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<keyword id="2060230" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="On-demand-music-streaming-service">On-demand music streaming service</keyword> <keyword id="1969101" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dhingana">Dhingana</keyword>.com has shut shop, finally. For some time now, rumours were rife that the company was restructuring its operations and Soundbox was the first to report that Dhingana could be quitting the game soon. 
 
When we visited the site today, a short message was up there that said: Goodbye! We hope that you enjoyed listening to Dhingana as much as we enjoyed building it. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for letting us be a part of your musical moments! -- The Dhingana Team 
 It is the second <keyword id="1368003" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="music-streaming-service">music streaming service</keyword> to shut shop within the span of three months. In November last year, Network18-owned In.com shut down its music offering as it could not meet the cost to content and monetisation was not adequate to continue the business. With Dhingana’s closure, the <keyword id="4627" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Indian-Music">Indian music</keyword> market will just have three major players in this space – Times Internet’s <keyword id="-77" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="gaana">Gaana</keyword>, Tiger Global-backed <keyword id="2060236" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Saavn">Saavn</keyword> and <keyword id="18898" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Hungama">Hungama</keyword>, which is extensively supported by <keyword id="17191" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="T-series">T-Series</keyword> content. 
 
Surprisingly, Dhingana has not given any specific reason for the sudden shutdown. Last we checked, its <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dhingana.free.app">mobile app</a> was up at Google Play Store. 
 One key reason could be T-Series withdrawing its music from Dhingana. T-Series said it was parting ways as there was very little traction on the Dhingana platform, compared to other services. So it is quite possible that a <keyword id="2060242" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Content-crunch">content crunch</keyword> or <keyword id="2060241" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Revenue-crunch">revenue crunch</keyword> has driven the company to withdraw its services. 
 “We were not able to see much traction in the service and secondly we couldn’t agree on the commercials and both parties thus decided to part ways in an amicable manner,” <keyword id="2060251" type="POSITION" weightage="80" keywordseo="T-Series-president">T-Series president</keyword> <keyword id="835320" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Neeraj-Kalyan">Neeraj Kalyan</keyword> told TechCrunch at the time of the break-up. 
 Set up in 2007 by twin brothers Swapnil and <keyword id="1317460" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Snehal-Shinde">Snehal Shinde</keyword>, Dhingana essentially operated from the US although the company had an India office in Pune. It was a popular music service and claimed to have more than 9 million unique users per month while more than 50% users accessed the service from the US and Europe. Dhingana offered a library of 1 million-plus songs, in more than 42 Indian languages and genres. 
 The company was backed by VC investors such as <keyword id="455799" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Lightspeed-Venture-Partners">Lightspeed Venture Partners</keyword>, <keyword id="309606" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Helion-Venture-Partners">Helion Venture Partners</keyword> and <keyword id="683320" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Inventus-Capital-Partners">Inventus Capital Partners</keyword>, and had raised $7 million in Series B <keyword id="6357455" type="EVENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="Funding">funding</keyword> in October 2012. Lightspeed led that round while existing investors Inventus and Helion also participated in the funding. 
 In spite of growing competition, Dhingana had gone ahead with its growth plans last year and tied up with <keyword id="2060229" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="General-Mobile-Corporation">General Mobile Corporation</keyword> (G-Mobi) to pre-install its <keyword id="683603" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="music-app">music app</keyword> on 1 million devices. This would have enabled Dhingana’s <keyword id="956764" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Android-app">Android app</keyword> to be installed on Intex, Zen, Hitech, m-Tech and Maxx devices. The company also partnered with <keyword id="6354924" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Idea-Cellular">Idea Cellular</keyword> for a music subscription service, which allows users to download unlimited music with no data charges. The service was to be made available to Idea users using <keyword id="6355645" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="android">Android</keyword> smartphones and WAP feature phones. In a bid to monetise its mobile content, Dhingana came up with a paid subscription service for its <keyword id="75489" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="IOS">iOS</keyword> app, called <keyword id="2060249" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dhingana-Gold">Dhingana Gold</keyword>. 
 With so many growth and monetisation plans in place, it is still unclear why Dhingana had to bite the dust and go <keyword id="1909965" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="out-of-business">out of business</keyword> so suddenly. Watch this space as we bring you more updates on the latest development. 
 
