Indian Startup Hubs: Startups And Ecosystem Builders In The Jaipur Startup Ecosystem

[Note: This article is part of The Junction Series. We are hosting our flagship conference, “The Junction” in Jaipur in January 2017. Learn more about The Junction here!]

It was late 1727 when Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II laid the foundation of Jaipur – the capital city of Rajasthan. Being titled as the first planned city of India, it is known for its architectural marvels, copious shopping bazaars and adorable jewellery.

In 1853, the whole city was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales!

Almost after 163 years, the city is getting painted again – now in the colours of artistic talent, well-established business culture, and a nucleus of entrepreneurial pursuits.

In the last three to four years, Jaipur has grabbed some serious attention from the investors, transforming the city into a startup hub. With planned government initiatives, co-working spaces like Wired Hub, the startup culture seems to have gotten a serious boost.

The city offers a number of advantages to the entrepreneurs. Not only is the cost of living here is relatively low, there is also a large pool of early adopters. It owns the largest IT SEZ in India and is a destination for corporates like Mahindra and Infosys. Delhi, being close, offers a ready market for Rajasthan startups.

As part of our ongoing Indian Startup Hubs series, we are covering the startup ecosystem in Jaipur. We will be covering some of the notable startups, and other individuals and groups that are building up the startup ecosystem in the city.

The Startups

According to angel.co, there are at present 367 startups  in Jaipur (and counting). As per a recent analysis by Inc42, 23 startups from Jaipur have been funded between 2014-2016, with a total amount of $142.25 Mn.

The investors seem bullish towards three major sectors: ecommerce, automobile, and edtech and about $80 Mn was infused into the ecommerce sector, contributing a staggering 56% of the total funding between 2014-2016.

GirnarSoft

Founder(s): Anurag Jain, Amit Jain

Founded In: 2008

Funding: In 2013, the startup secured $15 Mn funding from Sequoia Capital. In 2015, it raised another $50 Mn from Hillhouse Capital and Tybourne Capital and existing investor Sequoia, raising its valuation to $300 Mn. It was followed by an undisclosed amount of funding by Ratan Tata, HDFC and Times Internet in close intervals. In March 2016, Google Capital and Hillhouse also invested an undisclosed amount.

Girnarsoft, the parent company of CarDekho and PriceDekho, is the first mover in the online automobile space. It has also diversified into portals like TrucksDekho, TyreDekho, BatteryDekho, Help On Wheels, etc. It has also acquired portals like ZigWheels and has also expanded internationally with a car-comparison portal CarBay.

KhanaGadi

Founder(s): Amit Deep Kumar

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Hyderabad-based 50K Ventures in June 2016.

KhanaGaDi is a 360-degree online food delivery platform aimed at providing simplified food delivery solutions to consumers anytime and anywhere. It provides its food delivery services in trains, buses and at home.  It also provides home delivery and homemade food services in Jaipur city and soon planning to launch its services in Gurugram, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Dubai, and Kuwait city.

Yufta

Founder(s): Ritesh Khandelwal, Ravi Khandelwal, Tarun Sharma,

Founded In: 2014

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amounPre-Series A Funding from Rajasthan Angel Investor Network founder members, Ajay Data (CEO, Data Infosys Ltd), and other HNIs in April 2016.

Yufta is a hyperlocal fashion retail platform, which provides a personal stylist experience by curating major fashion trends for women, with aggregation of local fashion stores. It blends the virtual and real world shopping experience and provides users with a chance to select what to buy online while retaining the ‘real’ shopping experience by going to the store and trying it before buying.

BlueBox Media Pvt. Ltd

Founder(s): Pawas Jain, Deepanshu Khandelwal

Founded In: 2011

Funding: It raised undisclosed funding from RAIN members Sanjay Yadav, Puneet Mittal, Ajay Data, and Mahavir P Sharma in November 2014. In April 2016, it raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding led by Mahavir Pratap Sharma, founder and director of Oscar Exports. Ajay Data, CEO of Data Infosys, also participated in the round along with existing investors.

It owns two portals SpringTide and TheTechPortal and is into online and print media with a sole objective of bringing the youngsters across India on a common platform. It is also into branding solutions for startups and businesses providing niche services for website, app, graphics and content development along with digital advertising and social media marketing.

Locus Transit Pvt. Ltd.

Founder(s): NA

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised undisclosed funding from RAIN members Sanjay Yadav, Puneet Mittal, Ajay Data, and Mahavir P Sharma in November 2014.

