Across
the Indian start-up sector, growing networks of alumni from some of the
best-known colleges in India and overseas are helping entrepreneurs find money
and grow businesses. From IITs, BITS Pilani to IIMs...start-ups by alumni of
renowned institutes have taken India by a storm in the past few years.
Radhakrishna and
Raghunandan G, both IIM-Ahmedabad graduates, launched Taxiforsure in 2011 as an
online platform through which consumers can rent taxis. The company has
partnered with around 25 cab operators in Bangalore and around 15 in Delhi,
including branded operators like Mega Cabs and Cell Cabs.
The company, which claims to have reached operational profitability in Bangalore, has also done its own branding on about 550 cabs that are operated by small local operators. The past couple of years has seen the launch of a number of online and mobile based taxi booking services.
The two cofounders expect their company to earn revenue of Rs 100 crore by fiscal 2015.
The company, which claims to have reached operational profitability in Bangalore, has also done its own branding on about 550 cabs that are operated by small local operators. The past couple of years has seen the launch of a number of online and mobile based taxi booking services.
The two cofounders expect their company to earn revenue of Rs 100 crore by fiscal 2015.
Phanindra Sama was 25
when he founded the pioneering venture together with his BITS Pilani batchmates
Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri. In June 2013, they sold redBus to the
Ibibo Group for an estimated Rs 600-700 crore, the biggest overseas strategic
acquisition of an Indian internet asset.
RedBus now sells over a million tickets a month, and the gross value of transactions on the site last year was about Rs 600 crore, up from Rs 350 crore the year before.
Given the operators' wariness to computerize, redBus initially worked on the basis of seat quotas from operators, and returning unsold seats within a defined time before the departure of the bus. Three and a half years later, they introduced a bus ticketing software for the operators that could link to the redBus portal. To their utter surprise, it was a phenomenal success!
RedBus now sells over a million tickets a month, and the gross value of transactions on the site last year was about Rs 600 crore, up from Rs 350 crore the year before.
Given the operators' wariness to computerize, redBus initially worked on the basis of seat quotas from operators, and returning unsold seats within a defined time before the departure of the bus. Three and a half years later, they introduced a bus ticketing software for the operators that could link to the redBus portal. To their utter surprise, it was a phenomenal success!
Click to Amazon amazing facts
Mu Sigma is one of the fastest growing
companies in the world. It has raised a gargantuan grand total of 163 million
dollars in funding over nine years of its existence, and holds the unique
distinction of securing the largest funding round ever by a business analytics
company. For its founder, Dhiraj C Rajaram, it all started because of three
reasons: one, his unending urge to learn; two, to separate noise from signals –
in terms of information that comes to businesses in their day-to-day life. And
three, his belief that innovation in businesses is nothing but chance. Read the
story of his inspiring journey on YourStory..
2. Phanindra Sama of redBus says best is yet to come, after
acquisition
We at YourStory have had a great relationship with redBus and
have been associated with them since the beginning. Having seen the company’s
meteoric growth in the past few years, it was interesting to know what founder
Phanidra Sama thought about the acquisition. He told us in the initial days,
their focus was to solve a problem with technology. “None of us ever thought of
how big this would become or where this company would go five years from now.
But halfway through, we began to think that we’re onto something,” he said,
adding that the best from redBus is yet to come.
3.
An entrepreneur from Aurangabad who deserves applause – Clear Car Rental
This is the story of Sachin Kate, who hails from Aurangabad
in Maharashtra. From selling newspapers to being a school-going office boy at a
computer institute, the road to starting up wasn’t smooth sailing for Sachin.
Part-time jobs gave him confidence to startup. His venture, Clear Car Rental (http://www.clearcarrental.com/)
provides both local and outstation travel solutions. The services grew to 150+
cities within India and has a home team of 100 who manage the operations. A
local hero in Aurangabad, Sachin was far from the limelight before this
article.
....
....
In what would be a dream for most entrepreneurs in the
Indian startup ecosystem,Housing.co.in (http://housing.com/in) raised a second round of funding in less than a month of
its previous investment. Over a dinner meeting with former Network 18 CEO, Mr.
