A five-month-old video content startup plans to take on the likes of YouTube. Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma says someone's been trying to impersonate him. Taizo Son, brother of SoftBank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son, bets on the agrifood space in India. And Elon Musk's latest announcement. Here's all that happened on Startup Street this week...
Dekkho Narrows Strategy, To Target The Likes Of YouTube
Video streaming portal Dekkho reached a million viewers last week, five months after its launch. With 70 percent of the viewers spending an average 20 minutes a day on Dekkho, the startup has worked out a strategy to compete with the likes of Youtube.
There are three kinds of video content. First, the 2-3 minute videos, “the kind we see on Facebook that feed on autoplay”, co-founder Tanay Desai told BloombergQuint. Second, the premium 15-20 minute kind that has been fairly mastered by Netflix, Amazon and even Hotstar to an extent. Then comes the 3-10 minute category – where Youtube already stands, and where Dekkho wants to find its place.
Why is this category so attractive?
It's most in demand when it comes to advertisers. Not only is this the perfect time span for videos – not too long that it gets boring and not too short that it can't hold a viewer – but also has a shareability aspect that the longer videos miss out on.Tanay Desai, Co-Founder, Dekkho
Competitors too are limited in this category. “I don't really see anyone major apart from YouTube,” he said.
When BloombergQuint spoke to the startup's other co-founder, Vinay Pillai, in January, it was looking to compete with established players like Facebook, Hotstar and Netflix.
Dekkho also plans an advertising push in the next few months once it identifies the top five genres that are most popular on its website. With plans on track, the startup expects to garner 10-15 million viewers in the next 12-14 months, Desai said.
Identity Theft Scare For Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is exploring legal action against an alleged fraudster trying to impersonate him.
On September 14, Sharma tweeted a picture of an email communication between “him” and a certain Samant Sikka over some business opportunity. “This is quite a scam to raise money!” Sharma wrote on Twitter.
Warning! Just learnt that some Sahil is faking myself and sending emails from looking like my emails
(https://t.co/kV2vAPHBTP is not us!) pic.twitter.com/oLbc0C72N1He clarified that “we have One97MobilityFund.com but a One97Mobility.com pretends and making email that looks like me (sic)” on the micro-blogging site.
The picture also showed emails being sent to sahil@vuzelaa.com. The Vuzelaa Group is a tech startup launched by 18-year-old entrepreneur Sahil Arora. It's not clear if it's Vuzelaa's Arora that Sharma's tweet referred to. BloombergQuint's emails to the ID remained unanswered. Arora couldn't be reached for comment.
Masayoshi Son's Sibling Bets On 'Farm To Fork' In India
Japan's Mistletoe, an early-stage investor founded by Taizo Son, has partnered with India's GSF Accelerator and Infobridge to launch an agrifood technology accelerator in the country “to catalyse the farm-to-fork ecosystem”.
Gastrotope wants to invest in startups involved at various levels in the agricultural value chain, “starting with farmers and moving to food transportation, processing and delivery, and consumption by customers”, said a joint media release.
The newly announced incubator is already in talks with Andhra Pradesh and other government entities for a partnership to strengthen the country's farm economy, said Rajesh Sawhney, head and founder of GSF India.
Mistletoe is already invested in India through agritech and foodtech startups, including Innerchef, Ninjacart and Kisan Network. The tie-up comes at a time when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited India and announced multi-billion trade deals, including financing for the country's first bullet train project.
“I truly believe India will be the centre of agrifood innovation, and am very excited,” said Son in the statement. “India has amazing talents and engineers” in addition to “a long and rich food culture”, he said.
Musk Watch
Internet darling Elon Musk has something to fascinate us every week. So what did he have in store this time?
The Tesla founder tweeted that an “unreal” semi-truck is set to be tentatively unveiled on October 26. “Worth seeing this beast in person,” said Musk. Earlier in April, Musk had praised the Tesla team working on semi-autonomous driving trucks to have done a “seriously next level” job.
Investors loved the news and shares went up for next two trading sessions.
Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride tentatively scheduled for Oct 26th in Hawthorne. Worth seeing this beast in person. It's unreal.
And that wasn't all. Later, he shared a compilation of all of SpaceX's failed rocket launches.
(With inputs from BloombergQuint's Nishant Sharma)
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