[Monday Wrap] From specialty teas and data analytics to fun undies - your startup fix to start the week

YourStory brings you a list of promising startups we discovered through the week.

Nirmal Raj's love affair with tea started as a child when he would sneak into the tea factory his mother worked at, and rest on warm gunny bags filled with tea leaves. Following his graduation, Nirmal entered the corporate sector as a business development executive but stuck true to his passion. He set up Buddies Cafe in Coimbatore, which serves over 70 varieties of tea. Nirmal also owns an in-house tea brand called Danjo Teas, which is exclusively available at Buddies Cafe.

Mumbai-based Rockmetric is a 'cognitive data analyst' that automates analysis and insights with a 'natural language search' interface. With Rockmetric, large enterprises can now deliver sophisticated analysis and ad-hoc queries at scale instantly without having to expand reporting and analytics teams. Business teams can put in queries such as “Why did sales for product dip in London during May?”, “Which are the top account managers by target achievement rate?". "The platform understands user queries, analyses data, and delivers charts, descriptive insights, and complex analysis instantly,” says Founder Nimesh Mehta.

What is the best gift for a man, "A pack of innerwear!" Yogesh Kabra, the founder of XYXX, an online men’s underwear brand saw issues in the underwear market for men – the dearth of choices, lack of comfort, and the right price points, and set out to solve them. A typical multi-brand outlet offered brands that were either boring or expensive; all used similar fabric, and most were poorly designed. “Then there are the more affordable options, which have extremely poor quality. I don’t mind buying fast fashion in general for apparel, but innerwear is always driven by quality and comfort. I really did not have an option so I decided to make my own undies,” Yogesh says. 

Imagine a situation where after extensive interviews and a long hiring process, you see a clear disconnect between yourself and your employee. Enter Monjn, where assessments are not done by technology and people. It is an on-demand interview platform where senior industry individuals review prospective employees. Interviewers and candidates are matched on the Monjin engine through AI for an interview. These video interviews are recorded, analysed, indexed, rated and tagged and clients have access to a video interview where they see the interviewer and the candidate both in the frame.

Harvard Law School alumnus and Wall Street lawyer Shashank Bijapur found contract work intellectually rewarding but he, at times, felt that the task of copying old contracts to make new ones was cumbersome. Carnegie Mellon alumnus Madhav Bhagat also found contracts daunting, and a pain point for his businessman father. Shashank and Madhav met in New York and realised they could address their respective interest and pain point at the same time. The two started SpotDraft, an Artificial Intelligence-based contract management and creation system, in 2017.

 Piyush Kedia joined EY After graduation but unhappy with the 9-to-5 job, he started freelancing in design. A few contacts from his network had asked him to design their marketing content. Soon, a major publishing house got in touch with Piyush. “I charged them extra; but they were cool with it. I left the job in early 2015 to start up BlueVector,” Piyush recollects. Without any advertising, big and small brands were reaching out to him. Blue Vector has so far served over 100 clients in automobile, food and beverage, media, real estate, and travel and hospitality.

Now get the Daily Capsule in your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter today!