HealthTech Startup Peping Raises $400K Led By Better Capital

The fresh fund will be used to advance Peping’s technology infrastructure, team expansion and allocate resources for creative experiments

Bangalore based startup Peping, India’s first digital healthcare clinic platform focussing on Gut health has announced that it has secured its latest investment round of 400K USD led by Better Capital as the lead investor and other angel investors who have joined the funding round include Kunal Shah, Sandeep Kumar Dinodiya, Ganesh Balakrishnan, and Shubham Mishra.

The newly acquired capital will be allocated to various critical areas of the company's growth. A significant portion will be dedicated to advancing the product and technology infrastructure. Additionally, it will also work towards building a team with deep industry knowledge, and allocate resources for creative experiments and expanding our acquisition channels.

Peping is building a digital clinic that delivers solutions for managing dietary and lifestyle factors that contribute to conditions such as IBS, GERD, Gastric, Gastritis and Fatty liver. The company aims to transform the delivery of this crucial aspect of treatment by implementing personalised and tailored care plans that examine various aspects, including lifestyle and test results, to diagnose and target the underlying causes of health problems.

Commenting on the announcement Chirag Maheshwari, Co-Founder of Peping said, “At Peping, we recognize that managing digestive health concerns can be a challenging and burdensome experience. That's why our mission is to simplify and alleviate this process for you. Through our personalised approach, a dedicated team of healthcare experts, and state-of-the-art technology platform, we are committed to delivering the utmost quality of care for gastrointestinal (GI) issues, making your journey towards better digestive health as smooth and stress-free as possible. The patient relief rate for functional gastric disorders in India stands at a low 5%. Our ambitious goal is to elevate this rate to surpass 30% and establish a global benchmark in the field. I want to thank all our investors who believe in us and are instrumental in driving our mission forward.”

More than 30% of Indians experience Gastrointestinal disorders, with 67% of them grappling with conditions like IBS and GERD. This translates to a staggering 140 million individuals in India living with chronic gut health issues. The surge in gut health issues represents a contemporary epidemic, primarily stemming from our sedentary lifestyles and suboptimal dietary choices, imposing significant strain on our digestive systems. This generation faces an elevated risk of developing severe gastric disorders, which can profoundly impact overall quality of life. Peping aspires to establish itself as the preferred healthcare provider for addressing a wide range of gastric concerns, offering holistic solutions for a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Moreover, the modern sedentary lifestyle serves as a precursor to more serious health concerns, such as heart disorders, obesity, and hypertension, which progressively hinder daily bodily functions and ultimately lead to more significant lifestyle-related problems.

“Gut health is one of the most widespread health issues in India and it requires a team with an undivided focus on creating a truly full stack solution. Chirag and Prateek came to the same conclusion through their own experience with close family members. We are glad to be founding stage partners in their journey of building Peping into a premier gut care brand over the next decade”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout companies across sectors.

Founded in 2022 by Chirag Maheshwari and Prateek Maheshwari, Peping understand that dealing with digestive health issues can be overwhelming and challenging, which is why the company strives to make the process as simple and stress-free as possible. They are dedicated to developing a comprehensive solution for managing dietary and lifestyle factors that contribute to conditions such as IBS, GERD, and Fatty liver. With a personalised approach, a dedicated team of healthcare professionals, and an advanced technology platform, it aims to provide the highest quality care possible for its customers. 

Established in 2022, Peping is India's pioneering digital healthcare clinic, with a strong focus on Gut Health. Our mission revolves around creating a dietary and lifestyle management framework to address conditions such as IBS, GERD, Fatty liver, and more.

Peping was co-founded by Chirag Maheshwari, NSIT '14, who brings his valuable experience as a Founding Team Member and leader in Product/Supply Chain at Flatheads, with previous key Product roles at renowned companies like Nykaa, Shopclues, and Momoe. Prateek Maheshwari, NSIT '15, boasts an impressive background, having managed a $6 million Micro-lending portfolio at Milaap and spearheaded Partnerships for Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services at Capital Float (now Axio) and Finomena.

Blitz (formerly Grow Simplee) Raises $3 Mn in Seed Funding

Same-day delivery startup for omnichannel sellers, Blitz (earlier Grow Simplee), has raised $3 million in a seed round from India Quotient, Better Capital, First Cheque, and Titan Capital.

Other investors who also participated in this round include prominent Angels — Farid Ahsan, Abhinav Jain, Rahul Dash, Kunal Shah, Prabhkirandeep Singh, and Ishendra Agarwal, among others.

The Bengaluru-based startup intends to use the freshly raised capital to enhance technology infrastructure and expand its network of dark stores.

Launched in 2021 by Gaurav Piyush, Yash Sharma and Mayank Varshney, Blitz is rebranded name of erstwhile 'Grow Simplee'. The name 'Blitz' resonates the startup's passion for speed and efficiency.

The startup provides automated solution for end to end logistics, warehouse, and immediate shipping services for ecommerce brands, enabling e-commerce brands and marketplaces to deliver their products faster to their customers.

Y Combinator, Better Capital -backed Investment App Gullak Raises $3 Mn in Seed Round

Y combinator backed, saving and investment app Gullak, on Wednesday announced its $3 million funding as part of its seed round from new investors - YC and Rebel partners and existing investor - Better capital. The other investors who participated in the round include Good water capital, GMO fintech fund, TRTL ventures and angel investors - Kunal Shah(Cred), Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal (Early salary), Kevin Moore amongst a few others.

The startup will utilise the funds to increase average revenue per unit (ARPU) by offering unique financial products, strengthening the current product and also to expand its user base. It also plans to make some investment in building a strong community and spreading financial awareness.

Founded by former JusPay executives Manthan Shah and Dilip Jain, and Naimisha Rao, Gullak is a platform that helps automate savings. Through this app the users can save small amounts on a regular basis, and automatically invest that in digital gold. It also allows users to lease their Gold to get extra 5% returns every year on top of the annual Gold returns through its latest offering Gullak Gold+. With this launch, Gullak becomes the first B2C app in India to give users an extra 5% returns.

“A classic representation of a founding team that we love at Better - product, engineering and growth co-founders who are obsessively focussed on rapid iteration to unlock PMF. We are excited to be founding stage investors in Gullak as they make wealth creation easy for 200M Indians and have been thrilled to see the quality of traction already”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout fintechs like Slice, Open, M2P and others.

Launched 7 months ago, the app has grown from 2 Lakh daily GTV to 22 Lakh daily GTV. This is projected to grow to 1 Cr daily GTV by Aug '2023. 40% of their user acquisitions are from organic and referral channels which they aim to take to 60% while growing the GTV in order to build a sustainable business.

