Chandigarh based HAYR to Launch India’s 1st Free-Float City Self-Drive Car Share Service

HAYR Technology, a Chandigarh based startup is planning to come up with a new technology in India which will be very adaptable, convenient, secure and hassle-free. In April 2019, HAYR will launch India’s first free-float self-drive car share service in Chandigarh Tri-City, followed by other cities including Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

Speaking about their new project, Founder, HAYR Technology, Mr. Harjeet Singh said, “We are coming with much-awaited technology in mobility sector. After this, India will be one of the few countries who will enjoy free float self-driven car share service. The concept of free-float refers to ‘anywhere anytime pick up and drop off vehicle facility’ with designated parking”.

He further added, “To avail the service, one needs to make the reservation through HAYR Car Share Mobile App. The user can unlock the car and take a ride. Anyone having a valid driving licence is eligible to enjoy the benefits of this ride."

The startup is targeting to serve minimum 25-35 commuters in a day with minimal charges of Rs. 7 per minute, which is far cheaper than other means of transportation.

As promised through its tagline- DRIVE BEFIKAR, HAYR Car Share offers hassle-free, secure and convenient services to its users. Users do not have to worry about refueling and maintenance cost too. The startup provides amazing services of advanced reservations without the risk of
cancellation – meaning, the booking won’t be cancelled without a valid reason.

Considering women safety as an important aspect, Singh further stated, “We ensures women safety during late night. They can enjoy their ride without fear and trouble of security, and drop the car near their home”.

Parking is another bane of urban lifestyle. Keeping that in mind, HAYR has designated various locations across the city. Now, you won’t have to worry about private parking, and can park your vehicle at designated parking areas. Also, HAYR Technology is planning to rope in regional
celebrities to become their brand ambassador.

Singh also announced that HAYR is a perfect solution for terrible traffic. Instead of owning private cars, people can experience the uber-luxurious ride facilities through HAYR cars. The Startup assures that the car rental service would resolve innumerable problems of transports, distances, and parking.

The launch is highly awaited by the youth and citizens of Chandigarh ever since the announcement has been made.

India's 1st Marketing Accelerator for Hotels & Homestays Launches

It been over a year when we featured a promising Chandigarh-based startup, Stay On Skill, that allows people with skills to travel the world and get free homestay, in exchange of helping their host learn a skill they are gootd at.

In the last one year, the startup has helped numerous commercial properties across India in different aspects and during this period the founders realized that hotels and homestays in India are mushrooming like never before and this in turn has created a visibility problem for such properties where not every plausible customer knows about the existence of them.

In the city of Ooty itself there are more than 2000 hotels (and these are just the ones that are listed online). Across India, more than 1,75,000 properties are taking online bookings. Amid all of this, the problem is - how do you make people know that you exist. Listing on platforms like Airbnb or Booking doesn't ensure you visibility or bookings. If your property shows up on the second page of airbnb, you might as well forget that prospective customers will get to know about it. One good way to stand out from the crowd is to create a brand for yourself digitally - through social media, blogging, and video creation.

Unfortunately, not all homestays or hotels are aware of to how to go about it. Additionally, an analysis by Sat on Skill show that many of homestays in the past have been cheated by fake bloggers and instagram influencers, who either don't have authentic following or high traffic.

Stay On Skill, thus decided to launch India's first Marketing Accelerator for hotels and homestays to make these things transparent for properties and provide them some real value, by bringing to them real, verified, tested and authentic influencers.

[caption id="attachment_125761" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team of Stay on Skill[/caption]

The idea behind the accelerator is to help the deserving properties get the visibility they require, and the complete 3 months program is designed around that. The second aspect of the accelerator is to help the properties learn how to make more revenue through digital marketing and how to perform well on booking portals like airbnb. For this we have special masterclasses designed by experts, and office hours, where in the properties tell us about the specific challenges that they are facing and our expertise can benefit them.

Stay On Skill is expecting over 100 properties to apply for its first batch. The applications are open only till 31st August.

Interested properties can apply here - http://stayonskill.com/accelerator.html

Benefits for Hotels & Homestays

Besides gaining visibility, which the company claims to be minimum of 1.2 Million in 3 months, through the accelerator program, hotels & homestays will get access to star influencers who have the ability to make their property viral.

The participants will also get access to Masterclasses on different aspects of Social Media, Digital Marketing, Web Booking, so that after the accelerator they can take forward the learnings and start executing it themselves.

