1			Top, startups, India

Tata in collaboration with National Entrepreneurship Network (NeN) is scouting for the hottest Indian startups to find them and fund them. The oldest startup is started in 2003 and the latest in 2008. Several cities have figured in the startup list, with Bangalore topping the list and Mumbai coming up as a close second. The startups in the top 45 list ranged from Information Technology, Telecom, Education, Manufacturing, retail, publishing, Media etc., Expected nominations are in the range of 800-1000. Out of these 5 startups will be selected and funded.

Based on the user votes 45 companies had made the cut so far and many more waiting to break through. Retailer The Loot is leading the pack right now.

Of the total 45 companies only one company is investing in green technology or clean tech. 46 year old Poonam Bir Kasturi’s company from Bangalore called Daily Dump has a product to turn kitchen waste to compost. This would reduce the waste contribution from each household. This product is targeted at families and they have plans to launch it for apartment complexes. Vision of the company is to make each home in India fitted with one of their product and thus reduce the waste contribution to the country’s ill-equipped waste management centres. This would help India and the mankind alike. Visit their simple yet thoughtful website to get you started.

This came as a surprise because, the next big innovation is supposed to be from CleanTech and Vinod Khosla has already invested heavily in that.  One obvious reason for this aberration could be, entrepreneurial bug is relatively new in India and Indian entrepreneurs are taking safe bets with booming IT and Telecom industries rather than risky business like CleanTech.

Let us take a look at the list of startups that were picked and what they are upto.

The Loot: Jay Gupta’s survives in cutthroat competition of retailing. Competing in the market with corporate houses like Future Group, The Loot’s strategy is simple. Trade high volume at low margin. The Loot offers a discount of at least 25% on all brands. Garments they sell are not second hand or fake. They are originals. The sale (oops loot) is available throughout the year. Check this store out, if you happen to find one in your city.

GoSports India : Formed by alumni of Oxford and Harvard School of Law, this company finds and grooms talent for sports. They provide training, monitoring and representative services for promising athletes. Did some one ask when would India become a sports watching nation to a sports playing nation? I think here is your answer. We need more companies like this. GoSports is quite a sport.

ITCONS e-Solutions: Founded by Gaurav Mittal this company develops software products for recruitment an HR Space. It also helps in automating and streamlining the HR Processes.

Cafegadgets is a business to customer company which enables brand owners in IT and digital space to sell their products online and offering a whole range of products to customers at their doorstep. It is a win-win for the sellers and the buyers.

DeskAway is one of the pioneers of  ‘Software as a services’ (Saas) products. Their services help project collaboration and coordination via internet.

Daily Dump provides a way to turn the kitchen waste to compost and thus reducing the household’s waste contribution to the city.

Picsquare provides an online portal for photo printing, sharing and other personalized photoproducts.
Blogvani.com is a content presenting site with a very strong community of Hindi Bloggers. It has the potential to break into lakhs of Hindi readers and writers. This company is all set to help India’s large hindi reading population by tapping the rural market.

P.H.D - Party Hard Drivers has a very noble initiative. Don’t Drink and Drive. They will provide night cabs for people who party and get drunk in the process. Now that is something novel. That reminds me of the Shah Rukh’s ad where he gives a number to call for a Party Hard young fella.

The Viewspaper is targeted at youth of India. This portal provdes a way for youth to provide their views. Its audience is not limited to youth though. Yeh Hain Youngistan meri Jaan.

SadakMap : Translates to street Map. Ideally suited for Indian road conditions which cannot be normalized, SadakMap provides the maps through collaboration of  the user community. Users plot places on the map and have a discussion around them. Its a potential take-over target for Google.

Cinnamon Teal provides authors and institutions to publish books. They provide the option of printing in desired numbers unlike the publishing houses.

Crazy Noodles is a restaurant chain focused on providing oriental dishes in a fun filled environment.

Sacred Moments designs pooja kits customized for various festivals in India. This is one market, which I think is a Long Tail. But the concept can be easily duplicated.

Roovno Web Ventures helps the web startups that do not have a revenue model to generate consistent revenue. They will make the startup go from scratch to prototype and then to revenue generation business. They do stuff which is expected of a startup company. Glorified Venture capitalist, could be the right term

Experience Commerce provides social media solution on web and mobile platforms. They will help brands to reach their customers in a better and faster way. Their applications targeted for social media sites like facebook, orkut.

