2 COMPANIES

MUMBAI | MONDAY, 16 MARCH 2015

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Start-up aces bond in the jungle over big cats

Jungliceo.com has wowed new business owners
by helping them network while watching lions
and tigers in the wild
N SUNDARESHA SUBRAMANIAN
New Delhi, 15 March

eopards are Mukesh Ambanis inspiration. The Reliance boss once said he
liked spending hours watching the
wild cats and even takes business lessons
from them.
A new start-up is helping budding entrepreneurs take a leaf out of the Ambani book
by taking them on wildlife trips, allowing
them to bond over tiger and lion sightings,
and even generate business among
themselves.
This year, we intend to take at least 200
entrepreneurs and CXOs for our wild breaks
across India, said Rajesh Madan, founder of
Jungli CEO, and its website, jungliceo.com.
Madan and two of his friends, Mohit
Sareen and Mohit Aggarwal, picked up the
idea while they were on one such trip.
Though they ran completely different businesses, what bound them was passion for
wildlife. Also, being entrepreneurs themselves, they understood the pain points of
entrepreneurship, chief among these to
bond with the right people to grow their
business".
Shailendra Beniwal, on one of the first

trips, had spent two decades in the corporate

world before the bug bit him. A former sales
director at tech multinational HewlettPackard, he recently took the plunge into
entrepreneurship, launching an organic
food business called Deshse.com. Even so,
he was not so sure about the entrepreneurial world view. Thats when he came across
Jungli CEO . It is a brilliant concept for people who are loners. A CEO is a loner, Beniwal
said. He was on a trip organised by Jungli
CEO to Corbett reserve, a few hours drive
from here, where he spent a couple of days
with entrepreneurs like him.
When you spend two decades in the Rajesh Madan (3rd from right) and Mohit Sareen (4th from right) , co-founders, Jungliceo, with other entrepreneurs during a
corporate world, everyone you know is a cor- trip to the Corbett national park
porate guy. The trip gave some important
learning on how a business owner thinks, few and far between. Nor do these have wild company, earning from ticket charges for work and take it to 500 entrepreneurs next
Beniwal said.
breaks as a theme. A TiE member retreat is the trips, which can be as low as ~10,000. It year. We are putting in place a discreet
The founder of Deshse says his key take- coming up in Rajasthans Pushkar next is hoping to ride on the booming wildlife mechanism to enable them to dock in the
away was how frugal entrepreneurs are. In month.
tourism sector.
amount of business they generated for fellow
the corporate world, you dont worry too
Said co-founder Mohit Aggarwal: The members.
much about the money. When it comes to Present & future
Indian wildlife tourism business has been
Manav Malvai, another entrepreneur,
business, they count every penny, said However, the calendar of Jungli CEO is growing at 15 per cent annually for the past with interest in film-making and internet
Beniwal, who plans to take some of the packed. It has at least one trip lined for every decade or so. This growth promises to pick marketing, said he found two clients on one
upcoming trips.
month of 2015; on the agenda are the rhinos up speed, as busy business people look for of the trips. Though that is not the primary
While established entrepreneurial net- of Kaziranga, tigers of Bandavgarh and ways to mix business with pleasure.
objective, when you spend time with people,
works such as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Ranthambore and even the Andamans.
Madan said there was hardly any profit at there are a lot of exchanges of ideas and
also offer member retreats, such events are
At present, Jungli CEO acts like a travel this stage and the focus was to build the net- business tends to happen, Malvai said.

Mahesh Parasuraman quits as Carlyle

India MD, likely to launch new fund
To join former India Value Fund partner Sunil Theckath
Vasudevan to launch $200-mn growth capital fund
BIBHU RANJAN MISHRA
Bengaluru, 15 March

In a move that is seen as a sign of a growing

inclination towards growth capital investments, Mahesh Parasuraman (pictured),
managing director of Carlyle Group, is
learnt to be leaving the global
private equity major to start a
new fund.
Parasuraman, who has led
some of Carlyles successful
growth capital investments in
the region, will launch a growth
capital fund of $150-200 million
with Sunil Theckath Vasudevan,
former partner at India Value Fund
Advisors. According to sources, the fund
will target the mid-market segment.
Parasuraman is in the process of com-

pleting his exit formalities at Carlyle before

starting this fund, which will be known as
Amicus Capital. The prime reason behind
this move is the huge opportunity in the
mid-market space, where players such as
Carlyle dont play a major role owing to
their sheer size. This is the space where
Parasuraman has proved his mettle leading successful investments
such as Repco Home Finance,
Tirumala Milk Products and
Elitecore Technologies, said
sources in the know.
They also said Amicus Capital,
which would start operating sometime during the quarter, would be
a sector-agnostic growth capital fund largely focused on sectors such as health care,
technology and business services, media,
financial services and consumer. It would

