Satanik Roy's Interview

Name: Satanik Roy, Co Founder and Chief Product Officer, Yibeal.

Info.: He's Pursuing B.Tech Mechanical Engineering from SRM University Chennai (Class of 2017).
he's Former Co-founder and CEO of Appolysus and developer at Maptags Inc and Voyageur Magazine.





Q1. What is Yibeal ? Why did you choose the name Yibeal ?

Yibeal is a O2O mobile classifieds play. The top three things Yibeal does differently are:

#1. letting sellers and buyers leverage an online discovery platform (for broader connect) while transacting offline at local Yibeal centers (ensuring safe transactions and certified phones)

#2. providing first-of-its-kind warranty and insurance coverage for Preowned phones

#3. Branding existing mobile retailers' space (and their service engineers) to create a retrofit franchisee ecosystem for Yibeal's offline ops - facilitating faster growth on variable cost mode

We believe our ability to monetize  preowned mobile phone sales, and the aligned warranty/insurance businesses gives us a significant edge over the traditional, and largely commoditized, online classified platforms that focus on that space. And given India is poised to become the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, we think our timing could not be better.

Yibeal is the acronym for 'Yes it's a big deal'.

Q2. What inspired you to setup Yibeal ? How is it different from other used product sellers offline & online? 

During the early days at college I chose to stay in a PG, I had selected a room through an agent who took the cash and ran away I was left without shelter for a couple of nights in need of urgent cash I sold my laptop to an unknown person who negotiated heavily making an uncomfortable situation speaking in his mother tongue which I could never make out; at an unfamiliar place transacting in cash. I ended up selling a laptop which was bought a year ago for INR 67,000 at INR 5,000 after quoting INR 35,000 over a classified site.
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. I knew that things need to be changed in this market which addresses billions of people every year but still looses out on product valuation, product trust and security of transaction.

While building the Beta version we tested with a couple of beta users. One user called us up from Bangalore who had left his hometown Calcutta for his job about 8 months ago. On his mom's birthday he thought about gifting her an affordable smartphone and choose Yibeal. He booked an appointment with the seller and informed his mom all she has to do is go down the street next afternoon in the Yibeal Kiosk. The kiosk engineer was notified, she not only received a surprise gift packed in a birthday box but also the kiosk engineer connected her over Skype. She was in tears. Today she texts her a 100 times over watsapp which was just a call a week before.

His grandmother came to know about it from his mom and wanted a Yibeal phone to connect with his daughters who are married and are staying abroad. That was the most inspirational feedback on the product till date.

Q4. How it all started ? Who all helped you out ? What is the story from ground level ?

I have been fortunate enough to have built a dream team of people I admired and I have known for a long time closely. Led by Dipanjan Purkayastha, Global Technology professional with over 21 years’ experience across US, Canada and India in Strategy, M&A, Startups and Business Development is heading the team as the CEO, Former regional manager of Blackberry India Ambarish Sengupta joined in to head operations. My Co-Founder Asish Chakraborty, the present technical head of Yibeal and over six years of experience working in top MNCs across India. The team consists of Abhijeet Deb taking on the online marketing, Soumodeep Roy Muhurthy and Samarjeet Mukheerjee in operations, Dwijo Das in the finance, Arko Chatterjee in the legal, while Kiran Kumar is in the tech support and Anuradha C taking on as the PR officer.  And David Wang, Esteemed US entrepreneur and investor joins as the adviser. That is the immense power we feel every moment of this journey when we as  seem that we're a team like tea and milk, or cake and custard, or pork and apple of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.

Q5. Could you give a step-wise process of how a device will be traded from the buyers & sellers point of view ?