Haresh Chawla, the team closed on the funding deal. Advitiya Sharma,
Co-Founder Housing.co.in, told us how the investment boosted
the team’s confidence. “The manner in which the investment happened and more
so, the person who’s behind the investment has really got everyone in the team
pumped up. Haresh Ji has done quite a lot through his career,” he told us.
5.
ideaForge’s UAV comes handy in Uttarakhand
Founded by five IIT Bombay alumni, ideaForge (http://www.ideaforge.co.in/web/home)
is in the business of developing alternative energy charging devices for
various consumer electronic products and developing high-end technologies in
the field of autonomous aerial vehicles. The first product from the company is
called Netra, a collaborative work with DRDO, deployed to scan the air space in
flood-ravaged Uttarakhand in hope of locating missing survivors. Netra is a
completely autonomous hovering Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) ideal for short
range missions and requires very short training time.
6.
The story of Rootwork’s early success
Six friends from NIT Allahabad, landed on an idea for
an app while still in college. They eventually started Rootwork, (http://rootwork.co/) making apps
for any smart devices that are around you today (smartphones, smart TVs,
phablets, tablets, Google Glass), and everything smart that’s going to
arrive tomorrow. “At Rootwork, we materialize our own ideas by publishing
apps through Zitrr Studios. But as an ITeS company, our mainstream business is
to create and deliver bespoke apps to businesses, startups and individual app
publishers,” they said.
7.
Rotimatic: Rotis at a click of a button
A machine for almost every Indian, who has spent hours in
the kitchen. That’s Rotimatic (http://rotimatic.com/). It will help you make rotis at the click of a button.
Rotimatic comes from Zimplistic, a venture founded by Singapore-based Pranoti
Nagarkar. Zimplistic is one of the 15 Singapore startups which has received a
total grant of $6 million from Spring Singapore. Rotimatic also has an
impressive board which will help scale up the company. The major demand will
come from South Asia and Indian expats living abroad.
8.
Shared cab service Cubito launches in Bangalore
An ambitious effort by a group of BITS Pilani Goa graduates
to change the way transport works in India, Cubito (http://cubito.in/) offers shared
cab services and started with a six-month pilot run in Goa. Cubito pools people
sharing the same route (as opposed to the regular source –destination pooling
solutions) and arranges for a common cab to transport them. Cubito has
introduced their services in Bangalore for daily commuters initially for weekly
and monthly booking and have made the pricing simple at Rs7.5/Km (introductory
offer for people registering in July is Rs. 6/Km).
9.
FBI Arrests ShopClue’s CEO – Sandeep Aggarwal
The arrest of Sandeep Aggarwal – who is at the helm of
ShopClues, (http://www.shopclues.com/),
a Gurgaon-based marketplace and an earlier Silicon Valley-based Internet
analyst — shocked many. He was arrested by FBI agents in San Jose, California
(US) alleging insider trading charges. Following the arrest Southern District
of New York administration announced criminal charges against Aggarwal.
ShopClues had raised more than $16 million, including $10 million in March 2013
from Helion Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Netprice.com, a
Japanese business group based in Tokyo.
10.
Meet Oravel’s 19-year-old founder Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh
Agarwal got into the thick of the web very early in life, at 13. And by 17, he
had started his first company, Oravel. Oravel started as an Airbnb clone but
the model has undergone a twist. Oravel received a seed round of funding from
Venture Nursery. This story was how Ritesh got selected for the final round of
“20 Under 20” Thiel Fellowship, a prestigious two-year program where fellows
receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech
entrepreneurs, investors and scientists (like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Elon
Musk and Peter Thiel).
11.
How did Myntra ship orders in less than an hour
Bangalore-based eCommerce company, Myntra (http://www.myntra.com/)
hogged media attention when it shipped orders in less than an hour. COO Ganesh
Subramanian told us how he did it. “Optimizing the supply chain is the key.
There are technological improvements involved but the basic problem solved is
to reduce the queue time.” He also told us about the supply chain at Myntra,
how they decided to set up their own logistics division in 2012, setting up
last-mile operations and so on. After you’ve hit a certain scale, delivering
via your own logistics is cheaper, he said.
12.
