AI‑Native Family Office CREST Secures $3.1M Pre‑Seed to Expand Platform

CREST, an AI-native Fractional Family Office and new-age asset management company, has raised USD 3.1 Mn in pre-seed funding led by BEENEXT, Sparrow, Shastra VC, DeVC, Warmup Ventures, Atrium Ventures and 91ventures with participation from 40+prominent Indian and UAE founders and CXOs, including Amit Ranjan, Chirag Taneja, Revant Bhate, Shantanu Deshpande, and Kashish Sharma. The funds will be deployed to strengthen the company’s technology platform, expand its family office and investment teams, deepen regulatory and compliance capabilities, and build its asset management offerings across Global and Indian public markets and Real Estate. With this announcement, CREST is formally coming out of stealth as it builds a structured family office platform for India’s emerging wealth and value creators.

CREST combines Family Office advisory, Asset Management, Community, and Technology in one integrated platform. Its services span consolidated reporting, tax-efficient structuring, asset allocation, investment oversight, succession, estate planning, and next-generation development and readiness. Taking an advisory-first approach, CREST helps clients navigate geographies, managers, products, structures, and asset classes with a singular focus on their long-term wealth preservation and growth.

Commenting on the fundraise, Girish Singhi, Co-Founder and Zuhaib Khan, Co-Founder of CREST, said —

Many of India's founders and business owners have built significant wealth, but their personal financial structures haven't kept pace. CREST was built to sit on the client's side of the table, bringing together investment discipline, governance, technology and long-term thinking in one place. This fundraise will allow us to deepen our platform, strengthen our teams, and serve this generation of wealth creators the way they deserve to be served.

According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, India is home to more than 900,000 dollar millionaires today, a number forecast to nearly double by 2030, with the country adding USD 2.4 trillion in new financial wealth over the same period. These families deserve the same rigour, alignment, and long-term thinking that Family Offices have always provided to the ultra-wealthy. And all these families have two pools of capital - Domestic and International. We built CREST to bring an incentive-aligned, fiduciary-first, and retrocession-free Family Office to these conversations, for both pools of capital - domestic and international.”

Commenting on the investment, Saksham Pant, Principal at BEENEXT, said —

Founders, CXOs, and business families today are looking for trusted partners to help manage and grow their wealth long term. Girish, Zuhaib and the CREST team, with their strong investment expertise and an AI product built on top of India’s significantly improved financial infrastructure, are building a modern family office platform for the next generation of wealth creators and we’re excited to partner with them.

Over the next twelve months, CREST plans to expand its technology platform, deepen its family office services, and grow its asset management offerings for clients across India and the UAE. The company will continue to build strategic partnerships with CA firms, audit firms, legal experts and other trusted advisers who work closely with India's wealth creators. Its longer-term ambition is to become the most trusted Family Office for founders and value creators across India, the UAE and Singapore.

About CREST:

CREST is an AI-native Fractional Family Office and new-age Asset Management company that partners with founders, families, HNIs, emerging UHNIs, and institutions to build their own Family Offices to manage, structure and preserve wealth with discipline, alignment and foresight. The company combines family office advisory, asset management, technology and community across areas such as asset allocation, investment oversight, consolidated reporting, succession planning, estate planning, governance, philanthropy, real assets, alternatives and long-term wealth stewardship. CREST is anchored in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Dubai. For more information, please visit www.crest-capital.com.

About BEENEXT:

BEENEXT is a Venture Capital fund managed by serial entrepreneurs that focuses on assisting founders with their operational experience, network, trust, unique perspectives, and capital. The team invests in early-stage tech start-ups that are focused on building new digital platforms driven by the data network. BEENEXT is a platform of founders, by the founders, and for the founders across the globe, primarily in Southeast Asia, India, and Japan. Since its establishment in 2015, the team has invested in over 200 companies globally. For more information, please visit www.beenext.com.

Bootstrapped IndiaFilings Raises $4.3 Mn Secondary From BeeNext and Udtara Ventures

Chennai and Mumbai based IndiaFilings.com operated by VERVE Financial Services Private Limited has raised 30 crores from BeeNext and Udtara Ventures. The funding raised as secondary will be used to provide exit to family members who were fully invested in the company

IndiaFilings.com which helps businesses and individuals with compliance and regulatory services has raised USD $4.1mn from BeeNext, Udtara and angels. The funding will be utilised to give stellar returns to the family members who had originally invested to grow the company into a successful, profitable venture with over 500 employees and 1 lakh paid customers.

Lionel Charles, CEO and Founder, IndiaFilings with his mother

Founded in 2014 by Lionel Charles, IndiaFilings provides over 200 services for small businesses that help small businesses stay compliant and manage their regulatory requirements - at a very affordable price point. The company utilises homegrown technology to provide regulatory and accounting services at scale. The company has a revenue run rate of over Rs. 50 crores and is profitable.

Commenting on the announcement, Lionel Charles, CEO and Founder, IndiaFilings, said, “Our vision is to build IndiaFilings.com as an institution and a fintech platform for India. We are happy to partner with BeeNext and Udtara Ventures in our journey of building together. With this investment, we are looking to double our revenue, introduce newer products and grow our customer base further.

I am also extremely thankful to my parents for backing me up in my first venture with funds - when I came back after completing my Bachelors and Masters in the USA. They literally bet all their life savings on my venture. I am happy - that I have been able to give them an exit and good returns.

There is a perception that Entrepreneurship is risky among some in India. I hope our story serves to break this perception and parents see investment into their children's business as an asset class that can be monetised in this new decade.

