Indian startups leading the buzz on Quora

Anyone who's anyone in the technology circuit will likely know by now that traffic from India to Quora is huge. It recently surpassed the United States about a month ago, with Alexa stating that India represents around 31.1 percent of traffic compared to 21.8 percent from the U.S.

Being a Quora fanboy myself, I feel it is one interesting Web site that grabs your attention especially since you keep sinking into it one question at a time. And certainly many a times I see fellow Indians dominate this Q&A Web site with opinions, answers, discussions, debates, even arguments and insights of their own.

And when it comes to learning about a specific topic, I'd say it is truly a great place for personal insights that you can rarely find elsewhere especially for the Indian Startups scene.

I'm happy that a lot of the Indian entrepreneurs, VCs are quite active on Quora and building the ecosystem within this web site to engage with others and helping them too. Kudos to all of them. Of course, not to mention, it's a great way of personal branding. But what they are doing is beyond just that.

So I thought of writing a post on what are the quintessential people, topics, companies, questions & their answers you'd should follow if you are part of the Indian startup community or are aspiring to be, or for that matter just want to know what's happening and what's interesting out here.

Get to know the people who are out there day in, day out creating a vibrant community sharing insights. Also generating a lot of interest not only among people who are new to startups in india but also within the veterans who have a lot of experience and share their nuggets of wisdom out there.

So here's a curated list of questions, topics, companies, people, groups about various startups, VCs in India. And I must say some of these questions have interesting answers, some very insightful and some very amusing as well.

Quora has a certain level of tolerance and policies for joke answers and it would be sad on my part not to showcase that out in this blog post.

Yes, Indian entrepreneurs have a really great sense of humour too. This one, for example, hits the nail despite being a joke answer. 

On a serious note here's the rest of the insightful stuff. Some of my top picks:

Some interesting Questions and their answers

1. What's preventing India's youth from Entrepreneurship?
2. What are some notable software startups in Bangalore?
3. What are the hottest startups in New Delhi?
4. What are India's hottest startups in web and mobile?
5. Where can I find a list of Healthcare startups in India?
6. Why has India failed to produce tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.?
7. Which Indian startup do you admire the most?
8. What is an exhaustive list of Indian blogs that a new product startup should send press release to?
9. What are the pros and cons of having a web based startup based in India?
10. Should I continue with my startup even though I haven't been able to raise funding till now?
11. As an Indian startup, should I be getting a .in or a .com as my main domain name?
12. When should one startup?
13. Why are there so few product companies in India?
14. Do I need to register my small e-commerce business in India as LLP or Pvt ltd in order to run legally?
15. How do Indian e-commerce startups tie up with right courier services and ensure nothing goes wrong with delivery services and or shipping?
16. Is education still a hot space to do a startup in India?
17. What are specific examples of innovation in India that 1) have not been copied from other countries; 2) affect a wide cross-section of society; 3) have grown from zero to large organizations/impact in <10 years; and 4) are commercial in nature?
18. Will Flipkar be forced to shut down?
19. Which Indian startups are running on Django?
20. If Quora was started in India, would VCs in India have supported it?

 And here's a list of topics, companies and people to follow on Quora form the Indian Startup Scene. 

Startup groups (cities)

Of course the main group is Startups in India followed by various sub groups catering to questions with members from various cities and where their startups are based out of.

1. Startups in Bangalore 
2. Startups in Pune 
3. Startups in Mumbai
4. Startups in New Delhi
5. Startups in Hyderabad
6. Startups in Chennai
7. Startups in Kolkatta

Startup companies / VC firms in India

Not surprising to see a most number of talked about product on Quora are from the e-commerce domain. Other than that a few publishing, media companies and VC firms also in this list.

1. Flipkart
2. Infibeam
3. Snapdeal
4. Letsbuy
5. Yebhi
6. Jabong
7. Myntra
8. Zovi
9. Fashionandyou
10. Redbus
11. Zomato
12. Naukri
13. 99 Acres
14. Just Dial
15. Cleartrip
16. Yatra
17. MakeMyTrip
18. Pluggd.in (Now NextBigWhat)
19. YourStory
20. Medianama
21. Accel Partners
22. The Startup Centre
23. Indian Angel Network 
24. Canaan Partners
25. Lightspeed Venture Partners
26. Seedfund

People

These are in no particular order. All of them are active and have answered quite a number of questions, and a lot of them are insightful as well. The links direct to their answers in Startups in India topic. 

1. Arun Purohit 
2. Pankaj Jain
3. Navin Kabra
4. Avlesh Singh
5. Vijay Sharma
6. Prajakt Raut
7. Vijay Anand
8. Ashish Gupta
9. Mahesh Murthy 
10. Roshan D'Silva

Other topics relevant to Indian startups

1. Venture Capital in India
2. Entrepreneurship in India
3. Indian Entrepreneurs 

Hope you find this useful. Of course Quora is vast and ever-expanding, so there is a high chance that there are some more interesting, people, topics, questions companies that I might have missed to add. Feel free to comment.