ET Startup Awards 2021: This big-bang year belongs to Zomato

At a virtual meeting that lasted for concerning 2 hours on September twenty-four, a high-powered jury crystal rectifier by Infosys founding father and non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani selected winners across 9 classes from a rank of forty-four contenders.

The jury, comprising a veritable World Health Organization’s who in entrepreneurship, finance and company leaders from across the world, selected winners ambitiously to interrupt new ground, demonstrate the power to make giant, ascendable businesses and possess the perseverance to suffice powerful times that area unit intrinsic to taking off however even a lot of therefore amid a once-in-a-century pandemic.

“Zomato has broken the glass between the non-public and therefore the public universe. These 2 are a parallel universe for a decade. the very fact that someone burst out of the non-public universe and had such a spectacular success on the consciousness of the general public markets, that itself is AN amazingly mind-blowing achievement…,” Nilekani same.

The Gurgaon-based company, with a market cap of Rs one.07 hundred thousand large integers on the mad cow disease as of September twenty-four, joins a listing of eminent winners that have antecedently bagged the award for Startups of the Year like olla, Freshworks, Swiggy, Oyo, Delhivery and Zerodha.

Apart from being the primary high-profile client net imaginary creature to travel public (unicorns area unit firms valued over $1 billion), Zomato’s undefeated listing, that came before long once it had worn the upheaval formed by Covid-19 additionally found mention with the jury being attentive of the company’s tenaciousness and persistence. In 2014, Zomato was chosen because the Startup of the Year during this paper’s flagship event — The Economic Times Awards for company Excellence.

Notable additionally was the selection of Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founding father of information Edge because the winner of the ability Award for Best capitalist for what the jury delineate as his exemplary impact on the Indian startup scheme initial as AN businessperson and currently, united of the country’s most undefeated investors along with his early wager Zomato.

“He (Bikhchandani) is that the Bhishma Pitamaha of the (Indian) startup scheme,” same Navi Technologies founder and business executive Sachin Bansal, employing a term denoting AN elder politician drawn from the epic religious writing.

Bansal was a part of the eleven-member jury drawn from locations across the Republic of India, geographical regions and Singapore.

The award for the Bootstrap Champ visited Kovai, a SaaS startup primarily based across Coimbatore and London, whereas the prize for prime conceiver visited Log9 Materials. Ixigo cofounders Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar were chosen as winners of the Comeback child class.

The startup was adjudged because the Best-on-Campus was FamPay, whereas Lizzie Chapman, the founding father of ZestMoney, was the winner of the girl Ahead prize.

Genrobotic Innovations bagged prime honours within the Social Enterprise class for the employment of robots in fostering deep and impactful social modification.

While Urban Company emerged on prime within the freshly introduced class for this year — Covid-led Business Transformation.

Role Models

This year, the decisive votes were conjointly forged for those entrepreneurs exhibiting a long outlook with the jury commending people who have stuck to putting together and execution at their firms for years, specifically as a result of these founders are often role models for those aiming to start off.

The winners in classes like Comeback child, girl Ahead, and even Startup of the Year exemplified this quality, the elite jury the same.

“We ought to dedicate this year to startups for showing the manner and swing Asian nation on the world map. i feel it’s simply the start, is also there'll be bumps within the manner like everything else however it’s the start of an awfully long journey of success for a great deal of our firms,” same GV Ravishankar, MD, cypress Capital Asian nation, a jury member.

Other UN agencies conjointly participated within the jury discussions were Deepinder Goyal, father and chief operating officer, Zomato; Gokul Rajaram, product and businessman of US-based DoorDash; Nithin Kamath, founder and chief operating officer of Zerodha; Semitic deity Hariharan, partner at Y Combinator Continuity Fund; Amit Agarwal, world SVP and country head at Amazon India; Satyan Gajwani, chairman, Times net Ltd; Harsh religion, father and chief operating officer of Dream11 and Ankiti nuclear physicist, father and chief operating officer of Zilingo.

Select Group

The initial pool of candidates for the seventh edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards was created by a chosen cluster of around one hundred founders, investors and alternative stakeholders of the country’s startup system. ET’s editors worked with information partner Tracxn, a probe venture to make the ultimate order. This ensures that the ET Startup Awards square measure a recognition presented by, for and of the most effective among peers.