IndiaFilings was started with the simple idea that doing business should be easier and more seamless in India. Over 50,000 businesses have so far been started through IndiaFilings.com. The company currently offers services across various verticals like business registration, taxation, accounting, banking and intellectual property services. In 2018, the company launched LEDGERS Accounting Platform to help SMBs and Individuals with tax filing services. With this fundraise, the company is looking to professionalise management and scale operations.

Phi Commerce Raises 4 Million USD in Series A Funding From Singapore Based BEENEXT

• PayPhi, Phi Commerce’s API-first digital payments platform, is currently powering over 100 million transactions per month
• Phi Commerce to use funds for product innovation and expansion in new geographies 

Omni channel digital payments company, Phi Commerce today announced that it has raised USD 4 million in series A, led by BEENEXT, a Singapore based Venture capital firm. The fresh round will be utilised to bolster its product offering, expand in existing markets and enter new geographies.

Founded in 2015, Phi Commerce has established itself as a strong contender in the digital payments market across Tier 1 cities in India and has led the digital payments revolution into the underserved tier 2 and 3 markets as well, powering more than 100 million monthly transactions. With its API-first digital payments platform for payment schemes, banks, processors and large, medium and small businesses alike, PayPhi from Phi Commerce, provides frictionless payments experience by integrating all consumer touch points online, mobile, in-store, or doorstep and payment modes on a singular platform.

Commenting on the announcement, Jose Thattil, CEO and Co-Founder, Phi Commerce said; “Today, consumers and businesses globally are demanding that payment transactions be truly seamless, almost bordering on being invisible. We are proud that within a short span of time, PayPhi, with its revolutionary API-first architecture, has successfully proven its capability to meet hitherto unaddressed requirements at scale across online, in-store and door-step commerce. The need to eliminate friction in payments with 100% reliability is a universal requirement across advanced as well as emerging economies and we are confident we will soon be replicating this success in global markets.”

BEENEXT has maintained a stellar track record of identifying high performance fintechs that have, over a period of time, scaled up exponentially.

Commenting on the investment announcement, Hero Choudhary, partner at BEENEXT, said that; “India is probably the most complex payment market in the world with all sorts of payment form factors. The Phi Commerce team has built a remarkable product covering end to end omni-channel payments at scale. Their technology solution is scalable across the globe and we are proud to partner with the Phi team in their journey.”

The round also sees participation from Yatra Angel Network (YAN) managed by Abhishant Pant, a veteran in the Indian fintech space.

“We have seen Phi Commerce’s journey from the day they got associated with us in the Mumbai Fintech Accelerator. They truly represent an Enterprise payment powerhouse from India with solutions having application across global markets,” said Abhishant Pant.

Phi Commerce distinguishes itself by straddling payment facilitation for merchants and businesses and being an enterprise platform provider to payment schemes, banks and processors. It aids merchants and businesses in managing payments across the life cycle of invoicing, collection & distribution in an integrated manner and helps payment schemes, banks and processors overcome challenges of legacy platforms by providing a modern omni channel payment platform. PayPhi has gained widespread acceptance in the Indian market. Its solutions ranging from digital payments at the doorstep to single click 100% automated subscription payments and fully digitized high value B2B payments are transforming the way businesses empower their consumers for seamless commerce.

The award-winning platform’s API-first architecture enables digitization and automation for most back-end processes including reconciliations, accounting, last mile notifications and settlements, unleashing the true benefits of digital payments and minimizing operational complexity. The platform is the winner of MeitY DigiDhan Mission Fintech Award and has won the coveted Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI) India 2020 for its one-of-a-kind Instalments/Buy Now, Pay Later program.

TReDS Platform M1xchange Raises Funding from BEENEXT and Mayfield

Rs 10,000Crore throughput volume

MSMEs across 352 Cities used the TReDS Platform during the lockdown period

To expand its network across India and emerge as a comprehensive Supply chain finance leader

Access to funds at a much lower rate through the platform

15th December, 2020, Mumbai, Beenext Asia, Singapore and Mayfield have jointly made an investment of USD 4.5 Million in the current equity round in M1xchange, largest among the three holders of the Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) licenses issued by RBI. The round was led by incoming investor BeeNext from Japan and existing investor Mayfield followed on in this round as well. The utilisation of funds by M1xchange will be to expand its network across India and emerge as a comprehensive supply chain finance leader.

"We are very excited to partner with M1xchange in their journey. COVID-19 has accelerated digitization of cash, digitization of SME workflow and payments, commerce penetration into tier 2, tier3 towns and villages, and B2B payments to name a few things. M1xchange stands to benefit from all of these trends. With a solid software background, team has built a remarkable product to empower Indian MSME vendors over the next decade." said BEENEXT partner, Hero Choudhary.

Sundeep Mohindru, CEO of M1xchange believes, "The pandemic has had a profound effect on supply chains, businesses and economies. In the last few months, substantial positive movement has been felt for growth in business volumes versus previous quarter and this is also reflected in surge in volumes on M1xchange (TReDS). MSMEs across 352 Cities have logged into TReDS Platform since Pandemic time and have discounted invoices at rate of interest ranging between 4.75% pa to 8% pa. 60% of such MSME Enterprises are from Tier 3 & Tier 4 Cities and are able to take the benefit of this digital revolution. In coming days this secured marketplace for receivables financing will be integrated with other government digital initiatives"

Maple Capital Advisors, a Delhi based Investment Banking firm, acted as the financial advisors for this round of funding.

