The Best Indian Startups Revolutionizing the Market

TL;DR: India's startup ecosystem has become the world's third-largest, snapping back from a funding winter, with over 159,000 recognized players. Key sectors like AI, Fintech, and Quick Commerce are driving growth, with 51% of new startups in India launching outside major metros.

Introduction

According to Bloomberg, when Krutrim raised $50 million and hit a $1 billion valuation in 2024, it became India's first AI unicorn and the third-fastest company in the nation's history to do so. The message landed across the ecosystem. After a hard reset, Indian startups were building for durability, aiming for profits, and finding fresh growth outside the old hotspots, according to the Bain India Venture Capital Report 2024.

According to Bain & Company, this rebound was not driven by risky mega-deals, but by a 45% jump in the number of transactions, mostly in early and mid-stages. This signals a return to fundamental investing and sets a new, sustainable baseline for the ecosystem. This guide spotlights the best Indian startups redefining categories, explains where the momentum sits, and offers a practical path to enter the arena.

Become a Business Analysis Expert In Just 6 Months

With Our Best-in-class Post Graduate ProgramExplore Now

What Are the Top Sectors Driving Indian Startup Growth?

The 2024-2025 landscape is defined by a few dominant forces. While e-commerce and fintech remain pillars, their new high-growth offshoots, along with enterprise tech, are attracting the most capital and talent.

• AI and DeepTech: This is the breakout sector. Funding for DeepTech grew 78% in 2024 to reach $1.6 billion. Artificial Intelligence is the main driver, with successful AI startups in India like Krutrim and Sarvam AI building foundational models trained on Indian languages. (Source: The Economic Times | Times Of India)
• Fintech: This sector remains the backbone of India's digital economy. Proving its resilience, the Indian fintech sector's revenue surged 56% to $25 billion in 2023. According to BCG estimates, India’s fintech sector is on its way to becoming a $190 billion industry by 2030, powered by growth in payments, lending, and wealth management.
• Quick Commerce: According to reports, in Q2 of 2024, Blinkit recorded nearly 93 million orders while Instamart delivered 70 million orders. Grocery, convenience, and pharmacy delivery continue to lead behavior change in urban India. Direct‑to‑consumer brands also scaled through marketplaces and social commerce plays.
• Enterprise Tech (SaaS): Indian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies are now global leaders. According to DD News, funding for this sector rose to $1.7 billion in 2024. These companies are building world-class products for global businesses, with many now listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

Did You Know?

India is now the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, with over 159,000 recognised startups. (Source: PIB)

Best Startups in India to Watch

Here is a list of the top startups in India, categorized by their industry. These companies are a mix of established unicorns and high-growth ventures that are shaping the market.

E-commerce & Quick Commerce

1. Flipkart

• Flipkart is one of India's original e-commerce success stories and a direct competitor to Amazon. It operates a massive online marketplace for everything from electronics and fashion to groceries. Acquired by Walmart, it continues to innovate with features like Flippi, an AI shopping assistant. (Source: The Economic Times)
• Founders: Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal

2. Zepto

• Zepto’s dark‑store network made 10‑ to 20‑minute groceries common in top cities. The company tightened inventory, routing, and last‑mile execution to cut waste while holding speed. Its 2024 funding streak and 2025 valuation jump turned quick commerce into the year’s loudest growth story. (Source: Business Today)
• Founders: Aadit Palicha, Kaivalya Vohra

3. Swiggy

• Swiggy is a dominant player in food delivery and quick commerce. Beyond its restaurant marketplace, its "Instamart" service competes directly with Zepto in the grocery space. The company held the largest global tech IPO of 2024, signaling a new level of maturity. (Source: News18)
• Founders: Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini

4. Zomato

• A major competitor to Swiggy, Zomato is a food delivery and restaurant discovery platform. It was one of the first major startups in India to go public, setting a trend for others. Zomato also operates in the quick-commerce space through its acquisition of Blinkit.
• Founders: Deepinder Goyal, Pankaj Chaddah

5. Meesho

• Meesho built a powerful social commerce platform, enabling individuals (especially women in Tier II and Tier III cities) to become resellers by selling products through social networks like WhatsApp. It focuses on bringing the next billion users online with unbranded, affordable goods.
• Founders: Vidit Aatrey, Sanjeev Barnwal

6. Lenskart

• Lenskart has revolutionized the Indian eyewear market by combining online sales with a vast network of physical stores. It uses technology like 3D virtual try-ons and in-store AI-powered eye exams. It recently announced "B by Lenskart," AI-enabled smartglasses launching in December 2025.
• Founders: Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary

7. Nykaa

• Founded by Falguni Nayar, Nykaa is India's largest beauty and lifestyle e-commerce platform. It built its brand by offering a curated selection of domestic and international beauty products. Its successful 2021 IPO made its founder one of India's wealthiest self-made women.
• Founder: Falguni Nayar

8. BigBasket

• One of the original online grocers, BigBasket operates a comprehensive supermarket platform offering everything from fresh produce to staples. Now owned by the Tata Group, it remains a leader in the scheduled (non-instant) grocery delivery market.
• Founders: Hari Menon, V.S. Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari, V.S. Ramesh

9. boAt

• boAt is India's largest wearable and audio accessories brand, capturing a massive share of the market for earphones, headphones, and smartwatches. It succeeded by offering stylish, affordable, and durable products tailored for the Indian consumer.
• Founders: Aman Gupta, Sameer Mehta

10. Udaan

• Udaan is a B2B e-commerce platform designed for small and medium businesses in India. It connects retailers directly with manufacturers and wholesalers, streamlining payments, logistics, and credit for small "kirana" stores and merchants.
• Founders: Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, Vaibhav Gupta

Become The Highest-Paid Business Analysis Expert

With Business Analyst Master's ProgramExplore Now

Fintech

11. Paytm

• A pioneer in India's digital payments revolution, Paytm started as a mobile wallet and expanded into a full-stack financial services company. It offers payments, banking, lending, and investment services to millions of users and merchants.
• Founder: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

12. PhonePe

• PhonePe is India's leading digital payments app, dominating the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) market. Owned by Walmart, it provides a vast ecosystem for payments, recharges, financial services, and even its own "Indus Appstore" to challenge Google.
• Founders: Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, Burzin Engineer

13. Razorpay

• Razorpay is India's leading payments infrastructure company, providing a suite of tools for businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments. It recently launched its own AI-powered tools, RAY and FraudShield, and is building UPI payments directly into ChatGPT. (Source: Razorpay)
• Founders: Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar

14. CRED

• CRED is a members-only app for high-credit-score individuals. It rewards users for paying their credit card bills on time. The platform has since expanded into a broader fintech ecosystem, offering lending, e-commerce, and other financial products to its high-value user base.
• Founder: Kunal Shah

15. Groww

• Groww is one of India's most popular investment platforms, making it simple for retail investors to buy stocks, mutual funds, and gold. It has grown rapidly, especially among younger, first-time investors, by focusing on a clean, user-friendly interface.
• Founders: Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, Ishan Bansal

16. Zerodha

• Zerodha is India's largest stock broker, credited with disrupting the brokerage industry with its zero-fee equity investing model. It is famously bootstrapped (never took venture capital) and is highly profitable, focusing on building robust trading technology. (Source: YourStory)
• Founders: Nithin Kamath, Nikhil Kamath

17. BharatPe

• BharatPe built its business by providing a single, interoperable QR code for merchants to accept payments from all major UPI apps for free. It leverages its merchant relationships to offer small business loans and other financial services.
• Founders: Ashneer Grover, Shashvat Nakrani

18. Policybazaar

• Policybazaar is India's largest online insurance aggregator. Its platform allows users to compare and buy insurance policies (health, auto, life, and more) from various providers, bringing transparency to a traditionally complex industry.
• Founders: Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal, Avaneesh Nirjar

Become an AI-powered Business Analyst

With Purdue University's Business Analysis ProgramExplore Now

Enterprise Tech (SaaS)

19. Freshworks

• Freshworks is one of the most successful startups in India in the B2B SaaS space. It provides a suite of business software for customer support (Freshdesk), sales (Freshsales), and IT service management. In 2021, it became the first Indian SaaS company to list on the Nasdaq. (Source: YourStory)
• Founders: Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy

20. Zoho

• Like Zerodha, Zoho is a famously bootstrapped and highly profitable software giant. It offers a massive suite of over 55 cloud-based applications, from CRM and email to accounting and HR, competing directly with Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. (Source: Forbes)
• Founders: Sridhar Vembu, Tony Thomas

21. Postman

• Postman is an API (Application Programming Interface) platform used by over 20 million developers worldwide to design, build, and test their APIs. It has become an essential tool for the global software development community and is one of India's most valuable SaaS unicorns.
• Founders: Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, Abhijit Kane

22. InMobi

• InMobi is a global mobile advertising and ad-tech platform. It helps brands deliver personalized advertising to mobile users. InMobi was India's very first startup to achieve unicorn status back in 2011. (Source: Bloomberg)
• Founders: Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta, Abhay Singhal

23. Mu Sigma

• One of India's original data analytics pioneers, Mu Sigma is a pure-play data science and decision sciences firm. It helps large corporations use data to make better business decisions, working with over 140 Fortune 500 companies.
• Founder: Dhiraj Rajaram

