30 Startups To Watch: The Startups That Caught Our Eye In September 2020

Businesses the world over are gearing up for a reboot. They are rethinking recovery strategies, marketing or sales funnel, strengths and opportunities and are moving towards gaining back some of the lost ground, all this while ensuring employees are safe and their jobs are secure. For some startups in India, the pandemic has also unleashed the opportunity to come up with innovative solutions and also help businesses scale faster.

This month, our list of 30 Startups revolves around companies with interesting product propositions with plenty of B2B products in the fray. All these early-stage startups are leveraging the latest technology and tapping into the newer needs of consumers and businesses. With venture capital funding also recovering in Q3 2020, the Indian market could be on the comeback road.

30 Startups To Watch: September 2020

The enterprise tech sector seems to have got a big boost due to the post-pandemic market conditions. Companies that ease operational hurdles that have seen their stock rise and are also seeing increased investor interest.

In our list for September 2020, 10 out of 30 startups are operating in enterprise tech. Investor sentiments are also leaning towards startups in deeptech, edtech and ecommerce in the past few months, with agritech, known often as the least-disrupted sector, also gaining more attention.

So, here is the Inc42 Plus 30 startups list for September. Keep an eye out on these startups 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.

Adosphere

Why Adosphere Made It To The List

With a majority of India’s next billion internet users expected to come from rural India, Adosphere is trying to tap this market with its efforts to simplify communications in small businesses.

The communication technology startup claims to be powering the digital transformation of companies by leveraging its core strength of connecting people online. The startup enhances outreach programmes of companies with better strategies and simplified communication, enabling common citizens to connect with brands and companies and opt for their products or services.

Technology adoption and digital transformation are the biggest challenges for rural and semi-urban consumer-centric brands, small businesses, legacy companies, and in public infrastructure as well. Workplace from Facebook recently on-boarded Adosphere as its partner for India to integrate its feature set in Adosphere. The startup has leveraged Facebook-like features for chat, video calls, posts, and groups to train teachers in public schools across rural and urban areas.

Adosphere recently completed the execution of a community and collaboration building project for training and curriculum support to more than 1.2 lakh teachers in state-run schools in Gujarat. The project has facilitated online collaboration and training for teachers across Gujarat, helping local students continue their studies despite disruptions from Covid-19. It is now exploring similar digital innovation programs with other state governments and organisations.

Airprobe

Why Airprobe Made It To The List

Drones are increasingly being seen as the newest way to manage operations in many industries especially for hazardous conditions or even places where humans would need plenty of support to reach. Bengaluru-based Airprobe is tapping data from drones used for solar panel management to increase the reliability and operational efficiency of solar assets across their lifecycle.

Airprobe has helped 12+ GW of solar assets in India and overseas increase the performance and reliability metrics products using computer vision and machine learning to crunch data from drones and other field measurements.

Airprobe has two primary business models — it offers turnkey inspection solutions to drone operators around the world and secondly, it works with enterprises to build and scale drone programs in-house and with a SaaS product for data analytics. The company has a presence in North America, Europe, and Japan currently and intends to aggressively push for business in these markets.

“Our vision is to use AI and digital solutions to build solutions for climate change and adaptability. We have started in the renewable energy sphere as solar has become the default choice for power generation around the world and our goal is to make these solar energy projects reliable and operationally efficient,” said cofounder Aditya Bhat.

AntWak

Why AntWak Made It To The List

Short videos don’t just have to be about sketches, memes, or killing time. AntWak is looking to bring a new flavour of short videos through its social learning platform for professionals. The startup curates short videos from seasoned professionals from every possible field which serve as motivation, encouragement, guidance, or skilling tips for freshers and new professionals.

Founder Joybroto Ganguly said the vision of AntWak is to empower professionals who have accumulated years of experience to share it with others in their field or everyone. The professional world is a very different ball-game from the academic world. The learning there is more hands-on and more experiential. We learn from our experiences and we collaborate to work with others who have been in our shoes earlier,” Ganguly added.

The microlearning format is just the first step. The startup is in the process of fine-tuning its products to add more learning experiences. The idea is to create role models out of experienced professionals but in a more personal manner than a cold, formal approach of LinkedIn.

