The startup ecosystem is booming in India. With innovative ideas and concepts converting into reality. We earlier released a list of startups which have the potential to rock the ecosystem in 2015. It is time to look back at the year which just ended.
We have now come up with a list of startups which gained immense popularity in 2014:
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
Tripoto
Founders: Anirudh Gupta, Michael Lyngdoh
Founded: 2013
Funding: $400k led by Outbox ventures, with Palaash Ventures and Angel investors including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, Nikunj Jain of Frankly.me and others.
Rejoice to all befuddled travellers who are burdened by the choice of places to visit. There has been an increase in people’s desire to unravel something new, to travel to offbeat places and they are no longer mollified by the same-old-vanilla ‘Agra tours’ or ‘Golden Triangle tours’. The website brings together travellers from around the world to share and discover travel stories. It has quite a hefty list of itineraries from all over the world. Next time, before making a trip, do check what’s worth to see and what’s not.
Revenue Model: It earns revenues via Advertising, Affiliate models, integrating hotels and homestays.
Instamojo
Founders: Sampad Swain, Harshad Sharma, Akash Gehani
Founded: 2012
Funding: Undisclosed amount in angel funding from Rajan Anandan & Sunil Kalra, $500k in seed round from Blume Ventures, 500 Startups and others. And Series A round from Kalaari Capital and existing investors.
It is evident that B2C ecommerce is on its rise and will keep on rising. However, C2C ecommerce has not seen that much growth. Instamojo is about to bring a revolution in this segment. It empowers creator of all kinds to sell their creations across social platforms. After an item is sold they take care of hosting, bandwidth, payment process and more. It is as easy as counting 1,2,3 as it requires no coding, no setup, no maintenance.
Revenue Model: 5% of every successful sale.
Fin
Founded In: 2012
Founders: Rohildev N
Funding: Angel funded by Dr. Ritesh Malik of Guerrilla Ventures, Raised $200k in Product Crowdfunding in March 2014 & raised undisclosed amount in Series A round from Kalaari.
After smart glasses and smart watches, smart rings have entered into wearable technology. They will sit inconspicuously on your finger and will let you feel like a magician.One such ring is Fin, previously known as RHL Vision. It is a tiny hardware product that you can wear on your thumb as a ring and it will make your whole palm as a gesture interface. It can uniquely recognize each segments of the fingers and can convert your palm into a numeric keypad. It is a Bluetooth enabled device that can be connected to three different digital world gadgets like Smartphones, Smart TVs, Automobiles, and Home automation devices providing multiple device compatibility. It uses Bluetooth for Communication with connected devices.
Revenue Model: Earn via sale of wearable rings.
LetsVenture
Founded In: 2013
Founders: Shanti Mohan
Funding: INR 4 Cr. from Accel Partners, Eka Software cofounder Manav Garg, InMobi cofounder Naveen Tewari , angel investor Rajan Anandan and Sharad Sharma, cofounder iSpirt among others.
Every startup no matter how flourishing or bootstrapped requires funding to keep doing the same. To achieve this letsventure enable startups looking to raise see/angel money to create investment ready profiles online and connect to accredited investors. Not only this, the platform allows startups to get their business plans reviewed by experts and connect to mentors as well. They take care of closure of termsheet & shareholders agreement, and complete legal & financial process.
Revenue Model: It charges 2-3% of the entire funding as a commission from startups, once they receive the money.
Haptik
Founded In: 2013
Founders: Aakrit Vaish, Swapan Rajdev
Funding: $1 Mn from Kalari Capital in seed round
Haptik is a smartphone application that allows users to communicate with company experts over messaging. It acts like a WhatsApp for customer support to put an end to automated customer support machines where users can chat with experts and get help with customer support issues, FAQs and information. Users just need to send out a text and the specific company representative will get in touch with you within 1 to 4 minutes.
Revenue Model: It is yet to roll out a monetisation strategy
HackerEarth
Founded In: 2012
Founders: Sachin Gupta, Vivek Prakash
Funding: $500k from Angelprime and GSF SuperAngels
The hunt for talent has taken a turn to India. It’s no longer about Silicon Valley, India has multinationals and a booming startup ecosystem which require engineers(read: programmers). HackerEarth is looking to make the process of fathoming a person’s talent easier by programming challenges. They either design ‘challenges’ on their own based on skills like front-end development or hire someone to design them. The whole process is to create a profile, enter into a challenge, get an offer and get hired. It filters out best from the rest.
Revenue Model: They either source the candidates, assess them and then directly connect them to companies and charges a recruiting fee. Or they have a SaaS model, where they provide their assessment engine to companies that are hiring by charging about $2 per test taken or $740 per hire.
KartRocket
Founders: Sahil Goel
Founded In: 2012
Funding: Angel round of funding from 5ideas, 500 Startups and angel investor Jatin Aneja and $2 Mn in Series A from Nirvana Venture Advisors, 500 Startups and Japan-based Beenos (NetPrice).
Ecommerce has turned taller than Burj Khalifa, metaphorically. After giving cutthroat competition to brick & mortar shops, these offline sellers have found a boon. SMEs can now open their own ecommerce website and to do so Kartrocket works for them. It is a provider of DIY ecommerce platform. Kartrocket provides storefront designs, domestic as well as international payment options integrated with logistics. It helps these SMEs sell across mobile and web devices. The platform is already integrated with eBay, Amazon and Snapdeal to allow multi-channel sales.
