Bangalore-based Entropik Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which recognises emotions to help companies understand consumer behaviour, has won the first edition of UpStart Pitch, an event organised by payments firm PayU India wherein startups present disruptive ideas to investors to bag funding.
Online network for social causes LetsEndorse and cybersecurity startup AppsPicket emerged as the first and second runner-up, respectively. The winners will move on to the next round of discussion with investor partners.
The event, co-organised by Kalaari Capital's accelerator arm KStart and Matrix Partners, saw 10 startups pitch their ideas to the judges. The jury comprised Kalaari Capital managing director Vani Kola, Matrix Partners India managing director Vikram Vaidyanathan and PayU India CEO Amrish Rau.
Entropik has built a patent-pending technology called Chromo, which predicts users’ emotions based on their touch/swipe gestures on a smartphone, a digital wearable device, or Internet of Things sensors. This non-intrusive method allows businesses to understand how their consumers feel about their content and product. Based on insights gleaned from these sources, businesses can then trigger relevant recommendations and notifications.
Entropik had raised $200,000 from Dileep Bhatt, president of downstream operations at JSW Steel Ltd, and Milind Chaudhary, director of Sea Global Services Pvt. Ltd in November last year.
LetsEndorse is a network-cum-marketplace for social development, comprising non-profits, social entrepreneurs, companies, communities and local administration. Through the use of technology, it builds collaborations for co-creating and scaling up solutions, and mobilises funds through a mix of crowd-funding and corporate donations. The company had raised an undisclosed amount from Chandigarh Angels Network, Tata Trusts-backed Social Alpha and other unnamed angel investors in March this year.
AppsPicket has created a one-step, two-factor authentication that helps businesses authenticate their users with frictionless, public key that does not involve multiple steps or require any change in user behaviour.
Over the last one year, PayU has organised over 50 UpStart sessions in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, Pune and Chennai, and interacted with over 10,000 startups, a company statement said.