AntWak is now part of Google for Startups 2020 cohort. Currently, it boasts over 5K practising professionals from over 30 countries across 15 different professional verticals. Ganguly said the goal is to reach a million users in the next 12 months globally.

Augnito

Why Augnito Made It To The List

The cornerstone of digital health is the successful implementation of electronic medical records (EMR) or digital health records and in countries like the United States, speech has been the critical factor driving EMR adoption. This has created a multi-billion dollar industry.

Augnito is looking to tap this need for the widespread adoption of digital health records in India for the healthcare system. With the National Digital Health Mission expected to be implemented in India, the digital health ID will bring more structured data and create electronic medical records.

The startup offers a suite of products and services in voice recognition technology to healthcare providers with a SaaS-based revenue model. Its advanced speech recognition AI which enables healthcare professionals to increase EMR adoption in hospitals, without spending time typing into a machine. It claims to be driving better clinical outcomes and patient care quality.

Mumbai-based Augnito’s clinical speech recognition application offers a license for individual professionals, small teams, and enterprises which can be purchased on an annual or monthly basis. The speech API which is used to power EMRs is on a pay-as-you-go model with usage-based pricing.

BatteryPool

Why BatteryPool Made It To The List

While consumer adoption of electric vehicles has not been very encouraging, businesses are definitely capitalising on the cost savings that EVs offer in the long run. But one problem area is EV management, for which there’s no playbook as such in India. BatteryPool is a SaaS platform that is looking to give fleet operators clarity on how their EVs are functioning, including charging, operational maintenance, battery health, and more.

For founders Ashwin Shankar and Neil Nevgi, it all started when they ran a fleet of 2W EVs in Pune for one and a half years. During the process, they received many insights into the problems faced by EV fleet operators and drivers. They thus built a tool internally basis those insights to manage their operations and after realising the market for the same, now they have started to offer this tool to operators in other geographies.

“The economics of using EVs in commercial and fleet applications are starting to make sense but there exist operational challenges around using them mainly due to limitations around charging and a lack of an after-sales ecosystem. We want to enable the adoption of EVs in fleet applications by helping fleet operators and drivers address the operational challenges,” said Shankar.

Bold Care

Why Bold Care Made It To The List

Indian men — at least in the metros — are no longer shying away from turning to new-age solutions for sexual wellness, hair loss issues, and daily nutritional needs. Bold Care is among a slew of men’s health and wellness D2C brands with products for sexual performance, hair loss prevention, and daily nutrition.

In true D2C fashion, the startup manufactures its own products in GMP-approved facilities and has no middlemen hence guaranteeing the consistent quality. Bold Care sells its products online and its primary focus is on sexual health products. Being an online store, it is able to provide a privacy-first shopping experience for somewhat sensitive products. It also engages with its users in a comforting manner to discuss and solve some of the more important issues that men may have difficulty talking about.

Before starting work on the brand, the founders realised there isn’t a lot of reliable information about the market size in India for these problems due to the lack of conversation and research. The founders met around 60 sexologists in India and created a sexual health educational site through which they spoke to 250 males suffering from these problems one-on-one. They also tapped into their network of pharma distributors to understand the customer behaviour and gauge the market size.

COHIRE

Why COHIRE Made It To The List

Startups are often moving at such a fast pace that, there’s rarely any thought paid to CXO functions at the early stage. But sometimes, finding the right leader for a key function can also drive growth for the core business because specialist functions require specialists. COHIRE is a C-suite gig economy company that is looking to change this.

COHIRE enables startups to easily bring CXOs and top-level managers to drive key functions at a divided cost. This means startups, MSMEs, SMEs and other businesses can co-hire these experienced, high knowledge professionals on a shared basis.

For instance, in this model, a CFO could legally manage the all-important finance functions for two or more companies simultaneously, like an employee. COHIRE claims its model yields significant cost savings and a slew of other benefits such as flexibility, low liability, cost free on-boarding, easy replacements and exits, instant access to networks of expert vendors or professionals for execution and so on. This model also works on a fixed tenure or business problem-solving issue or business turnaround aspects.

