Paytm Bank Partners With Ola, Uber, For Fastags To 100,000 Drivers

PPB has set up 12 camps at Uber Green zones across different cities for drivers to purchase
and use FASTags

 Pay by app: The risks and rewards as Indians chuck cash, go digital
 Paytm Payments Bank to help spot apps that may trigger fraud transactions
 Paytm unveils all-in-one Android POS device to take on Google, Amazon
 Paytm launches all-in-one QR for merchants, to enable unlimited payments
 Airtel Payments Bank enables NEFT, users can make transfers at any time

Paytm Payments Bank (PPB) on Friday announced it has entered into a strategic partnership
with ride-hailing companies Ola and Uber. The tie-ups would empower over one lakh driver-
partners to conveniently use Paytm FASTags and seamlessly commute across the country, the
PPB said in a press statement.

PPB has set up 12 camps at Uber Green zones across different cities for drivers to purchase
and use FASTags. It is also working with Ola at Bengaluru airport and other local locations
including Indira Nagar, Devanahalli, and Electronic City transport hubs to accelerate the
adoption of electronic toll payments in India, the statement said.

Paytm FASTag doesn't require any separate prepaid account to be created, PPB said.

The money for toll payments gets auto-debited from Paytm Wallet and the balance can also
be used for shopping, recharges, bill payments, among other services.

Business Standard: Fri, February 21 2020.

HCL Technologies Is Betting Big On Internet Of Things-As-A-Service

 Satellites will drive IoT connections

 Moving to the Edge
 How IoT is helping cos disrupt their existing spaces and proposed ventures
 Big domestic IT services firms may see tepid revenue growth in Q3

Veena Kumar 1
  Digitising small businesses an $80 bn opportunity over 5 years, says study

HCL Technologies is putting its weight behind internet of things-(IoT)-as-a-Service as more

and more industries are looking at adopting the technology. “The fact is we were the creators
of the market (of IoT-as-a-Service). The business has grown very robustly, and we have
grown our business 11X in three years, of course on a smaller base.

We’re in the triple digit million dollar range already,” said Sukamal Banerjee, corporate vice
president, ERS Sales (Hi Tech & Comm.) and Head —IoT Works, at HCL Technologies. IoT
Works is a dedicated IoT business unit of HCL Technologies. It focuses on helping
customers accelerate time to market and increase cost saving. IoT-as-a-Service, which HCL
provides through this unit, has been a growing segment for the past three years.

According to research firm Zinnov, “IoT is the fusion of technologies starting with devices
incorporated with sensors, connected through networks to the cloud, on top of which there is
analytics. The complexity of the IoT Tech Stack is further exacerbated as applications are
delivered through multiple layers of technology sourced from different vendors, requiring
varied skill sets for integration, usage, and maintenance.”

This is where technology services firms have found an opportunity, given that different
protocols and standards related to IoT require expertise that a single organisation will find
difficult and cost intensive to have. While traditionally, asset-heavy industries like
manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation and logistics, and healthcare have been big
adopters of IoT, there are asset-light customers who are also looking to leverage the
technology.

“We have also come across very interesting use cases like in casualty and property insurance,
retail and CPG as retailers try to take on the Amazon effect,” said Banerjee. Retailers are
using IoT, he said, not just for improving the experience of the shoppers in the store, but also
running the back end — from packing inventory to prioritizing the shares of the products in
the stores. He added that IoT is also a big revenue generator for telecom service providers,
and they are also creating services — both business-to-business and business-to-consumer —
which require IoT.

In terms of geographies, HCL has chosen to work in North America and Europe initially, but
has now started to look at Asia Pacific (APAC) as well. “First primary focus, and that’s what
we did about 2018. And for the last year and a half, we started focusing on chosen countries
in APAC. And wherever we have chosen to operate we have seen significant traction,”
Banerjee said.

BS: Mon, February 17 2020.

