NewsVoir | 29 May, 2015
PayPal, a global leader in online payments, today announced the graduation of three startups incubated at its Start Tank Incubation Center in Chennai, India. The three companies — DoPartTime, Fantain, and Kobster — started their incubation at Start Tank between 2013-14. The occasion marks another milestone for Start Tank, which is located within PayPal’s Technology Center in Chennai.
PayPal’s Start Tank aims to identify and incubate the country’s next generation tech startups. These startups receive technology mentorship and infrastructure support from PayPal, as well as business mentorship from charter members of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai, a not-for-profit organization committed to the cause of entrepreneurship.
“As one of the world’s largest startups, we at PayPal are proud to see the graduating startups benefit from our mentorship and expand their teams and businesses while at Start Tank. This occasion is another major step in our commitment to the development of a strong technology ecosystem in India. We wish the three companies the best in their entrepreneurial endeavors,†said Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology, Asia-Pacific, PayPal.
Graduating Startups:
DoPartTime, founded by Mohankumar Swaminathan and Arun David, is a marketplace for bringing together part-time job seekers and job providers. The portal facilitates the finding and hiring of flexible and temporary jobs through a technology-led web and mobile platform. The company was selected through the Start Tank Incubation Challenge startup selection event in Chennai.
“This tenure at PayPal has helped us with a myriad of opportunities. The periodic review meetings and regular technology guidance gave us the necessary direction to grow our company. We also made our first sale through the incubator when we helped fellow-incubatee – Kobster hire 15 candidates. We are aiming to become the country’s ‘hyperlocal job marketplace’.†said Mohankumar Swaminathan, Co-founder & CEO, DoPartTime.
Fantain, founded by Anand Ramachandran, Aravind Ramachandran, and Vivek Venugopalan, helps sports companies use ‘Fan Data’ to increase revenue and predictability. Through its ‘Fan Data Management Platform,’ it engages, collects, and analyzes ‘Fan Data’ from various sources and provides actionable insights to customers. During its stint at Start Tank, Fantain expanded its headcount to 15 and won 3 clients, including the Indian Premier League T20 cricket team Sunrisers Hyderabad. Fantain was the recipient of the ‘Promising Startup Award’ at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Startupreneurs Conference & Expo 2014.
“Sports fan engagement is a niche business, yet a highly potential space in India. PayPal’s fantastic support enabled us to take risks and achieve our targets in a relatively short period of time. We currently have more than one-third market share in our area of focus,†said Aravind Ramachandran, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer, Fantain.
Kobster.com, founded by Vineet Neeraj, Karthik Ramaiah, and Mohan Gayam, is a web-based, B2B e-commerce player that helps corporate buyers, retailers, SMEs, home offices, hotels, etc. to purchase office supplies in bulk at wholesale rates.
Kobster recently raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Splice Advisors, and has seen its revenues grow from INR 40 lakhs to INR 6.5 crores by April 2015 while at Start Tank. The company aims to become the largest B2B provider in the space by creating an online platform for buyers and wholesale sellers from across the country.
“When we joined Start Tank, we were a four-member team. We’ve now become a 23-member strong enterprise and expanded our revenues tenfold. PayPal has been like a fourth co-founder, helping us build our company through their technological expertise and a great professional network including lawyers and chartered accountants,†said Karthik Ramaiah, Co-founder, Kobster.com.
About PayPal Start Tank
PayPal India formally launched its startup incubator in association with TiE Chennai in November 2013. The exclusive facility in PayPal’s Chennai technology center provides an obligation-free environment as well as technology and business mentorship for select startups to evolve. It has an office area of more than 11,000 square feet with a world-class incubation space, state-of-the-art conference rooms and other amenities.
Start Tank is located globally across PayPal offices in London and Chennai and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. Start Tank Chennai currently hosts two other startups: Konotor and PiQube. PiQube recently secured $500,000 in funding from The HR Fund.
About PayPal
At PayPal, we put people at the center of everything we do. Founded in 1998, we continue to be at the forefront of the digital payments revolution, processing almost 11.6 million payments for our customers per day. PayPal gives people better ways to connect to their money and to each other, helping them send money without sharing financial information and with the flexibility to pay using their PayPal account balances, bank accounts, PayPal Credit and credit cards. With our 165 million active customer accounts, we have created an open and secure payments ecosystem people and businesses choose to securely transact with each other online, in stores and on mobile devices. PayPal is a truly global payments platform that is available to people in 203 markets, allowing customers to get paid in more than 100 currencies, withdraw funds to their bank accounts in 57 currencies and hold balances in their PayPal accounts in 26 currencies. PayPal is an eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) company. In September 2014, eBay Inc. announced the planned separation of eBay and PayPal into independent publicly traded companies in 2015. More information about PayPal can be found at www.paypal.com and www.paypal-media.com. More information about the planned separation of eBay and PayPal can be found at update.ebayinc.com.
About PayPal India Technology Centers
PayPal’s technology centers in India (Chennai & Bangalore) have over 1,200 engineers who support the PayPal business globally. These talented technologists are part of a global team that is constantly innovating and driving software development initiatives that enhance and expand PayPal’s global payments platform. The India technology centers house a best-in-class team of software developers, architects, user experience engineers, web developers, data analytics & project managers.
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