The week that was: From the tech journey of Kaleidofin’s Natasha Jethanandani to the imminent IPO of edtech giant BYJU’S

As the CTO of Kaleidofin, Natasha Jethanandani is focused on making financial services inclusive, especially for the unbanked. Having been the Head of Engineering at Bank Bazaar, building tech for financial services wasn’t new for Natasha. 

But, her switch to Kaleidofin was “driven by a strong personal motivation” to use her learnings to make more of a social impact on lives. 

“I was really attracted to Kaleidofin’s mission to propel customers towards their real life-goals by providing intuitive and tailored financial solutions as a neobank,” explains Natasha. Her love for science was influenced immensely by her father, who was an electrical engineer, and her mother, who has a master’s in Physics.

Edtech unicorn BYJU'S can go for its initial public offering (IPO) in three years either in India or the US. Although the Bengaluru-based startup is yet to freeze on an exact timeline for the IPO, Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said that it’s possible in the next two to three years, and that it’s an “aspiration” for him to build a large public company out of India. 

“If you are expecting a timeline (for the IPO), I myself haven’t thought seriously about it — maybe like two years, three years, maybe longer,” he told YourStory Media Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma.  

Despite the exact timeline still being a little hazy, an IPO is definitely on the cards and is likely to happen sooner rather than later. 

“That (IPO) will be a clear option because we have a profitable model. That’ll be an option available to us sooner than later. To be very honest, I haven’t thought of the timeline, whether it’s two years, three years. Once we decide, I am sure we can do that in 24-36 months,” Byju said.

Now, let us talk healthcare. 

When former Myntra co-founders Prasad Kompalli and Ashutosh Lawania started online telemedicine startup mfine in February 2017, they weren’t the first in the space. But they found a major gap in the market.

They established mfine as an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare service that provides users access to virtual consultations and connected care programmes from different hospitals across the country. It was this very problem that also got Myntra CTO Ajit Narayan to Mfine. 

Today, Mfine is tapping mobile technology and AI to simplify healthcare in India. The platform allows users to consult doctors from top healthcare institutions through video or chat. Unlike others in the space, Mfine partners with leading hospitals rather than aggregating individual doctors on the platform. 

Last but not least, here is a homegrown video platform, which is an alternative for Zoom. 

VideoMeet’s generic name was a deliberate choice by its creators. Jaipur-based Data Ingenious Global began developing a video conferencing application within weeks of India going into lockdown. The demand for remote collaboration tools had already skyrocketed and the ‘quarantine economy’ was throwing up new stars like Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, and others.

Even as Zoom became the default video conferencing platform globally — going from three million to 300 million daily meeting participants in no time — Ajay Data, renowned techie and VideoMeet Founder and CEO, wanted to build a desi alternative.