The properties may also able to Build a brand value, as when some good influencers get associated with your property, it creates a great brand value for you, which most properties don't know how to capitalize on it, says Arjun Tuli, founder of Stay On Skill. "Increase in brand value and visibility lead to increase in revenue," Arjun added.

[caption id="attachment_125760" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Influencer Community of Stay On Skill and The Accelerator[/caption]

Selection Criteria

The accelerator program is looking for boutique hotels and homestays who are looking to stand out from the crowd. To select a property, the company will analyse it's uniqueness factor based on the following parameters -

1. Stay and lodging


2. Location


3. Culture


4. Food


5. Experience

This particular batch of the Stay On Skill accelerator is Not For Profit . All that we'll be receiving from the properties will go towards payment of the bloggers, influencers, graphic designers and social media experts - we won't be making a profit of a single penny from it. The idea behind it is to provide the accelerator as a medium to share our knowledge and expertise with the properties and help them benefit from it. If we are able to make it happen at a small scale for 10 properties, next time around we'll try to make an effort to reach a wider audience and help more properties benefit from it, told Arjun, founder at Stay On Skill.

[Top Featured Image  by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash]

Meet Pumpkart, A Chandigarh-Based Startup Praised by Google's Sundar Pichai

These days you can buy almost anything online from stationary to your furniture, so why to stop at just that. Here we have Mr. K S Bhatia who took the e-commerce platform to the next level. The Chandigarh-based startup Pumpkart and as the name suggests is in the business of selling all kinds of pumps online. With this venture, Mr. Bhatia has revolutionised the industry.

Notably, Pumpkart is India's largest online megastore for agricultural and domestic pumps.

This innovative e-commerce website got Google CEO Sundar Pichai praise recently during the Digital India Submit in Sillicon Valley. Google India has selected Pumpkart.com as a Regional SME Hero from 25 SMEs national finalists.



The startup has tied up with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India, to deliver high quality water pumps at cost effective prices to the farmers and others remotely through a wide extended CSCs network. It is also coming up with O2O offline stores very soon with the opening of first one within this month in Chandigarh.

THE IDEA

Pumpkart.com was launched by K S Bhatia in June 2014. It was launched with the mission of making the Indian water pump industry more organized and structured. Having had an experience of over 18 years in the same industry, Mr. Bhatia knew the full potential of a venture like this. He was fully aware that this was an untouched territory which could be taken advantage of.  Like any other e-commerce website they cater to the needs of their customers which in this case happens to be pumps. They don't just deliver products but they also provide free installation services along with technical support.

This entire idea was not just his doing, credits must go to his son as well. This whole thing started when his 14-year-old son, who is quite the techie gifted his father the domain name.

MEET THE MAKERS

A chemical engineer by background, he worked with few manufacturing companies before he struck oil in the form of Pumpkart. He has worked in this industry for almost 18 years and has a lot of experience in this field. He is a portfolio entrepreneur who holds more than one business to reform the Indian water management solutions industry.

USP

Pumpkart is a one of its kind company that caters to this sector, this itself sets it apart from the rest.  They do have some other features that lure customers to Pumpkart rather than going through a plumber or going through the hassle of going through the local shop.

• They provide free installation in rural and urban areas.


• They have a lot of variety, from small house pumps to agricultural pumps, you name it and it will be there.


• They have a well-informed support staff on board that help out the customers in making the right choice based on their needs.


• They also offer EMI options to ensure easy availability of products to farmers

DODGING THE COMPETITION

This sector has been quite unorganized and is mostly dominated by individual manufacturers and retailers. With the launch of Pumpkart in 2014, it aims to bring stability to the sector. There is no other player in the market that can match up to Pumpkart in this field. In a short span of time, they have managed to make associations with 100 plus brands and more than 500 total vendors, including dealers and distributors. Being the first in this field, this does give them an edge over any future players as well.

FUNDING

They are currently in talks with a number of investors right now regarding the same. Currently, Pumpkart is boostrapped and running on personal money of the founder.

THE JOURNEY TILL NOW

They journey of Pumpkart till now has been extremely good and they have been showered with awards for doing so well.

• It was named in list of the top 20 E-Retailers 2014 in India Award from Times of India


• Google India has selected Pumpkart.com as a Regional SME Hero from 25 SMEs national finalists.

They are based out of Chandigarh and have a team of experts handling their different departments like technical support, online promotions, customer support, logistics and business development. In the last one year, the company has really grown with over 10,000 happy customers so far, generating a revenue of over 60-65 lakhs per month. They seem to be doing really well.

