Research papers hold a great purpose in studying, exploring, and gaining expertise in a particular discipline. According to the estimates of the World Bank, there are about 8.9 million active researchers globally growing at a rate of 4-5% per year. The global research community has produced top scientists who have the potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems through Academia, Pharma, and BioTech Research. COVID-19 is a prime example of that, which has put the research community at the forefront to solve a global health crisis.
Presently, the researchers are equipped with archaic tools for creating research papers. This impacts speed, accuracy, and results in massive economic losses for universities and pharmaceutical companies.
Founded by Saikiran Chandha and Shanu Kumar in 2015, Typeset – an integrated cloud-based platform aspires to solve the shortcomings of writing research papers. The AI-based platform uses one of its kind technologies to automate the formatting of documents based on the publisher’s guidelines and overcomes the problems associated with storing knowledge in unstructured formats (PDF), thereby, creating professional-quality research documents or manuscripts for submission to journals within a single click of a button. According to the company’s estimates, it has succeeded in increasing the researcher’s productivity by up to 30 to 50 percent, by automating and reducing duplication of tasks.
Typeset’s key offerings and userbase
Typeset has designed its offerings to suit all stages of research-creation, publication, and dissemination workflow. Its product line includes - Creation Suite for B2C, Publishers (B2B), and Dissemination Suite for Universities (B2B) that offer an extensive range of benefits to researchers globally.
The creation suite for B2C enables the researcher to write, collaborate, and format research papers in a simplified way. It also lets the user export research articles in multiple formats within a single click. Currently, the platform witnesses a total number of 12,000 researchers’ sign up every month, and on average, they create 5,000 research documents per week. In the past three years, in total over half a million researchers in 175+ countries including Nobel Laureates have already used the platform.
The creation suite for publishers works smartly to detect plagiarism and convert the articles into multiple formats at a single click. It caters to small and medium publishers and has acquired a huge clientele including Scielo(Brazil), NAER (Spain), CGIAR (France), Comunicar (Spain), Polish Botanical Society (Poland), Journal of Human Behaviour and Brain (HongKong), American Society of Aging (USA), Journal of Catholic Education (USA), CEDAR (USA), and Claritas are a few to name.
On the other hand, the core of Dissemination Suite for Universities (B2B) is an AI-based intelligent framework – Lens. Started in 2019, it has acquired a client base of prominent institutions in such a short span including - IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, University of Calcutta, NITIE, IIM Indore, IIM Bangalore, and VIT University.[1][MOU2] These universities have been greatly benefitted by using Typeset. The benefits include improvement in visibility, accessibility and downloads of the research papers leading to better citations and university rankings.
Typeset’s business / revenue model
Typeset is an integrated platform that works on a subscription and license-based model. Its multiple revenue streams include enterprise license, publishers license, and monthly/yearly subscriptions. The enterprise license provides a customized pricing package to universities based on the number of users. The other type of license – publisher’s license is suitable for small and medium publishers that varies based on usage (number of documents processed), and their requirements. On the other hand, monthly and yearly subscriptions i.e. freemium model are created for B2C researchers that cater to individual researchers, professors, TA’s, postdocs, Ph.D.’s, postgraduate, and undergraduate students.
Typeset’s business growth and future plans
The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, and entered India through its subsidiary presence in Bangalore. Since its inception, the platform has grown multifold and is aggressively moving on its growth trajectory. The platform is planning to hit a worldwide user-base of 2 million (for the B2C segment) in the next 12 months. However, on the B2B segment front, the company is planning to expand its footprints to European and Southeast Asian markets by the end of 2021.
Typeset is a founding investor-backed company by Haresh Chawla, who has also been a Founder CEO of Network18 and several other prominent companies. With his active participation, Typeset has raised funding of USD 1 Million in 2018.
Could you write a line or two about the benefits to the universities using Typeset dissemination suite? The benefits are improvement in visibility, accessibility and downloads of the research papers leading to better citations and university rankings.