Tag: Startups

Business

TiE Mumbai conducts over 200+ engagements with Startups & Entrepreneurs, enabling and mentoring them

Dec 22, 2021 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Amit Mookim, #entrepreneurs, #government incubators, #Special interest groups (SIG), #Startups, #TiE Mumbai, #TiE Women Global Pitch Competition

At TiE Mumbai, this year was yet another year where the association continued with its virtual engagements although a few forums were created where people could meet physically whenever possible. TiE Mumbai has successfully completed about 200+ engagements on varied themes along with entrepreneurs and VCs and had connected nearly 10,000 people in some way during these events. Interestingly the mix of these engagements and outreaches have been different and varied when compared to the last years.

One of the key themes that TiE Mumbai emphasized a lot, is creating Masterclasses, which are building models for expert-based learning. The focus of these masterclasses was to create new angel investors. TiE Mumbai had several masterclasses run by prolific angel investors and which saw great participation as well as feedback.

“This year, TiE Mumbai added 150+ angel investors into the network. Our charter member base grew by over 30% and we increased our active member base by over 40%. TiE Mumbai has engaged with more than 10,000 people through its engagements. “said Amit Mookim, President, TiE Mumbai.

TiE Mumbai is also partnering with the government incubators like the STPI, where they are working on an incubation program. As a part of the program, jury members from the TiE network evaluate startups who are signing up for these incubation programs.

“I am hoping that in 2022 the connect and the engagement with the government incubators as well as their initiatives will gain more momentum,” added Amit Mookim.

As a part of its focus on Special interest groups (SIG), TiE Mumbai has SIGs on Healthtech, Fintech, Food and Retail already in place. Given its relevance in the community, TiE Mumbai intends to focus on two other specific SIGs, that is Blockchain and sustainability in the coming year. During this year, the association ran a marquee event for Healthcare, which was extremely well attended. It had participation from not only Indian entrepreneurs, corporates and VC, but also from the global network. TiE had speakers and investors both from the Valley and Europe. It had a high level of participation and engagement with close to 2000 people attending the Summit.

During the year, TiE Mumbai also ran several networking and mentoring programs. Close to 60 mentoring sessions were conducted where about 30 mentors from the TiE network mentored 60-65 founders.

TiE Mumbai has started working with Corporates more closely. TiE Mumbai designs, develops and executes corporate and startup engagement programs that help both scale their tech, digital and product offering faster to customers. This has proved to be immensely successful and TiE Mumbai looks forward to continuing this momentum in the next year as well.

On the Global front, TiE Mumbai has actively supported the TiE Women Global Pitch Competition. A woman entrepreneur representing TiE Mumbai was the finalist in this competition to support entrepreneurship.

Activities planned for 2022

  • TiE Mumbai is working on an Impact report, which is planned to be launched early next year. It will be a summarization and a depiction of how Mumbai plays an important role in the Startup ecosystem and will provide for further acceleration for bringing in and growing some of these Startups in Mumbai itself. The focus of this report is on the areas of Media and entertainment, Fintech, Healthcare and Wellnesstech and Sportstech.
  • TiE Mumbai’s flagship event, TiE Con 2022 is being planned for April 2022. This may not be a purely virtual event and efforts are being made to plan it as a global event.
  • With a network of 50,000 entrepreneurs on its database, a high profile of charter members and board members and years and hours of content, TiE Mumbai is planning to build on its physical assets. It intends to launch an initiative next year to create a community and plans to drive a lot more content digitally through these communities. This platform will enable these communities to interact and benefit from each other.
Business World

SpeakIn honours Experts who mentored Startups for the festive season

Nov 9, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Deepshikha Kumar, #festive season, #Jacob, #Mohit Arora, #Sanjay Srivastava, #SpeakIn, #Startups, #Suresh Mahalingam

India’s fastest-growing online business learning platform, SpeakIn acknowledged India’s top ten mentors that helped startups for maximising revenue in the festival season. Also, they were the most popular speakers on SpeakIn in October, when the festive season begins in India. With the objective of empowering young entrepreneurs and businesses, they helped out start-ups with their knowledge and experience.

