Will bitcoin become mainstream in a decade? ThroughBit founders believe so

Bitcoin started in 2009 and was trading at a high of $28 in 2012, today it is worth $3690. But, investors are still wary about it becoming mainstream since a majority of them do not understand it as a medium of exchange. 

There are several things that unite mankind, but none have united mankind more than money. Right from guns to gasoline, from cloud credits to cars, everything has been given a value that frees up human beings from deciding the exchange rate while transacting these items. Money is a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. However, the exchange of money, provision of credit, and setting up of interest rates is the domain of central banks. Centralised banking is a focal point in the formation of industrial and nationalistic economics. But, in the digital economy, money has taken a new twist and narrative, explains ThroughBit, an exchange for Bitcoins, at TechSparks 2017.

Since there is no active physical currency, new technologies such as blockchain – which is a protocol to trace the origin of transactions in a multi-party system – have given rise to Bitcoin as the panacea to the flaws of the central bank controlled economies. The primary difference lies here; Bitcoin is decentralised currency and is regulated by owners of the currency rather than a central bank. “The premise is that there will be transparency in transactions and no third party deciding the value. The system and user decides the value,” says Abhishek Gopal, Co-founder and CEO, ThroughBit.

The technology

The underlying technology, which is blockchain, is like HTTPs protocols on which several services are built. It removes middlemen and there are no clearing agents. It is yet to be understood as a medium of exchange by people used to the narratives of banks, which set the value to all transactions. In the Bitcoin regime, people need not have bank accounts and if it has to take off it would mean society would have to move away from the banking system. As stated earlier, value of transactions is determined by users and an intelligent machine that crunches data of transactions and estimates the value of trade. The question is that the Bitcoin platform, or the technology, becomes the new central bank. Only this time it is not run by people, but by a machine or machines.

Today, Bitcoin is expensive and each coin costs around $3,690 because of it being in short supply.

“It makes sense to invest, but nobody really knows the rate. Supply, demand and inflation need to be understood,” says Anandprabhu Rajendran, Co-founder and COO, ThroughBit.

Bitcoin trading started in 2009 and went all the way up to it dramatically fell to $2 when governments banned the currency. The reason for dropping crypto-currency was that people were using this to finance terrorism. However, in the digital economy, several businesses began to accept payments in Bitcoin and the value of each coin went up. Today, it is expensive in India because it is in supply in the USA, and for anyone to buy it locally they have to pay a premium to any exchange in which they are transacted.

For example, in the USA, the Bitcoin costs Rs 2.60 lakh, in India it costs Rs 3 lakh because the exchange here has to sell it for a premium. ThroughBit like a few other bitcoin companies, like ZebPay and CoinSecure, bring in bitcoin for aspiring investors from the global market and sell it at a premium. The reason bitcoin is expensive in India is because of its short supply, there are very few miners (individuals) in the public domain. A miner is the one who places all transactions in a block and solves computationally the block puzzle, which basically means he verifies that a bunch of transaction is not fraudulent. Once a puzzle is solved, the Bitcoin is mined into the ecosystem. This releases new coins into the ecosystem and the miner keeps these coins. The businesses that accept Bitcoins, all in the USA, as payment are Starbucks and Subway. There are hundreds of companies transacting on Bitcoins as an alternative mode of payment.

This system of transacting is going to be ahead of governments and political parties. “In a matter of a decade you would see governments making this digital currency mainstream for some applications,” says Mohammed Roshan, Co-founder and CTO, ThroughBit. In India, bitcoin is just an investment and is being held until it becomes mainstream currency.

When the future of cars and homes is controlled by software, then why not the way we transact with each other. The future will bring about an unprecedented change in human behaviour, which will give rise to the use of 21st century economy run by Bitcoin.

Eyeing the iPhone X? HappyEMI makes it easy to buy with quick financing at POS

Bengaluru-based startup is a consumer financing platform that provides shoppers with quick finance at the point-of-sale in stores and on online platforms.

How many times have you delayed a purchase for the lack of immediate money? It happens while strolling in a mall or browsing through an e-commerce website. That’s where HappyEMI steps in.

HappyEMI is a people-less and paperless consumer finance platform providing shoppers with quick financing at the point-of-sale in stores and on online platforms. It helps avoid the hassles of signing a series of papers and going through multiple rounds of queries, making shopping simpler, faster and easier.

The startup was founded by friends Suhas Gopinath, 31, and Anmol Vij, 30, in May 2017. Suhas was earlier Founder and CEO of Globals Inc, an enterprise solutions company, while Anmol was Founder and CEO of KeyMind Learning, an edtech startup based out of Coimbatore.

