HR Tech Startup Skillenza Raises $1 Mn from CBA Capital, Blume Ventures and Tracxn

Bangalore-based VH Education Services Private Limited, which own and operates HR tech startup, Skillenza, has raised $ 1 million in a pre-Series A investment round, led by CBA Capital's Education Catalyst Fund (ECF) and contributions from existing investors Blume Ventures and Tracxn Labs Other new investors LetsVenture, CIO Angel Network, Keiretsu Forum, Hyderabad Angels also contributed to the round, reported Times of India.

The funds raised would be utilised to create new modules for assessment of software engineers and expand into tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India, a statement from the company said.

Subhendu Panigrahi, CEO, Skillenza, said in a media statement, "We are working on credentialing students coming out of engineering colleges and creating a global repository of final year undergraduates. These verified and ranked profiles will help companies to hire talent quickly."

Skillenza was founded in 2016 by Subhendu. Essentially, it is a an online platform for professionals that hosts challenges, coding assessments and hackathons to help companies hire engineers and for professionals, it allows to showcase their skills and build an experience graph. The data generated from each challenge is recorded on the platform and is used to create a very personalized experience graph for each user.

"With the infusion of new capital, we foresee that the team will execute ideas that will aid companies to hire the best talent at scale in India to start with and eventually at a global level," said Ashish Fafadia, partner, Blume Ventures.

Vishal Bharat, MD, CBA Capital, said, “What attracted us to Skillenza is its offering that combines the creative process with 21st century skills. It enables participants to explore their skills in the areas that are close to their heart.” The current round would be utilised to create new modules for assessment of software engineers and expand into tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India, a statement from the company said.

"We are working on credentialing students coming out of engineering colleges and creating a global repository of final year undergraduates. These verified and ranked profiles will help companies to hire talent quickly," said Subhendu Panigrahi, CEO, Skillenza.

"With the infusion of new capital, we foresee that the team will execute ideas that will aid companies to hire the best talent at scale in India to start with and eventually at a global level,” said Ashish Fafadia, partner, Blume Ventures.

Recommended By Colombia Vishal Bharat, MD, CBA Capital, said, “What attracted us to Skillenza is its offering that combines the creative process with 21st century skills. It enables participants to explore their skills in the areas that are close to their heart."

It may also be recalled that in March, Bengaluru-based ePoise Systems, a HR Tech startup that offers a cloud based SaaS solution, got acquired by global SaaS-based suites giant Zoho, for an undisclosed amount.

Prior to that, in last November, Bangalore-based Hush, an employee-focused HR tech firm founded by two former Yahoo employees, has raised ₹ 4.5 crores in funding.

In March 2018, Gurgaon based HR Technology startup Benepik had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a group of investors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image Source - ShutterStock

Delhi-Based Paytunes Raises Angel Round from CIO Angel Network

Delhi-based PayTunes, a mobile advertising platform on Android, has announced today that it has raised undisclosed amount of funding CIO Angel Network (CAN). Sanjay Mehta and Anoop Mathur have led the round with other members from CAN.

Founded this year by Divya Pratap Singh, Rakesh Sehgal and Gaurav Tiwari, Paytunes is an android only application which incentivizes its users on every received call. It replaces the boring old ringtones of your phone with ad-jingles. Users can later redeem their collected rewards through free recharges and bill payments

Singh and Sehgal were batchmates from IIT Delhi, while Tiwari comes with an experience in business development across domains of FMCG and IT. They have had entrepreneurial stints earlier as well with their respective start-ups

PayTunes claims to have more than 10,000 users in just 14 days of its launch. The company aims to reach a user base of 1 lac consumers by the year-end. The company is in talks with some big brands to provide solutions for their internal branding as well in form of branding tunes as ringtones on the phones of their entire field staff networks.

"Mobile advertising is currently the hottest area in Advertising industry and brands are looking at newer innovative ways to reach the mobiles of their consumers. Most of the digital advertising avenues have for long focused only on in-app and website banner ads. This audio based ad delivery model is disruptive and holds global potential," said Sanjay Mehta, lead investor in PayTunes

As per a recent e-Marketer report, digital advertising spend in India is USD 0.94 billion out of which mobile advertising spend is USD 0.17 billion. By 2019 the digital ad spend is expected to grow to $ 2.17 billion out of which mobile is expected to contribute $1.23 billion.

Yesterday, another mobile advertising platform Pokkt had raised close to $5 million from Singapore-based venture capital firm Segnel Venture. India has few home-grown mobile advertising platforms like Inmobi, Komli and Adiquity, among others, that making their marks equally in comparison to global companies.