here has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.

Venture capitalists are lining up outside the offices of anyone with what seems a good, bankable idea or product. The business media diligently reports on promising start-ups. This was not always so. Until recently, no firm was taken seriously unless its top and bottom lines had crossed several zeroes. Except by BT, that is. We have been telling the stories of India's more innovative start-ups for years. Find out who made it to our list last year The current list, like all previous ones, was finalised after weeks of banging heads together and scores of emails going back and forth. Our criteria for considering a company were only two: it should have started after January 1, 2007, and generated some revenue from what promises to be a stellar product or service.

This is Business Todays Third Annual Listing of hottest start-ups and, pretty much like the two previous lists in 2007 and 2008, this listing is also completely subjective. But we did not put the names of the companiesdrawn by a host of venture capitalists, consultants and even our reporterson a board and throw darts at them. Nope, we took a long hard look at all the names we got and we got a lotand we looked at how viable these businesses would be. So, while a company might have some great guys working for it and a solid idea, we looked at whether it would still be around by the time Business Todays 20th annual list of Hottest Start-Ups comes about. Did we have any criteria? Yes, we did. All companies, save one, on our list are around three years old or younger. Though MeritNation is rather old, the company changed totally in 2007, keeping the old name but little else. The second is that the company has to be an Indian company: some nominations were great and did all their business in India but were registered abroad. The third criterion, as we explained, is survivability and that involves doing something new in India. Not reinventing the wheel by creating Indias Facebook or Twitter for India those services already exist and are called Facebook and Twitter, respectively, and the lack of borders on the Internet mean that Indians use them far more than local social networking sites. All our companies are doing productsin hardware, software, services or healthcare uniquely honed for India. We are pragmatic enough to realise that we might get some wrong. Our companies in the 2008 list (page 106) have had to change their plans, because the world has changed (and how!) since this time last year. But we are sure that our class of 2009 will not just survive the slowdown but are going to be the standardbearers of India Inc. in the future. Inbiopro Money from Molecules Bio-blockbusters: Chatterjee (L) and Iyer Rodrigues

Inbiopro, set up with the aim of taking potential blockbuster molecules from biotech firms and building them up to the preclinical and clinical trials stage, broke even within a year and has already delivered three molecules for trials. Two foundersChief Executive Sohang Chatterjee and Chief of Operations Kavitha Iyer Rodrigueshave worked together in biotech, while a third, Aditya Julka, had worked with them at consultants McKinsey & Co. and then at Millipore and Avesthagen, both lifesciences and biotech firms. We are focussed on capability rather than products, says Chatterjee, we provide a sizeable difference in time-to-market and costs to our customers. Inbiopro works for the emerging markets, touted as the next big thing in pharma. It has attracted two rounds of venture capital investment from Accel India and is using some of the money to upgrade and expand its labs in Bangalore, but it is in no hurry to expandits twofloor office in the industrial suburb of Peenya houses fewer than 20 people. The focus: executing complicated projects. All three founders have the required skill and experience, says Prashanth Prakash of Accel India. Inbiopro has never missed a trick when it came to cutting costs and hitting break-even: it began life in an apartment owned by Iyer Rodrigues parents and tapped them (both are IIM professors) for their business plan. Today, it is located in a nondescript office building, not in Bangalores expensive central business district. Were not a page 3 company, says Chatterjee, were happy flying under the radar and focussing on the bottomline. Location: Bangalore Year of founding: 2007 Founders: Sohang Chatterjee, Masters in Microbiology from National Centre for Biological Sciences, which is part of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Ph.D from Cornell, Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues, Masters in Clinical Microbiology from Kidwai Institute of Medical Sciences, Manipal and Working MBA from IIM Bangalore & Aditya Julka, M.Tech in Bioprocess Engineering, IIT Delhi and completing MBA from Harvard Business School this year Nature of business: Bioscience Funding: Accel Partners ($3 million) Will make money by: Already profitable Number of employees: 19 Revenue: Not disclosed Size of target market: $70 billion

Key competitors: Companies like Gala Scientific, Charles River and BioReliance in the US. Claims no major home-grown competitor Biggest threat: Slow pace of regulatory approvals in the US and European operations for generic biotech drugs

