With the calendar year about to come to an end, the Indian startup ecosystem would be looking forward to a turn in fortunes in 2021. While Covid-19’s aftermath is expected to take a toll on the economy for the foreseeable future, the talk of a viable vaccine is filling the business world with hope.
Venture capitalists and angel investors have also shifted gears and are looking for innovative models that can emerge in the new year as market forces. We are seeing rising enthusiasm among investors as indicated by the growth in funding in the past quarter.
30 Startups To Watch: November 2020
Our list of 30 startups for November includes companies that have been forerunners of new business models in the most prominent sectors this year. Enterprise tech solutions and SaaS startups have had a watershed year, thanks to the demand for such tools across business categories and sectors.
In our list for this month, 12 out of 30 startups operate in the enterprise tech sector, while fintech was the next most prominent sector with six entries in the November selection.
While edtech startups have been flourishing all year long, we are seeing new models emerging that seek to focus on offbeat areas and learning methodologies. This month, five edtech startups have been featured in our list.
Here is the Inc42 Plus list of 30 startups to watch out for in November 2020. Keep an eye out on these in the months to come.
Editor’s Note: The below list is not meant to be a ranking of any kind. We have listed the startups in alphabetical order.
Anveshan
Why Anveshan Made It To The List
D2C adoption in India has been quite promising since the last few years and in 2020, the direct-to-consumer wave touched new heights. The availability of easy-to-use ecommerce software platforms, cheaper mobile data plans, digital payments and the uptick in online shopping since the Covid-19 lockdown has made many brands adopt D2C as a business model.
Anveshan is one such startup that has capitalised on the increased demand for D2C products, to offer minimally processed food products made traditionally in villages through its online store. The startup also aims to empower Indian farmers by opening decentralised food processing food units and create employment for small food processors at the village level.
Its portfolio includes products such as organic honey, ghee, organic seeds and wood pressed oils, which are definitely niche for the Indian market as well. With the increased demand among consumers to know the source of the food in their plates, Anveshan has also leveraged technology to establish organised data, giving consumers access to the information of a product.
“From the farm to your doorstep, every step can be traced. The traceability of the product goes down to the roots of the crop we grow it on. We are one of the first food brands to ship consumer food products which can be traced back to the farm level, “said Kuldeep Parewa, founder and chief farmer, Anveshan.
He also added that the startup has automated the entire supply chain using its traceability app to manage micro manufacturing units efficiently
Bandhoo
Why Bandhoo Made It To The List
Construction workers constitute the most vulnerable and unorganised workforce in India and this vulnerability was exposed badly during the lockdown. On the one hand, it is one of the biggest job creators, on the other, many labourers stay unemployed for months on end without any organised hiring. Bandhoo, a Delhi NCR-based startup, is looking to help such transient and migrant labourers find work through contractors on a regular basis.
The startup leverages technology to help match the demand and supply of manpower in the construction business. The startup also works with the Haryana government to find jobs for the construction workers in the state and thereby opening up income opportunities.
Bandhoo now claims to have more than 2K construction workers registered on its platform. The startup offers video tutorials on how a worker or a contractor can register. Through a hiring module, the company reaches out to skilled workers and collects data on their skills, location and wage-rates. A project monitoring module tracks worker productivity and progress of project, while a tendering module helps reach out to sub-contractors specialising in various skill-sets.
Basis
Why Basis Made It To The List
As we transform towards digital economy, the need to make it inclusive is also being felt by fintech players. Along with improvements in tech, there is also focus on bringing empowering women to be financially independent. Basis is an app-based platform that aims to power financial independence for women.
Its community-driven product leads with financial education and offers curated advisory tools and recommendations for financial products and services tailored for urban Indian women. Basis is building a trusted digital financial services brand for women, and turning latent users outside of India’s formal financial system into active, informed consumers, claims the startup.
Basis offers two business models including subscription plans for customers that offer personalised financial advice, and premium master classes, and partnering with leading financial services providers to offer curated financial products such as insurance, credit, savings and investment products for its user base.
The startup’s primary research covering 500+ women across metro cities in India showed that a large majority of women take a backseat with their money management and have a strong intent to change this. However, there were fewer options in the market to cater to women. To fill this gap, the startup was envisioned as a platform that will speak to and address the financial needs of urban women, not as an extension of a male-centric product, but to a woman, as she is, that is strong, independent and full of choices.
