Plastic, polythene and styrofoam are seeing increased usage in India owing to their nature of being cheap and disposable after use. However, what people fail to take into account is the damage these materials cause to the environment. In a country with an estimated population of 134 crores, single use plastics see a lot of use everywhere—from food packaging, covers and bags to cutlery. India, which is primarily an agricultural nation, sees a lot of agricultural waste fit to be used to create products capable of replacing single use plastics. Pappco Greenware, an Indian startup, is trying to change this trend by introducing high quality cutlery which aims to replace single use plastics with products that are durable and look aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
Founding
Pappco Greenware was founded by Anil Agarwal and his two sons, Abhishek Agarwal and Aadesh Agarwal, in 2011. On a trip to Singapore, Abhishek Agarwal came across bagasse products and wondered if the same could be injected into the Indian markets since they are compostable alternatives to plastics. Bagasse is the dry pulpy residue which is left after the juice is extracted from sugarcane. Upon some research, the founders realised the best bagasse products originate in China and went there to explore various factories and their products as a part of their research and development. After doing this, Pappco Greenware was established.
Initial struggles
Once the Company was established, the sales were negligible. The difficulty was to get vendors on board to purchase their products. In order to make the vendors understand the existence of the demand for Paapco’s products, they went on to educate potential customers about the importance of the products they were selling and the negligible environmental impact they have. Another major hurdle was the similarity in appearance the bagasse products have with styrofoam, making it difficult to distinguish one product from another. The Company bootstrapped in spite of losses and finally managed to penetrate the market.
Products and raw materials
Pappco currently has multiple products in their inventory like plates, cones, glasses, bowls, boxes, straws, baskets, cutlery and many others. The products are made entirely from bagasse, a material which is available in abundance in India due to sugarcane and bamboo maturing every two years. The products offered by Pappco Greenware also eliminate the need for cutting down trees and petroleum oils used in the manufacturing of styrofoam. The raw materials used by Pappco are compostable and durable, meaning they are harder than styrofoam and able to withstand high temperatures, making them capable of being used in microwaves.
Pappco aims to aggressively capitalise on the current trend where awareness about sustainability and the environment are increasing among the public and many states are banning the use of single use plastics. Pappco Greenware partnered with brands like Curefit, Reliance Retail, Marriott Hotels, Taj Hotels and Future Group, to name some. With products like these in the market, everyone can choose to make a difference in reducing the carbon footprint.
We live in a rapidly transforming era where humanity is making exponential leaps in technology. Thirty years ago, no one would have believed you could talk to an online voice assistant to create tasks and get things done. Ten years ago, no one would have believed humanity would land robots on Mars. Technology truly has improved the quality of living of every human who owns a smartphone and has access to an internet connection. Voice assistants are slowly replacing manual tasks and making lives easier and efficient. Siri, Alexa, Google Voice Assistant are just some of the widely used artificial intelligence based tools which are employed on a daily basis. Artificial intelligence, which is hailed as the technology of the future is now slowly making its way into much more complex domains like self driving vehicles, quantum computing and also health care.
Suki, a United States of America based startup founded by Punit Soni, developed their own voice assistant which runs on artificial intelligence to simplify healthcare for doctors and other healthcare professionals. In simple terms, Suki is akin to Siri for doctors. While you could order a pizza or schedule an appointment on Siri, doctors could modify, edit and add health records of their patients. Suki is a powerful tool to help doctors with documentation of health records which often take hours of their (doctors) time.
Suki currently focuses on documentation but has the potential to expand its usage to data queries, ordering, prescribing and billing. According to a white paper published by Suki, using its technology increases the time a doctor spends with a patient by 12% by cutting note taking time by 76%. The time which is saved also brings in a financial benefit of $30,000 more in revenue a year on average for doctors.
Suki raised a $ 20 million Series B round from Flare Capital Partners, First Round Capital, and Venrock, doubling its total funding to $ 40 million since its 2017 launch. Suki is also looking to expand its reach in India and has decided to establish Bangalore as their base of operations. India holds a lot of potential for Suki considering the amount of manual work which goes into almost any sector.
It would be interesting to watch how Suki and other similar AI based startups would transform healthcare across the world.
In the past grooming products were traditionally targeted at the female gender. However, with changing times and perceptions grooming is now a gender neutral term. Grooming is now essential for looking great and making a good impression. However, in a market which is traditionally saturated with products from FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) for women, a startup saw potential in men’s grooming products. Bombay Shaving Company, found the men’s grooming market in India was largely unorganised and was largely limited to just shaving products. Today there are products like body wash, soaps, oils, shampoos, creams and perfumes for men’s grooming and the popularity of grooming products is due to brands like Bombay Shaving Company, Beardo and Ustraa.
