If you’re the curious sort who isn’t from this part of the country, you might have web-checked the sweets of this city, the festivals celebrated or the tourist spots around but didn’t see reason enough to check out its start-up culture. Well, you could be forgiven because for the outsider Kolkata is known for its traditions and cultures, beauty and, as the movie portrayed, “City Of Joy”.

But there&’s a new trend booming in the Bengal capital — the beginning of a fresh start-up sector involving whiz ex-students, with businessmen, investors, the government and the general public becoming gradually aware of the pick-up that promises to raise Kolkata as a start-up hub. Major attempts have been made by some tech start-ups to fan this wave of innovation and here are 10 of the city&’s top 10 tech set-ups that are in the process of upping the ante:

TaxMantra: If you’ve being agonising over a solid tax plan, this is a one-stop solution that helps clients sketch or renovate their tax map. A Chartered Accountant by qualification, exXaverian Alok Patnia founded this start-up that offers services such as company/ LLP creation, accounting, tax return filing and company law compliances. Major start-ups, business houses, NRIs and individuals are already a part of their client list.

BuyHatke: Ranked among the top 700 websites in the country, this one enhances the experience for online shoppers by letting them compare prices of the same product across different websites. Currently, it has in sync 50 credible websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and more as a base for price comparison. The list will surely grow with further efforts of its masterminds, Gaurav Dahake, Prashant Singh and Srikanth Sethumadhavan, all former IITians.

Mihup&’s Nectar: Face it, you can’t carry around a desktop everywhere you go, but should this fact prevent you from doing a web search? Hence this start-up provides a SMSbased search for content from the web ecosystem. It ends in finding categorised content based on reviews, affordability ratings and users’ social interest. The start-up has already bagged more than five million users.

SIBIA Analytics: This techintegrated set-up is aiming to boost the city&’s analytics in dustry and provides sales, marketing and customer intelligence predictions to its clients. CEO Angushuman Bhattacharya, a true Kolkatan at heart, is aware of the city&’s backlogging in the tech sector and hopes to join the bandwagon too.

 MindHour: A team of four gathered 10,000 registered clients within six months of the company&’s official launch. The website has a curriculum-based Adaptive Learning Programme that guides students towards advanced learning in science and maths. Among the co-founders, Soumya Agarwal has framed a total of 25,000 questions for students between the fifth and 10th standard.

Ikure: This start-up provides affordable healthcare services in rural India based on a cloud web application called Wireless Health Incident Monitoring System. As founder Sujoy Ghosh said, “Besides improving medical assistance, our innovation also allows mapping the main types and causes of diseases in rural areas.” Though the managerial team is limited to 50, the Ikure operational team has loads of the best medical professionals on the roster.

Surgerica: To infuse transparency in the medical industry, another Kolkata healthcare start-up that is making the move is Surgerica. Their service list includes reviews of hospitals, a comparative study of cost of a variety of medical facilities, booking appointments and video consultation. Amit Bhagat, the initiator behind the project, comments, “Currently we have 400-plus hospital centres across India with more than 350-plus doctors.”

Wow! Momo: The largest momo chain in the country had its birth in the City of Joy, thanks to two pass-outs from St Xaviers College. Their innovation lies in discovering new varieties of momos along with operations in food court outlets, restaurants and shop-in-shop models. Recently, Sanjeev Bhikchandani, the founder of Naukri.com, invested Rs 10crore for a 10 per cent share in Wow Momo.