We are almost at the dawn of the year 2015. Though the Indian startup ecosystem ameliorated a lot compared to the previous year, we hope the same happens this year as well.
But, before 2015 begins, Inc42 brings to you a list of startups you should watch in the coming year. These startups pack a punch and it’s just a matter of time when they deliver it.
AdPushup
Founders: Atul Agarwal, Ankit Oberoi
Founded: 2013
Funding: $632k in Angel Funding
AdPushup make amends to poor ad designs, placements, fonts, etc. It optimized ads allowing publishers & bloggers to make more money from their existing website traffic without the need for any coding skills. AdPushup helps websites overcome banner blindness and monetize impressions lost to ad blocking software. It used advanced A/B testing to compare between different ad variation like different placements and different sizes. After finding the best variation, it keeps a check a banner blindness and can help fight AdBlock.
Revenue Model: Free till goes public beta
Termsheet
Founders: Vivek Durai
Founded: 2013
Funding: N/A
Termsheet simplifies early stage fund raising and investing. It is an online platform which connects angels and founders and helps them execute a seed funding round. It does away with the need for founders to run after multiple angel investors, spend considerable time and effort giving valuation and termsheets. It allows angel investors to join a round, review confidential information about the company and helps them determine whether they wish to participate in the round or not. Once the round size is reached, it will get the required documents signes and complete filings. Termsheet is about to be India’s Angel List.
Revenue Model: Plans to monetise through on-platform transactions (one-off payments and subscription plans) for both startups and investors.
Zify
Founders: Anurag Rathor
Founded: 2014
Funding: $16.6K in Seed Funding
Introducing a different concept of paid carpooling, Zify has grown fast and has expanded its user base to thousands of daily commuters. Available only in Hyderabad, Zify has been a hit among the techies who have to travel long distances to their workplaces. With INR 5/km, the charges are lower than what is charged by 3-wheeler Auto
Revenue Model: Zify charges car owners a commission on the total fare per trip.
Tracxn 
Founders: Neha Singh, Abhishek Goyal
Founded: 2013
Funding: N/A
Tracxn aims at helping Venture Capitalists and private companies, looking for good startups to invest in, by providing the largest startup database covering over 10Mn companies, more than 100,000 of which are Indian. Globally, tracking over 50 sectors, tracxn allows companies to search for startups by incubator, investor, city and other similar filters.
Revenue Model: Although the starter kit consisting of the basic features is free at the moment, but, the higher features, providing more details about startups globally, are priced from $5 to $1000.
Appknox 
Founders: Harshit Agarwal, Subho Halder, Prateek Panda
Founded: 2014
Funding: $25k from Singapore’s The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator
Appknox offers peace of mind to brand owners and the mobile app developers by providing a security audit-tool for both source code and app binary file analysis. Appknox regularly performs security audits on their customer’s apps and alerts them to new vulnerabilities as they arise. The apps are scanned both before and after they have been published.
Revenue Model: Appknox charges the users depending on their application and its source code for detecting the vulnerabilities.
Violetstreet 
Founders: Ankur Gupta, Nayan Kumar
Founded: 2013
Funding: INR 10 Lakh in May 2014 at Startup SmashUp
Hyderabad based VioletStreet is an online fashion store offering products from all the stores, along with fashion feed from friends. Website allows users to shop real-time with friends and create a look, all by simply dragging and dropping thus making the process of taking feedback before buying really easy.
Revenue Model: Violetstreet generates revenue through affiliate sales and advertising i.e. from the traffic that they send to ecommerce sites including Jabong and Myntra among others.
Zoomo
Founders: Arnav Kumar, Himangshu Hazarika, Aniket Behera
Founded: 2014
Funding: $1Mn in Seed Round from SAIF Partners
Zoomo is a mobile app helping buyers meet second hand car dealers. The startup inspects and provides listing of verified cars on their platform.The complete information about the car and also its owner is provided. Not only does it help buyers finalise a car but also after a purchase has been finalised, helps them in getting documents transferred and even getting loans.
Revenue Model: Plans to introduce charges on listings and transactions along with vehicle financing as a revenue stream
Betaout
Founders: Arjun Maheshwari, Ankit Maheshwari
Founded: 2013
Funding: N/A
Betaout caters to all the needs of marketing. It is an All-in-one Ecommerce Marketing Software which includes services like email marketing, shopping cart abandonment, on-site engagement, actionable analytics etc. It clubs Behavioural Database and User Segmentation in its Marketing Personalisation Software which gives databases with user’s actions and profile data. In its engagement platform it makes use of Apps and Email Marketing which are personalised for users through Behavioural Database.
