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In hindsight, the maddening rush in 2015 towards grocery delivery startups in India made a lot of sense. The beautiful – but abstract – vision of a customer swiping his finger a few times in order to have groceries summoned to his doorstep was infectious. The sector seemed ripe with potential – until the big, bad logistics monster once again reared its ugly head. Planning pickups, warehousing, and deliveries was much more difficult than people thought it would be. Would startups stock inventory in warehouses or pick them up from stores? If they did pick up from stores, how would they ensure successful partnerships that would neither overestimate their own sales or coincide with that of offline customers?

While some grocery delivery startups have managed to make the most of the chaos – Big Basket, Grofers, and ZopNow to name a few – the founder of Divum Labs, Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, explains that there’s still a long way to go. According to him, the inherently consumer-facing world of grocery delivery startups has wasted too much time focusing on its operational aspects.

Photo credit: Kerala Tourism
Logistics in India can be tough.

Perhaps this is why he waited for the crowd to clear before launching Terraa. Until now, Divum has focused on building apps and cloud-based solutions for other startups and has worked with the likes of Mahindra Tata’s Babyoye and travel portal Makemytrip. Terraa is its first foray into the product space.

So far, Terraa has managed to successfully tackle the major problems that typically afflict grocery delivery startups in India. It has tied up with Gojavas, a logistics management company with connectivity to over 300 cities. This means that aspects like pickup, drop off, and collecting cash on delivery will be entirely handled by gojavas. “While we’ve also tied up a bank and a payment wallet, we realized that this cash economy would require handling cash on delivery seamlessly,” says Vaideeswaran.

Its first grocery stores – virtual warehouses, as Vaideeswaran calls them – are sourced through their partnership with Reliance Fresh, a chain that currently has 453 stores across the country. “In any city, we have at least 50 stores,” he explains. “Let’s say you order groceries. We already have four to eight stores to choose from to give you what you want, depending on the stock and availability.”

Gamification, social shopping, and chat

So… if not logistics or procurement, what’s left to focus on? “Marketing and bringing the best product to our consumers,” Vaideeswaran says. “Conventionally, grocery shopping has been a social thing,” he explains. “Families go to stores together and there are so many psychological things that have come with that. That’s an inherently social thing. Think of loyalty to a certain store, or the exciting feeling of getting rewards or discounts. That’s gamification. Our question was: why can’t we bring these aspects to an app?”

In my opinion, the Terraa app is the startup’s crown jewel. It’s equipped with a chat-like interface where users can select “prodicons”, or easy to load, emoticon-esque pictures of groceries that are carefully hand-drawn by Terraa’s design team.

“The only prodicons that aren’t hand drawn are the fruits and vegetables,” says Vaideeswaran. “We know that customers like to see real photos of their produce. We’ve only made an exception for the lemons.”

The chatbox acts like a shopping basket that collects and stores these prodicons. Because Terraa focuses deeply on customer data, Vaideeswaran explains that a user’s grocery experience becomes streamlined. “We use analytics and past data to figure out what you might want to order next. Every once in a while, we suggest products that the user might want next inside the chatbox.”

I’m using prodicons to order a balanced meal.

Users can also create “house carts”, or group chats with the friends and family that they usually shop with. “Once you add people to your house cart, you can collaborate real time with your groceries,” Vaideeswaran explains. “For example, my wife just added cereal to our house cart. I don’t think we need this brand so I can delete it and send her a prodicon of a healthier version.”

Still, entirely replacing grocery shopping with an app remains difficult. “We’ve had challenges getting those that are thirty and above to use our app,” he explains. “Emoticons just don’t excite them in the same way.”

Keep it moving

Photo credit: Patrick Savalle

While Terraa has only been live in Bangalore for a little over a month, Vaideeswaran has plans to move rapidly. “We want to prove that our business model can scale to multiple cities much faster,” Vaideeswaran explains. “We really believe in using our partnerships to their full capacity.” In the future, the startup hopes to partner with more grocery store franchises.

Whether or not Terraa will achieve success is yet to be seen. Still, it’s clear that Vaideeswaran has the right attitude to survive in India’s dynamic and intuition led grocery delivery environment. When I explained to him that I rarely ordered groceries online because the basket size was often too big to order just for myself, he immediately changed the minimum payment from INR 300 (US$4.50) to INR 200 (US$3). “Just for the weekend,” he laughs. “We’ll see how it turns out.”

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The US/India ed-tech startup differs from other platforms by pairing students with mentors and allow access to a community of fellow students and program alumni

Springboard, formerly known as SlideRule, has just picked up a US$1.7 million seed round from 500 Startups, Blue Fog Capital and a host of angel investors. LinkedIn Co-founder Allen Blue, The Princeton Review Founder John Katzman, InMobi Founder and CEO Naveen Tewari also joined in the round.

