12 Indian startups make the cut at Y-Combinator's Demo Day

At the recently-concluded Demo Day by Y-Combinator, 12 startups from India pitched their ideas to select-investors and venture capitalists from the Silicon Valley. Out of the 12, only 10 are publicly disclosed - MyPetrolPump, Lokal, Vahan, Khabri, Wingman (String.ai), Digi-Prex, Mela, Nonu, GreenTiger and Binks. The other two startups are under wraps for now.

The interviews, which happened in Bengaluru, was the first time that YC conducted its interviews out of California. The interviews were conducted by Adora Cheung, ex-founder of San Francisco-based Homejoy, and a partner at Y-Combinator, who stayed in Bengaluru for a month to conduct 140 interviews at Meesho's office.

According to the statistics slide-shared by Vinod Shankar, Venture Capitalist at K-Start India, 174 companies applied to Y-Combinator's recent summer batch from 27 countries. Interestingly, 38 percent of these companies are outside of the United States, 27.5 percent of the founders are women, and 5.7 percent are only India-based companies.

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Here are the 10 publicly disclosed startups

Wingman - Listens to sales calls and recommends the representatives to close deals better and quicker.

Lokal - Online news app for the 900 million non-English speaking users of India.

Khabri - Podcast-streaming app that offers podcasts in 100 Indian languages.

Nonu - Hair loss prevention kits on subscription.

GreenTiger - Allows users to trade the stock market from the United States with zero commission.

Binks - Tailor-made clothing and fitting for Indian women using computer vision and photographs.

Digi-Prex - Online pharmacy for Indian patients with chronic diseases

Mela - E-commerce platform for group buying and shopping for Indians through WhatsApp and Facebook.

Vahan - Helps on-demand startups and companies hire human resources through WhatsApp.

MyPetrolPump - Fuel-delivery for Indian B2B space.

Y-Combinator is a seed accelerator, also called an IIT for startups by Shashank Kumar, CTO and Co-founder of Razorpay, which is based out of Mountain View, California.

As per its new model, twice a year, YC invests a small amount of money ($150,000) in a large number of startups. The startups move to Silicon Valley for three months during which they work intensively with YC. The objective is to get these startups into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors.

The Demo Day of YC, or popularly called the D-Day within the Valley, happens during March and August of every year. The Demo Day for the summer '19 batch happened on August 19 and 20. Interviews for the winter batch for this year happened in Israel.

These cycles halt on Demo Day when the startups present their pitch to a selected and invite-only audience.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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