Read Top 18 Inspiring Startup Success Stories of 2020

The year 2020 was hard as it is. Yet, it has some positivity to leave behind. Each entrepreneur tried to put their 110% effort into their startup to come out unhinged. While there were moments in the year when we dreaded what was about to happen. Nevertheless, Indian entrepreneurs created a perfect recipe to inspire others. These startups in India are built on the grounds of persistence, mentorships, disruptiveness and market requirements. They’re inspiring success stories of people who have paved their own roads of innovation and dreams.

In this article, the entrepreneurs themselves are talking about their successful startup stories on how they have been able to build their empire in 2020.

1. Nikhil Pal - Co-Founder & CXO, Bharat Eat

In Covid times, our average per food order size is between 200-400 Rupees where 80% of transactions are online, and we do not charge a delivery cost on orders above 700 Rupees, where we received 100 orders daily which is good. But to receiving continuous orders, we have to compete with other platforms by offers, as we do. After a collaboration with Mr Ravi Kishan as a Brand Ambassador of Bharat Eat. With a brand new franchise model for an online food aggregator platform with centralized support services, where a franchise owner uses our name with several per cent profits shares of the sales #buildingforbharat for #aatmnirbharbharat.

2. Arpit Jain, Co-Founder and CEO. GreedyGame Media Pvt Ltd

The major highlight of 2020 was the pandemic and resulting lockdowns which lead to people spending more time on their phones. This eventually led to widening the user base of app publishers. We saw a growth of 4x in the revenue. Also since this IPL season, the audience was missing from the stands they were on their phones resulting in an increasing number of users this year. With our SDKX, we help app publishers maximize their revenue with customizable ad placements. Further, we have 200+ app publishers onboard who are benefitting from SDKX.

3. Vikram Wadhawan, Founder & CEO, Vasitum

Vasitum is an HR-Tech platform that is revolutionizing recruitment through AI. Driven as an advanced hiring platform we enable recruiters to hire top talent effortlessly and automate the recruitment process. Since its launch in 2019, the startup has strived to disrupt the traditional recruitment process by using ML (Machine Learning) and NLP (Natural Language Processing). Vasitum has been successful in carving a niche for itself and has garnered attention from the Indian and the global audience. Furthermore, Vasitum has also been selected for 500 Startups Global Launch program in Singapore just within a span of 1 year of establishment. Vasitum has onboarded 27 enterprises to resolve their hiring woes and reached 2,50,000 employees to find their dream jobs online.

4. Mr Amol Roy- Founder Shutter Cast

Covid-19 impacted all the businesses in the market and forced them to go digital and adopt changes accordingly. Digital transformation is becoming a need of the hour. We as a digital marketing agency, have seen a huge rise in the number of clients approaching us for acquiring digital services. And we are aware of the fact that this will continue for so long in the coming years. We have some of the most innovative campaigns focusing on the current world and the changes COVID has brought to the world. Our main business has seen tremendous growth and I believe that influencer marketing will grow more and more and become the favourite mode of communication among brands with their targeted audience.

5. Jatin Jakharia, Co-Founder, WorkIndia

Our Revenue in April went to 0. Our customer base, which predominantly is SME, was forced to shut. As business was slow, we invested time in improving our unit economics and building new revenue streams. Till date, we have 1) Reached 70% of our pre-covid business doing remarketing only. We believe that this number will increase as the market fully recovers. 2) Carved out a new business vertical focussed at recruiting delivery boys in bulk for logistics companies. This business contributes to 15% of the total business as on date. This demonstrates that WorkIndia adds considerable value to blue-collared recruitment and with that confidence, we aim to keep solving for the 23.7 cr blue-collared of India.

6. Mitul Bid, Co-Founder and CEO, Coditas

The success of service-based entities depends on the success of their clients. When the pandemic got official, we were anxious about the future. We went remote almost immediately since well-being isn’t something to be compromised. Our largest clients being from domains like tourism, we did bear the brunt of the situation, but the team strived to deliver the best and helped Coditas maintain a stronghold in the industry. Financially, operating without liabilities and having a cash cushion paid off. So, instead of letting people go, we chose to strengthen the team with more talents. Having a fundamentally strong work culture helped us make it through the year and we are now more prepared for what is to come!

