Document Scanning App 'Kaagaz' Raises Angel Funding; Gets Recognition from Ministry

Kaagaz Founders 

Kaagaz Scanner is an Indian document scanning app, that has come up as a great replacement for Chinese and other non-Indian scanning apps has raised funding of undisclosed amount from few angel investors, said the company /maker of the app.

Available on Android right now, Kaagaz Scanner has gotten a special mention in #AatmaNirbharBharat App Innovation Challenge and have also gotten recognition from Ministry of Education as well.

USPs of Kaagaz Scanner

Currently the app has following unique features and much more are being developed right now –

1. Can work completely offline
2. No Ads & Watermarks
3. Completely Free
4. No Sign In Required

App Link - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kaagaz.scanner.docs.pdf - ONLY ON ANDROID

Kaagaz Scanner is launched by a team of 3 seasoned entrepreneurs, doing their second startup together - Snehanshu Gandhi (IIT Bombay ’07, ISB Hyderabad ’12), Gaurav Shrishrimal (IIT Kanpur ’14) and Tamanjit Singh Bindra (AIT Pune ’06). They have been together working on another product called Sorted AI for over a year now.

The team have been working on another product in productivity space called Sorted AI for last 1 year. When Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi called for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat & Vocal For Local, everyone was talking about building Indian apps and removing foreign apps.

The team further said -

We found out that there is no decent Indian scanning app available in the playstore and that is when we decided to build one ourselves. It also was a natural extension to our other product (Sorted AI) which is an AI powered reminders and tasks app and made sense for us to build it. Since the idea originated from the call for supporting the nation, we felt that an Indian name would be apt for it and hence named it Kaagaz Scanner.

The startup boasts to to see "superb" growth since govt. announcement and adds, "We went from almost zero downloads to 200,000 downloads in 3 days, all organically". As of today the app has over 1 Million downloads on Play Store and 70% of the downloads are from WhatsApp forwards and Social Media outreach. On the 2nd and 3rd day after ban the app was trending at #2 in Productivity and #11 overall ahead of many well known apps.

Further, Kaagaz app has over 60,000 unique users coming to the app everyday and so far more than 10 million pages have been scanned using Kaagaz Scanner in about 1.5 months.

In its future goals, the startup is building a suite of AI powered utility tools that will help users manage their day-to-day tasks seamlessly. Kaagaz Scanner is its primary product right now and it aims to build it into a world class product. The startup is planning to bring more products in coming months.

AskSarkar - Pakki Jankari Powered by CoRover Among the Winners of Aatma Nirbhar App Innovation Challenge

• AskSarkar solves a difficult problem of getting authentic information from government and verified sources


• AskSarkar - Pakki Jankari is built using CoRover Conversational AI Platform which is having 235 million+ users


• 12+ Indian Vernacular Languages and several foreign languages are supported in AskSarkar


• Text, Voice and Video are enabled in AI Chatbot, AskSarkar.com


• These apps are the world class apps which are secure, robust and scalable


• Chingari, Zoho and MapMyIndia are also among the winners


• AskSarkar would soon be created for all the states and for all government departments and eventually be a global web app for the government/verified content

The 'AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge' supported by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY)’s Niti Aayog along with the Atal Innovation Mission, which was launched on July 4 saw participation from more than 6,940 tech entrepreneurs and startups across the country, and saw 24 winners in nine categories. In others category, MapMyIndia, Ask Sarkar and MyITreturn are the top 3 winners.

Years ago, it took days to get hands on essential government documents. A person would call someone who could send them to requested documents, hope they would follow through and then wait for the postal service to do its job. When they did not arrive in a week or so, the process is repeated.

These days, government websites are relied upon for information about the Government Schemes, Policies, Benefits, Scholarships, Jobs, reports, budgets and more that central, state and local governments post on their websites.

When citizens make contact with their governments, whether to seek services or information, their experience is often frustrating. While a small minority of citizens may find that their government offers the requested services or information in a timely and helpful manner, the vast majority do not. The constituent experience, when interacting with their government, can shape their assessment of, attitude toward, and trust in government.

