June 25, 2021  

The Future of Health Tech

Healthcare, facilitated by technology, has been an accelerated sector during the pandemic. The healthcare market in India is forecasted to reach USD 372 billion by 2022-2023. The global digital health market size is expected to reach ~USD 300B by 2028 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 15% over the forecast period. The health-tech ecosystem in India is expected to be worth $5-6 billion by 2023, as per analyst reports. What is more exciting is that this sector is expected to rise with a CAGR of 39-40%, as per the report published recently by IAMAI and Praxis. There is solid headroom for the growth of health tech since it only accounts for 2-3% of the overall healthcare market in India.

The covid situation brought the intent in patients and families to adopt health tech. This was furthered by the government’s intention to promote technology, telemedicine, and creating a backbone of NDHM, a digital healthcare ecosystem. However, the challenge remains on the agility with which the new age ventures and corporates can develop health tech solutions.

Due to the pandemic, there is high adoption of many health tech services, including e-pharma, teleconsultations, and integrated homecare with diagnostics. Large organizations are looking for new startups who can be acquired and acqi-hired to fast-track the roadmap of digital health services. Healthcare institutions have started adopting online channels to include digital transformation as a part of their strategic focus. According to the experts report, e-pharmacy and B2B health tech sectors account for 60-70% of the increasing health tech market. This is being accentuated by medical devices, e-diagnostic, and teleconsultation solutions growing between 65-70% in the present situation.

According to the reports by Praxis Global, the health tech ecosystem will see a surge of models led by the next wave of AI/ML that will drive better and faster health services to the consumers in need. Considering the landscape of investments in the last five years for the health tech sector, the quantum of funding has been close to $3.5-4B billion, with late-stage companies raising about $173-$175 million or 40-45% of the funds deployed in the Indian healthcare sector.

With such strong winds for healthcare to move fast on the technology value chain, Tracxn claims there are ~6000 health tech companies in India and growing. With experts from medicine, biosciences, and technology being a part of Mirainxt, we can reduce the time to market and revenue for health tech startups. Whether the venture is medical devices-led or deep-tech augmented analytics, we are here to make the founder’s vision come true.

June 15, 2021 No Comments  

India Edtech Opportunity and Innovation

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  • May 10 2021
  • 5 mins

India Edtech Opportunity and Innovation

In the last year alone, ed-tech companies in India managed to pick up USD 1.5B-2B dollars in funding. As per the Tracxn report of 2020/2021, India has 6000+ registered ed-tech ventures, of which 300+ are based in Pune. This does not come as a surprise since Pune is considered the country’s education capital. The quantum of funding and the volume of ed-tech companies indicate enough that education appears to be an attractive sector both for founders and investors. The Indian education focussed startups seem to be chasing a $10 Bn Edtech/Education Opportunity. As per the Inc $2 report, the ed-tech market of India is estimated to grow 3.7x in the next five years, from $2.8Bn (2020) to $10.4 Bn (2025). It is an astounding available market size which should be a strong motivation for world-class education technology solutions to see growth in India. If you consider the latest BARC and Nielsen report about the consumption of education content along with the time being spent on the same, it asserts a 25-30% increase in the time spent on education apps in the first three months of lockdown. Furthermore, for a common understanding, edtech does not end with e-learning and test prep. It has multi-faceted problems to solve, and hence technology reflects on impacting multiple avenues of the education value chain.

It is also essential to understand the various forms and factors in which edtech is deployed in the ecosystem. It is a stretch that impacts right from K12 to higher education. The people at large will understand the solutions in these sectors. However, a significant amount of edtech solution development and delivery also happens in the skill development and corporate learning ecosystem. In contrast, ventures like pepstudy.com would be playing in the K12 space. The companies like simulanis.com are leading the edtech learning into the corporate sectors. Also, there is a solid value demonstrated by institutions that have a symbiotic engagement with their alumni. Hence the rise of alumni connecting technology solutions can bring the whole current and past ecosystem together for institutions. 