The startup helps companies hire leaders at a comparatively lower cost and C-level executives can really add value in the scale-up phase in a short span of time.  COHIRE recently launched a 25:75 scheme, wherein businesses only pay 25% of the pre-decided compensation for a fixed tenure (3–6 months) with the rest, that is 75%, as a variable, linked to deliverables and KRAs. The startup said it would soon be working with early-stage startups on an equity-based model to further bring down the cash burn.

Cub McPaws

Why Cub McPaws Made It To The List

After working in leadership roles in companies such as Flipkart, Pepperfry, eBay, nVidia, Abhay Bhat decided to launch an ecommerce platform for kids leveraging technology. Cub McPaws uses its patented augmented reality (AR) technology to constructively engage with Generation Alpha kids, that is kids born after 2010, and their parents.

Cub McPaws claims to redefine the way kids and parents shop online with the AR experience. The startup recently raised pre-Series A from a global syndicate of investors from Japan, Dubai, the US, and India this month. The startup also claims to be growing its business at 50% month-on-month. The reason for growth during this pandemic, it says, is the tech-based approach that increases the immersiveness of the shopping experience.

After starting in India, Cub McPaws is looking to offer its complete range of products and expand product lines internationally.

CustomFit.ai

Why CustomFit.ai Made It To The List

With so many enterprise tech products and services in the market, the quest to stand out is getting harder for startups, resulting in spending to acquire customers.

CustomFit.ai is looking to help businesses and brands create a personalised B2B website to attract more clients and customers. The personalisation platform is designed from the ground up to address the use-cases and challenges of B2B marketers. It converts the website traffic to quality leads by changing website content and call-to-action (CTA) elements as per visitor characteristics such as the company size of the visitor, their industry, the source of the visit, the current product they are using among others.

CustomFit claims that its ability to identify visitors and map their traits, from various different sources and understanding visitor’s behavior from their journeys and actions eliminate the guesswork and provide valuable insights to marketers to plan and design their marketing campaigns and website optimisation strategies effectively and effortlessly.

It also integrates with any platform including WordPress, Webflow, Bubble, Wix, in-house/custom-built websites and more within a few minutes.

“Personalisation is now the key strategy for B2B marketing. CustomFit.ai transforms the website into a growth engine or one salesperson by precisely personalizing it for each visitor, thereby making the buying process a lot easier,” cofounder and CEO Ashwin Kumar said.

Docupilot

Why Docupilot Made It To The List

Automation is the latest trend in SMB digitisation, particularly those businesses that have been paper-dependent so far. Docupilot is looking to tap this wave with its document automation/generation SaaS product that helps businesses automate their document creation workflows. For instance, creating new documents manually by changing your client’s details such as the client’s name and address can be very unrewarding.

With Docupilot, customers can use the existing document and use custom automatic parameters for client details to create a personalized document for every client. Part of the Zoho Mafia, Docupilot has not raised external funding yet. “Since we wanted to bootstrap we looked specifically for less competitive markets and came up with a business automation domain. I feel these markets are still early so we wanted to build around it,” said cofounder Aravind S.

The startup’s long-term roadmap is around business automation and helping businesses automate repetitive tasks to save time, effort and money. It also plans to build multi-SaaS business automation products.

Eduauraa

Why Eduauraa Made It To The List

Tapping the all-encompassing edtech wave, Eduauraa is a digital learning platform that is banking on its affiliations with nine educational boards (seven state boards, ICSE and CBSE) in Hindi and English to gain a leg up on the competition.

The startup’s current content involves the PCMB syllabus for classes 6-10. It can be accessed through a dedicated app on Android and iOS, or the on web browser and on the Zee5 premium platform, which subsidises the cost of access for students, given Zee5 can be used by others in the home. Eduauraa offers three levels of introductory subscription packages including base video pack subscriptions at INR 999 per annum, VAS pack subscriptions at INR 1,999 per year, and all-inclusive subscription at INR 2,499 per annum.

