AI Startup Artivatic.ai Raises Another Angel Round of Funding from Spark10 Accelerator

Artivatic Data Labs Pvt. Ltd. that owns and operates Artivatic.ai, has raised an additional angel round of funding from Spark10 Accelerator. The funding amount is still undisclosed.

The raised fund will be used in expanding customer base and strengthening its proprietaries algorithms and technologies. The company is doing multiple POCs (proof of concepts) with more than 5, Fortune 500 clients and dozens of clients are in pipeline. Artivatic has already filed some patents and in process of filing more patents too. There are 20-member strong product & business team on building such innovative technologies. The company has Jonathan Quigley (Single Family Office, Executive Office, Hinduja Group, UK), Atal Malviya (Founder of Spark10 Accelerator) and Siddhartha Dhamija (Chief Growth Office, RazorPay) in its advisory board as well.

Artivatic.ai has earlier raised some angel funding as well form Singapore & Indian based angel investors. The company is looking for 110% MoM Growth in coming months and target to reach $2 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 Finance, Insurance, Capital Markets, Wealth Management, Banking, Healthcare, Fraud & Risk management, Diagnosis related areas.

Artivatic 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 July 2016.

Avenue Growth Raises Angel Funding Led by Talentedge's CEO, BCGSV & Others

Gurgaon-based Avenue Growth which connects brands to free-lance sales specialist, has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding led by Aditya Malik (CEO, Talentedge & Partner at Lumis Venture Partners), BCGSV (Brand Capital-Global Silicon Valley Fund) and a group of high net worth individuals (HNIs) including Haresh Punjabi, Rahul Mehta and Akhilesh Kumar. The startup also become a part of BCGSV’s 15 weeks accelerator program.

“The funds are being used to strengthen our industry verticals and develop a larger pool of freelance sales professionals,” says Rachit Mathur-CEO & Co-Founder-Avenue Growth.

Launched 6 months back in Jan 2017 by Rachit Mathur and Dilkash Rai Malhotra, Avenue Growth is a platform that aggregates some of the best sales professionals from across the country and channelises them to enable companies to reach out to customers across India.

A company reaches out to Avenue Growth to sell its products across specified locations. Sales professionals from across the country enlist on the platform as ‘growth specialists’. The client is also given a customised brand dashboard. Based on the requirements of the client and their experience, area of operation, and inclination, growth specialists are assigned to the client(s).

Through the brand dashboard, client can share leads and brief the on-ground team about the product or solution. Client can also track the progress of the sales process. Success parameters are set in tandem with client’s brief. The client pays for the successful closure of the sale; Avenue Growth deducts 25 to 40 percent of the commission which is shared with the growth specialist.

“As on today, we have over 5000 free-lance sales professionals typically having 3 plus years experience from FMCG | Digital | Finance | Hospitality | Retail background. We are present in 280 Indian cities and working with 30+ brands. We are looking to on-board 1,00,000 Growth Specialists by year end,” says Dilkash Rai Malhotra-COO & Co-Founder-Avenue Growth.

Sports Consultancy Startup, Time of Sports Raises Angel Round of Funding

Time of Sports, a Sports company specialized in sports consultancy services has recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Mr. Sandeep Arya Chairman and Managing Director of a $32 million conglomerate of companies Amtrak Technologies Pvt Ltd, Presto Infosolutions Pvt Ltd, Sanvei Overseas Pvt Ltd. The geographical spread of his group is across Africa, CIS, UAE and Singapore. The focus of the group is on thinking “Out of the Box” to give unique and cost effective IT and Security solutions to its customers. Time of Sports is an evolving Sports Company marking its presence in online as well as on ground Sports destined to be our Nations sports and fitness destination with the vision of a FIT NATION and a mission to create an ecosystem of SPORTS FOR ALL.

The funds raised will be invested in expanding the existing Sports Consultancy Leg of the Company to create an ecosystem of sports for all and fabricate India’s Largest Grassroots Initiatives. The funds will also be used to develop a unique sports mobile app which will further converge online and on ground sports & Fitness activities. The app will help the brand reach out to around 100 million school kids and their parents which will also enhance the presence of the brand exponentially. Lastly a portion of the funds would be utilized to launch the World’s Largest STEM Based Technology Challenge – F1 in Schools™ in India.

Yashraj Singh, CEO and Founder of Time of Sports, said, “We are extremely pleased to have Mr. Arya investing in our dream and we look forward to steer the company towards transforming the overall sports consultancy scenario in the country. We envisage to develop the youngest minds and sports stars in the fastest growing economy. We are constantly carving befitting Sports solutions and building a work group obsessed with quality and innovation. We are geared to be trailblazer of disruptive sports marketing concepts in Corporate and Grassroots Sports Initiatives. INDIA is emerging in the Business of Sports & we are at the opportune moment of this ERA. Mr. Arya amplifies the Mission of the Company and makes the Team a perfect amalgamation of Experience & Energy, Innovation & Technology.  The Game Begins…”

Since inception, Time of Sports has provided high quality consultancy advice to the sports and fitness sector and delivered unique Proprietary Platforms like NCR Games, Corpwarriors, Indian Fitness Festival and many more. The company has introduced multiple programs and platforms to popularize sports as an important aspect among sports enthusiast in the country. Over the years, Time of sports has conceptualized, Consulted and Executed Sports Initiatives like sports days, leagues and marathons involving large corporate, RWA’s and schools as well. These services have also supported governmental agencies like DDA, National Dailies, national sports organizations, local sports clubs and institutions.

