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BANGALORE: Indian entrepreneurs have worked out that innovative mobile-based technologies race the fastest to the one-million dollar revenue mark with little capital. 
 
These entrepreneurs develop the products--including mobile applications--within a month's time and then push for international acceptance. Once validated globally, the products lead to soaring revenues in quick time. 
 
Take the case of Nischal Shetty, for instance. It took just four weeks for the 29 year old to build JustUnfollow. Through this, enterprises (and others) can find out their inactive followers on Twitter and also how many have unfollowed them. 
 
This allows companies to give their undivided attention on potential customers. The Mumbai based company has already crossed Rs 6 crore in revenue by providing this technology to eight million users worldwide. 
 Shetty, who worked at review site <keyword id="2440589" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="40" keywordseo="Burrp">Burrp</keyword>, launched the firm with a seed capital of Rs 30,000. JustUnfollow charges clients between $10 (Rs 600) and $200 (Rs 12,000) a month based on requirements. 
 The startup expects to touch a topline of Rs 60 crore in a year. And industry leaders like <keyword id="11323" type="PERSON" weightage="40" keywordseo="Sabeer-Bhatia">Sabeer Bhatia</keyword> are bullish. 
 “With Indian mobile-first companies, I am bullish on their prospects to make a mark globally ,“ said Bhatia who sold Hotmail to <keyword id="10387" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword> for $400 million (Rs 2,400 crore) in 1997. “The categories where I believe mobile-first Indian startups will do well are communication and enterprise." 
 Last December Bhatia, along with mobile advertising firm <keyword id="164941" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="inMobi">InMobi</keyword> cofounder Amit Gupta and <keyword id="192167" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Qualcomm-Ventures">Qualcomm Ventures</keyword> invested $600,000 (Rs 3.6 crore) in Deck. The Bangalore-based firm enables users to make smart PowerPoint presentations through their mobile device. 
 
Sumanth Raghavendra, 40, founder, said Deck's technology also adjusts automatically with available lighting. The firm, which built its first product in four months, has gained one million users globally and is profitable. It expects to cross Rs 6 crore in revenue by next year. 
 
“These startups showcase the blend of proof of traction, superior product thinking and capital efficiency," said Rahul Chandra, managing director of venture capital fund Helion Advisors. 
 
About 88% of Indian entrepreneurs in the mobility space are building solutions that are ‘mobile first’ and not mere transitions from the web world. 
 
This was evident in a survey of 100 entrepreneurs, building solutions focused on both enterprises and consumers, done by Helion. 
 
“India has domestic market advantage due to mobile, unlike services market, they had no domestic market,” said Amit Gupta, cofounder of mobile advertising firm InMobi. 
 
Similarly, Pune-based Scandid founded by former Microsoft engineers Sushil Choudhari and Madhur Khandelwal enables shoppers do price comparison in real time by scanning barcodes with their mobile phones. 
 
“Our revenue has more than doubled after going mobile," said Choudhari, 33, who expects to achieve revenue of Rs 6 crore by next year. 
 
The company pivoted to the mobile platform last August. 
 
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InMobi’s Gupta said products that took two years to develop, now takes just six months due to advances in technology and rising demand within the country. 
 
The domestic market is what Bangalore-based local discovery and commerce platform Wooplr is betting on. It helps shoppers discover new products from local offline stores around them based on interest, location and through recommendations from friends. 
 
“Now you can know a particular local store on Richmond Road (in Bangalore) that sells a particular keychain,” said Arjun Abraham Zacharia, 32-year-old Wooplr chief executive, who cofounded the firm in 2012 along with his three colleagues at security firm McAfee. Wooplr now helps over half a million users across Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi make shopping decisions. 
 
“The fact that there is now a large local market for mobile first companies in India itself opens up a new vector to achieve scale domestically before expanding globally,” Bhatia said.

