5 rising startups in India – Nov 15, 2016

Photo credit: asawinklabma / 123RF.

Low-cost healthcare got a funding push in the millions, while a mobile games company struck its own windfall. Paytm’s founder pays up to an online apartment rental and purchase aid, and a hiring assessment startup finds its new home with a global firm. A used items marketplace rounds out today’s list.

Stasis Labs

The Stasis Monitor.

Medical device producer Stasis Labs has raised US$5 million in seed funding led by RTP-Healthcare Ventures, with participation from Wonder Ventures, Techstars Ventures, and others.

Founded by Dinesh Seemakurty, Michael Maylahn, Clayton Brand, and Derek Nielsen, Stasis Labs is based in Bangalore and Los Angeles. Stasis Labs seeks to create lower cost healthcare devices for use globally.

The Stasis Monitor, one of the startup’s products, measures heart rate, blood oxygen, 3-lead ECG, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. Unlike a traditional vitals sign machine, it uses colors and icons to provide a friendlier, more understandable look into how a patient is doing. Built much like a smartphone, the monitor is driven by software rather than hardware. The result is a cloud-connected device that costs a hospital less than US$5 a day to run, meaning hospitals in India could potentially use them outside of intensive care units.

The Stasis Monitor is currently being used in Bangalore’s Narayana Health hospital chain and a few other hospitals.

See: Exclusive: How a medical device maker got $5 million seed funding

PlaySimple

Bangalore-based mobile games company PlaySimple has secured US$4 million from Saif Partners and existing investor IDG Ventures.

Founded in 2014 by former Zynga employees Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy, and Suraj Jain, as well as former Walmart Labs engineer Siddhanth Jain, PlaySimple creates trivia, word, and puzzle games, including emoji word game GuessUp and word puzzle activity WordTrek. The company previously took part in Google’s Launchpad Accelerator.

PlaySimple seeks to cater to a global audience. Currently, the majority of its downloads come from the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada. Most of its players are over the age of 30.

The startup has two more games in the works. It makes money through a combination of in-game advertising and available in-game purchases.

See: Former Zynga, WalmartLabs employees land $4m to push games worldwide

NoBroker

Photo credit: Paragon Apartments.

NoBroker helps people search properties for rent or purchase. It landed an undisclosed amount of funding from Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Founded by Akhil Gupta, Amit Kumar Agarwal, and Saurabh Garg, the startup will put the funding toward growth – customer acquisition in particular.

Vijay joins investors that include Saif Partners, BEENEXT, Digital Garage, and Beenos. In September, the startup landed an investment from Anand Chandrasekaran. It got its series B round in February.

See: These engineers were harassed by real estate brokers. So they started NoBroker.

CoCubes

Gurgaon-based CoCubes, which runs a skills assessment tool for programming, coding, and English, has announced its acquisition by Aon Hewitt. Aon Hewitt is the global talent, retirement, and health solutions arm of Aon Plc.

“After spending nine years on building a successful assessment business, we felt it was time to find an organization that would help propel our growth further and faster,” company co-founders Harpreet Singh Grover and Vibhore Goyal write on the blog. They founded the startup in 2007.

CoCubes seeks to get individuals jobs in the short term by testing an individual’s job skills.

The acquisition will allow CoCubes to keep its brand intact under Aon Hewitt’s global presence, the post said.

CoCubes, backed by Ojas Venture Partners, conducts over 2 million assessments for 600 clients in 350 cities.

In July, online classifieds company Quikr acquired job search platform Hiree to expand its jobs platform to help those searching for white-collar jobs. It had fired 10 percent of its workforce in February.

See: LinkedIn too frustrating? These startups help Indians get jobs

Zefo

Bangalore-based second-hand goods marketplace Zefo has bagged US$6 million in a series A funding round led by Sequoia India, with participation from Beenext and existing investor Helion Ventures.

Zero Effort Technologies runs Zefo, which verifies used items through its site before selling them. The startup will use the money for its technology and to expand its employee base.

Arjit Gupta, Rohit Ramasubramanian, Himesh Joshi, and Karan Gupta founded Zefo in 2015. IIT-Madras alum Rohit and IIT-Delhi graduate Karan both worked at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Helion Venture Partners. Himesh, who graduated from IIT-Delhi, worked at BCG as a consultant. Arjit, who graduated from IIT-Allahabad, has worked at Flipkart, Amazon, and Adobe.

Zefo is currently present in Bangalore, Mysore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, and Mumbai. It mostly deals with household items like appliances and furniture.

See: This ecommerce site gives big discounts and still makes money. It just bagged $6m

We’ve been bringing you cool Indian startups lately. Check them out here.

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