This year, Time of Sports brings F1 in Schools™ to India. As F1 in Schools™ comes to India Time of Sports aspires to offer students a life changing experience. F1 in Schools™ is an international STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) competition for school children (aged 9–19), wherein groups of 3–6 students design and manufacture a miniature "car" out of the official F1 Model Block using CAD/CAM design tools. F1 in Schools™ is an internationally acclaimed brand associated with the Grand Prix. Time of Sports is privileged to have the support of the Formula One™ community – in particular Mr. Ecclestone and the new CEO Mr. Chase Carey at FOM and, of course, the Formula One™ teams who make our students welcome in the F1™ paddock and in their factories.

GrowthEX, A Global Platform Enabling Personal and Professional Growth, Gets Angel Funding

GrowthEX, a global platform enabling Personal and Professional Growth through Online Counselling, Programs and Peer Engagement, nurtured by an online and offline community of learners sharing common growth goals; has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a clutch of angel investors.

GrowthEX today has more than 100,000+ users, 5000+ Counsellors and 1000+ Programs. In addition to India, platform already has paying users from countries like Singapore, Qatar, Brazil and Nigeria, making it a global platform in a short span of time.

GrowthEX Community boasts of a strong user engagement with a user spending more than 12 minutes daily on an average on the platform, with a strong 40% non incentivised referral rate. More than 80% of the content distribution is in the form of videos and 58% of the content usage is through mobiles. More than 4,00,000 hours of counselling has been provided to the users till date.

"We believe that mental health can be fostered for an individual only with a strongly blended personal and professional growth, and that is where the spectrum of Programs, counsellors, influencers and community meets help our users.", says Varun Saxena, CEO, GrowthEX. Varun Saxena is an MBA from one of the country's reputed B School, NITIE Mumbai and also holds B.Tech from a premier government institute. He had more than 4 years of industry experience working with CIOs and CMOs of US and European clients, before starting his own venture. He is also the author of couple of academic books and a motivational speaker.

"Some of the top experts have been earning upto INR 2 lac per program already merely by following their passion and it has encouraged plethora of industry stalwarts, ranging from Psychologists to Skill Up Experts to Psychiatrists to Investment Bankers to Relationship Counsellors to IIT & IIM graduates to Consultants from Big 4 to retired Defence Personnel to host their programs or to join as counsellors.", adds Varun.

In addition to traditional programs providing professional development and career enhancement programs, GrowthEX offers programs and services in some of the very unique areas within Life and Relationships, ranging from Body Language while Dating to How to overcome a break up to counselling over topics like Extra Marital Affairs and Sexual Wellness. This is coupled with the availability of industry influencers offering counselling in areas like Profile Building, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Test Prep and Language Learning.

"Stress, due to both personal and professional reasons is becoming the part of an individual's life. While people are struggling in Relationships on one side, they are worried about the career on the other. This coupled with cultural reasons of not sharing these issues with experts, has further impacted the lives. We aim at making GrowthEX a lifestyle product, which enables everyone to grow and stay stress free.", says Ayesha Raval, Head - Strategic Marketing and PR, GrowthEX.

"We are in a service based sector and believe strongly that the perfect execution of the ideas, customer satisfaction and proactively working on what our customers need is the true differentiator and the barrier for the competition. Technology and features are something which anyone can develop with capital in hand, but it is the trust of customers through strong offline and online engagement and the value they find in our offerings, that makes us stand apart ." says Varun.

"Excellence in operations and delivery of programs has been our another strong differentiator. 94% program completion rate reflects customer satisfaction with our delivery model and ensures us staying ahead of competition." adds Ayushi Marwah, Head - Operations, GrowthEX.

In addition to 9 member strong team, GrowthEX also has Mr. Subinder Khurana in its advisory board. Subinder is currently a Member of the Board at TiE Delhi, member of NASSCOM Product Council, and was earlier the Chair of TiE Entrepreneurship Nurturing Program and a NASSCOM-Emerge Mentor.

Raised funds will be used to scale up the number of experts and programs on the platform, enhance technology and multi fold increase the community engagement initiatives, which serve as one of the major customer acquisition channels.

"We are on a mission to reduce the stress from lives by enabling personal and professional growth. In next 3 years, we see every 3rd Indian house to have a user of GrowthEX, either as a learner or a counsellor. And atleast every 10th house of all the major South Asian countries to have our user." says Varun.

