8 Ways to Gain an Edge over Your Competitors

Unlike what many fledgling startups might believe, a breakthrough product/service isn’t a fool proof road to success. Given the oversaturated markets today, startups often struggle to find a hold in the market after launching themselves into the race. In order to stay on top of the game, it’s mandatory for the startups to work out innovative strategies that would give them a competitive edge. Hence, before stepping into the market only to find themselves struggling to create an identity for themselves, it’s advisable for the startups to chalk out the key differentiator that stands them apart from the rest. Here are a few fundamental pointers that you must remind yourself of in order to gain an edge over your competitors.

Focus on the Need

First thing first. No path-breaking innovation is good enough if it fails to serve the need. We often see startups getting swayed by a fit of passion and enthusiasm for an idea/innovation that they think is unflinchingly brilliant. You cannot make the need fit into the innovation. It’s exactly the other way round.

While looking for a problem, make sure it isn’t your own bias-ridden problem, but rather a problem that infests a good number of people who shall constitute your chunk consumers. Do your research to confirm whether the problem in question is a problem the people are talking about too. According to the CBI insights, 42% startups fail because they try to ‘tackle a problem that’s interesting to resolve rather than those that serve a market need.’

Observe your competitors

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” said the wise men. The secret to staying ahead in the competition is to closely track your competitors. Know the things that are working wonders for them. Minutely follow their marketing strategies. Deep dive into their promotion activities that are conspicuously yielding benefits. Also analyse the gaps in their offerings to strengthen your products. Fortunately, today’s digital world has made it quite easier to monitor the competitors with help of various digital tools.

Stay in loop with technology

In today’s competitive world of business, startups must leverage technology to beat the slack. COVID-19 has magnified the need to stay abreast with technology like never before. Be it working from home, managing projects and database, communicating with customers and businesses, or automating workflows – technology is the key to multiplying efficiency and smoothing the rough edges.

Make your customers feel valued

More than half of the battle is won if you have achieved your customers’ loyalty. What better way to achieve this than to make your customers feel valued! To make the customers choose you over your competitors, make offers that clearly speak of your edge over the rest. Don’t hesitate going that extra mile to strike a personal chord with your customers and augment the overall customer experience. While it isn’t advisable to completely do away with transactional marketing, relationship marketing is the key to making your customers return to you with, possibly, a group of new ones as well.

Let the assumptions go for a toss

You may come with assumptions based on your experiences and learnings. Running a startup comes with its own sets of challenges that would require dynamic redressals. Be flexible enough to let your assumptions go for a toss – be it about your own business or of the competitors. Rather trust the real-time data. This will help you stay on your toes to handle the shifts and navigate better as and when required.

Hire judiciously

Most of the early-stage startups have limited bandwidth. This makes it even more crucial to hire a team that is brilliant skill-wise, and is aligned with your passion and goals for the company. A team that is willing to walk that extra mile and has a brilliant knack for innovating solutions and resolving bottlenecks in crunch situations.

Build a strong Brand personality

When it comes to building a strong brand personality, Apple is the king of the game. Brand personality is a set of traits that the customers perceive a brand with.

The first step to building a strong personality is to know your business in and out. Determine how you would want to be perceived. Gauge the strengths of your business that you’d want to communicate and would help you carve a niche. The idea is to create a distinctive demeanour of your brand that will instantly make you stand apart from your competitors.

Network extensively

This is another important factor that startups often fail to lend enough weightage to. Remember that entrepreneurs thrive because of the people they know rather than what they know.

Building a strong network is a crucial factor deciding the success and sustainability of a startup. So, focus on building and nurturing a support network of likeminded people who could be your peers or people from the business world. You will be surprised to see the number of times you will be able to fend off the risks of failure.

Here are a few reasons you must network extensively:

It gives you and your brand visibility and builds your reputation.
It improves your confidence.
It helps you to get prequalified referrals that could be converted into permanent clients.
Networking is the most appropriate way of getting mentorship and guidance. Fellow entrepreneurs or investors can offer you advice on different matters.
Opens the gate to mutual sharing of knowledge across various industries that helps everyone grow together.

Agrithink: How this startup from Assam is poised for a place among the most impactful agritech startups in India

25JunJune 25, 2021 By startupassam

In a country where agriculture forms the backbone of its economy, contributions being made to hold it upright are surprisingly scarce still. The problem lies not in the lack of capable minds, but in the hesitant attitude towards adopting more advanced methods combined with the lack of motivation to change that. There is always light at the end of a tunnel, and the time to bask in that light has arrived for our farmers. Agritech startups in India are working day in and day out to hold the backbone of our economy upright by integrating technology into the agricultural sector. Agrithink Services is one of Northeast India’s rising agritech startups that is working towards this integration and also helping farmers adapt to this revolution.

Agrithink’s main product/service is a sensor and app-based climate monitoring system called the Smart Micro-Climate Monitoring and Control System (SMMCS). One of the main challenges faced in the agricultural sector is the lack of data, which has time and again proven to be a big obstacle when it comes to providing optimal climate conditions to crops. This is one of the major reasons behind the failure of crops. With an IoT-powered system that can monitor and store data regarding parameters like temperature, moisture, and soil pH, the SMMCS is capable of monitoring any protected agricultural settings like greenhouses or mushroom cultivations. All that one needs to do is log into the app using a login ID and the ability to monitor the plantation’s micro-climate will be in their hands along with the ability to irrigate their crops when need be.

