eMavericks-Insight-Volume-2-Issue-1 by Tapan 'Ananta' Garg

Insight Volume 2 | Issue 1

Connecting consumers with service professionals, the UrbanPro way Rakesh Kalra Founder & CEO, UrbanPro

Table of Contents 03

Connecting consumers with service professionals, the UrbanPro way

What I learned while running the biggest food marketplace in India and how that’s shaping Petoo

Increasing market share through an online presence

Startup Spotlight Aguai Solutions

Editorial Dear Friends, Like you, we have had a memorable 2015, and we wish you a very happy and exciting 2016! Welcome to the fourth edition of eMavericks Insight, which features a conversation with Rakesh is one of the silent performers in the ecosystem and, along with his team, he has built UrbanPro as India’s largest marketplace for teachers, tutors, and trainers. Be it improving your academics or pursuing your hobbies, UrbanPro is the go-to platform to get the right ‘external expert’ help. Rakesh candidly shares with us his insights on how the hyperlocal services space will evolve, the differences between Marketplace

vs On-demand Model, how to add new categories to a marketplace, and a surprising learning from their rebranding exercise. Next, we reproduce a blog by Ritesh Dwivedy about his learnings on running JustEat, the biggest food marketplace in India and how these are shaping his latest startup — Petoo. The article exposes novices like us to the intricacies of the food business and gives us a fair hint that more innovation is yet to come to the online food ordering space. When Shanghai Jinjiang International E-commerce Co. Ltd. wanted to gain market leadership in the Chinese travel market sector, integrating resources across different business units through an e-business platform was imperative.

They looked to Dell Consulting Services to strategically plan their e-business strategy. Dell designed and implemented the required underlying customer relationship management (CRM) system, supported by their PowerEdge servers. Read this case study to learn why Dell is the perfect partner for online businesses. Our Startup Spotlight section features Aguai Solutions — national semi-finalists of CNBC Awaaz Masterpreneur Season 3. They are building India’s first connected healthcare platform, connecting the dots between patients, doctors, pharmacists, and pharma distributors. Once again, the trigger was a personal problem faced by the founders. Here’s hoping this new year helps you on your way to becoming a true eMaverick!

Connecting consumers with service professionals, the UrbanPro way

Rakesh Kalra Founder & CEO, UrbanPro

1. From ThinkVidya to UrbanPro — how would you summarize your journey? Share some of the key learnings that emerged while rebranding your business. The evolution of UrbanPro has been a truly rewarding journey. We started with ThinkVidya, where we successfully established market leadership in Academics, Exam Prep, Languages, and other learning categories. The success of ThinkVidya has led to the genesis of UrbanPro. As ThinkVidya.com grew to become the #1 destination for finding tutors, trainers, and training institutes, we realized that we were increasingly solving problems in more verticals beyond Academics. For instance, Dance, Music, and other hobby

classes became a large part of the offering. Hence, we found that the technology we built solves similar needs in a host of other verticals, and so UrbanPro was born. On UrbanPro.com, consumers can find tutors, trainers, and other skilled service professionals to meet their requirements, within their budget and location. Service professionals, on the other hand, can get hired for the services they provide, at a price that works for them, and thus grow their earnings. The rebranding exercise gave me an opportunity to interact with a few branding experts. My key learning was that the name only has less than 10% impact on the overall brand perception. It is the service you build around the name that has the major impact. We also found that our ThinkVidya customers were quick to adopt the new UrbanPro brand because of our continued excellent service. 2. How has your user acquisition strategy changed since your launch a few years ago, considering that the hyperlocal services market seems to be at the brink of rapid growth now?

successful campaigns since 2011, which are optimal for unit economics, and we understand what works and what doesn’t. We continue to experiment with new user acquisition channels, while growing the existing ones. Today, we get over a million visits each month on UrbanPro.com, 90% of which come from non-paid channels. We continue to grow our organic channels, while driving user acquisition via efficient spending on paid channels. As mobile is a growth area, customer acquisition is also being driven from mobile devices. 3. You were initially solely focused on the education space and are now expanding to educationrelated and other diverse areas. How do you approach adding a new category, and can you talk about all the ground work that goes into it? We had already grown beyond Academics into hobby classes and other learning categories. Over the next year, our growth will come from expanding existing categories and bringing our offerings to multiple cities. We are already catering to

There hasn’t been a significant change in our user acquisition strategy. We have been running

1,000+ learning categories across 15 cities in India, and have established clear market leadership in these categories. We will continue to strengthen our leadership position over the next 15-18 months. Further, when it comes to hiring a service professional, there are two clear models that have emerged:

to work either in a Marketplace model or On-Demand model. For example, hiring a tutor works in a Marketplace model, whereas hiring a plumber works better in an On-demand model.

