Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Nadhi Technologies, a 2.5yr old Chennai based SaaS startup has developed  lightweight, easy-to-use construction supply chain solutions for real estate and infrastructure construction projects.

Nadhi.in is founded by two civil engineers – Vaidyanathan and Ravi. S. Mundoli from IIT-M; Both have worked in manufacturing SCM at i2 Technologies before founding Nadhi.  Nadhi is incubated out of the IITM Research Park.

Nadhi provides easy-to-use supply chain management (SCM) tools toreal  ensure the synchronous on-site arrival of labour and materials per the updated construction schedule through the life of the project.

Nadhi’s core solution is a project monitoring and control solution with a mobile extension  – nPulse™ that reduces the information latency between various stakeholders in a construction project to zero and transitions business from reactive to proactive. Nadhi has built the industry’s first procurement planning solution that uses inventory management theory to optimize material procurement costs in construction.

In short, Nadhi builds solutions that complement ERP systems. Nadhi offers business process consulting to help transition companies to a managed platform. Nadhi also offers lean construction consulting practice.

Nadhi’s target customers are EPC contractors, infrastructure project owners, real estate developers. The market size for IT in construction is estimated to be about $5 billion and the potential to expand worldwide also exists. Nadhi’s revenue sources are software revenue – both subscription (SaaS model) and enterprise license options are available and consulting services.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Accel India has picked up stake by investing an undisclosed amount in New Delhi-based hospitality software firm HMS Infotech, which provides the Hotelogix software to run hospitality businesses. Hotelogix is a SaaS platform which offers  pay-as-you-go option for hotels of all sizes.

Hotelogix, is an ’Easy to Adapt & Simple to use’ solution that offers all that you might ever need as a Hotel Management Software to run your Hospitality Business smoothly. Hotelogix is targeting small and Mid-sized hotels.

Hotelogix covers the full spectrum of Hoteleiring tasks, both in terms of streamlining the internal operations, and enhancing your business reach to enable higher revenues & growth.

Hotelogix has an impressive feature, prominent ones are -

• Supports working in multiple currencies and in multiple time-zones.
• Unlimited point of Sale terminals to manage Restaurants, Spas, Room Service.
• Comprehensive property management system and frontdesk interface.
• Enterprise level auditing supported
• Robust reporting and revenue management
• Integration with GDS/IDS

Hotelogix is highly affordable platform. They have three pricing plans with plans ranging from $2.99 per room per month to $2000 one-time payment plan. The website is very informative and very intuitive and hotel executives can get started in less than 10 minutes. Hotelogix is gaining traction in the APAC, US & European Hotels.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Have you ever imagined web apps being delivered over voice? Majority of us would have thought its not feasible but a hyderabad based startup KooKoo has done it. KooKoo acts as an interface between your applications and the telephony world, thus creating another form of delivery channel for your web application.

KooKoo is the simplest and easiest way to build telecom applications IVRs, office PBX and outbound campaigns. KooKoo just performs telephony functions. It does not know anything about your application and it does not store your data. KooKoo is an interface between your web application and the caller. It takes phone commands from you and executes them on your behalf to the caller.The best way to think of KooKoo is as just another web page in your application. Only difference is, the web page is accessible from the phone rather than the browser

Kookoo can be a boon to Indian e-commerce space as majority of the customers would prefer telephones to interact with you rather than website.

So how does it work –

1.) Customer will call a specific telephone number and enter a pin.

2.) KooKoo will answer the call and will also make a HTTP call to your application.

3.) Your application will get the request and respond back to the request with an XML. The XML sent back by the server is then parsed by KooKoo.

4.) Based on the XML response, appropriate message is played back by KooKoo for the end user.

KooKoo support multiple languages like Java, PHP etc., allows you to send SMS and also supports payment processing.

KooKoo offers a free trial with a shared port.  As part of the free trial usage account, you will get a default phone number used by all the KooKoo free applications. Also, your application will get a pin number using which you can access your application.

Paid category pricing starts from Rs 2000 per port, KooKoo also offers a shared port model where the pricing is 1/4th of the original price.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Most of the people find it difficult to maintain medical records and doesn’t find them when its needed the most , Healthizen is here to solve this problem This portal allows user  to upload their medical details – from their weight and height, doctor prescriptions, lab tests results, details of surgeries undergone, X-Ray, MRI scan, ECG and other reports.

