The Startup Videos » Startups and Entrepreneurship

Picmaker

sangeerani — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:46:35 +0000

Picmaker is a DIY YouTube thumbnail maker that helps people create stunning Youtube thumbnails and YouTube channel art in a jiffy.

The simple and easy to use interface makes sure that users don’t need any designing experience to create an awesome thumbnail in Picmaker. With just a few clicks, anyone can create thumbnails that can significantly boost the CTR(Click Through Rate) of their YouTube videos.

What’s inside Picmaker:

Background removal tool
Sticker effect tool
Photo filters
100,000+ graphic elements
700+ pre-built templates
Exclusive access to 1000+ stock photos
Image Resizing option
Image upload option
Unlimited storage for photos and assets

Baked with love from the creators of Animaker Inc., Picmaker is the Perfect tool to make Uber-Cool YouTube Thumbnails!

Shubhloans – Democratizing credit and making it available to all!

sharmila — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 12:04:15 +0000

In terms of loan growth rate, India is positioned at fifth among the G20 nations. In 2014, more than 400 million people borrowed money in India. However, only one seven loan applications were approved for a formal loan in India. While everyone was busy applauding the exponential loan growth rate in India, Datasigns Technologies decided to cast their focus on the six-among-seven-people who have their loan applications rejected. And to help such people, the founders of Datasigns Technologies (Monish Anand, Rahul Sekar, Anand Barua and Tushar Patel) started India’s leading mobile lending platform – Shubh Loans.

A simple research into India’s lending system brings to light the prevalence of archaic and traditional assessment methods to judge creditworthiness of an individual. The current credit system, with its severe drawbacks, is keeping millions of loan seekers from getting their applications approved. What is worse: A large number of Indians are applying for loans to meet their emergency financial needs (whether it is student loans, home loans or medical loans). Shubh Loans, through its Android application, brings a new approach to credit score reports by helping the applicants understand their credit standing holistically and take better financial decisions!

Based out of Bangalore, Shubh Loans is a vernacular app that is helping a growing number of salaried employees (starting from 12K) in getting a loan of up to 3 Lacs with a long-term (up to 3 years) EMI tenure. The smart credit model deviates from the traditional model (where the individual’s repayment capacity is the sole criteria) and replaces it with the Shubh Loans credit model (which analyzes repayment capacity of and intention-to-pay by the individual). The traditional credit scoring method, which is wrapped with a thick veil of incomprehensibility, keeps 80% of India’s populace from getting loans on time. Shubh Loans aims to cut this clutter and educate the loan seekers about their credit score, that too in the vernacular language, thereby helping them approach the loan seeking process with confidence!

Shubh Loans recently raised 1.5 million Pre-Series – A funding from SRI Capital, Beenext and Pravega. Prior to this, the company raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Sanjai Vohra (former MD of JP Morgan), V. Bunty Bohra (Managing Director and India CEO of Goldman Sachs) and Peeyush Misra (Ex-Partner and MD at Goldman Sachs).

The popularity of Shubh Loans as the best upcoming mobile lending platform is showcased in its 50% month on month growth rate. Many business houses are already using Shubh Loans to get customized credit reports and loan processing support for their employees. Shubh Loans has tie-ups with 9 lending institutions in easing the personal loan process for end users. While the Shubh Loans Credit Report is helping the loan seekers understand their borrowing capacity and take corrective measures, the Personal Loan service is helping both unserved and underserved working professionals in getting their loan amounts without leaving the comfort of their home.

It is smart technology solutions like Shubh Loans which can make all the difference in a nation which is trying to bring its entire populace under the formal lending system. Shubh Loans wants to help the nation realize this goal and has set its sight at bringing more than 10 Lac people into the formal banking fold by 2020!

