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ShareChat Raises a $100 Mn in a Twitter Led Funding Round

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After a long struggle, India has also become home to many creative and useful startups, and even the global tech companies agree with that. Following that very fact, Twitter, one of the biggest technology company, just closed the D series funding as the lead for a four years old Indian company ShareChat.

Where Twitter led the funding, major investment brands including TrustBridge Partners, Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital took part in the investments, among which a few are the company’s existing investors. With the latest round of funding, the company was able to raise a $100 million, and with that, the company now values at about $650 million. Till now, the company has raised around $224 million.

ShareChat is an Indian social network that allows people to chat in the regional languages. This is the reason why despite tens of popular chat apps, ShareChat has grown to tens of million users in just four years. Twitter also sees the potential in the startup that is why it took the privilege to lead the funding for the company.

sharechat
Image Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

There has been no statement from Sharechat on the matter. But the managing director of Twitter India, Manish Maheshwari said in a statement, “Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners.”

Twitter just appointed Manish Maheshwari in April 2019 for its India office after it started facing a decline in its growth in India. After his appointment in Twitter, Maheshwari has said in a statement, “With premium Indian content on the rise in multiple regions across the country, I believe we are scratching the surface of what’s possible with Twitter in India.”

ShareChat supports almost every regional language except English, which has been the unique feature to attract its 60 million users to the platform. And, the company has no plans to change that in the coming future. So investing in ShareChat can be a step forward for the company to expand its limits to different regions, regional languages and people from different background.

shopclues

Sandeep Aggarwal : Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor and the Founder of Shopclues

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The emerging Indian start-ups are bringing a great revolution in the entrepreneurial world. The young Indian minds and their untamed passion is creating history in the 21st-century economy. But, it isn’t always the young minds, because it is known that experience makes you wiser.

Sandeep Aggarwal is one such passion-driven entrepreneur who has successfully launched two start-ups, Shopclues and Droom, and now is one of the most influential men in the business world. The idea of Shopclues was pondering in his mind since 2010, but finally, he founded it in July 2011, followed by the launch of Droom in April 2014. The entire business was set up in Silicon Valley, and later, it shifted to India. Aggarwal faced a lot of difficulties and failed plans before he finally founded Shopclues.

Early Education

After passing school, Aggarwal pursued a degree in B.Com followed by a master’s from Indore. While doing his master’s, he also interned with Kotak Mahindra, Mumbai.

The First Step into the Professional World

Sandeep Aggarwal Founder Shopclues
Image Source: techcircle.in

Aggarwal first stepped into the professional world when he landed an internship in Kotak Mahindra, in 1995. The internship was in Mumbai, and it was his first chance to interact with intelligent minds around him and learn from them. He was perfectly groomed in this duration of his internship on how to deal with people and work at a professional level. He realized that most of us might have proper skills and knowledge, but only a few knew how to expose it professionally. Aggarwal, in one of its interviews, said that this internship also helped him strengthen his analytical skills and strategic thinking, apart from business communication and personality development.

Life before Shopclues happened

After completing his master’s degree, Aggarwal worked in the field of investment banking. While working in it, something changed his mind, and he decided to move to the US. He joined the Washington University, St. Louis, USA to pursue an MBA degree, and after receiving the degree, he worked for two different companies. After leaving these jobs, he joined Wallstreet and served eight years as an internet analyst, where he was given research covers on companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo! etc. Aggarwal is also a chartered member of TiE Silicon Valley.

While Aggarwal was still working as an internet analyst, in 2010, he visited India quite a few times to launch research coverage for MakeMyTrip. It was the time when the idea of launching an online marketplace clicked in his mind. He started planning about his business with a website called DealsClues.com, but finally, he settled with Shopclues.com, in 2010 and established this marketplace in Silicon Valley.

Founding of Shopclues.com

With Radhika Ghai Aggarwal (Sandeep Aggarwal’s wife), Mrinal Chatterjee and Sanjay Sethi, he started his new business in Delaware. By September 2011, the team moved to India and permanently settled in Gurgaon. At the very beginning of Shopclues, Aggarwal raised $1.95 million from his social circle.

In 26th January 2012, the public beta version of Shopclues was released, and by next month, the team size expanded to 25 from only 3-4 members. The Alexa ranking dropped from 14,000 at the beginning of the year to 200 only in August of the same year. The company started making a jaw-dropping profit with more than 2 million monthly visitors.

