The top 7 startups from India

The top 7 startups from India

India has made huge advancements in the area of information technology. Initially it was only known for standard coding work. Nowadays it can also show off with some high profile and internationally operating startups. Flipkart is being at the forefront of this development, having an evaluation of 10 billion dollars.

In this post we are writing about the top 7 startups from the subcontinent.

The list includes:

• Flipkart & Myntra
• Hike
• Redbus
• Bookmyshow
• Snapdeal
• Zipdial
• Zomato

The pride of the Indian startup scene: Flipkart & Myntra

Flipkart is an e-commerce company which was established in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. It operates exclusively in India, with headquarters at Bangalore, Karnataka, owned by a Singapore based holding company. Flipkart has launched its own product range under the name “DigiFlip” with products including tablets, USBs and laptop bags. Flipkart has also launched its own range of personal healthcare and home appliances under the brand “Citron”.

In May 2014, Flipkart received $210 million from DST Global and in July it raised $1 billion led by existing investors Tiger Global and South Africa’s media group Naspers. Flipkart’s last fundraising round in December had pegged its valuation at $12 billion.

Myntra

Myntra.com is also an Indian e-commerce company but with a focus on fashion and casual lifestyle products, headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. The company was founded in 2007 by Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena with a focus on personalization of gift items. By 2010, Myntra shifted its focus to the online retailing of branded apparel.

In May 2014, Myntra.com merged with Flipkart to compete against Amazon which entered the Indian market in June 2013.

Innovating bus ticket booking: Redbus

Redbus is an growing Indian start-up.

It is mainly focused on making bus ticket bookings easier. Co-founder & the CEO of Redbus is Phanindra Sama who got the idea for this in the year 2005, when he was not able to travel back home for Diwali (a festival in India) because of non-availability of tickets. So he planed to solve this problem by creating a new solution that would help the common men, like himself. Within a few years “Redbus” has generated a revenue of more than 12 million US Dollars.

In 2015 Redbus is a company which is worth 110 million US Dollars with 650 employees and a profit of 65 Million Dollars annually.

US girl big in India: ZipDial

ZipDial is a Bangalore based IT company launched in 2010 by California-born Valerie Wagoner.

The idea for ZipDial was sparked when Valerie Wagoner was working in “mChek” (a company based around mobile payment). She noticed the Indian ‘missed call’ system – where people called each other, would let it ring once or twice and intentionally hang up, using the missed call to convey a message.

In 2015 ZipDial has already a strong client base. Currently they are working with 500 multinational companies like Unilever, Disney India , Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Gillette. Through ZipDial the customers can give a missed call to a service provider. The service provider can then send more information via text messages to the “Missed Callers”.

It has been recently acquired by global technology giant Twitter for an amount of about 30 million US Dollars.

Eating out made easy: Zomato

This startup was founded in a living room in Delhi in the year of 2008.

Zomato is a restaurant discovery website and mobile app. It has all information on restaurants — menus, photos, reviews and contact info — for more than 150’000 restaurants in 36 cities. It is currently in 11 countries (including India) and plans to be in 22 new countries in the next two years.

Now Zomato has done already three funding rounds from various investors. The Info Edge Group (a part of a large Jobportal provider called Naukri.com) holds 50.1 percent of the shares of Zomato.

The main advantage of “Zomato” is their fresh look in their user interfaces in their website as well as in their app. Users get a new perspective about the good restaurants and keeps them engaged with their search. People especially liked the easy handling which met their needs.

In 2015 it was acquired by Seattle-based food portal “Urbanspoon” for an undisclosed sum, estimated to be around 60 million US Dollars. The acquisition will help Zomato to get an entry into the US, Canada and Australian markets.

Online Coupons made in South Asia: Snapdeal

Kunal Bahl and Rohith Bansal are the founder’s of Snapdeal, which was started in 2010 after getting their university degrees. They were inspired by groupon.com, which was providing discount coupons to clients of different brands to increase their sales.

Snapdeal also started with daily deals. But later changed it to become an online store where people can buy anything that is available on this earth.

Snapdeal got 70% of todays share in the ditigal coupon market.

It got a 1 billion dollar funding last year from various investors and is continuously acquiring new companies in the e-commerce space.

To illustrate how dynamic Snapdeal is expanding, here the companies which it acquired till now:

• In 2010, the Bangalore-based startup bought up the group buying site Grabbon.com
• In April 2012, Snapdeal acquired Delhi based sports goods retailer esportsbuy.com
• In May 2013, it acquired Shopo.in, an online marketplace for Indian handicraft products
• In April 2014, it acquired fashion products discovery site Doozton.com
• In December 2014, it acquired gifting recommendation site Wishpicker.com
• In January 2015, it acquired a stake in product comparison website Smartprix.com
• In February 2015, it acquired luxury fashion products discovery site Exclusively.in

Snapdeal has already closed 6 rounds of funding till 2015. Japan based company Softbank made an investment of 627 million US dollars, which makes them the “largest investor” in Snapdeal.

Son of business tycoon making headlines: Hike

Hike is an instant messaging platform based in India with 35 million users. Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of the well know Indian business tycoon Sunil Barthi Mittal, founded Hike in 2012. They also released an app in the same year.

The company has just acquired an US based free calling service provider ZipPhone to make Hike able to compete against their rivals. After acquiring ZipPhone, they released a calling feature to its customers and also have plans to provide a free text messaging service. Now the messenger provides free calling over the internet in more than 200 countries. Customers can also send PDF, JPG and Microsoft Office file’s using Hike.

Booking tickets made easy: BookMyShow

Ashish Hemrajani is the founder of the very successful online ticket booking website and app ”bookmyshow.com”. They have brought out a new culture to India, to buy tickets online, instead of standing in a queue for a long time.

BookMyShow has changed the Indian audience and it reflects a new culture of the youth to book tickets online, whithout having to worry to the last minute, whether they will get tickets or not.

The user can easily buy tickets and also select the seats, where he wants to sit. Before this platform was founded, it was impossible to buy tickets in advance and knowing which seat number it would have.

It’s also possible to buy tickets for cricket matches (a favourite sport on the subcontinent) or any other type of show for which tickets are available.

It has more than 120’00 ticket sales per day. In the fourth quarter of 2014 it sold 3.7 millionen tickets per month via its platform.

Recently BookMyShow has raised around 25 million US Dollars and is now valued at around 160 million US Dollars.

Conclusion

India has become a top destination for online and IT business startups. This is definitely a sign that the IT scene in India has become more mature over the years and is now able to produce top startups and companies, which can compete on a global scale.

What is your experience with startups from South Asia? Looking forward to an interesting discussion.

Interesting links about this topic:
Coolest Startups according to BusinessToday
Startup Ranking

The author: Sascha Thattil works at Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.