The Emerging Startups Of India

Editor’s Note UNLEASHING EVOLUTIONS WITH THE SPARK OF INNOVATIONS

TThe well-known phrase, “All big things come in

small packages,” goes significantly correct with emerging startups. These flourishing businesses have the potential to transform industries with forwardthinking and groundbreaking ideas. The startup is the globe's powerhouse of transformations, a revolution, especially regarding business growth and expansion.

Startups have been helping to improve the future of technology development and the growth of the global economy. Moreover, startups have also been assisting the business arena to construct a good and effective environment for research and development, resulting in keeping the economy rotating positively.

Despite the employment. the Startups fundamentals foundations creativity, development. contribute Additionally, areas operate. helps novel

Abhishek Joshi Deputy Editor abhishek.joshi@insightssuccess.com

Despite these aspects, it is a matter of fact that startups are the foundations that can create opportunities for jobs and employment. As a result, significant growth is observed in the economy.

Startups also extend to economic strength and the fundamentals to develop novelties and innovations. These foundations bring different ideas that are essential to stir creativity, build up passion, and inspire constructive development. With originality and concepts, startups contribute and assist society in becoming more productive. Additionally, startups also support the development of the areas and the infrastructure in which these foundations operate. As a startup can stimulate ingenuity in society, it helps change society’s value-existence by developing a novel approach.

Embracing the journey of such idiosyncratic foundations, Insights Success features some of the enthralling stories on the rising establishments that have the potential to transform the modern business arena.

Flip through the pages and explore the perpetual novelties— The Emerging Startups of India —empower in the modern business arena.

Have a Delightful Read!

CONTENT CONTENT

Beyond the Box

Featuring Brief Company Name

Beyond the Box

DroptheQ Plexcel Info Systems Pvt Ltd

The NoName Company

Anupama Dalmia, Founder and Chief Mentor

Vaibhav Singhal, Co-founder and CEO

Ramesh Vasudevaiah, Director

Kalpana Agrawal, Founder

Beyond the Box is constantly focused on ideas to provide something unique, refreshing as well as challenging to the community of writers.

DroptheQ provides exceptional, integrated digital solutions to its end customers and vendors.

Plexcel Info Systems enable enterprises to unleash business value by bringing them online.

The NoName Company Makes Clothes for Fashion Brands worldwide.

Beyond the Box

Enabling Children to Discover the Fun in Creative Learning

Life is a never-ending journey of self-discovery. A

casual attempt at exploring mentoring in May 2017 turned out to be a life-changing experience for Anupama Dalmia . She is a computer engineer and has an MBA in Systems and Finance.

After working at Infosys and doing her dream job for six and a half years, she realized that corporate was not her true calling. She resigned to pursue her creative interests and to work on the ground for a social cause.

Anupama recalls, “ Urged by some friends, I conducted a three-day creative writing summer workshop for 25 kids. During the span of those three days, I realized that kids are unwittingly forced to imagine and express themselves by adults in conformist ways, which curbs their imagination. There was an instant connection established between the kids and me . Then creativity and happiness thrived all around.

That is when I decided to provide children with an environment, where they can express themselves without being judged and bloom to their full potential at their own comfortable pace . This led to regular classes and soon I began to get invited by schools, communities, and corporates for conducting workshops on creative writing and communication. When horizons started expanding in this space, it was time to make it streamlined and that is how ‘ Beyond the Box ’ took birth in January 2019 .” Apart from being the Founder and Chief Mentor of

Beyond the Box , gradually, taking a step ahead at a time, Anupama has now carved alternate career paths for herself in various fields.

Today, she is a blogger, author, social influencer, serial entrepreneur with three ventures, creative writing mentor, choreographer, and mother of a six-year-old. She has won over 30 awards for her work in all areas including the coveted Rex Karamveer Chakra (Silver) Award presented by the International Confederation of NGOs in association with the United Nations

She is the Advisory Board Member at three non-profit organizations - Tribal Connect, Humans of Safe Places, and Stem Baala . She has been also mentoring and helping many women in different spheres like personal financial planning, writing, entrepreneurship, health, etc., as a part of her own non-profit Building Bridges Foundation .