“We are driven by our vision to democratise wealth creation while working on all the 3 pillars of a sustainable business - Acquisition, retention and monetization - at the same time. All our initiatives have this as the underlying core. For instance, our recent offering Gullak Gold+ has allowed us to move to a 4 digit ARPU which has been a struggle for most companies in this space. We have also doubled our GTV after the launch of Gold+ with 0 marketing dollars and are hoping to see great retention numbers as well through this offering. We have just begun and the journey ahead seems exciting” says Manthan Shah, Co-founder, Gullak.

With a strong product oriented team that focuses on constant innovation and a team that prioritises meaningful growth focusing on low CAC’s and high ARPU, Gullak is set to disrupt the wealth creation space for the next 200 Mn Indians .Prior to this, Gullak raised $1.3 Million as part of its pre seed round led by Better capital and a couple of angel investors, including Vimal Kumar and Sheetal Lalwani (Co-founders at JusPay), Ramanathan RV (Co-founder at Hyperface), Nitin Gupta (Founder and CEO at UniCards) and Prasanna Sankar (Co-founder at Rippling) among others.

SaaS Startup for Laundry Industry Turns Raises $500K Pre-Seed Round Led by Better Capital

Turns is a modern full stack operating system for the $100B+ laundromats industry with integrated software & hardware.

Turns, a vertical SaaS startup for the laundry industry, has raised $500K in pre-seed funding led by Better Capital, along with participation from PointOne Capital and a set of stellar angels. Turns helps laundromats deliver a modern experience to their users with a full stack software & hardware integrated solution that includes a modern POS, customer management, hassle-free payments, accounting, employee management, logistics optimisation as well as compliance making it an all-in-one control center for laundromat owners.

Turns launched their beta and has already signed up 50+ laundromats and dry cleaners across eight countries including US, India, UAE & others. Turns will primarily focus on the United States market and is targeting 1000 customers in the next 12-18 months.

Laundry is a $100B+ industry worldwide and $40B+ in the United States alone and is rapidly transforming from the old dimly-lit quarter-operated stores to modern main street businesses run by customer obsessed entrepreneurs serving consumers as well as businesses and picking up and delivering laundry like DoorDash. Laundry is the 4th biggest retail spend category in the United States and a recession-proof industry that contributed billions to the GDP and was identified as an essential business during COVID restrictions emphasising their broad appeal and need in society. Small and independent laundromats and cleaners serve 100M+ retail customers as well as large B2B customers from industries like hospitality, medical establishments & others to ensure a supply of clean laundry.

Laundromats have complex workflows involving machines & manual labor, multiple business models designed around self service, vending sales, wash dry & fold, pickup & delivery orders, routes & more. Laundromat owners increasingly need a system that can scale as quickly as their business does and one that integrates seamlessly into existing systems. Traditional solutions have fallen short of the modern needs of this multi-billion dollar industry - this is the opportunity Turns is focused on.

Turns founders, Sukanth Srivastav and Vishal Gupta, built a laundry startup in India in 2015 and understood the nuts and bolts of the laundry business. Though that startup did not work out, it left Sukanth and Vishal thinking how large the industry and its problems were. They built on those learnings and zeroed in on building the “Toast for Laundromats” and started working on Turns in 2022.

“Laundromats & cleaners represent one of the largest main street businesses in the United States that was severely underserved by modern software. We see an immense vertical SaaS opportunity and already understand the laundry business intimately”, said Sukanth who leads all things business at Turns.

“Laundry is a large business but a complex & competitive one. Laundromats need state-of-the-art software to deliver the experience that is being demanded by B2C as well as B2B customers. We are building Turns to do just that - an all-in-one system that laundromat owners can operate easily and scale their business with a stellar customer experience”, said Vishal who leads all things product & engineering at Turns.

“Vertical SaaS is a massive opportunity that is being unlocked by a new generation of companies that bring a modern Uber and DoorDash like experience to users across a wide range of verticals. Toast did it for restaurants and Turns is doing that for laundromats. We are excited to be ground zero partners to Sukanth and Vishal as they pursue this large vision”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout vertical SaaS companies like Open, Teachmint, Plobal and others.

UserStudy, A User Research SaaS Startup, Raises $1Mn in Seed Funding from Better Capital

UserStudy, a SaaS startup that simplifies user research for product teams, has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Better Capital. Other investors who participated are Sparrow VC, Maninder Gulati, Good Capital and notable angels from Gojek, Microsoft, Meta, Oyo, FlexiLoans and Upgrad.

UserStudy Co-founders — Nitin Matiyali and Anshul Divakar

UserStudy is building a video-first research solution that gathers insights from video and audio channels in an organisation, and consolidates all insights and feedback in one place. The company also helps product teams in recruitment of the research participants with powerful segmentation on demographics and professional attributes. userstudy.co is a full stack research platform which covers the entire value chain of user research

“We use what is easy and give up on things that are complex. Our view is that user research is too complex and too laborious and products and experiences are suffering at scale due this challenge. UserStudy fixes this by making user research 10X easier for product teams globally”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of SaaS innovators like Plobal, Privado, Last9, Clarisights and others.

UserStudy was founded earlier this year, by Anshul Divakar and Nitin Matiyali, both of them batchmates from IIT Bombay. They have experience in organisations like Gojek, McKinsey & Oyo. Anshul has held product leadership roles at Gojek & Flexiloans, while Nitin has a strong business background as a consultant with McKinsey and Head of Revenue for Oyo’s UK Homes business.

“Our vision is to build a one stop SaaS for all research needs of product teams globally. While product and design leaders understand the importance of user research, most teams cannot do enough because conducting research is challenging and time-consuming. With UserStudy, it becomes effortless to do research. Insights are generated in a matter of hours, not weeks.” said Anshul Divakar, Co-Founder of UserStudy.

UserStudy aims to build from India for the audience across the globe.

AI-driven Food Supplements Marketplace Getsupp Raises ₹ 9.5 Cr in Seed Funding Led by General Catalyst, Better Capital and Others

GetSupp is pleased to announce its Seed round of INR 9.5crores. The round is led by General Catalyst and Better Capital along withl marquee angel investors like Saurabh Garg (Founder, NoBroker), Ankit Nagor (Founder, Curefoods), Kunal Shah (Founder, Cred), Rohit Kapoor (Global CMO, Oyo), Mohit Sud (VP Marketing, Unilever), We Founders Circle and others.

GetSupp is an AI-driven nutrition and food supplements marketplace for users to learn, discover & buy the best supplement through a tailored purchase experience and see visible results via a personalized post purchase journey. It has built a proprietary AI-driven technology for both pre and post sales experience.

