You want to buy original art or you need your house cleaned; someone to go through all your old mobiles and transfer all retrievable data to one location or better still keep your ma-inlaw happy (Saas ko Patao). Do not worry. There is online help for all your needs.
Invest in original art from a student, who may well go on to be the next Picasso; sick of your ‘Presswaala’ not getting the creases right; do you need your loos deep cleaned? Did you move to a new city and want classy furniture without getting into lifetime debt? Or did you want to upgrade your existing setup to a smart-home where your Wi-Fi works in every room to maximise content from your various gadgets to be consumed anywhere in the house? There’s a startup providing every one of these services and more and at rates that you can afford
Take chip-monks.com for instance, which is extremely popular with young professionals. Chip-Monks is a team of young people who help clients make the most of their devices. “This could mean teaching you how to use voice operated commands on your iPhone, or setting up a cloud for the whole family to access, or identifying the hardware and software needed to serve all your professional and entertainment needs,” explains CEO, Ambar Narula.
Narula gave up an extremely lucrative, senior management job at Airtel to set up Chip-Monks where his team is now teaching individuals, corporate, and even schools, on how to maximise what they can get from their expensive gadgets. There is even a customised service for clients, “to help identify which device is best for their individual needs because the most expensive are not necessarily the one you need.” And in keeping with his philosophy of optimisation and access, Narula, has ensured that their services are not just found online; Chip-Monks has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and most other social media platforms.
With 30,000 plus entities – and that’s just the ones who have already formally registered themselves – there’s a start-up or fledgeling web-only firm to take care of all your needs.
So much so that last month, Commerce and Industry Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman said she wanted to arrange an SAARC meet for start-ups from member countries, to enable such firms to claim benefits from the government, while also spreading themselves further internationally. A senior government official indicated that if efforts to coordinate with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, bore fruit, the meet could take place as early as December this year.
So what contributed to the momentous rise of the Indian Startup Ecosystem? Independent business analyst, Rakesh Salwan, says, “A recent Nasscom report on the startup industry said startups have begun leveraging technology to solve problems that have been plaguing India for years and in some cases decades. And that is the essence of why most startups are doing well.”
Often people who can’t get a need met with a service or a product, end up starting a business to provide that very thing to others in need. That, however, was not the case with Sabira Kalsi, who started ‘saas ko patao’ (yes that really is the name), last year. Her clientele is mostly working couples, who want food provided for small family parties. There’s a twist though. “They want the food to not be too fancy because they need to pass it off as made by them at home. One couple in Saket actually asked for subzi to be slightly undercooked... social pressure can be very high in some cases,” she says
On the other side, you have start-ups like www.cookgourmet.co where you can choose a recipe and have measured, cleaned, and prepped ingredients delivered within two hours at home with a recipe card. They have a new menu each week, and recipes are categorised from easy to medium with indicators of how fiery they are, how much cooking time is needed and most importantly how many calories per portion it is.
On the more artistic side, there are startups galore. The painting and visual side, for want of a better umbrella description, includes www.printoctopus.com (T-shirts, mobile skins, posters and canvas prints with prices starting at Rs 600. There’s www.maiyapublishing.com that helps wannabe authors find editors, photographers, designers and the like to ensure they retain control of how their book turns out.
If it’s raw talent that excites you, try www.bestcollegeart.com. A Delhi-based start-up, they describe themselves as a platform to showcase future superstars. But you can buy original watercolours at as low as Rs 300 if you want to fill your home with original art that won’t pauper you.
Similarly, for young professionals in transferable jobs or temporary postings, who need a classy home, without the hassle of worrying about disposal, www.furlenco.com comes to the rescue. It already has a presence in six cities and offers you everything from beds with mattresses, sheets, and pillows to fridge and microwave combos, all on rent. The biggest appeal that furlenco provides to a prospective client is that all furniture and upholstery is cleaned or sterilised before it is sent to another home. The company often does not require linens to be returned at all, if a client has had them for a long time.
On the laundry front, a simple search of the word ‘dhobi’ throws out page after page of results – “dhobiwala, dhobilite, hellodhobi, calldhobi, dhobimart, dhobibulao” and so on. They’re all offering the same services that your parents had a dhobi for – they come home, collect your laundry, and return it after a few days, washed, ironed, and (when requested) starched.
There are, however, many nonfinancial, non-technology start-ups that are extremely interesting, like batsondelivery.com which acts as a night service to provide food, groceries, toiletries, plumbers and electricians at night, or passiton.in which convinces people to actually pass on stuff “that can’t be thrown or sold”. For instance, there are artists who will take the glass bottles you donate. There are poor students who will take books donated by students who’ve moved to higher classes.
On a more serious note, startups have begun making their presence in sectors like power, renewable energy, traffic monitoring, data analysis, IT based healthcare, financial inclusion, agricultural productivity, skills development and of course, education. Or in other words, startups are beginning to disrupt every inconvenience in our lives.