LeRemitt™ Raises $1.25 Mn in Seed Funding from Axilor Ventures, Capital A, and Angel Investors

(From Left to Right- Mahesh Barate, Sheetal Jain, Hari Ambati) Founders – LeRemitt

LeRemitt™, a cross border platform that streamlines financial transactions, today announced that it has raised $1.25mn in seed funding led by Axilor Ventures. Capital A has co-invested in this round which also saw participation from angel investors such as Ram Govindarajan (Founder -Wizfreight) and Sumit Agarwal (Founder- Vyapar). LeRemittTM empowers businesses, especially MSMEs, by streamlining overseas financial transactions, unlocking new growth opportunities, expanding global reach, and navigating the complexities of international trade.

The newly raised funds will be directed towards several key areas, including assembling a robust team, global expansion, enhancing product capabilities, and forging strategic partnerships.

Commenting on the development Mahesh Barate, Co-founder, LeRemitt™- "The global trade market, valued at USD 32 trillion, offers abundant opportunities for growth and innovation. As our world becomes more interconnected, there is a growing demand for efficient and secure cross-border solutions. Traditional remittance methods are burdened with high costs, slow processing times, and limited accessibility, creating significant challenges. These obstacles particularly impact MSMEs, which often lack the resources to navigate complex financial systems, leading to time-consuming operational hurdles on a day-to-day basis. LeRemittTM aims to reinvent cross-border business transactions, ensuring easy, hassle-free, and prompt international remittances."

Speaking on the fundraise, Sheetal Jain, CEO & Co-founder, LeRemitt™ said, "This marks the first crucial step in LeRemittTM's journey, as we embark on our vision to create an ecosystem for international trade, encompassing various stakeholders, technologies, and services. With a goal to ensure smooth and efficient flow of goods and services,we prepare to unveil our first-ever service, cross-border remittance for B2B transactions, and we are confident that exciting times lie ahead. With Hari Ambati, our Co-founder & CTO, at the helm of our technology initiatives, we are crafting a seamless, state-of-the-art, and secure platform that will revolutionize how B2B transactions are conducted across borders."

Nandan Venkatachalam, Principal at Axilor Ventures, who led this investment, commented “Indian SMEs are expected to contribute to over 60% of the $1 Trillion export target by 2030. This will lead to a strong need for a cross-border payments layer for the SME segment, which banks typically underserve. LeRemittTM is building a new-age financial stack that will enable SMEs execute seamless cross-border trades and we are excited to be backing them.”

"The international remittance market is currently dominated by traditional banks and institutions that rely on legacy processes that are slow and costly, especially for MSMEs. The need of the hour is to build digitally driven, fast, accurate, compliant, and user-friendly remittance mechanisms that can ensure swift funds transfer at costs that encourage startups and the MSME sector players to expand their coverage overseas. This is also crucial from the perspective of making India a global industrial power as quick and affordable remittances will boost exports and the overall manufacturing sector in India. LeRemittTM is a great platform, and the founders know exactly what needs to be reformed in the B2B remittances arena in India. We have complete faith in the vision of the founders and support them in their journey toward creating great impact in the segment in the years ahead." added Ankit Kedia, Founder, Capital A.

LeRemittTM leverages groundbreaking technology to enable swift and seamless money transfers, ensuring recipients have instant access to their funds. Its platform offers competitive rates and minimal transaction fees, making it a highly cost-effective option for all cross-border remittance requirements. LeRemittTM employs advanced encryption and authentication protocols to ensure the utmost security, safeguarding customer funds.

The company was founded by accomplished professionals with vast expertise in the fintech and BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) sectors. Among the visionary founders are Sheetal Jain, Mahesh Kumar Barate, and Hari Ambati, each bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience to the forefront of the company's operations.

About LeRemitt™

LeRemittTM is a cross-border platform with a mission to empower businesses, especially MSMEs, in broadening their global presence, exploring untapped markets, and harnessing the boundless opportunities of international trade. LeRemittTM envisions establishing a cohesive ecosystem for global trade, uniting diverse stakeholders, cutting-edge technologies, and comprehensive services to facilitate seamless transactions between businesses across borders.

About Axilor Ventures

Founded in 2014, Axilor Ventures is among the top 3 most active seed funds operating out of India. Axilor Ventures invests in early-stage startups across sectors in the supply chain/B2B commerce, Enterprise SaaS, Healthtech, AgriTech, Fintech, and consumer internet space. Axilor Ventures was founded and backed by Indian tech pioneers, including Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, Prof. Tarun Khanna, Srinath Batni, and Ganapathy Venugopal. Axilor Ventures has invested in companies such as Wiz Freight, Vyapar, Detect, Capgrid, Metalbook, Medfin and Enkash, amongst others.

About Capital A

Founded by Ankit Kedia, the former promoter of Manjushree Techno pack Limited, the largest manufacturer of rigid plastic packaging in South Asia, Capital A is a seed to an early-stage venture capital firm. Capital A has the vision to contribute to a sustainable, diverse, and meaningful startup ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders. Last year, Capital A had unveiled 'Evolve,' a dedicated fund for the electric mobility ecosystem startups. In a short span of time, Capital A has supported more than two dozen startups across gaming, electric mobility, SaaS, the creator economy, and sustainable business sectors. The fund aims to continue supporting 8-10 startups. 

IoT Test Automation Platform Doppelio Raises $1.2 Mn in Seed Funding from Axilor Ventures and Mela Ventures

Funds to be utilized in product R&D and to expand in the US and Europe

Doppelio, a leading IoT Test Automation platform provider, has raised $1.2 Million in pre-series A funding from Axilor Ventures and Mela Ventures. Founded in 2019 by Gaurav Johri, Sharmila Saha, and Rajesh Kathirvelu, Doppelio is already adding significant value to Fortune 1000 companies from diverse industries, such as Automotive, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing and Connected Products.

Research organizations have estimated that the number of IoT devices will exceed 40 billion by 2026, with a strong CAGR. The number of connected endpoints is expected to be even higher than that. Due to this extensive scale, it is imperative that organizations guarantee their products function seamlessly, minimize product recalls, and, most importantly, prevent any negative consequences on users. However, lab testing of IoT applications is time-consuming, expensive, and still insufficient. This increases the time to market and the risk of failure of connected solutions.

Doppelio enablesthe testing of IoT applications without dependence on physical devices. Its device virtualization, simulation and test automation capabilities enable clients to test comprehensively with speed and reduce their dependence on field trials. With Doppelio, companies can test a wide range of functionalities (including FOTA, remote command and control) and test for performancewith up to a million devices.

Gaurav Johri, CEO at Doppelio, said “The response we are getting from large global enterprisesvalidates that we are solving an important problem for these companies.As connected products proliferate in the coming years, we expect Doppelio to become a critical piece in the IoT ecosystem,We are excited to have Mela and Axiloras investors and this funding will deepen our investments in the product and go-to-market.”

Ganapathy Venugopal, Co-Founder & CEO at Axilor Ventures, said, “Axilor and Doppelio share a common vision of creating category-leading solutions for large global enterprises. IoT devices are becoming pervasive but testing them is still hard. This leads to slower release cycles. Doppelio's advanced testing and simulation capabilities can help enterprises launch better products faster.”

Krishnakumar Natarajan, Managing Partner at Mela Ventures, said, “Doppelio is a great example of a company identifying a relevant and complex global problem and having a simple and impactful solution that can deliver value instantly. I am excited with the traction Doppelio is getting and am confident that they are on a path to becoming the category leaders in this space and being one of the game-changing global product company out of India.”