Started in 2017 under licence from RBI, M1xchange has scaled up to discount invoices worth more than Rs 10,000 crore. Some of their USPs include being a bank agnostic platform with 35 banks on-board. M1xchange is the only TReDS platform wherein the assignment of receivables is done digitally for every transaction, in favour of the financing bank. This gives confidence to bank's legal and risk teams for enforceability of Factoring Act regulations in the court of law, thereby bringing enhanced participation on the platform. The internal risk and repayment scoring algorithm of M1xchange has mitigated risk of fraudulent bills with zero exceptions in past 3 years.

The numbers of corporates that are approving invoices on M1xchange (TReDS platform) are byfar the largest amongst all exchanges and giving an opportunity to MSMEs to discount their invoices of multiple buyers. During this pandemic time, M1xchange took steps to further enable social distancing and implemented Digital On-boarding of MSMEs on the platform. This paperless, digital onboarding enables them to complete their digital onboarding journey within 15 minutes, without usage of courier for delivery of documents. "M1xchange plans to utilize the investment over few years to enhance its market reach and further evolve the technology for ease of use. The newer models of Supply chain financing and the resultant technology will be deployed in coming months", said Sundeep Mohindru, CEO of M1xchange.

With so much momentum even during the pandemic the MSME Ministry revised the definition of MSME and launched Udhyam portal as a single source for registration of an enterprise as an MSME. Sundeep Mohindru, CEO of M1xchange concluded by saying, "This has been of great help since many MSMEs have been able to reach out directly to the TReDS platforms and get themselves registered with us. There has been a considerable participation from corporates in the last 8 months (post lockdown) as they witnessed a merit in Supply chain finance, as a means for reduction in their Business cost and providing cash flow support to their suppliers under revised definition. PSUs have also started to allow their MSME suppliers to transact on the platform during the last few months. Some of these are , IOCL, BPCL, NTPC, ONGC, Power Grid, HAL, EIL etc. The PSUs are working on gearing up to the digital handling of their MSME suppliers so as to maximize the advantages of the platform."

"M1xchange continues to be the leader in this space and the only TReDS platform who is attracting international investor interest. Continued investor participation validates this large market opportunity. This round should go a long way in enhancing technology development and personnel to achieve greater scale." said Vikram Godse, Partner and Managing Director, Mayfield Fund India.

About M1Xchange

M1xchange is an RBI approved TReDS (Trade Receivable Discounting System) platform. TReDS is an institutional mechanism set up in order to facilitate the financing of trade receivables of MSMEs from corporate buyers through multiple financiers. TReDS will boost the Indian economy by solving the erratic cash flow problems of MSMEs caused due to slow paying invoices. M1Xchange has digitally transformed the vender payment ecosystem and the way MSMEs generate working capital. This has been achieved through seamless presentation of bills, their validation, discounting, and approval of funds on a single platform. There is no need for additional collaterals to raise money through the platform.

More details on M1Xchange can be accessed at http://www.m1xchange.com/. The utility of TReDS has been explained through videos at http://www.m1xchange.com/videos.php.

About BEENEXT

BEENEXT is an early-stage focus venture capital firm managed by serial tech entrepreneurs since 2015. The partners have hands-on capabilities and have been focusing on assisting founders in over 190 early-stage tech startups in Fintech, Marketplace, Healthtech, Agritech, AI/Data, and Spacetech domains. BEENEXT aims to establish the platform of the founders, by the founders, and for the founders across the globe primarily in India, South East Asia, and Japan with their own operational experiences, network, and perspectives.

About Mayfield

Mayfield is a global venture capital firm with $2.5 billion under management. Since its founding in 1969, the Firm has invested in more than 500 companies resulting in 117 IPOs and more than 200 mergers or acquisitions. Mayfield India has over $200 million under management and is a sector agnostic fund that invests in both technology, as well as, non-technology start-ups across sectors such as financial services, consumer brands, FMCG, logistics, and healthcare amongst others.

Edtech Startup Winuall Raises INR 14.7 Crore ($2 Million) to Digitise Coaching Institutes

Winuall, an online education platform that helps coaching institutes go digital, announced that it has raised INR 14.7 crore from Prime Venture Partners, BEENEXT, Ramakant Sharma (founder of LivSpace) and other angel investors. WinUall aims to democratise technology infrastructure for offline small and medium institutes and digitise the whole learning experience for students with online study material, assessments and live classes. The startup will use the fresh capital to enhance product capabilities and hire across technology, product, AI and business development teams. Winuall is planning to add more than 20,000 coaching institutes and serve more than three million students across India cities by the end of 2021.


Founded in 2019, Winuall offers a SaaS plug and play platform on a subscription model for tutors and coaching institutes. Private tutors small and medium coaching institutes are mostly run by individuals or a small group of tutors who are generally not tech-savvy. Winuall enables these tutors and coaching institutes to become fully digitized by providing tools like class scheduling, batch management, attendance, live classes, online quizzes, AI-based recommendations, online courses, building online platforms etc. Apart from managing their day-to-day activities, the tutors also get an opportunity to sell their courses across the globe on the platform and get to collaborate with other tutors.


Winuall provides a huge repository of questions and content for tutors that helps them to focus on teaching rather than taking effort on digitising. The company improves learning experience by leveraging AI to understand student learning patterns and accordingly suggests the best possible path for tutors using reinforcement learning. It also provides detailed analysis to tutors and suggests ways to better engage students.