Marketplace – In a Marketplace model, the platform provides the best choices to the consumer, making him or her the decision maker. The pricing significantly varies for each service, based on the consumer’s budget and the experience level of the professional.

the biggest opportunity for tech

On-demand – In an On-demand model, the platform makes the decision of deploying a service professional for the consumer. The pricing is fixed by the platform, and there is an implied guarantee of consistent service quality. Each of the models have their own inherent problems, and require a different approach. What’s more, different service categories tend

At UrbanPro, we are building the Marketplace model, as that has disruption and also has the larger market size of the two models. So, when we think of adding a new category, we have to ensure it works in a Marketplace model. Before zeroing in on a new set of verticals, our Category Management team ensures that all existing categories have a healthy marketplace balance or are on the path to being healthy at a hyperlocal level. The team evaluates 30 different metrics for each category and locality combination to ensure the right balance is maintained. This adds up to evaluating 1.8 lac different data points to ensure marketplace health for 1,000

categories in 15 cities. At the same time, the Category Management team conducts various qualitative and quantitative market research on these categories, and brings these insights to be integrated into the UrbanPro platform. 4. What are the key operational and technological challenges you have faced so far, and how did you overcome them? The biggest challenge for any startup in today’s environment is hiring the right talent. We tackle hiring by building a large enough pipeline from various channels. At the same time, we ensure that we don’t compromise when it comes to their skill-set as well as the cultural fit. The hyperlocal services market is very fast-paced and dynamic. Naturally, this means that it has its own set of challenges and opportunities. I think the biggest challenge we face, in terms of operations and technology, is to

continue to have a robust network of service providers without compromising on a qualitative experience. Our number one goal is to be able to match every consumer demand with a list of high-quality service providers, which obviously requires a strong supply density at the hyperlocal level. As a company, we have made a conscious decision to not chase aggressive expansion at the expense of a high-quality user experience. 5. The debate on web vs mobile has further intensified â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in fact, mobile seems to be the way forward. What are your views on the subject? We believe that the choice of the platform should be determined by our consumers and service professionals for the use case we solve. A service such as Uber has to be primarily available on the mobile, as you need a cab onthe-go, whereas services such as UrbanPro need to be available across platforms.

Since mobile is on a rapid growth in India and over 60% of consumers are using mobile Internet, the technology investment needs to follow this trend. At UrbanPro, we get over one million visits a month and over 50% of these visits are routed via mobile devices. Mobile also shows a higher growth trajectory than desktop. So, while we are primarily investing in mobile web and an app, we also ensure that the desktop experience works equally well. 6. We are seeing a lot of new startups in the hyperlocal services market. How do you see this space evolving in the near future? What kind of technology innovations can we expect? There are a number of use cases in the hyperlocal services market, and each requires its own focus and execution. There is the taxi segment, which is best developed. There are also the groceries and other local

deliveries segments, which have witnessed large investments by a number of companies. Hiring a service professional in a hyperlocal (locality-level), local (citylevel), and online segment (via the Internet) has recently seen a string of investments. Within this space, there are the Marketplace and On-demand models that I earlier mentioned. The fact is that both Marketplace and On-Demand models will each see its own winners. The Marketplace model is typically a winner-takes-all model. We are here to win the Marketplace model in India, and we have already established market leadership in over 200 categories in Academics, Languages, Hobby classes, IT courses, and Professional training. I believe the ‘Service Professional Hiring’ space will see a number of tech innovations.

