Category Archives: QuoDeck

Game-based Learning Market worth $29.7 billion by 2026 – Report by MarketsandMarkets™

According to a research report “Game-based Learning Market by Component (Solution and Services), Game Type, Deployment Mode (On-premises and Cloud), End User (Education, Governments, Consumers, and Enterprises) and Region – Global Forecast to 2026″, published by MarketsandMarkets™, the Game-based Learning Market size is expected to grow from USD 11.0 billion in 2021 to USD 29.7 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.9% during the forecast period.

Game-based learnings, such as AR VR games, AI-based games, Location-based games, Assessment and Evaluation games, Training, Knowledge and Skill-based games, Language learning games create modules, assessments, quizzes for the subjects of math, physics, chemistry, etc. organizations are using these game-based learning techniques because of ease of learning, problem-solving, time saving, cost-effectiveness, and demand in learning for immediate feedback on performance. This learning platform is used to learn any subject, in any game, in any language, on any device for all ages.

Game-based learning solution are deployed either on-premises or on the cloud. The adoption of cloud-based solution is significantly gaining traction as they are more scalable and do not require high costs compared to the on-premises solution. According to a survey conducted by DigitalChalk in 2018, almost 80% of learners said they would be more productive if their university/institution or work was more game-like. According to the survey conducted by TalentLMS in 2019, 33% of respondents would like more game-like features in their employee training software; about 83% of those who receive gamified training felt motivated. In this deployment method, all the information gets stored within enterprise premises.

Scope of the Report for Game-based Learning Market:

Report MetricsDetails
Market size available for years2020-2026
Base year considered2020
Forecast period2021-2026
Forecast unitsValue (USD Million)
Fastest Growing RegionNorth America
Forecast 2022-2026 CAGR21.9%
Segments coveredComponent, game type, deployment mode, end user and Region
Regions coveredNorth America, Europe, APAC, MEA, and Latin America
Companies coveredKahoot (Norway) Frontier Developments (UK), Minecraft (Sweden), Spin Master (Canada), Bublar Group (Sweden), BreakAway games (US), Gamelearn (Spain), Recurrence (US), Schell Games (US), Stratbeans (India), Tangible Play (US), Simulearn (US), Playgen (UK), Raptivity (US), Banzai Labs (US), Cognitive Toybox (US), Fundamentor (India), Idnusgeeks (India), Kuato Studios (UK), Monkimun (US), Smart Lumies (US), G-Cube (India), Hornbill FX (India), Infinite Dreams (Poland), Layup (Sri Lanka), MLevel (US), Quodeck (India), Threatgen (US), Gametize (Singapore), Sweetrush (US), Kidoz, (US) and VR Education Holdings (Ireland).

Corporates have added gameplay to their learning and development (L&D) programs to enjoy higher employee engagement and performance. The innovations of AR, VR, robotics, location-based intelligence, AI have advanced extraordinary. Suppliers sell packaged pre-employment games for soft skill and language learning. They provide custom game development services for vertical skills (coding) and license the platform for internal use. Several online marketplaces are selling digital 3D models, VR environments, and pre-trained AI models. 3D animation is an automated real-time deep learning technique. Companies such as Walmart, Agco, Bosch, and Boeing are currently using AR for corporate training. Only gamification or learning does not create engagement. AR is a feature that aids with the actual training. It fits perfectly into Scenario-based training. It talks to employees, interacts with clients, understands the social surrounding. Apple ARKit, in the hands of able AR and VR developers, has already yielded some amazing results. Apple’s ARKit 3 is a developer-friendly software used to create amazing AR-based content with relative ease. KFC has designed an employee training program with a VR simulator. Some popular location-based games, such as Ingress Prime, Zombies Run, Landlord, Geocaching, help to increase efficient engagement. Location-based services are most likely to increase the traffic on the mobile application by 3 to 4 times. Language learning games help to improve vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Some of the language learning games are Pictionary, Taboo, Stop, Hangman, Spiderweb, Word Jumble, Charades, Translate the Song, and Hot Seat. These games help to improve speaking skills, listening skills, and memory and encourage creativity, oral expression, and attention of the learner. Language games help to learn and teach foreign languages and practice communication skills. More than 15 online games and exercises are available for teaching popular languages, words, spelling, and grammar, which can be used for fun, interactive education, and examination.