Anupama is also a Sheroes Champion , where she motivates a community of 15 million women and is an Amazon-approved influencer with her own storefront of recommendations on Amazon. In an interview with Insights Success , Anupama briefed us about her journey and how she overcame challenges while establishing the successful brand of Beyond the Box.

Herein are the highlights of that candid discussion. Please brief our audience about your start-up, its values, vision, and mission.

At Beyond you budding love Our own not them and With methodologies, magic tell the within Our come the creative

herself mentor, won presented Places, helping of us while values,

At Beyond the Box , we believe that learning is fun when you make it fun. Our mission is to help children and budding writers unbox the joy of writing and develop a love for the written word .

Our vision is to empower children by encouraging them to own their thoughts and expression . We constantly strive to not just nurture the creative writing skills of kids but to give them the stimulus to become more perceptive, observant, and thoughtful individuals.

With our all-embracing approach, unconventional methodologies, and initiatives, in every session, we create magic using 26 letters of the English alphabet! It is time we tell the kids that they do not have to be in the box or out of the box, but they need to look beyond these boxes and focus within

Our venture also has a strong online presence and we have come up with numerous pioneering initiatives to promote the importance of literature and to spread the thought that creative writing is a life skill.

What kind of products or services do you provide to your clientele? Please talk in brief about your offerings.

We offer creative writing and vocabulary-building workshops and courses, which cover various aspects of the subject.

We also provide platforms in different formats to give kids exposure and reach through our book projects, literary journals, social media pages, and YouTube channel.

What were the challenges you faced while entering the business world?

The biggest challenge we faced was the mindset of people in general. Many of us still view creative writing as something academic and not as a life skill and self-growth tool. It took a while for parents to understand our vision because our teaching approach is largely practical, game, and activity-based.

The Emerging Startups Of India

Anupama Dalmia Founder and Chief Mentor

But I am glad to share that we soon overcame this challenge once parents began to notice positive changes in their children in terms of their language knowledge, writing skills, confidence, imagination, and critical thinking.

How has the ongoing pandemic affected the operations of your organization? How are you driving your company to sustain its operations and ensure the safety of your employees at the same time?

Earlier all our events and classes used to be conducted in person, but after the pandemic struck, we adapted our methods and shifted everything online. We believe one of the most important qualities of an entrepreneur today is resilience and the ability to keep reinventing the organization. We were able to do this successfully after some initial hiccups.

The fact that kids have got used to school online classes helped us too. Our entire team works from home, so safety in terms of physical health is taken care of. We keep checking on the team to ensure they are mentally fine because the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone’s emotional health. We have been very flexible in terms of letting team members take off when they have not been up to it.

What is the current industrial scenario of the industry you are catering to?

Most of the companies offering creative writing classes have a curriculum-based, technical approach. Our USP is in making the learning process full of fun and memories, and that does give us a competitive edge. We want to add here

that our focus is high on ourselves, and we do not indulge in too much of industry analysis.

We truly believe that with time, we need to evolve the ageold marketing concepts and strategies

We advocate for collaboration over competition and have worked in unison with our so-called competitors. We can all grow together.

What would be your strategic approach to scaling your business in 2022 and beyond?

In our business, connection and relationship with each child play a huge role, hence we strongly believe only in wordof-mouth marketing and growth. Having said that, our strategy would be to reach out to more schools and other educational institutions and touch the lives of many more kids.

We have a clear focus on reaching out to as many kids as we can and helping them unbox the joy of writing . We are also planning some exciting online events and campaigns to increase our social media engagement.

Where do you envision your company to be in the long run and what are your future goals?

COVID-19 pandemic has proved that all our plans can go for a toss in just an instant. Hence, a ‘what next’ focus works best for us. Yes, we do hope someday, we would be able to bring in our own small revolution in the way we raise our next generation . The process has begun but there are miles to go!