“The Indian consumer today is discerning and demands more,” said Anand Chandrasekaran, Partner, General Catalyst. “As she manages both her personal well being as well as that of her family’s, she will choose a high quality service which combines the simplicity of a health concierge with the trust and quality of the products recommended to her. GetSupp has a world class founding team that is building this service, and we are excited to partner closely on this journey.”

Food supplements market in India is at $5.5 bn right now and growing rapidly to scale to $18 bn in the next 5 years. India is seeing an unprecedented focus on health consciousness. Large population now believes that nutrition solutions can be very useful to overcome lifestyle concerns and problems.

“India is heavily nutrient-deficient and everyone discovers this at some point. But there is no solution that helps them comprehensively from learning about the deficiency correctly to starting the use of supplements and getting help for ongoing adherence. GetSupp is addressing exactly this problem with a solution that is tailored to each user & we are excited to be founding stage partners to Arpit & Deven", said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital.

In the near term, GetSupp will focus on strengthening their technology across the value chain to improve customer experience and make the entire journey seamless and easy for the users. It would partner with major brands in the nutrition space to provide best options to all customers.

“Our mission is to help every Indian discover the power of nutrition and how right supplementation can help overcome concerns and increase quality of life significantly. As of now, the entire journey from discovery to right usage to adherence is broken - And that is the reason why penetration of supplements is miniscule when compared to other countries. GetSupp helps the customers discover the right supplements and handholds them through the entire journey”, said Co-founder & CEO Arpit Gupta who is an IIT Guwahati & ISB alumni with more than 5 years of health and nutrition experience.

There has been a massive influx of products and brands in the nutrition category over the last 4 years. And this number is set to triple in the next 5 years. This also means that users have a lot of confusion and questions.

“Current ecommerce platforms have not been designed for discovery and consultation of supplements - GetSupp solves that problem. Our entire tech stack has been built to empower users, guide them, and answer any queries they might have during their supplement journey. Our content and AI-based consultation acts like a very knowledgeable consultant to make sure users get the best results”, said Co-founder and CTO, Deven Vyas who has been leading health and nutrition technologies for 8 years with a stint at Practo where he met Arpit.



GetSupp has a nimble, capital-efficient, and scalable business model. Backed by marquee investors, who share the strategic vision of founders - the firm has ambitions to grow aggressively in near future.

About GetSupp

GetSupp is India’s first AI-driven Nutrition and Food Supplements Marketplace. It helps users understand and discover the best supplement for them and then handhold them through the entire journey for better adherence and results. It has built a proprietary tech-stack for the entire journey and that makes it highly efficient and scalable. It was founded by Arpit Gupta and Deven Vyas who have combined more than 12 years of experience in the nutrition and health space. For more details check: www.getsupp.com

About General Catalyst

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, London, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/

About Better Capital

Better is an early-stage venture firm investing in India-as-a-thesis building companies for India and for the world from India. Better has a top tier portfolio of 175+ companies, has been an early backer of several breakout companies and has 2 unicorns in its portfolio. Better partners with founders very early and invests with deep conviction and helps its companies build in a systematic manner from idea to early PMF to traction to follow-on fund raises and more. For more details check: https://www.bettercapital.vc/

Community-led Crypto Investing Platform Crypso Raises $3 Mn in Seed Funding from Hashed Emergent, Athera Venture Partners, Better Capital, and Others

The company will use the capital to augment the platform’s content offerings, partner with crypto creators and influencers, and expand its user base. 

Community-led investing platform for cryptocurrencies, Crypso, has raised $ 3 million in seed funding from Hashed Emergent, Athera Venture Partners (formerly Inventus), Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, Polygon founders Sandeep and Jaynti, Kunal Shah of CRED, and other prominent angel investors.

The company will use the fresh round of funding to grow its user base and increase the breadth of product offerings and technology.

Founded in 2022 by Truebil.com founders Mr. Suraj Kalwani, Mr. Ravi Chirania, and Mr. Rakesh Raman, Crypso is India’s first-of-its-kind community-focused platform that enables crypto users to learn and discover the latest crypto trends, and invest via one-click trade signals on various altcoins generated by crypto experts.

Focused on millennials and GenZ users, Crypso is on a mission to simplify crypto and offer guided access to retail users with a community-first approach. Within a month of launch, the android only platform has accumulated over 50,000 actively engaged users and over 100 crypto influencers, creators, and experts who are using the app for daily crypto trends and updates with more than 25% of these users trading via social signals. The platform also witnessed more than 1 Cr in trade volumes within a couple of weeks after the launch.

Suraj Kalwani, Co-Founder and CEO, Crypso, said, “Crypto is fundamentally a social asset class and young Indian users actively engage with peers, influencers, and investment communities for crypto updates, analysis, and investment signals. With Crypso, we’re bridging the discovery and transaction loop with a strong hook around guided crypto investing. Users can connect with peers and experts, follow their portfolio movements, and stay on top of crypto trends and investing opportunities.”

Connecting new crypto investors, influencers, and experts on a single platform, the platform is helping users learn new strategies by participating in community group chats.

“This seed funding coming from marquee early investors, angels, and crypto-focused investors provides us with the fuel for growth and turbocharges our belief towards building a delightful consumer app for the growing crypto user base in India.” he added.

Speaking of the funding, Tak Lee, CEO & Managing Partner of Hashed Emergent , said “We are excited to back Suraj and team on their journey to build a user-friendly interface for Indian Web3 users. We like the fact that they are building for the young Indian users who will potentially be the early ones to adopt Crypto in India as we have seen across the globe.

Rutvik Doshi, Managing Partner at Athera Venture Partners(formerly Inventus), said “We have been partners with Suraj and team at Truebil and have seen first hand their ability to solve complex problem statements. Delighted to back them this time with Crypso from Day 1."

About Crypso

Crypso is a community-led crypto investing platform for young Indian crypto users. The platform offers a socially connected experience to users where they can discover and learn market trends by following crypto influencers and experts, joining community discussions with their peers, and trading crypto by executing 1-click trade signals from expert traders. Crypso is on a mission to enable guided and community first access to retail users in the complex crypto markets

Digital Manufacturing Platform Mekr Raises INR 5.8 Cr from Better Capital and Titan Capital

Mekr raises funding from Better Capital & Titan Capital to simplify mass manufacturing of electronics products.

Funds raised will be utilized to strengthen sales, supply chain, tech and project management team among others

Mekr, one stop source for complete electronics product manufacturing, has raised INR 5.8 Cr from Titan Capital and Better Capital. The seed funding round also witnessed participation from 2AM VC.

