[TechSparks 2020] From Freshworks to Facebook-acquired Little Eye Labs: a peek into key Tech30 alumni startups

For over a decade now, India’s largest tech and startup summit TechSparks has been featuring the Tech30 — India’s top 30 early-stage tech startups. 

At TechSparks, YourStory Mediahelps these businesses by giving them a platform to tell their stories, meet investors, collaborate with ecosystem experts and enterprises, and take their startups to the next level. Tech30 startups also get one-on-one meetings with investors and enterprise representatives, ecosystem connections, and partnership opportunities.

Over the last eight years, Tech30 startups have gone on to raise growth capital of more than $1 billion — reason enough to apply for this year’s Tech30. 

And if you are still not convinced, here are some startups featured in past Tech30 lists.

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Capillary Technologies 

A 2011 Tech30 company, Capillary Technologies is a global SaaS giant today. It was founded in 2008 by Ajay Modani, Aneesh Reddy, and Krishna Mehra. The startup was built to provide one-on-one meetings with investors and enterprise representatives, ecosystem connections, and partnership opportunities.

In the last 12 years, Capillary has raised over $102.1 million in funding and has made three acquisitions. It now offers cloud SaaS solutions to retail and consumer goods clients across the globe like Bata. 

This unicorn has global offices in India, the UK, Australia, and Germany, with 35,000 paying customers across the globe, and a total of 200,000 businesses signed up on its platform. 

Freshworks

SaaS startup Freshworks and its Founder Girish Mathrubootham are renowned in the startup world. Its home base Chennai is now being called “India’s SaaS capital” while the founder is often termed “SaaS God”. 

This Tech30 alumni startup was founded in 2010 when Girish read an article on Hacker News on the rise in Zendesk’s pricing by 60 to 300 percent and how disgruntled its users were because of it. 

He joined hands with Shan Krishnasamy, his colleague at Zoho Corp, to build a prototype in October 2010. Set up in Chennai first as Freshdesk, and later renamed Freshworks, the company is now headquartered in San Bruno, California, and has more than 2,000 employees and 1.5 lakh clients.  

It also acquired another Tech30 company Airwoot. 

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Little Eye Labs

A 2012 Tech30 alumni startup, Little Eye Labs, founded by Kumar Rangarajan, Giridhar Murthy, and Satish Gupta, went on to be acquired by Facebook in 2014. 

Founded in 2010, LittleEye Labs is a software tool for analysing the performance of Android apps. Backed by GSF and Ventureast Tenet Fund, its tool monitors battery, memory, CPU, and data consumed by every app in your smartphone. 

The founders, after a brief stint at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, are back in India developing another Tech30 startup Slang Labs. 

“When we met YourStory in 2012, Shradha (Founder and CEO, YourStory) liked the idea of our product, but we hadn’t yet built it. She told us that if we could build it in a month and get real testimonials for the product, we could pitch at TechSparks. That one month was crazy for us; we hustled our way into building the product and meeting people, it was an experience,” recalls Kumar. 

Slang LabsFounded in 2017 by Kumar Rangarajan and Giridhar Murthy of Little Eye Labs fame, and Satish Chandra Gupta, Bengaluru-based Slang Labs develops augmented voice experiences for users. 

These can help one command their devices to perform actions without even having to touch the screen. Slang Labs is a 2018 Tech30 company. 

Apply to Tech30, 2020

The advantages that TECH30 startups receive at TechSparks is unrivalled, including presenting before an audience of entrepreneurs, mentors, industry experts, and of course, investors, live. This is in addition to one-on-one meetings with investors and enterprise representatives, ecosystem connections, and partnership opportunities. 

Of course, there’s the chance to win funding of up to Rs 50 lakh and other prizes for your pitches (stay tuned for more details on the goodies to be won).

Last but not least, being part of the Tech30 list also helps you get featured in the annual Tech30 Report.

Simply put, being part of YourStory’s Tech30 is merely the beginning of a great trajectory for a startup.

Apply here to Tech30, 2020

Hurry! Applications are open until 11:59 PM on Sunday, October 4, 2020.