After Signing in your profile the app let's you can select your present GPS location or you may select a different location where you are looking forward to buy or sell a mobile phone. The stack data of users that is the number of transactions done and comments from the people who have transacted with creates a feeling of trust towards the other. The seller can automate Yibeal MSP calculator within his/ her phone to check the valuation of the phone as well as receives notification of Yibeal refurbishment option on the flaws and what value it will add up to. The buyer can search and select an appointment with a seller in his/her nearest kiosk (Yibeal service centers) where the kiosk engineer checks and certifies the phone and provides insurance and warranty. The buyer can pay through online/ cards/ cash or cheque. We are coming with a premium service for pickup, certification and delivery at door step. The buyer receives an agreement over which he/ she has been notified as the owner of the phone. Both buyer and seller receives virtual coins which can be used as discounts and Cash-backs.

Q6. According to this article Apple wanted to start a similar thing in India , how Yiebal can help Apple ?

With a new mobile phone being launched every 3 months on an average in India by the mobile manufacturers they find it difficult to retain customers as the customer already has a mobile phone in hand with he is unable to sell at a proper valuation hence rejects to buy the new mobile phone set that has just been launched.
At Yibeal when these mobile phone owners are able to sell their pre-owned product at ease with proper valuation the mobile manufacturers are able to retain customers.
Apple trying to push it's preowned market in India but not getting permission is looking for Indian Startups like Yibeal who are able to bring a constructive solution for this unstructured and unvalued billion dollar pre owned market.

Q7. What are the major roadblocks in this kind of startup ? How you tackled them ?

It was so risky and so scary to drive a dream to change one of the most unstructured market with vast challenges of gaining trust and overcoming peer obstacles, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder -if not impossible- to lose.

Q9. What are Yibeal's plans for next 3 years? What locations would you be expanding your services to?

With India trying to bring the next 500 million to 1 billion first time users over the Internet through its ‘Internet Sathi Initiative’ Yibeal will play a significant role in bringing smart-phone devices to these villagers affordably allowing the farmer to get a knowledge about the weather conditions hence know which crops will flourish, serving basic knowledge and health information source and finally for entertainment purpose. Providing the most convenient way for a better pre-owned transacting platform, Yibeal plans to extend its service options both vertically in products and set its foot in the US market in 6 months’ time with David Wang, adviser at Yibeal and esteemed US entrepreneur. Thus quoting themselves as 'Yes it's a big deal' which they acronym 'Yibeal', defining to be the next unicorn in the start-up world.

Q10. Considering there are some big players from the market seated in Yibeal, how democratic is the decision making? Is everything decided by the top members or do others also have a say in it? How is your experience working with everyone?

At Yibeal we have a strong cultural ethics where we stress:
Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person. Because we do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.
The team always asks a new Yibealer while joining, 'Do you dare to disturb the universe?'

Yibeal stresses on growth of individualism for the growth of the dream of the Yibeal family.

Shabbir Hussain's Interview

Name: Shabbir Hussain Saifuddin Nimuchwala ,

Info.: He's Co-Founder / Creative Head, Hats-Off (A Rich Media Co.). A BCOM Graduate.

Past: Nokia Worked as sales & service executive.

Q1. What is Hats-Off ?

       Hats-Off (Rich Media) agency is a young and dynamic digital marketing company from Pune, India. We are dedicated in creating, building and energizing brands. The strength of our company lies in the cocktail blend of purpose-driven creativity, brand marketing acumen, mobile, research and digital media prowess. We deliver RESULTS. We deliver programming apps that builds a powerful connection between people and products. For every client challenge, we customize teams to best deliver success. We create programs that are pitch-perfect, eliciting each brand’s mission and charm.
Hats-Off provides its service to small, medium and big scale organizations, regardless of industry. We help our clients grow and find success through the medium of age- the Internet. All this is done with thorough expertise and talent in Internet Marketing and SEO Optimization.

Q2. How it all started ? Who all helped you out ? What is the story from ground level ?

