The Economic Survey 2021-22, released last week ahead of the Union Budget, announced Delhi as the startup capital of India — a title so far donned by Bengaluru, popularly called India’s Silicon Valley.
Undertaken between April 2019 to December 2021, the national survey found Delhi had over 5,000 recognised startups, thereby surpassing Bengaluru (with 4,514 startups) in the number of startups among cities. The Morning Standard spoke to five successful innovators who have contributed in making the jugaad capital the startup hub of the country.
Rachit chawla, finway FSC
Four years ago, when Rachit Chawla saw that many tier 2, 3 and 4 cities did not have a penetration network when it comes to credit, he decided to start Finway FSC, headquartered in Jasola, South Delhi.
“People had right intent. They wanted to grow their businesses and raise money. But such companies were not available,” said Chawla, 34. He started Finway FSC with Prakash Jehangir, who is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) with eight years of experience in fintech and Nitesh Sharma with 20 years of banking experience. “We started with a team of seven, and now have more 5,000 partners across India,” he added.
Chawla said that he chose to start in Delhi because of its huge space and ‘lots of action’. “We got our first partners in Delhi. I was born and brought up here, and so got a lot of support in terms of connectivity, business, volume, technological know-how, and right sources to help my business to grow. It is definitely becoming a start-up hub. If you talk about Finway as a group company then it has interest in lot of strategic businesses and Finway has invested and nurturing those start-ups also,” said Chawla.
Upasana Taku & Bipin Preet Singh, Mobikwik
Founders of MobiKwik, Upasana Taku and Bipin Preet Singh started MobiKwik, a digital wallet in 2009 when India was a 100 per cent cash economy.Headquartered in Gurugram, it began operations as a mobile wallet and has since expanded to ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) payment gateway and other digital financial services. The company launched its flagship BNPL product MobiKwik Zip in 2019 to provide the fast-growing digitally paying Indians their first credit experience.
“Everyone advised us to do something mainstream, but we were confident that digital will be what we call mainstream in the times to come. Back in 2009, millions of Indians were going to nearby general stores, paying cash for daily essentials. That’s where the idea of MobiKwik originated to build a digital ecosystem for daily life payments,” said Taku, 42.
Both Taku and Singh, who went on from being business partners to partners in life, grew up in a humble background, belonging to middle class families. While Upasana, a Kashmiri Pandit, went to finish her Masters at Stanford, Singh, also, 42, holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
“I come from a middle-class family of Kashmiri Pandits. An unending quest for academia followed by a respectable job is ingrained in every person from the community. So, the idea of venturing into business by leaving a high-paying job and green card did not go down well my parents. It took me four months to convince them,” she said.The company’s initial challenge, she says, was what to build and how to build a scalable and sustainable product.
Taku said the next challenge was to hire the right people and sell their vision to them and prospective customers who could trust Mobikwik with their money. “Against all odds, Bipin and I built MobiKwik with a unique DNA—it was bootstrapped for the first four years and has achieved its current scale of 120 million registered users, having spent only $100 million since inception. Today, we are focused on BNPL for daily life payments and have the largest number of pre-approved BNPL users in India at 24 million,” she added.
Taku observed that Delhi has had a strong startup culture since 2008-10, which is why it has a large number of startups, unicorns and FDI investment.Besides, Gurugram has developed as a good startup hub over the last decade, offering modern residences, education, health and recreation facilities making it attractive to tech startups and their employees. “Strong investors’ interest in Delhi-NCR startups has more to do with their business models and less with geographic factors,” said Taku.
Pushpinder Singh, Travelkhana
Pushpinder Singh, 49, founder and CEO, Travelkhana, a foodtech platform that is an IIT product from BHU, came up with the idea to deliver fresh food on the move—especially in scenarios like a long train ride, where one cannot be too picky.
“I always used to find gaps in facilities while travelling, and thought why not use technology to remedy this. We were the first ones to venture into this space to provide edible, fresh and good of one’s choice on a train journey,” said Singh, a Delhi-boy, who started the venture from Preet Vihar, East Delhi, and later moved the company to Noida to a larger office space once the business flourished. ‘‘Now, there are many competitors, including the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) that recently started a similar service, but it is the quality of service that matters, which makes TravelKhana, the first choice for consumers.’’
