India has long been considered one of the top startup ecosystems in the world, housing multiple unicorns and iconic global digital-first brands. While Bangalore is called the ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, Pune is rapidly emerging as a major entrepreneurial hub. Between 2014 and 2021, Pune startups have received a whopping $1.5 billion of funding, indicating positive investor sentiment towards the talent in the city. A report by the Center for American Entrepreneurship, moreover, made note of Pune in its ‘Global Next’ category as an emerging startup hub. Around 3200 startups call Pune home at present, with tech startups accounting for a major fraction of these. Here, we take a closer look at three B2B tech companies that are catapulting Pune’s reputation:
AFour Technologies
AFour Technologies is a 360-degree software product engineering company that is headquartered in Pune. Founded in 2007, the company has serviced over 100 clients – most of whom are based out of the United States – and currently has 320 employees on its payroll. As experts in product engineering, AFour Technologies addresses the growing need in software companies post-Covid for an accelerated path to digital transformation, including a surge in demand for cybersecurity testing and reliability engineering services. The company’s mission is to enable its customers to build and maintain resilient, scalable, and secure software systems with high predictability and reliability using agile methodologies.
The services that AFour offers include product engineering, infrastructure design and configuration management, software prototype development, CI/CD pipeline, DevOps strategy consulting, system architecture design, UX and UI design, backend/API development, performance and security testing, test automation development and execution, among others.
Bynry
Bynry is a US-based B2B SaaS company founded in 2016. It focuses on enabling utilities businesses – an often-overlooked sector – to achieve digital transformation in an affordable, scalable fashion. With Bynry’s Smart360 product, small and mid-sized utilities firms transition from legacy technology to a cloud-based smart utility platform in a matter of weeks. Since its inception, Bynry has used cutting-edge digital, AI and IoT technologies to help energy-based businesses follow hassle-free procedures, standardize their operations and deliver better customer experience. They believe in the combined power of technology and human intelligence to achieve their vision of ‘utilities made smarter’. Bynry’s solutions primarily support four industries – Electric Utilities, Water and Wastewater, Gas Utilities and Broadband.
FreightFox is a tech-first Logistics Partner for Manufacturing Enterprises that is headquartered in Pune. Founded in 2020, their mission is to change the future of B2b Logistics in India by leveraging technology and data to deliver efficient on-ground transport operations to support the economy. FreightFox is the exclusive partner to some of the biggest manufacturing enterprises in India accelerating digitalization in logistics. As an organization, they aim to enable index-based freight contracts through their cutting-edge end-to-end logistics procurement and orchestration platform.
The B2B sector is poised for massive growth, as every business needs to purchase products and services from other businesses to launch, grow and operate. Pune is ideally poised to become a B2B start-up hub owing to its strong tech talent pool and Maharashtra’s innovation-friendly policies. Adding to the thriving IT and automobile industries and the pleasant climate, it’s small wonder that both entrepreneurs and investors are putting their money on Pune. In the near future, we could well see the emergence of another Silicon Valley out west.