Rahul Sachitanand Carnation Motor Mechanic Jagdish Khattar A Start-up after retirement? Trust Jagdish Khattar to do it. The man who became synonymous with the Maruti Suzuki success story decided to change the way Indians maintain their cars. Just weeks after stepping down from Maruti Suzuki, in December 2007, he set up Carnation, which is to be a chain of service centres that can handle 80 per cent of the models and makes on Indian roads. In developed markets the concept of a branded service player is well-established. In India, other than Maruti and Tata Motors, manufacturers do not give their owners much choice but to go to dealerships to get their vehicles serviced owners end up with unlicensed neighbourhood mechanics, explains Khattar. Carnations first outlet is in Noida and Khattar plans to have a nationwide presence by the middle of next year. Insurance companies and large car fleet operators have come to us as we can save them massive amounts of money, Khattar says. Carnation isnt going to be only about service: Khattar plans to foray into car sales and mechanic training schools. Sometimes, with start-ups, no matter how good the idea, experience matters. And Khattar has plenty. Little wonder, then, that the name Carnation has the tag, A Jagdish Khattar Initiative. Location: Noida, NCR Year of founding: 2008 Founder: Jagdish Khattar Nature of business: Multibrand Auto Sales Maintenance and Allied Services Funding: Rs 80 crore from Premji Invest, Rs 28 crore from IFCI ventures Will make money by: The 2nd full year of operations (2010-11)

Number of employees: 500 by March 2009, 5,000 by 2012 Revenue projection for 2009: The rollout commences from fiscal year 2009 and the revenue ending 2009-10 is projected at Rs 300 crore Size of target market: The auto service industry is estimated at Rs 2,500 crore Key competitors: Mahindra First Choice operates in the branded used car market Biggest threat: Extremely dependent on Khattars personality to drive marketing and sales; Khattar is already 66 years old Invention Labs Engg Products Inventing for India Tinkerers in their garage: (clockwise from top left) Ibrahim, Chandrasekaran, Shivanna and Narayanan They have a common passion: developing engineering products. They share a common aspiration, too: give Indian engineering an identity like the way German engineering is known for precision and durability and Japan for micro and nano technology. To achieve this, Ajit Narayanan (27), Adib Ibrahim (28), Aswin Chandrasekaran (27) and Preetham K. Shivanna (26)all from IIT Madrashave set up Invention Labs. Indian conditions are unique. Using a foreign technology or retrofitting has not worked. We want to invent Indiaspecific products, they say. Set up in June 2007 with an initial capital of Rs 15 lakh and a seed capital of Rs 5 lakh from IIT Madras, Invention Labs currently has 11 employees (including the founders). It has developed a few products: Kavia handheld communication device for children afflicted with cerebral palsy and machine vision systems for quality control (the current downturn has affected sale of this product). It is betting big on retail vending machinesprototypes of which are under development. Meanwhile, its servicing businessdesigning of sub-components and parts for various industriesensures adequate cash flow for this start-up to keep its activities going. Location: Chennai Year of founding: 2007-08 Nature of business: Engineering products development Funding: Promoters equity (Rs 15 lakh) and seed funding (Rs 5 lakh) Will make money by: Already cash flow positive

Number of employees: 11 Revenue: Not disclosed Size of target market: Rs 1,000 crore Key competitors: Vending machine suppliers, Netbooks, Soliton & Cognex Biggest threat: At the moment, product failure

N. Madhavan flipkart.com Indian Amazon N. Madhavan Sachin (L) and Binny Sachin and Binny Bansal (no, they are not related) found themselves in boring technology jobs after doing their computer science from IIT Delhi in 2005 and got their creative spark only when their career paths converged at Amazon India, the worlds largest online retailer. Amazon has only development centres in Indiaand the two figured they could very well replicate its online retail model. Initially, we thought of opening a comparison shopping engine. But after studying the e-commerce space we realised there were no good players in India, explains Binny. We thought of books, as online sales for books is good, there is no touch and feel factor and the suppliers are also e-enabled, explains Sachin. In September 2007, they quit their jobs to set up the company and had the site up and running in a month. It was an enormous task to get tie-ups with the major book vendors, as we didnt have an off-line book store. Another major challenge was to get the approval for the credit card payment gateway. we had to convince Axis Bank for the payment gateway and that wasnt easy, says Binny. Against the Rs 4,000crore books market, online business is a measly Rs 25 crore. We want to be number one in online book sales, says Binny. The company is growing at 35 per cent per month. Location: Bangalore Year of founding: October 2007 Founders: Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal

Nature of business: Online retail Funding: Self-funded, invested Rs 4 lakh Will make money by: 2011 Revenue: 2008-Rs 4-5 crore; 2009 (Projected)-Rs 20 crore Number of employees: 20 Biggest threat: Other online retailers which sell books, such as Indiatimes and Rediff AskLaila The local platform Adukoorie (L) and Konduri When compiling a list of hot start-ups, BT had decided to avoid crowded spacesonline travel agencies and local search. So why did AskLaila make the cut? Well, because we use the service quite a bit and we rather like it. But why did the founders Sriram Adukoorie and Kiran Konduri, both Microsoft veterans, call their local search site AskLaila and not something else? Well, when we were writing the code we gave female names to all our projectsWhen we were testing our search code we called it Laila and we began to like it, says Konduri. His wife initially thought it was a soft porn siteand even now it gets search requests for nude images. The service is available in eight cities and will be entering six more soon. Our biggest competition is not some other site but word of mouth, Konduri argues. He is not positioning it as a web service, but a local hub on a variety of platforms including mobile telephony. Where does it see itself in a few years? With an increasing mobile population local search will increase. But wait a while, we have something big up our sleeve, Konduri says. Location: Bangalore Year of founding: December 2006. Founders: Kiran Konduri and Shriram Adukoorie Konduri was previously at Microsoft and has founded two companies, including Zephyr Software, which was acquired by Infospace. Adukoorie was with Microsoft for 10 years. He launched MSN in India and several South East Asian countries. He was leading the content efforts at MSN across Asia Nature of business: Consumer-specific local information service delivered through multiplatforms (web, mobile, TV and print)

Funding: Secured a total of $12 million from Matrix Partners India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SVB India Capital Partners Fund in two rounds of funding Will make money by: Not disclosed Number of employees: 30 technical engineers and nearly 150 on field support Revenue: Not disclosed Size of target market: $200 million

Kushan Mitra InkFruit.com Hosting design talent Dalal (R) and Rai Do you love to draw/paint/design but keep your artwork stuffed in some box? Upload your designs on inkfruit.comgood ones get voted on by its community of designers and end up on T-shirts. You get rewarded. The brainchild of Kashyap Dalal (27) and Navneet Rai (28), inkfruit.com hosts the work of designers from all over the world. The popular ones then get screen printed on T-Shirts for sale. Dalal and Rai are from IIT Bombay, with Dalal also having an MBA from IIM-L. After holding several regular jobs, the duo got together in 2007 to turn entrepreneurs. There was a huge gap in creative merchandise space, explains Dalal. Inkfruit.com was launched in 2008 with their savings of Rs 3-4 lakh. The idea was first marketed in colleges and design schools to create an inventory of designs. Today, there are monthly contests, with cash prizes from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000. Seed capital came from their seniors, Karamveer Singh and Gaurav Songara, at IIT. Thereafter, Inkfruit received angel funding from Mahesh Murthy, Anand Lunia and Paula Mariwala. In just one year, Inkfruit has fetched revenues of nearly Rs 2 crore. We are expecting to break even by the middle of this year and expecting revenues of Rs 8-10 crore for 2009, says Dalal. Inkfruit currently sells about 5,0006,000 TShirts a month and gets 5 lakh page views a month. Location: Mumbai Year of founding: Mid-2007 Founders: Kashyap Dalal & Navneet Rai

Nature of business: Promotes creative merchandise Funding: Angel, amount not disclosed Will make money by: Should break even by middle of this year Number of employees: 15 Revenue: 2008-Rs 2 crore; 2009 (projected)-Rs 8-10 crore Size of target market: Merchandise (Tshirts, bags, posters) around Rs 650 crore Key competitors: OfflineTantra, Karma, etc. as well as Pepe, Lee, UCB. Online Customisation websites where you can print whatever you want Biggest threat: A backlash from the design community in case they dont like the things it does. So, it is trying to grow in a way that's fun for the design community AyurVAID Ayurveda, right side up Vasudevan By 40, most people prefer to settle down in their careers but not Rajiv Vasudevan (46). A scientist at Indian Space Research Organisation, operations person at Godrej & Boyce and Country Head of Motorolas paging systems division before joining the Kerala government, where he was the head of Techno Park at Thiruvananthapuram and Director, Kerala IT Mission, versatility has been a hallmark of Vasudevans career. While working on the governments biotech policy, he realised that ayurveda was not practised the way it should be. For most, it just meant a massage, explains Vasudevan. In April 2005, Vasudevan (then 41 years old) took the plunge and set up AyurVAIDa 15-bed hospital in Kochi that practises Ayurveda the classical way, including rigorous processes and extensive documentation with an initial investment of Rs 20 lakh. In May 2008, US-based Acumen Fund invested Rs 4.5 crore. Today, AyurVAID has hospitals in Aluva, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hubli (in all 140 beds). We will turn profitable next year, says Vasudevan. He plans to have at least 2,000 beds over the next five years. His goal is to make ayurveda the treatment of choice for select medical conditions. Location: Kochi, Aluva, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hubli Year of founding: 2005-06 Nature of business: Healthcare Funding: Initial promoters equity (Rs 20 lakh) and venture funding (Rs 4.50 crore)

Will make money by: 2010 Number of employees: 75 Revenue: Not disclosed Size of the target market: Unlimited Key competitors: Other healthcare service providers Biggest threat: Misperceptions people have about ayurveda