Revenue Model: Monthly Subscription Plans as per entity’s size starting from $19/month
Bisko Labs
Founders: Vivek Mohan & Alfred Johnson
Founded In: June 2014
Funding: Seed funding from Guerrilla Ventures
Bisko labs focuses on hardware products which redefines the conventional way of doing repeating task in daily life.This Kochi based startup has made some cool stuff like automatic plotter which has an accuracy of 0.3mm. Another product is sensor based quadcopter which uses gesture input to operate. Their latest and most revolutionary product is Intelligent Gear Transmission(IGT) which can convert any geared motorcycle to automatic geared.This technology is pending for patent and has received tremendous response.
Gigstart 
Founders: Atit Jain & Madhulika Pandey
Founded: 2013
Funding: $210k in Seed Funding on 4th December 2014
Gigstart provides a marketplace that facilitates finding and booking various kinds for artists like musicians, photographers, singers etc. for private as well as public events. It is as easy as browsing through an ecommerce website, only difference being that you go through a list of artists and select as per your needs. Making easier for clients to reach artists, it also increases visibility of artists. It manages the entire process from providing various options to connecting them to contract formalities and payment gateway.
Revenue Model: Charges nominal facilitation fee.
MAID 
Founders: Sabarish Prakash, Arjun Sarath, Biniyas Valiyaveettil
Founded In: January 2011
Funding: $125k in Seed Funding
Apps are used anywhere and everywhere. This Indian startup came up with a brilliant idea of creating a smart oven which brings crowd-sourced recipes directly to your kitchen. You can search for recipes based on ingredients, type of dish or just ask MAID to recommend a dish.
MAID is connected to a recipe store via internet where chefs across the world can upload recipes.It will also have the capability to stream cookery shows from the Recipe Store so that you can cook while watching them. It will be keeping an eye on your eating habits and calorie intake and act as a personal dietician.
Vidooly 
Founders: Subrat Kar, Ajay Mishra, Nishant Radia
Founded: 2013
Funding: INR 12 Lakh from TLabs Accelerator
Vidooly is a YouTube audience development and analytics suite that helps content creators; brands and multi-channel networks increase their views, audience base and earn more revenue on the YouTube platform. One can use Vidooly to get deeper analysis and performance of any YouTube channel or video such as video tags used in a video or channel, most popular influencers, subscribers and views growth, performance of video on social media, forecasting and some that YouTube does not provide publicly. The brainchild of Subrat Kar, Ajay Mishra and Nishant Radia, Vidooly provides advanced features like video tag suggestions, best time to upload, competitor tracking, comment moderation, connecting brands to the right content creators, collaboration with influencers, subscriber behaviour analysis, annotation optimization etc.
Revenue Model: Monthly Subscription Plans
ConfirmTkt 
Founders: Dinesh, Sripad
Founded: July, 2014
Funding: N/A
It is an online platform that provides status of a Train ticket booking using PNR and also assists users in deciding whether to book or not if the ticket is in waitlist by predicting if the booking would be confirmed or not. Claiming to be country’s best PNR predictor, Confirmtkt uses historical trends to efficiently make such predictions. The Confirmtkt mobile app has also been launched.
Revenue Model: The startup is initially trying to capture the market by attracting the users and then it would launch bookings feature. Besides this confirmtkt plans to partner with other Indian travel portals to launch travel features.
Appointy 
Founders: Nemesh Singh
Founded: May, 2006
Funding: Selected by Microsoft Ventures for summer acceleration program in 2014
Bhopal Based Appointy is an online scheduling software that is helping small and medium-sized businesses to grow using social media network i.e. facebook, twitter etc. Besides helping, service providers connect with their customers. Appointy can be used to create deals, discounts and offers. Appointy competes with the likes of MindBodyOnline, Bookfresh and OpenCal.
Revenue Model: From a free basic plan to business plan that charges $49.99/month, appointy has different packages depending on client needs.
Stay tuned for our next story which showcases the list of Startups that made it big in 2014.
This is part of our special series, In Focus: 2014 In Review, in which we showcase the highlights of 2014 and what’s to come next year in the Indian Tech Ecosystem. Stay tuned for more.
