A high-powered jury led by Infosys cofounder and chairman Nandan Nilekani picked the Gurgaon-based company as the Startup of the Year at a meeting in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The award recognised Lenskart’s success in building a fast-growing, large-scale, omnichannel consumer retail venture while creating an entirely new category, the jury noted. The 10-member jury chose eight winners from a shortlist of 41 contenders after deliberating for over 2.5 hours.
ETtechLenskart, founded by Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary, Ramneek Khurana and Neha Bansal in 2010, joins a list of eminent winners that have previously won the top prize. These include Zomato, Zerodha, Razorpay, OfBusiness, Delhivery, Oyo Hotels & Homes, Swiggy, Freshworks and Ola. Three of these—Zomato, Delhivery and Freshworks—are now listed companies, highlighting the strength of the businesses that have snagged the coveted award since its inception in 2015. Ola spun out Ola Electric as a separate entity and went public a month ago. Ola Electric was also one of the six nominees for the Startup of the Year category.
“The overarching theme of ETSA is that the so-called startup world is coming of age,” Nilekani said after the jury meeting. “We learnt a lot because many of these companies which we may not have heard of, some technology innovations we have not seen and even the quality of entrepreneurs… In all, this was a good learning experience for us.”
ET Startup Awards 2024: Playing on front foot in innovation game
Discover the stories of your interest
Mukul Arora, co-managing partner at Elevation Capital, was chosen winner of the coveted Midas Touch award for best investor because of his astute sense of timing on making exits from early bets. The jury zeroed in on Arora for the variety of his investments ranging from sectors such as food delivery and ecommerce to used-car sales and edtech. His investments include Meesho and Swiggy.
Strong revenue growth and profitability along with plans of eventually going public emerged as the key linking theme during the jury meeting. “I think the process was very well established and we asked everyone to nominate two candidates and sit down and have deeper discussions and those who know the companies well give good arguments and then go back and forth and decide the finalists,” said Nilekani.
The award for the Bootstrap Champ went to Boult—which sells earphones and smartwatches—for not having to access external funding in a capital-intensive category and yet scaling the business to be among the top players. The jury highlighted its ability to record steady growth in revenue and profit in a highly competitive sector while being bootstrapped.
The prize for Top Innovator went to Bengaluru-based BrainSight AI, which is building tools for neurosurgeons and psychiatrists to detect mental health symptoms faster and better, recognising its ability to tap into such a broad sector with growing importance for mental health awareness.
Geetansh Bamania—founder of furniture and electronics rental startup Rentomojo—was chosen as the winner in the Comeback Kid category while ClaimBuddy was adjudged the Best on Campus.
Hardika Shah, founder of Kinara Capital—a non-banking financial company (NBFC) that lends to small enterprises with a special focus on women business owners—was the winner in the Woman Ahead category. Haqdarshak, which helps people access the government’s social security services, won in the Social Enterprise category.
The 10-member jury, comprising top entrepreneurs, investors and corporate leaders from across the globe, chose the winners after several rounds of discussions followed by a secret ballot. Several of the contests proved to be intense.
Joining Nilekani at the milestone event were Mithun Sacheti, founder, CaratLane; Nyrika Holkar, executive director, Godrej & Boyce; Ritesh Arora, cofounder and CEO, Browserstack; Albinder Dhindsa, CEO, Blinkit; Sumer Juneja, managing partner and head, India & EMEA, SoftBank; Nikhil Kamath, cofounder, Zerodha; Nandita Sinha, CEO, Myntra; Prativa Mohapatra, MD, Adobe India; and cricketer Shubman Gill.
“It’s amazing to see the companies become so large and of such scale and now they are beginning to have an impact on the society and that’s great news,” Nilekani added. The initial pool of candidates for the 10th edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards was drawn up by a select group of around 200 founders, investors, and other stakeholders of the country’s startup ecosystem. ET’s editorial team worked with knowledge partner Tracxn, a research platform, to put together the final shortlist.
The Economic Times Startup Awards 2024 is presented by IDFC First Bank in partnership with Tracxn.