THE ROAD AHEAD

They have plans to open their very own stores in various cities across the nation starting with Chandigarh this Jan. This is their O2O (online to offline commerce) strategy to increase their customer base. They plan to open 100 display stores in next four years with service centres by the name of www.repairingindia.com.

Apart from this, they are also planning to launch an app soon to provide a better experience to their users.

They are also focusing on CSCs and VLEs to cater rural customers online and deliver products and services at their door for free. They have made deals with the e-Governance Services Limited, an initiative of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeiTY) under the IT ministry of India. This has been done to extend their reach to the rural markets which are a huge target market. This association will help them deliver water pumps through Common Service Centers (CSC), a kiosk with a computer and internet accessibility nationwide.

Meet Pumpkart, A Chandigarh-Based Startup Praised by Google's Sundar Pichai

These days you can buy almost anything online from stationary to your furniture, so why to stop at just that. Here we have Mr. K S Bhatia who took the e-commerce platform to the next level. The Chandigarh-based startup Pumpkart and as the name suggests is in the business of selling all kinds of pumps online. With this venture, Mr. Bhatia has revolutionised the industry.

Notably, Pumpkart is India's largest online megastore for agricultural and domestic pumps.

This innovative e-commerce website got Google CEO Sundar Pichai praise recently during the Digital India Submit in Sillicon Valley. Google India has selected Pumpkart.com as a Regional SME Hero from 25 SMEs national finalists.



The startup has tied up with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India, to deliver high quality water pumps at cost effective prices to the farmers and others remotely through a wide extended CSCs network. It is also coming up with O2O offline stores very soon with the opening of first one within this month in Chandigarh.

THE IDEA

Pumpkart.com was launched by K S Bhatia in June 2014. It was launched with the mission of making the Indian water pump industry more organized and structured. Having had an experience of over 18 years in the same industry, Mr. Bhatia knew the full potential of a venture like this. He was fully aware that this was an untouched territory which could be taken advantage of.  Like any other e-commerce website they cater to the needs of their customers which in this case happens to be pumps. They don't just deliver products but they also provide free installation services along with technical support.

This entire idea was not just his doing, credits must go to his son as well. This whole thing started when his 14-year-old son, who is quite the techie gifted his father the domain name.

MEET THE MAKERS

A chemical engineer by background, he worked with few manufacturing companies before he struck oil in the form of Pumpkart. He has worked in this industry for almost 18 years and has a lot of experience in this field. He is a portfolio entrepreneur who holds more than one business to reform the Indian water management solutions industry.

USP

Pumpkart is a one of its kind company that caters to this sector, this itself sets it apart from the rest.  They do have some other features that lure customers to Pumpkart rather than going through a plumber or going through the hassle of going through the local shop.

• They provide free installation in rural and urban areas.


• They have a lot of variety, from small house pumps to agricultural pumps, you name it and it will be there.


• They have a well-informed support staff on board that help out the customers in making the right choice based on their needs.


• They also offer EMI options to ensure easy availability of products to farmers

DODGING THE COMPETITION

This sector has been quite unorganized and is mostly dominated by individual manufacturers and retailers. With the launch of Pumpkart in 2014, it aims to bring stability to the sector. There is no other player in the market that can match up to Pumpkart in this field. In a short span of time, they have managed to make associations with 100 plus brands and more than 500 total vendors, including dealers and distributors. Being the first in this field, this does give them an edge over any future players as well.

FUNDING

They are currently in talks with a number of investors right now regarding the same. Currently, Pumpkart is boostrapped and running on personal money of the founder.

THE JOURNEY TILL NOW

They journey of Pumpkart till now has been extremely good and they have been showered with awards for doing so well.

• It was named in list of the top 20 E-Retailers 2014 in India Award from Times of India


• Google India has selected Pumpkart.com as a Regional SME Hero from 25 SMEs national finalists.

They are based out of Chandigarh and have a team of experts handling their different departments like technical support, online promotions, customer support, logistics and business development. In the last one year, the company has really grown with over 10,000 happy customers so far, generating a revenue of over 60-65 lakhs per month. They seem to be doing really well.

THE ROAD AHEAD

They have plans to open their very own stores in various cities across the nation starting with Chandigarh this Jan. This is their O2O (online to offline commerce) strategy to increase their customer base. They plan to open 100 display stores in next four years with service centres by the name of www.repairingindia.com.