Low-cost notebooks from 2 IIT Roorkee grads – Adister story
With Adister, (http://adister.in/) graduates from IIT Rourkee, Shubham Agrawal and Anubhav
Goyal bring print advertising to notebooks, and sell student notebooks at a
very nominal price (40% less than the market price, they claim). While there
are large players like Classmate, which are quite popular among the urban
students, a lot of India’s students still buy from local notebook brands from
their local stationary shops. The low cost of an Adister notebook, like a
newspaper, is subsidized by the ads that it carries.
13.
How Rikant Pitti co-founded EaseMyTrip
Rikant Pitti’s father used to travel a lot and always used
to book his tickets via his travel agent. This was in 2005 when OTAs were not
that popular. One day, Rikant checked the price of the tickets online and found
that the travel agent was charging Rs 1500 more. With the number of trips his
father took, the loss was over Rs 20000 per month. Rikant started booking
tickets for his parents, then relatives, friends of parents and so on.
EaseMyTrip (http://www.easemytrip.com/)
has over 275 employees on board and is a multi-crore company. Rikant is looking
at a turnover of at least Rs 1,200 crore in 2014.
14.
The two PhD dropouts behind the social media and analytics startup – Airwoot
Airwoot (http://www.airwoot.com/) is a New Delhi-based social media listening and analytics
startup founded by Saurabh Arora and Prabhat Saraswat. They met in 2008 at the
Technical University of Denmark, pursuing Masters. Prabhat continued his
doctorate in Denmark while Saurabh went on to pursue his doctorate in cloud
computing architectures at Hasso-Plattner Institute in Berlin. Midway, they
both dropped out and returned to India. They did different things before coming
together to start Airwoot — a social customer support helpdesk.
15.
From IT to dairy farming – Amrutha Dairy Farm
Santhosh
D Singh worked with IT majors like Dell, and America Online before starting
Amrutha Dairy Farms. To make it a success, he leveraged the expertise around
project management, process improvement, business intelligence, analytics, and
resource management he had accumulated over years of professional life. “I
decided to get into dairy farming, as this was a relatively stable and
profitable business in the unpredictable world that is Indian agriculture
sector,” he told us. He won the NABARD awarded Silver Medal for taking
initiatives to get into dairy farming.
16.
Ex Goldman Sachs analyst starts Frilp for local service recommendation through
social graph
Chennai-based Frilp (https://www.frilp.com/) is an application focused on connecting users with local
services and businesses through recommendations from friends and colleagues.
From the business owners’ perspective, Frilp helps the 40 million SMEs and
consumer facing businesses to get an online presence when they are recommended
by their happy customers. Ex Goldman Sachs analyst Shyam Anandaraman was keen
to startup and he joined hands with Senthil Kanthaswamy on Frilp.
17.
From coding to selling pani-puri – Gapagap story
When
Prashant Kulkarni was working with Infosys, he ate pani-puri from a roadside
vendor, fell sick and had to stay off his favorite street-food for months. This
prompted him to look for hygenic pani-puri. He found that there were no brands
selling this popular snack. Prashant launched ‘Gapagap’, India’s first pani-puri
brand. Today, under his venture Chatar Patar, Prashant and his team manages
Gapagap and other several products like 80 types of bhel, 27 types of chaats,
pohas, etc. Chatar Patar sells pani-puris in 112 different flavors.
18. Ex Wall Street banker’s 335th - the Confidence Fitwear
Following a successful career as an investment banker with
UBS in New York, Poornima Vardhan returned to India to become an entrepreneur.
While she was planning to make her move, she observed that people generally
focussed on looking good rather than feeling good. “There was a fit for every
kind – slim fit, petite fit and more. But I did not find a confidence fit
anywhere; clothes and accessories that make us look and feel confident,” says
Poornima. Thus began her entrepreneurial journey with 335th, (http://335th.com/) with a
concept of ‘Fitwear’.
19.
Mumbai floods made an entrepreneur – Rasilant
Shiladitya
Mukhopadhayaya was at his friend Sahil Anand’s house when incessant rains led
to flooding in Mumbai. Almost marooned, Sahil and he got talking about RFID
(radio frequency identification). Shiladitya had done a RFID project in 2005
for Texas Instruments. The duo raised money from their families and started
Rasilant Technologies, a global automation solutions and system integration
services company. They have had 35 major projects till date, including Bajaj
Auto, Reliance (multiple companies) and IL&FS.