BimaPe
Why BimaPe Made It To The List
While using debit and credit cards have become a norm, most consumers lack the knowledge of the additional features they offer. For instance, most cards offer free medical insurance up to INR 50 lakh when travelling and device protection worth INR 1 Lakh. This is what Mumbai-based BimaPe’s Know Your Card (KYC) tool is trying to address.
The startup helps cardholders understand the multiple benefits that they can claim. Customers are mostly unaware of these ‘free’ insurance covers or tend to overlook the benefits, founder Rahul Mathur told us. The startup aims to make its mark in the insurance space by helping customers make informed decisions using the KYC tool that reveals free insurance offers linked to cards. The user interface is simple enough. One needs to select the bank, type of card (debit/credit) and the variant from a dropdown menu to get the necessary information. Users do not have to log in or enter their card details to use the tool.
The startup also has two more products coming up – a wallet, which is in beta, and the policy deconstruction algorithm, or PDA. The wallet will feature the list of hidden insurance benefits and the PDA recommends insurance products to users based on their existing plans, suggests alternative policies and quotes prices on the go.
BitClass
Why BitClass Made It To The List
Edtech startups and online classes have gained traction, but they have also left behind qualified teachers who have found it difficult to make the digital move. BitClass aims to empower such individual teachers across academic as well as non-academic domains by helping them with whatever is needed to build a successful live online teaching business.
The startup claims to have built an all-in-one platform for teachers, with capabilities to enable them to establish a professional online presence, acquire new learners, build a community of their own, teach live in its in-built virtual classroom, among other features which makes it easier for teachers to reach wider online audiences and sell their live classes.
Besides that, it has also onboarded a team of in-house experts who help teachers with building their own personal brands, guide them on reaching the right target audiences and converting them into paying students. The startup charges a 5% platform fee on the transactions that happen on the platform. The business model focuses on maximising the number of transactions or course sales through the platform which aligns with the interest of the teachers.
“We spoke to hundreds of teachers ourselves and realised that while most of them are really good at teaching, building a brand and acquiring students through online channels is not something they are used to doing. This has entirely been a new territory for them. Our focus has thus been on building technology tools that can actually help teachers navigate this hurdle and build highly lucrative online teaching businesses,” said cofounder Gunjan Kejriwal.
Charge+Zone
Why Charge+Zone Made It To The List
Of all the hurdles faced by the electric vehicle (EV) industry in India, the biggest so far is the charging infrastructure. Many startups have been trying to resolve this major challenge. CHARGE+ZONE, founded in 2018, aims to create an EV charging network of more than 1Mn charging points by 2030 and connect consumers to the nearest charging station.
With its technology platform built on Internet Of Things (IoT) technology, CHARGE+ZONE is driven by a smartphone app and a cloud-based real-time data monitoring system. Co-incubated at iCREATE and Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) and recognised under the Department of Science and Technology, the app simply directs EV drivers to the nearest charging station along with data such as availability status for charging, advance reservations, digital payments and more.
Currently, CHARGE+ZONE’s clientele includes B2B and B2B2C partnerships with various automotive OEMs such as Ashok Leyland (electric buses), Bajaj Auto (electric scooters) as well as electric mobility companies such as Blu Smart, Shuttl, EEE-Taxi, Mytrah Mobility and others. The startup claims to have established a network of 120+ EV charging points across the Delhi-NCR region, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Vadodara and Ahmedabad.
Citymall
Why Citymall Made It To The List
While the smartphone adoption in Tier 3 cities and villages is increasing by the day, there is also resistance in terms of online purchases. The reason being an inherent lack of trust and unfamiliarity with digital payments.
“We realised that we needed to fundamentally re-imagine two core pillars for any established ecommerce business – customer acquisition & retention and logistics. The presence of a strong social and logistics layer, in the form of community leaders, solves these problems,” cofounder Angad Kikla said about CityMall’s vision.
The community-driven commerce platform is targeting the next 300Mn new internet consumers living in India’s small cities, towns and villages. Its offerings include everyday products like groceries, FMCG, fresh fruits and vegetables as well as general household products. It has community leaders as social connectors to the end consumers.
