Startup Watchlist 2020: Showcasing India’s Most Promising Startups

This article is part of Inc42’s Startup Watchlist, an annual series in which we list the top startups to watch out for in 2020 from industries such as agritech, AI, logistics, healthtech, edtech and more. Explore all the stories from the ‘Startup Watchlist’ 2020 series here.

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The Indian startup ecosystem’s journey towards maturity is best exemplified in the number of unicorns and soonicorns it has produced every year for the last half-decade. But to get to this point, startups have to prove their products or services in the market and that’s one of the biggest challenges for any new business.

This growth and the scale-up stage is often the most exciting time as well, as startups start to attract funding and reap the rewards of their initial planning.

As we step into a new decade with 2020 and the startup ecosystem is on the verge of hitting a growth spurt again. Over the past five years, we have kept a keen eye on the startup landscape and each year we have identified the startups that will come under the market spotlight in the 12 months to come. Inc42’s Startup Watchlist is an annual series where we list the top startups to watch out for in 2020 across sectors such as edtech, agritech, fintech, deeptech, enterprise tech, logistics, consumer services, electric vehicles, media & entertainment, healthtech and more.

Inc42 Startup Watchlist 2020

For 2020, we have scoured the lengths and breadths of the ecosystem and come up with the most promising startups in each of the major sectors in the ecosystem.

According to Datalabs By Inc42’s upcoming Annual Indian Tech Startup Funding Report for 2019, the total funding poured into Indian startups since 2014 stood at $58 Bn whereas the total count of funding deals stood crossed the 5K mark with 5,011 investments recorded till the end of 2019.

And in 2020, Inc42 predicts the ecosystem and the tech industry will maintain the stability of the past few years with minor growth. However, these startups will continue to earn market approval as well as win more investor confidence.

The Startup Watchlist has been a tradition at Inc42 since 2017 and each year we have managed to pick the startups that actually grew successfully in the months to come.

The startups that make the cut for the Watchlist are shortlisted based on editorial criteria as well as the recent funding, stage, growth or scale achieved in the preceding year and how it has differentiated itself or its model in a competitive market.

For instance, Dream11, one of the startups we had picked in the media and entertainment sector in our Startup Watchlist in early 2019, went on to become a unicorn later in the year. Similarly, our agritech startup picks of Ninjacart, Agrostar earned mega funding rounds, with the former getting backed by Flipkart and Walmart, and the latter bagging $27 Mn Series C funding.

In our edtech watchlist, we had selected the likes of Unacademy, upGrad, Toppr and Leverage Edu, all of which had a great run in 2019. And in healthtech, the startup watchlist picks of NIRAMAI, DocsApp showed great promise in 2019, while Innovaccer and Curefit continued to grow and spread beyond India.

So which startups made the cut this year? Find out in the Inc42 Startup Watchlist 2020. We are kicking things off with one of the hottest sectors in the ecosystem — edtech. Find out all about the most promising startups, the business models on the rise and what these startups have planned for 2020.

Checkout which startups made cut through the Startup Watchlist 2020 Edition:
1. Edtech
2. Agritech
3. Media and Entertainment
4. Logistics
5. Healthtech