SEBI To Increase Maximum Funding Cap from Angel Funds and More

In an aim to provide momentum to early-stage startup funding in India, market regulator SEBI plans to increase the maximum investment by angel funds in venture capital undertakings to Rs 10 crore from the current Rs 5 crore. However, the minimum investment by an angel investor will continue to be Rs 25 lakhs. The move will give boost to startups especially early-age ones to raise funds in maximum lot.

In this fast changing startup ecosystem of India, wherein angels are investing much higher amounts, such increase is needed to provide more opportunities to angel funds, regulatory officials said.

SEBI also plans on introducing the rule that an angel investor must have a minimum corpus of Rs. 5 crores in order to be able to register with SEBI as a recognized and legal angel investor. Further, the regulator also considering to raise the maximum period of accepting funds from an angel investor to 5 years from the present limit of 3 years, which will provide angel investors more time to identify opportunities and invest in venture capital firms.

The issue will be discussed at the board meeting of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) this week, reported Business Standard.

Technically speaking Angel funds is a sub-category of Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), which encourage entrepreneurship in the country by financing small startups at a stage where such firms find it difficult to obtain capital from traditional sources of finance such as banks and financial institutions. Currently, there are 398 AIFs registered with Sebi and among these 114 are registered under Category I, including eight angel funds.

Angel funds also refers to a money pool created by high net-worth individuals (HNIs) or companies (generally called as angel investors), for investing in business startups. Additionaly, angel funds offer mentoring to entrepreneurs as well as access to their own business networks.

Related Reading - What Types of Companies Do Angel Investors Fund?

Besides, SEBI also plans to provide an option to listed companies for distribution of cash benefits -- dividend of equity and preference shares as well as interest and maturity proceeds on debt instruments -- through the depositories in addition to the present system of distribution either directly by them or through the registrar to an issue and share transfer agents.

At present, there is a restriction on listed companies availing services of depositories for distribution of cash benefits.

In 2015 when SEBI relaxed norms for startups to get listed, the regulatory body, in last August, had also sent notices to at least half a dozen angel firms asking them for details of their business as SEBI found that few of them were acting like unauthorized stock exchanges.

To recall, few days back SEBI also announced that it is planning to allow startups to list on the small and medium enterprises (SME) platform of the stock exchanges as an opportunity to raise capital apart from usual private equity and angel investment funding route.

SEBI To Increase Maximum Funding Cap from Angel Funds and More

In an aim to provide momentum to early-stage startup funding in India, market regulator SEBI plans to increase the maximum investment by angel funds in venture capital undertakings to Rs 10 crore from the current Rs 5 crore. However, the minimum investment by an angel investor will continue to be Rs 25 lakhs. The move will give boost to startups especially early-age ones to raise funds in maximum lot.

In this fast changing startup ecosystem of India, wherein angels are investing much higher amounts, such increase is needed to provide more opportunities to angel funds, regulatory officials said.

SEBI also plans on introducing the rule that an angel investor must have a minimum corpus of Rs. 5 crores in order to be able to register with SEBI as a recognized and legal angel investor. Further, the regulator also considering to raise the maximum period of accepting funds from an angel investor to 5 years from the present limit of 3 years, which will provide angel investors more time to identify opportunities and invest in venture capital firms.

The issue will be discussed at the board meeting of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) this week, reported Business Standard.

Technically speaking Angel funds is a sub-category of Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), which encourage entrepreneurship in the country by financing small startups at a stage where such firms find it difficult to obtain capital from traditional sources of finance such as banks and financial institutions. Currently, there are 398 AIFs registered with Sebi and among these 114 are registered under Category I, including eight angel funds.

Angel funds also refers to a money pool created by high net-worth individuals (HNIs) or companies (generally called as angel investors), for investing in business startups. Additionaly, angel funds offer mentoring to entrepreneurs as well as access to their own business networks.

Related Reading - What Types of Companies Do Angel Investors Fund?

Besides, SEBI also plans to provide an option to listed companies for distribution of cash benefits -- dividend of equity and preference shares as well as interest and maturity proceeds on debt instruments -- through the depositories in addition to the present system of distribution either directly by them or through the registrar to an issue and share transfer agents.

At present, there is a restriction on listed companies availing services of depositories for distribution of cash benefits.

In 2015 when SEBI relaxed norms for startups to get listed, the regulatory body, in last August, had also sent notices to at least half a dozen angel firms asking them for details of their business as SEBI found that few of them were acting like unauthorized stock exchanges.

To recall, few days back SEBI also announced that it is planning to allow startups to list on the small and medium enterprises (SME) platform of the stock exchanges as an opportunity to raise capital apart from usual private equity and angel investment funding route.

Govt Planning No 'Angel Tax' on Startup Funding Via Recognized Investors

Despite no clarification given on demon of 'angel tax', that startups still haunts from, new regulations and contemplation are being revealed every passing day.

A day after Budget 2018 was presented, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) announced that it is making an amendment where startups incorporated before 2016 that have got up to Rs 10 crore in angel funding won’t face the so-called angel tax.

Now, in a latest news coming from a source, government is considering a proposal to exempt investments from recognized angel investor groups in startups from the so-called angel tax.

The news report further stated that, as an additional step concerning angel investments, a committee has been set up under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to form a framework for regulating angel investments.