Meet The Iitian Who Is Improving Efficiency In The $3 Trn Fashion

Industry
Veena Kumar 2
  Zilingo acquires Sri Lankan firm nCinga Innovations for $15.5 million
 Orders dry up for Surat's textile industry ahead of festive season
 How two engaging films look at the fast fashion industry from opposite ends
 Promoters of textile firms increase stake on demand recovery expectations
 Textile industry hopeful for a cut in GST rate on synthetic fiber

Four years ago, during a house party in Bengaluru, Dhruv Kapoor, an engineer at gaming
studio Kiwi Inc, had a conversation with his neighbour Ankiti Bose who was an investment
analyst at venture capital firm Sequoia. Both had reached a point in their careers where they
wanted to create their own start-up. But they had contrasting skill sets and had done different
kinds of work. “But we had a very common vision (about) the future of technology and
commerce,” says Kapoor.

Later, after many similar conversations, the duo quit their jobs and in 2015 launched their
own start-up, Zilingo, a commerce and technology platform that powers the entire fashion
supply chain. A lot has changed for Kapoor in these four years. Early last year the firm raised
$226 million from marquee investors such as Sequoia, Sofina and Temasek. The funding
valued the firm at about $970 million.

What differentiates Zilingo is that instead of focusing only on India, Kapoor and Bose
identified the whole of Southeast Asia as their target market. “What struck us is that
Southeast Asia has this incredible ecosystem that very few people from India had explored,”
says Kapoor, the 29-year-old co-founder and chief technology officer of Zilingo. “When you
look outside the boundaries of India, you see these incredible markets. These are also
countries which proportionally have a far higher middle class than India and have fairly high
per capita GDP (gross domestic product),” says Kapoor.

Also, what convinced them to target these markets in 2015 was the high level of Smartphone
and 4G penetration there as well as the opportunity of unsolved problems such as online
payments and financing. They also observed the lack of tech-enabled commerce platforms for
selling and buying goods. But there was a high demand for such solutions.

“For us as Indian founders, it was a pretty big leap of faith to take because we weren't well
acquainted with the Southeast Asian market,” says Kapoor, who along with Bose spent many
months in markets such Thailand and Indonesia doing their research. “We were on the
ground in Thailand, literally going door-to-door and meeting small sellers and were working
with translators to understand how they do business.”

Fashion is an over-$3-trillion industry, in which a majority of retailers struggle with meeting

consumer demand for fast, on-trend and responsibly produced products due to inefficiencies
and information asymmetry.

Singapore-headquartered Zilingo is addressing these problems by creating a full-stack

technology platform that makes the supply chain fair, transparent and connected. An alumnus

Veena Kumar 3
of IIT-Guwahati, Kapoor who also had a stint at internet company Yahoo, led conception and
development of the company’s numerous proprietary software tools and technologies to
shape the retail and supply-chain tech for consumers and merchants. He is building these
innovations with the help of 180 engineers who work at the firm's technology and innovation
hub in Bengaluru.

The Zilingo platform is at the centre of the company’s supply chain innovation, and enables
businesses to buy and sell goods in bulk; access financing, logistics, and other services. It
also sources apparel from its network of factories; and help them track and optimize their
production process. The company has built a global network which consists of 6,000 factories
and 75,000 businesses. Besides Southeast Asia, Zilingo now has customers in the US, Europe
and Australia, where brands traditionally lack transparency over the supply chain and
manufacturing processes.

Last December, Zilingo, acquired Sri Lanka-based software-as-a-service Company, nCinga

Innovations, for $15.5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition would help Zilingo
scale up its global supply chain capabilities. It would also help drive the adoption of the
manufacturing execution system (MES) software across Zilingo’s global network, enabling
access to previously untapped markets. An addition to Zilingo’s technology stack, the MES
software automates operations on the factory floor by enabling access to real-time data on the
go.

The firm also plans to leverage its global manufacturer network to increase distribution of the
software- specifically for core fashion manufacturing markets such as Bangladesh, India,
Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey.

“It is incredibly hard for managers and factory owners to track...the quality level and the
defects and nCinga’s team sets up tablets which enable the managers to track defects and
throughput of each production line,” says Kapoor. Additionally, using the Internet of Things,
a technology where devices communicate with each other intelligently, line managers and
owners are able to completely digitize the factory. These include live dashboards within the
factory and mobile apps that provide critical insights.

“This (insights) is to the extent that whenever there is a defect, a line manager can actually
see where the defect is happening, while the garment is getting manufactured and he also gets
a heat map about where most of them are taking place.” Kapoor says increasing penetration
of smart phones and 4G connectivity, Zilingo’s vision is to drastically improve the supply
chain. “We can transform how people are doing commerce and that's the journey we are on.”

