Biryani, tyres, electricity bills: What Indian startups worked on in 2024
As we wrap up 2024, here’s a throwback to the top ten startup stories of 2024. Despite a slowdown in many sectors, these entrepreneurs stayed grounded in their startup journey.
We have come to the end of 2024, and what a ride that was for the Indian startup ecosystem.
Artificial intelligence (AI) ruled all sectors as companies sought ways to integrate the technology into their business operations.
Lowering electricity bills, providing better air indoors, or blocking spam calls—AI is doing it all and much more!
Elsewhere, we saw edtech giants like BYJU’S losing its “behemoth” status, fintech major Paytm faltering on the RBI-Paytm Payments Bank fiasco, and Zomato getting even bigger with the largest market capitalisation for a startup.
Startup newsmaker Swiggy and Ola Electric debuted on the Indian bourses.
2024 was also the year for quick commerce companies, with Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, and Zepto making the competition interesting—talk about 10-minute delivery features!
The space tech sector, too, buzzed with innovation as the government announced a Rs 1,000-crore venture capital fund in the Union Budget.
Lastly, the year saw some of the most promising startups at YourStory TechSparks, working across AI, deeptech, spacetech, agritech, fintech, healthtech, and sustainability sectors, helping India reach its potential.
Before we wrap up 2024, we revisit our top startup stories from this year:
Habuild
Health is the primary need and focus of our lives. However, some of us struggle to maintain a consistent routine. Nagpur-headquartered startup Habuild, which started as a hobby for Saurabh Bothra— teaching yoga to his friends—soon turned into a venture motivating thousands of people to make exercise a consistent part of daily life
The wellness platform—founded in March 2020 by IIT alumni Saurabh Bothra, Trishala Bothra, and Anshul Agrawal—aims to promote physical and mental well-being and help people adopt a healthy lifestyle by cultivating lifelong habits such as yoga, meditation and Zumba.
The startup offers community-based programmes, wherein users practice yoga every day to maintain good health. It also provides personalised support in adopting healthier eating habits, regular exercise, and mindfulness practices such as mindful journalling, juice fasts, gut cleansing, kitchen gardening, and marma healing, with the guidance of experts.
Habuild operates via a messaging automation tool integrated into WhatsApp. It delivers its programmes online in English and Hindi, primarily through YouTube and Zoom.
Wahter
In 2023, husband-wife duo Amitt and Kashiish Nenwani set out to solve the critical issue of access to safe drinking water with Wahter.
The Gurugram-based packaged water startup—which sells water for as low as Rs 2 per 500 ml bottle—allocates 80% of its label space to partnering brands and enables advertisers to design and customise labels on their own. Meanwhile, its tech stack ensures advertisers get the most out of their expenditures.
It charges advertisers between Rs 10 and Rs 20 per bottle, depending on the target group chosen by the brand. Currently, Wahter’s bottle distribution network covers the Delhi NCR.
Naam.ai
Scam calls are a widespread menace. According to a McAfee survey, 48% of Indians conned by AI call scams lost over Rs 50,000 individually. While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is taking steps to implement a caller identification system, Jaipur startup Naam’s made-in-India app uses AI to flag potentially fraudulent numbers by scraping through its database of over 500 million phone numbers.
Founded in 2023 by Arpit Tak and Ramesh Chaudhary, Naam uses publicly available information to maintain its spam-free database and wants to serve as a homegrown alternative to the Swedish software company Truecaller, which helps identify and block spam calls.
Naam combines patterns like call duration and hang-up rates to better ascertain who is a spammer. It picks up numbers on Google reviews, social media posts, PDFs, and other files available on the internet. The app is much lighter compared to Truecaller, at just 5.9 MB, with a privacy-first approach and support for regional languages.
KARBAN Envirotech
"Air quality is a universal challenge, but when we consider our own living spaces, we find that indoor pollution often goes unchecked. That’s something I wanted to change," Karan Bansal, Co-founder of KARBAN, told YourStory.
Founded in 2021 by husband-wife duo Karan Bansal and Tanya Goyal, Jaipur-based KARBAN Envirotech introduced a bladeless ceiling fan that combines air purification, lighting, and IoT-enabled climate control to redefine indoor air quality management.
Using advanced technologies like Computational Fluid Dynamics and insights from aerospace engineering, it aims to optimise air circulation and improve indoor air quality with multifunctional, space-saving devices.