T.V. Mohandas Pai (Chairman of Manipal University), Bijou Kurien (Chairman of the Retailers Association of India), Anjali Bansal (Founder and Chairperson of Avaana Capital), Padmaja Alaganandan (Chief People Officer of PwC India), Kushagr Agarwal (Founder and Director of Business Development – APAC & EMEA, at KNR Management Consultants), Ankur Pahwa (Partner at Ernst & Young), Jeeveshu Ahluwalia (Indian stand-up comedian), Gayatri Gandhi (Certified KonMari Silver Consultant in India and the founder of Joy Factory), Anjali Rajagopal (Motivational Speaker, Identity Advocate, and Entrepreneur), and Sampark Sachdeva (Founder and Chief Coach at (SamparkSeSampark), are named as the ten most influential business experts and coaches for Indian startups by SpeakIn. Their webinars and lectures were enthusiastically attended by startup founders, who are keen to perform well in this festive season.

On this occasion, Deepshikha Kumar, Founder of SpeakIn, said, “With the backing of over 15,000 industry stalwarts, at SpeakIn, our focus is facilitating learning and connecting start-ups from the best experts of India and abroad. Amidst the festival season, these industry experts have significantly helped young businesses to formulate successful strategies in the festival season, which is considered the most lucrative period of the year for a majority of companies.”

“At SpeakIn, we always keep our clients at the centre of our work, delivering them the best in terms of quality, credibility, and uniqueness. We’ve gone from strength to strength and the time has never been more fitting for veterans to bring to the table, their own style and vision,” Deepshikha added.

SpeakIn has been hosting online discussions covering the most relevant issues featuring the top brass and the most experienced minds. And recently, its core leadership got further strengthened with the entry of Sanjay Srivastava, Suresh Mahalingam, Mohit Arora, and Jacob Jacob on board.

Business World

Returning to the new normal: Startups that are ensuring a safe comeback

Oct 30, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Dotpe, #New Normal’, #safe comeback, #Staqu, #Startups, #Unlock, #Zoomcar

With ”Unlock” initiates in the country after lockdown, businesses are resuming operations.

As India begins to ease the restrictions of lockdown, it will be imperative that there are measures in place to ensure the safety and security of citizens going back to work and daily activities. Startups across India have come up with innovative new ideas to tackle challenges presented by Covid-19 such as how to ensure social distancing, rethink transport in city centres, and get people back to work. From factory workers to city commuters, here are some startups using tech to help us to return to a new normal.

Zoomcar – Succoring essential service providers

India’s self-drive mobility platform, Zoomcar, has stepped up to ease the transportation woes faced during the pandemic. Zoomcar has partnered with various organizations that are considered essential in this period to ensure their employees are provided a safe commuting option. The service ensures these partnering organizations are able to lower the barriers for essential personnel to come in and serve the needs of the citizens. Also, Zoomcar has announced the launch of Zoomcar Mobility Services (ZMS), to provide a diverse array of software-based platform services across the entire spectrum of vehicle categories ranging from 2-wheelers, 3-wheelers, 4-wheelers, trucks, and buses. ZMS will work across both internal combustion and electric vehicles and is fully hardware agnostic.

Dotpe has launched a QR-based contactless commerce and payment solution

With the increasing cases of Covid-19 globally, many countries announced the lockdown state and started observing strict norms of social distancing. This urged the retailers both online and offline, to push for contactless commerce. Gurgoan based O2O commerce platform DOT has launched a QR-based contactless commerce and payment solution and is striving to tap the $1 trillion retail market in India. The contactless retail solution by DOT will allow the shoppers to scan a QR code by using the mobile phone camera and get access to catalogues of retail brands and menus of restaurants on a browser.

Staqu – Video Analytics to smart monitoring

A Gurgaon-based startup, Staqu, recently announced an array of offerings to facilitate superior COVID-19 response. The brand is leveraging its proprietary video analytics platform JARVIS to roll out cutting-edge use cases aimed at identifying, tracking, and curbing the spread of COVID-19 and similar contagion. The video analytics is the only way to monitor all the compliances and guidelines in new normal. The offerings include COVID-19 identification, Suspect Tracing, PPE monitoring, Security, Safety and Hygiene Analytics and People Analytics.

