India’s top founders & VCs pick their startup of the year, Technology News, ETtech

1. Binny Bansal, cofounder, Flipkart & Xto10X Technologies


My pick: Rupeek

What it does: Online marketplace for gold loans

Why I picked it: They are solving a real need in the market more efficiently than the incumbents with good unit economics and have hired a very strong team this year.

My year as an investor & founder: For me, this year’s highlight was meeting more than 80 growth-stage founders across multiple sectors and mentoring/helping more than 20 of them in their scale-up journeys.

2. Ankur Jain, founder & CEO, Bira 91


My pick: BharatPe

What it does: QR code-based payment app for offline retailers

Why I picked it: Bringing fintech to merchants while a lot of other fintech cos are focussed on consumers. Focusing on an overlooked and a large opportunity to facilitate merchant credit and improve business performance and payments for small businesses.

My year as a founder: It has been a key inflection as Bira 91 as it is growing in scale, impact, and speed of execution. The team has graduated immensely and the backend matured by a step function to deliver extremely strong growth in the business and create massive impact.

3. Nithin Kamath, cofounder & CEO, Zerodha

My pick: Ather Energy

What it does: Electric two-wheeler company.

Why I picked it: For building a production ready efficient electric scooter in less than 5 years since inception in an industry that is very capital intensive. Homegrown startups using clean energy solutions is the way to go.

My year as an investor: The year for me personally as a founder has been more up than down. We became the largest brokerage firm in India early this year. But currently figuring out ways to fight out if the current downturn in the economy is sustained.

4. Sujeet Kumar, cofounder, Udaan

My pick: OkCredit

What it does: Enables small merchants to digitize their bookkeeping.

Why I picked it: They have reduced the merchant’s burden of maintaining paper account books along with sending notifications for collections on time. This has helped merchants organise their accounting better.

My year as a founder: One needs to continuously balance between pace of execution, health of business, ability of team to take the business forward, validation of your business by external factors(like investors, your business partners, and others), and systems building for the scale.

5. Kanwaljit Singh, Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures

My pick: Wow Personal Care

What it does: A cosmetics and beauty products brand that largely sells through the online channel

Why I picked it: A digital first brand; rapid scale, bootstrapped, strong product line up, selling across geographies

My year as an investor: Amazed at the opportunity for consumer brands in India, humbled by the love we get from entrepreneurs, excited with the challenge of building a unique platform to support scores of iconic brands.

6. Deepinder Goyal, cofounder & CEO, Zomato


My pick: Cure.fit

What it does: Focuses on fitness, nutrition, therapy, and healthcare.

Why I picked it: Although there have been many contenders as it has been an exciting year for startups in India, I think Cure.fit has a really good business coupled with great execution. It’s great to see a startup take bold and engaging steps in an area largely untapped otherwise.

My year as a founder: We understood each lever of the business – growth, revenue, cost and what it takes to be profitable has become clear and apparent. From pushing the edges of search & discovery and smoothening the food delivery experience to closing the gap between fresh produce and our restaurant partners – we fired on all cylinders. We were able to achieve this thanks to a very dedicated team that we have in place.

*Participants were asked to pick startups where they do not hold a stake.