Image: Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images

Indian Music
Streaming Service Dhingana Is No Longer Running Its Business

Leading AI health and <keyword id="2014575" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="fitness-app">fitness app</keyword> <keyword id="2698623" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="HealthifyMe">HealthifyMe</keyword> on Tuesday announced it has raised $75 million (nearly Rs 560 crore) in a Series C round led by <keyword id="1175549" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="leapfrog">LeapFrog</keyword> and <keyword id="130474" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Khosla-Ventures">Khosla Ventures</keyword>. The company, which has raised over the total capital raised by HealthifyMe to over $100 million till now, said in a statement that it will use the funds to expand in India and Southeast Asia, make inroads into North America as well as to acquire relevant companies in the digital health and fitness space. It will also be investing heavily behind its AI powered HealthifySmart Plans and intends to double its current engineering and design strength. It will furthermore be hiring senior leadership members across operations, marketing, HR and technology. "We are already the market leaders in India and Southeast Asia and by combining AI and human empathy, we can deliver results in weight and lifestyle disease management at a fraction of the cost possible today," said <keyword id="2840907" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tushar-Vashisht">Tushar Vashisht</keyword>, Co-founder and CEO, HealthifyMe. HealthQuad, <keyword id="2919607" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Unilever-Ventures">Unilever Ventures</keyword>, and Elm (Saudi Arabia PIF entity) also participated in the round, along with existing investors Chiratae Ventures, Inventus Capital and <keyword id="11674421" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="sistema-asia-capital">Sistema Asia Capital</keyword>. HealthifyMe said it has doubled its user base and revenue in the last one year during the pandemic. It crossed 25 million downloads recently and is on track to hit $50 million ARR (annual recurring revenue) within the next six months, potentially becoming the largest health and fitness app outside the US and China. While HealthifyMe's base has been India, it has been expanding internationally and now nearly 25 per cent of its revenues come from outside the country like Malaysia and Singapore. "What they have achieved in India with their AI coaching solution at scale is truly pioneering for the world. We are excited about the potential as they scale globally -- specifically in North America, where 2 out 3 adults are overweight or obese," said Vinod Khosla, Founding Partner at Khosla Ventures. HealthifyMe is also planning to invest in building its leadership team and will hire for key positions across operations, HR, technology and marketing as well as P&amp;L heads. The company aims to hire over 1,000 trainers and coaches this year. SEE ALSO - <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/apple-could-finally-bring-the-always-on-display-feature-on-the-iphone-13/articleshow/84542970.cms">Apple could finally bring the always-on display feature on the iPhone 13</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/g-r-infraprojects-ipo-makes-a-strong-listing-on-exchanges-with-over-100-premium-shares-open-at-1700/articleshow/84542747.cms">G R Infraprojects IPO makes a strong listing on exchanges with over 100% premium, shares open at ₹1700</a>

HealthifyMe raises $75 million from US-based investors to make inroads into North America

A recent study found that only less than 3% of comments on venture capital blogs focusing on US financial and startup space are by women. While it is commonly understood that the proportion of women in the tech sector is low, this study showed that the engagement of women with the VC industry is even lower. Another recent study found that only about 15% of US companies receiving venture-capital investment included at least one woman in the executive team. If this is the case in a mature startup ecosystem like the US, one can imagine how inadequate the representation of women in a nascent startup ecosystem like the one in India, which is slowly catching up with the emerged markets in terms of cash flow to <keyword id="2783479" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="VC-funded-enterprises">VC-funded enterprises</keyword>. 
 
Of the top VC firms operating in India, Accel Partners India, Bessemer Venture Partner, Blume Ventures, Helion venture Partners, IDG VC India, Inventus Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Matrix Partners India, SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital India have no women partners or managing directors while Kalaari Capital and Seedfund have just one each. 
 
