Meet The Three Startups That Won The Delhi Leg Of 1776 Challenge Cup

US-based global incubator and venture fund, 1776, holds has announced the winners of “The Challenge Cup” . Competing for a prize of $175K in cash and over $1 Mn in other investments, over 40 startups from all over Delhi competed in this challenge on November 22nd to impress a panel of judges at the Delhi chapter of this competition.

The startups were judged by a panel of industry experts including Subinder Khurana (co-founder, Bank Smart Solutions), Nikunj Jain (co-founder, angel investor Frankly.me), Prajakt Raut (co-founder, Applyifi and founder, Hub for Startups), Priyank Aggarwal (head, strategy and new business, Philips India) and Ash Goirala, an angel investor.

The Three Shortlisted Startups From Delhi Are:

Maax Market

Founder: Lenin Srinivasan

Description: Maax Market simplifies tasks of marketing managers by automating routine work structure and allow managing custom market profiles for various customer segments.

Truelancer

Founder: Dipesh Garg and Rajshekhar Rajaharia

Founded in: 2014

Description: Truelancer is a curated freelance marketplace with over 200K freelancers, who are available to be hired as developers, designers, content writers, virtual assistants, growth hackers, social media experts etc.

MyPoolin

Founder: Ankit Singh and Rohit Taneja

Founded in: January, 2015

Description: With MyPoolin, users get to plan their hangouts or trips and pool in the money for the same, from the group, sans constant reminders and follow-ups.

These selected startups will get to attend the Challenge Cup regionals in Singapore. The winners of the regionals will move on to the global finals in Washington DC, that is to be held in June 2016.

Ankit Singh, co-founder of MyPoolin said, “It feels great to have an opportunity to showcase our ‘Made in India’ product globally.”

The company is gearing up for the regionals in Singapore. “It’s work as usual and we will be just focusing on improving and distributing our product which will be helpful for the regionals in Singapore. We believe that MyPoolin as a product has a global appeal and there is a great untapped opportunity and winning the finals in Washington will bring us closer to that goal. We will be focusing on improving and distributing our product which will be helpful for the regionals in Singapore,” he added.

Lenin Srinivasan of Maxx Market also shared his views with us, he said, “We came all the way from Chennai in train to participate in this 1776 challenge cup. Throughout our three-day train journey, we were afraid about our participation and we told ourselves that we have to win and there is no other go.”

“It is very important for us to win the finals in Washington. We are a bootstrapped startup and don’t have funding like other companies. Winning the finals is going to get us increased attention and visibility, which will translate into more customers. We also want to help establish thousands of online ecommerce businesses and use our marketing automation and personalisation technology to help them increase their revenues,” said Lenin.

Dipesh Garg, co-founder of Truelancer, believes that presenting in Singapore will be important for Truelancer’s business. They were also recently approached  by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore – a statutory body of the Singapore Government that aims to develop information technology and telecommunications within the country. He is also looking forward to present his venture in the US at the finals.

How The Challenge Cup Works:

A total of 20 startups will be chosen for each local competition final for which the organiser has chosen 45 cities across the globe to host Challenge Cup Local competitions. There will be 3 winner per local competition which gives a total of 135 winners.

135 local winners will compete for the regional finals, wherein 45 startups will be shortlisted to compete for the global final to be held at Washington DC.

Challenge Cup Matrix:

On November 21, 2015, 1776 partnered with Headstart Network, an organisation dedicated to foster entrepreneurial ecosystem in India, to host the Mumbai leg of Challenge Cup . The winners included Saypay, ShereIt and KITKI.

Delhi leg was headed by Neeraj Mehta and the event was held at Stirring Minds office.