The purpose of government posting any update on online channels is for the citizens will be able to locate and find information. The current experience, on the other hand, often leave users more frustrated than grateful. Many of us feel that this promised land of facts is more of a mirage than an informational oasis. Such behaviour is not limited to the one branch. This problem is pervasive across all arms of the government, including the executive, legislature, judiciary and spans every hierarchy - from central to the state to the district to the town to the village levels.

Particularly annoying are prominent websites that promise to link users to valuable data, but lead to sites with very little information. Sometimes the data and reports available online are five to ten years old. Spot check of the data in AskSarkar shows that more recent reports exist, but these are hidden in meaningless layers of website organisation.

Search engines and social media don’t even claim they provide authenticated information from the official sources. But, AskSarkar does!

In other cases, the links are broken. A lot of government websites report -"not found" message. Thankfully Search Engines sometimes do a better job of revealing such information than the government sites. One of the issues with any search indexer like Google tends to be, they favour sites, that are optimised for their business. There is a private cottage industry built around servicing citizens; such companies game the results in their favour. This behaviour further frustrates the citizens who are looking for authentic government data, and they are taken for a ride in a private entity site, with a commercial agenda. This misaligned incentive results, user feeling that government not caring for them. Say, if one searches for PAN card, they may not get the authentic/official website of PAN, and would get the search result of an agent or private company. Similarly, for scholarship, there is scholarship portal from Government of India, which would not be the top result when someone searches for Scholarships.

Here is where AskSarkar (https://asksarkar.com) comes in. AskSarkar wants to give authentic information to the users, that takes away the pain of searching and testing the navigation skills of the citizens of India. AskSarkar helps collate and index the most popular questions that the citizens of India to ask when they look at central government websites. CoRover has simplified the access to all these sites by proving a simple interface to ask such questions. All people can now ask questions using their natural conversations. AskSarkar using AI, ML & NLP recognises the intent of what users ask and gives the relevant and authenticated information that will not frustrate you. This App supports 12+ Indian/Vernacular languages in both text, audio and video.

Founder and CEO of CoRover says, “The content and accuracy of AskSarkar will keep improving as the usage further increases. This is still a baby bot, which can grow and learn better with the questions users raise. So, ask more to make it better.”

Co-Founders, Manav Gandotra and Kunal Bhakhri, and CoRover's Investor and Advisor, Mr. R. P. Singh have congratulated the entire CoRover team to make such an innovative and valuable app for Bharat, which will soon be used by the global audience.

If you are interested in taking it for a drive, have a look at https://asksarkar.com

Demo Video: https://youtu.be/6PGZGZUdwbQ

42Gears' SureMDM Bags the Second Prize in the Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge

42Gears is proud to announce that SureMDM, its flagship product, has bagged the second prize under the Office and Work from Home category in the Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. 

The challenge seeked to 'identify the best Indian apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world-class apps in their respective categories. This Innovation Challenge, with various cash awards and incentives of featuring apps on leaderboards, seeks to create an ecosystem where Indian entrepreneurs and startups are incentivised to ideate, incubate, build, nurture and sustain tech solutions that can serve not only citizens within India but also the world.'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched this initiative with a view to build a strong ecosystem for Indian applications. The challenge saw enthusiastic participation from individuals and businesses alike. Out of the 6940 entries received from around the country, 662 were filed under the Office and Work from Home category. 

"It's been an honour to present our product on such a prestigious platform. The huge number of entries, every one of which was unique in its own way, shows how immensely talented Indian IT professionals are. While we are humbled to see how much potential each of our competitors have, being recognized by the Government of India is no less than a feat," said Onkar Singh, Founder and CEO of 42Gears.

SureMDM is a feature-rich, scalable mobile device management solution that can help businesses manage, monitor, and secure their business devices from a single web-based console - regardless of the platform they run, their make, deployment location, or ownership (company- or employee-owned).

