20 Power of Ideas THE ECONOMIC TIMES | | FRIDAY | 20 JANUARY 2017

Julia Computing Udaan CREATORS Axio Biosolutions CREATORS CEO Viral B Shah, a co-inventor of CREATOR Former Flipkart employees Sujeet Kumar, the Julia programming language, It all started when Leo Mavely witnessed a mo- Amod Malviya and Vaibhav Gupta cofound- was instrumental in framing the torbike accident in 2006. The BTech student in ed the business-to-business marketplace policies and developing the technol- applied biotechnology employed everything in April. Malviya was CTO at Flipkart, in ogy behind India’s Aadhaar digital he knew to stabilise the victim. But when it charge of hiring data scientists to build the identity system. He co-authored came to stanching the massive bleeding, he platform. Kumar was heading WS Retail, the Rebooting India with Infosys was helpless. largest seller on Flipkart, and Gupta was a cofounder and former Aadhaar part of the company’s analytics team. chairman Nandan Nilekani, a book X-FACTOR about using technology for social Mavely founded Axio in 2008 but kept it in X FACTOR transformation. Julia Computing’s stealth mode till 2014. The startup uses a natu- Few startups can boast of having raised $10 other geeky cofounders are Deepak ral biomaterial called chitosan, extracted from million before launching their products Vinchhi (COO), MIT Professor shellfish, to make a sponge-like dressing that ClearTax or platforms. Udaan secured the money Alan Edelman (chief scientist), Jeff stops bleeding within minutes. Clients include from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bezanson (CTO-language), Stefan and Big data to solve problems in the Indian Armed Forces, the Border Security Pharmeasy CREATORS Lightspeed India in November, riding largely Karpinksi (CTO-finance) and Keno areas such as algorithmic trading, Force, the All India Institute of Medical CEO Archit Gupta, an alumnus of on the reputations of its founders. Udaan Fischer (CTO-tools). self-driving vehicles, astrophysics, Sciences, Apollo Hospitals and St John’s CREATORS IIT-Guwahati and the University of seeks to simplify the business of wholesale drug discovery and augmented Hospital. Axio has received funding from Accel Dharmil Sheth and Dhaval Shah have Wisconsin, founded the company in buying and promotion of new brands. X FACTOR reality. Partners include IBM, Intel Partners, IDG Ventures and GVFL. known each other since school. While 2011 with his chartered accountant Julia Computing, founded in 2015 and Nvidia. Sheth went on to become an engineer, father Raja Ram Gupta and brought on MOONSHOT YEAR by the creators of the Julia pro- MOONSHOT YEAR Shah trained to be a doctor. Their design and technology entrepreneurs Renewed efforts by Walmart India, Amazon gramming language, has offices MOONSHOT YEAR Axio is raising more funds from investors shared desire to use technology for Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki as Wholesale and Alibaba to revive their busi- in Bengaluru, New York, Boston, The startup plans to release the next that it will use to expand this year in India and healthcare led them to start Pharmeasy cofounders. ness-to-business platforms in India indicate London and San Francisco. Julia is version of its programming lan- abroad. The startup is seeking to win contracts in 2015. exciting times for the sector, and Udaan’s an open-source language for high- guage—Julia 1.0—this year. This from military forces across Europe, the Middle X FACTOR premise marks it as a potential winner. The performance technical computing will be a major milestone for the East and Africa. It is also in the process of in- X FACTOR The platform is used by more than market for B2B retail in India is estimated to and data science. Julia Computing Julia community and the startup as troducing its kits for industries as well as into Pharmeasy takes medicines and diag- 1.5 million Indians to file taxes elec- grow to $ 700 million by 2020. focuses on building products at the well. The company will also focus safety pouches in automobiles. nostic services to homes. Presently, it tronically. It has become popular intersection of machine-learning on adding banks as clients this year. delivers medicines in Mumbai, , with businesses and is used also by at Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad least 10,000 accountancy firms. The and Jaipur and diagnostic services business-to-business segment brings in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. The