20.
Tale of Viral Curry
Social
media agency Viral Curry was founded by engineering graduates Garima Juneja and
Gaurav Mishra. A team of five, Viral Curry works on a simple revenue model –
retainer fees for a minimum three months with a fixed monthly package. Garima
says, “We basically think about the brand’s present image and what we can
relate it to while keeping the most important thing in mind – Things with which
the audience can relate.” So far, they have had over 15 clients.
21.
A high potential business from IISc Labs – MYMO Wireless
MYMO
Wireless Technologies is one of the many innovative companies incubated at the
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In a team of electronics and
communications engineers, many in the top level management are PhD scholars,
who have gone through the pains of having to leave projects because of various
constraints. Tools like MW1000, developed by them, allows researchers to
concentrate on the algorithms without having to worry about the nitty-gritties
of coding for DSPs and by the looks of it, people are willing to shell out a
bomb for it.
22.
A tech backbone for cab services – 360 Cabs
An
integrated solution brings together cab agencies, cab drivers and travellers,
seamlessly on a single technology platform — a technology backbone for cab
agencies. That is what 360Cabs aims to be. In simple terms, it is a technology
solution for unorganized cab agencies to streamline their business and scale it
to the next level. It equips cab agencies to service their customers better,
retaining the existing customers as well as adding new ones. Lokesh Bevara, who
started 360cabs, told YourStory about his startup.
23.
For the love of dog – Dogspot.in
Rana
Atheya, Vizal Atheya and Shalesh Visen, passionate dog-lovers, started
Dogspot.in in 2007, as a place for dog lovers to connect. Their site grew in
popularity and the trio got fulltime into it in 2009. They introduced
technology to the dog shows across the country by automating their processes
and had their foot in the doors of everything related to dogs in India. In
2011, they decided to enter eCommerce and there hasn’t been any looking back.
DogSpot has about 3500 products listed on the site (not only dog products) and
does close to a 100 deliveries a day with an average ticket size of INR 1300.
24.
How to find the right product online – BuyHatke
BuyHatke,
an online product and price discovery service, started out of frustration with
online shopping portals. Now BuyHatke has an inventory of over 4 crore products
on the net and claims to receive over 500,000 unique page views monthly
(traffic stats on Alexa). They also recently launched their Chrome extension
and a separate mobile comparison platform. Envisioning to become the single
starting point of every purchase made online in India, this ambitious site
strives to keep improving their product.
25.
Alma Mater lets you doodle and play with your tee designs
Alma
Mater is an online store providing apparel and memorabilia to alumni students
from schools and colleges across India. Founded by Varun Agarwal and Rohn
Malhotra in 2009, the company has shipped 3,00,000 units till dates and is
continuously innovating to push this number. They give an option called Play,
which lets you doodle on tees. It has over 2000 art vectors and over 800 fonts
to choose from. You can upload your school/college or company logo. They have
worked with over 2500 school/colleges, 600 corporates, 400 private groups, 100
start-ups in 180 Indian cities and six countries.
26.
How Tune Patrol made an exit
Tune
Patrol is a social music discovery platform that works towards developing and
connecting a thriving community of independent musicians and their fans in
India. The product was launched in March 2012, hosting content from close to
150 bands. Tune Patrol is one of the star companies from the new breed of
startups coming from BITS Pilani and it had also managed to raise angel funding
to the tune of Rs 10 lakh. Brijesh Bhardwaj, Saurabh Gupta, Karthik G, and
Pronoot Barkakati, the co-founders at Tune Patrol, told YS how they won an
exit.
27.
The ShopClues story
Sandeep
Aggarwal was a stock market analyst, who provided research coverage on global
Internet giants like Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Expedia. In
2010, Sandeep wrote a sector defining report for the India Internet and also
launched research coverage on MakeMyTrip. When he came to India for this,
Sandeep identified room for eCommerce. He built on the technology front while
in Valley and came to India by September 2011 and subsequently launched
ShopClues in November along with his core team.