​Limited access to good education in India ​has led to a surge in tuition culture with off-school classes accounting for 15% of the total expenditure on private education and about 11-12% of the average family income is dedicated to tuitions. Eduauraa aims to close this gap by providing quality education at affordable rates for students

Its team includes teachers from ten schools, ​subject matter experts, visualizers, animators, editors and directors. The startup was launched last month by actor Ranveer Singh and since then has acquired a student base of more than 25K through various channels. Future plans involve expanding the content repository with four subjects including history, economics, geography, and civics and penetrating into a wider target audience starting with students of grade 11th and 12th to IIT, JEE/ NEET courses as well.

Enercent

Why Enercent Made It To The List

EV charging and management are about to boom big time in India and the ones that find the right problem to solve are likely to take the early lead. Enercent has taken a multi-sided approach to its energy platform for EV users, infrastructure operators and suppliers. Through a combination of mobile app, cloud services, and IoT hardware, it automates the entire cycle of EV charging like planning a charge, booking a charging session, measuring the energy consumed, billing and settlement, predicting energy loads and balancing to ensure safety and reliability of electricity.

“We are demystifying EV charging by automating the entire life cycle. With our products and services, we help fleet and EV users adapt, thrive and truly enjoy EV owning experience with zero range anxiety and superior RoI,”

Post the easing of lockdown norms from September 1, Enercent has expanded to Hyderabad, Pune and Delhi NCR. Enercent is on track to complete 51+ charging sites with more than 1500 charging stations across six cities by the end of 2020. It claims 2021 will be the year of expansion to 26 cities across India. The startup is also rolling out fast-charging stations for consumers, specifically targeting the premium EV segment in metros.

Factors.AI

Why Factors.AI Made It To The List

With many legacy brands going online today and D2C becoming the chosen path for new ones, leveraging the right marketing tech solutions has become key. Many companies are also seeing the value in opting for end-to-end services such as automation, workflow optimisation, personalisation of customer journey and advanced user funnels.

Factors.AI’s marketing platform integrates across data silos to deliver actionable insights through predictive analytics and AI algorithms. It aims to simplify analytics across marketing and product verticals for brands and establish a strong analytics foundation to enable data-driven strategies.

The startup provides a unified SaaS dashboard with personalised insights as per each brand’s needs to monitor critical developments. The Bengaluru-based company was recently shortlisted for the fourth batch of Google for Startups Accelerator India programme.

“We are taking a goal-driven approach to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and anomalies across customer interactions and help marketers spend lesser time analysing data and more time implementing data-driven decisions,” the company said.

Fokuz

Why Fokuz Made It To The List

Airmeet was one of the first Indian startups to crack through the video conferencing boom in the past six months and bagged $12 Mn in funding from Sequoia, Accel Partners and other major global investors earlier in September. Anticipating the boom in video conferencing, Inc42 Plus had picked Airmeet in its 30 Startups To Watch way back in March 2020.

Well, that doesn’t mean the video conferencing game is done. We have two rivals for Airmeet to contend with on our list this month. The first is Fokuz claims to help businesses enable remote working more efficiently with its video conferencing product. It was developed within a short span of five months to cater to the surge in demand from small businesses and startups, especially those that wanted an Indian-origin app.

Fokuz has secured a $2 Mn from a foreign investment entity recently and it plans to strengthen in areas like research and development (R&D), support and business development. Given the situation with Covid, it has allowed businesses to currently use all its features for free till the end of September 2020.

In the coming months, the paid version of Fokuz will bring features such as recording, which captures video feeds of the meeting with a built-in recording feature and stores the minutes securely for future references, document and file sharing during the meeting, whiteboards for brainstorming and real-time collaborations with detailed reports on the groups created and so on.

Foxy

Why Foxy Made It To The List

Social commerce is perhaps the best fit for beauty ecommerce and Foxy is looking to take the lead over established players with its sharp vertical focus. The beauty and grooming social commerce app for men and women offers customers a personalised shopping experience through selfie analysis, targeted curation and recommendations as well as differentiated fulfilment for brands.

Brands can use the platform for the reach and the logistics modules to create a direct-to-consumer channel. “We are building the blocks of ecommerce 2.0 that will shift the focus from buying to shopping through a mix of discovery, social engagement, entertainment and advice,” claimed cofounder Nikhil Gilani.

