Offline Product Search Engine into Junglee

Amazon had forayed into India as online product comparison avatar, Junglee. Online shops had listed the product prices over there. Now, it has started showing offline shops for mobile and TV products in the following cities: Bangalore, Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon. It just lists store addresses and phone number, but doesn’t show the availability or price.

Shops selling Samsung Phone in Mumbai

It is an interesting route for world’s biggest marketplace Amazon and a different model as well. Amazon USA, UK etc have 2 models:

1. An inventory-based model, where they sell, what they have in their warehouses.
2. Additionally, it has a marketplace model, where they allow sellers to list their products in the marketplace and the website visitors can buy on the platform.

The latter is very successful in emerging markets esp BRICS (Brzil, Russia, India, China) as well as Korea, Indonesia etc.

The 3rd model, wherein a location-based price comparison sites show prices from offline stores near you is interesting one in country like India. As a first cut, Junglee Nerby aims to drive web users to make a call to the stores and drive footfalls. I can not find any monetization built into the product as yet.

Comparison of services

Portal	Launch Year	Products	Cities	Shops	USP
Junglee by Amazon	Feb 2012 (site launch). May 2013 Nearby Launch	2 categories, mobile and TV	Bangalore, Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon	Handful	Coming from Amazon
PriceBaba	2012	Electronic Items	Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Gurgaon, Noida	400	Stores are listed post personal visit by verification team
Wicfy	2011	Multiple	Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata	Lots	Patented iso-pricing technology and interesting retailer-crowdsourcing model

Competitive Landscape

500 Startups recently funded Pricebaba.Another player is Pune-based Wicfy, which takes crowd-sourcing model to find cheapest price for a product and had raised money from Eco System Ventures. Naaptol have an Android app listing prices of product from stores, which never expanded beyond Mumbai. MySmartPrice also lists products from e-retailers. A yet-to-be launched portal, IndiaOrders will launch with 60 stores of Mumbai showing their wares for online buying. It takes slightly different route of enabling a buyer to get the products delivered to their homes. Interesting twist here is that a buyer can go to the store for queries, refunds, exchanges as well. It is an interesting segment with increasing middle class of India, but getting constantly updated price from retailers is a challenge. IPO-bound Justdial had a portal called Quick Quotes in works, which they had announced in Feb, 2012. That got coverage from Medianama in Sep and other portals as well. But, that page has been taken off Justdial website since.

TastyKhana receives strategic investment from DeliveryHero

TastyKhana (website) is a food home delivery company having a presence in 6 cities across India. According to reliable sources, it has received strategic investment from either Global Founders Capital or directly from DeliveryHero, a European company having presence in 13 countries across 4 continents. DeliveryHero had raised 50m last year for global domination [Techcrunch news]. India will be their 14th country. Global Founders Capital is a joint VC fund by Samwer Brothers and ex-CEO of DeliveryHero Fabian Siegel having $194M in its warchest right now. As I pointed in the rear end of my blog post earlier, food home delivery is an increasing revenue generator for not just mom and pop food joints, but also fine dining like Speciality Group’s Mainland China, Mezzuna etc.

The journey of TastyKhana has been a long story of patience, conviction, determination, customer-focus, and pivoting like any start-ups. I had heard Shachin Bhardwaj speak at Startup Saturday Pune in Sep 2011. He had started TastyKhana during his tenure at Synygy in Aug, 2007. He quit his IT job within 3 months to focus on his start-up fulltime. For a year, they were experimenting before finding focus. So, in real sense TastyKhana started in Oct 2008. They had delivered food worth Rs. 3.5 Cr by Aug 2011 (8 Cr now) to more than 50,000 customers (now in 1.5 years it has doubled to 100,000). They had only 200 restaurants in Mumbai and Pune on-board at that time, which has swelled over 500 (348 in Pune, 108 in Mumbai) in Aug 2012 and then to 1000 in Pune, Mumbai, NCR (Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon) and Bangalore now Apr 2013 [Source: Restaurant Owner page]. They were receiving 5000 orders a month of an average ticket size Rs.700-800 in 2012. Shachin was able to get angel funding from one of his previous colleague, Chetan Shah to scale up. One of the learning he shared is to take funding in Lacs, not in Crores, so that you learn fiscal responsibility. Interestingly, TastyKhana was just 20 days away from bankruptcy during first 6 months’ of their existence, which is one of themes covered in an earlier blog post.They acquired Food On Wheels to get on-board 3-4 delivery boys, so that they could use own technology solutions to improve the operations. They focussed on solving the following problems of customer:

1. Serve as aggregator of menus. No more do you need to keep paper menus stuffed in fridges, but have it online, when doing food order.
2. A customer could use online payment options instead of just COD (Cash on Delivery).
3. 3 channels to order available are: Online, mobile (using site at that time, now also mobile app) and phone (by calling TastyKhana helpline).
4. Another convenience factor for a customer was increasing the radius of home delivery of a restaurant by paying a delivery fee, which the restaurant would normally not deliver. TastyKhana was able to achieve this because of its own delivery boys’ network in the city. The customer incurs cost according to delivery distance and order amount, e.g. if order is a small ticket-size and the location is far from restaurant, the charges are more.