The funds raised will be utilised in strengthening sales, supply chain, tech and project management team and working capital requirements. The company is currently working for many leading organisations across industries ranging from EV, Fintech, Telecom, IOT, agri-tech and home appliance industries to fulfil their hardware product manufacturing requirements.

Gaurang Kuchhal, Co- founder & CEO and Anand Yadav, Co-founder & COO Mekr (From L-R).

The journey of Mekr is encouraging as both the founders Anand Yadav & Gaurang Kuchhal are second-time founders and have themselves gone through the journey from prototype to mass production of hardware products. Having experienced manufacturing challenges first hand, they realized the difficulties in taking proof of concept projects to mass manufacture real products which are used by consumers. Even simple products require integration of manufacturing processes from multiple industries like plastics, PCBs, Metal, import etc.

Commenting on the funds raised, Gaurang Kuchhal, C0-founder & CEO, Mekr, “People often have a pre-conceived notion that it is not possible to beat China product costings. However, this is not true in reality. At Mekr, for all our projects, we have been able to match China pricing while delivering great product quality and a seamless manufacturing experience.”

Speaking on investing the funds in Mekr, Bipin Shah, Partner – Titan Capital, “Today electronics import comes second only after oil in India. It is very surprising that we have so much dependence on imports for electronics. Now, globally there is a shift of supply chains due to Covid and global geopolitical situations.

Further adding to it he said, “India can make most of it due to its favourable conditions like - Manpower-talent, electricity rate, land availability (SEZ), domestic market size and government policies and support. Companies like Mekr will be pivotal in strengthening the Indian manufacturing ecosystem and making most of the manufacturing wave.”

"Mekr is building the Aatmanirbhar Manufacturing Platform of India to empower domestic product companies of all sizes with quality, scaling and price economics to compete with global competitors for the domestic as well as global markets. We are fortunate to be the founding stage partner to Anand and Gaurang as they build an important piece of the puzzle for leapfrogging Indian companies towards manufacturing leadership", said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout innovators like Teachmint, Wint, Open, Slice and many others across categories.

Mekr has a complete ecosystem for electronic product manufacturing like facilities for manufacturing of Plastics, PCBA’s, Metal, China sourcing and strong R&D team.

People looking to make electronics products can reach out to Mekr with their product specifications, samples or manufacturing files. Mekr works with its network of manufacturing partners, works on integration of different parts like software, plastics, electronics and seamlessly delivers complete product to the customer.

Retail Tech Company Vendekin Technologies Secures INR 8.5 Cr in Pre-Series A Round Led by Better Capital

• Targets USD 100mn (GTV) gross transaction value globally in unattended retail transactions by 2025
• Plans expansion into new global markets like USA and Europe
• To explore new avenues of unattended commerce such as EV chargers, amusement parks and laundromats
• The capital raised will be used to strengthen R&D and technology teams to drive superior consumer buying experience in vending machines and micro-markets

Vendekin Technologies, global pioneers in unattended retail technology solutions, today announced that it has raised INR 8.5 crores in a pre-Series A funding round. The round is led by Better Capital with participation from existing investors CP Gurnani's Family Office and Vineet Nayyar’s Family Office. The capital will primarily be used to strengthen R&D and technology teams to drive superior consumer buying experience at vending machines and micro markets.

The company further plans to expand into global markets such as USA and Europe, explore new avenues of unattended commerce such as EV chargers, amusement parks and laundromats as well as create a new channel of unattended retail in India through its one-of-a-kind V-commerce platform. It aims to power USD 100mn (GTV) gross transaction value globally in unattended retail transactions by 2025.

Founded in 2016 by Aroon Khattar, Vendekin Technologies is India's first hardware-enabled SaaS startup that is making waves globally in the unattended retail space. The company provides its proprietary technology solutions to large multinational companies as well as helps small vending operators digitize their business. The plug-and-play hardware solution, called Retrobox, can fit into any traditional vending machine without the need for 4G/5G, upgrading it to a smart, touch-less vending machine. The solution has been widely accepted by global players such as SandenVendo,Cantaloupe, Nestle to name a few.


The company has also recently launched the world’s first unattended retail aggregator platform called ‘V-commerce’ in India. This new platform is the first of its kind, one-stop solution anywhere in the world that brings consumers, vending machine operators, FMCG companies, vending equipment and technology providers and financiers on a common platform. Leading vending machine operators like Vendiman, Instago and Snackit and FMCG players like Coca Cola, Nestle, Godrej are a part of the platform.

Aroon Khatter, Founder and CEO, Vendekin Technologies said, “We are excited to have Better Capital as our strategic investor in our mission to revolutionize to digitize the unattended retail sector globally. The team at Better has steered several SaaS companies towards success in both domestic and international markets. We have a very special product in the unattended retail space and Better’s expertise will be instrumental in helping us gain market share globally. We are also excited about our plan for India where we have launched our V-commerce platform which is spawning many entrepreneurs in the unattended retail space. We already power the highest number of machines in the country, and you will see significant action from our side as we multiply this number many times over in the next few months.”

The global market for vending is projected to reach US$146.6 billion, growing at a CAGR of 1.3% by 2027. India, on the other hand, is expected to grow at a much faster clip at 14.9% CAGR, growing its market by 10 times within this period, as per a recent report by ResearchAndMarket. Vendekin aims to ride this wave and grow its presence from 4,000 to 50,000 machines and unattended kiosks by 2025. The company’s revenue has grown 400% year-on-year since 2020 and it currently facilitates around 1 million unattended retail transactions a month in India.

"Vendekin is building Stripe-like infrastructure for unattended retail, and we are excited to partner with Aroon and team as they scale their proven stack to serve a global customer base", said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout SaaS & infrastructure companies like Teachmint, Stader Labs, Khatabook and Airmeet.

About Vendekin Technologies:

Founded by Aroon Khatter in 2016, Vendekin Technologies is India’s leading hardware-enabled SaaS company which aims to democratize the global unattended/unmanned retail market. The company provides its proprietary technology solutions to a rich depth of partners/customers. From customized private labelled technology solutions to large multinational companies to helping small vending operators digitize their business, Vendekin’s solutions are reliable, flexible and agile. With multiple patents in the US, UK, EU and India, Vendekin is at the forefront of innovation and development in the unattended retail industry.