Algopix – Product Research Made Easy

sharmila — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 09:08:09 +0000

For past decade, the co-founders of Algopix have been committed to helping companies succeed in eCommerce. A few years back, Ori Greenberg and Dani Avitz founded an agency focused on providing the required expertise and management to expand companies’ e-commerce efforts internationally. Along the way, they had the opportunity to work with dozens of companies performing various activities including conducting general market research, creating international growth strategies, advising about local business entities and regulation, setting up fulfillment centers and creating customer support departments; we did it all. And humbly, they did it all pretty well. They had a great customer base, a great team and genuinely loved what we were doing.

But Ori and Dani started to see a bigger problem, a more systemic problem that went beyond the scope of the professional services their e-commerce agency offered. The majority of the merchants they were working with were relying on ‘gut feel’ to make critical business decisions. In the era of big data, of making the most calculated decisions possible, e-commerce merchants were falling behind. So they started spending more and more time with our merchants to understand the nuances and like any good investigation, they started at the beginning.

The first task with a new customer was always the same – to take a very close look at their inventory, specifically the list of slow movers; the millions of dollars stuck in warehouses. Reviewing the list of items consistently produced the same results – the items either had a low demand level or were priced higher than the market price as a result of inaccurate purchasing decisions. So, how did the customer choose inventory that was in low demand and/or inaccurately priced? Gut. Feel. In some cases, the market price was examined but gaining the demand level was always a challenge and always a guess.

Ori and Dani knew a few niche solutions existed in the market to help merchants explore the demand level on specific marketplaces (eBay, Amazon, etc.) but didn’t provide an Omni channel perspective which meant performing manual analysis to understand every item in every market. There had to be a better way.

To ensure they were on the right path, Ori and Dani brought on three additional full-time employees to test their hypothesis that more informed purchasing decisions from the beginning would help merchants’ bottom line. The results were more than apparent – sellers generated greater margins, increased sales volume, reduced risks of overstock and decreased the turnaround time of their funds.

The final step was interviewing merchants to ensure they were building a product that was easy to use, easy to look at and easy to see the value in. They wanted it to be a solution that was built specifically with sellers in mind. They spent the next two years designing and developing a solution they genuinely believe will help e-commerce merchants do business better. That has been and always will be their primary goal.

The results of their efforts were Algopix, a comprehensive product research platform that provides the eCommerce community with the data needed to make the most informed business decisions possible. By providing actionable product insights automatically, Algopix helps eBay and Amazon sellers save time, increase sales and reduce risks.

Algopix offers immediate benefits to users including:
Saving Time – reduces time spent on a tedious manual process and enables users to make decisions quickly.
Reducing Costs – with the right data about what to source and sell, overstock of products that are not in demand is reduced.
Lowering Risk – by making more informed decisions, the risk of losses on making the wrong choice is reduced.
Increasing Market Awareness – Comparison of different offers and sales campaigns over the long term for more targeted business strategies.
Enabling Smart Business Decisions – through intelligent analytics, Algopix equips users with the data needed to know precisely what actions to take

Algopix is currently free to use and supports over 12 eBay and Amazon markets globally.

Tag8 – Make THINGS Smarter

bhuvana — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 06:45:44 +0000

Tag8 is India’s first comprehensive lost and found recovery services company.

Practically everyone loses something or the other at some point of time. The loss is even greater when there are memories, emotions and hard work attached to the lost valuable. The idea of tag8 emanated to address the increasing cost and time-consuming problem of valuable portable items being lost. Of the Rs 100 cr valuable things found at various Indian airports, only Rs 28 cr worth valuables find its way back to the owners. This number would be more staggering at the railways given the sheer number of people movement. The Churchgate Station in Mumbai alone is estimated to receive 50 valuables every day in its lost & found department but very few find its way back to the owner due to lack of identification and claims.

Tag8 helps to increase the probability of finding lost belongings and quickly & conveniently returning it to its rightful owner. tag8 combines the strength of unique tags, Reward Program, logistics, internet, mobile applications, digital maps and 24X7 customer support.