Revenue Model: Monthly Plans as per size of the enterprise and charges transaction fee.
Akosha
Founders: Ankur Singla
Founded In: 2010
Funding: INR 1 Cr. from Sequoia in seed round in 2011 and $5 Mn from Sequoia in Series A in 2014.
There were days when customers were left unheard in case of a complaint lodged by them. Times Change! Consumer awareness helped them redeem their status in the market which led to formation of Consumer Forum. Akosha is a consumer awareness and complaints website which helps customer in resolving their problems with companies. ‘Akosha’ means to unravel things. The website claims to assist consumers in approaching the District Consumer Forums. Akosha has successfully passed the ‘baton of power’ in the hands of consumer.
Revenue Model: Started off with a focus on resolving consumer complaints and charging them, Akosha has now moved towards enterprise focused model.
Embibe
Founders: Aditi Avasthi
Founded: 2012
Funding: $4 Mn from Kalaari Capital & Lightbox
Internet Of Things finally engrained e-learning. With ease of access and available information all over the internet focused e-learning is important. Embibe.com provides with resources for preparation on engineering exams. It has a strong data platform and boasts of 100k students on board. It is move against brick and mortar players which are traditional money grossers in the engineering coaching sector, charging from INR50,000 to a lakh rupees annually. The database is exam-centric as it provides ways to boost speed, accuracy and time management, helping students perform to their potential.
Revenue Model: Has plans as per content and exam.
Wishberry
Founders: Anshulika Dubey, Priyanka Agarwal
Founded In: 2012
Funding: INR 4 Cr. from Rajan Anandan, Sharad Sharma, Navyug Mohnot, Deepak Goel, Dinesh Agarwal, Sunil Kalra and others
Turning your idea into reality has its own caveats. Wishberry also called as Kickstarter of India is one such platform which lets you pitch your ideas to friends, family and everyone else. Anyone who believes in your idea can contribute small amounts of money in exchange for being a part of your dream. The platform follows a rigorous curation process before approving a project. Once the project is approved, next step is to create a campaign page on its site and SWOOSH you are ready for crowdfunding.
Revenue Model: Upfront fee of INR 2500 and 10% of total money raised from any campaign
Newsinshorts
Founders: Azhar Iqubal, Deepit Purkayastha, Anunay Pandey
Founded In: 2013
Funding: Seed funding from Gaurav Bhatnagar, Ankush Nijhawan and Manish Dhingra, Times Internet and Flipkart cofounders Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal.
The adage ‘Time Is Money’ fits perfectly in today’s world. With all this hustle-bustle around, people have to prioritize what’s important. There were times when people used to sit hours reading newspaper or listening news on radio/TV. The media industry is biased towards those who have the patience and time to read the lengthy news articles. ‘News In Shorts’ comes with the promise of delivering news articles in less than 60 words skimming straight to the facts and not one’s opinion. Time is Money, only difference is We Own It, spend wisely.
Revenue Model: Will introduce advertisements and paid content.
ScoopWhoop
Founders: Rishi Mukherjee, Sattvik Mishra.
Founded In: 2013
Funding: INR 10 Cr. from Bharti Softbank
Ever heard of Cracked.com? yes, then you might be knowing there were certain things which you could not relate to. To remove this discrepancy, Scoopwhoop gives you humor content injected with a strong dose of Indian Flavour. The website takes pride in its ability to create viral content out of India situations and the country’s way of life as we have a large number of netizens fiddling with their internet connected devices. Scoopwhoop has created a huge amount of buzz in just 16 months of being operational and is known for it’s Buzzfeed style of content which includes listicles, pet pictures and goofy life hacks. Your one stop shop to laugh your ass off.
Revenue Model: Ad Revenue and from Brand sponsoring.
GrownOut
Founders: Sumit Gupta, Harsimran Walia
Founded In: 2013
Funding: Undisclosed amount in Series A from Matrix Partners India and before that it had raised undisclosed sum in funding from Outbox Ventures
Grownout is a referral hiring solution that enables companies to leverage their employees’ professional network. It has a vision of solving the hiring requirements of the industry using the latest available technologies. It utilises well researched techniques of referral hiring to make candidate sourcing easier and more efficient. It manages the whole process from finding the best match to completing the hiring cycle to monitoring applicant’s status.
Revenue Model: Charges clients which are based on per employee per month.
Touchtalent
Founders: Ankit Prasad, Mohd. Wassem
Founded In: 2012
Funding: $700k from Saif Partners, Deep Kalra, Sachin and Binny Bansal with few others
Touchtalent is a web based global community that allows users to display, share, appreciate and monetize their creations. It is created to promote the interest of creative groups. The site has features focusing on copyright, sharing, etc. which were designed keeping the interest of creators in mind. It has mobile app as well with over 1Mn downloads which displays the content in a fluid, dynamic and eye-pleasing manner. The website claims that users from more than 192 countries visit Touchtalent everyday to express themselves creatively.
Revenue Model: Yet to monetise.
