Rapido's Secret Sauce? Moved Away From Commission-Based Model, Says Co-Founder Aravind Sanka
Drivers just pay a subscription fee upfront and keep the fare, Aravind Sanka says at the NDTV Profit Conclave.
Rapido has upgraded its business model to software as a service and the ride-hailing aggregator does not take daily commissions, co-founder Aravind Sanka said on Tuesday.
"Our core focus is to give value to our customers, riders," Sanka said during a panel discussion on the Disruptors Who Changed Indian Consumers Forever at the NDTV Profit Conclave in Mumbai.
Drivers just pay a subscription fee upfront and keep the fare. Two million drivers work on Rapido platforms every month, according to the co-founder.
He pointed out that Rapido was a 10-year-old company and things did not happen overnight for it. "A crucial part of employing at scale is working in tandem with the government," he said. "The big part of what we do is to create employment at scale."
Practo
The Indian healthcare opportunity is large at $100 billion, according to Practo CEO Shashank ND.
The company, which aimed to take doctors' practice online, has 5 lakh doctors on its platform today. Practo has a gross merchandise value of $400 million and 90% of its consumers are organic, not via marketing channels, Shashank said.
"Quality always tops the requirement for majority users of Practo," he said, adding that subsidising by way of offers and discounts does not really work in healthcare.
The company has created AI assistants trained on 17 years of patient data on the platform. "Artificial intelligence assistants can talk to patients in their language for prompt medical guidance," he said. "For a startup, the right partner or investor is more valuable than the valuation."
InMobi
The world of consumer behaviour is getting similar globally, according to Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi. "Given the pace of the market, if you have an idea, now is the time to double down," he said.
InMobi was SoftBank's first investment in India in 2011. The company launched its mobile ads business even before Google.
"AI-powered commerce or shopping makes the consumer the hero of that beauty product or apparel. AI enables selfie-based 'try on' for online shopping, which is quite the norm now," he said.