In January 2013, Shopclues has ranked as the fifth largest e-commerce companies in India, and the Alexa ranking dropped to 90. The business was progressing swiftly, until, July 2013, when he found legal charges filed against him for the time he worked as an internet analyst in Wallstreet. Aggarwal said that it was a time of sheer crisis in his life, and it almost took a year or so for him to get back on track. He didn’t have any choice other than avoiding the press and any other formal role in Shopclues. His family suffered, too. But today, Shopclues, his first company is worth $1.1 billion, and it is one of the largest online stores to serve in India.

Droom

Aggarwal founded Droom in April 2014, and it was the first-ever online platform for selling and buying automobiles (used and new) and services related to the same. Droom has a very strong founding team with more than 75 years of experience in technology. It was only after a year of its founding that Droom raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Lightbox.

Even today, it is India’s most trusted platform for automobiles.

The emotional outburst

In 2017, Aggarwal was in the spotlight for posting about a private matter in social media which was concerning his wife, Sanjay Sethi and Shopclues. An emotional outburst in social media is often not considered as a very clever judgment especially for business tycoons like Aggarwal. But, he said it was a very fragile moment for him and it was definitely a mistake to attract negative attention. Though he went through an emotional turmoil, the companies didn’t suffer any such loss but his personal life is still a very big question mark.

Note 10 series

Galaxy Note 10 Series to Get Major Microsoft Apps, as a Result of New Samsung-Microsoft Partnership

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Microsoft is one of the biggest tech company in the world, but it could not make a mark in the smartphone industry with its Windows phones. But now, the company has taken a step forward and has partnered with the biggest Android smartphone manufacturer company, Samsung.

Samsung just hosted its Unpacked event in the New York City, where it launched its Galaxy Note 10, Note 10 Plus, Note 10 5G, Galaxy Book S, and a few other Samsung devices. The Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also attended the event and went on stage to announce the new partnership between the two companies.

The partnership will help Microsoft bundle a few of its apps to the Samsung Note 10 series smartphones. Through one of the features that the companies are combinedly getting to the phone is the mirroring of Androids apps to the Windows 10 systems using Microsoft’s Your Phone app. The users will be able to see their text messages, notifications, and even, the whole screen on their desktop or laptops’ screen by simply connecting the smartphone with a USB-C or USB-A cable. The users then can run all the apps of the phone on the PCs as well as make calls using the Your Phone app.

Note 10 series
Image Source: eftm.com

Other than the Your Phone app, the new Samsung Note 10 series smartphones will also render support for Microsoft’s OneDrive, Outlook, Microsoft Office, etc. With OneDrive the users will have an option other than Google Drive to store their data on the cloud. Also, the support for Outlook and Microsoft office will provide the users with a better way to process their documents over their smartphones.

“From calls and text messages to emails and photos, we’re making these everyday experiences great and the interactions between all the devices seamless,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said while on stage, “the combination of Microsoft intelligent experiences and Samsung’s powerful, innovative new devices, like the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Book S, make this possible.”

Most likely, the new partnership is entirely targetting on the rival company Apple, that already has got awesome built-in products on its iPhones. The main reason why iPhone users have always been afraid of switching to an Android phone. iPhone has already provided its users with the ability to send and receive text messages and e-mails through their Mac devices, and its productivity suite, iWork, is everything, a corporate user would want for all of their document related works.

But as Samsung has just joined its hands with Microsoft, to bring similar flexible features to its series of smartphones, it may be able to encourage the iPhone users to get Android smartphones.

Though the partnership between the two companies was big news, the event was solely to boast about the new Galaxy Note 10 series. The company talked about all the features that the new smartphones will possess. The company also revealed the price of the devices and when these will be available in the market.

The cost of the Galaxy Note 10 in India starts at Rs 69,999, while the starting price for Note 10+ will be Rs 79,999. The smartphones have already made available for pre-orders in the U.S. on selected online retail outlets, including Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm Mall, Tata Cliq and Samsung’s online store. The pre-orders in India will start on August 23. The company has also imposed offers like cash backs on the pre-orders.

UrbanClap

UrbanClap : One of the Most Successful Hyperlocal Startup in India

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The past decade has been the decade of startups, and India has been one of the booming industry for them. From Flipkart, Paytm, Yatra, Oyo, Faasos to Unaccademy, all are some of the names that are the most successful startups in India. Their unusual idea helped them emerge as the biggest companies in India. UrbanClap is a similar startup that is originated in India and was one of the newest ideas in the field of startups.

