Top and Best start-ups in Bangalore [Updated 2019]

Bangalore, which is also called Bengaluru, is well-known for India’s tech industry. This city is famously referred to as the “IT capital” and “Silicon Valley” of India because it’s the nation’s leading information technology (IT) hub. 

Through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative and the prominence on start-ups, Bangalore has also been quick to arise as the forecourt for such ground-breaking initiatives and enterprises. Be it an MNC or a small tech company, you just name it and you will find that most of them have their headquarters positioned in Bangalore making the city itself into a tech powerhouse. The city’s infrastructure and work culture have made it hugely encouraging for businesses and many start-ups that had begun elsewhere but have also started shifting their set-ups here. We have seen a lot of start-ups reaching heights today which have emerged from this city and making India’s name on a global level. 

As a location for innovation and development, Bengaluru has always welcomed talents and technology with open arms. As per the study was done by Zinnov and NASSCOM, India is ranked as the 3rd major start-up hub in the world with Bengaluru having an extensive number of these start-ups. Currently, this city household’s 7,200 – 7,700 number of registered start-ups and further a total of 1,200 new tech start-got added just in the year of 2018.  

Read more: Top 10 startups in India

If we talk about the city’s reputation as the finest destinations for any new start-up investment, the state Chief Minister, before the launch of Bengaluru Tech Summit had said, “Bangalore has ascended as one of the major global innovation centers in the alliance of Silicon Valley in the US, Tokyo in Japan and Tel Aviv in Israel.” 

We are all aware of the unicorns like Flipkart, Ola, which had started as start-ups but today has become the big business companies. So in this article, we will take you through the list of such many more Star-ups that have emerged from Bengaluru which has grown big, making India proud on a global level:

Team Indus: 

Team Indus is a start-up incorporated as Axiom research lab which is a for-profit aerospace company established by specialists from various backgrounds in technology, science, media and finance, who came together in the year 2010 to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition that announced in 2007. Rahul Narayan, Sameer Joshi, Julius Amrit, Indranil Chakraborty, and Dilip Chabria are the founders of this startup company.

The Google Lunar XPRIZE which is $30M company is a worldwide competition to challenge and encourage entrepreneurs and engineers to develop low-cost techniques of robotic space research.

They have got a contract from ISRO for a PSLV and in November 2016, they have also signed a big deal with Antrix Corporation (a commercial arm of ISRO), to provide them launch on 28 December 2017.

Website: https://www.teamindus.in

RazorPay: 

Razorpay is a startup founded by IIT Roorkee Alumni Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in 2014. It’s an online-based payment gateway which provides service to collect online payments through debit card, credit card, net banking and many other popular wallets including Mobikwik, JioMoney, Airtel Money, PayUmoney, Ola Money, FreeCharge, and PayZapp, etc. Razorpay is massively transforming the Indian payments industry and their primary focus is on easy on-boarding, high success rates and swift integrations which makes them the first choice for customers and new-age businesses.

In 2015 when Razerpay got incubated by Y Combinator, they raised a kernel funding of $2.5 million from Matrix Partners and 33 many other angel investors like Ram Shriram, Justin Kan, Naveen Tewari, and Kunal Shah, etc. Successively in September 2015, Razorpay raised a total of USD 9 Mn funding from Tiger Management and Matrix Partners, then again on July 2016, Mastercard made a strategic investment in Razorpay. By Jan’18, Razorpay raised $20 million funding as Series B Funding from its initial investors, Matrix Partners, Tiger Management and Y Combinator.

Website: www.razorpay.com/

ClearTax: 

ClearTax is an online platform founded by Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki for Individuals to formulate and file their Income Tax Returns in the undeviating short & sweet time while minimizing their tax deductions. They also provide solutions for GST and Mutual fund investments. The aim of the company is to delight their customers with ease, precision and making realistic to get rid of the concept that taxes are complex.

The team at ClearTax consists of talented mates from IIT, Harvard alums, BITS and Chartered Accountants having rich experience in Taxation. In 2014, the ClearTax became the first Indian startup to receive funds by Y-Combinator. Subsequently, Cleartax got the investment of $12Mn from SAIF Partners and in October-2018, Series-B fundraise, Composite Capital also invested $50Mn in the company. Today ClearTax is largest tax filing platform in India having more than 20 Lakh returns filed.

Website: https://cleartax.in

MoneyTap: 

Moneytav is founded by Bala Parthasarathy, Anuj Kacker and Kunal Varma (an IIT and ISB alumni) in the year 2016 which is a Fintech Start-up. They launched their app in partnership with the RBL Bank and many other NBFCs, which issues Unsecured, short term credit up to the limit of Rs 5 Lakhs to users directly from their phone or desktop. Customer can choose from the several repayment options available on the app concerning time, ranging from 2 to 36 months. 

The app was initially launched for the professionals such as lawyers, doctors, freelancers, and small proprietors in May 2017 and by November 2017, the app claims to have over 1 million downloads with more than Rs. 20 crore disbursed in Bangalore city itself.

The start-up raised their first funding from Sequoia India, Prime Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates in June 2017 of $12.3 million.

