Outside of the United States, India is the well-represented country in the newest Y Combinator accelerator class, with 32 startups hailing from Gurugram, Bengaluru, Delhi, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Chennai. For what it’s worth, the Y Combinator accelerator has sponsored more than 191 Indian startups, with nearly half — half! — Of those startups accepted in the last year. As we’ll see below, the startups in this batch plan to solve a wide range of tech difficulties, although they appear to be mostly focused on the financial services sector.
Consider ‘buy now, pay later’ sales, neobanks that focus on savings, and, of course, bitcoin betting. It’s a change from previous years, when the majority of India’s YC startups were in the B2B services space, but as we’ve seen, fintech is booming in terms of valuations and investor interest — despite a larger market downturn. Smatterings of firms from Accel Atoms, India’s pre-seed program for early-stage founders, as well as many, many IIT grads, are other noteworthy themes.
What they’re building: A sort of futures market where people can exchange money while wagering on whether or not a specific event will occur, such as the release of a movie or the election of the next president. Climate change, inflation, and omicron instances are among the more significant future catastrophes on which to wager. “Allowing people to trade on what they know instead of analyzing corporate financials or worrying about market conditions” is a key remark. On Y Combinator’s blog, the startup declared, “We’re making opinions investable.”
Quick Take from TC: Because of collectibles and NFTs, we know that alternative asset investing is gaining traction. TradeX is wagering that futures markets, which have been tried before but failed to attract enough investor interest to thrive, will work as well. It may have taken inspiration from Kalshi, a firm based in the United States that is attempting to encourage a new generation of traders to wager on a variety of outcomes (and that has itself raised money from Sequoia Capital, Henry Kravis, and Charles Schwab). According to Entrackr, TradeX has already raised $1 million in early funding.
What they’re working on: The Company is combining the concept of cash-back rewards with cryptocurrency. The startup noted on Y Combinator’s blog, “We enable users accrue free bitcoin as cash back and rewards every time they spend in India.” Our thoughts are as follows: GoSats claims to have an 85,000-member community, with 1,000 new users joining every day, after going through Accel’s pre-seed fundraising program, Atoms. GoSats might be a tempting acquisition target – or a platform that introduces a services business to crypto – by bypassing the exchange path and instead sitting on top of how people use and transact in both currencies and cash.
