Tag: Retail startups in India

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Startup

Startups in India: 6 Women-Led Startups Win COVID-19 Shri Shakti Challenge Organised by MyGov in Collaboration With UN Women

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In a major boost to women-led startups in India, six startups by female entrepreneurs have won COVID-19 Shri Shakti Challenge organized by MyGov in collaboration with UN Women. MyGov in collaboration with UN Women, launched the COVID-19 Shri Shakti Challenge in April 2020 to encourage and involve women led startups to come up with innovative solutions that can help in the fight against COVID19 or solve problems that impact a large number of women.

After thorough screening, 25 startups were shortlisted for presentations to the Jury which included Debjani Ghosh, President NASSCOM, Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer (CTO) Microsoft India, Dr R Ramanan, MD Atal Innovation Mission, Nishtha Satyam, Dy Country representative, UN Women India and Abhishek Singh, CEO MyGov. In addition to the earlier announced reward of Rs 5 lakhs for the top 3 winners, UN Women was generous enough to agree to reward Rs 2 lakhs each to the 3 startups chosen for their promising solutions.

Top 3 Female Entrepreneurs Who Won Are:

  1. Dr P Gayatri Hela is the founder of Bengaluru-based Resada Lifesciences Private Limited that designs and develops home and agricultural-based products using plant extracts instead of synthetic chemicals. As per Gayatri, germs and other bacteria/viruses become resistant to chemicals over time, whereas nature always has a way of fighting back against these organisms. For Shri Shakti Challenge, Gayatri submittedherinnovative product which is a non-alcoholic hand sanitizer that is  relevant not only for COVID- 19 but also for other infections. The idea had come to her in 2017, when she was battling the SARS pandemic with her with her one-year old daughter.
  2. Romita Ghosh,a cancer survivor, is the founder of Shimla-based iHeal HealthTech Private Limited which is a healthcare start-up that has been at the forefront of the fight against COVID and has been providing PPE kits to hospitals. Romita has also built a Made in India UV sterilization box for safe reuse of PPEs and masks that can help reduce costs for hospitals and other service providers.
  3. Dr Anjana Ramkumar and Dr Anushka Ashokan are the product manager and co-founder of Kerala based Thanmatra Innovations Private Limited have come up with the innovative solution of an anti-microbial solution that could be sprayed into handkerchiefs or dupattas for making them safe to be used as Face Masks. This also made it easier to protect kids. Their innovation is simple and scalable and can help convert any piece of cloth to anti-viral mask within minutes by a simple process of spraying and drying with their unique formulation.

Top 3 Startups identified as‘Promising Solutions’are:

  1. Vasanthi Palanivel, is the CEO & Co-Founder of Bengaluru-based Seragen BioTherapeutics Private Limited.As a scientist and researcher, she studied the symptoms and impacts of the virus and realized that the lungs were one of the worst infected organs in COVID and she has developed a plasma solution to treat respiratory distress due to COVID-19.
  2. Shivi Kapil is the cofounder of Bengaluru-based Empathy Design Labsthat focuses on healthcare, and took the pandemic as an opportunity to design solutions for pregnant women who could not go to the hospital due to risk of infection. Shehas designed Kriya, a wearable device for daily monitoring of pregnancy. The IoT-embedded product provides alerts and suggestions to expecting parents for timely action.
  3. Jaya Parashar and Ankita Parashar – a mother daughter duo are the founder and co-founder of STREAM Minds, and ed-tech company that works on promoting Science, Technology, Reading/Writing, Arts, and Mathematics education among school children across India. They have designed ‘Dobot’, a fully automated robot which acts as an in-house delivery assistant to make hospitals and healthcare clinics safe from the risks of COVID19.

MyGov congratulated the winners of Shri Shakti Challenge and hope that the solutions developed by them mature into full-blown products, and can scale up into robust solutions that help in our fight against COVID19; and of course also help address challenges facing women. All the winners and the participants of Shri Shakti Challenge are true testimony to the talent pool that exists in India and this challenge will go a long way in promoting women entrepreneurship in India.

All 25 selected startups presented their solutions to the Jury which evaluated the solutions proposed by the startups on the parameters that included innovation, usability, relevance and impact of their idea on the society. After thorough review, 11 finalists were chosen for the next stage. All the 11 selected startups were provided a prize money of Rs 75,000 each to further develop their ideas.

After giving time to the 11 Startups to develop the solutions, the final presentations were again made to the Jury on October 27, 2020. The quality of the solutions presented was excellent and the Jury had a tough time evaluating them. After intense discussions and deliberations, the Jury selected top 3 entries as winners, and in view of the high quality of solutions presented decided to recognize 3 additional entries as ‘Promising Solutions’.

This was a unique challenge hosted on the Innovate platform of MyGov that called for applications from women led startups as well as startups who have solutions that address issues faced by a larger number of women. The Challenge was implemented in two stages: Ideation stage and Proof of Concept (PoC) Stage. The challenge received an overwhelming response with a total of 1265 entries, from across the nation.