Website: app.moneytap.com/Moneytap‎

Zivame: 

Zivame is a clothing industry founded in the year 2011 by Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar. This is an online lingerie store presenting 5000 of styles, 50 brands and 100 sizes specifically for Indian women. Moreover, this start-up offers an extensive range of products majorly in three categories like lingerie, active-wear, and shapewear through its online and offline platforms. Today it has a presence in around 600 trade (multi-brand) outlets and 26 retail stores with a digital outreach across all the major cities in India. 

Zivame is also an omnichannel lingerie brand which is one of India’s flagship brand. Till now they have raised a total of $57.5 million funds and investment form different ventures throughout the world. 

Website: www.zivame.com/‎

Doodhwala: 

Doodhwala is an e-Commerce platform founded by Ebrahim Akbari and Aakash Agrawal in the year 2015 in Bangalore. It is the first start-up company in Bangalore to supply fresh farm milk directly to its customers. The company also delivers fresh dairy products, fruits, groceries and other daily essentials hand in hand. To use this service, people need to simply download their app and place the order from the list of more than 10,000 products available. As of today, the app is operating in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad. 

The Doodhwala Company has raised its funding of around $14.2 million in 3 rounds. 

Website: https://doodhwala.com

Colive:

Colive is a Real estate start-up founded by Suresh Rangarajan, Saurav Swami, and Arun Singh in the year 2016. Suresh Rangarajan is the CEO of Colive, Arun Singh is a Chief Investment Officer and Saurav Swami is their VP. 

Colive is a company that provides the co-living space for people looking for a house to stay in. These spaces are move-in homes, which are furnished with modern tech-enabled safety structures. Other than this, all homes here are fully examined and professionally managed which are suitable for urban living and are available at flexible and affordable pricing. 

Colive has raised around $12 Mn of their funding majorly from Salarpuria Sattva Group and Ncubate Capital Partners as well as some angel investors. 

Website: https://www.colive.in

HackerEarth:

HackerEarth is a technology-based start-up, established in the last quarter of the year 2012 by IIT Roorkee alumni Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash. HackerEarth provides the services for recruitment solutions to many corporates. Their list of clients has many impressive names including Adobe, Symantec, Wipro, InMobi, and many others. 

The company is hardly four years old but has already got their skulls turning in the IT world. The founder Sachin even featured in a Forbes list of Asians under-30. In 2014 HackerEarth had reached to the finals of the Seed stars World start-up competition held in Switzerland and also hosted the world’s largest developer confluence, IndiaHacks in 2016.

Website: https://www.hackerearth.com

BigBasket: 

BigBasket is the brainchild of Hari Menon, who today serves as the CEO and co-founder of the company. The start-up was established to aim the online grocery and food space in the e-commerce segment. Although this is one of the most challenging ventures in the sector, the startup has been growing steadily attracting great interest from investors and consumers alike.

This March, the company has already managed to raise USD 150 million in funding from investors and it plans to add 8 more cities to its area of operations, which presently cover 18 cities across the country.

Website: https://www.bigbasket.com

Housejoy:

 Housejoy is an online platform for on-demand service provider for all home needs ranging from construction to maintenance. The founders Sunil Goel and Arjun Kumar set up the Housejoy in 2015 by putting their vast experience in the service industry. 

The start-up aims at providing a wide range of online home services to their customers, including plumbing, home repairs and maintenance, cleaning, electrical services, laundry, computer repairs and many more things that a home requires. As a part of their growing portfolio, they have recently added specialized beauty and bridal make-up services. 

Since its beginning, the company has seen the impressive growth and attracted funding of $4 million within five months from many investors. Later in a year, they also engrossed around $22 million in funding from Amazon.

Website: https://www.housejoy.in

Moonfrog:

 Moonfrog is one more Bengaluru-based online start-up that is creating waves in India’s gaming Industry. The company was founded by Tanay Tayal, Kumar Puspesh, Ankit Jain, Oliver Jones, and Dimpalkumar Maisuriya, in the year 2013 and has recently made a very crucial acquisition by getting Mark Skaggs on board as their director, who was one of the co-creators of Farmville. 

The company has many successful games like Smash Hit and Teen Patti Gold which made its portfolio more impressive in the gaming world. Moonfrog has received over $16 million funding from Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global.

Website: https://www.moonfroglabs.com/about/

Practo: 

Practo was founded by two engineering graduates of NIT, Suratkal, Karnataka, Shashank ND, and Abhinav Lal, in 2008, when they were in their final year of studies at 20 years of age. They got this idea when Shashank was trying to organize his father’s medical records to get a second opinion from an overseas doctor. At this instant, they came up with an online platform for health service that digitizes records for helping users to make online appointments as well as get consultations from doctors. 

As of today, their clientele list includes more than 2 lakh doctors, 5,000 diagnostic centers, and 10,000 hospitals, spread over 36 cities of 5 countries. Practo has now even expanded their arms in Latin America as well, making its first entry in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The company has already attracted more than $124 million of funding so far including the major investment from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. 