7. Neha Bagaria, Founder & CEO, JobsForHer

We started the year on a high with JobsForHer turning 5 in March. But little did we know that soon after we will all be working from home for the rest of the year. We saw women from across the country, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities applying for jobs that were otherwise unavailable to them. Companies opened up several work-from-home roles, they stepped up to the challenge of virtual hiring; & conducted successful interviews over the last few months.HerRising 2020 - brought 3000+ candidates and more than 50 companies together in the biggest virtual career fair in India & the HerKey Conclave - for globally rising women leaders saw more than 300 participants and noted leaders from across the globe come together on a common networking platform.

8. Shivank Agarwal, Cofounder and CEO, Mitron TV

Mitron was launched in March 2020 with an intent to provide a user-friendly homegrown short video platform for the talented creators across the country who were looking for a Swadesi app. Despite the presence of TikTok, Mitron witnessed an incredible success since its launch and have continued to thrive since then with a pool of over 40million users. Mitron’s focus on community building by introducing content categories have helped creators connect with likeminded users. We also received $5 million in funding from Nexus Venture Partners and others. To promote PM Modi’s initiative of #VocalforLocal we launched Atmanirbhar Apps, a one of its kind discovery platform for Indian Apps which has been welcomed by Indian developers and users enthusiastically.

9. Paddy Viswanathan - Founder and CEO, C3M

COVID-19 has pushed businesses to adopt the public cloud and take a cloud-first strategy. With critical workloads deployed in the cloud, there is also an immediate need for secure and stable cloud infrastructure. Some of the largest companies in e-commerce, retail, internet and media, and consulting have started using our cloud security platform between May 2020 and today. Apart from this, remote working has also been working well for us. Our team members are getting to spend quality time with their families while being just as productive at work. In fact, we are contemplating making working from the office optional once the pandemic eases out. All in all, the year 2020 has been a blessing in disguise for us.

10. Shreyans Daga, CTO and Co-Founder, MyGate

Today, 2.5million+ homes across 15k societies use MyGate; a ~60% growth in user base in the past 6 months. But, the Karnataka State Police (KSP) CLEAR PASS initiative is undisputedly our most impactful success story this year. We were trusted with a four-day deadline to build a digital ePass system, facilitating movement of employees delivering emergency services during the lockdown. A web app for organisations to register for passes, admin roles for KSP authorities to approve requests, a mobile app with offline support for officials to validate passes, we built it all, in 96 hours! 1,20,000+ organisations sought approval with 2,40,000+ passes issued in just 2 months. This was later extended to aid inter-state travel.

11. Mr Chet Jainn (Founder & CEO) Crowdera

2020 will be a memorable year. With the pandemic spread, things did look bleak; but for Crowdera with its mission to create social impact, this year called us to rise above and beyond our capabilities to create meaningful footprints. We supported many organizations probono with our products, services and consulting with a small grant of Rs. One crore, to enable them to amplify their energy, and now some of those relations have turned into long-term partnerships. Crowdera is proud to have been associated with many charity fundraisers helping migrant labourers, KSB helping our ex-servicemen and war widows, Orange café supporting acid attack survivors etc. Our virtual Giving Economy Summit and Awards were a huge success with globally recognized speakers, rounding-off 2020 as a resounding success for us.

12. Tanvi Singla, Co-founder, Supreme Incubator

With the advent of the lockdown, we quickly pivoted our offline program to a fully digital model. Further, 12 startups joined the Summer 2020 cohort that started in August 2020. All startups are attending the program from their local cities. They are enabling us to create a hyper-personalized incubation program that works with founders remotely - so that they can continue to build their ventures in their own locations. Additionally, virtual working expanded the horizon of our networks globally - leading to over 50 mentors from around the world joining the panel, and over 400+ entrepreneurs engaging in our series of virtual events and webinars organised over the last 8 months

13. Mr Nishchal Dua | Director of Marketing

While the founders were searching for ideas around remote work, they stumbled upon the need for a platform which could create a world where geographic locations don’t determine how people added value. Airmeet is an all-in-one virtual events platform that has doubled (100% growth) it's revenue QoQ during the pandemic. We've successfully helped organizers host more than 60,000 events so far in this year and have also managed to secure a total funding amount of over $15 million from two funding rounds. With COVID-19, the events industry has witnessed an irreversible change, but people also realized the potential and benefits of hosting events virtually. With this realization, community managers will continue to host virtual events globally, long after the pandemic.