Business World

5 Indian startups betting on first-time smartphone users

Oct 27, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Arogya Setu, #Awaaz.com, #chingari, #DB Digital, #Pratilipi, #Share chat, #Startups

India is one of the largest developing markets for digital consumers, with more than 560 million netizens, and is likely to see the number of smartphones become twofold by 2023.

The private sector innovation and Jio revolution has made online utilization increasingly accessible by bringing internet-enabled services to a huge number of consumers. This has further been catalyzed by the lockdown as people in tier 3 cities and rural areas bought smartphones and data connections in order to stay connected to the world. Be it, online classes, business purposes, or COVID safety apps like Arogya Setu, people made sure to have at least one smartphone in one household.

As India’s smartphone client base has developed quickly, impelled by the diminishing expense and the expanding accessibility of smartphones and fast internet availability. Let’s take a look at five companies which are betting big on the new smartphone users:

Awaaz.com

Awaaz.com is India’s one of the largest platforms with a great range of spoken word content. The content ranges from English to various other vernacular languages as well. The platform offers a diverse variety of podcasts, stories, audios, and more. It is a highly engaging platform that is gaining the ears of the audience in recent times Audios and podcasts have gained lots of popularity during the lockdown with a good range of topics like meditation, health, inspirational and devotional.

DB Digital

DB Digital is India’s leading digital product startup offering the best news products. On a mission to support well-informed India with insightful and engaging content, DB Digital provides personalized and authentic high-quality vernacular news in unique formats including fastest news, exhaustive views, vibrant photography and engaging videos. Tailor made for Indians’ Its products rely on the high end AI and Machine Learning tools to keep users updated with the latest breaking news, analysis on political news, sports news, business news, entertainment news, and technology news as per the interest categories and location.

Share chat

Developed by Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd, Share chat is an Indian social networking service. It offers content consumption and sharing platform only in Indian vernacular languages to cater to over 1.17 billion digital users of India. With a plethora of content like romantic posts, jokes, fashion tips, and the latest news, the website is appealing and user friendly. It is a one-stop platform for all vernacular language lovers.

Pratilipi

Pratilipi is India’s largest platform associating readers and authors in 12 Indian dialects. It is the main online stage in India that takes into account writing in provincial dialects. Pratilipi, derived from the Sanskrit word signifying ‘copy’ is an independent publishing site. It is a stage that unites scholars and pursuers in a virtual network that instigates a dialogue on literature in any language. It is the 21st century’s response to the well-established convention of narrating however now as opposed to being clustered up close to a fire, perusers, and writers roost with their smartphones or versatile screens.

Chingari

The Chingari application is a short video-sharing stage established by two Bengaluru-based programmers, Biswatma Nayak and Siddharth Gautam. Around 2.6 million users have uploaded around 11.2 million sound clasps to recordings. This implies an ascent of over 500%. It is free to download and permits people to see or transfer short recordings on the platform.

It has risen as one of those Indian applications that have been downloaded a huge number of times in only a few days. Furthermore, this has prompted the enormous development of the application in terms of users, remarks, likes, comments, and video uploads.

Business World

Best 5 startups who have emerged as mentors for a better survival strategy in the Job market

Oct 24, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #edWisor, #Jobs for her, #Simplilearn, #Startups, #Udacity, #upGrad:

Covid-19 has brought in a lot of uncertainty in the job market and it has indeed become the era where survival is of the fittest. In the present scenario, the market has become extremely competent people are afraid of losing jobs. The reskilling and upskilling has become the need of the hour, it is not a matter of choice but a survival strategy.

To sustain in the market and fit into professional requirements these 5 platforms can be your best guide throughout your journey:

1. edWisor: It is a leading edTech and HRtech e-learning platform aimed at skilling the workforce for technology careers and making learners readily deployable in tech portfolios. It has held 12,000+ hours of live classes and arranged 10,000+ job interviews since its inception. It has trained over 5000 students across the country with a panel of 1,000+ mentors who train the students in industry-relevant job skills and are available to resolve subject related queries throughout the day on their Students Discussion Forum online and helped companies like TCS, Uber, Infosys PWC, Grofers, Deloitte to hire employees from its vast pool of candidates.

