20 Power of Ideas THE ECONOMIC TIMES | MUMBAI | 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, Delhi, 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 crore 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.