Apart from this, they are also planning to launch an app soon to provide a better experience to their users.

They are also focusing on CSCs and VLEs to cater rural customers online and deliver products and services at their door for free. They have made deals with the e-Governance Services Limited, an initiative of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeiTY) under the IT ministry of India. This has been done to extend their reach to the rural markets which are a huge target market. This association will help them deliver water pumps through Common Service Centers (CSC), a kiosk with a computer and internet accessibility nationwide.

YoDrive - A New Car Search & Sale Platform Developed Especially For Chandigarh tricity

Owning a personal vehicle is nowadays on the wish list of many. Whether the vehicle is new or old, it really doesn't matter. It should just be in good condition. Making this dream of Chandigarh tricity (including Panchkula & Mohali) come true is a leading web solutions provider called FATbit Technologies.

FATbit recently announced the launch of its own Online Car Buying and Selling platform called Yo!Drive. The platform will act as a discovery site for both new and old cars. User engaging features, intuitive design User Interface and secure architecture are some of the platform's feature which make it stand out from other such platforms in the highly competitive market.



“The Tri-City area has one of the biggest car markets in North India. However, the bulk of this market is fragmented, making it difficult for consumers to buy/sell their cars. A dedicated platform like Yo!Drive, which streamlines the process of buying and selling a vehicle would definitely diminish most of the hassles plaguing this sector," said FATbit’s CEO Manish Bhalla during the launch of the platform.

In addition to being an ecommence site for buying and selling old and new cars, Yo!Drive also offers its users with a range of other features like verified marketplace information, comparison options between different types of cars, extensive feature list and expert car reviews.

Yo!Drive is catering to the business-to-consumer market which is all about creating a single channel, which can benefit both the ends and bridge the current communication gap. Yo!Drive has been launched after months of extensive mental and physical labour by the FATbit employees. They have kept all the consumers expectations in mind from such a buy/sell platform while constructing the Yo!Drive platform.

By offering car enthusiasts a smooth, transparent and hassle-free car buying/selling experience, Yo!Drive aspires to become a revolution in the buy/ sell car market.

Serial-Entrepreneur-Led 'GetFixr' Helping People Get Verified Local Skilled Labors

We are a country of 121 crore people. Still, whenever we need to hire some labour for doing some odd jobs at our house, we have to go through a string of contacts in order to find them. Even if we are lucky enough to find some, the money part always become a part of debate. In order to bail out the common man from this almost frequently occurring situation and provide the labour community with a streamlined income depending on their skills, a Chandigarh based startup has come up with an excellent solution.

The startup called GetFiXR Media aims to organise the currently unorganised skilled labour sector. The young startup, established in February 2015, plans to do this by creating a centralised system for finding quick, local, verified and community rated tradesmen from the comfort of our own homes with the help of Web and mobile applications as an Android App and iOS app



Whether you need a Carpenter, Mason, Plumber, Electrician or Painter, this unique startup provides the customers with verified data from previous customer's feedback and creates an ecosystem for customers and tradesmen in order to end the customers long search for a skilled and quality labour.

According to GetFiXR, the one thing that sets them apart from others in the market is the fact that they are neither a service booking system, nor a business listing service working for one group or contractor only.

The startup acts as a platform that connects the two ends of the equation, namely, the customers and the tradesmen. Any tradesmen who wishes to find quality work by providing quality work can list himself/herself on GetFiXR. The consumers, on the other hand, aren't required to remember any new password or username as they can login into GetFiXR by using any of their favorite social networking sites.

The startup which hasn't received any external funding yet is the brainchild of two people, Kulbir Singh and Narinder Bansal. Both Singh and Bansal have more than a decade of experience in the Technology sector. Kulbir hss been a part of 5 Tech startups in the past(namely DesignersX, Fantoo & Foodeus) while Co-Founder Mr Narinder Bansal, have 19 years of experience in IT & Pharma, and had launched other Tech Startups in the past.

The startup which was initially only operational in Chandigarh and Tricity areas, is now also available to the Delhi NCR area such as Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad, Mohali and Zirar. The startup's future plans includes expanding to all the major metropolitans of the country by the end of this year. By 2016, they want to have their presence all over India. The platform can currently be accessed through their Mobile Web App, Web App and Android App.

Chandigarh-Based Startup Develops A Print-on-Demand (POD) Self Publishing Platformo

Have you been nurturing a dream of becoming a world famous published author but the only thing holding you back is the lack of knowledge about the whole publishing process or as we say in our language the whole 'tanta-shanta' involved in the process? Well, worry no more because your childhood dream of having your book on Amazon. com next to your favorite author's book is all set to come true.