2. Jobs for her: JobsForHer is a connecting portal to accelerate women’s careers in India by enabling them to start, restart and rise in their careers. It arms women, not just with jobs but also with career-related services such as mentorship, resume-writing assistance, career counselling, confidence-building & leadership workshops, skills up-gradation, and networking opportunities, to enable them to successfully navigate their professional journeys.

3. upGrad: upGrad is an online higher education platform providing rigorous industry-relevant programs designed and delivered in collaboration with world-class faculty and industry. Merging the latest technology, pedagogy, and services, upGrad is creating an immersive learning experience – anytime and anywhere. They have an outcome-based learning approach, industry-relevant curriculum, strong mentorship, and placement support.

4. Simplilearn: They are providing digital skills training to help individuals acquire the skills they need to thrive in the digital economy through providing rigorous online training in disciplines such as Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, Project Management, Digital Marketing, and Data Science, among others. In other words, they specialize in areas where technologies and best practices are changing rapidly, and the demand for qualified candidates significantly exceeds supply.

5. Udacity: Udacity’s mission is to train the world’s workforce in the careers of the future. Every industry is being impacted by modern technology. As companies everywhere adapt and transform their businesses, they’re looking to hire people with the tech skills to match their goals. We work with the world’s technology leaders to teach these critical tech skills through our powerful and flexible digital education platform.

Business World

The Growing Popularity Of Virtual Office Spaces Amongst Startups And Small Businesses

Oct 2, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Mr. Kushal Bhargava, #MyBranch, #Savills India, #Small Businesses, #Startups, #Virtual Office Spaces

With leasing and construction activity coming to a standstill in the first few months of the lockdown, research by Savills India reveals that total leasing declined by almost 60% in H12020 across six major cities to 13mn sq. ft (as compared to the year-ago period).

Individuals and newbies who have opened new businesses during this pandemic and do not require physical office spaces are mostly opting for virtual offices. Mostly because of one of its various benefits I.e., cost-cutting. A virtual office is a small office provided to new entrepreneurs where you get a dedicated receptionist to answer your calls, one can also book boardrooms and meeting rooms if they want with the latest audio-video equipment including high-tech facilities like video conferencing with high-speed internet connectivity. There is also a choice of taking one or all the services as per the client’s requirements. Clients can also take advantage of the provided address to them which can be used on their letterheads and business cards.

With a virtual office, a person can consider business expansion easily and showcase a well-established corporate image on their business documents.

Mr. Kushal Bhargava, Co-founder of MyBranch, the company which is easing Shared, Managed and Virtual Office Space requirements for corporate and startups said, “We at MyBranch have witnessed a 50% hike in the virtual office space requirements after the lockdown restrictions were lifted. These leads were mainly from the service & e-commerce industry. Their requirements also included GST registration for the state. Apart from providing an official address with a GST number, the virtual office spaces also help the growing entrepreneurs with the facility of meeting rooms and inbound-outbound communication management.”

MyBranch is planning to expand to 13 new cities with their entire service range shortly and is expecting an increase in the demand for virtual spaces in those cities as well.

Hiring a virtual office space is quite a cost-effective and convenient option for the E-commerce industry, SMEs or individuals who have started their own businesses.

Success hugs you when you minimize your costs and overhead expenses and focus on increasing your sales. Virtual offices are an excellent choice for startups, entrepreneurs, travelling executives, project-based clients/organisations who want to start a venture in a new location.

