The 7 Indian startups at the Tech Rocketship Awards finale
Businesses across AI, Big Data, IoT, fintech, meditech and more pitched to potential investors and incubators from the UK. These startups be assisted by the UK’s trade department in setting up shop in foreign shores.
The finale of the Tech Rocketship Awards 2018 — an initiative of the UK’s Department of International Trade (DIT) — was held in Mumbai on Tuesday. The event is in its fourth year now, and it seeks to bring together budding Indian entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from the UK, as well as experts from DIT who offer business advice and mentorship to homegrown startups looking to establish themselves abroad.
More than 300 startups participated in the initial rounds of the 2018 Tech Rocketship Awards that were held in October 2017, of which seven were declared winners in different categories viz. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), Fintech, Agritech, Meditech, and Cybersecurity.
The seven finalists pitched at the grand finale, part of the inaugural India-UK Createch Summit. These startups can potentially pitch to investors at June’s London Tech Week. Additionally, they would also receive assistance in business development from established UK firms.
Staqu Technologies (Category: AI)
This Gurgaon-based startup uses deep learning and AI to remove mismatches in the content distribution ecosystem. For instance, a consumer of sports items could be made to view a cosmetic product or ad and his inbox could be flooded with spam mails on the same. It happens due to gaps in the content-to-user data flow. Staqu breaks down customer data into speech, text and image, and analyses each data set to throw up contextual information/content to consumers. It counts Microsoft Bing, Paytm, Yepme, Panasonic, etc. among clients, and helps remove spillage and improve efficiencies in ecommerce.
Dineout (Category: Big Data)
Dineout is one of India’s leading table reservation services. While table booking is its consumer-facing service, its B2B product, Inresto, uses Big Data to help restaurants digitise their customer data. Restaurants don’t know their diners or their spending power or their culinary preferences or their frequency of visits. Customer data management is all the more cumbersome for multi-outlet restaurant chains. Dineout’s Inresto steps in right there, and enables restaurants to acquire, engage and retain customers more efficiently. It is already seeing five million monthly active users on the platform.
ThirdWatch (Category: Cybersecurity)
Third Watch helps track and prevent fraud in real-time. Its product ‘Mitra’ uses 32 sensors, deep learning algorithms, device fingerprinting, location profiling, and behavioural analysis to separate fraud users from genuine ones. Globally, over $30 billion is lost in fraud on digital platforms. ThirdWatch attempts to save billions of dollars in transaction costs across mobile and web. The startup offers a two-month free trial to potential clients. It says anyone who’s taken a trial has become a paying customer.
Paymatrix (Category: Fintech)
Paymatrix is an online rent payment and collection platform, which also lends credit for rent deposits. House rentals is a $40 billion market in India, says Paymatrix, but 70 percent of the transactions still happen in cash. Post demonetisation, Paymatrix received a fillip as landlords and tenants were more willing to transact digitally. Paymatrix’s services include tenant profiling, digital documentation from rent receipts and rent agreements to renter’s insurance, and credit for tenants. The startup claims to have connected over 8,000 tenants and landlords on its platform.
Ayasta Technologies (Category: IoT)
Ayasta utilises IoT, Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Blockchain technology to digitise the electricals industry. Ayasta has built a proprietary platform called CEGMA to monitor, analyse and detect anomalies in the electrical systems of companies, both inside facilities and outside in the electrical grids. It counts several Fortune 500 and Forbes 2000 companies in the sectors of Oil & Gas, Energy, Telecom, and Pharma among its clients. Ayasta’s core premise is to prevent outages and failures instead of curing them, and in the process, save millions of dollars for companies.
Mimyk (Category: Meditech)
Mimyk develops simulators that can train doctors and medical practitioners in carrying out tests and scans, for instance endoscopies, without their presence. A spinoff from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, Mimyk combines haptics, design, and virtual reality to build advanced simulation platforms. Its current focus is the development of an endoscopy simulation platform. Mimyk’s technology has been developed through a collaborative R&D activity carried out at IISc’s mechanical engineering and visualisation and graphics labs.
CropIn (Category: Agritech)
CropIn provides agri businesses a range of farm management software and mobile apps that enable them to undertake data-driven farming practices. CropIn’s software product tags farmlands in India, and displays the farm info on an app to field officers of multinationals, food and beverage companies for instance, that engage in business with farmers. The technology makes each produce traceable, and helps farmers and businesses make better decisions based on data and insights. CropIn claims to have digitised 2.1 million acres of farmland and tracked 3,500-plus varieties of crops.