Chatur Ideas Announces A Contest To Showcase and Fund Your Startup Idea

In order to foster entrepreneurship, Chatur Ideas, a Mumbai based startup, is coming up with #BeAChatur contest Pan India. #BeAChatur Contest (launching on 1st June 2017) is an intensive 4 month business plan, for individuals and startups to evaluate their business ideas in the risk-free environment of a competition. Unlike other B-plan competitions, the uniqueness of this one comes from the fact that the first round qualification will be based on public voting (30%). Furthermore, the entrepreneurs will get an opportunity to raise real time funds upto Rs 1 crore in front of Indian and Silicon Valley Investors. Top 3 entries based on mentor score matrix will be awarded Rs 3,00,000, Rs 2,00,000 and Rs 1,00,000 separately.

In the last decade, metropolitan cities have witnessed immense growth in startup industry, while tier 2 and tier 3 cities still have a long way to go. Chatur Ideas through its #BeAChatur contest is providing an online platform to all, wherein aspiring entrepreneurs from even the smaller cities can be majorly benefited. Renowned people from the startup ecosystem like Miten Mehta, Umasankar Nistala, Amit Patel, Bhavin Shah, Ajeet Khurana, U T Rao and many more will be mentoring the business plans of the participants.

Previously Chatur Ideas through its network of 1500+ investors has helped close to 650+ startups. Some of the startups who have been benefited through them in the past are Hubilo, Market Pulse, Genietalk, Intuit things, Catapooolt, Healthfin, etc. #BeAChatur contest will primarily be online so there can be larger number of beneficiaries. All business plans will be given a feedback which will be followed by series of mentoring sessions from industry experts. The participants will go through multiple rounds; each qualifying round will take the best ones a step closer to present their business idea and raise funds for the same.

Mr. Devesh Chawla, Founder and CEO of Chatur Ideas quoted, “The idea behind initiating the contest is to reach out to aspiring entrepreneurs who have a business idea but lack the funds to pursue their vision. We also aim to help them up-skill their business plan by providing them a platform with intense mentorship program under the guidance of industry professionals. This competition offers them a chance to present their startup idea to Indian as well as Silicon Valley investors”

To participate in #BeAChatur Contest, one can visit Chatur Ideas website www.chaturideas.com and sign up for the contest. There will be a nominal online registrations fee of Rs 350/-. The contest is open to all with no restrictions to age or profession. The registration for the contest will go live on 1st June 2017. Top 50 contestants will meet industry pool of mentors and will get to discuss their business plan. The top 10 contestants will be announced in the month of September who will stand a chance to introduce their business plan to the investors.

About Chatur Ideas:

Chatur Ideas is one of India’s leading startup enabling platform (as recognized by BRICS International Forum). After acquiring Nurture Talent Academy (India’s first Institute for Entrepreneurs present across 125+ cities and trained more than 34,000 entrepreneurs), Chatur Ideas is training young entrepreneurs across Institutes and providing them access to its vast ecosystem so as to enrich the entrepreneurship culture right from foundation level. Along with helping startups in colleges, it supports mature startups in raising funds, providing social media support, receiving mentoring and assists them with a 360-degree execution support in building their ventures to the next level.

10 Top Startup Business News From Last Week

As we gear up to embark on a new week, let's have a quick recap of the top 10 things that happened in the Indian Startup sector last week.

1) Snapdeal and FreeCharge Launch “Wallet on Delivery"

Last week saw one of India's largest Online marketplace Snapdeal announce the launch of a new and first-of-a-kind feature, Wallet on Delivery (WoD), which will allow Snapdeal and FreeCharge users to pay on delivery by using their FreeCharge wallet.

WoD provides a quick and effective solution to all the users currently having concerns regarding Cash on Delivery (CoD) because of the physical currency crunch due to the demonetisation drive by the Modi government.

