Tech 30 Report, 2013 – Winners of TechSparks 2013 Finale!

TechSparks 2013, the fifth edition of the flagship event of YourStory.com was held on October 5, 2013, at ITC Gardenia in Bangalore. This was the finale of the five-city TechSparks held at Mumbai, NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune throughout the year which involved interactions with over 10,000 entrepreneurs.

The massive high-energy business conference was attended by over 1200 members from the startup ecosystem, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, startups and government representatives. TechSparks finale was presented by Sequoia Capital, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Verisign, GoDaddy and supported by media CNBC TV-18 and GigaOm among other esteemed partners.

YourStory.com received more than 1,000 high quality applications from startups across the country from various sectors. It was a tough call for the jury to review these amazing applications and short list the 30 startups which got an opportunity to have a one-on-one discussions with investors and also present to the audience from across the country.

The theme of the conference was ‘Building for enduring success’. Starting from the keynote by Shailendra Singh, MD Sequoia Capital, the conference was structured around this theme. How can Indian entrepreneurs build organizations that last for decades, impacting lives for ages?

Shailendra shared interesting stories of enduring success of companies such as Mu-Sigma which had taken the time and effort to build something that leaves a legacy. This was followed by sessions such as the fireside chat of Shradha Sharma with Binny Bansal, Co-founder Flipkart who shared the stupendous success journey of Flipkart; chat with Dr Anu Vaidyanathan, Professor & Ultraman Athlete about going the distance from an entrepreneur’s perspective; and the discussion about culture and building for the long term with Ambiga Dhiraj, Head of Fulfillment, Mu-Sigma. The day also had a panel of eminent participants such as Alpesh B. Patel, dealmaker at UK Trade and Investment and founding principal at Praefinium Partners, Sanjay Anandaram, venture partner, SeedFund, SaumilMajumdar, co-founder and MD, EduSports, SrikanthIyer, CEO, TutorVista and Pearson Education Services, Saju Pillai, co-founder, Idea Device and Shashank ND, co-founder, Practo, that deliberated on how to build a company from scratch.

Interestingly, some of the past winners of TechSparks shared their views on entrepreneurship with the participants and this year’s companies. It was also announced on the day that TechSparks 2011 winner Idea Device had raised a round of USD 4 million funding from Sequoia Capital.

The day saw the release of the long-awaited Tech30 list that has the winning 30 companies of 2013. Among the winning 30 startups, 15% were from Bangalore and 10% were from Mumbai region, making them the largest contributors to this list. Nearly 57% were from the Enterprise Software sector, followed by 33% in Big Data / Analytics; interestingly, only 20% were from Consumer Internet space. Nearly 54% of the winning startups were about a year old and about 67% of them were bootstrapped. The full list can be seen here.

Download the full report here.