Vendekin currently operates in six countries including India, UAE, the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia and Oman and has enabled over 2 million transactions worth USD 5 million to date. The company has partnership with leading OEM manufacturers in the retail, refrigeration and vending space like SandenVendo, Nestle, Cantaloupe, Godrej, Elanpro, Vendiman, Instago etc. The company's early backers include CP Gurnani’s Family Office, Vineet Nayyar’s Family Office, Charudutta Palwe and others. To know more, visit: https://www.vendekin.com/

IIT Bombay Alumnus Founded Free Sleep Management App 'Neend' Raises $700K in Seed Round Led by Better Capital

The company offers vernacular language bedtime stories and guided meditation to make sleep more effective

Neend, India’s leading mobile-based application for sleep management has announced that it has raised $700k in its latest pre-seed round. The funding round was led by Better Capital, and saw participation from Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl (Founder of Snapdeal), Kunal Shah (Cred), and Nandan (Swiggy), Niraj Singh (Spinny) Sandeep Singhal (Nexus), Lalit Keshre and Harsh Jain(Groww) among others. 

The funds will be utlized for linguistic expansion and create more depth in categories like Yog Nidra, guided meditation session, and music, amongst others. In addition to this, Neend will also collaborate with the professional sleep experts to help users to measure, understand, and fix their sleep.

Founded in 2021 by Surbhi Jain, an IIT Bombay alumnus and serial entrepreneur, Neend aims to help individuals cope up with all sleep related problems, and provides an immersive experience with its relaxing bedtime stories, soothing sleep sounds, and ambiences. Owing to the current fast paced life, a majority of Indians are dealing with stress and anxiety which often lead to sleep deprivation, which the brand is aiming to address.

Commenting on the investment, Surbhi Jain, Founder of Neend, said, “In the last 5 years due to change in our lifestyles - lack of physical exercise, increased screen time consumption, and stress, sleeplessness or insomnia has become a very common problem. One in every 3 people has sleep troubles in the world. This has poised a huge challenge for individuals, impacting productivity levels. We wanted to build a platform that helps people address this. Through our relaxing content based approach, we are helping individuals cure insomnia and provide better quality sleep.”

In the past few months, Neend has seen tremendous growth across platforms. Their YouTube channel has more than 6.5 million views, with a subscriber base of 75000 in just a couple of months. The Neend app currently has over 50K downloads (most of these coming organically), with individuals suffering with severe insomnia issues recovering significantly and getting rid of their medication.

"Insomnia is fast becoming a major problem in India and is likely to get worse. Neend is an outcome of a founder’s personal journey with sleep deprivation. Neend combines immersive content and sleep expertise in a simple single app that is designed for millions of Indian users who are suffering with little help. I am excited to partner with Surbhi & team as they build the Sleep App for India”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of innovative health tech companies like Cradlewise, Fittr, Mojocare & others.

Neend is on a mission to help people have a better lifestyle by putting the right amount of focus on things which matter. The company is also working with experts to build sleep therapy content that helps cure stress, and chronic insomnia.

Contractor Digitization Startup ReNEWate raises Pre-seed funding from Better Capital

Founders of Renewate - Supratik Ghatak & Debashree Ghatak

The funding allows ReNEWate to expand its product offerings, accelerate growth and to further the development of its technology offerings, to simplify and improve the end to end workflow for property improvement professionals.

Renewate Infrastructure Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Pune based deep-tech startup, announced an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round led by Better Capital. The funding allows ReNEWate to expand its product offerings and accelerate growth as well as expand its presence throughout India.

Founded by husband-wife duo Debashree Ghatak and Supratik Ghatak, ReNEWate is India's only platform for helping millions of renovation contractors, property improvement professionals and agencies to manage their business digitally. With Renewate, millions of contractors and designers across India get a novel yet simple tool in their hands to convert requests into confirmed projects faster, manage them efficiently, get information on latest material trends & close the loop by accepting digital payments and dramatically improving their cash flows. Renewate’s product comes packed with latest in AR and AI - all with native language support bridging the skill gap and powering a new digital age for property improvement professionals and contractors. 

India’s property improvement market is upwards of $50B annually. Renewate aims to empower its users to go from a chaotic and unorganized process to a digitally-planned approach powered by the Renewate app. Contractors save time, grow their business and improve cash flow and get a wide range of benefits that Renewate brings in terms of raw material pricing as well as offers. For all this, contractors pay a percentage of their revenue to Renewate creating a win-win business model.

The founding team has several decades of experience in both the real estate and technology domains, having worked with global firms in the areas of software technology, cloud computing, AI, architectural and interior design, project management, supply chain management as well as material selection, cataloging and application.

Speaking on the investment, Debashree Ghatak and Supratik Ghatak, Founders of ReNEWate issued a joint statement saying, “We want to remove the common pain points that contractors and professionals face. Many of the contractors who are our customers, are at the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to literacy & education but really up the chain when it comes to showcasing high-value skill sets. With powerful yet simple technology at their hands they can be empowered to take control of their business from closure of their project sales to improving cash flows. We found instant alignment with Better and are glad to be partnering with them to build out our vision.”

“Millions of property improvement professionals & contractors are still using archaic and unproductive methods for running their businesses, losing time as well as revenue. Renewate is filling an important gap in this multi billion dollar industry by digitizing contractors with a mobile-first vernacular-first app that brings simple yet powerful tools to help them work smarter. We are excited to partner with Debashree and Supratik,” said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early investor in several SME digitization innovators like Khatabook, Teachmint, BharatAgri, Saveo & others.

ReNEWate allows multiple easy to use features that enable professionals to automate certain processes like documentation, measurements, estimation and invoicing. The technology is used by numerous contractors, designer companies, small & medium decor shop owners and has empowered them to use easy to understand technology to improve sales cycles, manage their business better and substantially increase their revenue.

The startup has earlier received a grant from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India for being one of the final top Smart 50 startups, who are poised to transform India as part of the Smart 50 challenge organized by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and IIM Calcutta. Renewate was earlier part of Brigade REAP, Asia’s first proptech accelerator program.

Edtech Startup Teachmint Launches India’s 1st Free Live Tutoring Mobile App & Raises Funds from Better Capital

An IIT alumni team creates the fastest free digitization platform for 1 Mn tutors fostering the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan. 

Bangalore-based edtech innovator, Teachmint announced its first funding round led by Better Capital with participation from Titan Capital. Teachmint has launched India’s first free live tutoring mobile app for digitally empowering 1M+ tutors.

The adoption of online learning in India is at an all-time high, setting a new benchmark for the rest of the world. However, despite the surge in online learning demand, the current platforms are falling short of delivering a true student-tutor connect that is necessary for effective learning. While schools and colleges can implement complex solutions, India’s 1M+ private tutors and coachings are struggling with lack of simple & effective tools to move their tutoring online. 