"We are also in advanced discussions with some of the reputed institutional funds for the next round. The next round of raised funds will primarily be targeted at exponential growth, both in India and South Asian countries. All our customers from outside India have so far been coming through referrals and we plan to take a step towards marketing in those countries too. We have been organically growing at a healthy rate MoM basis and future rounds will enable us to bring in the multifold increase in growth rate," adds Varun in the concluding remarks.

Sports Content App Sports Flashes Raises Angel Round

New Delhi-based India Sports Flashes Pvt. Ltd, which operates sports content app Sports Flashes, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Vikas Bajaj, joint managing director, Bajaj Motors Ltd, and Amit Kharbanda, founder, MyBox Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

The firm will use the funding primarily for marketing and to expand its team and domestic operations, said Raman Raheja, co-founder, Sports Flashes. The funding round has been facilitated by Anup Kalra, founder of startup consulting firm Ambit B2B, he said.

Sports Flashes offers sports TV, live scores, streaming videos, news, views, highlights, statistics, live updates and commentary. The app, which is available on both Android and iOS, has formed streaming partnerships with 13 international sports associations and bodies.

The company was founded in August 2016 by Raman Raheja and Keshaw Sinha. Raheja is an entertainment and sports professional with more than 20 years of experience. He has been associated with Commonwealth Games, World Kabaddi League, International Indian Film Academy Awards and Indian Premier League, among others. Sinha comes with over 20 years of experience in the technology domain and has worked with companies including HMV Saregama, Zapak.com and Network 18.

Sports Flashes claims to have seen more than 300,000 downloads to date and aims to touch 1 million downloads by end of the year. The app is currently available to users in five languages. It is also looking to offer content in 11 languages within a year.

“We are looking to create and promote hyperlocal sports content across 18 states and acquire Indian sports content covering at least 20 sports categories. We have virtually no competition as of now in the exclusive sports streaming and multi-sports content space, though Sportskeeda is a worthy benchmark to understand the market dynamics,” Raheja said.

AI Driven HR Analytics Startup inFeedo Raises $200k in Angel Round

HR analytics platform inFeedo has raised $200,000 in angel round from a group of investors led by Dheeraj Jain, Managing Partner, Redcliffe Capital and Anupam Mittal, CEO of Shaadi.com. The company also got funding from Ameera Shah, CEO of Metropolis; Vivek Bhargava, Group CEO of DAN Performance; Rahul Singh, CEO of Beer Cafe and Ambarish Gupta, CEO of Knowlarity.

Focused on employee engagement, inFeedo's new chatbot Amber is being used in companies like MakeMyTrip, PayU, Knowlarity, RedBus, Caratlane and Nearbuy. Founded in 2013 by Tanmaya Jain, inFeedo now helps HR automate continuous collection of feedback so they can focus on the action points. The chatbot called Amber talks to employees regularly and based on their chats, auto generates culture reports for HR leaders to proactively meet those who’re unhappy, facing troubles or about to leave.

“The investment further validates the disruption that inFeedo’s differentiated approach is creating in employee engagement for corporates at all levels. We are currently live with 16+ companies and are on track to touch more than 10,000 paid users by the end of the year 2016. With a phenomenal response from over a 100+ HR Heads across the country, we’ve reached a stage where we’re almost unable to deal with the incoming interest. We find ourselves as uniquely positioned in terms of data driven technology & investors who are backing our company to help us deal with scale,” said Tanmaya Jain, Founder at inFeedo.

Now that Amber’s natural language processing capabilities are in place, the company will use the funds to enter growth stage and scale across India with plans to hit the international market in 2017.

inFeedo recently participated in a reality show called the The Vault Show (India’s Shark Tank) where chosen entrepreneurs get 5 minutes to pitch to investors on the show. inFeedo got selected to present its case from about 5000+ applications and they also received on the spot funding of Rs. 50 lakh from 2 investors on the show and another Rs. 35 lakh from the other 2 investors post the show.

Mumbai Based Networking App Nodd Raises Rs 1 Cr in Angel Funding

Identifying a huge opportunity in the professional networking space, 11 entrepreneurs turned investors pump in Rs 1 crore in Noddapp.com. Mumbai-based Noddapp.com is an app based networking platform that helps individuals to discover and meet like-minded people through innovative curated experiences, using data analytics, experiences, and algorithms.

The raised funds will be used to scale up operations and expansion across major metros like New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Part of the investment will also be directed towards building a strong team and technology.

The company was incepted in March 2016 by Shubham Rai (Founder-CEO), Praleed Suvarna (Co-Founder-CTO), Rohan Haval, VP (Strategic Alliances and Marketing) and Arpit Bajpai (Co-founder and AVP). Nodd app is an exclusive networking brand globally that follows a reference based model to onboard new members to their platform. The app helps individuals to network with achievers across different walks of life who have excelled in the academic and professional environment. Nodd targets the top 10 %ile of the global population which amounts to around top 170 Million people of the world, including Millionaires, educational achievers, entrepreneurs & professional achievers who love to network for mainly 3 reasons- Business Utility, Learning and Glamour.