The 'demon' of so-called angel tax was introduced in Union Budget of 2012 under section 56 (2) (viib) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. This section says that any excess consideration received by a company will be treated as the income of the start-up if it issues shares to a resident at a price which exceeds the fair market value of the shares. The section does not apply if consideration is received from venture capital companies, venture capital funds or a certain class of persons notified by the government. Thus, a startup is required to pay an angel tax at the rate of whopping 30.9% on the capital raised in excess to its fair value.

Thereafter, in past few years, the finance minister has provided exemption from angel tax by excluding investments by non-residents, venture funds, angel funds, and the DIPP-registered startups. Astonishingly though, the startups and Angels of Indian origin are not excluded from taxation.

The latest move of government's new proposal may extend the exemption to angel investors of Indian origin as well.

Prominent angel groups such as Indian Angel Network, Venture Catalysts, AngelList and LetsVenture, among others, are currently presenting proposals to the SEBI panel on the outlines of the regulations regarding angel investments in the country.

To recall, in this year's union budget, it was announced that time for claiming a tax holiday/exemption by eligible startups has been extended till 1-April 2021.

Govt Planning No 'Angel Tax' on Startup Funding Via Recognized Investors

Despite no clarification given on demon of 'angel tax', that startups still haunts from, new regulations and contemplation are being revealed every passing day.

A day after Budget 2018 was presented, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) announced that it is making an amendment where startups incorporated before 2016 that have got up to Rs 10 crore in angel funding won’t face the so-called angel tax.

Now, in a latest news coming from a source, government is considering a proposal to exempt investments from recognized angel investor groups in startups from the so-called angel tax.

The news report further stated that, as an additional step concerning angel investments, a committee has been set up under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to form a framework for regulating angel investments.

The 'demon' of so-called angel tax was introduced in Union Budget of 2012 under section 56 (2) (viib) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. This section says that any excess consideration received by a company will be treated as the income of the start-up if it issues shares to a resident at a price which exceeds the fair market value of the shares. The section does not apply if consideration is received from venture capital companies, venture capital funds or a certain class of persons notified by the government. Thus, a startup is required to pay an angel tax at the rate of whopping 30.9% on the capital raised in excess to its fair value.

Thereafter, in past few years, the finance minister has provided exemption from angel tax by excluding investments by non-residents, venture funds, angel funds, and the DIPP-registered startups. Astonishingly though, the startups and Angels of Indian origin are not excluded from taxation.

The latest move of government's new proposal may extend the exemption to angel investors of Indian origin as well.

Prominent angel groups such as Indian Angel Network, Venture Catalysts, AngelList and LetsVenture, among others, are currently presenting proposals to the SEBI panel on the outlines of the regulations regarding angel investments in the country.

To recall, in this year's union budget, it was announced that time for claiming a tax holiday/exemption by eligible startups has been extended till 1-April 2021.

Bangalore Based Enterprise AI Startup Artivatic Raises Angel Funding

Artivatic Data labs Private Limited, the owner of Artivatic, has announced that it has raised angel round of funding from Singapore based angel investor Rahul Sood. The funding amount is not disclosable.

The raised funding will be used for building proprietaries algorithms and technologies and sales growth. The company currently has 3 paying clients and half a dozen clients are in pipeline. The company is launching its public beta product in end of April, 2017.

Artivatic was earlier selected for European Accelerator called ‘Spark10 Accelerator’ and raised initial angel funding from Spark10. The company is looking for 200% MoM Growth in coming months and target to reach US $10 Million in revenue in FY17-18.

Artivatic is an Enterprise AI Platform, built on the patterns of Genomics Science, Psychology and Neuroscience Capabilities to automate the decision making with prediction, personalization & recommendation in real time. Artivatic has its own propitiatory algorithms 'connected-data-genome- mapping' & 'cross-sector-connected-intelligence. Artivatic technologies are available in form of API, SDK & SaaS Platform for Enterprises & Developers to build Intelligent Systems & Solutions. Currently, it focuses on Lifestyle, Fashion, eCommerce, Marketing/Advertising, Retail, Recruitment, Healthcare, Finance & Telecom Sectors.

The company was founded by IIT & NJIT Alumni, Layak Singh & Puneet Tandon respectively in Oct 2016 after shutdown of earlier online dating startups ‘dateIITians & Cogxio.com’ in Jul 2016.

Event Tech Startup Hubilo Raises Angel Funding from a Group of Investors

Hubilo, a Gujarat-based tech startup operational in the Event Technology space, that provides integrated end to end online solutions for event organisers has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of investors including Girish Mathrubootham, the Founder of Freshdesk. Hubilo serves as a single platform that makes events dynamically interactive and empowers event organizers to create, promote, manage and analyze a number of events effortlessly. Hubilo automates Event Website, HTML Emailers, White Label Event App, Ticketing and Networking Platform in 20 minutes which otherwise takes months for an event organiser to develop.

This round of angel investment in Hubilo has been made by a group of investors which include VC Karthic, Miten Mehta, Umasankar Nistala, Rakesh Patel, Akash Bhavsar, Jeevanandhan Rajagopal, Vikas Chadha, Ameet Rughani, Samad Makani, Avinash Raheja and Ashish Nanda, apart from Girish Mathrubootham.

Hubilo, founded in 2015 was incubated at iCreate with a Seed Fund of INR 15 lakh and had received a Scale up Grant of INR 8.9 lakh from the Government of Gujarat. With a user-friendly interface, Hubilo as an online convergence platform, integrates and customises a seamless technology solution for every event organiser.