Next in line are the platforms that facilitate career development and job readiness for various edtech stakeholders. Our association is with one such venture, namely teenzclap.com, which works with colleges to upskill students to be career-oriented more than just being job-ready. A major operational challenge with any decent-sized university is its end-to-end campus management. Here is an opportunity that is being well leveraged by edtech companies that automate the entire campus management processes right from admissions to student exits and claim settlements. Admissions to delivery of programs to placements: the whole cycle is being completed by edtech ventures with easy-to-use professional solutions.

Considering the technologies that edtech companies are leveraging, they are at the forefront of the cutting edge. One can see how augmented, and virtual reality is being deployed or how job matches using artificial intelligence are being done. The use of gamification in K12, Higher ed, and corporate learning is increasing by the day as web apps, audio, and video content are being created and consumed in the number of bytes that one cannot count. Next in line is the evolution of robotics with AI in edtech leveraged by an edtech venture to accelerate learning and development.

There are four enablement areas that edtech has a tangible impact today. Companies have exceptional solutions for admissions management. Next in the process are edtech ventures who facilitate the deployment of the academic program for students to consume the courses. For assessment purposes, the technology advent is seen in the solutions of companies developing new-age technology. Finally, to accentuate the learning, to get a job, or become an entrepreneur, edtech companies play a significant role for the same. 

To sum it up, it is crucial to understand why edtech is successful globally and the haunting question for the Indian ecosystem. Education institutions and mentors of change always back the most successful edtech innovation systems. In India, this responsibility is shouldered by MiraiNxt, pledging to make a substantial impact to scale up edtech ventures from India to the world.

May 29, 2021 No Comments  

Success and Failure Elements of Startups

Success and Failure Elements of Startups

  • May 10 2021
  • 5 mins

Success and Failure Elements of Startups


The primary determinant of the success of a startup is its growth with the ability to sustain and thrive. It is also that 60-70% of the ventures fail due to premature market entry and attempt to scale up. It is essential to understand the factors that help startups take wiser, data-backed decisions and mitigate causes of failures:

1) A startup that gets mentored by meaningful and high-impact advisors can grow 3-4x faster and raise money with less time to market. Founders are pulled in many directions by many advisors. However, for enhancing the startup success, the guidance, and support of the right mentors and venture partners, whose first task should be to ensure that the founder’s time is invested wisely. Further, a strong rapport between the mentors and the founders can provide the startup with a network and roadmap that reduces their chances of failure.  

2) For successful ventures, execution skills always top over intellectual property and first-mover advantage: Over 60-70% of startup founders eventually realize that execution skills are always a more significant competitive advantage than technology and intellectual property. Every entrepreneur starts with an idea they strongly believe in strongly; however, faster they realize that the concept, product, and market viability can only be practical if there are best in class execution elements.

3) If the startup is making something deeptech, the acumen of the Technical co-founders is critical to the company. The challenges here are finding the right person, retain-ability, and the right choice of technology. Many ventures spend much money to develop stacks in various technologies and eventually reach the one they wanted in the first place. The suitable elemental advisory on the choice of technology requires a higher order of mentoring to capture a business opportunity. Once the technology aspect is sorted, the right mix of founders and team business management abilities, strategy, and execution are necessary since these are equally important pillars.

4) Founders patience is a crucial ingredient in the success or failure of a venture. When the founders make a business model and execution plan, there are assumptions of time needed to validate a product and associated business model. In real life, it can be 2 to 3x longer than expected to validate. Since validation is also dependent on intuition and listening to potential users, it often is not comprehensible in advance. An MVP will require several rounds of customer checkpoints and iterations before they become viable products that people can use and recommend.

5) Most ventures also fail since they select to work on a problem that is not significant enough. In order words, from multiple ideas, founders should find the problem whose solution is really missing by the people who can pay to use it. Selecting a wrong idea due to conviction, haste, or advisory leads to 30-40% innovation failures. Involving clients in solution development, regular testing of the performance, and their willingness to pay is critical for a venture’s success.