From ShopsUp to HappyEMI

Speaking about the beginning, Suhas says, “Both of us met Alibaba founder Jack Ma during in his visit to India. We were thoroughly inspired and realised that the future lies in an omni-channel approach. We wanted to explore something that co-exists in online and offline markets.”

The duo went on to start ShopsUp, an app that helps users discover the best stores in town for fashion, lifestyle, and other products and rewards them every time they shop. But soon, they pivoted to HappyEMI.

Anmol says, “While we were running ShopsUp we realised that traffic was coming in, but it was not converted into ultimate sales. We figured the need for easy financing options and HappyEMI was born with the help of existing mentors and investors.”

While ShopsUp is on auto-pilot mode currently, the duo’s main motivation was to solve financial and digital inclusion issues and offer easy credit to the under-served. People can use the HappyEMI service to instantly avail loans, buy their favourite product and repay in EMIs.

The Co-founders began by looking at their networks to find people interested in their vision; today, they have a team of 35 individuals based in India and China. The HappyEMI head office is in Bengaluru while the Research and Development team is in China.

How they check creditworthiness

HappyEMI analyses a customer’s creditworthiness through alternative data using the scoring engine. This data is extracted from the customer’s digital footprint, including social media, text messages and calls. The user can enter all required information via the HappyEMI app. HappyEMI then uses eKYC to verify users, seeks a digital signature for the loan agreement and taps Aadhaar to authenticate users. The settlement is processed to retailers in a two-day timeframe.

Anmol says, “At some point, we ask the users to download the app and share bank statements. We use an algorithm to track their income-expenditure using bank statements, loyalty experiences, etc. We have also partnered with a startup called Perfigos to do the same. They provide insights in the entire process of financial checks, verification and extraction of financial data.”

HappyEMI has signed up with major retail brands in categories such as mobile, consumer durables, home improvement, and car accessories. However, their current focus is on mobile phones and offline distribution. 

How do they monetise?

HappyEMI monetises through subvention from manufacturers and retailers and processing charges from consumers. The startup helps its retail partners improve sales conversions, boost basket sizes and increases customer happiness.

Anmol says, “We charge zero percent interest from users, but around seven-eight percent commission from retailers and manufacturers.”

It has disbursed over 1,000 loans till date with an average loan book of Rs 10 million and an average loan size of Rs 10,000. HappyEMI has partnered with two lenders, INCRED and IREP Credit Capital Pvt Ltd, and about with 400 retailers in Bengaluru, including Sangeetha, Poorvika, Hotspot. It has also signed up with Oppo and Vivo for direct subvention.

The technical integration with retailers’ billing systems has helped HappyEMI to scale in a non-linear way.

HappyEMI is funded by Anand Sankeshwar, MD, VRL Logistics and Yang Shu, CEO, Swipal Technologies, for $1 million and has received an undisclosed amount from AJ Investments, Chennai.

Taking on the challenges

Anmol says, “The initial challenges were in understanding the space, especially the regulations involved in operations and conforming to regulatory norms. As we had to partner with an NBFC who would lend on our behalf, we had difficulties in convincing them about our risk algorithms.”

They started with a 100 percent First Loss Default Guarantee (FLDG), and currently claim to work with 10 percent FLDG, which the founders believe is a “remarkable achievement”.

Speaking about what sets them apart, Suhas says it is the “data-driven approach that underwrites risk beyond credit score to reach a broader consumer base by using alternative data points”.

“HappyEMI doesn’t rely on the CIBIL score but has its own algorithm developed in-house and has over 180 parameters to check creditworthiness,” he says.

The startup has also developed a system called “Deep-locking” of the smartphone. During instances of a default in repayment of the EMI amount from the user-end, the phone becomes inactive and unusable. They have partnered with mobile manufacturers to do the same.

Looking at the market landscape

Recent findings from the Filene Research Institute and CU Direct on point-of-sale financing – financing at the point of sale for large consumer purchases – revealed the potential size of this market is estimated at $391 billion annually or approximately 3.5 percent of annual consumer spending. Healthcare, electronics and home goods, such as major home appliances and furniture, lead a long list of spending categories.

Point-of-sale financing provides credit unions with a good opportunity to offer members a more affordable alternative to high-rate financing offered by banks and payday lenders.

The fintech space has been seeing a lot of activity in India in recent times. The alternate lending platform EarlySalary recently closed $4 million from IDG and DHFL. Platforms like Slicepay, Capital float, Flexi Loans and InstaPaisa also operate in the same space.

In the future, HappyEMI plans to become India’s largest and most reliable EMI engine for any merchant to enable lending at POS. 

Suhas says that with HappyEMI, he aims to offer people the freedom to buy goods with the convenience to pay at ease in easy monthly installments.