This patented revolutionary system has won Agrithink Services the attention of numerous businesses as well as individual consumers. The Sikkim Government has shown immense interest in the SMMCS along with the desire to adopt this technology for all the agricultural beneficiaries in their state once the pandemic curbs are lifted. Apart from the SMMCs, Agrithink Services is also working on a soil health management service. Dr. Bijaylakshmi Goswami, a co-founder of Agrithink Services, emphasizes the importance of soil and expresses how the lack of data regarding the various parameters of soil is a matter of concern that needs to be looked into.

Dr. Bijalakshmi Goswami (left) in the field with Taufik Ahmed (right)

In a world like the one we live in, technology has become an inseparable part of nearly every sector. There is a need for pioneers from different fields to make this revolution happen to unleash every sector’s optimum potential. Agritech startups in India, like Agrithink Services, are doing exactly that – bringing out the true potential in agriculture by steadfastly battling the challenge of getting the farmers on board to put this revolutionary integration into motion headfirst.

“We can’t sit back thinking that the farmers will not be open to these changes. How will they if we simply just feed them words and hesitate to get into the field ourselves? We need to show them how it works and that it actually works and not just push them to the point of getting overwhelmed and ultimately refusing to adopt these new changes,” Dr. Bijaylakshmi rightfully says.

The desire to be a part of this revolution was born in Dr. Bijaylakshmi, a Doctorate in Biotechnology when she became a part of a wide range of projects for SmartFusionware which exposed her to the true potential of IoT and ICT. She met like-minded people while at work, like co-founder Taufik Ahmed, and decided to jump on board to bring about tech integration into agriculture. Thus, were sown the seeds of Agrithink Services leading to its launch in the year 2019.

2020 proved to one of the hardest ever mountains to climb for people all around the world. However, for determined individuals like Dr. Bijaylakshmi and Taufik Ahmed, a challenge is by no means a reason to halt in their journey to the peak. Thanks to the founders’ hard work, Agrithink Services received the MASI grant amidst the pandemic, etching their name permanently in the book of successful agritech startups in India. Dr. Bijaylakshmi says, “When you receive recognitions as big as the MASI grant, it’s a push in the right direction. You realize that you’re on the right path and have every right to believe in yourself.” She admits to the grant truly helping them put their plans for Agrithink into motion.

In a fast-paced world with innovative minds coming up with one thing or the other at every corner, the courage to come up with something new ourselves is a big challenge. One needs to have faith in themselves to taste the air of success. On being asked if she ever faced any problems in the entrepreneurial world because of her gender, Dr. Bijaylakshmi brings to notice a very important lesson that every individual, regardless of their gender, needs to remember.

“Problems exist in every field, regardless of one’s gender. The right way to go about dealing with them is by not making them the focal point of our journey.”

Dr. Bijaylakshmi believes that even though being a woman comes with its own set of challenges, there exist some big perks too. She mentions how being a woman has helped her make a stronger impact by being one of the women pioneers in the tech world. This is exactly the kind of motivation we need to keep working towards our goals.

The pandemic might be here to stay for an indefinite amount of time, but that surely doesn’t mean we be rendered powerless to go about working towards our goals. Although it did pose some problems in the initial days of their launch concerning gaining validation from the farmers and other clients regarding their products/services, Agrithink Services is currently fully focused on putting their next service into motion and is meticulously working on it while at home. They have full faith that the startup will reach its target revenue by the end of the current year regardless of the pandemic.

Agritech startups in India are doing a wonderful job at bringing about the necessary changes to take agriculture to new heights. What comes first is putting in the best possible efforts and recognition as well as success shall follow. The co-founders fully believe that Agrithink Services is set to achieve big milestones in the coming years and become one of the most well-known agritech startups in India owing to the revolutionary services provided by them. They also believe in their startup’s potential at creating new employment opportunities. This especially aligns perfectly with Dr. Bijaylakshmi’s previous endeavors of helping women from marginalized communities find opportunities to sustain their living.

To bring a plan to fruition, no matter how well orchestrated it might be, is no child’s play. There come into play numerous factors that need pillars for support. Agrithink Services and its success so far is no different. During the initial months of its development, Assam Startup and IIM Calcutta Innovation Park proved to be the pillars for Agrithink Services. Both Taufik and Dr. Bijaylakshmi express their immense gratitude towards these organizations while admitting that all that they needed to put the plans into motion, they learned from these very organizations. They also mention the value that these names add to the startup and express their pleasure to have earned the right to be associated with these two organizations.

SPOKEHUB: Pedaling its way to a cycling cult

05FebFebruary 5, 2021 By startupassam

Among the myriad epiphanies and the changing lifestyle habits that the pandemic has unleashed over the last several months, mankind’s renewed enthusiasm for bicycling would, perhaps, sit right among the top 5 post-lockdown adaptations that all of us would want to see being trending for long. While the urban dwellers across the globe seem to get smitten with the eco-friendliness and health benefits of bicycling today, Bikash Doley and Ajanta Boro had their passion rested on the pedals since the time when luxury cars made a better choice for people over bicycles. The thrill and the sense of freedom that these non-polluting two-wheelers offer to them are over and beyond the comfortable life that their corporate jobs in Kolkata had secured. In 2016, the couple decided on homecoming, which was about to change their lives forever.