It made Chalogekya.com – an auto rickshaw web and mobile service in the city which provide technology and transit assistance to the locals in a safe and smart manner.

Kidswids

Founder(s): Anugrah

Founded In: 2014

Funding: It raised undisclosed funding from RAIN members Sanjay Yadav, Puneet Mittal, Ajay Data, and Mahavir P Sharma in November 2014.

It deals in personalised and customised items for children from 3-12 years. The main motive of Kidswids is to provide a new amazing solution to their customers from the wide range of  products.

CultureAlley (Hello English App)

Founder(s): Nishant Patni, Pranshu Bhandari

Founded In: 2012

Funding: In July 2015, it raised $6.5 Mn in Series A funding from venture capital firm Tiger Global Management and other investors. Existing investors Kae Capital and 500 Startups also participated in this round.

Jaipur-based Intap Labs Pvt. Ltd runs cloud-based online language learning platform, Culture Alley. It started off as teacher-learner platform which offers audio-visual lessons for individuals. Today, the company provides language learning lessons in English, Spanish and other languages.

LogicRoots

Founder(s): Gunjan Agrawal, Kunal Gandhi

Founded In: 2011

Funding: In April 2015, it raised $400K funding in a round led by angel investment firm ah! Angels. The round also saw the participation from Calcutta Angels and 91springboard.

LogicRoots develops educational material for Mathematics in the form of interactive games for primary level students. The startup offers board games in arithmetic, decimals, fractions and memory building, for school kids through Amazon and Flipkart. Its app is currently live on the Windows phone which will move further to iOS.

RazorPay

Founder(s): Shashank Kumar, Harshil Mathur

Founded In: 2014

Funding: It raised $9 Mn Series A round in October 2015 from Tiger Global along with participation from Matrix Partners. In the same month, they also raised a seed round of $2.5 million which was led by Matrix Partners. Y Combinator and angel investors, including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal founders), Punit Soni (Flipkart CPO), Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta and Naveen Tewari (Inmobi founders), Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon (Freecharge founders), Bill Gajda (SVP, Global Head of Innovation, Visa), Jeff Huber (SVP, GoogleX), Ram Shriram (Board Member and an early investor in Google), Justin Kan (Y Combinator partner and Twitch Founder), in total 33 angel investors also participated in the seed round. Earlier, in March 2015, they also raised $120K from Y Combinator.

Razorpay is an online payment gateway solution. It aims to revolutionise online payments by providing a simple, affordable and secure way for small businesses, startups, and other traditional SME organisations like schools, colleges and training centres to start accepting online payments. It was also a part of Y Combinator and startup Oasis. The company, initially started our of Jaipur has now shifted its base to Bengaluru.

Johareez

Founder(s): Gajendra Gupta, Pradeep Gupta

Founded In: 2010

Funding: NA

Johareez is an online marketplace for jewellery. They have their own manufacturing of precious jewellery and curate fashion/imitation jewellery, along with providing the platform for sellers to list their products up for sale.

Jaipur Rugs

Founder(s): Nand Kishore Chaudhary

Founded In: 2004

Funding: The team has raised funding from Grassroot Business Fund.

Jaipur Rugs works directly with artisans and empowering them and their communities with a sustainable livelihood. Jaipur Rugs claims to have worked with over 50,000 artisans from rural India, who work on 7,000 looms across 600 villages.

Gemporia

Founder(s): Manuj Goyal, Steve Bennett

Founded In: 2014

Funding: NA

Gemporia  showcases jewellery live on TataSky, Videocon D2H, Dish TV, and Airtel DTH. All the jewellery come with certificates of authenticity, BIS hallmark for gold products and a 30-day money back guarantee.

Tax2Win

Founder(s): Abhishek Soni, Vertika Kedia, Shishant Todi

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised $1 Mn from an undisclosed business house in July 2016.

Tax2Win enables users to file income tax return in three simple steps – file it yourself, CA assisted, or CA reviewed. Self-filing is free, while CA reviews cost $1.50 (INR 99) and CA assistance costs $4.50 (INR 299). With a team size of 40, half of its employees are chartered accountants.

HippoCabs

Founder(s): Sagar Agrawal, Sahil Agrawal

Founded In: 2015

Funding: NA

HippoCabs is an intercity luxury shared cab service running between Jaipur and Delhi. It’s a cab aggregator and pays the drivers a fixed amount on a per-tip basis. Also, it charges only for  the distance travelled and not for the return journey.