“We outsource activities like customer acquisition, sales and marketing as well as last-mile logistics to this layer. This brings down our cost significantly and enables us to service this customer segment that has been hard to crack by traditional e-grocers,” KIkla added.
To enable sellers, the product is built with vernacular language users in mind and CityMall has also developed workshops to provide marketing and technological services. The startup claims to have witnessed 12x growth in the last 6 months, and is growing 50% month-on-month. It is currently in the process of expanding across several tier 3 & 4 cities in Haryana and UP and investing heavily in product development and setting up in-house logistics solutions.
Clientjoy
Why Clientjoy Made It The List
Customer lifecycle management has become imperative for companies to differentiate themselves from the competition and enable effective retention strategies. Clientjoy’s client lifecycle management software for freelancers and agencies, allows freelancers and agencies to manage their clients.
Starting from leads to proposals or contracts to project management to client support to invoicing and revenue realisation, the tool aims to help companies serve their customers better. The vertical SaaS product focussed on agencies allows every interaction with a client to happen through a single window. In terms of revenue, the startup offers three tiers including basic for $49 per month, plus for $99 per month and pro for $149 per month.
Some of its offerings include setting up processes to ensure the sales team is updated on what’s going on and what to do next, sales pipeline to show companies the items that need immediate attention and also lets them gain visibility by taking control by getting real-time reports and statuses for all the sales activities.
Founded in 2019 by Yash Shah, Anupama Panchal, Abhishek Doshi, Shashwat Bhatt in Ahmedabad, Clientjoy currently serves more than 1900 agencies in digital marketing, IT-service and design agency verticals in more than 30 countries across the US, India, Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Dcoder
Why Dcoder Made It To The List
Technology and apps are reaching the remotest corners of the world and smartphones are the key drivers. Bengaluru-based Dcoder is enabling the mobile app opportunity for independent coders through its mobile-first integrated development environment and code compilation platform.
The startup believes that since smartphones are the window to digital services for consumers, it is time to bring next-gen coding frameworks and AI tools for coders on smartphones too. The SaaS model allows coders around the world to code in 50+ frameworks and programming languages on the go.
“With more than 2 Mn registered users across 173 countries we are building the platform of choice for coding for the next generation of coders by redefining coding for mobile devices with a mobile-first framework approach,” said cofounder Ankush Chugh.
The startup’s compilers allow developers to build projects on multiple frameworks and for multiple devices. Developers can also make edits and connect their github or other repository accounts to import and export projects or fork existing work projects and connect to platforms like WhatsApp easily.
Dhurina
Why Dhurina Made It To The List
While the continuing uncertainty over the reopening of schools and educational institutions have kept online classes and edtech firms thriving, for rural children, access to quality education has always been a challenge.
And additionally, the cost of online learning programmes can be prohibitive for many Indian households. Dhurina is an e-learning platform working towards helping students get online learning at affordable prices with 3 and 6-month courses starting at INR 1,200 for test prep.
The startup’s main focus is to help students living in Tier 3 or rural areas where they are not able to get a quality education because of a lack of institutional infrastructure, cofounder Sachin Sardana noted. The Fatehabad-based company claims to have crossed more than 1 Mn users and are currently reaching out to children at several locations in Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar and UP. It also offers in-house curated study material, ebooks, along with live classes and video lectures from renowned teachers and experts.
So far Dhurina claims to have onboarded nearly 30 teachers, teaching in local languages to offer a better understanding for students. It has signed an exclusive contract with local teachers and pays them on both fixed income per hour and revenue-sharing basis.
Enkash
Why Enkash Made It To The List
The demand-supply gap in the B2B credit and payment space led to the formation of EnKash, a payments platform that’s geared towards simplifying business cash flows. Launched in 2018, it started its operations by enabling electronic payables on bank-partnered commercial cards. It then moved on to enable short duration credit needs for SMBs with its own EnKash card issuance. Now, it has evolved as a single B2B platform for all business expenses, payables and collections by backing businesses for their credit needs.
EnKash monetises on a per transaction basis & other platform usage fees, which varies depending on the use cases. The startup aims to create value for businesses and financial institutions together by enabling the right kind of products suiting the needs of the market.
