solutions even more simple and sustainable.

86 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Texas Instruments India Texas Instruments (TI) started out as a small oil and gas company in 1930, and then focused on defense systems electronics in the late 1940s. TI entered the semiconductor business with the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, devising microprocessors in the 1970s and digital signal processors in the 1980s. Now TI is a global Fortune 500 technology company with more than 40,000 patents to its name supported by more than 30,000 employees in more than 30 countries around the globe tackling client’s problems and pushing boundaries to create innovative products that help to improve the world around.

VMware Inc. VMware, Inc. founded in 1998, based in Palo Alto, California is an American company that provides cloud and virtualization software and services, and was the first to successfully virtualize the x86 architecture commercially. In 2004, it was acquired by and became a subsidiary of EMC Corporation, on August 14, 2007 (recently, EMC was taken over by Dell Inc. in 2016).

VMware seamlessly integrates, expands, or migrates clients on-premises workloads onto high-performance, global cloud resources.

IBM Cloud has partnered with VMware the industry-leader in virtualization and hybrid cloud management solutions, with SoftLayer providing the cloud infrastructure enterprises.

Wipro Limited

Xerox India Xerox India, based in Gurugram, India, is the Indian subsidiary of Xerox Corporation. The American printer, photocopier, document supplies, technology and services parent company is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. Originally called Modi Xerox, the India business was derived from a joint venture formed between Dr Bhupendra Kumar Modi through ModiCorp (now Spice Group) and Rank Xerox in September 1983. Rank Xerox was absorbed into Xerox Corporation in 1997 and Xerox obtained a majority stake in Modi Xerox in 1999. After obtaining majority ownership of Modi Xerox, it was renamed Xerox ModiCorp and later renamed as Xerox India.

Yokogawa India Ltd Established in 1987, primarily a provider of Process Automation Systems and Products, Yokogawa India Limited (YIL) is today positioned as a Comprehensive Solutions Provider of Enterprise Technology Solutions (ETS). It has the state of art global engineering center and manufacturing center in Bangalore. The IT firm has a strong marketing and service network across India having a breadth of competencies to meet the technological requirement of the Indian Process Industry. Yokogawa India excels in turnkey project execution in Process Automation and Enterprise Integration with core competencies in Design and Engineering of Process Control Systems etc.

Wipro Limited was incorporated on 29 December 1945 in Mumbai by Mohamed Premji as ‘Western India Palm Refined Oil Limited’ later rebranded as WIPRO Ltd. It subsequently diversified into IT and now is an Indian Information Technology Services corporation headquartered in Bangalore, India. With market capitalization of $45 billion, Wipro was the seventh largest IT Corporation in the world in 2015 marking Rs. 47,318 Crore revenues in 2014-15 with 8% growth. Azim Premji, current Chairman and Stanford University alumnus, has been at the vanguard of ensuring that Wipro grows responsibly and contributes to the development of society too.

Zensar Technologies Zensar Technologies an RPG Group subsidiary is an information technology services and infrastructure services provider with headquarters in Pune, India. Zensar has operations and a customer base spanning across 29 global locations. The Company was originally incorporated on 25 April 1952 under the name of Hollerith (India) (Private) Limited; subsequently the name of the company was changed to Zensar Technologies Limited on 14 February 2000. On 16 August 2001 Zensar Technologies Limited merged with Fujitsu ICIM Limited. Zensar is a technology partner of choice for the world’s leading corporations.

Zicom Electronic Security Systems Ziocom started the journey of securing lives in 1994; with years of expertise and experience, Zicom marked a name for itself in the field of Electronic Security Surveillance in India.

Zicom has expanded its reach to 5 countries, 1023 cities catering to over a million happy customers, with an annual turnover of Rs.1,108 crores in 2014-15 managing 20% growth.

Ziocom was a frontrunner in using cloud technology in CCTV Surveillance Systems, Access Control Systems, Fire Alarm Systems, Multi-Apartment Video Door Phones, Intruder Alarm Systems, Fingerprint Locks, and Remote Managed Services (RAM).

"Significant material within the listing has been sourced from the websites of the corporations listed. Material sourced from Wikimedia and associated encyclopedia are credited to respective authors. Planman Media takes no guarantee of the accuracy of the material sourced thus herein."

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 87

Sify Technologies’ CEO Mr. Kamal Nath receiving the commendation at the Power Brands Glam 2016 ceremony

METAMORPHOSIS OF A BRAND

I

n the world of brands, the DNA of the brand is sacrosanct. Many brand leaders have tried and failed miserably trying to change the brand properties in order to garner more market share. An unsympathetic market and market forces, have constantly forced brands to rethink their strategy. The journey to occupy another slot in the consumer’s mind-set is long and arduous, often without sympathy. If done right, it is this transformational journey that transforms the boys to men.

