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Shark Tank India

Long-lasting Impact of Shark Tank India on Indian Startup Ecosystem.

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Startups are the current obsession and way to independence for the youth. Starting from startups like Flipkart and PayTM, the Indian startup industry has come a long way. In fact, in terms of startups, India comes third in the list of the number of startups. Today, we can see an MBA graduate happily running a tea stall or some retired lady running their own food delivery business successfully. There is a huge role of the internet in making startups a passion more than a risk for people, but yes, the will of doing something big is what drives people to take that one decision that would change their lives forever.

Though the internet and good marketing have been one of the reliable sources from where we would get to know about new startups, a reality TV show named Shark Tank has just made us even more aware of the Indian startup industry. Shark Tank is a show that includes a bench of judges who are to invest in new business ideas from the budding entrepreneurs based on the potential of those ideas. It is the first season of the show in India, whereas the Shark Tank franchise has already produced thirteen successful seasons of the same show in the US and given opportunities to multiple startups.

About Shark Tank India

Shark Tank India is the Hindi adaptation of the American reality show Shark Tank. The show has gained popularity in India because of its unique concept of startups trying to grab an investment from the panel of ‘Sharks’ (investors/judges). The show was aired first time on TV on 20 December 2021, and the last episode of the first season came on 4 February 2022.

Shark Tank is a show of its kind, as the budding entrepreneurs of every age with their idea of business participate to represent their business idea in front of the selected investors (Sharks) and convince them to invest in the idea based on its potential. These Sharks are the leaders of their fields and looking for businesses that can multiply their investments. The Sharks in the first season included Ashneer Grover (MD and Co-founder of BhartPe), Aman Gupta (Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of boAt), Anupam Mittal (Founder and CEO of Shaadi.com and People Group), Ghazal Alagh (Co-founder and Chief Mama of MamaEarth), Namita Thapar (Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals), Peyush Bansal (Co-founder and CEO of Lenskart), Vineeta Singh, (CEO and co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics).

Shark Tank India
Image source: moneycontrol.com

Impact of Shark Tank India on Indian Startup Ecosystem

This is the first time that Indian TV has aired a kind of show that is appealing to every age group and has inspired many budding entrepreneurs to look beyond the 9-to-5 jobs. Shark Tank has given a great platform to people who have dreamt about having their own business but were always afraid of taking that leap of faith. The show not only inspired many but also opened gates for financial literacy for people and made them aware of many financial terms like capital investment, angel investors, series A (B, C, D, E) funding, etc., that are only known to business professionals only.

We can clearly see that not long ago, people were against starting up businesses that are different from the usual fields. Most of the times parents would ask their children to opt for engineering or medical, as these professions have always been the most secure ones. Shark Tank as a show has made a powerful impact on the middle-class population of India, which has always been afraid of taking risks and preferred government jobs over any business any day. The show has been a medium to educate the Indian middle-class parents about the existing flourishing startups and the possible opportunities in the said field.

Shark Tank has a great impact on the Indian audience, as the 35-episode series showcased people of age group from teenage to people of retiring age pitching their business ideas in front of the Sharks and bagging investments in lakhs and crores. This is only the first successful season of Shark Tank and many more to come, where we can see unique ideas making their way towards success and people normalizing startups as a career. India is already producing CEOs for big-name companies in the west, now this is the time, India produces its CEO for its own startups and makes big in the world.

Shark Tank can be a medium of filling people with confidence and becoming independent. The main learning from the show can be to find an opportunity in everything rather than waiting for an opportunity. Shark Tank is an educating show that is a must-watch for not only people looking forward to starting a business but also, for people who want to learn about business, startups, finances, investment, and where the world is moving in terms of startups and investments.

Bol.com

Daniel Ropers’s Entrepreneurial Journey Takes A Pause After Springer Nature

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Daniel Ropers says it becomes a great commitment towards professional work especially when it comes to education. The former CEO of Springer Nature captured the attention of one and all when he decided to step down. Daniel Ropers is very famous in the business world especially as the former CEO and co-founder of Bol.com other than Springer Nature. He stepped down from his position at Springer Nature in September 2019. We come across a lot of great personalities in our daily lives. And, in the business world, it has become quite common to spot business tycoons rising from nothing. Daniel Ropers, the former CEO of Springer Nature, has created a very significant position for him in the business world. He has recently left the company and his resignation took place very smoothly. So, let’s have a look into his entrepreneurial journey.

