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Paras Chopra to launch advanced AI lab in India after $200 Mn exit

EntrackrEntrackr · 5m ago
Paras Chopra to launch advanced AI lab in India after $200 Mn exit
Medial

Paras Chopra to Launch Advanced AI Lab in India After $200 Mn Exit Indian entrepreneur Paras Chopra, who recently sold SaaS startup Wingify for $200 million, is now planning to set up a modern AI lab in India. Announcing the development on social media platform X, Chopra stated that he aims to create efficient reasoning models and advanced AI algorithms that can have a global impact. Chopra is assembling a team to prepare a proposal for India’s AI mission and is seeking technical experts to join, either full-time or part-time. However, he has not yet disclosed the name of his next venture. He believes that solving problems in complex domains is crucial for economic growth and that enhancing AI models capable of highly intelligent reasoning could help address some of the world’s most pressing challenges, such as poverty, cancer, and fundamental questions about the universe and human consciousness. Unlike large Western AI labs with massive budgets for GPUs, Chopra’s project will prioritize efficiency. The team will explore innovative methods such as reinforcement learning, distillation, pruning, and neuroscience-based approaches to improve AI performance using limited computational resources. This will mark Chopra’s third startup venture, following Wingify (VWO) and Nintee. While Wingify was acquired by Everstone, Nintee was shut down in April last year. The company, backed by Peak XV, Kunal Shah, and others, returned most of the capital it had raised from investors.

Wingify reports Rs 61 Cr PAT on Rs 289 Cr revenue in FY24

EntrackrEntrackr · 8m ago
Wingify reports Rs 61 Cr PAT on Rs 289 Cr revenue in FY24
Medial

Bootstrapped SaaS firm Wingify has continued its growth journey as its operating scale spiked 30.8% in the fiscal year ending March 2024. Moreover, the firm’s profit also grew 30% YoY in the last fiscal year. Wingify’s revenue from operations increased to Rs 288.61 crore in FY24 from Rs 220.60 crore in FY23, its consolidated financial statement sourced from the Registrar of Companies (RoC) shows. The company offers SaaS solutions to online enterprises, supporting them in optimizing their conversion rates through their proprietary tool known as the Visual Website Optimizer (VWO). Income from the sale of VWO products was the sole source of its operating collection which grew 30.8% to Rs 288.61 crore in the last fiscal year. Wingify also made Rs 9.98 crore from interest income and other non-operating sources stood at Rs. 2.91 crore. With these incomes, the Pune-based company posted a total revenue of Rs 301.5 crore. The burn on employee benefits accounted for 61.8% of its total cost which grew 16.4% to Rs 136.83 crore during the last fiscal year. Notably, legal expenses shot up 497% to Rs. 38.10 crore. This indicates that the 15-year-old company is either fighting some expensive legal suites or long term investment in legal infrastructure. Advertising costs remained stable at Rs. 14.36 crore whereas other expenses such as information technology (IT), rental et al stood at Rs 32.04 crore. In the end, Wingify’s total expenses rose by 33.5% to Rs 221.33 crore in FY24 as compared to Rs 165.81 crore in FY23. With over 30% spike in its scale, Wingify also managed similar growth in profit after tax (PAT) in the last fiscal year. Its PAT increased 30% YoY to Rs 61.04 crore in FY24 from Rs 46.97 crore in the previous fiscal year. Its ROCE and EBITDA Margin stood at 18.85% and 27% respectively, on a unit basis the company spent Re 0.77 to earn a Rupee of operating revenue in FY24. Wingify reported cash and cash equivalents of Rs. 7.42 crore while bank balance (excluding cash equivalents) stood at Rs. 7.99 crore. Its trade receivables grew Rs 74.09 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2024. Wingify’s founder, Paras Chopra, saw a significant reduction in his annual remuneration last fiscal year which dropped to Rs 1.38 crore in FY24 from Rs 17.95 crore in FY23. However, another co-founder and the firm’s chief executive officer, Sparsh Gupta, withdrew an annual salary of Rs 19.5 crore in FY24. His salary and other remunerations soared almost 3.35X year-on-year. As per TheKredible, Chopra holds a majority stake in the company while Gupta has nearly 5% stake. Wingify’s flagship products compete with a clutch of global players like Optimizely and Google Optimize. The return to 30% growth is notable after a somewhat sedate FY23 when it recorded 16% growth, but the bottomline for Wingify remains the firm’s ability to stay ahead. With pricing options ranging from just over Rs 50K per month to over Rs 150K per month, the firm targets the largest part of the addressable market for its products, as it is. And where the orgs do not use it, their suppliers and service providers probably do. Bootstrapped and zero debt and, Wingify is the alternate vision for Indian software that many propose, of smaller firms that serve the world with smart products and services, rather than the giant behemoths that are seemingly struggling to manage their size, growth or new opportunities.

Paras Chopra’s Nintee shuts down, to return investors’ money

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Paras Chopra’s Nintee shuts down, to return investors’ money
Medial

Nintee, a digital health startup launched by Wingify founder Paras Chopra, has announced shutting down its operations after a year of launch. In a blog post, Chopra said that the majority of funding raised by the company is still remaining and will be returned to investors over the next few weeks. Nintee was backed by the likes of Peak XV Partners, Kunal Shah, and others. “Our original hypothesis was to use AI for helping people build better habits to transform their lives. This attracted a passionate niche, but we couldn’t build conviction that it could be a VC-scale business,” said Chopra. After abandoning the initial idea, the firm tried another pivot to explore education and learning related ideas, but Nintee team quickly discovered that building a successful consumer app today is very hard. Nintee has provided four months of severance to the impacted employees and also offered them to join Chopra’s other company VWO at the same salary. Nintee was the third company founded by Chopra after VWO and Wingify. His bootstrapped company Wingify reported back-to-back profits in the past fiscal years. Its revenue from operations increased 16.8% to Rs 223 crore in FY23 with Rs 51 crore profit after tax. Around half a dozen startups operating in India have announced shutting down their operations in the ongoing calendar year so far. The list counts Resso (India), Rario, OKX (India), Muvin and GoldPe. In 2023, more than 15 startups ceased their operations over funding and other challenges.

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