Back to their hometown, Guwahati, the duo took their first big step towards living their passion by opening Guwahati Bicycle Rentals – a high-end bicycle renting outlet that also offers customized cycling tours. Soon, a personal experience had brought them face-to-face with the dearth of servicing centres for high-end bicycles in the city. The few that did offer to service were strictly restricted to servicing their brands alone. Without further ado, Bikash and Ajanta had set themselves to shaping up a full-fledged bicycle hub that rented, retailed, customized, and provided complete after-sales servicing of high-end cycles. This had marked the beginning of Spokehub Cycling in 2017.

Spokehub is the go-to stop for everything related to high-end bicycles – right from purchasing, to customizing, to buying riding accessories, to cycle tours, to cycle servicing and maintenance, to sharing camaraderie with a community of people with a common passion.

Sharing her experience of starting a bicycle store in the city back in 2017, Ajanta recalls the scarce footfalls and limited enthusiasm among the people. “There weren’t too many riders in Guwahati back then. One reason could be that there weren’t too many bicycling events to create the excitement and the occasion for riders to use their cycles,” the co-founder says.

Perhaps, it won’t be wrong to mark that although Bikash and Ajanta had rightly gauged the market opportunity for high-end bicycles, they still had a task in hand to rejuvenate that market. They took things in stride to design bicycling events in Assam that naturally attracted riders from across the country to participate. Tables began to turn sooner as the latent riders in the region saw an opportunity being finally created for them to practice the thrill.

“Conducting events is a must because if I am buying an expensive bicycle, I would want an occasion to use it as well,” Ajanta explains.

Spokehub started torch-bearing bicycling activities with prolific cycle rallies and adventure sports. Soon, the corporate houses began joining hands as part of their CSR drives. The ripples created by the startup among the rider community didn’t escape the notice of the government departments either. Bikash and Ajanta have bagged government support, both in cash and kind, to organize cycling events that carry an inherent promise of popularizing the healthy habit of bicycling among the people. Besides, they have also been the technical partner for numerous events in Assam.

3 years down the line since starting up, Bikash and Ajanta have activated a bicycling cult in Assam that swears by the camaraderie born from the common passion for thrill coupled with the likeness for simplicity as well as health and environment consciousness. One of their four annual calendar events, the Assam Downhill Championship, has especially been a head-turner for three consecutive years now because of the gravity-defying racing stunts it puts on offer. The pan India participation of riders in the Championship has further consolidated the esprit de corps in the community.

As per the founders, Spokehub is driven by two broad motto: First, to promote cycling as an adventure sport among the youths. Secondly, to offer new goals in the form of health and distance rides to those who have already achieved enough career goals.

Ajanta further informs about forming a special 3-member team from the rider community, who have been leading Spokehub’s Athlete Training Program to inspire and train young riders. These make for an interesting case study on the application of deft strategies to create a market for something not many prospective customers had realized a need for earlier.

From the business perspective, the founders are focused on ensuring repeat customers to make it more sustainable. That is the reason they lay constant emphasis on the bicycle servicing part of the business. “We want the people to purchase bicycles from us and come to us for servicing as well. Banking exclusively on one-time purchases will not be viable from the aspect of sustainability,” Ajanta elucidates.

The decision is faring well for them as the startup is progressing steadily in the number game, with an average monthly revenue bracket of Rs. 35 lakh – Rs. 40 lakh for the last 6 months. For a business that has seen a remarkable spur in the last several months, thanks to the global bicycle boom during the pandemic, Spokehub founders will not want to lose the momentum at any given point in time. Much expected, they are leaving no stone unturned to chalk out a sustainable model for expansion.

Alongside the two stores in Guwahati, Ajanta and Bikash will soon be launching a new bicycle hub in Upper Assam. Their e-commerce site for mountain bikes will be up this year. Interestingly, they have also started training the technicians at bicycle stores in North East India to enable competent servicing in those stores. Ajanta informs about their plan to conduct training in a quintessential classroom setup with structured schedules soon.

The stone has started rolling for Spokehub, but Bikash and Ajanta attribute a good part of their recent developments to Assam Startup. Before getting incubated at Assam Startup – The Nest, the duo devoted their efforts to perfecting their offerings while the processes were given a miss. But the interactions with the mentors from IIM Calcutta Innovation Park during the incubation have helped them streamline their processes for a more efficient back-end operation.

“Our billing processes were mainly offline. But now, we have got a cloud-based platform that has streamlined the process. As we grow and expand, we have also realized the need to focus on HR like never before. Incubation at The Nest has further helped us pick up the much-needed financial aspects of a business. Assam Startup has given us a definite direction to structure our startup better,” Ajanta concludes.

The startup was also awarded a MASI (My Assam Startup ID) Scale-up grant of Rs. 15 lakh in the first tranche last year by the honourable Chief Minister, Sri Sarbananda Sonowal, at The Nest during a celebratory event – Udyam Assam.

As per estimates, India’s bicycle industry is worth Rs. 7000 crore. And with the pandemic not just magnifying the benefits of bicycling as a form of exercise but also as a means to commute, Spokehub is positioned perfectly in the clock to scale up to a national level in the coming days.