Matching a service requirement

If you are building an online

to a set of qualified service professionals requires a number of factors to be taken into account – location, skills required, experience, availability, and more. It’s not simply a question of building a competent matching algorithm, but ensuring a balanced marketplace at a hyperlocal level.

business, you must make sure

This is extremely hard, and will require tremendous innovation in technology. For the further development of UrbanPro’s worldclass matching algorithm, I foresee data sciences and category depth playing a big role. 7. What advice would you like to give others who are starting to either build an online business ground up or taking their brick and mortar businesses online?

you have three essential skillsets, ideally at the founding team level – Technology, Product, and Digital Marketing. Over and above this, you need to ensure your product has a modern design and that consumers will find it easy to use. An online business is not just about building a website or an app. You have to invest your time and money in customer acquisition and also in providing excellent customer service. 8. Tell us about the funding you have received and your acquisitions so far. We have raised two rounds of funding so far: - Angel Investment in Jan 2014 - `12 Crore from Nirvana Ventures in March 2015

What I learned while running the biggest food marketplace in India and how that’s shaping Petoo first-mover advantage. With more than 2 dozen Internet-first restaurants, he felt it would be a difficult road ahead. I completely agreed that growing Petoo would be extremely tough, not because of the few dozen Internet-only restaurant startups but because food is a freakishly complicated business to be in.

Ritesh Dwivedy Co Founder & CEO, Petoo.in In my almost decade-long association with JustEat, I have come across various challenges pertaining to the food industry. Some we tried to solve and were successful, but many were difficult to resolve as we never controlled the entire lifecycle of the order. So when I was discussing the idea of Petoo (pronounced as pay-too) with a friend, I explained to him how cool the concept was, how we would solve the current complexities pertaining to the industry, and how Petoo could be the next big thing. My friend saw reason to my madness and trusted that this indeed was something really different and not something everyone was thinking about. But he also cautioned me — we would have to plan and execute immaculately, as there were already too many people working on similar ideas in the food and QSR space, and we might not have the

As far as competition for Petoo is concerned, any restaurant — small or big, Internet-enabled or non-Internet-enabled, from dabbawalas to office cafeteria, the food stall at cinema theatres or even your kitchen at home — is a competitor. Had we started Petoo two years ago, we would still have faced tremendous competition from the already-established food joints. Food is a hyperlocal business and hence no matter how big a food

brand is, they face significant competition from the unorganized single outlets or even from the roadside dosa/momo stalls. Competition in food just cannot be avoided — not now and not in the past — and I don’t think it will be any different in the future. It is perhaps the only industry in which there always will be hundreds and thousands of players co-existing and even complementing each other. While I was at JustEat, every month the sales team would sign up at least 10% new restaurants (of our entire partner estate) to join the platform. More than 50% of these new partners would have started operations just few months ago. Another interesting fact was that every month, we also lost anywhere between 5-10% of our partner restaurants, with the most

common reason being closure of business. When we analyzed reasons for the closures of such large number of restaurants every month, we found that the most common reasons were: 1. Improper menu planning (eg: a QSR focusing on a fine dining kind of menu, focusing on making exotic dishes and thus reducing the addressable market size) 2. Ordinary food, ordinary service 3. Chef-depended business - Retaining staff is difficult and when a chef leaves, he takes away the soul of the restaurant 4. Not pricing dishes right - Either too low or too high 5. Not planning the cash flow properly and running out of funds within months of launch

We realized that businesses shutting down due to competition was quite rare (unless you are the 10th North Indian restaurant within a 2 km radius). Things have certainly changed in the last two years, however, with new restaurants opening up at similar if not faster rates every month. The difference now being that some of these new restaurants are Internet-only restaurants. Opening an Internet restaurant is less expensive and hence is gradually becoming the flavor of food entrepreneurs. Petoo, however is not a ‘me-too’ restaurant. We have put in a lot of thought and used the learnings gained over almost a decade of running JustEat into Petoo. We aspire to run a food business as smartly as any other technology company. Things are easier now than they were a few years ago because we now have access to amazing

remove inefficiencies which are a part of the industry since ages has now become possible and has opened up many possibilities. Restaurants all across the globe have always been a real estate and peopleor-chef-dependent business, expensive to establish, and difficult to scale. Those who managed to standardize and partly mechanise their process became big businesses and those who did not, stagnated as hyper local businesses. Our vision is to make a smart QSR which is lean, has extremely efficient processes, and offers fantastic customer experience. We have set on a difficult path but we will try our best: offering an amazing experience to our customers is what gives us sleepless nights. We certainly won’t be paranoid about competition; in fact, it is outright stupid to be worried about competition in food.

