✅ How AI/ML can help with sales

The most interesting news selected specially for you! 25 September 2024 [View in Browser]( Hello, Seasons change, but the IPO season is around the year. Next to list on the Indian bourses is AI startup [Fractal Analysis]( which is considering filing its papers by November this year to raise $500 million. According to Bloomberg, Fractal may seek a valuation of at least $3.5 billion in the share sale, and the listing could take place as soon as the first quarter of 2025. In fact, November may also see [Swiggy’s]( market debut. Speaking of IPOs, six domestic investment banks are under [SEBI]( investigation for charging companies fees equivalent to 15% of the funds raised via IPO to help them list on the Indian stock markets. That's much higher than the standard fees of 1-3% in India. Meanwhile, neobank [Jupiter]( is in discussions to buy a 5% to 9.9% stake in SBM India, a subsidiary of the State Bank of Mauritius. Now, imagine being so good at your job that you end up playing that role on the screen! That’s the reality for South Korean Olympic shooter [Kim Yeji](. After becoming an internet sensation during the Paris Olympics for her cool demeanour during a serious shooting competition, Yeji has landed her first acting job…as an assassin! Oh, are you ready for [TechSparks 2024]( Because our speakers surely are! YourStory’s annual flagship three-day event starts tomorrow in Bengaluru, and we are excited to unveil our coveted [speaker lineup]( definitely don’t want to miss it! In today’s newsletter, we will talk about - Making sales effective using AI/ML - Better snacking with traditional superfoods Here’s your trivia for today: Which is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia? --------------------------------------------------------------- Startup Making sales effective using AI/ML strength lies in being a mobile-first SaaS platform, which helps sales teams on the go. It is built to support the entire sales lifecycle, from prospecting to renewals and provides targeted solutions for hiring, onboarding, sales management, and performance tracking. Key takeaways: - The company began its journey in Bengaluru as a lead management tool for sellers and initially serviced across verticals. Its AI and ML tools help build playbooks for sales teams, providing intelligent insight through nudges. - The SaaS startup has over 350,000 users across more than 70 financial institutions. Its operations span India, Asia, and the US. - Vymo has raised over $45 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Emergence Capital, and Bertelsmann India Investments. The capital has supported Vymo's expansion efforts, product development, and market penetration. [Know More]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Funding Alert 1) M2P Fintech: Rs 850 Cr| Series D 2) Nurix AI: $27.5M| Seed-Series A 3) Atlys: $20M| Series B --------------------------------------------------------------- Woman Entrepreneur Better snacking with traditional superfoods moving back to her hometown of Malda, West Bengal, during the pandemic, Divya Arora Musaddi quit her job to start Heka Bites, a snack brand, in December 2021. “I travelled through different regions to find out what type of products people prefer. For example, jowar, makhana and others were age-old crops rooted to cultures, and we were forgetting them,” she says. Health first: - Heka Bites offers 20 SKUs that include snacks, trail mixes, and nut mixes. There are also raw and unprocessed seeds and nuts like pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, and makhana. - The venture started with three women employees and has now grown to an all-women team of 35, employed through a chain of referrals. - Heka Bites uses a mix of performance marketing and awareness campaigns to popularise the brand to its target audience, which comprises mainly young working professionals and women looking for healthier snacking alternatives for their children. [Read More]( --------------------------------------------------------------- From the CapTable As Unacademy shifts offline, is Gaurav Munjal shifting focus? Over the past 18 months, Unacademy has found itself in something of a no-man’s-land, neither growing rapidly nor truly bringing its burn under control. While its losses are believed to have narrowed to about Rs 500-600 crore in FY24 (the company is yet to file its audited financials for the period) from over Rs 1,600 crore in the preceding fiscal year, it was still burning ~Rs 50 crore every month. This stands in stark contrast to some other tech companies that went slow on growth but managed to achieve profitability. SoftBank-backed Meesho, for instance, managed to cut its burn by over 90% and even achieved a profitable month in 2023. Unacademy’s plight hasn’t been helped by multiple senior-level exits, including the company’s chief business officer, chief financial officer, and chief operating officer, which have cast further doubt about the company’s ability to script a comeback. Especially since both company and industry insiders say Munjal isn’t a big fan of the direction the company has taken, having become increasingly focused on its offline coaching business since the pandemic ended. "Gaurav (Munjal) no longer has the passion for running Unacademy as a coaching class chain. That was never his vision for the company, but it has essentially become that, especially with no growth in the online segment," said another individual closely associated with Unacademy, speaking anonymously. Key takeaways: - One of India’s best funded ventures, SoftBank-backed Unacademy has been trying to script a turnaround for over a year but hasn’t made much progress - With its investors pushing for an acquisition, the company has explored several merger options but with little success - The majority of Unacademy’s senior management has quit. Even its co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal appears to have lost interest in the core business - For Munjal, the focus now seems to be on Unacademy Languages, a competitor to Duolingo, which he believes has the potential to become Unacademy’s first “global offering” [Continue Reading]( --------------------------------------------------------------- News & Updates - [UPI:]( India is in talks with countries in Africa and South America to help them build a digital payments system using UPI as a blueprint and expects two launches by early 2027. NPCI International Payments Ltd is in talks with “several countries” and is closing in on an agreement with one of them. - [Store:]( GitHub will soon allow enterprise cloud customers to store their code data in the EU, as part of a growing push in the tech world to meet regulatory requirements and customer expectations around data protection, particularly where sensitive information might be at play. - [Stance:]( JPMorgan is bullish on India and Japan within Asia but is also keen to allocate resources towards Southeast Asia, which is benefiting from the China Plus One strategy. JPMorgan expects its commercial banking business to grow as much as 30% in India over the next few years. --------------------------------------------------------------- Here's what else we have for you MathWorks is an ally in accessibility, enabling healthcare startups to build solutions for rural India Rural health is undergoing a revolution in India. Read how the MathWorks Accelerator Program helps startups accelerate their product development to create medical devices and solutions that are readily available and customised for India’s rural regions. Know more. [Know More]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Supercharging India’s AI Innovation with Vector Search and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Dive into Elastic’s Vector Search and Elastic for RAG Workflows, and how they are changing the game for developers and businesses. Get insights, hands-on demos, and connect with Elastic experts. [Know More]( Did you know? Which is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia? Answer: Laos. It is surrounded by Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail nslfeedback@yourstory.com. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, [sign up here](. 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