For students, Winuall provides "state-of-the-art" analytics of their performance and solutions to enhance it. Students use the app to learn concepts, take quizzes, work on the recommendations provided by the app, and engage with their peers.


Founded by Ashwini Purohit, Winuall has on boarded more than 3700 coaching institutes across the country. Over 5000 tutors are already using the platform extensively to teach online, conduct quizzes, solve doubts, and sell their courses. Since the lockdown, the company has seen a massive increase in live class hours and over 50 Million minutes of learning has been delivered on Winuall's platform.


Coaching is a $80 billion industry in India and it is growing at 15% per annum. While self-paced education has witnessed a massive transformation in the last couple of years, the tutoring Industry has not evolved over the past few decades. COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of the tutoring industry forcing individual tutors to adopt technology to increase their reach and teach with more advanced methods. According to a report by Technavio, the online tutoring market size in India has the potential to grow by $132.21 billion during 2020-2024 and about 2.5 million local tutors need to be upgraded technically.


Ashwini Purohit, CEO, Winuall, said - "We believe digital tools will become an integral part of the learning experience and evolve our education system in a massive way going forward. With the ongoing pandemic, this investment is a testament to how newer trends of online learning will emerge in the times to come. Our aim is to enable tutors in India to go digital and improve the quality of learning for students. We want to empower the tutors & coaching institutes to remain independent by building and retaining their own brand name through our platform."


Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, said, "The tutoring market is at a significant inflection point, and there are a lot of tutors who want to manage their own student interactions and develop an independent identity. Winuall is facilitating this by helping tutors & coaching institutes to go digital, providing them with content and performance improvement recommendations using AI. Winuall is backed by an outstanding team with passionate founders who have a deep understanding of the tutoring and education space."


Teruhide Sato, Founder & Managing Partner, BEENEXT, said in a statement, "This pandemic has pushed start-ups across the globe to innovate. Edu-tech like many other sectors will play a crucial role in shaping and impacting a more digitally connected future. We are excited to back a passionate team like Winuall, who are looking to transform the educational system in the country. There is tremendous opportunity in the online tutoring market and we look forward to being a part of Winuall's journey to digitally-empower educators."

About Winuall

Winuall is an online education platform that helps coaching institutes go digital providing them with content and performance improvement recommendations using AI. The company provides software as a service platform to tutors on a subscription basis. It also enables tutors to sell their content and services to a broader audience and charge a small transaction fee on that.

For more information, please visit: winuall.com 

Payment Startup BharatPe Raises $15.5 Mn from Insight Partners, Sequoia and Beenext

Delhi-based Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates payment tech startup BharatPe, has raised $15.5 million (about Rs 106.7 crore) in series A round of funding from Insight Partners, an American venture capital and private equity firm, along with contribution from existing investors, Sequoia and Singapore-based VC firm, Beenext.

The fund raised will be utilized by BharatPe in scaling its operations and empowering millions of merchants with UPI payment within the next two years.

The funding came within a couple of months after BharatPe had raised nearly $17 million (about Rs 120 crore) from Sequoia Capital India, valuing the payments startup at $60-65 million. Prior to that in October last year, it raised $2 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital India and Beenext.

With latest fund infusion, BharatPe has raised a total of $33 million in funding over three rounds, according to www.indianweb2.com estimates.

Founded in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, is a B2B payments company enabling universal 'UPI'​ acceptance at offline merchants. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an immediate real-time payment system that helps in instantly transferring the funds between the two bank accounts through a mobile platform.

Currently with over 6 lakh merchants in India, the startup is operating in 11 cities - Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Jaipur.

To recall, last month leading payments startup MSwipe Technologies has raised Rs 219.8 crore from US-based hedge fund Falcon Edge, B Capital Asia, Epiq Capital and DSG Consumer Partners. At the same time it was also reported that another leading Indian online payments startup Razorpay is in advanced discussions with Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Sequoia Capital to raise $75-100 million in new funding,

AI based Healthtech Startup NIRAMAI Raises $6 Mn from Dream Incubator, Others

Artificial intelligence (AI) based healthtech startup NIRAMAI Health Analytix, has announced that it has closed $6 mn in a Series A round of funding led by Dream Incubator, a Japanese VC firm, with participation from BEENEXT and other investors.

Earlier investors pi Ventures, Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, and Binny Bansal also participated in the round. The funds will be used for scaling in India, hiring top talent and getting additional regulatory approvals for international expansion.

The fresh funding comes within three months after NIRAMAI had raised about US$6-7 million from its existing investors Pi Ventures, Axilor, Ankur Capital and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, in November last year.

NIRAMAI is creating a revolution in breast
health screening with its patented technology called Thermalytix™ which is a
non-contact, non-invasive and radiation-free solution for early stage breast
cancer detection. The solution is clinically proven to be accurate for women of
all age groups. This affordable and portable solution is completely privacy
conscious. Thermalytix can be applied to other areas of diagnostics as well.
This innovation has led to NIRAMAI being selected as the only Indian company
listed on 2019 cohort of AI 100 startups in the world by global business data
intelligence platform CB Insights.

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO & CTO of NIRAMAI, says, “NIRAMAI helps to bridge the gap in
our healthcare delivery systems by providing an AI tool that is
accurate, affordable and accessible to all. If institutionalised as regular
screening method, NIRAMAI Thermalytix has the potential to save many lives not
just from breast cancer deaths but eventually other diseases as well. We are
thankful to the continued support and mentorship provided by our seed investors
and are excited to join hands with our new investors to propel us to next level
of growth.”

