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Moteefe

Moteefe: How Mathjis, Lev, and Olivier set up on-demand Social commerce business?

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In the last couple of years, social commerce is growing rapidly. Also, we will see exponential growth in this field in the future. Additionally, online shopping is completely changed due to the social media platform. Which in turn changed the requirements of the social commerce platform. Hereafter comes the role of Moteefe. Moteefe enables many opportunities in social commerce and allows to sell products on social media. In fact, entrepreneurs can easily create custom designs on the Moteefe platform. These designs can then put in front of niche audiences. The company Moteefe is set up in 2014 by Mathijs, Olivier, and Lev. However, it features over 30 products on its social commerce platform.

What is Moteefe?

It is a tech e-commerce company that helps users with selling custom products online. Also, it is reliable and easy to develop its own brand with Moteefe. Young entrepreneurs Mathijs, Olivier, and lev founded the company in 2014. However, the vision behind the formation of the company is to bring great clothing designs to the totally hassle-free market. In a short duration, the company achieved trustworthy customers with its one-stop online shop for all kinds of products. Starting from the baby grows, cushions, clothing to the mugs and phone cases; everything can sell or buy on Moteefe.

The Inspiration Behind Setting On-demand Social Commerce Platform

The founders of Moteefe always wanted to promote entrepreneurship. Also, they were aware of the risks, hassle and the obstacles that come into the way of creative people to sell their products. They found the social commerce business as a perfect platform to help such creative peoples. Additionally, they feel everyone is unique so everyone should wear unique products. Thus, to achieve all these goals the Mathijs and his co-founders set up an e-commerce platform for on-demand merchandise.

The backstory of Foundation

While studying at INSEAD, Moteefe founders had the task to create a full plan for scalable online business. That’s how the idea of Moteefe sparkled into the mind of founders. However, they felt that it’s a golden opportunity to flourish the business. Because of that time, very few social commerce companies were working in the market. After that, they researched and planned on this after completing MBAs at INSEAD. So, after deep researched they decided to set up the social commerce business and founded it in 2014.

Struggles During the Start of the Business

​At the start of the business, they had to face many problems. Because they wanted to help entrepreneurs to create their own businesses. Furthermore, the big challenge was to set the method of creating custom made products. However, Moteefee developed an efficient platform that helped sellers to produce only needed goods. As well, ensure to not left with stock they can’t shift.

Relaxed Maniacs of Moteefe

The founders of Moteefe likes to call themselves as relaxed maniacs. Because they think its fun to provide awesome service. Also, they enjoy while working and searching for creative ideas. Well, these relaxed maniacs are Mathjis Eefting, Lev, and Olivier Stapylton-Smith.

Mathis Eefting

He is the founder as well as the CEO of the company. Mathjis is a native of Holland, he went to INSEAD for perusing MBA. Before establishing Moteefe, he worked as a consultant at Holland. Presently, he is serving as a CEO at the social commerce platform Moteefe. UnderMoteefeMoteefe his policies, the company rising the business day by day. However, he met the co-founders during his MBA.

Olivier Stapylton-Smith

He is the co-founder and CMO at Moteefe. However, he started a successful financial start-up before assisting the Moteefe’s establishment. Presently, he is serving at the company as a CMO and he is responsible for the revenue side of the business. Since the foundation of the company, he is constantly working on the lookup for new avenues of growth for the company. As well, Olivier shared an equal contribution to creating new business opportunities at Moteefe to make it an even better platform.

Education and Career

From 1995 to 2007, Oliver went to Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle for his formal education. After that, he studied BSc at UCL in Economics and Geography. However, he further studied Business Administration and Management at INSEAD. During his MBA, he met his future business partners. Earlier, he worked as a non-executive director in the field of equity crowdfunding at Volpi for two years. Also, Olivier worked at Ondra partners as a Corporate Finance Advisor.

