Odd Startup Names And The Stories Behind Them 

Ever wondered why some startups chose to go with rather off-beat, sometimes bordering on weird, names? Well, here’s the situation. Most domain names - which combine practicality and resonance - were snapped up a long time ago. And with more than 19,000 startups already present in the country, new ones clearly need to put in a lot of effort to come up with some meaningful, original, and catchy.

Here are some of the oddest names we found and our attempt at deciphering the story behind them.

Petoo

The Bangalore-based food-tech startup was founded by Ritesh Dwivedy, Abhishek Mandal and Kumar Setu in 2015. The name 'Petoo' is the Hindi word for glutton and that's exactly what the founders claim to be.

"We could tell you that the name came to us from some market research we had done, but we believe - 'honesty is the best policy'. Petoo was chosen because we are foodies (read gluttons!) and love Indian food, sugar and spice and everything nice," the founders say on the startup’s website

An online quick service restaurant, Petoo delivers Indian dishes from a short and standardised menu to its customers. In August 2016, the startup raised $500,000 from existing investors and high networth individuals through the online deal-making platform, LetsVenture.

AbeRuk

This online marketplace for books wants people to experience the joy of reading hardcover and paperbacks. The name, roughly translated, means ‘hey you, stop’. It’s an attempt by the startup’s founders -Sidharth Shamkar and Sidharth Kumar - to grab people's attention, as per their website.

In July 2016, the startup raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Hong-Kong based Swastika Company, according to a report by VCCircle.

Sattviko

The startup, found by three engineers in 2013, is a chain of restaurants. The name broadly describes what they serve - food cooked the Sattvik way. Based on the word 'Sattva', or honest and pure, it’s all about fresh and pure food cooked such that it retains all its nutrition and is easy to digest.

This is how its founders, Prasoon Gupta, Ankush Sharma, and Rahul Gupta, describe the startup - an "age old wisdom of ayurveda and yoga meets International cuisines”.

SidQam

While the words do not necessarily mean anything, the name SidQam seems to be derived from the names of its founders - Fardeen Siddiqui and Rahil Qamar.

Founded in 2015, the company's signature product - Eventus - is a cloud-based healthcare software that allows recording, management, and sharing of clinical data. In April 2016, the company expanded its linguistic base to Hindi and plans to introduce other Indian languages as well, according to information on its LinkedIn page.

The Noida-based digital healthcare startup last secured $1.2 million in seed funding from investment firm SQue Capital in November 2016.

Enlightiks

The name of the data analytics startup is a play on the word 'enlighten'. It’s best known for its business intelligence product 'Querent', and was acquired by healthcare startup Practo in December 2016.

MuhurtMaza

First of its kind, MuhurtMaza is all about pujas and vidhis and getting the correct samagri with the best guruji for your religious ceremonies. The term 'Muhurt' comes from Mahurat, or auspicious time, while 'Maza' is, well, fun. The startup aims at delivering the complete package for a puja with the necessary items for the ceremony and is fast becoming a one-stop destination for young Indians.

Yottaasys

The analytics startup, founded in December 2014, is all about using data in the best way possible.

The startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding for its data sciences and machine learning product, Decision Sciences Factor, from Delhi based Gleevoaz Ventures in November, 2016, according to its LinkedIn page.

MachaDalo

The one-stop advertising platform founded in July 2015 translates to "let’s do it" in Hindi vernacular. Founded by Nitin Jain and Anupam Sorabh, the startup is working towards the "convergence of digital advertising with offline advertising”.

Tweet with the hashtag #OddNames and tell us which one did you find to be the oddest. Don’t forget to tag @BloombergQuint.

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