       So on 12th Oct'2011, 4years from now is when 3 college going, common young folks, busy in their own lives happy with whatever they were doing, not to forget childhood buddies who came together to form something that would change their lives completely.
This was when I was busy with my focus set to be the master in telecom industry working his ass off at Nokia. Husain Habib all set to turn out as a film director & photographer while Taher Mandiwala happy with his Networking skills working with Cisco. That's when Husain one fine day realized that working as an employee would just be a 9-6 job, that too for someone else to give them a happy & wealthy lifestyle.
It was 6months before 12th Oct'11 when Husain called me up asking if I would be interested in starting a business along with him. Working at Nokia for almost 4years by then I had my focus intact in sticking with this brand & all I did was give Husain some fake promises of working together & that's when he started researching on Business that would do wonders for us & I had no clue what was coming in. Few of the business ideas we dropped before getting into Digital advertising were - Cutlery, Hardware, Glass Manufacturing.
Now this was when Husain calls up Taher asking if even he would be interested in joining us for a new venture & Taher jumped up as a baby all excited & boosted because this was something what he always wanted to do but had no idea how to take the first step. Now this is when the three of us started hunting for new ideas & venture options, during all this while I was still least interested to make a switch from the technology world to a boring & rusty product buying, selling world.

Husain, was giving his everything to find out the best business which would excite us all equally & bingoo! He found out that digital advertising was the next big thing that India would shift onto & he shared this idea with us & this is when I finally decided that yup I should now make a move from my ready-to-achieve dreams to struggle-to-achieve ones.

Q3. Being a BCOM, BCA Graduate and an IIT pass out in Management, you all three Dived into the sea of Unknown , why ?

      It was all need of the hour, at our early twenties when most of other folks who belonged to a well settled family had nothing to worry in their future & the rest had their MBA’s & PHD’s to focus on & get a degree to work in some MNC & be satisfied with their job profiles, It was then when we thought of not letting this stage of our life go in vain & take a risk with whatever we had, this was the time we could make a bigger decision in life & not look back again, we still look back & feel proud on our decision & we finally sat together figuring out what genre in digital would be the right thing to start off with & we found out SMM & SEO where the key players during those days with a very few agencies trying their hands onto it 4years back.

Q4. What was most challenging for you personally during the journey of Hats-Off ? And how you tackled it ?

       For me personally the most challenging part was the initial capital, it was just a sum of 10,000/- I couldn’t afford to have that in my account (Financial crunches) & the three of us never wanted to involve our families into our idea of starting up a digital advertising agency, yes we did inform them but never asked for a penny. Taher & Husain contributed a sum of 10,000/- INR each & I having no money asked my nana (grandpa), he wasn’t my real grandfather though but he always took care of my family since we were kids & went through the lowest phase of life, he had a small 150sq.ft of shop space in Pune which he then gave to me for a year & asked me to use that space as my capital for Hats-Off. I don’t know where would I be if my late Grandfather wouldn’t have come forward helping me in it, he expired a month back & I miss him, he was one idol I knew, he was a god figure to me.

Q5. What do you think, is digital marketing changing the way people look and feel products? If so how ? 

      There is no denying that digital is now a part of the three basic necessities we knew in our schooling – Food, Clothing, Shelter & Digital. I don’t remember when was the last time I bought anything without reviewing it online or not purchasing it from the major players on digital. From news to sport to something as worst as Taher Shah’s Angel is spotted, watched & discussed not personally but on digital. We do not buy from stores any longer, physical stores work as a product trail tool, where the end consumer visits to just try their hands on onto the product they wish to buy & they later purchase it online from a portal that offers them a deal they can’t ignore.

Q6. Do you agree, if anyone wants to be an entrepreneur, he doesn't need to have a related  degree?