IRobot

Irobot: American Advanced Technology Company Founded By Three of Mit’s Ai Lab Members

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iRobot is an American advanced technology company. Three of MIT’s AI lab members set up the company in 1990. It has been working in robot design for space exploration as well as military defense. Also, the company creates a wide range of consumer robots that can perform both outside and inside works of home. For example, its robots Roomba and Braava. These are robots as a vacuum cleaner and floor moppers respectively. 

After serving at MIT’s AI lab, H. Greiner, R. Brooks, and C. Angle set up the company in 1990. 

iRobot 

It is an American advanced tech company that works in the field of Robotics. However, the company started the development of PackBot in 1998. Just after receiving the DARPA research contract. In 2002, iRobot started designing home robots. As of the year 2004, its home robot the Roomba sold a million units. Also, in 2005, the company began being traded on the NASDAQ. Until the year 2012, the company sold 8+ million home robots. Additionally, it has deployed more than 5000 defense & security robots. 

Best Home Robots

iRobot designing home robots since 2002. Roomba, Braava, Create, Mirra, and Terra are well-known and mostly sold robots of the company. The robots Roomba and Brava operate as an automated vacuum cleaning robot and floor mopping robot respectively. However, the company’s robot Create is designed as a hobby robot. Mirra is designed to clean swimming pool floors, while Terra is designed for mowing the lawn using mapping.

Founders of iRobots

Colin M. Angle

He is the CEO and iRobots co-founder. Under Colin’s policies, the company is at the leading robot enterprise. Also, he showed the world an example of team empowerment and innovation to deliver market-friendly robots. In addition, under his guidance, the company has built a strategic network with many companies like Boeing, Clorox, etc. Together, these companies are delivering new and innovative robot solutions.

Education 

Colin Angle is an honorable student at MIT. He holds a tech bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s degree in computer science. During his master’s, Angle’s thesis assisted to produce a six-legged autonomous walking robot called Genghis. Presently, it is at Smithsonian National Air and Science Museum, Washington D.C. 

Career

In 1990, he was Artificial Creatures’ president. Also, he worked at the AI Laboratory of MIT. At that time, he first met Helen Greiner and Dr. Rodney Brooks. Later, they turned as partners in the foundation of iRobot. Earlier, just after the formation of iRobot, Colin and his team worked for NASA. For NASA, they designed behavior-controlled rovers. In fact, the team won the NASA Group Achievement award. As well, the Angles name is inscribed on the spirit case of the Mars exploration rover. 

Awards and Recognition 

Colin M. Angle has been honored with numerous professional awards. Also, the Mass Technology Leadership Council honored him as CEO of the year. He marked the name in the list of Best Bosses, the list declared by Fortune Small Business Magazine. Besides, Ernst and young honored him New England Entrepreneur of the year. 

Helen Greiner

She is iRobot co-founder and teammate of Rodney Brooks and Colin Angle at MIT AI Lab. Also, she served as CTO of Aria Insights. 

Early life 

She was born in 1967 in London. At the age of five, Helen’s family shifted to Southampton, New York, USA. Helen decided to work with robots when she was ten-year-old. It was the Star-War movie that inspired her.

Education

Helen is a Mechanical engineer studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, she earned a Master’s in computer science. Apart from that, Greiner holds an honorary degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Clarkson University. 

Achievement

At iRobot she assisted in designing the first-ever version of iRobot called Roomba. However, she served as chairman of the company until 2008. Also, she served as an iRobot president until 2004. Under her guidance, the company released a PackBot, Roomba and military robot called SUGV.

Other Achievements 

Helen served the United States Army as an advisor in Logistic and Technology. Also, she affirmed as highly qualified Expert for Robotics, Autonomous Systems & AI for the Army.