look at investments in the range of $8-$20

million with a significant minority control.
The whole idea is to play on the Indian
consumption story and leverage the India
skill story, it added.
Parasuraman declined to comment.
Carlyle could not be reached for official
response and an email to the company
remained unanswered.
Parasuraman, a qualified chartered
accountant and cost accountant, joined
Carlyle in September 2004 after a stint
with Ernst & Young and Arthur Andersen.
He was instrumental behind some of the
successful investments such as Repco
Home Finance, which Carlyle exited with
a 6x return, Elitecore with 8x return and
Tirumala with 4.5x return on investment.
He also led Carlyles investments in
Edelweiss Financial Services, Newgen
Knowledge Works, South Indian Bank,
Value & Budget Housing Corporation, and
Allsec Technologies among others.

Madan said Jungli CEO intends to help

its participants clock a business of ~3 crore by
the end of the year. That will be the true
yardstick for our success. Our guests have
already achieved ~28 lakh of business from
just two wild breaks, he said.
His plans are ambitious. Next year, we
will start taking wild breaks to overseas
wildlife destinations like Masai Mara,
Okawango, Borneo, Bhutan, etc. By 2017,
Jungli CEOs destination matrix will also
include destinations for adventure sports
like rafting, bungee jumping and
hang-gliding.
While entrepreneurs like Beniwal say
they would like to take such breaks at least
once every few months, they acknowledge
that matching of attitudes, a love for wildlife
and smart packaging of activities are critical
for sustaining the interest and growth of this
platform. It is going to get built over
yearslargely through word of mouth, said
Beniwal.
The founders are digging into other international business referral networks such as
BNI, of which they were part of, to bring in
new businessmen. They try to keep the personal touch going by being on the trips
themselves. At least one of the three directors of Jungli CEO will always be a part of all
wild breaks. We will never delegate that crucial aspect to an employee or consultant.
We will instead scale up by having more
breaks and by offering high-value breaks,
Madan said.

Mumbai realty developers debt rises

Land purchases and big projects, amid
dull sales growth, among the reasons
RAGHAVENDRA KAMATH
Mumbai, 15 March

New land acquisitions, big property projects and private equity

buyouts are pushing up debt levels of Mumbai-based real estate
companies.
Net debt of developers such
as Oberoi Properties, which had
remained debt-free for a long
time, and of Godrej Properties,
which followed a joint development model, has risen in the
past three quarters due to negative cash flow. According to
Kotak Institutional Equities,
Godrej Properties net debt rose
from ~1,839 crore in this financial years first quarter (Q1) to
~2,474 crore in Q2 and ~2,605
crore in Q3.

Slow sales in residential and

commercial property in the older projects and high capital
employed in commercial have
consistently resulted in GPL
(Godrej Properties) reporting
negative operating cash flow
and, hence, rising debt, said
Samar Sarda, an analyst with
Kotak Institutional Equities
Research, in a recent note.
Sonam Udasi, head of
research at Tata Asset
Management, believes to develop marquee projects, GPL needs
to take debt.
However, the company says
its financials are strong. GPL's
sales volumes in the first nine
months of FY15 are up 97 per
cent and are the second highest
among all publicly listed real

estate developers in India. Our

balance sheet is strong and our
borrowing costs are the lowest in
the industry, said Pirojsha
Godrej, chief executive and
managing director, in an
emailed response.
According to the Kotak
report, Oberoi Realtys net debt
rose from ~555.9 crore in Q1 to
~690 crore in Q2 and ~792 crore
in Q3. It had negative cash flow
from operations in 2013-14 and
in the first nine months of 201415, Sarda expects high expenditure in the Oasis joint venture in
Worli without sales being a key
reason for this.
The Oasis JV is for developing a mixed-use project, including the Ritz Carlton Hotel and
Residences, managed by Ritz
Carlton.
Udasi believes with a low
debt to equity ratio and strong
market capitalisation, it can eas-

ily manage the debt.

Oberoi is gearing for a slew of
launches. These include a housing project in Mulund West and
Borivali East, and the Oasis JV in
Worli. Early last year, it bought
Tata Steels land in Borivali for
~1,150 crore and raised debt to
fund the acquisition.
The debt levels at another
company, Indiabulls Real Estate,
primarily went up due to new
acquisitions, which included 22,
Hanover Square, in London,
where the cash outflow was
~1,800 crore, and Voltas land in
Thane, where it paid ~240 crore.
Indiabulls believes the purchases will yield a good surplus. We strongly believe
these investments add significant development potential to
the company and are likely to
contribute a ~2,000-2,500 crore
net surplus over the next five
years.

