[Startup Roundup] Is bootstrapping the answer for startups today?

Why do startups fail? Or rather why do certain startups succeed while others fail? Questions like these are constantly being asked whenever three or more ‘startup people’ get together.

In its 2017 Startup report, Nasscom says that this year too, startup mortality remained a cause for concern with a majority of them closing down within 1.6 to 1.9 years of inception.

Among the causes for startup failures, the report lists scalability-related issues as the top reason. Factors like low market demand and a stiff competition slow nearly 49 percent of startups’ march towards building scale. While nearly 45 to 50 percent startups die even before securing seed stage funding and need maximum support to kickstart.

In such a scenario when we come across startups that are bootstrapped and doing well, it is greatly heartening. This week, we profiled a few bootstrapped startups. Meanwhile, for more stories on bootstrapped startups, you may like to go here.

QuasarEnviro

A bootstrapped startup, QuasarEnviro, operates in the energy space. Virendra Joshi started QuasarEnviro in 2011, with a focus on energy conservation using technology. His tech-enabled products now save energy on air-conditioners and refrigerators, leading to major savings on bills, writes Sindhu Kashyap.

The 20-people team has built two tech solutions, Enisaver, which is designed to save energy in different kinds of air conditioners, and Ref-Saver, which is designed for refrigeration units.

Read the full story here, titled: ‘Using technology, bootstrapped QuasarEnviro aims to reduce cost of energy consumption by 30 pc’

Be.The Solution

A company that is into curation of women-centric personal hygiene products, it offers sanitisers, wipes and gels that focus on the sanitation and cosmetic angles.

Backed by its parent company Ador Group, Be.The Solution is nevertheless a startup, and one of the big challenges – like for all startups – was to keep costs low. It proved more difficult because of the Ador Group tag.

Founder Deep Lalvani says five percent of all net revenues go back to funding hygiene products in India. The team has tied up with Milaap and is working towards goals like establishing toilets in rural areas.

Read their full story here, titled: ‘How this bootstrapped startup is aiming to take on the P&Gs of the world’

Think Tanc

If you’ve always wanted to own your own restaurant, but did not know who to turn to, then this startup has the answer. Bengaluru-based Think Tanc helps plan, set up, and run restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Founders Amit Roy and Anupam Sehgal help prospective restaurateurs decide what kind of an establishment to set up, what cuisine it should offer, what is the target audience, down to what should be the colour of the menu cards and walls.

Amit and Anupam’s clients include Skyye Bar, Fluid in Mysore, The Bierre Club, and Puma Social Club.

Think Tanc also works with well-known and established brands like Nagarjuna in Bengaluru and Sukh Sagar. He adds 90 percent of the company’s business is with new turnkey projects, and the remaining 10 percent are mainly research-based, based on the clients’ requirements.

Read the full story here, titled: ‘Bootstrapped Think Tanc turns your restaurant dream into reality’

Yulu

After working in stealth mode for four months, InMobi Co-founder Amit Gupta is set to launch his new startup, Yulu. It will offer IoT-based bicycle sharing to resolve last-mile connectivity and is backed by the other co-founders.

An answer to Bengaluru traffic, Yulu aims to work on a form of transport that abides by a ‘4S philosophy’- solo, shareable, sustainable and scalable.

“We need to replace big personal vehicles with smaller and efficient clean energy vehicles. At the same time these vehicles need to scalable and sharable so that the overall cost of ownership is low and the utilisation is very high,” Amit tells Harshith Mallya.

Read the full story here, titled: ‘After cashing in early on the mobile wave, InMobi co-founder aims to do an encore with the sharing economy’

Excellence4U

Founded by Madhusudan Rao and Suparna Rao in late 2011, Excellence4U has since been on a warpath to uncover “dirty” money.

It has helped startups and venture capital firms figure if their partners, and their accounts, have links with black money. The company can even tell investors how founders of a company encash money by providing bills other than salaries.

E4U works on a SaaS model, and the go-to-market strategy is word of mouth.

The company uncovers patterns, like if a majority of a company’s business development trips coincide with, say, the school holiday season. “We have seen investees advertise for talent with relevant years of experience greater than the technology age itself – should the investor be concerned with data points like these?” Sathya tells Vishal Krishna.

Similarly, for investee companies, E4U uncovers if their finance function is akin to complex treasury operations and works to manipulate cash.

Read the full story here, titled: ‘Sniffing money-trails, Excellence4U negotiates the financial maze for investors, startups’