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Novel Insights

How India's Start-up Ecosystem is Booming in the Modern Times?

Farming is one of the oldest professions, which involves the systematic process of tending the

land-sowing- watering-adding fertilizers-monitoring the growth and protecting from pests, insects, and other threats, to generate a rich crop. Growing a new and healthy crop production takes regular efforts and care. Similarly, a start-up business needs to be planned, managed, and executed with focus and professionalism.

Farming involves active involvement in all the stages of crop production, as does a start-up, in understanding the market needs, planning the business model, nurturing and attending to the business requirements promptly and effectively, and working towards focused goals in a customer-centric vision. The start-up wave began a couple of decades ago when a growing number of professionals in different sectors began their business start-ups from a modern and scientific perspective.

Business entrepreneurs joined this bandwagon to form meaningful, purpose-oriented, and wellorganized businesses. The primary factor differentiating modern start-ups from traditional businesses is that the start-ups are scientific models and have strong and well-strategized business models supported by a clear vision and technological support system.

The government launched the Start-up India initiative on January 16, 2016, to build a stronger ecosystem for nurturing India’s start-up culture to drive economic growth, support entrepreneurship, and enable large-scale job opportunities.

Jaw-dropping Statistics

According to the data from ministry data from June 2022, the number of recognized start-ups in the country increased from 471 in 2016 to 72,993 in 2022, registering a mammoth growth of 15,400%,

which is a phenomenal rise in the economic development of the country.

The start-ups have spread across 56 diversified sectors of education, finance, healthcare, ed-tech, MedTech, fintech, eCommerce, and consultancies, with around 4,500 start-ups recognized in emerging technologies of the internet of things (IoT), robotics, artificial intelligence, analytics, etc.

The initiatives taken by the Centre are schemes like the Start-up India Action Plan, Fund of Funds for Start-ups (FFS) Scheme, Start-up India Seed Fund, Start-up India: The Way Ahead, Start-up India Showcase, Start-up India Hub, income tax exemption for three years, selfcertification under labor and environmental laws, among others.

Not only the government schemes but the Indian start-up community is also benefitting immensely from the Venture Capital (VC) funding as well. "Indian start-ups seem to be gaining investors’ confidence. India witnessed a whopping 39% year-on-year (YoY) growth in VC funding deal volume to 976 during the first half of 2022. The corresponding disclosed funding value too clocked a 4.5% rise to $15.6 billion," according to GlobalData , a leading data and analytics company.

$800 million funding was raised by Think and Learn (Byju's), $700 million funding raised by Bundl Technologies (Swiggy), $450 million funding raised by Polygon, and $300 million funding raised by Xpressbees.

The modern approach of the start-up model has grown phenomenally in numerous dimensions. Let’s identify the fine shades of this vibrant start-up ecosystem

•Meeting Industry Requirements With Suitable Solutions

The research identified that start-up entrepreneurs are focused, ambitious, and organized in their ways of managing the business. Adhering to the basics, their business aims to offer suitable solutions. With this focused approach, the companies worked in a systematic and planned process. Clear vision-based work culture has developed the start-up businesses to be focused on the core industry requirements, thereby becoming important contributors in the industrial segments.

•Fulfilling Customer Needs

The start-ups aimed at identifying the customer needs and customizing their products /services to meet the needs. This

basic factor was identified and formed the core of the business growth. When satisfied with their needs, customers develop a bond with the company and steadily become loyal patrons. Happy customers also communicate about the brand to other customers increasing the word-of-mouth publicity.

•Expanding Business Verticals

Start-ups have led to the growth of numerous industry verticals and sub-sections, thereby increasing the root functional potential of the entire business segment. This has led to numerous innovations, developments, and refinements in business services. Growing start-ups are fostering allied industries like consultancies in numerous sectors, human resources, housekeeping, security, sales and marketing, business accounting with finance, logistics, maintenance, and many more.