Tazasabzi

Founder(s): Nishant Jain

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amount in Seed funding from Brand capital in March 2016.

Tazasabzi aims at providing fresh fruits and vegetables at the doorsteps of its customers. It offers a ‘Cash on Delivery’ option. Customers can return the ordered vegetables if they are not satisfied with the quality of vegetables.

Houssup

Founder(s): Hemant Singh, Devendra Baghel, Shubham Trivedi, Pranjal Gupta, Sameera YV, Raghav Mundra

Founded In: 2016

Funding: It raised an undisclosed Seed round of funding in April 2016 from Mitin Patel, MD of Prima Automation, and Gaurav Agarwal.

Houssup is an interior design and home furnishing portal and was accelerated at Startup Oasis. It offers a variety of interior design templates, get the chosen design visualised through its augmented reality gadget before implementation and finally do it themselves or hire an interior designer to complete the project.

Myly

Founder(s): Madhup Bansal, Gaurav Mundra

Founded In: 2014

Funding: It raised a $100K Seed round of funding from Newbie Promoter Pvt Ltd. in January 2016.

Myly is a mobile-based education startup which provides a secure online environment for managing institution data along with an analytics dashboard.

UrbanDhobi

Founder(s): Satyam Mishra, Prakhar Pagaria, Tushar Thettayil, Saransh Sidhu

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding round from a Delhi-based private equity firm in February 2016.

UrbanDhobi is an on-demand laundry startup currently operational in Jaipur. They are trying to create benchmarks in terms of quality of washing in India. They pick up clothes on the preferred time slot of a user and deliver back in just 24 hours.

Curious Cobo

Founder(s): Prateek Jain, Sonali Jain

Founded In: 2015

Funding: NA

Curious Cobo is an online venture for kids that focuses on offering you a fun-filled package of simulative and cognitive tools that could boost the intelligence, social skills, language, speech, and self-awareness of your 4 – 8-year-old child.

Srjna

Founders–  Sharad Bansal, Om Prakash, Kapil Arya, Vivek Pathak

Founded In: 2014

Funding: It raised a funding of $65K from Puneet Mittal (CEO, Pratham Software), Rajneesh Bhandari (President, TiE Rajasthan), Mahavir Pratap Sharma (President, RAIN), and three other RAIN members along with two independent undisclosed angels.

A brand of Elation Edtech Pvt Ltd, Srjna aims to ensure that students from classes I to X retain their creativity. The startup has created over 200 economical and portable subject-learning models for schools based on an experiential learning approach.

Zero Waste

Founder(s): Prateek Goel, Dixit Singhvi

Founded In: 2014

Funding: NA

ZeroWaste is a reverse commerce platform for customers to sell their old (used, unused and overused) electronics for cash. Also, they have set up collection centres at various places in Rajasthan to ensure that e-waste is disposed of responsibly.

Jewelove

Founder(s):  Sambhav Karnawat

Founded In: 2012

Funding: NA

Jewelove is a platinum jewellery ecommerce retailer based in Jaipur. They work on a capital-efficient on-demand model and provide complete customisation services for platinum jewellery in India.

Organic Shop

Founder(s): Manuj Terapanthi

Founded In: 2011

Funding: It raised INR 30 Lakhs in an angel funding round from RAIN in August 2013.

Organic Shop is a joint venture of Jaipur INC – a Delaware-based online marketplace for organic products across categories like clothing, food, cosmetic including health and wellness.

Indibni

Founder(s): Nitin Jain, Ankit Jain, Khushbu Mathur

Founded In: 2013

Funding: NA

Indibini is an online portal that specialises in gifting products and branding services. It aims to provide themes and ideas wrapped around Indian culture.

LinkYou

Founder(s): Anuj Agrawal, Rishab Garg, Aayush Sharma

Founded In: 2015

Funding: NA

LinkYou is a real-time networking app. It let’s user explore events and people based on his location and interests so that he can expand his network with more like minded individuals.

Wooden Street

Founder(s): Lokendra Ranawat, Dinesh Pratap Singh, Virendra Ranawat, Vikas Baheti

Founded In: 2015

Funding: NA

WoodenStreet is an online furniture retailer, with a USP to offer customised products and a personalised experience. It allows users to share his/her ideas and convert them to a workable 3D for further confirmation.