Mentorship sessions were organized to enable graduation of the ideas into Proof of Concepts that can be scaled up. These sessions were topics that included Business Modelling, Financial Modelling, Legal Certifications, Digital Marketing, Product Design, Art of making Pitch and were conducted with the support of NASSCOM, Industry Experts, and the Atal Incubation Centre  at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology.

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Startup Strategy

The Future of Retail in the COVID-19 Era

रिटेल बिजनेस
रिटेल बिजनेस

The fast-changing landscape is making the retail industry turn from an unorganized to an organized sector. This sector remains one of the greatest industries across the globe. Big moves are marked, in the industry with the introduction of technology, and the retail industry has shown rapid adoption of it very well.

Due to COVID-19, the whole country was under lockdown, which has affected not only the lives of humans but has also hugely affected industries, and they have to cope up with a lot.

Finally, unlock happened after the lockdown of months, and now the retailers have started to evaluate the losses due to the pandemic. Now, the retail industry is hoping to bounce back to the pre-COVID-19 state.

Therefore, consumer behavior is tough to predict currently. Here are the things to be expected post-COVID-19.

Social Distancing the New Normal

After many governments have started allowing stores to open with the rules and set of guidelines for preventing COVID-19, masks are one of the important rules to follow. For running, business owners need to follow these rules by limiting the number of the customer at the store. This will lead to fewer sales, but high-end retailers can achieve it can be achieved by adopting an appointment system.

That’s a true majority of retailers will be facing trouble in maintaining social distancing, and it will affect their business.

Controlling the fear of infection

If you want up your sales, take this serious health emergency seriously, as these health emergencies as serious you can. As we know, people have taken extra careful measures and cautions to avoid the infection. Now owners who are strictly following the rule of wearing masks, avoiding handshakes, sanitization of hands, and doing cashless transactions are attracting more and more customers.

Stores offering these are likely to achieve more sales as the customer will notice business owners care about their health too.

The approach of the omnichannel

There was a time when buying clothes or shoes online seemed like an odd thing to do. Fast forward to today’s time, it’s one of the common and popular ways to shop. The omnichannel approach has raised since the lockdown is imposed as pandemic made this boomed in the eCommerce industry.

This is one of the biggest opportunities that came from retailers to encash the chance and this is a big chance for today as well as gain for future ground.

Due to the pandemic, our life’s work has been thrown us out of order, and we have been forced to accept new normal. The benefit of this hard time approached innovation has taken place.  With the aid of technology, things may get easier to face this difficult time After 4 months of incurring losses of ₹90,000 crores this lockdown, the organized retail sector works every day on new strategies to cope with the game.

 

 

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Startup

Retail Business Ideas: Research, Explore and Start Your Retail Business

Millions of business ideas are available around you. However, one should start a business on the basis of their interest or passion and the investment they can make it.

If a retail business idea is popping up in your mind, we must say that it is one of the profitable and productive opportunities, not only in big cities but also in small towns. (Dr Vivek Bindra to Share Business Expansion Strategies During World’s Largest Webinar ‘Retail Ka Mahakumbh’ on September 27 Click Here to Register Now)

Due to COVID-19, starting a new business is difficult, but not impossible. Therefore, we come up with top retail business ideas that you can begin.

Bakery

You love baking and have skills, then opening a bakery business is the best dwelling house-based business choice. This business can either pop out at your home or you can collaborate with other bakery or retail shops for sales.

If you are considering a home-based job, then don’t forget to create a good plan and strategy.

Cooking Sessions

Have a love for food and cooking? And you have great skills in cooking too. If the answer is yes, then make this skill of the teacher. Due to the high restaurant opening made people forget their cooking skills. Time to revamp it, and fill the gap use your skill to teach others.

It’s a low cost you can plan your working style and register students as per your will. Once you have built the trust, then you can go forward with opening a food training center.

Grocery Shop

In our country, their enormous population, and everyday household supplies. Starting a grocery store in a good location gains tremendous popularity. Now, due to the pandemic, grocery stores have commenced delivering the groceries at home and even build their app to receive orders.

A grocery store is an evergreen business idea. You even don’t need any special skills for starting this business, just an accurate business plan.

Nursery

A plant nursery is one of the profitable ideas for anyone who loves gardening. Nowadays, people buying plants and gardening as a stress buster from daily routine work.

Thus, if you have the right knowledge of plants, then opening a nursery is a very profitable business for any individual. This line of work is low infrastructure cost makes it revenue-wise more lucrative.

Website Designing

Every startup, big companies need the website as it is known as the face of every business in this digital time. Every business owner needs a website to symbolize themselves. You own the skill, eye for creativity, and have time to invest in this.

Website designing can be the best retail business idea you can think of as it is a minimum requirement idea of a laptop and internet connection.

In recent times the Indian retail industry has surfaced as a fast-growing industry. With the right business plan and research work can make your retail business idea into a great success. As the success of the retail business depends on the correct knowledge of the product. We hope the shortlist of retail business ideas help you in inspiring for starting on your own.