Indian Startup Hubs: Startups & Ecosystem Builders In The Madhya Pradesh Startup Ecosystem

Far from the startup hubs – Delhi, Bangalore, nicknamed as the “heart of India” due to its geographical location in India, Madhya Pradesh is the second-largest state in the country by area. With minimal government support, group of entrepreneurs and educational institutions themselves have established incubators, funding groups and other support systems for startups.

According to data available, Madhya Pradesh is houses over 500+ startups with majority of startups situated in Bhopal, Indore and working in IT and services category followed by ecommerce. Madhya Pradesh government had earlier collaborated with the SIDBI to set up a VC fund of over INR 200 Cr, with INR 75 Cr being provided by the government.

As a part of our Indian Startup Hubs series, this time we are covering the startup ecosystem in Madhya Pradesh.

We will be covering some of the notable startups, and other individuals and groups that are building up the startup ecosystem in the state.

The Startups

WittyFeed

Founder: Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav, Parveen Singhal

Founded in: September, 2014

Funding: Bootstrapped

WittyFeed is India’s answer to Buzzfeed in the viral content space. The startup is a modern age blogging platform for photostories and listicles. The company’s aim is to become the #1 content company in the world beating Buzzfeed and Diply, while in the process create a world-class media company catering bloggers, readers, social media influencers and brands for reaching out the audience natively.

Appointy

Founder: Nemesh Singh

Founded: May, 2006

Funding: Appointy is currently Bootstrapped and was selected by Microsoft Ventures for summer acceleration program in 2014. It was also among the top 50 emerging companies by NASSCOM in 2013.

Appointy is an online scheduling software that helps small and medium-sized businesses to accept appointments online. Appointy helps streamline the appointment booking process, improves staff productivity, and helps in promoting/ marketing services. Appointy also integrates with social media platforms to increase reach and help get additional customers for its clients.

My Child App

Founder: Harsh Songra

Founded in: January 26, 2015

Funding: It has raised seed funding of $100K from 500 Startups, Pallav Nadhani and Ritesh Malik.

My Child is an app that helps parents spot developmental disorders in their child within a matter of 45 seconds. The app is for monitoring growth of children aged between 11 to 24 months. Users can ask questions related to the areas of growth in that particular period. Besides, it can even recommend specialist doctors.

InkThemes

Founders: Pankaj Agarwal, Neeraj Agarwal

Founded in: 2011

Funding: Bootstrapped

InkThemes creates wordpress themes for different business needs that includes building ecommerce stores, membership sites, etc. It has over 27,000+ paid customers in 95 countries across the Globe. Recently, the company has also launched two other products, FormGet.com (SaaS-based form builder) and MailGet.com (SaaS-based mass email solution).

Bindaaskart

Founders: Shraddha khandelwal, Garima Piryani, Geeta Hablani

Founded: January, 2015

Funding: Bootstrapped

Bindaaskart is an online healthcare assistance service provider company, targeting chronic disease patients (Heart Disease, Diabetic Patients, Cancer Patients, Thyroid Patients, Skin Diseases & many more). Till date, it has served 318 families and is growing month on month, and is generating operating profits as claimed by the founders.

The Miraculous Millets

Founder: Archana Relan, Gaurav Jaiswal

Founded in: 2014

Funding: It had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Development Bank Of Singapore, Incubation supported by TISS incubation centre.

Miraculous Millets is working to promote indigenous millets (millets are referred to as coarse cereals) of India as health food options by innovating on food processing and marketing techniques. The venture looks forward to make millets as a low risk crop for farmers and nutritious food option for urban consumers.

Bharat Calling

Founder: Sandeep Mehto

Founded in: 2009

Funding: The startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed round funding from Caring Friends (Pune)

Bharat Calling is an organisation that works on democratising higher education in India by connecting rural students to top universities in the country by providing capacity building programs and hand holding support.

Ideata Analytics

Founders: Pranjal Jain, Sonam Jain

Founded in: November 2013

Total Funding: Bootstrapped

Ideata Analytics is a big data analytics product startup. The company has developed a data intelligence platform which can be used to connect, clean and analyse variety of data sources. It provides an easy to use, drag and drop interface to create intuitive reports and dashboards to derive insights.

CloudTrains Systems

Founder: Tripti Tiwari

Founded in: 2014

Funding: The startup has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from one of its food, beverages & hospitality project in August 2015. Besides, it has also raised an undisclosed amount in crowdfunding in October 2015.

CloudTrains Systems is a web/mobile app design and development company that prioritises user-interaction design to build compelling solutions for startups and businesses. It helps businesses reach more customers through B2C consumer apps, and/or make the employees more efficient through an B2E enterprise app.

K-12 STEM Learnings Pvt Ltd

Founders: Rachit Nema, Hemant Deshmukh

Founded in: 2013

Funding: Bootstrapped

K12 STEM offers experiential learning hands on activities kit to school students on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Currently, the startup offers services in 22 schools, caters 15000 students across various districts of Madhya Pradesh.

