India’s startups
News from May 2020
The monthly India startup news summary for May 2020, drawn from the daily Startup News Asia news feed.
The Indian startup news headlines below each link to one of the original online news articles that published the item concerned. Each article either directly covers India’s tech startups, or deals with issues of importance to India’s startups in some way.
News headlines featured here are the Indian tech startup news items pulled from our daily startup news coverage, which currently covers 17 primary locations across Asia and Oceania. News sources we pull from are agnostic; we find and aggregate news about India’s tech startups from online outlets large and small, based purely on relevance to individuals, and organisations, interested in Indian tech startups.
Additional subject-focused news summaries are also online, covering the month’s blockchain news, artificial intelligence, digital currency news, cybersecurity and datasec, and a broad collection of fintech news.
- India: An intro to Carbon Craft Design, partnered with US’ Air-Ink to make tiles from processed airborne pollution
- India: Garuda Aerospace startup selected to deliver automated drone-based sanitisation to disinfect public spaces to contain the spread of coronavirus
- India: Pratilipi vernacular self-publishing firm raises $9.4M led by China’s Tencent, with discovery and reading platform allowing writers to e-publish their works
- India: Pedagogy platform raises $400K with focus on students preparing for engineering and medical entrance exams
- India: YourNest Venture Capital VC firm launches SOAR incubation program, aiming to boost startups in the IT sector with cheques from $250K to $1M
- India: Classplus edtech startup raises $9M Series A with app-based focus on tutor supply
- Data shows India now has more internet users in rural areas than in urban cities – 227M active users, 10% more than urban India’s 205M
- India: LetsVenture launches LetsVenture Plus growth-stage investment platform seeking participation from family offices and ultra-high net-worth individuals
- India: LoanAdda loan aggregator startup gains backing, offering small-ticket loans via mobile app and website
- India: VernacularAI raises $5.1M Series A with multilingual artificial intelligence-driven automation services built on speech recognition
- India: Spyne gains pre-A funding with AI-driven online image editing suite focused on photographers and photography-using businesses
- An intro to the 9 startup solutions selected under the UN Environment Programme’s 2020 Asia-Pacific Low Carbon Lifestyles Challenge
- India: Intello Labs raises $5.9M with AI-backed tools to monitor quality of, and to grade, fruits and vegetables
- India: Stepathlon Lifestyle fitness startup raises funds from 9 global investors, aiming for expansion into fan and community engagement and corporate wellness
- A brief intro to 10 plant-based food tech startups boosted by Germany’s ProVeg Incubator
- India: A look at Whitehat Jr, education-tech startup focused on cloud-based remote learning in STEM subjects
- India: An intro to Evo Foods, food-tech startup focusing on plant-based liquid egg products
- India: An intro to Walrus banking and payments app, offering teens 13 years and over a free bank account, debit card, and ability to request money from friends
- India: Pradhan Mantri e-VIDYA initiative for digitally-delivered education launched, allowing the country’s top 100 universities to run online courses, along with startup opportunities
- India: Khatabook fintech raises $60M with 8M active merchants across 11 languages
- India: Rupifi digital lending startup secures pre-A funding with software-as-a-service offerings for SMEs
- India: Pixxel nano-satellite startup selected for first batch of 10 startups in Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator in Los Angeles
- India: AngelList India head launches iSeed micro-VC fund, aiming to back up to 35 early-stage startups
- India: Agri10x agritech startup to work with gov’t to help remote farmers sell produce directly to consumers via blockchain- and AI-driven platform and village-level entrepreneurs program
- India: An at-a-glance intro to the 14 startups backed by Venture Catalysts since January with investments of up to $2M
- India: Okinawa Oki100 electric motorcycle set for Q3 launch, boasting top speed of 100kmh
- India: Illumnus raises $100K with software-as-a-service education platform
- The Indian advertising sector recorded a growth rate of over 25% in digital in 2019, reaching 21% of the country’s total ad spends
- ICYMI: $300M Alpha Wave Incubation Fund launched by Abu Dhabi’s ADQ to back early-stage companies in India and SE Asia
- India: Zaggle gains partnership with Visa to launch payment solutions for SMEs and startups, including Founders Card credit card
- India: Bharti Airtel telco acquired stake in Voicezen, early-stage startup focused on conversational-AI applications in the customer services space
- India: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, country’s largest port operator, join TradeLens shipping-focused blockchain platform founded by IBM and Maersk
- An intro to the 3 blockchain startups selected for the Starfleet India Accelerator
- India: An intro to 4 women entrepreneurs working on SaaS platforms spanning retail, hospitality and more
- India: Google reportedly mulling 5% stake in Vodafone Idea, joining Facebook and Microsoft in entering India by way of network operators
- India: VestaSpace to launch 35+ satellites alongside 8 ground stations and 31K data receptors from September 2020, aiming to facilitate pan-India 5G service