technology. Harnessing technology to

Increasing market share through an online presence Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce provides consistent online to offline services to more than seven million members through a consolidated CRM system Customer Profile

Company

Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce Industry Hospitality & Tourism Country Shanghai, China Employees <200 Website www.jinjiang.com Business need Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce wanted to gain market leadership in the China travel market by integrating resources across different business units through an e-Business platform. Solution The company selected Dell Consulting Services to strategically plan their e-Business strategy and design and implement the required underlying customer relationship management (CRM) system supported by Dell PowerEdge servers. Benefits •

Provides consistent online to offline services to more than seven million members

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Increased market share through efficient integration of resources across business units

“Our e-Commerce platform will propel our business

Deployed technology strategically with the help of end-to-end expertise and services

was robust and effective in supporting the growth

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Enhanced customer experience through an effective loyalty program

consulting services provided by Dell have enabled us

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Achieved organization change and planned a financially secure future

to transform our vision into reality.”

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Solutions featured • Infrastructure Consulting Services • Systems Management • Servers

into the future. We needed to ensure that the platform we have planned for our company. The end-to-end

Rodney Bao, CEO, Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce

Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce is a subsidiary of Jin Jiang International Merchant Services Co., Ltd., one of the largest comprehensive tourism enterprises in China. Jin Jiang International Merchant Services Co., Ltd. consists of four main business units, namely Jinjiang International Hotels and Jinjiang Inns focused on providing hospitality services, and Jinjiang Travel and Jinjiang Car Rental providing transportrelated services. The Jinjiang brand is approximately worth U.S$ 2.7 billion, offering 861 hotels, 70 travel agency outlets and 10,000 luxury rental cars to the China travel market. The group established Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce with the aim of becoming a modern services group and increasing their market share by offering their customers a one-stop e-commerce platform to fulfill all their travel needs. To do so, an e-Commerce platform had to be built which would integrate systems and resources across all business units supported by a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Involving end-to-end expertise to strategically deploy technology After evaluating the offering of several consulting firms, Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce selected Dell Consulting Services to formulate their e-Commerce strategy and deliver tactical implementation and application of a CRM system. Rodney Bao, CEO, Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce, states, “The successful track record of Dell consultants in the consumer travel industry and in the CRM implementation practice, combined with our existing relationship with Dell, made us confident that they are the right partner for this crucial project.” Prior to implementing a CRM system at Shanghai Jin Jiang International

E-Commerce, Dell consultants played a critical role in establishing the strategy for building a sustainable e-Commerce platform by designing the corporate positioning and profit model, resource integration method and product and loyalty program. Once the strategy was set, further planning and designing was put into developing the operational, business and IT planning models, on which the e-Commerce platform would run. At the implementation stage, Dell consultants assumed all construction and development tasks required to implement a CRM system and an Electronic Service Bus (ESB) platform as well to build the Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce website. The company deployed Dell PowerEdge™ R710 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors running Oracle Siebel CRM 8.1.1.7, SOA Suite 11.1.1.5, Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.5, Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.5, WebLogic 10.3.5 and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11.1.1.5. Bao explains, “Our e-Commerce platform will propel our business into the future.

Products & Services Services Dell Business Consulting Services Hardware Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors Service •

Oracle Siebel CRM 8.1.1.7

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Oracle Business Intelligence

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Enterprise Edition 11.1.1.5

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Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.5

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Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.5

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SOA Suite 11.1.1.5

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WebLogic 10.3.5

“Our partnership with Dell in implementing an e-Commerce arm to our business has shown positive results. We are now equipped with technology that can lead us into a future in which the Jinjiang name will possess a larger share of the market, more engaged customers and ultimately higher revenues.” Rodney Bao, CEO, Shanghai JinJiang International E-Commerce