Vaibhav Jain, Co-Founder & CEO of Hubilo said, “Organising an event is a tedious task wherein a multitude of activities are needed to be closely coordinated at all levels and can involve innumerable vendors as currently, more than 80% processes are done manually. We at Hubilo aim to automate this entire process of online management of events – taking over the mundane task that the organizers will be doing manually and allowing the software to do it in an easier and much more efficient way. With a strong team and vision in focus, we target to build the largest community of the event goers by powering all the major events held across the globe.”

With a take on the investment front, V C Karthik, Founder at Buzzworks said, “Along with an innovative technology and good market opportunity, the quality, commitment and integrity of the founders and the team was one of the factors that struck the chord right with all the investors. What fuelled our interest to invest in Hubilo was the growth momentum and we were able to see the growth of the company in terms of the product, traction and team at large, during the fundraising phase itself.”

Further talking about the product, Miten Mehta, Silicon Valley Angel Investor and Board Member said,“Hubilo’s AI driven deep learning application is equivalent of LinkedIn + Whatsapp – rolled in to one platform for event specific professional connections and engagement that leads to business opportunities like no other that I have seen or used in market today. I’m excited to work along with Vaibhav and team as strategic investor and board member to scale Hubilo growth and build value over next three years.”

The Asian market size for the Event Tech industry accounts for $60 billion market and is growing at a significant rate of 38 % since 2006. Thus, newly raised funding will primarily be used for expansion to new markets and technology upgradation as a part of company’s future plans.

Other startups operating in this segment are Explara, MeraEvents and Bookmyshow among others.

Financial Technology Startup Datasigns Technologies Raises Angel Funding

Datasigns Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a mobile first financial technology startup has secured an undisclosed amount in angel funding. The investment round was led by Sanjai Vohra, formerly a Managing Director with JP Morgan and UBS and V. Bunty Bohra, Managing Director and India CEO with a large global investment bank.

At $1.2 trillion, India is estimated to be one of the largest markets for consumer finance in the world, behind USA and China. It is also one of the least evolved markets for lending, with close to 70 per cent of the market being underserved by institutional lenders. According to a report by international philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network, over 400 million people borrowed money in India in 2014, but fewer than one in seven were approved for a formal loan.

Datasigns works on behalf of both borrowers and Institutional lenders. Their mobile application “Shubhloans” helps borrowers generates proprietary individual credit score using traditional and secondary data points. Datasigns lending partners use this credit score for lending.

The credit score generated is dynamic and changes with the borrower’s behavior and financials. The “SHUBHLOANS” app is digitized end and to end and offers a paperless loan experience.

“Everyone deserves access to the right amount of credit; and this is exactly what we strive to do through our mobile first platform – Shubhloans. Our innovative credit scoring model debunks old ways of lending and ensures optimal credit by holistically assessing overall risk” said Monish Anand, CEO of Datasigns Technologies.

Founded by bankers, technologists and data scientists; Datasigns has begun operations in Bangalore and has received overwhelming response from the market.

In April 2016, Mumbai-based fintech startup SwitchMe had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of investors including Mohandas Pai, Hiro Mashita and Singapore Angel Network. In June, Financial-technology startup ePayLater, which is operated by Mumbai-based Arthashastra Fintech Pvt. Ltd, had secured $2 million (Rs 13.3 crore) in a seed round of funding from HNIs who are amongst the leaders in the global financial industry.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Bangalore Based Startup Hashtaag Raises $1M in Angel Funding

Hashtaag, a firm which builds native mobile apps & products driven through technology, has announced that it has secured USD $1 million in angel funding. Hashtaag was founded by Krishna Vemula (Kim) and Jayavardhan B N in 2015. Based in Bangalore, the firm employs over 40 mobile app developers, designers and support staff.

The startup primarily works with entrepreneurs and startups looking for high-quality mobile app development partner. Hashtaag helps companies transform their mobile businesses through product strategy consultation, UI/UX design, cross-platform development, quality assurance, deployment, and ongoing support of premium mobile and web applications.

“We are extremely thrilled to secure this funding that will enable us to hire better talent, build better products and expand operations further in India and globally. We intend to make rapid inroads in the design-led app engineering space, and with this additional funding impetus we can continue to focus on delivering the best products to meet our client’s needs with our fundamentally unique business model and value propositions,” said Kim, Chairman & Co-Founder of Hashtaag.

With more than $1 million in revenue, Hashtaag sought funding to support its rapid talent acquisition, product R&D and geographic expansion. The firm aims to reach 100+ employees by the end of 2016; in India, it has already set up additional offices in the key cities of Chennai and Mumbai and plans to expand globally. The company also has an office in San Francisco, California which caters to serial entrepreneurs in the US.

Hashtaag is the proud mobile app development partner of apps such as Doors, Shouut, Paperboy, FaceChat, Curiocty, and Logoon– all owned by popular celebrity icons and serial entrepreneurs.

“While India has been a source for less-expensive development resources for a while, we’ve seen international companies hesitating to use Indian agencies due to quality concerns. Mobile apps or technology products need premium design and development to be successful. Hashtaag is working to raise the bar in India – and around the world – in providing excellence for our clients. We are glad that investors are recognizing our potential to capture a large portion of a booming market.” said Jayavardhan B N, CEO & Co-founder, Hashtaag.

