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Self-funded startups with the potential to grow into large companies
Rolling out the RED CARPET
Starting today, we showcase the five entrants who are at the very top in each of the eight categories in which The Economic Times Startup Awards will be presented. The short-listed candidatescomprise the best of their breed and provide a glimpse of theentrepreneurial talent in India
BOOTSTRAP CHAMP
Founded: 2013
Founders: Anjan Choudhary,CEO; Meenakshi Choudhary, Chief People Officer; Amar Anand, COO; Alok Sinha, CTO
Based: Bengaluru
What it does: Provides digital marketing and customer engagement technology for brands
Inquirly Technologies
Founded: 2012
Founders: Nishith Chasmawala, CEO; Amit Sharma, Director-Products
Based: New Delhi
Key Investors: Accel Partners, Indian Angel Network, India Innovation Fund, India Ven-ture Partners
What it does: Stool management kit for bedridden patients
Consure Medical
Founded: 2012
Founders: Nithin Kamath, CEO
Based: Bengaluru
What it does: Discount brokerage platform for equity, currency and commodity trading
Zerodha
Founded: 2005
Founders: Pallav Nadhani, CEO; Kisor Nadhani, CFO
Based: Kolkata
What it does: Developer of data visualization software, digital charting
InfoSoft Global
Founded: 2010
Founder: Paras Chopra, CEO
Based: New Delhi
What it does: Develops technology to analyse website activity and increase conversions
Wingify Software
Founded: 2012
Founders: Ashish Tandon, CEO; Nandini Tandon, Chief People Officer
Based: Vadodara
What it does: Protects web and mobile applications against cyber attackers
Indusface
Founded: 2009
Founders: Arvind Pani,CEO; Vivekanand Pani; SK Mohanty
Based: Bengaluru
Key Investors: Aspada, Qualcomm Ventures
What it does: Provides real-time regional-language capabilities to businesses
Reverie Language Technologies
Founded: 2014
Founders: Sapan Kumar Jain, CEO; Jeby Cherian, Chairman; Amit Goel, COO
Based: Bengaluru
Key Investors: Chicago Capital Ventures
What it does: Re-verse logistics ser-vices for retailers and enterprises
BlubirchFounded: 2008
Founders: Mallik Sunda-ram, CEO; Pradip K Ma-jumder, Chief Scientific Officer
Based: Bengaluru
Key Investors: Accel Part-ners, India Innovation Fund, Kitven Fund, Tata Capital
What it does: Patented technology allows cus-tomisation of treatment for cancer patients
Mitra BiotechFounded: 2013
Founders: Abhinav Asthana, CEO; Ankit Sobti, CTO; Abhijit Kane
Based: Bengaluru
Key Investors: Nexus Venture Partners
What it does: Pro-vides API man-agement suite for software developers
Postman
The best original ideas that set the startup apart from competition
TOP INNOVATOR
This high-power jury will select the winners of the second edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards, the finest accolade of Indian entrepreneurship
Nandan NilekaniCofounder, Infosys
Amitabh KantCEO, Niti Aayog
Sachin BansalCofounder, Flipkart
Subrata Mitra, SeniorPartner, Accel Partners
Rajan Anandan, MD, Google SE Asia and India
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, Paytm
Vani KolaMD, Kalaari Capital
Mukesh BansalCofounder, Myntra
Satyan GajwaniVice-chairman, Times Internet
Kartik HosanagarProfessor, Wharton School
For comprehensive and insightful stories about all things startups and technology, log on to www.ettech.com
The more new com-panies there are, the harder and more time consum-ing it can be...
JIM CRAMER@jimcramer
Tweet OF THE DAY
Quick Byte ANIRBAN BORA
2 millionMonthly users of Google’s WiFi across 19 railway stations, says CEO Sundar Pichai
New Delhi: PadUp Ven-tures, a mentor-driven incubator focused on technology and mobile startups, has been launched in the National Capital Region. It is the brainchild of Rajat Jain, former MD of Xerox In-dia; Pankaj Thakar, a tech and mobile evange-list; and Deepak Sogani, a strategic finance pro-fessional. PadUp, which launched on July 16, plans to grow across a few other cities across India over the next cou-ple of years, according to a statement. In beta mode, it has built up around 10 incubatee startups across differ-ent sectors. — Our Bureau
LG has confirmed it will launch the V20 in Sep-tember in a blog post on its website. It’s going to run Android 7 Nougat software and will likely be one of the very first phones to do so. The LG V10 was unique in that it offered two screens.
