In the last few decades, online shopping has grabbed the full attention of everyone. It has become a part of our daily lives. From clothes to medicines, to groceries, there is hardly anything that cannot be brought from online. It is convenient, hassle-free and it saves time. Plus the pandemic accelerated the demand for shopping online; people find it safer especially during the period of lockdown.
Now when we purchase any goods they are delivered or shipped to the preferred place that we have mentioned while shopping online. There are different methods of shipping and E-commerce sites are adopting different models for their business. To deliver the products to their customers, a number of ways can be followed. In this article, we will talk about one of the methods which are known as Dropshipping. So, let’s take a look into it.
“Dropshipping is the entry point for a lot of people to business, E-commerce, and entrepreneurship. It’s the perfect first business.” –Lachlan Delchau-Jones
Dropshipping is a way of selling and delivering products to your customers without managing, and shipping the goods. Here you contact the supplier and let them deliver the product to your customer.
Basically, your website is like the intermediary, from where the customer chooses the product and then you forward the request to the supplier of the product who will ship it to the customer.
You don’t have to manufacture, store or ship the product themselves, dropshipping is free from all these steps all you have to do is to find the perfect dropshipping supplier for the job. It is quite a good option for those who want to start an E-commerce startup. It is said to be one of the most profitable models in the E-commerce industry.
The history of Dropshipping actually goes back to the days of the 60s and 70s, way before the internet was developed. During that time, when mails were delivered to the people, small booklets or catalogues were present along with them, with the help of that, one could place the order for their desired product from the catalogue through telephone and then the order was delivered to them at their doorstep.
Sears Catalogue
Amazon and eBay then changed the way people used to sell products online. People who want to sell their products could just place them on the sites and let the E-commerce sites drive the traffic towards that product.
Currently, sites just need to find the supplier for the product who does the remaining job for them. Aliexpress and Shopify are some of the websites that made starting an E-commerce business easier as manufacturers and dropshippers are easy to find here.
How Dropshipping Works?
If you want to start an E-commerce site, dropshipping is one of the best options for you. Below are the steps on how it actually works.
The first and foremost thing that one has to do is select the proper supplier.
The second step is to connect the supplier’s app to your online website.
Select the products that you want to sell to your customers.
Set a price strategy for you dropshipping model of your business.
Accept the orders from your customers.
The orders of the customers then are forwarded to the supplier. And you have to pay them for that order.
The suppliers then deliver the products to the doorstep of your customers.
Advantages of Dropshipping
Some of the advantages one get to enjoy if they chose to dropship are:
E-commerce business that follows the dropshipping model doesn’t need a large amount of capital for their business. They don’t need to pre-purchase the products. So comparatively, it needs less capital.
No need for a warehouse, where you have to store the products. The suppliers are the one who takes care of the product by storing them. Therefore, you can select whatever product you this is appropriate for your business.
As the whole shipping process of the products is handled by your supplier, you can do your business from any part of the world.
You can try to sell any kind of product on your website and if it is not bringing any profit, then you can quickly drop it from the list of your website.
Disadvantages of Dropshipping
Some of the disadvantages of the dropshipping model are:
You don’t know what kind of quality your product will be. A bad quality product may cause uproar and can be bad for your business.
You don’t have any control over the time the supplier takes while shipping the product to your customer.
While serving the customer, difficulties may arise, if there is a problem in communication with your supplier.
Dropshipping can be expensive as well, the market is quite competitive and if research is not done properly, then you might see other sites dropshipping the products at a much lesser cost.
Future of Dropshipping
In the past few years in the E-commerce business, there is an increase of business sites adapting to dropshipping model and in the future, it is only going to increase. Dropshipping can only be a profitable model for your business if you play all your cards properly and follow all the strategies carefully. For example, you have to be careful while selecting the dropshipping company for your business, proper research has to be done and then you can follow your plan.
E-commerce sites if planned accordingly and follow this model properly will turn into a high return business and will be a source of great profit.
For startups that are interested to try their hand at E-commerce, the dropshipping model is quite a good option for them. With more and more startups emerging, it is just a matter of time before people will realize the model’s importance and need in their E-Commerce business.
FAQ
Does Dropshipping have a Future?
Yes, dropshipping can easily turn into a profitable model for E-commerce sites as the model is a low-risk one.
How did dropshipping start?
Dropshipping started in the 60s and 70s when people used to receive catalogues by mails and could order items directly from the catalogue via phone, and have the company deliver them.
Who is the most successful dropshipper?
One of the most successful dropshipper is Irwin Dominguez. In just eight months, he made one million dollars worth of sales.
The time we are living in, startups are making the loudest noise all over the world. People are being brave and are keen on transforming their ideas into reality. Almost every country is experiencing a rise of startups across industries; young entrepreneurs are striving hard to fulfill their vision without any fear. This is not only about the growth of an individual but it is also contributing to the growth of the countries.
Just like all other countries, India is also experiencing the same rise. Not only that, it has become the biggest hub of Startups in the world. In this article, we will talk about how the initiative by the Government of India to create an ecosystem where Startups can flourish and how in the last six years, this initiative has been able to help young entrepreneurs and their startups. So, without any further ado, let’s get started.
“What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.”
Startup India is an initiative taken by the Indian Government; it was first announced in the year 2015 by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The campaign was launched on January 16th of 2016.
Basically, the main aim of this campaign is to provide an ecosystem where the Government will empower all the new Startup ventures and of course to encourage the innovation culture. Overall, this initiative is also in a role to stimulate entrepreneurship, economic growth, technological growth, innovation growth, and the employment of the country.
What is a Startup as per DIPP?
Though most of us more or less know what a startup is, mainly because today we are almost surrounded by startups, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DIPP) has defined the startup companies, as per the government of India. By the term “startup”, DIPP has mentioned the companies that are within 10 years from the date when they were incorporated/registered. Furthermore, the turnover of the company shall not be exceeding the 100 crore mark for any of the financial years since its incorporation/registration. Besides, it is obvious that the startup should have its headquarters in India to be recognized as an Indian startup. Along with that, DIPP also recognizes the startups that are registered with either of the following legal frameworks:
The registration of the company should be under the Companies Act of 2013; or,
Section 59 of the Partnership Act of 1932, as a partnership firm; or,
Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2002, as a limited liability partnership.
Benefits Provided by Startup India
Some of the benefits that Startup India provides to the young entrepreneurs of the country are:
One has to register through a mobile app or a website for their startup. It is quite easy and anyone who is interested can fill up a form and the whole process is online.
While filing the patents, startups will get an 80% reduction on that cost. Plus, the Government will deal with the facilitator fees and the startup will only pay the statutory fees.
The Government of India as per the initiative has created a ₹10,000 Crore fund and it will be invested in the startups as their venture capitals.
Startups will be free from paying three years of income tax if they get a certificate from Inter-Ministerial Board.
Research parks to be set up and it will give out several facilities in the R&D sector.
A number of compliances are provided to the Startups that will ensure saving of time and money.
People who are investing in startups will receive an exemption from tax, this will help in attracting more investors for the startups in the country.
The startups can choose from the investors, who want to get funds for their business.
One can close their startup within 90 days from the date of application of closing it up.
Every year nationally and internationally the Government has decided to host two fests where the startups will be able to interact with each other.
Current Startup Scenario in India
In the last few years, hundreds of Startups have been founded in the country and it is just increasing with time. Some of them have already made it to the list of Unicorns in India. For those who are not aware of what Unicorn is, basically, the term means a startup that has a valuation of $1 billion.
Top Indian Startup Unicorns in 2021
Right now, the country has over 83 Unicorns and has become the third-largest Unicorn hub in the world. The industries with the most numbers of Unicorns in the country are Fintech, SaaS, and e-commerce.
Bengaluru has emerged to be the city with the most number of Unicorns. Not only that, India has four Decacorns as well. Decacorns are those startups that have a value of $10 billion and above.
Startup India: The Innovation Week
The year 2022 is even bigger than the last year for startups in terms of the rising number of startups and unicorns. The day before the 6thanniversary of Startup India, on the ongoing celebration of innovation week, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has interacted with over 150 startups from different sectors through video conferencing. He announced that the 16th of January will be observed as the National Startup Day in the country.
Start-ups are going to be the backbone of new India. When India completes 100 years of independence, start-ups will have an important role. Country's innovators are making the country proud globally: PM Modi pic.twitter.com/aggRwUZs0X
The PM also said that the Startups are going to be the backbone of the country. He firmly advised the youth to indulge in the world of startup and “innovate for India and from India” and to also focus on the semi-urban and rural part of the country with their startups. Apart from that, he firmly believes that when India will complete its 100 years of independence, Startups will be playing a major role in the country.
Conclusion
It has been over 6 years since the StartupIndia initiative was launched many have benefited from it and it will continue encouraging the startup world of India. Young entrepreneurs have started dreaming fearlessly and are continuously striving to make those dreams a reality. An initiative like Startup India is just focusing on pushing those dreams to the peak of success.
FAQ
Who are eligible for Startup India?
Any business that has a turnover of not more than ₹100 Crore is eligible for Startup India.
What are the top 10 startups in India?
Unacademy, Udaan, CRED, upGrad, Razorpay, Meesho, Skyroot Aerospace, boAt, Urban Company, AgniKul Cosmos are top startups of India.
What is the main aim of startup India?
Startup India is a flagship initiative of the Government of India, intended to catalyze startup culture and build a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
Milestones are a great way to keep track of what you’ve accomplished in your life. And, when it comes to your startup, you should be aware of the milestones that are required and those that have the most impact on your company. Achieving a goal is always a great feeling, and it’s especially crucial for startups since it propels the company to the next level of success.
Milestones are like stepping stones to a successful business, and it’s critical to create proper milestones to keep track of your startup’s progress and keep it on the correct track. Following are some meaningful milestones you should be focusing on hitting if you want to have a successful startup.
It is one of the most important objectives that a startup should strive for. The model should be simple to comprehend, but it must also grow through time and include all of the aspects that changing time necessitates. The business model should tell everything about the project and explain to the investor about the working of the business.
2. Set up a Business Bank Account
One should always separate their personal and business accounts. It is usually the most intimidating thing in the world when you are starting a new business. And you’ll need two separate accounts for your personal and business assets to keep everything in order.
3. Launching a Website
When you build a business website, it becomes official, and the majority of people will learn about it. If your company does not have an online presence in current times, it will most likely suffer. Launching a website for your company will boost its legitimacy and make it more accessible to customers.
4. Hiring Important People For Your Business
Bringing the proper people on board assures that they will grow with you, boosting your company’s overall success and decreasing the need to hire for any new leadership role that arises down the road. When the right people are doing the right jobs, the efficiency sky rockets and is ultimately good for the company.
The creation of the first ever working prototype is the next milestone. This is how companies begin by developing their initial product. The prototype leads to the finished product, and the finished product leads to customers, which leads to profit.
6. Collecting and Reviewing Feedback
Collecting feedback throughout the introduction of prototypes and minimum viable products will save you time and money in the long run by revealing the product’s market position and future possibilities. Take your time collecting data and reviewing feedback, since this will assist you in creating the ideal product to meet demand.
For a startup, nothing is more stressful than the first product launch. The first ever launch decides the new reputation of the company amongst the customers and whether it will be valued in the market or not.
Your company will begin to receive paying customers after formally introducing the new product, and this is the best moment for the startup to keep the customers hooked and keep them coming back. Once the product is published, a small number of new consumers will try it out, and if they enjoy it, they will recommend it to others, resulting in a pool of devoted customers.
9. Have An Excellent Customer Service
If the product is good but the customer service is poor, the total quality of the experience will suffer, the product’s market value will fall, and customers may begin to migrate to a company with superior customer service. Invest in it and hire people who are qualified for the job. A company’s image, especially that of a startup, can be made or broken by its customer service.
Keep track of customer growth and the amount of new customers you obtain daily and monthly once the business is up and running and the initial product sales are happening. This will aid in the general expansion of the company and its consumer base. A large customer base equals more earnings and more individuals using and promoting your product. Make a daily and monthly goal for yourself so that you always have something to strive for. This will aid in the improvement of profit strategies and the efficiency of work.
Conclusion
You achieve a new milestone with every new sale or product you create. However, there are some milestones that are far too essential to overlook, and you should keep track of them to ensure that you are running your business correctly. Milestones keep you on track for your goals, and striving for them will make your work more efficient, and when you achieve them, you’ll feel more productive and optimistic about your business.
Different business milestones have different effects on the company but the ultimate goal is to earn money and expand the business. Keeping track of records and recruiting the correct personnel for the job will aid in growth and help you reach your milestones faster. However, the most important thing is to not only maintain track of the business, but also to look after yourself and the people who are helping you reach your goals.
The characteristics that propel a startup to success are proper workplace culture, vision, and teamwork.
What is the most important thing an entrepreneur should do before starting a business?
According to experts, analyzing rivals, examining the legal elements of your sector, evaluating your income and expenses, being practical about the risk involved, understanding timing, and hiring aid are all good first steps in beginning a business.
What is a milestone in entrepreneurship?
Milestones are business goals that include dates and the individual or team accountable.
2021 was one year full of events. This was the year when the pandemic did not come to an end. It was the year when the vaccines started to pick up the pace. Not only the pandemic stayed but it transformed into many forms and variants. We were confined to our homes and were still connected with the help of technology.
This was the year when we saw how crucial healthcare workers really are. We learnt how to honour them. We learnt ways to heal, and we shared the ways we found. We learnt how we can be alone and together with everyone at the same time. We rediscovered that we can overcome anxiety to rise above our shortcomings. We learnt how to smile under our masks and how to appreciate friends and family and life. We learnt how to hit back from the setback.
All these things happened in 2021, and now it is almost the end of the year. India too shared the pain and heals with the whole world. We too joined hands and faced the pandemic with courage. There was one new event that we witnessed this year and that set the tone for the rest of the year. The event we all saw was the uprising ‘valuations of startups’.
The Indian startup ecosystem saw unicorns from all directions, it was quite literally raining valuations. Companies raised a lot of capital, reached huge valuations and made a mark in this unusual year. This is the time for a startup rewind. Let us see back on this eventful year and bid farewell. This article entails everything that happened in our Indian startup ecosystem this year. First, the basics and then the technicalities, read on to witness glory.
There are many jargons that go without saying in the business world. One of the most (considered) prestigious words is Unicorn. A unicorn refers to a startup (A company) that is privately held and reaches or over a valuation of 1 billion dollars. The term was first officially coined in 2013 by Aileen Lee, a venture capitalist.
She chose the mythical creature (It does not exist in reality) ‘Unicorn’ to represent the rarity of such immense successful ventures. When Aileen coined the term ‘Unicorn’, there existed about thirty-nine companies that deserved to be called unicorns.
If we look at CB insights, we will find that there exist about 803 unicorns as of august 2021. If we sort the list of all unicorns on the basis of scale, the top tier will be reserved by ByteDance, SpaceX and Stripe. Some of them have already achieved valuations of 10 billion dollars like SpaceX and Stripe. They are to be called ‘Decacorns’.
Indian Startup Ecosystem in 2021 – A look back
This year was the year of many firsts, this year we saw many things that were never done before. America chose its first female vice president, NASA touched the sun for the first time ever, space tourism became a reality, and India won its first gold medal in the athletics category.
Neeraj Chopra Gold medal in Javelin Throw
Alongside all the worldly business, our country India saw something unusual in the startup ecosystem. We saw a boom of unicorns and many firsts in these many categories too. India witnessed the first health tech unicorn “Innovaccer”, the first social commerce unicorn “Meesho” and the first electronic pharmacy unicorn “PharmEasy”. These were the firsts (types) unicorns in their respective fields that India saw this year.
Well, startups are quite always the trailblazers for technology and innovation they bring to society but apart from these above mentioned ‘Firsts’, do you know how many Indian Startups became a unicorn?
The Indian startup ecosystem saw 33 startups that came under the definition of a Unicorn. That means in just twelve months, India produced something like three dozen unicorns in the country. This stunning number definitely improved India’s status in the world.
Moreover, India displaced the UK to become the third top country to have a flourishing startup hosting ecosystem. The cumulative valuations of these unicorns go over the value of 33 billion dollars and that is a new record in itself. The UK on the other hand produced 15 unicorns.
India now is ahead of the UK, France, Israel, Brazil, Canada and South Korea, on the list of top startup hosting countries. It added many unicorns, led by the online educator BYJU’S (worth the US $21 Billion), Mobile ad tech InMobi (the US $12 Billion), and travel stay finder (the US $9.5 billion). There are 33 stories to be celebrated. We will talk a little about some of them. Let us read the most glorious and biggest startups of the year for the Indian startup ecosystem.
BYJU’S (Education + Technology)
BYJU’S is an “ed-tech” platform which simply means the amalgamation of education and technology. It is one of the world’s leading ed-tech companies providing learning programs for students in LKG, UKG, classes One to twelve (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET and IAS. The mobile app uses a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to personalise learning for every student.
It has a valuation of about 21 billion US dollars. That is a massive number. The company is also in talks for a listing in the United States. It is expected that if the listing is successful, BYJU’S valuation will jump from 21 billion dollars to a whopping 48 billion dollars. It is headquartered in Bengaluru.
It is not just India’s topmost startup in terms of valuation but it is also one of the most valued ed-tech platforms in the whole world. BYJU’S has had and still has, a great growing perspective in India but the plans of this ed-tech giant is deviating a bit.
The company is planning to enter the United States and then on to other English speaking international markets. It tends to believe that these countries (like the United States) have a large untapped demand for a merger in the field of education and technology. These are developed countries with an already built strong payment infrastructure and the willingness to pay a fee. The subscription business model of BYJU’S, hopes for better demand and a better future in these outside countries.
It is here to be noted that it is not going to be easy. Conquering the education and technology amalgamation is a herculean task. That too in a foreign land where technology is already developed and flourishing. So, fighting in a market that is already a place of the target for many corporations will be difficult. The expansion is still in talks but the effect it has on India is nothing short of remarkable.
InMobi (Mobile Marketing platform)
Going by the most amount of valuations, InMobi lies second in this list. It is the country’s second most valued startup. It is valued at 12 billion dollars. Inmobi is based out of the most favourite city for startups, is Bengaluru. It is a mobile advertising platform that helps others in optimising the ranks of the advertisements which run primarily on mobile phones.
InMobi has raised a total of $320.6M in funding over seven rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 1, 2019, from a Venture-Series Unknown round. InMobi is funded by six investors. Lightbox and Tennenbaum Capital Partners are the most recent investors. InMobi has acquired 10 organisations. Their most recent acquisition was Appsumer on Oct 13, 2021.
InMobi has invested in NestAway on Mar 16, 2015. This investment – Seed Round – NestAway – was valued at $1.2M. InMobi has raised a total of $25M in a single venture fund, InMobi Indie Game Developers. This fund was announced on Jul 24, 2014, and raised a total of $25M. Data is sourced from Crunchbase.
One of the most interesting facts about InMobi is that it is India’s first Unicorn. Yes, it is true. In 2011, the startup was provided with a cheque of 200 million dollars from SoftBank and thus it became the first-ever unicorn startup in India.
The future of this advertisement focussed startup is quite interesting. According to the March 2021 news, the company InMobi is planning for an IPO in the United States at a value of up to 15 billion dollars. After being founded in 2007, and becoming the first-ever unicorn in India, it is seen as a hopeful venture. It is also seen as the torchbearer of the unicorn league that started after this company entered the $1 billion mark of valuation. The company also has a subsidiary named “Glance”, which also turned a unicorn in the pandemic year, 2020. What the future holds for this venture, is yet to be seen, for now, it is expanding as much as possible.
OYO Rooms (Hotels and technology)
Ritesh Agrawal, a 19-year-old college drop-out released the nightmares of a traveller for an affordable place to stay in and then decided to develop an Airbnb inspired online homestay service. Spotting a perfect opportunity in the then unorganised hotel market, which was worth less than $7 billion, he founded OYO Rooms in 2013. 24-year-old Ritesh Agarwal had the solution to a backpacker’s ordeal of unpleasant surprises to horrors of the “budgeted” hotels is a booking app that promises clean, affordable and branded hotels.
OYO is a global travel technology company. The aim of this company is to help people find hotels and staying locations. It also works as a connection between patrons and guests. It was founded by Ritesh Agrawal and the startup is based out of Gurgaon (Now gurugram), Haryana, India. The company now has about 10,000 employees as of now.
The startup is financed through debt and is a privately held company. OYO has been able to raise about 4.5 billion dollars up till now and has made twenty-seven investors interested with their money in the venture. Let us see through the facts and figures that shaped the hotel retail chain OYO, here in the next para we discuss the founding and funding of this startup,
OYO has raised a total of $4.6 billion in funding over 21 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Dec 16, 2021, from a Debt Financing round. OYO has invested in OYO LIFE on Oct 30, 2018. This investment – Funding Round – OYO LIFE – was valued at ¥8.3B. OYO is funded by 27 investors. Microsoft and Värde Partners are the most recent investors. OYO has acquired a total of about 7 organisations. Their most recent acquisition was Danamica on Sep 2, 2019. They acquired Danamica for $10M.
Investments Analysis for the year 2021 (Investments behind valuations)
The Indian startup ecosystem saw a noticeable record on investments this rather unusual year. The startup ecosystem has witnessed an investment of $36 billion in privately held companies this year. This investment trend can be seen making sense as the demand for digitisation has grown many many folds amid the Covid 19 pandemic.
This year, the opus of seed-stage deals dominated nearly 396 deals aggregating to a value of 705 million dollars. Moreover, the number stood at 166 Investments at the “Series A” round of funding, which amounted to about 1.67 billion dollars. This is the data up till the 20th of December. It is to be carefully noted that most of the majority of the investments were in the direction of the IPOs that were listed in the year 2021. It was directed to the pre-initial public offering and nuanced rounds in companies like Zomato, PolicyBazaar, Ola and Paytm. If we count and add the top ten deals or investments, we will get the number 5.58 billion dollars.
In addition to the number of deals of investments, Indian startups also raised more than normal. Normal here refers to the compared rounds of the previous years that were preceding 2021. Startups raised much more than they normally do, this is quite unusual. Which matches the theme of the whole of the unusual year that we faced.
Risk capital funds stepped up the game to take bigger and bigger bets on high growth companies. Interestingly, they put all that risk of investing capital in these companies very early in time. This resulted in companies getting more and more valuations. These higher valuations inflated the worth of these newborn businesses and led the way of doubling and even tripling their value in each successive funding round.
VC Deals in India By Year
The graph above clearly shows the enthusiasm in investment deals this year. We can notice that venture capital deals in India are rising. The number is not even steady, it is mostly a jump. After a little slump in the year 2020, it picked up the pace again like before. Not only the pace and rapidness but the volume and magnitude grew too.
The aggregate value of deals that happened tripled from what it was in the initial year of the pandemic. The second year in pandemic saw an average deal of almost 33 million dollars. Such a jump in average deals proves the point that investors and Venture capital funds are bullish on companies. This year they took more risk in hope of expected future returns.
“Valuations are a reflection of an investor’s exit expectations. 2021 has proven the full venture cycle for India. Some fabulous exits like Zomato, Nykaa, PolicyBazaar and others have increased exit size expectations, and consequently the valuations,” said Alok Goyal, founder and investment partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, an early-stage VC firm.
He also sounded a cautionary note while pointing out that
“markets have a habit of overreacting on both sides – in bull and bear cycles. We are seeing a bull cycle reaction right now and (won’t) be surprised if there is a bearish overcorrection in the future.”
Many companies like Fintech startup, Cred, OfBusiness, Groww, Cars24, Licious, Spinny, InfraMarket, Good Glamm Group and Pristyn Care were among the firms whose valuations grew manifold in the last year.
Number of VC Deals in India in 2021
“Through 2021 we experienced a strong positive shift in the quality of founding teams, depth of markets, unit economics and exit opportunities via public markets. As a result, investors across stages felt comfortable writing larger cheques and taking more risk,” said Vaibhav Agrawal, partner at Lightspeed India, which has backed new unicorns of 2021 like ShareChat and Apna Co.
Seed VC Deals in India by Year
The above graph is the graph showing Seed Venture capital deals in India over the years. The number of capital deals was rising until a halt in 2020, that too got over and the growth continued in 2021. However, if we look at the average deal size, we can clearly see a good amount of growth. The average investment deal we saw was about 2.5 million dollars, which is the highest over the years preceding 2021. With this trend in the average deal size, aggregate deal value also grew to 700 from 400 in the year 2020.
With all this capital at ease and in their bank account, startups have been able to execute their strategies and thus are able to grow more than ever in the past twelve months. Moreover, they are seeking listing not only in our big nation but even in the foreign developed and technology-rich lands.
More and more investments are enabling them to grow both vertically and geographically. Most investors said that sectors that dominated 2021 like web3/ crypto, SaaS, direct-to-consumer or D2C brands and tech, business-to-business (B2B) commerce, edtech and healthcare will continue to attract funding next year as well.
“ Cycles will come and go, but the important takeaway here is that Indian entrepreneurs have access to the equity needed to get closer to their vision of being market leaders,” said Pranav Pai, cofounder, 3one4 Capital, an early-stage venture fund with investments in Licious and Koo.
“They are also taking this opportunity to strengthen balance sheets and prepare for the resilience needed to face a correction when it comes,” he added.
Today, most mature startups have dedicated corporate development teams and an exit by sale is a real option for founders now, according to Kashyap Chanchani, managing partner, The Rainmaker Group, a Mumbai-based investment bank. “Till two years ago a majority of M&As would have been out of distress and lack of options,” he said.
Some time ago, we feared that the covid 19 pandemic will impact and eventually affect the listings this year. We were surprised by startups as if they were ready for the magic trick. Initial public offerings were not in the options for startups this year but 2021 changed that.