SureMDM is already being used by over 10000 customers across more than 115 nations, and the company has earned repeated recognitions and mentions in Gartner Magic Quadrants and Customers' Choice Awards. Headquartered in Bangalore, 42Gears also has offices in the US and the UK. Apart from being associated with leading Indian brands such as Flipkart, Indigo, BYJU's, and Delhivery among others, the company also works with international tech giants such as Intel, Samsung, Lenovo, and more.

"We believe that SureMDM can help companies ensure business-continuity during these uncertain times. It has all the features businesses need to enable secure remote access today," added Singh.

About 42Gears

42Gears is a leading Unified Endpoint Management solution provider, named a Visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management tools two years in a row offering SaaS and on-premise solutions to secure, monitor and manage all business endpoints, such as tablets, phones, desktops, and wearables. 42Gears products support company-owned as well as employee-owned devices built on Android, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, macOS, Wear OS, VR, and Linux platforms. 42Gears products are used in various industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, education, and retail. 42Gears products are trusted by over 10,000 customers in more than 115 countries.

For more information on SureMDM, please visit www.42gears.com.

MapmyIndia Move wins prestigious Digital India Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge

MapmyIndia, India’s pioneer and leader in digital mapping and advanced location-based and IoT technologies today announced that its flagship app, MapmyIndia Move, has been selected as #1 in the prestigious Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge in its category, which has been organised by Government of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission – to identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world class Apps in their respective categories.

MapmyIndia Move is India's super app for maps, mobility, safety, hyper local social discovery & more that comes built in with India's most detailed, accurate, comprehensive, continuously updated and feature-rich maps from MapmyIndia. MapmyIndia has been building the most intelligent and versatile digital maps of India including detailed doorstep/house address level and fully 3D real-time hyperlocal maps and advanced location-based technologies since 25 years, far before any international provider started offering solutions for India.

Rakesh Verma, Chairman and Managing Director, MapmyIndia said "25 years ago, our vision that someday 80% of all data would have a location component, and our desire to build something that could benefit all of India, led us to build the best digital map product for the country and world-class advanced location-based technologies. We have always believed in Aatmanirbhar and as a company, have since the beginning focused on building indigenous technologies and remained profitable. MapmyIndia knows India better, which is reflected in the better detail and localisation of our intelligent maps and app, and we do not use user's data for advertising, unlike global search giants, making MapmyIndia Move a better, safer and more intelligent alternative for Indians. We need the support of all of you - users and the government - to use and encourage the use of MapmyIndia, be vocal for local and help us go local se global. We thank the Government of India for recognising us as a winner in the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Challenge".

Maps are used extensively by crores of individuals and lakhs of small and large organisations depend on maps for various use cases. Now, Indians know that India has its own fully indigenous app in the form of MapmyIndia Move, which is more secure and respects user privacy compared to the global search giants, does not exploit user data for advertising, and offers much more precise and comprehensive intelligent, hyper local maps, and delivers many more features and benefits.

MapmyIndia Move, in one app itself, offers

• India’s best 3D and house-level maps with voice-guided navigation
• Remote GPS tracking of vehicles through connected GPS IoT gadgets
• Corona-related hyper-local information such as nearby containment zones, testing centres, treatment hospitals and isolation wards to help users stay safe.
• Live safety alerts about upcoming potholes, speed breakers and accident prone zones during navigation
• Precise directions to the exact doorstep of buildings through house number maps and the revolutionary eLoc, a 6-character unique location ID for every place across the country which simplifies India's complex addressing system
• Community reporting of hyper local issues on the map to help authorities fix issues by citizens on-ground, and
• Hyper local social networking and discovery features through My World View to help people stay connected with people, places, things and information around them in real-time.
• A super app platform, which allows multiple apps to be integrated into the MapmyIndia Move app by leveraging MapmyIndia’s APIs, giving users continuously increasing features and functionality.

For this nation wide competition, 24 finalists across 9 categories were selected from amongst 6940 entries received from across India. In MapmyIndia’s category there were 1200 apps out of which MapmyIndia was given 1st prize! Some of the other winners included prestigious apps such as Zoho.