“Post evolution of B2C payments space in the last decade, B2B space digitization is still struggling with frictions on payments, credits, investments etc. It is marred by manual processes within organisation & while connecting with various outside service providers including FIs,” said Hemant Vishnoi, cofounder, EnKash.
By bringing automation in the procure-to-pay process to collections and flexible credit products through commercial cards, EnKash claims to serve more than 65K businesses so far and partnerships with more than ten financial institutions.
Ensuredit
Why Ensuredit Made It To The List
The insurance industry in India is still largely bereft of digitised operations, as the cost of digital insurance continues to deter insurance players. The high cost of distribution expansion, lower marginal utility from expansion and problematic unit economics are some of the hurdles in digital insurance penetration in India. The inherent need to drive this up is what drove Ensuredit to its current model.
The startup provides a platform or insurance as a service that enables insurance players such as insurers, brokers, corporate agents, IMFs, and agents to expand their revenue significantly by expanding their sales force, channel partners, and/or the number of insurance manufacturers they work with. The API-led model offers linkages to major insurance companies in both life insurance and non-life categories. The platform enables access to digital distribution, streamlined workflows, open APIs, and an AI-based analytics suite for end-to-end digitisation and sales process enablement.
The startup’s current product offering is ICE Insurance, a single, standardised platform that brings clarity, efficiency, scalability, and cost savings to the entire insurance sales and distribution cycle. It also offers a plug and play platform integrated with all major insurance firms enabling a quick go to market with digital distribution right from onboarding, KYC, quote generation, comparisons, proposal creation, claims and policy generation.
The startup’s roadmap for the next 12 months is focused on getting the distribution right, onboarding a diverse clientele and building an industry actionable data analytics.
Fountain9
Why Fountain9 Made It To The List
Tracking inventory at a store and warehouse level is crucial to building a sustainable retail business that does not overstretch or hamstring itself in the distribution layer. Mumbai-based Fountain9 leverages tech to allow companies to take care of their inventory in an efficient way. It claims to enhance the accuracy of the client’s purchasing plans with a prediction engine that eliminates the noise of historical anomalies and stock-outs to provide accurate visibility into SKU levels demand.
The startup’s AI engine, Kronoscope, constantly senses changes in demand patterns to help businesses adapt quickly and eliminate inventory pile-ups even as customers get what they are looking for. Kronoscope uses an ensemble of multiple machine learning and deep learning algorithms to auto-train a custom model for each SKU in every store, warehouse or channel.
Its proprietary algorithms identify a variety of patterns including seasonality, cannibalisation and substitution effects to boost the accuracy of predictions. The startup claims that no manual tuning is required and the models automatically retrain to new demand patterns, outliers and eliminate volatility. It also provides proactive alerts on potential future stock-outs and take corrective buying actions with automated procurement plans to help minimise revenue loss.
FRAAZO
Why FRAAZO Made It To The List
Opening an online store and reaching the consumers directly skipping multiple intermediaries is an easy task today. This is because of the ease of digital payments, availability of multiple ecommerce software platforms and increased demand for D2C brands. This has also led to increased competition. Today, for a D2C brand to stand out, the key differentiator is managing logistics and reaching consumers ontime.
FRAAZO is a fruits and vegetables D2C brand, currently operational across Mumbai, that claims to differentiate itself by offering 60 min express deliveries of fruits and vegetables. According to the startup, being able to service 95% of Mumbai’s geography and in such a short time is its USP.
As of now, 90% of the orders come through the native channels such as its Fraazo app and website. The startup also claims that its core business model thrives on the integrated, safe and secure supply chain it has built from multiple farms across Maharashtra to its stores within 18 hours.
The company has also capitalised on the demand for pesticide-free food from the urban population. It has built a dedicated channel to source produce directly from farmers bypassing the unhygienic and porous supply chain that gives scope to unsafe handling and adulteration of quality. It uses precision agriculture to leverage data to pick the finest produce from the partners and deliver it to consumer homes. The startup claims to be monitoring the supply at every stage from farm to customers.
Harmonizer
Why Harmonizer Made It The List
As energy management and power quality is a global challenge, many businesses are suffering losses or leaking revenue due to inefficient management. Harmonizer Solution is looking to address this challenge through a knowledge-based approach to enhance the reliability, sustainability and productivity of the electrical network.