This year we witnessed monumental shifts in how technology-led businesses expand at the maximum. Smaller startups like gaming firm Nazara Technologies went public this year but it was food delivery from Zomato’s Rs 9,000-crore IPO that really set the stage for at least half-a-dozen top-league startups seeking an IPO in India.
Country
No. of Unicorns
USA
487 (+254)
China
301 (+74)
India
54 (+33)
UK
39 (+15)
Germany
26 (+16)
France
19 (+12)
Israel
17 (+9)
Canada
15 (+12)
The above list is the list containing “Top countries and cities where the world’s unicorns are based out of”. We can see India is ranked third in this list of countries. It has added 33 new unicorns in this year alone.
City
No. of Unicorns
San Francisco
151(+83)
Beijing
91(-2)
New York
85(+52)
Shangai
71(+24)
Shenzhen
32(+12)
London
31(+15)
Bengaluru
28(+20)
Hangzhou
22(+2)
The top cities where the Unicorns are based are also listed. San Francisco is the top tier city where startups foster growth the most. SF is the home of the startup world, the presence of Silicon Valley makes it a very favourable place to be.
If we move down on the list and see the number 7, it is Bengaluru, the startup hub of India. Later in the list, we can also see Gurugram and Mumbai. All these cities because of their business environment and with the help of the government have turned out to be a growth nest for new-age startups.
Industry
No.of Unicorns
% of Total Value
FinTech
139
19.5%
SaaS
134
10.4%
E-commerce
122
8.4%
AI
84
6.0%
HealthTech
80
4.7%
Cyber Security
40
2.5%
The above list is an excerpt that we are linking to our blog. We can see that FinTech (Finance and technology) has incorporated the most number of unicorns. Not to mention that technology has occupied a huge part of our daily life amid the pandemic. This can be safely assumed as the reason why technology has grown at this pace.
During the pandemic, people began questioning a lot of things like their finances and the security that they get from money and the likes. Thus, these questions and the revelation of the fact that life is fragile led to the growth in people investing their money into stocks. We can safely say that people began thinking long term because of the pandemic. The second and third rank is held by SAAS (Software as a service) and E-commerce startups, which too is crucial to normal life in the pandemic.
Unicorns Founded by Indians (Abroad)
We read about the data about startups that went on to become unicorns in Indian borders or boundaries, but Indians won’t stop here. There are some startups that are helmed by Indians that went unicorns outside of the Indian borders.
Indians now can be seen running about 119 unicorns in India and around the world. This cumulative number contains 54 unicorns that are in India and 65 outside Indian borders. Let us talk about a few unicorns that are either founded by Indians or who have at least one co-founder who is an Indian.
Instacart – Instacart is an on-demand delivery startup based in the United States.
Clip – Clip is a finance technology (Fintech) company based out of Mexico. It is founded by an Indian,
Improbable – gaming company based out of the United Kingdom.
Moglix – E-commerce platform based out of Singapore.
Determining Valuations
When we think about valuations, we might think about some graphs and numbers and more data and more numbers. Well, you are right, it is number crunching and data drives but there is one more aspect to it, the story behind the data. And oftentimes the story enjoys more space than numbers. There are three things that need to be kept in mind,
Valuation is simple, we choose to make it complex.
Every valuation has a narrative behind it. A good valuation is more about the story than about the numbers. When valuations go bad, it’s not because of the numbers, it’s because of biases, uncertainty and complexity.
When valuations go bad, it’s not because of the numbers, it’s because of biases, uncertainty and complexity
Why we are seeing a surge in Unicorns (What explains India’s Unicorn boom ?)
It was a wonderful year for the Indian startup ecosystem. It is really interesting to see that in an unusual year like 2021, startups were able to get impressive valuations. Not only impressive valuations but they were able to become unicorns with a worth of over a billion dollars. This requires an explanation. Let us see how these new businesses with literally no past record of profit-making are even able to hold great valuations. Let us see the most expected view that the experts are saying.
Technology Sector Uprising
Before the pandemic started in the year 2020, India was a developing nation (still is). India was adapting to the major shifts in the sector of technology and slowly but surely was on the path of making the new behaviour (of using technology on a regular and normal basis) a reality.
At that time, there was a chief technological officer in almost every Indian household, who was under the age of 20 and above 12. That person was the chief in the technology sector of the house. He/She was the person if the other members of the home (who are not that tech-savvy) wanted any sort of help in that domain.
As the pandemic hit, everything came to a standstill and our dependence on technology grew manifolds. This growth made the public procure more and more technology in houses all over the country.
The CTO of the house also became the chief procurement officer for the household. As the reliance on technology became broader and broader, people became more used to it. We are seeing a massive change in consumer behaviour, and we don’t think that the change is irreversible.
Now, it has been about two full years in the pandemic and the need for technology has not slowed. It has risen and only risen in the past year. This rise in the usage of technology has made possible such growth trends in this unusual year.
Each and every business, or startup has become a technology business, without them realising this thing. Today even before anything, they want to work on the technology behind the company, because they know that it will be the face of the company in the future. The future is already here.
Cheaper Accessibility to technology
The lockdown and the fact that people spent most of their time at home has led to more technology boost. We have used technology for quite everything except a few things. Phones and laptops were seen as the most important technological devices in a household. We attended virtual meetings, went on to more virtual meets, dated on our phones and ordered food from our mobiles.
This dependence has led to a huge demand for not only the technology sector but the wearable sector as well. The cheaper accessibility of smartphones and the wide range of tech devices has also led to a boost in this technology race. This race has opened the door for a fully digital economy that India will become in the upcoming years. This boost in technology has enabled a new playground for startups and thus, we see huge and handsome valuations and of course “Unicorns”
Thriving Payments ecosystem
Led by Paytm and Google pay, India is paying digitally. We are using net banking, Unified payments interface or UPI, credit cards, debit cards and all sorts of things to make our payments easy and convenient. This has led to startups expanding their respective user bases. This has also led to the digital and cashless and paperless economy that the government of India supports.
A thriving payments infrastructure also has led to growth in the valuations of startups. The reason is the fact that as paying someone becomes easy and it alters the behaviour of people transacting something, it boosts it.
A good and smooth payment gateway also lubricates the payments made to a business. This lubrication has penetrated every business in this tech-savvy India and led to more and more payments. As paying becomes easier and business transactions become more and more accessible, startups are able to maintain a healthy user base and even they are able to increase their user base in the previous year.
This increase in user base and the loyalty customers show startups are able to generate some income that proves the point of investing in them. Thus, they get more and more money from investors and Venture capitalists as they are able to see and witness a good and healthy user base.
Digital-first approach
Every business, be it a newborn startup or a 100 year old national or a multinational company, eerie business is operating with a target of a “Digital-first approach”. Going by this approach, the businesses are starting to maintain and take their online business very seriously and make their digital hand the strongest among all. This will not only help in maintaining that already established user base but it will also help them to establish themselves as a brand in this technology world.
Moreover, it is online and in the digital space than in the offline space that people discover new businesses to get their work done. Thus, digital businesses are also good at generating new customers from zero. This has also helped startups to establish themselves as a trustworthy investment for both venture capitalists and potential customers.
IPOs of startups
This year we all have witnessed that startups that are relatively young than that of established brands went ahead and listed themselves. They had, what we call an Initial public offering in financial terms. IPOs of Zomato and Paytm proved the might of these young startups.
Venture capitalists used to invest in tech companies. The reason behind that is that software is easy to scale, In fact, the software is the most scalable thing in the whole world. Softwares and digital assets can give you returns as much as 10X a year in some cases.
Now, as we all know that pandemic accelerated that trend of dependence on software and led to our more use of technology on a daily basis. When everything came to a halt, like restaurants, retail businesses and theatres and other businesses, the only sector that shined through that rough phrase was the technology sector. This is why capitalists and investors invested their money in tech businesses because it is the hottest available option of investment right now and possibly in the future as well.
Future Predictions of Indian Startup Ecosystem
The future is going to be interesting at this pace. We don’t know when this cycle of great valuation will stop and it is hard to tell. The pandemic taught everyone that technology is the sector that is the best for investments. The best way and most efficient way to invest in technology is through the hands of venture capitalists. This is the trend that we saw recently in the pandemic years. We can safely and surely say that technology is going to be something that will drive growth in the future.
If we talk about the future predictions, then boss, it is on the positive side of the slope. As things get normal, people will resume working on their laptops and smartphones. This pandemic altered the behaviour of people from all over India, also the whole of the world saw a change in behaviour.
Some are saying that these valuations are just vanity metrics and some are promoting the fact that Indians will run the world and tech is the next big thing (already is). Some are even thinking of a correction in the market that the market will correct itself in the future time to come. Some are also saying that it is a unicorn bubble. What is a unicorn bubble? let us find out,
A unicorn company is one that is valued at, or above, $1 billion US dollars. A unicorn bubble is a theoretical economic bubble that would occur when unicorn startup companies are overvalued by venture capitalists or investors. This can either occur during the private phase of these unicorn companies or in an initial public offering. This is what we call a unicorn bubble.
The term is as weird and mythical as the term ‘Unicorn’ itself, but in this uncertain and unusual world, we are now probably ready for each and every ‘weird’ and mythical thing that crosses our path. Let us then witness the future with our own eyes.
Conclusion
This year, the volume of seed-stage deals dominated with nearly 396 deals aggregating to $705.86 million while about 166 investments series A amounted to about $1.67 billion, this data is until December 20. India is now the third most destination in terms of startups produced per year. We produced 33 this year. That is the highest of many countries.
We did even better than the United States and other developed countries in this category. India is growing insanely when it comes to the startup world. There are so many unicorns in India these days. The reasons we discussed already in the blog above. We have been betting on technology for two years now. It is the foreseeable future as far as we can see, the pandemic only accelerated it. We are seeing a massive change in consumer behaviour, and we don’t think that the change is irreversible.
All these things happened in 2021, and now the year is ending. What you want to take with you depends heavily on you. As we come to the end of the year, it’s time to reflect back and set the tone for the new year. It is that time of the year when we get ready to start something again and try again, and/or continue doing successful ventures in the future.
The startups in India made us proud and had shown us a ray of hope in a rather dull year. We all hope that this ray of hope broadens in the new year as explorers from all over the world continue to make our world better equipped for the future.
FAQ
How many unicorns are starting in India in 2021?
India added over 33 unicorns in 2021 which takes the total count to 54.
Which industry added the most unicorns in 2021?
The fintech sector added the most unicorns in 2021 with 139 unicorns.
The concept of bootstrapping a business is nothing new. The term originates from the concept of “pulling yourself up by your own”. In the business world, the term generally refers to: “Financing and growing your business without the need for external assistance in the form of capital investment.”
In other words, it’s the “I’m doing it my way” approach to building a business. There’s a buzz today in the SaaS universe around bootstrapping. The wind has changed in some way and has spurred some conversation on the topic. That’s why I we bring to you the 5 best tips for bootstrapping your Startup.
Venture capital funding is at an all-time high in India. In 2017, Indian companies received VC/private equity funding to the tune of $17.6 billion, with Japan’s Softbank investing nearly a quarter of that amount in Flipkart, Paytm, and OYO.
It would appear as if nearly every tech-based start-up is backed by VC funds these days and if you want to make it to the big leagues, you need VC money. But a closer look reveals that this claim is not quite true. Bootstrapping may not only be a viable alternative to VC funding, but it might also actually be your ticket to startup success. So, take a look at the 7 bootstrapped SaaS startups who successfully secured bootstrapping.
People talk to your sales team to learn about and purchase your product
Your landing page call-to-action is “Request a demo”
Your primary growth channel is sales
The reason you should pick one is that it focuses on you. If you sell to a specific type of customer, in a specific way, it simplifies everything. Which features you build, how your pricing works, what you optimize your landing page for and more. Rather than doing alright at both, you can be excellent at one. Startups don’t win by being alright, they win by being excellent.
2. Simplify Everything
You can simplify more than just your sales model. You should strive to simplify everything your users interact with. From the top of the sales funnel to the bottom: your content, ads, landing page, pricing, onboarding, product, and more. People are busy. They have short attention spans.
They’re constantly being targeted by thousands of corporate agendas. If you make something the slightest bit difficult, they won’t take the time to figure it out. They’ll drop off. They’ll stop reading your blog post. They’ll close your landing page. They’ll quit using your product.
But if you make it easy, they’re far more likely to engage. And they’ll remember that “Yeah, this is easy to use”. In the early days, you need loyal fans. You need people to love your company, otherwise, growth will be an eternal grind.
More customers = More money = Doing better. Right? Wrong. The problem is that it makes your product and messaging unfocused. Consumer or customers need different features than SaaS customers. They also resonate with different messaging on the landing pages and in products. The consumer customers end up churning more.
It turns out that feedback is more valuable to SaaS companies because it drives revenue. Of course, hindsight is always 50-50. If you don’t know who your target audience should be, you don’t understand your users well enough. Get out of your office and talk to them.
