US-based early-stage startup accelerator Y Combinator conducts two cohorts every year, in which chosen startups are given $500,000 - the standard $125,000 is given for seven percent equity while the remaining $375,000 comes with an uncapped MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause.
The recently begun Winter 2022 cohort, consisting of 192 startups, also saw 32 Indian startups make the cut.
Y Combinator’s three-month-long intensive accelerator programme is held for early-stage ventures around the globe. Selected startups receive financial aid along with support and mentorship.
The Indian startups that made the list in this cohort are -
TradeX
Founded in 2021 by Divij Goyal and Ankit Shrivastava, TradeX is an event-based predictions market for the Bharat audience. TradeX users can take direct exposure to any real-life event, double down on their investments or hedge positions. The Gurugram-based startup has launched various events across different categories like entertainment, finance, news, sports, etc. and will be focusing on going deeper in these categories. In January 2022, the startup raised a seed round of $1 Million from TDV Partners, SoMa Capital and marquee investors.
Better Opinions
Started in 2021 by Soumyajit Das and Samay Jain, Gurugram-based Better Opinions is a prediction market of India which allows users to trade their opinion on everyday topics.
In February 2022, it raised over $1 million in its pre-seed round from Y Combinator, Java Capital, Soma Capital, and angels such as Mayank Kumar, Co-founder, UpGrad, Sudhanshu Raheja, Head of Product and Engineering, GoTo Financials (Gojek-Tokopedia), Pratyush Prasanna, SVP, Gojek, Chinmaya Sharma, Chief Commercial Officer Namshi and the Ranadive Family, the Co-founders of Sacramento Kings.
In December 2021, the platform launched its real money gaming app “RMG App” and within a month of its launch the startup claims to have seen 150,000 sign ups with a week-on-week growth of 30 percent.
OurEye.ai
Founded in 2020 by Miran Junaidi and Sourav Sanyal, OurEye.ai is a video intelligence solution for enterprises to monitor any and all standard operating procedures, leveraging pre-existing CCTV-IP infrastructure. It comes with features like day-to-day insights, consolidated dashboards and metrics, rapid integration and scaling, real-time notifications and alerts. At present, OurEye is catering to sectors like food and beverage, and industries like factories, manufacturing units, construction sites and more.
Fello
Launched in 2021 by Shourya Lala and Manish Maryada, Bengaluru-based Fello is a game-based savings and investment application for the Gen-Z and young millennials of India to save, play and earn returns more than a traditional savings bank account.
Users can save and invest in financial assets, and for every rupee they save, they get one gaming token using which they can play daily and weekly games. And if they win in these games, they get to win Rs.1 lakh every week.
Within a span of 12 weeks of launch, the startup onboarded 250,000 users with 92 percent of them being referred users, 88 percent of them being first-time investors who are spending over 12 minutes on an average per day on the app saving and playing games together.
In November 2021, it raised $1 million in a seed round led by global talent investor Entrepreneur First (EF).
SaveIN
Founded in 2020 by Jitin Bhasin and later joined by Gaurav Luthra and Anurag Varma, Delhi-based healthtech startup SaveIN helps doctors, dentists, and veterinarians serve 50 percent more customers who are otherwise unable to avail private healthcare.
SaveIN recently launched its unique offline BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) product for financing need-based healthcare expenses, at physical points of care.
Within a short span of time, the startup claims to have over 400 healthcare providers in its network and have issued $60,000 in loans, growing at 20 percent weekly and earning six percent on the loan amount.
It is targeting 100 million urban Indians who undertake on an average one healthcare procedure per year costing $200.
Material Depot
Bengaluru-based startup Material Depot was founded by Sarthak Agrawal and Manish Reddy in 2021. It is a search engine and workflow automation tool for the architectural and design industry.
It is also enabling the community with an image recognition tool and a digital mood board to embed the right material in the design.
Telematica
Launched in 2021 by Abhishek Jain and Aditya Ketkar, Bengaluru-based mobility startup Telematica is an API and data platform for electric vehicles through which companies can access telematics, battery, and other mobility data, as well as remotely control EV charging with a single standardized API.