For a restaurant owner, they had the following proposition:

1. Zero overhead with great margins.
2. Keep the bottom line low, as logistics is taken care of by TastyKhana. They only pay for orders, not for idle delivery boys’ entire time [I call it Operations as a Service, OAAS ala SAAS (Software as a Service)]
3. Get alternate sales channel on TastyKhana website, phone line and also Facebook app for food ordering and reservation.
4. In addition, there is valuable data, they get free statistics, feedback from customer on switching, churn ratio and spending capacity of the area’s customers.
5. While dropping food orders of a restaurant, they are able to drop TastyKhana branded menu of other restaurants.

The technology differentiator has been built by CTO, Sheldon D’Souza and Senior Software Architect Pradeep Singh (First employee of the company).

1. Focus on automation and scale
2. Acceptance notification of food order from restaurant
3. SMS to delivery boy

Once TastyKhana reached scale, they are able to deliver invaluable analytics like “Chinese food eating customers are spending more than Rs.1000/-“. This insight can help someone looking to start a restaurant.

Competition

It’s a crowded market for sure with Europe based Justeat (Jan 2011 investment into Hugryzone. Raised 41M afterwards), Foodpanda (launched June 2012 in India) and home-grown players like titbit, Deliverychef, Delivery, Bigbite etc. Some of these power local search engine like burrp (powered by JustEat) , while India’s leading local search engine forayed into food home delivery on its own. Most restaurants have a phone line for home delivery, while many take orders online and in mobile apps as well.

Siyona Jha my 2nd kid

One of the most happiest day of my life was in Feb, when we were blessed with a second child. My son is thrilled to have a girl chilD to play with. He calls her Barbie doll and princess among other names.

My Story with TIE Anand Khandekar

Sponsor

Clarion venture partner

My story background

Earlier talks covered wide array of speakers, including Puneri brands like Gits food. Interactive breakfast is another activity of TIE Pune, which has seen immese participation and benefit for all. All Asia business plan competition in association with Praj was a resounding success. Then, there is a series of full-day workshops as a part of Nurture initiative – Ajay Bhagwat. Business model evaluation among them was extremely beneficial to one and all.

Sponsorership kit

Paying Rs. 10k for one My Story session gives you a kiosk, 3k emails with logo in form, handout branding, etc. It is not just for big companies, but even startups looking for exposure can consider it.

Introduction

Anubhav from payleaf gave a lucid introduction of the speaker Anand Khandsar. He began by recollecting a speeach by a visionary to his company men 10 years ago, which included Anubhav. He said one should become catalyst of change for the society. The man was no other than Nandan Nilekani, who after successful stint at Infosys is spearheading the Aadhar project, which aims to bring smiles and prosperity to the billion people. Anubhav had met Anand many a times to understand his journey and said Anand is also in the same league as Nandan, who make revolutionary change and are sensitive to the society, they operate in.

Story begins

Then Anand was presented a bouquet by MCCIA. Anand and Anubhav then took seats and so began the story.

He is from a family of teachers, and did edcuation in Fergusson College. His parents laid equal emphasis on physical education. One of the lessons, which stood him good many years after was the tradition of scout doing one good deal everyday, kind of service to community. During engineeering days later he was a part of COEP boat club and swimming club. He got Gold medal for his performance. This is one of many Gold medals, he has amassed in his academic and professional life. In 3rd year, Navy selected him to join him, so with pressure off, he needed to pass to get into navy. He topped in the engineering. He got the Lieutenant rank from Naval forces during the last year. He went on to do 25 yr stint in navy.

Transition – His wife is a successful paedatrician. Child’s education led him to take up private job. It took 5 years to secure release from Navy. Veena, his wife was still in Navy. He joined Meltron (Maharashtra State Electronics Corporation ) from May’85 till Dec’88.

Teamwork during navy was carried to MELTRON. Get best out of whatever resources you got, solve yourself, spirit of innovation. Meltron – telephone system, railways grew during his 4 yrs from 4 cr to 80 cr . CDOT  exchange. Sam Pitroda. Digital Exchange. 4 units. Engineers from  same region – Konkan, Marathwada, Andheri

Yojna in Seepz, Mumbai. Unisys cofounder .  CCI instead of STPI. 100% EOU. Bank loan. For sw, headquarter gives loan, not branch. Same file to Tara Deshpande. 3 months.

SK Firodia visited every month from MCCIA. 3 exchanges to upload file. Compuserve network. Windows 3.0 beta version. Professional forum. Video related work, message post (like email). Interview from Detroit. Ravi Gopte left Telco. Had to convince his father, who had resigned.

Magnificent 7 – first employees.

Motorola

Yojna had tie up with Motorola. It did not materialize in 1991. Offshore development. Coding standard, testing. 6sigma sw unit. SW is mercurial. Motorola lab became sei 5. Grow it to 400. 6 weeks of process. P-CMM.