Beginnings
Bombay Shaving Company was founded in 2015 by Deepu Panicker, Rohit Jaiswal, Shantanu Deshpande and Raunak Munot who are all friends. It all began with Shantanu, who was a software engineer working for McKinsey in the United States of America. A chance discussion with a friend who was interning at Harry’s, a New York based shaving brand piqued Shantanu’s interest. The friend spoke about how shaving brands in America are challenging the likes of Gillette and PRO, which led Shantanu to the realisation that India could also use a disruption in the grooming space.
Shantanu then spoke to his friends, family and general consumers about shaving habits and came to the conclusion no one likes to shave because men hated the daily ritual of shaving. This led to the birth of Bombay Shaving Company. Shantanu soon roped in his school friend, Raunak Munot, who was the Director of Social Strategy, GroupM New York, and college friends, Rohit Jaiswal, the Head of Channel at Emel and Crompton Greaves, and Deepu Panicker, a senior analyst at McKinsey.
The team worked with world class experts and manufacturers about fragrances, raw materials and worked with chemical engineers as well as packaging innovators. The first five hundred customers were acquired purely through word of mouth. Most of their products are constantly innovated depending on customer insights. One example would be when a sizable amount of customers wanted the shave to be closer and aggressive, the team designed a new razor part and shipped it to their customers free of cost.
Secondly, the Bombay Shaving Company team wanted to give their customers a great unboxing experience and it worked. Customers began to share unboxing videos and pictures on social media and it worked wonders for their branding which led to an increase in sales. The team also gave users the option to get their names engraved on the shaving razors to add a personal touch for free of cost. Bombay Shaving Company raised $ 9 million in funding since its inception and now sells more than 40 products across four categories (shaving, bath, beard and skincare.)
Today Bombay Shaving Company has redefined the shaving experience and continues to grow. In January 2021, Bombay Shaving Company raised $6.1 Mn (INR 45 Cr) in a funding round led by a UK based consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser. This funding will be used to launch three new consumer brands in the market, invest in marketing and branding and penetrate deeper into the market, beyond the metros.
Let us know in the comments below if you have ever used any of the products of Bombay Shaving Company or plan to use in the future.
While the world is caught up in its daily routine, there is one startup which is silently taking over Silicon Valley by storm. Named as Clubhouse, the startup has nothing to do with parties but is instead the next big thing in social networking technology. Clubhouse is slowly growing in leaps and bounds and is attracting a slew of some big names in technology onto their platform. Since the last couple of weeks, Twitter is abuzz with this new player in town and how amazing its user interface and experience is, and the most unique but important thing is Clubhouse provides direct access to the who’s who of the startup world.
So what is Clubhouse and why is it being hailed as the next big player in the social networking scene? Read along to find out more about this incredible app.
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is a new type of social networking platform which is an audio only platform. This means every conversation takes place through audio where users speak to let their thoughts known. Users can create and host rooms where speakers will talk about a particular topic. Depending on the topic being discussed in a room, a user can join the room as a participant and take part in the conversation. Clubhouse believes audio is a special medium and users need not worry about being judged because there are no cameras.
How to use clubhouse
Clubhouse is currently only in its beta phase and the app is not open to the public at large. The app is also available only to iOS users at the moment. The only way to join the community as a user is through an invitation from an existing user. This is one of the reasons why Clubhouse is such a rage at the moment. The team behind Clubhouse say they do not want to scale up very rapidly because they feel it is important to take things slowly. Therefore the invite only/iOS only is the current offering in beta, but experts and pundits believe it is a genius marketing strategy to get people to talk about the app.
Upon registering, users can choose a variety of interesting topics based on which rooms are displayed. A user can then join one of these rooms and take part in the discussion.
Clubhouse currently has a user base of 600,000 users and it is still in its beta mode. Getting an invite to Clubhouse is a badge of honour at the moment. Indian Twitter feeds exploded in early January 2021, when AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and Entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan hosted a room called Startup Bharat, where they spoke about the Indian startup scene on Clubhouse. Since then Indians have been scrambling to acquire the highly sought after Clubhouse invite.
Evan Williams, Reddit co founder Alexis Ohanian, former Y Combinator President Sam Altman, AngelList co founder Naval Ravikant, Ashton Kuthcer, Oprah Winfrey, Drake, Kevin Hart and many others are some of the influential personalities who are on Clubhouse.
Kevin Harrington, a host on Shark Tank hosted a room in Clubhouse where he listened to pitches from entrepreneurs. The room had more than 3000 participants and some of the pitches even received funding by the end of the session. This fast paced and the in-the-moment nature of the app is why Clubhouse is such a rage.
As Clubhouse slowly expands and finally makes itself available for everyone, it would be interesting to see how it will position itself among the likes of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. But right now, in its nascent stages, Clubhouse is the place to be and a place of deep learning.