       I strongly agree that you can do anything if you wish to, degree of-course is a plus point in anything you want to do today, some don’t just go for degree to earn money but they make the most out of their education & implement them in their lives too, but again I don’t see anything you preach in your schooling or college coming to life until you get into streams like Engineering, Medical & a very few. Otherwise it’s all your self-upgrading that takes you places. Have seen the best of brains during my schooling & High schooling doing nothing great with their lives, a few proved me that book worms is the term that exists while a few other ones proved me that they are lazy to be anything in their life. The problem today is that you find something easy you do it, when challenges knock the door they find the easiest exit to it. I belonged to a Co-Ed school, was never good with English communication as nobody at home spoke English & after I joined Nokia I realized what was I lacking & I learnt it all by myself by communicating with my customers.

When we started off with Hats-Off I took social media, designing & creative segment of my company because I thought I was pretty good at it until I was disappointed with myself when I realized I was a zero because my school always taught me the wrong stuffs in first place. Everything I know today from communication to discipline to management have learnt it by observing & self-belief.

Now let's get onto our qualifications while we started this digital advertising agency -
Husain Habib - Commerce Graduate with no clue about digital, marketing or sales.
Taher Mandiwala - Networking expert but '0' at SEO, Web development.
Shabbir Hussain - Pursuing 1st year BCOM while having never heard of SMO, designing or even the tool Adobe.
Qualification now -
Husain Habib - Champ in marketing, you name the brand & he will tell you the name of the last employee of the company (we call him Wikipedia)
Taher Mandiwala - You cannot mess up with him for anything that's technical, you name the issue he has the answer, the master's in development & SEO ask him their doubts.
Shabbir Hussain - I poop designs & ideas now, they keep flooding out of my head, designing is now my favorite hobby.

Q7. Share some of your School/College learnings that you applied in Hats-Off.

       Frankly school & college has taught nothing more than how to read & write, everything else has been self-achieved, everything that we have seen as grown-ups around us have made us what we are & helped us take Hats-Off a step higher, We do not hire employees on the basis of their qualification or some base percentage criteria to be eligible, we hire them on their skills of the job profile they have wished to join in for, we see their skills & confidence over education.

Q8. What is your office culture ? How many employees are there ? Do you take interns ?

       We are a team of 20+ all below the age of 30years & everyone is a master at what they do. We have kept our culture simple yet sweet - work & play as much as you like, Music, Jokes, Dancing, Yelling & Screaming on top of our voice which makes our neighboring offices & residents wonder what are we upto. Yes we also hire interns & fresher’s & train them, but we always see them leave disappointed because we set them a working culture so free & high that they feel uncomfortable working anywhere else after they have to leave us.

Q9. What are the major roadblocks in this kind of startup ? How you tackled them ? 

         Roadblock for a startup which is self-funded & started by three guys who hardly knew anything about digital is the lack of knowledge about the stream & capital limitations, While we had 20,000/- INR in total to begin with Hats-Off in 2011, we lost around 10k while we ended up paying some wrong electricity bill assuming that was ours & which never was refunded by the MSEB. With a sum of 10,000/- we managed to sustain ourselves for a year with 1-2projects in hand for the entire year without any employee hired. This 1 year worked as a learning session for us in terms of understanding the clients, their needs, what we had to offer, what were we missing out from our end & a benchmark plan. From 2012 we bagged in some amazing projects like Nokia Priority, Toonz Animation & hired employees & shifted to a better workspace & things kept changing ever since.

Q10. What is your favorite Quote and by whom ?

        Love. Live. Life. - #Myquote

        Jo kuch nahi karte woh kamaal karte hai - SRK

        Degree se sirf certificate milta hai, akal nahin – SRK

Q11. Being in this field, if you like to conclude a lesson to the upcoming entrepreneurs, what would that be ?

         Just go find your Self potential & do not wait for the right time to come, make it happen, always have people around you who criticize you or don’t believe in you, this will act as an encouragement & boost up module for you. Take up challenges & never think how just say wow & go for it. Digital has a lot to offer the world in coming future, you are still not that late to begin with it.

Q12. List some of your learnings/Mistakes from Journey of Hats-Off.

