E-Cell, RJIT

In the year 1999 IIM Ahmedabad graduate Mr. Srinivasu met Kushal and Ganpathy after quitting a decade long job in ITC and working for Arthur Andersen consultancy firm. In the days when online transactions represented a negligible percentage in the country, they thought of venturing into financial services such as online share trading platform and online money lending, but that would be going against the existing banks. Then they thought of a payments gateway, an area where almost banks and online services were struggling to achieve success and gain popularity.
With a lot of focus on promoting and giving demo on the merits of online transactions, they started gaining a customer base by connecting banks and merchants and utilities which have to collect payments from customers. It was clear that once someone tries the online payment method, they are sure to return on the same platform. But even with such demos and promotion, it took them 4 years for convincing and signing a deal with state owned telecom company BSNL.
The initial years were hard. But they finally received their initial seed funding of $500,000 from Sidbi Venture Capital and Bank of Baroda. It first 5 years this funds covered Billdesk’s account books. But by the end of fifth year, they started to see a change in transaction trends. More people were ettin comfortable with internet banking and online bill payments and now the billers were willing to pay the fees for the service.
By the end of year 2009, their platform and service evolved so much that their revenues tripled and customers could directly pay at the merchant’s website rather using the bank’s wesite.
BillDesk today has proven as one of the key company in the fintech industry with a slow by steady growth and therefore attracting and retaining investments of over $200 Million and making it a Unicorn in 2015.

Illuminate 2020.
Coming Soon!

CureFit was founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal, co-founder of fashion retailer Myntra, and Ankit Nagori ex-chief business officer at Flipkart. Bansal and Nagori worked closely at Flipkart after the company bought Myntra in 2014.
Being the first of its kind, there were many struggles the founders faced in deciding the direction of the app. With both Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori not known for their endeavours in fitness, they had to take each step meticulously and carefully to reach their audience. The struggles that come with being a first of its kind also involves convincing investors in trusting the venture. Since fitness hasn’t gained much momentum in India until recently, it was a real uphill battle to initially get the investors on board. They also had struggles with setting up Eat.Fit as any food delivery on a daily basis to hundreds of customers requires a close-knit network with reliable servicing. They had to partner with many small firms in order to bring their dream to reality.
In the past two and half years, the startup has raised $294 million in eight funding rounds, and recently, has also opened its centre in Jammu and Kashmir. It is present in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR region, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur, and recently, it launched in Dubai. Cure.fit’s services are used by over 500,000 active subscribers.

Amid the covid-19 pandemic cure.fit closed all its fitness centres at the start of the lockdown. Struggling with the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the company has also downsized its employee base across markets.
The Bengaluru-based fitness startup launched a grocery delivery service in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. The company launched its MovementForMovement campaign where via cult.live the user has to accept the challenge. For every challenge, a contribution of Rs 100 was to be made to the PM CARES Fund to help COVID-19 relief efforts.

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