How marketplace-based startups are evolving in India and the first month winners Bizongo and TrueBil

Looking at the sharp rise in the number of marketplace-based startups springing up in India, we announced ‘The Marketplace 2015’ campaign in association with Accel Partners to identify and showcase the next BIG startup success story emerging from India leveraging the marketplace model.

The campaign gained good traction and we received over 150 applications in the first month. Here are a few insights from the application process –

• Over quarter of the applications came from the Startup Capital, Bengaluru, followed by Delhi/NCR and Mumbai.

• 85% of the applicants are adopting a mobile strategy to scale their business and the remaining 15% are yet to decide on an app strategy or are planning to leverage responsive website instead of an app.
• Over 80% of applicants are building for Android, over 43% are building for iOS and about 18% building for Windows.

• Close to 90% of the applicants are targeting for the Indian market and about 10% are trying to build a global marketplace.

• 79% of the applicants are bootstrapped, about 21% had raised an angel or seed round of funding, including one which had successfully crowdfunded its venture.

Read More - Rise of the Indian marketplaces, and what the future holds

The five finalists of ‘The Marketplace 2015’ campaign for the month of June are –

• Bizongo – a B2B marketplace catering to the massive chemicals and plastics industry verticals.
• releaseMyAd – an online marketplace for mass-media advertising, including newspapers, radio stations, multiplex chains, magazines, and websites across 110 cities in India.
• RentSher – a peer-to-peer online rental marketplace that provides end-to-end services, including listing, discovery, online booking, payment, and home delivery.
• TrueBil – a managed marketplace for pre-owned cars helping buyers and sellers make informed decisions.
• A mobile social shopping platform for C2C commerce who are still in stealth mode

After a one-on-one discussion with each of the finalist - Bizongo and Truebil were adjudged as the winners for this month. Stay tuned for detailed stories on the winners and finalists.

As part of the jury, Anand Daniel, Partner, Accel Partners India shared - "Excited to see more than 150 high quality startups apply for 'The Marketplace'. We had the pleasure of meeting a handful of them and have picked the best couple for this month. We picked the winners based on the quality of the team, the scalability of the idea and the uniqueness of their implementation. Look forward to meeting more such companies in the coming two months."

In case you are a marketplace startup, then apply now for the July edition of ‘The Marketplace 2015’ contest here.