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Unitus Seed Fund Invests in DriveU, India’s First On-Demand Private Driver Service

29Feb By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

Unitus Seed Fund Invests in DriveU, India’s First On-Demand Private Driver Service

29th February, 2016. Bangalore, India: Unitus Seed Fund, India’s most active seed fund supporting startups innovating for the masses, announced its investment in DriveU, a firm that aggregates on-demand drivers for private car owners in India. If Uber and Ola have changed the way people travel in urban India, there has been another creeping gap – that of utilization of privately owned vehicles in the country that has largely remained unaddressed. According to recent reports, there are more than 15 lakhs (1.5 million) private cars in Bengaluru, and 30% of the car owners are seeking drivers. And that’s just in Bangalore! DriveU, founded in 2015 by Ramprasad “Rahm” Shastry, Ashok Shastry and Amulmeet Singh, intends to revolutionize the self-driving habit in the country by addressing the...

No WhatsApp on BlackBerry, Nokia by 2017

29Feb By AnkitaNo Comments

Tech

No WhatsApp on BlackBerry, Nokia by 2017

Facebook owned messaging service WhatsApp has announced that its services would be discontinued on BlackBerry and Nokia devices by 2017. WhatsApp's announcement also includes Nokia's low-end S40 and S60 Symbian platforms, as well as the older Android 2.2 and Windows Phone 7.1 operating systems, the Verge reported. Based in Mountain View, California, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook Inc. on February 19, 2014, for approximately USD 19.3 billion. As of February 2016, WhatsApp had a user base of up to one billion making it the most globally popular messaging application. Whatsapp Blog - Earlier this week WhatsApp turned seven years old. It has been an amazing journey and in the coming months we're putting an even greater emphasis on security features and more ways to stay...

26Feb By Sonia MotwaniNo Comments

Story

From Bootstrapping to Generating 100cr in Revenue, The Story of Mirraw

Shailesh Jain was in the US for his first job when he wanted to buy a saree, but it was not available there. He bumped into his friend Anup Nair and started to discuss the concern with him. And at the end of the conversation, they found a problem to solve! “I and Anup always had the entrepreneurial bug, and after realizing the potential in the market, we decided to come to back to the country and start-up,” says the Computer Technology engineer from VJIT. Our culture is deeply rooted with our parents. And Mirraw is looking to bring all that to you. With over 3 lac listed products, 3 million and counting customers worldwide, their mission is to bring world's best ethnic designs to your doorstep. Based out of Fort, Mumbai, Mirraw brings handpicked designs in ethnic jewellery, apparels, and...

22Feb By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

Selfi Discovery App for Hyperlocal Magicpin Raises $3 million Series A Funding

Magicpin, a hyperlocal discovery app, founded by Investor-turned-entrepreneurs Brij Bhushan and Anshoo Sharma have raised $3 million in Series A round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. The app offers Instagram-like features where users can take pictures and selfies to avail of offers and discounts at neighbourhood stores. “While looking at the market from an investing lens, it was quite clear that India is entering a phase where everyone would be connected through their smartphones. A trip to China in late 2014 was an eye opener for the kind of businesses and value such an environment would create. There is an opportunity window today in India for creating a massively valuable business that leverages data, technology and people networks around offline transactions, and w...

IIT Graduates Find a Convenient Way To Maintain Your Homes

8Feb By PriyankaNo Comments

Story

IIT Graduates Find a Convenient Way To Maintain Your Homes

All Indians have faced situations where we need urgent services for our homes, be it an electrician, a plumber, someone to look under the hood of the car or just clean our carpets. Usually, the process is tedious where we ask our acquaintances for references or go to the Yellow pages or Google it and take our chances. Then comes the agony of waiting for an unpunctual repairman and not knowing his reliability and background apart from his charges. Enough to send a shiver up the spine. The Solution: Aurospaces A Passionate IITian has brought the best of tech and built a common platform for a variety of services to ease the process of maintaining our homes and make it a pleasurable experience. With a deep understanding of what a common Indian goes through in accessing basic services, ...

IBM Team Launched An App to Measure “Holy River Ganga is Clean or Not”

18Jan By NitishNo Comments

Story

IBM Team Launched An App to Measure “Holy River Ganga is Clean or Not”

An Indian research-based team in IBM has made an app called "Ganga Watch". The app will measure the condition of water in the Ganga basin and beyond Water. It is intended for the common public who want to see water condition and safe limits, as well as relevance based on different purposes. Our vision in this regard is that India’s river data be as easily available as her rivers’ water. This means any historical data and new real-time sensing data be accessible for lay users as well as technical people to drive their decisions, whether individual like bathing, health or agriculture; or institutional like sewage treatment, industry inspection or dolphin conservation said IBM Research Team. First, a quick refresher on data. It can be quantitative in nature meaning expressed as numbers (li...