Yet, few companies have dared to take the plunge. The most recent instance on a global scale has been Pepsi, which – with the growing global concern about childhood obesity and unhealthy lifestyles – smartly moved to occupy the ‘healthy snacking’ mind space. Closer home is the example of Sify. Old timers will know how the brand disrupted the world of Internet in India by giving Indians their first access to the Internet. A muddle of red tape ensured that a majority of Indians did not benefit at least until a decade later.

But being a business, Sify could not wait around until conditions were favourable. So, with a subtle extension of the DNA, the brand began offering initially connectivity to Enterprise customers. In time, the product portfolio expanded to the full plethora of ICT services. Today, two decades into its life, Sify is an acknowl-

88 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

edged leader in the ICT space, courted equally by both telecom and IT players for their products and services.

The key aspect of the communication was to use the goodwill that the company had garnered with their businesses. Being one of the first Internet companies came with its challenges. Digital was new and a bold era to explore into, and Sify made the right moves into market. Continuous understanding of the changing sphere of innovation was aided by PR. It is very important for a brand that is going through phases of transformation to create a positive, public image and establish a relationship with the target audience and media. At Sify, this was enabled by an effective communication process. When the business was going through a makeover, it was the consistent communication focus that helped the brand to evolve. At the end of the day, a business is about people and that is where public relations comes in.

Sify’s mindshare has a lot to do with being a disruptor in the technology landscape.

It enabled business more seamlessly and quickly. And that was two decades back. We have witnessed a drastic change in the internet landscape over the last 10 years. Today, we need to communicate to an audience that is ever evolving, and a strategy that helps us portray that innovations help us grow.

When we started out, what kept us going

was Sify’s constant innovation in technology and the ability of the organisation to communicate it in a structured manner. It has helped us build general awareness about all our services, business units and it has supplemented the marketing and advertising efforts. Visibility in key media helped us secure sustainable partnerships, customers and gave us a better negotiating position with potential investors.

Today, the world is overrun with companies like Uber and Paytm who are disrupting the way of doing business. For a public that has been fed on a staple diet of anarchist auto and taxi drivers, Uber and its brethren like Ola and Meru were godsends. But that’s just half the story.

What is undeniable is that these companies have also been quick to build a massive repository of good and clean PR for their efforts. The communication has for most parts been incisive and immediate and has been constantly evolving. They understand that the communication focus for today will not look the same in six months, 12 months, or two years down the line. It is directly proportional to the advancements in technology and industry. They understand that ‘Disruption’ was yesterday and now it’s the status quo.

4Ps Reprinted with permission from Sify; marketing@sifycorp.com; www.sifycorp.com

(Left to right) Hon’ble Minister of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Government of India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Mrs. Ritu Marya (Editor in Chief) Franchise India Media, Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri launching the Power Brands Glam 2016 Book

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 77

1

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

2

3

5

6

4

1. August gathering at the "Franchise India presents Power Brands Glam 2016 in association with Gitanjali and Times Now" event at “The Park, New Delhi�

2. Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri honoring Honorable Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan 3. Prof. Naveen Chamoli, the suave host of the day 4. Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri addressing the audience 5. Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri addressing the audience 6. Honorable Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri launching the Niti Aayog special edition of The Sunday Indian 78 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

7. Honorable Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan addressing the audience 8. International fashion designer Ritu Beri, Actress Neha Dhupia and Superstar Prosenjit launching the book 9. Neha Dhupia is being inducted into Power Brands Hall of Fame 10. Ritu Beri is being inducted into Power Brands Hall of Fame 11. Prosenjit is being inducted into Power Brands Hall of Fame 12. Rituparna Sengupta is being inducted into Power Brands Hall of Fame 13. Mr. Ravish Kapoor, CMD, Ravish Kapoor Innovative Invitations with Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri 14. Ritu Marya receiving Inspirational leader of India Title on behalf of Mr. Gaurav Marya 15. Mr. Yogesh Lakhani CMD, Bright Outdoors receiving Inspirational leader of India Title 16. Mr. Akhil Gupta CEO, GITANJALI receiving Inspirational leader of India Title on behalf of Mr. Sourav 2016Arora | 4PsGroup BUSINESS & MARKETING | 79 Bhattacharya Group President 17. Mr. R.K. Somany CMD, Hindware receiving Inspirational Leader of India Title OCT-DEC 18. Mr. Anmol Promoter, LT Foods receiving Inspirational leader of India Title on behalf of MR. V.K. Arora