How to Bootstrap your Business?
4. Ruthlessly Manage Your Time
In a start-up, there’s an endless list of things you could spend your time doing. How do you most efficiently spend your time? The worst part is that many activities feel productive but really aren’t. Take email, for example. If every time you get an email, you drop what you’re doing to deal with it, you’ll spend your entire day on email. Obviously, falling behind is a problem, but you can dedicate chunks of time to work through it. Context switches are expensive.
Another culprit is building features that aren’t mission-critical. Sometimes a customer asks for a feature, and it’s tempting to say “we’ll have it done today”. We’ve done this many times. We want to impress people and deliver value as fast as possible. It feels right, but you will end up building a lot of features that aren’t useful to many people. This isn’t an efficient use of time. It’s much better to pick one high-level strategy, and patiently execute it.
The best way to solve this is to set measurable goals. What is your team trying to accomplish this year, half, quarter, and month? What must be done to hit these goals? What can I work on today that will move the needle the most? Thinking this way helps you make unbiased decisions about how to spend your time. Otherwise, you’re just acting in the heat of the moment: inefficiently.
5. Be Helpful
On top of these things, remember that you are in the business of helping people. People buy your product because it solves their problems. The more you can get in the mindset of helping others, the better your company will do.
List of 7 Successful Bootstrapped Startups in India
Now, let’s look at some of the startups that were successfully bootstrapped.
1. Zoho: The operating system for business
Zoho takes its love for small businesses to the next level with its smart software offering. It is also considered, one of the best CRM for SaaS startups. The company enjoys a worldwide user base of 15 million and has over 33 products that help you achieve your sales & marketing, support, finance, and recruitment needs with a deep focus on business.
Zoho CRM
The company’s flagship product Zoho CRM is pitted as India’s answer to the behemoth grandpa of SaaS – Salesforce.com and emerges a clear winner in terms of price comparison with the latter. Founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas. Their team size is more than 2,500 and they are based out of Chennai.
2. Hotjar: All-in-one Analytics & Feedback
Hotjar is a new, powerful tool that reveals the online behavior and voice of your users. By combining both Analysis and Feedback tools, Hotjar gives you the “big picture” of how to improve your site’s user experience and performance/conversion rates. Hotjar is one of the best-bootstrapped saas companies.
Hotjar Heatmap
Founded in 2014 by David Darmanin & Erik Näslund, their team size is more than 100 and they are based out of St Julian’s, Malta.
3. Agile CRM: Built with love for small businesses
Agile CRM is a Sales and Marketing CRM for small and medium businesses. It’s complete with everything, from web pop-ups and email templates to advanced sales and marketing automation; and is designed to help small businesses sell and market like the Fortune 500, at a fraction of the cost.
Agile CRM is trusted by over 7,000 customers and fills in the space of a killer combo of CRM and Marketing Automation. Agile CRM is one of the best bootstrapped SaaS companies.
Agile CRM
Founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Manohar Chapalamadugu. Their team size is 70, and they are based out of Hyderabad.
4. Aweber: Simple, Personalized Email Marketing and Automation
AWeber is an email marketing and automation platform – but they’re a bit different than the other services out there. They’re built for time-strapped content creators, small business owners, and entrepreneurs.
You’ll get access to easy-to-use automation tools to launch automated email sequences, tag and segment subscribers based on their behavior, send remarkable one-time promotional emails or newsletters, and track your success.
AWeber dashboard
Founded in 1998 by Tom Kulzer. Their team size is more than 100 and they are growing. They are based out of Pennsylvania, US.
5. FusionCharts: The most comprehensive JavaScript charting library
FusionCharts is a software provider of data visualization products (JavaScript Charts, Maps, Widgets, and Dashboards). The company has the most comprehensive JavaScript charting library, with over 90 charts and 1,000 maps, and is loved by 24,000 customers in 120 countries. FusionCharts is one of the best-bootstrapped saas companies.
Graphs by Fusioncharts
Founded in 2001 by 16-year-old Pallav Nadhani. Their team size is more than 100 and they are based out of Kolkata.
6. Kayako: Taking the helpdesk a long way
Kayako is a customer service software that scales with your business and makes it easy to deliver an unrivaled customer support experience. Today, Kayako is the leading multi-channel help desk that helps over 10,000 businesses to delight millions of their global customers.
Kayako
Founded in 2001 by Varun Shoor. Their team size is more than 150 and they began their operations from Jalandhar.
KooKoo is an interface between your web application and the caller. It takes phone commands from you and executes them on your behalf to the caller. KooKoo rightly fills the gaps of lack of time, manpower, and inefficiency of the current communication setup and minimizes the loss of business.
KooKoo is a product of Ozonetel, which was founded in 2007 by Murthy Chintalapati, a serial technology entrepreneur, and Atul Sharma, a product architect. Their team size is more than 100 and they are based out of Hyderabad.
Conclusion
So, these were some of the famous successfully bootstrapped companies. Bootstrapping may not only be a viable alternative to VC funding, but it might also actually be your ticket to startup success. Let us know your views on bootstrapping SaaS startups in the comments section below.
FAQ
What are examples of SaaS?
Examples of SaaS companies are BigCommerce, Google Apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, MailChimp, ZenDesk, DocuSign, Slack, Hubspot.
What is SaaS model?
SaaS is a method of software delivery that allows data to be accessed from any device with an internet connection and a web browser.
What is an example of bootstrapping?
An entrepreneur who risks their own money as an initial source of venture capital is bootstrapping.For example, someone who starts a business using $100,000 of their own money is bootstrapping.
There is a huge increase in population in India. The increase in population has led to an increase in the traffic in the metro cities in the country. The top cities in the country were ranked in the top positions for the highest traffic worldwide.
To bring a solution to this huge traffic and the delay caused because of that various startups have been working towards building Air Taxis. Let’s look at some of the Air Taxi startups in India.
India’s first Air Taxi service was first launched at the Chandigarh airport. It was inaugurated on 14 January 2021 by the Chief Minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar. The Air Taxi service is launched under the UDAN scheme of the Central Government.
Airports Authority of India had tweeted on their official Twitter handle saying that India’s first Air Taxi flight was flagged off by the Chief Minister of Haryana as part of their Inauguration. They added that the flight will operate under the Regional Connectivity Scheme RCS-UDAN.
The Chief Minister of Haryana said that this is the first time in the country that a small aircraft is used for services in the form of an Air Taxi.
The Air Taxi can carry one pilot and three passengers. The Air Taxi has the lightest plane which has a twin-engine in the world. Its weight is 760 kg. The aircraft uses a standard 92 octane petroleum which is different from the normal flights which use Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF).
The aircraft can travel at a range of 742 Nautical Miles. The services can be availed at INR 1,755 per seat. The main objective of the aircraft is in line with the government’s aim to connect the Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities with the metro cities of the Country.
A subsidy is provided by the government to the airlines per seat to provide better connectivity to the smaller towns. As per the reports the airline will cover around 26 routes under Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) UDAN.
Ubifly technology is a Chennai-based startup that is working on developing e-planes in the country. Ubifly Technologies Private Limited was founded in the year 2016. The company is commonly known as the e-plane company.
It was founded by Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy and Panjal Mehta. The Startup is concentrated on developing electric planes and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The main aim of the startup is to bring a new definition for intracity travels and their products focus on short-distance intracity travels.
Pranjal Mehta(Left) with Prof.Satyanarayanan
The company is trying to build a hybrid mix of drones and electric airplane technology. The vehicle will take off and land similar to the drone but will move forward in the air like an airplane.
The Startup has already designed three UAV models, Ek Hanz which will be used for delivering goods and services, Scout which is for security and surveillance, Vayu which will be a hybrid autopilot e-plane.
The company will develop a two-seater air taxi which will be called as e200.
IIT Kanpur had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with VTOL Aviation India Pvt. Ltd. The deal is worth INR 15 crore. VTOL Aviation India Pvt. Ltd is an Indian private aviation company. The MOU is for building prototypes that will be operational and will be used as flying taxis.
The project is expected to be completed by 2023 where over 100 researchers from IIT Kanpur are working towards developing a fully functional prototype.
According to the deal, the researchers will first conduct a test to identify the feasibility of the project. This is to understand the key technological areas of the project and the rest of the project is expected to be completed by 5 years.
Ajay Ghosh who is the head of the Aerospace Engineering and the Flight Lab at IIT Kanpur has said that there will be more than 100 students working on the project in the coming years.
The researchers will work on developing the aircraft based on VTOL technology that is vertical takeoff and landing. They are working towards building an electric aircraft to promote clean energy and sustainability.
Uber Air Taxi
Uber is working on developing an aircraft based on e-VTOL that is electric vertical take-off and landing. These are considered to be cleaner, cheaper, and safer than helicopters. Uber Elevate is working towards developing aerial ridesharing with Uber Air and is expected to take off in 2023.
Uber Air taxi Prototype
In 2020 it was announced that Joby Aviation will acquire Uber Elevate. Both the parent companies have agreed to integrate their services into each other’s app.
Uber had announced that Dallas and Los Angeles as the two cities to begin their Air Taxi and Melbourne, Australia as its first international city to move forward with its expansion.
Uber has also said that it has shortlisted 5 countries other than the US to expand its Air Taxi services which include Japan, India, Australia, Brazil, and France.
Vinata Aeromobility Model
Vinata Aeromobility
Vinata Aeromobility is developing a Full Autonomous Hybrid Flying car through Advance Aeromobility by using combined technology of quadcopter VTOL hybrid power urban air mobility systems and integrated electric power 4 wheel drive motor with advanced aerospace engineering cutting edge technologies.
According to Yogesh Ramanathan, Founder, and CEO of Vinata Aeromobility, the company is hoping to perform flight trials of their Hybrid-electric Flying car by 2023 and make it available for Commercial flights by 2025.
It can fly at a speed of 100 to 120 kilometers per hour and can carry two passengers at the same time, with a maximum flight time of 60 minutes at a maximum height of 3,000 feet.
Conclusion
Other than these some more companies are working towards the Air Taxi services around the globe which include Vertical Aerospace, Hyundai’s helping hand, a joint venture between the Boeing company and Kitty Hawk Corporation.
FAQ
What does Air Taxi mean?
Air taxis are small commercial airplanes used for short flights between localities.
Which company is going to start a drone air taxi service in India?
Malaysian budget airline AirAsia is planning to launch a flying-taxi business as soon as next year.
Does Dubai have a flying Air taxi?
Dubai has one of the first major projects of Air taxis, The Autonomous Air Taxi (AAT) is an 18-rotor drone taxi. The company claims to be the world’s first ‘self-flying taxi service’.
Indians are fixated on the startup culture. People are choosing entrepreneurship over mundane, 9-to-5 jobs. However, not everyone succeeds as an entrepreneur. A survey revealed that approximately 11% of the Indians are engaged in ‘early-stage entrepreneurial activities’. And only 5% of these early-stage entrepreneurs actually went on to establish their startup.
But keeping these statistics aside, some Indian startups have gone on to dominate their target segments. This post is dedicated to some of the most successful entrepreneurs from India whose ventures have revolutionized the daily life of millions, if not billions, across the globe. The path to name and fame wasn’t easy for them; it involved several trials and tribulations.
Ritesh Agarwal founded OYO rooms in 2015. He was the recipient of the TiE – Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Award (2014), became the first Asian to win ’20 under 20’ Thiel Fellowship (2013), was named one of the top 50 entrepreneurs by TATA First Dot Awards (2013) and became the world’s youngest CEO at the age of 17. Ritesh Agarwal, an Orissa boy coming from a business-oriented family, went to Kota to become an engineer.
But unlike other JEE aspirants, his passion caught hold of him and he did not take JEE preparation seriously. Instead, he wrote a book called ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopedia of Top 100 Colleges’; the book became immensely popular on Flipkart.
He was just 16 when he was selected for the Asian Science Camp held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). With a penchant for traveling and having lived in tons of hotels, Ritesh observed a common problem at the places he stayed – the exorbitant price of the hotel room was not proportional to the facilities provided. He felt that majority of the hotels in India couldn’t satisfy the basic needs of a traveler on a budget.
Thus, he started Oravel Stays,his first venture in 2012. He improvised his business model and re-launched Oravel as ‘OYO’ which is short for ‘ON YOUR OWN’. Ritesh Agarwal became one of the most revered Indian entrepreneurs through OYO. At the age of 26 he became a billionaire.
Net worth of Ritesh Agarwal as of now is $2 billion. He became the second youngest billionaire after Kylie Jenner in the world.
An epitome of courage and wisdom, Shradha Sharma was at the top of her career while working with famous news media houses such as Times of India and CNBC (Mumbai). During her stint with these organizations, she noticed that no one was willing to promote and air the stories of entrepreneurs—both successful and not-so-successful. She figured out that there are millions of stories storming around but no medium to share them with the masses. Shradha decided to create YourStory, an online portal that hosts entrepreneurial stories and other share-worthy content.