Singh said that Delhi-NCR offers a good ecosystem for startups to flourish and seamless infrastructure like the Delhi Metro that provides the best inter-city travel.“I have worked with MNCs and even co-founded another company before starting my own venture with four employees that has expanded to 100. While the business was affected in the pandemic, it’s on revival mode now. We have also remodelled our platform with other services, and that is working out well,” said Singh.
Bharti Singhla & Kushagra Srivastava, Chakr Innovation Pvt. Ltd
It was in 2015 when Delhi-based IIT graduates Bharti Singhla and Kushagra Srivastava, both 28 now, decided to launch their own startup. “Kushagra was in the final year of college and I was working with Boston Consulting Group. In 2015, a WHO report tagged Delhi as one of the most polluted cities in the world. That’s when we thought of finding a solution,” said co-founder Bharti.
The duo started identifying sources that were unaddressed in terms of pollution. A lot of initiatives were already taken, but there were a few tight spaces. “One of these were Diesel Generators (DG) sets, extensively used in industries to small shops in the country. These are heavily polluting and no technologies back then addressed this. We started experimenting with various technologies when as a team we came across building a retro-fit device in 2016,” said Bharti. This device, fitted over DG sets, captures emissions and reduces particulate matter by 70-90 per cent.
Chakr Innovation started off with grants from IIT-Delhi, American Society of Mechanical Engineers and later supported by government schemes and other investors including ONGC and IOCL. “Along with a private equity firm, angel investors and SBI also invested in us,” she said. From 7-8 employees, it now has over 80 full-time employees. It also has contractual manpower for manufacturing. The head office in Delhi manages sales, operation and finance, and the manufacturing and production unit is in Pune.
Talking about socio-economic growth, Bharti said that earlier people were unaware how crucial their product is for the environment and their own health. In the initial four years, she said, the venture was not profitable. But in the last financial, the revenue has tripled in terms of numbers. In time, as the government’s focus began shifting to tackling pollution, the company’s sales started to pick up. “We have over 200 installations across the country and cater to a variety of clients, including FMCG, manufacturing units, hotels, ONGC, etc.,” the co-founder informed.In the next five years, Bharti wants the company to become a catalyst for developing and implementing technologies and products on climate action and innovation.
Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, Gajendra Jangid and Ruchit Agarwal, CARS24
Four young tech and management graduates founded CARS24, a used cars platform headquartered in Gurugram, which focuses on a $100 billion industry. When Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, Gajendra Jangid and Ruchit Agarwal came together in 2015 to chart the plans of solving the pain points of the sector, it was just a $50 billion industry. While it is now a $100 billion industry, market experts are sure the sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10-15 per cent this decade.
The idea for a used-cars platform came to Chopra (Co-founder & CEO), after experiencing the tedious, tiresome and never-ending process of selling his car before temporarily settling in the US, he added.The founders, all between 35 to 42 years old, hail from technology and management backgrounds. Chopra has a BTech and M Tech degree from IIT-Bombay and MBA from University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School. Jangid, too is BTech from IIT-Bombay in Metallurgical Engineering. Ruchit holds an MBA Finance from Cornell University and Mehul has an MBA from IIM Calcutta.
All four said they understand what the younger generation wants when it comes to buying cars. On behalf of the co-founders, a company spokesperson told The Morning Standard said that car ownership stands at a meagre two per cent in India, creating a huge opportunity for the auto industry. The future of car buying is entirely online as it allows the buyers to buy what they like and this is where CARS24 comes in the picture. “We want to encourage the customers to embrace the convenience of buying their next car entirely online. CARS24 wants to be the Amazon of cars, We bet that you will buy a used car online the same way you buy a smartphone,” said the spokesperson.
Sharing the views of founders, the spokesperson added that many eminent industry players chose Delhi as the headquarters which has helped the city to earn the title. “We believe Delhi continues to maintain a good atmosphere for business with advanced technological support, providing a multitude of opportunities for budding startups, and will certainly be able to gain newer heights. Additionally, it needs to maintain a good investment ground to gain profitability. It has all the required infrastructure to be the startup capital,” said the spokesperson.