BS: Tue, February 04 2020.

How Flipkart Is Automating Its Supply Chain With Robotics, Machine

Learning
Veena Kumar 4
The e-commerce giant is using robots to automate its supply chain and bring the next 200
million customers online

 E-commerce firms expect 60% increase in business this Diwali season

 Walmart-owned Flipkart invests Rs 2,839 crore in India wholesale entity
 Flipkart's BBD plans: Big Billion branded aircraft and burgers
 How deep discounts, impulsive buying have helped e-commerce beat slowdown
 Trying to democratise opportunity for all: Flipkart CEO on 'Samarth'

Tucked away in a nondescript lane on the outskirts of Bengaluru, is the sorting facility of e-
commerce giant Flipkart. Walking into the hangar-like building, you can hear grinding
metallic noises. That’s the sound of hundreds of robots, or cobots, as they are called, working
seamlessly with humans.

The human workers place the products on the orange-coloured robots, and the machines sort
them after scanning the encoded information on each parcel and placing them in the
designated bins. “It is cool working with them,” says Nakula Punji, one of the thousand-odd
employees at the facility.

Earlier, Punji would pick up products that customers had ordered, do the sorting, and walk
back and forth for hours to get them ready for shipping to various destinations. With the
robots to support him now, Punji is learning newer skills. Says Lalit Majhi, Punji’s co-
worker. “I am now being trained in the safety aspects of working with equipment.”

As it seeks to bring the next 200 million consumers online, Walmart-owned Flipkart, which
competes with US rival Amazon, is betting big on robots as part of its technology-led
initiatives. The company already sells products across over 80 categories, servicing all 20,000
pin codes in the country.

“If you have to scale business, the amount of space needed for sorting millions of packages,
is humongous. Doing that manually is also prone to error. The idea behind using cobots is to
work at scale and provide faster service to the customers,” said Pranavs Saxena, head of
robotics at Flipkart.

The company, which started using robots as a pilot early this year, has since quadrupled their
number to 450 at its Soukya Road facility in Bangalore. The robots, which are basically
automated guided vehicles (AGVs), can sort 18,000 packages per hour. They are capable of
working round-the-clock and they self-charge themselves at various charging points once
their battery is drained. According to Flipkart, these AGVs or cobots can migrate easily,
offering flexibility to deal with unplanned or seasonal demand spikes, such as during the
company’s flagship festive sale, “Big Billion Days”.

“When you are growing fast, that scale also creates different kinds of problems, especially
when you don’t know how much you will grow. For example, three years ago, you didn’t

Veena Kumar 5
know whether people would buy more fashion or (electronics). To manage that, one needs
flexibility and robotics brings that,” said Saxena.

Flipkart's sortation facility, which is as big as a football stadium, has two floors. A worker
scans each package and puts it on a conveyor belt to take it to the specific floor. There,
another operator feeds the shipments to robots, which take them to the nearby scanning
machines to read the barcodes. Depending on the information, robots take the shipments to
designated bins for items to be delivered to the specific pin codes. The robots use machine
learning (ML) to identify the shortest route to a particular bin.

The robots also communicate with each other in real time, whether it is to prevent a collision
or for workload distribution. “We achieve 99.9 per cent precision with robots,” said Nikhil
Vartak, a senior manager at Flipkart, and part of the company’s automation and research and
development team.

All those handling the robots undergo rigorous training before they begin work on the shop
floor. At the automation area, the employees are mandated to wear safety helmets, jackets
and shoes. Experts see Flipkart’s use of robots as a stepping stone towards
introducing automation across supply chain processes. “In India, companies have just begun
to deploy robots at the warehouse level. Flipkart is leveraging its parent company Wal-Mart’s
acquisition of a robotics start-up and using AGVs to increase sortation efficiency by almost
60 per cent,” said Ashwin Krishnamurthy, associate vice president — technology and
internet, at management consulting firm Praxis Global Alliance.

Warehousing and supply chain are one of the most crucial cost components of any e-
commerce company. According to Ankur Pahwa, partner and national leader for e-commerce
and consumer internet at EY India, now that these companies are shifting to specialised
delivery timelines such as same-day and 4-hour deliveries, it has become even more critical
for them to have effective logistics, warehousing and supply chains. “The biggest impact of
using robotics in warehouses is that they increase the throughput by 5 to 10 xs. This
technological upgrade in warehouses, combined with the up skilling of manpower, is
necessary to substantially reduce logistic costs to cater to the massive growth in online
shopping,” said Pahwa.

