India's Hottest Start-Ups ; This Is Business Today's Third Annual Listing of Hottest Start-Ups and, Pretty Much Like the Two Previous Lists in 2007 and 2008, This Listing Is Also Completely Subjective.

Summary

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This is Business Today's Third Annual Listing of hottest start- ups and, pretty much like the two previous lists in 2007 and 2008, this listing is also completely subjective. But we did not put the names of the companies drawn by a host of venture capitalists, consultants and even our reporters on a board and throw darts at them. Nope, we took a long hard look at all the names we got and we got a lot and we looked at how viable these businesses would be. So, while a company might have some great guys working for it and a solid idea, we looked at whether it would still be around by the time Business Today's 20th annual list of Hottest Start-Ups comes about.

Did we have any criteria? Yes, we did. All companies, save one, on our list are around three years old or younger. Though MeritNation is rather old, the company changed totally in 2007, keeping the old name but little else. The second is that the company has to be an Indian company: some nominations were great and did all their business in India but were registered abroad.

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India's Hottest Start-Ups ; This Is Business Today's Third Annual Listing of Hottest Start-Ups and, Pretty Much Like the Two Previous Lists in 2007 and 2008, This Listing Is Also Completely Subjective.

The third criterion, as we explained, is survivability and that involves doing something new in India. Not reinventing the wheel by creating India's Facebook or Twitter for India those services already exist and are called Facebook and Twitter, respectively, and the lack of borders on the Internet mean that Indians use them far more than local social networking sites. All our companies are doing products in hardware, software, services or healthcare uniquely honed for India.

We are pragmatic enough to realise that we might get some wrong. Our companies in the 2008 list (page 106) have had to change their plans, because the world has changed (and how!) since this time last year. But we are sure that our class of 2009 will not just survive the slowdown but are going to be the standardbearers of India Inc. in the future.

Inbiopro

Money from Molecules

Inbiopro, set up with the aim of taking potential blockbuster molecules from biotech firms and building them up to the preclinical and clinical trials stage, broke even within a year and has already delivered three molecules for trials. Two founders Chief Executive Sohang Chatterjee and Chief of Operations Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues...

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