While Foxy is a consumer-facing ecommerce play. It also provides brand partners with a full-stack solution to drive D2C operations. It is backed by angels such as Sequoia India’s Rajan Anandan, Cred founder Kunal Shah, WhatsApp business head Neeraj Arora, former Facebook director Anand Chandrasekaran, Deutsche Telekom’s Srini Gopalan and VCs such as Sequoia, Lightspeed, Matrix and AWI.

Habbithealth

Why Habbithealth Made It To The List

Taking on the might of HealthifyMe and Curefit, Habbithealth is looking to bring proprietary foods formulated using modern natural ingredients to the metro markets. The startup claims to make everyday nutrition simpler and more rewarding with a tech-led gamified approach.

The nutrition-tech company is building a full-stack model with complete ownership over R&D, IP, brand and deep integrations throughout the value chain. Over the past three years of research, through alternate natural sources of proteins, fats and sugars, Habbithealth claims to make every consumable item as healthy as possible, without compromising on the taste.

In the coming months, the startup will be launching a wide portfolio of personalised nutrition products from natural proteins for everyday use, to indulgent snacks, beverages and ice creams. The digital ecosystem aims to guide consumers on their health journey by building good habits and rewarding them for it. Over time, it also plans to build on the data from customer preferences and personalise their nutrition needs.

helloVoRld

Why helloVoRld Made It To The List

The name helloVoRld may just be the most unique name for a startup we have seen this year, but the name holds the clue to its vision. Well, it’s VR or virtual reality.

Founded in 2019 by Dhawal Jain and Aman Kumar, who met at BITS Pilani, the idea was to use something seen in video games to solve a major problem the duo encountered when they rented a flat together in Mumbai. They couldn’t choose the right furniture since they couldn’t see how it would look inside the home.

After doing the due research into how VR can solve this challenge, the founders interviewed about 100 furniture companies and designers to understand their problems and looked at the virtual inventory as a solution to most of their challenges. After graduating in July 2020, the founders are all set to release the company’s first product soon.

The startup claims to be enabling VR experiences for a wider variety of products at one-tenth of the current cost, allowing customers to experience the products from the comforts of their home.

The startup launched the beta version of the AR and fabric-customisation platform, which has been adopted by over 50 companies in India within a month. helloVoRld wants to make the product simpler by integrating the technology to any website/app in under five minutes.

KwikID

Why KwikID Made It To The List

Recovery in fintech sub-sectors such as digital insurance, investments and even lending may simply have not been possible without the steps taken to streamline authentication through digital and video KYC. Kwik.ID offers the KYC solution as a SaaS product to improve customer onboarding and instantly verify the identity of users.

The startup enables complete remote on-boarding of customers within three minutes, as long as the customer has the PAN & other verification documents ready. Kwik.ID claims to predict with 90% accuracy whether a video KYC call will get completed or not. This is powered by the company’s proprietary algorithm and predictive analytics with real-time insights around bandwidth, phone hardware, customer demographic, among others.

Kwik.ID was one of the first products fully compliant with RBI’s V-CIP guidelines that came in January and is designed to ensure that Video KYC tool reaches rural areas with provisions for a low bandwidth mode and guided step-by-step processes. Currently, the startup is in an aggressive client acquisition mode across BFSI in India.

Lifology

Why Lifology Made It To The List

In edtech, parents make the choice and the users are the children, but often counselling is not provided adequately to both parties. Lifology is looking to help parents choose the right career paths for their children by introducing them to a plethora of new-age career options. It empowers them with modern assessments to get a 360-degree understanding about the child, connects children and parents to the network of career coaches, facilitates interaction with mentors and exposes kids to life skill training.

The company offers video-based content related to various careers, courses and universities curated by experts and assessments powered by artificial Intelligence used on the platform to measure strengths, skills, aptitude and competency and career suitability of children.

Interacting with more than 3K parents across India made the founders realise that the problem they address is deeply rooted and cannot be resolved through a couple of hours of counselling or training. The only way to address this is to support parents through the long-term. This prompted them to follow an annual subscription model to Lifology. This model offers special features. However, parents also access Lifology magazine, Lifology TV and Lifology hub free of cost. The startup aims to reach 200K parents by March 31, 2021. At present, it has more than 12K paid users and 60K parents who access unpaid services.

