Start-up India on the threshold

Fitch, a credit rating agency, announced India’s sovereign rating at ‘BBB’ with a ‘stable’ outlook, giving investors and operators a lot to smile about

In a leafy back alley, two lifelong friends tapped away at their keyboards, perfected their Internet start-up company, an e-commerce site which will take on giants like Amazon. It was called Flipkart.

Flipkart would be just another success story of the digital age, if it were not for the company’s location, a country which once was called the Land of Snake Charmers. Nearly half a century after her independence, she slowly metamorphosed into the Land of Software Engineers (though as Indians we aren’t proud of the latter as well).

Honestly we are leaping ahead, again and again. If I may, the leap is preposterous. After Snakes and Software, it is now Startups. Thanks to them, a country which has always been changing alongside the aspirations of its 1.2 billion people is not only the third largest economy in the world but is the hub of billion-dollar firms and a hot investment destination.

The latest addition to this cult has been triggered by the Telangana Government itself. Creating a buzz even before its formal launch, T-Hub, India's largest technology incubator, was almost completely booked, and attracted over 130 startups from across the country.

The facility, which is one-of-its-kind in the country, has also tied-up with 20 venture capitalists and is also in talks with University of Texas, Houston, MIT Media Lab, Incubio of Spain and laboratories and academic institutions in India and abroad for collaboration.

Telangana Information Technology Minister K Tarakarama Rao had told reporters that the state government will provide Rs 10 crore for the innovation fund to provide funding to the startups. The government hopes that private players will contribute Rs 90 crore for the innovation fund for T-Hub in public private partnership mode. "To begin with the innovation fund will be Rs 100 crore. We want to ramp it to $100 million or over Rs 600 crore," he assured.

LocalJao

One of the first lot to be shortlisted to set their base in the honoured T hub was LocalJao.

Thanks to the newfangled start-ups addressing the demand-supply gap in hyperlocal space, we have the comforts all from just a tap on our smartphones. The striking rise of internet users and the surge of payment options have paved the way for hyper local businesses – the latest bigwig for investors. And with the aim to make the scenario better and bigger, Arshad Azad, the CEO and one of the co-founders of LocalJao has come up with an idea of delivering the products to the buyers on the immediate day from the store of their choice.

“We saw the trouble of local retailers. A friend of mine was complaining about the whole e-commerce taking away their share of profits and that was when we came up with this idea, LocalJao, which aims to give the sellers their share of branding and the opportunity to choose what they want to do with their page,” says Arshad.

“LocalJao is a hyper-local e-commerce platform which will bridge the communication gap between the customer and stores. We want to bring all the micro-sites under one umbrella. We will be launching a new functionality every month, with an intention to further ease the lives of the brick and mortar stores.”

Talking about the launch, Arshad says, “LocalJao will start its operation in Hyderabad by the end of this year and will be expanding to four other cities. We want to hit the break-even within eight months from the time of launch, so that is the main focus right now. We have selected few stores across Hyderabad where we presented our ideas to them and we were overwhelmed with the conversion ratio.”

Even before the official launch of the portal, as many as 100 stores have agreed to partner with LocalJao to sell their products. The team of LocalJao demonstrated confidence while stating that they would acquire twice the number of stores to join the bandwagon, by the time of their launch, which is expected to happen in the last week of December.

“We are not a bunch of just some college grads but we have relevant experience in Journalism, IT, Project Management, Supply Chain Management, Six Sigma and Marketing. We are here for some real business,” shares the proud team.

Arogya Finance

Moving away from the usual e-commerce, there are a few which are exclusively service oriented. Co-founded by Jose Peter and Dheeraj Batra, Arogya finance is a social healthcare venture, which offers medical loans to the traditionally un-bankable, using innovative risk assessment tools that allows them to finance people outside the formal banking system. The business model is structured in a way, that it directly pays the medical bills of an individual to the hospital or the healthcare service provider.

“Majority of Indian population is unable pay out of pocket expenses for medical needs. Often money is borrowed at high interest rates or is organised by selling personal assets or simply ignoring much needed medical attention. Unexpected healthcare expenses have led to 40 million people falling into poverty every year. Arogya Finance has taken a step to bridge this gap by offering loans at reasonable terms by making it available at the right time and place of need to those who lack formal income proof,” shares Jose Peter.

Biomatiques

Biomatiques is leading the way in Iris Recognition Technology as the only indigenous Indian manufacturer whose singular vision is to continue the development of the best yet simplest and most accurate Iris Recognition technology for the end users. “By focussing on quality and latest technology, Biomatiques ensures a high level of identity security and access control with their range of Iris scanners and Iris recognition software provided to end-users worldwide,” shares Tamaal Roy, the CEO of the firm.

Their range of products, include stand alone and cluster, provide security solutions for individuals, townships, government departments and from small-medium enterprises to large corporations. The areas of application for the products are simply limitless. From tracking employees’ schedule adherence, basic access control mechanisms in apartments to large corporates, immigration, law enforcement and many more, our products can be deployed in several areas.

The firm has developed several biometric Iris Recognition solutions using its patented hardware and copyrighted Iris Feature Extraction and matching algorithm.

By:Augustin Kurian With inputs from Meenakshi Sengupta