Website

Flipkart follows Amazon in raising commissions for sellers in some categories

Online marketplace Flipkart has revised commission rates for sellers—increasing fees in certain categories and reducing rates in others—while launching a new loyalty programme that will reward top sellers.

According to the new initiative, sellers will be put in three brackets and incentivized accordingly—gold, silver and bronze. This is part of a broader move to improve the quality of customer service at a time when chief executive Binny Bansal and business head Kalyan Krishnamurthy have made customer satisfaction in the form of net promoter score (NPS) a top priority for the e-commerce firm.

With gold being the highest rated, sellers in that bracket will be eligible for benefits and rewards including discounted shipping fees. “We’ve been looking at how to drive our quality for customers higher over the last year or so. Over the festive season, we wanted to launch this programme. This is a very exciting programme and a first of its kind in Indian e-commerce. What we are doing is basically rewarding and encouraging our quality sellers by clearly defining what is the criteria or the status that we would like to give them,” Anil Goteti, head of marketplace at Flipkart, said in an interview.

“Based on this criteria or status, whether it’s a gold seller or a bronze seller, we are giving them some exciting benefits. At the heart of the programme is a drive to incentivize sellers and give them an understanding on what it takes to move higher and enjoy more benefits,” he added.

As part of the plan, top sellers will be rewarded with incentives and benefits such as discounts on shipping fee, faster payouts and exclusive promotions. Flipkart will reward gold category sellers with a 20% discount on shipping fees, while silver category sellers will enjoy a 10% discount.

“Shipping fees is a big component in many sellers’ P&L, particularly in e-commerce—for gold sellers, we are offering a 20% discount on the forward shipping fee,” said Goteti. “(The criteria) will depend on two things—what sort of consumer experience they are helping us deliver and how big are they in terms of overall revenue and units for us.”

Flipkart has well over 100,000 sellers on its platform, “close to 115,000-120,000”, according to Goteti. That compares with the 120,000 sellers that sell on Amazon’s marketplace in India. Flipkart currently counts WS Retail Services Pvt. Ltd as its largest supplier.

Simultaneously, Flipkart has also revised commission rates for sellers, with price hikes in some categories and rate cuts in others such as microwave ovens and washing machines.

Last week, Amazon India raised commission rates for sellers in certain categories such as consumer electronic devices, while reducing fees in others such as large appliances, after a bruising festive season showdown with Flipkart. Amazon raised the fees for sellers on its marketplace platform in categories such as automotive accessories, mobile phone covers and cases, desktop computers and laptop batteries, and reduced the commission rates in categories such as furniture and kitchen appliances.

“As a marketplace, we have been looking at newer policies and commissions and we do that every quarter. As part of this roll-out today, we are making a few changes to our commissions as well. In fact, in a lot of categories, we are actually slashing rates—such as microwaves and washing machines. In a few categories, we are also increasing rates,” said Goteti.

Earlier this year, Flipkart changed its policy toward third-party sellers on its platform, charging higher commission rates in key categories, passing on costs of product returns to sellers and encouraging them to use its logistics service, as part of an effort to improve its customer service and brand, Mint had reported in June.

Flipkart had told more than 90,000 of its sellers that it will charge higher commissions in categories such as fashion, and that sellers will have to bear the full cost of product returns.

Earlier this year, Flipkart also decided to shift a majority of its sales to a select group of third-party sellers to regain its once-vaunted customer service levels, in a significant departure from its strategy last year when it attempted to have tens of thousands of sellers generate most of the business on its platform.

Flipkart has already identified at least four large seller entities that will help it comply with two potentially troublesome foreign direct investment regulations on offering discounts and capping a single seller’s contribution to overall revenues at 25%, Mint reported in July.

Source By: livemint

SoftBank Group writes down $555 million in Ola, Snapdeal investments

SoftBank move comes in at a time when both Ola and Snapdeal are looking to raise fresh funds to sustain amid growing competition from rivals



SoftBank in its report stated a loss of ¥58.1 billion from financial instruments for the six-month period ending 30 September 2016 compared to a gain of ¥112.6 billion in the year-ago period. Photo: Bloomberg

New Delhi: Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. has written down as much as 58.1 billion yen ($555 million) in two of its biggest investments in India, cab-hailing firm Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) and e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd), the company said.

In an earnings report, Softbank stated a loss of 58.1 billion yen from financial instruments for the six-month period ending 30 September 2016, compared with a gain of 112.6 billion yen in the year-ago period.

“Gain or loss arising from financial instruments at FVTPL (fair value through profit or loss) comprises mainly changes in fair value of preferred stock investment including embedded derivatives, such as ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd and Jasper Infotech Private Limited in India, designated as financial assets at FVTPL,” the company said, explaining the loss during the six-month period.