Awards and recognition

In 2000, the World Economic Forum honored her as one of the Global leaders. Also, she named Ernst and Young New England Entrepreneur of the year. Helen also set the name in Fortune Magazine list of “Top Ten Innovators”. She also awarded as Entrepreneur of the Year by Good Housekeeping. Furthermore, she honored as one of America’s best leaders by Kennedy School at Harvard. Apart from that, she had been honored with many such awards and titles. Recently, in 2018, Wentworth Institute of Technology awarded her as “Women of the Year”.

Rodney Brooks

He is an Entrepreneur and co-founder of robotics companies iRobot and Rethinks Robotics. Presently, he is the Rethink Robotics CTO and Chairman. Brooks also served at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. 

Education

He studied at Flinders University in Pure Maths. Also, he has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford. At Carnegie Mellon and MIT, he held research positions. Brooks has published many papers in computer vision as well as in artificial intelligence and robotics.

He also served as a member of the International Scientific Advisory Group of National Information & Communication Technology, Australia. Presently, Rodney is serving at Xconomy.

Awards and Recognition

In 1991, Brookes won the Computers and Thought Award at the Int Joint Conf on Artificial Intelligence. Apart from that, he worked as the Cray Lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Also, the Mellon Lecturer at Dartmouth as well as Forsythe Lecturer at Stanford. Brookes works actively in Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, he appeared in the movie called “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” in 1997. That movie was named for one of Brookes’s scientific papers.

Schbang

SCHBANG- INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS UNDER ONE ROOF

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A company needs a variety of marketing resources for its proper functioning. Designing a proper website, frontend development, creating a mobile application, etc are the basic requirements of any company. From an apparel company to a software company, a strong technical back-up is always on demand.

Most of the companies tend to hire freelancers and assign projects. But, a separate team is needed to supervise the tasks as well. So, what can be the best solution than getting everything done under the same roof? Schbang, a Mumbai-based technical agency is providing marketing solutions for a wide range of audiences.

Harshil Karia, Sohil Karia, and Akshay Gurnani established the company in 2015. Since then the company is trying to provide the best advertising solutions to its customers.

About the Founders

After graduating from high school, Harshil went to the University of Mumbai. He studied advertising, media, and marketing and graduated in 2008. In 2009, he went to the University of Toronto to learn more about finance.

During his bachelor’s degree, Harshil was an intern at Dentsu Marcomm Pvt. Ltd as a trainee copywriter. In January 2007, he started a job at LifeStyle Networks Ltd as a marketing executive. He continued for six months and shifted to WATConsult in November 2007. In 2008, Harshil co-founded FoxyMoron, a digital agency. He co-founded Schbang in 2015 and currently serves as the managing director of the company. He is also the CEO of Proof Analytics.

Sohil went to Greenlawns School, Worli and then completed his bachelor’s in commerce from Podar College of Commerce and Economics. In May 2010, Sohil joined FoxyMoron as a junior visualizer and finally became the senior art director before leaving the company. After co-founding Schbang, he became the chief design and technology director.

Akshay went to the same school as Sohil and completed his higher studies from H. R. College of Commerce and Economics. In June 2010, he started a job at TresVista Financial Services as a financial analyst. He worked at FoxyMoron for four years and currently serves as the CEO of Schbang. All three co-founders decided to start their journey while working for FoxyMoron.

The Decision

The trio started planning the layout of their future business before resigning from FoxyMoron. But, when Harshil stepped down it was a shock to the world because till then media had no information about Schbang. Harshil also said that they chose not to involve media and it is the reason they became successful in launching the product.

Everything is Planned

Resigning from FoxyMoron wasn’t an impulsive decision for any of them. Because they planned and strategized for eight long months before launching Schbang. So, when they founded the company it already had sixty good numbers of employees. The main office was established in Mumbai. And, apart from that they also had an office on Delhi.

When Schbang was launched, it already landed many lucrative clients like BBlunt, Good Knight, FirstyCry.com, Sequoia Capital, and many more. When Harshil was asked why they kept themselves shrouded, he said they were busy creating partnerships with big companies. This proves that Harshil is good at marketing and strategizing.