The Game-based Learning Market, by end-user, has been segmented into consumer, education, government, and enterprises. The enterprises segment has been sub-segmented into BFSI, manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, IT and telecom, consumer goods and retail, and others, which include energy and utilities, media and entertainment, transport, and logistics. Currently, about 35% of the millennial workforce is working in the manufacturing industry. Gamifying training has proven to be extremely beneficial to some manufacturing giants who have experimented with and moved to serious games as a methodology of training their employees. The IT industry has created a big change in the Game-based Learning Market. AR, VR, cloud gaming, virtual teammates, graphics, portability have increased the market growth of the Game-based Learning Market. HR industries are using game-based learning in L&D and training and development. The healthcare sector is using this technology for training purposes. World bank’s EdTech team has guided individual topics on education technology.

The Game-based Learning Market across North America, Europe, APAC, MEA, and Latin America. The presence of key players, such as Hornbill FX, G-Cube, Indugeeks, and Fundamentor, contributes to the growth of the market. The increasing number of 5G infrastructure development initiatives in the region drives the market growth. APAC includes countries with the largest education systems in the world. China and India can be considered countries with the top three education systems in terms of students. These are the main driving factors in APAC region. North America is the largest market for serious games, cloud gaming, and game-based learning. The government in the US continually supports the game-based learning, serious games market by using through training in the military and healthcare sector. There is a huge investment from big players in game-based learning. Active support from private foundations for game-based learning-related projects. Canada focuses on a long-term infrastructure plan, as its IT spending (around USD 88 billion) was high in 2019. The US is technologically progressive, with a high level of awareness about innovation processes across industries and disruptive technologies, such as AI, cloud, 5G, and edge storage. The US is the most mature market in terms of game-based learning solution’ adoption. Most of the higher education institutions in the country have implemented game-based learning for educational processes. There is significant scope for game-based learning companies to increase their business in the US, as universities are expected to plan upgrades of the existing learning systems.

The Game-based Learning Market is dominated by companies such as Kahoot (Norway) Frontier Developments (UK), Minecraft (Sweden), Spin Master (Canada), Bublar Group (Sweden), BreakAway games (US), Gamelearn (Spain), Recurrence (US), Schell Games (US), Stratbeans (India), Tangible Play (US), Simulearn (US), Playgen (UK), Raptivity (US), Banzai Labs (US), Cognitive Toybox (US), Fundamentor (India), Idnusgeeks (India), Kuato Studios (UK), Monkimun (US), Smart Lumies (US), G-Cube (India), Hornbill FX (India), Infinite Dreams (Poland), Layup (Sri Lanka), MLevel (US), Quodeck (India), Threatgen (US), Gametize (Singapore), Sweetrush (US), Kidoz, (US) and VR Education Holdings (Ireland).

This was first published on MarketsandMarkets™

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People More Motivated By Entertainment Than Traditional Learning Constructs: Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO and Co-founder, Quodeck

Anyone who runs a digital business recognizes the need for interesting and interactive content to attract and retain customers, train employees, and gig workers, and engage value chain stakeholders. This is precisely where QuoDeck comes in. A B2B SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform, QuoDeck enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage audiences. Founders Kamalika Bhattacharya and Arijit Lahiri experienced a moment of insight on a routine visit to a mall. “We found that in between scanning visitors, the security guard was playing candy crush,” exclaims Bhattacharya. “That’s when we realized that people are more motivated by entertainment than traditional learning constructs,”

QuoDeck began as a game-based learning system but now offers a complete digital engagement suite, called the QuoDeck Interactive Cloud that promises engagement, speed, mobility, regionalization, data, and security. QuoDeck has been awarded a fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering, London and Newton Fund and selected as a winner at ET Power of Ideas.

Today, QuoDeck caters to over 5 million users across an enterprise client list that includes Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, Dabur, etc.

Role of gamification in the workplace

Gaming is all about stimulating people, driving a healthy sense of competition among them, and ultimately rewarding them. Rooted in psychology, it can be used to drive any kind of activity or function in the workplace. It works particularly well in the field of learning and enablement by adding an element of fun to propel interest and engagement. This is often achieved by using points, badges, rewards, and contests to create a sense of competition and winning around learning and knowledge consumption.

Studies have shown that through gamified learning and training, retention of information is longer and has high recall value due to the fact it is generally imparted through an audio-video medium. Gamification is also an excellent tool to test participants. It can be used to assess how the participants manage time, prioritize and respond to social cues, among other key skills.

Nowadays, many organisations are shifting towards gamification, making the corporate process smooth and easy going for both HRs and employees.

Gamification is used at workplaces to add a fun element and to increase the level of interest of employees in their day-to-day tasks. It is used in many corporate practices such as onboarding new employees, training, employee engagement & motivation.

What is the scope for job creation through Gamification?

