When YourStory started chronicling the startup ecosystem in 2008, few companies, including the ones in our INDIA 100 2015 list, were known beyond their immediate circles; seven years down the line, these companies have grown to become not just India’s best-known names but have also attracted global attention to India and its maturing fast-startup ecosystem.
In 2012, Bangalore ranked 19th within the world’s startup ecosystem. By 2015, the city moved up four spots to 15th place, but 6th in terms of access to funding. The year has been epochal. Prime Minster Narendra Modi made startups the central theme of his Republic Day speech. Entrepreneurship has gone mainstream; spreading to every corner of the country– even the marriage market is more accepting of founders, who are the new celebrities in town! And for the very first time in the history of Indian startups, Flipkart’s Sachin and Binny Bansal have made it to the top 100 in the prestigious Forbes list.
The INDIA 100 ranking shows the 100 hottest companies that have demonstrated their ability to scale up and seized opportunities through 2015. These are the startups that stayed in the news through the year and grew substantially. These 100 companies have already demonstrated the ability to achieve various levels of scale; some have been around for more than half-a-decade. Aside from these every year YourStory showcases 30 of the most promising tech start-ups you need to watch out for.
YourStory discovers and showcases emerging tech startups that might eventually go on to achieve similar ‘success’ as the Tech30 at TechSparks each year.
TECH30 2015 Startups
Description
1
Aarav Unmanned Systems (AUS)
develops high-end autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), customizable for a variety of applications. AUS has ventured into civil, research and defence application capabilities using short-range UAVs.
2
Fropcorn
hyper-local content distribution product, delivers high-quality content to consumers over wi-fi.
3
CloverBoard
is a wi-fi-connected smart switchboard that gives users convenience, energy savings and security. Its suite of sensors provides time-of-the-day-based intelligence and learns user’s usage patterns.
4
Bfonics
is an end-to-end proximity-marketing platform, leveraging Apple’s latest iBeacon technology and Google’s Eddystone. The product aims to enable channel partners to effectively engage with audiences and create a meaningful experience.
5
Mobisy Technologies
Bizom, a ‘mobile-first’ cloud solution, provides real-time communication and analytics for sales, distribution, strategy, HR and branding teams.
6
Capacloud’s Ecotop
is a 2×2 feet floor tile that can grow any plant on any horizontal or vertical surface without a lot of maintenance.
7
Cyclops MedTech
is a medtech startup working on surgical and eye-tracking solutions. Their first product is a wearable eye-tracking device for accurate diagnosis of episodic neurological events like vertigo.
8
Daily Rounds
is a network of doctors with over 180,000 practicing doctors on the platform. Doctors use the Daily Rounds app to learn and share clinical cases, as well as the latest medical updates, guidelines and news.
9
Furdo
intends to make interior design simple. The startup has a “try-before-you-buy” 3D interior design solution that allows new homeowners to virtually walk through and experience their designed home.
10
Gridle
is a productivity platform for work. This cloud-based standardised application can be customised according to a company’s needs.
11
Guesstaurant
is gamifying the foodie experience. Its platform lets users discover new places to eat by solving a quiz.
12
Habba (Rang De)
is an online store for traditional artisans of rural India.
13
InnAccel
is a medical technology acceleration company focused on innovation for low- and mid-income markets. InnAccel has built a proprietary innovation platform and forged partnerships with national and global entities to support startups and entrepreneurs.
14
Innovaccer
InnovAccer is a data science firm that enables organisations to accelerate their data-science adoption. Its flagship product, Datashop, helps businesses collaboratively determine business solutions by integrating disparate data sources and transforming them into actionable insights.
15
Meltag
is a direct customer-connect platform that provides loyalty programmes and CRM solutions for brands in India.
16
Nifty Window (Storefront)
offers a SaaS platform aimed at helping brick-and-mortar businesses drive in-store sales across search, social media and mobile channels.
17
Niki.ai
offers an artificial intelligence-assisted buying experience for the mobile platform. It helps consumers across all commerce functions, like booking a bus ticket to ordering food online using a chat-based format.
18
Omni
is a consumer internet company that is working on enabling a close-knit community within neighbourhoods. The focus is on providing access to local level information and knowledge that can be of great use to all members of a community.
19
Ploud.IO
focused on building a futuristic platform that is at the intersection of virtual reality, deep learning, sensation and artificial intelligence.
20
Qustn
is a mobile-first SaaS platform that aims to help companies engage and train their remote workers, resulting in a direct impact on revenue and profit.
21
Sattva MedTech
is a portable healthcare device weighing less than a kilo and uses advanced sensors to acquire physiological data. Designed for Indian conditions, the device is non-invasive and compliant with IEC standards for medical diagnostic equipment.
22
Save Indian Grain
is a social enterprise dedicated to developing modern grain-storage solutions, subsistence market places, agri-stakeholders and cluster maps for small and marginal farmers in India.
23
Shape Crunch
is reinventing how people buy their footwear by bringing in 3D printing for insoles. A large number of people suffer problems owing to flat feet, plantar fasciitis, heel pain, etc. and Shapecrunch is a ‘custom-fit’ solution to those problems.
24
SmartQ
is a smartphone app that helps employees of big tech parks avoid long queues at the massive food courts that such complexes normally house.
25
TruckSumo
is an aggregator of small commercial vehicles (mini-trucks). Using technology, TruckSumo connects businesses with local logistics needs in real-time to service providers who can fulfil those needs.
26
True Semantic
helps companies track and improve their customer experience at scale.
27
Upshot
is a mobile user engagement platform that helps enterprises increase user engagement, retention and monetisation. It is a comprehensive mobile marketing platform that will help mobile marketers and developers gather deep, actionable user insights.
28
Vity Mobi
is product that offers efficient crash reporting and log monitoring for apps on the Android and iOS platforms.
29
Voodoo
is a digital assistant on the handset. It integrates with all the apps on a device and helps users get the best deals, compare prices, get coupons and give their ratings and recommendations within the app.
30
Curefy
enables everyone to instantly talk to doctors from premier hospitals over phone or video chat. The company aggregates the lean time inventory of doctors from premier hospitals to give its users enable 24×7 access to medical professionals.
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Also, early next year, YourStory is coming up with Young Workplace Awards – India’s only Definitive Startup Workplace award – which will chronicle the best of the workplaces in the ecosystem.
INDIA 100 – METHODOLOGY: We took around 1000 startups that have raised over $1 million and who were in the news during 2015. We put these names through our internal ranking system to evaluate them against three parameters: growth, revenue and funding. The next step was to partner with Mattermark to get their GrowthScore for each. Once we had 100 startups, we then re-ranked them using four equally weighted variables from Mattermark: growth score, mindshare score, employees’ month-over-month growth and total funding. (More about GrowthScore here).