YourStory was started in 2008 and has allowed over 70,000 stories to come to the fore. Shradha Sharma leads a team of 100+ people who work together to offer content in 11 Indian languages. YourStory’s aim is to provide a voice to the roller coaster of emotions that an entrepreneur goes through. Shradha Sharma is the recipient of the L’Oreal Paris Femina Award and has been included in the list of Worlds’ Top 500 LinkedIn Influencers. She is one of the most followed female entrepreneurs in India. Her channel has earned more than 26 million individual views.She is one of the most followed female entrepreneurs in India.Her net worth is of $1.3 billion.
Bhavish Aggarwal, an IIT Bombay alumnus, co-founded the most popular cab aggregator in India – Ola Cabs – with Ankit Bhati. He is the recipient of the Billionth award in 2013, Best startup of the year by IAMAL, and was listed in Forbes30 under 30 list. Bhavish revolutionized the idea of cab-hailing in India by making use of smartphones. Ola Cabs was different from the other cab services at that time in the sense that it leveraged smartphones and GPS technology; thus, it became easy for people to book cabs from anywhere, at any time. Bhavish Aggarwal left a well-paying job at Microsoft to work on Ola Cabs. No one supported his idea but it was his strong will, determination, and eagerness to take risks in life that led him to the pinnacle of success. Bhavish Aggarwal is counted amongst the most successful Indian entrepreneurs. According to Time magazine Bhavish Aggarwal is one of the 100 Most Influential People this year. His Net worth is $ 500 million.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder of Paytm, the cornerstone of digitized payments in India. Vijay is from Aligarh, India. A graduate of the Delhi College of Engineering, Vijay worked on several projects and at a small startup before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. He put in USD 2 million to get One97 up and running. One97 is the parent company of Paytm. The payments platform gave Indians access to a mobile wallet, the facility of making payments using QR codes, simplified bill payments, and a lot more. These features made Paytm wildly popular. In this manner, Vijay Shekhar Sharma became an inspiration to budding entrepreneurs all over the globe. He Won the Best Serial Entrepreneur Award at the Rural and Urban Development Summit and Awards 2022 presented by the Minister of State for Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India.
Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, founders of Zomato
Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah revolutionized the food delivery segment in India through its first foodtech unicorn Zomato. The duo are IIT Delhi graduates. Zomato started out as ‘Foodiebay’ and was first launched in Delhi. It was later extended to Mumbai and Kolkata. Now, there is not a single place in India where Zomato doesn’t render its services. Zomato’s mobile app is its USP; the app has an excellent user interface that lets you order food from the restaurant/eatery of your choice and make hassle-free payments. In Jan 2020, Zomato acquired one of its competitors- Uber Eats in India for a valuation of $300 million. In July 2022, Zomato went public with its stock listing at a premium of 53% over its issue price and it commanded a market cap of Rs 43,000 cr as of Mar 2023. In 2018, Prakash Chaddah left Zomato to venture into different fields. Net worth of Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal is estimated to be Rs 2,000 cr as of Mar 2023.
Kunal Shah graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Wilson College, Mumbai, and briefly pursued an MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies before dropping out. Shah’s first startup was a company named Paisaback, which provided cash-back promotions for organized retailers. Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon are the founders of one of India’s most innovative business models – Freecharge. CRED is Shah’s second venture after he sold Freecharge to Snapdeal in 2015 for $400 million. He is definitely one of the most famous entrepreneurs in India.
Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal, founders of Flipkart
Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are the founders of Flipkart. The e-commerce segment in India underwent a drastic change courtesy of Flipkart. Sachin and Binny found discrepancies while searching for products on Amazon’s online store. The duo realized that the USP of their e-commerce initiative would be the timely delivery of products complemented by a simplistic user interface that leveraged the latest technology. Both the founders have now stepped down from their positions in Flipkart after it was acquired by Walmart in 2018. Flipkart is still giving a tough fight to all the e-commerce platforms out there and continues to win the hearts of Indians. India Today ranked them 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.
Deep Kalra is the founder of MakeMyTrip. The credit for the introduction of online train bookings in India goes to Deep Kalra. A graduate of St. Stephen’s College with an MBA degree from IIM Ahmedabad, Deep worked for GE Capital and ABN AMRO bank. But the office culture and 9-5 job couldn’t captivate him enough. With a $2 million investment from eVentures and his co-founders, Deep Kalra founded MakeMyTrip, (earlier known as ‘India Ahoy’) in the year 2000. The company was listed on NASDAQ in August 2010. After IRCTC joined the race, Deep diversified MakeMyTrip by introducing hotel bookings. MakeMyTrip has mergers with MyGola, TrulyMadly, and the ITC group, to name a few. Deep Kalra is the chairperson of the NASSCOM Internet Working Group, a member of the Executive Council of NASSCOM, and is part of CII’s tourism sub-committee. He was ranked no 1 in a list of most powerful digital influencers in India by KPMG in 2011. His net worth is $ 136 million.
BYJU’S has helped thousands of students who struggle with subjects such as mathematics and science crack some of the hardest entrance exams like the JEE, NEET, and UPSC, CAT, IAS, and international examinations such as GRE and GMAT. BYJU’S has dominated the online education vertical for quite some time now. Byju Raveendran is the founder of BYJU’S. He is an engineer who worked in a shipping firm and accidentally stepped into the field of teaching when he assisted his friends with their CAT exam. Raveendran’s friends cleared the exam with flying colors and this motivated him to take up teaching on a full-time basis. Byju Raveendran started BYJU’s with an initial investment of just INR 2 lakhs. The startup’s valuation has recently crossed $22 billion as of March 2022, and the company have over 115 million registered students.In January 2022, the company joined Simplilearn, Unacademy, upGrad, PrepInsta Prime and Vedantu to become one of the founding members of IAMAI’s India EdTech Consortium.
In March 2022, the company signed a contract with Qatar Investment Authority to establish a new edtech company and a R&D center in Doha.
The concept of bringing the grocery store to one’s doorstep has done wonders across the globe. With it, the problem of waiting in long queues at groceries has now gone for a toss. Indians too now prefer the online route for grocery shopping. And who has dominated this segment? BigBasket. Hari Menon is the founder of BigBasket. With sales of over INR 150 crores per month, BigBasket has cemented its place as one of the big shots in the Indian e-commerce domain. It is operational in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata at present. In 2021 Tata Digital buys 64% stake in BigBasket His company received a lot of awards such as Consumer Internet Company of the Year by VC Circle Awards 2016, Best Online Grocer at Coca Cola Golden Spoon Awards 2016, Best retail and e-commerce app of the year at AWS Mobility Awards 2017, etc.
Albinder Dhindsa wanted to provide the services of a grocery, bakery, and general store through a consolidated platform. His dream took the form of Grofers, an Indian online grocery service. Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar founded Grofers. The duo worked hard to infuse new ideas into the online delivery system in India. Grofers is worth around $650 million today. The company has shifted from a B2B to a B2C business model. Grofers was named one of the Top 10 startups in Delhi and Gurgaon in 2014. Grofers had attained unicorn status or $1 billion in valuation, after raising over $120 million from food aggregator Zomato Ltd. On December 13, 2021, Grofers changed its brand name to Blinkit. As of 2021 Albinder holds 5-10% stake in the company.
Sanjiv Bajaj is known as the Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv. Born into a family of the Bajajs, a business house started by Jamnalal Bajaj, who led the Bajaj Group to glory, Sanjiv had the zeal to raise their family business to amazing highs. Sanjiv is the son of Rahul Bajaj and great-grandson of Jamnalal Bajaj. After completing his Btech. in Mechanical engineering, followed by a Masters in manufacturing systems from the University of Warwick and an MBA from Harvard Business school, Sanjiv started his career with Bajaj Auto in 1994.
He had been a promising businessman from the very first, which helped him scale numerous prestigious designations within the organization. He had brought the American-style supply chain management to Bajaj Auto. Bajaj is currently serving as a non-executive director of Bajaj Auto.
Along with Bajaj Auto, Sanjiv also contributed to Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, Bajaj Finance for which he was appointed as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman. Sanjiv even led Bajaj Allianz General Insurance to emerge as the 2nd most profitable insurance company in India. Being an accomplished entrepreneur, Bajaj won a range of awards for the same, like the Entrepreneur of the Year” Award 2015-16 from Bombay Management Association, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2017, Economic Times Awards for Business Leader of the Year 2018. Therefore, Sanjiv Bajaj can be regarded as one of the greatest entrepreneurs and business leaders that India has seen to date. Sanjiv Bajaj has a revenue of over ₹ 36,692 crore ($ 4.4 billion) and profit of over ₹ 2,866 crore ($ 348 million) for H1 FY2022-23.
PolicyBazaar has certainly grown to become one of the best insurance aggregators and a global technology company but it might not have secured the illustrious position that it now stands on if it was not for the Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder of the company, Yashish Dahiya. Dahiya was a student of IIT Delhi, from where he did his Bachelors in Engineering. He then went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Ahmedabad, which was followed by an MBA from INSEAD in 2001.
Yashish was the MD of the pan-European travel distributor, ebookers.com, and had previous experience of working as a strategy consultant of Bain & Co. in their London office before he founded PolicyBazaar in 2008. Yashish Dahiya had a major contribution to PolicyBazaar since he founded the company along with Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar in 2008, which has successfully become a key influencer in consumer decisions around insurance now. Furthermore, the platform hosts over 100 million visitors a year on average on its platform.
Dahiya was honored with the EY Entrepreneur of The Year (EOY) 2019 award in the Financial Services category and more for all that he had done for PolicyBazaar. Yashish Dahiya is also an extraordinary sportsperson along with a celebrated entrepreneur. He is the Indian masters swimming champion and has taken part in several world masters swimming championships representing India. Furthermore, Dahiya also boasts of having the 3rd fastest half ironman timing and the 5th fastest Ironman timings amongst Indians across all age groups along with having the fastest timings in his age group. In June 2021, Policybazaar obtained the insurance broking license from IRADA and announced that it would set up 100 offline outlets across India. The company also surrendered its web aggregator license. PB Fintech Ltd, the parent company of Policybazaar, opened its initial public offering (IPO) and raised ₹5,625 crore(US$700 million).Shares of PB Fintech Ltd began trading on National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in November 2021.
It seems nothing less than a dream when we talk about a fan of Manchester United, Mumbai Indians, and the Indian cricket team, who founded a company named Dream11 for the love of sports that he nurtures. Yes, it happened with Harsh Jain, who with his founding partner, Bhavit Sheth, founded Dream11 and Dream Sports, India’s no. 1 sports fantasy platform for sporting enthusiasts. That allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, handball, basketball, volleyball, rugby,futsal, American football,and baseball.
Harsh was the son of Anand Jain, an Indian business magnate previously associated with Mukesh Ambani. He was born in Mumbai, India, and was an engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania, after which he went for an MBA from Columbia Business School. Harsh began his career with Microsoft from where he completed a 2 months Summer Internship from June 2006 to August of the same year after which he went to work in Jai Corp Limited as a Marketing Manager. His father, Anand Jain was then the Chairman of the company. Jain worked at Jai for 13 months, when in 2008 he decided to establish Dream11.
Harsh is currently serving as a Culture Enforcement Officer (CEO) & Co-Founder of Dream Sports (Dream11, FanCode, DreamX, and more) and one of the leading entrepreneurs of India. Harsh is a major inspiration for the budding entrepreneurs of the country for sure. In April 2019, Dream11 became the first Indian Fantasy sportcompany to become a unicorn.In November 2021 Dream11 was valued at $8 billion.In December 2022, Dream11 had 160 million active users in India.
Supam Maheshwari is better known as the CEO and Co-Founder of Firstcry, India’s online marketplace for baby products. Supam was a postgraduate student from IIM Ahmedabad and started Brainvisa, as his first company with Amitava Saha, back in March 2000. The Pune-based company witnessed a steady growth before it was acquired by the US-based group, Indecomm Global in 2007.
Supam served as the Co-founder and the CEO of Brainvisa till December 2009 in order to found another company. He founded FirstCry.com in August 2010 along with Amitava Saha, Prashant Jadhav, and Sanket Hattimattur.
The idea of establishing an eCommerce company focused on baby care products was rooted deep in his personal experience as a first-time parent, who faced numerous challenges in sourcing the best product for his baby. Firstcry has grown to be a market leader when it comes to baby products online. The company currently boasts of over 380 stores across India.
His net worth could be estimated at 190 million USD.The baby products marketplace’s valuation stands at 1.9 billion USD after an equity funding round of 13 million USD with pi Ventures As of 2021.
FirstCry had increased its IPO size from around $700 Mn to $1 Bn, aiming at a valuation of around $6-7 BnIN Aug 2022
Richa Kar is the face of one of India’s largest online lingerie stores, Zivame. Richa was born in a conventional family in Jamshedpur. Kar was an engineering student, who completed her graduation from BITS Pilani and eventually went for a corporate job in Bangalore. Richa eventually left her job in order to pursue an MBA, after which she joined Spencers Retail and then SAP Retail.