Educational, training, and recruitment platforms are increasingly leveraging the fun elements of gaming to help engage people in jobs. It follows then, that the reverse can also be true – gamification can be used to impart basic skills to people before they are hired and also upskilling them after they are hired. This should impel better outcomes for people looking for work opportunities, effectively making them more job-ready.

Also, an increasing proportion of the workforce that companies are going to hire in the near future will be gig workers. According to a 2021 report by Boston Consulting Group, gig workers have the potential to service up to 90 million jobs in India, or 10 percent of India’s roughly 900 million-strong workforce in the near future. Companies across sectors are banking on the rise of the gig economy to scale fast but quickly hiring gig workers and training them is a huge challenge for enterprises. Gamification can solve for this challenge and maximise job creation. Entertainment and gaming platforms are hugely popular among gig workers to alleviate boredom. A platform that leverages this entertainment factor with high-quality UI can help companies hire and train staff in a highly scalable manner.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

QuoDeck tracks event stream data continuously and uses Machine Learning methods to figure out trends that prove effective for people. The data is aggregated, co-related, and filtered in real time to help create personalized recommendation algorithms that evolve based on what users prefer to consume. As for Artificial Intelligence, that finds applications in learning content creation such as question generators and chat bots that are used to mimic real-life situations as closely as possible.

Where does India stand versus global trends in the adoption of Gamification?

If you look at the numbers, the global gamification market is expected to grow exponentially to USD 38.3 billion by 2027, from a mere USD 9.1 billion in 2020. Things are a little slower in India. While the adoption of gaming is widespread, the use of gamification mechanics in businesses is still at a nascent stage. Moreover, gamification seems to be geared more towards the internal customer than the external. Most Indian apps have yet to gamify their customer, partner or vendor onboarding process as well as their loyalty programs even though these are known to have a tremendous impact.

Working with fortune 500 companies

As India’s largest digital learning and engagement platform, QuoDeck works with several Fortune 500 companies such as Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, Tata Consumer, Dabur, and Britannia. These companies have been quick off the mark in recognising the potential and benefits of gamification for their external and internal audiences. Gamification is particularly effective for training and upskilling full-time employees as well as gig workers. Moreover, given the large audiences these companies need to address, digital platforms are the only scalable option for them as they allow standardization and big data collection.

What would it take for smaller companies to adopt Gamification?

Smaller companies need bite-sized platforms and a content-ready approach to spur them to adopt gamification in their businesses. Reducing the cost outlay and providing customized platforms that can go live in a matter of days will certainly make gamification more widely acceptable.

How far away are we from a future where every company prioritises this?

Most companies already realize the need for scalable platforms to train their workers. A field-based workforce requires an approach to training that is different from the traditional classroom, workshop, or on-the-job model. Gamification makes the process of learning entertaining, pull-based and relatable, thereby allowing for maximum adretention. Businesses can no longer afford to ignore the importance of gaming and gamification as effective tools for audience engagement and training; embracing them fully is not too far away in the future.

What are QuoDeck’s plans and goals?

Modern-day businesses across the world are dealing with the challenge of reaching their geographically widespread workforce. This challenge is a huge opportunity for us. We plan to go global with our entire suite of services and work with companies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. While we pursue this goal, we need to ensure that QuoDeck remains the market leader in its category as it is today. We hope to keep it so with constant cutting-edge innovation.

This was first published on BW Gaming World

How hyper-casual gaming can be used to transform enterprise outcomes 

It’s undeniable that gaming is no longer a niche, but has become mainstream. In the past, gaming as an activity or culture was identified with console gaming through PlayStations and Xbox, which were far too unattainable to gain mainstream acceptance. But mobile gaming has taken the world by storm and has gained broad-based appeal and adoption. Gen-Z and Millennial audiences, especially, spend more time gaming than on any other form of entertainment. 

Even within gaming,  the hyper-casual game genre has become increasingly popular. As a game genre, it accounted for almost 60% of mobile game downloads out of the top 20 billion downloads in 2021. With simple user interfaces, compact sizes, and highly visual designs, hyper-casual games have a broad appeal among digital audiences, and not just among Gen-Z and Millennial players. So, given the popularity of this genre, how can this be leveraged to drive enterprise outcomes. 

Today, let’s take a tour of hyper-casual games, their characteristics, and their incorporation into the enterprise to drive the best business outcomes. 

What are Hyper-Casual Games?

Let’s start with what hyper-casual games are. They are games that incorporate simple mechanics such as clicking on something repeatedly, or swiping and selecting, or just clicking to avoid obstacles. They don’t require high levels of hand-eye coordination and incorporate bright visuals to make them eye-catching. Therefore, the level of skill asked of the player of a hyper-casual game is very low, making these games playable across all age groups. 