Since only these two firms have been named, it is likely that they contributed the most or accounted for all of the write-down. A SoftBank spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking clarification and comment.

SoftBank on Monday announced second quarter results, posting a profit of 528.6 billion yen ($5.1 billion), boosted by a favourable exchange rate, as well as by healthy operations in home market Japan.

According to SoftBank, of the total mark-down, 29.62 billion yen was recorded as a loss arising from the yen’s year-on-year appreciation.

The news comes at a time when both Ola and Snapdeal are looking to raise fresh funds. Mint reported in June that Ola was looking to raise $300-400 million from existing and new investors. It needs to raise funds this year to refill its cash coffers and to maintain its lead over rival Uber.

Both Uber and Ola have been burning significant cash in India to win market share by wooing customers through discounts.

Ola has so far raised about $1.2 billion from Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, SoftBank Group, Didi Chuxing and several other investors.

Snapdeal, too, has struggled to hold on to its market share and has slipped to a distant number three behind Amazon and Flipkart.

In May, SoftBank, in its quarterly results, indicated slowing sales growth at Snapdeal. Snapdeal’s gross sales, which exclude discounts and product returns, slowed to 90% in the year ended 31 March from 301% in the previous year, SoftBank said then.

An attempt to cut costs and conserve cash in a slow funding environment pushed Snapdeal to shut Exclusively, its online platform for premium and luxury fashion goods, in August.

Last year, Snapdeal raised $500 million, mainly from Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group, Foxconn Technology Group and existing investor SoftBank, which then valued the Delhi-based firm at about $4.8 billion post money.

According to a Snapdeal spokesperson: “At Snapdeal we are focused on driving great outcomes around customer experience, growth and efficiency. On the back of this focus, we have seen tremendous success with the recently concluded Diwali sales season and we continue to build excellent momentum in the business. We cannot comment on accounting practises of any of our investors.”

The write-down is a sign of the times, experts said, and as significant as the number seems to suggest. “In a portfolio that spawns multi-billion dollars, $550 million may not raise too many eyebrows,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief executive at Greyhound Research.

“There is definitely pressure on both sides, investors as well as companies. SoftBank has started putting its house in order,” he added.

Indeed, the focus has changed to the “robustness of the business model” from just revenue and “growth”, said Sreedhar Prasad, partner, e-commerce and start-ups, at KPMG India.

“ Small aberrations in valuations on a long-term investment cycle is not a cause of concern, as future investments will be based on how the business will grow in the coming years,” he added.

Source By: livemint

5 Lessons From My Startup Flop You Don't Need to Learn the Hard Way

If you look up quotes related to learning from one’s mistakes, you’ll end up with hundreds. Everybody knows that mistakes or failures draw valuable lessons, yet we avoid finding those gems as best we can.

I recently completed my crash course from the guru, known as failure. What a ride it was. He taught me lessons I would have never received from the beautiful lady, known as success.

Today, I’ll expose my story about failure to increase your chances of success.

The story is about my failed startup, Foja Dara, which pulled me into self-pity until I extracted lessons that will help me succeed in the future.

Here’s a condensed version of my story, followed by my reflections on this fiasco.

After procrastinating for years, in 2014, I finally started my own business. The wonderful idea was to open an e-shop to sell traditional shoes to the international market. Why shoes? Because a funny-looking, yellow-nosed gnome met me in the park and told me to open a shoe store.

Folks, living in the U.S., UK and Europe, were my target segment, and I got busy setting up shop. To keep things short and sweet, I've summarized the major steps I took to realize this dream of mine.

• Name the brand. First, I embarked on naming this baby of mine, and after contemplating thousands - okay, hundreds -- of names, I arrived at Foja Dara, which was a traditional name for a traditional product. So far, so good.
• Source the product. To get a smooth supply line, I met a couple of vendors, and it took numerous visits to markets far-and-wide to finalize the products and the subsequent suppliers. I also grabbed some of my samples and had the poor things shot and edited by a professional photographer.
• Ship. To get my product on customers’ doorstep, I got my hands on the cheapest most reliable, shipping company to deliver boxes to my anxiously awaiting customers -- I wish. I also sorted out the packaging part by finalizing a logo and hiring a print company to brand my stuff.
• Make a website. One night, I had a weird dream, in which a funny-looking, yellow-nosed gnome advised me not to hire a developer and to make the website myself. Since I had experience with WordPress, I thought, “It’s just about finding a theme and splattering my logo all over the place after installing a few plugins. That’s it.” So I followed my goblin’s counsel to a T, and did just that. I took me nearly six months of toiling and tinkering before I was somewhat satisfied with the site. Fortunately, the domain has now expired, and it can no longer be seen - not even by Google’s bots -- phew! If you’re interested in having a look at the remains of my brand, head over to Foja Dara’s Facebook page, which doesn’t seem to expire on its own.

