The city of Pune is the cultural capital of Maharashtra and a hub for the automotive and IT sectors. Pune is a favorable destination for investments in India. It has paved way for several emerging startups. The city’s close proximity to Mumbai adds to its advantage in trade, business, and lifestyle. Thus, Pune is popular among investors seeking to launch their business. This post outlines some of the most popular startups in Pune.
Also read – If you are looking for a list of startups in Pune, this exhaustive list of all recently funded startups in Pune and other cities should help you.
We have also covered startups based in Delhi, Goa, and other major cities of India.
- FirstCry
- Letsintern
- InTouchApp
- PortraitFlip
- Helpshift
- EarlySalary
- MindTickle
- DataTorrent
- Happy Roots
- MarketsandMarkets
- Plobal Apps
- Docplexus
- Tork Motors
- Repos Energy
- ShoppinPal
- HotFut Sports
- 111 Startups
- Dark Reflections
- Brandup
- Icertis
- Xpressbees
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FirstCry
Founder: Supam Maheshwari
Year Founded: 2010
Industry: Baby Products
FirstCry is Asia’s largest online store for baby and kids products. It caters particularly to the needs of parents expecting children or those with toddlers. In general, FirstCry offers a massive catalogue for children till their early teens. The venture was started by Supam Maheshwari and offers the best deals in products meant for kids. The endeavor aims to ensure that the customer gets the widest choice of top-rated brands and products at the best price in India. FirstCry is known for its service and the timely delivery of products.
Amitabh Bachchan is the brand ambassador of FirstCry. FirstCry’s major customer base is in Pune. It is rapidly expanding operations in other metro cities too.
Letsintern
Founders: Rishabh Gupta, Mayank Batheja, and Pranay Swarup
Year Founded: 2010
Industry: Recruitment
Very few people know that Letsintern is a Pune-based startup. Letsintern is a platform for students to grab their favorite internships. Over 12,000 organisations have tied up with the company to streamline the process of hiring interns and employees. The platform claims to get more than 280,000 visits on its website and mobile app every month.
Letsintern was founded by Rishabh Gupta, Mayank Batheja, and Pranay Swarup in 2010. Aspiring minds, a job-finding platform, acquired Letsintern in 2015. After the acquisition, the company’s headquarters was shifted to Gurgaon.
InTouchApp
Founders: Sarang Lakare
Year Founded: 2012
Industry: Mobile App
InTouchApp is a simple yet useful app that helps you manage your contacts. It was developed keeping businessmen and entrepreneurs in mind. InTouchApp allows you to save contacts from business cards. It automatically updates the contacts and assists in managing both personal contacts and business contacts. The app is free of cost on all major platforms. As of now, it has over 1 million downloads and manages billions of contacts.
The app was founded by Sarang Lakare. Sarang has 12 years experience in application development. He has a master’s degree and a PhD in Computer Science from Stony Brook University.
PortraitFlip
Founders: Sunny Choudhary
Year Founded: 2018
Industry: Art and Handicrafts
PortraitFlip makes handmade paintings from photos and delivers them to the customer’s doorstep. You can order custom handmade paintings from its website. PortraitFlip ships worldwide and experiences many orders from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. The company flaunts a 100% satisfaction guarantee because it trusts the artists who makes these custom paintings with utmost precision. The paintings are hand-painted by artists in mediums like oil, charcoal, pencil, acrylic, coloured pencil, and watercolor.
PortraitFlip is famous for its ‘compilation portraits’ wherein the customers can convert characters from multiple photos into one painting. The company is also known to make pet portraits, couple portraits, and landscape portraits. It offers you customization options like size, medium, framing options, unlimited characters, custom messages, etc.
Mr. Sunny Choudhary, the founder, currently directs PortraitFlip. This Pune-based startup has made a revenue of $600,000 since its inception in 2018. PortraitFlip is targeting a revenue of $14,00,000 by the year 2021.
Helpshift
Founders: Abinash Tripathy and Bishampayan Ghose
Year Founded: 2011
Industry: Business Solutions
Helpshift is a business service provider. It offers smart solutions to businesses for maintaining and improving customer interaction. With the aid of Helpshift’s AI chatbots and other personalized products, businesses can automate their customer service tasks and focus on what matters the most. The startup also provides other related services.
Helpshift was founded by Abinash Tripathy and Bishampayan Ghose. It has received a total of $38.5 million in funding from different ventures in the Silicon Valley.