Website: https://www.practo.com/company/about

CommonFloor: 

CommonFloor is a Real estate based company established in 2007 by Lalit Mangal, Sumit Jain, and Vikas Malpani that provides apartment management solutions to gated communities. They got this idea based on their own experience soon after they shifted to Bengaluru and faced huge trouble moving into a new house. 

Initially, their user-base was small, but they quickly expanded their services to create a dependable platform on which owners and tenants could post their real estate requirements or offerings for buying or renting their flat/ house. 

After receiving sizeable funding from investors like Tiger Global and Google Capital over the years, Quikr brought the company for $200 million.

Website: https://www.commonfloor.com

Embibe:

The Bangalore based Startup Embibe, is an online platform founded by 33-year-old Aditi Avasthi who is an ex-TCS employee who wanted to change the way students prepare themselves for competitive exams. Embibe works on an online platform having a team of entrepreneurs, who help learners & students to get coaching on various entrance examinations like AIIMS, JEE, CET, AIPMT and many more. 

As of today, Embibe claims of having over one million students using their app and they have raised around $4 million funding from early-stage investors such as Lightbox and Kalaari Capital.

Website: embibe.com

Porter:

 Porter is an again a startup based out of Bangalore founded by Pranav Goel and Uttam Digga from IIT Kharagpur and Vikas Choudhary from IIT Kanpur in August 2014. Porter is a company providing on-demand light trucks to allow businesses and users to hire tempos and trucks for their intra-city pickup and drop requirements. Their services also include providing intelligence and reporting tools that give various businesses real-time monitoring of the vehicles they hire. Till now they’ve secured around $6 million funds from Sequoia Capital. 

Porter majorly provides solutions to FMCG, e-commerce, SMEs, traders, Courier, 3PLs, and Cargo companies with clientele lists inclusive of Amazon, ITC, Flipkart, Urban Ladder, Ola Store Delhivery, Parle Agro, Pepperfry, and many more.

Website: theporter.in

Quikr: 

Quikr is an online platform for classified advertisements for India that allows people in the same city to trade their household goods, bikes, cars, services, jobs, real estate, and matrimonial stuff. It was founded in the year 2008 by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas having it’s headquartered at Bangalore and later shifted it to Mumbai in 2014. Quikr was formerly known as Kijiji.in and was a subsidiary of eBay, that later spun out. 

The Company claims usage by 500,000+ sellers and 30M+ customers with an annual growth rate of 527 percent as of Oct 2014 and also claims to enable over $4 Billion worth of monthly transactions as of Jan 2015. Quikr has acquired “RealtyCompass” which is a real-estate analytics platform to enhance its offerings in the real estate space and to complement QuikrHomes. In 2016 they also acquired CommonFloor and Grabhouse. 

As on date, Quikr has a total Funding of USD 370M through various investors such as InnoVen Capital, Tiger Global Management, Brand Capital and 9 Other Investors.

Website: https://www.quikr.com/

Mu Sigma: 

Mu Sigma is a start-up founded by Dhiraj Rajaram in 2004 having it’s headquartered in Chicago and a global delivery center in Bangalore. It is a data science and Analytics Company that provides services to companies to make decisions driven by data. 

Mu Sigma has a presence in a variety of organizations across many industry verticals solving day to day business problems in fields such as Supply Chain, Marketing and Risk management, etc. Their Industry verticals include Airline, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare, Hospitality & Entertainment, CPG, BFSI and Retail having Clientele list of 140 out of the Fortune 500 companies. The company also aiming to reach $1B in revenues by the year 2020. MuSigma has received around USD 209 Mn funding from investors like undefined, Fidelity Investments, Sequoia Capital and 3 Other Investors till now.

Website: https://www.mu-sigma.com

Read More: How to start a startup in India

Conclusion:

With all of these start-ups evolving from Bengaluru, and many more planning to make the city home, Bengaluru’s list of envious titles only appears to keep growing; in adding to being the ‘Garden City’, ‘Lake City’, and ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, now it is also the “start-up center” of the country.

Bengaluru darkened other Indian cities by an astounding margin, grossing $133 Mn in cumulative funding. India’s Silicon Valley was followed by Gurugram at $29.5 million and Chennai at $35 million funds.

You must be knowing that most of the start-up minds today use this very principle of small ideas that can solve the common man’s problems of daily life and make sure that they succeed well in their goals and come up with constructive and fruitful results. It is also apparent that these start-ups are getting successful more in Bengaluru, because of Technology, the easy resources, and opportunities available in the city. There are many reasons why the entrepreneurs today are choosing Bengaluru over other cities for starting their start-ups which are as follows: 

a. A resilient community of technical expertise/ engineers having a work experience globally, shrewd customers and rising pools of early-stage capital.

b. A Unique culture of mentorship and networking that permeates the city.

c. The city being home to country’s biggest software companies, it is an apt pool of talent for start-ups.

d. A start-up can be assured of finding a minimum number of qualified experts in Bangalore, as compared to any other Indian city.

e. A high density of investors and entrepreneurs which also bringing established businesses to the city

f. Bangalore’s reputation is going up day by day as a hub for cutting edge technology

g. Start-up gets an angle investors easily hence you don’t have to boil the ocean yourself.