N. Madhavan Orange Cross Healthy to the bank Barreto (L) and Raut The promoters had no background in healthcare when they decided to set up this unique venture, which will advise healthcare consumers about options. But their lack of domain expertise (barring Melvin Barretos passion for marathons) did not deter the likes of Sridhar Iyengar, former Chairman and CEO of KPMG, Pravin Gandhi, IT industry stalwart, Shantanu Prakash, Founder of Educomp, and Ashutosh Garg, Chairman and Managing Director, Guardian Life Care, coming aboard as advisors. Neither did it deter private equity firm Lumis Partners from injecting an unspecified amount into the new-born. Sandeep Sinha, Managing Partner, Lumis, says: As a rule we do not invest in early stage companies. Orange Cross is perhaps the only exception, but that is because of the nature of their business. Orange Cross had a very clear business plan: to offer thirdparty advice to patients from interpreting adverse trends in the annual health check-ups to suggesting venues for getting a particular diagnostic test done, together with cost options. We help people manage their health and wellness requirements, says Co-founder Prajakt Raut. The start-up charges the healthcare consumer depending on the services rendered. Barreto says: We wanted to be in an industry where we would have the opportunity to shape customer thought processes. Whether they will make money is a question that will be answered in a few years. Location: Gurgaon

Year of founding: 2007 Founders: Prajakt Raut and Melvin Barreto Nature of business: Provision of healthcare and wellness services Funding: Lumis Partners bought a stake between 10%-50% for an unspecified amount Will make money by: Cash flow positive by CY09; P&L break-even by 2010-2011 Number of employees: 21 Revenue: Not disclosed Size of target market: At least a billiondollar opportunity Key competitors: None within India Biggest threat: The sheer scale and the rapidity of the ramp-up of their project Intelizon Energy Lighting up Rural India Uppal is betting on LED Kushant Uppal, 39, an IIT Madras engineer armed with a Ph.D from the US , quit his job in the US and returned to India to set up Intelizon Energy in February 2007. Uppal saw merit in what his mentor, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras, had to say about the possibilities of solar energy, particularly in rural india. He was also able to convince Ventureast and Emergic Venture Capital funds to put in money. His first product? A solar LED task-light with an embedded solar panel, priced at Rs 799, and branded Zon Light (Zon is Sun in Dutch). So far, we have sent out around 8,000 units. says Uppal. Since Uppal does not tap subsidies, this task-light cannot be sold below Rs 799 per unit. He is talking to microfinance institutions so that the poor can afford it in instalments. He claims it is cheaper than current solar lanterns, and 200-300 households can be lit up for between Rs 1.5 and Rs 2.5 lakh. Says Uppal: Our vision is creating a world of smart energy. Location: Hyderabad Founder: Kushant Uppal Nature of business: Renewable energy with focus on rural and semi-urban markets.

Funding: Has got venture funding of between $ 0.5 million and $ 1 million Will make money by: 2011 No of employees: 25 Revenues: Around Rs 50 lakh for 2008-09; projects a five-fold increase for 2009-10 Size of target market: Sees markets in India and Africa and estimates a market size of over $ 1 billion Key competitors: Local brands, torch lights, kerosene lamps and emergency lights Biggest threat: The use of LED light not becoming a trend. Also, if funding sources become tight

E. Kumar Sharma MeritNation.com Custom-built Education Handle with kid gloves: Chauhan (in green) and Hemrajani (extreme left) Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani are entrepreneurs at heart. Buddies from the 1996 batch of IIM Bangalore, they worked at Philips briefly before deciding to quit and do their own thing with just Rs 40,000 as capital. The start was almost a disaster, as Chauhan recounts. When they put in an advertisement in a newspaper to attract MBA aspirants, their contact address did not work and the telephone went kaput. We were down Rs 15,000 for a 40 cm display ad with both the address and the telephone not working. We really laughed that day, says Chauhan. Salvaging the situation, they managed to convert their first few walk-in customers. We served them with our life, says Chauhan. Initially, they dabbled in the education space but by 2007, they reconfigured their company to cater to a new product: an adaptive assessment engine for learning. The product will enable customisation of learning. Every child is different. The product will identify the problem, and then generate appropriate content for the child, says Chauhan. Funding ($1.6 million) came in at the right time from InfoEdge, the holding company for online recruitment brand naukri.com. Next steps: opening up to schools and teachers, then online subscriptions and break even.

Location: New Delhi Year of founding: 2001; completely rejigged the business in Oct. 2007 Founders: Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani Nature of business: Web-based education Funding: $1.6 million in April 2008 from InfoEdge Will make money by: 2009-10 Number of employees: 55 Revenue: Rs 2.5-3 crore (2008-09); Rs 5-6 crore (Projected 2009-10) Size of target market: Huge, there are 2.5-3 million students on the Net Key competitors: Mathcrew; Extramarks.com Biggest threat: Limited broadband connectivity
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