Over the last few months, the ETtech team has been neck-deep preparing to bring to you the ninth edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards (ETSA). Today, we are unveiling our stellar jury and nominees of Bootstrap Champ and Top Innovator.
Driving the news: The most coveted recognition for Indian entrepreneurship is almost a decade old and with it so much has changed in the startup ecosystem. We will chronicle a lot of these changes in the next few weeks as we approach the physical ceremony slated for October. Stay tuned for that!
Coming in a year when the technology industry has been hit by turbulence, it was not easy to pull this nominee list together. But, what surprised us is that there are many startups which have been building strong businesses away from the noise.
Who’s on the elite jury? Keeping in mind the theme of reset across the technology world, we selected a stellar jury with varied experience in steering large businesses through multiple cycles.
- Uday Kotak, founder and director, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Jury chairperson
- Ranjan Pai, chairman, Manipal Hospital
- Shekhar Kirani, partner, Accel (ETSA 2022 Midas Touch winner)
- Supam Maheshwari, cofounder & CEO, Firstcry, Xpressbees and Globalbees
- Deepinder Goyal, cofounder & CEO, Zomato
- Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart group
- Renuka Ramnath, founder, Multiples PE
- Harshil Mathur, cofounder & CEO, Razorpay (ETSA 2022 Start of the Year winner)
- Roshni Nadar, chairperson, HCL
- Satyan Gajwani, vice chairman, Times Internet
- Arjun Sethi, cofounder, Tribe Capital
Also read | ET Startup Awards 2023: Jury looks for startups with clear path to financial sustainability
What’s the process? ET reached out to more than 150 of the country’s top entrepreneurs, investors, industry groups, and other stakeholders to compile a list of the brightest entrepreneurial talent. This was then distilled by the paper’s editorial team to arrive at the final list.
The jury will finally pick the winner after long deliberations followed by secret voting.
ETSA does not allow for self-nominations.
Jury dossier: The most important part of the jury meeting is a 100-page dossier we prepare in-house. This handbook, packed with information that stays confidential with the jury, goes through hundreds of checks and rechecks before it is finalised.
I want to reiterate that the awards are an outcome of many months of hard work by our reporters, news desk, copy editors, designers and colleagues in the brand and marketing team. Also, thank you to our previous winners, nominees and the overall ecosystem for always being so supportive.
Also, watch out for many under-the-radar ventures that may not be attracting big cheques but are building profitable businesses.
Stay tuned for all the ETSA 2023 coverage through the week leading up to the virtual jury meeting on September 12.
ET Startup Awards 2023: Jury looks for startups with clear path to financial sustainability
What’s the jury looking for? Their focus will be on startups that are building financially robust, scalable businesses that can make an impact to solve the opportunities we have at hand as a nation. Today, Rajan Pai of Manipal group and Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart group, tell us what they expect from the nominees. Read more here
And the nominees are….
Starting today, we will showcase the shortlisted contenders beginning with the Bootstrap Champ — those entrepreneurs who have built a startup without external funding — and Top Innovators — startups with an original idea that has set them apart from the competition.
- Bootstrap Champ
- Boldfit
- Fyers
- Boult Audio
- Klenty
- Gameberry Labs
Read more about the nominees here
- Top Innovator
- StringBio
- Zero Cow Factory
- GalaxEye
- Brainsight AI
- Newtrace
Read more about the nominees here
Google learning to build for the world by building in India: Thomas Kurian
Google will seek to expand the remit of its engagement with the Indian government to include Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, helping further secure the adoption of digital transaction modes in India, Google’s global chief of cloud, Thomas Kurian, told ET in an interview.
Three-way street: “We see India in three different ways. First, we see it as a real market for talent. Second, we have customers in virtually every domain. We also see India as a place where we are learning by building products for India, but also taking them globally,” Kurian said.