Knowing that scaling up nationally would require a fresh round of market research, manpower, a well thought out Go-To-Market strategy, and heavy capital at disposal, the journey will surely not be any less nerve-wracking than participating in a cycle race on rough terrains. And yet, when asked if given a choice whether they would go back to chairing an esteemed corporate post or continue with the struggles and risks of running a startup, pat comes Ajanta’s reply: “Of course, we will choose the struggle over the security of a corporate job. It has brought us back peace of mind. Despite the insurmountable amount of hard work, we are now a pair of happy startup founders. And there’s no way that we’d let this go.”

Satarupa Mishra

5 tips to get back to work after Vacation

27Oct By startupassam

It’s always a task to frisk back to the groove after a frolicking vacation. Yet, there’s no way but to leave behind the sun-kissed days at the beach and crawl back to the reality of the workplace. I say ‘crawl’ and not ‘jump’ because the harder you try to pull your mind out of the vacation zone, the more tasking it would get. The idea is to take your time, be lenient to yourself, gradually train your mood, allow the work reminders sweetly knock at you until you are reloaded to get back into action. Here are 5 simple, yet effective hacks to find your rhythm back to work after vacation.

Do not rush into doing things all at once

Ideally, it’s always a good idea to take a day before going back to work after vacation. Given that time might not be luxuriously available to many, take the day slow, even if you are getting down to business the very next day after the break. Take time to clean and jazz up the desk, order your favourite comfort food, roughly run through the pending plans, and make a few phone calls to reconnect. This way, you will allow the much-needed time for your mind to relax, recuperate, and come to terms with your demanding business schedules.

Take time to plan out the day

You might be someone who prefers going with the flow than planning the day ahead. But to get yourself back to business post a holiday, charting a to-do-list for the day and the next is a wise bet. This helps you revisit the work that needs to be done and prioritize immediate actions.

Start with the pending tasks rather than jumping straight away to the new projects. This will give you a sense of familiarity that shall help you get back to the groove early. Focus on tasks that come easy to you without taking much time. Small successes help boost confidence before setting off to strike big.

Don’t get lost in the mailbox

Expect unread mails piling up in the mailbox while you were vacationing. Do not spend too much time answering the emails you had missed during the break. It will stress you out more and you end up confusing email activities with productive work. Rather use your time strategically and only respond to the emails that are time-sensitive and need your immediate attention for yielding fruitful outcomes.

Drop a greeting to the stakeholders

Utilise the time to reconnect with your team and stakeholders, letting them know that you are back and ready to talk business. Try to stay more informal in your tone, asking them about their whereabouts, and sharing a few anecdotes from your trip. This helps restrike an immediate connection and plaster the lapse in the communication while you were bonding with your friends or family at a holiday destination.

Get back to work with a new perspective

Going back to work after a vacation is likely to trigger immediate stress considering the workload that you had left behind for that much-needed break. Yet, know that the vacation was essential for you to clear the mental impasse and come back with a bang. Sometimes, getting away from the business for a short while becomes important to give a kickstart to the work. Be open to the idea of embracing fresh perspectives post a break and you will be surprised with the gush of new ideas flowing to give your business strategies a fresh standpoint.

Failures are unpredictable. Being an entrepreneur, you must have especially encountered failures like no one else. From Rovio to Microsoft, there are numerous examples of how the startup founders made failure their stepping stones and rose from the ashes like a Phoenix to achieve success. Here are a few simple hacks to deal with failures.

Assam aquaculture startups: Casting the net right

25SepSeptember 25, 2020 By startupassam

Assam stands among the highest fish consuming states in the country. The Assamese people’s love for fish is very much evident from its regional cuisines like Maasor Tenga, Patot Dia Xaru Maas etc. Naturally, fish farming poses a huge livelihood-supporting scope in the State. The fact that Assam is blessed with a subtropical climate, vast aquatic resources and rich piscine biodiversity makes it a suitable hub for aquaculture. However, despite the boons, there is a huge gap between the demand for quality fish and the production/distribution of the same. Primitive farming methods and disrupted supply chain are the major reasons for this.

In India, the fishery sector provides livelihoods to an estimated 10 million people. In Assam, the sector contributes over 2% to the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and plays a crucial part in providing livelihood to a significant population of the state. The state is abundant in freshwater bodies, conducive for fish farming. The two major river systems – Brahmaputra and Barak, several beels, lakes, tanks/ ponds, and swamps are endowed with valuable fishery resources.

There has been a spike in fish farming in recent years. However, it hasn’t been enough to meet the demands, 3.36 lakh tonnes a year. To meet the gap, the state depends on the leading fish producing states like Andhra Pradesh. But this doesn’t compensate the demands for local fish varieties either.

Looking at the huge scope of aquaculture in Assam, scientific fish cultivation is conspicuously encouraged and propagated by the State. This has particularly opened avenues for new generation entrepreneurs and startups to innovate lucrative business models around aquaculture while leveraging new-age technologies.

Biofloc is an emerging technology enabling greater aquatic production in a smaller area and involving minimum cost. A number of small entrepreneurs and startups are joining the party to leverage the technology for greater production, both in terms of number and variety.

Fish-A-Live, an Assam Startup incubatee, is producing local fish varieties like magoor, singi, kawoi, sitol, borali, prawn, etc. using the biofloc technology. The startup is also developing a unique portable aerated box that retains the freshness of the fish while retailing them out. The box can monitor dissolved oxygen level and is equipped with a solar-powered LED and the air pump that keeps alive the fish for longer hours. Founded by Debajit Mahanta and Abdul Sajad, the startup is currently operating at Tezpur in Assam with 4 biofloc tanks and will be expanding to other towns soon.

