[Monday Wrap] From a design and digital consultancy to custom-made shoes - your startup fix to start the week

Two chemical engineers, who chose to call themselves "Clueless Engineers", started The Minimalist while still in college to give design a new spin. Chirag Gander and Sahil Vaidya, whose venture started as a Facebook page for crisp content, graduated to their design and digital consultancy based out of Mumbai not long after. The startup offers services under three business units - branding and communication, interaction design, and digital marketing.

In this time of seamless buying and improved customer experiences, visuals are extremely important. Divyesh Patel and Aditya Patadia realised the potential of visual commerce in 2015, and their deep tech startup Turing Analytics is helping retailers step into the age of visual commerce. Turing Analytics has developed an image-based product discovery and recommendation engine for ecommerce sites that enables shoppers to upload a photo and look for similar-looking items across categories.

If shoes are your thing, Kashif Mohammad and Aravind Maddireddy know customising can take them to a completely new level. Their bootstrapped, Bengaluru-based startup Rapawalk lets you design your shoes in a 3D configuration, then takes your order, and manufactures them. Though only a month old, the company it has set its sights on the global footwear market, currently valued at $150 billion.

Nikhil Autar began work on a personal pain point to launch his innovative product,  Get To Sleep Easy. The 24-year-old cancer survivor built a hospital bed to help patients sleep easy. The smart bed, which can be operated with a remote, has sensors that detect one’s position on the bed, monitor movement patterns, and take into consideration the pressure on the bed. It helps tackle many of the health problems arising out of bad posture of patients on hospital beds.

A stay in Mumbai, be it for work or leisure, is synonymous with expense. But budget stay just got a makeover with bootstrapped Urbanpod, which has brought the concept of sleeping pods to India. Founded by Hiren Gandhi, Shalabh Mittal, and Berlin Lee, Urbanpod offers aesthetically designed state-of-art pods that provide essential amenities and a design that ensures privacy. The company aspires to be the one-stop destination for businessmen and backpackers looking for a short stay in a city.

At a time when many struggle with the should-I, shouldn't-I question, the founders of this startup impressed K-Start with new strategies, got funding, and became profitable in 1 year. Bengaluru-based Guaranted, which was launched in 2015, provides furniture and electronic appliances for rent and sale in Bengaluru. Next stops? Pune and Hyderabad, which will be followed by Tier II cities.

Puneet Gupta saw a business opportunity when he saw soldiers working in some of the harshest regions of the country without access to water and opportunities to clean up. This inspired him to start Clensta International, a startup that offers water-saving tech to help soldiers guarding borders keep clean even in freezing temperatures. Clensta, which is incubated by IIT-Delhi, aims to provide innovative solutions for day-to-day health and hygiene-related problems by reducing the dependence on water.

With India’s annual spending on marriage-related services pegged at $57 billion and the fact that are over 100 million unmarried Indians aged between 18 and 35 years, the wedding market is colossal. That's what enticed Kochi-based Saneesh Sukumaran to start Wedeterna, which brings a unique DIY model to matrimonial sites. Wedeterna follows a subscription model similar to other matrimonial sites, but has a strong differentiator: this matrimony site showcases only self-created profiles.

Amid the brand explosion that urban India is witnessing in recent times, Vadodara-based Harish Mohan is working to crack the functional drinks market in India. His bootstrapped startup, SipWise, was born in December 2014, and is now available in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Pune. The brand is planning nationwide expansion next and is investing heavily in distributing the product in mom-and-pop stores.

Be it Udhampur or Bengaluru, this entrepreneur is ensuring companies run on robust software. Rajinder Gandotra set up Avekshaa Technologies in 2011 to provide specialised solutions in the area of performance, availability, scalability and security (P-A-S-S) assurance space of enterprise software. Simply put, it provides a fitness certificate to software operations in large enterprises after stringent tests.

Who doesn't love surprises? But planning one for someone special isn't easy. Chennai-based Surprise Machi gives you ideas and more on how you can do this. Founded by Bhagya Prabhu and Shahul Hameed, this startup does not believe in selling the usual ideas or gifts to surprise someone; its USP is 100 percent customised ideas. How do you get started? Visit their website, share your occasion, the interests of the person you want to surprise, and your budget. Voila!

With more and more Indians putting travel on top of their bucket lists, Amsterdam-headquartered Booking has shifted its cultural DNA as it sets sights on Indian market. Booking has over 47,750 properties in India and has seen a growth of 68 percent in the last year; close to 30 percent of these are in the homes sector. The company is hopeful of cashing in on the inbound demand from the international market to get an edge in the Indian market.

If the teas on the market aren't really your cup of tea, don't worry. Mayura Rao has joined India’s handcrafted tea party with an organic brand that promises an Ausum cuppa. Bengaluru-based , founded in 2018, offers organic tea blends and tisanes to distinguish itself from the competition selling single origin teas. Fifty percent of these gourmet teas are sold through 36 physical stores in Bengaluru; 50 percent sales are made through the Ausum website and Amazon.

Despite the focus on the agriculture sector in recent times, the problems remain many. However, this founder from Rajsamand is showing there is more to agritech than an app for farmers. Nikhil Toshniwal's FarmGuide, through its digitised system of automated web and mobile platforms, is capturing real-time data for reliable databases that can be analysed and used at the field level for risk analysis, market distribution, and effective agricultural policy formulation.

Buying a used car can be daunting. Is it a good vehicle? Is the engine in good condition? What if it isn't good enough? Those worries are now in the past as you can now drive home a used car without the paperwork hassle, the Truebil way. Founded in March 2015, this Mumbai-based startup helps car buyers to discover and find pre-owned cars and car prices. Truebil uses advanced technology to give a data-driven intelligent assessment of a car’s current value, based on complex pricing models.

If you're in the mood to snack and want something healthy, Supa Star Foods has some answers for you. This Gurgaon-based startup, founded by Pawan Raj Kumar, Shoiab Kholi and Suupratik Deb in 2015, aims to disrupt the snack market with healthy snacks made with corn. Supacorn, , which sells flavoured corn kernels, fresh corn kernels, and corn cobs, is now available in close to 3,000 shops across India, and aims to reaching 5,000 shops soon.