India is a rising power, with 65% of its people between the ages of 25 to 35. This young generation requires to earn and due to a lack of work opportunities, they turn to self-employment. The rise of start-ups in India happened gradually, over a period of time. According to some websites, 2008 was the exact year the start-up revolution took shape in India after a global recession. After that, it got converted into a culture with the announcement of the Make in India campaign that the government introduced in the year 2014 to target the growth of entrepreneurship in India.
A start-up is associated with the idea of exponential growth and most importantly, innovation. A founder solves a complex problem and invents a novel solution or they discover a more effective way to duplicate and disseminate an existing idea. When the implementation of an idea is put into physical form, it’s called a start-up.
Investing in Indian start-ups has increased significantly in recent years, according to figures, from $6.6 billion in 2018 to $10 billion in 2020 and up to $36 billion in 2020. This indicates that India has a huge number of outstanding start-ups thanks to the presence of VC firms and the country’s fast-expanding economy, all of which provide a solid basis for Indian businesses to succeed. I’ve made a list of the most innovative start-ups in India, let’s see what makes them stand out of the crowd:
Indian start-up TradeX was founded by Divij Goyal in 2021. The company targeted the Fintech industry. TradeX is a trading platform that uses predictions as a tool. It helps customers to make transactions based on criteria that are important to them. For making accurate predictions, users can win rewards. This is what separates TradeX from other trading platforms.
“We trade to express an opinion on whether a future event will drive the value of stocks up or down. You believe that vaccination is effective and you start buying hospitality stock. You believe tesla will stop accepting crypto and you short crypto positions.” ~TradeX about section
Since its inception, the company has received a Seed Funding round of 70 Million Rupees. This funding round and the total investment were sponsored by a group of nine investors who think TradeX will be a force to be reckoned with in a few years.
IppoPay offers a platform for small businesses to collect and distribute payments. Its main customers are MSMEs, freelancers, and people who operate a business in Tier 2 and tier 3 cities. IppoPay helps retail outlets to accept payment via apps like PayTm, Google Pay, BHIM, and other UPI apps.
Indian firm IppoPay was founded by Mohan Karuppiah and jai Kumar in 2020. The creation and implementation of digital payment gateways that make it simple for MSMEs, freelancers, and home-based businesses to take payments is the most important component of the business.
In the two investment rounds that have taken place since the company began, IppoPay received $2.4 million to aid in the company’s next phase of growth and development.
In 2018, Kunal Shah executed his innovative idea of CRED in Bangalore, where a person can pay their credit card bills and get rewarded for it at the same time. It was a fresh idea and turned out to be a hit.
Users get “CRED coins” for credit card bill payments. These points can be redeemed in a few ways like buying a product, entering a contest, or joining a workshop.
To become a CRED member, one needs a credit score of 750+ as a prerequisite.
CRED in its industry and its competitors like Slice or OneCard are still not as popular as CRED. One of the main reasons for CRED’s popularity is the creativity they bring with their ads like their ‘OGs song’ got 4.4 million views on YouTube alone. Their other ads featuring Rahul Dravid, and Kapil Dev were also a trending topic on Twitter for sometime. CRED’s ad featuring Neeraj Chopra has 16 million views on YouTube. Their advertising strategy has played a huge role in CRED’s popularity.
AarogyaAI is an Indian startup founded by Co-founders, Praapti and Avlokita. They started AarogyaAI in 2019, as a solution for the growing challenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Prajapati was motivated to address public health issues using her knowledge of infectious diseases.
The purpose best described on their website is “Microorganisms are changing, rendering them ineffective to traditional antimicrobials and transforming into ‘superbugs’. The focus, therefore, is on solving micro problems in research which do not translate into the public application.”
Aside from being innovative, this start-up is a need of this day and age. Helping to develop effective resistance against evolving Microorganisms. The company obtained $855,500 in funding from a group of four investors as a result of these funding rounds.
With Arun Chandra and AbhirajBhal as founders, Urban Company came into existence on 10 November 2014. It became a major platform in the industry of ‘on-demand home services’ within a few years of its arrival. This was something that people felt was lacking in their lives, ease of finding a hassle-free solution to almost all requirements of an individual from the comfort of their homes.
The urban company aims to empower consumers by connecting them with the right service providers for their needs at their own homes. They offer a wide variety of services including beauticians, fitness trainers, electricians, plumbers, photographers, and much more.
‘The Future is Electric’, With this belief, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain started Ather Energy in 2013. Ather Energy is an electric vehicle company that currently has two electric scooters on offer, namely Ather 450x and Ather 450 plus.
The company launched its products in 2016 and had been doing well since. They reported sales of over 59k units between January to December 2022.
Ather is known for its aesthetic and innovative design along with a decent range and features like automatic hill hold assist, which a lot of people appreciate and consider as a primary factor before their purchase. Hero MotoCorp is one of the key investors in this startup.
Ather believes “Intelligent vehicles will revolutionize our commute experience” and have been doing good in implementing the same.
Ravi and AnujaKabra realized the potential of hygienically made ice pops for children as their target audience after serving 17 years in the food and beverage industry.
They started Skippi Ice Popos with the idea to revitalize ‘chuskis’ into a more flavourful and juicier product than the competitors. Skippi Ice Pops was established in 2020 and survived the whole pandemic situation.
The business had a successful run at Shark Tank India and secured 1 crore funding and now they have distribution channels across the country.
Belong is the world's first predictive outbound hiring solution that helps businesses discover a pool of talented people who could be potential employees.
Vijay Sharma and SudheendraChilappagari founded Belong in 2014. The design of their website is a simple one-page describing who they are and an email address to contact them. That’s how they have been doing business
The startup relies on collected data to suggest the right candidates for companies based on the qualifications and needs of the company. Belong connects employers to a verified network of potential employees from start to finish.
Drivezy was founded by Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Vasant Verma in 2015 to bring about a change in the transport sector.
Drivezy offers a vehicle-sharing service in India. Drivezy is a strategic and efficient alternative to owning a vehicle and paying a huge sum of money.
Drivezy allows individual vehicle owners to list their vehicles that are not being used, and turn them into profit-generating assets by renting the vehicles to customers at a fraction of the cost. This has allowed a lot of people to enjoy riding different vehicles, including those who can’t afford to invest in owning a vehicle and also those who want to make a trip with a rented vehicle.
Mahindra Finance and ICICI Bank are the key investors of this start-up.
Conclusion
To succeed, one must execute the right idea in the right direction at the right time. These are the 3 main elements of a successful start-up. when these 3 elements function in sync, the endeavour is set to reap the fruit. The output increases, the customer base expands, and the start-up starts to grow exponentially.
As far as I know about start-ups, there’s more to a start-up’s success than mere luck & great coincidences. It requires thorough planning, investment, a product, solid research, knowledge, experience, a strong will, and most importantly INNOVATION. All these factors combined contribute to a high probability of success in this ‘dog eat dog world’. There is no guarantee though, it’s a high-risk gamble but if it works, everything would be worth it.
According to Inc42, “India boasts more than 6,000 startups and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is confident that 44% of them are based in Tier II and Tier III cities. And their numbers are only rising.” At the moment, India has the second-largest start-up ecosystem in the world, it is bound to grow further and the future looks bright.
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