The Indian market is up for a creative disruption. Increasing internet penetration, on top of the presence of a vibrant youthful population who are ready to explore new things in life, has left space for startups to bloom and alter our habits and lifestyle.
The sharp shift towards digital education, the culture of work-from-home, playing indoors has altered our consumer habits. The pandemic has even motivated us to take personal hygiene and health seriously.
Let us look at some startups that are here to make our lives easier.
ByteLearn
ByteLearn, an AI-powered EdTech startup is revolutionising education by building an AI assistant for math teachers and students. The name “Byte” stems from the concept of a 1-on-1, personalised tutor for students, which is also a super-powered assistant for teachers. The pandemic has caused a sharp shift to remote learning, thus burdening teachers and demotivating students. Teachers already have spread thin managing over 100+ students, and are struggling to assign and grade homework, provide immediate and personalised feedback, track individual knowledge gaps, and provide practice to remediate gaps. Students are hurt too as they often lack the immediate, short, targeted help they need while solving math problems. ByteLearn viewed this as a big market opportunity and created an AI assistant to do the heavy lifting and equip teachers with the superpowers that they need to teach and inspire students to reach their true potential.
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The founders, Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha, are IIT graduates and serial entrepreneurs with 15 years of experience in the EdTech industry. The startup’s team consists of talented AI/ML scientists who previously worked at IBM and Sun Microsystems, an education and content team affiliated with Teach for America and a product design team with previous experience at Khan Academy and Imagine Learning. With a robust team and vision, ByteLearn has raised a sizeable seed funding round from marquee VCs so far. ByteLearn is aiming to become a dominant market player as it uses cutting edge AI technology to create adaptive learning tools and envisions itself as one of the pioneers in changing the education landscape, thus solving both teachers and student problems. Its business model covers all bases, B2B and B2C, with both freemium and premium pricing strategies. ByteLearn has a clear product roadmap for the next 5 years as it plans to expand to global markets and cover subjects beyond Math.
Pariksha
Pariksha, founded by Karanvir Singh, Utkarsh Bagri, Vikram Shekhawat and Deepak Choudhary in 2015, is a vernacular EdTech company that seeks to make education accessible and affordable to students who may be first-time mobile users.
Today, Pariksha operates in 16 states, 8 languages and offers around 120 courses. With the increasing digitalisation of rural India, Pariksha aims to go phygital and presently operates from 3 blended learning centres. It has also launched India’s first education stack that seeks to empower education service providers.
ImaginXP
As India is focused on skilling its youth population, ImaginXP, a virtual university platform that ties to universities to provide degree programs or certification courses ranging from Bachelor of Design, BBA, MBA, B.Tech, and the like.
Founded by Shishir Kumar and Shashank Shwet in 2013 at Pune, ImaginXP has around 2,500 students enrolled in full-time degree programs.
The MyCoach platform connects companies with students so that students are imparted industry-relevant skills which would come in handy when they enter the job market. Today, more than 15,000 students are enrolled in this platform. The pandemic which has disrupted the traditional university programs has helped in propelling its growth.
Tamasha
Founded by Siddharth Swarnkar and Saurabh Gupta in 2020, Tamasha provides the ideal space for content creators and social media influencers to interact with their fans.
Tamasha is a unique influencer-led live gaming platform where content creators and social media influencers can have the opportunity to host live online games.
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At a time when social media is booming and Youtubers are the new stars, Tamasha offers an exclusive space for the young talents to engage with their audience and figure out their game-plan.
Rooter
Founded by Akshat Goel, Piyush Kumar, and Dipesh Agarwal, Rooter is a game streaming app available in 10 Indian languages. It allows gamers to join popular streamers, upload gaming videos or images, and even create one’s gaming content. The views may get virtual benefits as well.
Today Rooter gets an average of over 80,000 live streams in a single day, and tournaments are held almost weekly. It presently occupies the top spot in the Sports section of Google Play Store.
Power Gummies
In a fast-moving consumer-centric world, we as individuals have neglected our health for too long. Power Gummies which seem simple, nutritious and attractive have offered a new alternative.
Founded by Divij Bajaj, also known as the gummy man of India, in 2018, Power Gummies has brought forth chewable vitamin gummies thereby influencing over 100,000 lives including many celebrities. Today the gummy man has made it to Business World 30 Under 30 Super Entrepreneurs of India 2021.
PeeSafe
Many women suffer from Urinary Tract Infection due to unhygienic sanitary practices. Starting as a toilet hygiene company, PeeSafe which was founded by Vikas Bagaria, Srijan Bagaria and Dheeraj Jain has been able to venture into women’s hygiene products like sanitary pads, menstrual cups and even intimate wash products for both men and women.
Today Pee Safe is accessible in more than 3000 stores, owns more than 90 per cent of the market in the toilet seat sanitiser category. It grew 80 per cent in the last financial year and expects a growth of 100 per cent over the next three years.
TruNativ
A health-conscious mind cares about the ingredients which go into the making of whatever he consumes. As many food products produced using harmful artificial ingredients crowd our FMCG marketplace, TruNativ claims that their products are environmentally conscious, they use only real food ingredients and their products are backed by science.
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Founded by Pranav and Mamta Malhotra in 2019 TruNativ Foods and Beverages is aware of urban malnourishment in our cities and wants to make a difference by converging health, hygiene, convenience and taste.
Raskik
Millenials want to experiment with their beverages and Raskik, a brand that produces natural fusion fruit juice is emerging as one of their options. Founded by Vikas Chawla, Abhay Parnekar and Satyajit Ram who were veterans of CocaCola, Raskik presently offers three variants of coconut water and fruit juice fusions at just 30 bucks.
The growing $2 billion fruit juice category has offered huge scope to experiment and dismantle the way we drink our favourite fruit juice.
Coutloot
We may have noticed that our local shopkeepers do not get sufficiently empowered by the presence of e-commerce giants. Coutloot, India’s largest offline to online social commerce platform, offers a solution in such a scenario.
Founded by Jasmeet Thind, Mahima Kaul and Vinit Jain in 2016, Coutloot enables the ‘local’ to be ‘vocal.’ Almost anyone can sell their products online in under 30 seconds and customers can even bargain! This is how the online marketplace is built and can be at par with the offline ones.
Evenflow
E-commerce is going to be a $150 billion market by 2025. Consumers usually go for trusted brands while shopping online which puts new brands at a disadvantage.
Taking a cue from the US and Europe, Evenflow which was founded by Utsav Agarwal and Pulkit Chabbra offers to manage inventory, performance marketing, on-platform merchandising, cataloguing and new product development to third party brands who raise 80 per cent of their revenue through e-commerce. This is how local brands can be adequately empowered.
Entrepreneurs, investors and internet penetration offer the foundation of any start-up ecosystem. India is going strong on all parameters. This will change our lives for the better.
These startups will be pitching at the 9Unicorns Venture Catalysts demo day with other up-and-coming startups offering their unique products and services. Join them on August 11 and 12 to connect with some of the most promising young startups in a virtual networking session. To learn more, visit their official page here.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 9Unicorns
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