Speaking on the investment, Shubham Rai, Founder, and CEO, Nodd said, “The segment that Nodd caters to is an untapped space hence we don’t have any direct competition and that was one of the reasons why we have drawn 11 investors to participate in an angel round of funding. The funds will be used to increase our team size and invest in technology as well as expanding our geographical presence.”One of the esteemed investors Sandipan Chattopadhyay on being asked what he thinks of the curated experiences at Nodd, stated that "Boldly go where start-ups have not gone before… to network". Another Investor Jaison Jose also quoted that - " I believe, Nodd is an idea whose time has come, Professional networking and engagement needs to be at the next level, and this team is doing a fantastic job in building the ecosystem."

On Demand Laundry Startup Pickmylaundry Raises $200K in Angel Funding

Gurgaon-based on demand laundry startup Pickmylaundry has raised undisclosed amount from Kedar Lele (a top level executive of a leading FMCG major) and existing investor GHV Accelerator. The startup has raised about $200K and had commitment of another $300K from a couple of angels. The company will use the newly raised funding in expanding its operations to entire NCR and explore opportunities in other cities.

Pickmylaundry will also set up offline stores to reduce the last mile logistics cost, which is at currently around Rs 100 per order. “We will also roll out 24 hours delivery service and overnight service,” said Gaurav Agarwal, Founder, Pickmylaundry.

Founded by Gaurav Agarwal, along with Ankur Jain and Samar Sisodia in May 2015, Pickmylaundry had previously raised $100k from Anurag Kapoor, Executive Director of the Gurgaon-based GHV Accelerator.  The startup provides premium washing and dry cleaning service leveraging mobile based technology. It picks up your dirty duds from your doorstep and deliver fresh, clean clothes back at your doorstep.

Pickmylaundry has also started B2B services (such as linen laundry for hotels and guest houses) in June this year. The platform estimates a revenue of Rs 10 lakh plus from B2B services alone.

The recent deals in this space include: In November 2015, Wassup acquired Chamak for an undisclosed amount in an all-equity deal. Delhi-based Tooler shut shop early this year, while Hyderabad-based Ezeewash got acquihired in a structured full equity deal by Wassup. Earlier in February, Housejoy acquihired on-demand laundry startup Mywash for an undisclosed amount. Recently, Mumbai-based Doormint ceased operations.

Satvacart Raises Its Third Angel Round, Targets Profitability by May 2017

eGrocery retailer, Satvacart today announced the closure of its Angel Round 3 with Serial Entrepreneur & Angel Investor Nimit Panigrahi joining the current round. The firm had earlier announced the participation of ad guru Abhijit Awasthi, SP Vijay of Tarento Technologies and Karan Chellani at the beginning of Angel round3.

Announcing the development, Rahul Hari, Founder and CEO, Satvacart said "The closure of Angel Round 3 reinforces the validity of our business model and the confidence that we enjoy among investors. With this funding, we plan to enhance our technology and data analytics capabilities to make the business ready for scale up and become self-sustainable, before replicating the business across other geographies. We will be hiring talent across Technology, Data Analytics and Retail for our future expansion and are open to aqui-hiring as well as acquisitions."

Performance highlights:

* Improved average revenue per user (on a monthly basis) by 100% over the past 8 months.

* Increased wallet penetration in active households to 25% currently vs 13% in January 2016. Planning to increase it further to over 70% in the coming months.

* With almost zero discounting, increased the number of transactions per active household per month for on-demand grocery to 2.71 now vs 1.9 in January 2016.

Nimit Panigrahi is a serial investor and entrepreneur. An alumnus of Cass Business School (London), he has extensive experience in business strategy, financial modeling, risk consultancy & mitigation and brand building. After his crucial stint with the corporate world, Nimit co-founded an Insurance broking house and a boutique HR Consultancy. Post their success Nimit entered into real estate as a developer in Eastern India. He has further ventured into building an exclusive and diversified portfolio of technology ventures which include – Thumbbell – a Health & fitness marketplace; Lolchef – a Food delivery app; and FiFi - an artificial intelligent fitness app.

Commenting on his decision to invest in eGrocery sector when investors appear to be shunning it, Nimit said, "I am happy to collaborate with Satvacart on its growth journey. The team has been doing a tremendous job by focusing on single geography and cracking the viability part before cracking the scalability part."

“I have studied the business models of some of the globally successful eGrocery players such as Ocado and Fresh Direct. The problem is not in the sector but with the business model. I see a huge opportunity in this sector primarily because the entry barriers have now been set. Given the recent shutdowns, it will be extremely difficult for any new player to enter into eGrocery or secure funding. Any future scale-up will happen among the existing players only, who have a sound and sustainable business model. And this is where the value creation opportunity lies." added Nimit.

Tapesh Singhi, Partner, Palaash Ventures said, “We are extremely happy with the performance Satvacart has given over the past two years. With right decisions, the company has not only managed to survive in a tough market with heavily funded players, most of whom have shut shops now, but has also attained unit level profitability and cracked the business model."

