Top 10 Indian Hardware Startups Building Products for India and the World

In today’s video, we take a look at the top 10 Indian hardware startups building products for India and the world

00:00 Introduction
02:32 #10 Openapp
03:28 #9 AjnaLens
04:29 #8 DrinkPrime
05:32 #7 Makers Hive
06:26 #6 Atomberg Technologies
07:27 #5 Smartron
08:57 #4 Emotix
10:05 #3 GOQii
11:08 #2 Boat
12:16 #1 GreyOrange

#10 Openapp: Founded by Gotama Gowda, Siddesh Keluskar and Rajshekhar Jenne in 2014, Openapp builds smart IoT-enabled locks for their customers. Right now, their smart locks are being used across more than 500,000 and it is India’s smart lock maker.

#9 AjnaLens: Founded by Abhijit Patil, Abhishek Tomar, Gaurav Godbole, and Pankaj Raut in 2014, AjnaLens builds AI-powered mixed reality glasses. They launched their first product AjnaBolt for the Indian military in 2020 before launching their enterprise product AjnaX earlier this year.

#8 DrinkPrime: Founded by Manas Hota and Vijender Reddy in 2016, DrinkPrime began its journey as WaterWala in 2014 with the goal of bringing structure to India’s disorganised drinking water space by providing 20L waters cans on demand. Today, they have built their own smart water purifier which is being used by 25,000 of their customers to get clean drinking water for a monthly subscription.

#7 Makers Hive: Founded by Harsha Reddy Ponguleti, Pranav Vempati and Suren Marumamula in 2018, Makers Hive’s flagship product, KalArm, is India’s first fully functional bionic hand, which only costs between ₹3.5-4 lakh which is about a tenth of the cost of similar products outside of India.

#6 Atomberg Technologies: Founded by Manoj Meena and Sibabrata Das in 2012, Atomberg Technologies used their prototype energy-efficient motor to manufacture energy-efficient ceiling fans for Indian consumers. Since the launch of their energy-efficient ceiling fans in 2015, Atomberg Technologies has sold more than 1 million units.

#5 Smartron: Founded by Mahesh Lingareddy, Rohit Rathi and Narsi Reddy Posham in 2014, Smartron manufactures everything from laptops, smartphones and electric bikes. However, they plan on launching their own home automation products in the future – which will be powered by their own AI-powered ecosystem called TronX.

#4 Emotix: Founded by Chintan Raikar, Prashant Iyengar and Sneh Vaswani in 2014, Emotix builds an AI-powered personal robot for kids called Miko. The latest version of these personal robots is called Miko 2 – which uses AI and computer vision to engage with children in educational conversations. The startup has successfully sold their products across more than 140 countries.

#3 GOQii: Founded by serial entrepreneur Vishal Gondal in 2014, GOQii sells wearable fitness devices that can track vital health statistics like oxygen levels, blood pressure and heart rate. Today, they are already the second-largest wristband wearables company in India, behind only Xiaomi. While they manufacture their products in China, the startup has now committed to moving their manufacturing to India.

#2 Boat: Founded by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta in 2016, Boat started their journey by selling charging cables, before moving to products like earphones, speakers and smart-watches. In just five years of their launch, Boat has managed to build the world’s largest wearable brand out of India – while raking in ₹701 crore in revenue and making ₹49 crore profit in the process in FY20.

#1 GreyOrange: Founded by Akash Gupta and Samay Kohli in 2011, GreyOrange manufactures smart robots that are used by companies around the world to increase efficiency and productivity in their warehouses. While GreyOrange is an Indian startup, the majority of their revenue comes from outside India, making them a perfect example of a hardware startup building from India for the world. They are also planning to go public soon by taking the SPAC route in the US.

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[manas]

Hi Caleb, thank you for featuring DrinkPrime in the list. Building Hardware is hard but extremely rewarding to see a real product in the hands of users!

