Start-up For A Cause

Kajol Taneja Dec 22, 2020

1. Samunnati

Chennai-based Samunnati, was founded in 2014 by Anil Kumar ,a veteran banker with over 27 years of experience to provide financial intermediation, market linkages, and advisory services to agriculture value chains. Unlike customary lenders Samunnati focuses on smallholder farmer needs and sketches appropriate financial products that are not collateralised. The fintech lender which operates in the niche intersection of agritech and finance has disbursed loans worth over Rs.4200 cr serving 4 million small farmers across 14 states since its inception. With over 500 employees the startup has clocked a revenue of Rs.729 cr in the financial year 2020.

2. Gocoop

Launched in 2014, by Siva Devirreddy, GoCoop is the first Indian online marketplace to bring together weaver groups, cooperatives, and their ultimate buyers. With a spread over more than 10 Indian states, GoCoop has banded together over 350 weaver groups and cooperatives to date and its interventions have empathetically effected the lives of more than 85,000 weavers.

Certified silk, handloom and handicraft are just a couple of the products this Bengaluru- based startup has put together on its platform. The ‘Good Loom’ brand is the organisations latest brainchild, bringing high quality and vintage handloom style to the eco-conscious consumers by guaranteeing them of a certain quality and aesthetic design standards.

3. Saral Designs

Mumbai based, Saral Design Solutions is a social enterprise founded in 2015 by IIT Bombay and Madras alumini Suhani Mohan and Kartik Mehta. With aims to increase awareness about menstrual hygiene and help women from non-urban areas, this product driven startup focusses on designing commodities to provide access to affordable and quality menstrual hygiene in india.

The duo propelled Saral Designs to put together semi-automatic and automatic machines named SWACHH for decentralised production of sanitary napkins. Currently, the company has five variants of the machine: SWACHH 1.2, SWACHH 3.0, SWACHH 4.0, SWACHH 5.0 and SWACHH 7.0 along with two Indian patents for the technology.