Education of Daniel Ropers

Daniel went to ESSEC Business School in 1995 to study Global Economics and Business Studies. He also completed his master’s in Business Economics and graduated in 1997. He always a niche for business development and thus established his career by serving infamous companies around the world.

Professional World

Daniel started his career with McKinsey & Company. In 1997, he joined the company as a Management Consultant and continued for a couple of years. In 2000, Daniel after co-founding Bol.com joined the same as the CEO of the company. He worked at the company for seventeen years. In 2010, he became a Supervisory Board Member of the Telegraaf Media Groep.

After leaving Bol.com, he joined Springer Nature which he left after two years. Daniel witnessed the growth of Bol.com from the beginning as it was founded in 1999. While he served at Bol.com, it emerged out as one of the most popular retailers in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Daniel’s Leadership in Bol.com

The newly built company of 1999 excelled under the leadership of Daniel Ropers. Daniel showed great interest in companies related to academics. Bol.com started its business as a company that sells books online and Springer also encompasses academic publishing.

When Bol.com was established in 1999 it only had a handful of customers which after three years turned to millions. Once landing bigger customers, the company decided to expand its business and started selling electronics as well. So, in 2004, the company expanded its product range and witnessed more than 5 million orders in total.

The company didn’t entertain a huge number of employees. Bol.com comprised of fifty team members in 2006. This year, the annual revenue of the company summed up to €100 million. In 2008, the company launched its first personalized newsletter. Bol.com expanded its business to Belgium, thus collaborating with the local retailers and expanding their products.

Once Bol.com started going international, they needed more employees for the abroad offices. In 2014, the companies employees increased by twenty times as it was ten years ago. Eventually, the company also introduced same-day delivery. This was a good strategy for a company like Bol.com as it also started selling products needed in everyday life. Under the leadership of Daniel, the company went international, expanded its products, improved its delivery timings, etc.

Springer Nature

Springer Nature is a company or rather academic publishing exclusively for journals, academic researches, scholarships, etc. Daniel joined the company in 2017, two years after its founding. Springer Nature was formed by merging more than a couple of companies. It includes Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan Education, Springer Science, and Business Media. The merging was finally completed in May 2015 and the maximum shareholder was Holtzbrinck (Macmillan Education).

Daniel was already a business mastermind when he joined Springer Nature. So, it was expected of the company to grow bigger under his supervision. Under Daniel’s rule, the company developed excellent group strategies and planning for the future.

Daniel said that education is the foundation of every step we take today. We might have become huge business tycoons, but without proper education, it wouldn’t have been possible. Within two years, Daniel was greatly attached to the company and more than that with the purpose served. He said it is hard to leave the company. But, at the same time, he needed a break from twenty-five years of this life.

cookpad

Cookpad : Success Story of the Largest Recipe Sharing Platform

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In earlier times, it was the dinner table where people had most of their interactions and the family members connected with each other. Slowly, the time changed, and people were more into buying readymade food and eat it alone. We can call it a lack of time that people no more find time to sit and eat food with their family. This way, people also started forgetting the recipes of traditional food and preferred not to cook. But there is a man named Aki Sano, the founder of Cookpad, who understands the value of self-cooked food. It not only helps people save a lot of money but also keeps people in touch with their traditions.

Aki Sano founded Cookpad about 22 years ago in Japan. It is not that he hit the idea, and the startup was an instant success. There were a number of incidents that took place before Cookpad could really be one of the largest online recipe-sharing platforms in the world.

About the Founder

Aki Sano is a Japanese entrepreneur, who was born on 1 May 1973 in Tokyo, Japan and studied at Keio University, Tokyo. He had always been interested in technology as well as alternative energy. When he was in high school, he built solar-powered cars. Following his passion, he took alternative energy as a subject at the university. He then went to attend a one year Solar Summer Camp, too. Later, during his graduation, he also made it to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) conference in New York. Though he found the conference quite boring and dull, he met an interesting fellow from West Indies named Abdu.

Aki Sano Cookpad
Image Source: cookpadteam.com

Abdu had got a degree from the US but returned to his homeland, where he grew his own vegetables and did farming. Sano found it quite interesting, and it had a great impact on him. Back to Japan, while buying vegetables from a supermarket, Sano realised that he was about to buy imported vegetables when he could get fresh ones from across the road from the local farmers. This incident and meeting with Abdu got him to sell vegetables from the farmers to the students at the university.

