India, Jan. 30 -- It's something of a tradition for technology publications to put out lists of startups to watch in January, and InformationWeek is no stranger to that trend.

This year, the list includes a lot of startups that sit at the confluence between two or more technology and social trends. For example, it includes a company that is applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the issues surrounding the "me-too" movement and GDPR. Others are combining wearables and machine learning with the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and robotics. And, still others applied AI to personalized marketing, blockchain to the food industry, and cloud computing to the mess that is politics.

To be included in the list, startups had to be less than...