Doppelio will be at the IoT Tech Expo, Santa Clara, CA, on 17 May, 2023. Visit us at Booth#263 if you are in the area.

About Doppelio

Doppelio enables companies to rapidly test IoT apps by virtualizing and simulating devices at scale. The platform enables the testing of IoT applications for any device, protocol, and scenario.Fortune 1000 to emerging growth leaders across the industries leverage Doppelio’s IoT Test Automation platform to reduce dependence on physical devices, reduce the risk of failure, faster time to market and lower the cost of quality. Visit www.doppelio.com for more information.

About Axilor Ventures

Founded in 2014, Axilor Ventures is among the top 3 most active seed funds operating out of India. Axilor Ventures invests in early-stage startup across sectors in the supply chain/B2B commerce, Enterprise SaaS, Healthtech, AgriTech, Fintech, and consumer internet space. Axilor Ventures was founded and backed by Indian tech pioneers, including Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, Prof. Tarun Khanna, Srinath Batni, and Ganapathy Venugopal.

About Mela Ventures

Co-founded by Krishnakumar Natarajan and NS Parthasarathy, Mela Ventures aims to put Indian B2B SaaS companies that are solving real-world challenges on the global map. They celebrate and support the spirit of entrepreneurship at every stage of the journey. In addition to investment, they also provide guidance and support to achieve collective goals defined by their portfolio companies.

Mela Ventures provides investment, strategy, innovation, research, networking and other mentorships to start-ups and next-generation entrepreneurs.

Interior Design Automation Platform Prolance Raises $2 Mn in Funding Led by Foundamental and Axilor

Prolance Raises US$ 2 Million in Pre-Series A Round, Led By Foundamental and Axilor

Aims to partner with over 30,000 interior designers within the next year

Prolance, a technology-enabled cloud manufacturing platform for Interior design companies, today announced that it has raised US$2 Million (₹16 Crore) in a Pre-Series A round led by Foundamental and Axilor. Arali Ventures and Force Ventures also participated in the round. The startup said it will use the funds for expansion into more cities across India and to add new categories to its platform, with a mission to make the interior design project execution simple, accurate, and effortless.

Prolance Founders

Prolance offers a Design-to-Manufacturing SaaS platform that automates all the activities from quote to CNC file generation for manufacturing. It also provides a marketplace for procurement of all materials required for the execution of interior projects and cloud manufacturing of the projects.

Rama Harinath K, Cofounder, and CEO of Prolance said, “Prolance started with the mission to transform the interior design industry through technology, and our goal is to become the Operating System for the Interior industry. Our growth in the last two years, along with near-universal appreciation from our clients is a testament to the strengths of our SaaS-based marketplace for interior design professionals. We are really excited to have the backing of leading global and Indian investors in this round as we gear up to execute the next stage of our growth strategy and bring Prolance to thousands of interior design companies and contractors.”

Prolance already works with some of the biggest names in the residential interiors ecosystem, including Godrej Interio, SquareYards, Landmark, Pepperfry, and NoBroker. The startup also has more than 1000 smaller interior firms using its platform. The startup also has enlisted hundreds of materials suppliers and processing factories on the supply side to become a single-stop shop for materials and manufacturing. Headquartered in Bangalore, Prolance also has a strong presence in Hyderabad and Chennai.

The startup was founded in 2020 by five industry veterans: Rama Harinath K (Co-founder of HomeLane and MyHomeSpeaks), Vivek Parasuram (Cofounder of HomeLane.com and Bello Interiors), Raghunath Gururajan, Jaisimha Sathyanarayana, and Manoj K (all three are co-founders of DeltaCADD solutions).

Shubhankar Bhattacharya, General Partner of Foundamental said, “Manufacture of, and procurement for, interior design products represent a large market that is starved of technology enablement. Rama, Vivek, Raghunath, Jaisimha, and Manoj are seasoned founders with a strong founder-market fit to tackle this immense opportunity. We are thrilled to lead Prolance's seed round as they continue on their journey to becoming the leading manufacturing platform for interior products in India and beyond.”

Nandan Venkatachalam, Principal, and B2B Lead at Axilor said, “Prolance is looking to automate the fragmented and highly complex $ 60 billion interior design market in India. The team comes in with in-depth experience in the space, which gives them a unique advantage on a product, distribution, and value addition to customers through their cloud manufacturing platform. We are glad to be backing their vision, in our continued theme to back companies going after large, unorganized supply chains.

Prolance said that it has added hundreds of partners in the last year including major players like Square Yards, Pepperfry, Landmark, and NoBroker. The startup is now aiming to add 30,000 partners over the next 12 months. It also plans to add new categories like False Ceilings, wallpapers, Painting, and loose furniture among others on the platform.

Low Code Automation Platform Twixor Raises $2.4 Mn from Season Two Ventures, Axilor Ventures and The Chennai Angels

The intuitive solutions CX platform for intent-driven and micro-engagement solutions is planning an aggressive scale-up

Twixor, a Singapore HQ, low-code no-code (LCNC) conversational AI and process automation platform that helps businesses build hyper-personalized engagement solutions has announced that it has raised $2.4 Million in Series A round from Season Two Ventures (an Indo-US corridor VC firm), Axilor Ventures and The Chennai Angels.

Twixorsimplifies the way organizations integrate consumer interactions/engagements in their business processes to give enterprise customers better AI-driven cognitive experiences. With 6 global patents in its kitty, the CX automation platform powers accelerated conversations by driving seamless, low-friction, multi-lingual, and app-less interactions and transactions. The company is looking to aggressively scale up its reach and operations. The new funds will be utilized for further theirinnovation journey, to strengthen strategic partnerships, global expansion, and hire talent.

Twixor will shortly launch its global SaaS platform: ‘Twixor AIM’, a no-code omni-channel messaging engine, and ‘Twixor Compute’, a low-code process automation engine.

Speaking on this occasion, Ashok Anand, Founder & CEO, Twixor, said “Twixor helps businesses create superior customer experiences by enabling them to deliver intuitive solutions, address complex use cases, accelerate time to market and reduce total cost of ownership. This investment comes at a strategic moment in our growth journey. It will help us accelerate our twin objectives of technology innovation and global scale-up.”

Sajan Pillai, Managing Partner, Season Two Ventures said, “Twixor’s trajectory from ideas to success is rooted in the right culture to promote innovation and growth, which is very well aligned with our vision of digital transformation, especially in banking tech. We are excited to back Twixor's ambitions to scale their initiatives regionally and internationally. We look forward to supporting the company in realizing its full potential and unlocking new markets through our deep networks in banking and fintech”.

Season Two Ventures is focused on tech-enabled, early-stage start-ups in the enterprise SaaS, Health-tech, FinTech, logistics/supply chain and retail space.

Ganapathy Venugopal, co-founder & CEO, Axilor Ventures said, “It is time to see enterprise platforms for large global verticals being built from India. Twixor is a great example of this”

Axilor Ventures is a leading seed fund with a strong enterprise SaaS portfolio which includes companies like Detect, Maximl, Switchon and Leucine.

Mr Sameer Mehta (Chief Investment Director of Atlas Family and Vice Chairman at Dr. Mehta's Hospitals), and Angel Investor (The Chennai Angels) said, "Twixor is one of the fastest growing companies as every company they work with are able to show long term benefits and savings within 3 months. AI-assisted rapidly-deployable enterprise solutions at the best.”

The Chennai Angels is one of India's leading Angel Investment Networks.Twixor experienced 100% revenue growth in 2021 and is looking to double its revenue in 2022.