14. Akash Gehani, Co-Founder & COO, Instamojo

While the pandemic left an impact on several sectors, small businesses were the most impacted of them all. Hence, we pivoted to design products that will help them establish an online presence and transact without having to lose business. Several products were launched in a span of 100 days – MojoPlus, InstaCash, the online store platform among others. We turned cash-flow positive, hitting an all-time high in terms of revenue and a doubled GMV since inception. During a lockdown, we recorded a 25% increase in the number of daily merchant sign-ups, indicating a positive response towards a digital shift. We recently raised a round of Pre-Series C funding to further expedite our growth and venture into international markets.

15. Yashash Agarwal - Co-founder - Gamezop

Founded by siblings Yashash and Gaurav Agarwal, Gamezop is a leading multigame platform, with over 40 million monthly active users. Despite the challenging year that 2020 was, Gamezop booked healthy profits and grew its revenue 4X, building on its strong metrics from 2019. The sustained momentum for the company came through its unique business model: Gamezop doesn't spend any money to acquire users -- instead, it powers a gaming section within 1,900+ popular apps and websites. These apps and websites embed Gamezop's multigame platform, enabling gaming as a feature within their products. In August 2020, the company announced $ 4.3Mn in Series A led by BITKRAFT Ventures, the world’s largest esports fund.

16. Amit Gupta, CEO and Co-founder, Yulu

We’re on a mission to provide sustainable and affordable mobility at scale to solve for the first and last mile connectivity and to address the challenges of air pollution and traffic congestion in India. 2020 has been a momentous journey full of challenges and opportunities, with a truly rewarding outcome. Safety from Coronavirus is the topmost concern of commuters. Given the requirement of social distancing, solo ridership is preferred to the group, and driver led shared mobility options.

The ongoing corona crisis has allowed us to offer safe mobility solutions to our users. Users find Yulu as the safest mode of commute due to our single-seater vehicles, frequent sanitization, and last sanitized time stamp on the app. We are making Indians truly Atmanirbhar with the freedom to commute safely in crucial circumstances. We are committed to transforming the way people commute in India, working closely with the cities, corporates, and citizens.

17. Mr Prasad Rajappan, Founder & CEO, ZingHR

We believe that the world will inevitably be faced with a series of unprecedented challenges in the future. Along with these challenges, the industry will bring a galore of opportunities. It will provide a platform for entrepreneurs to demonstrate the cutting-edge innovation to tackle exigencies and navigate through them. Entrepreneurship will play a catalytic role in fostering problem-solving skills, critical analysis and design thinking. The COVID-19 has already made a beginning of this trend. At ZingHR, we found organizations are increasingly warming up to the idea of deploying HR technology to improve business outcomes. Catering to robust demand, we revamped our application this year to provide a wholesome user-friendly experience. HR Technology is going to be the next big thing for organizations worldwide to boost productivity, foster an employee-centric culture and lead to OUTCOMATION- a process wherein automation will help to achieve tangible business goals.

18. Kunal Kislay, Co-founder and CEO

During the lockdown, our team got together to create a computer vision solution to help organisations re-start operations. We trained the algorithm to detect face mask violations, monitor social distancing, identify higher temperatures through thermal cameras and facilitate contact-less attendance. The solution could be plugged into existing CCTV camera network, requiring no downtime and was economical. Because site visits were not possible, through smart use of technology, we remotely configured cameras and deployed our solution. Our operations and support team supported the IT in-charge at a client site through a set of collaborative dashboards. This enabled us to service customers at a fraction of original time and effort. 2020 made us realise that we have built a resilient team that fought together in an adverse situation. We got a new client base were able to stay afloat during and after the lockdown.