28.
Harvard Business School duo quit to startup Handybook
Handybook,
the brainchild of Umang Dua and Oisin Hanrahan, enables online booking of
‘handy’ services from cleaning to plumbing to painting. It is expanding base in
New York, Boston and San Francisco. Umang told YourStory what motivated the duo
to quit Harvard Business School to pursue this dream. The duo had launched
Handybook while still at B-school and when the business started to get traction,
and they saw the potential to build something big, they decided it deserved
their unwavering attention. “The fascination of being able to take something
from an idea to a real business that people can actually use,” spurred them on.
29.
Helping people find a new house with a click – CommonFloor
Sumit
Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani wanted to develop a platform that could
bring together people who live in gated communities and came up with
CommonFloor.com in November 2007. CommonFloor is now in 120 cities across the
country. Around 60,000 communities are listed with them today, constituting
more than 50 lakh homes. “We have more than 60,000 projects listed on our
portal and this is the largest compared to any property portal in India. The
number of property listings has grown by more than 500% in the past financial
year,” Sumit told us.
30.
Starting up out of college – WebandCrafts
Webandcrafts,
a web solutions company, provides companies with web designing, web
development, graphic designing and internet marketing services. The firm
started in Chennai in 2009, then shifted base to Thrissur, Kerala, in May 2012.
Today, the startup has successfully hosted over 2,500-plus websites. The
startup has a client list of over 500 clients, including Australian
construction company Strong Force, Thomson and SMR, which Webandcrafts founder
Abin Jose Tom counts as their most prestigious clients.
31.
How a VC turned entrepreneur to startup Craftsvilla
Manoj Gupta is Founder/CEO of Craftsvilla.com, (http://www.craftsvilla.com/)
an online marketplace for Indian products. Earlier, he was Principal at Nexus
Venture Partners, an India focused $600 million Fund, and the board member of
multiple companies, including Yebhi.com and Sohanlal Commodities in India. He
told us the story of how he downsized from 80 to a lean and mean 8-member team.
“The ’lazy’ ones were the first to go, ’talkative’ species the next one,
’political’ crap the third lot and ’less skilled’ ones were the last. Only
those who were hard working, passionate, remained and are now shaping next
journey of Craftsvilla,” he told YS
32.
A Makemytrip in cab aggregation space – TaxiForSure
TaxiForSure
idea materialised over many conversations between Raghunandan G and Aprameya
Radhakrishna on cab availability in India. Over those, they stumbled across the
idea to be an aggregator for radio taxi industry in India. Founded in late
2011, Taxiforsure’s first set of unknown customers came from intranet posts in
companies by employees who had used its service. Later, Facebook ads and radio
campaigns widened its reach. The venture does extensive online and offline
marketing campaigns, facilitates over 2,000 bookings per day across two cities
Bangalore and Delhi (NCR).
33.
Zomato’s India business breaks even
This
article written on July 26, 2013, was an interview with Zomato founder, Pankaj
Chaddah just as their India business hit even. He spoke extensively on their
present and future expansion. Calling the break-even milestone “a great
validation of our business model”, Pankaj told us: “Honestly, it only
encourages us to grow faster. It gives us great confidence in our business
model, both B2B and B2C, and now it is a question of replicating it in enough
places. We haven’t had the time to sit back and think about the past and
journey so far, and I hope that we don’t get that time either.”
34.
Bringing travellers around the world together through Tripoto
Anirudh and Michael, who had met at Indian School of
Business, Hyderabad, started Tripoto (http://www.tripoto.com/) to bring together travellers from around the world, share
and discover real, and actionable crowd-sourced travel stories. The startup
maps every single destination in the story, along with the associated content
and pictures. A travel itinerary tied to a traveller profile provides
additional information, such as the nature and interest of the traveller. It
adds to the authenticity of the content. Further, people can connect with these
travellers and ask questions related to their trips.
35.