The endeavour to ‘Make Things Smarter’ drives the philosophy at tag8.

How It Works ?

The owner needs to simply buy and affix the tags on the valuable and register them @www.tag8.in. The specific categories catered to bags, passports, keys, gadgets and pets. In case the valuable is ever lost and is found by someone, tag8 arranges the pick up from the doorstep of the finder and returns it to the owner. The tag8 Reward Program offers certification, gift hamper and its own products as a reward to the finder. In addition, the owner can also reward the finder through the tag8 platform.

For more information, please Watch “How it works” video on www.tag8.in.

Tag8 believes that having mitigated the current key finder challenges through the ease of identification of the owner, convenience of return and the reward program, the probability of return will be significantly increased.

The experience so far

The tag8 return percentage at present is 40% across 12 categories of valuables. For passports, keys, ID cards, books the return rate is 80%+. Interestingly, 90% of the valuables were reported found within 4 hours of loss. The most fascinating data was the fact that 75% of people who returned are from middle or lower middle class of the society.

Social Impact

The general perception in India is that things once lost do not get returned. However, in reality, it’s more the lack of awareness and infrastructure that is hindering the return. The lost & found centres in India are overflowing with collected valuables that aren’t being claimed. Reader’s Digest in a recent study on integrity rated Mumbai as the second most honest city in the world, given the number of wallets that were returned.
Refer http://www.rd.com/culture/most-honest-cities-lost-wallet-test.

We believe that our venture will play a pivotal role in changing the perception of India and also contribute significantly in strengthening the social fabric of the nation by promoting trust in the society and building community morale. This also dovetails well with the Honourable Prime Minister’s smart cities initiative.

About the Promoters

Tag8 was found by Sanjay Chakrabarti, ex-Senior Partner (41 years) and Alok Sheth, ex-Director (37 years) of Ernst & Young in 2014.

The founders have extensive experience in Management consulting and Business development. Founders have deep experience in advising companies in the area of business strategy, business transformation, supply chain transformation, operations improvement, and program management.They have advised business leaders from Industrial, Consumer, Renewable and Airline industries.They have experience of 35+ years between them.

Animaker :First look of “The Video Infographics”.

Sruthi — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 07:13:21 +0000

Animaker, which turned up the trumps with the fame of “ an online tool for creating studio-quality videos” has a great news for everyone. It has launched “the video infographics”.

Video infographics: an introduction.

Data and statistics are an inevitable asset for everyone. (Marketers, Journalists, Teachers etc). It is a valuable insight which poses to be a foundation of every decision you take. There is a voluminous amount of data present but no proper method to relay this valuable information to the audience.

Video infographics is the new tool that surpasses the traditional powerpoint presentations and elaborate infographics. It is a combination of “video” and “infographics”, the two powerful tools of conveying information. It breathes life into the boring presentations and make information appealing, consumable and retainable.

Animaker’s Video Infographics: First look

Animaker has come all over again with new features, an extended library, updated assets, enhanced User Interface and many more exciting effects.

The latest theme has

3000+ maps

1000+ charts

30+ bgm

Unique font styles

A whole new range of Pre animated assets

Enhanced User Interface

900+ properties

Improved speed

Fully customizable

Maps:

This category comes handy for journalists. Tiled animation, icon animation, destination animation etc are the types of maps offered in this section. You can select two locations and animate it parallelly too.

Charts:

Line charts, pie charts, Bar graphs. Dotted graphs, Area map, Numbers, Currency, tables…. There is a huge set of charts available in the library section. The data can be manipulated and customized by a single click.

Pre animated assets:

Now your animation becomes easier. Animaker has included a vast number of pre-animated lines, shapes, icons that adds professionalism in your work, yet take it less effort.

Other Features:

Your video can seem more alive with a new set of inspirational and merry bgms. All genres of music files are available in the updated set.

That is not all. This is just a dime’s worth.