Picporta is the next generation image searching, indexing and storage solution. It uses its image recognition algorithms and reasoning based on user feedback to fetch images. Another possible google acquisition target.

Spring Blossoms is an online florist with a a wide range of flower arrangements and gifts.

Ncore Web Services provides a collaborative online platform for students and teachers for content and services.  Students can find teachers based on the feedback model. This is the next generation tuition center, but only better.

Peek-a-boo Patterns provides customized furnishings for your kids bedroom. This children special is started by Garima Agarwal of Kolkata.

DhanaX is a facilitator between the lender and borrower of money lending. Leveraging the oldest lending practices, much before banks have arrived,  it provides an easy way for the transactions. This could be a next generation hand loan mechanism.

iXiGO.com is a travel search engine which aggregates travel information from eclectic sources. They search so that you don’t have to.

BookEazy Technologies provides a platform for allowing users to type in the language they think in. They currently support 17 Indian languages.

Inkfruit is the online destination to create T-shirts. Users can design, interact and buy T-shirts of their choice.

Nautanki TV is online entertainment platform with a wide range of videos. Just as the name suggests, you can do all the nautanki you want. Unlike your regular TV, this would be your selection at your desired time. Broadband speeds should really be jacked up for this company to succeed. I see no reason why they will not.

DesiCrew Solutions Provides entry-level back office services for several clients. Services include, transcription, telecalling, digitization, GIS plotting.

Adhysteria.com This is the place where you can give away the stuff you don’t need or exchange stuff for something in return. All this can be done with the power of video review of products and strong user community feedback.

Giftwrapped provides corporate gifting solution.

Gray Matter Infotech : Jaipur based company lets people rate other people based on looks. The ratings can be compared with others and with celebrities too. I am a little confused with this company.
Vembu Technologies is one of the older startups in the list. Started in 2004 provides a remote online backup.

Tyroo Media is an online advertising company, which connects advertisers with the publishers.  It serves advertisements on websites and shares revenue each time a visitor clicks on the ad, much like google adsene.

Kallos Solutions provides products like Customer Relationship management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for small and medium enterprises (SME). Products are provided at a low cost. Products are web ready and can be installed remotely, which makes the company scale globally into other countries.

Whirlybird Electronics:  One of its kind WE designs navigation systems for aircrafts, ships and guided missiles. This is the only company in the list, which is moving up the value chain in a space mostly dominated by the Americans and the Europeans (Japanese and Chinese too).

Storrz.com : This company wants to differentiate between shopping and purchasing. While all the online portals involved in e-Comerce provide a way this purchase, Storrz provides a way to shop. Their logic is shopping is a social activity and purchasing is not. That is what is wrong with the traditional e-Commerce. Storrz wants to fill that gap by provide a community based shopping based on reviews and many more.

Fountainhead School wants to do it basic education, what ISB has done for management education in India.  Started in a model similar to that of ISB, Fountainhead is all set to revolutionize the way kids learn by getting away from the traditional teaching models and letting kids get ready for the future challenges of life.

Hungryzone is targeting the bachelor IT population of Bangalore (almost 50% of the IT population) to fill in their food needs. Food can be order online or an sms and it will be delivered at your doorstep. You can also sign up for a monthly package.

Rage Chocolatier is you shop to go for if you are looking for a customized chocolate. It also caters to corporates. This kind of reminds me of Chocolat movie.

Indian Shutter: Focusing on new India and planning to change the way people look at India, Indian Shutter is your source of stock photography for India. Semi-professional photographs take the images and a revenue model is built around it.

Xpert Media Technology is the men’s lifestyle portal targeted for India. This is a much needed portal and Xpert has the first mover advantage.

TRI Technosolutions Pvt Ltd is focusing on educational robotics and plans to generate revenue on the customer relations.

Rarefind Engineering sends rich content from web to your mobile with an non-interfering ad attached to the message. If you want to send a picture to your friends mobile this is the place to go.

Cane-O-La Foods provides fresh, ready to drink sugar cane juice. The juice is extracted in a healthy and scientific manner.

Neev Schools focuses on providing quality education and also allowing the child nurture other innate talents like music and dance.

ReviewGist reviews all the gadgets and other things so that you don’t have to. They provide an unbiased opinion for that new mobile you wanted to buy. Contemplating to buy that Nokia N96, this is the place to finalize the decision.

Vaya Technologies : With a tagline of “preventing theft in the city” Vaya provides solutions to your security needs. CCTV solutions, automation solutions, firefighting, bio-metrics attendance and many more.