Here're Top 10 Innovative Indian Companies by Fast Company

Last week, Fast Company, a monthly American business magazine published its list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2019. JioSaavn along with other Indian companies such as Dream 11, Chai Point, Ola have made it to the list.

The list honours the businesses making the most profound impact on both industry and culture, showcasing a variety of ways to thrive in today’s volatile world. Half of the companies on this year’s MIC 50 list are appearing for the first time.

#1 Jio Saavn

Jio Saavn is a music streaming app formed post merger of Jio Music and Saavn and offers more than 40 million tracks in 15 regional languages for 38 million monthly active users, has been ranked 1st in the list of top 10 Indian firms in Most Innovative Company on a country basis.

#2 OYO

Gurgaon-headquartered budget accommodation firm OYO, which recently got a Unicorn stats, has got the 2nd position in the list. Fast Company chose OYO for its coveted place for expanding its hotel options to appeal to business travellers. Oyo, which resembles US-based Airbnb, is a network of properties that include free Wi-Fi, free breakfast, white linens, and other hotel features for a fraction of the cost of a normal hotel.

#3 Saathi

Amedabad-based Saathi Eco Innovations  [Feature Story] makes biodegradable sanitary napkins for rural women in India and has coveted the 3rd position for the most innovative companies from India.

Last year, in Cleantech Open Global Forum held in Los Angeles Saathi was announced winner for developing a technology to make fully biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads made from waste banana tree fibre.

#4 RupeeCoin

Hyderabad-based RupeeCoin, the first entry in the list has secured the 4th position. It is a blockchain solution startup which allows people without a bank account or a credit card to engage in the digital economy.

#5 OLA

Bangalore-based cab-hailing firm Ola, which recently got massive $900 million investment from Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, grabbed the 5th rank. It has expanded to a network of more than 1 million vehicles--cabs and autorickshaws--across 169 cities.

#6 Chakr Innovation

Delhi-based Chakr Innovation has secured the 6th position. The innovative startup has developed the world’s first retro-fit emission control device for diesel generators. It uses technology to reduce emissions from diesel generators and bring down air pollution levels.

#7 ShareChat

Bangalore-based ShareChat is a social networking and regional content platform for the fast growing Internet users in India. With ShareChat one can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images from India in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam.

#8 Swiggy

The food delivery company that recently raised $1 billion infunding has got 8th position for excellent food delivery service.

#9 Chai Point

A Harvard alumnus founded company, ChaiPoint made the entry for the first time and received the 9th position. It is India’s largest organized Chai retailer and caters to corporations with a cloud-based beverage service called BoxC, an IoT-enabled automatic tea dispenser.

#10 Dream11

Mumbai-based Dream11 made its entry for the first time and got the 10th rank. It offers Indian sports fans a platform to showcase their sports knowledge. Fans can create their own team of real-life players from upcoming matches, score points based on their on-field performance and compete with other fans.

Recently, International Council of Cricket (ICC) has signed a deal with Dream11, India's biggest sports gaming platform, to make it its "Official Fantasy Game Partner" till 2023.

Top Featured Image by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash.com

Meet 3 Indian Startups Which Won Top Awards At Global Cleantech Innovation Award

Clean technology innovators and entrepreneurs from India, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey were honoured on 30th January at the 2018 GCIP Global Week and Cleantech Open Global Forum held in Los Angeles and it feels proud to say that this year's Global Cleantech Innovation Award has gone to an Ahmedabad-based startup we featured in 2016 -- Saathi Eco Innovations. Saathi was announced winner for developing a technology to make fully biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads made from waste banana tree fibre.

Besides, two other Indian startups that also won top awards are - Kerala-based NavAlt Solar & Electric Boats (NSEB) and Aspartika Biotech from Bengaluru. NSEB won in the Global Category Award for Renewable Energy while Aspartika won won the Global Category Award for Waste Beneficiation.

