Category: business

Dholakia Ventures invested undisclosed amount in Vernacular EdTech platform Vidyakul

New Delhi, 19 October 2021: Dholakia Ventures, an investment arm of Dholakia Family Office has invested an undisclosed amount in Vidyakul, a Vernacular after-school e-learning platform. The investment arm of Diamond King of Surat Savji Dholakia saw the potential and topped-up the bridge round raised by the platform in early September 2021. Angel investors including- Gaurav Juneja, Saurabh Agarwal and Puneet Mittal also participated in the ongoing round.

Vidyakul is aimed at providing after-school e-learning for the state board students in vernacular languages. The platform understands that education is best delivered when in one’s own language.

Vidyakul has witnessed high growth post its launch in the Gujarat region with focus of learning in Gujarati language. Within 7 months of launch in the region it has registered more than 6 lakh students from Gujarat itself. The brand has also partnered with more than 500 Gujarati medium school to distribute Digital and print study material.

The EdTech start-up is currently delivering education in 4 languages and has already enabled the same for 11 lakh students from 10 States. Vidyakul has attracted the marquee investors and has raised funds from SOSV, We Founder Circle, JITO Angel Network and Thinkuvate till now.

“We have been getting overwhelming responses from students in Gujarat. With the growing internet penetration, the scope of digital learning has widened, and we are exploring the possibilities of the same. The unique approach to deliver quality education in vernacular languages makes us a go-to platform for students from every region in India for – access to quality education. By getting such response and believe from our investors, we plan to go to the deeper Bharat by penetrating and reaching to each student in rural areas.” said Mr. Tarun Saini- Founder, Vidyakul.

“Quality Education in rural area is the need of the hour and we are happy that Vidyakul’s vision is aligned to it. We like their “BHARAT” focussed multi-lingual approach for the rural areas in the nation, which is an unserved market. We have seen their growth in Gujarat region and are confident that the team has the potential to lead this category. We’re excited to extend our support to this educational evolution through our investment in Vidyakul.” – Mr. Dravya Dholakia, Dholakia Ventures

About Vidyakul

Vidyakul is the first Vernacular after school e-learning platform for India-2 (Bharat) helping state board students in tier-2,3,4 and rural areas across 10 State-board. They help students learn academics via pre-recorded and live lectures from the most prominent trusted local teachers. Vidyakul is solving the problem for millions of students who are appearing for state board exams and facing challenges of quality online tutoring in their own language at an affordable price https://www.vidyakul.com/

India’s Biggest Parenting Platform, MomJunction to Rekindle the Art of Storytelling with Amazon Alexa

National, 19th October, 2021: MomJunction, India’s largest parenting website, announced that its collection of stories for children will now be available for parents to access across the country via Amazon Alexa. With this added feature, MomJunction hopes to rekindle the art of storytelling in the contemporary world and inspire children to dive into the world of magic, wonder, and imagination through stories in vernacular languages. These stories are exclusively available in Hindi and will be available in English soon.

Currently, stories available on the platform include folktales related to animals and popular historical characters like Birbal and Tenali Raman. To get started in any Alexa-enabled device, one can ask by saying- “Alexa, lion ki story sunaiye”, “Alexa, chuhe aur billi ki kahani sunaiye”, “Alexa, sleeping beauty ki story sunaiye”, “Alexa, Tenali Raman ki kahani sunaiye” etc.

Momjunction powered stories are available in Hindi on all Alexa-enabled devices and on the free Alexa app for smartphones.

The idea behind these stories is to promote and stimulate imagination, creativity, helping build vocabulary and instill a sense of magic in kids. The mental adaptations of the characters from the online storytelling sessions will help a child boost their creative skills. This will also provide an alternate option for parents to dispense an outlet to reduce screen time for children who are grappling with homeschooling and isolation. These stories will be for children across all age groups, from Kindergarten to 12th grade.