LG V20 is Launchingin September
Tech Buzz
PadUp! New Incubator Opens in NCR
6 �THE ECONOMIC TIMES | BENGALURU | TUESDAY | 2 AUGUST 2016Disruption: Startups & Tech
Chennai: With a novel ideapromising home ownership fordrivers as incentive for highperformance, C Sivasankaran,the Aircel founder now backedby billionaire investor AjayPiramal in his new venturetaking on Ola and Uber, hasraised the bar for driver in-centives in the hotly-contestedcab aggregation market.
The avowed dissenter againstcash incentives believes owning ahouse has been the tallest peak toscale for cab drivers. “I want mydrivers to get rich,” he said.“There is something called pro-sperity quotient… and this iswhat UTOO has on offer for thedrivers,” he said.
Entering the fray just about eightweeks ago, UTOO is still in softlaunch phase. In the early stage ofaggregation in its first city, Chennai,UTOO faces an entrenched Ola and afast-moving Uber heading to city’soutskirts in pursuit of new markets.With a prominent logo on the bon-nets and uniformed drivers, UTOOcabs are just getting to be seenacross the city. Coming after thepromise of not deploying carswithout air-bags and building amodel that shuns surge pricing andcash incentives, the home schemearrives to bolster supply of drivers.
UTOO has purchased 200 flats in aproject in Perambur in suburbanChennai from builder ArihantGroup as its first expenditure. Moreresidences in the .̀15-25-lakh rangewill be bought on the Old Mahabali-puram Road, Ambattur, and Porur,areas on the city’s periphery burde-
ned with huge unsold real estateinventory. To garner supplementalfunding for the housing units,Sivasankaran will leverage centralgovernment scheme PradhanMantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), whichis a credit-subsidy scheme for homebuyers in the economically weakersections of society.
The PMAY scheme offers a sub-sidised interest rate of 6.5% for amaximum loan of Rs 6 lakh and atenure of 15 years. To be anchored by
National Housing Bank, the scheme,earlier called Housing for All by2022, is meant for families with anannual income of .̀ 3-6 lakh. “Whythe scheme did not take off so well asplanned was that the prospectivehome buyers need to contributesignificantly. A cab driver cannotbring in lakhs. UTOO will chip inwith the margin money,” said Siva-sankaran. The gap funding thatUTOO offers is based on an eligibili-ty of 5,000 trips, which UTOO esti-mates can be done in 1.5 years. At arate of 15 trips a day, close to thecommon performance metric forapp-based aggregators like Ola andUber, drivers will take 11.1years tocomplete 50,000 rides, when theybecomes eligible for UTOO to paythe balance of the home loan subjectto a ceiling of .̀ 20 lakh. The marginmoney UTOO floats to drivers is atan interest rate of 9.5%.
DIDI CHUXING-UBER DEAL With all eyes on China, the Indian startup ecosystem is calling forpolicymakers to look at domestic businesses battling moneyed foreign competitors
Biswarup Gooptu &Neha Alawadhi
New Delhi: Uber’s decision tothrow in the towel in China hasreignited the debate in India onwhether policymakers here sho-uld be creating level-playing fi-elds for domestic businessesbattling moneyed foreign com-petitors.
The sale of Uber’s Chinese unitto Beijing-headquartered taxiaggregator Didi Chuxing is thelatest example of US consumerinternet majors failing to succe-ed in the world’s second-largesteconomy, undone by China’sprotectionist regulatory polici-es. Amazon, the world’s largestonline retailer, last year opted tosell on Chinese internet giantAlibaba.
That’s in contrast to their fort-unes in India, where Uber, theworld’s most-valuable startup,and Amazon have been able toestablish a dominant presenceby pouring in billions of dollarsto grab market share, unsettlingtheir largest domestic rivals.
“We need to address this biasand create a level-playing fieldfor domestic startups,” said Sha-rad Sharma, cofounder of pro-duct software think-tankiSPIRT.
“Our domestic stars — Flip-kart and Ola — have sufferedfrom this unintended bias in fa-vour for foreign startups.”
