Connecting
Indian researchers with global knowledge
Knimbus has managed to sign up 1,300 users within a short
span but it needs to quickly grow its paid user base
Mayur Vaidya from IIT-Madras is
pursuing a PhD in material sciences. Till some time ago, he wasn't sure of the
content sources relevant to his topic and available through the institute
library. His mentor told him about Knimbus
and he's been using the online platform since then. As Knimbus is customised to
his library subscriptions, he got just those articles in search that he could
access. That saves his time and effort in finding content and he also got to
know of other publisher platforms.
Knimbus, a Gurgaon-based online
start-up, powers researchers to search and collaborate from global resources.
While platforms such as Outsell and Simba also do research themselves and offer
advisory services, Knimbus restricts itself to search and collaboration.
So, researchers working in the
scientific, medical and technical (STM) segment in India or elsewhere or those
wanting to co-author technical papers can now look beyond global platforms such
as Outsell and Simba Research.
"We wanted to democratise
knowledge and spur innovation not just in India but globally as well,"
says Knimbus' chief executive Rahul
Agarwalla, who co-founded the networking site with friend Tarun
Arora after they realised that researchers in India had limited access to the
global knowledge pool.
Launched in September 2011, this
online community was recently in the news for raising a round angel funding of
a little over $500,000 from a group of six investors.
The early days
In 2010, Agarwalla, who's neither
a techie or from a research background but has an MBA, had just returned from
Japan, gung-ho on research and development (R&D). He was working at a
Japanese company that created software products and, therefore, had an insight
into R&D. A chance conversation with Arora, the CEO of Global Information
Systems Technology (GIST), a reseller of information, and a computer science
grad with Silicon Valley experience, was all it took to start the journey. The
talk was around that India has 20 per cent of the world population but makes
for barely two per cent of research. Agarwalla was 36 years and Arora 40 when
Knimbus was born. With Agarwalla and Arora, GIST, too, invested in the project.
That a researcher needs to collaborate with peers was the basic idea. That a
fifth of the world's scientific papers are co-authored internationally, while
India is nowhere in the scene, firmed up the venture.
The model was to connect
professionals to online content and peer groups to enable discovery, creation
and sharing of knowledge in the STM segment.
How it works
Knimbus searches across published
scientific content from hundreds of publishers and provides users with a single
gateway to millions of journal articles, patents, e-books and course material.
It also serves as the largest gateway to open access content from selected
publishers and institutional repositories. Users can upload their working
documents, datasheets and presentations and make these public to contribute to
Knimbus.
At least two users, speaking on
condition of anonymity, have said the Knimbus platform's single search window
saves time and effort. The key differentiator of the platform is that Knimbus
brings together search and social features, enabling knowledge sharing and
research collaboration. What users like about Knimbus is it helps them manage
most of their information needs, from discovery to organising their content in
one place and finally sharing it.
The opportunity
Internationally, STM is a
$30-billion industry, while in India the market is valued at $1 billion.
Outsell and Simba Research are among the leading US organisations in this area.
The business model, an analyst says, is scaleable, as STM has been able to
withstand the challenges of the publishing world. The model is believed to be
"extremely profitable", with as much as 35 per cent margin.
STM can be divided neatly into two halves: Publishers with online presence
making up for an estimated $20 billion of business and value-added online
service (a category that Knimbus is part of) at $10 billion, according to
experts. While this segment is growing at an average four-five per cent, this
value-added segment is showing significant promise at 20 per cent annual
growth. "Revenue is shifting, from the traditional STM publishing to
online value-added segment," agrees Agarwalla.
Business revolves around a
business-to-business (B2B) model with two flavours - free access and advanced,
subscription-based institutional version. Apart from 1,000-plus institutes in
India, the company has struck partnerships in the US, Germany and Malaysia,
among others. These international partners are information resellers such as
GIST and get a commission from subscription. While the free access model is no
money churner, it builds on the future, when more members convert to the paid
format. It is expected as the market matures, the percentage of people shifting
to the premium-paid model will grow.