Considering the fact that biofloc culture is relatively new in the state, there’s a conspicuous need for awareness, promotion, and dissemination of knowledge about the technology. It has tremendous potential to create livelihood opportunities for people, especially in rural areas. Understanding this need and the potential, another Assam Startup incubatee, Jolkuwori, is imparting free biofloc training to the native unemployed/people from the low-income category towards enabling them for self-employment and a steady source of livelihood. Founders, Dipankar Kashyap and Partha Protim Goswami aren’t only creating awareness among the common people, but also helping them set up biofloc tanks at a minimal cost. Jolkuwori’s engagement involves right from the training to setting up biofloc tanks to maintenance. Besides, the startup runs an independent fishery employing biofloc technology to breed a gamut of local fish varieties. To date, Jolkuwori has trained over 500 people and has facilitated the setting up of 15 biofloc tanks. They earned over Rs. 83,000 from setup and services in August and sourced a revenue of Rs. 63,000 from fish harvesting in the same month. The startup has designed a viable roadmap, with 20 more biofloc installations in the pipeline and projected revenue of Rs. 4 lakhs for October.

Jovial Barman, an engineer by qualification, identified the unorganized nature of the fishery sector in Assam. He noticed how the supply chain was disrupted due to motley factors like long transportation hours, fluctuating prices, and the perishable nature of fish, etc. COVID-19 and the perennial days of lockdown have disrupted the chain further. The situation drove Jovial and his three peers from Nalbari to work out a solution to the issue. They have founded a startup, Kolong, to meet the ever-rising demands for fish through a centralized fish market run in both online and offline modes, with a conscious effort to enforce price uniformity. While the customers will be able to place their orders on their website www.kolong.in (to be launched shortly) for doorstep delivery, they are also building one-stop physical stores with all facilities to retain the freshness of the fish so that the customers can make live picks without compromising on the quality. Starting their operations since August this year, the startup is currently operational at Nalbari with plans for expansion in the months ahead.

These are just a handful of instances from the lot. A good number of youths from the state are coming forward to finding remedies to push fish production, smoothening the supply chains, and spreading awareness about emerging fish farming technologies for empowering local populations with self-employment ideas and skills. Proper utilization of the vast aquatic resources and innovative solutions for mending the erratic supply chain can pave the way for the growth of the fishing industry that will not just meet the local demands, but also export the surplus to the neighboring states and even to the South East Asian markets. And the emerging startups and entrepreneurs must play a crucial role in unleashing that potential.

Failures show the way to success. Read about the 5 take-home stories of startup failure here.

Quick Ghy sets to pose as Guwahati’s answer to UrbanClap

27Jul By startupassam

The service sector has been an emerging domain in India with cities coming up with smart solutions to everything. Owing to the increasing demand for daily essentials in the cities, a Guwahati based startup – Quick Ghy Pvt. Ltd – has started a digital marketplace for services.

Quick Ghy is a unified platform for services that allows users to list their services online and help them get connected to potential clients. It works on building an instant, reliable, and convenient platform that allows users to access home care and personal care services in the comfort of their homes.

Siblings Gaurav Medhi and Drishti Medhi identified the pain point of the urban households in getting access to instant reliable services that have emerged as a necessity due to a busy urban lifestyle. Without wasting much time, they decided to act on designing a solution that would result in a win-win game for both the hyperlocal service providers and the users. They laid the foundation of Quick Ghy in June 2019 and had soon started gaining decent traction.

An incubatee from the second Cohort at Assam Startup – The Nest, Quick Ghy offers an array of home care services like plumber, electrician, carpenter, dietician, psychology counselor, deep cleaning, personal grooming and beauty, and personal fitness.

With the COVID-19 posing challenges for people and businesses, Quick Ghy has started sanitization services for both domestic and commercial spaces like the Central Bank of India office in Guwahati. A team of service partners in PPE kits sanitizes the space after undergoing due temperature checks.

Starting up with Rs. 3 Lakh as capital, Quick Ghy has come a good way in just a year, catering to more than 1000+ households and commercial places to date. With a keen understanding of the unserved needs of the people at this hour, the startup has tailored virtual sessions on fitness and mental wellbeing and is also working on enabling home visits for delivering personal grooming services while maintaining strict safety norms.

Quick Ghy is, currently, banking on their social media handles, leaflets, and word of mouth to disseminate awareness about their existence. Works are underway to get the App in place soon.

Coming from a business family, it won’t be an exaggeration to comment on the siblings’ inherent drive to innovate solutions.

“Having had the niche to explore and the urge to contribute towards a greater goal, we decided to pave our path towards entrepreneurship,” Drishti says.

However, the inheritance of key entrepreneurial traits did not make their journey any easier in the early days. Asked about the key challenges that they had faced, the sibling founders are quick to point out about the trials undertaken to establish the product-market fit. With national players like UrbanClap already making their pan India presence loud and clear, the people of Guwahati do have a fair idea of the digital marketplace. But, gaining the confidence of the customers about their services being at par with those national players was tasking that demanded a good amount of patience and persistence. The issue of logistics, especially in times of COVID-19 has been posing another major challenge. Nevertheless, the young founders have fared well to overcome those challenges and carve a way for themselves.