Image : Satvacart Founders - Rahul Hari & Deepika Saxena

Let’s Barter India Raises Angel Round, Led by ‘Scale Ventures’

Let’s Barter India, world’s largest community for barter on Facebook, raises the angel round led by “Scale Ventures”. They have raised an undisclosed amount from Scale Ventures and Sanjay Choudhary of Crowdinvest. The team aims to use this funding amount to fuel the growth rate of Let’s Barter, reach out new markets with the app and build a strong team to spread the concept of barter, enabled via technology.

Delhi-based Scale Ventures, a brainchild of Nilesh Rathi of ‘Rathi Group of Companies’ and Rahul Narvekar, ex- CEO, IndianRoots is a leading venture capital firm that invests primarily in early-in-revenue startups. Both the founders started the company with a mindset of not just funding the start-up but giving the right kind of mentorship, which is far more vital at an early stage of a start up. Scale Ventures had formally signed an agreement to acquire Guerrilla Ventures.

On this occasion, Mr. Rahul Narvekar, Co-Founder, Scale Ventures said, “I have known Pooja and Sahil since I have been a part of Innov8. I had attended Let’s Barter’s event in Chandigarh and realized that the venture is scalable and has potential in India. We feel that the start-up is niche but will connect with the youth of the nation as it follows the very unique module of barter. We will suggest Let’s Barter ideas to scale their business by indulging in meaningful tie-ups with e-commerce portals, restaurants and dating sites.”

Commenting on the first round of funding, Pooja Bhayana, Co-Founder, Let’s Barter India said, “We are ecstatic about our association with Scale Ventures. The funds shall be utilised for scaling up across different cities of India, educating the market about tech enabled bartering and building a strong backbone team to fuel Let's Barter. From a strategy point of view, we have so much to learn from amazing leaders like Rahul Narvekar and Nilesh Rathi.”

“We are very happy to have gained trust of the industry leaders like Rahul Narvekar and Nilesh Rathi” said Sahil Dhingra, Co founder, Let’s Barter India. He added “Our vision is to take the concept of barter, and the Let’s Barter app, to all cities and towns of India. We are building an alternate avenue for Indians to get more value of their used goods, and services, rather than selling it for low prices on classified sites.”

Let’s Barter India was formed in September 2015 as a Facebook group and the app was launched in August 2016. Headquartered in New Delhi, it is spearheaded by Pooja Bhayana and Sahil Dhingra, the two co-founders. The inspiration was to create more avenues for used products rather than selling them at a low value. The vision of the company is to be the platform for C2C exchanges & used goods and promote barter of services.

Let’s Barter India runs a Facebook group with over 1, 83,000 members, a community of likeminded people that barter with each other. This has reached this height without any marketing spend. It is now world’s largest community for bartering on Facebook. As a next step to making bartering easy, they recently launched a successful hybrid mobile application with its Android and iOS versions. The process of bartering services and products has been prevalent in India since time immemorial and they expect to bring back this concept of adding value to used goods to the present times.

Customer Engagement Technology Startup Codemojo Raises Angel Round from CIO Angel Network

CIO Angel Network (CAN) has made an undisclosed investment in Chennai based Codemojo, a technology startup company offering customer engagement & rewards system with 10lines of code & 10 minutes of API integration for Omni channel businesses to increase daily & monthly active user base through Loyalty, Behavior Gamification, Referral Wallet, etc. Sanjay Mehta a full time angel investor and Manoj Chandiramani a technology evangelist have lead the round from CAN.

Founded by a tech-biz team of Shoaib Mohammed & Vijaykrishna Ramanathan, Codemojo.io (Previously D-Rewards) provides fully managed white labelled customer engagement services for Omni channel businesses. The services include, User Referral, Full-fledged customizable loyalty program, User behavior Analysis & Gamification and a Rewards wallet for managing closed loop credits. It helps companies reduce 80% of coding due to plug n play codes for:

- White labelled Rewards Wallet
- Loyalty & engagement with cashback
- Gamify user engagement with points

All features can go live with Online website, App or Physical & Cloud POS providing a complete engagement & retention solution within 10 minutes.

Manoj Chandiramani Lead at CIO Angel Network says “Research shows loyalty programs increase purchases by 20%, as well as repeat customers are more profitable. Codemojo's customer engagement & rewards system with it's unique touch of Behaviour Gamification, has lot of potential to make a difference in this space.” The core problem Codemojo solves is “Time & Cost” that is involved in creating & maintaining customer engagement components whichcomponents, which are non-core to the business. With Codemojo the technology team has a onetime integration role to play and the Marketing team has complete control to customize and run different programs based on the business requirement from time to time.

Vijaykrishna Ramanathan, Co-Founder and Head of Business Development, Codemojo says, The online industry is going through a major shift, the focus is moving from GMV & Download to driving repeat transactions and selling premium subscription services. With Codemojo in place, businesses across different sectors don’t need to reinvent customer engagement solutions for their business. Codemojo powers their marketing teams with unique tools & reports that let them be in total control of their customer engagement journey both proactively & reactively keeping them agile at all possible scenarios.