According to a release, the US/Bangalore startup will be using the cash to grow as many of their courses are already at capacity. As a platform currently offering data science and UX design programs, Springboard will be leveraging the funds to launch workshops in new fields and provide more student support services.

Springboard is a self-paced, mentor-led e-learning platform for Millennials so the recent rebranding was to better reflect their mission. Unlike other e-learning platforms, Springboard offers more than just content and pairs students with industry mentors, some of which work at Airbnb, Etsy and LinkedIn. Users can also tap into a community of fellow students and program alums.

Thanks to these weekly 1-on-1 video calls and access to an engaged community, Springboard reports completion rates of up to 10x more than your average online course.

Also Read: These are the key ingredients that make an edtech ecosystem thrive

“As the tech industry grows, employers can’t hire talent fast enough. There is incredible demand for trained data scientists and UX designers, even as 45 per cent of recent college grads are underemployed and struggle to find affordable, effective ways to learn career-related skills,” said Gautam Tambay, Co-founder and CEO of Springboard said in a release.

“We’re addressing these problems at Springboard by offering something truly impactful — an incredibly personalised education that doesn’t break the bank. Our approach of combining a project-heavy curriculum with 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts creates accountability and ensures that our graduates are ready to thrive in the new economy.”

The two-year-old startup was initially launched as a search engine for online courses, before growing to include curated content. Over the years, Springboard listened intently to their users who cited needs for “more guidance and interaction,” so they added the mentorship and community layers in 2014.

Since inception, Springboard has seen demand from students across six continents and is home to a network of 100+ mentors, which include data science and design professionals. Success stories include Springboard alumni landing jobs at IBM, Boeing and Reddit.

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The startup raised US$1.7 million in first round of funding from German-based private investor Joerg Winklemann

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BottlesXO, a mobile app that delivers wines with its proper, ready-to-serve temperature within an hour of ordering, is launching in Hong Kong this month.

The startup, which launched in Shanghai in June this year, recently expanded to Suzhou, a city northwest of Shanghai. It is also planning to hit the Singapore market early next year.

The startup was founded by Mischa Schulze. A German national, he relocated to Shanghai to open a design firm three years ago, before founding BottlesXO. He was living the typical “agency life” laced with late, thirsty nights in Shanghai.

“In Berlin, it’s easy to get access to wine anytime. But in Shanghai, after 9PM I can only go to the late night stores. There is no ‘good’ wine there, in term of quality,” says Schulze, referring to the vast majority of liquor stores in China which stock a disproportionate amount of bai jiu (a Chinese alcoholic beverage).

Schulze also found prices at these stores “unbelievably expensive”. So, he, along with fellow wine connoisseur Thilo Fuchs, started investigating why the prices were so high compared to Europe.

They couldn’t find a reason for the exorbitant prices of wines in the city. So they started BottlesXO, which delivers affordable wines and also provides information on the bottle, tasting notes and suggests food pairings. The duo roped in Chinese native Zou Zhengfeng as the third Co-founder.

Currently, the team has around 20 staff in Shanghai alone.

Schulze’s former employer Blue Scope Communication provided the seed funding worth US$100,000 to develop the prototype of the app. This was followed by a funding round of US$1.7 million from Joerg Winklemann, a private investor in Germany. The trio now plans to raise the second round of funding around the Chinese New Year.

Also Read: Want to find best watering hole for New Year’s eve? Try Vgulp

Competition flows in Hong Kong

Image Credit: BottlesXO

Talking about competition, Schulze says: “We are competing with everyone — supermarkets and online stores that pre-deliver local brick and motor stores.”

Also Read: UK-based Deliveroo grabs US$100M to expand to Asia, Middle East 

Despite the difference in culture, the BottlesXO team sees Shanghai as its training grounds for Hong Kong.

“I think the market in Shanghai is highly competitive. Chinese consumers are very very demanding,” says Schulze, saying that Shanghai offers more choices than Hong Kong does.

They’ve had to make a few logistical changes. In Mainland China, the startup hires its own team of drivers that speak perfunctory English, because “drivers are our only touch point.” In Hong Kong, the team is working with a third party company for delivery. But BottlesXO doesn’t want to be grouped in the myriad of food delivery services in town.

Also Read: Hong Kong startup Delivery Republic raises US$2M in seed funding

“Delivery services are not serving their own products. They are [bringing] stuff to your door. I think delivery services compete on who is faster and cheapest. The business model is very flat. We are a niche model. I’m not afraid of the food delivery guys. I’m not looking to make 600 deliveries per hour [or] rely on growing our user numbers by the thousands per week,” Schulze says.

BottlesXo is aiming to be profitable in nine months, a goal the company said it managed to achieve in Shanghai. The startup currently have a few stock rooms from which it distributes wines to select areas in Hong Kong.