6) Dependence on funding instead of relying on savings to reach early revenue can become a “fail fast” decision. Founders seldom look at the runup of initial months/years to be covered by loans from small banks. This can be a predictable amount in time of need instead of spraying and praying with the pitch deck to angel investors. During the initial growth phase, reliance on bootstrapping, money from family members, funds, and part loans from banks may work better for the growth of a venture

Overall, the evidence of successes and failures in the startup’s ecosystem indicates that the founders should surround themselves with mentors and team members with complementary skills, which accelerators and innovation centres can bring about. Further, the founders should launch and iterate fast, with a balance of speed and precision. Lastly, work on a solution that is needed by a significant amount of users and be innovative in generating money for the venture.

May 10, 2021 No Comments  

Scale Up with an Incubator Innovation centre

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  • May 10 2021
  • 5 mins

Scale Up with an Incubator Innovation centre

Applying to be a part of a scaleup innovation program is a significant decision for any startup with an MVP in the early stage. The startups need scalable and sustainable business models with limited bandwidth of time. Innovation centres can help in this requirement of doing more in less time, with high impact and velocity. The founders should not believe that the team is too good to sit with mentors and take guidance. Also, it is wrong to assume that an innovation centre is a fast track to stardom or becoming a unicorn immediately. The startups that get into a reliance innovation/incubation centre ecosystem get hugely benefited with

  • Cost and time saving: Time is the most precious asset of startup founders in their journey to build something meaningful. Innovation centres like Mirainxt come with support systems such as digital media management, technology development, law firms, patent attorneys, fund-raising material development, to name a few. These services are needed by all early-stage startups and cost high in the open market. The startups enjoy these services pro-bono or at optimum rates when being a part of the incubator. 

 

  • Minimizing errors: Being a part of an innovation centre allows startups to access the best industry experts and advisors from research to launch. The incubators put money and effort to onboard the relevant subject matter experts to help the founders minimize errors and maximize outcomes. It is a fact that often, the first pilot or paying customer for a venture comes due to soft introduction by the incubator and/or the mentors involved. In effect, companies with incubators/innovation centres can enjoy infrastructure, support and training that can be time and money consuming for startups.

 

  • Inspiring environment: A no-brainer, incubators provide an environment that encourages and inspires. In this environment, there is much potential for the cross-pollination of ideas and possible alliances and synergies. Alternatively, co-working spaces and other sandboxed environments can offer an inspiring environment.

 

  • Derisking the funding process: Imagine a startup not knowing how to pitch to investors and, more importantly, to whom? The startups start to spray and pray, which adds to their efforts and increasing frustration levels. Incubators/innovation centres derisk the startup and the investor by curating the right venture to meet the relevant investors. This ensures that both ends get the best out of the time and discussions, eventually leading to a thorough evaluation of the business propositions.  

 

  • Brand Recognition: Being a part of the incubation/innovation centre ensures that the external ecosystem takes the startup seriously. The incubators/innovation centres have the right PR and Marketing strategies to showcase their cohort to the world. With the backing of an incubator/innovation centre, the startups can have a better chance of putting their foot in the door.

 

A meaningful and impactful incubator/innovation centre focuses on its strength and associated ecosystem development sectors. They offer many benefits, however not every startup can make it through the robust application process. Both the incubator/innovation centre and startups take equal time to evaluate mutual benefits and commit to one another from onboarding to a successful exit.

MiraiNxt, a state of the art innovation centre, offers a strategic high-intensity program to scale up health, education and deep tech companies. Startups are welcome to leverage MiraiNxt for realizing their vision to be a world-class venture. MiraiNxt is housed in an engineering institution with access to ecosystems, funding and resources to support technology development. It can be a startup’s best opportunity to succeed.