24. Icertis

• Icertis is a global leader in cloud-based contract lifecycle management (CLM). Its AI-powered platform helps large enterprises manage their contracts, ensuring compliance and surfacing risks and opportunities hidden within legal agreements.
• Founders: Samir Bodas, Monish Darda

25. Druva

• Druva provides a 100% SaaS platform for data protection and management. It offers cloud-native backup, disaster recovery, and data governance services, helping businesses protect their data across data centers, cloud applications, and endpoint devices.
• Founders: Jaspreet Singh, Milind Borate, Ramani Kothandaraman

Pave The Pathway to Business Analytics Excellence

With Purdue University's Post Graduate ProgramExplore Program

AI & DeepTech

26. Krutrim

• As mentioned, Krutrim became India's first AI unicorn in January 2024. Founded by Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal, it is building India's own "full-stack" AI, including foundational Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on 22 Indian languages and custom AI chips.
• Founder: Bhavish Aggarwal

27. Sarvam AI

• Sarvam AI is another leading generative AI startup focused on building Indic-language LLMs. Backed by the government's IndiaAI Mission, it is developing models like "Sarvam-1" trained on 2 trillion tokens to serve the Indian market.
• Founders: Vivek Raghavan, Pratyush Kumar

28. Qure.ai

• Qure.ai is a prominent medical imaging AI company. Its algorithms read X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs to detect diseases like tuberculosis, lung cancer, and strokes, helping doctors make faster, more accurate diagnoses, especially in under-resourced areas.
• Founders: Prashant Warier, Pooja Rao

29. Yellow.ai

• Yellow.ai is one of India's leading conversational AI platforms. It helps enterprises like Fortune 500 companies automate customer and employee support with powerful AI chatbots and voice bots that can handle up to 80% of queries. (Source: yellow.ai)
• Founders: Raghu Ravinutala, Rashid Khan, Jaya Kishore Reddy

30. Fractal

• Fractal is a long-standing leader in the AI and analytics space, serving Fortune 500 clients. It provides AI-powered solutions for marketing, supply chain, and decision-making. It achieved unicorn status and is reportedly weighing an IPO. (Source: Bloomberg)
• Founders: Srikanth Velamakanni, Pranay Agrawal

Health Tech

31. PharmEasy

• PharmEasy is a leading digital healthcare platform. It started as an online pharmacy delivering medicines and has expanded into diagnostics (offering at-home blood tests) and tele-consultations, creating an integrated health ecosystem.
• Founders: Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah

32. Tata 1mg

• Previously 1mg, this company was acquired by the Tata Group. It is a major competitor to PharmEasy, offering online medicine delivery, lab testing services, and doctor consultations, all accessible through its app.
• Founders: Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, Vikas Chauhan

33. Cult.fit (Curefit)

• Cult.fit is a holistic health and fitness platform. It began by building a large chain of tech-enabled, group-fitness gyms ("Cult"). It has since expanded to include online fitness classes, meditation (Mindfit), and healthy meal delivery (Eatfit).
• Founders: Mukesh Bansal, Ankit Nagori

34. Pristyn Care

• Pristyn Care is a health-tech startup focused on elective surgeries. It uses an asset-light model, partnering with hospitals and clinics to provide a seamless "end-to-end" experience for patients, from diagnosis and insurance to the surgery and post-operative care.
• Founders: Harsimarbir Singh, Vaibhav Kapoor, Garima Sawhney

35. Practo

• Practo lets patients find doctors, book appointments, and manage digital records. It enables teleconsults and helps clinics with workflow software. The company pushed early on data security and consent in healthcare settings.
• Founders: Shashank ND, Abhinav Lal

Logistics & Mobility

36. Delhivery

• Delhivery is a leading logistics and supply chain services company in India. It provides a full suite of services, including last-mile delivery, freight, and warehousing, for e-commerce companies, SMEs, and large enterprises. It is now a publicly listed company.
• Founders: Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan, Kapil Bharati

37. Ola

• Ola is India's largest ride-hailing company, competing directly with Uber. It has expanded beyond cabs to include auto-rickshaws, bikes, and e-scooters on its platform, serving as a comprehensive mobility solution for millions.
• Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati

38. Rapido

• Rapido is India's largest bike-taxi platform. It focuses on making last-mile connectivity fast and affordable by allowing users to book rides on two-wheelers, navigating through congested city traffic much faster than a traditional car.
• Founders: Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli, SR Rishikesh