India, along with other global markets, is also testing upcoming technologies such as drones
and self-driving vehicles to further reduce human intervention. Companies are also investing
in ancillary technologies such as artificial intelligence and ML. AI in supply chains is helping
in smart procurement, sorting of products and efficient demand forecasting, thus improving
efficiencies as well as customer satisfaction.

“Amazon and Walmart have taken the lead in developing a drone workforce combined with
RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology that could significantly automate inventory

Veena Kumar 6
management. Drones can also help in real-time monitoring and resolve the out-of-stock
problem,” said Pahwa of EY.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the sale of industrial robots in India
reached a new record, with 4,771 robots installed in 2018 alone. This is a 39 per cent increase
over the previous year. India now ranks eleventh in the world in terms of annual installations
of robots.

Though most of these robots are procured from other countries, Gurgaon-based Grey Orange
is one of the earliest robotics start-ups in India that designs, manufactures and deploys
advanced robotics systems. One of Grey Orange’s robotics systems accelerates the process of
order fulfilment by queuing the items for picking. Grey Orange’s robots have been deployed
by companies such as Mahindra, Delivery, DTDC and Pepperfry. Worldwide, the number of
robots in use is 2.25 million — a three-fold rise over the past two decades, says a report by
Oxford Economics. Trends suggest the global stock of robots will multiply even faster in the
next 20 years, reaching 20 million by 2030.

Business Standard: December 11 2019.

What Makes Fastag The Biggest Disruptor On India's National Highways

The govt hopes this December will mark the beginning of change over at the national level to
an entirely electronic system of toll collections on India's national highways
The National Highways Authority of India introduced FASTag, which uses RFID technology
and allows cars to pass toll plazas without stopping for payment

 Paying cash in FASTag lanes won't invite penalty till December 15

 Link your FASTag to a prepaid card, not a savings or current account
 Tech, service firms gear up for FASTag as govt extends deadline to Dec 15
 Confident of hitting tax-collection target, says FM Nirmala Sitharaman
 Budget 2019: Income tax collection target 'too steep', say experts

India’s third major experiment for the road sector in less than three years has just begun this
December. It is the plan to make every vehicle that uses national highways pay tolls
electronically.

A year ago, India had moved from a single-year insurance policy for vehicles to a multi-year
policy. And, from next year April, any new vehicle sold will have to operate under the
stringent BS VI emission norms.

There have been other tweaks in between, like making driving licence rules stiffer and a
massive jump in fines for traffic offences. Altogether, highway driving rules in India has
never faced so many changes in such a short time.

Of these, the introduction of FASTag, essentially Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

chips on all vehicles, could prove the most disruptive. Though all automobiles that have come

Veena Kumar 7
out of showrooms since December 2017 are now fitted with these devices, they have often
remained decorative pieces. Older vehicles will have to get the chips installed on
windscreens.

But from December 1, these chips have begun to become active. Tolls can only be paid by
these chips. From December 15, vehicles that do not show up at the toll plazas with these
chips will have to pay twice the amount as penalty.

“The government is not keen on earning the penalty, seeks to inculcate a habit among the
users of paying tolls electronically,” said a source in the ministry of road transport and
highways. The ministry had been toying with the plan to make FASTag universal from 2012,
when it had set up a three-way joint venture company, Indian Highways Management
Company Limited (IHMCL), as a collaboration between NHAI, banks and leading road
concessionaires. NHAI holds a 41.38 per cent stake in IHMCL, the concessionaires another
33.81 per cent and the financial institutions the remaining 24.81 per cent.

Like most things in India's digital economy, this too was based on a report written by
Nandan Nilekani. After several attempts, the ministry hopes this December will mark the
beginning of change over at the national level to an entirely electronic system of toll
collections on India’s national highways.

Asheesh Sharma, chairman and managing director of IHMCL, says FASTags will throw up
data on the number of cars that use a stretch of road, accurately. “It will provide the bidders
for toll-operate-transfer road projects data that they are not able to get now. With the data,
pricing will be better to give the government better monetisation of these assets.”