Make most of the latest theme of Animaker’s Video Infographics. The good news is that you can work collaboratively on all the themes of Animaker to make best use of all the available options. To get started, Click here.

SeekSpark: Register for FreeYourMind

bhuvana — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 13:40:44 +0000

Taking care of your mind will be simple and defined; Seek online counselling with SEEKSPARK.

With this portal, people can get help from experts online on solving issues out of stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and work-life imbalance. In simple words, the portal connects those seeking help with those providing it and facilitates the conversation either through phone or video conferencing and now with chat interaction too.

“It was a personal incident with a very close family friend that made me aware of issues in mental health, and more importantly, how seeking help for it is curtailed by a lack of knowledge, inconveniences surrounding the access to a good care provider and stigma around it, says Kunal Pancholi, Founder & CEO. It made me think of how a digital platform could address these issues effectively. That led to researching with some prominent psychologists and psychiatrists. In January 2015, I left my job to build this platform with over 200 professional care providers.”

Watch the above video to know how simple it is to seek professional help via “SEEKSPARK.”

World Mental Health Day:

On 10th of Oct, 2015 this portal will be open for people to have access to care providers over a personalised chat-based interaction and that’s going to be FREE! People with any specific query, concern, issue or plain curiosity regarding things that affect their mind are welcome to enter into a private, confidential and anonymous chat with the care providers.

Facebook Style: Saying Thanks to Advertisers

bhuvana — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 06:48:42 +0000

Facebook counts 2 million active advertisers, and they have just two words to say to each one of their advertisers: “Thank you” (Click to see the official post by Facebook with ‘Thanks saying video’)

Here, its also important to emphasize – Active advertisers refers to the customers those who regularly buy ads through the company. Majority of them are small and medium-sized business owners.

Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged advertisers in a Facebook Business Post as follows:

This is a moment to celebrate all of the incredible entrepreneurs like you who are creating value for their communities.

Courtney, a mom in North Carolina who started The Produce Box, a company delivering fresh food that now provides a market for more than 40 farmers across the state.
Shubhra and Vivek, married Indian entrepreneurs who sold their house to raise the money to start Chumbak, an accessories company that now employs more than 150 people.
Thiago, a Brazilian man in the Amazon who turned his passion for making chocolate into Brigadore Brigadeiros Gourmet, a chain of stores and a national brand.
KaYoung, a young woman in South Korea who used her law school tuition money to launch HotelNow, a service for finding last-minute hotel rooms, which is now expanding across Asia.

And there are more than 2 million other inspiring stories of people working to grow their businesses. You’re creating jobs, sharing new ideas and inspiring all of us to dream big.

To support the customers better, Facebook also launched a mobile app for advertisers to use to manage their campaigns. The app, called Facebook Ads Manager, is initially available on iOS, and allows its users to create and edit ads, track spending, view ad results, receive ad-related notifications, and more.

Everything in one place: Promote business, product, news, event or yourself around the world!

bhuvana — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 09:30:33 +0000

A person who always striving to innovate – Javier Ideami is the founder and director of Ideami studios. Ideami is a multidisciplinary creative director, engineer, artist and entrepreneur, who is into business, creativity, and technology for many years as well as leading innovative workshops, conferences and events. His passion towards visual creativity and own need become the major reason for Posterini’s birth.

Posterini provides solutions to all visual asset challenges like online event advertisement, inviting people for celebrations, Crafting a magazine covers, creating amazing movie posters for films, educational or school project works within some minutes.

It’s an all in one tool for visual marketing needs, and has templates, typography, images, shapes, visual effects, montage capabilities and full flexibility & control, mainly easy to use. Which is also helpful in accelerate public marketing assets and sharing creations around the world.

Ideami also spoken at prestigious institutions including Stanford University in California, the United Nations FAO headquarters, the faculty of architecture at the university of Rome, Canary Wharf financial centre in London and at other numerous symposiums and events around the world.

His expertise brings together fields as diverse as Entrepreneurship, Software Engineering, Teaching, Photography, Film-making, Music, Publishing, Designing, Acting, Public speaking, Marketing, Drawing and Painting.

Apart from Posterini and Ideami studios, he also involved in other creative ventures such as:

Springkite Creativity Workshop: springkite.com
Incredivid Video Production: incredivid.com
Volandino Comical Series: volandino.com

Javier’s creations have been exhibited in many galleries and festivals around the planet. And he has received numerous awards across many of the above mentioned field. Ideami presents a quick story of Posterini’s birth and more information about the tool in the above video. Watch and get laugh with his funny intro of a comical series website called Volandino.

OrCam: Good bye to Magnifying Glasses

bhuvana — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 09:01:57 +0000

Vision is the most important aspect in our daily life. In a single day, there are many tasks to perform where vision plays the major role. People with partial visual loss find it difficult to organize and manage their everyday activity. This suffering has come to an end with Orcam.

Orcam is an intuitive portable device, which provides artificial vision to assist the visually impaired. It has an smart camera mounted on the eye glass which recognizes the text, objects and products that is been communicated to the user’s ears through a discrete bone conduction earpiece. The device responds to a intuitive gesture, a point of the finger or press of the button initiates the device to detect the product.

There are 280 million people around the world who are the victims of partial visual loss, Orcam aims to give freedom and the independent life these visually impaired people wish to live. Orcam is invented by Orcam technologies which is a start up located in Israel. Israel is flourishing with startups that come up with technically sound concepts and innovations. They pose a great challenge for other upcoming entrepreneurs in different parts of the world and global brands to be even more innovative and competitive. It’s rightly called the start-up nation.

This product signifies that, an amazing idea when molded with technology can make impossible things possible.

Startup Branding: 10 ways for Mobile Startups to stay ahead of Competition

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 12:29:04 +0000

Competition is aggressive in a business and is brutal for a startup. It is better for a startup to accept the fact that, competition is an indispensable component and there is no other choice than fighting out. There are predators that want to eat up and swallow small startups like you in hopes of eliminating the competition. Do you want to fall a prey to such ruthless predators or gain the courage to withstand and fight against them.
Startups tend to think, branding is a material that is intended for top businessmen and premium products. But, branding is essential for any startup and matters much more for a mobile startup.
In the present day, Mobile communication is the primary means of communication that exploits technology. Mobile communication is trending to keep up with user demand. Technology is driving the industry to develop faster and more efficient. Now, we see umpteen number of mobile startups? How will you clear the clutter and win the race?
Regardless, of your potentialities, the attractive USP, the magical X factor, you cannot escape that stiff competition at some point. How to beat the competition? The answer is you got to stay ahead of it. This article brings together 10 ways of how a mobile startup can uncover current and future development and how to factor that to stay ahead of the race.
Here’s how.

1. Telling a great startup story

Many of us use it but only a few have mastered it. Storytelling. Yes, a story is worth a good start. In an era where consumers are bombarded with irrelevant information, success in business will be had only by those who have mastered the art of narrating a captivating story. “Tell it, Don’t sell it” should be your mantra. Your customers are mobbed by millions of advertisements, campaigns, hoardings and so on. Precisely, they live amidst noise and cannot hear you. But you can edge out your competition with a powerful and convincing story; the most powerful way to put ideas in the world, today.
Even the tech-titan Apple had to learn the importance of a good story. In 80’s, Apple attempted to persuade IT executives and top companies to adopt Mac through ads but they failed. Overtime, they turned the stone only with a gentle persistent storytelling.

2. Define your brand

Branding is a survival tool. It helps you to sustain in the competition before a fierce combat. Branding involves 2 components- Naming your business and discerning the logo of your product.