EarlySalary
Founders: Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal
Year Founded: 2015
Industry: Fintech
EarlySalary is a fintech startup that provides short term loans to salaried people. With the help of EarlySalary’s app or website, people can apply for hassle-free and instant loans up to INR 1,00,000. No pre-payment fees are applied on the loan.
EarlySalary was founded by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal. Akshay is the CEO of the company while Ashish is the CFO. The startup has raised $23.2 million from different ventures.
MindTickle
Founders: Mohit Garg, Krishna Depura, Nishant Mungali, and Deepak Diwakar
Year Founded: 2011
Industry: Business Solutions
MindTickle provides a sales enablement solution that uses data-driven analytics to show the impact of sales readiness programs on revenue growth. It is a readiness platform that creates an excellent sales culture, thereby permitting products to be sold quickly and with efficacy. It combines an award-winning platform and the best practice methodologies to improve sales performance and knowledge. The results of this combination include improved customer engagement, higher win rates, and bigger deal sizes.
MindTickle was launched in 2011 by Mohit Garg, Krishna Depura, Nishant Mungali, and Deepak Diwakar. It has raised INR 174 crores in Series B funding. Some prominent investors include Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Canaan Partners, and Qualcomm Ventures.
DataTorrent
Founders: Milind Mukund Barve and George Michael Kelakos
Year Founded: 2012
Industry: Computer Software
DataTorrent captures real-time data and combines it with the existing data to generate insights. DataTorrent is useful for companies where millions of events need to be monitored on a per-second basis. It is a YARN-based application and is open-sourced as Apache Project Apex. This Pune-based software startup received $24 million in funds from Morado Ventures, August Capital, and AME Cloud Ventures.
Lakshya Singh
Happy Roots
Founder: Reema Sathe
Year Founded: 2016
Industry: Food
Happy Roots started as Reema Sathe’s vision to create a business model around healthy products. Happy Roots connects with local farmers for the manufacturing of delicious products like cookies, crackers, and other kinds of snacks.
Reema Sathe, the founder of Happy Roots, has received several awards such as Business Today’s Most Powerful Woman (2017), Nari Shakti Puraskar 2017, etc.
MarketsandMarkets
Founder: Sandeep Sugla and Aman Gupta
Year Founded: 2001
Industry: B2B Research
MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research and consulting. It provides data related to technology, new product offerings, and market performance. MarketsandMarkets currently serves 7500 customers worldwide. It includes 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as its clientele. MarketsandMarkets provides high level analysis of major market segments and helps with the identification of opportunities.
It offers service to multiple industries such as aerospace, defense, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, mining, construction, healthcare, agricultural, automotive, and other industries. MarketsandMarkets provides reports on information related to market segmentation, patent analysis, forecasting solutions, market dynamics, and technology information. MarketsandMarkets has received a total of $56 million in funding from FTV Capital, Zodius Capital, and Mantra Ventures.
Plobal Apps
Founder: Atul Poharkar
Year Founded: 2015
Industry: Software Development
Plobal Apps is an online commercial venture available for both Android and iOS users. It promotes Shopify and has a number of features like apply pay, promotional coupons, push notifications, etc. The app aims to increase sales.
Plobal Apps was launched in 2015 by Atul Poharkar. Atul is a graduate from Fergusson College who later went on to do his engineering from Maharashtra Institute of Technology. The company has around 50 team members.
Docplexus
Founder: Phanish Chandra
Year Founded: 2013
Industry: Healthtech
Docplexus is an online community for doctors across India. It has more than 1 lakh doctors from more than 1500 cities with 89 specialties registered on its platform. Docplexus is the largest community of doctors online and continues to grow.
Phanish Chandra, the CEO of Docplexus, is a social entrepreneur who aims to connect patients and the Indian healthcare system through this app. He has skills in software development and this skillset was of great help to him during the Docplexus app’s development.
Vidhi Punamiya
Tork Motors
Founder: Kapil Shelke
Year Founded: 2009
Industry: Automobiles
Tork Motors is India’s first electric motorcycle company. Kapil Shelke is the founder and CEO of Tork Motors. Tork Motors was founded in 2009 with a vision to create a zero-emissions vehicle that could perform on par with petrol machines.
The key to Tork Motors’ success is the engineering of the motorcycle which reduces the cost of the vehicle and makes it affordable for middle-class Indians.
