AI startups lead the way at TechSparks 2023 Pitch Fest

Since its early days, YourStory has had one mission—bring forth stories of India’s entrepreneurs and new-age startups. 

And this hasn’t changed, even 15 years later.

After the success of its Mumbai edition, Pitch Fest 2023–a platform for startups to command the spotlight–was back in the 14th edition of TechSparks in Bengaluru.

A YourStory initiative, The Pitch Fest is the ultimate tech startup showdown. The programme intends to provide entrepreneurs and startups a platform to present their innovative ideas and business models to a live audience, potential investors, and a carefully curated jury. 

The live pitching event intends to offer the initial momentum to make it big. YourStory thrives to help early-stage startups with on-spot funding opportunities, enabling them in getting the right investment through investor connect, media visibility (to over five million readers), acceleration pathway, and an opportunity to pitch their products and services to potential customers. 

Over the three days of TechSparks 2023–Bengaluru edition, 30 startups pitched their ideas within three minutes, and spent another five minutes answering the questions and doubts posed by the jury. 

These 30 startups were also highlighted in YourStory’s Tech 30 report–a list of the country’s most promising early-stage startups handpicked by YourStory, that have the potential to become major disruptors of tomorrow. 

“We believe we will have one million startups in India, if not more. Every year, we select 30 companies that are creating innovative solutions. Let’s celebrate and recognise these companies that we believe will be big tomorrow,” Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, said. 

Carefully picked from over thousands of applications, these 30 startups pitched in front of a jury comprising Sampath P, Partner at Kalaari Capital; Nitin Chandalia, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group; Aman M Tekriwal, Co-founder of Maxar.vc; Hemang Vaidya, Senior Associate (Investment), GVFL; Avinash Ramanathan, Vice President at Kalaari Capital; and Utkarsh B, former Chief Architect at Flipkart. Besides, around 665 people from the audience participated to vote and shortlist the top three startups. 

Artificial Intelligence or AI seems to have been the talk of the conference. Here’s the rundown of the top startups shortlisted by the jury and the audience: 

Jury’s choice 

Verdant Impact 

Founded by Manish Kumar and Maya Zeph, Jaipur-based Verdant Impact is a full stack animal husbandry platform offering farmers backward and forward linkage for purchase and sale of livestock. Its product–Animal ICU, provides digital livestock healthcare services. It uses AR and VR solutions and Universal Animal Ancestry Animal Mark to ensure unique animal identification and quality certification. 

Neural Garage 

Bengaluru-based deeptech startup Neural Garage, with its flagship product VisualDub, leverages AI and deep learning algorithms to address challenges related to unsynchronised visual aural cues. The startup operates in films, OTT, broadcasting, advertising, content creation, and gaming sectors.

Founded by Mandar Natekar, Anjan Banerjee, Subhabrata Debnath, and Subhashish Saha, Neural Garage offers its technology through API integration, SaaS, and desktop software. 

Sivi AI 

Generative AI startup Sivi AI transforms text into visual content at a 10x speed. Leveraging the power of AI, the Bengaluru-based startup automatically creates product banners, social posts, and display ads, using prompts, stories, and webpages. Following human design principles, the Sona J and Ram Ganesan-founded startup accommodates all brand guidelines and also allows user edits, with up to 16 variations within two minutes. 

Audience’s choice 

Naam 

Jaipur-based Naam is an AI-based contact identification application that allows users to identify unknown calls and spammers, without syncing the contacts. Co-founded by Arpit Tak and Ramesh Chaudhary, Naam aims to become India’s biggest calling app, facilitating safe and secure communication. 

Assert AI 

Co-founded by Nitin Jain, Job Philip, and Shalabh, Assert AI uses advanced AI and computer vision capabilities to optimise and automate processes across industries. The Mumbai-based startup ensures improved productivity, accuracy, and safety, by processing visual inputs and identifying things simulating a human vision, sans human error.  

Verdant Impact 

The Jaipur-based startup was shortlisted by the audience as well as one of the top three startups at the Pitch Fest.