Eto Munehiko, Managing
Director, Dream Incubator Advisory and Investment India, who will join
Niramai board, says,
“We are excited about partnering with Niramai that is building a truly deep-tech
solution out of India. We also believe in the potential of their technology to
solve global health problems at scale. The disruptive AI based technology is
key to early detection of disease and saving lives especially where there is a
shortage of skilled medical professionals and dense breast ratio is high. Dream Incubator would support Niramai’s
international expansion including Japan.” Dream Incubator has invested
in more than 160 companies across 8 countries and supported 28 IPOs.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi
Ventures added, “We believe that Niramai’s team and technology will create
a significant difference in early detection of breast cancer and are happy to
continue backing them in their journey. AI diagnostic tools are helping doctors
scour through data to better diagnose a variety of abnormal conditions and is
the only way to bridge the huge demand and supply gap when it comes to quality
healthcare.”

NIRAMAI
has made excellent progress in 2018 showing clinical validation with multiple
trials published in international forums, market validation with 20+
installations in hospitals and diagnostic centres across 9 cities in India and
receiving excellent user feedback from women.  

NIRAMAI was founded in July 2016 by serial
intrapreneur Dr. Geetha Manjunath who comes with 25 years of expertise in research
and innovation leadership, and Nidhi Mathur with rich experience in business
planning, strategy and product management. Both women co-founders have
previously worked with companies like Xerox Research and Hewlett Packard Labs. Niramai has previously raised a seed round of $1mn in April
2017.

Neo-banking Startup Open Raises $5 Mn from Beenext, Speedinvest and 3one4 Capital

Bangalore-based fintech startup Open Financial Technologies Pvt Ltd (Open), which offers a digital neo-banking service for SMEs, announces its Series A funding of 5 million USD led by Beenext, Speedinvest and 3one4 Capital.

Prior to this, the startup had raised undisclosed amount in May last year, whi was its pre-series A funding led by Unicorn India Ventures and Recruit Co. Ltd, through its investment subsidiary RSP India Fund LLC. Existing investors ISME-ACE and Vaibhav Domkundwar’s BetterCapital AngelList syndicate

Open offers a business account in partnership with banks that helps SMEs
automate and run their finances effectively. The account has all the tools that’s required by a small business to
send and receive business payments combined with an automated bookkeeping tool to
integrate banking into their business workflows.

Founded
in 2017, Open is solving business banking challenges faced by SMEs and the platform
today has grown to over 30,000 SMEs and processing over 2 Billion USD in
transaction run rate adding over 7500 SMEs every month and is the fastest SME
focused neo-banking service globally. Open plans to use the funding to scale up
the team and launch a few new products.

The
series A round was led by Beenext – Asia’s top-tier early-stage fund investing
across SEA, India and Japan. Speedinvest - a leading early stage VC fund in Europe
which also backed leading neo-banks like N26, Holvi and Tide. Existing
investors Unicorn India Ventures and Angellist Syndicate also participated in
this round.

According
to Anish Achuthan, Co-founder & CEO of Open “Banking is broken for
small businesses as traditional business banking services have not focused on
the needs of these businesses. This presents us with a large opportunity
to disrupt this segment in partnership with banks. The funding will help
us accelerate customer acquisition and growth as we target to onboard 1 million
small businesses into the platform in the next two years.

Speaking on the investment, Dirk Van Quaquebeke, Managing Partner, Beenext says, “I have been looking at the neo-banking space globally for the past 5-6 years and must say that I have not seen this kind of growth and robustness of an SME Neo product at this young stage of a company. I am deeply impressed by Anish and his team and what they have achieved in such a short period of time.”

Just a few days back, Beenext had also contributed in $8 million funding round of Smallcase, a Bangalore-based financial technology startup.

Speaking on the investment, Stefan Klestil, General Partner, Speedinvest, said “Tech is enabling the financial inclusion of small businesses everywhere in the world. Based on our track record in Europe, and together with Beenext, our trusted regional partner, we have started to back strong, proven founders like Anish in the Indian market with its practically unlimited growth prospects. We are very excited about our first tech investment in India." 

Founded in May 2017, by by serial entrepreneurs Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan along with ex-TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob, Open has raised investments from Recruit Japan, Unicorn India Ventures, DICE fintech and other angel investors that include Sweta Rau, Citruspay founder Jitendra Gupta, TaxiforSure founder Apremaya Radhakrishnan, Chiranth Patil of BetaPlus Ventures, Archana Priyadarshini of Unicorn India Ventures and Vaibhav Domkudwar’s BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate.

Citrus Pay Co-founder's Financial Planing App Cube Wealth Raises $2 Mn from Beenext, 500 Startups, Others

Mumbai headquartered Cube Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd that runs and owns, Cube Wealth, a finance and investment planning app, has raised ₹14 crore (~ $2 million) in a Series A round from Singapore-based venture fund Beenext, Japan-based Asuka Holding and 500 Startups, a US-based early stage venture fund.

The freshly raised funds will be used by the startup to grow sales in its top cities -- Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune—and expand to Europe and Japan, targeting non-resident Indians.

Cube was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Satyen V Kothari, who is also the co-founder of payment gateway Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU in 2016 for $130 million. He has previously founded marketing automation firm Trapezo and e-commerce firm Lotus White, among others.

Initially started as a niche bill payments and expense service, Cube Wealth helps manage investment portfolios and provides investment advice from SEBI-registered advisors. The app offers members wealth creation, automated savings, and expense management.