Finally, in late 2014, I launched. To gain traction, I pushed the word out about my startup on social media, hoping people would notice my brilliant merchandise. Here’s what happened next.

Crickets.

Nothing.

On Day 14, I closed the shop for good.

It felt like I’ll never be able to mend my damaged ego. Surprisingly, I pulled myself back up way quicker than I thought I would. And as soon as the tide of sour emotions receded, I set upon extracting lessons from this dud of a project.

Here are the lessons I learned from my startup flop. Hopefully, it will help you have a better chance of success in your ventures.

1. You can’t do everything by yourself.

A close review, in retrospect, revealed that I tried to do everything by myself. Even though I had a shoestring budget, there were things I should've let specialists handle. The most glaring example of this blunder was my website. Who in his right mind tries to set up a professional ecommerce website by learning from tutorials? Well, I guess it was me. Lesson one - outsource.

2. You can’t go far alone.

An African proverb says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

That sums up another blunder that slipped into my blind spot while I was rolling. The thought of enticing someone to join my struggle never crossed my mind. With like-minded partner(s), I could’ve made fewer mistakes and leveraged their energy to push off with more force. Lesson two - synergize.

3. You can’t succeed if you’re not passionate about it.

In hindsight, I realize this startup was for the sake of a startup. Not even a tad bit of passion or a sense of mission behind it. I should have gone deep enough to identify something that I was passionate about. If you are not crazy about your offering, stop right there. Come up with something you can do zealously for the rest of your life. Lesson three - dig deep.

4. You can’t chase two rabbits at a time.

Chasing two rabbits will leave you panting and empty-handed. I was trying to set up a business while still working a nine-to-five job. Since I had a full-time day job, I spent a better part of an entire year getting everything in place. This meant working from nine to midnight, when the only break was my commute back home. The result? Compromised job performance and a failed business as the topping. Lesson four - focus.

5. You can’t afford not to plan for success.

Even if I had struck upon success, by any chance, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Why? Because I paid little attention to what was next, in the case that my venture was a roaring success right off the bat. To top it off, I had a backup plan for failure, and it worked! Yippee. Lesson five - burn your boats, folks.

I can rant on about my failure for eternity, but the lessons have been learned. It’s time to move on. It’s time to make a set of entirely new mistakes, and learn more. That’s how we grow, expand and eventually succeed.

I’ll bow out with these famous words, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

The Overnight Success Story Of EngineerBabu

This is the story of an "EngineerBabu" who hailed from a very distinct village called Tikamgarh. He was the lucky one to earn the respect of being an Engineer and was greeted with a warm welcome every time he used to go back home.

This journey is about his determination and willingness to leave a perfectly paying MNC job to start his own venture setting a strict example for all us entrepreneurs out here.

Mayank Pratap is the founder of EngineerBabu, and I had no clue about the magnitude of impact the 28-year-old created the moment I sat and had a little talk with him. Yes, EngineerBabu is just another product-oriented company which has a bigger version of dreams, and there are a lot of things on the list that prove this startup requires an overwhelming ovation.

Their journey was quite a lot and the fact that he was the only Engineer from his village motivated him every time he faced a difficulty. It was the time when he used to face the constant on timers and glares from his seniors, who only tried judging him for his work, he realized working there was no right to the zeal he held inside him. He wanted to meet his dream, fly off the cliff with all the colors raiding the sky.

That sounds beautiful. Doesn't it?

Let's start off his journey with his words that have left me spellbound and inspired to keep doing what I aspire to.

His journey started off from a little cube where he used to work as an Engineer for a Multi National Corporation. It was then he realized that there was much more in store for him than a 9 to 7 job where he had to work his ass off. As uttered by him, EngineerBabu was a product of his determination. He wanted to turn that name that the people back at his village used to call him into a name that was quite renowned in the city. 

You see personal savings are something every 20 something never thinks of doing, all they think of is how they can buy those boots, or that car and even the most expensive Harley that they can boast out about. 

Mayank along with his two friends Aditi Chaurasia and Avdhesh Pratap Singh Solanki founded the idea of 'EngineerBabu' merely by their personal savings. Of course, their effort needed investors and influencers to take the stride. But it got hard when all of the chances got turned down by a simple NO. 

And the company turned into a client service provider than what it was meant for- Product Delivery Services.

The Growth Phase:
You see, setting up a start-up is not a cake, it needs the batter to be beaten hard enough for the cake to rise slowly and steady making everyone happy around with its vibes. The initial months of the startup were spent in a lot of hard work and strength. It was then that they came across the fact that there is much more to kick off but the investors. There were oodles of emotional challenges as well; there were even times they had to be at the best of their mental health even when they were not able to. 
Clueless about the path and how the journey will unfold, three friends took over the initiative to move forward together with a belief that things have their own time and pace to happen. They always knew they had to walk on thorns. 