Teachmint (www.teachmint.com) has launched a mobile-first video-first app that enables tutors to seamlessly digitize their tutoring business with a simple and familiar mobile experience. Teachmint is India’s first mobile and web app that delivers high quality 2-way streaming video as well as a simple tutoring business management workflow to mark attendance, create content, conduct tests and a lot more. 

Thousands of tutors across 300+ cities have adopted Teachmint to manage their tutoring sessions with a combination of online as well as recorded videos. With a strong word of mouth, Teachmint has raced past 25,000+ users within just weeks of its launch. 

Teachmint is founded by alumni of IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi (Mihir Gupta, Payoj Jain, Divyansh Bordia and Anshuman Kumar) who have led important initiatives at leading brands like OYO, Swiggy, Open, Mckinsey and Roposo. The founders see a large opportunity for contributing to India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan by empowering tutors with tools to deliver effective learning outcomes for students and parents, who spend Rs. 25,000+ crores on private tutoring every year. 

Team Teachmint: the company takes pride in excelling a 100% remote working model.

“We strongly believe that teachers need to be given control within the online education space in order to address the needs of the diverse student base in India. Repeated studies have shown that learning happens best in cohorts where there is a personal touch from the teacher and there is a connection within the cohort. Recent times have highlighted the struggles of teachers while dealing with online tools that are not built for a teaching use case. 

At Teachmint, we are enabling teachers with the right digital tools so that they can run their classes efficiently and take their own unique styles of teaching to many more students. Over the past 3 months, thousands of teachers have trusted Teachmint as the one-stop solution to digitise their classes and we hope to support millions more in the near future. ” said Mihir Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO at Teachmint.

Teachmint is a free app that tutors can simply download and get started with their online tutoring. A dedicated Customer Happiness team ensures tutors are successful with Teachmint via phone, email and video support.

“Teachmint is the need of the hour in India - a simple digital companion that helps millions of tutors deliver an effective learning experience for students and a far more convenient experience for their parents. The rapid adoption of Teachmint by tutors across categories is a testament to the intensity of the need as well as the finesse of the product. I am excited to partner with the Teachmint team in this important mission”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. 

The fresh funds will be utilised for product enhancement, customer happiness and enabling reach to tutors in all parts of the country. 

DocSumo Raises $220k seed funding from Better Capital, Techstars and Barclays

The start-up will use the fresh funds to build sales channels in USA and strengthen its product to unlock new use cases

DocSumo, document AI startup founded in 2019, raises seed funding from Better Capital, an early stage venture firm with fintech investments in notable companies like Rupeek, Open, Khatabook, YAP and others. Global accelerators TechStars and Barclays also participated in this round making the total raise for the company to $220K.  The start-up provides intelligent workflow automation for financial services companies to save back office costs by up to 70% through document data capture, analytics and fraud detection.

DocSumo, which is headquartered in Mumbai, was founded by Rushabh Sheth (CEO), ex-Managing Director of Rocket Internet in Asia and Bikram Dahl (CTO), who was leading business intelligence and data science for the same firm. The startup has its engineering team based out of Kathmandu, Nepal and head office in Mumbai. Seeing the head of finance at their previous firm spend days reconciling invoices with bank statements, Rushabh and Bikram leveraged their data science and software engineering expertise to build Docsumo.

The document AI market is valued at $1.5 billion globally and with recent advancements in computer vision, it is growing 70% annually. DocSumo’s core technology platform helps in the automation and analysis of financial data such as bank statements, pay stubs, tax data, and business financial documents. It helps companies and firms to convert unstructured documents into structured data. Using various analytics techniques and data science, Docsumo helps its clients reduce turnaround times and increase accuracy and efficiency of the underwriting process. 

Speaking about its core value proposition, Rushabh Sheth, founder and CEO, Docsumo said, “Even today, most financial services firms outsource their back-office operations in India where thousands of people do mundane tasks of entering data and verifying documents. Not only is it costly and takes a long time, but it is also error-prone. Using natural language processing, DocSumo automates the reading of documents to enable companies to make faster and accurate decisions. Our aim is to build a ground-breaking AI solution that can read documents the way humans do and make data trapped in those documents actionable.”

DocSumo will use this investment to strengthen its product, marketing and sales engine, and also foray into newer markets like the USA. Going forward, the company plans to build a suite of API products that will help lenders and insurers to automate their operations thereby providing better customer experience. 

“Documents are the starting point of thousands of workflows at small & large organizations across industries. DocSumo is building on the cutting edge advancements in computer vision and natural language processing to extract data and context inside documents to enable automation of document workflows like never before. At Better, we are excited to be part of DocSumo’s journey as it unlocks this large and growing Document AI opportunity”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. 

Other than saving time and money, Docsumo has a range of API products for reading ID cards, bank statements and tax returns. They are currently working with large lenders in India such as PaySense (acquired by PayU) to enable real-time customer onboarding and also with insurers in the USA to enable reading of policy documents.

Neobank for Teens – Walrus Raises Funding from Better Capital

The start-up launched an invite-only beta with thousands of  users on its teen-focused neobank platform and has a large & growing waitlist. 

Bengaluru based Neobank - Walrus announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding for its platform focussed on providing banking solutions for teens and young adults. The pre-seed funding round was led by Better Capital, an early backer of neobanks in India including investments in Open, Khatabook, Jupiter, Yelo and Slice.. There was also participation from seasoned angel investors including Raveen Sastry (Co-founder, Myntra), Raghunandan G (Ex-Founder and CEO of TaxiForSure) and Brijesh Thakkar among others. The company plans to utilize the funding to expand its team and enhance product features. 

Walrus is a modern day digital-only banking platform for teenagers aged 13 and upwards. Although aimed specifically at teenagers, Walrus’ services can be used by anyone up to the age of 22. The platform provides them a secure and “Gen Z-like” cool banking solution that helps them to manage their money smartly and inculcate good financial habits. Parents can use the app to transfer money to their kids instantly via UPI, who can then spend the money hassle-free. They will be able to set saving goals for their children, teach them to invest small amounts of money in SIPs and mutual funds and also teach them to budget their expenses.

Founded in 2019 by Bhagaban Behera (CEO), Sriharsha Setty (CTO) and Nakul Kelkar (COO), Walrus was set up with an aim to help teenagers and young adults develop financial literacy at an early age ultimately leading them to the path of financial #AatmaNirbharata. The team comes with a collective experience of 40 years in leadership roles at various startups and MNCs.