Repos Energy
Founder: Aditi Bhosale Walunj and Chetan Walunj
Year Founded: 2017
Industry: Fuel Delivery
Repos Energy offers doorstep delivery of fuel for industries to minimize diesel loss. Repos works on cloud-based technology and IoT devices. The customer orders diesel via the Repos App and a Repos petrol pump operator reaches the customer location to complete the diesel delivery. Repos Energy uses smart fuel dispensers to make transactions quick and easy. Repos Energy currently offers door-to-door delivery of diesel in around 65 Indian cities. Ratan Tata has invested an undisclosed amount in this startup.
ShoppinPal
Founders: Pulkit Singhal and Sriram Subramanian
Year Founded: 2012
Industry: Business Solutions
ShoppinPal provides software products for businesses to better understand their sales and management verticals. Some of its products are Stockup, Prosxdata, POS-ERP Sync, and eCommerce Sync. It also provides a suite of these offerings.
Pulkit Singhal and Sriram Subramanian founded ShoppinPal in 2012.
HotFut Sports
Founders: Pavit Singh and Nikhil
Year Founded: 2012
Industry: Sports
HotFut is a sports development company which aims at providing world-class sports facilities to the people in India. It gives youngsters an integrated sporting experience that will help build sports in India at the grassroots level. The company also organizes tournaments for sports lovers and corporate events. Hotfut has an academy of its own where people come to play outdoor games.
Hotfut sports was launched in 2012 by Pavit Singh and Nikhil. Hotfut is currently operational in Pune, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.
Anik Banerjee
111 Startups
Founders: Nitin Lahoti and Vikrant Bhujbalrao
Year Founded: 2015
Industry: Funding
111 Startups is a not-for-profit organization. It is connected with more than 300 startups across India and helps them secure funding. The startup wants to encourage entrepreneurship and promote well-calculated, risk-taking abilities. 111 Startups focuses on IT professionals, engineers, students, and startups that are in the early stages of entrepreneurship.
111 Startups is the joint effort of Mobisoft Infotech and Pesh Group. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Pune.
Dark Reflections
Founder: Siddhi Shah
Industry: Designer
Pune-based Dark Reflections Studio is a venture by Siddhi Shah, a designer. Originally from Chennai, Siddhi settled in Pune. The Studio sells dream catchers with the lowest price of a dream catcher being INR 300. It sells dream catchers for different occasions and in different sizes and colors. Dream catchers are generally used for décor and come in different sizes; hence, the price is determined accordingly.
Brandup
Founder: Shiv Singh
Year Founded: 2006
Industry: Digital Marketing
Brandup is a SEO and digital marketing firm in Pune. Brandup ensures that you get unique and recurring visitors by applying the right digital marketing tactics. Brandup provides services such as digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, organic marketing, support services, and online advertising.
Icertis
Founder: Samir Bodas and Monish Darda
Year Founded: 2009
Industry: Contract Management Software
The company is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington with 12 offices globally, including an engineering office in Pune, India. Key investors of Icertis include B Capital Group, Ignition Partners, Premji Invest, Greycroft Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Eight Roads Ventures, PSP Growth, and Cross Creek Advisors.
The company provides contract management software. It aims at improving contract management efficiency and compliance by providing access to contract lifecycle information across many devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Xpressbees
Founder: Amitava Saha And Supam Maheshwari
Year Founded: 2015
Industry: Logistics
Xpressbees is the fastest-growing express logistics service providing end-to-end supply chain solutions. The Pune-based startup works with several e-commerce firms. Xpressbees has seen huge growth as online shopping has become world’s second-largest internet market.
Xpressbees raised $110 million in November 2020. It is spread over 2000 cities and processes more than 2.5 million orders per day.
We hope this post encourages you to move ahead with your business idea and achieve something great. If you know about other startups based out of Pune, let us know in the comments. We will connect with them and feature them in this list.
FAQs
Which are the top startups in Pune?
Some of the top startups in Pune are:
- Xpressbees
- Firstcry
- Faasos
- EarlySalary
- HappyRoots
- MarketsandMarkets
- DataTorrent
- Letsintern
- Brandup
- InTouchApp
How many startups are there in Pune?
There are around 3100 startups in Pune.
Is Pune good for startups?
The great weather, proximity to Mumbai, and network of many big companies makes Pune an emerging startup hub in India.
Which are the high paying startups in Pune?
Some of the high paying startups in Pune are:
- FirstCry
- Icustommadeit
- EduBridge
- Letsintern
- Brandup
- Xpressbees
Which are the Unicorn Startups in Pune?
Unicorn startups in Pune are
- FirstCry
- ElasticRun
- Xpressbees