India is witnessing immense innovation in every sector and owing to the recent smartphone boom in the country, the mobile app development industry in particular is seeing huge potential and scope. According to a report by Deloitte, India is set to become the largest base of mobile app developers by 2017. Gartner has further predicted that 42% of organizations are expecting to increase spending on mobile app development by an average of 31% in 2016.

HR Analytics Startup ‘inFeedo’ to Raise $150K in Angel Round of Funding

Three years ago, Tanmaya Jain and his college roommate Varun Puri embarked upon a journey to make the average employee felt valued, with their employee engagement platform, inFeedo. After bootstrapping over a year on client revenue, today they raised an angel round led by managing partner at Redcliffe Capital, a UK-based hedge fund. This $150,000 round was led by Dheeraj and preceded by Palash Jain, Ex-Head of Google India Core Operations. inFeedo is in conversations with relevant angels and HNIs having a strong background in the HR-Tech space to complete the remaining round in the month of September.

“inFeedo is the next disruption, having aligned itself perfectly with the global shift towards people management. We have heard stellar feedback from their clients on how they have arrested attrition and helped boost employee productivity. It's efficient SaaS model will enable them to manage culture in organizations across the globe!" said Dheeraj, Managing Partner, Redcliffe Capital.

The Next Wave of Chatbots: inFeedo’s new AI chatbot “Amber” has been an instant hit with HR heads at geographically distributed companies like MakeMyTrip, Lava Mobile, Knowlarity, RedBus and Nearbuy. Built purely on client feedback, this bot can now automatically talk to employees at specific intervals in their lifecycle and based on their chats, auto-generate Culture Reports for HR leaders to proactively meet those who’re unhappy, facing troubles or about to leave.

“If HR and Data Science were to marry, inFeedo would be the baby. It’s been a real emotional roller coaster ride, watching our baby grow up into a platform that can engage 5500+ employees, generate 1000+ ideas, host 10+ anonymous townhalls and predict attrition in ways that are humanly impossible”, said Tanmaya, Founder, inFeedo.

An Unusual Team: 21 year old, Tanmaya has been growing inFeedo’s paid user base at the rate of 53% QoQ and is cashflow positive, with an unusual team that includes a college dropout from St. Xavier’s, an in-house data scientist and an aspiring psychologist who spent 15 months in Antarctica.

“They are a very creative set of youngsters who are youngsters in terms of age but when it comes to their conversation, discussion and point of view, they can beat any senior guy 30/30+ with their logic”, said Yuvaraj Srivastava, CHRO, MakeMyTrip.

With less than 10 team members, this team surfed the recent huge waves of “startups surge/downturn” and emerged profitable by keeping cost of operations at bare minimum. By end of 2016, inFeedo aims to touch more than 10,000 paid users and is looking to partner with more B2B HR companies as it scales.

A Growing Market: With the rising adoption of technology by HR, SMB SaaS is expected to grow to $76 billion in 2020 and India is expected to capture eight percent of this market.

inFeedo is raising this round to meet this growing demand, scale across international waters and hire talent that can build upon Amber, their chatbot’s machine learning, natural language processing and predictive analytics capabilities.

HR Analytics Startup ‘inFeedo’ to Raise $150K in Angel Round of Funding

Three years ago, Tanmaya Jain and his college roommate Varun Puri embarked upon a journey to make the average employee felt valued, with their employee engagement platform, inFeedo. After bootstrapping over a year on client revenue, today they raised an angel round led by managing partner at Redcliffe Capital, a UK-based hedge fund. This $150,000 round was led by Dheeraj and preceded by Palash Jain, Ex-Head of Google India Core Operations. inFeedo is in conversations with relevant angels and HNIs having a strong background in the HR-Tech space to complete the remaining round in the month of September.

“inFeedo is the next disruption, having aligned itself perfectly with the global shift towards people management. We have heard stellar feedback from their clients on how they have arrested attrition and helped boost employee productivity. It's efficient SaaS model will enable them to manage culture in organizations across the globe!" said Dheeraj, Managing Partner, Redcliffe Capital.

The Next Wave of Chatbots: inFeedo’s new AI chatbot “Amber” has been an instant hit with HR heads at geographically distributed companies like MakeMyTrip, Lava Mobile, Knowlarity, RedBus and Nearbuy. Built purely on client feedback, this bot can now automatically talk to employees at specific intervals in their lifecycle and based on their chats, auto-generate Culture Reports for HR leaders to proactively meet those who’re unhappy, facing troubles or about to leave.

“If HR and Data Science were to marry, inFeedo would be the baby. It’s been a real emotional roller coaster ride, watching our baby grow up into a platform that can engage 5500+ employees, generate 1000+ ideas, host 10+ anonymous townhalls and predict attrition in ways that are humanly impossible”, said Tanmaya, Founder, inFeedo.

An Unusual Team: 21 year old, Tanmaya has been growing inFeedo’s paid user base at the rate of 53% QoQ and is cashflow positive, with an unusual team that includes a college dropout from St. Xavier’s, an in-house data scientist and an aspiring psychologist who spent 15 months in Antarctica.

“They are a very creative set of youngsters who are youngsters in terms of age but when it comes to their conversation, discussion and point of view, they can beat any senior guy 30/30+ with their logic”, said Yuvaraj Srivastava, CHRO, MakeMyTrip.

With less than 10 team members, this team surfed the recent huge waves of “startups surge/downturn” and emerged profitable by keeping cost of operations at bare minimum. By end of 2016, inFeedo aims to touch more than 10,000 paid users and is looking to partner with more B2B HR companies as it scales.

