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The vibe across the globe right now is basically, “How much worse can it get?”

India’s trade deficit in June has risen to a record $25.63 billion due to imports of petroleum, coal, and gold, coupled with a continued fall of the rupee (right now at an all-time low), slow exports, and a bigger current account deficit (CAD).

Then, the S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 tumbled as well—closing at 53,134 and 15,811 on Tuesday. The euro too saw a two-decade low as rising gas prices added to recession tensions across Europe.

In other news, Swedish brand Myrkl has launched the world’s first hangover prevention pill in Britain. And, of course, it’s vegan.

Meanwhile, the Large Hadron Collider is back in action. The world’s largest particle accelerator is all set to run for almost four years to continue its search for dark matter.  

‘SaaS’ing the loan recovery game

The stars of the Indian fintech ecosystem have long been startups providing payments and lending solutions. However, one category often overlooked in this segment is ‘collections’. 

Delhi-based Credgenics is among those that picked this problem and looked at automating debt recovery and collection pipeline for lenders with SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). 

Since its inception in 2018, the startup has created a collection management tool for banks, NBFCs (non-banking financial companies), and fintechs, allowing customers to streamline and manage their loan recovery workflow, including litigations, billings, payments, and collections.

Easing collections hiccups:

• Credgenics is the brainchild of IIT alumni Anand Agrawal and Rishabh Goel, and Mayank Khera, who studied law at GGSIPU, Delhi. 
• The startup currently handles about 2.2 crore loan accounts on its platform.
• Its clients include ICICI, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra, Yes Bank, IDFC First, IIFL Home Loan, IIFL Finance, Reliance Asset Reconstruction, Tata Capital, and Hero FinCorp. 

A super app for all things queer

In June, the world celebrates the queer community. After all, it is Pride Month. But for the rest of the year, the LGBTQIA+ population remains largely ignored and often misunderstood—a problem Aayush Agrawal set out to solve.

Aayush wanted to build a go-to-platform for queer people and started working on Pride+, a super app that would cater to everything anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community could need. Its services include mental health support, therapy, job listing, upskilling, clothing, art selling and buying, and entertainment—all for the queer community. 

A product of Pranah Sandbox—incorporated by Aayush in February to create a sustainable and inclusive platform that would allow fair services to be accessible to all—the app is currently in stealth mode.

A one-stop-platform:

• Pride+ will provide counselling and therapy, and help individuals document their ‘coming out’ in any form—text, audio, visual and video—and release it on the app’s social platform. 
• The app will be available for iOS and Android devices initially. Aayush plans to launch it worldwide, with a few exceptions, including China and North Korea.
• It will be available in major Indian languages, besides English and foreign languages like Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Turkish, Urdu, German, Nepali, and Italian, among others. 

“The app will be safe, secure, and private. Builder.ai, and we have worked on this very thoughtfully. Neither will there be ads or selling of user data, nor a lack of resources to report anything that makes a user feel uncomfortable,” said Aayush. 

Tapping air for water

Almost four billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. According to UNICEF, by 2040, roughly one in four children worldwide will live in areas of extremely high water stress.

While the science behind generating water from air is not uncommon, India is yet to catch up with this technology economically. 

Aryav AWG, a part of Aryav Ecofriendly Resources Pvt Ltd, is solving this problem. It uses its patented machine to produce safe drinking water from the air.

From thin air:

• Sanjay Kumar Garg, along with Natwar Dhuwalia and Bharat Bhushan Kapoor, launched Aryav AWG in 2018.
• The startup’s AWG extracts water vapour from the air by the condensation method—cooling the air below its dew point and pressurising it. Unlike a dehumidifier, an AWG is designed to render the water potable. 
• Aryav AWG has designed its machines to meet drinking water requirements between 100 to 10,000 litres per day.

“The process is eco-friendly and generates no waste water, unlike the reverse osmosis (RO) machine that discards over 60 percent of processed water. Our energy-efficient patented machine consumes five to six units less power in water generation compared to other available machines in India,” Co-founder Sanjay Kumar Garg told SMBStory.

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