Newton School

Why Newton School Made It To The List

It’s one of the biggest challenges in the Indian education system — while degrees and course completion rate may be high, there is little attention paid to employability, even in the most lucrative sectors such as engineering. Newton School trains students to become skilled software developers and get placed in top companies, with a focus on employing the students emerging out of small-town India.

The startup offers a six-month online training programme with a pay-after-placement model under which students are charged zero fees until they are placed, with a minimum package of INR 6 Lakh per annum.

Before Newton School, founders Siddharth Maheshwari and Nishant Chandra cofounded Bolo, a video-based consultation platform and while building it, they realised that there’s a huge demand for engineering roles and enthusiasm of students was also high. While talking to these students they figured out that while the students were highly motivated, the education system had failed to make them employable. It was then that they decided to bridge this gap and founded Newton School in 2019 with an aim to empower students to become proficient software developers. This skill pool of coders are then made available to companies to hire immediately at zero cost.

The coming months will see Newton School further evolve its platform and increase its user capacity to handle thousands of simultaneous learners. The company will also prioritise the development of products utilising Artificial Intelligence to streamline and personalise the learning journey of each student.

Gobuzzr

Why Gobuzzr Made It To The List

Bees are a critical link in the pollination cycle of plants and not only produce honey but can actually help an ecosystem flourish without human intervention. Unfortunately, inhumane beekeeping practices have tarnished the reputation of the bee industry as a whole, but Chennai-based agritech startup Gobuzzr is looking to change that with its IoT solution for apiaries.

It keeps a check on beehives in apiaries, by monitoring the weight of the hive, internal humidity, temperature and sounds to determine the health of the hive in real-time. Farmers can get this data through a web portal or mobile app.

“Gobuzzr will not only put an end to the choking of thousands of innocent bees in the process, but also reduce transportation cost and cut down manual labour cost. Most importantly, this will show the health condition of the bees and beehives, remotely and in real-time, thereby increasing the productivity of honey and agri-farming,” said Kapildev G, cofounder, Gobuzzr.

Gobuzzr’s tech platform is built around the IoT device called ‘Beehive Monitor,’ which is fixed at the bottom of each beehive. Embedded with a GPS sensor, this device further helps farmers identify where the hive is located and sensors also monitor the weight of the beehive in real-time. The device sends the data to the cloud periodically, which is then transmitted to the mobile application.

OurEye.Ai

Why OurEye.Ai Made It To The List

The next-gen cameras will not only be capable of recording events in real-time, but also give businesses analytics based on those videos to really maximise the investment in video surveillance. OurEye.ai is a video intelligence solutions provider that helps businesses get higher returns on the investment of existing cameras by deploying a virtual auditor or store manager or quality supervisor through cameras.

This is done through artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to help businesses track standard operating procedures (SOPs) and make them move away from physical audits by making data concrete. The startup believes that data is just as good as the person collecting it.

The SaaS subscription for OurEye’s tech is priced at INR 900 to INR. 6500 per camera per month and fees are charged depending on the APIs or features used, including basic SOP compliance, facial recognition and data analytics APIs and more.

The 100X.VC backed startup has deployed three pilots, the biggest one being QSR brand Burger King. Along with this, it is currently setting up for 25-30 businesses every day. The plan is currently to onboard 50K cameras by the end of the year, says the startup. Going ahead, it aims to have 10 Mn connected cameras by 2025.

Pracify

Why Pracify Made It To The List

The gig economy is not just about food and hyperlocal delivery — companies are using part-time workers and contractors for tasks that require a lot of human capital. Pracify connects companies to a network of selected and trained on-demand gig workers to perform simple task-based jobs on a pay-per-performance system. This enables end-to-end work execution for companies in a tech-driven manner and companies pay only for outcome achieved. Companies can hire, manage, track and pay gig workers using Pracify’s web application.