Passion

The co-founders try to create a very positive working environment with brimming passion. The founders are also deeply indulged in spreading social awareness in any kind of necessary situation. It also promises good quality product which is budget-friendly as well.

The Journey of Four Years

Within the span of four years, the Schbang community size has expanded both in terms of customers and employees as well. Currently, some of the top-most clients of Schbang are Baskin Robbins, Mattel, Castrol, etc.

One can provide better solutions for their customers when they understand them well. This is one of the main strategies rather fundamental rules of Schbang. Since the entire business depends on better marketing on behalf of their customers; they try to maintain a very friendly relationship.

Apart from keeping its customers close, Schbang prioritizes technology. Because let’s just admit what’s more important to a company than tech when it is providing IT solutions. The two main targets of Schbang for the year 2020 are growing to a family with more than 500 members and hitting a net revenue of 100 crores.

Freshworks

The Indian Co-Founders Took Freshworks To A Whole New Level

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Indian engineers have their demand all over the world. Both the quality and quantity of engineers our country produces every year contributes to a massive part in overall development. And, among all fields, the demands of IT people are at peak. With the new start-ups in any sector, engineers are required very much. The story of Freshworks narrates the tale of two Indian engineers and how they established a company. Freshworks is a software company based in the United States. Founded in 2010, the company got into the uniform club in 2018. Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy founded the company in 2010 as Freshdesk.

About the Founders

Girish graduated from high school in 1990. He went to Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy and studied Electrical & Electronics. He graduated in 1996 and then went to the University of Madras for pursuing his MBA.

His first job was in HCL Cisco ODC as technical staff and he worked there for a year. In 2000, he joined eForce Inc as a senior software engineer. He also worked at AdventNet as a product manager. Before co-founding Freshworks, Girish was the Vice President of product management at Zoho Corporation.

Shan studied mechanical engineering from Vellore. He graduated in 2001 and joined Zoho right away. He worked there for nine long years and then co-founded Freshworks with Girish.

Founding a new company

Girish hovered here and there a few times before establishing Freshworks. Before joining HCL he also taught Java and wanted to open a training institute. But, the idea wasn’t productive for a long time because one time he had plenty of students and next to the moment he had to convince people to learn it.

In 2010, after Girish returned from the U.S. he suffered some trouble with a company. The customer service of the company was poor and he got frustrated by it. This is when he realized that a proper helpdesk still has a lot of potentials. So, with his prior knowledge from working at Zoho, Girish decided to build his own company.

But, he needed a co-founder at the same time. This is when he contacted Shan who is a good friend of him. As he agreed instantaneously, the duo started planning for the company. But, both of them were married and had a family. It’s a huge risk to quit your well-paid job when you have to take care of your family. But, they finally went with their guts and made Freshworks a grand success.

The Beginning

Girish didn’t have good exposure to the business world. So, finding big venture capitalists was a hard task. He started landing investors after his blog on the Freshworks start-up story went viral. The blog was such a big hit that customers started signing up before the actual product was ready for launch. Anand Daniel offered Freshworks a helping hand during this time and finally, the company launched its product.

Surprisingly, the company landed its first customer from Australia. And, the following six customers were also from different countries making it an international company from day one. Many customers signed-up just after trying the trial version.

Funding and Acquisition

When the company was founded, it had six team members. With no outside funding, the team spent $160 each month as rent for their new office. Girish didn’t take any salary back then.

In 2011, Freshworks won $40,000 from the Microsoft BizSpark contest. Since it was a new company then, contests like this helped in gaining exposure followed by good funding. In the same year, the company raised one million from Accel Partners. After from Accel, Freshworks also has investors like Tiger Capital and Sequoia Capital.