About Twixor:

Twixor drives seamless, low-friction multi-lingual app-less banking transactions – in contrast to a banking branch, website, mobile app, or call center – all of which have varying degrees of friction. This leads to a significant impact on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and cost of acquisition, service, and retention, including time to open an account (reduced by 80+%), time to access required information or complete banking transactions (reduced by 65+%) or estimated cost optimization at a call center (reduced by 70+%).

Vegetable Farming Startup Pepper Farms Raises $1 Mn in Seed Funding led by Axilor Ventures

Saurabh Singla,Co-Founder and CEO Pepper Farms; Shalini Aggarwal, Co-Founder and COO Pepper Farms

Pepper Farms is disrupting the 300 billion dollarhorticulture industry in India by organising productions via improved infrastructure and tech integrations.

The company is on track to reach an Annual Recurring Revenue of 8 million USD by mid-2022 with improved yields and adding 1000 acres of land under it in next 12 months.

Agritech start-up Pepper Farms, that helps farmers organise vegetable production lifecycle starting with plantations until harvest and sales, secured USD 1 million in seed fund led by AxilorVentures and Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-founder of Aspiring Minds. Others who also participated in the round included Prof Tarun Khanna (Harvard Business School), Raman Uberoi(ex-COO CRISIL), Sunil Kalra (Via Projects), Rahul Jain (Co-Founder Epigamia).

Founded by Saurabh Singla, an alumni of IIT Guwahati and Shalini Aggarwal, Chartered Accountant, an alumni of SRCC, Gurugram based Pepper Farms is organising vegetable production by building a network of farms with end to end virtual management, customised agronomy, and direct market linkages. The company aims to use the capital to strengthen its operations via advanced technology and agronomy stack.On a track to reach an Annual Recurring Revenue of 8 million USD by mid-2022, Pepper Farms is organising the 300 billion USD horticulture industry in India.

Directly working with farm owners, farmers, and others involved in the value chain of vegetable production, the company has been able to expand its business in country’s top agricultural geographies, including Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh managing dozens of farms.

Speaking on the announcement, Saurabh Singla, Co-Founder and CEO Pepper Farms, said, “Emerging as the fastest growing network of protected farms in India, we aim to bring production of another 1000 acres under Pepper Farms in the next 12 months. Multiplying yields and financial returns with great traction from farmers and landowners, we are on a mission to disrupt the farming industry with our agronomy, operations, and marketing strategies”.

“The idea was to reduce inefficiencies plaguing the farming ecosystem. With structuring small, fragmented farms, we are able to impact the lives of hundreds of farmers, skilled and unskilled workforce while delivering quality production for the masses,” added Shalini Aggarwal, Co-founder and COO Pepper Farms.

“There is a massive opportunity to optimise farming value chains. Pepper Farms has rapidly scaled from inception with its ground understanding of vegetable production, enabling future growth. With technology advancements and agriculture science developments, Pepper Farms will be a key player in the farm production ecosystem of the country,” commented Lead Investor Prachi Sinha, Axilor Ventures.

Pepper Farms is enabling improved yields, operating the entire value chain from plantation to harvest and large-scale sales with infrastructure management. With ground research, agronomy, marketing, and high-quality production round the year, the start-up is selling the produce daily across APMCs, eRetail, modern retail, and restaurants through their robust supply chain.

To know more about Pepper Farm, please visit: www.pepperfarms.in

Axilor Incubated Marax AI Launches Goal Based User Retention Platform with Funds from Zeroth.AI and Artesian VC

California and Bangalore-based marketing automation startup Marax AI has launched a goal based user retention and engagement platform which allows brands to retain and engage their users with personalized delightful experiences in real time; driving higher conversions and more meaningful engagements.

The platform is meant for broader set of e-commerce customers as the startup claims to have 9% reduction in churn for one of its customers, DailyNinja.

Marax is incubated at Axilor, a startup accelerator as well as early stage seed fund founded by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal.

Marax platform works on making user engagement more relevant and as personalized communications is becoming a key differentiator for making buying decisions, the platform by Marax focus on long-term user happiness, depending on industry.

According the startup, "Currently the market lacks a tool which optimizes for user intent and business goals simultaneously. For example - optimizing for a user’s intent to purchase a particular product with a personalized offer while also satisfying marketing budget constraints at the same time. And this is where Marax AI comes in."

[caption id="attachment_127871" width="537" align="aligncenter"] Raman Shrivastava - Founder/CEO - Marax[/caption]

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine at Marax works by monitoring millions of real-time data points of the critical moments in the user’s lifecycle and their interaction with retention and engagement campaigns to build a deep understanding of user behaviours with your product or service and then engage them through a multi-step recommendation process with the most relevant experiences at the right time through the customer’s preferred channels of communication to maximize long-term user satisfaction.

Started by Raman Shrivastava, Sumant US and Prateek Gupta in 2016, Marax is a goal based user retention and engagement platform which takes both - the company’s business objectives and customer motivations into consideration making every interaction with the brand a meaningful one.

Marax has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round from Zeroth, Artesian VC and a series of angel investors. The company is currently in talks to raise another round of funding and they will use the new funds to strengthen their ML and AI offerings, expand their team and expand aggressively across international markets.

To ensure that brands only send the most personally relevant notifications to users, notifications are matched to users using machine learning models in a multi-step process. Traditionally, supervised learning models have been used for predicting click through rate (CTR) and likelihood that the notifications lead to meaningful interactions.

This however, doesn’t capture the long term or incremental value of sending notifications. There can be some signals that appear long after and cannot be attributed directly to the notification.

Supervised learning systems typically generate predictions, but then require data analysts and product managers to make sense of these predictions and craft a strategy to take actions.

Marax’s feedback driven learning systems, on other hand, can create systems that make decisions, take actions and improve based on the feedback they receive. With these implicit feedback driven systems, they have observed a significant improvement in overall long-term reward.

This approach also moves away from the traditional methods of rule based and event based triggered retention marketing campaigns optimized for immediate rewards such as a higher CTR, delivering results visible in the form of reduced churn rates, higher retention and better engagement metrics for brands.

The team currently consists of AI researchers, Data Scientists and software developers working in tandem with marketers and industry veterans, reminiscent of scenes from Mr. Robot.

Raman Shrivastava, CEO of Marax puts it, “We are building our way to the end of segmentation. Every customer is unique and they should be treated that way. We make this possible with automated and optimized actions delivery moving beyond just predictions while also taking into consideration, business constraints"

The company is currently running trials with their existing set of early adopters within the consumer internet space to gather feedback and refine their algorithms while also adding more integrations with the third party tools that their clients work with.

“Thanks to Marax, in just one one month of working together, we boosted user engagement and have been able to reduce our monthly churn rate by 9% ” Sushant- Product Manager at DailyNinja , Sequoia funded startup and one of Marax’s early adopters.

“Raman and the Marax team are one of the top customer and product-focused teams we have seen. Their customers love them because they take feedback well, treat those relationships sacred, and their success shows for it.” - Tak Lo, Partner, Zeroth.AI and one of Marax’s early investors.

“Kudos to Raman and team at Marax at having identified a potent technology in form of deep learning for user analytics, primarily retention. The use of deep learning combined with unique domain driven data strategy gives them better accuracy over conventional models.” - Dr.Srinivas Padmanabhuni, PhD. in Artificial Intelligence from University of Alberta, who advises Marax on their AI strategy and architecture.

Health Tech Startup Niramai Raises $7 Mn from Pi Ventures, Axilor, Binny Bansal & Others

Bangalore-based NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a deep tech powered health technology startup, has raised about US$6-7 million (~ ₹50 crore) in a fresh round of funding from its existing investors Pi Ventures, Axilor, Ankur Capital and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, reported Economic Times.

