Startups – Tech Raman

Axis Bank launches Axis Startup Social, an unique networking platform for Startups

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:50:38 +0000

Axis Bank, India’s third largest private sector bank has been passionately backing up and nurturing start-ups with their innovation lab “Thought Factory” and I been keenly following their pursuit for start-up excellence in the fin-tech space since the inception of the platform. To further boost the start-up ecosystem in India they have conceptualized and brought forward a new networking platform, Axis Startup Social, where start-up entrepreneurs could meet, network and share knowledge. The first of the Axis Start-up Social networking event happened in Bangalore at the vibrant WeWorks, a co-working space which itself bustles with many start-ups and people incubating their ideas there. So naturally, it was a perfect place to host the very first Axis start-up social. Speaking about the initiative, Sidharth Rath, Group Executive, Corporate & Transaction Banking, Axis Bank said, “We are excited to launch Axis Start-up Social, a platform through which we hope to provide the much required, ‘extra edge’ to the start-up community by hand holding them, sharing knowledge and providing the required financial solutions. Today, the Indian ecosystem is flooded with innovative ideas but what is missing is the presence of the right channel and guidance in terms of acceleration, scaling up and funding. Through Axis Start-up Social, we endeavor to create an ecosystem to encourage innovation and the next-level-of-growth opportunities to start-ups that are ready to take that leap.” The evening buzzed with over 100 bright minds among the start-up community, who had gathered not just to network and get to know each other but also got an opportunity to listen and interact with Vivek Gupta, founder of Licious Foods who shared his start-up journey how he waded into uncharted challenges when he chose to enter a business of meat in a supposedly land of vegetarians and made a successful venture in a food space. Also on stage was Amit Rohatgi, whose start-up Divrt, provides smart parking solutions for urban commuters who enthralled the audience with engaging conversation. The event concluded with a befitting corporate comedy by stand-up comedian, Vikram Poddar whose jokes would have resonated with many of the audience who would come across such experiences in their real life in their corporate and start-up life. It’s yet another commendable initiative by Axis bank to bring in like-minded start-up minds and have an engaging evening. It should also be noted that recently the bank also launched its Axis Startup Banking product earlier this year, which is bundled with all key technology enabled products and caters comprehensively to banking needs of startups. With new initiatives and outreach programs, Axis bank is proving themselves to be the pioneers amongst the Indian banks to relentlessly back and support the startup ecosystem in India.]]>

Axis Bank Thought Factory Graduation day for Start-ups in Fin-tech

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 11:45:20 +0000

news about Axis bank setting up ThoughtFactory, an innovative lab to nurture fin tech start-ups and now they have announced the graduation day for the six exciting start-ups that have been nurtured in their hub. Six start-ups, namely S2Pay, Pally, Perpule, Fin-techLabs, Paymatrix and Gieom graduated from the first batch. At the Graduation day event, where the start-ups talked about their work, Axis bank announced that it has selected three fin-tech start-ups from the first batch of its accelerator programme ‘Thought Factory’ whose solutions it will commercially deploy at its business units. The three start-ups that the Axis bank will be working with are Pally, Fin-techLabs and Gieom for their fin tech solutions for its specific-use cases . [caption id="attachment_12358" align="aligncenter" width="900"] Rajiv Anand, Head of Retail, Axis bank[/caption] “We will pilot these solutions internally before releasing them to our customers. Axis Bank doesn’t take any stake in these start-ups, neither will we invest in any. We will associate with these start-ups on a commerce agreement basis,” Rajiv Anand, executive director, Axis Bank, said. Also watch: https://youtu.be/P1xO000EVHc The Axis bank thought factory program started with a pool of 108 applicants and after rounds of filtering down, here are the six start-ups that came out with flying colours on the graduation day. Pally: The start-up aims to deliver better customer experiences to organizations engaged in financial domain, using AI. Pally has created an intelligent chatbot that creates an investment portfolio for tax savings when it is fed with an image of a salary slip. S2Pay: The start-up’s solution enables offline mobile payments. Building a layer over any payments app, users can make secure payments from their mobile app, even when they are offline via SMS. Perpule: A Kalaari Capital-funded start-up, Perpule allows users to scan products from their mobile app and pay from within the app once the list is complete. The company had raised $650,000 in an angel round from Kstart Capital; Venture Highway; and Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure. Fin-techLabs: This is a lending management platform that offers different analytical models that can be used in the digital spending space. It offers a bunch of solutions including loan management software, peer-to-peer lending marketplace software, bank statement analyser, and ID proof verification software. Paymatrix: This start-up is a property rent management platform connecting tenants and landlords. It automates the rent collection process through different payment options, offers customised rental agreements and provides tenant screening services. Gieom: This firm offers cloud-based solutions and analytics to help large firms manage their operations, employee productivity, change management, and risk and compliance. It also helps banks transition smoothly to new IT systems. Axis bank’s Thought Factory provides a vibrant work space for the start-ups in their program , it also provides masked data which is crucial for any start-up to run on a real-life working model. The ecosystem also gives them exposure to meet angel investors and mentorship from industry leaders and experts such as GoQii founder Vishal Gondal, Sharad Sharma of iSpirt, Manish Chokhani of Enam and serial entrepreneur Shankar Narayan. Thought Factory is an interesting pillar in the Start-up India movement and it would be interesting to see how it spans out in future. We will keep you updated, stay tuned. ]]>

