The star-studded ceremony scheduled to be held on October 5 in Bengaluru will see the guest of honour, Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, engage with the present and past winners and the who’s who of the technology and startup world.
The journey of ETSA has mirrored the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem across various cycles.
This year’s elite jury consisted of previous ETSA winners—Blinkit’s Albinder Dhindsa, BrowserStack’s Ritesh Arora and Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath, highlighting how the awardees have scaled the heights over the years.
While Dhindsa won the Comeback Kid award for Grofers (now Blinkit) in 2018, BrowserStack and Zerodha were winners of the Bootstrap Champ award, in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The latter two went on to be nominated for the coveted Startup of the Year with Zerodha claiming the crown in 2020.
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Spotting ’em young
Electric two-wheeler maker Ather Energy, which won the Best on Campus award back in 2016, has not only become a large business that clocked over Rs 1,700 crore in revenue last fiscal, but has also filed for a Rs 3,100 crore initial public offering (IPO).
ETtechSimilarly, other startups such as Atomberg Technologies (winner of the Best on Campus category in 2019), and other winners and nominees in the Top Innovator category like GreyOrange (winner in 2015), Qure.AI (nominee in 2021) and Innovaccer (nominee in 2018) have racked up big funds showcasing how they have grown in size.
According to Tracxn, GreyOrange, a provider of SaaS-enabled warehouse automation tools, has raised $545 million, while Qure.AI, which provides artificial intelligence-based decision support tools for diagnostic images, has raised $123 million–the latest round being a $65 million fundraise led by Lightspeed.
Healthcare enterprise software firm Innovaccer has raised a total of $379 million and was last valued at $3.2 billion.
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This underscores the ability of ETSA to recognise winners in their early stages. Spacetech startup Agnikul Cosmos–which bagged the Top Innovator award in 2020 not only for innovation but also for its potential to further push India’s self-reliance in space–created history in May with the world’s first 3D printed rocket engine launch.
Similarly, Bellatrix Aerospace, the Best on Campus winner in 2020, is expected to begin commercialising its proprietary propulsion systems. The startup has already achieved a significant milestone with the launch of its propulsion systems on board the national space agency’s launch vehicle on January 1.
Maturing ecosystem
With the boom in public markets that is also seeing multiple new-age companies launch their IPOs, the focus has increased on the ability of larger startups to provide exits to their investors through this route, testifying to the maturity of the Indian startup ecosystem.
The most prized Startup of the Year category–which recognises a venture having the potential to become a blue-chip corporation–has seen three of the past winners become publicly traded companies. These are Freshworks (winner in 2016), Delhivery (winner in 2019), and Zomato (winner in 2021).
While Delhivery is valued at nearly $4 billion, Zomato–the largest food delivery and quick commerce company–currently has a market capitalisation of over $30 billion.
A fourth, Swiggy, Startup of the Year in 2017, is expected to go public soon.
Ola Electric, which listed on the bourses earlier this year, was spawned out of mobility startup Ola, which was awarded Startup of the Year in 2015. Ola Electric is currently the largest electric two-wheeler company in the country
Winner of the Comeback Kid category in 2016–online travel platform Ixigo, which had stood out for the grit and resilience of its founders over a period of 15 years–also went public this year.