Hyper casual games will also have mechanisms such as simple level-ups, bonus gatherings, and repeat visit rewards, all to make the player feel good about playing the game with easier ‘wins’. 

Although they tend to concentrate on a single basic mechanic, such as endless running or finding hidden objects, hyper-casual games are nonetheless tricky enough to keep players engaged. In short, hyper-casual games are simple to learn but challenging to master, which draws players in repeatedly. The genre is famous for being played in small or snackable bursts, that gamers can enjoy while waiting in line or commuting to work.

How can games be used to drive enterprise outcomes?

Considering its minimal game mechanics and addictive game play it is easy to incorporate learning into hyper-casual games to increase knowledge retention and engagement, leading to higher productivity. 

Question-based, hyper-casual gaming is a mechanic where questions can be answered to gain more time or lives or rewards in a game. As players play the game longer and longer to achieve high scores, they encounter these questions again and again as they seek to gain more time/lives to reach a higher score than before. Such a mechanic is known to drive higher recall of these facts or concepts, simply because they are seen again and again. This is a scientific technique called ‘Spaced Repetition’, where the repetition of these questions places difficult-to-recall facts and information in front of a learner multiple times until it excites not just rote memory, but visual memory as well. Multi-sensory memory ensures that these facts stick in the mind of the learner for a long time. 

Based on the ‘high scores’, players then get to see a leaderboard, where they can compete with others on knowledge. This leaderboard spurs players to try to keep knocking others off the top perch and creates a ‘Pull’ mechanism for the content. Therefore, the need to beg and cajole learners to consume the content is very low. Additionally, social media mechanics can be added to create buzz such as sharing their wins on internal company pages or running these as contests, which reward those at the top of the leaderboard. 

To sum up, it is undeniable that the popularity of the hyper-casual gaming genre combined with incorporating learning approaches makes it a potent tool in the hands of smart, new-age enterprise learning and capability development professionals. As the proportions of enterprise audiences start to lean more heavily in favor of millennials and Gen-Z, enterprises must make the leap to these approaches in order to remain relevant in these young minds.

Consumer engagement: Gamified campaign gaining momentum with leading brands

QuoDeck’s gamified campaign #D2City has received over five million impressions in just two weeks

Leading brands are using gamified campaigns for engaging with consumers due lack of physical space where consumers can experience or see D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands after the Covid outbreak.

QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City, which is used as an engagement strategy for over 28 brands enrolled on the platform, has received over five million impressions in just 14 days of its launch. Over one million engaged through videos, games, and other content.

Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO, QuoDeck said innovative brand communication is the key to capturing customer attention in this age of transient loyalty and #D2City has established a brand new high engagement marketing tactic for D2C brands across sectors to create brand affinity.

The campaign was designed as an interactive digital city that allowed visitors to experience, explore, play and learn about their favorite D2C brands.

Mobile-friendly gaming microsite

For the campaign, Quodeck hosted over 28 big and small D2C brands from industries such as Cosmetics, Electronics, Personal Care, Food, Apparel, and Baking Goods, among others, in a mobile-friendly gaming microsite designed as a city with buildings, key buildings playing host to brands and their games.

The D2City campaign leveraged the growing popularity of gamification to help D2C brands capture consumer attention from far beyond just tier-I cities. During the duration of the #D2City campaign, the platform received 80 percent hits from tier-II and -III cities across the country, correlating with the rising demand for D2C in these areas.

Launched in 2017 by Kamalika Bhattacharya and Arijit Lahiri, QuoDeck is a B2B SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform that enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage audiences such as employees, value chain, and gig workforces.

The platform is highly scalable and equipped to handle large user bases and extended ecosystems such as sellers, agents, vendors, distributors, partners, etc.

Today, QuoDeck is the market leader in its category, catering to over five million users across an enterprise clients, including Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, and Dabur.

This was first published on The Hindustan Business

Top 5 Platforms every Company with a Gig Workforce should use or know about

Since the start of the pandemic, India has become a global hotspot for the gig economy. India’s gig economy comprises a market opportunity characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work instead of permanent jobs. By their very definition, a gig worker is not bound to any one organization & can work on multiple projects according to their expertise and availability. A plethora of business models has come up in recent times leveraging the gig economy, such as rideshares, delivery models, service providers, etc. This large consolidation has a potential of over 90 million jobs in the near term, as per a 2021 BCG-MSDF report. In short, roughly 1 out of every 10 people in the working age population in India is expected to be a part of the gig economy.