Indian Mobile Startups Hit The Million Dollar Revenue Mark Fast

<ul><li><keyword id="55885" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="hotmail" source="Orion">Hotmail</keyword> co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has launched a new social video messaging platform.</li><li>It’s called ‘<keyword id="2457121" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="showreel" source="Orion">ShowReel</keyword>’ and it helps people create video resumes that can be sent out to job recruiters.</li><li>ShowReel plans on onboarding companies who can directly choose candidates from this platform.</li></ul>Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith created one of the first free web-based email services ‘Hotmail’ back in 1996. It was acquired by Microsoft just a year later and then rebranded to Windows Live Hotmail and Outlook. Fast forward to 2021, Bhatia is now launching ShowReel, a TikTok-like social video messaging platform for people to help find jobs. So how exactly does the app work? ShowReel lets you create video resumes of yourself but in a conversational way. There are preset questions to which you answer, record videos and stitch them together. These questions have been selected as those that are mostly asked in interviews. ShowReel also has a TikTok-like feed where you can browse through and watch videos of other users. You can share these videos with companies you wish to work with and can also add a QR code to your resume that links directly to your ShowReel video. “You, first of all, create a profile of your own. So let’s say you want to market yourself - one way is you send a paper resume to different job sites or to different companies directly. And it gets lost and you may be called for an interview or not. Or you can be more proactive and put a QR code in every one of your paper resumes or send an actual video. You actually send a video and say this is who I am,” Sabeer Bhatia explained in an interview with Business Insider. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="How companies can find candidates on ShowReel" comment="subhead" text="How companies can find candidates on ShowReel">How companies can find candidates on ShowReel</cmsannotation> ShowReel currently only has questions designed by Bhatia for four categories - professional, personal, startup and leadership. The company is in talks with global companies to get them onboard the platform and prepare their own set of questions for job seekers. Bhatia wouldn’t name these companies but we can expect to see them join the platform by the end of this year. “There will be a job section where you will be able to specifically look for jobs and do actual interviews for that job. There will be job-specific questions that are asked for that job. Companies will either post questions on that section directly themselves or they’ll ask us to post them and you just answer those questions and you’ve done your video interview with that company for that job,” Bhatia said. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="How job seekers can stand out with videos" comment="subhead" text="How job seekers can stand out with videos">How job seekers can stand out with videos</cmsannotation> ShowReel wants to act as the first step towards finding a job and wants to offer a unique approach in addition to the process of sharing your resume with companies. It’s also designed to help speed up the interviewing process. Bhatia also expects this to help job seekers make their profiles stand out. <div type="image" title="img (19)" msid="87751094" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;In ShowReel, you create conversational videos by answering questions about your name, education, dream job and more.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> “At the end of the day if the person who’s hiring, if they take a look and they have ten resumes only one of them initially has a QR code with a video, who do you think that person is going to hire,” he said. Video profiles or resumes may actually work really well, and they can even make a person stand out from the crowd. But for a company scanning through the videos first, it may create biases. On this, Bhatia said that the platform blends more with people facing jobs like retail, sales and business development. There are also features being developed for people who may not like to make videos. “We will help them create an avatar where they don’t have to even show their face and they can just do an audio recording for example,” Bhatia said. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Revenue models" comment="subhead" text="Revenue models">Revenue models</cmsannotation> In addition to helping companies speed up the process of interviews, ShowReel is also exploring options of shortlisting candidates for companies. “We’ll charge some money to reduce the number and give you only the hundred best of the thousand best using AI.” This is also expected to turn into a revenue model for ShowReel where it charges companies for posting jobs on the platform. But end-users and job seekers will never be charged for using the app, Bhatia assured. ShowReel is currently in beta, and the app is available to download on Android and iOS. The reason behind holding the app launch in India is because “the problem is most acute over here” and “you solve the problem where it is the worst first.” Bhatia also suggests that this app will give Indians an opportunity to market themselves, something that is quite common in the United States. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/freecharge-announces-neo-banking-platform-to-offer-fixed-deposits-digital-credit-card-and-more/articleshow/87750610.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Freecharge announces neo-banking platform, to offer fixed deposits, digital credit card and more</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/facebook-meta-microsoft-epic-games-and-others-companies-building-the-metaverse/articleshow/87663969.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">It’s not just Zuckerberg ⁠— here’s how gaming, shopping and dating could look like in the metaverse</a>