Online marketplace Flipkart,India’s most-valuable consumerinternet company at an estima-ted worth of $15 billion, is lockedin an attritional battle for marketdominance with Jeff Bezos-ledAmazon. The country’s largest ri-de-hailing app Ola is competingwith Uber, which post its exitfrom China is bound to doubledown on its business in India.
“The government must havean explicit policy for providing a
level-playing field to our domes-tic startups, a necessary condi-tion for having open markets,”Sharma said. “This absence of alevel-playing field for domesticstartups is resulting in digitalcolonisation. This has seriousconsequences for the future.”
Since its launch in 2013, Ama-zon India has leapfrogged the co-untry’s second-major ecommer-ce company Snapdeal and is bre-athing down on Flipkart. Earli-er this year, Bezos announcedthat Amazon would up its invest-ment in its India arm to $5 bil-lion (about .̀ 33,300 crore). The
online retailer has identified In-dia as its biggest bet outside theUS after being squeezed out byAlibaba in China.
Uber is also expected to throwmore capital to grow its busi-ness in Asia’s third-largest eco-nomy. In June, Uber said it wo-uld invest in its India operationsa substantial portion of the $3.5billion it raised from Saudi Ara-bia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Several industry experts, ho-wever, are of the view that pro-tectionism is not the way for-ward for Indian businesses.
“The government’s job is to fos-ter innovation and create an en-vironment for investors andcompanies to invest in India andencourage local entreprene-urs,” said Kunal Shah, founderof Freecharge.
Desi Cos Want a Chinese Wallof Protection
SHARAD SHARMACofounder, iSPIRT
Our domesticstars — Flipkart
and Ola — have suffe-red from this uninten-ded bias in favour forforeign startups
Two months ago, Uber announ-ced a massive $3.5-billion fund-raise, along with a $1billion allo-cation to China. Within two we-eks, Didi announced an eye-pop-ping $7.3-billion fundraise,backed largely by China Invest-ment Corporation, China LifeInsurance and China MerchantsBank. At that point it was gameover for Uber in China. The sur-prise news of Monday’s mergerannouncement is that Uber rece-ived 20% of the merged entityand $1 billion in cash — possibleChinese largesse to keep foreigninvestors happy!
Over the past 10 years, Chinahas actively cultivated its do-mestic private capital markets,whether it is big-ticket direct in-vestments by its banks and insu-rance companies in the likes ofnew-age consumer companieslike Alibaba and Baidu or tradi-tional infrastructure compani-es. And there are also initiativeslike the creation of a massive do-mestic venture capital industry.
Robust local capital marketsprovide long-term domesticcurrency finance, support in-frastructure development andinnovation, reduce foreigndebt, and guard against curren-cy fluctuations and fickle inter-national investors. Robust do-mestic capital availability is vi-tal for a thriving private sector,which in turn is vital to meetingthe 10 million new jobs a year re-quired in India.
In India, if it wasn’t for US-ba-sed Tiger Global and later Ja-pan’s SoftBank, many of ourstartup founders would have be-
en unable to raise sufficient ca-pital to get off the ground, buildlarge businesses and hold off fo-reign competitors. However, asis the nature with foreign capi-tal, it is often happy funding onlyproven models from Internatio-nal markets and often passes on“India-for-India” innovations.
Comparatively in China, localinnovation is thriving. Well-known names like WeChat, Ali-baba and Taobao, have businessmodels and products, which lo-ok nothing like their US counter-parts WhatsApp, Amazon orEbay and the like. A fellow ven-ture capitalist friend, who is inti-mate with China, says that therate of innovation there is signi-ficantly ahead of the US as a re-sult of liberal domestic venture
capital support. It isn’t that do-
mestic capitalrequires massi-ve budgetarysupport — thereare large poolsof capital sit-ting with Indian
insurance companies and pen-sion funds. The government co-uld of course also do well to re-prioritise wasteful budgetary al-location like keeping loss-ma-king PSUs in mature sectorsafloatand allocating it to moreinnovation and growth-led pri-vate sectors, which can boostGDP and employment. Last we-ek, NITI Ayog stated that over$400 billion of venture capitalwill be required in next 10 years.