Ms. Natasha Garyali, VP, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at MomJunction, said, “Listening to stories on Alexa can be immersive, educational, instructional, as well as entertaining. Our selection of stories is thought-provoking and stimulates a child’s imagination. Besides imparting knowledge, they also rekindle the spirit of reading among modern-day children, helping them focus and enhance their concentration abilities. We aim to make stories by MomJunction available across diverse topics to encourage the art of listening among children.”

97% of Indian companies say CX innovation is required to protect businesses from competitors: Zendesk study

Mumbai– October 19, 2021 – According to new research released today by Zendesk, Inc (NYSE: ZEN) in partnership with Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), companies in Asia Pacific (APAC) that have continued to invest in their customer experience (CX) over the past year are 10.3 times more likely to have maximised their resiliency during the pandemic and five times more likely to have grown their customer base in the past six months. Organisations in India stood out against their APAC counterparts, displaying a keener interest in taking the CX route to business growth. Most Indian organisations (88%) accelerated their CX projects over the past 12 months compared to their counterparts in South Korea (67%), Australia (65%), Singapore (62%), and Japan (37%).

“In today’s digital-first economy, improving one’s customer experience is critical. In fact, our research with ESG confirms that the customer service function has evolved from a cost centre to become a revenue driver for businesses. Indian organisations who realised this have made great strides in maturing their customer experience capabilities, and are seeing the results. It’s important that all businesses – regardless of industry, size and life cycle – continue to invest and innovate in CX for long term success and growth,” said KT Prasad, MD & RVP, India & SAARC, Zendesk.

The 2021 State of CX Maturity Report surveyed more than 3,400 CX decision makers globally – of which 921 were from APAC including India, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea – to understand the characteristics and benefits of customer experience leadership. ESG built a CX maturity scale to identify common patterns and behaviors that separate high-maturity CX organisations – what ESG calls the “Champions” – from three levels of less-mature ones: “Starters”, “Emerging”, and “Risers”. The report outlines what businesses need to do to move up the maturity scale.

The research found that the number of Champions within midsized and enterprise companies in Asia Pacific has increased from 6% to 8% since 2020, with India (16%) and Australia (12%) having the highest proportion of Champions. The greatest gains in the region were tied between India, Australia and Singapore, which all saw a 6 percentage point increase from 2020.

“The findings indicate that the shift to digital and remote work during the pandemic served as a trigger for companies to accelerate their adoption of new technologies, policies and processes to benefit from a higher CX Maturity,” added Adam DeMattia, Director of Custom Research at ESG. “Across Asia Pacific, Champions recognise that service excellence can be a differentiator, and are actually accelerating investment in CX projects.”

CX-led innovation is a competitive differentiator, particularly in India

The vast majority of respondents in APAC (90%) agree that CX innovation is required to protect their business from competitors. And in India, 97% of midsize and enterprise-sized Indian organisations agree with this sentiment. In fact, three quarters of them recognise the strategic imperative of CX innovation, significantly more so than their counterparts in South Korea (49%), Japan (45%), Singapore (42%) and Australia (41%).

They also see the value of data to help focus this innovation – 100% of Indian organisations say they use support data to expand sales opportunities and business growth, the highest globally. And they’re reaping the results – an overwhelming majority (94%) report a significant impact on business growth, higher than any other country surveyed.

Among the four levels of CX maturity, Champions in APAC are taking the lead in driving continuous innovation in their CX and using customer service data.

• APAC Champions are 7.4 times more likely than Starters to be using service data extensively.
• When used, that data is delivering results – APAC Champions are 17.3 times more likely to identify the impact on sales success as “game changing”, oustripping counterparts in North America (12.7 times) and Europe (9.4 times).
• APAC Champions are also 2.8 times more likely than Starters to have accelerated major CX projects over the past year.

CX maturity and innovation linked to business resilience and revenue growth

There also continues to be a clear correlation between improved CX maturity and the benefits of increased customer satisfaction (CSAT), faster response times, and effective customer service. Notably, the study also calls out the connection between CX maturity and greater business growth and revenue.

