NASSCOM InnoTrek 2014 is a first of its kind delegation of India’s top product and entrepreneurial founders/CEOs coming to Silicon Valley May 12-17. NASSCOM is India’s preeminent IT trade body, and we seek to nurture and scale up the product and entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.
The delegates will experience first-hand Silicon Valley product companies, connect to global VCs/angels and interact with product leaders, corporate development and business development executives. The delegation will also have an opportunity to showcase the potential of Indian product companies to the world.
The weeklong trip includes three full conferences (a one-day NASSCOM Product Conclave in Silicon Valley, Collision Conference in Las Vegas and TiEcon in Santa Clara), campus visits to prominent tech companies and startups, field trips, tech talks, fireside chats and networking get-togethers. The delegation comprises of 27 of some of the best Indian startups and growth-stage product companies. Here’s an overview of the delegate companies.
1. Capillary builds technology to help merchants understand customer purchase behavior, provide real-time personalized recommendations to shoppers and offer relevant promotions across all channels. Capillary is deployed in 150+ major brands across 10,000 retail locations, across the United States, United Kingdom, Middle East, South Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. American Express recently entered into a partnership to introduce Capillary’s customer engagement solutions across the United States. Investors include Sequoia, Norwest, Qualcomm Ventures and, most recently, American Express Ventures.
2. ContractIQ offers an enterprise-grade marketplace for mobile app development service providers to showcase their project work. The launch of Tapiphany.org, a volunteer-driven community initiative for mobile developers to share technical articles and resources they leverage in their work, is one among several initiatives to scale the developer network and buyer community. Currently 2,000+ companies across 40+ countries are on the platform and over 70+ products have been built for customers across the world through app developers’ recommendations. ContractIQ is bootstrapped.
3. DataWeave provides actionable data by aggregating, parsing, organizing and visualizing millions of data points from across the Web to help enterprises discover, monitor and analyze trends and patterns. DataWeave makes data access easy through APIs, dashboards, alerts and visualizations to clients that include Jabong, Snapdeal, Hoopos, Rediff, Indiatimes Shopping, CrowdANALYTIX, Puma, UrbanJourney, OfficeYes, EasyRation, ZigWheels and many more. Investors include leading angels, Blume and 5ideas.
4. Docspad enables document embedding, annotations and editing in enterprise applications with enterprise clients across multiple geographies. Early traction and integration interest has been very strong. Docspad was recently funded by angels.
5. Eka offers trading and risk-management software to commodity and energy traders and aspires to be a global software product firm. It operates in energy trading risk management and commodity trading risk management. Eka is privately held and in recent years made a few acquisitions of companies in Australia and Canada. It has 32 clients, 340 employees and operations in six countries. Investors include Nexus and Silver Lake Kraftwerk for which Eka was their first investment in an India-based company.
6. Eventifier creates archives of events by aggregating public social media content streams. This allows conference organizers to effortlessly provide a smarter way to archive all event photos, videos, slides, tweets, conversations and much more from the entire Web. Eventifier is funded by Accel and Kae.
7. Ezetap delivers a smart and convenient mobile point-of-sale solution for SMBs to accept consumer payments for emerging markets across Asia Pacific, Africa and Middle East. The Ezetap service is PCI-DSS compliant and has been certified by multiple, leading financial institutions. Funded by Angel Prime, Helion, Social+Capital, Berggruen Holdings and a strategic investment by American Express.
8. Flutura leverages decision sciences with a focus on machine-to-machine and data analytics to help optimize processes and resources across energy, oil and gas sectors with several industry majors already using its offerings. Flutura is funded by Hive Technologies.
9. Framebench enables users to come together and view visual assets, both images and videos, in perfect sync. Users can mark and annotate them and change color composition in real time while chatting over the built-in voice channel. Changes are then published to other users in real time. Framebench is funded by Blume.
10. FreeCharge is an online bill payments and prepaid top-up platform in India. Millions of customers in India use FreeCharge today to recharge their prepaid mobile phones, DTH connections or data cards. FreeCharge is funded by Sequoia.
11. FusionCharts enables organizations to make data in their dashboards, internal reporting systems and presentations look stunning and easy to understand. With over 22,000 customers and 500,000 developers in over 120 countries including the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies and some of the Web’s most popular sites, FusionCharts is a world leader in supplying enterprise-grade charting components. It is a bootstrapped private company.
12. Germin8 offers stakeholder insights and an engagement platform that collects and analyses conversations in real time and converts them into industry-specific actionable insights and leads. It is used by top brands and agencies, which include MTV, Cadbury and Publicis. Germin8 is funded by Kalaari.