•Opening New Avenues of Collaboration

The rising number of start-up businesses has expanded the business sector from the inside out. This non-linear expansion led to the demand for various business deliverables and, of course, the competition. Entrepreneurs focusing on cost control, process efficiency, and bettering customer services have developed innovative thinking, leading to numerous joint ventures and collaborations. The recent mergers of Vodafone and Idea Cellular are a glaring example of how businesses are coming together toward better business propositions.

Accelerating Towards Rewarding Ventures

The scientific model of the start-up businesses has proved to be significantly effective in working with a focused vision, optimum business efficiency, innovative approach, strict adherence to the basic process flow, and enhanced quality with growing customer satisfaction, which are the key differentiators from traditional businesses. Similar to the agriculture occupation, in a start-up business, the efforts go deep within the business system, yielding the fruits of success steadily and impressively.

It is blooming to inspire young generations of professionals who are opting for business ventures than choosing the typical job lives.

- Kedar Borgaonkar

customers about the word-of-mouth

This has are numerous sales and the Entrepreneurs bettering The glaring toward proved approach, enhanced the to efforts of professionals the Borgaonkar

Vaibhav Singhal, Co-founder and CEO

DropthQ

Vaibhav

Vaibhav Singhal, Co-founder and CEO B

Emerging Times

Transforming Indian Industrial Future

Today, in the age of emerging modern-age developments, start-ups are growing from numerous

industrial sectors, creating a versatile growth ecosystem in all dimensions of market transformation, development of allied industries, employment opportunities, and economic development of the region. The concept of the Start-up is unique, thoughtful, and powerful in itself, as it is a self-working and evolving business model.

Scientific Approach

The new businesses getting registered as start-ups get trained and prepared for working on the start-up model. It is based on a foundation of logic, futuristic planning, and a chalked-out business process where every department has a role and specific functional outline. The scientific approach involving the systematic application of modern software systems has given greater control to the entrepreneurs over their businesses and created a self-working business system engaging all the employees and resources towards fulfilling the business goals.

Effective Business System

Modern start-ups are focused on objectives and specific attributes, thereby making every aspect of the business rightly justifying the designated purpose. Numerous aspects like Data Analytics,

Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain technologies have created an incredible business status, further enhanced with predictive analysis giving the business leaders an upper hand in making quicker and more effective decisions.

The system analyses the functions from the minute job-tojob basis, as well as from the whole perspective, to pinpoint the grey areas and suggests the necessary changes for continued progress.

The modern start-up models have proper effective working methodology outlined in the integrated system, which opens the work in simplified and better-connected formats. This gives an excellent working speed to the employees, ensures work completion within the expected timelines, and increases the efficacy of the entire work process.

Exploring New Business Areas

As rightly said, Necessity is the mother of invention , startups today are self-evolving business entities that function in a dynamic rhythm of their business cycle. During the work process, numerous challenges are resolved through internal innovation in business integrations or diversifying process outsourcing.

Numerous businesses have expanded and transformed into new verticals as the working challenges steadily opened new avenues of support activities. More unique needs in the market propel the rise and development of specific businesses also. This is one of the important avenues for start-ups today.

Higher Quality Standards

The business models are based on long-term goals, creating a comprehensive value-based culture of quality, integrity, passion, and progress. Quality is the biggest asset of any business enterprise, which defines many aspects of the organization, its culture, work, and systems. Good quality earns customer respect and builds lasting trust.

Moreover, high quality develops a strong bond between the organization and its clients, which gets stronger with time. Modern start-ups focus on high-quality parameters in their product/service offerings that enhance industry standards.

NextGen Customer Service

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has gained great importance in the past few decades. The simple and organized function of CRM equips start-ups with a

straightforward way of handling, retaining, and strengthening customer relationships. Comprehensive startups have a precise role designed in their business structure.

CRM acts as an important resource that delicately and precisely handles the customers to the core of their requirements and all types of queries. Recent studies have identified that old and existing customers form a significant business volume, which is a valuable cushion in challenging market scenarios.

