Top 10 Exciting Indian Startups Founded by Women Entrepreneurs

Less than 14% of Indian startups are founded by women and according to Mastercard’s 2020 Index of Women Entrepreneurs, the numbers are even more dismal for women entrepreneurship in India as just 5.2% of business owners are women – ranking India at 55 out of 58 countries.

Keeping that in mind, we wanted to celebrate women entrepreneurs on women’s day and here is a list of the top 10 most exciting Indian startups founded by women entrepreneurs.
00:00 Introduction
03:16 Nexus Power
04:38 Little Black Book (LBB)
06:38 YourStory
08:18 Myelin Foundry
10:44 DoubtNut
12:57 SmartVizX
15:32 ZestMoney
17:29 Rivigo
21:08 MobiKwik
23:56 Honorable Mentions
28:24 Nykaa

Nexus Power: Founded by twin sisters Nishita and Nikita Baliarsingh in 2019, Nexus Power is building bio-organic and biodegradable batteries for electric vehicles. Initially, Nishita and Nikita wanted to actually build EVs, but after doing some research, they realized that India’s EV space was still a really tough market to get into and they started creating batteries that could replace Lithium and were good for the environment.

Little Black Book (LBB): Founded by Suchita Salwan in 2011, LBB started as a Tumblr blog and has now evolved into a discovery-led commerce platform. Suchita started building a small team of employees, freelancers, and interns, who would scour Delhi searching for interesting places that people could visit. They later started building their own website and app after Dhruv Mathur joined LBB as a co-founder in 2015.

YourStory: Founded by Shradha Sharma in 2008, YourStory started as a platform that would tell stories of entrepreneurs who are not superstars yet but have the spark, drive and hope. After failing to raise funds from investors for her media and news startup, Sharadha Sharma bootstrapped YourStory for seven years before investors eventually realized the potential of her venture.

Myelin Foundry: Founded by Aditi Olemann, Ganesh Suryanarayanan and Gopichand Katragadda in 2019, Myelin Foundry’s flagship service called Fovea Stream is able to leverage the power of artificial intelligence and deep learning to upscale videos that viewers are watching on OTT platforms up to 4K, irrespective of the video’s original quality or network bandwidth limitations.

Doubtnut: Founded by husband-wife duo Aditya Shankar and Tanushree Nagori in 2016, Doubtnut provides its users with instant video solutions to doubts in a number of different educational categories like math, physics, chemistry, and biology. Students just plug in their question or even take a photograph of it and Doubtnut provides a solution to that question.

SmartVizX: Founded by another husband-wife duo Gautam and Tithi Tewari in 2015, SmartVizX is a virtual reality startup that is changing the way architects communicate. Their flagship product Trezi is India’s first VR-based design communication and collaboration product. SmartVizX’s customers can use Trezi to seamlessly review, modify, and experience a project design with clients and colleagues.

ZestMoney: Founded by Ashish Anantharaman, Lizzie Chapman, and Priya Sharma in 2015, ZestMoney is a fintech startup that partners with NBFCs and banks to offer EMI option to customers who do not have access to credit cards and can’t afford to pay for products out of their pockets in full.

Rivigo: In 2014, Deep Garg and Geet Kalra set out to make the profession of truckers more humane and address the growing need of truck drivers in the country by starting Rivigo. The company’s innovative relay trucking model not only helps its drivers to go home to their families every day but also makes deliveries for their customers much faster. Today, Rivigo has become a unicorn and has raised more than $280 million.

MobiKwik: Founded by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku in 2008, MobiKwik is a digital payments startup that was started before FreeCharge, Paytm and PhonePe. Initially, MobiKwik was a prepaid mobile recharge service but it has now expanded its portfolio to include a host of financial services like offering loans, investment in gold and mutual funds and it also has its own payment gateway called Zaakpay.

Nykaa: Founded by Falguni Nayyar in 2012, Nykaa started things off with an exclusively online approach, curating beauty products from a number of different well-known global brands. They follow an inventory-based business model. By 2017, Nykaa had broken even and they’ve been profitable ever since. Today, Nykaa sells beauty, wellness, and fashion products for both men and women using an omnichannel channel approach: through their website and 70 offline stores across India.

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