4 startups scaling up in India

Photo credit: Paulo Fassina.

Today, India’s transportation app space made it rain once again, and startups that want to pimp out your office and gadgets also bagged funding. Check out these four startups that didn’t wait until Friday to get paid.

Jugnoo

India’s ride-sharing space got a little more interesting today as auto-rickshaw aggregator app Jugnoo secured US$5.5 million in a series B round led by Paytm. VC firm Snow Leopard also participated in the investment.

Jugnoo was founded by Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal in 2014 and tries to provide yet another public transport solution in India. The funding will be used to help along the startup’s expansion in India, launch new offices, and scale up marketing and advertising. It will also be used to provide more incentives and rewards for quality drivers.

“We will invest this funding to increase our presence to 25 more cities over the coming six months and provide access to the remotest corners of the country,” said Samar in a statement.

Jugnoo is based in Chandigarh.

See: More than mere taxis, Jugnoo raises $3m to use auto rickshaws for everything

Saral Designs

Saral Designs’ team

Menstrual hygiene startup Saral Designs has raised angel funding from investors in Powai Valley, including Farooq Adam, founder of Fynd, and Ambi Parameswaran, former CEO of FCB Ulka Advertising.

The Mumbai-based company was founded by IIT alumni Suhani Mohan and Kartik Mehta in mid-2015. They aim at producing low-cost, good-quality sanitary pads. They currently have a team of nine engineers (several of whom are graduates of IIT, NIT, and BITS Pilani) working on the product, which is made on in-house designed machines that the startup claims are cheap and easy to set up.

“Hygienic menstrual protection is a basic need for every woman, [the] absence of which has led to 70 percent of women in India contracting reproductive tract infections,” said Suhani in a statement. “There is a huge potential for good quality products at the right price coupled with an innovative distribution strategy to reach out to the 312 million underserved women of India.”

“We have several interesting plans in our pipeline in the coming months ranging from increasing our production and sales, to adding more peripheral features to the product which makes the pads easier to use and dispose, especially for the low income segment where access to toilets is limited,” added Kartik.

A Persistence Market Research study predicts that India, along with China, will be the fastest-growing feminine hygiene product markets in Asia.

Industrybuying

DailyObjects