High Scalability

Start-ups are well-planned and structured businesses with provisions for easy scalability within the same framework of the resources and assets. This helps increase the business efficiency, scope, capacity, work planning, and inventory scheduling.

Over the past decade, the impressive surge of numerous start-ups has been the outcome of this prominent aspect of scalability. Entrepreneurs even utilized this fundamental to make substantial changes in the business during challenging market conditions, strategically scaling down the functions and adjusting the resources to meet the demand levels accordingly. The scalability feature in modern start-ups helps in better business control, precise planning, and effective utilization of resources.

Scaling New Horizons

The start-up culture that has been developed has boosted the new business potential through its near idealistic and systematic working models. Business researchers have identified the prevailing businesses and have identified the market happenings closely.

It has been determined that certain businesses that sustained the market uncertainties and competition were those that had disciplined business structures—picking the crucial qualities and strategies of the entrepreneurs and creating new innovating practices which have win-win probabilities for the customers, associates, employees, and the organization too—thanking and crediting our honourable Prime Minister for taking the Start-up India initiative in 2016, which has boosted the business ecosystem of the country and has spread essential awareness about the startup business model in young professionals.

- Kedar Borgaonkar

startstructure. have significant with framework business of to challenging functions the sustained probabilities honourable startBorgaonkar

NoName Global

The Sustainable Fashion Company

Sometimes when we stroll into malls and fashions streets, a thought often crosses our minds that how is it possible for such affordable clothes to be made in huge quantities. Of course, fast fashion is all about that and has its way of working. Although it looks good and fancy from the outside there are various destructive effects it has caused to the environment.

To challenge this age-old working of the fashion industry and move towards sustainability The NoName Company has geared up on the field. Being empathetic towards the environment the organization has come up with various ways of making garments from recycled waste and organic eco-friendly materials.

Under the astute leadership of their Kalpana Agrawal , Founder, the company is successfully fighting a battle for a greener and cleaner planet. She believes in providing her customers with 100% pure organic and sustainable fabric that ensures nothing but the best for every customer.

Course till Date

The NoName Company was started to promote efficient, sustainable, and ethical manufacturing of garments. It used organic and recycled fabrics like cotton, linen, hemp, bamboo, Tencel, etc.

The company has dedicated lines and manufacturing capacities for better utilization of resources and creating a network of audited, verified suppliers and factories. It takes end-to-end responsibility in the entire manufacturing process, quality of the fabric, and timelines to deliver the final product.

The NoName Company exports sustainable fashion products globally to small, midsize, and large fashion brands taking into consideration the small Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) which has become necessary after COVID as every business has faced volatile demand.

The company also provides solutions to Indian brands that wish to focus on sustainable and organic products and need a reliable and quality-focused manufacturing partner.

Percipient Leadership

The NoName Company is delivering complete end-to-end solutions from fabric to garments under the dedicated leadership of Kalpana Agrawal. She emphasises the need to be kinder and more sensitive towards the environment.

Kalpana has worked in the garment production industry for over 20 years with brands like Walmart, Marks and Spencer, Target, and many more.

She realised the need for fashion to be more sustainable and hence started The NoName Company in 2018 to focus on this niche which was then in its formative stage.

However, the trend is fast-changing now. With a significant rise in global awareness, an increasing number of start-ups and eCommerce have moved on to better quality products that can last and help their brands establish a distinctive USP. This sense of partnership and community drives Kalpana to make India a global destination of high-quality, sustainable, and organic garments that are manufactured from ethical practices and do not allow slave/child labour or other unfair practices.

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Kalpana Founder

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Kalpana has been in the fashion and garment manufacturing business for over two decades. She has seen upfront how ‘fast fashion’ has boomed and caused huge environmental damage. She rather said that “it has become a race to the bottom.” Practices like lowering pricing, faster turnaround, and turning a blind eye to various industry malpractices have caused disharmony to the entire fashion industry.

The NoName company laid its foundation because Kalpana felt its high time to focus on smaller, community-focused, and sustainable needs. The company was entirely selffunded and supported by close family members who put their trust and money behind this larger cause.