The Online Jewellery trade in India. Challenges and Solutions

12Jan By No Comments

Story

The Online Jewellery trade in India. Challenges and Solutions

More than anywhere else in the world, India has had the largest culture of jewelry for hundreds of years. Jewelry, gold and precious stones are deeply rooted in the Indian tradition and go as far back as far as the start of the Indian civilization itself. Until today, jewelry in India is not simply an accessory or a show of status. Each piece, and every stone represents something deeply mystical, be it sacred planets or protection against evil spirits. For women across India, jewelry also often represents a form of financial security. Especially in Tier III cities where many women do not own a credit card or even a bank account, jewelry can be a symbol of independence. While an emerging market of online jewelry sales is surging, displaying rapid growth in the last 5 years, traditional...

Facebook’s Messenger app passes 800 million users

8Jan By reutersNo Comments

News

Facebook’s Messenger app passes 800 million users

Facebook Inc's Messenger app surpassed 800 million users, the company said on Thursday, making it the fastest-growing app of 2015 according to research firm Nielsen. The means Messenger, which Facebook created as a standalone app in 2014, has more active monthly users than rivals Snapchat and Viber, but still lags the 900 million using WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook. WhatsApp was one of the first apps to let people send and receive free text messages on smartphones, bypassing network charges. Messenger users can also exchange messages, but the app also offers free video calling and some business services. "One of the things we have to work on this year is this perception or mindset that Messenger is only to speak with your Facebook friends," said Messenger head David Marcus in...

Parth Patel – An IITian behind birth of Carpooling idea in Mumbai

3Jan By sharadNo Comments

Entrepreneurs Talk

Parth Patel – An IITian behind birth of Carpooling idea in Mumbai

About Parth Patel and the reason behind this idea? Hi, I'm Parth Patel, co-founder of Zupp - an intra-city carpooling mobile app for daily office commute. In 2011, after graduating from IIT Delhi, I joined EY in Mumbai. Since I was accustomed to a hassle-free campus life, the menace of daily commute in Mumbai caught me unawares. At first, my good landlord allowed me to use his car for daily office commute, as his kids were all settled abroad and the car was just catching dust. I drove to office for first couple of days, but found it harder each day to find a parking spot. Eventually I was forced to shun the idea of taking my own car and instead started hailing taxis. I traveled daily from my home in Bandra West to the EY office in Dadar West. I had to wait for at least 15 mins before ...

“Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm” , Big 4’s App Performance in 2015 by Deepak Abbot

31Dec By Deepak AbbotNo Comments

ANALYSIS

“Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm” , Big 4’s App Performance in 2015 by Deepak Abbot

Following up on my last year’s post on Mobile Commerce, I decided to focus only on Big 4 this time primarily due to lack of time. Here is what I published in Dec 2014: Mobile Commerce Growth in 2014 - It's An App World Let's take a visual look at how some of the top mobile commerce Apps of India grew in the year 2014, which also points…growthbug.com The numbers shown below are based on my formula based on publicly available data. Plus I have used all the free sources of data (non-paid) available from popular App store analytics platforms. The charts below are only for Android, which IMO would be 85% of all App traffic. Flipkart maintained its leadership in 2015: Flipkart grew 2x: Returning users: Month 2 retention seems to be the biggest concern for all: Num...

Sab Kuch Aasaan Hai For People Living in Andheri Region of Mumbai

16Dec By AnkitaNo Comments

Story

Sab Kuch Aasaan Hai For People Living in Andheri Region of Mumbai

AASAAN, is a mobile-based chat platform, where the user sends in their enquiry about anything they may require in the form of a chat message. He then receives a response within 90 seconds about the possible delivery options, and the price quote of the service and product they desire. Once the user confirms the order, the team places the order with their affiliated vendor’s and use their logistic team to collect the order and deliver the product at the user’s doorstep. The company acts like the middle men between the user and the vendor. What makes it different from its competitor is the fact that it does not impose any delivery charges on any order (even if the order is just for a éclair). This is because the company’s desire is just to serve its customer and target the masses. Another ...

How Slack Technologies developed from an idea for easier office chat to software juggernaut in two years, entirely by word of mouth

14Dec By NitishNo Comments

Story

How Slack Technologies developed from an idea for easier office chat to software juggernaut in two years, entirely by word of mouth

It's late morning on a Thursday in September, and Slack Technologies CEO Stewart Butterfield has convened a meeting with his design and product heads in the company's low-key San Francisco headquarters. On the agenda is the question that's been most on Butterfield's mind lately: how his $US2.8 billion ($3.9 billion) start-up, which makes business-collaboration software, can be as good with 250, 500, or a thousand people as it was when he founded it with a team of eight. For today's meeting, Butterfield, sporting camouflage suede wingtips and argyle socks, has prepared a list of "teachable principles" he wants his people to internalise. Butterfield is off and running when something distracts him: Brandon Velestuk, Slack's design director, is video-conferencing from Vancouver, and his...