• This connection is most pronounced in Asia Pacific, with midsized and enterprise Champions from the region 4.7 times more likely than Starters to have grown their customer base over the past six months, and 10 times more likely to have increased per-customer spend significantly over the same time period.
• Champions are also changing how the customer service function is viewed across their organisation. With digital interaction being the main connection point with many customers, Champions in Asia Pacific are three times more likely than Starters to operate profitable service teams, where direct revenue exceeds the cost of customer service.
• APAC Champions are also better positioned to adapt and thrive in the face of change, taking roughly half the time to grow their team by 50% and onboard new hires (22 days versus 43 days for Starters) and add a new channel (21 days versus 45 days for Starters).

Investment in CX leads to better agent retention and productivity

Agent turnover, technology, flexibility and wellbeing all emerged as areas of investment and focus for teams over the course of the past 18 months. This led APAC Champions, in particular, to move quickly to implement tools to support overwhelmed service teams.

• Investments and process changes made by APAC Champions in the early stages of the pandemic include increased utilisation of public cloud services (66%); more flexible remote work policies (64%); expanded mental health/wellbeing initiatives (64%); more flexible working hours (60%); and the adoption of new collaboration tools (60%).
• Larger APAC businesses have also increased customer visibility in the past year, with 43% saying they have achieved a “single source of truth” when it comes to customer profiles compared to 25% a year ago. A closer look at APAC Champions found that they are 6 times and 9.4 times more likely to deliver excellent customer visibility and cross-channel visibility, respectively, to agents than Starters. In fact, over three quarters of larger Indian organisations (77%) achieved greater cross-channel visibility, a significantly higher percentage than their counterparts in Australia (36%), Singapore (29%), South Korea (23%), and Japan (17%) .
• As a result, APAC Champions are 4.3 times more likely to have excellent agent retention and 72% higher agent productivity than Starters. That said, staffing turnover continues to be a challenge for more than one in three APAC organisations, up from 23% in 2020. This figure rises to 76% among midsize and enterprise-scale businesses in India.
• Between accelerating CX investments and adapting service policy changes earlier in the pandemic, Champions in APAC are 10.3 times more likely to believe they made the right investment and policy decisions during the pandemic to maximise their resiliency. Indian organisations stand out against their APAC counterparts as close to two thirds (64%) feel they made the right CX investments to increase their business resiliency in the future versus 11% in Japan, 21% in Singapore, and 28% in Australia and South Korea.
• APAC Champions also expect a 25% increase in the number of remote agents, even after the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer an issue.

Conversational experience for stronger customer relationships

Globally, Champions are three times more likely to prioritise delivering conversational customer experiences that can build deeper customer relationships. And in APAC, Champions unanimously agree that pivoting to a more conversational experience with customers is a key goal for their teams – signalling the shift away from transactional service focused purely on resolving tickets.

• Organisations in APAC have increased the number of service channels year-over-year from an average of 7 to an average of 7.8.
• Many anticipate that preferences and changes will continue to shift as well: 73% of APAC organisations predict that chat and social channels will be most used by customers in the future, up from 54% who say this is the case today.
• Meanwhile, Indian organisations lead globally in their enthusiasm for a conversational future, with 79% of them agreeing that chat and social channels are most used by customers today and 100% predicting this will remain the case in the future.

Zendesk’s customers in India include ITC Foods, Ola, 1MG, DevFactory, Dream11, Slice, Magicbricks.com, etc.

Additional Resources

• For more information, download the report, The State of CX Maturity, here (https://www.zendesk.com/cx-champion/)
• Read the blog content series on how businesses can achieve CX maturity here (http://www.zendesk.com/blog/cx-maturity-best-practices/)
• Check out the virtual event, “CX Discoveries: Decoding Customer Service” here ( https://www.zendesk.com/lp/apac-cx-discoveries)

Methodology

In the second quarter of 2021, ESG conducted a double-blind survey of 3,450 line-of-business decision makers – of which 921 where from Australia (N=203), India (N=200), Japan (N=208), Singapore (N=197) and South Korea (N=113) – who were responsible for ensuring and enhancing the customer service at their organisation. Organisations spanned all market segments, from small businesses to large enterprises, and multiple industry verticals like retail, consumer and corporate services, financial services, healthcare, education, and technology companies, among others.