It offers Airzone and Airzone Light, each available in three colours and light variants, totalling 18 SKUs. Airzone is designed for larger spaces, while Airzone Light is intended for compact areas.
Farmley
Healthy snacking really took off in the post-pandemic era. According to Akash Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Farmley, two meals are a thing of the past, and consumers now eat around 7-8 meals a day.
While these natural, organic, and low-calorie snacking items are often more expensive, Farmley (TechnifyBiz) decided to specialise in dry fruits and nuts, offering 80 products such as trail mixes, maida-free pasta, and roasted munchies—with prices ranging from Rs 30 to Rs 999.
The Delhi-based direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand, founded by IIT alums Akash Sharma and Abhishek Agarwal in 2017, differentiates itself with its farmer network and in-house innovation unit.
With five farm gate processing centres and four fully equipped processing units, Farmley has expanded its presence beyond India to countries, including the US, the Middle East, and Australia.
Regrip
Tushar Suhalka, Founder, ReGrip
India’s booming tyre manufacturing industry has a dark side—toxic waste. Presently, the country handles around 2.8 million metric tonnes (domestic and imported) of tyre waste a year. Gurugram-based REGRIP aims to reduce this waste via sustainable tyre recycling.
Founded by Tushar Suhalka in 2021, the re-engineered/refurbished tyre startup uses quality grade rubber to make refurbished tyres through shearing and retreading. It is backed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Rajasthan government, and celebrity investor Suniel Shetty.
Regrip leverages deep tech to assess reusability and preventive check models to maximise tyre lifespan. It has built an application around this. The B2B startup employs computer vision to inspect discarded tyres and determine if they can be refurbished. If they are suitable for reuse, the system also estimates the price at which they can be traded in the aftermarket.
Enlog
Now, you can lower your electricity bill, thanks to AI. As urbanisation and industrial growth drive up global energy demands, pressure on resources intensifies. However, a significant portion of the energy supplied is lost due to inefficiencies in residential, commercial, and industrial settings.
In 2019, Bharath Rankawat founded Enlog to offer AI-powered energy management and IoT solutions. Its product Smi-Fi is an AI-powered energy management system designed to enhance home and business electricity consumption.
Smi-Fi connects IoT devices to existing electrical systems, monitoring real-time energy usage and collecting data on consumption patterns, appliance behaviour, and environmental conditions. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyse this data, predict energy demand, and optimise consumption based on historical trends and external factors like weather.
Potful
In a crowded market where cloud kitchens, including BiryaniByKilo, Behrouz Biryani, and EatFit, are one-upping each other on foodtech platforms, Potful is trying to distinguish itself.
Founded in 2017 by Lokesh Krishnan, the Bengaluru-based cloud kitchen specialises in handi biryani—cooked in the traditional way in ‘handis’, or clay pots—where the heat transfer is slow and uniform and the biryani takes longer to cook.
Operating 25 cloud kitchens across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, Potful claims to be the largest handi biryani brand and the second-largest cloud kitchen brand in south India.
The company receives more than one lakh orders a month. Each order is freshly prepared, which leads to a longer delivery time of approximately 60-70 minutes, as the cloud kitchen doesn’t reheat biryanis.
CodeMate
Founder of CodeMate, Ayush Singhal
When it comes to writing an email or an essay, digital writing assistants make it easier to create a draft that is readable and without errors. Codemate Founder Ayush Singhal wanted to build something similar for software code—a tool that would correct and upgrade the programming language as the developer codes it.
The startup created a plugin that can debug code, including fixing syntax errors and run-time errors, and warning about performance issues. The coding assistant analyses the code to determine the errors and suggest solutions. It can also refer to multiple codebases and provide suggestions to ensure the code is maintainable, scalable, and adaptable.
Yellow Naturals
There are many skincare brands in the market targeting infants. However, dermatologists and skincare experts have been sounding the alarm about potential health risks, including skin allergies, rashes, and other adverse reactions.
Addressing this problem head-on is Yellow Naturals, a personal care and skincare brand specialising in natural products for children aged 4-12. The Gurugram startup—founded by Pooja Dugar and Alok Nagpal in 2023—focuses on safe and gentle skincare and hair care solutions for age-appropriate kids.
Some of its products include daily cleanse shampoo + conditioner, body wash, and nail paints ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000. Yellow Naturals also offers a makeup kit for kids—made from ingredients such as natural oils and butter, avoiding toxins, talc, and other chemicals.
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti