These Indian startups made it to the WEF’s 2018 Technology Pioneer list

The World Economic Forum on Thursday named two Indian startups as part of the 2018 list of its Technology Pioneer programme

Delhi-based data intelligence firm SocialCops and Ahmedabad-based agriculture data analytics company My Crop Technologies were the Indian companies featured along with 61 other early-stage companies, a statement released by the WEF said.

The selected startups will be part of the WEF’s initiatives, activities and events and will also get the chance to participate in the international non-profit’s flagship annual meeting at Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, next January.

Other companies that were shortlisted to the WEF’s 2018 list offer products and services like blockchain for voting, artificial intelligence for drug discovery, cybersecurity, city-scale augmented reality and food-production improvement. Of the 61 companies awarded the title of Technology Pioneer 2018, a quarter were female-led and a majority came from outside the US, the company’s statement said.

In the last two years, no Indian startup made it to the list, which only featured 30 companies. Past winners of the WEF initiative include Airbnb, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Palantir Technologies, Spotify and Twitter.

“We wanted to democratise data and make it possible for millions of organisations in the world to derive the kind of value from data that only financial institutions and Silicon Valley giants are capable of deriving today. Organisations at different stages of their data journey can use our platform to drive decisions," said Prukalpa Sankar, co-founder of SocialCops.

Founded in 2012 by Sankar and Varun Banka, the startup has raised $320,000 (Rs 1.92 crore) in seed funding from investors like 500 Startups, Google India managing director Rajan Anandan and Manoj Menon, managing director of Frost & Sullivan, Asia Pacific. SocialCops aims to track parameters such as teacher attendance in public schools, quality of public infrastructure and adherence and access to medical care on a continuous basis.

"We want to keep engaging with global stakeholders in government and society, as well as in business, to help adopt data-driven systems and increase their impact,” Sankar said.

MyCrop is a machine learning-based collaborative platform to support farmers. The company, through a smart combination of big data, sensors, drones and algorithms, collects data, analyses it, and provides it to farmers, thereby helping them improve productivity. It has offices in Singapore and Indonesia as well.

Founded in 2016 by Deepak Pareek, MyCrop works with stakeholders like input companies, buyer companies, non-governmental organisations, finance institutions, government bodies, and extension service providers to improve farm productivity.