[TechSparks 2020] Problem, product, positioning – 30 quotes from the top Tech30 startups of 2020

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our recent articles. Share these gems and insights from the Tech30 founders with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

YourStory’s flagship annual startup conference TechSparks was held entirely online this year on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2011, TechSparks has featured a carefully curated list of the 30 most promising early-stage tech startups of the year, called Tech30.

Over the years, outstanding members of the Tech30 community have included Freshworks, Capillary Technologies, LogiNext, Little Eye Labs, Flutura, Forus Health, Moonfrog Labs, Crayon Data, and Airwoot, to name a few.

In this special collection of quotes from our TechSparks 2020 coverage, we present founder insights on market identification, problem spotting, and positioning statements. See also our profiles of the top Tech30 startups over the years: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.

India has over a 1,000 dams and bridges, but the inspection process is almost 50 years old and the reporting is paper-based. - Johns T Mathai, EyeROV

India has more than 15 million individuals with autism, and we are adding 200,000 new cases every year. - Manu Kohli, CogniAble

In the future, our video consumption diet will compose of real recorded videos and synthetically generated videos. - Ashray Malhotra, Rephrase.ai

Many growing companies are trying to build some sort of in-house data platform. They try to hire distributed systems engineers, who, though are not only very cost-intensive, but there are not many on the market. - Sharad Agarwal, Sprinkle Data

Drones are an emerging market; the industry is expected to be worth $45-50 billion by 2025, and India alone will have a major share of around 6-10 percent. - Shravan Vatambeti, Avianco

Warehouse discovery is a huge problem for businesses that need storage solutions because there are hundreds of small operators that own a handful of spaces, and they don’t always have a strong online, discoverable presence. - Vijay Anand Bhagavatula, ODWEN

The browser is very important and bringing anything to it, collaboration happens out-of-the-box. Browsers have come a long way and so have almost all hardware APIs support. - Lakshmana Pasala, Yaoe

There isn't a single product or platform that provides real, tangible savings through CloudOps automation and resource management for the various ways in which businesses consume public clouds. - Ravitej Yadalam, Lightwing

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By eliminating inventory wastage, we are also helping cut down the problem of food supply shortage and reducing the carbon footprint. - Niki Khokale, Fountain9

We are the only platform that enables enterprises to manage multiple labelling teams for the same project. Most of our customer say that the platform is built from the labeller perspective. - Chetan Velkur, Taskmonk

I saw the need for software tools that empower end-users to build their own applications versus moulding them in vertical applications. - Rachit Khator, Stackby

Cutting out weeds is a tedious task that involves a huge labour cost for farmers. We wanted to build something that can assist these farmers in the weeding activity and at the same time, ensure that no harm is done to the health of the crop. - Jaisimha Rao, TartanSense

Having an all-in-one online course delivery platform allows us to also go beyond edtech. - Sandeep Singh, Spayee

We have developed an Open Source Network Operating System called NiralOS. - Abhijit Chaudhary, Niral Networks

We offer a secure way to collect and share identity, personal, and financial data from individuals and businesses via SMS, QR codes, and API. - Saurav Raaj, Senderment

We are providing healthcare membership to emerging businesses who struggle to source affordable employee healthcare benefits. - Yogesh Agarwal, Onsurity

In the long run, we would like to use our capabilities for building satellites and sending [them] to the Moon, Mars and asteroid belt. - Awais Ahmed, Pixxel

We aim to boost our presence in Indian metros and also develop our infrastructure for EV charging on highways and long-distance routes. - Akshit Bansal, Statiq

Our addressable domain is to prevent life-threatening stages of diseases in patients living in the remotest locations through early monitoring by cost-effective and simple devices. - Arpit Jain, Sunfox Technologies

One of the key problems for users in testing is having to deal with multiple frameworks and setting them up across different tech stacks and device types - so the idea is to have one common platform for everything. - Rishank Pandey, WorkDuck

Anyone who is applying for a credit card or wants to get identities verified can embed this software into their mobile applications and use it further. - Antony Vendhan, IDENTY

Our medical AI intelligently deep-dives into patients’ history, based on their chief complaints and previous responses. - Nitesh Shroff, Arintra

There is a huge gap between what academia thinks is required in Li-ion battery development and what the industry really wants. We pivoted to build the complex technology behind EVs. - Nishant Ranjan, Zeuva Automotive

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We realised that the problem did not lie in the healthcare aspect, but in logistics when it comes to vaccines. That’s when we took up cold-chain management technology. - Mayur Shetty, Blackfrog Technologies

Providing a central dashboard that can aggregate and create reliable master geo-databases to provide an accurate estimate of the situation to decision-makers has turned our business into a complete war room solution. - Ayushi Mishra, Drona Maps

Amaran has six robotic arms that can move around the climber for harvesting the coconuts anywhere on the treetop. It has a mouse click method that is used to select the coconut bunch to be cut. - Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, Megara Robotics

We use technologies like static analysis and machine learning to learn from how a project or team writes code and suggest how they can write code better by generating bug fixes automatically. - Sanket Saurav, DeepSource

Our aim is to create an ecosystem where users attend events based on their interests -- connect with people based on similar interests from across the globe and host events for their own community. - Skandha Gopalan, Samaaro

Anyone doing commerce on WhatsApp is our primary customer, whether it's a grocery store, wholesaler, manufacturer, retailer, restaurant, or a bakery. - Sonakshi Nathani, Bikayi

It is about time the country changes its reputation as an outsourcing destination to a product destination. - Ankur Joshi, Nuclei

YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).