Anand Jain (L) and Suresh Kondamudi

RANK 2, 3-YEAR-OLD START-UPS, COOLEST START-UPS, CLEVERTAP

Unlike most of the new-age start-ups, the founders of mobile analytics company CleverTap are not 20-something fresh college passouts. Anand Jain, Suresh Kondamudi and Sunil Thomas are technology veterans with decades of experience.

When the trio decided to join hands to set up CleverTap in 2013, they were employed with the Reliance Industries-backed media conglomerate Network 18, where they were involved with the group’s various Internet platforms such as Moneycontrol.com, Firstpost.com and BookMyShow. com. Studying user behaviour across these platforms was an integral part of their jobs. “When we started understanding users across platforms, we realised there was a lot of scope to re-target the same set of users and convert them into potential customers,” says Kondamudi, Co-founder and CTO of CleverTap.

When Kondamudi talks about re-targeting consumers in the online world and converting them into potential customers, he is referring to data analytics. For instance, if a consumer regularly visits Amazon. com to buy premium products, the chances are that during his subsequent visits also the homepage of his app would open up to show the premium brands that are on offer. This kind of consumer targeting is possible thanks to the 4,000-odd engineers who at the back end have complete understanding of consumer usage patterns and serve them accordingly.