Hotmail co-founder wants to help people find jobs through TikTok-like video resume platform ‘ShowReel’

Dreams are easy to sow, and even easier to revel in. India leading the world or playing a significant role in the current century is a heady drink from the spring of hope, at the fountain of the world. <keyword id="6354185" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="IT">It</keyword> is an oft heard phrase that India and China are set to be the super powers of the world in the near future and this would change the rule of trade game for many countries. 
 
How can India contribute to the global scenario when she herself is going through some transition within as far as political equations are concerned? 
 
When dreams are about India leading the world, there are some very important areas the country could be looking into, to march ahead with hope and promise. Some areas have been India’s innate strengths already, and some could be the strong points of the country that’s looking hopeful at the threshold of the world stage. 
 
Well, for starters, here are a few things that all the countries in the world engage in despite problems they might be fighting within its vicinity. 
 
<keyword id="6355445" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Education">Education</keyword> 
It was about a year ago when US State Secretary John Kerry said India and US together could lead the world in education. Now, India’s role in education per se would not be clear without the understanding of the great Indian middle class, which strives hard for the sake of education of their family members – mostly children. The median age of India’s population is 28 years and skill development is something India has been consistently working on. With institution-level collaboration, India can actually lead the world in better dissemination of education and innovative methods of teaching. 
 
Science research 
You sure have heard the success of Mangalyaan, which was the cheapest trip to the orbit of Mars by any country. India did it in about a year, and well within the budget of a Hollywood production. Now, jokes apart, to understand India’s emphasis on science and space technology, would be to comprehend with the age old wisdom seated in the Indian psyche. Most of the professors, who learnt in India, have gone about occupying cushy positions in renowned universities abroad. It is time India closed the loop to establish the intellectual potential and help the world understand its importance. 
 
IT industry 
Now, a popular joke is every second Indian, is an IT professional. Or, wait. Did you say second one? We thought ‘every’ Indian was an IT professional! When the jocular argument ends, it’s time to look at the reality. India and Indian professionals almost singlehandedly fixed the Y2k bug (remember? The millennium scare?) while working on most deathly shifts in various locations worldwide. Silicon Valley knows the reality that India cannot be ignored when it comes to the ‘e’ world. After all, we got our first email from an Indian Sabeer Bhatia. Right? India is still treading the path like a lone unchallenged tusker. 
 
<keyword id="107737" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Entrepreneurship">Entrepreneurship</keyword> 
One of the most endearing things about India is the presence of human resources, in most educated, skilled and ready-to-employ form. People speak more in English, the global language and can be one of the easiest employable workforces. Leveraging on this can turn India into a force to reckon with. 
 
eCommerce 
The emerging eCommerce sector has a lot to gain from India that has the most Internet-accessing generation. Average urban Indian being a youth before his 30s, working to earn a handsome salary, and is most comfortable shopping on the Internet makes him a hot property of tomorrow’s eCommerce debuts. India, with most young people connected to the net, can give a serious run to markets like US and China as far as eConsumerism is concerned. 
 
Innovative agricultural practices 
The age old wisdom in agriculture has somehow come to a standstill in the last few years when India took chemical fertilizers and poisoned the womb of her earth. Now, with things changing for better, Indians are returning to agriculture with aplomb and how! Innovative agricultural practices coupled with some knowledge passed through generations is making India a land of innovative agricultural practices. It is indeed a strong point India could compete with rest of the countries in the world. Abundant availability of human resources and a political will to check the migration by rural Indians into urban pockets can help the world satiate its hunger for fresh and healthy food.

India: A Showstopper On The World Ramp

“To the winners, who won because they didn't give up.”- <keyword id="198636" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vijay-Shekhar-Sharma">Vijay Shekhar Sharma</keyword>, founder of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/You-might-soon-be-able-to-shop-up-to-Rs-25K-via-mobile-wallets-Paytm-asks-RBI-to-raise-cash-limit-for-the-same/articleshow/48110055.cms">Paytm</a>. 
 