A Growing Market: With the rising adoption of technology by HR, SMB SaaS is expected to grow to $76 billion in 2020 and India is expected to capture eight percent of this market.

inFeedo is raising this round to meet this growing demand, scale across international waters and hire talent that can build upon Amber, their chatbot’s machine learning, natural language processing and predictive analytics capabilities.

CheersOye! A Simplified Social Payments and Social Gifting Platform Raises Angel Round

CheersOye! founded by Ex-Yahoo Analytics Lead, Bhavna Lalchandani and ex-Zee Digital Marketing Expert Rahul Shrivastava in 2015, has closed its angel round for an undisclosed amount from a very influential set of HNI investors.

The startup is a simplified Social payments and Social gifting platform that allows users to pay via app for Instant Real Personalized Experiences or send the same to a friend’s mobile instantly via e-vouchers on SMS or Email and receive interesting gratifications in return.

The company focuses on sharing casual, spontaneous and fun social experiences such as dining, spa & salon, fitness, travel, entertainment, lifestyle experiences such as jewelry, designer wear, fashion,lifestyle, etc. However currently they are live with F&B, Spa&Salon and will be soon expanding to the other mentioned genres.

Users can send a beer, spa, facial, cheesecake, wine, dinner, doughnuts, pizza, lunch, breakfast, brunch, champagne, or movie vouchers, gift hampers, etc to a friend instantly on their phones and also earn cashbacks & freebies.

So if you decide to send a beer to your friend or just buy dinner for yourself using CheersOye! you can actually get a surprise foot spa or cheesecake or just some cash back as CheersOye! vouchers or any other treat via an e-voucher which can be redeemed at the Partner Merchants.

CheersOye! offers a convenient and instant way to deliver personalized experiences via e-vouchers on the mobile number of the recipient, who can then go to the respective merchants and redeem it, thus making a revolution in the traditional way of payments and gifting.

So how does it work? Well it's a pretty simple process.

Sender recommends a Personalized Treat/Experience and selects a Merchant.

Enters the recipient details and makes a payment for the voucher value via CheersOye web/mobile app.

Recipient receives e-voucher on the mobile phone/email id along with the voucher details as personal message/email.

Recipient showcases the original SMS/Email Voucher at the Merchant for redemption.

Once voucher is redeemed, recipient is updated immediately with an Email/SMS confirmation.

Merchants also get a real time update on the dashboard with the voucher and recipient details.

CheersOye! offers a win-win to its Customers as well as Partner Merchants.

Customer benefits include Convenience, Cashless transactions, Personalized Experiences & Treats, Instant Delivery, Freedom of Choice, Cash backs/Freebies for every transaction, Curated Offline & Online Merchants.

Merchant benefits include New Customer Acquisition, ROI Driven Model basis Pay per Performance, Cross promotions to the right target audience, Real-Time Voucher Tracking &Analytics, Self Serve Model.

Current Traction – CheersOye! has crossed 50K downloads within few months of launch with 35% repeat usage. They have tie-ups with 1000 partner Merchant outlets covering 50+localities in Mumbai covering across F&B, Spa & Salons and are soon expanding to other genres and cities within this quarter.

Some of the renowned brands in their portfolio include The Barking Deer, Intercontinental Long & Short, Ramada Palm Grove, Baskin Robbins, Krispy Kreme, Persian Darbar, Bombay Barbeque, Cream Centre, and Spas include Iosis, Enrich, Four Fountains, Envy Salon, Pep Salon, NuAyurveda Clinic and many more.

Future Plans:

• Facilitate Billion Transactions across 20K+ MerchantsPan India via social payments and become a channel for a massive retail network of 20K+ Merchants Pan India for accepting customer payments via e-vouchers.


• Self Serve Model for Merchants who can join the bandwagon in just one click.


• Empower Social Spends –At Offline and Online Partner Merchants.


• Loyalty and Reward platform - To become a centralized platform for Loyalty and Reward System including corporates, thus becoming a single platform for marketing to the right target customers for all the partner merchants.


• Unified Analytics Platform offering in-depth Customer Analytics and Merchant Analytics.

EdTech Startup Notesgen Crosses 400k Users, Raises $100k Angel Funds

Notesgen – a peer-to-peer notes eXchange platform for students to learn and earn, has crossed 400k users, raised $100k in angel funds and enhanced its product to become the first platform to offer personalized notes feed for each student based on their preferences, keywords and field of study.

The company announced a complete product revamp to support personalization technology. This includes features like allowing students to register their field of study, keywords and search terms which are used to create individual oriented notes feed from their databases with highly relevant and useful content for the user. Additionally, students can download Notesgen curated 25,000+ notes from professional educators and top students as recommended content. A powerful search based trending content feed mechanism has also been added so that students can check out the top content related to their interest.

Notesgen has also improved integration with cloud based storage so enable students to upload notes easily from dropbox, google drive and other repositories; improved social sharing of notes and introduced a bonus credit system for user referrals. The UI/UX has been revamped to make it easier to identify credibility of authors, preview notes better and get notified for wish-list faster.

All of the improvements are also available via its iOS and Android apps as well. Notesgen has reported over 10 minutes per session average engagement with its mobile app which is a strong indication of the value its student generated content brings to other students.

Speaking at the release, its young founder & CEO, Manak Gulati, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University said “student makes notes to understand a point or concept better in their own way. This individualized way of understanding a concept gives other students key insights and learning that is unique about Notesgen. This is the reason we are seeing over 400k users from 100+ countries without any marketing spends”.