In 2018, Freshworks raised $150 million in the Series H funding round. The main investors were Sequoia Capital, CapitalG and Accel. This year, the company received the unicorn tag and it became the third Indian company to receive the same in 2018. After the Series H funding, the company’s total valuation became $1.5 billion.

Success

The main products of Freshworks include Freshdesk, Freshcaller, Freshsales, etc. The company has over 250,000 customers to date. Freshworks made a profit of 21 crores in the financial year 2018. It has also acquired companies like Natero and CanvasFlip.

razorpay logo

Razorpay- A Company Leading In The New Digital Payment System

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With the developing tech ecosystem in India, competitors are also increasing in the market. Previously, very few people had the guts to take a risk and do something unconventional. But, once a company achieves success, competitors keep on increasing because everyone wants to follow what’s trending. With the developing tech ecosystem in India, competitors are also increasing in the market. Previously, very few people had the guts to take a risk and do something unconventional. But, once a company achieves success, competitors keep on increasing because everyone wants to follow what’s trending. Similarly, only a few years ago who would have thought about money transfer with a swipe of fingers. But, now so many companies are trying to establish easy and secure online money transfer facilities. Razorpay, a company founded in May 2014 and promises a secure, developer-friendly payment system for every Indian user. The platform can access any kind of payment method through Razorpay which includes net banking, debit card, credit card, and also wallets like Ola Money, Airtel Money, etc.

About the Founder

Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur are the founders of Razorpay. Shashank did his schooling from St. Xavier’s High School, Patna. He went to IIT Roorkee and completed his bachelor’s in Computer Science and was also a part of Y Combinator 2015.

While his time at IIT, Shashank worked as the summer intern at the University of Minnesota and also at Microsoft during the next summer. He joined SDSLabs and worked there as the Vice President for one year. Before founding Razorpay, Shashank worked at Microsoft as a software development engineer.

Harshil also went to IIT Roorkee and was an employee at SDSLabs. He also worked at Schlumberger as Wireline Field Engineer for nine months. Currently, Harshil serves as the CEO of the company, Razorpay.

The Initial Stage Of Razorpay

The start-up started through the Y Combinator program and initial it raised $2.5 million in the seed funding round. The seed funding round was led by Matrix Partners along with other investors which includes Jeff Huber, Justin Kan, etc. In 2015, the company raised another $9 million from the funding round led by Tiger Global.

The founders started the company in Jaipur and in 2015 they shifted the headquarters to Bengaluru. The company had a fifteen-member team by this time. The money that was raised in this round was planned to invest in exploring other segments of the payment industry and building other products.

Baby Steps

When Shashank and Harshil co-founded Razorpay, a lot of competitors were already present in the market. So, they set small goals and gradually expanded the company. The best thing about using Razorpay is the user can carry out a transaction using the 2G net. So, within a couple of years after founding Razorpay, the users witnessed a 30% higher success rate. By the end of 2015, 1,800 merchants were using the platform of Razorpay.

Many start-ups also started using Razorpay as their primary money transaction platform. The start-ups include Lookup, LocalOye, NeoStencil, and many more.

Getting Bigger

In 2016, Mobikwik came into a partnership with Razorpay. This gave Razorpay access to Mobikwik’s Power Wallet API and the success rate increased. By this time, Razorpay did business with 3,000 merchants and they were expecting 1,000 more by the end of the year. After the partnership with Mobikwik, the business deals of Razorpay increased geometrically.

The code of conduct

Shashank said that his time in Microsoft taught him the quality of leadership. The one thing and the founding rule of Razorpay are that be honest with your clients. Shashank follows it strictly and he expects every employee of his office to maintain this standard.

Success

In 2018, Razorpay raised $20 million from Tiger Global and Matrix Partners. In 2017, Razorpay came into a joint partnership with Telegram for chatbot payments. This Company came up with its advanced version of Razorpay 2.0 during this time.