With such a large influx of gig workers, most of whom are young millennials and GenZ, gig employment in many ways, is becoming the future of work. And enterprises recognize this and are looking to capitalize on this opportunity significantly. So, how do you hire, engage, and train a larger gig workforce? This is where this list of curated apps and platforms targeted toward the gig economy can help. Serving a variety of functions, these apps and platforms can help companies unlock the immense potential of the gig economy.

Here we list down the top 5 Indian platforms that every Company with a Gig Workforce should use or know about:

  1. QuoDeck

The management and training of gig workers have always been a significant challenge for enterprises. While it is a crying need for every company working with gig workers, the challenges of training and engaging a disaggregated workforce with high levels of churn are not easy. Launched in 2017 by Kamalika Bhattacharya & Arijit Lahiri, QuoDeck is a B2B SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform that enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage audiences such as employees, value chain, and gig workforces.

QuoDeck caters to the growing need for organizations to build digital engagement for these audiences, an inherently scalable approach. The QuoDeck Platform specializes in creating pull through the use of games and gamification mechanics, driving higher adoption and greater retention among these audiences. Furthermore, by using interactivity and games, QuoDeck helps capture valuable data in real-time and analyze it through big data analytical tools. The platform is highly scalable and equipped to handle large user bases and extended ecosystems such as sellers, agents, vendors, distributors, partners, etc.

QuoDeck offers a complete digital engagement suite called the QuoDeck Interactive Cloud that promises engagement, speed, mobility, regionalization, data, and security.

Today, QuoDeck is the market leader in its category, catering to over 5 million users across an enterprise client set that includes Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, Dabur, etc.

2. Workflexi

Workflexi is a gig economy platform that bridges the gap between businesses or individuals and gig workers that are specialized in facets, both technical, non-technical, & creative. Skills in demand like IT skills, Accounting, Taxation, Digital marketing, Interior designing, Baking, photography, dancing, singing, sketching, cinematography, and others.

The platform believes in on-time payments to avoid settlement delays which is one of the common problems for platforms dealing with payment gateways and traditional payment transfers.

The platform was founded by Prabhu & Sandesh Kangod in 2016.

3. Flexiple

Flexiple is a gig economy platform that pre-screens freelancer developers and designers to simplify the selection process for organizations. The platform has a multi-level assessment system with pass rates that vary from 45.4% to less than 1%. This ensures only the quality of talent greets businesses that sign up to hire for gigs. Some of them include technical prowess, communication skills, background checks, and performance consistency.

One of the highlights of Flexiple is the platform also offers a 1-week trial period to enable companies to assess the synergies with the gig workers before plunging in.

Flexiple was founded by three IIM-Ahemdabad graduates, Karthik Sridharan, Hrishikesh Pradeshi, and Suvansh Bansal, in 2016.

4. Truelancer

Truelancer is a global marketplace for freelancers & businesses. The gig-powering platform enables a company to post their requirements, recruit freelancers & consultants, and get the job sorted. Truelancer is home to over 600,000+ freelance professionals.

This platform comes with a Safe Deposit where it collects funds from businesses and transfers them to users only after the final project has been approved & completed. Be it SEO experts, content writing, web development, design, or sales & marketing, Truelancer has it all.

Truelancer is based out of New Delhi and was founded by Dipesh Garg in 2010.

5. One Impression

One impression is a dedicated platform for digital celebs and influencers. The platform claims to have registered over 14 Million+ influencers right, from celebrities, micro-influencers, IG legends, and TikTok stars. One Impression comes with an additional feature called OneDoctor, an AI tool, that combines an intensive algorithm to determine the best influencers for a project.

Launched in 2017 by brothers Apaksh Gupta and Jivesh Gupta, One impression is based out of Gurugram.

This was first published on Business News This Week.

QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City receives more than 5 Million Impressions in just 14 days!

What does the future of engagement look like? QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City may hold the answer! In this age of fleeting brand loyalty, enhancing customer engagement is the only way to sustain a business for the long term. Given the lack of a physical space where consumers can experience or see D2C brands, run-of-the-mill ideas of marketing are no longer enough. D2C brands need to adopt new innovative ways of customer engagement. Launched on 14th February 2022, the visionary new gamified campaign #D2City used hyper-casual games as an engagement strategy for more than 28 brands that enrolled on the platform. In just 14 days, the campaign received 5 million+ impressions across India, with over a million users engaged through videos, games, and other content.