Data from IHMCL shows in the first week of November, the number of tolls paid through
FASTags was 7.27 million. In money terms, the collection was a little more than Rs 173
crore. Assuming the trend held for the month, the numbers would be close to 30 million a
month, for approximate revenue of Rs 700 crore.

The percentage of tolls collected via FASTags is less than 30 per cent to the total receipts
across the country, but government sources said this number has already jumped close to 50
per cent in the past few days. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study notes that the average number
of e-toll transactions per month at all the toll plazas in the month of April 2017 was around
7.5 million.

Electronic toll collection had long ago emerged globally as the key solution to enable a fast,
efficient and cashless payment option for collection of fare for using highways. The world’s
first electronic toll plaza began duty in Norway in 1986. By the turn of the century, several
countries had adopted it. In Asia Japan began it in 2001 and China in 2014. India had
obviously lagged. One of the essential requirements for the system to operate is the need to
provide an integrated centralised system that provides an interoperable solution across all the
national highway toll plazas of the country. It has now become possible with the creation of
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Veena Kumar 8
 How National Electronic Toll
Collection works

How FASTag works

It is a deceptively simple technology that

goes through eight stages of signal
sharing between the banks that have
issued the FASTag, the National
Electronic Toll Collection switch
operated by NPCI and the toll gate, all
in a span of few seconds.

As a car with a FASTag approaches a toll plaza, the antennae at the gate locks on to the radio
frequency of the tag and puts a question to the acquirer bank (with whom the toll operator
does business) to validate the tag details. The bank asks the NPCI switch to cross check the
vehicle’s details. If the details match, the switch confirms the tag is fine to the bank, which
then calculates the toll fare. The acquirer bank will now again ask the NPCI switch to debit
the toll from the customer’s FASTag.

The switch now asks the bank from whom the FASTag has been bought (issuer bank) to debit
the money from the customer’s account. If the FASTag is topped up, the transaction goes
through and the issuer bank sends a sms alert to the customer. If the response from the bank
is not sent within the defined time limit, the transaction is considered as “deemed accepted”.
But the system of signals is not over yet. The NPCI switch will notify the acquirer bank that
the transaction has happened and the bank will in turn notify the toll operator. Phew!

The presence of NPCI ensures that any bank can issue a FASTag, though at present only 24
are listed for this business on their platform. However, of these only ten have set up the
technology platforms to offer their business to the toll operators. The list includes Axis bank,
SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and PNB among others.

Clearly, since FASTags come loaded with the vehicle specifications, once installed, these
cannot be changed across automobiles. Customers can either top up their tags by linking it
with their bank accounts, or have a prepaid system. In either case, they are eligible for a 2.5
per cent discount. But the problem with a prepaid account is that the customer will need to
remind herself to recharge it. If it isn’t, the tag gets blacklisted at the toll plaza and there is a
tedious process of halting, paying the penalty and getting the FASTag back into the system.

BS: Wed, December 04 2019.

Medlife's Secret Sauce Behind Delivering Medicines In Less Than 2 Hours

MedLife has mobile apps for everyone, and a smartphone is where all the tasks happen
 India's only express player's secret behind delivering medicines in 2 hours
 Will close $150-mn funding in 3-5 months: Medlife CEO Ananth Narayanan

Veena Kumar 9
  SoftBank in talks to invest $70 million in Indian e-pharmacy Medlife
 Delivery staff are among the worst affected by rising Delhi's air pollution
 Swiggy's sustenance: A diet of customer loyalty and logistics

Nestled in a lane off Richmond Road, a busy business district in Bengaluru is a 3,000-square
foot stocking and fulfilment centre (FC) of MedLife Express, a division of e-health
firm MedLife. As is the case with any FC, the place is thronged by delivery executives and
courier vans churning out consignments of retail medicines day in and day out. But what
makes this centre unique is that it is the fastest in the country in terms of handling
consignments.

Nine of every 10 orders from this facility are processed in less than five minutes. The facility
is part of the riches MedLife acquired when early this year it bought medicine delivery start-
up Myra, the first player to offer express deliveries back in 2015. At the time, the concept of
ordering medicines online was only beginning to pick up.

Cut to 2019, MedLife Express continues to be the only player in the segment offering
deliveries within two hours. Now, with time its processes and technology systems have
matured to enable something called Super Express — delivery under 30 minutes.