India push: Google Cloud has made an aggressive push into the country over the past few years, especially under Kerala-born Kurien, who is going to complete five years as chief of Google Cloud that competes with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
Broadening the spectrum: The company is also expanding its partnership with ONDC not just as a technology provider but as a solution provider. It is also working with the IT ministry to explore a partnership with the national language translation mission’s Bhashini, where it wants to use generative AI to further augment its capacities.
BharatPe looks for fresh funding of $100 million
BharatPe is in the hunt for a fresh funding round, according to two people in the know. The company has reached out to its existing investors looking to stitch a $100 million round.
Scouting for fresh equity: The New Delhi-based fintech is looking to raise fresh money on the back of improved financials and a planned public listing in the next year or so. The company has reached out to existing investors, but the challenging part is retaining the valuation it had achieved in the last round. The startup had raised a massive $370 million round in 2021 at a valuation of $3 billion.
Exits continue: While BharatPe is looking for a new round, the spate of top-level exits at the company has continued. Nishant Jain, the chief business officer, and a bunch of vice presidents heading business verticals across merchant lending to products have quit. There has been a complete reshuffle at the top and the current leadership team seems to be looking to start afresh.
Companyspeak: BharatPe accepted that there has been a series of top-level exits but said that overall attrition is lower than industry standards. The company reiterated that it continues to attract talent as well.
Over the last few months, the fintech has onboarded a new CFO, a new CTO and a new head of consumer lending, among fresh appointments.
Top tech executives, VCs push govt to build infra to realise AI dreams
The Indian government needs to invest in building a common AI computing infrastructure that would help bridge the critical gap with the US and draw in the necessary investments, say experts, venture capital founders, and industry bodies.
For comparison’s sake: India’s largest cluster of graphics processing units (GPU) is about 2,000-2,500 as compared with 20,000 plus in the US, said Shridhar Garge, head, strategy, planning & programs, Nvidia, illustrating the AI infrastructure gap that impedes growth potential for the biggest breakthrough technology in the world.
VC take: “One thing the government can do is to build a very large-scale (GPU cluster),” said Rajan Anandan, MD, PeakXV Partners and Surge. “Why shouldn’t India build a 100,000 GPU cluster and then we give it to Indian developers, Indian research institutions, Indian startups to build on and make it very affordable?”
Jargon buster: A GPU cluster is a group of computers, with a GPU on every node. Multiple GPUs provide accelerated computing power for specific computational tasks, such as image and video processing and training neural networks and other machine learning algorithms.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Ather secures Rs 550 crore in funding from Hero MotoCorp: Electric scooter maker Ather Energy is set to raise Rs 550 crore from its largest shareholder, Hero MotoCorp. In a filing with stock exchanges on Monday, Hero MotoCorp said its board has passed a resolution to invest the money in the rights issue of Ather Energy.
Will buy Paytm shares at any given opportunity | Vijay Shekhar Sharma: Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said on Monday that he is ready to increase his stake in the company at any point in time and that Ant Financial selling its shares in the payments services provider was one such opportunity.
With new payment terminals, it’s ‘battle on’ between Pine Labs and Paytm | Physical merchant payments are becoming a battlefield for payment players trying to carve a niche for themselves. On Monday, with two similar product launches, both Pine Labs and Paytm showed their intent to go after the lucrative offline merchant sector.
Nazara raises Rs 100 crore from Nikhil Kamath: Gaming and media firm Nazara Technologies on Monday said it was raising Rs 100 crore from Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of retail stockbroker Zerodha, and was planning a bigger play in the Indian game publishing space.
Unicorn India Ventures secures Rs 225 crore for first close of its fund: Early-stage VC firm Unicorn India Ventures (UIV) has secured Rs 225 crore for the first close of its Rs 1,000-crore fund. This is UIV’s third fund. The money has been raised from a mix of existing and US-based limited partners. The final close is expected by March 2024.
Global Picks We are Reading
■ India’s Elite Tech Schools Are a Golden Ticket With a Dark Side (Wired)
■ This robot vacuum mop may solve the problem of dirty docks (The Verge)
■ The paradox of OpenAI’s bid to enter the corporate world (FT)