The man, who always wears a welcoming smile, stands true to every word he wrote during the most difficult times of his life. Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a company whose current value is a little over $3 billion in the market in 2016, a dream dreamt when he was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in pocket. But he tasted victory the hard way. Nothing came easy for him. The tears he hides behind the chirpy self that he puts up in front of the world could not be hidden for long while recollecting his journey. Interestingly, it was not talking about his failures that brought tears in his eyes; it was his hard earned victory. 
 
Life tested him right from the beginning of his journey to become one of the most influential people in the business world today. Though he passed his higher secondary when he was just 14 years old, a child prodigy of sorts, making it through college was the first tough challenge he faced when he left the cosy comfort of his small hometown outside Aligarh and ventured into the real world. 
 
A topper in his school, he was lost in transition in college-Delhi College of Engineering. Coming from a very humble background (his father was a highly principled, school teacher, who refused to earn the extra buck through tuitions, because he believed in what was the right thing to do), Vijay did not know how to read and write English for he completed his school education completely in Hindi, in his small town. However, he realised soon enough that to make it through college he must start learning the language first and with the help of books, second hand magazines and his friends, he mastered the language in a way which few can. His modus operandi was to read a Hindi version of the book simultaneously with the English-one, a habit that ensured that he soon learnt to read two books at the same time! But it wasn’t easy to say the least. The first-bencher in school slowly started gravitating towards the back benches, and in a short while, was so disheartened and disillusioned with his bad grades, mostly due to language constraints, that he completely stopped attending college. 
 
“When winning is about not giving up. 
 
When doing all that you can, gets a new meaning.” 
 
Struggling to learn English, survive the rigours of engineering college and the big bad city that Delhi was, this normally would be the time when many in his situation would have quit. Vijay, however, was something else. He decided to build, to use the time he had from ‘not attending college’ by turning an entrepreneur. A believer in challenging the unknown, he made the internet his playground and Sabeer Bhatia and Yahoo his inspirations. He aspired to go to Stanford, because that was where Yahoo was built, but realising his lack of financial resources and his challenges with the English language, he decided to emulate some of the genius at Stanford, by learning how to code all by himself. He started building his own content management system with some of his college mates, which went onto being used by some of the biggest news publications including The Indian Express. It was also during this time when he started his first job at an MNC. He quit after six months and built a company of his own with his friends. He finally passed his college examinations too. 
 This would also become the darkest time in his life, when having his dreams of reaching the <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword> shattered, he was also left bankrupt by his partners, with whom he had just begun a business and raised the first round of funding. In 2005, he had raised a hefty amount of Rs 8 lakhs through his venture of which he was conned off 40%. He was devastated. But Vijay was not a man to give up so easily. He lived at a hostel near Kashmiri Gate in Delhi, skipped meals and walked long distances to attend work or meetings in the southern part of the State. 
 
Infact having been through such tough times, if there is a fear that the ‘Iron Man’ of the startup ecosystem of India still harbours, it is that someday ‘some unknown’ will take away all of his hardwork. 
 Things took to a better turn when he began One97, the parent company of <keyword id="6357120" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="PayTM">Paytm</keyword>. They started experimenting with the three basics of internet- content, advertising and commerce. But the big eureka moment came in 2011 when he first pitched the idea of entering the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/SBI-is-threatened-by-new-age-payments-banks-flies-to-Bengaluru-to-catch-up-with-tech-savvy-rivals/articleshow/48650002.cms">payment ecosystem</a> in front of his board. The board was not convinced, as he was talking about betting the company’s money on a non-existent market. 
 
“Some other entrepreneur would have sold the equity and started their own company. But I aspire to build a 100 year old company. I think that men and boys are different because the boys flip and sell. Men run and build legacies,” Vijay said. 
 