1- Do not hesitate.
2- Worry less about how & more about why, that’s where you will have your answers.
3- Never over deliver, most of them do not like it.
4- Don’t take them as your client, take it as your brand, and you will work on it as yours.
5- Great service is all it is about.
6- Take your own decisions & be firm at it.

Ankit Vyas's Interview

Name: Ankit Vyas.
Info.:  Co-founder & COO , OIZOM Instruments Pvt. Ltd.
He's Master in Product Design (National Institute of Design), Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (GCET, SPU)
He's a professional product designer with 4 years of business experience. He's practicing product design in his design consultancy Cosire Innovations. He has experience working on various types of products like consumer electronics, medical products, appliances, instruments, machines etc. he's journey of Cosire opened vigor to explore and innovate radicle ideas to make it reality.






Q1. What is oizom ?.

OIZOM is our initiative of working in the area of natural resources. We have started with air-quality, the next big thing against humanity. We have developed air-quality monitors and purifiers for indoor and outdoor spaces.

Q2. How you such an idea ?

Oizom originated from self-realization of the pollution in our city-Ahmedabad.

Q3. Do you earn from it ? If so , what is the revenue model ?

We have installed 40 solar-air-quality monitors in Delhi. We are selling products as per client's requirements and specification. We are earning out of it.

Q4. How frequently the information about pollution level updates ?

We can adjust the frequency from every 5 Min to once a day.

Q5. What is the source of the information ? Is it your own analysis or you outsourced it ?

We have our own analytics platform called "OIZOM Terminal". It provides reports, charts, analytics, notifications etc. as per user's need.

Q6. What is the role of Oizom in one's life ? 

Oizom touches life of every human being by realizing and improving air-quality of their surroundings. Oizom is an initiative related to healthcare of every human being.

Q7. What is your target audiance/users ?

We have B2B segments like industries, hospitals, offices and B2C customers as our target audience. We are also approaching government for out-door devices.

Q8. How it all started ? Who all helped you out ? What is the story from ground level ?

Founders : Ankit, Vrushank and Sohil know each other from a long time. Being a part of the maker community, we use to discuss about the professional projects  whenever we meetup. We all use to work on novel concepts and products to make some difference to some people or problem. But we were always keen to solve much bigger problem. A problem, which applies to everyone; irrespective of gender, location, cast, breed anything ! We had a ‘Life Centric’ approach in mind. Something relevant to humans, animals, birds, plants and mother earth. In short “We wanted to make the world ACTUALLY a better place”.
We came down to the fundamental basics of life that is Air, Water and Food. We do not consider air-quality as a problem as we can not see Air. Thus ’Making air visible through technology’ became our first agenda. Air-diagnostic Product came into our first agenda. We started conceptualising Air-diagnostic Products for every possible scenarios. Oizom has personal, indoor and outdoor air-quality monitors developed and market ready.

Richa Singh's Interview

Name : Richa Singh.
Info.: Richa Singh , Co-Founder , Yourdost.com .

Yourdost Team.

Q1. What is YourDOST?

YourDOST is one of its kind online emotional wellness platform to get support from experts consisting of life coaches, career coaches, psychologists and other experienced individuals. YourDOST aims to reduce the stigma attached to seeking help for mental wellness in our country and with the use of technology, make expert help widely and instantly available to people looking for emotional and mental wellbeing.

However ironic it may sound but the word “mental” is associated with madness and insanity. As a result, seeking mental counseling is a huge taboo in our society. Seeking support is considered a sign of weakness. Most of the times we keep our problems to ourselves because we are not very comfortable accepting our vulnerabilities. There are issues of discovery and availability also present with searching for a relevant counselor nearby.

We believe technology is a potential contender for filling these gaps - especially anonymity and reach. This has helped us get some early acceptance of this solution from people.