Globally, the electric vehicle market is exploding. Particularly in India, where more than 40 percent of the new automobile sales are expected to be electric by 2030.
Legistify
Founded in 2016 by Akshat Singhal and Pratik Mohapatra. Gurugram-based Legistify is a platform that helps Indian companies to manage and resolve small legal disputes. Such disputes can easily be tracked and settled through its software.
AntWalk
Founded in 2019 by Joybroto Ganguly and Sriramkumar Sundararaman, Bengaluru-based startup AntWalk is an up-skilling platform that empowers teams with continuous learning tracks to equip them with the right skills at the right time.
Its upskilling programs are customised to business objectives of organisations across sales, customer success, general management, technology and product functions and promote employee development by enhancing their existing competencies and developing newer ones.
AntWalk claims that it is powered by 3000+ experts from 500+ global brands across 40+ countries to power these courses and 1:1 Interactions.
Blitzllama
Launched in 2021 by Joel Koshy, Rahul Mallapur and Bently Nixon, Bengaluru-based Blitzllama is a toolbox that helps brands to collect user feedback at scale, map a user’s product journeys and get highly contextual answers in minutes to focus on better branding and marketing execution.
Requestly
Founded in 2021 by Sachin Jain and Sagar Soni, New Delhi-based Requestly records all API traffic and allows developers to modify responses for any API request without changing anything on the backend. It is available as a browser extension on all major browsers and as a desktop app on all platforms.
The startup is already in production with 40000+ developers across 500+ organizations using Requestly.
PayCrunch
Founded in 2020 by Aman Bhayana, Bengaluru-based PayCrunch is a UPI-based credit platform for college students. The secure and reliable platform aims to deliver a unique experience to students when they go out with friends to shop, party, and more.
It is a microloan lending app that makes borrowing money easier for students. The buy now, pay later app claims to have more than 10,000 users, and aims to make financial management easier by helping track transactions.
Kaagaz
Founded in 2019 by Tamanjit Bindra, Snehanshu Gandhi and Gaurav Shrishrimal, New Delhi-based Kaagaz is an app for Android and iOS users to scan, read, edit, manage, and store all the documents required in a cloud.
Edustack
Started in 2021 by Vamsee Koneru and Prudhvi Raj, Hyderabad-based edtech startup Edustack provides digital and interactive worksheets aligned to a K-12 curriculum. With Edustack, teachers can create, assign, autocorrect and generate analytics in minutes instead of spending hours on printouts, photos, and giving feedback.
Tingo
Founded in 2021 by Sandilya Miduthuri and Chalam PVS, Gurugram-based Tingo is an android dialer app for young people in India. Every day over 40,000 people use Tingo to set video ringtones for their friends and family. It is growing at 17 percent weekly and handled 25 million+ phone calls through the app in the last two months.
The startup’s vision is to be the phone dialer app for 2.5 billion smartphone users worldwide.
InsureMyTeam
Founded in 2021 by Kunal Popat and Rachit Puri, Mumbai-based InsureMyTeam provides employee health insurance and primary care for companies in India. Employees get access to unlimited health consultation, along with traditional hospital expenses.
RecordBook
Founded in 2021 by Abhishek Choudhary and Robbin Singh, Bengaluru-based RecordBook is a one stop solution to manage all business data, workflows, and teams for small and medium businesses on their mobile devices and in their local languages.
BharatX
Founded in 2020 by Mehul Jindal, Shyam Murugan, Eeshan Sharma, and Siddharth Venu, Bengaluru-based BharatX operates its Buy Now Pay Later in a white-labelled manner on other apps and websites. This enables brands to get a much better embedded consumer transaction flow, along with increasing their revenue upto double digit percentages with higher retention rates and conversions.
RedBrick AI
Founded in 2020 by Derek Lukacs and Shivam Sharma, Pune-based RedBrick AI SaaS platform offers high-performance web annotation tools for 2D and 3D data to give experts access to specialized tooling right from their browser. The RedBrick configurable workflow system helps teams build robust and scalable quality assurance processes. RedBrick AI offers a suite of APIs to help developers consume the annotations being created, and integrate with MLOps.
