This year’s meeting took place against the backdrop of widespread turmoil across public and private markets, which has slashed the valuations of several startups amid a severe crunch in late-stage funding.
Despite the sombre industry environment, the mood was ebullient as the jury focused on empirical metrics and deliverables such as profitability, exits and effectiveness of innovation.
Today, it’s our pleasure to announce the winners of the 2022 edition of India’s most prestigious awards for entrepreneurs.
Razorpay bags top honours at ETSA 2022
At a virtual meeting that lasted for more than two hours on October 28, a high-powered jury led by Infosys CEO Salil Parekh named the Bengaluru company Startup of the Year for building a large business in the competitive fintech sector without sacrificing on profitability.
In all, the jury chose nine winners from a shortlist of 45 nominees across the nine categories.
Welcome to the club: Founded by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in 2014, Razorpay joins a list of eminent winners that have previously bagged the top prize including Zomato, Zerodha, Delhivery, Oyo Hotels & Homes, Swiggy, Freshworks, and Ola.
The jury for ETSA 2022
The jury: The high-powered panel including startup entrepreneurs who have taken their companies public recently, had logged in well versed with a 103-page dossier comprising confidential data from the shortlisted companies drawn up by the ET editorial team.
Maintaining a time-honoured tradition, direct contenders recused themselves while their candidatures were being discussed. Many other jurors with direct and indirect interests in the shortlisted companies participated in the debates but refrained from casting a vote.
“All the nominations for Startup of the Year (SOTY) were simply outstanding companies, and it was a really close call at the end of the day. [Razorpay has] demonstrated great growth profitably on the back of relentless customer focus, continued innovation in adjacencies, and a culture that allows them to ‘build to last’,” said jury member Sriharsha Majety, cofounder and CEO, Swiggy.
Also Read | The ultimate goal of ETSA 2022 was to pick winners displaying “innovation, grit, differentiation, integrity, and ambition,” according to Infosys chief executive and managing director Salil Parekh who led the ten-member jury.
Startup of the Year: Razorpay
Razorpay was voted as The Economic Times Startup of the Year 2022 in what was arguably the most closely contested category. In a neck-and-neck race, not seen in recent years, software testing startup BrowserStack emerged as another serious contender for the top award but missed it by a whisker amid multiple rounds of discussions and voting.
Razorpay, currently India’s highest-valued fintech firm at $7.5 billion, eventually took home the big prize. Having processed payments worth about $80 billion annually, the company has a good chance to emerge as the top online payments processing platform after rival PayU called off its deal to acquire BillDesk.
“We started off with the hope to make a difference in India’s financial ecosystem, but today the dent we’ve created by powering disruptive businesses with intelligent technology excites us to reach greater heights and this honour gives us further confidence to continue on this path,” Razorpay cofounder and CEO Harshil Mathur told ET.
CEO of the Year: Falguni Nayar
Falguni Nayar has broken all the conventions associated with the typical new-age entrepreneur, from gender to age to the category she chose for her startup.
Having founded Nykaa at the age of 50, she took on established ecommerce giants, barely raised any venture capital, and turned profitable in a cash-guzzling sector to successfully take her company public last year. All of this led the jury to pick Nayar as CEO of the year, a new category introduced at the Economic Times Startup Awards to showcase the growth and maturity of the ecosystem.
“For the longest time one questioned whether there can be a standalone company in the beauty category, considering the tough competition from horizontal players,” said jury member Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia India & Southeast Asia.
Nayar told ET, “From Day Zero, our business has been about creating customer delight and elevating the shopping experience – keeping at its core authenticity, content, convenience and curation. Prioritising sustainable growth with an emphasis on the right unit economics has been crucial to Nykaa’s success.”
Midas Touch: Shekhar Kirani
Among the most high-profile categories at the ET Startup Awards, this year’s Midas Touch award for best investor saw jury members debate whether clocking exits and providing cash returns should be the hallmark of a successful investor over plum mark-ups on a company’s valuation.
This made it a close fight as most of the nominees have seen one of their portfolio firms go public over the past year to break the pattern in a largely exit-starved ecosystem.
The jury finally zeroed-in on Accel’s partner Shekhar Kirani for being the first to write a cheque to Freshworks, the Indian SaaS poster child that went public on Nasdaq last year, and for having spotted a number of other high-quality enterprise firms early on.
In a close contest with Sequoia Capital’s Mohit Bhatnagar, who had impressive wins over the years with Zomato, Oyo and Citrus Pay, among others.
“I am humbled to be chosen, but, to be fair, this win is for all of us who have been nominated and the entire investment community,” said Kirani.
Woman Ahead: Smita Deorah
It was a two-way fight in this category between Smita Deorah – for her ambition to make quality education available to the masses through her edtech venture Lead – and Saroja Yeramilli – for her three decades of experience in retail and consumer-facing businesses that helped her build Melorra, a direct-to-consumer jewellery brand.
As the discussion evolved, education as a theme took centre stage for the jury, which highlighted the significance of the sector.
“Education is at the base of solving all our problems, and the type of education that Lead is trying to impart would be something that really makes a big difference,” said a jury member.
Deorah told ET, “Our aspiration is to reach 60,000 schools serving 25 million students over the next five years, and for that we will continue to expand our product portfolio and our reach to the deepest parts of the country.”
Top Innovator: Eyestem
It’s estimated that cell therapy products will cost more than $450,000 per injection globally. The Bengaluru-based Eyestem’s mission to democratise access to such treatment by bringing the cost down to less than a 50th of that won it the Top Innovator Award at the ET Startup Awards 2022.
Eyestem’s aim to treat “incurable” eye diseases helped it pip Haber, an artificial intelligence-powered startup that simplifies manufacturing processes, which came in a close second.