[caption id="attachment_126840" align="aligncenter" width="501"] Cube Team with Kothari (Image - Cube @ Facebook)[/caption]

Acording to Kothari, Cube Wealth is aiming to becomes profitable by the time it goes for a Series B fundraise, that is roughly 18 months from now.

“We are targeting the upper middle class segment of users who have an income of ₹10 lakh per annum and above and want to make financial planning easy and jargon-free,” said Kothari, in a statement given to LiveMint.com.

The startup currently employs 15 people, mostly engineers, and will look to hire more in the next year, although it targets at keeping the employee count below 50. The Cube team comes with a background in digital payments, personal finance, and design. They have worked with market giants like Apple, Frogdesign, Yahoo!, Intuit, Citrus Pay, American Express, HSBC Bank, Disney, Zynga and First Data to hone our skills for Cube.

The Cube team has previously released a mobile app for bill payments called, 'Cube Bills', that has garnered over 2.5 million downloads and exceptional ratings in the App Store and Google Play store.

Source - LiveMint

Citrus Pay Co-founder's Financial Planing App Cube Wealth Raises $2 Mn from Beenext, 500 Startups, Others

Mumbai headquartered Cube Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd that runs and owns, Cube Wealth, a finance and investment planning app, has raised ₹14 crore (~ $2 million) in a Series A round from Singapore-based venture fund Beenext, Japan-based Asuka Holding and 500 Startups, a US-based early stage venture fund.

The freshly raised funds will be used by the startup to grow sales in its top cities -- Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune—and expand to Europe and Japan, targeting non-resident Indians.

Cube was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Satyen V Kothari, who is also the co-founder of payment gateway Citrus Pay, which was acquired by PayU in 2016 for $130 million. He has previously founded marketing automation firm Trapezo and e-commerce firm Lotus White, among others.

Initially started as a niche bill payments and expense service, Cube Wealth helps manage investment portfolios and provides investment advice from SEBI-registered advisors. The app offers members wealth creation, automated savings, and expense management.

[caption id="attachment_126840" align="aligncenter" width="501"] Cube Team with Kothari (Image - Cube @ Facebook)[/caption]

Acording to Kothari, Cube Wealth is aiming to becomes profitable by the time it goes for a Series B fundraise, that is roughly 18 months from now.

“We are targeting the upper middle class segment of users who have an income of ₹10 lakh per annum and above and want to make financial planning easy and jargon-free,” said Kothari, in a statement given to LiveMint.com.

The startup currently employs 15 people, mostly engineers, and will look to hire more in the next year, although it targets at keeping the employee count below 50. The Cube team comes with a background in digital payments, personal finance, and design. They have worked with market giants like Apple, Frogdesign, Yahoo!, Intuit, Citrus Pay, American Express, HSBC Bank, Disney, Zynga and First Data to hone our skills for Cube.

The Cube team has previously released a mobile app for bill payments called, 'Cube Bills', that has garnered over 2.5 million downloads and exceptional ratings in the App Store and Google Play store.

Source - LiveMint

Delhi Based Startup Get My Parking Bags $3 Mn From BEENEXT, IAN, Others

GetMy Parking, a Delhi-based startup providing cloud-based mobile parking technology has raised $3 million (Rs 19.2 crore) funding from BEENEXT, IAN Fund and Indian Angel Network.

Earlier in February 2017, the company raised pre-series A funding of $1.1 million (Rs.7.35 crores) from Indian Angel Network (IAN), BEENEXT, The Chennai Angels (TCA), and Sunil Munjal (Hero group). Prior to this, in January 2016, the startup had raised $0.376million (Rs.2.5 crores) from The Chennai Angels (TCA).

The company plans to use freshly infused funds to expand to more cities, both in India and overseas. Commenting on the development, Rasik Pansare, Co-founder and CMO, Get My Parking told PTI, “Parking management is still an unorganised segment in India. We are trying to digitise the demand side and we are in 300 locations in Delhi-NCR already.”  Pansare further informed that the company is also working as part of some smart city pilots like one in Navi Mumbai.

Founded by Chirag Jain, Rasik Pansare and Rahul Gupta, Get My Parking uses Internet of Things (IoT) for its smart parking platform. The startup’s platform digitises parking spaces. Its mobile app gives users a bird’s eye view of all the legal parking lots, allowing them to search, book and navigate to the relevant parking spot.

The startup claims that it currently processes about 1.7 million parking tickets a month in the Delhi-NCR region.

With the team of 60 people and plans to hire about 20 more people in the next 2-3 months, Get My Parking has already set up an international business development team that is working on expanding the company’s operations to 15 countries by March next year. The company has already entered markets like Taiwan and Indonesia and is carrying out pilots in some countries of Europe.

Currently, with the smart cities taking off rapidly, there is an urgent requirement for indigenous smart solutions that ease traffic and mobility. So apart from cashless parking management systems and mobile applications, Get My Parking has city dashboards and enforcement applications for government authorities, revenue analytics for contractors, APIs for mobility providers and hardware integrations with OEMs. But for these to be effective, different stakeholders should be brought together. So, Get My Parking has built a completely integrated IoT platform that connects all these solutions and their stakeholders seamlessly.

The rapid urbanization in developing nations like India never gave much attention to mobility planning. Get My Parking is now poised for international growth and has recently set up country partners in 2 countries. With Get My Parking maturing from a novel concept to a trusted smart parking platform, our cities finally have the data driven solutions to make urban driving hassle-free.

