Over the past few years, governments around the world have started supporting small businesses and startups through many government-led initiatives.
India, just like many other countries is now focusing on having more local businesses and thus have many initiatives that are helping upcoming startups in India.
Being a developing market with a strong financial standing, India is also one of the top markets for attracting foreign startup investors.
Over the past few years have seen many major names enter the Indian market one way or other.
Here are 10 promising startups in India to watch out for:
1) Dunzo
While we are all used to hailing cabs while travelling these days, Dunzo is India’s very own hyperlocal service which runs almost all the errands for you.
Dunzo is budget-friendly and has already set base in major cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
The app is a lifesaver for people who are busy in everyday life and don’t even get a minute to themselves.
Just ask for a pickup-and-drop and every small need will be taken care of. Be it a run to the bank or a run back home to fetch a file, Dunzo will take care of it.
Dunzo also provides a Bike Taxi service in Gurgaon in case you need to get someplace and don’t have the budget to hail a cab.
Based out of Bengaluru, Dunzo was the first Indian company to be funded by Google in 2017 and has grown much over the past two years. They now make over 30,000 transactions each day across the four major cities.
2) ShareChat
While looking at promising startups in India, ShareChat makes to the list as it provides service that many known messenger service was not able to fulfil.
ShareChat provides a social platform in many regional languages which otherwise were ignored until recently.
At present, they provide their services in 14 regional languages and have plans to go even into micro-markets such as the Northeast.
They also plan to monetise their service via advertising and in-app purchases.
ShareChat has been backed by many international companies such as Shunwei Capital, Morningside Ventures and Xiaomi.
3) Ather Energy
Founded in 2013, Ather Energy is India’s very own electric vehicle company that manufactures electric scooters 340 and 450. A lot of buzz is going around about Ather and it is definitely in our list of the most promising startups in India.
The company has also established electric vehicle charging infrastructures in Bengaluru and Chennai where people can come and charge their scooters.
These Charging infrastructures, called Ather Grid, also provide 3-pin sockets to supply AC power to other electric vehicles.
Ather, in its latest round of funding, raised $51 million and is now planning to set up a new manufacturing and few charging facilities in multiple cities.
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4) CRED
CRED is an upcoming startup in India that provides a members-only app with the aim to make paying credit card bills simpler and reward its users for paying their bills on time.
Besides rewarding its users for timely payments of bills, CRED also provides its users with offers and discounts on shopping, health services and other sites.
Besides rewards and discounts, CRED also helps its users discover hidden charges in credit cards so they can get them removed if they want.
5) Zerodha
Zerodha is an Indian financial service company, that offers retail and institutional broking and trading services to its customers.
Founded in 2010, Zerodha has now become number 1 brokers in India with over 1 million clients across NSE, BSE and MCX.
Zerodha has over 1000 members in its multilingual support team that answer their clients’ queries over phone and e-mail.
They also offer a countrywide network of partners to offer regional support to its customers.
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6) Simba Craft Beer
Born in 2016, Simba is a young but one of the most promising startups in India which plans to take on giants such as Heineken, Budweiser and Bira 91.
In the short period of three years, Simba has already clocked ₹125 crore in revenue with the projected target of ₹250 crore within a year.
Though Simba is based out of Chhattisgarh, its beer is now also available in Delhi, Gurgaon, Goa, Assam, and Karnataka.
Simba offers two variants of beer, wheat (wit) beer and a stout beer and makes a profit of Rs 35 per bottle on a wheat beer. The biggest advantage that Simba holds is that it offers two variants of beer, Wheat (wit) and stout beer.
Though the stout variant was a gamble, none of the beer start-ups, apart from microbreweries, marketed a stout and that is where Simba hopes to capture its market.
7) Kissht
Kissht is a financial technology platform that offers personal loans to its customers to buy electronic gadgets, kitchen appliances and other items on the digital point of sale.
Mumbai based startup, Kissht was founded in 2015 and allows its consumers to pay for their online orders in monthly instalments, even if they don’t have a credit card.
In the past few years, the company has tied up with over 3,000 offline stores and over 50 online merchant partners.
They now plan to utilise future funds to increase its online and offline merchant base and deepen its presence across categories.
Kissht in 2018, had raised $30 million in a Series C round and according to latest reports is currently in talks with various Indian investors to raise another Rs 50 crores in funding.
8) Milkbasket
Milkbasket is a hassle-free daily grocery delivery app that provides its customers’ items of daily needs such as fruits, milk and bread, right at their doorstep.
Gurugram based Milkbasket offers its customers an assortment of more than 5,000 items and delivers them daily across Delhi NCR.
Founded in 2015, Milkbasket till now as raised $14 million in Series A funding and is recently acquired Bengaluru based PSR supply chain company to expand its footprint.
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9) Cure.Fit
Founded in 2016, Cure.Fit is an app-based service that helps its customers build a healthy lifestyle by adopting healthy habits and diet.
The app helps its customer adopt healthy means to fulfil their health needs, be it food, fitness or meditation.
Cure.Fit is one of the most promising startups in India with lead investor Accel Growth putting around $30 million in series D round of the company.
Cure.Fit also operates various gyms under Cult.Fit, healthy food offerings under Eat.Fit, mental wellness through Mind.Fit and diagnostic centres through Care.fit
CureFit has raised over $75 million in funding in less than a year after it raised $120 million the previous year.
According to a recent calculation the latest investment values the company at over $500 million.
In the past few years Cure.Fit has made a slew of acquisitions, with two boutique fitness brands—Cult and The Tribe.
They have also acquired yoga chain a1000yoga and Bengaluru-based health food delivery firm Kristys Kitchen.
Earlier this year, CureFit also acquired health beverage brand Rejoov and now plans to acquire more medical diagnostic centres and start expanding in other cities.
10) Bounce
Bengaluru based Bounce is the world’s fastest-growing bike-sharing start-up that clocks about 60,000 rides per day.
One of the most promising startups in India, Bounce in 10 months of launching its dock less scooters, has completed over five million rides, that has covered over 30 million km.
Though the company at present has presence only in the city of Bengaluru, it has a very bright future as it was valued at over $220 million in June this year.
The latest funding has not put it on par with global players such as US-based scooter-rental companies Lime and Bird.
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