Dream Wallets

Founder(s):  Nikhil Agrawal, Manish Harodia

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in May 2016. The investment was led by IndusInd Bank executive vice president Siddharth Banerjee and senior vice president Vikas Ranjan, Anshul Jindal, a senior investment officer with a Switzerland-based investment company, and Sunil Koul, executive director at a Hong Kong-based investment bank. Industrialist Sanjeev Agrawal and chartered accountants Rakesh Gupta and Aditya Aggarwal also participated in the round.

DreamWallets, run by SeedLogix Resources India Pvt. Ltd is a crowdfunding platform. It claims to be the only crowdfunding platform in the country that offers both fixed and flexible funding options.

ClassifiedsDekho

Founder(s): NA

Founded In: 2014

Funding: NA

Classifieds Dekho is a free classifieds website that helps people buy, sell, rent, find in categories like furniture, mobile phones, cars & bikes, services, pets, real estate, jobs, education, entertainment and matrimonial. It allows a user to post free ads and also view the ads posted by other members.

Aha3D

Founder(s): NA

Founded In: 2010

Funding: NA

Aha3D is on a mission to carry out fundamental development on 3D printing technologies and to serve as a platform for high technology indigenous research in this area. The core strength of the company is its in-house design and development specialisation on all aspects of machine design, including embedded firmware, application software, core electronics and mechatronics.

Seva Services

Founder(s): Ravi Raizada

Founded In: 2010

Funding: NA

Seva Services is a hyperlocal service provider which offers home and office repair services. They are also working in the field of Technical Education known as “SEVA LEARNING” which presents a wide range of courses from Refrigeration, Mobile Repair and Computer Hardware, to Electrician. The firm is also involved in helping customers find the best buyer for used appliances and working towards finding an active solution for reducing e-waste.

FaidaOnline 

Founder(s): Vipul Paliwal, Gaurav Jain

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised $1 Mn in an angel funding round from New York-based Right Gems.

It is an online marketplace allowing users to exchange products. One can exchange used mobiles, electronics, furniture, books, furniture and kitchen appliance etc.

Gram Power

Founder(s): Yashraj Khaitan

Founded In: 2015

Funding: It raised an undisclosed Seed funding in March 2012 and a Series A round, later in March 2015. It is backed by investors such as Eric Brewer, Vestergaard Frandsen, and Campanille Impact Fund.

Gram Power is an energy tech company founded out of Berkeley, California. They aim to solve two problems – energy access and energy lost. They’ve managed to reduce losses for Indian Utilities by over 90% using their patented smart grid technology. The company’s tech was selected by NASA among the top 10 cleantech innovations around the world. They are also part of CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad.

Offerbean

Founder(s): Ritesh Khandelwal, Abhishek Sharma

Founded In: 2012

Funding:NA

Offerbean is an eretail venture which offers electronics goods, toys, watches across various cities in India. The company has tied up with more than 100 of suppliers and has been growing its supplier’s network monthly. The portal showcases majorly big brands like Dell, Samsung, HCL, Apple, Lenovo, HP, Espirit, Fastrack, Funskool etc.

Kalaage Creations

Founder(s): Raghav Sharma, Ravi Piplani

Founded In: 2015

Funding:NA

Kalaage is a social networking platform for writers around the globe to share and submit their work and get it published. It also connects magazines/newspapers with writers to get regular content and manage their submission process. This way, writers get a real value in return as they get an opportunity to become published authors, and magazines get a chance to directly interact with a myriad of writers/readers and get creative and unpublished opinions/works from it.

SaveYourHealth

Founder(s): Rakesh Kumar

Founded In: 2016

Funding: NA

SaveYourHealth provides healthcare services like home, private, nursing, primary, mental, urgent, child, elder, men, women etc. at the comfort of home. They facilitate lab tests at home and medical equipment rentals, making healthcare more accessible for the patients. They were also a part of Startup Oasis and CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad.

Sarv

Founder(s): Ramesh Choudhary

Founded In: 2016

Funding: NA

Sarv.com products cover all communication fields and cloud-related needs on a single platform for enterprise and small-medium business. This includes email marketing, cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud telephony, CDN & SMS marketing services. All product are developed inhouse only and the goal is to make Sarv as one stop solution for communication & IT related needs of any size of the company.

Kuberbox

Founder(s): Sourav Lodha

Founded In: 2014

Funding: NA

KuberBox aims to establish itself as a genuine source to buy Diamond Jewelry in India in a personalised and customised fashion. Also, they want to create a network of self-motivated individuals/small business who can extend its products and services to their customers through the use of Kuberbox’s tablet app, under the KuberBox Privileged Partner program.