In 2019, the company raised $75 million from the funding round led by Ribbit Capital. After this round of funding, the company raised a total funding of $450 million. They have also declared that the new funding will be invested in new sectors of the company. Currently, they are focusing on the neobanking platform Razorpay X and its lending arm Rayzorpay Capital. This strategy is a part of Rayzorpay 2.0.

Zoomcar

The American Duo Launches Zoomcar i.e A Self-Drive Car Rental Start-Up In India

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American start-up culture is more developed than the Indian start-up culture. Recently India is making big news on this ground. But, the start-up ecosystem has not been this strong in our nation since the beginning. It took years for entrepreneurs and visionaries to establish a rigid concept of start-ups in India and eradicate the orthodoxy.

Since India is just at a budding stage for young entrepreneurs to shine, the potential is extremely high. So many business ideas and resources are left unturned. But, a perfect business mind always finds a path to achieve the goal.

The unexplored market of India attracted the American duo to our nation and establish a start-up. Greg Moran and David Back were fascinated by the potential business market in the field of transportation in India. They decided to open a business for car rentals and kudos they made it. They founded Zoomcar in February 2013 through the market research that was going for a long time.

About the Founders of Zoomcar

Greg Moran went to the University of Pennsylvania and acquired his bachelor’s degree in international relations. During his time at this university, he worked as a summer associate in Cerberus Capital Management. After graduating, he joined Fieldstone Capital Private Group as an analyst and worked there for almost two years.

Before pursuing his master’s he worked at International Power America for a year. In 2011, he joined USC Marshall School of Business for acquiring his MBA. Greg worked as FloDesign Wind Turbine as a summer associate in 2012. While pursuing his MBA, he developed a very keen interest in the market of India. Hence, one fine day he decides to fly to India with David and plan a business.

David has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania. He also went to Harvard Law School and he completed his MBA from Cambridge University. In 2006, he worked as a summer research intern at the American Enterprise Institute. He also has teaching experience at the University of Pennsylvania.

David also has working experience at McKinsey & Company and Goldman Sachs. He resigned from Zoomcar in 2015 and joined Idein Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence. He was a speaker at The London Speaker Bureau for four years and in 2019 he became the managing partner of Icarus Ventures.

The Beginning

Intrigued by the potential of the Indian market, Greg, one day decided to take a vacation and explore business opportunities. David accompanied him. It seems Greg saw a huge scope in the car rental sector and started planning seriously about it. The duo was in a dilemma between the transportation business and renewable energy space but decided to pick the former one.

Honestly, the obstacles were immeasurable. They faced a lot of problems initially which included getting a license in the first place. Greg received the seed funding, everything was ready but at the eleventh hour, they weren’t given the permission to have a license. It was a do or die situation for them, but they managed to sign in a deal with someone already having a license. The entire procedure wasn’t a piece of cake but the business kicked off really well.

Investors and Partnerships

The initial investors of Zoomcar include Lawrence Summers, Lady Barbara Judge, William P. Alford, and many more. Some famous companies Zoomcar raised funding from are Mahindra&Mahindra, Ford Motor Company, Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners, Funders Club, Athene Capital, and etc. To date, Zoomcar has raised total funding of 673 crores.

Throughout this journey of seven years, Zoomcar has established a firm relationship with Mahindra and Ford. Zoomcar in association with Uber has also launched some campaign increasing driving awareness among the public.

Success

Both David and Greg had to overcome a lot of struggles to make Zoomcar a huge success. Firstly, it was a big challenge to make people believe that they were serious about the start-up. Because most of them thought it was just a plan which will never come into play. And, licensing was another nightmare for the company.

But, Zoomcar currently witnesses over 5,000 bookings per day. Their next target is to make 8,000 cars on the road turn to 25,000 cars on the road.

Both the co-founders think that users will increase at a rate more than twice in the following years. Because a good part of India’s population consists of adults aging between 25-30 who believe more in experimenting than having an asset. So, anytime they will pick a car rental service rather than buying one.