India has achieved a remarkab-le growth rate of 7%+ annuallyon the back of strong domesticsavings (32% of GDP, vs worldaverage of 24.5%) and foreigninvestments; to ensure this do-esn’t falter and rises to 8%+ oreven 9%+, creation of strong do-mestic capital markets is impe-rative.
(The author is managing partnerof early-stage investment firmOrios Venture Partners and is anangel investor in Ola)
It’s Time Our VCsBought India Story
REHAN YAR KHAN
By Invite
In Uber-Didideal, a lessonaboutsupport fromhomegrowncapital
Bengaluru: Restaurant discove-ry platform Zomato said its foodordering business crossed the 1-million-order-a-month mark inJuly, fast closing the gap with mar-ket leader Swiggy.
“The fact that July had five wee-kends certainly helped our cau-se,” said Mukund Kulashekaran,business head of online orderingat Zomato. “Finally, at 8:23 pm onthe 31st of July, we hit the million-order mark for July — and then weracked up another 20,000 ordersbefore the night ended,” he added.
The food ordering platform wasat the 7,50,000-mark in May, amonth after close competitorSwiggy hit the million mark.
Zomato is behind Swiggy in thenumber of orders fulfilled, whichis primarily because it has a mini-mum order clause for most listedrestaurants.
This move, however, helped it rai-se the average order value to .̀ 480,with the contribution margin ofthe platform per order at .̀ 23. Theaverage order value at Swiggy wasaround .̀ 340.
InfoEdge-backed Zomato’s food-ordering platform has been pus-hing towards better unit econo-mics and closed down its food-or-dering business in four tier-2 mar-kets earlier this year.
Zomato Crosses1-million OrderMark Last Month
Hitting the MarkWHEN THEY HIT 1 MILLION
AVERAGEORDER VALUE
Swiggy: April
Swiggy`340
Zomato`480
Zomato: July
New Delhi: Flipkart Chief Ex-ecutive Binny Bansal has led a $1-million (about .̀ 6.6 crore) seed fun-ding round in Mumbai-based fastmoving consumer goods startupQwikPik Technology, which ownsand operates the YumLane brandof food products.
Other investors that have alsoparticipated in the round, a firstfor YumLane, include PeopleGroup Founder Anupam Mittal,Sachin Bhatia, cofounder ofNasdaq-listed travel portal Ma-keMyTrip, and Darius Pandole,partner at private equity firm NewSilk Route.
YumLane, which was founded inMarch this year by Hitesh Ahuja,who was also with New Silk Route,offers hot snacks and meals, suchas momos and pizzas, across retailpoints in Mumbai.
Both Bansal and Mittal had inves-ted in Bengaluru-based on-de-
mand mobile tutoring platformHashLearn in March.
The Flipkart CEO has been an ac-tive angel investor, along with hiscofounder Sachin Bansal, havingpreviously invested in Bengaluru-based MadRat Games that makesoffline educational board games.They have also made other startupbets like electric scooter maker At-her Energy, mobile gaming startupMech Mocha, mobile news app In-shorts and broker networking plat-form Plabro Networks.
YumLane, according to Ahuja,will use the proceeds primarily to-wards marketing and furtherbrand building, as it looks to ex-pand its presence in the city, beforeentering other markets across thecountry.
Bansal Takes a Bite of this CoFlipkart CEO leads $1-million seed funding round in YumLane
TOP INVESTOR
Binny Bansal, alongwith Sachin Bansal, hasinvested in MadRatGames, Ather Energy,Mech Mocha & PlabroNetworks
NORMAN
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COMING HOME UTOO has purchased 200 flats in a project in Perambur in Chennai from builder Arihant Group
Top UTOO Drivers to Get a Home of Their Own CSIVASANKARAN
There is something calledprosperity quotient… andthis is what UTOO has onoffer for the drivers
Collision Course
Uber sued Ola for ̀ 50 crore and accused them of resorting to a range of machinations, including mak-ing false bookings on its platform by setting up “fake rider accounts” and misleading its drivers through “fake calls” impersonating Uber
Ola accused Uber of flouting lo-cal laws and called Uber India anti-na-tional
past two years, both compa-nies have been un-dercutting each other on the driver incen-tive programmes in a bid to lock in supply
have been undercutting each other even in front of the govern-
ment instead of lobbying to-gether for bet-ter regulations
2015, Ola ac-quired Taxi-ForSure for