Her exposure in the retail industry helped her develop knowledge and practical skills beneficial for the retail industry. While working with SAP, Richa was intrigued about Victoria’s Secret, America’s largest retail company for women’s lingerie, and the success it enjoys. Soon after, she realized that India hasn’t got any such websites empowering women to shop for their own lingerie online smoothly and fearlessly.
Though Richa had a considerable experience of around 8 years by then in the retail industry, her parents didn’t get the concept of selling lingerie and weren’t sure how they would speak of her daughter, who is involved in such a profession to others. Therefore, she gravely lacked any support from her family but with her strong will and zeal to found a startup, she ultimately managed to establish Zivame with Kapil Karekar in 2011. Zivame has now become an online leader in its segment, offering more than 5,000 styles, 50 brands, and 100 sizes. Zivame products come at affordable prices with high quality.
The company that initially started with Rs 35 lakhs, which Richa borrowed from her friends, is currently one of the best women’s lingerie marketplace in India. Zivame has received $69 million in funding at a valuation of $98.6M and her net worth is Rs 749 crores, according to reports. The company currently holds about 26% of the market share of the women’s online lingerie market in India, which stood at Rs 430 crore in FY19.
Ashish Hemrajani is an Indian entrepreneur, popularly identified as the Co-founder and CEO of Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of India’s biggest online entertainment ticketing platform BookMyShow. Ashish Hemrajani completed his MBA with Marketing as his specialization from Sydenham University in 1997.
As soon as he completed his MBA, he went to work with J. Water Thompson. However, after working in the client management segment of the firm for 2 years, Ashish left the company in order to start his new venture with Bigtree Entertainment and BookMyShow in 1999.
BookMyShow still stands as a leading online ticketing solution for Indians. Under the leadership of Ashish, the company further expanded to New Zealand, UAE, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. BookMyShow also had a feature to buy tickets of sports matches like IPL, ISL, etc. They now have employ over 400 people across offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore. Ashish Hemrajani Net worth is estimated at Rs.3000 Crore as of 2021.
Shiv Nadar is a founding member of HCL Technologies and a prominent Indian entrepreneur, billionaire industrialist, and the recipient of India’s 3rd highest civilian award, Padma Bhushan. Shiv Nadar is the 3rd richest person of India, as of September 2021 with a net worth of around US$29.3 billion. Nadar goes by the nickname “Magus” (meaning: wizard in Old Persian), which he received from his friends.
Nadar was educated in the St. Joseph Boys Higher Secondary School, Trichy, and received his pre-university degree from the American College, Madurai. He again pursued Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, and received his Bachelor’s in engineering.
Walchand Group’s Cooper Engineering Ltd., Pune, which he joined in 1967, marked the start of Nadar’s career. However, he soon left his job role and founded Microcomp, a company that focused on selling teledigital calculators in the Indian market. Soon after that, he founded HCL in 1976 in collaboration with several friends and colleagues and with an investment of Rs 187,000.
The company made revolutionary advancements in the Indian IT landscape and is still regarded as one of the best among the homegrown IT companies whereas Shiv Nadar stands tall and towering as one of the top entrepreneurs of India.
The founder and CEO of the cyber security company, TAC Security, Trishneet Arora, was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 2018 Asia list and also in Under 40 List of India’s Brightest Business Minds 2019 by Fortune magazine, in 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year in Service Business-Security, 2021 Fortune India 40 Under 40 and 2022 he was Awarded as global leader of tomorrow.
Arora failed in the 8th standard but his relentless love for computers and coding drove him through the path of glory to become a professional ethical hacker and a renowned cybersecurity expert. Arora dropped out of school but continued with his studies along with fixing computers and cleaning up software.
Trishneet was only 19 when he founded his own company, TAC Security Solutions in 2013 and he has never looked back since then. The cybersecurity company, TAC Security offers protection to numerous corporations like Reliance Industries, CBI, Gujarat Police, and Punjab Police and others, against network vulnerabilities and data theft. Trishneet Arora’s net worth is $5 million as of now.
The founder of Reliance Industries, Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, or Dhirubhai Ambani, as he is popularly known, was a successful entrepreneur and business tycoon, who took Reliance public in 1977. Dhirubhai has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades heaped on during his lifetime and was also awarded the prestigious Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honor after he died in the year 2002.
Dhirubhai was a student of the Bahadur Khanji school. After the completion of his studies, he left for the Port of Aden, Yemen, to work for A. Besse and Co., for which he was later involved in selling shell and Burmah oil products. However, he left Aden and came back to his motherland to start his own company. Initially starting with “Majin” in partnership with Champaklal Damani, Dhirubhai eventually set up Reliance Commercial Corporation in 1966, which was later rechristened as Reliance Industries in May 1973.
Also, it was Dhirubhai who launched the popular textile brand ‘Vimal’. Dhirubhai died when he was 69 and was worth around $2.9 bn upon his death.
Lakshmi Niwas Mittal is the Executive Chairman and CEO of the largest steel-making company in the world, ArcelorMittal, and an Indian steel magnate based in the United Kingdom. Besides, Mittal also serves as the Chairman of Aperam, a stainless steel manufacturer, which spun out of ArcelorMittal. Mittal owns around 38% stakes in his company along with another 20% stakes in the EFL Championship football club, Queens Park Rangers.
Lakshmi Mittal has also been appointed as a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs since 2008. Mittal was recognized with titles, honors, and awards of various kinds from time to time including “the third-richest person in the world” as announced by Forbes in 2005. He was also announced as the “Business Person of 2006” by Sunday Times, “Person of the Year” by Financial Times, In 2008 he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, and more.
Born in a Marwadi family, Lakshmi studied at Shri Daulatram Nopany Vidyalaya in Calcutta and graduated from the University of Calcutta affiliated St Xavier’s College with a B.Com degree in the first class. Mittal first chose the business way by founding the steel factory PT Ispat Indo. He went to purchase numerous companies from abroad, like the Irish Steel plant, starting from the state-owned steelworks in Trinidad and Tobago, all of which were successful initiatives.
Mittal ultimately succeeded to come out triumphant in a hostile takeover bid of Arcelor and later renamed it to ArcelorMittal, which is currently responsible for bringing a lion’s share of revenues for Mittal. As of 2022, he was ranked as the 15th richest man in India by Forbes with a net-worth of US$17.8 billion.
Informally known as the Czar of the IT industry of India, Azim Premji is the face of Wipro. Premji is known as an entrepreneur, investor, engineer, business tycoon, and philanthropist who was responsible for cementing the position of Wipro as one of the most prestigious of the Indian multinational corporations through more than four decades of growth and diversification.
Azim Premji is the founding Chairman and a non-executive member of the board of the company and has been twice listed by Time Magazine among the 100 Most Influential people.
Premji went for a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University but he had to come back to take charge of Wipro, which was then termed as Western Indian Vegetable Products. He expanded the business to a large scale and later on discovered the vacuum that IBM left on its expulsion from India. He filled the gap by developing the IT wing of Wipro.
Premji is one of the most successful Indian entrepreneurs whose total wealth was estimated $9.3billion and $25 billion respectively as of feb 2023. Moreover, he is also recognized for his philanthropic nature. He makes most of his donations to the Azim Premji Foundation and had agreed to give away half his wealth by signing the Giving Pledge in 2013. In 2019, he dropped from the 2nd position in the Forbes India Rich list to 17th position after giving away a huge amount to charity.
He topped the EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List for 2020
We all have heard about Dunzo but do you know who founded it? The 24/7 delivery app was founded in July 2014 by Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha. Kabeer Biswas is the CEO and Co-founder of Dunzo, who completed his B.E from the University of Mumbai and followed it with an MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).
He started his career with Bharti Airtel, Videocon Telecommunications, and then went on to found Dunzo. Dunzo currently provides its delivery services in eight Indian cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
In August 2021, Dunzo launched a new service, Dunzo Daily, to deliver essentials and household items in 19 minutes. January 2022, Reliance Retail led a US$240 million funding round along with Dunzo’s existing investors Lightbox, Lightrock, 3L Capital and Alteria Capital. Reliance Retail invested US$200 million for a 25.8% stake in Dunzo.
Ratan Tata is the former Chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Group and is still the head of the charitable trusts of the company. A scion of the Tata family, Ratan Tata was the son of Naval Tata and later adopted by Jamsetji Tata.
He is well-known as an Indian industrialist, philanthropist, and one of the few business tycoons who are synonymous with success. Tata was the recipient of two of the highest Indian civilian awards – Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.
Ratan Tata was a student of the Cornell University of Architecture and completed his Advanced Management Program from the Harvard Business school in 1975. Tata was the apparent successor of J.R.D Tata, who started with the shop floor of Tata Steel and was responsible for expanding the company on a massive scale.
Largely credited with the diversification and growth of Tata, Ratan Tata helped the company acquire numerous businesses and companies including Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover, and more, and scaled the company to unimaginable heights. Ratan Tata is currently featured among the top entrepreneurs of India and an inspirational figure for all the budding entrepreneurs and other individuals.
Nithin Kamath is the Co-founder of the biggest stock-broking company in India, Zerodha, an inspirational entrepreneur, and is famous as one of the self-made billionaires of India. Nithin along with his brother, Nikhil Kamat has also been declared as the richest self-made billionaire in India under 40, according to IIFL Wealth and Hurun India’s 40 & Under Self-Made Rich List 2020 with a combined wealth of Rs 24,000 crores, as assessed in 2020. In year end march 2022 zerodha net profit was 2094.3 crore.
The company has valued itself at $3billion, based on the valuations of employee stock option. Nithin Kamath was a student of Bangalore Institute of Technology but he was never quite inclined to academics. Kamath got into the world of trading at the early age of 17 and eventually, his love for trading grew.
Nithin was successful in trading but also lost quite a lot of his money in the early 2000s. Kamath then returned to a fixed job at a call center, where he worked for 4 years before joining Reliance Money as a franchisee in proprietary trading and advisory services. He worked hard and saved his capital to establish his own company Zerodha in 2010 and emerge at the top of his game with Nikhil.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur distinguished for being the executive chairperson and founder of Biocon Limited and Biocon Biologics Limited. Furthermore, she was also recognized as the former chairperson of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Kiran was the recipient of the Othmer Gold Medal for her contributions to the fields of science and chemistry.
Financial Times listed her among the Top 50 women in the business list while Forbes listed her as the 68th most powerful woman in the world. Furthermore, Kiran was also named the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year in 2020.
After completing her graduation from Bangalore University with a bachelor’s degree in Zoology, Kiran went to the fermentation science and brewing at Melbourne University and topped her class emerging as a master brewer in 1975. She struggled to join as a master brewer in India after serving Carlton and United Breweries because the breweries here believed that the job of a master brewer is a “man’s work.”
However, Kiran discovered huge opportunities abroad and joined Biocon Biochemicals Limited, and eventually started Biocon India. In 2015, she joined The Giving Pledge, promising that at least half of her wealth will be dedicated to philanthrop. In 2019, she was listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She received Firodia Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 for her contributions to science and technology.
In January 2020 Kiran received the international award and became the fourth Indian citizen to be honored with Australia’s highest civilian award. In year 2023 they start
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw scholarship for the students who study in the fields of science, technology or mathematics at the Mount Helen Campus. By 2022 she has a net worth of $3.1 billion.
Back in 2010, paying gas, electricity, telephone bills, and recharging our mobiles, DTH, and more wasn’t as easy as it is now. Then, Freecharge was one of the companies that came into being, which greatly helped the Indian masses to empower their digital ways. Sandeep Tandon was one of the founders of this precursor of today’s digital payments app, Freecharge, which he founded in 2010 with Kunal Shah.
A technology investor and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of India, Sandeep Tandon was a student of Bombay Scottish, after which he pursued a Bachelor’s and then Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. Sandeep started his career with a Los Angeles startup where he worked as an application manager.
However, it wasn’t long before he left the company and initiated his own venture, Celetronix but that was again sold to Jabil Circuits.
Freecharge was the next company that he founded, which emerged as the fastest-growing mobile payments app in India. After a short but successful period, Freecharge was acquired by Snapdeal and then eventually acquired by Axis bank, which currently owns the company.
Being a successful entrepreneur with years of experience, Sandeep Tandon is currently serving as the Managing Director of Tandon Group, as an Angel investor, and a mentor to the young entrepreneurs.
As eccentric as its name, Bewakoof boasts of an incredibly successful run as a casual wear and accessories hotspot for the current generation and undoubtedly a major part of its success goes to its Founder Director, Prabhkiran Singh. He along with Siddharth Munot founded Bewakoof.com back in 2010, which has since been a raging success for its unique printed t-shirts, joggers, funky mobile covers, and other accessories.
Both being civil engineering graduates from IIT Bombay, Prabhkiran and Siddharth were well-known to each other. In fact, both of them started with their independent startups right after they completed studies but none of them truly worked before Bewakoof was launched, which disrupted the Indian markets, promoting the “silliness” when it comes to fashion.
