5 rising startups in India – Aug 28, 2017

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“India is on the brink of a massive surge in consumer consumption, but not until the underlying payments infrastructure is securely in place,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, while announcing a US$16 million funding round for fintech startup Ezetap.

Ezetap is among a bunch of rising startups that raised funding to make the most of the increasing consumer power in India. Their domains range from payments to healthcare and travel.

Ezetap

In India, most mom and pop stores and other small merchants used to accept only cash payments until a few years ago when smartphones became widely popular and helped startups innovate with mobile payments. Ezetap was one of the first startups to do that.

Launched in 2013, Ezetap came up with its own gadget that attaches to a smartphone and allows retailers and merchants to process credit card transactions on their phones. This helped a lot of ecommerce companies, restaurants, and service providers to take the card payment option to customers’ doorsteps. It also offers its payments software as a service, with which merchants can support a digital transaction via any device or interface, including biometric, SMS, or digital QR code.

Ezetap claims to process US$135 million in transactions monthly with more than 15 million consumers having transacted on its platform so far. It has announced a fresh funding round of US$16 million led by JS Capital Management, the investment firm of Jonathan Soros. Ezetap’s existing investors Social Capital and Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures upped their stakes by pitching in the latest round.

Ezetap is “like a combination of Stripe, AWS, and Android, built for the complexities of the Indian market,” Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, said while announcing fresh investment.

See: India’s PM launched a stripped-down app for mobile payments

Curefit

Cure.fit coaxes users to adopt healthy habits with food, exercise, and meditation. It has three products – eat.fit, cult.fit, and mind.fit – for holistic wellness. Cult.fit and mind.fit offer workouts and meditation sessions offline as well.

The company announced funding of US$25 million from existing investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, IDG Ventures, and UC-RNT fund.

Curefit was founded by India’s fashion ecommerce leader Myntra’s co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori in 2016. The company has made three acquisitions so far: a1000yoga, Cult, and Tribe fitness centers.

See: A dark data startup you haven’t heard of is spilling secrets to Starbucks, McDonald’s

Alienadv

Travel startup Alienadv focuses on unusual adventures around the world – hiking Kilimanjaro on foot to a martial arts training camp in Thailand. It claims to have partnered with over 300 verified local operators in 110 destinations across 11 countries.

The startup, which launched its portal in mid 2016, recently announced raising an undisclosed amount to scale up and said that it was already profitable. The activities space is the last dinosaur standing in the travel market, according to Alienadv co-founder and CEO Ankit Jaini.

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