NoName is unlike other start-ups that are trying to grow big at any cost, often bleeding to the point of death and depleting their wealth as well as their investors. Kalpana strongly believes that business should itself be sustainable to make an impact on sustainability.

End-to-end Support

Start-ups, small brands, and fashion designers who want to sell their garments online or offline need a whole lot of support to make their creative ideas convert into finished products. NoName provides a wide range of services to convert your dreams into reality. From designing, making technical documentation, creating a production-friendly and cost-effective design to sourcing of the fabric, trims, and other raw material, colouring, printing, dying and the list goes on.

Opportunities with a piece of Challenge

In the very early stage of the start-up, there was a general mentality among people that sustainability was a buzzword, and many brands were not keen to bet on that as a strategic direction. She didn’t like the fact most of the brands sold poor quality products, especially the ones imported from other countries.

The NoName Company doesn’t believe solely in prots. They just focus on making awesome products for awesome people.

“ “

Kalpana Agrawal Founder

This will long be a challenge for her because it is difficult to convince brands that on a dead planet there won’t be any customers so whom will they sell as there would be no end customer.

However, the company has successfully built a strong community of like-minded suppliers, fabricators, factories, and partners who help to make sustainable and organic products at a very competitive price. This makes it easier for garment brands to reduce their price differentials and help them position their brands higher on the value chain by selling products that feel better and last longer.

The Pandemic Dairies

COVID was a disaster for the company like it was a disaster for the entire world. It took over humans as well as the economy, to an unfathomable amount. The NoName Company took all possible measures as advised by the Indian Government from going into lockdown initially, then starting on work with safety measures and taking care that every employee is fully vaccinated. The organization is still working only at 75% capacity.

Even though they are not working in full capacity, because of the upsurge in the demand over the last two quarters it has managed to put the past behind. Kalpana feels that the pandemic has highlighted the tricky interlinkages between suppliers, manufacturers, logistics, and finally between the retailers and customers. Any slip anywhere affects all stakeholders as raw material prices are at very high levels, making supply expensive and demand slow.

The global logistics seem unlikely to reduce now with the added uncertainty because of the Russian Ukraine crisis. Kalpana wonders when and if human beings will be able to

live together in peace and harmony. For her, such crises are unnecessary and foolish misadventures that have affected the entire humanity equally. Even though it’s sad but the company decided to stop nowhere. It wishes to be a shimmer of light and work towards their cause even though it feels small and insignificant today.

A note-worthy Advice

According to Kalpana, Roti, Kapda, and Makan (food, clothing, shelter) are the essentials for survival. Hence, fashion will always remain a core industry as long as humans exist. But as the face of fashion has turned to fast fashion, it could make short-term gains, but never will it be a long-term value.

Her most important advice to budding entrepreneurs is to find your niche and go after it with hammers and tongs. If youngsters feel that there is a lack of excitement and passion for the work, they have pursued then they shouldn’t be wasting time and money chasing a dream that they don’t believe in.

Standards over Surplus

Unlike other companies, The NoName company doesn’t believe solely in profits. They believe the greed to scale at any cost, is the root cause of all evil. It leads to a false ego and creates a dog-eat-dog world. Kalpana believes they are not bothered by scale. They make awesome clothes for many brands and are thoroughly enjoying doing that.

Of course, the company believes in profits as they are not an NGO, but they prefer to work more on the products than the profits. Kalpana talks about the learnings and message from The Geeta – Karmanye Vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana meaning do your dharma and leave the results to God.

Sustainability is the Future

The worldwide fashion industry is highly dynamic and has seen well-known and established brands close postpandemic. Simultaneously, customers are still in the flow of fast fashion which makes youngsters adopt low-cost products.

From the other perspective, the organization applauds the rising popularity of brands that have contributed significantly to sustainability in fashion. The work done by established brands deserves to be applauded and this is what gives hope to a start-up like The NoName Company that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

NoName provides a wide range of services to convert your dreams into reality.

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