/
•
•

Editor's note: So far, 2019 has been a standout year for women-led startups in India. Of the top 150 startups by funding in the first six months of the year, an unprecedented 17.3% had women as founders or co-founders. To put that in perspective, the same figure was about 10% for the full year of 2018, and had largely remained stagnant earlier, at 12% in 2016 and 2017, according to data from market research firm Venture Intelligence. “We can see more and more women get funded around us,” says Ashwini Asokan, founder and chief executive officer at the artificial intelligence company Mad Street Den and its automation platform Vue.ai. (Vue.ai in April raised $17 million in its Series B round of funding.) Globally, too, women-founded and co-founded startups have been gaining ground, with 2018 seeing an all-time high of $40 billion going into startups with at least one female founder, an increase of 56% from the year before, according to a report released by company research firm Crunchbase. “In the last eight months, 10-15 female founders (like Lizzie Chapman of ZestMoney, Ankiti …
The online storytelling company is betting that content will be the most sought-after commodity as scores of platforms jump on the microdrama bandwagon. But success will hinge on whether it has a good enough story to draw the audience.
SEBI has lowered the bar for loss-making startups to list. In that context, a company like Zepto redefines the meaning of risk in public market investing.
The 15-year-old company has bought one brand after another in the hope of growing fast. That plan has fallen flat on its face, but there’s no stopping Wingreens.