Faridagupta, CareNx and Buttercups are winners of Google SMB Heroes 2017

Faridagupta, CareNx and Buttercups are the national winners of Google SMB Heroes 2017, an initiative aimed at recognising businesses that have embraced technology to power their growth.

 Faridag Gupta won the award for Business Impact Through Digital, CareNx won the award for Impacting Change Through Digital and Women Business Leader award was given to Buttercups. These businesses have excelled in innovative use of technology and have leveraged it to address challenges and grow their businesses.

Farida Gupta’s women apparel business is committed to bringing together a varied range of traditional crafts and techniques. They have successfully built their online presence which has resulted in an increase of 400% year on year in their profitability.

CareNx provides health solutions for high risk pregnancies to over 6,000 pregnant women in more than 200 villages and has strategic partnerships with more than 20 organizations that include hospitals and medical schools. Leveraging the digital platform, they created a first of its kind app that connects pregnant women with gynaecologists to monitor vitals and provide recommendations for any identified health risks. By the end of 2017, CareNx aims to reach 30,000 pregnant women in India in 800 villages.

Arpita Ganesh’s Buttercups started social media marketing in 2014 and followed it up with Google advertising solutions in 2016 including search, adwords and analytics. After starting digital marketing, Buttercups started getting orders from all parts of the country and their revenue has gone up by 13x in the last 18 months.

Google SMB Heroes 2017:

PackingSupply is an online store for packaging materials and using online tools has increased its business orders by 80% and revenue by 139%. Also, their investment in digital has allowed them to reach over 20,000 customers across the country.

WedLista is an online destination for wedding apparel. Within the first two months of commencing their digital journey, the company has 100 registered 100+ customers and is clocking revenues of Rs. 2 lakhs. Further, the business has enabled 40+ sellers from different cities of India and gets 1,500+ visits per day.

Pen Pundit Media Services is a leading 360-degree editorial company that works with over 15 writers, graphic designers and subject matter experts to cater to the ever-expanding need for well curated and well written online content. Today, 90% of Pen Pundit’s marketing strategy is inclined towards digital media.

TABLAB is an interactive learning lab with localised content was launched in May 2016 for the government schools of Gujarat. Since then TABLAB has expanded to four Indian states and content is available in nine languages. Today, TABLAB is truly transforming rural education in India with an average usage of 30-45 minutes per child. 

DIVEIndia is the oldest dive centre in the Andamans and offers basic to advanced scuba training. DIVEIndia’s website leads conversions increased by an average 230% YoY and the organic website increased by 400% from November 2015 to March 2017.

YourDOST provides online counselling and emotional support platform designed to foster mental wellness. YourDOST has touched more than 10 lakh lives till date. With 900+ experts, it carries around 2,300 one-to-one conversations every day.

Astra Concrete is India’s largest manufacturer and exporter of quality concrete spacers. Today, 60% of Astra’s revenue comes from international orders, 30% comes from other states in India and only 10% comes from Goa. In the next five years, Astra Concrete products aims to achieve a target of Rs. 100 crores, mostly tapping the international market.

Pipabella is an online fashion jewellery store. Using digital tools, Pipabellas has seen an increase in sales by more than 200% over the last 12 months. The cost of acquisition has dropped by 45% and customer base has increased by 60%.

Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces and aggregates that data as hotspots on a map indicating trends at a local level. Today 400,000 people have benefitted from Safecity and 150,000 users have visited the website. It is now present in Kenya, Nepal, Cameroon, Nigeria, USA and Trinidad & Tobago. 

Gainwell Leisure Holidays is Eastern India’s largest international outbound tour company. Since 2014, the business has experienced 100% growth in revenue through web leads and in 2017 alone, website traffic has grown by 3x over previous year.

In addition, Google launched Primer, a free mobile app designed to teach digital marketing skills in a quick, easy and interactive way. In the last few months, Primer has been downloaded over two million times.

Google also launched ‘Websites with Google My Business’, a free tool for SMBs to create free, mobile optimised websites, easily and instantly. Through this new feature, businesses get access to templated, editable websites using their already existing data on Google My Business. With Websites with Google My Business SMBs can automatically build websites in 10 languages – Tamil, English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam. 

160,000 Indian businesses are already using Websites with Google My Business and finding newer ways to connect with consumers.

Addressing an audience of over hundred small and medium business owners, Rajan Anandan, Vice President – India and South-East Asia, Google said, “India’s incredible story of internet adoption continues to have a transformational impact on how people are consuming information, finding new businesses and connecting with one another. However, India’s 51 million strong small and medium business community is not yet where they should be. At Google, we are committed to removing the barriers to adoption and providing small business with the training and tools they need to accelerate their growth.”

As esteemed jury panel comprising Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology; Dr. A. Didar Singh, author and Secretary General, FICCI; Sairee Chahal, Founder and CEO, www.sheroes.in; Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice-Chairman, Info Edge, India and Kevin O’Kane, Managing Director – Google Marketing Solutions, Google Asia Pacific selected the national winners from 14 regional finalists, who had been recognised earlier this year. This year, SMB Heroes witnessed unprecedented interest, with 1,100 entries from over 142 cities across India including Hoshiarpur, Rajkot, Rajamundhry, Jamshedpur, Coimbatore, Hisar, Bhimavaram and many more.

Addressing an audience of local SMBs and highlighting the importance of digital, Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said, “The small business sector is the backbone of the Indian economy, driving 37 per cent of the country’s GDP and employing 120 million people. It is encouraging to see initiatives like Google’s SMB Heroes program, which can help fuel economic growth by making the Internet a key facilitator in India’s SMB growth story.”