20 startups to watch in 2013, picked by Startup Village
Kochi-based incubator Startup Village has announced a list of 20 startups to watch in 2013. The organisation picked the names from a total 192 companies, out of which 132 are virtual incubatees (those who are not physically present at the Village) and 45 are student startups.
"We have known these companies since their entry to the Village. So we didn't have to spend much time to pick them from the companies being incubated here," chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar told Techcircle.in. "We picked them based on technology innovations and consistent performance. These are the companies who we think would grow big in the next two-three years."
Announcing the names, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys co-founder and chief mentor of Startup Village said, "We need our own Facebook and Google. The startups should scale up and become household names. In the near future, each startup will come up with solutions, products, new ideas and jobs."
Here is a quick look at the toppers:
Top 10 startups
The Kochi-based startup focuses on in-house production of animated films and tele-series. The company claims that it has created animated feature films and short films within a short span of time.
A one-year-old startup, iTraveller.com offers an online platform that enables people to personalise their travel plans by picking their preferred destinations, hotels, rooms, etc. It also automates online vacation planning processes, currently done manually by all global OTAs. The technology environment is hosted on cloud, which powers the franchises at various destinations (Kerala, Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, as of now) to deliver hassle-free and cost-effective services.
It offers a customer interaction platform that can be used by enterprises to collect feedback for products and/or services. The solution is currently used by Delhi Police for the 'Know Your Police Station' initiative.
Cloudex Healthcare
Cloudex Radiology Solutions uses cloud-based technology to provide online radiology reporting services to hospitals and medical imaging centres. According to the company, it has already implemented its services in a few government hospitals, tertiary cancer centres, a medical college and a few private medical imaging centres.
Finahub offers a SaaS-based customer management platform for retail broking firms in India. Its product, called Kinship Platform, can be leveraged for managing all customer-interfacing activities of a retail broker. It also enables them to improve customer engagement and achieve higher operational efficiency by automating processes, such as report sending, customer ticket tracking, etc. Finahub also helps them understand customers better with the help of all customer interaction data available on the platform.
An online food ordering site with loads of features. Here, users can view restaurant details including menu, photos, offers, ratings and reviews. The company's current network includes tie-ups with 4,000-plus restaurants across eight major cities in India, including Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Calicut, Kochi and Trivandrum. Going by the present growth rate, the startup aims to serve 10 million foodies by the end of 2013.
The startup conceptualises, designs, manufactures and undertakes contract projects to apply robotics and machine vision across a broad range of technology market sectors like manufacturing, medicine, agriculture, defence & space, security, entertainment, etc. It is a single window solutions and services provider, which can meet all kind of robotics/automation needs. It provides engineering products solutions and consultancy in areas like robotic simulation and control, machine-vision, training, virtual reality and navigation applications.
Mashinga
A hardware product startup formed by three Computer Science grads. It builds multi-touch hardware and surface computing solutions for segments including hospitality, realty, retail, etc., to engage customers using natural user interface (UI). It is running a pilot with more than 20 interactive retail stores in Bangalore.
A startup offering a social music-sharing mobile app with gamification and real world incentives. It offers a free, fun and simple way to share music with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
It enables brands to launch a white-label, fully customised social loyalty programme on Facebook, websites, mobiles and stores within minutes, through its self-serve social loyalty platform. The loyalty platform also offers deep social integration, real time feeds and analytics capability. It helps brands reward customers not only for purchases but also for social sharing. It has many loyalty modules like rewards market place and coalition network.
Top 5 promising startups
The first startup incubated at the Startup Village, WowMakers is a design studio focusing on branding and animated explanation. It has completed more than 100 projects, including BlackBerry's Rubus.
A business data analytics firm with focus on Semantic sentiment analysis of social data across the web. It works with high volumes of data to analyse and generate actionable insights.
This startup is developing energy-efficient devices that can ensure all-day computing through cloud delivery models for the masses. It focuses on new screen technologies and portable energy solution integrators – so that mobile computing devices offering all-day computing can be developed. Its key focus areas include less or virtually no-recharge cycles, excellent connectivity with intelligent failover options for data connectivity and an adaptive, artificially intelligent social networking platform-based operating system.
Riafy
It offers a relational intelligent artificial system, capable of delivering the best content on the web, based on a user's interests. It has a powerful relationship building mechanism that can process massive quantities of data to find unique relationships between things. One can also keep track of evolving user behaviour and create a personalised space within the internet.
A startup specialising in robotics for household applications, embedded systems, security systems, training sessions and workshops for engineering students and other custom requirements.
Top 5 student startups
The Startup Village has also picked five student startups including HedCET, STAD, Bluebag, QEdge Code Studios and DIONZ.
Watch this space as we bring you more updates on disruptive startups that will rock 2013.
(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)
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