Among reasons for the limited representation of women at the top strata of VC firms—and thus the nature of decisions that are made or not made in the country’s startup ecosystem, which will lead to wealth creation and drive growth in the long run—is the fact that the ‘men club’ that leads most VC firms tends to opt for people like them when it comes to recruiting talent. 
 
Secondly, since VC industry in India is at a nascent stage and is not well understood, women perceive VC jobs as something that belong to the area of hardcore finance and number crunching rather than a business model evaluation, and hence tend to stay away from it. 
 
Another reason is the lack of awareness at business school level, which results in very few women taking up internships at VC firms that will help them mould their career in the VC space at an early stage. 
 
Since Indian startup ecosystem is still at its cradle, even those women who would want to take up a corporate career have not got enough opportunity to see how investments in startups would turn around in the long run. Or how innovative ideas can give birth to multi-billion dollar companies in the future, unlike in mature markets like the US where there are ample examples of startups, which were bit players at certain point in time, emerging as corporate behemoths valued at billions of dollars. Mobile-app-based radio taxi aggregator Uber, which raised a recent funding round at a staggering valuation of $40 billion within five years of being launched, is just one example of startups turning billion dollar opportunities for VC firms. 
 
More cash flow to startups owned by women entrepreneurs will happen only when a larger percentage of decision makers at VC firms become women who would want to nurture fellow women as future corporate leaders. 
 
Another drag is lack of concentrated efforts from the government to nurture VC investments and support the startup ecosystem. Despite the ‘Make in India’ campaign, the recent Budget presented a miserly picture when it came to allocation to nurture startups. 
 
However, the silver lining is the new law announced by market regulator SEBI, mandating at least one woman on the board of publicly-listed companies though it exempted SMEs having equity share capital of up to Rs 10 crore and net worth not exceeding Rs 25 crore. 
 
Also, corporate India seems to be slowly awakening to the need for more women in the ranks of the top honchos. The Indian unit of telecom firm Vodafone recently said it increased the percentage of women employees in its workforce to 20 per cent currently from 14 per cent two years ago and will hire even more women across levels and functions. Group Executive Council of the Tata Group too is said to be planning to double the count of women to over 300,000 from 115,000 currently in its 540,000-strong workforce. 
 
One hopes VC players in the country, too, take a cue from the SEBI directive and what larger industry peers like Vodafone and Tata Group are trying to do bring about a change when it comes to ensuring women representation in the country’s investment space. 
Image: thinkstock

Venture capital and gender gap: Where is India headed?

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://all-turtles.com/">All Turtles</a>Phil Libin, cofounder and former CEO of Evernote, launched All Turtles in May 2017 as a studio for developing artificial intelligence startups.</div></div></div><ul><li>Disco, a startup partnered with Evernote cofounder Phil Libin's young artificial intelligence studio All Turtles, released its product to paying customers Tuesday.</li><li>The product tracks positive language within office chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams, and then aggregates the comments into positive feedback reports for employees, managers, and executives looking to get a sense of what is going right on their teams.</li><li>The idea is that positive reinforcement can keep employees happy and improve office culture.</li></ul> An artificial intelligence startup backed by Evernote cofounder Phil Libin and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wants to automate positive reinforcement. Disco - one of the first companies to come out the artificial intelligence lab All Turtles, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-cofounder-phil-libin-new-ai-venture-fund-all-turtles-2017-5">which Libin launched in May</a>- is an employee feedback tool that scans office chat software like Slack and Microsoft Teams for compliments and positive comments. Those comments are then aggregated into reports that employees can regularly check for positive feedback. The idea behind it, said CEO Jeremy Vandehey, is that employees work better and harder when they feel that their efforts are recognized by the company. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">DiscoCEO Jeremy Vandehey opened up Disco's product to paying customers on Tuesday.</div></div></div>Vandehey started developing the product in 2015 after working at companies where positive feedback was hard to come by. He believes that Disco can help companies build a culture of positivity, which ultimately will be reflected in the quality of work. After members of a particular workgroup invite the Disco bot into their group, the bot quietly monitors and collects examples of each individual's good work. If a company's values involve prioritizing customers for example, Disco will log each time a staffer says or does something that reflects that they prioritize customers."At its core, we've simplified the ways you give positive feedback to your coworkers, managers and even you're executives," Vandehey said. "It's basically democratized that whole experience and made it a lot easier to do that every single day, versus once a quarter or even once a year, by being inside of the work stream." On Tuesday, Disco opened up its product to paying customers. So far the product has enjoyed a hefty beta mode with 20,000 different companies using it internally, including Spotify, Intuit, Adobe, Slack, and Walmart. Disco will charge companies $4 per employee per month, or $3 per person for month for annual subscriptions. The platform uses natural language processing and machine learning to create profiles for employees based off of what people have said about them in digital environments. Employers can issue regular feedback reports to show their workers what they're doing well, or to keep track of an employee's strengths for review purposes. There is one problem though: while Disco has all of the makings of an automated review platform, Vandehey said that there is no mechanism for tracking negative feedback. "We want to feel good about developing a culture of appreciation before we talk about that," Vandehey said about a negative comment tracker. "It's something a lot of our customers ask for because they want to fully replace performance reviews with real time feedback system. But we don't want to release something like that without really thinking through the consequences of opening up constructive feedback to the masses." Investors, so far, don't seem to mind the positive approach. Disco has raised $2.15 million in seed funding from General Catalyst, Slack Fund, XSeed Capital, Inventus Capital Partners, 500 Startups, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stretching-before-after-workout-explained-2016-12">An exercise scientist explains what everyone gets wrong about stretching</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

A startup from Phil Libin's incubator thinks its artificial intelligence will make employees happier at work

Rohan Shravan was 24 years old when he founded Notion Ink, a <keyword id="138263" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="startup">startup</keyword> that designed India’s first tablet computer Adam. The device was launched five months before Apple placed the first version of the iPad on store shelves. 
 
At its international debut in the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas in January 2010, one of the first to place an order for Adam was an employee at Apple headquarters in Cupertino. However, in the ensuing months as the iPad gained iconic status, Adam dropped by the wayside, felled by the lack of risk capital to grow the business. 
 “When I told venture capitalists that our product will be a challenger to <keyword id="10591" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Samsung">Samsung</keyword> and Apple, they laughed at me,” said Shravan, a mechanical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur who initially bootstrapped the firm with personal savings of around Rs 6 lakh. 
 
Shravan’s experience is hardly unique. In the midst of an unprecedented entrepreneurial boom, several of those starting up say there are more hurdles than advantages in the Indian startup sector. Apart from the red tape and the lack of policy support there is also a shortage of true risk capital that can back edgy new ideas. 
 
Customers are unwilling to pay for untested products and many entrepreneurs choose the middle path fearing failure. “I was very aggressive, arrogant and fought like a warrior, the so-called experts advised me to tone down and be nice, which led to our downfall,” said Shravan who trained engineering students to work on Adam as a way to minimise staff costs. “Around 80 per cent of the employees were final year students; they were later snatched by Samsung and Motorola.” 
 
In recent years, several ventures including short messaging service GupShup, personalised news service Frrole and language keypad maker Luna Ergonomics have altered business models when faced with regulatory hurdles or the fear of rejection from investors and customers. 
 This at a time when many global technology companies including WhatsApp, <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword>, caller identification service Truecaller, home rental marketplace Airbnb, and question and answer site Quora count India as one of their fastest growing markets. 
 
Nearly 40 million of WhatsApp’s global user base of 450 million is in India. “India is our largest market with about 30 million users and continues to demonstrate great opportunities for us,” said Nami Zarringhalam, cofounder of Sweden’s Truecaller. When Amarpreet Kalkat started his company Frrole in 2011, he wanted to build a product that was tailored to a user’s area of interest. 
 
“I believed it could rival Google News,” said the 35-year-old entrepreneur. Eight months later, Kalkat started looking for funds and he had to answer the dreaded question, over and over again: “How do you make money?” Two years of running the company without external funding almost made him bankrupt. Kalkat was forced to start a new by changing his model to an enterprise product. 
 
At about the same time when Frrole was launched in Silicon Valley, a text and photo sharing app called Snapchat was born. It received $60 million (Rs 361 crore) in initial funding and was handling 150 million photos every day. 
 
Last year, the company rejected a $3 billion (Rs 18,000 crore) buyout deal from Facebook. “There is a very high chance that Frrole would still have been a social newspaper, if we were based in Silicon Valley,” said Kalkat whose company now has a dozen of enterprise customers. 
 
Parag Dhol, managing director at Inventus Capital Partners, said he has some sympathy with the entrepreneurs’ point of view. “But let me throw the question back at them—let us find at least one product from India where there are at least 100 million users,” said the investor who has backed firms such as Savaari Car Rentals, online bus ticketing site redBus and technology company TELibrahma. 
 
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Angel investor Sharad Sharma, who pushed Kalkat to alter his business model, is of the view that in Silicon Valley entrepreneurs can afford to not have a paying business. “Because they have the confidence that they will get bought over, here there is no such scene. It’s all about viability of the business,” said Sharma who participated in a $245,000 angel (Rs 1.4 crore) funding round in Frrole this April. 
India has a far worse ratio of venture capital exits as compared to Israel and the US, according to data compiled by think tank iSpirt and investment bank Signal Hill. Few large companies are interested in buying out startups or using their products, impeding growth of local companies. 
 
“We had all the ingredients to become a large global company,” says Abhijit Bhattacharjee, 43-year-old founder of Luna Ergonomics, the maker of the Indian language keypad Panini. 
 
Named after an ancient Sanskrit grammarian, the technology makes it possible to type quickly and easily in all Indian languages on the mobile phone. The company which has received patents for its Korean language interface did not find takers amongst Indian telecom companies. 
 
“Supporting Indian scripts on digital devices does not suit the strengths and roadmaps of these companies,” said Bhattacharjee, whose company last released an Urdu keypad for iOS, Android, and PC in 2013. “Which large enterprise buys cutting edge technology from startups? When there are not early customers, how can you expect to have $1 billion companies?” asked Ashish Gupta, a senior managing director at Helion Venture Partners that backed group text messaging service GupShup. 
 
The Mumbai-based firm was launched just six months after microblogging site Twitter was launched in the US in July 2006. Within a year of inception the service had racked up 15 million users. 
 GupShup was a free, social, short messaging service that allowed users to communicate and connect with family, <keyword id="343" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="40" keywordseo="Friends">friends</keyword> and followers using ordinary mobile handsets. But the telecom ecosystem and policies were a problem. 
 
“The regulations did not allow advertising. The operators kept the short messaging service rates high,” said Beerud Sheth, cofounder of Webaroo maker of GupShup product. The company had to shift focus from retail consumers and instead offer the messaging platform for enterprises. 
 
“They (government) should invest money in big ideas. They need to stop protecting big industries and start encouraging disruption and risk taking,” said Rahul Sood, partner at Microsoft Ventures and a technology entrepreneur, who sold the luxury computer business VodooPC to Hewlett Packard in 2006. 
 
Compare this to China, where the startup ecosystem is accelerating faster than anywhere in the world. There are around 1300 incubators and accelerators across the country compared with about 35 active accelerators in India. Shravan of Notion Ink has not lost hope yet. 
 
The entrepreneur is placing another bet. This time a personal computing robot called EVE, which he thinks will disrupt the market and will be in the market by 2017. “I will be jealous of my kids, they will be enjoying the rewards our hard work and same is true for the next generation of entrepreneurs,” he said.

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Indian Music Streaming Service Dhingana Is No Longer Running Its Business

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