The startup, which was part of AXilors summer'17 accelerator batch, had last raised $50,000 in November of last year when it was selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator programme, a Google's flagship 6-month programme that includes an intensive two-week boot camp in San Francisco. Prior to this, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Pi Ventures, Binny Bansal, Axilor Ventures, Ankur Capital, and 500 Startups, in in April 2017.

The startup has raised a total of $6.1M in funding over 3 rounds including this one. NIRAMAI has reportedly saw revenues of Rs 43 lakh in FY17-18.

Founded in 2016 by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur, NIRAMAI has developed a novel breast cancer screening solution that uses a new cancer screening software powered by machine intelligence called 'Thermalytix' over traditional thermography images, which can detect cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional diagnostic methods and can therefore improve survival rates.

NIRAMAI's portable technology, which is low cost and affordable for mass screening of rural population, has screened more than 3,000 women and had earlier shared plans of looking to expand across the country through healthcare partners, as well as in a couple of Asian markets by 2019. The company at present has deployments in diagnostic centres/hospitals across three states -- Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

In India, NIRAMAI competes with Healthi, Qure.AI, and Predible Health, which too have envisaged AI for their solution. Globally, the company competes with Volpara Solutions, Enlitic, Inc., and SemanticMD.

pi Ventures, India’s first applied AI and IoT focused early stage venture fund, has recently got US$6 million from CDC Group plc, a UK Government's development finance institution. It was founded by Manish Singhal (Co-founder & Ex-CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company).

Axilor Ventures Launches New ₹200 crore Tech-focused Fund for Early Age Startups

Early stage seed fund and startup accelerator Axilor Ventures, founded by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal, on Tuesday launched a ₹200 crore technology-focused fund to invest seed money into early-age technology startups.

Called as "Axilor Technology Fund", the new Category-I fund is expected to invest ₹3 crore in each investee company under Axilor's portfolio, compared to its earlier ticket size of ₹1-3 crore. Nearly 50% of the new fund will be set aside for seed stage investments, while the rest will be used for pre-seed funding via its accelerator programme.

The Axilor Technology Fund will target enterprises, deep tech, artificial intelligence, consumer tech, fintech and healthtech companies in early-stage.

Axilor’s head of investments, Payal Shah, said that the new fund will work with early-stage tech start-ups in the first two to three years of its journey. "Most of the seed investees in the current portfolio are either bootstrapped or have raised an angel round. From a business perspective, they tend to have a fast-growing set of users and have established early signs of product market fit."

According to Axilor, in India despite of the fact that several new funds being raised by existing and new VC firms in the past 12 months the Series A investments are currently going through serious crunch and emptiness. ‘Axilor Technology Fund’ aims to fill this gap and by funding more Series A start-ups in the next 12 months.

Gopalakrishnan, chairman of Axilor Ventures, said, "Axilor was set up with a vision to help early-stage startups improve the odds of success. The launch of Axilor Technology Fund is an important addition to the platform."

Ganapathy Venugopal, CEO Axilor Ventures, said that in early-stage companies, the sole requirement is not just funding support. “Hence, a seed fund should be able to add value beyond capital. And, at Axilor, we have built the network that offers access to customers, investors and an active founder community.”

In the past three years, Axilor has made 38 investments, leading 17 seed rounds in enterprise and consumer-focused start-ups.

Axilor's last investment was in Advantage Club, in which it led the $300K funding along with Ten Innovate, in January this year.

Additionally, it may be recalled that S Shibulal, one of the founders of Axilor, had launched EduMentum -- an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

Via - LiveMint

Axilor Ventures Launches New ₹200 crore Tech-focused Fund for Early Age Startups

Early stage seed fund and startup accelerator Axilor Ventures, founded by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal, on Tuesday launched a ₹200 crore technology-focused fund to invest seed money into early-age technology startups.

Called as "Axilor Technology Fund", the new Category-I fund is expected to invest ₹3 crore in each investee company under Axilor's portfolio, compared to its earlier ticket size of ₹1-3 crore. Nearly 50% of the new fund will be set aside for seed stage investments, while the rest will be used for pre-seed funding via its accelerator programme.

The Axilor Technology Fund will target enterprises, deep tech, artificial intelligence, consumer tech, fintech and healthtech companies in early-stage.

Axilor’s head of investments, Payal Shah, said that the new fund will work with early-stage tech start-ups in the first two to three years of its journey. "Most of the seed investees in the current portfolio are either bootstrapped or have raised an angel round. From a business perspective, they tend to have a fast-growing set of users and have established early signs of product market fit."

According to Axilor, in India despite of the fact that several new funds being raised by existing and new VC firms in the past 12 months the Series A investments are currently going through serious crunch and emptiness. ‘Axilor Technology Fund’ aims to fill this gap and by funding more Series A start-ups in the next 12 months.

Gopalakrishnan, chairman of Axilor Ventures, said, "Axilor was set up with a vision to help early-stage startups improve the odds of success. The launch of Axilor Technology Fund is an important addition to the platform."

Ganapathy Venugopal, CEO Axilor Ventures, said that in early-stage companies, the sole requirement is not just funding support. “Hence, a seed fund should be able to add value beyond capital. And, at Axilor, we have built the network that offers access to customers, investors and an active founder community.”

In the past three years, Axilor has made 38 investments, leading 17 seed rounds in enterprise and consumer-focused start-ups.

Axilor's last investment was in Advantage Club, in which it led the $300K funding along with Ten Innovate, in January this year.

Additionally, it may be recalled that S Shibulal, one of the founders of Axilor, had launched EduMentum -- an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

Via - LiveMint

Edtech Startup Knudge.me Raises Funding From Indian Angel Network

Bangalore-based edtech startup Knudge.me has raised undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN) along with participation from Axilor Ventures, a seed fund and accelerator founded by industry veterans including S Shibulal and Kris Gopalakrishnan, among others.

Notably, Knudge.me was part of Axilor’s Summer ’17 Accelerator batch. The startup was also selected for Facebook's FbStart programme, in November 2016.

Founded in 2017 by Zunaid Ahmed, Udit Jain and Pushp Raj Saurabh, Kundge.me is a microlearning mobile platform to help people improve their English skills leveraging Artificial Intelligence and gamified learning.

The startup's android app has organically gained more than two million users across the globe. The app was also selected as the “Best Hidden Gem” by Google Play Store in 2017 besides being an Editor’s Choice app.

Knudge.me's current courses are targeted to help students improve their verbal score in exams such as GRE, GMAT, SAT, CAT etc.

“We want to build Knudge.me as a global edutainment platform that makes learning fun for everyone. We already have seen interest from users in countries like the United States, Brazil and Indonesia. We believe that the phenomenon of game-based learning can be applied to a variety of learning contexts. We are truly excited at building a global consumer product out of India,” said Zunaid Ahmed Co-founder and CEO at Knudge.me.

The startup is currently working on a plug-and-play gamification model which will allow its users to create, share, and play games on any topic they’re interested in. Knudge.me intends to target a generation who are addicted to their phone screens and make their otherwise unproductive time more worthwhile.

Commenting on the investment, lead IAN investor Bikky Khosla said, “Gamification is still catching up in India, because of which many do not know how much it can positively impact learning outcomes. We need to revolutionise the way our nation approaches education and Knudge.me provides that strongly integrated gamification experience with their core intent being on skill development and learning. I firmly believe that this product is uniquely positioned to make a powerful change in learning outcomes, in India and globally."

In previous month only, IAN had invested undisclosed amount in PregBuddy, a Bangalore-based femtech (female technology) startup.