Launched in December 2014, YourDOST is available to people via its web platform (www.yourdost.com) and also on mobile through its recently launched mobile app on android platform (bit.ly/YDandroid). It allows instant access to users to a team of 90+ experts to share through an online interface, be it a live chat or email query or even book one on one interaction with the expert of their choice. The key aspect of this venture is that people are kept completely anonymous throughout the platform.

Q2. How It All Started?

The idea took birth out of a personal experience and therefore it is not just a business for us.

When I was at IIT Guwahati, my hostel-mate committed suicide due to anticipation of bad placement. but none of us had any clue of her suffering before she took the drastic step. I think this could have been avoided. Even though we had counselors, psychologists in the campus but hardly any one was seeking their support/help.

When I started working, people around me were stressed due to job pressures and relationship issues. However again, most of these people were not willing to talk about their problems fearing social implications and for the fear of being called mentally ill.

Today, we have so many ways to connect but we feel lonely than ever before. We want to make sure we are connecting to connect and not just to upvote and like but share our emotions

With this belief, we started yourdost.com - an emotional wellness platform

Q3. What difficulties you faced and how you tackled them?

Culturally there is so much stigma in our society around discussing about mental health that it require a lot of psychoeducation for people to truly believe that seeking support is not a sign of weakness and mental well-being is as important as physical well-being.

Our approach has been to spread awareness, to tell people it is ok to be human, it is ok to be vulnerable. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness or mental illness. Through our hundreds of content, we try to share the stories of people who went through difficult times and a lot of psychoeducational content on various topics to spread awareness about mental well-being.

Today we have 90+ experts consisting of life coaches, psychologists, career coach, life coach and other experienced people, so our customer always have a rich list of people to select from based on their experience, speciality, language and other factors. We promise anonymity to customers, which encourages them to share their feelings with experts without the fear of being identified from anywhere and at any time of the day

Q4. What all services currently YourDost provides?

We have 90+ experts  consisting of life coaches, psychologists, career coach, life coach and other experienced people. People can engage with them through an online interface, be it a live chat or email query or even book one on one interaction with the expert of their choice.  It can be accessed through our web portal YourDOST.com or through our android app bit.ly/YDandroid. The key aspect of our venture is that people are kept completely anonymous throughout the platform.

The professionally trained counsellors and experts at YourDOST will help you with

• Healthy Personal Relationships
• A productive and satisfying work life balance
• A more focused approach towards achieving your goals
• A more confident self
• The ability to deal with pressure of all kinds and from many sources - personal, societal, peer.

On the other side, the experts are provided with a system to access the platform. This side is completely different than the user facing platform and gives experts access to experts community, a lot of reference material developed through intense research, training modules, ways to easily manage their interactions with clients.

Q5. How Yourdost is gonna Expand in future?

To start with we want to capture the virtual market. Everyone who wants to improve themselves should be a part of YourDOST. We want to start in India and then go beyond India. We want to be there for people across all strata, all age group.

Q6. What new services you gonna introduce after raising Rs 2.5 cr?

With 2.5 Cr raised our main focus is to increase awareness and make people aware of the importance of mental health. We shall also introduce a lot of premium services such that voice and video calls going forward.

Q7. What is exact role of YourDost in one's life?

It is exactly what the name says, 'YourDOST'. Self improvement is such a challenging task, that people have to constantly look out for information and guidance by 'Googling' them. Well, they need not spend time on searching anymore. YourDOST is a one stop platform to seek tips, guidance, information, for anyone, anywhere, on any device.

Q8. What is your company's ultimate goal?

If you want to conclude a lesson from your journey of YourDost then what'd that be.

We want to make this world a better place.

We have understood that a little help or guidance to people will go a long way to help them deal with oddities of life.

The sense of accomplishment when we help people is remarkable and it propels us to work harder and reach out to more people.

Today, we have so many ways to connect but we feel lonely than ever before. We want to make sure we are connecting to connect and not just to upvote and like but share our emotions. We want to be their emotional support who stands beside them and help them in their journey of self improvement.