Details on the portal are accessible anytime, anywhere and user need not carry their files and records of medical history every time they  visit a doctor.

Healthizen is a pune based startup founded by Anand Anupam, an IIT-IIM graduate. Healthizen mission is to have centralized information platform and reduce the information asymmetry in the health care space and develop the system by placing patients at the center of the ecosystem.

Ina addition to providing a ready-to-use platform for online storage, this portal has also a panel having doctors and health experts, who help the users with general health tips as well as second opinion whenever required.

Healthizen has a big shopping section where a user can find health related products like health food, specialized health accessories, portable testing equipments etc.

Lets have a look at the monthly traction at Healthizen:

Its a decent statistics to begin with, check out Healthizen and share your views.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

A successful profit-driven organization is one that achieves a good level of profitability. In order to do this, there is a need for an effective supply chain management software. The efficacy level of the said chain relies greatly on the supply chain management software as a services.

Defined as the control of materials, information, finances and other resources as the output moves from the supplier to the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the retailer and finally to the customer. The entire network that involves these different elements is referred to as the supply chain. Each stop gives out an additional value to the product and at the same time, benefits from its passing by.

Management of the chain is focused on making sure that every single party involved in the chain is able to get the optimal level of benefits that can possibly be accessed in the whole process. It is necessary for an individual to understand this basic concept to get a good shot at how an organization’s logistics and operations go.

The product is the most important element in supply chain management. It is essential to consider various factors when determining and manufacturing the product. One of which is the demand. A product is useless if it is not something the customers want. More so, the time it takes for the product to get into the customers’ hands is also something to take note of.

Demand is possible only if the customer has access to the information pertaining to the presence and possibility of the product. Within the supply chain, information involves the different parts of the different processes the product has to go through before it gets to the hands of the consumer.

Last comes financing. It plays a major role in the supply chain since each step of the process entails specific costs. The manufacturers, for instance, gets to deal with the suppliers concerning the possible payment arrangements pertaining to the supplies of raw materials and similar needs.

Certain problems can occur within this management. These can include the distribution strategy as well as the distribution network configuration. The cash flow and inventory management can also be sources of issues within the chain.

For a business end product to be successful, an effective supply chain management is definitely a must-have. It is all about the different operations and processes that take place within an organization. Hence, it is a necessity to maintain its presence and well-being.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

RecruiterBox is a SaaS based recruitment process management application which aims to simplify the recruiting process from creating the job listing to closure of vacancy.

Recruiterbox is a product of Aplopio Technology Pvt. Ltd., a firm based out of Bangalore and is founded by two IIT Madras graduates - Girish Redekar & Raghuveer Kancherla. Aplopio is an i-Accelerator company. Recruiterbox pricing starts from $20/month and goes upto $300/month depending upon number of Active jobs.

Key Features of RecruiterBox:

• Recruiterbox gives you a consolidated place to manage all your jobs & applications.
• Recruiterbox gives you tools to share your jobs to linkedin, facebook, twitter etc. You can also publish your openings to job search engines and free job boards.
• Recruiterbox can automatically add resumes sent to your email to the database,  Recruiterbox accepts PDF, Microsoft Word (all versions), Open Office, HTML, rtf, text.
• Auto Assigned emailed candidates to Job Openings, a company can ask its staffing vendors to include job codes in the email subject when they send candidate resumes. Recruiterbox will automatically ensure that candidates get assigned to the right opening.
• Recruiterbox identifies & notifies you of any duplicate application, which helps you avoid re-processing candidates and save time.
• Recruiterbox has inbuilt tracking mechanism and one can know candidates are at what stage of your hiring process.

Indeed Recruiterbox is a simple, affordable and useful way to manage your resume database. Earlier i have covered Interviewstreet which enables company to conduct online technical tests before interviewing a candidate.

If you are a doctor or a group of doctor running a clinic and finding it tedious to collect patient information and manage it, here is good news for you. Practo, developed by Naabo Soltuon, a bangalore based startup which provides SaaS based online practice management software for individual doctors who practice independently, small and medium size clinics to manage their practice and provide better services to their patients.