To reduce harmonic distortion, voltage fluctuations and enhance quality of power delivery, Harmonizer has patented an energy and asset performance software EL-EXI, which has inbuilt machine learning-based analytics to detect problems in the electrical network, assets such as transformers, motors, machines, power quality disturbances, energy efficiency, HVAC system, compressed air system, lighting system, among others.
Based on the analytics, the customer will get alert indication or alarms with proper problem detection and solution. Harmonizer also offers an electrical switchboard called Canny that acts as an intelligent device with various sensors installed and ML algorithm deployed in server/cloud that can be monitored through an app. The startup also claims to have many other innovative and AI-based products as well to serve the industry.
Besides developing Canny and EL-EXI, as of now Harmonizer has filed 14 patents and is focussing on innovations related to AI and ML. Its long term plan is to implement AI/ML-based solutions for the industry and building applications that bridge the gap of expert knowledge in the industry for power quality, energy efficiency and EV chargers.
Kitchens Centre
Why Kitchens Centre Made It To The List
Cloud kitchens as a concept have garnered plenty of investor interest and even unicorns have added cloud kitchen enablement or access models to their repertoire in the past couple of years. Today, many hotels and dine-ins have also adopted the idea to keep their businesses running. Capitalising on the same, Kitchens Centre offers food businesses and brands complete infrastructure setup support, including fully equipped and compliant commercial kitchens on rent.
It rents properties that are currently underutilised and designs custom spaces for fully-equipped kitchens. Brands or individuals can lease out the kitchen to begin operations with no time delay. It also takes care of other aspects such as running cloud kitchens besides ready infrastructure, including power, water and security, tech support, affiliate partnerships and management.
The startup claims to have successfully delivered more than 400K food parcels through over 200 brands. The solution has also come at the right time for the food and beverages industry, which is running into losses. Cloud kitchens help reduce costs when expanding to multiple geographies.
Kyt
Why Kyt Made It To The List
Extracurricular courses for children have existed offline in India for many years now. However, there are often geographical limitations to accessing educators. With the pandemic, these activities had almost come to a full-stop. And now, many startups are trying to capitalise on the need for more organised extracurricular learning in an online format.
Kyt leverages technology to provide these online-only, live lessons to children from five to 15-years old. The startup believes that supporting a child’s inclination to learn new things aren’t additional or extra and they are essential to all-round development.
Being online-only, Kyt’s curriculum is designed with elements of animation and gamification to supplement learning, as well as rewards to motivate each child. The celebrity partners work closely with Kyt’s professional educators and curriculum designers to create the courses, including what each class will include, how much time is spent revising previous classes, how to introduce new concepts, and what homework and practice material will involve.
“Nurturing interests outside the world of academia equips children with essential life skills. In addition, access to reputable institutions and respected teachers paves the way for a life-long love for learning,” said the startup’s cofounder Bhavik Rathod.
Kyt earns its revenue through sales of courses and pays a set fee to instructors and payment gateways. Once the courses are over, students receive a certificate of completion, signed by the curriculum partners. Most courses have three levels — beginner, intermediate, and advanced — with monthly subscriptions coming soon.
Kyt courses require minimal commitment — less than five hours per week — and include regular assessments of each student, with progress reports shared regularly with parents. It offers two learning approaches for children with its exclusive content including Kyt academy and Kyt workshops. In the coming months, Kyt expects several thousand new students to enrol in its platform, while also adding and onboarding more teachers for online learning. Kyt will also be adding more courses, including chess, various musical instruments, public speaking, creative writing, and how to be a content creator.
Lancify
Why Lancify Made It To The List
New-age skills have been in demand across industries, however, most educational institutions have failed to fulfill that pain point of skilled talent supply. Lancify focusses on new and up-to-date ways of employability by enabling young people to learn new-age skills related to trending SaaS products and tools.
The startup sells courses that will allow learners to become freelance-ready and take clients from A to Z and claims to build a community where learners can share resources, leads, hacks, and synergize to become the global workforce of tomorrow. The startup charges learners a fee for every course they purchase and is exploring how the SaaS platforms in its courses could use learners as a plug-and-play expert network for businesses.