Edureka – A Startup Wonderkid to Watch Out For!

Lakshmi Rajan — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 11:00:11 +0000

Lovleen Bhatia, a software engineer himself who went on to head the R&D of DbyDx Labs, probably came across this dilemma and that lead him to co-found Edureka , a live and interactive e-learning platform. Since its inception in 2011, Edureka has up-skilled 3,50,000 learners across the globe and is no mean feat. Edureka has 75+ courses across segments; Big Data, Analytics, Mobile development, Programing languages, cloud computing, among others. With a pool of 800+ instructors who are themselves an industry practitioner and an in-house syllabus designed with inputs from the industry, Edureka has positioned itself in an envious position. Every Edureka course culminates in a live real-life project after which the learner is awarded an Edureka certificate. So far the platform has 50,000+ hours of live classes. So what makes Edureka an interesting platform for working professionals? Foremost, it offers flexibility to learn at their own time and location, even from their mobile devices. With my interaction with Loveleen Bhatia , what I really liked about the Edureka model is that you can come back at any point of time even after your completion of your course and get yourself refreshed on the subject and also future proof yourself on the later developments in the subjects you have joined. Edureka doesn’t bind you to particular course duration but allows you to drop in any time later and stay abreast in the new developments in the course you opted for. So where does Edureka stands now? In a span of 6 years, Edureka has up-skilled 3,50,000 learners across the Globe with 80% of the learners having 2-8 years of experience. Out of this 55% are from India, 45% from rest of world. An interesting fact is that many of the joiners are through word of mouth referrals from other learners which reflect the positive patronage the platform has gained. At a time where we witness increasingly floundering start-ups who fail to translate the ambitious business plans into a money spinner, Edureka has a remarkable financial story to share. Started with an initial capital and angel funding of $250,00, it stamped an astounding 2768% growth during its first 3 years. It continues to grow at 30% MoM in India and 20% in overseas markets and expects annualized revenue of $50 million by 2019 up from the current revenue of $12 million. With a firm business model and a positive growth story and a thumps up from the Industry, Edureka is a silent start-up making the right moves. If you are a start-up tracker, keep this guy in close radar!]]>

Microsoft showcases SaaS solutions for cloud-first startups in India

Lakshmi Rajan — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 03:51:37 +0000