How, you may ask. Well, the answer is a-year-old Chandigarh based publishing startup called White Falcon Publishing.

This one year old startup has built a one of its kind Print-On-Demand self publishing platform for publishing books. The platform is appropriately named Self-Publish.

Print on Demand (POD), as the name suggests, is about printing things only when there is a demand; instead of keeping an inventory.

The platform aims to assist newbie authors in publishing their books for global distribution online. The startup has collaborations with a huge network of globally diverse Print-On-Demand providers and book distributor. It is through its this demographically diverse network that the startup is able to make its customers books available for sale in various countries like Japan, USA, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada etc.

Author is provided an account on the print-on-demand platform (platform.self-publish.in), where he/she can monitor the book sales and royalties accumulated.

What makes the startup different from others in the market is the fact that they aim to provide its author customers with the best of services at the best of price available in the market. It makes available a wide range of plans for the customer to choose from and even allows them to custom design it in cases they don't need a particular feature of a already available plan.

The startup has achieved the feat of publishing more than 110 titles in less than a year since its establishment.

The brains behind the self-funded startup is a Symbiosis, Pune educated Navsangeet Kaur. She has earlier worked as a Senior Associate in the Procurement & Contracting Department of 4G team at Reliance Industries, Mumbai, India.

The startup's Print-on-Demand Self Publishing Platform is a brand new model for book publishing. In this model, the author also doubles up as the publisher of the book. He/she can avail various professional services for making the manuscript print-ready. Once the work is published through the platform, the books are listed on online channels for sale worldwide. Books are then printed as and when the orders are placed on these channels . Hence, neither the author nor the publisher has to take a big risk by making a big investment in bulk printing of books. Books published through the POD platform of White Falcon Publishing never go out-of-print and have higher royalty.

The platform also provides the authors the facility to view live sales/royalty reports through the POD platform, hence giving them a complete transparency about the whole process. So, what are you waiting for? Take out your pens and put on your thinking caps right away.

Chandigarh-Based CA-Turned-Entrepreneur Put Dabba (Tiffin-box) Service Online

Moving to a new city is tough but what is tougher is coping with the loss of your mom's home cooked loved-filled meals. One of the major problems that one faces while moving to another city or becoming independent is the problem of food.

Eating out every time is not an option given the huge amount of travelling cost involved. In such situations, most of us settle for dabba services that promise to give us the best of both worlds, the taste of home cooked food away from home and that too at a much cheaper rate than any other restaurant.

Anyone who has tried to avail a dabba service knows that finding a decent dabba place near your house or office is no easy task.While finding a dabba service, the priority is to find the one which offers good food at a decent price but in order to do so; one has to go through a tedious process of calling each and every service separately and comparing their price and menu.

This would have been your condition too a few months ago but with — SendMyTiffin you can leave your dabba (Tiffin-box) services problem behind forever.

[caption id="attachment_99216" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Anuj Jain (left) founder of SendMyTiffin.com during launch in Chandigarh[/caption]

Launched by a Chandigarh based charted accountant, Anuj Jain, the website brings tiffin services from Chandigarh, Panchkula, Zirakpur and Mohali on one single platform. Currently, Anuj has tied up 20 local tiffin service providers across cties like Panchkula, Mohali, Zirakpur and Chandigarh.

"It is an unorganised sector with only random numbers listed online and in a scattered way. Hardly anyone has their own dedicated website and there’s no information regarding menus either,” said Jain in a statement to Indian Express.
The website is quite interactive and easy to use. The listings include the menu, location and price of the dabba.

"We take online payments but the delivery starts in three to four days. As a special initiative, the vendors are offering a five-day paid trial offer so that the customer is not bound to eat the food for a month if the taste and service are not up to the mark,” added Jain .

A customer can book dabba services for all three meals of the day. Talking about future plans Jain said, "We will look at offering reviews from customers as well. The online food market has a huge potential with 200 million Internet users in India. We are also working on a mobile application that would enable customers to place orders on their phones too."

The Chandigarh-based startup is looking to increase number of tiffin service providers listing on website by 10-20% month on month by exploring and catering to moving to new locations.

Bootstrapped & Self-funded, Sendmytiffin.com as of now is a sole proprietorship owned by Anuj Jain. Anuj Jain is a chartered accountant with over 10 years experience in field of Accounting and Finance.