In a world with unpredictable consumer behavior, brands need to accentuate focus on being more relatable and human. With #D2City, QuoDeck, India’s leading SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platforms, set out to bridge the gap between brands and technology. “Innovative brand communication is the key to capturing customer attention in this age of transient loyalty, and with #D2City, we established a brand new high engagement marketing tactic for D2C brands across sectors to create brand affinity,” said Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO, QuoDeck on the completion of the campaign.

The campaign was designed as an interactive digital city that allowed visitors to experience, explore, play and learn about their favorite D2C brands. For the campaign, Quodeck hosted 28+ big and small D2C brands from industries such as Cosmetics, Electronics, Personal Care, Food, Apparel, and Baking Goods, amongst others, in a mobile-friendly gaming microsite designed as a city with buildings, with key buildings playing host to brands and their games.


The D2City campaign leveraged the growing popularity of gamification to help D2C brands capture consumer attention from far beyond just Tier 1 cities. During the duration of the #D2City campaign, the platform received more than 80 percent hits from Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities across the country, which also correlates with the rising demand for D2C in these areas.”Games have a universal appeal, and when used as a marketing strategy, they can even solve the challenges that brands face when they are looking to engage customers from Tier 2 & Tier 3 Cities.” Kamalika added.

The #D2City campaign also demonstrated that gamified content could help brands gain valuable behavioral insights that, in turn, will help them optimize experiences across customer lifecycle stages while reducing overall marketing costs.

Established in 2017 by avid gamers, QuoDeck uses gaming principles to engage enterprise learners and provide data-based insights to improve user experience.

This was first published on Business News Week

Entrepreneurship 101: How to foster leadership?

Leadership is not taught in any school or institution. Leaders are made — with the necessary skills over the course of their lives. 

But who is a good leader?

Warren Bennis states, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Therefore, a good leader creates a vision for his startup and aligns and motivates people toward achieving that vision. 

However, building a startup and leading a team of people can be challenging in a startup environment, especially during the initial phase. Leadership in a startup involves having an in-depth understanding of the business, coming up with strategies and innovations to solve the business problems, and developing a culture where employees flourish. 

For this article on Entrepreneurship 101, we focus on fostering leadership in the workplace and becoming the best role model for one’s team. 

Who is a good leader? 

YourStory asked startup founders to list some of the qualities of a good leader. Here is what they had to say: 

Team player 

A good leader is essentially a team player. They treat their employees with respect, irrespective of their designation and social status, and value what they bring to the table. 

While bringing their own expertise to the table, a good leader is aware of their limitations. Thus, instead of wanting to do it all by themselves, they work with their employees as a team and let the subject experts take over.

Value creation 

A leader must be able to differentiate between the long-term and short-term goals and gains. They should focus on creating brand values that would eventually help them stay on track, acquire, and retain more customers. 

A good leader must be able to maintain a “Balance between long-term and short-term goals…They focus on expanding and scaling, rather than focusing on immediate funding, generating an early exit option, and pursuing immediate advantages,” says Kamalika Bhattacharya, Co-founder and CEO of SaaS startup QuoDeck

This was first published on Your Story

5 Apps and Platforms that every enterprise should have to get the best from people across their value chain

Companies across the world rely on a complete suite of business activities and processes that go into creating a product or providing a service. Commonly referred to as Value Chains, these multiple stages in a product or service offering increasingly determine an enterprise’s efficiency, profit, and success. However, any Value Chain can only be as effective as the people behind it.

Though the world of business was already on the cusp of change in terms of technology and digitization, the pandemic changed the way businesses thought, by placing the workforce in the ‘driver’s seat of a company’s growth. It was no longer about where people worked, or how many hours they put in; instead, it was about taking ownership and delivering results in the absence of structured workplaces. And the fact was, it took motivated employees and value chains to do this well, leading to a virtuous cycle of productivity and loyalty leading to customer retention and market growth for businesses.

With the pandemic slowing, but the new ways of working here to stay, companies are being pushed to adopt technologies and platforms faster to support this way of working. We’ve compiled 5 apps and platforms that can help companies get the best from their value chains in today’s world:

1. Digital Training and Enablement (QuoDeck) –

QuoDeck is a SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform that enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage their employees, value chain, and gig workforces.

QuoDeck caters to the growing need for organizations to drive last-mile performance improvement through a better understanding of products, services, processes, and sales & customer service approaches. The platform creates pull through the use of games and gamification mechanics, driving higher adoption and retention, and delivering market-beating performance improvement outcomes for organizations. Furthermore, by using interactivity and games, QuoDeck helps capture valuable data in real-time, and analyze it through big data analytical tools.