We needed to ensure that the platform was robust and effective in supporting the growth we have planned for our company. The end-to-end consulting services provided by Dell have enabled us to transform our vision into reality.” Providing customized solutions to customers The CRM system has simplified the tasks of staff in the marketing and customer service departments related to obtaining customer information and profile creation. Similarly, the ESB platform designed by Dell has allowed Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce to realize seamless data exchange of product, order and customer information. The integration of information from sales, customer service, market management, hotels and travel agencies in a singular system enables Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce to know their customers’ preferences better and launch targeted promotional campaigns relevant to their customers’ activities. “Customers who use our e-Commerce website to book our

services are now able to receive customized services due to the Business Intelligence module deployed by Dell consultants. This has positively enhanced the user experience for our customers,” says Bao. Boosting monthly e-sales transactions As a result, the company has seen an immediate jump in sales and has boosted sales transactions through their e-Commerce website in just one month’s time. “Increasing sales transactions through our e-Commerce website indicates a substantial increase in sales within a month. It means that our strategy is working and that the efforts put in by us and the Dell consulting team are paying off,” adds Bao. Engaging customers through an efficiently managed loyalty program The increase in sales has also been driven by a customer loyalty program that has been seamlessly integrated across all business units with the implementation of the loyalty module of the CRM system. This CRM system has enabled Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce to build a centralized member management system which allows for member identity recognition and rewards. Data of over three million members was migrated from isolated information systems owned by different business units by Dell consultants to the loyalty module which now processes a substantially higher number of records per day. By integrating the CRM loyalty module with Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce’s

third-party point redemption platform, customers are now able to gain and redeem their points through the Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce website instead of being directed to a third party site. Bao states, “Our CRM system has been integrated with our e-Commerce website in an extremely user-friendly manner by Dell. Now, we can keep our customers engaged on our website which is always good for sales.” Enabling organizational change and securing a brighter future Working with Dell Business Consulting Services, Shanghai Jin Jiang International E-Commerce has been able to define their strategic position in the market and establish a financial model to see them through the next five years. The partnership has been elemental in bringing across the organizational change that is necessary for any organization to adapt to while fundamentally changing the way business is done.

equipped with technology that can lead us into a future in which the Jin Jiang name will possess a larger share of the market, more engaged customers and ultimately higher revenues,” concludes Bao.

“Customers who use our e-Commerce website to book our services are now able to receive customized services due to the Business Intelligence module deployed by Dell consultants. This has positively enhanced the user experience for our customers.” Rodney Bao, CEO, Shanghai JinJiang International E-Commerce

“Our partnership with Dell in implementing an e-Commerce arm to our business has shown positive results. We are now

e-commerce

Startup Spotlight Aguai Solutions chemists remind customers of their medication doses. And thus was born India’s first connected healthcare platform — Pharmaeazy, which was followed by Medieazy, Distributeazy, and Rxeazy.

Bimlesh Gundurao CEO, Aguai Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Q1. What was the trigger to build India’s first connected healthcare platform and how is it evolving? Healthcare is a very complex industry and it is critical that the ecosystem works seamlessly. On closer analysis of the challenges, we realized that consumers need better prescription management and that the pharmacy is a vital touch point for consumers. This was the genesis of www.Pharmaeazy.com, a CRM-driven store management software that doubles up as a platform to connect all Outpatient Department (OPD) stakeholders. Two closely related incidents in my family made me notice the need for digital

Madhur Rao COO, Aguai Solutions Pvt. Ltd. prescriptions. In both cases, handwritten prescriptions were lost and we were unable to track the required medication dosages. What’s more, clarifying the same with the doctor in question was a nightmare, as he was a visiting consultant and couldn’t remember what he had prescribed. This triggered the desire of wanting to transform the Indian healthcare ecosystem. While we toyed with EMR and Patient Management systems for children and senior citizens, we realized that people will not type up their prescriptions themselves. We needed a more holistic solution — one that solves the problem of recording prescriptions and helps

Q2. Healthcare is a highly regulated industry. How are you negotiating this while trying to maximize value and convenience to your end customers? As a Healthcare Technology company, we are aware of the necessary regulations, such as Health Information Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), and have designed our platform to stay compliant. All data is fully secure and is only accessible by the respective stakeholder. Security and convenience is a hard balance to achieve in any industry. To ensure a highly secure system, convenience may be compromised. Currently, when a pharmacy receives an order from the Medieazy app, it validates the prescription at the point of delivery with the customer. Going forward, Rxeazy will enable doctors to convert their paper prescriptions to e-prescriptions that can be securely shared with their patients.

P1, Gem Wellington, Old Airport Road, Bangalore – 560017 Amarinder Singh | amarinder@cioindia.org | +91 9343171420 Ranjit Metrarni | ranjit_metrani@dell.com

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