Urban Ladder in Indian homes
From
McKinsey, to Amar Chitra Katha and to starting up at Urban Ladder, Ashish
Goel’s professional progression bears no sign of being conventional. Every
stint, however, was as successful as the other one. Ashish explained his choices
by blaming them on his unquenchable thirst to learn. Ashish spoke at length
about starting Urban Ladder. Their secret to success is marketing, he said:
“Marketing is our trade secret. Our target market is an online shopper who has
made a purchase of a lifestyle product at least twice a month. At least, that
is our ideal customer.”
36.
Applying gesture-based technology – The Fluid Motion
Agrawal brothers, Abhinav and Raghav, started with Trutech
Webs, a cloud computing solutions company based in Mumbai. They built a testing
platform iLiftOff, and soon branched out into a totally different product called
‘The Fluid Motion’. (http://www.thefluidmotion.com/) using gesture-based technology. The Fluid Motion team
believes that gesture technology shall surpass the touch based technology
primarily because it can be used with huge sized screens, with the user
standing up to 15 feet away. Their product has information application, retail
application, computer control boardroom application and 3-D application.
37.
Catering to carnal desires – Kaamastra
Kaamastra
is an online store for adult products started by Rahber and Maqsood Nazir. The
site sells bedroom lingerie, role play costumes, intimate massage and bath
products, lubricants and erotic body jewelry. Their customers are not just the
urbane individuals of metros, but enthusiasts from Tier 2 & 3 cities like
Patiala, Lucknow, and Chandigarh as well. The products are delivered in a black
cardboard box with no distinguishing names or logos. If you pay online, you are
billed under a completely different name (not Kaamastra) to maintain your
privacy.
38.
DJ turns entrepreneur to sell ‘farsan’ online – Farsankart
Darshan Dhruv joined his family business of packaging after
four years with an MNC abroad, but wasn’t satisfied doing “the regular stuff”.
People around him were surprised when he spoke of his plans to sell ‘farsan’
(Gujarati snacks) online. Today, FarsanKart sells farsans from Vadodara’s
leading farsan stores like Payal, Sukhadia, Jagdish, and mukhwas from
Vadodara’s famous JK Mukhwas. He is tapping the large population of Gujaratis
abroad with www.global.farsankart.com, which caters to the UK, USA and Canada. Darshan plans to
reach 160 countries in another two years.
39.
Holidify to discover little known places
During
their college days at IIT-Bombay, Kovid Kapoor, Rohit Shroff, and Prateek
Chauhan were always on the lookout for weekend holiday destinations. They soon
exhausted all the travel options available online and realized two shortcomings
in the industry: “The destination choices offered by most websites are limited
and generally populist in nature, leaving very little options, especially if
one is a power traveller. In such a scenario, travellers have lesser
independence in choosing a destination and have to depend on what is being
offered,” Rohit found. That’s the idea of Holidify.
40.
From hobbies to business – CityShor
To
individuals, CityShor tells what’s best in Ahmedabad in food, fashion, travel,
events, home décor and entertainment — the unusual and unheard stuff of
Ahmedabad. To businesses, CityShor is a visually heavy online media company
that aims to fill the gap left by print, radio, and hoardings — one which can
help cover/promote a product. Pallav Parikh and Pankaj Pathak started this out
of their personal passion for travel and writing. The duo claims to have
covered every nook and corner of Ahmedabad on CityShor and wants to scale this
model to reach more cities.
41.
Happy feet forward – Mink
Divya
Raheja and Harsha Chordia, college friends from Chennai, wanted to design
footwear. They found a cobbler, who helped them and started Mink in 2010. While
in college, they custom-designed their friends’ old sandals, crocs and even
jazzed up medical shoes for people they know. They started selling their products
on Facebook and soon broke even. “Even when you are ready to invest money the
manufacturers are not ready to try anything new, at least with young
entrepreneurs. We want to get into manufacturing our own footwear other than
just custom-designing them,” Divya said.
42.
Delivering Apps well and fast – AppStudioz
With
a simple mantra: deliver apps well and fast, Saurabh Singh started AppStudioz
in April 2011. Just over two years old now, App Studioz already has more than
160 employees and has served more than 230 clients across the globe.
Concentrating mainly on mobile apps across platforms, AppStudioz builds apps in
various areas, including 3D/2D games, Enterprise, and now also in wearable
computing. AppStudioz has built more than 700 apps till date and bank
heavily on quick turn around with quality work to keep the client satisfied.
