Editor's Note- by Tanvi Ajmera
“Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought,” rightly quoted by Dr. Albert, Szent-Gyorgyi. India holds a sui generis position in the world for a variety of reasons, and having one of the youngest populations is perhaps the most pivotal. With 62 percent of the population in the working-age group and 54 percent below the age of 25, we have the advantage of leveraging the skill and ability of our youth to drive the nation forward through productive output and innovation. In the pursuit of realizing how important it is to keep carving out new ideas, thereby contributing to the economy, India is swamped by several startups from all over the country. Despite all the resistance caused by the fatal outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian startup ecosystem has evolved like never before. Indians from every part of the country are emerging as entrepreneurs, where they own their niche in the startup industry.
In accordance with the reports and surveys, it is bookmarked that India was the third-largest startup market in the year 2020 at $11.8 billion. With over 38 unicorns, our country continues to witness the consistent stir in the startup ecosystem which homes potential unicorns of the future. Indian startup is center-staged and is eyed by entities from every segment including SoftBank, Naspers, and Tiger Global, etc. These stakeholders help the startups in fueling their efficiency and molding them as ‘unicorns’ of the market. With the pandemic taking its toll and shifting our lifestyle to a tech-based space, most of the emerging startups in the country are technology-focused. Ola, Zomato, Byju’s, Ruptok, Swiggy, Unacademy, etc. are a few of the examples of the few startups who have taken the market by storm.
The global unrest has consciously coerced everyone to adapt to the digital environment, with which comes the opportunity of initiating different startups. Indian startups are pervasive across almost every industry including transportation, retail, automotive, hospitality, finance, logistics, food delivery, insurance, etc. Some of the startups are well-geared to dominate industries of their niche by reaching out to customers on an impeccably large scale. A credit of these beefed-up startups also goes to the Government who introduced ‘Startup India’ and ‘Stand up India’ as an initiative back in the year 2016. As a country dominated by job seekers, we are now moving towards a country that has job builders. It is not far away when Indians will stop seeing a brain drain because they will be able to find lucrative opportunities back home owing to a developed ecosystem enthralling global presence.
As per the report of the Nasscom Tech Startup 2021, India pinpoints 38 startups with a valuation of over $1 billion. Also, it came into notice that in December 2020, 41,061 startups and 4.7 lakh job opportunities by 39,000 startups were created. Some of the spearheading Indian startups to highlight include Udaan, Ola, Dunzo, Razorpay, PharmEasy, Digit Insurance, MonetTap, Yellow Messenger, etc. Indian startup would not have marked its revival without the odds, especially amidst the pandemic. However, there still persists a huge gap between what an Indian startup is and what it could become. Despite an array of startups spreading across many industries in the country, startup investment in rural areas is almost imperceptible. Furthermore, there is an existential crisis of startups in the agricultural component of the country which needs immediate attention.
Considering the Indian startup scenario, this edition of Business Outreach brings to you the most engaging information on towering new startups in India which are spurring Indian growth.
The Cover Story
| Logo | Name | Spokesperson | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
 | GuruQ | Minal Anand – CEO & Founder | GuruQ is India’s best tutoring platform that connects students with the right tutors. With the GuruQ platform, students can personalize their tuitions classes with respect to the mode of class, type of class and budget. |
Special Features
| Logo | Name | Spokesperson | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Cetking | Ravneet Gandhi – Founder & Director Avneet Bhatia – Co-Founder | Cetking is an educational institution imparting quality teaching and mentorship to MBA aspirants all over the country. Their services include classroom coaching, online coaching and mentorship. |
Top Emerging Startups
| Logo | Name | Spokesperson | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Ourea | Anooja Bashir – CEO & Founder Vinod Chacko – COO | Ourea is a branding & designing company that provides the best possible positioning of the brand by understanding the customer journey targeting the right audience at the right time with the right message. |
 | Flexiclouds | Vinod Chacko – CEO & Founder Anooja Bashir – Co-Founder & CMO | Flexicloud deploys the best servers and the best technologies to host applications to deliver the speed that you’re looking for your apps. Flexicloud enables everyone to get access to the latest cloud technology. |
 | Razorpay | Shashank Kumar – Founder Harshit Mathur – CEO & Co-Founder | Razorpay is payments solution which allows businesses to accept, process and disburse payments with its product suite. It gives you access to all payment modes including credit card, debit card, netbanking, UPI and popular wallets. |
 | Byjus | Byju Raveendran – Founder & CEO Divya Gokulnath – Co-Founder | BYJU’S is an ed-tech company and the creator of a distinguished school learning app that offers personalized learning journeys to students, suited to their learning style and speed. Learning programs from BYJU’S are available for students in classes 1 -12 (K-12) and competitive exams. |
 | DeepSource | Sanket Saurav – Founder Jai Pradeesh – Founder | DeepSource helps engineering teams ship good code to production faster. DeepSource continuously analyzes source code changes, finds and fixes issues categorized as security, performance, anti-patterns and bug-risks. |
 | TourOn | Vikash Manoharan – CEO & Founder Keerthi – Co-founder & CFO | TourOn is a personalized travelling assistant that allows you to plan and customize your trips to create experiences. TourOn helps to curate your tour plan, just the way you picture it. |