Shoaib Mohammed, Co-Founder and Head of Technology, Codemojo says, Tech teams in companies always have their hands full with never ending bug fixes and product upgrades. With these narrow pipelines, any idea of in-house built Customer engagement system often takes a back seat. Here is where Codemojo plays a vital role by offering plug & play components which can be tightly integrated in under 10 minutes & 10 lines of code.

Talking about the opportunity, Shoaib Says, Customer Engagement market is currently pegged over $32.420B globally. Companies doing business online have been dependent on deep discounting to drive repeat purchases, but this can’t go on forever and a need of an engagement program becomes important to increase the customer lifetime value. With the in-house development cycles, most companies are stuck with one program or none at all.

Sanjay Mehta having invested over 62 startups says “I am really excited the technology disruption with CodeMojo. Startup will scale very fast as the founding team is complete & complementing with expertise in technology & sales.”

With established startups facing challenges in raising larger funds at one side, Enterprise brick and mortar giants moving online at the other side, the timing is quite right for Codemojo to help power their customer engagement & retention in cloud.

Reliance Genext Hub,  which is  a CIO Angel Network  member has mentored and accelerated CodeMojo team. During the program the company could get access large enterprises like Reliance Retail to improve upon their customer engagement needs.

Image Source - ShutterStock

Sports Tech Startup Athletto Raises Angel Funding

Founded in April 2015 by Ujwal Sutaria(IIM-A alumni), Praveen Gadpayle ( NITIE alumni) and Narayana Vyas(IIM-A Alumni), Athletto is a sports and fitness platform to capture interactions among people while discovering sports and fitness facilities, coaching services, players and tournament information around them and booking it on the go.

They have raised an undisclosed angel funding from renowned industrialist Mr. Atul Ingle, an avid sports lover himself. He is a self-made 1st generation entrepreneur and is keen to help the startups in building strong foundation of business from his past experience. He said, “I like the vision of the team, the passion and sector knowledge which they bring along with them. I have known the team from quite some time now and they are very meticulous in their approach and know their customers really well.”

Ujwal and Vyas are former national level tennis players and bring a combined experience of 30 years in the sports sector having played multiple sports like badminton, football, squash, handball, cricket, etc. Praveen previously worked with Gati, brings with him intense operations know-how and is the patient problem solver.

Athletto wants to digitize the sports ecosystem and currently provides cloud-based SaaS tool to the sports & fitness facility owners to manage their facility and helps them build and maintain their online presence thus increasing their revenues. On the consumer end, Athletto has a website as well as android and iOS app which provides customers with detailed information about each facility like photographs, timings, contact details, location, prices, ratings, reviews, coach information and more.

Contrary to the public notion that there is dearth of sports infra in our country, one will be shocked to know that India has 2.5L+ sports facilities spread across private, government, schools, colleges and residential complexes. Currently the average occupancy rates of these infra are at a dismal 10-15%. There is tremendous scope to improve it to 50-60%. Hence, the team is focussed on aggregating listings on their platform and trying to digitize this completely unorganized sports sector, which is estimated at more than USD $50 billion in Asia.

Athletto has also won an award at the India Sports Award organised by FICCI in Feb this year for their outstanding effort to promote sports among the masses using technology Professor of Sports Marketing and Management at IIM-A, Mr. Sanjeev Tripathi says "Digitizing the sports infra and making them easily discoverable will help in increasing the utilization of infrastructure, drive people to take up sports as well as increase the business of the venue owners. I must say that this is a wonderful idea and the team understands the market really well."

Athletto has verified more than 8000 sports facilities across 8 cities for listing and partnered with more than 400 sports facilities across Bangalore for online booking. “Currently our platform is facilitating 200+ daily transactions and have already facilitated more than 40,000 transaction handling an amount of Rs 1.5 Cr in less than 10 months” said CEO and cofounder Ujwal Sutaria. He further said “The best part of sports is the high repeat rates and customer loyalty, we see an avg. repeat rate of 65% giving a high CLV making it a profitable and self-sustainable business.”

They are making great inroads into the professional sporting scene in India through partnerships with sporting biggies like Bengaluru Football Club(BFC), Olympic medal winner Gagan Narang’s Gun for Glory Shooting Academy, Vijay Amrtiraj’s Champions Tennis League team, Arsenal Soccer School, FCBescola and many others. Apart from these, many more exciting tie-ups are lined up for the future.

“We plan to deploy this capital in ramping up our operations in Bangalore and expanding to couple of other cities. A part of it will also be utilized in hiring talent and improving the technology and customer experience” said Ujwal.

Athletto started his journey of entrepreneurship with CIIE’s Young IIMAvericks Fellowship program (a program to support graduating students of IIM-A to take up the entrepreneurial path) and currently is receiving active mentoring support from CIIE. Athletto had also been shortlisted for Y-Combinator’s S16 batch(less than 1% startups make it to YC from around the world).

Bangalore and Coimbatore Based Online Doctor Consultation Platform icliniq Gets Angel Funding

Bangalore- and Coimbatore-based an online doctor consultation platform icliniq has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Erode-based laparoscopic surgeon MadhanKumar Madathupalayam. Post funding, Madathupalayam, who was earlier associated with the venture in a consulting capacity, will join the board of  icliniq.