Sumeet Jain's Interview

Name : Sumeet Jain

Info. : Co-founder of Stupidsid.com. Have done his engineering from DJ Sanghavi College of Engineering. Started Stupidsid while he was studying in college and have been responsible for the Strategizing, Marketing , PR and sales at Stupidsid.






Q1. What is Stupidsid ?

Stupidsid is a platform for students to get access to university specific academic content and make informed decision regarding education. We started it as a college review website which today has grown much more from that. We have started with providing university specific academic content to students, the first phase of it being the solutions to the past question papers. In the coming phases we will add notes and also other allied services which will be useful for a student.

Q2. What all services this awesome website provides ?

You can divide the site in to two sections, Knowledge Hub and Study Resources.

Knowledge Hub:

This is the section which contains college reviews, admission processes. Complete guidance regarding MS in US. We have tools like grad school finder and finding similar profiles for students planning to pursue higher education. We have reviews of around 700 colleges. 

Study Resources:

This section contains past years papers and solutions to them. This solving paper part has now been thrown open to the users. Now anyone can post answer to the already uploaded questions. These answers get moderated by our in house moderators. Currently the subscription for 6 months costs Rs 199.

Q3. Is it only for Engineering Students ?

Currently all our services are for engineering students only. We do plan to expand to other courses too but that is only after we cover a good number of engineering universities.

Q4. How you or your team got idea of such website ?

All our services have been around the problems that we have faced during our college. There has always been dearth of genuine information and content. We found a big void in this space. There was no website which provided genuine college reviews. We were the first one to provide reviews from students perspective. There has been no website which is providing online content for university specific content. You will see that this sector is very disorganized. Also the local content available had so many errors in it that it was a really not possible to refer them. That is when we thought that we should even start with providing academic content.

Similar was the case with MS in US content. There are so many students who are planning to pursue MS but there is no good website which will connect the students or help them genuinely. With so many university agents around it is difficult for students to trust anyone but the students actually studying there.

Q5. Do you cost for services you provide ?

Most of our services are provided free of cost. We charge for Past years paper solutions only. 

Q6. Does your website provide Question Papers or Answers for Other state boards ?

Yes, we provide Solutions to Past years papers of Mumbai University, VTU (Karnataka), Anna University, GTU (Gujarat),RGPV ( Madhya Pradesh).

Q7. What are your future plans for stupidsid ?

Our plan is to  reach out to each and every undergraduate student in country. We want to make a consolidated platform for all the students.

Amit Grover's Interview

Name : Amit Grover.

He is Co-Founder at AHA Taxis, AHA Taxis offers outstation taxi booking for one way fares, return trips and multi-city tours. They are a team of IIT-IIM co-founders with an experience at diverse companies like Myntra, Infosys, Asian Paints, Onida, Mumbai Angels. Amit Grover, earlier ran Nurture Talent Academy for 5 years, now handling marketing and operation at AHA and his partner Vikas Taneja has been a technology innovator for more than 15 years, now heading technology and strategy function at AHA. They used to play cricket together during IIT days, and know each other ever since.

Q1. What you're currently doing ?

For last few months, we did consumer research, met lots of drivers and travel agents, conceptualized and designed the entire system and hired a team of developers. We have built website, mobile application and back end application for consumers and aggregated taxi drivers to offer best service to customers booking their taxi travel on AHAtaxis.com. We are currently doing sales and marketing to reach out to a vast majority of travelers, and increase awareness of our brand. We are also working with several partners for co-promotions and this will add long term value to the whole ecosystem.

Q2. Tell us about AHA TAXIS.

AHA Taxis was born as an idea few months back, when we realized road travel is nearly 5 times bigger than train travel, still it has issues related to availability, affordability and customer service. If you go to any offline taxi driver, he will charge you double fare even for one way trips, as he has a risk of not getting return customer. We are trying to offer one way fares, which are fair for customers, and increase business for taxi drivers at the same time.