Also Read: foodpanda’s refined sister foodora enters Hong Kong

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2015 was a breakout year for startups in Pakistan. One company was accepted into YCombinator, two raised multi-million dollar investment rounds, and a local competitor was acquired by German juggernaut Rocket Internet. Add that to the mushroom growth of startup incubators and accelerators across the country, as well as much more hype and buzz around tech entrepreneurship in general. The future seems bright.

Of course there are still challenges to overcome. Payments is a niggling problem – unwieldy financial regulations mean fintech startups aren’t able to address this need and ecommerce as a whole suffers. High-speed internet connectivity is still not a guaranteed right; it’s been just over a year since Pakistan introduced 3G/4G LTE services, and there’s still a long way to go before most of the country jumps on the bandwagon.

On the upside, several promising companies secured investor cash this year. Here’s our list, in no particular order.

1. Zamzama Property Group

Zamzama Property Group, which is the parent company of real estate sites Zameen and Bayut, raised US$9 million in series B financing, marking the largest investment in a Pakistan-based startup this year.

Zameen’s rival in Pakistan is Rocket Internet-backed Lamudi but word on the street is that there’s a massive gap between the two. The portal has been around since 2006 and counts Patrick Grove’s Catcha Group as one of its investors.

See: They started an online property portal in a small apartment. Now it’s worth millions

2. Naseeb Networks

Naseeb Networks is the holding company of job portals Rozee and Mihnati, concentrating on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, respectively. The startup raised a US$6.5 million series C round, bringing its total funding to US$8.5 million. Acceleration of growth in target markets of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was said to be the primary reason behind the sizable investment.

3. Wifigen

Wifigen, a startup that provides wifi solutions for businesses in exchange for social media logins, raised an undisclosed amount of seed investment valuing the company at US$1 million. The angel investor behind this round is John Russell Patrick – a former executive at IBM and an early-stage investor in Uber.

4. Bookme

Bookme, an online platform for booking bus, cinema, and event tickets, secured an undisclosed amount of seed investment from Element Ventures, which valued the company at US$4 million. The startup was previously one of the Startup Arena finalists at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2014.

5. EatOye

EatOye, an online food delivery service, was acquired by Rocket Internet’s Foodpanda as part of a regional acquisition spree to assert its dominance in the sector. The startup was a late entrant to the online delivery space in Pakistan, but had started to seriously threaten Foodpanda’s position at the top of the perch – hence the buyout.

6. Forrun

Delivery and logistics startup Forrun was acquired by technology services company Arpatech. The acquisition was made in line with a concentration on ecommerce, logistics, and technology verticals.

Arpatech is well-known in Pakistan startup circles, after funding and successfully exiting from EatOye.

See: These Pakistani brothers skipped college, taught themselves how to code, and built a site that attracts 100M monthly visits

7. Markhor

Markhor, which makes handcrafted artisanal shoes, stole the show this year when it became the first startup from Pakistan to be accepted into Y Combinator, thus receiving US$120,000 in seed capital. Waqas Ali, founder of Markhor, had told Tech in Asia that the acceleration was aimed at strengthening Markhor’s position as a luxury lifestyle brand.

8. Interacta

Interacta, a startup which is trying to redefine conventional broadcasting by making television shows interactive, raised US$220,000 in seed funding from Fatima Ventures. The startup’s app, which is similar to music detection service Shazam, analyzes sound coming from television channels and pushes content accordingly. For example, in cooking shows, users can view the recipe directly on their phones. Broadcasters can also use the app for targeted advertisements.

9. Sportskot

Sportskot is a marketplace for sporting goods manufactured in Pakistan. There’s a large, fragmented industry of sports apparel and equipment, and the startup is trying to bring them all under one umbrella to assist in visibility and appeal to international clientele. Sportskot raised US$140,000 in seed funding to expand its operations.

See: 13 startup incubators, accelerators, and co-working spaces in Pakistan

10. MySmacED

MySmacED, a startup in the edtech space, is a communication platform that enables real-time information sharing between parents, teachers, students, and administrators. It creates a “moderated social network,” while also assisting with feedback on child performance and easier information sharing between teachers and students. The startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding valuing the company at US$2 million.

11. AutoGenie

Autogenie is Pakistan’s first on-demand car service and maintenance startup. Other than these basic services, it also offers premium members things like roadside assistance, regulatory and tax compliance, and car analytics. The startup raised US$100,000 in seed investment from PakWheels.

12. Mezaaj

Mezaaj is a platform for fashion designers to showcase their work and get noticed in the digital sphere. The startup works with local universities and schools to hunt down promising talent, and encourages them to work on their own original designs. These are then either sold online on the marketplace, or through large retail stores in the country. The startup secured an undisclosed amount of seed investment, valuing the company at US$500,000.

See: 5 disruptive ecommerce startups we saw in 2015

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