He managed to join in many farmers who would deliver vegetables to the students at the university who had placed the orders, and if there were any extra veggies, they would sell those to people passing by. This way, it became a huge business, and Sano had to build a website for the same. This, eventually, became his first startup. He managed the business for two years, and after two years, it was the time to graduate. His friends had started cracking the interviews with companies and were already placed. But Sano was still thinking of what he should do.

Founding Cookpad

With his experience with the vegetable selling business as well as his interest in corporate business, he decided to start his company and named it COIN. But despite he launched the company, he had no idea what he would be producing or selling. He ended up with three ideas, expanding his vegetable selling business, build products that endorse alternative energy or do something around housing. But eventually, he discarded all those ideas and came with Cookpad.

Initially, Cookpad was known as Kitchen@Coin, which was a side by side business that he was running along with a full-time job. The idea behind the startup was that people were avoiding cooking food and ultimately, buying the vegetables, just because they did not have the right recipes. With Cookpad, he wanted people to find the right recipe to cook the right food. It was a subscription-based service, where people could put their food recipes. The subscription fee for the platform was $5 per month. Sano set the target of 50,000 people joining the platform within two months, but only 100 people joined the platform and that too, in three months.

This discouraged Sano badly, and he asked his subscribers how he could return the money as he had decided to close the platform. But for his surprise, the subscribers were ready to pay more to keep the service going. This way, he made the service free for his subscribers and changed the name Kitechen@Coin to Cookpad in June 1999.

The Success

By March 2002, the company started advertising the business across the country. In September 2004, Cookpad launched premium service for the users. After two years, the company launched its first mobile service naming it as MOBAREPI. It then announced a premium service for the MOBAREPI users as well, in November 2008. Cookpad hosted its IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on July 2009. This was the time when the company really saw the success and had earned revenues increased by 80 per cent.

Cookpad was named in the list of the TSE Mothers in July 2009. By 2010, the company started expanding across borders and opened its first office in California, USA, followed by opening one in Singapore in 2011. Today, the company has its offices in countries, including the UK, Spain, Indonesia, Lebanon, Brazil, India, Taiwan, Hungary, Greece, Russia, etc. The company has established its international headquarters in Bristol, UK.

Today, Cookpad has got around 5 million registered recipes on it and hosts 40 million monthly unique users globally. Sano stepped down from the post of the CEO of Cookpad, and in 2014, he owned a 44% stake in the company, which valued more than $1 billion. In 2016, Sano ranked at #42 in the Forbes Japan’s 50 Richest 2016 list.

eatstreet

EatStreet : One of the Most Successful Startups Not From the Silicon Valley

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We can call it laziness or the extra money we have that we use to pay people to deliver things on our doorsteps. Today, a countless number of startups are providing the delivery services, and we just need to pay a small fee for that. But sometimes, these service providers charge an amount that is not justified, and we are only annoyed. This is the same case happened with the co-founders of EatStreet when they got the idea for their first and the most successful startup. Matt Howard, Eric Martell, and Alex Wyler, the students of the University of Wisconsin–Madison founded the company when they had to pay extra fee for food delivery despite being college students.

Eric Martell and Alex Wyler were computer science students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. One day during their internship, Martell felt hungry and ordered food through campusfood.com. As soon he placed the order, he received a call from the delivery guy telling him that it would have been way cheaper if he had simply ordered through the phone call. This made Martell frustrated as even he was a student, he paid extra money for the delivery.

Martell discussed the incident with Wyler and came to the conclusion that they should build a similar website, that would provide free deliveries. This way, there were high chances for their idea to work, and they would also get good points to add in their resume. They could make the website run by themselves, but they needed a marketer to reach out to the restaurants for promotions. So they decided to join Matt Howard in, who was studying economics and political science major at the university. He had also got some experience in selling cars. So he seemed to be the perfect fit for the promotions.

EatStreet Founders
Image Source: wisc.edu

Finally, the three founded EatStreet as BadgerBites on 1 February 2010. Initially, it became difficult for them to convince the restaurants, but slowly the business came on track. In fact, in nine months, the company was making 100-200 deliveries every day, through about 70-80 restaurants in the city. In 2011, BadgerBites won the G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition and got a $10,000 prize as well as free office space in 2011. It also won the third prize in the NEST competition, held at the university. Winning those competitions not only helped the co-founders to get money to support their business but also access to some good entrepreneurs who have been mentoring them to date.