The funding
Two of the angel round investors
have told Business Standard it was their private investment.
Sarabjit Singh, partner with a
global consultancy and who has worked across financial services, retail,
utilities and manufacturing for 20 years, is among the angel investors.
"My team and I do a lot of research and this platform is a great
solution," says Singh.
Working with global media clients
in certain segments, one understands the value of such a tool/network and its
potential to grow in segments, including risk management in the corporate
world, according to Singh. "Beyond a certain threshold, most of the
subscriptions become profitable in this model."
Another investor, Ashwani Singla,
CEO of Penn Schoen Berland, a global research-based communication advisory in
South Asia, refers to Knimbus as an idea whose time has come. Pointing at the
"poverty in research in India", he asks, "How will innovation
happen?" That's what prompted Singla to make an independent investment in
Knimbus, as it allows researchers to collaborate.
With its global ambition, Knimbus
would surely again require money quite soon. "In another six months or so,
the company would go for funding once more," says Agarwalla. This time, it
will be a different set of investors, he adds. An estimated $3-4 million will
be raised next.
Revenue model
Largely a free cloud-based
platform, it aims to go paid gradually as it expands globally. It already
offers premium paid accounts for a small number of clients. By its own
admission, Knimbus wants to be both LinkedIn and Google for researchers. The
key difference is in the security and quality of network, according to the
founders.
At this point, of the 1,300-odd
users, most are accessing for free on the Knimbus platform. Around 40 are paid
users, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, DRDO Lab and
nuclear research institutes, to name a few. The cost could be anything from
$2,000 to $8,500 an institute a year, depending on the size of an institute.
Apart from IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and government
R&D set-ups, users include central and state universities as well.
Singh, who has invested in other
companies in private capacity, including a bottom-of-pyramid focused start-up
called Swabhimaan, agrees Knimbus' focus is to hit the international market and
gain more customers abroad. "This is to make the model more sustainable
and present it as an alternative to some of the existing models in research
publishing."
With a projection of $140,000 revenue for 2013, the company hopes to turn
profitable in 2015. In the first quarter of this calendar year, it clocked a
revenue of $30,000. While sellout is clearly an option, Knimbus is looking at
long-term growth and international expansion.
Apart from scholarly research
sharing, the platform is also being used as an innovative teaching tool. For
instance, a professor recently shared his reading list with his class by
inviting the students on to it and tagging articles.
Challenges
The challenge, as an analyst
points out, is it is both open and secret. The secrecy element is especially
true for research relating to DRDO or nuclear energy. It is a team of a litlle
over 30, all in their 20s, now at Knimbus, and the numbers are growing. While
the current team is either in the technology side or marketing, it depends on
outsourced resources for finance and human resources.
The promoters do not take any salary currently. "We are using every penny
to grow our business," says Agarwalla.
EXPERT TAKE: Prof Rajat Moona
Knimbus has an interesting concept, which connects researchers and provides
mechanisms for collaborations among researchers. It aims to provide a research
community framework much on the lines of the social networking except that it
is for a specific purpose.
India's research community had faced a major challenge of availability of
information for research work from other groups. Such searches are highly
specialised, unlike those provided by general purpose search engines.
Bulk of scientific, technical, medical, social and industrial research is
carried out in partnership mode as is evident by the number of research papers
and patents published with joint authorship. Clearly, there is a demand for
such a networking from the research community. Lack of access to the right kind
of information, not knowing the sources of knowledge and data for their work,
and lack of a platform to network with researchers across the globe are some of
the issues faced by researchers while carrying out their research.
It is often said research today is driven by information and computing. The
availability of information empowers researchers to carry out quality research.
Knimbus aims to fill in this gap and, therefore, likely to have success in connecting
researchers together.
Source | Business Standard | 7 October
2013