43.
Design and crafts from the weavers of West Bengal – Maku story
Maku
Textiles, a designer brand which encourages the use of handwoven cloth, was started
by Santanu Das, a designer from NID, Ahmedabad, and Chirag Gandhi, an
engineering graduate from Nirma University. The duo designs the fabrics
and gets them woven from weavers in West Bengal and Kutch, Gujarat, Earlier
based in Ahmedabad, they have moved to Kolkata. “We want to create a better
ecosystem for these weavers so that the craft is not lost and it is a fair deal
for everyone in the game, from the weaver to the middleman to the end
customer,” they told us.
44.
The Thrillophilia adventure
Abhishek
Daga and Chitra Gurnani Daga, the husband-wife team behind Thrillophilia, have
been working on the startup for about three years. They first raised an
undisclosed seed amount from a US-based investor in 2011, and the next round
was for $200,000. Abhishek told us, “While in entrepreneurship, the lines
between personal and professional lives are blurred. In our case, there is no
line! We talk a lot about business, even at home, at holiday and everywhere.
While that might not always be great, but it’s really exciting for VCs, as
we’re a team that’s literally, always thinking about the business!”
45.
An online payment solution for masses – PayU
PayU
India, online payment company, launched PayUPaisa, a web-based product which
empowers buyers to pay and sellers to get paid online. The product is free for
sellers and provides beneficial selling tools like a free webstore, free
storefront and email invoicing. On the other hand, PayUPaisa has a strong
dispute resolution centre to safeguard buyers and keep their money safe even
when they have paid for a product or service. It has a strong dispute
resolution centre to safeguard buyers and keep their money safe even when they
have paid for a product or service.
46.
Building smart solutions for Indian customers – Silvan Labs
Hi-tech
security system, smart device management and other home automation systems that
posh apartments in Bangalore boast of are powered by one startup – Silvan Labs.
Dr. Giri Krishna and four others – Avinash Gautam, Ajay Gupta, Nandakumar and
Mohan G – are the brains behind the company. All of them have had stints at
Texas Instruments before starting up Silvan Labs in 2008. When they began,
Silvan Labs placed themselves as a product provider. “One of the biggest
learning for us was that Indians don’t buy products, they buy solutions,” told
us Giri.
47.
Harvard grad wants to rejuvenate politics with Swaniti
“Swaniti
was originally conceived at Harvard in 2009. Two of my colleagues and I had
noticed that there was this incredible interest from graduate students at Harvard
to want to work with political leadership in India. Some students had even gone
back to India after graduation and decided to work in politics and development.
However, there were a number of students who could not secure a
project/position with a political leader because he/she often lacked the
network,” Rwitwika Bhattacharya, who started Swaniti to address this need, told
us.
48.
Diner’s friend, restauranteurs too – dineout
Dineout,
web-based restaurant table reservation and deals service, pop up on the radar
of many in the restaurant business as a friend, because of the business that
they generate for restaurant owners and as a fierce competitor to other players
in the segment. The startup competed with 40 other companies to win YourStory’s
WebSparks prize in January 2013. Co-founders Vivek Kapoor and Sahil Jain shared
details of their entrepreneurial journey with us in this story.
49.
For shy adults – ShyCart
Shycart
is an e-commerce startup which deals with products that people shy to buy at
physical stores. “Necessity is where the idea for Shycart came from. Vivek was
the one to come up with the idea. And it hit the chord directly. I understood
the potential of the idea as I knew e-commerce can help,” co-founder Arul Oli
told us. They focus largely on adult hygiene and adult entertainment, besides lingerie.
50.
Lured by the weird – ShortCircuit
Co-founded
by Richa Johri along with her husband Vipul, Shortcircuit exclusively focuses
on the idea of corporate and retail gifting by adding a personal touch to the
products. “Weird things attract me a lot and I always had an instinct to start
something of my own. We make products targeting a niche market because for
every product we make, we add some personal touch,” Richa said when we asked
why the name ‘Shortcircuit’. Shortcircuit is a team of seven. Richa is the
creative head while her husband looks after the financial and legal matters of
the company.
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