Notesgen also announced a follow-on funding of $100k by its angel investors. To further help accelerate the product roadmap and marketing, Mr. Arvind Jha, ex-head of engineering at Adobe India and a leading technologist and digital /social media strategist, has joined its board to drive Notesgen to 1 million active users by Dec 2016. Notesgen also revealed an impressive panel of advisors including Mr. Amit Ranjan, a founder of Slide Share and Mr. Satya Narayan, founder/CEO of Career Launcher.

Notesgen is an EdTech startup focusing on building a notes Xchange platform where students can upload their study notes so that other students can benefit from the same. It offers both free and priced options for such notes. Since its inception in Nov 2014, it has grown virally demonstrating a demand for peer-2-peer notes sharing that is not being fulfilled by other platforms so far. Notesgen is based in Delhi, India.

Medinfi Raises $200K in Angel Funding from Reputed Professionals

Medinfi Healthcare Private Limited announced that it has raised approx. $2,00,000 (sR 1.5 Crores) of fresh angel funding from reputed professionals like Mudit Saxena (Senior Vice President, Genpact) and Evan Lim (Singapore). Existing Directors like Mr. Hemant Kaul (ex-CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance) and Dr. Ram Kumar Kakani (Professor, XLRI) have re-invested in this round of angel funding. With this funding, the company has so far raised more than USD 0.5 million (approx. INR 4 Crores) in angel funding.

This round of funding comes soon after company’s selection for Red Herring Award 2016 finals in Manila, Philippines for Top 100 start-ups in Asia. The company was also chosen by Aditya Birla Group recently in its Bizlabs Core Program 2016 for top healthcare technology start-ups.

Medinfi intends to use the funds to grow its user base to 5,00,000 from 50,000 currently by March, 2017. The company wants to extend its services for the users in 50 Indian cities, up from 12 cities at present, and may explore South East Asian countries including Singapore. It also plans to serve the users of iPhone by launching iOS mobile application by this time..

According to Mr. Ravi Shankar Mishra, Founder & CEO, Medinfi, “Medinfi is overwhelmed by the response from global angel investors in this round. We shall remain committed to offer verified information to our users for taking healthcare decisions online and expand our services to many more users across India and South East Asia.”

In past, Medinfi was selected in top 100 digital health start-ups globally by Interface Health Excellence (IHX), Canada and was selected for Facebook’s FBStart and Social Good Programs.

Medinfi is Indian pure-play healthcare content platform which offers verified and genuine information on nearby doctors and clinics to its users. The startup has an easy-to-use Android mobile application and website which helps users locate the nearest doctors and hospitals for their every-day check-ups. The applications automatically detect the current user location and displays the nearest doctors, hospitals, and clinics.

While the users can call the doctors and hospitals from the mobile application, Medinfi does not have any revenue tie-ups with either doctors or hospitals and thereby does not book appointments. The company wants to remain a pure-play content platform and would like to continue serving its users with genuine and verified content at all times.

Currently, the application is available for users in 12 Indian cities, namely Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, NOIDA, and Navi Mumbai with information on 12000+ verified doctors, clinics and hospitals. The mobile application has more than 50,000 users which has grown 600% since January, 2016.

Medinfi has worked closely with Insurance Information Bureau of India, promoted by Insurance Regulatory Development of India (IRDAI), for Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance (ROHINI) project which has given Unique Identification to 32000+ hospitals located across India.

Customised Furniture Startup Stitchwood Gets $200K in Angel Round of Funding

Mumbai-based customised furniture startup Stitchwood which owned and operated by Tangramme Furnishing Solutions Pvt. Ltd, has raised $200,000 (around Rs 1.3 crore) in its third round of funding from Deepak Gupta, co-founder, Equity Crest and a bunch of unnamed angel investors, including high-net worth individuals (HNIs).

“We plan to raise about $400,000 in the third round of funding and have already raised $200,000. We have also got a commitment of another $100,000,” Ajit Shegaonkar, co-founder, Stitchwood told Techcircle.

The startup aims to utilise the funds for operations, marketing initiatives and enhancing customer experience. In July 2015, Stitchwood had raised $400,000 in an angel round from members of Powai Lake Ventures and a few individual angel investors. It had earlier raised $100,000 in its seed funding round from angel investor Ajeet Khurana besides other investors.

Stitchwood was founded in 2014 by IIT Bombay alumni Ajit Shegaonkar and Vikas Nair, the startup allows users to design their own furniture using the tools on the platform or upload the image of the furniture on the platform. With the online 3D design tool, the company allows customers to visualise their furniture design and helps them create their own furniture.

Stitchwood is currently serving customers in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi-NCR region and claims to be growing by 45% on a month-on-month basis. The average ticket size of customised furniture sales is more than Rs 1 lakh. The startup gets about 1000 queries on a monthly basis. Also, the firm has so far tied up with more than 200 micro, small medium enterprises (MSMEs) to manufacture the furniture.

The other players operating in the customised furniture segment is also catching investor interest. In January, Bangalore-based startup Infurnia Furnishings Pvt Ltd had raised seed investment of $160,000 from early-stage venture capital firm Idein Ventures.

In December last year, Hyderabad-based custom-made furniture e-tailer Customfurnish.com, secured about $4.5 million in a fresh round of funding from Bangalore-based family office Agnus Capital.