Early Life & Career

Like every other freshly graduated person, the bug of entrepreneurship had also bitten the co-founders of UrbanClap Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra. Bhal and Khaitan were college friends, who always thought of starting up their own business. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the two started working for Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at their U.S. office.

During their time at BCG, Bhal and Khaitan often talked about starting their own business, but none of them had a clue that what they would be doing. Instead, they used to casually ignore the thought. But one fine day, they decided that if they want to do something, they have to start it very next second. They just can’t only daydream about it.

UrbanClap Founders
Image Source: livemint.com

The two had no idea what would be their startup based on, but after working for two years in BCG, they had figured out they want to start an ‘enduring business’. Both were ready to take the plunge. So in 2013, 0they left the job and came back to India to start their business.

Bollywood and movies being the biggest interest in India, Bhal and Khaitan launched their first startup named Cinemabox. The company made entertainment devices for public transport like buses, trains and planes. They invested about INR 10 Lakh in the startup on their own.

On the other hand, Chandra received an engineering degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing his college, he worked for some major companies like Infosys, Yelp, and Twitter. Chandra had a similar dream as of Bhal and Khaitan, so he also came back to India, in 2013. Here he started an online-autorickshaw booking platform Buggy.in.

But both the startups could not do well and were shut within seven to eight months of their inception. Despite the failure, the three budding entrepreneurs were not in the mood to quit and were still looking forward to establishing a successful startup.

Most of the times, the better startup ideas are the result of the necessities one faces in real life. This way, the foundation of the startup is always strong, and the results are the most fruitful. After failing once in the business, they were looking for that necessity-driven idea.

Meanwhile, during the wedding of Khaitan’s sister, Khaitan faced a lot of problems in hiring people and local vendors for various tasks. This hit the pinpoint, Khaitan and Bhal were certain that creating a platform, where people could find service providers at a reasonable cost will be their next startup idea.

Founding UrbanClap

The two now needed a tech guy, and eventually, got to meet Chandra through their common friends. The three of them discussed the idea, and after, contributing INR 10 lakh each, they started UrbanClap in October 2014.

They met with professionals from the different fields and shared their idea with them, such that to make them register to UrbanClap. Upon meeting those professionals, the three co-founders got to know that these service providers also faced various problems with their customers and payments.

The Success

The company was an instant hit, As you could hire people from various fields, like a Yoga teacher to a plumber, through the UrbanClap app. In two years, the company expanded to six major cities of India, including Kolkata, Jaipur, Chandigarh. UrbanClaps received its first investment of $10 million from SAIF Partners, and by 2015, it had raised $37 million, SAIF Partners, Accel, and Bessemer Venture Partners, being the major investors. In December 2015, Ratan Tata from Tata group also made an undisclosed investment in the company.

The UrbanClap app lets the customers book a particular service through the app, the professional go to their home and complete the task. The customers make the payments for the service through the app. The company deducts 20 per cent of the payment and rest go to the service provider. This way, many of the registered service providers even make a lakh a month.

In 2018, the company expanded to Dubai, UAE and also closed a $50 million Series D round for expansion. By this time, the company revenue started growing three times a year.

The three co-founders seem to have no plans of going public in the near future. They want to make the company, and its services, future-ready and with their hard work as well as their strategies, it looks quite promising as well.

Netflix India mobile only plan

Netflix to Roll-out a Cheaper Mobile-only Plan to Target More Users in India

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The online video streaming services are taking over the entertainment industry, and there has been the rise of many of them Netflix being the leader of all. But amid the high competition, Netflix is also having some issues in regaining its customers. For the past few months, the company has also been facing slower growth due to the rise in its subscription plan prices, as well as the rise of other companies like Amazon that offering fancy discounts and original content over their platform.

The company has seen the lowest growth in the past few months, and only half of the expected number of new users have subscribed to Netflix in the first quarter of this year that just ended in June.

To be the leader in the filed, the company has to take some serious steps, to begin with, reduced prices. Netflix just announced that it will be starting up a new but cheaper mobile-only streaming plan, India being the first recipient of the new plan. The company revealed the news on Wednesday, adding that India is the biggest growing market, where it will be easier to get to most of the users with lowered prices.

Netflix India mobile only plan
Image Source: magicpin.in

“After several months of testing, we’ve decided to roll out a lower-priced mobile-only plan in India to complement our existing plans. We believe this plan, which will launch in Q3, will be an effective way to introduce a larger number of people in India to Netflix and to further expand our business in a market where Pay-TV ARPU is low (below $5),” said Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix.