2) ShopClues Launches a One-Stop Shop for all Your Wedding Needs – ‘The Wedding Store’
In order to cash-on on the incoming wedding season, ShopClues is making sure that it becomes the top-most preferred e-commerce destination for brides and grooms to fulfil all their wedding shopping desires.

The e-commerce site has launched, ‘The Wedding Store’ that will help brides and bridegrooms shop for all the occasions associated with their wedding, right from their Sangeet ceremony to Bachelorette party to the D-Day. In an offer to offer them the most unique shopping experience, the platform has also tied up with multi-jewellery brand Gitanjali to provide flat 50% discount on diamond and gold jewellery and 70% discount on silver jewellery.

3) IFMR Capital Raises $25M Funding from Eight Roads Ventures

Chennai based IFMR Capital, which is currently at the top of the ladder when it comes to providing capital market access to financial institutions serving the bottom of the pyramid, has successfully raised funding from Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited which will be investing up to $25M in the company.

The current funding round is IFMR Capital’s second round of institutional funding. The fresh round of investment will help the company escalate its existing business to a whole new level and even allow it to explore other opportunities across new products and sectors.

4) Razorpay Introduces One-Hour ‘Express Activation’ to Enable Online Payments for Small Businesses

Razorpay, an online payments platform, announced about the launch of ‘Express Activation’ for all offline businesses in India. The main aim behind this move is to provide immediate relief to thousands of small businesses currently facing the brunt of the surprise demonetization drive undertaken by the Modi government.

‘Express Activation’ allows small merchants to get their account approved and activated within just 1 hour of submitting all the relevant documents. With Express Activation, Razorpay has become the only payment gateway in India to onboard merchants in an hour. The initiative will come as a great respite to small merchants who have been primarily transacting through physical currency until now.

5) Square Yards Raises $12M from Reliance Group

One of India’s top-most online to offline (O2O) real estate transaction player, Square Yards, has successfully raised a whopping $12 million in investments from the Private Equity arm of Mr. Anil Ambani led Reliance Group.

This is startup's first institutional investment after it had raised $11Mn from a clutch of HNW investors in the year 2015. With the money, Square Yards aims to target a double digit market share in Indian Real Estate distribution, expand to more than 25 countries on the ground advising on global real estate, become largest mortgage advisory and developer marketing firm in India, and strengthen its distribution network across Indian and global markets.

6) Unocoin Reveals Robust API To Power New Business

Last week saw Unocoin, a young India based bitcoin company, successfully implementing its Application Programming Interface (API) that allows companies from all around the globe to access the world’s largest potential market for Bitcoin and to take advantage of all of Unocoin’s extraordinary set of features.

The startup's API provides companies and individuals in India the power to generate bitcoin wallets; buy, sell, send and receive bitcoin; securely store bitcoin; receive notifications when payments arrive; retrieve real-time or historical price information, and accept and request bitcoin payments for merchants. It even allows companies to remit bitcoin to India and to submit the KYC details of their beneficiaries.

7) JustRide Raises $3M in a Bridge Round by Y Combinator Partners and Others

JustRide, an emerging self-drive car rental company, has successfully raised a capital of $3 million from marquee YC partners and major global investors. The funds will be put to use to bolster the startup's car sharing platform JustConnect and Yabber, an IoT device for cars which is built on the company’s innovative Smart Vehicle Technology. JustConnect is a car sharing platform that helps in monetising the cars of the individuals, when they're not in use.

8) Organic Farmer and Social Entrepreneur Dharamvir Kamboj Secures Financial Backing from Investors

A one-of-its-kind show in India, The Vault has has had a great track record in providing financial support and national visibility to innovative business ideas. A recent episode of the show saw saw organic farmers and entrepreneurs Dharamvir and Prince Kamboj winning the amazement and praise of The Vault Keepers with their idea of a multipurpose machine that processes farm produce.

