After attending Surge earlier this year, we’ll head again to Bengaluru, India, for another important tech event in the country: TechSparks, organized by the tech media YourStory on the 30th of September and 1st of October.
Once again, we are very excited to meet lots of startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and get inspired by what gamechangers have to offer in such a key market in the region. Indian startups have in the last years attracted the attention of investors, corporates or the GAFA with a peak of investment in 2015 of over 5 billion USD. The startup ecosystem in India is growing extremely fast, with 3 to 4 startups emerging everyday and around 30,000 startups.
If e-commerce startups, especially hyperlocal and on-demand, have attracted most investments in the country until now, the market is stabilizing and most startups are shutting down.
Fintech is the new battlefield in India
The latest battlefield is definitely the Fintech industry, with a lot of actors entering the space. But the recent launch of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) by the Indian government as a new layer of its set of API known as the India Stak, will give no choice to the mobile wallets startups to find another business model. “Working with pop & mom stores and selling information to consumer goods companies can be a way for them to earn money” explains Vishal Krishna, business editor at Yourstory.
We are looking forward to listening to Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm, the mobile payment platform reconverted into e-commerce. The startup has received 575 million USD from Chinese internet giant Alibaba in March 2015, as well as an investment from the Indian industrialist Ratan Tatan.
Another panel which attracted our attention is the “New Frontiers of Fintech” with Fintech startups BankBazaar, ZestMoney and Paisabazaar, as well as the Head of the Thought Factory, Axis Bank’s innovation lab to invest in Fintech startups. Thought Factory has just launched a 3 months accelerator in July. Axis Bank is the third largest private bank in India and is at the forefront of new technologies. It has allowed Aadhaar to become the e-KYC platform across all its 2,000 branches and has partnered with a digital security company, e-Mudhra, to facilitate digital signature to its customers.
We hope to hear more the India Stak and the new UPI during the event, as this technology is about to disrupt the Fintech industry and is making the news. E-commerce giant Flipkart, for example, launched its PhonePe app based on UPI platform last August, nearly 5 months after it acquired the startup PhonePe.
Latest trends in Healhtech and IoT with CloudNine Hospitals and giants Tata and Xiaomi
Healthtech is another industry expected to grow fast in India. Cloud Nine Care Hospitals could be leading the way in adopting healthtech as the hospital is “planning a plethora of services ranging from an app for patients with relevant interactive content provided by global research Universities; apps for doctors and employees with real-time analytics for business and medical records; and food services for patients to wearable technology and connecting medical equipment to doctors’ tabs” as explains Vishal. The co-founder of Cloud Nine Healthcare will present its journey from a family business towards a leading startup during Techsparks.
As India plan to become the next manufacturing hub with its “Make in India” initiative launched in 2014, the country could also become a potential leader of the Industrial IoT revolution. We are for sure going to attend the talks of the industrial group Tata as well as the Indian Head of the Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi, 3rd largest smartphone vendor across 30 cities in India. A success due to its budget Redmi 3 Note smartphone which is the company’s highest shipped smartphone for India. 75% of the phones sold in India are manufactured in the country.
As usual, we will listen with interest the pitches of the 30 best upcoming early stage startups picked by Yourstory team. That’s always insightful to understand where the Indian startup ecosystem is going. Of the 180 startups showcased in the past years, 97 have raised growth capital after they featured on the Tech30 list. In fact, more than $630 million of growth capital has been injected in these startups after they were part of TechSparks’ Tech30 list. Little Eye Labs, Forus, Capillary, Freshdesk, and Loginext are but a few of the Tech30 startups that have become examples to emulate.
Outside of the event, we will also explore the startup scene in Bangaluru by meeting incubators, startups and other key innovators ahead of a learning expedition that we would like to organize in 2017.
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