About Edtech startup fundings in India, last month an another ed-tech startup IndigoLearn has raised $150,000 in a seed funding round from a group of angel investors based in India, the US and Europe.

Prior to that, Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students, also raised ₹3.5 crore in a pre-series A round of funding led by WaterBridge Ventures with participation from Omidyar Network. Prior to this, Bengaluru IMAX Program has raised $13.5 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Ventures and existing investor Aspada, in February.

Additionally, it may be recalled that S Shibulal, one of the founders of Axilor which participated in this Knudge.me funding, has launched EduMentum -- an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

Via - Times of India | Top Image - Axilor Ventures @Youtube

Edtech Startup Knudge.me Raises Funding From Indian Angel Network

Bangalore-based edtech startup Knudge.me has raised undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN) along with participation from Axilor Ventures, a seed fund and accelerator founded by industry veterans including S Shibulal and Kris Gopalakrishnan, among others.

Notably, Knudge.me was part of Axilor’s Summer ’17 Accelerator batch. The startup was also selected for Facebook's FbStart programme, in November 2016.

Founded in 2017 by Zunaid Ahmed, Udit Jain and Pushp Raj Saurabh, Kundge.me is a microlearning mobile platform to help people improve their English skills leveraging Artificial Intelligence and gamified learning.

The startup's android app has organically gained more than two million users across the globe. The app was also selected as the “Best Hidden Gem” by Google Play Store in 2017 besides being an Editor’s Choice app.

Knudge.me's current courses are targeted to help students improve their verbal score in exams such as GRE, GMAT, SAT, CAT etc.

“We want to build Knudge.me as a global edutainment platform that makes learning fun for everyone. We already have seen interest from users in countries like the United States, Brazil and Indonesia. We believe that the phenomenon of game-based learning can be applied to a variety of learning contexts. We are truly excited at building a global consumer product out of India,” said Zunaid Ahmed Co-founder and CEO at Knudge.me.

The startup is currently working on a plug-and-play gamification model which will allow its users to create, share, and play games on any topic they’re interested in. Knudge.me intends to target a generation who are addicted to their phone screens and make their otherwise unproductive time more worthwhile.

Commenting on the investment, lead IAN investor Bikky Khosla said, “Gamification is still catching up in India, because of which many do not know how much it can positively impact learning outcomes. We need to revolutionise the way our nation approaches education and Knudge.me provides that strongly integrated gamification experience with their core intent being on skill development and learning. I firmly believe that this product is uniquely positioned to make a powerful change in learning outcomes, in India and globally."

In previous month only, IAN had invested undisclosed amount in PregBuddy, a Bangalore-based femtech (female technology) startup.

About Edtech startup fundings in India, last month an another ed-tech startup IndigoLearn has raised $150,000 in a seed funding round from a group of angel investors based in India, the US and Europe.

Prior to that, Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students, also raised ₹3.5 crore in a pre-series A round of funding led by WaterBridge Ventures with participation from Omidyar Network. Prior to this, Bengaluru IMAX Program has raised $13.5 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Ventures and existing investor Aspada, in February.

Additionally, it may be recalled that S Shibulal, one of the founders of Axilor which participated in this Knudge.me funding, has launched EduMentum -- an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

Via - Times of India | Top Image - Axilor Ventures @Youtube

Gurgaon based Advantage Club Raises $300K In A Funding Led By Axilor Ventures

Advantage Club, India’s only platform for both employee perks and reward & recognition,has raised an additional $300K from Axilor Ventures, Mumbai Angels, Purvi Ventures and prominent investors. The company provides curated privileges in essential and luxury segments for corporate employees and effectively increases an employee's spending/saving power by 10%. Premium brands on the other hand, get to target selected clientele without brand dilution. Initially started as a perk platform, they started receiving a high demand for rewards and recognition from their existing clientele, and recently launched the same.The funds will be used to enhance the reward and recognition program, building distinguished features and redemption options.

The founder couple, Sourabhand SmitiDeorahare both UCLA alumni and have worked with Amazon and Microsoft in the United States, before starting Advantage Club. Their aim is to create an analytical tech-platform which redefines employee rewards beyond gift cards and corporate discounts beyond dining.

Currently, 6000+ brands across 12 different categories including Samsung, Max Healthcare, Home Centre, Zoomcar, Smaaash, Mother’s Pride, Footprintsand Lifestyle are offering exclusive privileges via Advantage Club. They have onboarded 200+ companies including Accenture, Fidelity, Concentrix, Home Credit, Tech Mahindra, PNB Metlife, RBS, Hero and many more.There are 6 Crore+ organized sector employees in India which they aim to target.

Axilor led the round, with Ten Innovate and returning investors Mumbai Angels, Chicago Based Purvi Ventures also participating. Other prominent individual investors including Avtar Singh Monga (COO IDFC Bank), Amit Singal and Manish Aggarwal (Startup Buddy) participated in the round again.Advantage Club had raised $400k earlier from Purvi Capital, Mumbai Angels and other prominent individual investors.

Sourabh Deorah Co-Founder and CEO said, “We aim to delight corporates and employees via our app with exclusive privileges from premium brands, and features like wish lists, a 365-day customer helpline and usage dashboard. We now also enable companies to run rewards and recognition via us, and offer redemption options beyond gift cards and internal buying portals, through our extensive network of perks redeemable through reward points.Overall, we aim to be a technology company which gives multiple solutions to enhance employee and customer engagement.”

According to Smiti, COO and Co-Founder, “Every brand wants to reach out to the niche corporate clientele. But in today's unorganized market, even if they offer acorporate privilege, it is not promoted among the employees creating lose-lose situation for them. We not only help brands market within corporates, but throughfeatures like smart personalized notifications and newsletters, we are able to influence the choices of the customer right before he/she is about to make adecision. Through our Rewards and Recognition program, brands also get a share of the HR recognition and gifting budget, which is hard to achieve independently.”

Commenting on the investment, Payal Shah, Head of Investments at Axilor Ventures said, “We were impressed by the high level of savings enabled by AdvantageClub for some of India’s largest corporate houses. We are excited to help the company build a world class product that will touch the daily lives of millions of corporate employees.”

Ravi Srivastava, Founding Partner at Purvi Capital said, “Advantage club has shown outstanding growth since we invested last year, and the team has demonstrated that they don't just have a great product, but are capable of acquiring & delighting clients at scale. Similar to other mature markets, employee engagement programs are becoming indispensable in India. And Advantage Club is strong on track to lead this massive market.”

Amit Singhal, Founder at Startup Buddy said, “Advantage Club has proven that they are the right platform for brands to reach out to targeted niche audiences. Their focus on technology and strong unit economics has enabled them to build a venture which is not justsustainablebut alsoscalable.”

Advantage Club is aiming to extend their product bouquet to introduceadditional dimensions in employee/customer engagement. The program is already live in all major metro cities, and is planned to expand across India with stronger presence in tier-2 cities.

Hourly Hotel Booking Platform MiStay Raises Seed Funding Via Axilor Ventures, Others

Bangalore-based online hotel reservations startup MiStay, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Axilor Ventures and a group of angels, a press statement said.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds for hiring talent and marketing, apart from expanding operations.

Founded in 2016 by Indian Institute of Technology Madras alumni Jaiswal and Pranav Prabhakar, MiStay is a travel-tech company that allows booking a hotel room by pack of hours with flexible check-in & check-out time.

In April 2016, Mistay was launched in just 2 cities (Delhi & Gurgaon) and with 12 hotels. Soon in next five months, the company launched its operations in eight more cities.