13. Global Delight is a mobile app developer that has launched some of the most memorable Apple Store apps from India such as an award-winning volume booster app, a gorgeous screen capture software and some of the most popular camera and video recording and editing apps. With over 35 million downloads across its portfolio, a blockbuster Camera Plus app with 22+ million downloads with 50 percent from the United States, it won the Macworld Best of Show 2012 and App Store Best of 2012 awards. The team is working to deliver the exceptionally delightful and unique mobile experiences. The company is wholly owned by Robosoft Technologies.
14. InstaClique converts casual browsers to buyers, offering a complete onsite social engagement platform for e-commerce companies by enabling site visitors to engage with their friends and family from the site, get real-time product recommendations and is a contextually aware shopping assistant. InstaClique is a member of the Target Accelerator.
15. NowFloats helps take SMBs online in just minutes using SMS as a communications channel. It boasts 10,000 customers, ranging from apparel stores to electronic and mobile shops to food and beverage places and spas. The company is Blume and angel funded.
16. Praxify connects patients, doctors, hospitals, blood banks, labs and pharmacies into India’s first interconnected healthcare platform. The offering is being used in major cities in India including Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore & Hyderabad. Their patient app is available on Google Play Store. Praxify is bootstrapped.
17. Pugmarks.me offers Web users a contextual discovery inside their browser that understands the kind of pages the user is reading, and proactively delivers high-quality content recommendations. Funded by Ojas and Blume.
18. Rolocule delivers a console-like interactive entertainment software for next-generation platforms like tablets and smartphones. Rolocule was recently awarded the People’s Choice Award at the 8th International Mobile Gaming Awards in Barcelona. Rolocule is funded by Blume and angels.
19. Sapience is an elegant productivity audit tool that provides knowledge industry employees with a daily balance sheet and self-audit tools to improve productivity and enable managers to proactively identify delays in project delivery. These automated work visibility tools promise to deliver 20+ percent improvements to an organization’s productivity and increased profitability while respecting individual privacy and helping employees achieve work‐life harmony. Sapience has 40+ customers including a few Fortune 500 global companies, several of India’s Top 10 IT firms and global MNCs. Sapience is funded by Seed Enterprises and angels.
20. ShepHertz offers services for building multiplayer games, cloud-based project management and simple applications in Android or HTML5. Its App42 platform delivers a combined mobile and multi-player gaming BaaS platform for developers irrespective of the technology or platform on which they develop. App42 has an impressive list of clients including Hungama.com, Zapak.com and 99Games. ShepHertz is funded by Kae and Blume.
21. Spatial Ideas leverages GIS, social data and biometric data to solve real-world problems in the e-governance and enterprise applications space. Its technology platform has received awards from local and state governments and global expansion is being pursued. Spatial Ideas is bootstrapped.
22. Suyati provides tools for enterprises to promote, drive and manage employee and influencer advocacy for their brands by leveraging internally created, as well as externally available content. The goal is to drive up brand recognition across social channels while also reducing direct advertising costs. Suyati is bootstrapped.
23. Telibrahma offers contextual mobile solutions combined with a powerful, lightweight AR platform that has received numerous patents. Telibrahma is funded by Intel, Inventus and Ojas.
24. Tookitaki offers an advertising platform to optimize real-time ad buying and increase upper funnel conversion rates. The technology has four distinct but interlinked modules — real-time data feed processing, data mining and pattern analysis, supervised trend detection algorithm and campaign optimization. Customers include many top-tier ecommerce companies in India and elsewhere. Investors include Blume, IIG and HBS Angels of India.
25. WebEngage enables online businesses to improve sales and collect customer insight on their website in real time when the user is on their website via push messages that can be targeted to specific customer segments. WebEngage is an angel-funded company with a strong global footprint of over 18,000+ websites including TurboTax, Avaya, Intuit, Flipkart, Moz, Snapdeal, Udemy, MakeMyTrip, and Rocket Internet. WebEngage is funded by GTI Capital and angel investors.
26. Wingify has bootstrapped to millions in annual revenue. In a hyper metrics-driven world, Visual Website Optimizer takes the complexity out of A/B testing tools by allowing users to visually design test variations via a step-by-step, wizard-driven interface and statistics-based intuitive reports without page tagging or having to modify code. The company is growing at 100+ percent with thousands of customers across 75+ countries.
27. Dfy Graviti through its product Amiya enables consumers to engage with television in new ways by connecting consumers to content of choice on TV and converts any TV into a Smart TV with a dongle. Dfy Graviti is seed funded by a Silicon Valley-based investor.
Ravi Gururaj is chairman of NASSCOM Product Council and a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council. He is a serial entrepreneur with five ventures and two public exits, an angel investor mentor, technology executive and ecosystem evangelist. As chairman, his mandate is to nurture and grow India’s software product and entrepreneurial ecosystem. He is a TiE Bangalore charter member, cofounder/chair of the Penn & Wharton Club of Bangalore and cofounder/chair of the HBS Alumni Angels of India.