The startup aims to disrupt the traditional outsourcing model by making it easier, risk-free, cost-effective, and transparent for companies to hire temporary workers for feet on the street and work from home kind of tasks. The tasks currently are focussed on key business functions such as marketing, sales, and research and operations.

“We were one of the nine startups selected for Class 02 of 100X.VC recently and since the demo day on September 18, 2020, we have received a lot of investor, business and student interest. We are launching the product early next month but have already seen a few hundred installs on both App Store & Play Store,” said cofounder Shivam Malhotra.

Pracify’s plans for this year include acquiring large enterprises and growth-stage startups to start executing work on the platform, hit initial one million users on the supply side and execute 500K tasks on the platform.

Precily

Why Precily Made It To The List

Legal automation is about to see an arms race between enterprise tech startups as legal compliance is one of the most document-heavy processes. Precily arms tax and legal practitioners with AI-based automation tools for research and drafting, freeing them to focus on higher cognitive tasks such as analysis and customer relationships. It offers an intuitive solution with a workflow management layer that helps drive efficiency across various tax and legal workflows.

Precily AI prepares automated responses to tax notices, legal opinions, thought leadership documents and research documents while also providing the entire document and supporting links and references and meta-data tagging.

The enterprise tech startup aims to be the largest AI-based business process automation company for the tax and legal industries by bringing in the fundamental transformation that helps clients save information retrieval time by 80% and increase efficiency by bringing more than 90% machine accuracy

Precily’s customers which include Big Four audit firms and law firms have achieved 300% ROI with an 80% increase in workflow efficiency and 70%-90% reduction in staffing costs, claims the startup.

Railofy

Why Railofy Made It To The List

India has a vast rail-network connecting the nooks and corners of the country and ferrying nearly 23 Mn people every day. However, the very real and long-outstanding problem of the waitlist in the Indian Railway system has led to derailed experiences like cancelled trips, standing journeys, last-minute expensive flights or unreliable touts and agents. These stories of congestion, cancellations, daily hassles and anxieties related to reservations against cancellations (RAC) or waitlisted tickets are what Railofy is solving for.

Waitlisted passengers can go to Railofy and buy RAC or Waitlist protection for a fee of INR 200. The startup monitors the passenger’s waitlisted ticket in the background. If the ticket is not confirmed post chart preparation, Railofy provides a flight close to the price of a train ticket or bus at a nominal price for shorter routes. The price for flight or bus options is fixed at the time of purchasing waitlist & RAC protection itself, thus ensuring that passengers are shielded from last-minute rising fares.

Railofy’s business model is driven by data science where the excess demand in railways is connected to other under-utilised modes of transport like flights and buses at affordable prices.

Currently, with limited trains plying, the congestion on the trains on these routes is so high. Plus, no tickets are available till the end of October and most migrants have run out of money and have no other source of incomes in their villages, says Railofy. The startup’s asset-light model has thus also been enabling migrants in India to get back to the cities for jobs, by mitigating potential losses.

Recordent

Why Recordent Made It To The List

Not only are digital lenders rewriting their existing credit and risk models, but they are also looking at technology to help in the recovery of loans and streamline repayments. Hyderabad-based Recordent is helping startups boost collections by offering better credit check tools and reduce risk before offering loans to customers.

Operating under a SaaS model, Recordent charges lenders based on the number of customers uploaded by them on the platform. Its collection charges are performance-based. On a successful collection, it charges at most 1% of the customer dues collected. The price for credit and payment history reports are different for individual reports and business reports. Starting from INR 100 for an individual report to INR 1,200 for comprehensive business credit report for non-members.

“Collection of dues is a global problem. We experienced problems with collections in our businesses and have seen others encountering similar problems. We found that many MSME and large organizations are spending an inordinate amount of time and resources in collecting payments. Thus, we want to bring accountability among businesses and individuals to pay dues on-time,” said Recordent cofounder Harish Mamtani.

SpeaQuin

Why SpeaQin Made It To The List

Another made-in-India video conferencing solution on our radar is SpeaQin. The Pune-based startup’s USP is that it does not require a separate download, which significantly reduces the entry barrier. At the same time, SpeaQin offers password-protected calls, call recording, 256-bit encryption and compatibility across devices and operating systems.