GCIP is a joint initiative of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and is conducted in partnership with the Cleantech Open (CTO), a Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator programme. Each startup involved receives training, mentoring, and promotion, and is put in contact with potential investors, customers and partners through participation in the programme. Each national GCIP receives $1M to $2M in funding from the GEF, which is matched by $2M to $6M+ in co-financing (including in-kind) from in-country public and private-sector partners.

Here are the detailed elaboration of what these startups are doing exactly:

Saathi Eco -

Saathi has developed a technology to produce 100% biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads made from waste banana tree fiber. No water is used in the production process, and use of the pads is projected to reduce 1,011 MT of CO2 emissions and 1,323 MT of plastic waste annually. Saathi Eco Innovations’ low-cost decomposable sanitary pads, and hygiene and health awareness campaigns, also contribute to women’s empowerment in India, where only one in six women have access to sanitary pads, constraining their ability to work and attend school during menstruation. For more on Saathi ECo, read our this featured article on same.

NavAlt Solar & Electric Boats -

Founded by an IIT-Madras graduate Sandith Thandasherry, Cochin, Kerala-based NavAlt Solar & Electric Boats is building affordable solar ferries. The 20-metre-long solar ferries are India’s first solar ferries, and also the world’s most cost-effective ones with seating capacity of 75 passengers. The photovoltaic modules on the roof of these ferries will be sufficient to charge the batteries for 6-hour operation everyday. During the cloudy days of Kerala, the ferry service will still be operational with secondary charging available at the dock.

While a typical solar ferry costs rupees Rs 7.5 crore when built in Europe, the cost has been brought down to Rs 3 crore when built in India. A well-designed conventional boat which use up about Rs 20-lakh worth of fuel every year costs around Rs 2 crore in India while the solar ferries use no fuel at all. The operating cost of solar ferry is 40 units of electricity or 6.2 US$ per day which amounts to 185 US$ per month and 2,150 US$ per year.

Notably, NavAlt is a joint venture firm between Navgathi Marine Design and Constructions (Cochin, Kerala), Alternative Energies (France) and EVE Systems (France).

Aspartika Biotech -

Founded in 2015, Aspartika is a biotechnology startup incubated at the Technology Incubation Center, Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bangalore. The startup focuses on the development of products from waste by utilizing the Agro-waste in the vicinity of Karnataka. The products developed by the company is silkworm pupa oil enriched with omega-3 fatty acid and poultry feed from silk industry waste. The startup started its journey in 2013 August, with a grant of Rs.49.46 Lakh with a Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India - Biotechnology Ignition Grant and has also received support from Government of Karnataka under the Idea2PoC scheme.

Related Reading - 10 Promising Cleantech Startups In India Right Now

Ahmedabad Startup Giving India's Rural Women Access To Affordable Sanitary Pads Made of Banana Fiber

While most of us aspire to make a difference in others life, only a few are able to achieve this feat. Fortunately, a group of MIT graduates were able to realise their this dream when they founded Saathi to provide affordable and bio-degradable sanitary protection to women in rural India from waste Banana tree fiber.

Recent data has revealed that even today 88 percent of menstruating women in India are being forced to make use of homemade alternatives such as newspapers, rags, ash and wood shavings etc. due to lack of access to modern sanitary products and menstrual awareness.

According to Saathi, each year, many Indian rural girls and women end up missing out up to 50 days of school and work respectively due to their monthly menstrual cycles. In fact, many of them are even forced to drop out of school entirely once they attain puberty. Apparently, not only are the women suffering from the lack of menstrual awareness, even the nation ends up losing close to US $15 billion in productivity when working women are forced to stay at home during their periods.

Based out of Ahmedabad, Saathi Pads was conceived by four MIT graduates Amrita Saigal, Grace Kane, Zachary Rose and Kristin Kagetsu as a part of one of their college projects. The inspiration behind the name was that they wanted the Saathi pads to act as a companion to women who use them during their duration of their periods.