QuoDeck offers a complete digital engagement suite, called the QuoDeck Interactive Cloud that promises engagement, speed, mobility, regionalization, data, and security. Today, QuoDeck is the market leader in its category, catering to over 5 million users across Fortune 500 clients.

2. Employee Financial Wellness (Valyu) –
Valyu secures the employee’s financial wellness through its tailored financial products and services. It builds literacy around better personal finance practices and takes care of all unexpected financial crises, celebrations, and smart savings.

Valyu.AI is a fintech startup committed to innovation and financial wellness that partners with companies to enhance their employer brand. Valyu offers a suite of financial services & products on social inclusion and financial wellness for all employees across the board. The company has set out to reduce employee financial stress by providing employers with a holistic approach that addresses financial well-being issues at its core. Their financial wellness programs have changed lives, and improved staff retention and productivity by providing enterprises with a holistic approach that addresses financial wellbeing issues at its core.

Founded in 2020, The company leverages AI and Machine Learning to develop advanced salary solutions that can help companies alleviate their employees’ financial concerns by giving them early access to their earnings and establishing a financial care framework.

3. Employee Gifting (IGP for Business)
IGP for Business is India’s 1st Gift tech Company and is a one-stop destination and partner for enterprise rewards and loyalty solutions. With a fully automated, high-tech gift tech platform, IGP for Business empowers companies to leverage gifting as a growth driver. IGP for Business offers a robust Digital platform for enterprises to manage the Rewards & Incentive Programs for their employees, channel partners & customers. You get access to India’s widest multi-category reward catalog across personalized and perishable merchandise options, as well as 100+ e-gift cards.

Employee Gifting is important because it helps build engagement and overall loyalty by creating an experience that sparks an emotional connection, strengthening the employee’s relationship with the company. With IGP for Business Platform, enterprises can celebrate their employees’ birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions by uploading a bulk order through a customized dashboard. IGP for Business does the rest. The company ensures your pre-selected gift reaches your employee’s office or home, wherever they may be. What’s more, they ensure it reaches a pre-designated time, and the proof of delivery with the timestamp is updated in real-time on your dashboard. Invoicing gets digitized as well. If you are an enterprise that runs Loyalty Programs, Channel Incentive Programs, or Employee R&R programs, in that case, IGP for Business can power your entire rewards catalog across Merchandise as well as Gifts Vouchers.

4. Employee Benefits program (Advantage Club) –

Advantage Club was founded to define employee benefits beyond just provident funds and corporate discounts beyond just dining. It has grown into a platform through which corporates can engage more meaningfully with their clients. Advantage clubs aid employees with rewards and recognition, early wage access, perks, and other products in order to increase employee engagement within the firm.

Launched in 2016, Advantage Club runs a corporate discount platform and an end-to-end reward and recognition solution. When corporates enroll with Advantage Club, they get access to exclusive offers from over 10000 brands, including Samsung, Faasos, PNB Housing, Myntra, and Apollo Pharmacy, among others.

With over 370 corporate clients, including giants like Concentrix, EY, Technotree, DXC, Maruti Suzuki, Punjab National bank, and Mphasis, Advantage Club is leading the $10 billion market in SE Asia.

5. Corporate Wellness (HealthifyMe) –

HealthifyMe offers corporate wellness programs to enterprises to improve employee health & engagement. Employees have witnessed a 50% increase in physical activities and a 59% increase in engagement. The programs are based on a gamified app that includes a leader board, teams, and tasks & objectives and is tailored according to employee needs.

HealthifyMe is an Indian digital health and wellness platform headquartered in Bangalore that provides services such as calorie tracking, one-on-one nutrition and fitness coaching, and diet and workout plans. It was founded in 2012 by Tushar Vashisht, Sachin Shenoy, and Mathew Cherian.

This was first published on SmartStateIndia

QuoDeck launches a one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City for D2C brands in India

QuoDeck, India’s leading SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform, has launched a one-of-a-kind gamified campaign designed as an interactive digital city that allows visitors to experience, explore, play and learn about their favourite D2C brands.

The visionary new gamified campaign https://gamiquo.com/interactive/#/d2city will be live on the QuoDeck platform from 14th February till the end of the month. For the campaign, the company has featured 25 big and small D2C brands from Cosmetics, Electronics, Personal Care, Food, and apparel, amongst other industries.

Over the past decade, the D2C model has gained traction in India due to the growth in eCommerce penetration and is expected to be a $100 Bn+ market opportunity By 2025. At present, more than 800 D2C brands are vying to impress Indian audiences.