Cofounders Gowtham Sundaresan and Azan Barodawala were freelancers when in college together and began to get a lot of projects and even built a community of other young freelancers throughout the city. They then launched Lancify Learn with two courses recently.
“The response so far has been amazing. Our waitlist blew up and got full within a few days. Our users are saying that this is the first time they’ve actually experienced learning and entertainment at the same time. We’ve managed to bring down the time taken to produce a course by 50% in the past 4 months, whilst constantly improving in production and content value,” Sundaresan told Inc42.
For the next 12 months, the startup is looking to churn out more courses as they continue to increase how binge-able and valuable the content and experience is. It aims to add 100K customers by the end of 2021.
Mudrex
Why Mudrex Made It To The List
Cryptocurrency models are on the rise in India and digital investment platforms are one of the biggest beneficiaries. Mudrex, which was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2019 batch, is leveraging AI and machine learning models to allow crypto traders to automate their cryptocurrency investments, similar to robo-advisories for stock markets. The startup aims to bring advanced trading and investing algorithms for the crypto segment.
Mudrex provides traders and investors the tools to automate their trading and investing process and as a result, earn better or balanced returns. Mudrex has a subscription-based business model and charges users a monthly fee which is a percentage of what they invest.
The startup told us it has seen 40% MoM growth during the lockdown. It claims to have over 8500 crypto traders with more than $2 Mn managed and processed by the platform every month. Till date, the platform claims to have processed 200K orders with a total trading volume of $400 Mn.
Orglens
Why Orglens Made It To The List
Much of the real work in companies even today happens through the informal networks of relationships that employees build across functions and divisions. These informal networks cut through formal structures and also at times sabotage best-laid plans by blocking communication and resisting change. So, mapping and understanding these informal networks and social links can help organisations drive productivity, innovation and efficiency.
Orglens solves communication, collaboration and execution challenges in organisations and communities by identifying the hidden, invisible networks through which information and work flows. Information and insights from and about these hidden networks are then used in making organizations and communities more efficient, inclusive, resilient and effective.
The startup has created a model on the intersection of social psychology and network science to map and generate insights from informal and invisible networks. Currently, its offerings are in the HR tech space but soon they will also start their social sector practice. Orglens claims to have worked with companies such as Nestle, PropTiger, Western Digital, Tata Realty, Paytm, Sterlite Power and Egon Zehnder.
PumPumPum
Why PumPumPum Made It To The List
Pre-owned car leasing is going from being a lifestyle choice to a necessity amid spending curbs, and even businesses are reutilising assets for less costly shared mobility and rental models. PumPumPum offers short duration vehicle leasing, long-term rentals (six to 24 months) on private registered cars at the most affordable lease EMIs.
To support the entire used car ecosystem including car dealers, customers, insurance partners, automobile workshops, banks & NBFCs, PumPumPum manages the owner’s risks such as repair, maintenance, tyres, batteries, car resale value, insurance and more for a safe and comfortable travel with hassle-free ownership.
Ranging from monthly subscriptions of INR 10K to INR 1 Lakh, PumPumPum car subscriptions are based on the duration of the subscription. Witnessing a huge demand for luxury cars in the segment, the company is aggressively planning to offer used luxury cars in leasing format.
By leveraging futuristic technologies such as IoT and machine learning, the company aims to deliver a seamless, safe and exceptional experience to users. The company is also applying ML to reduce maintenance costs by taking a preventive course with the help of data received through IoT.
Qapita
Why Qapita Made It To The List
The scalability and eventual recurring revenue streams that a SaaS model affords led to the idea of Qapita. The equity management platform is targeting startups in Southeast Asia and India. Its first product QapMap is designed to enable capitalisation table management, employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) management and digital ESOP issuance with the aim of eventually enabling digital share issuance for companies across this region. Qapita is headquartered in Singapore with a presence in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.
“We want to be a product-led platform which will scale in the digital age with network effects and be an N-of-1 company Having worked alongside multiple founders and startups during our fundraising journeys, we recognised the huge gaps that exist in digitising ownership records. If records are systematically digitised today, then transactions can be digitised in the future,” said the startup’s cofounder Lakshman Gupta.
