India’s startup ecosystem has grown around 400X over the last decade. This has created space for entrepreneurs to question established practices and look at alternative ways to solve these long-standing challenges. As industries evolve, businesses are exploring innovative ways to fill gaps, reimagine traditional processes, and meet evolving consumer and industry needs.
What sets these efforts apart is not just the use of new technology but also a willingness to look at familiar problems in a new light. By questioning existing methods and exploring different solutions, these companies are bringing fresh ideas to their respective industries and challenging the way things have traditionally been done. Here are five startups that are doing things differently and bringing a fresh perspective to their industries.
1. UN:BLOC: Taking a Different Approach to Chronic Healthcare
Founded by Deepak Sahni, who previously built Healthians into a major at-home diagnostics platform. He has started a new venture called UN:BLOC, which is built on the idea that chronic diseases need to be understood at their root rather than managed indefinitely. Its pathway involves Block Medicine, a clinical way developed by Sahni and the clinical team at UN:BLOC that combines the intelligence of Ayurveda with modern diagnostics to target the underlying root causes of chronic conditions. The team has identified 51 physiological blocks, which have been assessed by BlocMarker diagnostics and treated through personalised UnblocProtocols. In August 2026, cricketer Yuvraj Singh joined UN:BLOC as an investor and founding team member of UN:BLOC and a patient in its first cohort of 300 founding members.
2. KarbunWise: Making Sustainability Data More Reliable for Businesses
KarbunWise is a climate-tech company focused on making sustainability data more reliable, accessible, and useful for businesses. Its software platform blends technology with sustainability expertise to help companies with carbon accounting, product life cycle assessments, Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), building assessments and broader ESG reporting. What makes its approach unique is the focus on traceability, such that sustainability figures can be traced back to their underlying data and verified independently. Regulators and investors are demanding that companies demonstrate environmental performance to a much greater degree and KarbunWise aims to help them move away from spreadsheets and one-off reports to more consistent, verifiable data.
3. Handpickd: Rethinking Fresh Grocery Delivery Through a Zero-Inventory Model
Handpickd is taking a different approach to fresh grocery by questioning the conventional model of stocking produce in warehouses or dark stores before it reaches consumers. Instead, the platform operates on a zero-stock, harvest-to-order model, aggregating demand overnight and sourcing produce from farmers based on what customers are expected to order the following day. This allows Handpickd to focus on factors that are often difficult to standardise in fresh produce, including ripeness, quality, quantity and freshness.Its AI-powered matchmaking system allows customers to specify preferences such as ripeness, size, sweetness and quantity, bringing the personal choice of an offline fruit-and-vegetable market to the online shopping experience. By connecting demand more closely with farm-level sourcing, Handpickd is rethinking how fresh produce can move from farms to urban households with greater predictability, personalisation and supply-chain efficiency.
4. Cultyvate: Using Technology to Make Irrigation More Efficient
Cultyvate is an agritech startup that uses IoT sensors, remote sensing and AI-powered analytics in order to help farmers make better irrigation decisions. Its technology monitors the field conditions. It recommends when to water, helping to reduce water wastage and improve crop productivity. The startup works across crops like paddy and sugarcane and brings data-driven irrigation practices to farming. Cultyvate is tackling water efficiency at the farm level with a tech-driven approach that replaces traditional irrigation methods with a more accurate one, helping farmers boost productivity.
5. Zypp Electric: Electrifying Last-Mile Delivery Through a Full-Stack Ecosystem
Zypp Electric is transforming urban logistics by replacing traditional fossil-fuel delivery fleets with a full-stack electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem. Partnering with major e-commerce, food, and quick-commerce giants like Zomato, Swiggy, and Blinkit, Zypp deploys IoT-enabled electric scooters paired with a dense network of automated battery-swapping stations. Instead of treating EV adoption as a simple vehicle purchase, Zypp built the missing infrastructure layer that solves range anxiety and charging downtime for gig-economy delivery riders, turning last-mile logistics green and operationally efficient.
