#BootUpINDIA Inner Circle kicks off with 8 companies!

Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in BootUpINDIA. We received over 100 high quality applications. The Jury painstakingly went through each of them to pick 8 companies who are being inducted into BootUpINDIA Inner Circle today!

BootUpINDIABefore I share the 8 selected companies, I want to tell the applicants that didn’t make to the Inner Circle this time that there will be more opportunities to get included in the coming year(s). BootUpINDIA is an ongoing program that will expand the Inner Circle over time. We are also organizing a Bootstrap Summit for the applicants and will be profiling all the applications on the on the ProductNation site. You are part of the important Bootstrapping community and our effort is to make it stronger and more mainstream over time.

With that, let me welcome the eight bootstrapped companies to the iSPIRT BootUpINDIA Inner Circle

  1. ApnaStock Solutions: ApnaStock.com’s mission is to level the playing field for the individual home builder and small developers by getting them the wholesale price and logistics benefits usually only available to large national builders.
  2. Exclusife: A sales acceleration application for Indian Retail SMEs. This mobile application allows businesses, for the first time, to capture real-time information about all their store visitors.
  3. Global Groupware Solutions: EmployWise™ is an award winning, integrated SaaS employee life-cycle management software. Its key modules can handle all aspect of human resource needs from recruitment to retirement.
  4. Inquirly Technologies: An Integrated Customer Experience Management platform that enables companies to move beyond the limitations of traditional digital marketing, Sales, and customer service and employee engagement.
  5. PowerStores Ecommerce: A SaaS based ecommerce platform targeting the SME sector in Asia.
  6. SignEasy: SignEasy is the simplest and most convenient way to sign documents and fill forms right from your iPad and iPhone. Save time, money and eliminate the hassles of printing, scanning, faxing and shipping the signed paperwork.
  7. The Media Ant: Creating market place for offline media with currently aggregating over 5000 media option comprising Magazine, Radio, Cinema, Airport, Airlines and other non traditional media.
  8. VoiceTree Technologies: MyOperator is a call management system. In country like India where 80% business proceedings happens over phone, MyOperator acts as a platform for organizing their phone calls in a simpler and affordable way.

The gurus of bootstrapping, our Jury Members, are now going to switch into a mentoring role for these Inner Circle companies. This is not for a few months but for a whole year. We have found that there nothing more powerful than an expert entrepreneur helping another entrepreneur to achieve greatness.

In addition to this structured group mentoring, Inner Circle companies will also get press coverage of Customer Impact Stories, access to Performance Warrants, and a privileged opportunity to participate in other iSPIRT initiatives (M&A Connect, SAI Playbook Roundtables, etc.).

BootUpINDIA is a long term commitment for us. iSPIRT believes that there are two viable pathways to building strong software product companies – Bootstrapped and VC funded. We are equally vested in both these pathways.

Six months back when the idea of “BootStrap Award” was discussed for the first time in the monthly iSPIRT Fellows meeting, an intense hour long discussion ensued. As a result of this initial discussion, and the subsequent reviews that followed, we abandoned the idea on a one-time Award and formulated a one-year program in its place. This fits better with the iSPIRT model of making a big impact on promising companies in our product ecosystem. We  launched the BootUpINDIA program on August 15th as bootstrapping brings some sense of independence for startups from external funding.

The last 45 days have been extremely hectic for the BootUpINDIA volunteers. To stay synced up we have had a conference call every single night. The Jury members also pitched in. Many of them attended various planning discussions. They also did video interviews which helped convey the BootUpINDIA idea to all of you. These video interviews are of lasting value. Do check them out here…

Once again, congratulations to the BootUpINDIA Inner Circle companies! We at iSPIRT are very excited about the program and will continue to work hard in creating IMPACT and empowering startups. On this auspicious Gandhi Jayanthi, we once again commit to building India as a Product Nation.

‪#‎BootUpIndia‬ Inner Circle Members featured in ET (full page)