Their positive spirit and entrepreneurial zeal are evident in their vision to go pan India in the next 3 years in the face of bigger and more experienced competitors existing in the market. More than anything else, their mission lies in impacting livelihoods and helping the thousands of vocationally skilled workers in the country find easy access to the market. The process has already begun as the Guwahati-based service providers, working with Quick Ghy, have already recorded a spur in their earnings. For instance, the electricians working with Quick Ghy have witnessed a sharp rise in their income from Rs. 5000 a month to Rs. 10, 000. It’s this impact-oriented perspective that is expected to take Quick Ghy to places.

Perhaps, all that they would need right now is a bit of support and confidence of the locals from their city, Guwahati, because, no matter wherever the climax might lead them to, their success story must germinate in the hometown.

Here’s a story about a startup that has launched an app to organize all the donations and distributions of the COVID-19 relief materials by a number of volunteers & volunteering organizations in the Cachar district of Assam.

By: Satarupa Mishra

Gyan Panda, an ed-tech startup from Assam earns ₹2 Lakhs in 3 months since launch

23JulJuly 23, 2020 By startupassam

Call it a fluke or a meticulous plan, the ed-tech startup, Gyan Panda, has launched the online learning app at a time when the world has realized the need for remote learning platforms more than ever.

In 2019, founders Manash Boruah, Dibakar Dutta, Bhaskar Jyoti Dutta, and Pravakar Dutta explored the need for a bi-lingual digital learning platform that would help students from Assamese medium schools to undergo a smooth transition to the predominantly English mode of learning at the higher secondary and degree levels. The high-priced packages at coaching centres and uneven availability of these centres in the remote districts of Assam were the other problems that they wished to address.

Manash, an engineering student in Jorhat, chanced upon a conversation on social media with Dibakar Dutta, an engineer by profession. While they discussed the idea, Dibakar got Bhaskar and Pravakar on board as well. Together they brainstormed for months to design high school and higher secondary level tutorials for SEBA courses that would help the students clear their concepts.

Gyan Panda was incorporated in October 2019 and sooner works got kick-started to develop the online tutorial app. Gyan Panda started offering online video tutorials for Mathematics Advanced Mathematics, Science, English, and Physics for students from ninth, tenth, and twelfth standards. While the mode of instructions remained predominantly Assamese, they soon launched Mathematics classes in English while obliging to the user demands. Works are underway to introduce Assamese and Social Science as well, which, the founders intend to offer for free.

Apart from these regular subjects, Gyan Panda has a special section catering to the basic concepts of Mathematics for those who need special care to grasp the basic concepts. Besides, there’s a Basic English Grammar course and an Extra Curriculum section focussed on career guidance, etc. Interestingly, these sections are offered for free. The Live Test section enables students to write class tests for gauging their performance.

Currently, there are 8 faculty members on board, giving out meticulously designed video tutorials. The number is expected to go up to 10 with the introduction of the two new subjects – Assamese and Social Science.

Gyan Panda is offering the school level courses for an annual subscription fee of Rs. 600 per subject, while the higher secondary level classes are on offer for Rs. 1200 per subject. A quarterly instalment option is also available, especially to make it more affordable for the people from the lower economic strata.

Acknowledging the inadequate knowledge of online payment among many, Gyan Panda has introduced a Help section especially to guide users on the process of making online payments. Furthermore, they have reserved the bank deposit option for those who aren’t comfortable with the digital payment method.

The startup has smartly leveraged the current demand for remote learning to rev up the revenue right after the start. Since its launch in April 2020, the Gyan Panda app has witnessed over 37, 000 downloads, with the daily active users tallying to around 2200. As Manash informs, the users are increasing by 500 every day. Till last month, the startup had made a total revenue of Rs. 2 lakhs, recording a phenomenal revenue growth of 117% in June.

While the founders are ideating new features almost every day, they are undertaking research and analysis of the existing digital learning platforms in the market to identify loopholes and cull out key learnings that could be applied to Gyan Panda to make it more effective and user-friendly. For instance, Manash points out about the relative ineffectiveness of animated educational videos for slow learners, who need special handholding by the teachers. “We feel that we cannot completely do away with a classroom environment, especially for students who need more time to absorb learnings. We are planning to introduce live classes in the future while making a conscious effort to create a classroom environment,” Manash informs.

As big names in the startup investment world are quietly keeping an eye on promising ed-tech startups in the wake of the pandemic, the one like Gyan Panda is expected to hold a strong ground in the race for impact-driven innovations in the education sector.

By: Satarupa Mishra

Guwahati baker rustles up innovative ways of serving Black Rice

09Jul By startupassam

Innovation can take place anywhere – in a lab, a hostel room, or even in the kitchen. While the popular buzz for innovation revolves around technological breakthroughs, one cannot dismiss its existence even in things as basic as food. If the general definition of innovation includes a new product or a new method of utilizing an existing product towards serving the market needs better, a home baker’s craft to rustle up innovative ways of serving black rice can, arguably, fit in the definition as well.

Keyaa Das Choudhury’s experiment with black rice makes an inspirational pocketbook for those who remain smitten with a thing of wonder, but could not think of creative ways to put it to the right use.