Saathi, which means ‘companion’ in the Hindi language, has won laurels such as the MIT DLab Scale-Ups Fellows for 2015 and the 3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge Social Track winner title, but the real journey for the startup began in 2014 when it won the Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition in the Social Enterprise Track. This particular win forced the founding team to push themselves hard and bring the concept to life, and help women. However, the team had to redesign the alpha prototype manufacturing model that they had developed at MIT.

The startup is aiming not only to provide 100% biodegradable pads to women all over India, but also produce income-generating opportunities for groups of women and for farmers.



Although the Saathi Pads are fully biodegradable in a period of six-months, the team is still continuously working for ways to up-cycle the product. One of the options in the pipeline includes using it as a supplemental product with cow dung for bio-gas creation, and then using it in bio-loos.

The MIT graduates initially did face a few problems coming up with a core material for the biodegradable pads, but they finally landed up on using banana fiber as firstly, it is easily available in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and secondly, since the bark of a banana tree is almost entirely waste, they thought this could be a great use of the material and additionally a great way to provide additional income opportunity to farmers.

The startup is currently focusing on the launch of its #onemillionpads program, under which they aim to distribute a million pads to women in the states of Jharkhand and Rajasthan. They have even joined hands with Ekal Vidayalaya, a Delhi-based NGO to help them in educating rural women on menstrual health for the duration of the program.



All above images via - facebook.com/SaathiPads

Ahmedabad Startup Giving India's Rural Women Access To Affordable Sanitary Pads Made of Banana Fiber

While most of us aspire to make a difference in others life, only a few are able to achieve this feat. Fortunately, a group of MIT graduates were able to realise their this dream when they founded Saathi to provide affordable and bio-degradable sanitary protection to women in rural India from waste Banana tree fiber.

Recent data has revealed that even today 88 percent of menstruating women in India are being forced to make use of homemade alternatives such as newspapers, rags, ash and wood shavings etc. due to lack of access to modern sanitary products and menstrual awareness.

According to Saathi, each year, many Indian rural girls and women end up missing out up to 50 days of school and work respectively due to their monthly menstrual cycles. In fact, many of them are even forced to drop out of school entirely once they attain puberty. Apparently, not only are the women suffering from the lack of menstrual awareness, even the nation ends up losing close to US $15 billion in productivity when working women are forced to stay at home during their periods.

Based out of Ahmedabad, Saathi Pads was conceived by four MIT graduates Amrita Saigal, Grace Kane, Zachary Rose and Kristin Kagetsu as a part of one of their college projects. The inspiration behind the name was that they wanted the Saathi pads to act as a companion to women who use them during their duration of their periods.

Saathi, which means ‘companion’ in the Hindi language, has won laurels such as the MIT DLab Scale-Ups Fellows for 2015 and the 3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge Social Track winner title, but the real journey for the startup began in 2014 when it won the Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition in the Social Enterprise Track. This particular win forced the founding team to push themselves hard and bring the concept to life, and help women. However, the team had to redesign the alpha prototype manufacturing model that they had developed at MIT.

The startup is aiming not only to provide 100% biodegradable pads to women all over India, but also produce income-generating opportunities for groups of women and for farmers.



Although the Saathi Pads are fully biodegradable in a period of six-months, the team is still continuously working for ways to up-cycle the product. One of the options in the pipeline includes using it as a supplemental product with cow dung for bio-gas creation, and then using it in bio-loos.

The MIT graduates initially did face a few problems coming up with a core material for the biodegradable pads, but they finally landed up on using banana fiber as firstly, it is easily available in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and secondly, since the bark of a banana tree is almost entirely waste, they thought this could be a great use of the material and additionally a great way to provide additional income opportunity to farmers.

The startup is currently focusing on the launch of its #onemillionpads program, under which they aim to distribute a million pads to women in the states of Jharkhand and Rajasthan. They have even joined hands with Ekal Vidayalaya, a Delhi-based NGO to help them in educating rural women on menstrual health for the duration of the program.



All above images via - facebook.com/SaathiPads