Indian Unicorns 2022: Acko Helps Indian Masses Get Insured

Non-life insurance market in India is expected to grow 14% in fiscal 2022 from INR 1.98 trillion (~$27 billion) in fiscal 2021 driven by the influx of private insurers in the sector. But despite the market size, currently, only a fraction of the nation’s 1.3 billion people have access to affordable, sizable policies. Acko is a leading non-life insurance player in the country that recently entered the unicorn club.

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Building a Global HR Tech Business from India: Adit Jain, CEO of Leena AI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the 2018 timeframe when you were ending the year with 20 customers in that HR use case. What happens in 2019? Help me understand how your HR business is growing and what is the next use case that you go after.

Adit Jain: We wanted to focus on HR. We didn’t want to go out of HR right now. In 2019, we started talking to customers globally. We are in the business of providing a great experience to the end-users who, without Leena AI, would have called or emailed someone and waited for a response. The second biggest ROI is that we save a lot of HR time. On the other end of the table is an HR who gets the same request 500 times a day. They’re bored and have better things to do.

561st Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 561st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, January 27, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

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561st Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting In 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 561st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, January 27, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How were the teachers acquiring students from the neighborhood?

Manan Khurma: Mostly the teachers were relying on their personal networks.

Sramana Mitra: Word-of-mouth.

Manan Khurma: Yes, or you go to your complex and do an event. It was mostly organic stuff. This is how we grew on the demand side for the first few years. We now spent money for acquiring demand. We were getting teachers on board and they were getting students on board.

Building a Global HR Tech Business from India: Adit Jain, CEO of Leena AI (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise money through the YC process?

Adit Jain: Yes. We raised a $2 million seed round from Elad Gil. Then a bunch of seed funds joined in. Funder’s Club was one of them.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you locate the company?

Adit Jain: I shifted to New York because we were getting a lot of manufacturing customers who were based on the East Coast than on the West Coast. We have a huge presence in India as well for development and product.

Indian Unicorns 2022: Rebel Foods Takes Kolkata Rolls to Cloud Kitchens

The food delivery market in India is expected to grow at 28% CAGR through 2026, and 26% this year. The market is highly fragmented with global players like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut competing with Indian-origin players like Zomato, Swiggy, and Rebel Foods. Rebel Foods is among the latest Unicorn players in the country that is spearheading the Cloud Kitchen concept.

Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the sweet sauce of your curriculum? In the market, we have Khan Academy. There’s a lot of curriculum out there. What is it that you bring to the table in your methodology that is different?

Manan Khurma: The biggest underlying trait is what we call learning by reasoning, which is understanding the why behind the what. Every fact and algorithm that the student is expected to learn, they also need to understand the why behind it. For example, if they’re in grade four and they’re being taught how to add fractions, they also clearly need to understand why their algorithm works. They also need to learn why it’s true.