Practo automatically reminds your patients about their appointments and also does scheduling. Practo allows you to save patient records, photos related to treatments in a systetmatic fashion, but also take care of your accounting and billing.

Additionally Doctors and individual clinics also get their own webpage on Practo, which can leverage it for online presence and marketing. To maintain a cordial relationship and giving a human touch Practo allows you to wish your patients on their birthday via SMS.

Practo’s prominent feature is Billing and Accounting. Doctors can create a price catalog for each line of item with their description, doctors can also analyse and work on spend management and also tally their accounts by fetching period accounts from Practo.

Practo pricing starts from 699/month/doctor to 2999/month/hospitals(15users). Indeed Practo helps you Practice Smart.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Ericsson has acquired a minority stake in Novatium Solutions Private Ltd. with an aim to speed up the broadband enabled user services in emerging economies. Novatium launched its commercial service in November 2009 and has 40 employees in its Chennai office and 35 employees in the field throughout India. Novatium offers a PC together with cloud-based services via telecom operators gives Ericsson exciting opportunity to support an innovative local business in a fast growing market that will further increase the need of mobile broadband

Via agreements with various software companies, Novatium offers a PC together with cloud-based services through telecom operators and distributors’ network, where the consumer buys his or her choice of a service-package, for example anti-virus, photo editing or office programs, as a thin client on a monthly basis. Primarily, this service addresses the needs of first-time Internet and PC users, both from simplicity as well as from an affordability perspective.

With Ericsson acquiring a minority stake in Novatium, the company will have funding and competence to further develop the offering and grow outside India in markets with similar needs. For Ericsson the agreement offers an exciting opportunity to support an innovative local business in a fast growing market that will further increase the need of mobile broadband.

Acknowledging the importance of cloud based services, Gowton Achaibar, head of Region India, Ericsson, said, “The business concept PC as-a-service is a strong offering addressing an important growing segment in the Indian market. With this engagement I see potential business synergy benefits to both Novatium and Ericsson and our respective customers.”

Alok Singh, CEO Novatium Solutions Pvt. Ltd. said, “This strategic relationship with Ericsson encompasses a great opportunity for Novatium as we are partnering with a global organization with the best technology know-how, which will help us develop our offering and introduce it to new markets.”

The middle income consumers and the first time PC owners are the primary contributors to the growth of PC usage in India, while connectivity to internet and cloud based services are important enablers.

The PC-as-a-service with cloud environment also brings a business opportunity to the telecom operators as it provides differentiated broadband pricing based on what services the consumer wants to have access to. This not only allows operators to increase their revenues from a service revenue share but also increases the addressable broadband market by lowering consumers’ entry barriers with affordable PC’s and related services.

Novatium has contracts with some of the major Indian telecom operators like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Bharti Airtel and TATA.

iWebNotes is a mumbai based startup which offers SaaS based ERP cum CRM solution targeted at small and medium enterprises.

iWebnotes facilitates SMEs in their ctivities such as accounting, invoicing, sales, stock keeping, projects, tasks and HR related activities. I like their pricing strategy kept it very simple and have adopted only one pricing which is 299/month/user, it won’t confuse the common user. One can see their demo and can as well signup for a 30 days free trial for the hands on experience.

The workflow and functionality are very basic and high level features which should suffice 70-75% of their work, which is good to get started  but i doubt whether this simplicity will draw users since most of the SMEs want rich features at low price.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Tata Communications, a leading provider of the new world of communications, and Google India today announce plans to combine their global resources to offer a portfolio of web-based, collaborative business connectivity tools that provide email, instant messaging, calendar functionality, video and office presentation tools for business’ across India.

The portfolio of business tools, powered by Google Apps™, is a significant move by both parties to bring value-added applications to Indian enterprises while offering localized pricing, billing and support.

The service is simple to subscribe, easy to use and streamlines the complexities of IT while allowing businesses to pay for only what they need. Indian organizations, particularly the emerging enterprises, will now have expanded access to Tata Communications’ cloud-based software services, helping them migrate their IT requirements to a pay-as-you-use business model. Building on Tata Communications’ leadership position as a SaaS service provider, the portfolio will help organizations reduce IT cost and complexity and be more productive. It will be particularly beneficial to companies with fast growing teams, offices spread across the country, or staff who travel frequently.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com