Streak
Founded in 2020 by Shiv Bidani, Balaji R and Mitul Mehta, Bengaluru-based Streak is building a new age personalised and gamified banking solution for teenagers.
The startup is a fast-paced edu-fintech startup working towards redefining children and teenagers' relationship with money.
Castled Data
Founded in 2021 by Franklin George, Manish Singh, Abhilash Thulaseedharan and Arun Thulasidharan, Bengaluru-based Castled Data helps organisations sync customer and product data in realtime from cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Postgres etc to their sales, marketing and support tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Google Ads, Mixpanel, Intercom and lots more.
91Squarefeet
Founded in 2019 by Amit Bansal, Puneet Bansal and Amit Mishra, Gurugram-based 91Squarefeet is simplifying physical retail expansion for big brands. Using its project planning software and a managed marketplace of contractors in India, the startup has built over 300 stores in the past nine months for brands like Bridgestone, Westside, Chai Point, etc.
shopr.tv
Founded in 2021 by Mukul Anand, Tushar Dhara, Akhil Suhag, and Akshay Suhag, Bengaluru-based shopr.tv is building live commerce for India. It is Twitch for fashion and beauty, where creators can broadcast, build an audience, and monetize by selling over live streams.
The startup claims to be growing to over 10,000 downloads, $2,000 GMV, and 26 creators- with an average watch time of 15 minutes. It has a partner pipeline with over 70 creators and 12 brands whose products these creators can sell.
With an average order value of $55 and 150 million consumers, the startup makes money by taking a 10-12 percent cut on every sale.
Fieldproxy
Founded in 2020 by Balakrishna Balasubramanian and Swaroop Vijayakumar, Chennai-based Fieldproxy is a retool for field teams. Its no-code application allows organizations to build internal mobile applications to manage field teams of any size.
Fieldproxy’s vision is to be the operating system for field teams.
NinjaStudy
Founded in 2022 by Shivam Gupta, Anoop Jaiswal, and Akshay Sanghai, Bengaluru-based NinjaStudy is an AI-powered English speaking tutor app. The startup helps English learners around the world to practice and learn English speaking in free flow conversations with feedback on your grammar, pronunciation, and fluency.
You can imagine this as Siri/Alexa for learning and practicing English speaking.
Vance
Founded in 2021 by Parth Garg and John Finkelman, Mumbai-based Vance helps companies unlock their recurring revenue upfront. This gives them the boost to grow without dilution, warrants and hassle.
Harmoney
Founded in 2021 by Amal Dani, Omkar Ghaisas, and Aditya Mehta, Mumbai-based Harmoney is a bond trading platform for financial institutions and asset managers in India. The startup is building the infrastructure to digitise bond markets and make bond trading more efficient.
Janani.life
Founded in 2021 by Raj Garg and Nilay Mehrotra, Bengaluru-based Janani is building at-home diagnostic and treatment plans to service 130 million infertile Indians, starting with at-home semen diagnostic. The startup launched four months ago and already has around $8000 of monthly revenue, and it claims to be growing 50 percent every month.
Arda
Founded in 2022 by Pranay Shetty and Ramkumar Venkataraman, Arda provides a single API for fintechs to embed DeFi products on their platform. This allows them to acquire more customers, retain these customers and increase revenue and engagement, all in a custodial, secure, and compliant way.
Yodaa
Founded in 2021 by Tanmaay K and Shival G, Bengaluru-based Yodaa is a savings-first neobank for Gen-Z in India.
With Yodaa, the customers get access to a prepaid card and a smart money app. Using Yodaa, they can make payments, save money, split bills, get credit, invest, and learn about wealth creation. The customers can also round off their transactions and auto-invest into digital gold. Essentially allowing them to save as they spend.
The startup’s larger mission is to create a “Bank for Life” for 25 million GenZ in India and SeAsia.
Besides these 30 startups, the Winter 2022 cohort also saw two women-led Indian startups make the cut. Neobanking startup SALT and rewards platform GoSats are also participating in the cohort.
Edited by Anju Narayanan