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

10

80 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

1. Mr. Ashish Pareek Brand Manager, Hindware receiving Indian Power Brand Title 2. Mr. Devendra Gulia RPC Head - North, Officers Choice receiving IPB Title 3. Mr. Chandru Kalro MD,TTK Prestige receiving IPB Title 4. Mr. Ritum Jain CEO Sparkle receiving IPB Title 5. Mr. Satish Agarwal (CMD) Mr. Sunil Agarwal (Director), Kamdhenu Limited receiving IPB Title 6. Mr. Jagdish Shetty (National Franchies Development Manager) Monginis Foods receiving IPB Title 7. Mr. Navneet Kalra, MD, Khan Chacha receiving Power Brand Rising Star Title 8. Shri Jai Saxena and Shri Sagar Anand along with Dr. Harsh Vardhan 9. Ms. Triveni and Mr. Joydeep Singh, receiving the PBRS Title for Wine Company 10. Some of the distinguished brand creators and achievers who were honored 11. Sumit Maheshware, CEO, Think Routes 12. Founder of the IIPM movement, Dr. Malay Chaudhuri and Ratna Chaudhuri 13. Amit Verma, CEO, Swastika Enterprises 14. Arun Karna, MD, AT & T Global Netwarks Services, Special Guest 15. Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies 16 . Maj Gen A K Srivastava & Col. Vinod Rathee Senior Divisional Director, Rolta India Ltd. 17. The 4 Ps B&M Title winners from the fields of Advertising, IT & E Commerce 18. Neeraj Agarwal, A Sandeep, Prasoon Majumdar, Arindam Chaudhuri, Dr. J.K. Mitra (Former Dean of FMS), Archana Sinha, R. Jayachandran, Shashank Pal, Roopam Singh & Molshri Jain 19. Sagar Ananad, Ruchi Arun, Vineet Dhamija, Jai Saxena, Nandini Sen & Venu with Arindam Chaudhuri | 81 OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps Gopal BUSINESS & MARKETING

1

2

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

3

4

5

6

7

1. Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri and Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri 2. Arundhati B Chaudhuri, Director Strategy & Innovation, Planman Media, Varun Jindal, President Planman Media and Shikha Ghosh, Director Sales & Marketing, Planman Media 3. Arindam Chjaudhuri with Varun Khanna, CEO Planman HR and Sachin Shrivastava, GM Sales & Marketing 4. Prof. Arindam Chauduri with Amit Saxena 5. Prashanto Banerji, Arundhati B Chaudhuri, Sushila Chamoli and Naveen Chamoli, CEO Contentra 6. Rituparna Sengupta with Hall of Fame Title 7. Prof. Arindam Chauduri and Neha Dhupia 8 . Prof. Arindam Chauduri, Rituparna and Prosenjit 9. Prof. Arindam Chauduri with Arundhati B Chaudhuri 10. Prof. A. Sandeep with Ms. Babita 11.

Prikshit Thukral Zonal Business Manager Times Pro and Aaditya Razdan Chief Manager Alternate Channels Times Pro with Varun Jindal and Shikha Ghosh 12. Arindam Chaudhuri and Rituparna Sengupta with yoga maestros Sanyay and Rashmi 13. RajatThareja and Tabish Muzaffer from Mandate with Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri 14. Team Planman Media

82 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

8

10

9

11

12

13

14

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 83

TECHNOLOGY 4ps B&m

Brands & Billionaires of tomorrow will be built on the Internet

Of the nouveau billionaires on the block, the ones causing maximum disruption are those running technology firms; by rAJITA cHAUDHURI

Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahal (Left) and Rohit Bansal

96 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Flipkart co-founders Binny Bansal (Left) and Sachin Bansal

T

Anybody can be a Billionaire

he annual list of the world’s billionaires is out. There are 1,810 billionaires in the world today (down from 1,826 last year).

However, what’s interesting is that approximately 65% of these are self-made billionaires. Billionaires of today are not necessarily those born with a silver spoon; rather, today, like never before, the world is seeing the birth of billionaires who have started from ground zero and made it to the top.

Out of the whole list of billionaires, 198 are new to the list; and of these newcomers, a large portion has come from the fields of manufacturing, real estate and technology. Out of these three fields, the one that’s causing the largest disruption is the field of technology. Take a look at the newcomers on this list and you will see that most of them are heading companies that are rich in technology and not physical assets. The newcomers are Pinterest cofounders Evan Sharp and Ben Silberman, Flipkart cofounders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, WeWork cofounders Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey etc. In fact, look at the guys at the top: Bill Gates has been at the top for 17 years out of 22 years, Jeff Bezos has moved up from the 15th to the 5th spot, Mark Zuckerberg has moved up to the 6th spot. This just goes on to prove that technology will be the game-changer of the future.

Technology has a lot to contribute towards making the world really flat.

While America used to be the hub of a large number of billionaires with New York boasting of the largest number of billionaires in the world, things are changing.

While at 79, New York still has the largest number of billionaires, Hong Kong is fast closing in with 68 billionaires. Interestingly, out of the top 10 cities with the largest number of billionaires, 6 cities were from Asia this year and New York was the only American city in the top 10. Most of the billionaires of the world are today from the Asia-Pacific region and not from the United States.

