The new era of technology has led to newer ideas of entrepreneurship and many of them have bloomed in 2014. These start-ups are in fields ranging from business to academics and sports and are contributing hugely to the Indian economy
Who would you consider the youth icon of India?
Is it Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone or Sonam Kapoor or any other Bollywood celeb?
Well, there are some other rising stars who are brave enough to take risks and daring to take on challenges.
And they are not celebs, but nothing less too!
The youth of today is crazy, wild and even reckless in some instances. But the spontaneity and the drive to think big and think different leads them to out-of-the-box ideas and eventually much inspiring success stories.
While many of us do not get the time to notice the struggles and hurdles a person might have faced during his/her career and are busy in our corporate work pressures, shopping expeditions, clicking selfies, buying new smartphones and cameras and posting updates on social media sites, there are some others who take their life and career pretty seriously, against popular notions of ‘youth wasting their time’ and ‘youth is wasted on the young’. Yes! We are talking about the young entrepreneurs of India and when we talk about Indians, how can we forget Mumbaikars who are the very soul of buzzing activity, zeal and enthusiasm, moving in a fast-paced world.
Some have just started a year or two back and are still working on the local or small-scale level, but yes they definitely have big dreams and are moving step by step towards their ultimate goal: SUCCESS – success for themselves as well as for the country, in leaps and bounds. Here is a list of few Mumbai-based start-ups that mushroomed in 2014.
Toppr:
This organization helps students get ready for the scariest of the entrances: the IIT-JEE mains. The company now provides preparation tips and notes for other entrances as well. Started by Zishaan Hayath, an alumni of IIT Bombay, the company was just a 5-member team in early 2014 that worked in a Chandivali apartment. Through the year, the team has grown to 40 members and shifted to their second office where they have more than 30,000 students referring to their organization for pre-medical courses and engineering entrances.
There are some other start-up ventures like Embibe and TestBook that have come across as pretty successful and popular with students prepearing for IIT-JEE, BIT SAT, et al and Embibe acquiring 4 million dollars from Kalaari Capital and Lightbox, while TestBook (started by another IIT alumni) setting the standard with 55,000 registered users and raising INR 1.5 crores from LetsVenture and Ah!Ventures.
Instamojo:
Think of an e-commerce marketplace that enables users to collect their payments using a link. The system caters to all woes related to payments and delivery and the seller can leave everything on the framework by just sharing a link on the location the consumer is. There are only three simple steps required for the seller to pursue. Firstly, s/he has to post tangible items and get a unique link for the same. The items can be anything from clothes to books to fancy stuff. The link will be shared with friends, family and followers and your goodies will be sold at a location you decide.
Founded in 2012 by Harshad Sharma, Akash Gehani, Aditya Sengupta and Sampad Swain, the company has found its way to glory from its earlier days when there was no place from where Sampad could manage his newsletters. Instamojo has recently come up with a series, A Round from Kalaari and is planning to work from Bangalore now.
Flatchatapp:
Real Estate and Flat hunts remain the most happening sectors and after 99acres, magicbricks.com ventures, it is time for people to connect through chatting apps where they can look both for flats and flatmates just by chatting with others who have the same requirements. The housing sector has been the talk of the town with another promising startup, Grabhouse coming into picture. You now will not need a rigorous flat hunting expedition with the broker as the latter is an online flat hunting experience that has become popular with around 25,000 people now who have used the service as yet. The company came into action early 2014 and has been able to open branches in four cities now. This online service too is known for flat and flatmate hunt.
Shopsense:
Our shopping needs and experiences have now gone for a complete revamp with Shopsense working in alliance with retailers to engage consumers by employing both technology and retail marketing or B2B techniques. Salman Khan’s ‘Being Human’ stores are their most loyal and notable customer.
InOpen Technologies:
Private and public schools often need valuable academic matter and here comes a start-up for their rescue. Co-founded by Rupesh and Prof. Sridhar in 2009, this is an educational start-up that was still trying to expand the client base while the team itself was growing in early 2014 but by the end of the year, has been referred to by 6 lakh students both in India and abroad. The company has also come up with a flagship product called Computer Masti that has been implemented in more than 350 schools in the country while 130 countries have downloaded the content. Computer Masti has become so popular that it had to be translated in eight Indian and two foreign languages. About 4000 teachers have also been trained on the Computer Masti process so that more and more students can be taught about the methodology. Academics when merged with online detailing and high quality content can be remarkable indeed!
JustUnfollow:
The company that started with a team of 13 in early 2014 and had begun working on TakeOff app by downloading content monthly of size 250k from TakeOff app, and having a little more than 3 million of total app downloads in early 2014, is now set to grow and scale higher with a dedicated team of 26 members and app installs at 350k. The total app downloads have risen to 5 million and the firm has reached a benchmark of 9 million users of the app where the app has become available to both Android and iOS users.
PriceBaba:
This is a place where you can search what to buy and where to buy it from, not to mention the optimum costs for the product. With shopping options galore, we all get confused as to what should we buy at a certain time of the year and where would we get the best deal. PriceBaba will resolve all your queries related to shopping. Where early 2014 witnessed the company exploring new cities for its growth and adding more products to enrich customer experience, currently it has gained grounds among 4.4 million visitors especially in the month of October. The company now knows the trends people follow while buying an item and where the company was restricted to mobile phones, it now plans to include many more products in its kitty for improving user experience and emerging as the best research engine for products in India come 2015.
These are just a few of the start-ups that have started to make their mark in different Indian industries. Many more like Browserstack, Webengage, LocalOye, Customer360, Zepo, Emportant, FusedCow, WizRocket, Haptik, et al have done well for themselves especially in the year 2014 from introducing messaging apps to connect consumer to brands (Haptik) to providing HR and Payroll Management solutions (Emportant) to giving a design and data platform for the construction industry (FusedCow). The youth of India is seriously contributing in all fields ranging from Business to Education and Sports and you are bound to get inspired by the Mumbaikars who have set a strong hold in the entrepreneurship market and have made us all proud.
P.S.: Now you can go and tell your parents about your entrepreneurship plans especially as more than 80 start-ups are booming in the country presently.
I am sure that after reading these success stories, they cannot say no to your ideas. (*winks*)