Orane Healthcare India Pvt. Ltd backed icliniq will use the funds for product development and augmenting the firm’s technology backbone. The startup is also looking to raise its Series A round of funding and has already initiated talks with potential investors.

Founded in 2012 by Dhruv Suyamprakasam, icliniq is an online doctor consultation platform where patients can consult doctors through queries, phone and video. It provides various channels to contact its doctors such as posting as a health query or booking a slot for real time face-to-face consultation over HD video and phone (it will be a private/secure call back).

icliniq charges patients for every subsequent query after the first question while it charges a flat fee of Rs 299 for its video and phone consultation for 15 minutes. The firm takes 21% of the total transaction charges as its fee and gives the rest to the doctor.

Patients from over 60 countries including the US, the UK, Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Albania are using the platform. Currently, icliniq has about 1,200 doctors on its platform, of which close to 900 are from India and the remainder from countries including the US, the UK, UAE,  Singapore and Germany.

The company currently generates about 70% of its revenues from the US. In India, a significant portion of users is from Delhi, followed by Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. The firm currently operates with a 12-member team and plans to expand the team size.

icliniq is also working on an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled consulting assistant for doctors. Currently codenamed smartdoctor, this will ensure a faster and effective consultation mechanism by pulling up a doctor’s prior consultation history.

The startup competes with the likes of Lybrate in India which raised $10.2 million in Series A round from VC firm Tiger Global Management and Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, in July 2015.

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Two-wheeler Servicing Platform LetsService Gets Angel Funding

Bangalore-based LetsService Automotive Technologies Pvt. Ltd. backed LetsService, an on-demand marketplace and booking platform for two-wheeler servicing, has raised angel funding from QuEST Global chief operating officer Ajay Prabhu and Julia Computing Inc. co-founder Deepak Vinchhi.

The startup said, "The funding was raised earlier this year, will be used to build technology, streamline operations and upgrade its app." The funding amount is still undisclosed by the company.

It is also in an advanced stage of talks with investors for its pre-Series A round of funding and expect to raise it by the end of next month. The startup, which offers its services in Bangalore currently, has also set up its services in Mumbai and Pune recently.

Founded in October 2015 by Sachin Shenoy, Girish Gangadhar and Sachin Radder, LetsService helps motorcyclists get their 2 wheelers serviced at authorized service centers sitting at home or office.

The customer can track his bike through the day with intuitive alerts and notifications. Recently, the startup partnered with Quikr to provide convenience to two-wheeler owners on QuikrServices in Bangalore. The firm charges a convenience fee of Rs 300-400 from customers based on location. It also gets a referral fee of Rs 100-150 per service from the authorised service centres.

LetsService, which has tied up with around 100 service centres of different two-wheeler brands in Bangalore, claims to have served 10,000 customers so far.

“We are growing at 70% month-on-month and have a run rate of 3500 transactions per month currently,” the startup added.

Other players operating in this space are DrivoJoy, MotorExpert, Bumper and Cartisan. In March 2016, Bangalore-based on-demand two-wheeler servicing startup DrivoJoy raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Indian Angel Network (IAN) and a clutch of others. In December 2015, Bangalore-based Bumper, a mobile marketplace and booking platform for car servicing, secured $500,000 in seed funding from venture capital firm SAIF Partners. And in July 2015, Bangalore-based automotive services marketplace Cartisan raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Global Founders Capital, Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan Ventures, TaxiForSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna and others.

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Rentickle.com Raises $250K in An Angel Round of Funding

Rentickle.com, the life style rental start up venture has raised an angel round of $250K backed by industry veterans Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner at Water Gate Investments, Vinay Mittal, Chief Financial Strategy Officer of HT Media, Dinesh Mittal, Chief Legal counsel HT Media and Sandeep Gupta, General Manager, Emerging Asia, Microsoft, Singapore.

Rentickle.com is focused on enhancing the lifestyles of consumers by providing on rental basis brand new lifestyle products like Home Appliances, Furniture, Sports gear etc. While lifestyle rentals is a large and organized industry in the West, in India this industry till recently was largely dominated by localized and unorganized players who provided consumers mostly with used products at very high prices with little or no focus on aesthetics or quality.

Rentickle.com started off in November 2015, and today in a short period of 6 months, have serviced diverse clients from various walks of life- students, young professionals, newly married couples, expats and large corporate houses.

The furniture is fabricated in dedicated manufacturing facilities using the best quality and aesthetically elegant material like teak, top quality fabric etc., whereas the appliances are sourced directly from manufacturers, so consumers are thrilled to receive factory packed appliances with on site warranty provided by the brand. The company offers attractive monthly rentals (starting at Rs. 100/- per month!), and promises brand new furniture which is home delivered free of cost within 3 to 5 days. The company also offers unique benefits like reducing rentals (after 6 months of renting) and buy-back option to consumers. Continuing its focus on customer delight, the company is offering free on- site maintenance and polish/ fabric cleaning every six months for products supplied.