Clevergene scales up genomics capacity to expand its genetic diagnostics and discovery genomics offerings

India October 19th 2021 : Clevergene Biocorp, a Bangalore based genomics company with unrivalled discovery genomics and genetic diagnostics capabilities, has increased its testing capacity to over 1 lakh annual tests, with the installation of the latest Illumina NovaSeq 6000 DNA sequencing platform, the most advanced DNA sequencer in the world. This puts Clevergene amid an elite club of organisations around the world that can analyse tens of thousands of human genomes.

The added capacity will open new horizons for highly powered experiments at the depth required to discover rare genetic events. With this addition, Clevergene will be able to explore new horizons to widen its discovery genomics offerings by introducing applications such as single cell gene expression, genome deep sequencing etc, that requires large volumes of DNA sequence data. Clevergene is also aiming at leading genetic diagnostics with a focus to provide diagnosis for rare and difficult to diagnose genetic ailments.

Speaking on this latest addition Tony Jose, Co-Founder & CEO of Clevergene said, “Our primary intention behind this investment is to scale up our genetic diagnostics portfolio and make available comprehensive genetic diagnosis to the millions of patients suffering with genetic ailments. We are also expanding our discovery genomics offerings to Europe and North America.”

The addition of this critical piece of infrastructure is great news for top life science research institutions, speciality hospitals and diagnostics companies who have been looking for a partner in Genomics with capabilities in high-throughput sequencing and deep tech genome analysis.

This investment has augmented Clevergene’s already strong testing abilities and puts them in a strong position to partner global discovery genomics projects.

About Clevergene

Clevergene is a Deep Tech company offering Genomics services for contract research and genetic diagnostics with a successful track record of working with reputed research groups, institutions, companies and hospitals in India and around the globe.Through its state-of-the-art laboratory in Bengaluru, housing Next-Gen DNA Sequencers and High-Performance Computing infrastructure, Clevergene analyse the genetic code of organisms like humans, plants, microbes and other animals, to hunt for patterns that offer insights to improve the quality of life on Earth.

Practically & E-Cell, Indian Institute Of Technology Bombay (IITB) To Host National Entrepreneurship Olympiad At Eureka! Junior 2021

Mumbai, October 19th, 2021: Practically, India’s first experiential learning app designed to make learning immersive for students of classes 6-12, has tied up with the student-run Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) as the title sponsor of the fifth edition of Eureka! Junior.

Eureka! Junior is a one-of-its-kind business plan competition organized to promote entrepreneurship amongst school students of classes 6 -12 across India. E-Cell IIT Bombay is Asia’s largest student-run non-profit organization focused on promoting and supporting entrepreneurship with a reach of over 6000+ startups, 1,60,000+ students, 90,000+ professionals in over 900 cities in India and abroad.

Launched on August 22, 2021, the fifth edition of Eureka! Junior will host National Entrepreneurship Olympiad on Practically’s test platform on 31st October 2021. It is expected to attract thousands of student registrations from across the country.

Participants will have to register on the Eureka! Junior microsite and download the Practically app. They can use the same credentials to register themselves on the app to participate in the Olympiad. Participants can keep attempting the Practice test on the app in preparation for the final test. The final Olympiad test will be divided into three tracks – Classes 6 to 8, Classes 9, 10 and Classes 11, 12.

The top 2 winners across the three tracks will be rewarded with Practically scholarships worth upto INR 1.5L. They will also get an overall cash prize of INR 15,000 from E-Cell, IIT Bombay. Additionally, 24 top scorers across tracks will win 50% discount vouchers on Practically subscriptions. All participants will also get certificates from E-Cell, IIT Bombay. The last date to register for the Olympiad is 25th October 2021.

While announcing the partnership, Charu Noheria, Co-Founder & COO of Practically, said, “We are pleased to associate with E-cell, IIT Bombay to create a generation of successful entrepreneurs from across the country, and believe that Practically’s high-quality content and IIT Bombay’s prestigious legacy will help students to achieve that. We encourage students of classes 6-12 to come forward and make the best of this platform to learn and win scholarships.”