So he put 1% of his equity, which was about $2 million around 2011, on the table and said, “This is for all of you, if I waste the money that we put on the site.” He adds, “There is no fun in doing what others ask you to do, the real fun is in doing what people say you can’t do.” 
 
And it is with this belief that the first avatar of Paytm, Pay Through Mobile, was born, going rapidly onto becoming the next big thing of the startup ecosystem in India. And, since then it was never looking back. 
 
 
 
The secret behind this steep arch is the trust he built with his customers which none other gave as much value to before. Even before Vijay began the roll-out of his <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Mobile-wallet-for-government-services-will-be-a-reality-soon/articleshow/50026480.cms">internet wallet services</a>, he first built a strong 24x7 customer care service to address the worries of customers to enable them to trust the wallet enough to put their money into the hands of the unknown. “30% of the company’s campaign budget is invested in building trust with the customer. For us it was the single most important factor,” says Vijay, with a deep pride in what he has built so far. 
 
“We propagated through word of mouth once the trust was built. I have a firm belief that the truest relationship test comes when one goes through a stress case. This makes our relationship with our customers special and unique than the rest. We also launched in Twitter and Facebook so that as soon as a customer complained, we got back with an immediate response and help. Trust is the secret formula which worked for us, though there were 30 other licences already available in the market like Mobikwik.” 
 
Backed by consumer trust, Paytm’s stupendous journey to the top of the internet wallet market is now a part of startup folklore, but what is unkown is that Paytm also became one of a handful companies worldwide to secure Series A funding exceeding several $100 mn. They have done only a single round of funding till now with Alibaba, SAIF and Alipay. 
 
“I have always wanted a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Lendingkart-joins-hands-with-Paytm-for-collateral-free-business-loans-to-SMEs-sellers/articleshow/49935027.cms">business partner </a>and not a syndicated investor. Our relationship with “business partner/investor” is of a journey together. There are four people who own this company- me, SAIF, Alibaba, Alipay, says Vijay, in his usual animated way. 
 
After building a billion dollar worth company, maintaining the success is the most difficult part of the journey and it cannot be done without good teamwork, he says. For that, he ensures that the right people are taken onboard who share the same passion to build like his. He has also given 4% of his equity to the team, which in current value terms is about $120 million. 
 
“I have given more to my team than any amount of salary cumulatively taken in so many years, ” Vijay says. And why he chose to do so isn’t hard to understand. Given his personal experiences and the tough fight he put up to achieve where he has reached, he values everyone who contributes to creating his vision. People working in his company are never referred to as ‘Employees’, but as ‘Colleagues’ or ‘Teammates’. A staunch believer of God, he believes that only one amongst every 10 hardworking person succeeds to the levels he today firmly belongs in, and because of that respect he shares for every hardworking person, he doesn’t have the right to call anyone an employee or a worker. 
 
But, it’s just not the fighting spirit that has Vijay in the position that he enjoys today. Despite his engineering background and no formal education in business management, he has the business acumen of a genius. 
 
While the pride he takes in his creation and the people who help him implement his vision is obvious, he brushes this unique quality off by saying, “When something’s not working, I become the customer,” with a smile on his face, that is so true to himself. He attributes his humility to the lessons learned from his father. His father refused to take tuitions even though the extra money would have made a huge difference to their lives, as he believed that true education cannot be the privilege of those who have money. 
 
His struggles are the reason why he hates reading fiction. How can one be inspired by made up tales! 
 
Vijay stands testimony to the saying, “A man makes his own destiny.” 
 Life has been busy for this go-getter ever since he entered college. A true lover of all kinds of music, Coldplay, U2, <keyword id="74615" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Jim-Morrison">Jim Morrison</keyword> being his favourites, he takes respite in music to relieve his stress. He is also the resident DJ at One97, added Vijay with a whole-hearted laugh, often forcing his colleagues and teammates to listen to the music he discovers. 
 
Inspite of all these, his attitude to life can be best defined in his own simple words. 
 
“It (his success) still seems so surreal.” 
 
(Image credits: Paytm)

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