START-UP CORNER z TRACKING EMERGING INDIA

Only serious job seekers wanted

START-UPS
IN THE NEWS

In a year, Bengaluru-based myNoticePeriod.com has over 400 paying clients, 85,000 job seekers and has raised ~18 crore.
Itika Sharma Punit & Anita Babu find out how the company clicked
hen internet giant Yahoo!
decided to downsize its
research and development
(R&D) team in India last year, close to
600 professionals were reportedly lost
their jobs. While several companies
showed interest in hiring these highlyskilled people, there was no systematic
way to connect with them.
A year-old website myNoticePeriod.com started by former Yahoo!
employees Manjunath Talwar and
Abhijit Khasnis came to the rescue. It
hosted
adedicated
web
page
yahoo.mynoticeperiod.com, to help
these laid-off employees connect with
recruiters. The portal was instrumental
in helping several find jobs.
We are not sure how many were
fired but at least 300 Yahoo! executives
registered with us, said Talwar, chief
executive officer, myNoticePeriod.com.
We personally knew several of the people affected. We haven't given a thought
to whether or not we would do this for
another company but may consider it.
The start-up was founded in January
2014, allowing companies to recruit
from a pool of talented professionals
ready to take up a new job.
Both of us used to recruit for our
teams in our earlier jobs. It was a constant pain when candidates would first
take up the offer and then refuse the job
just before the joining date. Thats when
the idea of myNoticePeriod.com came to
us, said Talwar.
While online recruitment portals
such as Naukri.com and Monster.com
have been in India for several years,
myNoticePeriod.com differentiates

E XP E RT TA K E
Job, marriage and
house hunting touch
the lives of every
individual in India,
and we are talking
about a country of
over a billion people.
Online recruitment
portals, in particular,
disrupted the way things were done
with the use of technology.
Over the years, recruitment portals
have been a very useful tool not only for
recruiters but for companies. However,

itself by focusing only on professionals

who have quit their current jobs and are
serving the notice period.
Such candidates are serious about
looking for a job, said Talwar, making
it easier for an employer to fill up positions faster.
The market
According to the start-ups estimate, of
around 3.1 million professionals the
Indian information technology (IT) sector employs, around 35,000 change jobs
each month. This is the target group for
myNoticePeriod.com.
In our earlier jobs, we realised that
even when recruiters had access to candidates whose profiles were listed on job
portals, we could not find candidates
actively seeking jobs, Khasnis said.
Thats the reason we do not allow candidates to keep their profiles on
myNoticePeriod.com
indefinitely.
Theres a said period for which the pro- Manjunath Talwar (left) and Abhijit Khasnis
file remains active, post which, if the
candidate does not operate it, it is taken acquisition, development and reten- India. More recently, the company contion, Gururaj said. The current cluded a Series A funding round, raising
down.
It was this ability to find a unique processes and tools will be disrupted by ~18 crore from IDG Ventures India.
Now, the portal has a pool of 84,000
idea in a market that already has sever- newer trends such as mobile and
al players that attracted Ravi Gururaj, improved analytics. Our start-up has job seekers and a little over 400 paid
the chairman of Nasscoms Product done a great job in successfully entering clients. Among others, the companys
Conclave and an active angel investor, to this space that already has several large clients include Wipro, HCL Technologies
put his money in myNoticePeriod.com. players by building an innovative and Cognizant, as well as Flipkart.com,
Gururaj, who has a portfolio of about unique offering that appeals to a wide Amazon.in and Caratlane.com.
20 start-up investments, has advised range of customers.
After investing from own savings ini- The founders
and invested in four in the human
tially, myNoticePeriod.com raised ~2 Talwar and Khasnis have both worked in
resource (HR) space.
India will have the worlds largest crore in September 2014, from four several large technology companies and
knowledge workforce and a voracious angel investors Gururaj, Raghu held key profiles for 15 years each.
An alumnus of Indian Institute of
appetite for new, efficient tools and serv- Krishnananda, Shamsunder Talreja,
ices which help with all aspect of talent Prashant Kirtane, and IDG Ventures Management, Talwar worked with
i2 Technologies before joining Yahoo!,
where he defined the map for media
properties such as Yahoo Autos, Games,
Travel, Homes, Celebrities, TV and
Weather.
the first-generation players in the space
company can essentially save time and
Khasnis, an alumnus of Birla
have now become quite generic and
money in looking for candidates from
Institute of Technology and Science
therefore several start-ups are coming
scratch, as it gives access to professionals
(BITS), has worked in leadership roles at
up with more efficient tools that help in
who might have been shortlisted by
technology companies like Oracle and
refining the process of finding
other companies, including competitors.
i2, building their flagship products,
candidates.
The online recruitment segment has
besides his experience at Yahoo!
LinkedIn is one example, a professhuge potential because it was a pioneer
A well-rounded package attracted
ional networking website but used by
in using technology. With emerging
me to myNoticePeriod.com, said
recruiters to look for candidates in a
technologies playing a role, there is
Gururaj. Talwar and Khasnis were
more focused way. Several other startscope to take things to the next level of
hands-on engineering managers with
ups have also launched tools that help
disruption.
experience and credentials, had worked
in slicing and dicing a huge data pool of
The writer is C K Guruprasad, principal at
together and bonded as partners in this
job seekers.
Heidrick & Struggles India
venture, exhibited solid early business
Through myNoticePeriod.com, a
thinking, had identified an innovative