In the same year, Bangalore-based CapriCoast.com Home Solutions Pvt. Ltd, received $3.5 million in a Series A round led by existing investors Accel Partners India and Singapore-based VC firm RB Investments.

Mumbai houses the highest number of angel investors

While Bengaluru might be holding the crown of being India's startup capital for quite a long time now, but it has unfortunately lost out on being crowned as the number one destination for India's angel investors. According to data made available by a study done by LetsVenture, an angel investing platform, Mumbai, the financial capital of India, houses the maximum number of angel investors in the country.

The study reveals that out of the total 1,800 angels in the country, the Mumbai-Pune belt is home to about 332 angel investors. This is followed by Bengaluru with 298 for the second position and DelhiNCR is a close third with 285 angel investors.

In addition to the numbers, the study also revealed several other interesting facts about angel investors in India. According to it, when compared to their United States counterparts, Angels in India do lesser due diligence and have a pattern of being Sector-Agnostic.

The findings reveal that angel investors in India end up spending only 4 to 10 hours in doing a due diligence of the startup that they are planning to invest their money in, whereas US investors dedicate around 20 hours on an average for the same. The study also talks about how Indian angel investors often schedule their meetings with entrepreneurs without any prior intimation, while their US counterparts holds their meetings twice every month, and they're planned much in advance for everyone's convenience.

India with its 1,800 angels forms just a fraction of the US's tally of around 300,000 angel investors. These figures strongly indicate that India's angel investing ecosystem is still in its beginning stage and has a long way to go. Though the figures don't look so faltering right now, they do offer a promising future ahead. This becomes almost double sure as last year saw the number of angel deals almost doubling to 691 from just 370 deals in the year 2014.

The LetsVenture report also predicts that 2016 will witness a number of bridge rounds, which is a round of funding that takes places between between the seed round and a full-blown Series A round. According to the report, we will be able to see a number of angels enthusiastically participating in these bridge rounds.

The report also talks about the huge disparity between the US and Indian startup industry regarding the exit procedure. Unlike in the United States, Indian angel investors have to play a waiting game for M&A opportunities or follow-on investments instead of an IPO to get an exit from their startup investments. Majority of the US based angel investors are provided with an opportunity to exit the startups within 3.5 years of their investment. But, an exit in the Indian subcontinent is highly unlikely.

]Top Image Source: Shutterstock ]

The Indian Iris, A Policy Research and Consulting Startup, Raises Angel Funding

The Indian Iris, a policy research and consulting startup that focuses on analysing and simplifying government policies and schemes, raised an angel investment of undisclosed amount from Ahmedabad based Timbru Ventures, a fund that supports aspiring entrepreneurs with promising ideas.

The Indian Iris was founded a year ago with support from Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad. It is founded by the passionate alumni of IIT Roorkee, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIIT Bangalore.

The Indian Iris is the first of its kind platform that provides all policies and schemes of centre and state governments in an easy to understand language. The team at The Indian Iris navigates through complex policy documents and decodes them for easy understanding of citizens.

“We started with the thought that all governments, center or state, formulate some policies and schemes for the welfare of businesses or for their citizens. However, many times the information is not easily available, searchable and easily understood by common citizens, depriving them from availing benefits. There are language barriers too. That’s where, The Indian Iris aspires to play a major role,” says Sahitya, the co-founder.

The Indian Iris has also developed an android application, ‘Join R’, available on Google Play store for download. The app attempts to leverage the community driven culture in our country. The key aim of the application to deliver information that matters the most to the Indian citizens including the policy and scheme related information. Currently, this beta version of the application maps all 6,50,000 villages of our country and allows user to join his or her village community.

Timbru Venture’s managing director Narayan DhulSingh said that they invested in this startup mainly for the promising team and they are attempting to solve a huge problem which impacts a large majority of our country. “In today’s digital world, information is the new source of power. Many in our country do not get the right information at the right moment. If successfully implemented, it will create a huge impact,” he further added.

“We aim to become the most preferred source of information on policies and schemes by center and state governments in India. We shall cover both welfare and business policies and schemes.” We aim to build a policy and project consulting layer to generate revenues”, says Narayan, another co-founder.

At present, the portal sees over 30,000 unique visitors with 145,000 page views per month. Every day, the portal receives tens of queries from users asking for clarification on polices/schemes, and seeking advice on how to avail benefits. The startup aims to use the funds to scale its operations, hiring more resources for handing user queries, building and marketing the mobile platform, Join R, and enhancing the user interface of The Indian Iris.

Social Commerce Platform Meesho Raises Angel Funding from Investor Rajul Garg, Others

Social commerce platform Meesho, previously called Fashnear, has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from investor Rajul Garg, besides other investors. The Bangalore-based startup which was founded by IIT Delhi alumni Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in 2015, allows sellers to set up an online shop through its platform and also facilitates sharing on other social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Pinterest, amongst others.

A business-to-business (B2B) platform, Meesho has also launched its app for Android users and planning to launch for iOS users very soon.

Rajul Garg has previously invested in many firms like Innotarget Fashalot Retails Pvt Ltd (which runs location-based fashion and store discovery mobile platform Fashalot), Corner Store Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (a full-service pharmacy targeting patients with chronic illnesses that operates under the brand LifCare) and AddoDoc Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (which runs the Babygogo mobile app that connects parents with child healthcare experts).

Last year, Hyderabad-based Thinkbits Internet Technologies Pvt Ltd which owns and operates social commerce startup VioletStreet.com, has also raised $315,000 in angel funding from former Bank of America senior vice president Venkat Vallabhaneni and angel investor Srinivasa Rao Paturi.

