The night-less hard-work, a gazillion prototypes and countless battles for ideas all boils down to this: “Capital”. How can you grow and implement your idea if you don’t have enough resources to put it to life. FUND Conference helps newly formed startups achieve this. A platform was given to over a 100 companies to pitch their vision in 2 minutes, based on which the top 10 companies will be awarded a one-on-one 10 minute interview with the investors. No one wants to see their ideas die, and so, the enthusiasm in the hall was real.
Based on the number of votes, following is the list of the top 10 companies and what they really do. This list is accompanied by the 4 wild card entries hand picked by the investors.
1. Bizi:
A CRM software in the making. The market for SaaS based CRM tools is very hot and competitive. Entering a market with a large number of players require differentiation. A few of the differentiating factors I found with Bizi were the auto update of a contact’s information when changed any personal information. Another factor was that they are coming with a mobile version of it as well. It will be exciting to see how things will turn for Bizi.
Twitter: @Bizi_ID
2. PeepTrade:
A platform that gives you the access to the portfolio of an investor of your choice and help you improve yours. This is as simple as it sounds except it would not be free. However, if you are a successful investor, you can set up your own portfolio for others to access with your own set monthly price. A win-win for traders. However, this brings down the question of transparency. What if the successful investors don’t want to upload their portfolio? What if they are earning enough from their investment, that the incentive of PeepTrade is not big enough? Only time will tell if PeepTrade is the next big thing in the Stock Market.
Twitter: @peeptrade
3. Trak n Protect:
Solving the problem of inventory and optimizing retail operations for their client, Trak n Protect manufacture beacons that can be attached to an object to then manage its location. The strategy of the company is very impressive. Despite of number of applications, they are currently focused in the Hospitality industry where it is hard for hotels to maintain their inventory of beds and roll-away beds and Car Dealerships to track their inventory of automotive. They are also maintaining equivalent focus in R&D to simplify the beacon. It will be interesting to see the growth of this company in other markets.
Twitter: @TraknProtect
4. Wheedle:
In a nutshell, it is a combination of Groupon and Yelp. The consumers will share their intent on what they want to do and the merchants will discover this need and assist to cater it with discount coupons. The consumers will then share their experience and get more coupons from the merchants. With a falling market of Groupon, it will be a challenge for Wheedle be able to compete in this space.
Twitter: @wheedleapp
5. Reveel:
A spin off of Meet up with a more real-time environment. Someone who is out at an event will take a picture and post it to the app. People will then be notified about whats going around in the city when they check their app and can join the event. In short, this app helps people to improve their social life when they most need it. Skepticism rises about the growth when your 2 min pitch says “No advertisements in this app, we don’t like advertisements, F*** them” (with a middle finger raised high in a crowd of business people and investors) and you don’t see anyone in the room laughing. Good luck to the team.
Twitter: @getreveel
6. Evolve Basketball:
A personalized basketball training app for people who cannot afford a physical coach who charge over $20 per hour. The founder envisions to explore further sports if this hits the charts. It shall be interesting to see how mass market perceives this app.
Twitter: @evolvebballapp
7. Great Lakes Neuroscience:
www.greatlakesneuroscience.com
In a world where the first idea of starting a company is to create an app, this company on the other hand has come up with a different set of solution. As many of you will recall the Ice bucket challenge trending in 2014-2015, was for the cause to research for the treatment of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease. GL Neuroscience is preparing a drug, Tp5 for the cure of this disease and a few others, and they estimate it to be out within 2 years. If proven success, it could be the next big thing in the pharma industry.
Twitter: @GLNeuro
8.Get 20:
When you really want your legal questions answered right away, but then you have to go through the hassle of booking an appointment with an attorney, this is where Get 20 helps. The business model is extremely simple, select a topic and ask a question, and you will get a call from an attorney within 20 minutes. The service is reasonably paid at $19 considering the high rates of consultation with attorneys. The profile of the attorneys are also featured on the website for the credibility. I see them as a great help for people constantly stuck in legal aid. Next time when you are considering for a divorce, have a quick consultation.
Twitter: @justget20
9. SmartVizX:
Buying a house or an office space is a big decision. When you go out to look for one, you would go visit your realtor, and then you will spend multiple visits to different places on site only because of a personal satisfaction to check each and every corner in the place. These multiple visits costs time and money for both the agent and the buyer. SmartVizX, an Indian based startup, cuts down this cost and helps an efficient buying process. They offer a VR platform to real estate agents, where they can have an entire 3D virtual tour for their buyers. The tour is from corner to corner where you can even bend down to look under the table. Now even though it sounds simple, but the work done to accomplish this is very challenging. It would need a large scale expansion on the company side to sell to a market such as United States. Brilliant concept, but lot of effort required to make it a success.
Twitter: @SmartVizX
10. Kliink
A spin off of Groupon where one person puts a status on what they like, if someone else has the same interest, they both get a discount. Given the falling groupon markets, and the company still in a very early stage, it will be a long time till it sees a ray of light.
There were 4 other companies which were hand picked by the investors:
1. PeopleVine:
A platform to engage with your customers in real time. You import their data from the social media channels and export it to your CRM software via Peoplevine. The platform comes with a wide set of capabilities which are their differentiating factors in this market.
Twitter: @PeopleVine
2. Bellowwood
No website or social media channels found. The company builds beautiful bar-kitchens for upscale restaurants.
3. Smyc:
One of the most exciting platform to look out in the space of Digital Marketing. Smync offers a “Social Brand Advocacy”, which means that they help their clients build their Brand Value via Social Media. With a highly user friendly dashboard, and creating a pool of most engaged customers, Smync is one of its kind in building your Social brand.
Twitter: @gosmync
4. AdCat:
AdCat provides a very useful tool for advertisers/content marketers in the online space who struggle with resizing the images in the ad space of a given social network site. It is a very simple, easy to use, and a quick platform. It also has a nice blog focusing on how online advertisement market is rising.
Twitter: @AdCatIO
In the future posts, I will name 3 top companies, which I feel will make a major difference and which you should look out for.
SMarketinGuru 