Everybody is jumping on the start-up bandwagon, and Bollywood stars are no exception. Startups hold tremendous potential and Tinseltown celebrities are quick to zoom in on the diamonds in the rough. Corporate Citizen brings you a list of promising startups (some of them are established companies today) backed by the who’s who of Bollywood
Starting with the actresses, they aren’t lagging behind their male co-stars one bit. Karisma Kapoor is the single largest individual share-holder in Babyoye.com, the e-commerce store for baby products, owned by Nest Childcare Services Pvt. Ltd. Karisma has 26 percent stake in the company whose other investors include Accel Partners and Tiger Global. Company’s founders—Arunima Singhdeo and Sanjay Nadkarni, however, continue to own a majority stake in their start-up. Earlier in 2015, Mahindra Group bought Babyoye.com for an undisclosed amount. While we don’t know the exact amount, the revenue of the company touched Rs.30 crore last year. Therefore, It can be safe to say that Karisma Kapoor made a sweet profit on her initial investment.
Justdial had signed Amitabh Bachchan as its brand ambassador at the fag end of 2010. Instead of monetary payment, he opted for a stake in the company. He was given 62,000-odd shares at a price of Rs.10 each and he was roped in for a period of three years. Later, when Justdial went for an IPO, those shares were valued at Rs.3.83 cr. Those same shares have shot up to more than Rs.10 cr early this year. AB Sr also invested in cloud storage and sharing soultions start-up Ziddu, based in Singapore. The star’s investment in the venture was $2.50 lakh. Judging by the 1.2 billion page views on the company’s website, as well as 300 million visitors in just a month’s time, the legendary actor seemed to have made the right move.
Today, Yatra has come far from its humble roots. But for the seven-year-old travel operator backed by the American venture capitalists Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital, roping in Salman Khan, who has a knack of minting crores of rupees from all of his movies, was a real coup. Salman has a 5 percent stake in Yatra.com, which is an ad-for-equity deal. Simply put, ad-for-equity clause entails promoting and marketing the brand, in exchange for equity shares. According to Economic Times, Yatra.com is valued at Rs.3,500 crore (which makes Salman’s stake worth Rs.175 crore) and going strong, so he can certainly look for windfall gains in the future.
Buying in wholesale always gives us a better price, doesn’t it? The bulk of purchase allows the suppliers to give a discount.GroupHomeBuyers is a company launched by HDIL which applies the same concept to buying homes. GroupHomeBuyers claims to make bulk investing in real estate more affordable and eventually profitable. People show interest in a property, once a minimum ceiling is reached, it triggers a discount. The company is backed by Shilpa Shetty (details on shareholding are not known), along with her husband Raj Kundra. Altough the exact stake is not known, it is presumed to be of a high amount, as Shilpa will also be acting as the brand ambassador of the company.
BY NEERAJ VARTY