in 60% of the revenue. ClearTax has Capital Float Indus OS startup recently raised $17 million from received the backing of American similar platform for India in 2013. phone users in India is rapidly increasing. Bessemer Venture Partners, Orios startup incubator Y-Combinator as well Indus OS (previously FirstTouch) pro- Ventures and Aarin Capital, besides as venture capital firms SAIF Partners X FACTOR vides a complete local language ecosystem pharma distribution player Ascent. and Sequoia Capital. PayPal cofounder The non-banking financial company has for smartphones. The OS powers more Max Levchin, American entrepreneur disbursed more than Rs 1,000 worth than 50 smartphone models, including MOONSHOT YEAR Scott Bannister, and AngelList’s Naval of loans to about 6,000 merchants, ahead those of Micromax, Intex, Karbonn and E-pharmacies are anticipated to be the Ravikant have also invested in it. of many of its competitors. Its proprietary Celkon that sell widely in small cities and next big thing in the healthcare space, credit analytics software has helped keep towns. It has more than 6 million users and Pharmeasy already has made MOONSHOT YEAR defaults under 1%. Last year, Capital Float across India and Bangladesh. Indus is headway. With its recent funding, the With the goods and services tax set to opened an online marketplace for NBFCs the most used smartphone OS in India startup wants to expand deeper in rollout in June, online tax-paying plat- and banks to sell their products. It is behind Google’s Android. It registers every city it operates in. The company forms will be sought after as businesses backed by Sequoia Capital, Aspada, SAIF nearly 400,000 activations every month, plans to introduce its medicine delivery seek clarity and ease in compliance. Partners and Creation Investments Capital which the company expects to double in 6 service in Chennai and Hyderabad and ClearTax is developing applications for Management. CREATORS months. In 2015, Indus OS received $5 mil- expand its diagnostics services to cover enterprises to be able to file taxes online. Rakesh Deshmukh (CEO), Akash Dongre lion in funding led by Omidyar Network. Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad and It aims to capture a significant number MOONSHOT YEAR (CPO) and Sudhir Bangarambandi (CTO) Jaipur this year. of the 8 million entities expected to climb CREATORS Capital Float plans on expanding to 150 shared a passion: to build an operating MOONSHOT YEAR on to the GST Network platform. Sashank Rishyasringa and Gaurav cities and introducing more products this system for smartphones that’s rooted in The company will launch its next version, Hinduja were batchmates at Stanford year. The alternative lending and credit regional languages. Thus came Indus OS. Indus OS 3.0, this year, just as telecom University in California, not far from market is expected to receive a boost this operators increase focus on expanding Silicon Valley. There, they closely tracked year as more merchants and individuals X FACTOR network connectivity in small cities Zenoti the growth of companies such as Lending adopt digital transactions, prodded by a gov- With internet connectivity improving and towns. It also plans to partner with Iqlect Club, which inspired them to develop a ernment determined to curb cash trades. across the country, the number of smart- Chinese smartphone brands. GOING ON 17 CREATORS Founder Sachin Sinha, an IIT-Kanpur graduate, has nearly two decades of CREATORS product development experience Ecommerce is passé. Moonshot ideas will grab the eyeballs this year—unique CEO Sudheer Koneru, who was at Microsoft, Amazon, Jabong and with Microsoft for over a decade, Limeroad. In 2013, he took a year off fintech models, an open source programming language, media and traditional got involved in the wellness indus- to build a database engine with an try when he invested in luxury analytics layer to provide insights in health club brand Latitude that real-time. That engine became Iqlect businesses with a tech spin. 2017 is all set to be about going off the beaten track hospital chain Apollo group later the same year. bought. Sensing potential for end- to-end cloud-based software solu- X FACTOR tions for spas and saloons, Koneru Iqlect’s product Ampere provides started Zenoti in 2010. insights for use in multiple applica- Seclore Technologies Rivigo tions, including for fraud detection IIT-Bombay. Graduate School of Business. X FACTOR in