Omnichannel-focused B2B platform ShepHertz aspires to become unicorn

Siddhartha Chandurkar, CEO & Founder of ShepHertz, has a strong reason to feel that his company is on a path to become the next unicorn.

The Gurugram and Palo Alto-based startup enables traditional enterprises in their omnichannel digital transformation through pre-built backend cloud services, BigData and API gateway solution.

“We enable marketers to launch use cases and campaigns in days instead of months without having a dependency on the development team or external development agencies and helps enterprises to realize the digitization roadmap by putting them on a continual transformation path,” said Chandurkar.

The platform claims to be on a hyper-growth path, registering over 8,400 per cent growth in APIs alone in the past two years. The company is riding on the exponential growth chart and running a profitable business.

Enterprises like IndiGo Airlines, Kotak Securities, Spencer’s, Edelweiss, L&T Realty and a few others are leveraging the platform for solutions and products in SaaS and enterprise models.

“We have quite a few customers in each business vertical – BFSI, retail, real estate and media, among others on dedicated platforms. Other than these, we have more than 55,000 app developers in 150 countries using our SaaS platform to build various apps and games,” Chandurkar added.

Old enterprises such as large banks, retail companies, and taxi services, among others are now competing against new age startups -- Paytm, Flipkart and Uber.

He added that owing to digitization, the new age startups seem to have an edge over old enterprises; the latter is in dire need of adaptation to the new change if they aspire to sustain in the business.

ShepHertz: A 7-year-old story

The inception of ShepHertz goes back to the year 2010 when it started as a technology startup focusing on product development and services in the area of PaaS (Platform as a Service), Cloud Computing and SaaS (Software as a Service).

They then offered multiple product offerings based on their underlying ‘App42’ platform, which allowed developers to develop, deploy, manage and sell their mobile, web, social and SaaS applications for all popular devices, technologies, and platforms.

In 2013, it closed its first formal round of $300,000 from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels, and Kae Capital.

In 2014, it raised $100,000 from India Quotient. In the same year, it raised $1.2 million from seven investors.

The startup gradually introduced other services and smartly carved out its niche among the gaming app developers.

The platform was building features for games like avatar, buddy management, and others.

Besides, ShepHertz also adopted the strategy of content marketing for expansion strategy and exploring new markets. It publishes content in three languages -- English, Spanish and Japanese.

In 2015, it repositioned itself as an omnichannel digital transformation through pre-built backend cloud services, BigData and API gateway solution.

Talking about differentiation, Chandurkar said that while other companies are offering different solutions, we have emerged as a one-stop solution for digitization of enterprises where we provide all the services.

Market growth

The digitization move, which has offered various benefits to different sectors such as insurance, media, retail, banking and others, is expected to create around $100 trillion of value by 2025, according to Gartner.

The study says that in this fast-growing market, 80 per cent of business leaders expect their company to become digital enterprise by 2019.

In its survey, it also found that 56 per cent of CEOs witnessed an increase in profits after digitization.

Chandurkar sees an immense potential in the market when the whole ecosystem is moving towards digitization. He believes that in this growing market, likes of him holds an immense potential to emerge as the next unicorn in the Indian startup ecosystem.

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