Datasigns Technologies Secures $1.5 Mn From SRI Capital, BeeNext, Others

Datasigns Technologies, a mobile first financial technology startup that operator of lending platform Shubh Loans has raised $1.5 million in pre-series-A funding from SRI Capital, BeeNext and Pravega Ventures. The firm plans to utilize freshly infused fund to grow its technology team and expand to 25 markets from seven.

Prior to this round, the company has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Sanjai Vohra, former MD of JP Morgan, V Bunty Bohra, India CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Peeyush Misra, a former partner at Goldman Sachs.

Commenting on the development, Sashi Reddi, Founder, SRI Capital said, “Many massive companies are going to be built in this space, finally being able to lend to the next 200 million consumers ­ Shubh Loans will be one of them.” Reddi has earlier invested in enterprise SaaS companies including Identropy and Yellow Dig.

At $1.2 trillion, India is estimated to be one of the largest markets for consumer finance in the world, behind the US and China. It is also one of the least evolved markets for lending, with close to 70% of the market being underserved by institutional lenders. According to a report by international philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network, over 400 million people borrowed money in India in 2014, but fewer than one in seven were approved for a formal loan. The ratio of consumer loans to GDP for India is at a low 11%, compared to countries like China which is close to 40%.

This show that the current credit system is not working for a large part of our population. Almost 400 million people are being excluded because of traditional and archaic ways of credit scoring.

According to the company website, Datasigns aims to democratize credit and make it available to all. Their technology platform, Shubh Loans is transforming consumer lending. It is doing so by busting the myths that it is hard to get data, difficult to store it and even tougher to use it. The platform help loan companies to make smarter credit decisions and to expand the availability of fair and transparent credit.

Founded in 2016 by Monish Anand, Rahul Sekar, Anand Barua and Tushar Patel, Shubh Loans is a vernacular language app that builds a proprietary credit score and report for loan applicants, who can then borrow from any of the nine banks and NBFCs on the platform.

“We are targeting people who do not have access to bank loans and bring them into the formal banking economy. Using the Shubh Loans app, users can apply for a loan of up to Rs 2 lakh for a maximum time of two years,” said Monish Anand, CEO of Shubh Loans.

The company claims that since its launch, over 60,000 customers have built their credit score using Shubh Loans. The platform further boasts to have a monthly growth rate of 50% and aims to bring over 10 lakh people into the formal banking system through its lending and credit-building product.

Diagnostic and Wellness Startup Healthians.com Raises $3M in Series A Round Led by BEENEXT

Healthians.com, a diagnostic and wellness startup has announced that it has raised $3 million (Rs 20 Crores) in Series A Round of Funding led by BEENEXT along with Digital Garage, Japan, BEENOS and others. The company raised its seed round last year in July from YouWecan ventures.

Healthians.com technology-led asset light model merges international quality benchmarks of branded labs with the scalability & efficiency of marketplaces. The operational model involves working in close partnership with lab owners to significantly increase lab capacity utilization, upgrade to high-quality infrastructure and implement a proprietary 52 point technology-led quality management system in order to ensure high-quality results. The cost savings from increased and consistent sample volumes are then passed on to the customer, resulting in lowest prices in the market.

Anuj Mittal, Co-Founder, Healthians.com added, “Ensuring reliability, quality and accuracy in Diagnostics is a complex science with possibility of failure at more than 50 points in the chain. Even the best known labs despite certification, suffer from inconsistencies. With deep expertise gained in this domain, we are creating cutting-edge technology that will ensure accuracy across all aspects of diagnostics from home collection to lab testing and we will look to automate the entire operation matrix as well. Married with our unique asset light business model of deep partnerships, not only does this allow us to scale rapidly, but it also gives us unparalleled unit economics.”

Healthians.com gets over 1000 booking requests every single day from Delhi/NCR alone and has collected over 30,000 samples last month. The platform has conducted over a million diagnostic tests and has served over 150,000 customers in the Delhi/NCR region. The company has it’s own team of over 200+ phlebotomists in Delhi NCR alone, making it the largest home collection service in the country.

Speaking of the funding, Deepak Sahni, Founder, Healthians.com said “We spent the last few months putting the entire operations and quality piece into processes will be automating everything possible. I am glad that Healthians.com revenue is by far the highest while we are still in Delhi/NCR as compared to other players in the space. We have been getting continuous support and confidence from our Investors and this round adds great validation to our model. By 2019, we will be India’s largest diagnostic brand”

The company’s direct to customer approach offers free doorstep sample collection service through its certified and trained team of sample collectors and transporting the samples to the nearest Healthians lab. Customers can book a broad range of tests with an option to create customized packages for their exact requirements, while still availing the benefits of package pricing. These services along with the quality-focused approach ensure the complete reliability of test results leading to high repeats.

Teruhide Sato, Founder and Managing Partner, BEENEXT said “I met Deepak in November last year and invested a small amount through convertible notes and finally decided to lead this round after witnessing tremendous growth shown by the business in all aspects. I see a real sustainable business being created which is there to stay long. Diagnostics is a huge market in India and has room for many more players. Healthian’s unique model with focus on quality, cost and customer experience is highly scalable and expandable to other markets.”

The future plan of the company includes creating the largest umbrella brand in the country by adding over 200 labs and 3000+ phlebotomists to its existing network across 30 cities over the next 12-18 months. The business aims to grow swiftly to achieve 5,00,000 monthly sample load by the end of 2017.

