The National Startup Day (16th January) recognizes and celebrates the contribution of startups to India’s economic resilience. The startups are fast-emerging as the backbone of the Indian economy and contributing in revenue generation and job creation. With technology, innovation and policy support, the country has become the 3rd largest startup capital of the world. It now has 84 unicorns and is registering a boom across sectors like auto, fintech, healthtech, edtech, agritech, deep tech, artificial intelligence, climate tech and others.
The startups are leading the ‘techade of India’ with entrepreneurial waves becoming stronger and the coming period will witness a rise of new businesses. As India rises as a global startup hub, let’s take a look at 10 startups which started from the roots and have now established themselves as successful businesses with innovation and technology.
1. CRED: It is a members-only club which rewards individuals who pay their credit card bills on time. It makes the payment experience rewarding for its users with exclusive offers and access to premium experiences. The users can manage multiple cards with a strong analysis of their credit score. It makes it extremely convenient for users to keep a track on their spending and manage expenses with analyses of spend tracking and efficiency of usage of the card. Its AI-backed protect feature keeps an eye on every single nuance of the credit card payment journey with timely reminders, spend patterns and usage statistics, benefitting the users in multiple ways.
2. Damensch: Following the path of innovation in the fashion industry, Damensch is a clothing brand which is on a mission to create essential wear for men. The company focuses on the most neglected category in a man’s wardrobe—the innerwear, and puts innovation at the center of everything. It has set up a unique design studio to bring in new technologies like bacteriostatic function, deo-soft freshness, MicroModal fabric and others. The brand pays special attention to comfort and sustainability and offers products like tank tops, printed tees, pyjamas with aesthetic styles to benefit its customers.
3. SanKash: It is a travel fintech company with a focus on helping travel brands—online and offline—to provide innovative payment plan products to customers. Realizing the growth in the travel and hospitality sector, the firm wants to create best-in-class customer and partner focused lending solutions for the industry. It enables travel providers to offer flexible payments to their customers through its vacation loans.
4. Simpl: It is a buy now pay later app which simplifies shopping experience for its customers. It is reimagining the credit card ecosystem by providing a full-stack, mobile-first platform for credit based payments. It seeks to empower online retailers to build trusted relationships with their customers. It is working to empower consumers and merchants by giving them more control over their commerce experience with innovative solutions.
5. Biz2X: It is a turnkey global SaaS platform that supports financial institutions to provide customized online lending experience for their small and medium business customers. It is helping banks in running their lending operations at scale, and offers enhanced loan management, servicing, risk analytics and a configurable customer journey. It uses a streamlined user interface, AI-driven analytics and a customizable white label environment to help banks enhance their core services such as offering focused customer service, growing their portfolio, and increasing the use of their different products.
6. BeatO: BeatO is a digital app-based platform that provides clinically proven, comprehensive diabetes care programs to prevent, control & reverse diabetes under the guidance of experts.
BeatO’s ecosystem includes its innovative smartphone-connected glucometers that work in unison with the BeatO app and an experienced team of experts – health coaches, nutritionists and top doctors. BeatO’s AI powered app provides personalized insights & real-time, data-driven care via its experts. BeatO also provides a complete one-stop solution for all daily diabetes essentials such as medicines, lab tests, diabetes friendly foods & products.
7. upGrad: A leader in the edtech space, upGrad has played an important role in the online education revolution. It offers a wide range of online courses and products to college students and working professionals. It provides campus & job-linked programs, short form, executive courses, undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programs. It enjoys a learner base of over 3 million across 100+ countries and over 300 university partners and robust enterprise business with a client base of 1000 companies worldwide. Already termed as Asia’s higher edtech leader, it has registered a strong presence in India as well as the UK, US, Middle East, India, Singapore & Vietnam, and in many more countries.
8. mPokket: Empowering its customers with their urgent financial needs, mPokket is an instant loan app that provides loans to college students and working professionals. The borrowers can take instant cash loans between Rs 500- Rs 30,000 depending upon their profile and credit history. The amount gets instantly transferred to their bank accounts and the flexible repayment plan makes it easier for borrowers to repay the loan with nominal interest charge. The users are not required to provide collaterals and physical documents and can get their instant personal loans approved quickly and easily.
9. Furlenco: Since the beginning, Furlenco has distinguished itself by providing cost-effective, user-driven, and aspirational products. The brand offers a range of furniture and home appliances that come with a variety of furniture access options as well as the freedom to switch between them thanks to scalable, best-in-class technological solutions. Furlenco places the customer at the center of everything they do and always follows through on their promises. Furlenco is the one-stop shop for all your furnishings and appliance needs. From renting to buying, you can have it all, along with free installation and inter-city relocation for all its products. With Furlenco’s annual plans, you can rent individual furniture and appliances based on your needs or subscribe to services for your complete home at a single price.
10. Delhivery: The company is the largest and fastest growing supply chain solutions provider. It aims to build the operating system for commerce through a combination of world class infrastructure logistics operations of the highest quality and cutting-edge engineering and technology capabilities. It has customers across sectors such as FMCG, consumer durables, consumer electronics, lifestyle, retail, automotive and manufacturing. Since its inception, it has successfully fulfilled over 1.4 billion orders across India. It has built a nation-wide network with a presence in every state, servicing over 18000 pin codes.