The first challenge: Convincing people to trust.
When it comes to building a company, you need people by your side to help you build a family. It is not just about trusting your instincts but having a team and nurturing a family that adds on to the building of an organization. This was the most difficult task for the three of them. 

How do we convince people to join us? 
Three people, no monetary help, no investors and only savings to spend. On top of that, there were new recruitments to be done and new projects flooding the timeline, and the company was heading towards success. That was a lot. Wasn't it? 
There was just one thing clear in their mind- No external help was to be taken. Plus, no relying on friends for money was possible. The entire phase was jam-packed with a lot of jeopardies. But, something had to be done. 

Mayank believes in solving his problems in three brief ways:
All that people talk about nowadays are investors, but I guess customers are the ones that are to be thought about first. It is the client who gives you the money; it is the customer who gives to the innovation and it is the customer again that makes you happy. And you cannot turn your investor into your customer anyways, can you?

Amitabh Bachchan does not necessarily use Navaratna oil or all the cricketers endorsing wheelers don't necessarily drive them around the city. So you know now what you need to look into when you are searching for an investor. 

1. Creativity is the key. Get your minds to work and you'll end up having all the solutions to your problems. 

2. Serve your employees. Shower them with a lot of encouragement and a stride to work ahead. It is your team that takes you ahead and makes the difference. If you listen to your employees, their innovation, you will for sure get the ideas to solve their problems. 

3. Believe in your people and they will be glad they made their best to work with you.

4. Try to find the right people and not the best. It's not about the MBA's and IITians that make the company's flag swirl like never before the much and many that put all the effort into a team as a whole. They might be smart enough, and not an IITian. 

5. When you are small, hire talents with dreams and not people with grades. Because if he is here for a dream, he might as well add onto the work you are doing. 

6. Love competitors, learn from them. If you don't have competitors, you might as well not get to grow. Respect your competitors so that you can learn as much as you want. 

7. Business is about hopes, dreams, and courage to turn them into reality. 

8. Last but not the least, never, ever give up on your dreams. Let them live.

It started off with a dream in the eyes of the only Engineer Babu from Tikamgarh.



Giving an apt name to an organization that could shine brightly in the eyes of every Engineer. 



All they wished for was a team that could pull things off just like a family. 



Pulling strings together and finding the best people, they built a hearty team, as big as it could get. That laughs together and no doubt, live each other's dreams. 



Now that the family has grown from 3 to a number that is still growing. 



And the team has now grown bigger after establishing themselves in Chicago.

With the perfect blend of hard work and smart work, the team deserves great accolades. Don't they? 



And yes, Scale Ventures announces it first investment in Indore in EngineerBabu.



Source By: wittyfeed

6 years, 4 products, and 5 continents — what is this New Yorker doing in India?

A hidden wanderer, Adam Walker has gone to the extent of using his education loan to start up. Adam’s tryst with starting the perfect venture has taken him from Europe to Africa and now to Asia.

But what caused this downtown New Yorker to finally bring his aspirations to India? The answer lies in his narrative.

Adam Walker, Founder, Hummingbill

The start

Adam’s journey as an entrepreneur began at the age of 22. He started a small wind turbine company called Kosovo Wind Garden in Pristina, Kosovo (Europe). The idea was to addresses the country’s lack of reliable electricity. Running it for a year, the idea eventually fizzled out in March 2012.

However, his love for creating a social impact raced into his next venture. Looking at electricity being stolen by businesses and consumers, he built an objective meter reader with other co-founders, which monitored electricity consumption along with intelligent load shedding. The idea picked some steam and seeing an active market in Chile, he enrolled the venture to the Start-Up Chile Accelerator programme in 2012.

While settling himself in Chile, things took a turn, as his investor was caught by the FBI for illegal money laundering from Russia. He was shocked of the happenings and was even ousted from the organisation. Things became bitter, but Adam wouldn’t stop taking his chances.

It was too soon to call quits.

The zeal

Taking a page from his book, Adam remarks,

A problem in my history is jumping to work on something without really thinking of setbacks and reflecting on the options.

Operating in the electricity monitoring space and looking at the condition of bill generation, Adam with an ex-colleague started a mobile billing subscription software, RemoteCycles in May 2013. The aim was to correct operational efficiencies preventing different customers from paying different amounts for the same service.

Looking at the boom of mobile money amongst the population, he chose Nairobi, Kenya, as his next test ground.

After moving there, Adam soon realised that he fell into the classic problem of addressing the solution before the problem. Utilities in Kenya were majorly governed by public companies, and lack of competition caused these companies to have no incentives to improve operations.