Business World

4 startups giving aspirations to IoT development in India

Sep 9, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #IoT development, #Startups

Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved as one of the wildest ecosystems today. India is part of the global IoT revolution. Previously dictated by big players like Google, IBM, Intel, Ericsson, Cisco, Intel, Apple and Amazon, the IoT space is now being enabled by the startup ecosystem in the country. MA report by IDC suggests that IoT will garner $6 trillion of investments till 2020. The Indian government is spending $1 billion of budget on the smart cities project, which is majorly driven by IoT technologies. Here are 4 Indian startups giving aspirations to IoT development in India

MicroGO

MicroGO, a leading innovation company in the health and hygiene domain, leading the next generation internet of things (IoT) enabled hygiene solution called GOassureTMLITE – India’s first smart hand hygiene station that is lightweight, IOT enabled and assures good hand hygiene practices. The state-of-the-art solution is designed especially for healthcare and public spaces. The products roots for good hygiene practices similar to GOassureTM MAX, but in a 10X scalable model. The startup is solving the problem of hand hygiene and is working with 19 airports such as Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Baroda, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Guwahati, etc. MicroGO also caters to end-to-end WaSH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) solutions to its customers with their products GOhandsTM, GOcleanTM, GOfreshTM, GOpureTM, and GOpure+TM

Zenatix

The startup co-founded in 2013 is a data-driven energy efficiency platform. The company uses advanced Machine Learning models to provide energy savings for large commercial consumers. In 2017, the startup raised $1 million pre-series A funding by Pi Ventures. The startup is solving a unique problem of electric power loss.

TagBox

TagBox is helping companies to mentor individual shipments and products. The smart supply chain solution is designed to work with e-commerce platforms. The tags developed by the company works in three layers. The physical layers include BLE-driven sensor. The tag uploads data to the gateway, putting it on the cloud. The solution predicts the possible mistakes and failures in the shipments.

Falcon Labs

Mumbai-based IoT startup is using data mining technologies to automate the water management problems in urban areas. The startup by IIT-Bombay graduates provides both software and hardware. The complete IoT framework can be customized for different use. The startup currently works with vendors, contractors and manufacturers. Falcon Labs has worked on projects in states like Haryana and West Bengal.

Business World

Indian Companies from different sectors helping Startups to grow in this pandemic

Aug 7, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #COVID-19 pandemic, #Startups

At this time when the entire world is slumped by a COVID-19 pandemic, safety measures are taken worldwide and social distancing are hampering businesses. Startups have experienced huge impacts no matter how established they are. This is prompting them to re-look at their business strategies and different ways to maintain the steady growth of their Business.

While everyone is talking about the economic slowdown and financial setbacks, there are startups who have seen a surge in numbers with the by changing their business and marketing strategies and with the help of associating with different brands.

AdTech Marketing strategy – Promodome

Promodome is a full-service Advertising Agency based in Delhi. driven by two principal strengths: Creative and Media. Promodome helped startups to change their marketing strategy and grow their business even at the times of COVID-19. Promodome Communications is driven by a team of highly dedicated professionals with years of experience behind them in growing and nurturing brands.

Contactless Payment – DOTpe

A technology startup, DotPe provides neo digital transformation and commerce solutions to restaurants and F&B brands. By offering its QR code & WhatsApp based SCAN-ORDER-PAY solution, direct communication & digital ordering management technology to them, it can assist food courts to ensure streamlined business operations while following the social distancing norms and make customers feel safe through minimal human touch while ordering and settling the bill. Dotpe enables offline merchants/retailers to digitise their store in a matter of a few minutes and start accepting contactless orders.

C2B Data Marketplace – Aiisma

Aiisma, India’s first C2B data marketplace, rewards the users for exchanging anonymous data. In sync with the government’s mission of #AatmaNirbharBharat, AIISMA as a startup, is enabling 50 start-ups & SMEs to revive and stay relevant. C2B data marketplace is working towards reviving the local start-ups and SMEs hit by Covid-19. It is offering tech support, access to AiiAds&Aiisma Marketplace.

Conversational AI – Chatbot – Ori

Ori is a start-up that makes multilingual conversational chatbots. Covid19 has completely changed the working model of the businesses, now people can only connect virtually for sales and customer support which is the key for growth in business as it develops user’s trust toward the brand. Ori’s platform uses real-time insights and cues to help users improve their experience across calls, Emails, Conversations Over Chat. Several MSMEs were badly affected and in need of a quick, cheap solution. ORI created a simple solution, on Whatsapp, without any upfront charges to increase adoption and let MSMEs leverage the power of automation