Currently, MiStay is operational in 30 locations and claims to have around 400 hotels on its network. Its partner hotels include branded chains such as The Park Hotels, Pride Hotels, Sarovar Hotels, Keys Hotels, Treebo Hotels and Mango Hotels. MiStay claims that its customer base has grown seven times in the last six months.
MiStay’s model is unique in that it offers slot-wise hotel bookings. A full day is divided into three slots: morning (8:00 am – 11:00 am); day (12:00 noon – 7:00 pm); and night (8:00 pm – 7:00 am). The customer can book any combination of consecutive slots based on need.

Asutosh Upadhyay, head of programs at Axilor, said in the statement, “MiStay has taken a customer-centric approach to hotel bookings… While giving travellers the best options, they are unlocking value in hotel inventory, making this a win-win solution for individuals and corporates.”

Axilor Ventures is led by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal.

Hourly Hotel Booking Platform MiStay Raises Seed Funding Via Axilor Ventures, Others

Bangalore-based online hotel reservations startup MiStay, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Axilor Ventures and a group of angels, a press statement said.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds for hiring talent and marketing, apart from expanding operations.

Founded in 2016 by Indian Institute of Technology Madras alumni Jaiswal and Pranav Prabhakar, MiStay is a travel-tech company that allows booking a hotel room by pack of hours with flexible check-in & check-out time.

In April 2016, Mistay was launched in just 2 cities (Delhi & Gurgaon) and with 12 hotels. Soon in next five months, the company launched its operations in eight more cities.

Currently, MiStay is operational in 30 locations and claims to have around 400 hotels on its network. Its partner hotels include branded chains such as The Park Hotels, Pride Hotels, Sarovar Hotels, Keys Hotels, Treebo Hotels and Mango Hotels. MiStay claims that its customer base has grown seven times in the last six months.
MiStay’s model is unique in that it offers slot-wise hotel bookings. A full day is divided into three slots: morning (8:00 am – 11:00 am); day (12:00 noon – 7:00 pm); and night (8:00 pm – 7:00 am). The customer can book any combination of consecutive slots based on need.

Asutosh Upadhyay, head of programs at Axilor, said in the statement, “MiStay has taken a customer-centric approach to hotel bookings… While giving travellers the best options, they are unlocking value in hotel inventory, making this a win-win solution for individuals and corporates.”

Axilor Ventures is led by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal.

Hardware Startup Open Appliances Raises $550,000 From Axilor Ventures and Zoho Co-founder

Bengaluru based hardware startup Open Appliances, that manufactures smart locks, has announced that it has raised $550,000 from Axilor Ventures and Kumar Vembu, co-founder of software product company Zoho Corp.

The startup plans to use the freshly raised funds further to strengthen its products and enter new verticals. It also plans to file patents for close to half a dozen hardware designs.

Founded in 2015 Gotama Gowda, Rajshekar Jenne and Siddhesh Keluskar, Open Appliances designs, develops and sells revolutionary smart locks for enterprises across sectors.

The startup provides Bluetooth-enabled smart lock systems to telecom and logistics companies. Its product ‘Force’ is a smart padlock that can be remotely unlocked via Bluetooth using a mobile app while 'Forge' is a hardened industry-grade lock in-built with a WiFi hotspot for unlocking/locking using smartphones. Forge is mostly used to secure large cabinet boxes.

Gotama Gowda, who is CEO of the startup , said in an interview that the company manufactures 8,000 smart locks every month. It has had sales of around $500,000 since the first product went into commercial production a year ago, he said.

In the same interview, Gotama noted that Open App already has a revenue pipeline of $2 million this fiscal year with more than half of it recognised.

The company estimates that the physical security equipment and services market is estimated to reach $197.07 billion by 2019. Out of this, Access Control as a Service -- the company’s target market -- will account for $6.06 billion, it says.

Open App competes to a greater extent with players like Latch, which focuses on the enterprise space. While in India, legacy players like Godrej seem to be Open Appliances' closest competitor at the ‘smart lock’ space for homes and enterprises along with another upcoming niche startup AwakeY.

Revolutionary Breast Cancer Screening Startup NIRAMAI Raises Funding Led by Pi Ventures

NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a startup that’s building a revolutionary non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer has raised seed funding led by pi Ventures with participation from Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal. NIRAMAI (Non Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Learning) is a pioneer of a new patented technology called Thermalytix© that can remove technological, logistical, and cultural barriers that hinder breast cancer screening among women today. The start-up’s solution uses artificial intelligence over thermal images to address the issues of early detection of breast cancer.

NIRAMAI has recently been inducted by Axilor Ventures for its summer 2017 accelerator batch.

NIRAMAI is on a mission to create a universal cancer screening method that can save lives by detecting breast cancer at an early stage. The overall hardware-software solution is portable and uses big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. Early diagnosis is critical in saving the life of a cancer patient. Their method of screening is based on principles of Thermography that can detect tumors 5 years before mammography or a clinical exam can detect.

NIRAMAI was founded in July 2016 by Dr. Geetha Manjunath who comes with 25 years of research and innovation expertise in areas such as data analytics, machine learning, cloud computing, semantic web and Nidhi Mathur who is a serial intrapreneur with rich experience in business planning, strategy and product management. Both the women cofounders have previously worked with companies like Xerox Research Center and Hewlett Packard Labs.

[caption id="attachment_116078" align="aligncenter" width="700"] NIRAMAI Team[/caption]

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO & Co-founder of NIRAMAI, says, “Mortality rates among breast cancer patients are very high in India. Our solution is portable, low-cost, very safe, privacy-sensitive and can detect cancer at a very early stage making it very suitable for regular preventive health checkup as well as screening camps. This investment will help us strengthen our IP portfolio, expand operations and ensure our cancer screening tool is readily available for commercial use.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures added, “Breast Cancer is a major killer across the world. In India, one out of two women die after getting diagnosed with breast cancer since the detection happens very late. Early detection is key to saving lives and is enabled very well with the innovative and disruptive AI based solution from NIRAMAI. We are excited to partner with them in their journey to solve this important and worldwide problem.”

Co-founder of the Mumbai-based impact investor Ankur Capital, Dr. Ritu Verma said “We are very excited to partner with NIRAMAI. Their early detection solution is low cost, zero radiation and non contact, which very effectively addresses the concerns and limitations for larger adoption of screening for women across all segments. Breast cancer rates are growing in India and having such a solution is imperative for addressing the dismal survival rates we are seeing today.”

Shalini Prakash from 500 Startups, the leading global venture capital seed fund shared "We are always very excited to discover stellar teams and disruptive companies solving big problems, and NIRAMAI is definitely one of them. Breast cancer rate is increasing every year and there is a huge gap in the health industry. NIRAMAI’s technology solves this problem for millions of Indian women by early detection and taking preventive measures for breast cancer ahead of time."

Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart said “The innovation from NIRAMAI is solving a key problem in women’s health today. We are happy to partner with this new startup that is socially relevant, innovative and has good market potential."

[Top Image - NIRAMAI Co-founders Dr. Geetha Manjunath & Nidhi Mathur (L-R)]

Axilor Ventures Inducts 20 Startups in Its Summer'17 Accelerator Batch

Axilor Ventures announced the list of 20 startups that made it to its Summer'17 accelerator batch. This is its fifth batch and is the largest accelerator cohort in India.

Talking of the new accelerator cohort, Ganapathy Venugopal, Co-founder and CEO of Axilor said, “The institutional capacity to support early stage startups in India is quite low - whether it is the structured programs to systematically improve the odds of success of startups, the market access that they need in their early days or the angel investment capacity. This has been Axilor's mission and by doubling the capacity of this batch to 20 startups we have taken one more step to bridge these gaps. We are very excited to work with the new cohort.”