This time the loss was big, and his firm was bleeding money and time.

In the same year in July, Adam went back to the US and did all kinds of odd jobs to support the venture. He reminisces,

It was really difficult being over-educated and underemployed. The times were really stressful.

A person who had his bachelors in Physics and Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters in Science, Technology and Public Policy from Rochester Institute of Technology was walking dogs and stacking wood at saw mills to keep his venture alive. The tough times didn’t chose to leave his side.

Although working in various countries, all of Adam’s businesses were incorporated out of the US.

In December 2013, the co-founder left and Adam moved back to Kenya. Dearth of personal funds led Adam to move to a servant’s quarter in Nairobi. Building his fourth venture called HummingBill, he continued with his odd jobs, unlocking phones (imported from US) and tutoring students in Biology.

But things took a turn, when Paul English, Founder of travel metasearch Kayak, and Africa Angel Network chose fund his venture for $45,000. Looking at the limited scope of the market, his advisors kept asking him to move out of Kenya.

But clarity struck Adam only after an exploratory trip to Mumbai in July 2014. Understanding that he gave his very best, Adam realised the need to move to a bigger market.

And, in December 2014, Adam flew to Mumbai to give his dying startup another lifeline.

The introspection

Trying to understand where he went wrong, the learnings were fairly simple.

He believes that the environment and people with whom he started the company weren’t the best. Also, the culture in these geographies lacked intellectual capital in terms of experience and product understanding, not to forget the difficulty to raise capital.

But, there is a silver lining to his story, where all his experiences haven’t gone in vain.

It’s been more than a year for Adam in India, and his B2B automated billing and invoice generation solution Hummingbill finally seems to have taken off.

The team at Hummingbill

A new start called Hummingbill 

Adam says,

40 million small and medium sized businesses in India experience cash flow issues. In 2015, 97 percent of those B2B businesses reported consistent late payments from their clients, where their average Days Sales Outstanding was 65 days, the longest in Asia. Further, one in three invoices unpaid in India is due to the seller's fault, predominantly from their clerical errors white drafting invoices.

Looking at the enormous market and the depth of the problem, he moved to the tech capital of India — Bengaluru — to build a solution that allowed vendors to track invoices in an intelligent way, moving invoices to cloud.

Further, mentorship became easier as India had not just a history of indigenous software, but also talent migrating from the Silicon Valley.

The software solution called Hummingbill helps to remove the dependency on an accountant, allowing sale representatives to create and send invoices.

Integrated with payment gateways like Razorpay and Instamojo, the invoice comes with a payment button which vendors can use to pay the raised invoice. Integration with payment gateways also allows Hummingbill to automatically reconcile the payment.

Sitting as a Gmail plugin, the data are made available to sale representatives in a personalised manner. The solution helps businesses provide visibility into the designated sales representative responsible for invoices, while removing operational inefficiencies to the process. Reminders to businesses for payments due are also automated.

Additionally, aging reports, a tool used by collections personnel to determine which invoices are overdue for payment, are automatically generated and customised depending on the designation of the person in the organisation. This helps to bring complete automation to the process.

The software automatically syncs with Tally software, which seems to be dominating the market. The firm has raised $100,000 from a mix of angel investors from Singapore and Dubai.

While starting up, one of the major threats Adam saw was from manual accountants, which would help businesses manually create invoices monthly. The key was to disrupt them and sync the invoicing solution to Tally, which was dominating the market. He adds:

In India, there is a slight resistance towards newer technology. Further, there is a high fallback on the population for doing these tasks. However, in billing it doesn’t scale with a lot of companies still having bad books.

According to the company, over 300 businesses have downloaded Hummingbill, and uploaded over 9,000 of their clients onto the platform. Since its beta release in June, over 18,000 invoices have been tracked. The firm has garnered Rs 40,000 in revenues since June and claim to be growing at 45 percent month-on-month. Having a workforce of four members including Adam, the team is equally divided amongst engineers and sales representatives.

The company also faces competition from bigger brands like Zoho Invoice, Zoho Books, Beyond ARM and ezyCollect amongst many others in the accounts receivable management software market.

In the next nine months, the company is looking to raise a bigger round of $500,000 to triple their team size and also looking to break even.

The Adam Walker of today

The vision for this entrepreneur remains to be even bigger. While things seem to have finally picked up, Adam seems to be nothing like his past.

Although a sense of regret lingers in him, he owes a better sentiment towards his life experiences and past failures.

Having learnt a lot, he questions and invalidates every move before taking a sound step. He did that while launching Hummingbill in India too.

But his failures haven’t deterred him from taking leaps and jumps forward, because as it’s said the rolling stone gathers no moss.

