Yoga has conquered the world. Swami Vivekanand took yoga to the west. He wrote the book Raja Yoga in Manhattan in the year 1896. After that yoga started strengthening its roots through teachers and their disciples who travelled to distant foreign lands spreading the powerful impact of yoga everywhere. A popular image of The Beatles, the British rock band visiting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh in 1968 brought yoga to international attention all the more. Millions of people around the globe have started relishing the benefits of yoga. Adding to this popularity, International Yoga Day was declared in the year 2015 by the United Nations upon the proposal of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Yoga is so popular globally that there are hundreds of startups at international level that are promoting yoga through their products and services. Listed below are a small sample of 5 such startups:

1. Yoga Wake Up – It’s a yoga alarm clock ensuring your day starts at the right note. It is an audio-guided meditation or yoga sequence which starts whenever you set up your waking time. One can choose from a huge variety of soothing instrumental music and certified meditation experts and yogis to help start a calm, serene and peaceful day. Joaquin Brown and Lizzie Brown are the founders of the startup based in Los Angeles.

2. NomadYOGI has been a web platform with the purpose to explore, organize, and share a yoga-centered life. Joseph Goodman is the CEO of this platform who is based in Marin County, California. It is a single point to research, schedule, communicate, transact, advertise and inspire people associated with yoga whether as teachers or learners. It's a user-friendly site providing a social network of yoga enthusiasts and finding solutions in relation to Yoga. 

3. YogaBuddy is a SaaS platform for teachers to manage and grow their businesses. It is a platform for yoga learners to discover the right teacher. Yoga Buddy offers a digital suite of tools that allows teachers to be their own boss, and get their business running. It operates through an iOS app. Beamer Wilkins, Robin McIntosh and Beau Bergeron are the founders. They are based in different locations in the US.

4. Sankalp – Josh Nickell is the CEO and Founder of Sankalp based in Los Angeles. Sankalp has been founded with the vision of connecting the yoga enthusiasts with a global yoga and artist community who create unique and high quality yoga mats and other yoga related products. 

5. Down Dog is one of the highest rated apps for practicing yoga at home. More than 12 million practices have been completed through Down Dog so far. San Francisco based Benjamin Simon and Carlos Ormachea are the founders who make use of AI to create an endless stream of individualized yoga practices. 

Yoga does not just unite the body with health, mind with peace, soul with calmness but also east with west! Not just a huge number of yoga practitioners worldwide but also startups vehemently point towards this.