The cohort of 20 startups and 52 founders makes for interesting statistics. They belong to five sectors – consumer internet (4), enterprise (6), AI (4), healthcare (3) and fin-tech (3). 80% of them are product companies – 10 serving enterprises, 6 consumers and 4 serving healthcare providers. All but 2 have already launched and 10 of them are post revenues. The founders have diverse experience – 9 of the 52 founders are less than a year out of college (some graduating next month) to very experienced folks starting up first time. While the median years of experience is 6 years, 2 years on an average has been spent working on a problem similar to their startup idea. Interestingly, 15 out of the 20 startups are from outside of, signifying the depth of startup talent in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

Welcoming the startups into the batch, Asutosh Upadhyay, Head of Programs at Axilor, said “The demand for our program has been overwhelming and validates the need for such programs among founders. Unlike the previous batches, most of the startups are post launch and some of them post-revenues. Our 100-day program is designed to help them make rapid progress, gain business traction and get funded. Axilor’s market network provides early access to customers and partners. They get to work with resident advisors on the riskiest parts of their business and finally get funded.” Axilor’s growing community of 100+ founders is another big draw. Being part of this community allows them to learn from other experienced founders, tap into each other’s networks and seek help.

Meet Axilor’s Summer ’17 Accelerator Cohort

Sector	Name of startup	About the startup
AI/ ML	Detect	Detect is a Drone data-as-a-service company focused on helping manufacturing industries ensure asset integrity and proactive monitoring leading to enormous cost reduction. Detect’s solution is currently in use in some of India’s largest oil & gas companies.
	Niramai	95% of breast cancers are curable if detected early. Yet 76,000 women die in India alone and more than 700,000 globally, every year. Niramai is working on a non-invasive, radiation-free, painless and low cost cancer screening solution.
	Orbuculum	Genomic data holds the key to predicting health. Orbuculum uses AI on genome data to predict diseases such as cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases. Orbuculum's AI tool will help doctors diagnose chronic diseases early thus reducing cost and improving effectiveness.
	Transporter.city	Last mile logistics is big with an estimated 2 billion+ annual deliveries by 2020 in India alone. But they are also expensive, manual and error-prone escalating costs and compromising customer experience. Transporter.city's SaaS product automates the entire last mile logistics planning and helps increase the same day delivery output to 95% with 25% lesser delivery fleet and 40% cost savings.
Enterprise	Adya Inc	All enterprises are prone to Cybersecurity threats - not just the ones who can afford an expensive on-premise security product. Adya's network and endpoint cybersecurity SaaS product helps enterprises protect themselves from employee theft and ransomware - a problem affecting more than 70% of enterprises, globally.
	CoPro	Events and business conferences are ubiquitous. But there is no tool that can assess audience engagement and generate actionable insights and analytics for the organizers. Crowd Product (CoPro) is pioneering the way audiences engage during events. Already used in leading startup events including Nasscom Product Conclave 2016, TiE Product Showcases and many more VC events.
	Extraaedge	Student acquisition for educational institutes is highly expensive, conventional and inefficient. Extraaedge is a "Salesforce+Hubspot" for educational enterprises that generates a 3X RoI on their marketing and sales spend.
	Gig Production	Event organisers want large audiences but struggle to manage pre-event and post-event audience engagement. Used by the likes of DJ Snake and Sunburn, Gig's automated communication tool bridges this gap and connects concert organisers to their audience, right on Facebook messenger.
	Maroon	Maroon is a predictive analytics platform that enables enterprise sales teams achieve upto 44% higher conversions on their marketing and sales leads.
	Rucept	Rucept is a powerful merchandising platform for high traffic content creators globally. It helps them monetize their art and engagement through products without investing in sampling, manufacturing stocking and distribution.
Fintech	Healthfin	Healthfin makes healthcare procedures affordable for consumers. Especially with low penetration of medical insurance, Healthfin helps patients secure credit support for expensive medical procedures. With an inventory of >4000 hospitals and 9500 diagnostic centres, HealthFin helps patients discover the best hospitals and secure funding.
	Legal Docs	Executing legal documents, especially for consumer needs (like rental agreements, PoA registrations etc) is time consuming, expensive and is dependent on multiple parties. Legaldocs is the fastest growing, Do-It-Yourself portal that enables the entire legal process - documenting, verification, validation and online registration. Currently a partner to Govt of Maharashtra on the e-governance project, it also enables Aadhar based verification for Legal doc preparation.
	TaxGenie	GST is coming! It brings with it a new multi-billion software market for GST compliance. Taxgenie is a platform that will help the 30million MSMEs be GST compliant and manage their businesses with just a smart phone and spreadsheets.
Consumer Internet	Castiko	Entertainment in India is big and one of the top 5 markets globally. But casting, a critical aspect impacting the quality of production, is archaic, manual and time consuming. Castiko revolutionises how casting directors discover, audition and cast actors by bringing the entire cast recruitment workflow online.
	Knudge.me	With around 50 lakhs bite-sized lessons consumed and more than 4 lakh games played, Knudge.me has established itself as on-the-go learning platform for folks looking to improve their English skills
	Multibashi	With an average session length of more than 9 mins on the app, Multibhashi makes the experience of acquiring a new language highly realistic with audios recorded by native speakers and simulation of real life situations.
	YourQuote	YourQuote's mission is to make everyone quotable - by helping people capture their thoughts on mobile and broadcast their words as 'google-able' quotes. Currently gaining rapid traction with over 40k organic downloads and 6k+ DAUs.
Healthtech	PocketPill	With 300k downloads and >80k MAUs, PocketPill has established the use case for solving $300 billion problem of medication non-adherence in chronic patients by bringing affordable medicine to everyone, saving costs and improving health outcomes.
	Talkadoc	Chronic disease management is protocol-driven, time consuming and requires frequent doctor visits. In cases like mental health, with the doctor-patient ratio of 1:1100, there aren't enough doctors. Talkadoc's product allows doctors to increase the acceptance of new cases by at least 25%. This is achieved by helping them automate the entire patient management process. Currently focused on mental health, it is already being used by over 30 doctors and 20k patients and caregivers.
	Treatgo	Healthcare is expensive all over the world. More than 7m people travel to other countries every year in search of cheaper and more effective treatments - 300k travel to India alone. Treatgo is an online platform to help international patients and referring doctors compare, choose and reserve medical treatments.

IDG Ventures India and Axilor Ventures Launches Program To Attract New Age Startups

IDG Ventures India and Axilor Ventures, the accelerator run by former Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and S D Shibulal, have partnered to launch Frontier Tech Innovators Program or FTIP2017. With this, IDG and Axilor wants to invest and partner with new-age disruptive startups working on a deep tech innovations to help solve large-scale problems in India.

IDG and Axilor will be selecting disruptive startups in the areas of -

1. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications and content



2. Blockchain, Bitcoin and the decentralized internet



3. Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning used to transform healthcare, finance, retail and business operations


4. Drones, Space, Robotics and Autonomous vehicle technologies



5. Moonshots (ground-breaking idea) focused on solving India’s core problems related to healthcare, education and employment using deep technology.

Who can Apply -

Young startups (preferably less than three years old) looking to raise seed or pre-series A round of funding in one of the above Tech areas can apply here till March 24.

With an India focus, these organisations are looking forward to ideas that can solve bigger problems of society in finance, business operation or healthcare delivery. “We are excited by the ambition of Indian entrepreneurs to build deep-tech solutions using frontier technologies to solve large problems in India and the world. Through this program, Axilor will continue to support and mentor path-breaking entrepreneurs,” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, chairman, Axilor Ventures.