real-time. Within six months of Zenoti enjoys a monopoly in India, product launch, the startup part- X FACTOR X FACTOR counting large chains including nered with NxtGen and Cisco for its Seclore’s product allows companies to In a highly unorganized trucking market, Lakme, O2, Enrich, Kaya Skin data center solutions, which includes control access over digital documents and Rivigo has a technology-driven product Clinic, and Four Fountain Spas providing its analytics layer for ap- the information they share with others by with driver-friendly policies, ensuring among clients. It is present also in plications, log and other Internet-of- restricting rights to, say, copy a file or modi- loyalty to the platform. The company has the Middle-East, Southeast Asia Things devices. fying its content. This gives businesses invested heavily to own a fleet, ensuring and US markets. The company’s control over their data even if these are complete control and monitoring freight annual recurring revenue in 2016 MOONSHOT YEAR residing in a vendor’s computer. Marquee movement in real-time. Warburg Pincus was $7 million-$ 10 million. The Unlike other data analytics startups, clients include HDFC Bank, Deloitte, Tata invested nearly Rs 500 crore in Rivigo in startup last year raised $15 mil- Iqlect’s go-to-market strategy in- Group and Aditya Birla Group. In May, November. lion from Norwest Ventures and cludes offering data center solutions Seclore raised $12 million from Sistema Accel Partners. to cloud providers to ensure larger Asia Fund. MOONSHOT YEAR enterprise reach. For its real-time CREATORS The rollout of the goods and services tax MOONSHOT YEAR digital fraud-detection solution, the Vishal Gupta came up with the idea for MOONSHOT YEAR will necessitate a reconfiguration of ware- Zenoti, which currently works startup is focused on signing large Seclore’s digital rights management prod- Since October, Seclore has signed contracts housing and distribution networks, which only with large spa and salon banks and payment companies as uct while working on a similar product that with the Ministry of Defense and the Union will provide a fillip to trucking companies chains, is increasing focus on India embraces electronic transac- would allow enterprises control over con- finance ministry for three multi-million CREATORS such as Rivigo. The single tax structure smaller businesses running two- tions. The startup in December fidential documents shared with others. dollar security-based projects. With recent Former McKinsey employees Deepak Garg will help the trucking industry increase three outlets. The company, which hired Gayathri Krishna, previous The IIT-Bombay alumnus had previously government initiatives pushing the coun- and Gazal Kalra started the company as a efficiencies as the waiting times at state registered a 150% rise in revenue executive director and partner at cofounded sales management platform try towards enhanced measures in terms relay service for drivers to reduce the turn- borders drop. Among the handful of start- in 2015, is targeting similar IBM, chiefly to help it find clients in Herald Logic with Abhijit Tannu, a gradu- of securing digital infrastructure, the com- around time in long-distance deliveries by ups in the long-haul truck transportation growth for this year. the fintech and banking, financial ate of IIT-Kharagpur. They sold Herald to pany foresees huge demand from financial road. Garg is a mechanical engineer from sector, Rivigo has an edge because of its services and insurance sectors. an Australian firm in 2009 and incorpo- services, manufacturing and engineering IIT-Kanpur. Kalra graduated from IIT- relay model of driving to achieve shorter rated Seclore in 2010. It was incubated at companies this year. Delhi and has an MBA from the Stanford delivery times. ShareChat ZestMoney CureFit CREATORS CREATORS Lizzie Chapman (CEO), Priya Sharma Founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit (CFO) and Ashish Anantharaman (CTO) Nagori are former Flipkart top execu- were colleagues at British digital lending tives. Bansal had sold his online fashion company Wonga.com and had travelled to retailer Myntra to Flipkart and was head- India in 2011 to scout for business oppor- ing commerce at the online marketplace. tunities for it. Their research gave them Nagori was one of Flipkart’s earliest em- enought reason to start their own venture ployees and was responsible for scaling in 2015. up categories across the company.