The estimated annual revenue of Bewakoof in 2020 was INR 200 Crores. The net worth of Bewakoof is estimated at INR 100 Crores.
The Indian traditional consumer products market was all saturated and boring, hoping for an upcoming disruption, which Mamaearth brought with its honest, organic, and safe products. The initial idea emerged out of a real-life problem that Varun and Ghazal Alagh faced while raising their own baby.
All of us want to extend our utmost care and best quality products to a newborn and Varun and Ghazal Algh wanted the same for their baby. However, it was when they were expecting their baby that they found the reality about the Indian baby products, none of which met the safety standards required to be applied on a baby. They first started to import baby products from the US but that was neither feasible nor less of a burden to their finances.
This made the research, apply for proper certifications and resulted in the launch of Mamaearth after 4 years of hard work and R&D. Mamaearth is currently hailed as the first Asian brand with the MadeSafe certification for its toxin-free and entirely herbal products. Furthermore, it boasts of having served over 1.5 million customers across 500+ cities of India. The parents turned entrepreneurs, Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh have achieved an envious success and are looking forward to a brighter way ahead as one of the most successful Indian entrepreneurs.
The company has expanded into offline distribution through multi-brand retail outlets and exclusive stores, to both online and offline markets. Their next step is to expand the offline business to 100,000 outlets and 100 Indian cities. The company has estimated revenue of INR964 crore in FY22, a growth of 109% over the past year.
PhonePe is akin to digital payments in today’s India. This market leader of a UPI-based digital payments platform was founded by Sameer Nigam, along with his co-founders, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer in December 2015.
Sameer Nigam has an MBA in Entrepreneurship from The Wharton School. After completing his schooling at DPS Noida, Sameer went to study Computer Engineering at the University of Mumbai and then completed a Masters of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona, finally finishing his MBA in 2009.
Sameer served as the Director of Search Product Development at Shopzilla for a little over 6 years, after which he launched Mime360, an online social media distribution channel. Mime360 was eventually acquired by Flipkart, where he again served as a Senior Vice President, Engineering but he left the company after one and half years to start his own company, PhonePe.
PhonePe has since been a roaring success! PhonePe continues to be the top player in the Indian payments ecosystem and accounted for nearly 50 percent of all UPI transactions processed in December 2022, According to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
Conclusion
We hope this list of famous Indian entrepreneurs motivates you to act on that startup idea you have in your head. Who else do you think should be featured in this list? And what makes you go gaga over him or her?
Contact: shubham@startuptalky.com
FAQs
Who is the youngest entrepreneur in India?
Shravan Kumaran and Sanjay Kumaran are the youngest entrepreneurs in India. They co-founded the company called ‘GoDimensions’ a development unit, in 2011 at their home at the age of 10.
Who is the world’s richest person?
The world’s richest person is none other than the founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, who boasts of a net worth of $223 billion, as of February 28, 2022.
Who is the richest Indian?
Mukesh Ambani is the richest Indian with a wealth of $103 Billion, as of March 2022.
Is a CEO an owner?
The title of CEO is typically given to someone by the board of directors. Owner is a job title that is earned by sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, who have total ownership of the business. However, these job titles are not mutually exclusive — CEOs can be owners and owners can be CEOs.
Who are the leading Indian entrepreneurs now?
To name some of the most prominent Indian entrepreneurs, we must list:
A Startup is the result of an innovative idea getting sculpted, that have the capacity to transform the world. The term Startup has been in limelight over the past decade due to their rapid growth recorded around the world. The global Startup Ecosystem has surpassed $3 trillion which is larger than the GDP of UK. In India, 41,061 Startups have been recognized by government as of December 2020. Such an enormous growth has pushed India to top 3 in the Startup Ecosystem table lead by US and China.
For a Startup to sprout, mere ideas and business knowledge won’t do good. They need funding. This is where the Venture capitalist, Private equity investors and others pop-up. Facebook is one such investor, who selects innovative Startups through their Facebook Accelerator Programme, and offer financial support and guidance to them. They have so far made 38 Investments and 90 acquisitions in diverse Startups and businesses.
In this article, we’ll see 10 of such Startups, that received funding from Facebook out of which, some are showing great potential towards reaching the Unicorn Club.
Factory_OS, a housing development and modular home company, has raised $77.7 million from 6 investors including Facebook and Google. Factory_OS deploys viable and pioneering tech with optimized manufacturing systems to construct multistorey buildings at efficient costs and effort. Keeping up with the growing demand of housing, Factory_OS is focusing on building more affordable homes, and simultaneously developing technology for utmost optimized solutions. Besides off-site construction, Factory_OS has also partnered with Autodesk for ‘Digitizing Volumetric Design’ for efficient delivery, manufacturing, and construction.
Gojek
Facebook startup funding in Gojek
Gojek is an online multi-service provider who deals in digital payments, food delivery, commuting, shopping and many more. They offer almost two dozen services and serves more than 170 million customers around Southeast Asia. Gojek provides all their services from one application and hence it became a Super App. They showed great potential in their growth in Indonesia, where it was originally established in 2010. As a result, Gojek succeeded in procuring a huge sum of $5.3B from big investors like Facebook, PayPal, Visa and 31 others in 12 funding rounds. They have made 13 acquisitions and investments so far in their line of business.
Tech Matters, an innovative and non-profit IT and Services company, has raised $1.7 million in its seed round, and is funded by 4 investors including Working Capital and Facebook. Tech Matters aims to develop AI and data driven cloud-based products for startups and innovative organizations, as well as Machine Learning models to predict outcomes with internal and external datasets. It also designs interactive custom bots to keep their customers and stakeholders engaged, while also answering FAQs. Tech Matters deploys data to create immersive experience and experimental designs, hence solving some complex business problems.
Nilus
Facebook startup funding in Nilus
Nilus, a social enterprise that employs crowdsourcing and AI for creating affordable food markets, has raised $1.5 million from 9 investors including the like of Facebook, Google, and Angel Ventures. Nilus aims to fight the dearth of food to low income people through technology and efficiency, and become the first private firm to come up with a viable solution. Nilus focuses on helping the vulnerable communities with food shortage with professionalism, while also keeping in mind the nutritional quality of the food and an optimized way to prepare and deliver it. The services carried out by Nilus are with utmost transparency and efficiency to conserve resources as well.
Com Olho builds scalable AI solutions for enterprises, and has recently secured a strategic investment by Facebook and Lloyd Mathias in the grant and angel rounds respectively. It is also India’s first company to win the patent for fraud detection advertisement, and works for both, fraud as well as identity theft detection. Com Olho is also working towards helping making high dimensional data more viable among enterprises using machine learning models and uses programmatic attribution manipulation for fraud detection. It also offers various resources including informative blogs for general awareness against frauds and identity thefts.
ArtyOwl
facebook startup funding in ArtyOwl
ArtyOwl is a unique marketplace and an E-commerce store for handmade products, and has raised $100K in the grant round from Facebook in December of 2020. Be it personal care, home decor, food, or even fashion, ArtyOwl offers many different niche of home made products for users and customers to try something more custom and sometimes traditional. ArtyOwl endeavors to revolutionize handcrafted products and trade, so artisans and craftsmen can share their works with the world, and showcase their dexterity. With ArtyOwl, customers also enjoy a simple, convenient and secure shopping experience with an exceptional bouquet of handcrafted items.
Meesho
facebook startup funding in Meesho
Meesho is an e-commerce company rooted in Bengaluru and is growing its branches across India rapidly. Meesho is an online re-selling company has created more entrepreneurs in recent years, out of which 80% turn out to be women homemakers. This was the reason for their success and popularity in our country. In 2016, Meesho was selected for Y Combinator, and it was one among the three Indian companies to achieve this feet. Facebook’s first investment in India was made in Meesho. They raised $1.1B through 10 rounds of funding from 32 investors. In September 2021, Meesho raised a whopping $517M through Series F funding where Facebook and Good Capital were the recent ones to invest.
Unacademy is the second EdTech company in India to enter the Unicorn Club next to BYJU’S. They secured $838 million investment from 42 investors of which Facebook was also a part of, and have made 10 acquisitions in the past 2 years. Unacademy is an online educational platform that deals in diverse areas of learning. They offer online courses, live classes, practice session, tests, etc., for all the competitive and professional exams in India. They have grown to be the most popular online learning platform among Indian learners.
facebook startup funding in FEMCA Financial Services
FEMCA Financial Services was created with a unique objective of helping the investors and traders with investment research reports, containing the ranks of investment advisors based on their win-to-loss ratio. They also provide their expired reports to students and investors for auditing, in order to gain their authenticity. Facebook and Tanmaya Sharma are the two lead investors of FEMCA who had invested $15K in the company for its further development.
Hello Heart
facebook startup funding in Hello Heart
Hello Heart is a cutting-edge clinical-based smartphone solution and healthcare company that fixates on improving hearth health of the masses. It is part of the diversity investment of Facebook, and has raised a total of $23.2 million in funding from 22 investors Arba Ventures and Franklin Trust. Hello heart offers clinically approved smartphone based solutions that help manage hypertension, and fight heart diseases. It can also be integrated with your existing health plan and work with your PCPs and cardiologists while also offering a peer reviewed assistance and unmatched effectiveness for employers, individuals, and health plans.
HelpMum is a social enterprise that works to prevent infant and maternal mortality rate in Nigeria. It was created by Dr Adereni Abiodun, a social entrepreneur and innovator, in 2017. They create awareness among pregnant women on safe and hygienic delivery by issuing affordable birth kits and educate birth attendants through their e-learning platform.
They participated in the race for Facebook’s accelerator programme in 2020, along with 77 participants and got selected as one among the four Startups for an additional funding of $25,000. They’ve so far acquired $410K of funding from seven investors out of which, Google made $270,000 investment in them.
EchoAR
facebook startup funding in EchoAR
EchoAR, also known as Echo3D is a cloud platform, that offers tools and infrastructure facilities to developers and companies to create games, apps and contents in 3D, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). Their main objective is to provide a readymade platform for creators to develop and publish their own content (3D/AR/VR) without the need for technical knowledge or a developing team. With Facebook’s recent investment on Oct 5, 2021, EchoAR managed to procure $5 million seed capital from 12 investors including Remagine Ventures and Space Capital.
Obviously AI
facebook startup funding in Obviously AI
Obviously AI is a tool that helps its clients to build their own business learning models. Users don’t require any coding knowledge to create their model and the output can be easily integrated to their database. A new technology called “Edge Sharp AutoML” was developed by Obviously AI, which helps the users to build new models within a minute. Using this technology, they claim to have saved 13.8 million hours for their customers. They bagged $3.6M as seed capital from Facebook and other investors and further added $1.1M to their capital recently to expand their operations in eastern countries like Japan.
Utiva
facebook startup funding in Utiva
Utiva is another Nigerian company that became one of the four Startups to win Facebook Community Accelerator Program’s fund of $25K. It is an EdTech company that involves educating technology for people across Africa. They provide online virtual classes on Data analysis, tech skill development, digital marketing and many more with expert trainers.
JobSenz
facebook startup funding in Jobsenz
JobSenz is an online job searching platform which is based in Singapore. They also sell learning materials to students on their platform that are provided by experienced educators and institutes. JobSenz received $40K from FbStart programme to expand its business in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Also, they would receive guidance and mentoring from Facebook’s technical and engineering team as a part of this programme.
Facebook has been in the funding and venture investment niche for about a decade now, and continually seems to invest in innovative startups through its accelerator program. While it has already made 35 venture investments, the most recent being in January of 2021, also acquiring 89 organizations along the way, it has been hiring tech investors to lead an investment fund, suggesting there are yet more startups that Facebook is eyeing to invest in. Hence, it is safe to assume that in the near future, the startup ecosystem is bound to evolve, and be nurtured by tech giants and venture investment firms.
FAQs
Does Facebook invest in startups?
Facebook always looks towards investment opportunities in early-stage startups. They focus on backing potential startups with innovative models for growth not only in India, but globally.
What is the Facebook Accelerator program?
The Facebook accelerator program provides mentorship from Facebook employees, training on Facebook’s approach to products and businesses, and access to a global network of startup peers, successful founders, and industry experts.
What are the startups funded by Facebook accelerator programs?
Some of the top startups that are funded by facebook are:
In India, it is almost impossible to find a person who does not have any idea about video creating app TikTok. On its website, TikTok describes itself as “a destination for short-form mobile videos.”
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, which has been around since 2012 and is valued at $425 billion, as of July 2021. According to the latest news dated September 28, 2021, TikTok is currently used by around 1 billion users every month. In fact, it’s generating so much attention that TikTok parent, ByteDance was recently crowned the world’s most valuable startup.
History
TikTok (formerly known as musical.ly) is a free social media platform that lets you watch, create, and share, discover short music videos — often to a soundtrack of the top hits in music, usually of 15 seconds. The app musical.ly was used by young people as a platform to express themselves and showcase their talents through singing, dancing, comedy, lip-syncing, and other activities.