The company is servicing Delhi NCR currently and has already drawn ambitious plans to expand PAN India in the coming months. Also in the pipeline is the category expansion into baby products, elder care, adventure gear, sports equipment and may more. Rentickle has a studio on Sohna Road, Gurgaon for consumers who wish to see the products before taking on rent.

The team has already furnished close to 200 rooms in the last 6 months and is confident of generating a Rs. 5 Crore committed revenue in a couple of months from now.

Easy Roads Gets $200K in an Angel Round from Investors Based in Europe and India

Easy Roads, a Mumbai based tech–travel startup, has raised $200,000 in an Angel round of funding from investors based in Europe and India. Funds raised will be utilized towards customer acquisition via unique content, building a scalable technology platform and working towards creating a strong community of road trippers.

Founded by Sachin Parikh, Easy Roads is now 4 months old. Sachin has over 11 years of corporate experience and spent close to 8 years in Europe before moving to India. He was the co-founder of a travel startup called White Collar Hippie which he ran for almost 3 years and exited just a few months ago.

From a recent survey conducted across different age groups, 87% people said they love taking road trips. However, they aren’t able to take road trips because of uncertainty attached to road travel, lack of accurate and credible information and whatever little information is available is scattered all over the web. This is precisely the problem that Easy Roads is solving.

The app includes a curated list of places to explore, points of interest along the way and suggestions to make the drive more enjoyable along with details of the destination. In addition, there’s a Car-O-Bar section which includes road side assistance, rentals for car accessories, pre-trip car check-up and rent-a-driver services to ensure that the trip is as safe as it is fun. There is even a blog section titled “Easy Reads” which has a selection of articles relevant to road trips and travel.

Currently the app has trips only from Mumbai and Pune, but will soon expand to other cities. However, the company is also in discussions with a few state governments to develop interesting sectors for their road trips.

The Indian Travel & Tourism Market is a $42 billion market and out of that the road trips sector is approximately $1 billion.  Indian travellers take approximately 22 road trip days per year and spend an average of $40 a day on a road trip. This includes accommodation, meals, activities and fuel. The PhoCusWright study revealed that spontaneous bookers account for one in every five road travellers, and that 21% of these individuals shop for hotels on their smartphones. 2.5 million cars, 16 million bikes, 3 million Miles of road network, 200 million smartphones and 1 solution joining all of them together - Easy Roads, 'making road trips happen'.

Their goal is - Every time someone thinks road trips, they should think Easy Roads.

School Products Marketplace Schoolkart Gets $300K in Angel Round

Delhi-based an online school products marketplace, SchoolKart has raised $300,000 in an angel round of funding from 12 angel investors, some of whom are prominent angel investors, while the others are HNI’s.

Founded in 2015 by ISB alumnus and former Amazon employee Nikhil Sareen, Schoolkart is a one-stop shop for school uniform, books, sporting and stationery needs. The startup has school uniforms of over 500+ schools across Delhi/NCR and Pan India.

In addition to uniforms, it has other categories such as Shoes, Books, Stationery, Bags, Bottles, Lunch Boxes, Toys, Games, Accessories etc. As of total, across all categories together, the company has about 25,000+ products on the platform.

Schoolkart also run a program called Schoolkart Cares, which is a CSR initiative to give back to society whilst creating a meaningful impact. Customer who visit schoolkart are given an option to donate their old uniforms, shoes etc. These products are picked up from the customer location by Schoolkart's logistics partners. These products are then sanitized, refurbished (if needed) and then donated to its partner NGO's who in turn decide the best use and distribute them to underprivileged children.

The startup has raised about $500,000 so far. Currently, its team consists of 15 people across Sales, Marketing, Operations, Customer Service & Technology.

School Products Marketplace Schoolkart Gets $300K in Angel Round

Delhi-based an online school products marketplace, SchoolKart has raised $300,000 in an angel round of funding from 12 angel investors, some of whom are prominent angel investors, while the others are HNI’s.

Founded in 2015 by ISB alumnus and former Amazon employee Nikhil Sareen, Schoolkart is a one-stop shop for school uniform, books, sporting and stationery needs. The startup has school uniforms of over 500+ schools across Delhi/NCR and Pan India.

In addition to uniforms, it has other categories such as Shoes, Books, Stationery, Bags, Bottles, Lunch Boxes, Toys, Games, Accessories etc. As of total, across all categories together, the company has about 25,000+ products on the platform.

Schoolkart also run a program called Schoolkart Cares, which is a CSR initiative to give back to society whilst creating a meaningful impact. Customer who visit schoolkart are given an option to donate their old uniforms, shoes etc. These products are picked up from the customer location by Schoolkart's logistics partners. These products are then sanitized, refurbished (if needed) and then donated to its partner NGO's who in turn decide the best use and distribute them to underprivileged children.

The startup has raised about $500,000 so far. Currently, its team consists of 15 people across Sales, Marketing, Operations, Customer Service & Technology.