9) GO-JEK Buys Pune-Based Mobile App Developer Leftshift
Indonesia’s largest startup, GO-JEK, has acquired Pune-based mobile application developer Leftshift that specialises in designing and engineering mobile apps for popular startups such as Walnut and BookMyShow. With the acquisition, GO-JEK aims to strengthen and upscale its product development, design and engineering platforms so as to support the unicorn’s rapidly growing Indonesia operations.

10) TiE and HAX Join Hands To Accelerate IoT and Hardware Startups In India
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) have come together to work with Shenzhen and San Francisco based HAX to provide a forward push to Internet of Things (IoT) and hardware startups in India. HAX is the first and largest global accelerator and seed investor for hardware startups.

With its great experience and expertise in incubating a string of startups across the globe, HAX will provide the selected startups, with best-in-class prototype in manufacturing and access to global markets.

Ah! Ventures registers its first exit from startup Harness Handitouch

 

Ah! Ventures, a Mumbai based startup, has just recorded its first ever exit in startup Harness Handitouch. The Chennai based company is currently going in for a series A investment of an undisclosed amount from Luxembourg based Armat group. The startup had successfully raised a funding of Rs. 1 crores two years ago from investors, members of Club Ah!, part of Ah! Ventures, a platform which brings together entrepreneurs and investors.

"It was a profitable exit for us. The Series A investors wanted all the existing angel investors to exit," said Abhijeet Kumar, founder, Ah! Ventures in a statement to Economic Times.

"In all 12 investors have exited in this round; including 9 of our investors, and financial transactions have been closed. We are targeting to have many more such exits in near future and we shall be doing so by investing into high quality startups and entrepreneurs," added Kumar.

Founded by an IIT Madras and ISB Hyderabad alumnus, Subramanaian Viswanathan, Harness Handitouch is an education technology company that leverages tablet and the cloud to create connected learning. The company has an aim of enhancing the teaching experiences through its platform.  The company though headquartered in Chennai, India, also has a corporate office in the United Kingdom.  It currently sells in six countries and has over ten thousand learners in these countries. Apart from this, Handitouch also works in areas such as corporate training and online coaching.

The Mumbai based Ah! Ventures has made around ten investments through the help of its network of investors since the year of its existence and the startup has some big plans in store for this year.

"We will be investing in 10 to 15 startups this year through our network of investors, and plan to invest in ticket size of around Rs 6 crores ($1 million). We are sector agnostic but are picking good teams before backing them” Kumar said.

Ah! Ventures registers its first exit from startup Harness Handitouch

 

Ah! Ventures, a Mumbai based startup, has just recorded its first ever exit in startup Harness Handitouch. The Chennai based company is currently going in for a series A investment of an undisclosed amount from Luxembourg based Armat group. The startup had successfully raised a funding of Rs. 1 crores two years ago from investors, members of Club Ah!, part of Ah! Ventures, a platform which brings together entrepreneurs and investors.

"It was a profitable exit for us. The Series A investors wanted all the existing angel investors to exit," said Abhijeet Kumar, founder, Ah! Ventures in a statement to Economic Times.

"In all 12 investors have exited in this round; including 9 of our investors, and financial transactions have been closed. We are targeting to have many more such exits in near future and we shall be doing so by investing into high quality startups and entrepreneurs," added Kumar.

Founded by an IIT Madras and ISB Hyderabad alumnus, Subramanaian Viswanathan, Harness Handitouch is an education technology company that leverages tablet and the cloud to create connected learning. The company has an aim of enhancing the teaching experiences through its platform.  The company though headquartered in Chennai, India, also has a corporate office in the United Kingdom.  It currently sells in six countries and has over ten thousand learners in these countries. Apart from this, Handitouch also works in areas such as corporate training and online coaching.

The Mumbai based Ah! Ventures has made around ten investments through the help of its network of investors since the year of its existence and the startup has some big plans in store for this year.

"We will be investing in 10 to 15 startups this year through our network of investors, and plan to invest in ticket size of around Rs 6 crores ($1 million). We are sector agnostic but are picking good teams before backing them” Kumar said.