The startup also believes that the platform will encourage more employee equity ownership in startups. “The ESOP value proposition should be as simple as a payslip. We launched the company seeing the opportunity to tap into the rapid growth of startups, angel investments and employee ownership in Southeast Asia and India,” he added.
The startup is digitising the system of record for equity ownership which is currently a cap table, usually managed on excel. The platform aims to serve as a one-stop repository of all legal documents relating to equity investments such as the relevant filings, share certificates, shareholder agreements among others.
Shippigo
Why Shippigo Made It To The List
As more and more brands are looking to ship a large number of orders today at a faster rate, there is a huge demand for shipping software that offers strong integrations with the brand’s selling channels and increases efficiency. Cashing on the same, Shippigo offers software pre-integrated with the top shipment carriers and ecommerce platforms around.
Clients can just add Shippigo to their online store and start shipping using its various partners. It aims to help online brands make informed decisions by comparing rates offered by our carrier partners across locations in real-time. It also works on a zero commitment model in which when a brand has a shipment to be picked up, all they need to do is just click and there is no minimum guarantee needed.
Shippigo presently offers cash on delivery and prepaid shipping options to around 24K postal codes in India and cross-border commerce solutions spanning 220 countries. It also focusses on key aspects such as returns and reverse logistics. With online selling, there are bound to be some returned items now and then and through Shippigo, brands can quickly enable pickups and service reverse logistics.
SignalX.ai
Why SignalX Made It To The List
Figuring out the risk assessment related to clients, investments, third-parties, and counterparties is out of the most challenging aspects of running any business. Hyderabad-based SignalX offers an AI-based automated due diligence solution that accelerates and enhances the same for financial and legal analysts. It helps these experts examine the target company’s ownership and group structures and equity holding patterns.
Built for risk, legal and compliance professionals, we arm our users with powerful automation and research capabilities helping them run over 200+ risk and compliance checks on any given target. SignalX offers its solutions to professionals in M&A, insolvency, valuation and others.
It helps them analyse changes in ownership structure over time and understand key individuals involved at the higher levels in an organization and their relationship with other entities. It leverages various tech tools to perform an in-depth financial analysis on cash flow, profit and loss, balance sheet data across years and helps clients understand trends in profitability, operational margin, and others.
Besides it also makes examining regulatory notifications easy by maintaining an ever-expanding list of regulatory notifications from banks, financial regulators, competition commissions, and market regulators.
Spayee
Why Spayee Made It To The List
Working in the edtech space with educators and content creators for more than eight years, Spayee cofounders Sandeep Singh, Gourav Kakkar, Aniruddha Singh and Vijay Singh realised that there is a need for an all-in-one platform for content creators to monetise their content. They felt that the whole market of course platforms was being dominated by global players who were not apt for Indian creators and this is when they decided to launch Spayee in 2018.
It aims to help content creators with the highest quality, affordable and scalable technologies by offering an all-in-one white-label course platform for content creators to create, market and sell their courses. The platform allows creators to create course content in the form of audio and video tutorials, pdf documents, quizzes, assignments, and live classes along with automated payment gateways, sales and marketing funnels.
The startup claims that its product is being used by more than 1K customers in India, and it has helped them generate more than INR 200 Cr with online courses in the last two years. The startup aims to become the go-to platform for Indian course creators, who want to monetise their course content. It believes that it has a great value proposition in the global market too and is planning to go global by 2022. On the product front, it is working towards creating an exclusive B2B marketplace for Spayee customers, where content creators can collaborate among themselves and generate more sales.
StockGro
Why StockGro Made It To The List
With over $ 2Tn in market cap and over $20 Bn in daily trade volume, the Indian stock market is 8th largest globally, but it is still dominated by traditional brokers and mutual funds.
StockGro was founded to serve the need to disrupt this segment. A social investment platform that has brought three elements under one roof — gaming, social and trading. Focussed on democratising investments for millennials, the startup claims to have simplified the user journey from learning to making investments in the stock market.
The startup claims that more than 40 MBA schools have adopted StockGro as an official partner for stock trading education and running mock exchanges. Users across small towns and metros are spending many hours every-day on the app. “StockGro has gained prominent user traction in just four months and expected to cross 200K paying users by the end of 2020,” founder Ajay Lakhotia added.