Speaking about its core value proposition, Bhagaban Behera CEO, Walrus said: “Financial literacy is an important aspect of life which most people learn very late in life. In a very competitive, fast paced  world, one should be taught how to calculate taxes, how to budget expenses, invest and plan for finances earlier than later. In India, we usually learn the importance of these life skills in our early or late 30s by which time most of us have already made a lot of financial mistakes. This can be a resentful experience for many people. We allow parents to educate and financially support their children in their first steps using a digital financial product. Built for the Instagram generation, Walrus is an Instagram equivalent for a bank account which is cool, new-age, intuitive and easy to use.”

Despite being born digital, there are 200 million teens in India today that don’t have access to any tool to use digital money seamlessly. Financial institutions like banks do not consider kids as an important segment as they do not have earnings and do not need to avail credit]. It’s too much of a hassle to open an account in a bank for these children. Teenagers do not need to open a bank account to use Walrus. They would be able to install the app, load money and pay any merchant via UPI QR code or using the Debit Card for e-commerce purchases. Walrus is India’s first payment instrument that allows users to make UPI Payments without linking a bank account. 

Speaking of the investment, lead investor Vaibhav Domkundwar commented, “Walrus is the biggest missing link for today’s Instagram generation in India - it puts money in the hands of the teenagers so they can feel independent, make their own choices, learn from the choices they make and grow up to be a financially educated generation. We have 200 million such teenagers who will experience money & money management in a new way with Walrus. I am excited about this opportunity and fortunate to partner with a stellar team.”

Walrus is also building a community known as ‘Club Walrus’ which is a teens-only network for networking and learning interesting things like entrepreneurship, building products, digital marketing etc. from Industry experts. 

Although the startup is in beta, it is witnessing a strong demand for its product from teenagers and is seeing a high engagement and retention amongst its thousands of  beta users and has a large & growing waitlist.

Inspection AI Startup Inspektlabs Raises $600K in Funding from Better Capital & Titan Capital

Inspection AI technology startup - Inspektlabs has raised $600k in a pre-series-A round led by Better Capital, Titan Capital: investment office of Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, and a cluster of angel investors. Inspektlabs is also a part of 2020 London Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars. The company focuses on building computer vision products for physical asset inspections using photos and videos. Its current focus is on automating car inspections for global motor insurance and automotive players.

The US and New Delhi- based startup will utilize this funding for product development and to increase its breadth of offerings for insurance and automotive players across the globe.

Founded by former McKinsey and Zomato employees, Devesh Trivedi (CEO) and Sanchit (CPO) in 2019, Inspektlabs’ solution is based on an Inspection AI technology allowing firms to perform damage assessment, claim estimation, asset valuation, and fraud detection of physical assets using photos or videos. Customers can capture a 360° video of any asset (such as a car) using a smartphone, and within seconds, Inspektlabs’ API reverts with an inspection report.

The current process of inspection is manual - which is costly, slow, and ripe with fraud. In addition to this, manual inspections are now more difficult than ever due to COVID related lockdowns. Inspektlabs technology enables self-inspection by automating the entire inspection process using photos or videos. The company has so far inspected 100K cars in Japan, UK and India. As a response to COVID, Inspektlabs has also recently launched a new inspection product to ensure hygiene within cars as well.

While the company is focusing on car inspections as of now, its technology is also applicable in cellphone, hotel, property, bike, truck and ship inspections.

Speaking on the investment, Devesh Trivedi, Co-Founder at Inspektlabs commented, "Inspektlabs products have been designed and built from the ground-up to plug into this evolving paradigm of enterprise solutions. Our products currently reduce the cost of inspection by 98% and reduce the time required for inspections by 95%. We are constantly innovating to deliver new value propositions by improving deliverability, and assuring reliability in our product. We will soon diversify to other assets such as cellphones, bikes." 

Devesh Trivedi, Co-Founder, InspektLabs

Speaking on the investment, Vaibhav Domkundwar, Lead Investor said, “At a time where the world is prodding for a contactless environment, there is an increased demand and market for automation technologies. Almost every industry today is looking to ensure safety, adeptness and productivity. We can, therefore, expect to see greater use of computer vision technologies across an even wider selection of industries in the very near future. Inspektlabs technology not only increases efficiency, but is quite easy to deploy as well. This particular technology trend I believe will transform our society.”

Inspektlabs has built a growing library of 5 million damaged asset photos and videos that has universal applicability. The company has filed international patents for select damage categories, and has already signed contracts with 2 major players, and has 4 other pilots running with large automotive and insurance companies globally.

Inspektlabs falls into the “Inspection AI” bucket, essentially a startup space that automates the traditional inspection processes using machine learning. Of late, this space has seen conviction from many financial and strategic corporate investors. Some noteworthy global deals include, UK headquartered Tractable.ai which has raised $ 60MN so far, Israel based Ravin.ai which raised $4 MN in 2019 and France based Monk.ai which raised $2.4 MN in June 2020.

InsurTech Startup Riskcovry Raises Funding from Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund and co-led by Varanium Capital, Better Capital

Mumbai based InsurTech Platform startup, Riskcovry, confirmed today that they have closed their Pre-Series-A round led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, which also saw participation from Varanium Capital and Better Capital.

Riskcovry considers itself as a neo-insurer providing "insurance-in-a-box" solution, which allows any business with a large captive user base to enable distribution of insurance to their users in an end-to-end fashion. The company has taken the payment gateway (PG) approach of enabling insurance as a financial services layer to any business.  Just like a PG cuts across multiple payment instruments (cards, UPI, wallet etc.) and issuers, Riskcovry enables the distribution of multiple insurance products across insurers (Health, General and Life) with plug-and-play infra to support any distribution use-case, for existing or new customers, completely digitally as a “one-stop-shop".

The startup was incorporated in 2018 by the founders, Suvendu Prusty, Sorabh Bhandari and Chiranth Patil. Suvendu and Sorabh are ex-insurance industry execs who built the distribution books of two insurers, whereas Chiranth is a two-time founder who comes from a fintech & strategy background.  Vidya Sridharan is also a co-founder and CTO, and brings in deep technology experience.

The founders issued a joint statement, "As a startup, we get a chance to dream big and back it up with our execution chops.  We dream of a time when insurance is truly democratized for all Indians.  We figured that an inclusive model that connects various players in the insurance industry is win-win and scalable.  For this, we needed to organise the insurance value chain by way of technology, which makes it easy for various types of products to be distributed.  

We serve our distribution partner community by essentially being that unified solution for them to do anything insurance.  This means not just enabling for ‘purchase’, but also two other touchpoints their end-users typically have with providers as part of insurance life-cycle i.e., ‘manage’ and ‘claims’, all digital, and on-demand.

