From F&B to AI, from design to p2p lending, here are some companies that are expected to shine

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Indian startup ecosystem has undergone major changes over the past few years. Sectors like Internet of Things (IoT), Fintech and Edutech found favor with investors whereas the remaining ones didn’t see much big-ticket funding. With the dawn of 2017, we have come up with a list of 7 Indian start-ups to keep an eye on in the upcoming years ahead.

Faircent

Launched at the helm of the digital revolution in 2014, Faircent is a peer to peer lending marketplace founded by Rajat Gandhi & Vinay Mathews. All thanks to government policies, P2P now is considered as one of the most innovative financial products. “From disbursing Rs15-20 lakh loans a month, Faircent is disbursing Rs 1.5 crore a month. The major digital shift in India’s payment mode has put the company in a sweet spot.” – says Rajat Gandhi.

Today they successfully help customers get cheaper loans based on their creditworthiness and help lenders earn high returns from their peers or community.

Staqu

Founded by Atul Rai & Abhishek Sharma, Staqu acts as the best AI-driven solutions for retailers. The company helps users search for products using images rather than words. For example, if a user wants a floral print dress, then she must be able to upload a picture and find similar kind of products. In artificial intelligence driven solutions, products can be integrated into search technology of e-commerce companies. Clients like Roposo, Karbonn and Panasonic are making use of this search technology. The Gurugram-based company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network in June.

Freshtohome

Shan Kadavil founded online fish and meat delivery service in 2016. Since then he has been doubling sales every three months and is looking forward to expanding his services to 20 more cities in 2017. Today, 80,000+ customers mainly from Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Delhi order chemical-free fish and antibiotic-free chicken online. “We have a centralised processing model, so it is easier to scale”- Says Shan. In fact, Google India managing director and angel investor Rajan Anandan says the company has achieved the fastest zero to $5 million revenue in the e-commerce sector in India.

Healthifyme

Founded by Tushar Vashisht, Mathew Cherian & Sachin Shenoy, the lifestyle tracking platform recently crossed a million downloads in app stores second to doctor listing and aggregator platform Practo. The app helps users to identify the calorie value of Indian foods, offers paid services from fitness experts and nutritionists. Around 5 per cent of users pay for premium services, and the average revenue per user is Rs 5,500 (US$85.90) a year. it may quite interest you to know that the company is looking forward to raise more funding later this year.

Also read: 12 artificial intelligence startups revolutionizing healthcare in India

Flyrobe

Last year, IIT-Bombay grads Pranay Surana, Shreya Mishra and Tushar Saxena started Flyrobe, a designer apparel rental startup offering brands such as Sabyasachi, Ritu Kumar, Masaba Gupta, Armani, Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein. They have already raised a total of US$7 million from Sequoia Capital, IDG, GREE Ventures and angel investors and are currently in five cities- Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bengaluru and even plans to open offline stores in Delhi and Mumbai in 2017 with 300 designer collections on the platform.

Peelworks

Founded by Nidhi Ramachandran and Sachin Chhabra, Peelworks aids around 3,000 retail stores across the country. They simply aim to improve efficiency in distribution and marketing. After spending 14 years with FMCG giant Hindustan Unilever, Sachin Chhabra decided to come up with a company that helps its customers analyse information on performance, incentives, promotions, and skills of employees. Today the company employs 200 people and is looking forward to register $5 million revenue this fiscal and is expecting to double its income in 2017.

Myra

Myra is a Bengaluru-based online pharmacy store that aims to deliver medicines at home within an hour. The start-up does approximately 1,000 transactions a day and has managed a customer retention rate of 75 per cent. Backed by angel investors including Pranay Chulet of Quikr, Pankaj Gupta from Twitter and Prashant Malik from LimeRoad, Myra hopes to have a positive impact on the lives of people who are ill, old or anyone who needs access to Medicare, says founder Anirudh Coontoor and Faizan Aziz.

While this is by no means a comprehensive list, we will certainly be watching to see what happens next in the year ahead.

—-

 

The post As 2017 nears its end, here are 7 Indian startups to watch out for appeared first on e27.