When Keyaa Das Choudhury, a homemaker based in Guwahati, came across black rice at a fair in Guwahati, she was bowled over by its tremendous health benefits. After asking around for a recipe, she finally prepared a regular black rice pudding. Although happy with the outcome, she couldn’t contend herself with making just a single recipe of this wonderful ingredient.

“My husband didn’t like the pudding much. Or let’s just say that it was more of a regular item tried and tested down the generations. It was disappointing to see such a wholesome ingredient getting wasted in a single recipe. There had to be other ways to cook it. There must be more people like my husband who look for better serving variations to it,” Keyaa says.

Two years later, someone from her family had gifted her another packet of black rice bought from Manipur. This time, she decided to try and spin her wand (a spatula in this case) to try out something new with this Midas ingredient. She pulled out her grandmother’s recipe of a regular cake baked in an ethnic coal stove. But instead of the regular flour, she experimented with black rice. To her surprise and relief, the black rice cake came out better than she had expected. Her next experiment was to make the cake more palatable for her kids and tried baking layered cakes with delectable icing. Her experiment worked this time as well.

Ecstatic and encouraged by the success, she baked a cake for her two acquaintances from the Assamese film fraternity, Surjya Hazarika and Malaya Goswami. She disclosed to them, for the first time, her clandestine urge to start her own venture – an all-black rice bakery. The movie stalwarts enthusiastically validated her idea. In fact, Malaya Goswami was the first customer of Keyaa’s Black Rice Creative Baker’s Industry launched in 2019, ordering for an eggless black rice cake.

From that day to date, Keyaa’s focus has relentlessly been on innovating wide varieties of black rice desserts and savories. Though designer cakes and cupcakes are her specialties, she makes equally scrumptious chocolates, biscuits, dosas, idlis, cutlets, and laddus – all made from black rice. Her special salted black rice tekeli pitha (an Assamese recipe traditionally made with sticky rice, jaggery, and grated coconut) and savory black rice cakes with chicken and cottage cheese are must-tries for those who love experimental cuisines. Perhaps, it won’t be entirely wrong to call her culinary twists with black rice as a remote form of incremental innovation that increases the value of an existing product for consumers.

Of course, Keyaa’s quirky black rice fares weren’t perfected overnight. It required time, effort, and perseverance to get the proportions, temperature, and the ingredient combinations right. The appetizing outcome is all set to make the difference for people who swear by the nutritious benefits of black rice.

Keyaa’s out-of-the-box black rice dishes have rewarded her with around 50 regular customers from Guwahati and Kokrajhar, receiving 4-5 orders for designer cakes each day, on an average. As a baker, Keyaa dreams of the day when she could represent India in the global market for the indigenous confectionery and chocolate items.

A self-taught chef and a mother of two sons, Keyaa is taking baby steps every day to hone her entrepreneurial acumen. Keyaa’s creative mind conceived the idea of popularizing black rice through a variety of scrumptious delicacies. Next, through her trial and error experiments, she has succeeded in innovatively dishing out enjoyable black rice eatables. Perhaps, with a bit more focus on strategic business practices, a new chapter awaits to unleash and reward her efforts with a profitable enterprise. Especially given the current tide skewing towards indigenous products and local innovations, the right kind of branding and promotion can give Keyaa’s Black Rice Creative Baker’s Industry deserving access to the global market.

By: Satarupa Mishra

Naga woman, Akitoli Suu, creates buzzword for sustainable living with her organic toiletries

02JulJuly 2, 2020 By startupassam

Women in North East India have been known for their courage and industriousness. It is their impeccable grit and knack for business that has pushed Ima Keithal in Manipur as the largest all women’s market in the map of Asia. So, when we chanced upon the story of Akitoli Suu coming back home in Dimapur, Nagaland to start her business venture, it didn’t surprise us.

Following her 8-year stint in the US and the UK as an expert nutritionist, Akitoli decided to make a homecoming in 2012 and engage in her father’s rubber plantation. It was during this time that she developed an attachment with Nature and began unearthing its blessings. The 38-year old also started maintaining a vegetable garden towards pursuing an organic and sustainable lifestyle.

Akitoli’s choice of adopting a natural way of life also drove her to explore natural alternatives to the chemical-laden toiletries and healing ointments. She did thorough research on the harmful effects of chemicals on skin and decided to experiment with making soaps at home using natural ingredients.

The first time she made soaps, Akitoli Suu decided to get the quality validated by her friends and family. The positive feedbacks from them encouraged her to carry on with her experiments to create her line of organic soaps. The trial and feedback cycle continued for another 6 months.

Learning and unlearning through her experiments in the kitchen, Akitoli Suu finally founded Angry Mother Soap Co. in 2014. Her soaps are abundantly infused with the natural goodness of coconut oil, olive oil, lemongrass, almond, garden fresh tomatoes, papayas, oats, French red clay, calendula, Shea butter, fresh cow milk, hemp, flowers, and aromatic essential oils.

Having carved a niche for herself in organic soap making, Akitoli slowly expanded her range to other toiletries like shampoo bars, perfume sticks, lip balms, body butter, foot creams, elbow grease, pain relief balms, massage oils, and pet soaps, among others.

Akitoli makes sure to add the wow element in her soap designs. From cupcake shaped soaps to the neon-colored varieties that glow in the dark – she incorporates flabbergasting designs to masterful outcomes.

All her products are organic certified by USDA and India Organic.