Naming your startup right

Naming your startup is an overwhelming and an exhaustive experience. Name is like an address for a startup. Names might seem simple. But, in this cluttered information highway, startup names should be unique to mark them well from the competition. It has become a trend to reach out to consultants and name developers who suggest the right name that fits your product and brand. A brainstorming of the company’s mission and vision is followed by a linguistic and context analysis. Language patterns are analyzed in the consultation and the study resolves the cultural nuances of a name.

Know what makes a good name.
Brainstorm a list of names.
Narrow it down to a few decent names.
Pick the one that is perfect.

Names generate emotional responses. In fact, popular brands such as Apple and Google, made the cut recently in an Adweek survey that measured emotional responses from consumers to major brands. Define your brand with the right name and site a triumphing address. Create a unique brand personality.

Spend time for your logo

Logo is the face of your brand. It is related to every aspect of your business. An identity to your company and forms a first impression on the consumer’s mind.
The reason behind a logo design is knowing your startup story. Know your company’s objectives and how you are going to brand yourself, while knowing what your consumers will respond to. Company principles and values come alive in logos, and it shouldn’t just be carried by market data. Know that your logo can emerge along with your brand without losing the core of your business.

3. Social Media Branding Plan

Social media is both bane and boon for marketers. It is one of the most standardized marketing strategy. There are 3 steps to follow,

Ascertain your startup goal.
Decide your target customer.
Build real world relationship with them in the media.

4. Founders’ business behavior

A startup founder should be a good leader. He should set a role model to the members of his organisation. There are certain virtues that portray a fine business behaviour and always keep a founder in control,

Trust and Integrity.
Focus only on things that are primary for the business.
Reinforce productivity.
Establish Authority in the market.

5. Know your competitors

Study the competition you are facing. By doing so, you will identify the areas you need to improve. Who are they? What are they selling? What is their USP? How do they stand out in the market? The answer to these questions will enable you to gain insight on the competitive nature of the market and helps in resolving solutions to handle the fight.

6. Connect with customers

To combat potential poaching, build and maintain a relationship with your customers. Deepen your customer relationship by being responsive to their needs. Take time to survey and understand what they really want?

Price
Quality
Service
Latest Product

Once you have gained insight on their requirement, attempt to meet the customer expectation. Be flexible and reassess your marketing strategy. Excite your customers with innovation. Promos bring excitement. Plan a new promo every month.
Early Bird promo, invite a friend promo, Get one buy one promo, Weekend promo and so on.

7. Stand Out

Establish your uniqueness. Show the market that solid reason to buy your product and draw the customers towards your product. They should not have a second thought of going back to your rivals. Explain to the market Who you are? What you sell? Why customers should come to you? It can be a small flyer or, brochure or a classy and expensive media campaign. Frequently, emphasize the freshness in your product or service. Customers fantasize and are attracted towards newness.

8. Leverage a skilled team

The success stories of many businesses is backed by a strong team. Attract fresh and motivated skilled talent by providing a healthy work culture and environment. Throw an opportunity for a structured career growth. And hence draw in the key resources that can serve the best for your organisation. The key resource can equip your product to stay ahead of the competition.

9. Stay ahead in technology

Technology is the need of the hour in any field and is unavoidable for a mobile startup. A mobile launched with the current technology is more likely to take the market by storm. A mobile technology which offers real-time interoperability solutions, a compatible platform for all mobile networks can definitely stay ahead of the competition. Be it Android or IOS, look out for innovation and exploit it in your product. Update with the latest technology to pull the customers towards your product.

10. Maintain a business blog

Brands are incomplete without a voice, and there is no better way to deliver branded messages than blogging. Content Marketing is going to stay, we may see changes only the forms of content. Hence, it is good to maintain a blog and regularly post content supporting your business. Content that are keyword rich and optimized by search engines can enable you to reach your goal.
There is beauty in brevity. Reach your target customers with crisp informations about your product in the form of infographics and explainer videos.

Hope this article aids all startups, especially to stay ahead of the competition. Wishes for a successful startup branding. Share your views on startup branding and your experience as a startup in staying ahead of competition.