MapmyIndia Move app's presentation to the jury, which was very well received by all, is available to view at https://youtu.be/jC0UfUEhuAo.

The announcement of MapmyIndia as the winner in this video, is available to view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz4DHBimzb4&feature=youtu.be (skip to 9:41).

MapmyIndia's cutting edge technologies and maps are used by 5000 enterprise customers across the public and private sector. 80% of all cars in India with navigation systems use MapmyIndia, and thousands of the large and small technology companies and app developers use MapmyIndia's APIs and solutions, leading to 20 crore Indians benefitting from MapmyIndia's maps and technologies.

Founded & headquartered in New Delhi in 1995 by IIT Roorkee Alumnus Rashmi Verma (currently Executive Director), and BITS Pilani graduate Rakesh Verma (currently Chairman & MD), MapmyIndia pioneered digital mapping in India 25 years ago, built India’s first interactive map portal (MapmyIndia.com) in 2004, built the first All India GPS Navigation system (MapmyIndia Navigator) in 2007. MapmyIndia continues to build many other India-first, world-first and world-class cutting-edge technological innovations

Koo App Wins PM Modi’s AatmaNirbhar App Challenge

• Koo App is an Indian language based twitter for non-English users.
• Currently available in Hindi Kannada, Tamil and Telugu Languages

Koo App was selected as a winner of PM Modi’s AatmaNirbhar App Challenge on Aug 7, 2020. AatmaNirbhar App Challenge was an invitation from the Prime Minister to foster digital innovation among startups and entrepreneurs in India to create products that could cater to India and its digital needs in 8 categories. Koo App was one of the winners in this App Challenge, that received over 6900 entries from all over India.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and CEO of Koo said “We’re very excited about being one of the winners of the AatmaNirbhar App Challenge. PM Modi is giving startups, innovators and entrepreneurs a very good platform to showcase their creation and we’re grateful for this opportunity. We look forward to taking Koo to a wider India that wants to connect with people in their mother tongue.”

Mayank Bidawatka, Co-founder of Koo said, “We are honored to be a part of the winning list of apps that have been selected from among the 6940 entries that the AatmaNirbhar App Challenge received. We value and appreciate the thrust our government is placing on technology innovation for a better India. It’s a proud moment for our team and our contributors to be recognized for our creation. We look forward to giving a voice to a billion Indians through Koo!”

About Koo

Koo is India’s Micro-blogging platform in Indian languages. Koo was launched in March 2020 and is now available in 4 Indian Languages – Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Just 10% of India understands English. The rest speak 100+ Indian languages. They don’t have an Indian language friendly platform to speak their mind and express themselves. Koo is a micro-blog that enables Indians to express themselves in their mother tongue.

Koo also invites some of the most prominent personalities in India so that users can follow them and their thoughts. Koo was launched just 5 months back and has seen prominent personalities like Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Shri Sadhguru, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Dr. Ashwath Narayan (Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka), Deputy Commissioner of Karnataka, MP Tejasvi Surya, Ashutosh Rana, Ashish Vidyarthi and many other Politicians, IAS Officers, Actors, Actresses and Sports personalities using it to be in touch with their followers.

Koo enables users to speak their mind using text, audio and video. They can either convey their thought in 400 characters of text or 1-minute short audio or video Koos. Some app features include following, people feed, 1-1 messaging, english to language keyboard, language news feeds and hyper local hash tags. Koo will soon launch other languages too in the coming months.

Koo has been co-founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. They are serial entrepreneurs and have built startups like TaxiForSure and redBus in their past entrepreneurial avatars.

About Aatmanirbhar App Challenge

Ministry of IT and Technology (MeitY) in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission – Niti Aayog launches Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge to identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world class Apps in their respective categories. This Innovation Challenge seeks to create an ecosystem where Indian entrepreneurs and startups are incentivised to ideate, incubate, build, nurture and sustain tech solutions that can serve not only citizens within India but also the world. The Mantra is to Make in India for India and the World.