Microsoft showcased Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for the Indian enterprises and particularly focusing on the new-age technology start-ups who are born-in-the-cloud start-ups. The company’s BizSpark Plus programme aims to provide right tools, resources, connections, knowledge and expertise that startups need to leverage the full potential of the Cloud and create innovative, SaaS solutions built on the Cloud. The programme offers free Azure Cloud services to qualified startups to power their business. Recognizing the growing number of startups and give them the necessary support, Microsoft Accelerator program has also partnered with 13 startup accelerators to roll out this program. The Accelerator programme also guides and offers inputs on scaling up and customer acquisition for mature and late stage startups. Close to 100 startups have graduated from eight batches of the Microsoft Accelerator program. The SaaS solution built on the Microsoft Azure public cloud platform offers technologies for offering better customer experiences, building intelligent infrastructure through cloud, local market on chat and talent management platform. The solution also offers scalability, reliability and make them future-ready as they grow up their business model. Indian datacenters provide local customers with data residency and replication in multiple regions for backup and recovery, and the option of a private connection to the cloud. Some of the startups on board the cloud-based SaaS solutions include Ameyo that offers an Omni-channel platform to streamline customer interaction across all conduits of communication and has helped businesses increase customer conversion by 6% to 15% while reduced cost of sourcing, lower churn and higher customer retention. Vymo – a personal assistant app for enterprise sales or service teams focusing on schedules, routes, alerts and recommendations that are actionable. Vymo’s solution has helped increase sales productivity by 30% for one of the leading insurance companies in India, and lower TAT by 80% for one of the leading Indian Banks. FlamencoTech – a cloud solution provider that creates its own ‘services layer’ customization on top of various technologies that fulfill varied business needs of each customer; QUSTN (Capabiliti) – a mobile-first talent management platform to Recruit, Onboard, Train and Assess frontline employees has helped companies improve employee engagement index by 65%, with new hires becoming productive team members in less than half the usual time. Yellow Messenger – a universal messaging platform to Shop, Book, Order anything on Chat. The solution helps reduce marketing and support costs by 30% and increases customer conversion and retention by 20%. “Our strategy is to build best-in-class platforms and productivity services for a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We realise the pivotal role that startups, with their ideas and enthusiasm, can play in leveraging those platforms to create newer solutions,” said Harish Vaidyanathan, Director, Independent Software Vendor Programmes at Microsoft, in a statement.]]>

With this App you can go cashless at restaurants and split the bills with your friends too

Lakshmi Rajan — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 19:03:29 +0000

You are going out to eat with your friends and when its time to make the payment, either you pool in the money by cash or one pays by card and then later you split the bills. Phew! And you know its a hard task either-ways. After couple of pegs and when the bill finally arrives you tend to feel you are over-billed for pegs you never had? The small scribbles of the order you made on the tissues gets messy at the end. You are hesitant to handover your card to the server for making the payment? A Bangalore based startup, Noroc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. wants to make your life easier atleast when you go out for food or drink. Keeping in mind the common scenarios like some that we listed above, they have come up with an app, Binge, available both for Android and iPone, focused on the food and beverage industry to make it cashless plus with many add-on features. Once you install the app, you can see the list of restaurants and pubs that supports this app in their transactions. Currently, the app is restricted to Bangalore but it will be just a matter of time it will be scaled up to cover other cities. When you are at one of the listed places, you can share your Binge id with the server. All the orders you make gets linked to your Binge id and you get real-time notifications as and when you make new orders. (So you know when you ordered that drink!) So how do you pay? In your Binge app you can store up to 4 card details including credit card and debit cards. The card details are encrypted with in the Binge app and the information stored using the information is stored using “Tokenisation”, an advanced security standard. The payment process is similar to the online transactions, the app takes you directly to the payment gateway of the bank via encrypted passway and when completed it returns to the app with the confirmation message. At the same time, the system at the restaurant also gets confirmed of the payment and you can walk away. The app also allows you to split the bills with up to four of your friends, by default it splits the bill equally but it also allows for editing the amount. You can also add tip to the server. It also comes handy at situation where you are at an restaurant and you realize you ran out of steam at your card balance or it throws some error, you can simply call a friend and ask them to complete the bill from their end wherever they are provided they too have the app in their phone. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="8979,8980,8981,8982"]

Even though it is early days for the startup, they have tied with over 25 joints in Bangalore including Loveshack,

Skyye, Toscano, Sanchos, Sinkong, Opus, Blimey, Bootlegger etc. Binge plans to enter Delhi and Mumbai by May and cover over a 1000 restaurants in Bangalore by the end of 2015.

This is one app that sounds appetizing right? Go Binge.

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