Speaking about the association, Mr. Prateek Chauhan, Events & PR Head of E-Cell IIT Bombay, said, “By inculcating the basics of entrepreneurship at this stage for students, we feel that Eureka! Junior will give the required stimulus to innovation in the future. We are happy to partner with Practically as in the age of remote learning, they have uniquely positioned themselves by bringing in experiential learning tools to Eureka! Junior.”

Eureka! Junior offers a perfect platform to young inquisitive minds to bridge the gap between ideas and the realization creatively. The platform prides itself in providing a 360-degree holistic experience to participants by teaching the basics of entrepreneurship, polishing creative ideas, drafting business plans, and presenting them to a panel of judges. It also hones analytical and behavioral skills by supporting them with the knowledge and guidance to present themselves with great panache. To encourage out-of-the-box thinking, Eureka! Junior will be hosting a series of workshops in 1000 schools engaging 10,000+ students with various initiatives for fostering creativity.

Grapes Digital bags the Digital AOR and Communication Mandate for Ed-tech platform Suraasa

New Delhi: The leading digital-first marketing agency, Grapes Digital has won the digital AOR and Communication (PR) mandate for ed-tech start-up Suraasa. The account won following a competitive pitch process, and it will service the account from its New Delhi office.

As part of the win, the agency will be responsible for media buying and planning to achieve all the marketing objectives of the brand. Apart from that, it will also focus on providing creative solutions, digital branding and strategy, content planning for social media marketing along public relations to enhance the brand’s proposition in the sector.

Commenting on the partnership, Rishabh Khanna, Founder and Cognitive Scientist, Suraasa, said, “Our vision of helping teachers grow in their career is a unique idea for everyone out there and it takes very thought-through marketing and creative strategies to reach our niche as well as make them take the desired action. We look forward to establishing this new partnership with the agency and are confident that the team at Grapes will play a key role in helping us achieve our vision.”

Commenting on the win, Himanshu Arya, Founder and CEO, Grapes Digital, said, “In the last few years, the demand for ed-tech has increased drastically, and the sector has witnessed tremendous growth and evolution. Suraasa is a pioneer in teacher-growth-focused learning. It is quite encouraging for us to partner with a brand like Suraasa that aims to revolutionise the teaching landscape in India and beyond. We look forward to partnering with the brand in this journey.”

About the brand: Suraasa offers development programmes to help teachers expedite their professional growth and create a high-impact learning environment in classrooms. Being an impact-focused organisation, Suraasa also partners with premium schools to let them hire Suraasa-qualified teachers at zero cost. The team behind Suraasa has been in teacher training for 10 years and has trained 100,000+ teachers from 1,500 schools across 21 states in India before launching Suraasa.

Huawei hosts “Green ICT for Green Development” Summit in Partnership with Informa Tech

[Dubai, October 19, 2021] At the Better World Summit (BWS) hosted by Huawei in partnership with Informa Tech, Bob Cai, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei’s Carrier Business Group, delivered the opening speech titled “Green ICT for Green Development”.

“As a leading global provider of ICT infrastructure and smart devices, Huawei incorporates green development into everything we do. We see this as part of our social responsibilities. In addition, Huawei is ready to become the best partner for operators in their efforts toward carbon neutrality,” said Cai. “With our innovative products and solutions, we will help operators cut carbon emissions and make their networks more energy efficient. We also want to work with operators and use ICT to better enable other industries to cut carbon emissions and become carbon neutral faster.”

In June 2021, Huawei and Informa Tech jointly proposed the Network Carbon Intensity (NCI) initiative, in which carbon emissions per bit of data is defined as a new metric for green networks. Huawei emphasized that people’s pursuit of better lives must be balanced with the need for lower carbon emissions, so the company proposed this initiative to better manage and measure carbon reduction roadmaps.