The Optimist Citizen

Founders – Piyush Ghosh, Tuhin Sen, Piyuli Ghosh, Sanyam Agrawal, Tanima Chakraborty

Founded in – October, 2014

Funding – Bootstrapped

‘The Optimist Citizen’ is an online and print media company that focuses on presenting only positive news and optimist stories, ranging from inspiring stories to stories of unsung heroes,  good governance, achievements, acts of courage, and everything that can create optimism and bring back hope in society. The startup claims itself to be the world’s first “open source good newspaper” where citizens of the world come together form their own clouds (online) of common interest, and write positive stories and news. At present, the print version has readers spread across Bhopal, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Chennai.

StyleDotMe

Founder: Meghna Saraogi

Founded in: November, 2012

Funding: Bootstrapped

Styledotme is a fashion app that helps you get instant fashion advice from fashion experts and friends when you need it. The app allows to poll friends and followers and get them to help you by voting for your options. As a premium service, Styledotme have collaborated with fashion bloggers and stylist to help users offer instant advice when they find a post with live timer.

Twist Mobile

Founder: Virat Khutal

Founded in: March 2009

Funding: It raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Achal Choudhary and In 2012, raised an undisclosed amount in series A round funding from Matrix Partners.

Twist Mobile develops mobile HD games across all platforms that can be downloaded onto internet-ready feature phones. Besides, it is also proactive in developing virtual reality videos, virtual reality architecture 3D and SDK development.

MotorBabu

Founder: Avdhesh Solanki, Aditi Chaurasia, Mayank Pratap

Founded in: January 2016

Funding: Bootstrapped

Motorbabu is an app that helps users find service centres in vicinity and allow them to book services (Bike/Car) hassle free with transparency.

Mentors and Angel Investors

Nemesh Singh

Nemesh Singh is the founder and CEO of Appointy, one of the leading SaaS-based scheduling providers in the world. Nemesh created a profitable, bootstrapped, global company from a small town in India. Nemesh mentors companies on  product development, team hiring & retention and strategic direction.

Sarang Verma

Sarang is the COO of Appointy and one of the co-owners. Sarang is an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, and has worked in investment banking for 6 years before launching Appointy. Sarang has extensive experience in fundraising, global structuring, legal agreements and overall strategic direction.

Accelerators and Incubators

WittyFeed, MPangelnetwork and Appointy offer mentorship, working space and common facilities to startups and budding entrepreneurs working in the technology/ SaaS and B2C space.

Investment Firms

MP Angel Network

Founded by Sawan Ladha, MP Angel Network helps startups jump-start their journey by offering them resources, connections and knowledge through a connected network of startups, investors and mentors across the state. It is also a great platform for investors and experts to explore, fund and nurture ground-breaking ideas. The MP Angel Network, in addition to money, provides constant access to high quality mentoring, vast networks and inputs on strategy as well as execution. Their typical investment is in the range of INR 50K to 5 Lakh. INR 25K are given to startups at an initial stage without any equity, without any interest just to take their idea to next level. Few of its portfolio companies includes Edu-Net, VertiSystems, Cubedots, Prejour, Shaurya Infravsion and Eatoutadvisor.

Organizations

Indore Startup Community

It organises a monthly meetup for budding entrepreneurs to network. More than 80 people attend this monthly meetup. The organisation was set up in March 2014.

Startup Ignition

Founded by Gaurav Jain, Startups Ignition, organises events and bootcamps for startups. The internship and job fair is one of the initiative of the organisation. In nutshell, Startups Ignition ignites the startups from idea stage, connects them to different stakeholders and enables them to grow exponentially. It organises a 5-week entrepreneurship bootcamp that helps entrepreneurs, founders and teams to properly launch a company. This is done by removing the fluff from a traditional 4-year degree or other out-dated programs, and delivering an intense and impactful results-driven curriculum.

eChai Indore

eChai is an offline-online social network of entrepreneurs, it helps fellow entrepreneurs connect with each other with offline events and online co.rise social network. It is a platform to share insights, have discussions, collaborate with fellow entrepreneurs and help each other to grow and succeed in their ventures. Every month, entrepreneurs, professionals, students and mentors from various backgrounds come together in different 25 cities to share, connect, collaborate and get the eChai experience.

SESC

Student Entrepreneurship Support Cell (SESC) at IIT Indore provides a platform for students who are interested in pursuing their ideas and taking it to the next level making them entrepreneurs.

Indore Entrepreneurs Network (IEN)

Indore Entrepreneur Network is a startup chapter of the early-stage entrepreneur’s & startups from Indore to support startup ecosystem in the city. The network aims to provide solutions to problems faced by aspiring entrepreneurs by connecting them to mentors and thought leaders in their domains and organising monthly seminar/workshops. Besides, it also makes a regular startup visit to help and brainstorm the challenges associated with a specific startup.

Don’t worry if we missed out anyone, we will keep on updating the list.

[Thanks to Nemesh Singh of Appointy and Vinay Singhal of WittyFeed for helping us put together this list.]

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