Achieving express delivery

Faizan Aziz, vice-president (products) at MedLife, says the centre is the model for the
company’s four other FCs in Bengaluru and one in Mumbai, as he takes this reporter on a
tour of the facility, which processes more than 4,000 orders a day. Aziz and Anirudh
Coontoor are Myra’s co-founders who joined MedLife after its acquisition.

The FC did not have robots sorting parcels or state-of-the-art assembly lines. At first glance,
it was rather humble, with carefully demarcated areas for various functions handled by a team
of around 25 men. All processes work on workflows, proprietary stocking apparatus and
back-end technology systems perfected over time, explains Aziz. MedLife also has mobile
applications for everyone, from the delivery agents to the warehouse staff, and a smartphone
is where all the tasks happen.

The racks at the entrance, meant for delivery agents to pick up orders, was unique. Aziz
termed those “pigeon holes”, two-way racks curtain-covered in the front. The way it works is:
A delivery agent picks orders from different pigeon holes in accordance with the instructions
in his mobile app, and scans each parcel on the app to double-check. One order is retrieved
from each pigeon hole, and multiple are emptied because there are usually multiple orders
delivered by one executive.

This innovation allows the company to change delivery orders, add more parcels, or take out
the ones that are to be delivered far off. It is essentially a mix and match of delivery routes till
seconds before the delivery executives come in.

Veena Kumar 10
“We are dynamically using the pigeon holes, so whenever we change the route, there is no
need for sorting the parcels again. Only the pigeon holes, where the delivery person has to
pick the order, change. We change routes every minute, what if an order has come in the last
minute?” explains Aziz. This is in contrast to standard delivery — say, by an e-commerce
firm — where people manually club different orders in a box which is handed out to the
delivery agent, making it an arduous task to alter the final shipment in the last minute.

Through pigeon holes, and some refinement in routing algorithms, MedLife Express is able
to club, on average, 4.8 orders per run, which Aziz claims is the highest in the industry.
Typically, courier companies do somewhere around two orders per run.

Moving on to the inside, you find that the racks are not labelled alphabetically. They in fact
have special serial numbers. Taking one of them out, you see in a rack various compartments
that stack different medicines. The beauty here is that medicines stacked together are the ones
that are also typically ordered together — for example, a medicine for common cold along
with the cough syrup. The concept is called “Heterogeneous Stacking,” says Aziz, adding that
Amazon is the only other player known to follow this process.

Inside the FC, the executives toil, doing different tasks — stacking, retrieval, invoicing, and
check-outs. All have smartphones apps, where they punch each and every step in their
processes. All this real-time data flow into a software dashboard, managed by the FC
manager, which records granular information like the time spent on each task and swiftness
of each employee. A whole lot of automation is fed into the system. For instance, “if the load
in the warehouse increases, more people will be automatically directed to racking. Likewise,
if there is an influx in orders, everybody will be moved to checkouts”, says Aziz.

Even, in-warding and inventory management are heavily reliant on technology. Here,
MedLife Express uses data science and prediction algorithm, which crunches volumes of
order data, with a focus on cluster-specific buying patterns. Using this, the company claims to
be able to predict 94 per cent of the future inventory, which allows it to run on a mere 32-day
inventory cycle, far lower than standard pharmacists do. The aim is to bring down the
inventory to about 20 days as the algorithms get more astute.

Domino effect: Medicines in 30 minutes

MedLife, which is expected to raise a major funding round soon, has big plans for its Express
Delivery vertical. “Medlife Express is one of the most innovative services in the industry
today and we expect to scale up aggressively and serve both the acute and chronic needs of
the customers,” says Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ananth Narayanan.

“We are also testing Super Express Delivery, basically delivery under 30 minutes. Five per
cent people in Bengaluru are already getting this without even knowing it. Going forward, we
will make it a premium feature and charge Rs 19 for Super Express,” says Aziz.

With the Myra acquisition, MedLife has attained a stronger foothold in the online medicine
delivery segment. E-pharmacy, or online medicine delivery, is the biggest revenue generator
Veena Kumar 11
and sub-segment in the larger health-tech space, with an estimated market-size of $9.3 billion
in 2019, according to EY.

MedLife has other verticals like lab test booking and online doctor consultation, but the bulk
of the revenue comes from drug sales.