“We would like to stay focused on diagnostics for another 12 months. We have built necessary technology and roadmap for expanding our offerings towards other healthcare services in future. Having the largest medical fleet on the street for home sample collection enables us to offer many more healthcare services to our customers. This will be new and game changing for the specific industry” added the founders.

Droom Bags Series B Funding Led by BEENEXT from Singapore and Digital Garage from Japan

Droom, India’s pioneering online automobile transactional marketplace, has announced the closing of its Series B funding in a round led by BEENEXT from Singapore and Digital Garage from Japan. Majority of existing investors are participating in the current round including Lightbox and BEENOS.  The fresh funds will be used to further strengthen the dominating position in the online market for automobile in India, continue to make platform more scalable and functionally rich, and expand internationally.   The amount raised for the new round of funding is significantly higher than the Series A, Droom raised in July 2015.

Droom with a presence in 142 cities has the largest reach in the hyper-local category in India and will use the fresh funding to further grow in the local markets and expand presence across international geographies. The latest round will see the Gurgaon headquartered company use the proceeds to create a larger sales team, adding more business lines, boosting its technology platform with a focus on creating a richer consumer experience.

Speaking on the development, Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Droom, said, “We have been witnessing tremendous growth over the past 16 months in terms of adoption by sellers, number of categories and listings, geographical presence in 142 cities across in India, and GMV/transactions.  Droom is permanently changing how automobiles should be bought and sold online by creating tools for 21^st century for trust, transparency, pricing and convenience.  We are very delighted that BEENEXT and Digital Garage have liked Droom journey so far and the future potential and decided to lead the round.”

Speaking on the occasion, Teruhide Sato, Founder and managing partner, BEENEXT said, “Droom has swiftly established its leadership position as the premium digital marketplace to buy and sell automobiles in India.  Sandeep is an exceptional founder and his vision, grip on marketplaces and ability to drive innovations are second to none.  We supported him and Droom fairly early on and have seen tremendous growth and disruption Droom has brought to the market.”

Adding to the same, Kaoru Hayashi, President and Group CEO, Digital Garage, added, “What Sandeep and the entire team at Droom have been able to do in such a short span of time is extremely impressive and is the main reason why we have handpicked Droom for investment. We are confident that our investment, coupled with its differentiated approach and disruptive business model, will continue driving its spectacular growth trajectory in the future as well.”

Through the funding and the ongoing support of investors, Droom, aims to cement their position in India as the ultimate automobile marketplace. To materialize this, the company will also see an infusion of funds towards marketing, business development, customer acquisition (operations) and new category expansions.

Betaout Raises $1.5M In Pre Series A Round Of Funding

Noida-based Betaout Inc., a customer intelligence and marketing automation platform for E-commerce companies has raised $1.5M in its Pre Series A round of funding. The funding comes from an esteemed group of investors including Beenext, Stanford Angels, Letsventure, Chennai Angels, Hyderabad Angels, and Mumbai Angels. Match Group CEO, Sam Yagan who had participated in Betaout’s seed round funding through Corazon Capital also participated in this round.

Betaout will use this round of funding for customer acquisition in the Indian market, and expansion in other Asian markets. The funding will also be used to hire professionals across Technology, Marketing, and Account Management. The company will also focus on developing its mobile offering, and other features on its platform such as machine learning, conversation-commerce, etc.

Betaout, founded in October 2014 launched a SaaS based offering for B2C/ E-commerce companies that provides customers real time big-data, segmentation based on business rules and machine learning, and omni channel personalization that reaches customers with personalized marketing via push, email, sms, re-targeting, in-app, in-web etc. The company’s revenue model is based on a monthly recurring subscription that is determined by the number of addressable contacts and messages sent.

Industry experts peg the E-commerce opportunity in India at $25 Billion. Customer retention and personalization capabilities are going to be key in differentiating the front-runners from the rest. Betaout’s target market is SMBs, a large category in India and naturally companies enabling E-commerce for this category will see a surge in demand for their products and in the number of users. Companies managing a large volume of users want to know their audience intimately and market well to them. This is where Betaout comes in.

Betaout's tools enable its customers to build amazing marketing experiences for their customers, and drive more customer engagement and revenues.

On the funding, Ankit Maheshwari, CEO and Co-founder, said, "This round of funding, by respected and reputed names in the investor community has energized us to pursue our business objectives with focus and alacrity. This would be an absolute necessity given the pace at which the E-commerce and B2C market, which we serve, is growing in India. Our plans for 2016 include growing our existing customer base in the Indian market and expanding to other Asian markets including Indonesia and Malaysia."

Sam Yagan via Croazon Capital who is also CEO of Match Group one of the key investors in the Pre Series A round of funding said, “We are impressed with the progress Betaout has made in India in a short span of time. Their product has already been embraced by some of the big names in the E-commerce space validating the value their customized toolset adds to E-commerce companies in their drive for more engagement and conversion across all channels.”

"Betaout’s product gets to the heart of all E-commerce marketers’ goal, which is to help them have an understanding of the customer that the product or service speaks for itself. Betaout through a single tool is helping its customers achieve the same and we are enthused to be part of their journey." said Teruhide Sato Founder and Managing Partner at BEENEXT.

In its earlier seed round, the company had raised $500,000 from a distinguished group of CEOs/Founders of companies including, Snapdeal, Paytm, Match Group (okcupid, Tinder), Groupon India, Freshdesk, Redbus, Slideshare, Goibibio, Shaadi, Slideshare, Better Inc etc.