Add to this the fact that out of the newcomers to this list, the maximum were from China. So while earlier it was

Inmobi founder Naveen Tewari

Airbnb, Snapchat, Uber, Flipkart, Dropbox, Snapdeal, Ola Cabs, InMobi, Zomato – all have young guys at the helm oil, minerals, real estate, which were responsible for creating billionaires, today technology is making billionaires faster than ever before.

Huge developments in technology are also key reasons that more and more of the young guys are challenging the biggies in the business and disrupting things like never before. The Internet has opened the doors and given access to knowledge, finance, people etc to an extent like never before. Look at the new and hippest brands of today – Airbnb, Snapchat, Uber, Flipkart, Dropbox, Snapdeal, Ola Cabs, InMobi, Zomato – they all have young guys at the helm of affairs taking on the world armed with just a powerful idea.

All these companies mentioned above are “unicorns”. This means that though they are private companies, yet they are valued

at $1 billion or more. For example, Uber is valued at $62 billion, Airbnb $25 billion, Ola $5 billion etc. This is something that was considered unthinkable before the Internet revolution. That a company like that could really exist, was considered a myth –hence Unicorn!

The billionaire mindset: Don’t be afraid!

Don’t be afraid to dream big. Don’t be afraid to fail big either. Don’t be afraid of criticism. The whole world will tell you how it cannot be done, so relax. All you need to be sure of is that you want it to happen and you have to want it real bad.

In fact, the easiest way to know that you have a great idea is when everybody says it won’t work. Be sure you have hit the jackpot. All great ideas were called stupid at the start, but the people behind the idea never lost faith in themselves or their ideas and made it happen.

Don’t be disheartened if you don’t know how to make your idea happen. If you need to learn a particular skill – it’s right there on Google. If you need to know how Harvard and MIT are handling a particular course – it’s right there on edX for free. If you have acquired all knowledge and now need to make an app, a website etc, again you can access numerous resources on the Internet for free and make

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 97

TECHNOLOGY 4ps B&m

one at almost zero cost. Your prototype is ready, but now you need the funding.

No worries. Just as the social media has changed the way we connect with friends, it has also changed the way we raise money for a business idea. The concept of ‘crowd-funding’ is growing in popularity and more and more entrepreneurs are reaching out to people on the social media platform to fund their ideas. Sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGO, ProFounder, Buzzbnk, 33needs, AppBackr, CauseVox and numerous more have helped so many ideas come to life.

You don’t have to be a technology giant to compete with Apple watches. The company Pebble proved that twice. Once in 2012, when they had an idea for a watch and went to the site Kickstarter with their idea. 85,000 people loved the idea and pledged money to help Pebble realize its dream. The company raised more than $10 million (10,000 percent of the goal). Then again in 2015, when they wanted to improve the features of the watch, they went to Kickstarter again looking for a funding of $50,000. In less than an hour, they could raise $1 million, and by the end of the campaign, they had got more than $20 million funding from numerous people across the net.

Hiral Sanghavi, a frequent flier, had the habit of forgetting his neck pillow on flights. So one day he and his wife Yoganshi Shah decided to develop a travel jacket that would have a neck pillow, an eye mask, gloves, blanket… everything. They went to Kickstarter looking for $20,000.

They landed up with more than $9 million.

From smart watches, to wireless headphones, to 3D printers… all kinds of ideas have found people who were interested in them and supported them.

As I said earlier, you don’t need to be born with a silver spoon to make your big dreams come alive.

What you don’t need today

You don’t need piles of cash, you don’t need a rich uncle either. You don’t have to go to Harvard or get a degree from a famous place. You don’t need any infrastructure to house your company. You

98 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal

Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal

don’t need staff as you can find numerous virtual assistants at a fraction of the cost and without any hassle.

What you definitely need

You need to believe in you and your idea.

Sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGO, ProFounder, Buzzbnk, 33needs, AppBackr, CauseVox and numerous more have helped so many ideas come to life

You need to be able to articulate your idea well. As the saying goes: “You only get one chance to make a first impression”.

Be it a meeting with an angel investor, or a venture capitalist, or a presentation on Kickstarter, you have to be very sure that your idea sounds interesting and investment worthy.

If you are not articulate enough, you can lose out even though your idea had a huge potential. You need to have a great network. You need to know how to significantly make your presence felt online. You need to know the way to get the attention of your niche audience in this very crowded space. Once you have mastered these things, it’s just a matter of time before your name appears on the next Forbes list of global billionaires.

Great passion, a clear vision, a concrete plan, a mind blowing pitch and you are ready to count your millions!... Or billions, if you may!!!

4Ps

OCT-DEC 2016 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | 71

IT GIANTS

4ps B&m

70 | 4Ps BUSINESS & MARKETING | OCT-DEC 2016