IDG Ventures India is raising $200 million (Rs 1330.55 crore) in its third round to take its assets under management. Though the specific fund for FTIP is unknown, Sanat Rao, venture partner at IDG India, say typically 10 per cent of any fund is allocated towards seed funding.

Bot Protection Platform InfiSecure Raises $600k in Seed Funding from IDG and Axilor Ventures

InfiSecure, a bot protection technology startup has raised $600K in seed funding from IDG Ventures and Axilor Ventures.

InfiSecure was launched in March 2016 as a SaaS platform for real-time bot detection and fraud protection. InfiSecure sanitizes a website’s traffic and improves business metrics using a 24x7 active SaaS solution.

Abhilash Pandey, an IIM-Calcutta alumnus and Founder at InfiSecure said, “More than 50% of all web traffic is generated by bots. There are good bots helping in improving SEO and bad bots engaged in fraudulent activities.

Without a bot mitigation strategy, all online businesses are bound to suffer from a myriad of online frauds. The frauds are too many and have a huge impact on various industries in terms of sales and brand value. Moreover, it is not cost-effective and technology efficient proposition to build an in-house solution to tackle the bot menace.”

The company is already protecting several global online businesses from scraping, bot abuse, fake traffic fraud, content theft, form spam and other online frauds that are caused by bots. InfiSecure gives businesses insights about their bot traffic and eliminates bad, unwanted or suspicious behavior in real-time.

“Bad Bots are becoming a big threat to the web security landscape. Through our analysis after acquiring global customers, our insight is that as the bot number, nature and online activity grows and as bots become more sophisticated, the impact on businesses will be greater in the upcoming years than ever before”, said Ashish Kumar Singh, CTO at InfiSecure.

“Bot protection is an emerging space and we believe has a large global market potential. We are very impressed with InfiSecure team and are happy to partner with them in this journey”, said Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director, IDG Ventures India.

With the funds raised, the company plans to invest more on research and global business development. There will be a strong focus on technology innovation to cover more aspects of website protection.

Mr Ganapathy Venugopal, Co-founder and CEO of Axilor, added - “The demand for cybersecurity solutions is on the rise among online businesses to protect them from growing bot traffic. The InfiSecure team is well placed to solve this problem.”

Healthtech Startup ‘Neurosynaptic’ Raises Investment from Healthquad, IAN & Axilor Ventures

With the commitment to make quality healthcare affordable to the masses, Neurosynaptic Communications has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A round of funding from healthcare focused venture fund – Healthquad, World’s largest group of angel investors – Indian Angel Network and Infosys co-founders backed – Axilor Ventures.Healthquad and IANwill be joining the board of the company.

The Company has earlier received strategic investment from e-Zest Solutions Ltd, a global digital experience engineering company, with large international organization on healthcare product innovation.

As population in both rural and urban India struggles with the challenge of access to quality healthcare, Neurosynaptic offers proven, highly scalable e-health and m-health technology solutions that bring together products, partners and processes in the healthcare delivery ecosystem.

Established in the year 2002 by Sameer SubhashSawarkar and Rajeev Kumar, Neurosynaptic aims at eliminating the health complications faced by the developing world. It enables access of quality and affordable healthcare to masses in rural and semi urban remote areas through its low cost, high quality remote access telemedicine solution. The Company achieves this through its Unique,cloud-based telemedicine platform ReMeDi® (Remote Medical Diagnostics), that provides screening, primary diagnosis and triaging capabilities by remotely connecting the different stakeholders (patients, doctors and point-of-care service providers) of healthcare delivery ecosystem and offering 35+ point of care diagnostics including Physiology, Urine and Blood Chemistry tests, and various others, along with Electronic Medical Records. The company has reached over 50 million populationtill date by deploying itsReMeDi® solution in over 2,000 villages across India.

Commenting on the announcement, Sameer SubhashSawarkar, CEO at Neurosynaptic said, “Access to basic healthcare is a daunting challenge in rural India and most of the developing world, and there is a dire need for a solution like ReMeDi® which is targeted at the rural population. We have been relentlessly working at building solutions that are most beneficial for people who have limited or no access to quality health care. Not only does ReMeDi® connect up the entire fragmented ecosystem for last-mile delivery, but it also offers several features like workflow configuration, and the latest sensor & wireless communication technologies. Our Patented Safe Devicestechnology helps curb the misuse of devices and eliminates human errors. We are looking at exciting times ahead. The soon-to-be-launched ReMeDi®-NOVA and pay-per-use model with Cloud, Mobile Technologies, UX and Analytics, shall revolutionize the last-mile healthcare access. We are delighted to have such strong support from our investors who are equally focused in bringing about large scale impact and building a Global Enterprise for social change.”

The company plans to utilize the investment for International Certificationsand launch of its products and to scale international business in Africa and South / South East Asia, besides further penetration across India. They are also in the process of launching the upgraded version of its flagship ReMeDi®platform which would offer SaaS based (pay-per-use) telemedicine and m-health solution along with a wider range of diagnostics.

“Telemedicine as a concept and solution is gaining traction world over, equally in developed and developing markets. This solution takes care of accessibility, which is a primary driver in the under developed markets and affordability, which drives the need in developed markets. Governments and insurance agencies are working towards building a conducive environment for accelerated acceptance of such solutions. We feel that Neurosynaptic, with its proprietary product and solutions offering and deep experience is best placed to capture the opportunity in this region. We will work closely with the company to help build their growth plan as they move along in expanding their network & adding the services on their platform”commented Dr. Amit Varma, Sponsor of Healthquad

Increased technological improvement, rise in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases along with increase in aging population has enhanced demand for remote monitoring. Global telemedicine market is expected to hit the US$ 35,500 Mn mark by 2020 at a CAGR of 15%.

Lead IAN investor Nagaraja Prakasam commented on the investment saying,“As only 2% doctors are in rural area where 68% of India lives, the medical expenses for them is triplefold– loss of wages, travel to nearby town, expenses for the person to accompany. This makes them not to seek health care until it’s in very late, thus health care expenses are one of the top reason for poor not able to come out of poverty or puts them back in poverty. Neurosynatpic with its patented ReMeDi® digital health solutions aims to improve this situation, and has successfully demonstrated scale on the ground. The team has phenomenal talent and we believe they will continue to excel in the industry to be a market leader.” Naga has led 6 other IAN investments including Uniphore, GoCoOp, Freshworld, Saahas, SP Robotics,Soloron through IAN Impact, encouraging entrepreneurs solving real problems.

“We welcome the new investors aboard. This is big endorsement of e-Zests’ strategic investment, and we look forward to the Company growing Global by leaps and bounds”, says Shrikant Shingane, a serial entrepreneur, and e-Zests’ representative on the Company’s Board.

“Of the three important healthcare outcomes of access, affordability and effectiveness, access is perhaps the first and most important problem to solve. The Neurosynaptics team is one of the few with a world-class telemedicine and point of care diagnostic solution for solving the access problem at a scale when it can make a real impact. This investment will help them expand their reach to smaller towns in India as well as replicate their model in other emerging markets.” commented Mr. SD Shibulal, Co-Founder Axilor Ventures.

The company is focused on building a telemedicine solution model & a SaaS model for hospitals, clinics, governments, NGOs across the globe. Together with its partners, Neurosynaptic'sReMeDi® solution today brings access to healthcare in 30 districts with over 2,000 village centers and over 8,000 village health operators reaching to 50 million people in India. With an aim to co-create a healthier surrounding, Neurosynaptic has demonstrated the impact of technology solutions at a large scale in tackling this global problem.