Good startup companies in Pune

Pune has more in common with Bangalore than just weather and tech companies, it is also a thriving startup hub. Last Saturday, we did a Roadshow in Pune for the upcoming UnPluggd in December. I met a few startups out there and the energy is really high. However, there are some harsh realities that startups from Pune have to face too.

Enterprise focused, inspite of being closer to Mumbai

Even though Pune is closer to Mumbai, the city has mostly produced Enterprise startups. Proximity to Mumbai means access to media agencies, advertisers etc – but the city has mostly seen enterprise startups such as Druva. This is mostly because of the influence that comes from mentors who typically are from enterprise companies like Veritas etc.

Having said that, the enterprise focus also results in startups quickly moving to Silicon Valley to accelerate the business (for instance, Nexus Venture Partners’ portfolio in Pune includes Pubmatic, Druva and Helpshift – all of them are global now).

Talent pool & Infrastructure

Pune has always been a good source of talent especially with the amount of IT companies and educational institutes in the city. But these two factors are just not enough to produce and inspire talent required for a startup culture.

The city also is a leading manufacturing hub in the country making it a good place for product development. The city is fast growing, yet affordable compared to Mumbai or Bangalore. There exists a small early adopter crowd too.

Punes proximity to Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, is an added advantages to startups in the city. Meeting potential investors or VCs is nothing more than a couple of hours drive down the express-way. However, its mostly the entrepreneur who ends up doing the driving.

But inspite of this close proximity to the financial hub of the country one of the main problems startups in Pune face is access to finance & funding, which is very essential to the growth of any startup. Raising funds beyond the seed stage into the Series A and B rounds was a challenging factor, but this trend is slowly changing. As the number of startups in the city begin to increase, the funding activity is also gaining some traction. Very recently Pune based security solutions company Druva raised $25 mn in a Series C funding from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital, a new investor.