Brigade REAP chooses 5 out of 122 startups as part of its 9th cohort

Brigade REAP today chose five startups from 122 applicants as part of its 9th cohort of startups. They will be part of a program that follows an intensive 18 weeks cycle to help scale their business. These are the five startups from 8 finalists who participated in two jury rounds. The parameters of evaluations included 10 points. They were innovation, relevance to the industry, the magnitude of the problem, the pedigree of the founding team etc.

“Since inception, our focus has been to accelerate innovation in the real estate sector; to help deliver and enhance efficiencies both for the industry and the customer. The objective is to help inventors and innovators create sustainable and scalable businesses. In the past, startups have seen an increase of over 150% YoY growth in revenue. Further, 42% of the startups have raised funding within 12 months of graduating. The real estate industry also was actively involved in giving business as well as investing in many of these startups. Once the onboarded startup’s demonstrated their progress, identified stakeholders, firmed up business plan with customer and investor pitches ready, Brigade REAP enables access to customers for potential investors for fundraising.” said Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP.

The final five startups are

Angirus: Eco-friendly technology to make building materials, made from 100% waste materials for the affordable housing industry.

MetroGuild: Convert flat buyers to customers through hyper-personalized relationship-building marketing and sales.

GoFloaters: Enable individuals and teams to work from anywhere through its wide network of on-demand workspaces.

Strawcture: Green Building Material - bio panels that convert waste to value.

Vision Earthcare: Wastewater rejuvenation.

About the Jury

The second jury included renowned industry stalwarts such as M.R. Jaishankar, CMD Brigade Group, Samir Kumar, MD Inventus Capital, Vipul Roongta, MD HDFC Capital, Sanjay Mehta, Founder & Partner, 100x.VC, Ram Chandnani, MD Advisory & Transaction Services, CBRE, Kumar Vembu, CEO GoFrugal Technologies and Mohan Parvatikar, Director, Brigade REAP.

From the leaders

“We have a very stringent selection process where the jury evaluates each incoming application based on the nature of the problem, the founding team, whether the company has any early traction and whether their solution is unique. Further, our role is to help the chosen startups to sharpen their value proposition, create or re-examine their business plans and pricing models and identify customers. Brigade REAP has six pillars of engagements with the on-board startups. This include product, technology, business model, people, go to market and scale” said John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor, Brigade REAP.

“I’ve been involved with Brigade REAP since inception and have seen a drastic improvement in both the numbers and the Quality of Founders solving real problems impacting both the Real estate industry and the environment. I’ve also seen the real estate sector start embracing technology solutions to become more efficient, and that’s one of the key reasons investments in the sector are now gathering steam. I’m reasonably confident that in the coming decade we will see the emergence of quite a few scaled proptech startups from India” said Samir Kumar, MD Inventus Capital India and member of the Final Jury.

"Real estate is the largest asset class by far, but it is still in the early stages of technology adoption. While I have been investing in diverse sectors, Proptech as a sector is definitely to watch out for. Each of the finalists in REAP's Cohort 9 are solving very interesting problems. For e.g., startups that are recycling waste to create new building blocks for construction and interiors in a scalable manner. The final five that were shortlisted should have an exciting 2021 as they get into REAP to scale their product and business offerings" said Sanjay Mehta, Founder & Partner 100X.VC.