The success of the service encouraged the three to expand it to other cities as well. They built different websites for different cities, expanding the service to the cities that had more colleges or had universities. After running around 15 different websites for BadgerBites, the three co-founders launched a single website with the name EatStreet, and combined the services of the fifteen into one, on 21 January 2013. This way, they started to expand the service nationwide. By now, all three had to focus entirely on the service leaving other works behind. Matt Howard became the CEO of the company, Eric Martell held the position of COO, and Alex Wyler was appointed as the CTO of EatStreet.

The same year, in February, EatStreet hosted a series A funding led by and raised a sum of $2.45 million. The company was also named as #2 “Food Delivery Startup to Watch” in the U.S. by StrategyEye. The next year, the company became a part of the National Restaurant Association, in order to promote the digitalisation in the food industry. The company even partnered with Yelp, such that users could make orders through Yelp directly.

In April 2014, EatStreet raised another $8.4 million in a Series B investment round, Cornerstone Opportunity Partners LLC, Independence Equity, Great Oaks VC, CSA Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, being the major investors.

The three co-founders won the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in the Midwest in 2015. By the C round of the funding, they were sure that the business is going to get real big, and they need to work on their data game.

In 2017, Howard and Wyler got featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology list. Martell stepped down from the post of COO to focus on his passion to help people build businesses in the same year. By the series C funding, the company had raised a sum of around $26 million. And at the same time, 200 corporate employees, as well as 800 delivery guys, had joined the company. The company processed around orders from 1.7 million customers in the year of 2017.

Today, the company has expanded to over 15,000 restaurants in over 150 cities in the U.S. The company, today, operates the orders and deliveries through its app, website, Facebook page as well as through the restaurants’ custom websites. EatStreet intends to reach around 350 to 400 cities across the U.S. by 2020.

Echovme-logo

Sorav Jain : An Indian Entrepreneur Crusing Down the Bay of Digital Marketing

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The traditional ways of marketing have been outweighed by digitalized promotions as soon as we stepped into the era of digitalization. But, since the last few years, online marketing space has been overcrowded by people with low experience and claimed professionals. The presence of such freelancers, who have a very minimal idea about digital marketing and social media, creates confusion among the customers which reduces trust in the long run. So, the effectiveness of a good digital marketing company gradually loses its demanding position while people with basically no knowledge-creating havoc in the digital world.

And, to clear the mind of people and help them chose the best, Sorav Jain, a young Indian entrepreneur created some offbeat strategies for his digital marketing company, echoVME. He built the company out of pure passion, as he was ever really into studying biotechnology, though he pursued it. But, later he made his mind to create something of his own, like his father and uncles and went abroad to study marketing management.

Family Background and Early Life

Sorav Jain belonged to a family where creating your own ship cruise was appreciated more than working on a royal one. His father and uncles were established businessmen, so going the unconventional way and turning down tempting jobs were absolutely supported by his family members.socialsamosa.com

Sorav Jain
Image Source: digitalscholar.in

Sorav went to Loyola College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology in 2007. While being an undergraduate student, he already mastered the art of SEO, and hence, joined Contempo Technologies as an SEO and Content Executive in January 2006. By this time, Sorav already chalked out his plan to start off his venture and explore the entrepreneurial endeavours. He went to the University of Leeds to complete his master’s degree in International Marketing Management and joined CMO Axis as a Digital Marketing Specialist after graduating. Working for CMO Axis, a global digital marketing firm fascinated him even more about the world of advertising.

Setting up echoVME

Sorav Jain still continued working at CMO Axis, while he was building his own empire. Quite a business mind!

An entire plan was set up, and Sorav started assembling the building blocks of the company from December 2009. The company became operational from March of the next year, a couple of months after leaving CMO Axis. So, like any other young entrepreneur, Sorav dived into his business with the utmost passion and energy to bring a significant change in digital marketing.

The company started with a team of 10 members operating from Mumbai and Chennai.

At People’s Best Interest

echoVME wasn’t established with the regular idea of going around, convincing people, taking in clients and earning money. Sorav really wanted to put some effort to make young minds, especially college students, learn about digital marketing so that the quality of freelancers available in the marketplace improves and more students get exposed to the light of digital marketing.

Since its establishment, a lot of training sessions and workshops are conducted by echoVME. Apart from covering major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, echoVME has also spread its wings to Sri Lanka. It was a really smart strategy from the owner to conduct such workshops, as they received humungous positive feedbacks, even from CEOs, CMOs, and Executive Officers of many famous brands.

Within few months of founding the company, it made deals worth $10 million through corporate blogging strategy.