Source By: YourStory

[Bootstrap Heroes] How this 29-year-old built a Rs 180-cr solar business in 5 years

India’s middle class is estimated to be 300 million in size. A majority of this middle class will be in top 55 cities over the next 15 years and these people will require electricity. The total power generation capacity of the country is 300 gigawatt (GW) and only 13 percent of the country’s power generation is met through renewable energy. Of that, 13 percent solarenergy constitutes about 8GW of capacity, which is roughly 3 percent of the overall power generation of India. Companies wish to enter the solar power generation business because of the tax break provided by the government and the $100-billion investment expected to come in by 2020 to take the solar power generation capacity to 100GW over the next decade.

With this as the hypothesis IIT engineer Himamsu Popuri started Nuevosol Energy Private Limited in 2011, which in five years has crossed Rs 180 crore in annual revenues. Nuevosol builds solar mounting systems and structures for energy companies. This meteoric rise of Himamsu was clearly because he was able to tap into all the investments going into solar business. More importantly, industries setting up solar farms were looking for consultants who could explain by execution why mounting of the solar panel structures is far more important than just laying it on the field. “I was working on the corporate side of a solar energy company when people began to get confused over setting up solar panels across India. It was early days and most were paying big money to understand solar energy,” notes Himamsu.

Founding team of Nuevosol: (From Left to Right)  Sriram Dasari, Director – Strategy, Himamsu Popuri, CEO & Managing Director, Srinivas Maganti, Director – Operations, Harish Krothapalli, Director – Projects, Nikhil Babu P, Director – Design

The early days

It was while graduating in 2009 from IIT-Madras did Himamsu find an interest in solar energy. He was picked by Solar Semi-conductors, a manufacturing comany as an engineer. Within a year he joined Cirus Solar where he learned the ropes of setting up complete solar photo voltaic installations. While in that company he realised a business opportunity. "People did not realise the positioning based on the movement of the sun allows the business to capture the most energy; the mounting of the structures are also dependent on the soil types," explains Himamsu. This was knowledge that became a business opportunity. When he started the company in 2011 the fact that  several solar installations ignored basic work was brought to the fore. "We work with most EPC (engineering, proc urement, construction) companies and real estate companies to provide a turnkey solar solution for solar on the DC side, meaning we help them capture usable power by setting up our structures," say Himamsu.

His first break came when a small engineering company asked him to set up a 1MW solar structure outside of Hyderabad. Since, he has 55 clients, including Azure Power, Tata Power, Sterling Wilson , ACME and Lanco, and has built 1GW worth of solar projects.

The business was set up with an investment of Rs 50 lakh (raised from friends and family) and since it is a straight cash business because of the nature of large corporate contracts Himamsu has been able to reinvest cash to run the business after that initial support.

The business model

The company works on a per-MW basis charge or 1.5 percent of the total cost per MW. To set up 1MW of solar power a company spends anything between Rs 6 and 8 crore. The EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation) for this business ranges from eight to 12 percent and works on low net margins.

Nuevosol takes time-bound turnkey contracts from infrastructure companies, which usually last for three to four months. Infrastructure companyies work with Nuevosol to understand the lay of the land and the number of solar panels that can be set up in the area. Himamsu's team quickly works out the cost per structure and gets all the steel mounts manufactured and shipped to location, where his team then helps the infrastructure company to assemble the panels on the mounts. In some cases they install trackers on the panels to move based on the sun's movement to gain maximum power. Nuevosol is now a 250-member team and expects it's revenues to hit Rs 500 crore in three years.

"These are ideas that are scaled sheerly because of the entrepreneurs ability to find an opportunity which was largely undiscovered," says Sridhar Pinnapureddy, founder of CtrlS, the data centre company.

The competition for Nuevosol are the myriad private contractors and engineers that claim to understand the solar business. The opportunity does not stop there for Nuevosol. Himamsu now has plans to design and execute rooftop projects for large corporates. Today, an average corporate pays Rs 12 per unit of power and solar is one way to be self-reliant energy-wise and reduce grid and wheeling charges. Himamsu's company has set up the rooftop solar for companies like Infosys (in Hyderabad) and the Oberoi Group of Hotels.

"India needs energy and such companies that organise the unorganised in the engineering sector are very valuable," says Mohandas Pai, MD of Aarin Capital.

Himamsu credits the successful establishment of Nuevosol and its seamless functioning to his friends and colleagues who were also the founding team of the company. Nikhil Babu (Director- Design), Sriram (Director- Strategy), Harish (Director-Projects) and Srinivas (Director - Operations) joined him in 2011, and decided to make solar energy plant construction an organised business. The future is in renewable energy and Himamsu has played the right notes to become a Rs 1,000-crore company in a decade.

Source By: YourStory