 

Healthcare App Prescribez Raises $145K in Angel Funding from Ankush Mehta, an Angel Investor

Prescribez, the healthcare app (mobile and web app) by ThingsMeet Solutions has raised a seed funding of $145K from Ankush Mehta, an angel investor. A consumer centric health service aggregator, Prescribez makes collaboration between consumers and service providers like doctors, labs and pharmacies easy by bringing them on one platform. It allows users to search and avail health services through theapp in an easy and affordable way. The app is slated for launch this month in Pune.

Disrupting the way healthcare is delivered and experienced by people, ThingsMeet Solutions, the tech start-up from Pune, is creating multiple technology driven solutions to expand access to healthcare, enhance the quality and improve health outcomes. “Prescribez” is the first product from ThingsMeet Solutions.

“We are looking to aggregate labs and start doctor consultation through Prescribez itself,” said Neeraj Joshi, co-founder and CEO, Prescribez, further adding, “The funds will be used for product development and marketing. We are also planning to start operations in Mumbai in the next six months”.

Neeraj Joshi, Manish Bandil, Cherag Mehta and Jayant Kaduskar have founded the Pune-based startup, ThingsMeet Solutions. Neeraj Joshi, Manish Bandil and Cherag Mehta have previously worked together at Infosys Technologies for more than fifteen years. Jayant Kaduskar is an IIT Bombay alumni and has previously worked in Accenture and Infosys. Each of the founder has healthcare and technology experience of over two decades.

With more than two decades of experience in healthcare and technology, the founders have deep passion to use technology, to help people manage their health better. With a firm belief in digital technology and internet of things, the founders aim to change the way healthcare is delivered and experienced by people. ThingsMeet Solutions identifies problems in healthcare segment and develop products as solutions to expand access to care, enhance quality and improve health outcomes. The company plans three offerings over the next 2 years with Prescribez a consumer centric healthcare app being the first one.

Vehicle Maintenance Startup MotoMojo Raises Angel Funding From Founders Of Ventes Avenues

Mobile app based vehicle maintenance startup MotoMojo has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from the founders of Ventes Aveues, which invest in startups and help them reach their customers. Niloufer Dundh, Fauzan Rahim and Balamurugan Mani, the three co-founders of Ventes Avenues, have invested in their personal capacity.

The startup which started operations in March 2016, MotoMojo currently offers services across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane and helps connect customers with reliable and trustworthy garages at affordable prices. With a strong network of over 2500 garages across the city, the startup offers one click booking using the app and also ensures  convenience through their “ pickup and drop” services  that a customer would truly value. In addition, the company has an in-house team of experts to help a customer choose the services that are ideal and thus aid in decision making. The startup ensure hand-holding of customer throughout the process which is very essential in category where majority of customer don’t have enough in-depth knowledge about servicing.  

With a host of service providers catering to regular servicing/maintenance of 2 wheelers/4 wheelers, car wash, denting, polishing and painting apart from emergency services like towing and puncture care, MotoMojo is looking at tapping into this huge market of  192 million vehicles and is set to scale up exponentially.

With this angel round of funding MotoMojo will look at ramping up the product capabilities, marketing and also building on ground support to build excellent customer service.

In the next couple of months, the company will build a service that will create a sustainable business and help customers discover what true service means. The startup has plans to scale up its services across major metros in India over a period of time.

With services such as a door-step Eco Friendly car wash at just Rs.99, this sure looks like a startup that’s set to go places.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

Delhi Based Healthcare Startup Imedilane Raises Angel Funding

Imedilane a Delhi based Healthcare based startup focusing on Telemedicine based Virtual / Tele & Email Consultation has raised angel funding amount of approx $40K from Angel Investors.

The startup was Founded by Shakti Anand, an Ex – Military Engineering Service Officer and alumni of IIM Bangalore having 12 + yrs of experience. He and his wife Khushboo Anand decided to start a Virtual Consultation platform  after seeing the problem which there family members & friends faced staying in Tier2 & Tier3 city on daily basis as most of the best Health Care Practitioners are in Metro city. Building on the concept Shakti Anand made the prototype model which was backed by Angel Investor.

During initial research, he found that almost all people face problem of finding good certified Doctors having qualification from institutes as "Most of the information is based on word of mouth shared by their relatives or friends" said Shakti Anand, adding that there was no centralized system or portal providing End to End Solution for consultation.

Imedilane initiative is helping patient to save the time and money from travelling far distance, removing the hassle of finding places to stay and giving service to patient to speak with right doctors of their choice from home Via Video Calling, Email Consultation and Tele Calling (with or without Internet). The startup's team is presently focusing on Tier 2 & 3 cities of India and has also started rendering its service for the International patients for customize consultant service and has plan to target African and UAE market going with the theme of Go Global by Prime Minister Narendar Modi.

Imedilane is also helping doctor’s to assist patience in a better manner as they need not to travel far distance within cities or other towns as they will be able to provide consultation from one place and enhance their reach of service. The company has also provided software to doctor’s by which they can manage the clinics  better, interact on social media platform and  save time for their critical patients.

Presently the startup has started the operation with a team of more than 120 Doctors based out of Delhi and has reach out to more than 8,000 user in last few weeks. Looking at the better response from the market Imedilane team looks to reduce the gap in the Industry and promote medical tourism in India.