With over 35,000 units of soaps being sold so far that includes serving orders from the local hotels in the state, Angry Mother Soap Co. churns out an annual turnover of around Rs. 6 lakhs.

They say that what looks good also sells well. Akitoli’s product packaging is as interesting as the name of her company. The recycled paper packs are handcrafted and come with cool labels, depicting the 16 official tribes of Nagaland in their traditional attires.

She has a store at Thilixu in Dimapur that has been wonderfully done to create a natural ambience for customers to get sold on to her product offerings. Though she doesn’t have a website yet, Akitoli’s brand has been able to garner decent exposure through Facebook and Instagram accounts. The buzz created around the products has also helped her bag B2B collaborations with establishments such as The Farm Chennai.

We can’t wait to see her company website, which, she says, will be launched in the coming days. Akitoli is about to make her way onto the online retail platforms that are expected to push the sales further.

Her mother being a businesswoman working on traditional handlooms, one might say that entrepreneurship runs in Akitoli’s blood. Yet, to manage two full-time employees and ransack her brains to come up with standalone branding and sales strategies demand a world of determination, persistence, homework, and knowledge. As much as innovation, entrepreneurship is the cumulative result of innate acumen, core intent, and acquired skills. And Akitoli Suu is surely shifting gears meticulously to achieve her entrepreneurial goals.

By: Satarupa Mishra

Health-tech startup in Assam is making healthcare facilities accessible to all

25Jun By startupassam

If COVID-19 has severely disrupted businesses, it has also accelerated technological innovations to cope with the lockdown norms. Health-tech startup from the Silchar town in Assam, QWKPRO Consultancy has leveraged the opportunity to up the game on digitising healthcare services, integrated on a single platform.

Biswajit Paul gave up a lucrative job to design a healthcare platform in 2016 – QuickOBook – in order to steamroll the hassles faced by patients in getting doctor’s appointments and waiting in long queues at the clinic. The platform enables patients to not just book an appointment, but also live-track it to be able to cut down on the waiting time at the clinic.

While its patient management software connects hospitals, laboratories, doctors, and clinics with patients, the startup’s cloud server, called QOB Connect, stores the medical history, prescription, and test results of the patients for future reference. The startup is also integrating data analytics into the software to offer possible diagnostic indications to the doctors based on the accumulated data about the patients.

Biswajit’s drive to create QuickOBook stemmed from his personal experience of having to trek over two hours to reach the government hospital in Silchar. There was no respite even after reaching the hospital as he had to wait throughout the night to get the appointment tokens to see a doctor. While this struggle for accessing medical facilities might seem alien to the urban dwellers, it is a hard reality for people residing in the far-flung rural areas of the North-Eastern region. That’s when Biswajit realized the need for a solution to ensure timely medical intervention in rural areas in the Barak Valley of Assam.

Interestingly, QWKPRO is outsourcing the QOB Connect software to hospitals, labs, clinics, and doctors for free. Revenue is sourced from the patients, charging them an amount for every doctor’s appointment. They also charge from the doctors for website listing. Besides, the startup earns a commission for lab appointments and medicine orders.

What sets QWKPRO apart from the big players like Practo, DocsApp, and Lybrate is its focus on rural patients. As Biswajit says, the medical sector in the North-Eastern region is largely fragmented and most inaccessible to the rural population. The startup’s objective isn’t just to organise the healthcare sector, but also to facilitate even access to the healthcare facilities, including for those residing in the remotest villages of the region. Acknowledging issues of poor internet connectivity and digital illiteracy in the rural areas, QWKPRO has also designed an offline version that allows patients to schedule appointments through SMS.

Today, the startup has over 1000 doctors enlisted on their website and over 12 hospitals and diagnostic laboratories onboard across the Barak Valley in Assam. They have also penetrated into Tripura and Mizoram, making an annual revenue of Rs. 38 lakhs in 2019-20. The health-tech startup has already connected 2.5 lakh patients in Assam’s Barak Valley and Tripura with medical practitioners.

As it happens with most startup entrepreneurs, Biswajit’s journey has been dotted with challenges. He was wanting in support from his family who aspired to see him chair a coveted position in a government department. Yet, going against the tide, he quit his job at Tata and started working on developing the website in 2016.

“It was difficult convincing the medical practitioners about the QuickOBook. They found no viability in the idea especially given the digital illiteracy among a lion’s share of the population in the region,” Biswajit says.

For a year, the startup went without getting a single appointment request. Subsequently came a phase when the startup founder was faced with a severe cash crunch, which compelled him to take up the job of a Medical Representative in Silchar. The job turned out to be a blessing in disguise in terms of building a network and generating leads.

Meanwhile, Biswajit met Jewel Sen who readily bought his startup idea and agreed to wear the co-founder’s hat. Together they invested around a lakh to build the infrastructure and hire a team.

Tables began to turn after the first year as revenue started to toddle into their kit. In 2018, the startup managed to raise a seed fund of Rs. 10 lakh from a local distributor in Silchar. Since then there has been no looking back.

Today, QWKPRO has an independent office set up in Silchar with 19 employees working under them. They have also roped in an IT team based out of New Delhi to develop the QuickOBook app as well as revamp the website.

With the incubation and nurturing received under Assam Startup – The Nest, NASSCOM, Bengal Chamber of Commerce, and NIT Silchar, QWKPRO is surely barking up the right tree in scripting red-letter success in the coming days.

By: Satarupa Mishra