We are super excited to be partnering with the Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, Varanium Capital and Better Capital for our Pre-Series-A round.  We embrace mutual thesis around intersecting inclusive insurance ecosystems with new-age technology tools and look forward to working with them closely as we accelerate into the next stage of our company’s evolution.  This round will help us scale on our product-market fit, and serve more enterprise customers across segments that enable both mainstream and alternative insurance distribution.  We look forward to building out our technology, product, data sciences, sales and growth teams.”  

Saras Agarwal, Principal at Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund added, “Riskcovry brings a fresh approach to digital distribution for the insurance market.  Their API-first approach helps enterprise customers get access to highly relevant insurance products, through a completely digital process of underwriting, policy issuance, claim settlement and compliance. This extends the reach for insurance companies and provides downside protection to many end-users of enterprise customers at a very reasonable price point.  We are very excited to support the team on this journey!"

Riskcovry falls into the “financial infrastructure” bucket, essentially, a startup space that enables the ‘rails’ or ‘pipes’ that connect various payers within the industry’s value chain via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in order to seamlessly interact with each other. 

Of late, this space has seen conviction from many financial and strategic corporate investors.  Some noteworthy deals in India include Payments & Cards Infra Provider M2P’s recent Series-A of $4.5M led by BeeNext and FinTech Infra company Setu’s Series-A of $15M led by LightSpeed with co-investment from Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund among others.  Globally speaking, US headquartered payment network VISA acquired Plaid for $5.3B, a Silicon Valley based FinTech company that enables applications to connect to users’ bank accounts via APIs. 

Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund, that supports ventures leveraging technology to build inclusive solutions for India’s next half billion. The fund invests at the idea, seed or pre-series-A stage in high impact sectors such as finance, health, education and livelihood.

The fund is built on a decade-long start-up engagement experience and deep-rooted network of IIM-Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO, which has been running leading accelerator programs and seed-funds in India since 2008.

Riskcovry InsurTech Platform is an omni-channel insurance distribution technology company.  It bridges the gap between demand-side distribution and supply-side manufacturing sides of the insurance value chain, by providing product innovation & commercialization, omni-channel distribution technology & data analytics.  Current customers include Banks, FinTechs, eCommerce, Digital, NBFCs, Brokers, BCs, HRTech, HealthTech and Supply-Chain companies.  

Location Analytics Startup Locale.ai Raises Funding From Better Capital & Notable Angels

Rishabh Jain and Aditi Sinha started Locale.ai to help every company with moving assets (goods, delivery partners,sales partners, vehicles etc) increase revenues and get more sustainable demand using real time location data & analytics. 

The startup today announced that it has raised an undisclosed round of funding led by Better Capital with participation from notable angels such as Myntra & Nudgespot co-founder Raveen Sastry and Fusion Charts co-founder Pallav Nadhani in a pre-seed round. 

Since the Covid outbreak, online delivery has been powering the world and location analytics has become the need of the hour for last-mile delivery. They have seen a huge spike in demand from food, grocery, medicine delivery companies who want to reach their customers as soon as possible and get to 100% booking fullfitment.

Their product helps businesses maximize on the number of high-valued customers, increase frequency as well as their repeatability, thereby improving the topline. 

“We help companies decrease their customer acquisition cost by expanding in areas based on latent demand, reduce user churn by providing better SLAs in locations where they drop-off and increase existing customer revenue by doing geo-targeting based on users they move and where they order from” says Aditi Sinha, co-founder of Locale.ai and an alumnus of BITS Pilani. 

In a world where user acquisition and retention on the web is focused on creating user cohorts and targeting them differently, Locale’s aim is to help these companies that have operations in a real-world incorporate the “location” element and go super targeted and granular in their strategies.

They have established partnerships with data vendors to help companies overlay granular external data such as mobility patterns in a city, traffic, weather on top of their internal data to get more robust insights. 

“Location is at the core of the strategies that companies use to capture demand and Locale is the fastest way for any company to convert location data into easily searchable intelligence and the right insights”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, a seed fund with early bets in category defining businesses like Open, Khatabook, Bijak, Yulu & others.

Locale was founded in 2019 and is already working with mobility and delivery companies in the US, France, Argentina and India. The funding will be utilized to scale and expand globally, primarily in the US.

Today, they are ingesting around 1 million location events per day and claim to increase the user conversion percentage by 3x & asset utilization rate by 35% using granular and targeted geo-promotions and provisioning supply in the right locations.They also have made the integrations really simple so that companies can get up and running in a span of a couple of hours. 

Insurtech Startup Kruzr Raises $1.3 Mn from Saama Capital and Better Capital

InsurTech startup Kruzr has raised 1.3 Million USD (Rs. 9.5 Cr) for its seed round led by Saama Capital with participation from Better Capital. Kruzr is a preventive motor insurance technology which helps insurance companies personalize policy premiums & improve their risk model by delivering an engaging preventative driving assistant to their customers. Kruzr is founded by Pallav Singh, Ayan, and Jasmeet Singh Sethi.

Kruzr blends the power of voice technology and artificial intelligence in its personal driving assistant that helps drivers minimize mobile distractions, drowsy driving, speeding and external risks like weather and accident-prone zones. In pilots with insurers, Kruzr managed to cut down distracted driving by 80%. Kruzr is working with motor insurance companies in Europe, UK and India to bring its technology to their customers to prevent accidents & improve claims.

“Road accidents cause over 1.3 million deaths globally every year, and motor insurance companies lose billions of dollars due to these. However, more than 75% of accidents are actually preventable with timely driver assistance. We at Kruzr are building technology to minimize these accidents and help make motor insurance truly preventive and customer-centric.” says Pallav, co-founder and CEO.

The funds raised will be utilized to grow the technology team, scale the product, and expand the business in Europe and UK.

“We were very impressed by the founding team’s vision for Kruzr and their significant customer progress in the European automobile insurance market. We believe Pallav, Ayan and Jasmeet can build a world-class product company out of India serving this sizeable and growing global market,” said Suresh Shanmugham, Managing Partner, Saama Capital.

“Kruzr is leveraging the latest advances in mobile, big data, and AI to build a unique preventive driving technology that will save lives and help motor insurance companies design personalized policies. I’ve watched the Kruzr team learn and iterate to build traction with the world top insurers & am excited about the future ahead”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital.

Kruzr is positioned as the world’s first technology powered smart driving assistant and is designed to automate driver safety. The mobile app automatically detects driving and begins to play the role of your driving assistant. It filters out all important calls and messages, thus reducing distraction while driving, one of the major causes for road traffic incidents across the globe.