FACT BOX

DiabetOmics raises $5 million

Overview: Online hiring portal

and mobile application
focused around candidates,
who are ready to join on short
notice. Helps companies fill up
openings faster

US-based DiabetOmics Inc, a medical

diagnostics company with operations in
India, has raised a Series-C round of funding
worth $4 million from Ventureast to drive
manufacturing and commercialisation in
India. It has also raised an additional $1
million from KI Varaprasad Reddy, founder
of Shantha Biotechnics, which was sold to
Sanofi a few years ago.

Revenue: FY16 revenue seen at

$3-4 million

Orobind secures $200,000

Team: 35 employees across

sales, technology, marketing,
other functions
Funding: Angel round:
~2 crore; Series A: ~18 crore
Investors: IDG Ventures India,
Ravi Gururaj, Raghu
Krishnananda, Shamsunder
Talreja, Prashant Kirtane
Revenue strategy:
Subscription model for
corporate clients; no fee from
candidates
Challenges: Established
incumbents
approach to enter a big existing market,
had identified a solid revenue model
and were extremely passionate about
building a big high impact company.
The future
Among other things, the company is
investing the funds it has raised for moving to a bigger office as it looks to expand
its team. The company currently has
around 35 employees.
The interiors of this new office are
inspired by Nasscoms start-up warehouse, half a kilometre away and where
the company was initially incubated.
A part of these funds will be used to
enhance the technology behind the portal, and for expansion abroad.
We dont have a set timeline but
after we spend some more time in India
and build the right solution, we are looking to expand to the US next, Talwar
said. It could happen by the end of this
year. The team has studied the US market, and says no company there does
what they do.

Orobind Fitness Technologies, which runs a

mobile marketplace of fitness experts under
the same brand, has raised $200,000
(~1.26 crore) from a group of angel investors
including Harpreet Singh Grover, cofounder, Cocubes; Lalit Mangal, cofounder, CommonFloor.com; and
Toppr.com co-founder Zishaan Hayath.

Daily Rounds raises $500,000

Daily Rounds, a mobile app that compiles
case studies and quizzes for doctors, has
raised a seed round of ~3 crore ($500,000)
from venture capital firm Kae Capital,
Japanese e-commerce firm Beenos'
founder Teruhide Sato and start-up
accelerator GSF. Sato, has backed a similar
company in Japan called Medpeer, which
was listed in 2014.

Sidbi fund backs Natureland

Natureland Organics, which supplies
organic foods has raised an undisclosed
amount from Sidbis Samridhi Fund to
ramp up its business nationally. It works
with a network of certified organic farmers
and offers cereals, pulses, beans, spices,
condiments, oils, ghee, processed food
products and honey.

Qyk raises angel funding

Qyk, the mobile marketplace for finding
local services announced on Friday that it
had raised funding from a group of angel
investors including early investors of Ola,
Housing and Delhivery. Investors include
Zishaan Hayath (co-founder of Toppr and
Powai Lake Ventures), Abhishek Goyal (CEO
and co-founder of Tracxn.com, ex-Accel
Partners) and Sahil Barua (CEO and cofounder of Delhivery). Qyk seeks to serve as
a one-stop platform for availing a wide
range of local services. Qyk (qykapp.com) is
a mobile platform which enables customers
to hire trustworthy service providers and
professionals near their area.
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