“We believe that innovative brand communication is key to the success of D2C brands, as most D2C brands target unique niches with nuanced value propositions, and through #D2City campaign, we are offering these brands a high engagement marketing tactic to create brand affinity,” said Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO, QuoDeck.

“In a world with unpredictable consumer behaviour, fickle brand loyalty, countless channels, and platforms, brands need to accentuate focus on being more relatable and human, and we believe game-led engagement does precisely this by bridging the gap between brands and technology,” She added.

QuoDeck has curated various leading D2C brands and listed them on a virtual platform that is a mobile-friendly gaming microsite designed as a city with buildings, with key buildings playing host to brands. Users can interact with the buildings, play branded games and stand a chance to win gift vouchers if they top the leaderboards of the respective games.

The D2City campaign leverages the growing popularity of gamification to help D2C brands capture consumer attention. The Gamification market is expected to grow to USD 38.3 Billion by 2027, from USD 9.1 billion in 2020.

“We at QuoDeck aim to furnish highly engaging and personalised gamification products for brands for their target audience,” Kamalika further said.

Established in 2017 by avid gamers, the platform uses gaming principles to engage enterprise learners and provide data-based insights to improve user experience.

This was first published on Business News This Week

7 Tips for Employee Learning and Development: Expert Tips on How to Train Your Employees

What do you need to run a successful business? You can be anyone, from an entrepreneur to an influencer. But whenever you are online, you need something to grab attention. Of course, your content does that for you. But is that all? Can’t you just do better than now? Yes, we all can. 

The main goal of any online business is to keep your audience active. It ensures their coming back to your platform and making some purchase. But, it is a job better said than done. So, are you looking for a tool that allows you to stay active with your audience? Look no more. Here is the list of must-have tools for any online business. 

Tools To Help You Better Your Online Presence

  1. Social Media Tools

Social media presence is now the most important thing for any individual or brand. To make it clear, here is a statistic that highlights the importance of social media presence for brands. 71% of people who have had a good experience with a brand on social media are more likely to recommend that brand to their friends and families

And how do you improve this social media presence? Well, being active on your accounts does not always help. Of course, you can go from one platform to another and check each engagement differently. 

Or, you can simply use social media tools for better engagement. Tools like Hootsuite, Talkwalker, and Google Alerts are some social media analytics and monitoring platforms to name. 

These platforms get to observe everything happening on social media related to your brand. For example, you will get to see all the comments on your different platforms in one place. It helps in replying and connecting with your audience easily. 

And faster connection means a better experience. Using social media tools is way more effective and allows you to stay engaged with your audience. 

  1. Content Discovery Tools

You have to keep up with your competitors as well. Otherwise, you will see your audience going away to them. So, good competitor research is always important. But is it always possible to keep track of all your competitors manually? Most of the time, no. 

So, the easiest way is to run a competitor research tool. These tools run a quick research on the given keywords and find you all related content on the web. You can use Buzzsumo for that purpose. This tool is a must-have for anyone running online content for their business. 

  1. Marketing Automation Tool

Marketing is a crucial thing to engage with your audience. However, digital marketing is more than that. You need to take care of a lot of things- from your customer’s journey to their reactions. So, a content marketing tool can be the most helpful in this case. 

As a content marketing automation tool, you can consider using Hubspot. Hubspot lets you keep track of your marketing journey and helps you target your audience. Targeting is crucial and when you pass the stage, engaging with your audience becomes easier!

  1. Live Chat Software

Have you noticed those pop-up messages you get when you visit certain websites? These are live chat support or chatbots. These chatbots are very much helpful in increasing your audience engagement. So, how do these work? 

For live chat software, you can use ProProfs Chat. When someone has visited your blog or website, this chatbot keeps track of that. Now, after a certain time, if the person does not take any action on your site, a voice or chat pops up to grab their attention. By doing that, your audience feels like there is someone to help.

  1. Interactive Content Tool

Interactive content is the future of content marketing. While an average blog post takes around 3.5 hours to complete, interactive content is easy to design and more engaging. In addition, people here get to interact, which increases the ROI. So, modern marketers focus more on interactive content.

Amplayfy is an interactive content creator tool. Here you can create a variety of content, from quizzes to polls and surveys within minutes. These help you keep your audience engaged and increase the conversion rate. Interactive content is also helpful for influencer marketing. So make sure you try it out as soon as possible. 

Conclusion

Engaging your audience with your content is a very crucial thing to boost your online growth. And if you are serious about your online presence, you get to know every possible way to crack that. These are the best tools that you can use to stay active with your audience. We hope this discussion was helpful. We will see you with the next topic right here!