5 rising startups you can’t ignore in India

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From real estate to smart homes, personal finance to baby products, an eclectic mix of startups in India got a boost today. But the one that takes the cake is Creo, which has the gumption to make an Android OS and a smartphone to go with it. It sure is taking the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ seriously.

Creo

This is one unusual startup to sprout in India. For one, it boldly got into a space where biggies are jostling to find a niche, and there are hardly any Indian precedents that tasted success. Bangalore-based Creo wants to make smartphones and also an operating system to power them. And to get there, it has the backing of Sequoia India, Beenext Ventures, and India Quotient, who invested US$3 million as seed money.

“The idea of building an Android-based OS for a smartphone stemmed from the realization that in the current market, while hardware is getting better very fast, there is not enough differentiation on the software front. We want to be the ones bridging that gap,” says Sai Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Creo.

The Creo team is young but has already taken the road less travelled with its first product, a Chromecast competitor called Teewe. It raised US$1.75 million from Sequoia Capital and India Quotient Fund in March 2015. The startup was then called Mango Man Consumer Electronics. Teewe is being used in over 50,000 homes, according to the company.

See: Teewe may do what Chromecast can’t: enter the living room of every home in India

Housing

Just when most of India was ready to write-off Housing as a lost cause, its biggest backer SoftBank has injected US$14.7 million in funding into this real estate portal.

A year ago, Housing was one of India’s hottest startups. But it has cooled off dramatically since then. Its co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav dominated startup news for a long time, picking fight with investors, quitting, giving up shares, and finally getting the sack. All the while, the startup clocked huge losses in its balance sheets. And recently, its rivals CommonFloor and Quikr merged, threatening its survival further as NewsCorp-backed PropTiger also continues to grow fast.

See: SoftBank keeps Housing alive with $14.7m transfusion

Firstcry

Photo credit: Nick Nguyen

Indian biz tycoon Ratan Tata has made his fourth startup investment already this year. This one’s an undisclosed amount in babycare ecommerce site FirstCry, according to a statement from the company. Brainbees, which owns the FirstCry brand, has raised US$69 million in multiple rounds from IDG Ventures India, Saif Partners, Vertex Ventures, Valiant Capital, and New Enterprise Associates. FirstCry has an omni-channel approach, combining web, mobile, and offline outlets.

Fisdom

Silvan Innovation Labs