[navneetprabhakar]

+1 for Grey Orange. Having worked there in the past, i can say its one of the best orgs to work for :)

[hariTheHuman]

Being a canadian you talk more about indian startups than I know as an Bengalurian. Keep going bro. Good luck for all your videos on Indian content.
Edit: Now I know you both Caleb and Prithvi reside in India. Keep going.

[rautsaurabh]

As always you guys are producing brilliant content. Just a suggestion can you go a bit deeper and start explaining concepts like how to set up a company in India, unit economics of running a business? Hard technical stuff will help a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs.

[kshitijshekhar]

A better homegrown startup than Grey Orange would be Ati Motors. It was founded by an IISc professor (a child prodigy, and another person) who also built the simputer. The simputer was at the time (1990s) one of the most advanced hardware devices in the world.

[viksjolt]

It's my dream to make my own hardware manufacturing plant for electronics and computer components in India. Contributing to make India a manufacturing hub for electronic components.

[KejriwalBhakt]

I have been like shouting my lungs out from the rooftops that Indian Unicorn doesn't and wouldn't add much value to our international image and economy unless we have a hardware unicorn. Software startups can be replaced easily. You see Twitter getting replaced by Koo by copying it. Insta reels replacing TikTok etc. You won't survive long with a software startup. Hardware however isn't easily replaceable. DJI I suppose was a startup and now this giant has hegemony over civilian drones. So does Chinese smartphone manufacturing giants. India should either grow in Hardware or utilise its already powerful IT sector to move to product-based software manufacturing. We are still proving services and BPO facilities.

[deepankchauhan]

Wow. GreyOrange topped the list. Proud moment for me being an employee in that company 😌

[pranavtripathi]

Might buy goqii as an alternative to the Chinese brands . Didn't even know it existed. Thanks

[shridharhegde]

What's up with 1.8L subs.. looks like a strong Resistance .. been watching your subs (of course, content as well) and every Saturday i expects it should be more that 2L. Hope that day comes soon
Excellent work Caleb and team deserve a thumbs up 👍

[sreejithsreelal]

Excellent bro. Eventhough I am an indian, only through your videos I came to know about indian startups. Excellent work bro. Thanks

[technoidic_ash]

Wow so great to see someone compile such inspiring lists of Indian Start-ups making global impact 😌🙏

[SaraTarannum]

U never fail to increase my knowledge abt the startup world Caleb. Every video is something new. Not copied… Just new🙌🏻A big fan🤘🏻 Keep going buddy👍🏻

[MerePitaShree]

BTW I am a 3rd year college student, three years back when I came to New Delhi I faced many issues in finding Hostels, then I thought of starting my own startup for hostels based on the OYO model but due to some of my mistake I couldn't succeed

[neerajnama]

Loved the way initial context set, that why this video is important rather than just mentioning top 10 names.

[reallifeyoutuber]

7:27 ..
Bought a smartron t.Phone P back in 2017 !
At that time the product was a miracle..
Unbelievable features packed in it at that price, but that was not enough for a phone...
1) it doesn't gave software updates
2) no security patch updates
3) worst ever after sale service(took 4 months to accept our request to repair our phone and even at our cost at warranty period.!)
And at that time we felt almost it was a scam, becoz no new models and ignorant services...
absolutely tronX was a good concept.

And now after that I'm hearing about smartron here.

[sujantkumarkrishnvanshi]

Most reliable & awesome channel to learn updates and in general of startup ecosystem...
The Work is commendable.. 🙏

[karthikranga]

I might be late for the party again. But WOW! An amazing list of startups in hardware sector. I like what Mahesh from Smartron said about manufacturing in India. But there is also a problem with that. when you send the designs and outsource it for manufacturing, it could easily be copied and replicated for cheaper price. Even big giants like Apple and others are trying to manufacture in house to reduce the reliability on others. Again, there are pros and cons in everything, one has to leverage on the company's goal.

[xvx]

Thanks
You got a new subscriber
And I would also encourage citizens of India to come up with more startups and brilliant ideas for future of 🇮🇳🇮🇳
Peace ✌🏻

[smartfivedigitallocks]

Hey Caleb, thank you for featuring Openapp. And as usual, great content! 😊