Q3. How you got an idea to start such a cool service?

It was last year that I had booked a train ticket for Delhi-Bhopal-Delhi trip and it was having waitlisted status. Delhi to Bhopal ticket got confirmed at the last moment, while Bhopal to Delhi ticket was cancelled at the last moment. It was a panic moment for me, my wife and 4 year old kid. I searched for options using google and just dial but all drivers asked for double charges. That time the idea of online booking for intercity taxi came to our mind, and as kept going deeper, we found it was a big pain for customers in India and had no parallel anywhere in other countries. So we decided to solve this problem and AHA Taxis was born.

Q4. Why AHA TAXIS is introduced , when we have OLA Cabs , TABCAB , Uber and others in market ?

OLA Cabs does not offer outstation or intercity taxi. Uber does not offer this service across the world, though they recently started a limited period Mumbai Pune service. They are happily engaged in solving the local travel business, which is also a large problem to solve. But there are differences between local and outstation travel, including volume, value, ticket size, duration of travel, passengers per vehicle etc. Hence, it requires a different kind of team, process, software, marketing to solve the intercity travel problem.

Q5. What differs "AHA Taxis" from OLA Cabs , TABCAB , Uber and others ?

AHA Taxis is complimentary to OLA Cabs and other players. A part of our supply base, that is, the drivers and taxis, are common. Same with a part of our customers. However, there are many other differences in our approach to the market and problem we are solving. And we are just starting, so we have to try harder to make a place in customers' heart. 

Q6. I've researched and found that you don't serve in Southern part of our country , why ?

We wanted to first get the process right, before going for expansion to other parts of the country. Currently, we are in middle of fund raising, so once we complete that, we will start with the process of opening up newer routes on our platform. 

Q7.   I've also found that you provide the cheapest travel . How you managed that ?

The biggest determinant of our cost is the taxi drivers attached to our system. We have cultivated our relationships with them on a personal basis, so they trust us and agree to work with us on fair rates. Our other advantage is using online marketing, understanding technology and using our frugal jugaads to keep operations cost low. We have deliberately kept out any frills from the website to improve performance. We want to be like Indigo Airlines, not Kingfisher Airlines. 

As we grow, we will expand this network and keep our costs low by using technology and build a strong and satisfied customer base, which will further enable us serve more people at lowest costs. This will definitely be challenging, but we are geared towards this.

Q8. How many awesome people are behind AHA TAXIS ?

We are a team of 7 people, and just hired 10 interns who will be with us during the summer season. As we grow, we will hire more people at all levels. 

Q9. How your Service helps Society ?

I think if we are able to give travel choice to customers at half the current costs, it will bring a huge boom in the overall economy. People will save more, which they can then spend on their essentials or as they wish. For example, we just served 2 students who had to travel for their internship out of Delhi to Indian Oil in Panipat, and they were happy with the options we gave them. I am sure they will spend their savings on their studies.

Q10. What is your ultimate Goal ?

Our ultimate goal is to give freedom of choice to customers who wish to travel out of the city for any purpose - be it for business trip, holiday or honeymoon, outing with friends, giving exams, attending a marriage or death ceremony. We do not want them to worry what will be the rates, will the driver be on time, will it be safe and reliable etc. We just want them to forget about any travel hassle. Just leave home and reach your destination, in most affordable and timely manner.

Q11. How much time it took you to reach this level ?

We have taken about 4-5 months to reach to this level, and started getting an order a day. We are growing fast, and planning to add more routes. With increased investor interest in this sector, we are hopeful to attract funds to fuel our growth further. 

Q12. What are your further plans , how you gonna expand AHA TAXIS ?

We are planning to expand to more hubs across India, and partner with travel agents, as well as other entities like restaurants, highway dhabas, tourist destinations for co-promotion. India is a large travel market, and one way fare is a big local problem, so we have no plans for foreign countries.