X FACTOR X FACTOR ZestMoney allows customers of online CureFit raised the largest series-A fund- XpressBees ecommerce platforms—35, so far—to pay CREATORS mobile messaging platforms such ing last year—$15 million from Accel CREATORS for their purchases in monthly instalments The idea for this local-language as WhatsApp. Lightspeed Ventures- Partners, IDG Ventures and Kalaari After Brainvisa Technologies, Supam even if they do not have credit card histo- social networking app came about funded ShareChat has 400,000 daily Capital. The company is experimenting Maheshwari cofounded his second busi- ries. The company is backed by eBay found- when IIT-Kanpur alumni Farid users, many of whom spend up to with an online and offline mix of preven- ness venture, BrainBees Solutions, in er Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network and Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush 3 hours on the app conversing in tive healthcare solutions, which includes 2010 with Amitava Saha. The company, Ribbit Capital. Sachdeva launched a debating app Bengali, Odia, Bhojpuri and other a chain of fitness centres under the brand which owns infant and maternity brand in English and found it to be too elit- local languages. Cult. FirstCry, expanded its logistics busi- Nestaway Technologies MOONSHOT YEAR ist. They launched ShareChat in ness, XpressBees, in 2015 to serve other ZestMoney is planning expansions this October 2015 as a platform for shar- MOONSHOT YEAR MOONSHOT YEAR ecommerce firms as well. Saha steers CREATORS year through partnerships with more ing content in local languages. From more than 5 million regis- This year, CureFit will launch a slew of this last-mile logistics startup. Amarendra Sahu, Jitendra Jagadev ecommerce and fin-tech companies and tered users presently, ShareChat products as well as raise fresh funding. and Smruti Parida are all second-time is working to help customers use credit in X FACTOR aims to grow to 25 million users The company plans to be a combination X FACTOR entrepreneurs and batchmates from different avenues through new products. The app is something of a cross this year as it adds more regional of engagement, coaching and delivery XpressBees raised Rs 85 crore from the National Institute of Technology, The company is expected to raise series-A between Instagram and V-Chat. languages and dialects. Once the models through a mix of online and existing investors SAIF Partners, IDG Suratkal. funding from PayU and existing investors It allows users to create and find company reaches that target, the offline channels addressing curative Ventures and others in February 2016 to Omidyar Network and Ribbit Capital. content in their preferred languages founders will seek to monetize healthcare. expand its operations. The company has X FACTOR and share these with others on through advertisements. built capacity to handle about 100,000 The home-rental network has over the orders a day in a much more capital effi- last two years aggressively grown its cient manner as compared to rivals. footprint and focused on solving a major pain point, which is bachelor accom- ticles, covering everything from news stories MOONSHOT YEAR modation, with value-added services. ScoopWhoop to pop culture trivia. Over 3.5 years since its The company will launch warehousing The company gets home owners living launch, the website has drawn in more than 30 and related services this year to take ad- elsewhere to rent their apartments at CREATORS million visitors, or about 8.5 million visitors a vantage of an expected 20% increase in a premium and ensures them timely Rishi Mukherjee, Saransh Singh, Sattvik year. Most other digital media websites man- ecommerce shipments this year. After payment. It takes a small percentage of Mishra, Suparn Pandey and Sriparna age 100,000-200,000 visitors in a year. Snapdeal-backed Gojavas was shut- the rent as commission. Nestaway has Tikekar knew each other from their days at tered last year, there is latent demand raised more than $43 million in two the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. MOONSHOT YEAR in the ecommerce-focused logistics years from investors, including Tiger They came together again in 2013 to set up This year, Kalaari Capital-funded sector. Also, as online marketplaces Global and DST Partner Fund. ScoopWhoop. ScoopWhoop will venture deeper into creating optimize their supply chains to align non-fiction programming, covering city-based with the goods and services tax, they are MOONSHOT YEAR X FACTOR news and regional language content. The expected to shift loyalties from unorgan- This year, the company is poised to The cofounders, fans of digital content publi- company’s recent acquisition of Touchfone ized logistics firms to startups such as raise more capital, which would give it cations such as Buzzfeed and Upworthy, decid- will allow it to offer video-streaming services XpressBess. the firepower to be the segment leader. ed to create a digital media platform focused in small cities and towns. It will also allow for Nestaway is also considering a plan to on Indian youth. ScoopWhoop produces short personalized content, based on which adver- Reporting by Payal Ganguly, Shadma Shaikh, J appeal to a wider audience and offering videos, documentaries, listicles and news ar- tisements can be targeted to each user. Vignesh, Mugdha Variyar, Aditi Shrivastava and more premium services. Shashwati Shankar