Obstacles and Competitors

For Sorav Jain the hardest challenge was time management and implementing every theoretical statement from the heavy books of business administration in real life. He said that when you set up a business, it is more than just the bookish definition of the business terminologies, as you have to deal with real people and real crisis. But, that’s how one learns, isn’t it?

Sorav gives very vague answers, every time it comes down to mentioning echoVME’s competitors. In an interview, he said that every company that is trying to reach a standard position in digital marketing, especially blogging-centric marketing, are the competitors.

Success of echoVME

Presently, echoVME has trained more than 2000 professionals and brands through their training programs and workshops. More than 100 workshops have been conducted echoVME in major cities of India till date. The training sector of echoVME, SOCIALME has gained unexpected popularity from the very first day.

What after echoVME?

Sorav founded Digital Scholar, an agency-based learning institute in July 2019. Apart from this, Sorav has also been a guest lecturer at many famous educational institutes, like IIT Madras and Leeds Metropolitan University.

zozotown

Yusaku Maezawa : Self-made Japanese Billionaire who Bought SpaceX’s First Ticket to Moon

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Though the 9 to 5 jobs are secure and have opportunities for growth, not many resemble the very idea. Despite that, there are only a few who take the step to make their lives different from that. It requires lots of courage to deal with what comes with the risk one takes to get an unusual but better life. One such person who never liked the idea of living the life of a salaryman is the Japanese entrepreneur and founder of Zozotown, Yusaku Maezawa.

Early Life

Yusaku Maezawa was born and brought up in Chiba City near Tokyo in Japan. While growing up, he got the opportunity to study at the Jitsugyo high school; a school affiliated from the prestigious Waseda University. Usually, it took him to reach the school around one and a half hour trough the train. While travelling on the train, Maezawa saw many salaried men around him, and he could never relate to them as well as the idea of 9 to 5 jobs. This was the time when he decided that he would never go for a salaried job but will do something more interesting and maybe something on his own.

While at school, Maezawa got introduced to a punk band named Switch Style, which later, he joined as a guitarist. Soon, he learnt to play other instruments as well and became the main drummer of the band. With the band, he got to travel to different cities and even countries. Once, when he went on a tour to New York with his band, he was quite amused by looking at how the new internet technology was developing there. Maezawa found out that the growth of the internet has also produced many opportunities for the people as well.

Starting Entrepreneurial Journey

Yusaku Maezawa
Image Source: observer.com

When back from the tour, Maezawa realised that even without knowing, he ultimately had caught into a salaried job. But he had no plans to continue. In 1998, to pursue his dream of starting his own business, he alongside his job in the band, started selling music CDs, under the company name Start Today. It was a mail-order business. Influenced by the rise of the internet, in 2000, he took his business online. Soon, Maezawa started stocking up clothes and fashion accessories on the platform. With the rise in demand and to focus entirely on his business, he quit his music career in 2001.

The company was rebranded as Zozotown, which in 2005, became solely a fashion eCommerce website, as Maezawa cut the Music CD selling business free the same year. Within two years, the company grew enough to go public in the Tokyo Mothers Market in 2007.

Interest in Art and Culture

Yusaku Maezawa, apart from being a former musician, has always been interested in art and culture and had dreamt of working in the same regard. So, in 2012, he founded Contemporary Art Foundation; a foundation that entirely focusses on art and promoting young artists through awards and grants. He also had the plans to establish an art museum in Chiba. So for his non-existing museum too, Maezawa was always looking for great art pieces that he now exhibits through his foundation every year.

In 2017, Zozotown integrated an online measurement system, named Zozosuit, and the same year, Zozotown became Zozo.

Maezawa has always had free-thinking and is known for his progressive management style. In fact, he started a 6-hour working day system in June 2012 to make his employees spend more time with their family. His company also offers extra housing allowance to the employees who live far from their homes to work in the company. He is also into charity works.

Accomplishments

In 2017 his estimated worth was 1.5 billion. According to 2018’s Forbe report, Maezawa is the 14th richest person in Japan with a net worth of $2.7 billion. His company has raised to over 2000 employees, and the online platform has got over 3 million registered users. Maezawa holds around 59% of shares in Zozo. Besides art and culture, he is also very interested in travelling, and 60% of his time, he is out of Japan, travelling.

Talking about travelling as his hobby, Maezawa is the first person who will be travelling to the moon with Elon Musk’s BFR rocket in 2023. He will also be inviting a few artists with him to travel. According to him, he has already made a down payment for the ticket for the moon mission to SpaceX.