HinKhoj

Founder(s): Udai Singh Meena

Founded In: 2014

Funding: NA

The app offers Hindi-English dictionary and other Hindi language products and services. One can find on site a curated information about other apps and websites and a few tutorials to learn the Hindi language.

WholeSaleBox

Founder(s): Rohit Dangayach, Madhur Bhaiya, Rakesh Shekhawat, Chandan Agarwal

Founded In: 2015

Funding: N/A

Wholesalebox App helps shops promote their shops and business by broadcasting Wholesalebox designs to their customers with their marked up retail pricing and taking customer opinions even before buying, thereby reducing dead stock. It also helps in branding the showroom and get the latest trends and customer demand prediction.

UrbanJobs

Founder(s): Sagarika Parida

Founded In: 2015

Funding: NA

UrbanJobs use latest technologies in data mining and machine learning to find the best candidates for recruitment.

Other Startups

StreetJumper, founded in 2014 by Tarin Podar, and Abhishek Chandra was an on-demand logistics network that offered personalised delivery service through a delivery boy or jumper to the consumers. The company is acquired by Mumbai-based entrepreneur Sandiip Modi in an all-cash deal in April 2016.

Propterry, Winsight Academy, CrispTalks, EventGraphia, Gurupdate, Living Greens, RedInno, Awakey – are a few other startups based out of Jaipur.

Major Investors In Jaipur Ecosystem

Rajasthan Angel Investors Network (RAIN)

RAIN is a group of Angel investors in Jaipur interested in investing in early stage businesses, which have a potential to create scale. It is interested in any domain preferably driven by technology or services with the potential of high scalability and could be started with minimal CapEx. It has invested in startups such as online media company Blue Box Media Pvt Ltd, auto rickshaw finder app called Chaloge Kya, and Kidswids, a unit of 3D-printing company MakerKart. Also, it invested $149K in edtech startup  iAugmentor Labs Pvt. Ltd in August 2016 and an undisclosed funding in fashion retail platform Yufta in April 2016.

Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund

Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund (RVCF) has signed an agreement with Startup Oasis and CIIE to dedicate 10 percent of its INR 500 crore third fund for the startups. It’s portfolio companies include Yatra, Mosambee, Soft Tech, Aujas, Leeway, Frontier Logistics, NexTenders and more.

Startup Oasis 

The joint initiative of Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation Ltd. (RIICO) and the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad. It has mentored startups like SRJNA, UrbanDhobi, RazorPay amongst others and has trained more than 1,000 aspiring entrepreneurs.

500 Startups, WarburgPincus, Hillhouse Capital, Kamal Kothari, Mahavir Pratap Sharma, Yogesh Chaudhary, Ajay Data are other notable startup investors in the city.

Co-working Space And Government Initiatives

Wired Hub, founded by Himanshi Goyal, was publicly opened on February 1, 2016, and has organised regular workshops, mentorship sessions and pitching contests. It currently has over 10 members and is spread in an area of over 1000 sq. ft.. It has also introduced a unique concept of the co-working club where members can avail the facilities and attend the networking events, without taking a desk space.

enTRIPreneur, started by Anuj Agarwal, Jahnvi Sharma, Rachna Ghiya, and Swapnil Soni is a platform that aims to change the way entrepreneurs connect with each other. The platform organises exclusive trips for entrepreneurs where they can relax, interact, connect, and learn with other like-minded and proactive entrepreneurs

The Rajasthan Government has also started several initiatives to boost the state’s startup ecosystem. A recent one is the state startup policy, announced in October 2015 by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. It aims to set up 50 incubators/accelerators, supporting 500 startups, creating 100,000 square feet of incubation, and mobilising Rs 500-crore angel/venture capital funding in the next five years.

Another is the Rajasthan Startup Festival, organised every year with the support of  TiE Rajasthan, incubator Startup Oasis, and the Rajasthan Angel Investor Network (RAIN). The event includes two days of expo, conference and workshops.

Editor’s Note

With startups opting their home town as a base to start their entrepreneurial journey, fueling support becomes the utmost necessity. With the State Government doing its part in building a robust startup ecosystem in the city, it will definitely add to the foundation of Jaipur as a startup hub. Also, growing support from accelerators and investors is also building the roots stronger to create a mature ecosystem for the budding startups.

Do not worry if we haven’t included your startup in the list. Just send in your details in the comments below and the list will keep growing. Stay tuned for more in the series!