According to a report, despite being the biggest population, only 2 million people are subscribed to Netflix in India. The company said that it may gain more subscribers if it reduces the subscription prices for the Indian users, The basic Netflix monthly plan starts at Rs 500 which allows the users to access Netflix on a single screen at a time. With the announcement, the company disclosed that the new plan will only work on mobile devices and will render a 480p picture quality.

While testing the new plan in March, Netflix offered the users a price as cheap as Rs 250 ($3.63) for it, but there has been no revelation on what will be the prices for the original plan. The company will be bringing the plan by the third quarter of this year in India, and later, it may also expand to other countries.

unacademy

Unacademy : India’s Online Learning Platform Helping People To Move a Step Forward Towards Their Dream

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Almost all the students of our country are pressurized for signing up in coaching classes after the secondary examination. But life becomes hectic after long hours in school followed by coaching and then self-study. This is the reason why students lose interest and tend to give up. Moreover, even in coaching classes, the lectures are equivalent to long hours of speech and every doubt of students is not solved.

So here, Unacademy comes to the rescue. Unacademy brings to India an online learning platform, where you can get to watch online videos of your curriculum prepared by experienced educators. The app is not only useful for 10+2 students but also for the college students preparing for exams like CAT, GATE, UPSC, etc.

History

Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, launched Unacademy.in, a Bangalore based start-up, in January 2016. The organisation is run by Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt Ltd. Before launching this free learning platform, Unacademy used to be an educational youtube channel, started in 2010, which now has around 15 million video views. The channel was created and run by Gaurav Munjal, and then later in 2015, the other two members joined in.

Unacademy Founders
Image Source: techcrunch.com

Munjal and Singh before launching Unacademy, worked at Flatchat which came under the acquisition of CommonFloor in 2014. Saini was one of the civil service aspirants, who cracked the examination at a very young age, but he left his job as Assistant Collector, in order to build Unacademy. At the age of 22, Saini became an IAS Officer by ranking 18th in the civil service examination 2013. He realized that among 6.5 lakhs IAS aspirants, only 1.5 lakhs were able to afford coaching classes. So, he decided to join Munjal in the platform of Unacademy and give online coaching to help the underprivileged students.

Growth and Investors

Only after a year of launching the free app, Unacademy raised a good amount of funding. In 2016, the company raised $500,000 in the seed round of funding hosted by Blume Ventures. Some of the investors who participated in this funding round were Rajan Anandan (Google India Head), Sumit Jain (Co-founder of CommonFloor), Aprameya Radhakrishna (Co-founder of Taxi4Sure), Sujeet Kumar and Phanindra Sama (Co-founder of redBus). Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal and Paytm’s founder Vijay Sekhar Sharma also funded $1 million to Unacademy. By this time, Unacademy already gained more than 200,000 subscribers and 729 videos from online coaches. The videos were short (around 8-10 minutes) and crisp with a lot of visuals like graphs and images to make sure that the students don’t lose interest.

In 9th August 2017, Bhavin Turakhia, CEO and founder of Directi (an online application for business and communication) joined the board as Director. Turakhia is a huge tech entrepreneur who apart from founding Directi also founded Flock, Radix, CodeChef, Ringo, Media.net (co-founder) and Zeta (co-founder). According to the estimates of Forbes magazine in 2017, he was ranked as 95th richest person of India. He looks upon the overall business strategy of Unacademy and focuses on creating more versatile contents.

In 2017, the company raised $11.5 million in series B funding, from Sequoia India and SAIF Partners. The company announced that the funds will be invested in hiring new employees and for increasing the number of products. The company was hiring online educators on the basis of their experience and the educational background.

The three founders got featured in ‘Forbes 30 Under 30 India’ for their commendable work and progress. In July 2018, the organisation raised $21 million funds through another round of funding, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners and Nexus Venture Partners being the main investors. The company has raised a total of $38.6 million through all the funding rounds so far.

The success

With the increasing number of active students and teachers, Unacademy has become India’s largest online learning platform. There are over 2,400 lessons in Unacademy, covering topics from the various competitive exams. With more than 2 million views on the videos, Unacademy is reaching every corner of India to help the youth and empower them. Unacademy also has some top ideal educators, like Kiran Bedi, on board. More than 300,000 students have been benefited from the free app and have cracked even the toughest competitive exams of India.