During this summit, Huawei stressed the need to establish a platform for industry collaboration on green development and said that BWS is a good example. This platform will regularly bring together industry partners and operators to share innovative technologies and latest practices in how to cut carbon emissions and contribute to a greener ICT industry. According to Cai, at MWC Barcelona 2022, Huawei will continue to hold a green development forum with its partners to share industry practices and latest solutions, and all industry partners and operators are welcome to attend the forum.

“We believe the BWS in Dubai is a good beginning. Looking ahead, we will continue to work with our industry partners and operators to empower green development of all industries using our innovative technologies,” said Cai at the end of his speech. “As we envision in the theme of our flagship exhibition hall in Dubai, ‘Lighting up the Future’, we believe that together, we will light up a greener future.”

Other attendees who spoke at the event included Richard Mahony, Vice President of Service Provider Markets of Informa Tech; Dr. Dena Assaf, UN Resident Coordinator of the United Arab Emirates; Tommy Stadlen, Co-Founder of Giant Ventures; Dr. Ahmed Bin Ali, Corporate Communications SVP of Etisalat; Hervé Suquet, Group Energy SVP of Orange; Dirk Karl, Chief Procurement Officer of MTN; Tanveer Mohammad, SVP of Global Operation of Telenor; and Aaron Jiang, Vice President of Huawei Wireless Product Line.

Top 5 Financial Technology Companies Supporting Financial Health of MSMEs

MSMEs sector is blazoned to be the second-largest employment creator after agriculture, rendering employment to an estimated 11 crore. After all, it is the backbone of every economy and shares 30 percent of the GDP, and accounts for 48 percent of the exports.

Unfortunately, this space has always faced a plethora of issues associated with extensive liquidity, supply crunch, and lack of credit etc. These factors have created an unprecedented challenge for businesses of sizes, early age startups and MSMEs have been hit the hardest. This presents a significant opportunity for solution providers to bring forth intelligent insight-driven platforms that can enable easy access to cheap credit and helps in weathering out the storm faced by MSMEs. So, here is the rundown of the top 5 Financial Technology Companies offering Financial Health of MSMEs with their services –

Crediwatch– Crediwatch (CW) is a digital trust platform that has demonstrated multifarious use cases for the likes of large public sector banks to boutique corporate firms to small-scale industrial units. CW is an industry-defining AI/ML-powered company that operates in the space of business analytics, credit risk intelligence, and insights on businesses. CW is driven by its mission to solve for: 1. Financial inclusion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) 2. Removing barriers to trade and credit 3. Building trust and transparency in business.

SmartCoin Financials– Smartcoin Financials is India’s first fully-automated app-based consumer lending company, offering small ticket personal loans to the underserved in India. It is stimulating MSMEs and individuals development and financial inclusion in India through ML and AI in financial services. Started by IIT/IIM alumnus Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh, and Jayant Upadhyay in early 2016, Smartcoin is aiming to address the credit requirements of innumerous self-employed micro-entrepreneurs, micro-merchants and middle/lower-income salaried individuals by leveraging advanced data science and Machine Language algorithms.

RXIL: In recent years, digital lending has been able to service the problem areas of the MSME ecosystem fairly efficiently. However, a completely recourse free mechanism called TReDS launched by the Govt. of India has enabled over 24,000 MSMEs unlock access to cash flow from their own working cycles. Receivables Exchange of India, is the country’s first TReDS Platform that provides registered MSMEs with recourse free, trusted receivables payments within 48 hours.

Algo360: Algo360 is an emerging alternative credit score solution that provides lenders 800+ alternate data points to gauge the creditworthiness of MSMEs who usually any credit score don’t have to present to banks. Less than 20% of MSMEs have access to formal credit amid an estimated MSME debt demand of INR 70 trillion or INR 70 lakh crore.

Cashinvoice: Cashinvoice provides technology that automates end-to-end processes from PO creation, invoice generation, payment clearance, reconciliation to settlements. This automation helps create a healthy working cycle between corporates and SMEs / vendors thereby allowing SMEs to focus on core commercial activities to scale their businesses by prioritizing efforts in the right direction.