SpeaQin supports meetings with up to 100 participants at a time, with easy screen sharing, steady performance in low-bandwidth situations and more. The company also offers a dashboard so that participants can access meeting reports, invite other participants, create custom events and set custom meeting preferences for each event among other features.

While it claims to have signed up paid users including individuals and businesses, SpeaQin is targetting 500K registered users by the end of the year.

Supercric

Why Supercric Made It To The List

Fantasy cricket is all the rage these days and SuperCric is capitalising on the more sophisticated players among the bunch with its gamified strategy cricket manager simulator targeting every armchair cricket expert to test their decision-making skills.

SuperCric’s primary product acts as a fantasy enabler and allows fantasy sports game users to run simulations to make smarter choices when competing in fantasy sports tournaments. The startup provides them with a 90% accuracy rate and is built with Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on real historical match data worldwide. Backed by Kabaddi Adda, Supercric currently offers simulation for the Indian Premier League matches, but the company has plans for other tournaments too.

“Cricket has always been called a gentleman’s sport. Decision making and the role of the thinking captain is as critical as the role of a century scorer. SuperCric reinforces this role and gives users a taste of the challenges faced by the decision-makers of the sport,” said Suhail Chandhok, cofounder and CBO, SuperCric.

This year the startup aims to work closely with fan promoters and evolve the product to deliver what the fans would love to see more of. Also, while scaling up SuperCric, it plans to allow fans to auto-generate video content based on the game progression to share on their social platforms.

Suraasa

Why Suraasa Made It To The List

Teachers need upskilling too, what with edtech becoming the norm, and it’s not just about knowing how to use a camera, but how to present a concept and ensuring up-to-date knowledge. Suraasa’s e-learning platform allows teachers to upskill themselves with content and pedagogy created by its research and development team. The business model is to offer B2C solutions directly to prospective and current teachers who wish to explore high growth opportunities in the field of international education and other fields.

Teachers can register on the platform to take a qualification or a short-term certification for the next milestone. The model offers online tech-enabled synchronous and asynchronous blended solutions and teachers can choose to learn from any part of the world.

“A lack of qualitative teacher education system has led to underdeveloped skills in teachers. The age-old B.Ed. curriculum has failed to prepare teachers for the 21st century and has made the teachers dependent on on-the-job learning. Suraasa has identified all the layers of the problem and offers a complete online solution to teachers. Our edech services are focussed on making teacher education accessible and providing life-cycle management to teachers,” said Rishabh Khanna, founder, Suraasa.

Over the next 18 months, the Gurugram-based startup plans to expand to new international markets and multiple locations in India. It is also planning to launch four new qualifications for teachers that would be accepted in all locations.

Tinker Coders

Why Tinker Coders Made It To The List

It is said that the future will belong to those who can not only think and ideate but also build — and we don’t just mean software products, given that technology is in pretty much all real-world systems and infrastructure.

Tinker Coders is an online learning platform for students to explore the world of coding and in addition to software development programmes, its courses are centred around artificial intelligence, python, block coding, mobile application development. It also focusses on 3D designing, Arduino programming for embedded systems and gadgets, electronics and robotics among other new-age technologies. These coding programmes are conducted live by experts in the field.

The company is trying to penetrate the market with both B2C and B2C via B2B approach. Apart from getting subscriptions directly through the website, Tinker Coders is partnering with the schools across India to get the children enrolled in its online coding programs. Also, it is replicating the same model across 40+ countries to register its presence in the B2C market as well as in the schools across these countries.

“As schools were closed, we began working to reach directly to our customers. Although Tinker Coders was supposed to be launched a few months later, we grabbed the opportunity and initiated the operations in one week itself,” said Anoop Gautam, CEO, Tinker Coders.

The startup claims that its clientele base has reached more than 20 countries in the month of August, including countries from Eastern Africa and the subscribers have reached more than 200K. By the end of this year, the startup plans to expand its reach in more than 50+ countries and its educator’s network to more than 2K professionals.

So, that’s our 30 Startups watchlist for this month. Inc42+ members can access our picks for the past seven months here. To nominate a startup or suggest a name for us to check out, please email at [email protected].