39. Porter

• Porter is a tech-based, on-demand logistics platform for intra-city deliveries. It is often called the "Uber for trucks," allowing users and businesses to book mini-trucks, tempos, and bikes to move goods within a city.
• Founders: Pranav Goel, Uttam Digga, Vikas Choudhary

40. Shadowfax

• Shadowfax is a leading on-demand, last-mile logistics network. It provides delivery services to businesses across various sectors, including food, e-commerce, and groceries, using a flexible network of delivery partners.
• Founders: Abhishek Bansal, Vaibhav Khandelwal

Stand Out With a Business Analyst Certificate

AI-Powered Business AnalystExplore Program

Clean Tech

41. Ather Energy

• Ather Energy is a high-performance electric scooter manufacturer. It has built a reputation for its premium, smart scooters (like the 450X) and its own fast-charging network, "Ather Grid," setting a high bar for the Indian EV market.
• Founders: Tarun Mehta, Swapnil Jain

42. Ola Electric

• As a separate entity from the ride-hailing business, Ola Electric has become India's third top-selling electric scooter manufacturer. It built a massive "Futurefactory" and has ambitious plans to dominate the two-wheeler EV market and expand into electric cars. (Source: Bloomberg)
• Founder: Bhavish Aggarwal

Did You Know?

Over 51% of all recognized startups in India now originate from Tier II and Tier III cities, reflecting a major shift in the country’s innovation map. This decentralization shows how smaller cities like Coimbatore, Indore, and Jaipur are emerging as powerful startup hubs beyond traditional metros. (Source: Press Information Bureau)

Which Cities Are Emerging as Startup Hubs in India?

The startup map in India has changed. The stereotype of Bengaluru and Gurugram as the only hubs is outdated now. Coimbatore, Jaipur, Indore, Lucknow, and Bhubaneswar are now part of the regular circuit for founders and investors.

This decentralization is creating lakhs of jobs outside the traditional metros. For the first time, over 51% of all government-recognized startups are from Tier II and Tier III cities. Even funding is shifting. In 2024, Mumbai overtook Bengaluru as the most-funded city, largely thanks to Zepto's massive rounds. The message is simple: If a startup solves a real local need and shows unit discipline, capital will find it.

Which Startups in India Are Hiring Freshers Now?

This new landscape creates a complex picture for professionals. Startup layoffs fell 67% year over year in the first half of 2025, and hiring surged 35-40%. Meanwhile, a new wave of AI‑driven restructuring eliminated some operational roles while raising demand for new roles in AI, data science, and product management.

This has created a "salary schism": According to the Times of India, median pay for engineering and data roles fell by about 40% over the past year, while PWC states that professionals with AI skills are seeing increases of up to 56%. That is a clear signal to re‑skill for higher‑value work. Aspiring professionals should focus on AI-Powered Business Analyst and Post Graduate Program in Business Analysis and Generative AI to stay competitive.

How to Launch a Startup in India

This boom inspires many to ask, "How to register and launch a startup in India?" The journey from idea to enterprise involves several key steps. Many founders hire a business consultant to help navigate this stage.

1. Validate Your Idea: Research your market and ensure your product or service solves a real problem
2. Create a Solid Business Plan: Outline your mission, vision, financial projections, and go-to-market strategy. A good business plan is essential for securing funding
3. Choose a Legal Structure: Decide whether your company will be a Private Limited Company, a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), or a One-Person Company (OPC)
4. Register Your Company: Complete DIN and DSC, register the company with the MCA, and set up GST if relevant. Pick one finance stack and one HR stack to avoid tool sprawl in month one
5. Raise at the Right Time: Start with grants, revenue, or angels who know your domain. When you go to institutions, a good business proposal helps

What Government Schemes Support Startups in India?

The government actively supports this journey. Startup India recognition brings tax breaks, easier compliance, and access to capital under the Fund of Funds. Founders who qualify should apply early to reduce friction during growth.

IndiaAI Mission has earmarked ₹10,300 crore over five years and is pairing startups with subsidized access to high‑performance compute. This matters because reliable GPU time is the scarcest input in AI today. The mission’s first cohorts include model builders focused on Indic languages and enterprise tools.

You're Steps Away from a Business Analyst Job

Business Analyst Master's ProgramEnroll Now

Conclusion

The Indian startup ecosystem is quickly maturing. It is a decentralized, resilient, and increasingly mature market setting global trends in fintech, AI, and quick commerce. The best founders are writing clear business plans, setting honest targets, and building for India and the world. If you want a seat at that table, invest in skills that compound.

Whether you aim to join one of the top startups in India or build your own, the future belongs to those who can navigate this dynamic new landscape. Effective leadership, strong general management, and AI-powered business analysis skills are essential for scaling these new ventures.