In the e-pharmacy segment, MedLife faces competition from other well-established start-ups
like 1MG, Net Meds and Pharm Easy. All the four firms put together contributed 90 per cent
of online drug sales last year, according to Red Seer. In the larger health-tech, a few other
models have been validated and scaled stupendously.

Practo, for example, has built a $500-million business by offering a platform to connect
doctors and patients. On the other hand, Portea Medical, which offers clinical and paramedic
support at home on request, has also grown multifold.

BS: Sat, November 23 2019.

From Goqii To Healthifyme, Brands Slog It Out On The Fitness Track

By tweaking the product and finding a famous face to endorse it, brands are ratcheting up the
numbers
 Experts express concerns as cyber security threats loom on Smart Cities
 MevoFit Thrust smartwatch review: Feature-heavy, yet not smart enough
 Lenovo Ego Smartwatch scores well on most fitness-tracking parameters
 Honor Band 5 review: Affordable wearable with vibrant display, new features
 Explained: How smart devices are changing the threat landscape

From fad diets to wearable fitness trackers, health and fitness are on everyone’s mind. And
brands promising to help allay the universal and growing concerns over one’s mind and body
are crowding the alleyways, be it at local supermarkets or online marketplaces.

While some have appointed celebrity endorsers to add more punch to their promises, others
are combing through the data pouring into their apps to create a custom-fit or offering an
aggregated service pack. But in the alphabet soup of trackers, apps and advisories, foods and
other gadgets, how do brands differentiate their promise and more importantly, find the trust
of their consumers?

A few brands such as GOQii, Cure. Fit or HealthifyMe are picking their way through the
crowd. For instance, GOQii (wearable products) has Akshay Kumar as brand endorser to
combat the firepower of market leader Xiaomi. HealthifyMe has localised its content,
customised the experience and is banking on AI-powered coaches to get an edge over the
competition and Cure. fit is bundling products and services to tackle physical and mental
fitness, nutrition and primary healthcare.

By tweaking the product and finding a famous face to endorse it, brands are ratcheting up the
numbers. For instance, while Xiaomi has 41 per cent of the wearable products market with its

Veena Kumar 12
 range of Mi Bands (IDC figures for Q3 of
2018), GOQii at 19 per cent share in terms of
shipments is at number two. But GOQii is clipping
ahead at 47 per cent, lower than Xiaomi’s 77 per cent,
but still way ahead of its competitors.

Similarly, in the diet and weight loss

category, HealthifyMe has been clocking an annual 3x
rate of user additions while its AI-based coaching (Rs
300 per month) has been growing by 30 per cent
month-on-month, the company claimed. And Cure. fit
said that in three years it has set up more than 200 physical fitness centres across 8 Indian
cities and two internationals in Dubai, more than 31 mental wellness centres with one in
Dubai.

The numbers tell only part of the story. The bigger challenge is keeping the trust of the
people. “Most wearables, for instance, offer the basic features. Hence, the leading brands will
have to do something different and offer more than their peers. Also, instead of running
multiple apps, they could also look at becoming an aggregator,” says N Chandramouli, CEO
of TRA Research.

Vishal Gondal, founder & CEO, GOQii, says that the key is to offer a long-term value
proposition. “As per our research, 94 per cent people don’t trust the traditional health care
system. So, there is a huge trust deficit,” which is what they want to address. “We are
targeting consumers from a long-term value perspective,” he says.

A similar logic powers the push for wearable products. “We don’t only make money when a
consumer buys a wearable. It is how a consumer enters our ecosystem. We make money
when a consumer interacts with the app. Our wearables are bundled with subscription,”
Gondal explains. The company has used Akshay Kumar as the face of an initiative to spread
awareness about health and fitness and works closely with influencers in the category.

Tushar Vashisht, co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe believes the best way forward is to
keep the care affordable and innovate. “We are continuously innovating on our app quality,
localising content and bringing in some feature differentiation. Ours is one of the first to offer
an AI-based health and diet coach called Ria, apart from making human trainers digitally
accessible,” Vashisht elaborates.

Naresh Krishnaswamy, business head Cure. Fit believes that people make the difference.
“Experts and facilities are our two pillars, so identification of the right locations for the
centres and setting up the team with the right set of trainers and centre managers is very

Crucial,” he says.

Business Standard: Mon, September 02 2019.

Veena Kumar 13