SuperOps.ai
Why Superops.ai Made It To The List
Having been in the IT industry for a couple of decades and successfully building IT service strategy, Superops.ai cofounders Arvind Parthiban and Jayakumar Karumbasalam wanted to build a product that would reshape the way people thought about IT and IT service providers.
The pandemic gave us a moment to pause and reflect on how we wanted to do this, said Parthiban. “Due to COVID-19, everything came to a standstill. Businesses couldn’t operate the way they usually did and the workforce became distributed. We discovered that businesses were heavily reliant on IT service providers and IT managed services to enable business continuity and set up for remote work,” he said.
The founders also felt that managed service providers (MSPs) and IT service providers weren’t equipped with the right tools to manage their businesses and services efficiently in this new normal and this was a huge opportunity that we wanted to tap into. They thus launched Superops.ai, an AI-first company that empowers MSPs to stay relevant in changing times.
“We are building futuristic MSP tools with true-AI capabilities that help SMB service providers to reduce costs, save time, and enhance productivity. It is a SaaS business model,” added Parthiban.
The startup is still in the pre-product launch stage and it is preparing for the beta launch of its products. It has successfully signed up users for a pilot programme and its immediate plan is to achieve product-market fit and wants to enable IT and managed service providers to solve new-age problems using new-age software in the long-term.
TagMango
Why TagMango Made It To The List
TagMango provides business tools for creators to set up revenue-generating communities by providing one-time and subscription-based services. The startup claims to have worked closely with over 100k creators, influencers and artists to create TagMango’s feature set.
The platforms help creators create multiple income streams by creating mangoes (or tiers) to which the audience can subscribe to, get complete freedom to create the kind of content their community vibes with and enable fan interactions through personalised video calls, shoutouts, and various social interactions.
It helps them centralise their community management, automate payment systems and streamline the onboarding and creation process. Its various offerings include exclusive content, video calls, chats, video shoutouts, social interactions, creator reviews, video conferencing and direct messaging.
Terra.do
Why Terra.do Made It To The List
An edtech startup with a difference, Terra.do is an online school focussed on climate change and aims to transition millions of individuals into the climate industry to fight back against global warming. They run a 12-week online bootcamp for talented individuals that teaches concepts to tackle climate change, plugs them into a network of mentors and exposes them to work opportunities in the space.
The startup selects motivated individuals who are already skilled in their fields for the 12-week online programme, with ten hours of time, to teach about all aspects of climate — science, policy, business, social justice. Each class has just 20-25 fellows with extensive skills, background and passion.
During the programme, the learners also become part of a global community of hundreds of climate changemakers. They can form study groups, hang out in video calls with alumni and have lifetime access to this network. The target audience for these programmes is anyone who wants a grand overview of the climate landscape, and those who want to move into climate work as a career, as well as anyone with high-school level familiarity with maths and science.
Yellow Class
Why YellowClass Made It To The List
Capitalising on the edtech wave, YellowClass offers an online kid’s hobby classes for the age group of 3-12 years. The courses offered include a variety of hobbies such as drawing, painting, dancing, cooking, storytelling. These are large classrooms where 1000s of kids join together and interact digitally. They can also participate in a variety of competitions and events. The platform offers a variety of free and premium classes.
Yellow Class has a community-led business model — bringing mothers together to share their kid’s hobbies, activities and encourage each other. The growth of the business is organic and led by referrals and has more than 200K members in the community in a short span of time.
The business model was borne out of early user behaviour, where mothers would refer others mothers and kids to join the classes. YellowClass regularly takes feedback from the community on the type of classes that are working well. This deep-rooted understanding of the activities and the constant feedback from mothers helps the startup figure out the roadmap, said cofounder Anshul Gupta.
The startup has also been experimenting with kids competitions such as Halloween contests, Children’s Day contests and also new activity classes like quizzing and magic. The simulated classes held enable continued interactions with kids.
“Our mentors have been instrumental in bringing out the magic across our workshops. Also recently, we have introduced a number of trend-driven contests and content eg: Halloween, Diwali, etc. which lead to high engagement and excitement among children, we would like to continue the efforts in this direction,” Gupta added.
So, that’s our 30 Startups watchlist for this month. Inc42+ members can access our picks for the past nine months here. To nominate a startup or suggest a name for us to check out, please email at [email protected]