Behind the Name: Startup Founders Reveal the Inspiring Stories of Naming Their Companies
- by: eChai Ventures
Maithreye Murali Reddy, Founder, Miracle Me
I work in the health space and I definitely wanted something that is positive and give a sense of hope to the consumer.
I wanted a simple name.
Keeping ‘Miracle’ helped me with even further developing my products. We use a combination of the result with Miracle. Like, for sleep we call ours as ‘Miracle Sleep’, so on.
Initial brainstorming
Ah! SOOO much! There was too many options and combinations I worked around. I used CHAT GPT to give me a bunch of options as well. Now I can’t even remember half of them (thank god! I didn’t pick them) If I cant recall them then that itself is a bad sign to start off with.
Challenges
Everyone has a different opinion of the names you pick. I tried to find a balance out between others opinions and my own sense of reasoning.
Key deciding factors
One of the most important key factors when naming my venture was a mix of a few critical factors like scalability, distinctiveness, resonates with the values of the brand, ease of pronunciation. Given that its a D2C brand,the customer name recall was very critical in identifying a suitable name. I definitely wanted something that was universal and very positive.
Ekta Shah, Co-Founder, Biziverse
Biziverse indicates "business universe".
We have traditionally been quite consistently pathetic at picking names for our ventures. The name of father's first venture, "Peach Computers", can apparently be spelt in more than five ways! We successfully complicated it further with a longer word "Technovations" when we formed a company, as our bankers, customers, and suppliers refer to it as "technologies", "techno innovations", "innovations", what not! Even our flagship product there, "Genie" has a myriad of spelling possibilities.
But hope is eternal. And domain names are scarce.
During the Covid lockdown, as we evolved the idea of the possibly first-ever single platform combining business tools like ERP and CRM with B2B interactions, vendor matching, knowledge resources, and more, we realized that we are making a single place for business owners and managers to be at for everything related to business - inside and out. Thus, we found all combinations of "business" and "universe" and their synonyms quite relevant.
A key criteria was the availability of a .com domain name, which, fortunately, was available immediately.
Once again, we had forgotten about our tendency for complex spellings, and today, even our investors sometimes pronounce and spell Biziverse in interesting ways!
Amit Panchal, Co-Founder, Allevents
In our case, naming was very simple. We were building a site where one can explore all the events happening in any city. So we started exploring multiple options based on the availability of the domain name. The first name we searched was allevents.com, unfortunately that was not available and bigrock suggested us allevents.in.
The moment we read allevents.in we started making sentences like all events in ahmedabad (allevents.in/ahmedabad), all events in chicago (allevents.in/chicago) and so on.
And quickly we bought the domain name and started working on the prototype. And we named it All Events in City - allevents.in!
CoKarma is one of the fastest growing coworking spaces based out of Hyderabad, they have 8 locations and over 2,400 seats. Founded by Tarun Mor and Ekta Bansal Mor in 2018, here’s the story behind their wonderful brand name “CoKarma”.
“CoKarma” - so the idea behind the company is to build a “coworking space” that gives back to its community, the word “Karma” in Sanskrit also means doing good “work”. Hence, the essence of CoKarma is to bring people together to do “great work” so that we can make the world a slightly better place. Hence “CoKarma”!
I got the idea for the name while I was driving back home one day. As the concept was “co-working”, I wanted the name to have a prefix of “co” and a suffix which drives the essence of what we were trying to build. Suddenly, “Karma” popped in my head as a probable suffix and when I heard my selves saying “CoKarma” it sounded like a really good name.
I took feedback from a few people on the name and all of them gave a resounding thumbs-up for it.
Nadeem Jafri, Founder, Hearty Mart
The idea behind having a unique name like Hearty Mart was to promise our customers, suppliers and stakeholders that we are concerned about their needs and would be stand by them. It was also to break the myth that Juhapura is a hostile area and not a business friendly area considering our proximity to Juhapura since first Hearty Mart store was at Vishala Circle.
In various B-Schools where I am invited for a guest session, I am often asked about the name and I joke that had it been launched in Navrangpura neither it would have been Hearty Mart nor you would have invited me for an interactive session :).
Viraj Rajani, Co-Founder, Digipple
When my co-founder Siddharth and I decided to start a digital agency, we began our search for a company name. Both of us were inspired by the PayPal Mafia, and we understood that 'Pal' means 'Friend.'
So, after a few iterations, we declared ourselves as your digital friends. Thus, Digipal became the name of our new venture.
However, we couldn’t find a domain name for that, so I came up with an idea to use the same pronunciation, and that’s when the name Digipple occurred to me. We searched on a domain provider and found the name available. Now, Digipple is almost 4.5 years old.
Mahendra Sharma, Founder, Matrubharti
Matrubharti is a sanskrit word मातृभारती
We publish ebooks in indian regional language, self published by authors and delivered to readers on our Android and iPhone App.
Matrubharti is synonymous to Mother Tongue. Since we promote language and literature in mother tongue, this name suited us well.
Kush Prajapati, Co-Founder, Redicine
The name 'Redicine Medsol' is a fusion of two integral aspects of our mission. 'Redicine' is born from the combination of 'Reminding' and 'Medicine,' a nod to our flagship product, the Smart Pill Box. This innovative device is at the heart of what we do – reminding patients about their medication schedules and ensuring adherence, a critical factor in effective healthcare.
'Medsol' stands for 'Medical Solutions,' reflecting our broader commitment to the healthcare sector. It signifies our dedication to offering a range of medical solutions that are not just technologically advanced but also deeply empathetic to patient needs. This part of our name underscores our role as a provider of comprehensive healthcare solutions, going beyond just a single product.
In the process of naming our company, we focused on simplicity and memorability. We wanted a name that was easy to pronounce and would resonate with our customers. Additionally, securing a trademark was paramount to protect our brand identity. After extensive brainstorming, we arrived at 'Redicine Medsol.' This name not only aligns perfectly with our vision and products but also stands out in the healthcare industry for its clarity and impact. It symbolizes our commitment to revolutionizing patient care through innovative, technology-driven solutions.
Shruti Kushwah, Founder, Crealoons Innovations
The story behind naming goes back to our native way of thinking,
We wanted to coin a word that doesn’t exit in dictionary, it’s unusual, brings inquisitiveness when one hears it,
We thought of many names and since creation is what we do today, creating products and devices that stand out for our clients, we choose the word “crea”
And since we wanted to sound it youthful & mysterious, we added loons to it.
That’s how Crealoons Innovations was named.