A remark from a jury member on the core of the category being innovation swung the vote in Eyestem’s favour. “It’s a powerful thing if it comes true,” said a jury member on Eyestem and its potential.
Jogin Desai, cofounder and chief executive at Eyestem, said, “We still have a long way to go but this will help us move further along. What matters most is figuring out how to make our patients’ lives better.”
Bootstrap Champ: Noise
While choosing the winner of the ‘Bootstrap Champ’ title, the star-studded jury cheered for companies in this category for building businesses of size and scale without the help of venture capital.
With more than Rs 800 crore in revenue and Rs 40 crore in profits, it was clear that the jury could not ignore Noise’s outstanding financials despite challenges around China manufacturing and the low defensibility of the business.
“While there is a China sourcing factor, being bootstrapped and taking it to $100 million in scale along with a profit, it is not an easy task at all for an Indian company,” said one of the members of the jury during the discussion.
“For a bootstrapped business to succeed, you need to constantly operate with unfettered belief, but when your actions get externally acclaimed and validated, it’s like a shot in the arm to do even better,” said Amit Khatri.
Comeback Kid: Exotel
For this category, the jury was clearly looking to recognise the resilience of the founding teams and their ability to tackle the various vagaries of building a new-age technology business.
From the word go, the elite jury praised the grit that Exotel founders Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan and Sachin Bhatia have displayed against many odds to build an Indian software play in cloud telephony for the world.
“Exotel is a strong comeback story and it has really stood up during difficult times,” said another jury member.
Bhatia said, “Exotel has a unique position in the market of being a full-stack customer engagement platform and confidently placed to continue to develop high-quality customer engagement solutions, underpinned by the latest best practices in the industry,” said Bhatia.
Social Enterprise: Banyan Nation
It was Banyan Nation’s simple approach to a problem as complex as plastic waste reduction that helped the nine-year-old startup clinch the coveted Social Enterprise award.
It beat Chakr Innovation by a razor-thin margin as the jury tipped toward the cause of plastic waste reduction amid wider concerns around climate change the world is grappling with.
Founded by Mani Kishore Vajipeyajula and Rajkiran Madangopal, the Hyderabad-based startup converts plastic waste materials into recycled granules.
“(Our) clear mission is to bring in transparency and traceability into plastics recycling value chain and drive the circular use of recycled plastics in mainstream products and packaging,” Madangopal said.
Best on Campus: Solinas Integrity
The jury had a detailed discussion before picking Solinas Integrity, whose robotics solutions help eliminate manual scavenging, as the winner of this year’s Best on Campus award.
Solinas edged out ClaimBuddy, a Gurgaon-based Mediclaim support startup, in a close contest.
Founded in 2018, the company develops robotic solutions for the pipeline and sanitation industry, addressing leakages and eliminating manual scavenging. It focuses on short-range and long-range pipeline inspection and robotic cleaning of septic tanks.
“Sanitation workers clean sewers at great personal risk and every few months one or two of them lose their lives doing their jobs,” said jury member Sanjeev Bikhchandani, adding, “Saving lives is more important than any financial return.”
“This award recognises and validates our efforts and our business idea,” said Divanshu Kumar, cofounder and CEO of Solinas.
How we arrived at the winners
In its eighth year, the Economic Times Startup Awards have captured the ever-changing world of technology and Digital India, as the sector has grown from infancy to to spawning publicly traded corporations.
Having seen at least two cycles of funding booms followed by tech winters, the awards are a true testament to the way Indian entrepreneurship has matured over the past eight years.
This year we introduced a new category – CEO of the Year – to highlight the evolution of the ecosystem as professionals are leading scaled companies, not just founders.
But what goes behind selecting the nominees and the winners of the ET Startup Awards, considered the most prestigious in the Indian entrepreneurial community?
Here is a timeline of the efforts that went into making the process most rigorous and detailed.
ETSA Alumni: Where are they now?
Previous winners of the ET Startup Awards have stood out amid a crowded startup ecosystem and have gone on to become successful businesses. We look at a few of them from previous editions of the awards.
Rohan M Ganapathy & Yashas Karanam
Bellatrix Aerospace | Best on Campus (2020)
Bengaluru-based in-space propulsion startup Bellatrix Aerospace recently tested an eco-friendly propulsion system for satellites that takes a new path away from hydrazine-dependent fuel systems and delivers fuel efficiency potential up to 20% for space satellites.
Sahil Barua, Suraj Saharan, Kapil Bharati, Bhavesh Manglani, Mohit Tandon
Delhivery | Startup of the year (2019)
Earlier this year, Delhivery made its debut on the bourses despite a global rout in tech stocks due to macroeconomic headwinds. At a time when consumer tech startups are staying away from tapping the public markets, Delhivery’s shares opened 1.2% higher than the issue price when they listed.
Ritesh Arora, Nakul Aggarwal
BrowserStack | Bootstrap Champ (2015)
Subscription-based web and mobile app testing platform Browserstack, a nominee in the Startup of the Year category in 2022, aims to become the largest testing platform globally with 50% market share.
Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy, Mrinal Pai
Skylark Drones | Best on Campus (2018)
Founded in 2015, SkyLark Drones, an enterprise drone solutions provider, raised its first institutional round last year when it picked up $3 million from Info Edge Ventures and IAN Fund, to build its geospatial intelligence product and expand into international markets.
Jaydeep Barman, Kallol Banerjee
Rebel Foods | Comeback Kid (2015)
In 2021, Rebel Foods became the first cloud kitchen startup to become a unicorn. It also tied up with delivery firm Foodpanda last year to expand virtual restaurant offerings across several Asian countries.
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