Friendship cultivate. Linkedin, FB. Raymond Vikary. Clinton admin. User interface on mob had to be closed bc ppl cud not visualize.

Illionia Inst of Tech, mtech tie up.

Cirrus logic

Family is in Pune. Suhas Patil. Syslogic. Mutha Chambers-1996. Chip design. Parallel development. Mpeg2, graphics. Compress time. Configuration mgmt system. Later became Nvidia. Monthly project review. Reuse. Promotion consideration. Govt bodies to get city on map. After 30 yrs, huge diff between Pune n Bangalore. Mot would do anthropological.  4 attributes – entrepreneurship + education.

Video on mobile. 2m pounds from Irish angel investors. No need to go to silicon valley to do work. 2004 camcorder sw of samsung. 35 ppl. 800 in Nvidia. Navy seal. Training. Warrior elite. Distillation of human spirit into. Mentored companies.  Fully commited, training (r and d budget) professional, managerial. Live in tent. Simulate adversity, fear. Share feelings. Share weaknesses with colleague, competitor.  Mentor – HR intervention, network.

IT + art, culture = animation. Flick tennis. Anujay. Ebook into animation. Curran Deshmukh VFX Chicago Richard Gere. Dance.

ATT head of sales in 1998. Failure with ppl. Do I give up theme of trusting? Linkedin says retired life, grandchildren. Yoyoed between MNC n startup. Good for scaling up. Value system. For all managers across 200k employees, 85 countries.

21 ppl in 1 week. Pune, hyd, Bangalore. 2000 pace silicon.

Market capturing idea with conviction. Create market or expand. Arbitrary projection. Committed core team. Captain’s rock -48hrs. Rope in angel investor. Key processes of governance. Fallback on friends for recruitment. Anand.khandekar1@gmail.com

Abhay Vaidya, exDNA editor. Vandana Gadia press. Saikat Dutta.

500 in Breakfast, 2000 in My story, 150 in workshop. Hpc for cross functional area. True evangelist at work

Social media for doctors

I was privileged to be a faculty for social media marketing, blogging for doctors at Maharashtra University of Health Sciences. There were 25 doctors, who were present there as part of CME (continuing medical education). They earned 4 points out of it. Medical informatics is green-field space in India and a lot of development will take place in near future. I enjoyed talking about blogging, wiki, Facebook marketing, Twitter and Health 2.0 with wonderful participants. Looking forward to interact with all of you at:

• http://www.facebook.com/prasoonk
• http://twitter.com/prasoonk
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/prasoonk
• http://www.slideshare.net/prasoonk

GPCON 2009

GP (General Practitioners) across Maharashtra congregated for a conference GPCON’09 on 5th and 6th December at Yashwantrao Chavan Natyagruha, Kothrud, Pune. It was organised by the General Practitioners’ Association and Indian Medical Association. It focused on empowering family physicians with knowledge, attitude and skills to don the role of a true superspecialist. Experts made presentations on pyrexia, hypertension, obesity, endocrinology and cardiology. Besides paper presentations and workshops, there were essay competition, best clinic competition, free paper presentation and poster competition on swine flu. The stalls of various healthcare IT companies and pharmaceutical companies provided a lot of insights into new stuff coming into the market.

Get Birth Certificate Online

[Update: Apr 2012] The online system is completely broken for citizens. Even though decentralization was done in 2009 and 14 ward offices were supposed to ease Kasba Peth’s burden, the same is not effective from my personal experience.

[Update: May 2011] According to Times of India report: Citizens have said that the status of complaint does not change for months, on the online redressal system once it is forwarded to the departments concerned. I have used http://punecorporation.org/pmcwebn/ptax/ptaxhome.asp to pay my property tax. They have a demo for the same as well. There is a lot of utility on PMC corporation site, but most are non0fucntional, incl online birth certificate. PMC has claimed since May 2008, that online birth certificate is possible.

[Update: March 2011] The site has not been accessible for a couple of years now. So, I decided to file a complaint at PMC e-governance site. They have given me a complaint number. I was quite impressed actually. I immediately got an SMS and they mentioned GRS helpline number – (020) 6634 4203.

Number :751666360
Complaint about :Statistic & Computer
Complaint Description  :http://punecorporation.org:8888/onlineassesment/faces/property/PrintCertificates.jspx is not accessible.
Resolution time : 2 days
Date of Registration  :3/11/2011 8:23:52 AM
Complaint assigned to  :Vishwanath Sabani
Ward Office number :25501000
Ward Office address: Pune Municipal Corporation, Shivaji Nagar, Pune.

[end of Update]

According to Pune Municipal document, it is compulsory register birth and death within 21 days. Pune Municipal Corporation has improved it site for birth certificate. Now you can can not easily print birth certificate, even though the eGovernance report says so.

http://www.punecorporation.org:8888/onlineassesment/faces/property/PrintCertificates.jspx

Following details are required.

• Normal & Delayed Registration
• Child Details – Gender, DOB, Time, Weight, Name, Birth Place etc.
• Parent Details – Name, Address, Qualification, Occupation
• Delivery Method, Informant Details, Attachments in case of delayed registrations