Though TikTok was originally available as musical.ly in the U.S. but was rebranded when Musical.ly merged with TikTok on 2 August 2018, to create a ‘bigger and better short-video community’ when the two apps merged in August 2018. The app is now called TikTok, complete with a new logo. The app has all of the same features as musical.ly and allows users to create videos recorded in 15 seconds or less and share them across a community.
TikTok incorporates the most popular elements of both apps with a feed that highlights the users’ community. In addition to this, a “For You” feed uniquely recommends the relevant videos based on the users’ interest and viewing preferences. The video clips on the platform may only be 15 seconds long but they are having a big impact on the audience.
With more than 1 billion users, TikTok is incredibly popular, owing in part to its slick mashup of features from other kid favorites. As with the lip-synching app Dubsmash, users can watch and record videos of themselves lip-syncing to popular music and soundtracks. And just like YouTube, TikTok is an interactive world of videos that lets you connect with friends and admirers through likes, comments, and even duets.
About CEO of TikTok
ByteDance’s CEO and founder is Zhang Yiming, a 35-year-old entrepreneur. Information about Zhang is scarce as he doesn’t give many interviews but he has even created a real estate search engine. He has studied at Nankai University.
Zhang Yiming – CEO of TikTok | CEO & Founder of ByteDance
In a 2015 speech at his alma mater, Zhang revealed a few other details about himself. He is a big fan of biographies and spent a lot of time in college reading. He said he is socially awkward, precisely a “science man” who introduces himself at school reunions with “Hi, I installed your computer.” During college, he used to build websites and did tech troubleshooting for extra money. As an added bonus, it helped him meet his wife.
ByteDance is the Chinese version of Facebook. It was launched in 2012 in Beijing. It has chat apps and news apps. After acquiring an AI company, it jumped onto the video-sharing bandwagon. In 2015, it launched a Chinese video app called ‘Douyin’, which was a great hit.
In 2017, the concept of Douyin was taken further in the form of TikTok, when there was already a lot of competition from Musical.ly, a video sharing app, which was already there at that time in the market. However, ByteDance soon acquired it and merged Musical,ly’s userbase with TikTok. In December 2017, the deal was closed at $1 billion dollars.
In 2018, Softbank had invested $3 billion dollars, which raised TikTok’s worth to $75 billion dollars. There’s something special about TikTok, looking at the firms that are placing such trust in it!
TikTok has offices in many countries, including India. Surprisingly (or not), TikTok has several million users in India.
TikTok uses AI at its core. The algorithm it adopts is rumoured to be more powerful than the ones used in other social media platforms. It uses your video viewing history to populate relevant videos feed in “For You”. In this app, personalization is at its peak. If you watch these 15-sec videos completely, then its AI feature will serve you with more associated content.
The more you converse with it, the more it gets trained to provide your personalized feed. It is different from other platforms because it just shows you recommended videos or posts based on your recent activity. What’s interesting is that ByteDance has a different version of TikTok for Chinese users whereas a different version for the rest of the world, Douyin. It generates revenue in a pattern similar to that of other social media apps.
According to some reports, an average user spends nearly 52 minutes on TikTok. With over a billion users and reportedly available in 150 countries and counting, the platform for short-form mobile videos has left other social media platforms way behind. It has 1.5 billion registered users with the maximum users lying in the 15-25 age group.
The gigantic userbase has an almost equal sex ratio. 54 % of TikTok users are males and 46% are female. The visionary Softbank fund has always invested in startups that have worn the crown of most valuable entrepreneurial ventures.
TikTok is used by many Asian countries like Cambodia, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, etc. TikTok strongly influences the lower and middle classes of China and India. TikTok has recorded that around 43% of the new users of the app are from India. The app amassed a whopping 200 million+ users from India before being banned. Besides, it has also been seen that the Indian users spent over 5.5 billion hours on TikTok in 2019, according to the available data. A major credit surely goes to Jio internet services, which gave Indians instant access to these 15-sec videos with the ability to upload similar videos. The growing segment of influencers grew has a lot to do with TikTok.
How does TikTok Make Money?
ByteDance does a lot more than just run TikTok. It also owns Toutiao, a massively popular news platform with 240 million downloads, as well as products like Xigua Video, TopBuzz, and BuzzVideo.
TikTok is available in 155 countries. It’s also available in 75 languages, which helps to attract these many users. TikTok is the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store, with 33 million downloads in a single quarter of 2019. The app strongly beats out all other social media giants like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, which round out the top five. These numbers of downloads help earn the revenue.
TikTok offers in-app purchases of coins, starting from 100 for $0.99 and leveling up to 10,000 for $99.99. Users can give coins to their favorite creators, who can in turn exchange them for digital gifts. Mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported that TikTok users worldwide spent $3.5 million on in-app purchases during the month of October 2018, which is nearly four times what they did in October 2017.
Digiday reported that agencies also may start advertising on TikTok going forward given its explosive popularity. According to the Nanjing Marketing Group, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, offers splash ads that can cost about $150,000 for one day and newsfeed ads for about $4 per click. Thus, many celebrities, and brands like Pizza Hut pay to run such campaigns or the promotion and endorsements.
TikTok now enjoys a monopoly in the micro video-sharing market. It’s also expanding to the news industry. It recently bought a French news company and has a stake in US-based news agencies. The use of AI is extremely high in TikTok’s initiatives. It uses an AI tool that collects various news clips and prepares articles in a few seconds.
Challenges Faced by TikTok
Though TikTok has a monopoly, the journey to date hasn’t been smooth for TikTok. It had to pay $5.7 billion dollars for violating children’s privacy in the US. India also banned this app for a few days. Mark Zuckerberg spoke about TikTok and its dominancy in US and other countries. He expressed concerns about the privacy of users of TikTok.
Yet many reports credit Zuckerberg’s reaction to fears of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp losing their grip over social media to TikTok. Recent reports suggest TikTok has already positioned itself as the topmost social media app in the market. The US government has been critical of TikTok over concerns on the national security.
When it comes to value addition, the 15-sec videos on TikTok don’t do anything big. However, they provide entertainment and comical content, a stress buster for billions across the globe. Underneath all of this, ByteDance is building an empire using millennials and having greater influence over them.
Many feel that millennials are now morally and ethically more vulnerable than ever, with attraction towards silly content in the name of entertainment as one such reason. In February, the FTC in the U.S. fined TikTok $5.7 million for violating the children’s privacy law (COPPA) and required the app to implement an age gate.
Moreover, some Indian politicians and parents also believe that the app’s content is inappropriate, particularly with regard to its use by minors. Thus, the Tamil Nadu court ruled against TikTok and banned it, saying the app could expose children to sexual predators as well.
But after all these hurdles, TikTok managed to persuade the governments by implementing some policies by restricting the app for users above 13 years. Now, parents can help children manage their screen time by selecting how much time they would like their child to spend on TikTok like 40, 60, 90, and 120 minutes per day. This feature is password-protected; when users reach their limit they have to enter a password to continue. Parents can set the password to be in total control of the screen time.
Even after facing all these hurdles, TikTok has successfully circumvented them to become the World’s Most Valuable Startup beating all other social media giants. It has set an example of how by using the power of the youth, which is revered for possessing the highest potential, a startup can excel in the market by using appropriate strategies.
In an exclusive interaction with StartupTalky, Ayushi Gudwani – the Founder & CEO of FableStreet gets candid about her early life, interests, career & startup challenges.
Ayushi Gudwani has been a work-wear consumer for years and went through the predicament of finding great pieces to wear to the office. She always found it hard to find styles that fit well and are comfortable and long-lasting. That triggered her thoughts and she ended up co-founding FableStreet. It started with a vision to make women feel confident and comfortable by addressing their work-wear needs.
Know the journey of FableStreet from Ayushi Gudwani | Founder & CEO of FableStreet
Tell us about your early life, interests and hobbies.
Ayushi Gudwani | Owner of FableStreet
I was born and raised in New Delhi in a typical Indian family, with a strong focus on academics. I was a topper throughout my high school and undergraduate. After the completion of my engineering from NSIT (Delhi), I went to pursue MBA from IIM Calcutta where I was awarded a silver medalist. Post that, I joined McKinsey & Company in 2008, before venturing out to start FableStreet in 2016. So I have geeky typical engineering + MBA background, not very exciting! Personally, I am an optimistic person as well as a dreamer and executioner. I derive my energy from people around me and rely heavily on my teams and family. My hobbies and interests include a fitness regimen, travelling, music and indulging in Thai food once in a while.
Being an entrepreneur is fulfilling but chaotic. It means having a never-ending workload that just seems to pile up like Jenga. I usually wake up at 6 am and start the day with a nice cup of tea and newspaper. Then, I make a to-do list of the agenda I need to take care of that day as well as the week, which is then passed on to my team. I also spend some time on my phone to check how the previous day’s sales are doing and resolve any urgent issues that need attention.
My teammates know how much I love going to the office on workdays and meeting them and engaging with them on a day-to-day basis, be it to discuss work or simply share a laugh. A typical workday would consist of team or one-on-one meetings, problem-solving, focusing on product development, etc. And to find balance in life, I spend time with my family, read books and chill on Netflix.
Tell us about your job responsibilities. How they have changed over time?
As a Solopreneur, the first couple of years, in terms of job responsibilities, were different than they are now. I managed operations, oversaw the hiring process and pushed myself to learn every aspect of the business. But all that has eased over time, as the team grows and expands.
My core responsibilities include solving the problems to ensure that we are on the right track, thinking through a strategic lens for the business, focusing on team health to build capabilities, boost morale and support them professionally and personally, networking and building partnerships and looking at opportunities for future funding and growth. Lastly, I also make a mental note to be prepared every day to face and solve any last-minute fire-fighting circumstances that may occur in any of the teammates, no matter how big or small.
What challenges did FableStreet face?
As a business owner and strategist, one is always experimenting with new things – it is a continuous trial and error process. We need to understand and accept the fact that 1 out of 3 ideas will work in any set-up/venture. Eventually, counting each and every setback is exhausting and also takes the joy out of working on your ideas. So, whatever I am working on, I give my best shot. One day at a time – that’s the only mindset I function with.
FableStreet site that caters for the need of all professional women out there.
Tell us about your superpowers.
Tenacity, multitasking, passion, a strong belief in my business idea and knowledge of my target audience and competition along with strong people skills, emotional quotient and understanding of what drives people. I believe these are the super-strengths that I’m managing till today.
Knowledge of your target audience keeps you ahead of your competitors.
Which online tools do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?
Even though I like being connected to people and my teams, I am not a big gadget freak and do not use multiple tools/apps. I follow the traditional method of making to-do lists either on paper or Google sheets/ Excel sheets for tracking and planning of daily work. I prefer one-on-one discussions and team huddles to operate my business. Lately, Zoom and Google Hangouts have been helpful for remote team discussions.
My previous work experience at McKinsey & Company and the people I worked with, in terms of leadership skills, problem-solving, aspirations and vision are a big part of who I am today. They have shaped me into the person I am today. Working with such inspiring people helped me learn what leadership means and how to care for individuals and teams.
I saw people genuinely care about my professional growth and that is something I would like to give back to my organization. I also learned how to dream big and act small with no end to visioning – that if you can’t solve the problem, no one else can. At a personal level, it has been my family and the values they have given me, had shaped my views and how I lead my life.
How’s your workspace setup look like?
We have an open seating arrangement at work to ensure open communication, approachability and quick problem-solving within the teams. I am usually placed between my team and that’s how I like to work when I am in the office.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
One of the best pieces of advice I have got is that people are your biggest asset. As an employer, you need to make sure that you genuinely do right by them. From a business point of view, it would be to think big, act small and conserve cash. This is something that holds true everywhere.
If you get a chance to start your career again, what would you do differently this time?
I would like to achieve a B-school degree from abroad, primarily in the USA. The reason being that the quality of schools and education is fairly different there. I love my alma mater (IIM Calcutta) and had an opportunity to spend some time at UCLA Anderson School of Management and I absolutely loved that.
Frequently Added Questions – FAQs
What is FableStreet?
FableStreet is a premium work-wear brand for women that helps women to find tailor-fit clothes on all body types.
Who is Ayushi Gudwani?
Ayushi Gudwani is the Founder and CEO of FableStreet.
Who is the owner of FableStreet?
Ayushi Gudwani is the owner of FableStreet.
Is FableStreet available online?
Yes, you can get FableStreet clothing from their own website or other e-commerce sites such as Myntra, Ajio & Nykaa.
What is the FableStreet funding to date?
FableStreet has raised a total of $2.9M in funding over 2 rounds.
What is the USP of FableStreet?
The USP of the FableStreet includes a proprietary and R&D-backed tailored Fit algorithm which gives a great fit with just 3 body measurements. The company offers a “My Style, Your Fit” solution to address the problem of women across shape and size.
Yash Taneja
