[Startup roundup] If it is MadGuy Labs they must be in Happyness Factory

What's new, you ask. Here are the five startups we uncovered this week. 

2017, by all means, has been a year of reckoning, especially for the Indian startup ecosystem. The year began with the pundits predicting the doom for tech startups in the country. It was too good to last, they said.

As we begin the countdown to 2018, we realise that like the proverbial Mumbai spirit, the ‘startup-ing’ spirit can never be snuffed. A media platform dedicated to bringing the stories of passion and grit of starting up, we have observed that there are as many startups that are created every day as there are those that shut down.

Even as we await the exact data of the number of startups that were born this year (Nasscom estimated that four startups were created daily in 2015, the year of the tech entrepreneurship boom), one thing we can tell you for certain is that starting up is here to stay. It can only get better.

Even with a slowdown in terms of funding, YourStory has found that startups that have shown promise and growth have seen investor confidence.

We discover new startups and bring their stories to you daily. Here are five startups that we uncovered this week that you ought to read about.

MadGuy Labs

While pursuing his engineering degree, this entrepreneur created apps as a hobby. A particular one on general knowledge went viral. During a campus placement that he was attending, he found many of his batchmates referring to it. Inspired, he decided to skip the placement opportunity, turning to entrepreneurship instead.

An alumnus of IIT Roorkee, Alok Katiyar co-founded MadGuy Labs. Started in 2015, it is an online educational platform that brings coaching institutes and students together.

Read the full story here.

Payworld

Fintech has been getting a lot of attention from investors, especially since the demonetisation experiment by the government last year. Digital payments and wallets saw a huge surge soon after this move and there has been a steady increase in fintect startups.

Thus, when Sugal & Damani Group started operations in 1991, little would they have guessed that a fledging lottery business would be the gateway to building a new-age Indian financial services company for low-income groups.

Payworld is leveraging its old assets to ensure digitisation. As a part of its services, it empowers low-income groups perform basic banking services such as money remittances, SME lending, loan and bill repayment facilities, and consume other digital services, including recharges, train and bus ticketing as well as insurance.

Read how the startup is betting on the concept of ‘phygital’ -- mixing physical and digital properties -- to create an ecosystem for its not-so-tech-savvy target audience here.

EZkirana

Every year, we discover some of the best in tech startups as part of our annual Tech30 list. You can find the full list of this year’s Tech30 startups here.

This week, we profiled the Tech30 startup EZkirana, a Bengaluru-based B2B online grocery startup, which is looking at launching its private label by 2018. You can read the story of their journey here. 

Meratask

These two entrepreneurs took a shot at solving a tough problem using technology -- which is to deliver small items on the same day in the city. “The current system is inefficient as it takes a long time for deliveries within the same city. Technology can solve this and we believe runner services can beat couriers within the city,” says Piyush, who went on to found Meratask, a runner service that allows the customer to order deliveries through an app.

Read the full story of Meratask here.

Happyness Factory

They say once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. For Amar Pandit, an electronics engineer, who started a financial advisory firm in 2012, his aha moment came recently when he launched his latest venture – Happyness Factory – a robo-advisory technology platform helping individuals with their investment goals. Read his story here.

If you want your daily dose of startup stories, all you need to do is, go here. From AI/ML to cryptocurrency, from foodtech to healthtech, from e-commerce to subscription-based services, you will find startups of all kinds that are trying to solve problems in their own unique ways.