The Indian E-Commerce startup ecosystem continues to rapidly expand, propelled by the increase of the internet. From grocery to clothes, shoes to shampoos, everything is available online. You name it and it’s there!
Influenced by factors like increased internet penetration, smartphone adoption and affordable data plans, the online retail industry is expanding, strengthening and increasing opportunities year by year.
As per the report by the Indian Brand Equity Forum, the Indian E-commerce market is expected to touch a whopping $200 billion by 2026. And, here we have jotted down the top 10 Indian e-commerce startups that seem promising shortly.
1. Flipkart
Headquartered in Bangalore, Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company that is incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. Initially used to sell books online before expanding their business to other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.
Flipkart gives tough competition to Amazon’s Indian subsidiary and domestic rival Snapdeal.
As of March 2017, Flipkart had 39.5% of the market share of India’s e-commerce industry. Flipkart boasts a dominance in the apparel segment after it acquired Myntra. It is one of the largest eCommerce in India that is neck and neck with Amazon in terms of electronics and mobile phones sales. Besides this, Flipkart also owns PhonePe, a fin-tech startup based on the Unified Payments Interface.
In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired 77% of stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, with a valuation of Flipkart reaching $20 billion
Founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and former Amazon employees, Flipkart slowly grew in prominence and now has made a mark in the lane of e-commerce companies. In October 2020, Flipkart acquired a 7.8% stake in Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail for $204 million.
2. 1 MG
Headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana 1mg is an online pharmacy store. It was founded in 2015 by Sameer Maheshwari, Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal and Vikas Chauhan. After launching in the year 2015, so far, 1mg raised a total of$191.3 Million and 1mg has acquired a total of 3 companies, including MediAngels, Dawai Lelo.
This platform enables consumers to know more about their medicines and also find more cost-effective substitutes. Incorporated in 2015, 1MG is a leading market player in the eHealth space and provides easy & affordable access services across medicines, health & wellness products, diagnostics & teleconsultation to customers.
1mg operates three diagnostics labs, and has its supplying arms in over 20,000 pin codes across the country and through its subsidiaries, it is also engaged in the business of B2B distribution of medicines & other healthcare products. Tata Digital Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Sons, acquired a majority stake in 1MG Technologies Ltd, an online pharmacy store.
3. Paytm Mall
Paytm Mall is an online shopping mall that provides every single product from accessories to cookware, everything! It is quick, convenient and trouble-free. You get the desired item delivered to your doorstep. Paytm Mall claims to have over 65 million products ranging from smartphones, tablets to laptops, sarees, kurtas & Kurtis to t-shirts, sneakers, sports shoes to sandals, earrings, watches to fitness bands, chimneys, cookware to gas stoves, dairy products, baby products to makeup kits and many more.
You get a variety of offers in the super value bazaar that sells daily food staples, ready to cook food, high on nutrition food, beauty, make-up, personal care, health, baby care products and many more. A user can shop by categories, availing of the available deals, cashback offers, seasonal sales, and many other options for gratifying their experience. Founded in 2010 by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm has brought the physical mall into an app!
4. Zomato
Zomato is a food delivery app that connects over 55 million users to restaurants in 24 countries across the world.
Founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008, Zomato started as a company that used to provide content to the restaurants to help their users make informed decisions before dining out. Zomato, now a food tech company connects customers to restaurants and helps them get their yummilicious food at their doorstep.
Since their inception in 2008, they have touched new heights, today they have a team of more than 5000 Zomans, that represents 32 nationalities, and helps millions of users decide their menus for dinners, lunch and breakfast to decide from.4 million listed restaurants or deliver over 28 million food orders per month.
Their growth has been backed by several investors and so far have received funding of over 600 million USD to date. In early March, Zomato announced to raise $750 million to $1 billion through an initial public offering (IPO) in the coming months.
5. Myntra
Myntra is India’s leading e-commerce company that aims to make fashion and lifestyle products accessible to all. It is a one-stop solution for all fashion hacks.
Myntra started as a customization company in 2007 to become a technology and fashion pioneer today. Myntra is a firm founded by Ashutosh Lawania, Mukesh Bansal, Vineet Saxena, Myntra is an Indian fashion e-commerce company based out of Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
Between the period of 2007 and 2010, used to sell personal items such as T-shirts, mugs, mousepads and others.
In 2011, Myntra started to sell fashion and lifestyle products and drifted away from personalisation. By 2012 Myntra had over 350 Indian and International brands on its platform. In 2014, Flipkart acquired Myntra in a deal valued at ₹2,000 crores (US$280 million). The deal got the proceedings from common shareholders Tiger Global and Accel Partners.
Though, Myntra functions and operates independently. Myntra is a standalone brand that operates independently under Flipkart ownership, serving “fashion-conscious” consumers. In January 2021, Myntra changed its logo, after a complaint was lodged against them, briefing that the logo shows a naked woman.
6. Lenskart
Lenskart is an Indian e-commerce portal for eyewear, based in Faridabad, India. As of September 2019, Lenskart was available in 70 cities of India. Lenskart manufacturing facility based in Delhi manufactures 300,000 glasses in a month. Lenskart has also a factory based in Zhengzhou (China) which manufactures about 50% of the production
By Dec 2019, the company stood at a valuation of $1.5 billion after Softbank invested around $275 million. Lenskart was founded in 202 by Peyush Bansal, a former Microsoft employee, along with Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi.
7. Zivame
Zivame is considered as one of its first kind of fashion brands started in 2011 by Richa Kar as a Lingerie Retailer featuring hundreds of styles that fits Indian Women.
After realising that Lingerie is an underserved category or one of the ignored clothing segments in women clothing in India, Zivame came into being. It has also entered into other categories like Activewear, Sleepwear and Shapewear which is witnessing 2X growth in the Lingerie category. It has already become the largest Lingerie Retail EBO network in India with about more than 30 retail stores.
8. Nykaa
Nykaa.com is one of India’s biggest online destinations for beauty & wellness products. With more than 2500+ brands, 5 lakh+ products and delivery all across India, it has become a one-stop solution for women looking for affordable cosmetic brands along with apparel. It was founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012.
In 2015, it expanded its reach and began selling Fashion products and in 2018 Nykaa Fashion came into existence.
Today, Nykaa has multiple E-commerce platforms ranging from websites to mobile apps and has 76 offline stores as well. It is a unicorn startup valued at ₹85 billion (US$1.2 billion) in 2020.
Nykaa also runs Nykaa Network – A community of millions of beauty and fashion enthusiasts across India along with Nykaa TV – its YouTube channel which engages an audience of over 1 million apart from its bi-monthly magazine called Beauty Book.
9. Limeroad
Limeroad is a startup based out of Gurugram founded by Suchi Mukherjee in 2012. The idea behind Limeroad was when Mukerjee was on maternity leave. Tiger Global Management, Lightspeed India Partners, Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed Venture Partners are its investors. This Gurugram based startup has raised $50 million in funding to date. It is India’s first boutique fashion marketplace for Women, Men and Kids.
It allows its customers to create their fashion scrapbook, create their style and even earn from it.
10. BYJU’S
Based In Bangalore, founded in 2015, Byju’s was started by Mr Byju Raveendran. Byju’s is backed by Marquee investors like Owl Ventures and Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Times Internet, etc. It raised a total of $2.7B in funding over 18 rounds. An, their latest funding was on Jun 21, 2021, from a Series F round, where IIFL invested in them.
BYJU’S is India’s largest ed-tech company and the creator of India’s most loved school learning app which offers highly adaptive, engaging and effective learning programs for students in LKG, UKG, classes 1 -12 (K-12) and competitive exams like IIT-JEE, NEET and IAS.
BYJU’S has a learning app BYJU’S – The Learning App, which was launched for classes 4-12 in 2015. Today, their app has more than 75 million registered students and 5.2 million students who have taken annual paid subscriptions. A student is reported to spend an average time of 71 minutes on their app from 1700+ cities, the app is said to re-establish the meaning of learning.
In early 2019, BYJU’S acquired Osmo, a Palo Alto-based maker of educational games to redefine the whole offline to the online learning experience. Besides this, BYJU’S acquired White Hat Jr in 2020, a Mumbai-based programming start-up that teaches children coding.
Disclaimer: Note that the provided top 10 E-commerce Indian Startups are not based on any ranking but the discretion of the writer.
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